MATTHEW M. BRAICH MBRAICH@LCLARK.EDU

STRAWSON AND ALLISON ON KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

MATT BRAICH

LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE

PORTLAND, OREGON

MAY 2008

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT

SUBMITTED in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

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STRAWSON AND ALLISON ON KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

ABSTRACT: Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism is no stranger to controversy. A primary source of the controversy is the question whether Kant regards the distinction between things in themselves and appearances as metaphysical or epistemological. Advocates of the metaphysical interpretation (specifically, P.F. Strawson) insist that things in themselves and appearances are distinct entities occupying different ontological realms: the phenomenal realm and the noumenal realm. By contrast, advocates of the epistemological interpretation (specifically, Henry Allison) insist that things in themselves and appearances are numerically identical entities considered from different perspectives: the empirical perspective and the transcendental perspective. While both interpretations offer plausible accounts of transcendental idealism, neither is completely compatible with the text. The question, then, is: what elements of Kant’s philosophy must we sacrifice in order to adopt either interpretation? In this paper, I answer this question and argue that, though each view fails to cohere fully with the text, the problem may not lie in the details of the interpretations. There is another possibility: transcendental idealism may not itself be a single, self-consistent doctrine.

Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism is no stranger to controversy. As one of

Kant’s earliest critics, F. H. Jacobi, famously writes: “the ‘thing in itself’ is the kind of concept

without which it is impossible to enter Kant’s system, but with which it is impossible to get out

of the system.”1 Jacobi’s remarks highlight an apparent tension in the first Critique: on the one

hand, Kant restricts the range of things we can cognize to possible objects of experience, while,

on the other hand, his system relies on uncognizable entities. For many critics, this tension tolls

the death knell for transcendental idealism. In The Bounds of Sense, for example, P.F. Strawson

jettisons things in themselves in an effort to absolve Kant from what he regards as

inconsistencies. “The only element in transcendental idealism which has any significant part to

play in those structures,” Strawson writes, “is the phenomenalistic idealism according to which

the physical world is nothing apart from perceptions.” 2 If we accept this metaphysical

interpretation of Kant, the dilemma is twofold: should Kant continue to talk about things in

themselves, his system runs into apparent contradictions; yet, should he abandon things in

themselves, as Strawson urges, his system operates exclusively at the phenomenal level.

1 F. H. Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gespräch, Breslau: Gottlieb Löwe, New York and London: Garland (1787). 2 P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, London: Methuen (1966), page 246.

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More recently, however, this interpretative tradition has lost favor among Kantians.

Since the publication of Henry Allison’s Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, commentators have

increasingly regarded the distinction between things in themselves and appearances as

epistemological, rather than metaphysical. 3 By contrasting things in themselves with

appearances, Allison insists, Kant means only to underscore the limits of our cognitive powers;

he is not, importantly, distinguishing between two ontologically distinct sets of entities—i.e.,

appearances and those supersensible entities that lie, as it were, outside of our cognitive field.

Consequently, Jacobi’s original criticism is avoided: Kant can coherently talk about things in

themselves because those entities just are appearances considered in abstraction from the

conditions of our cognizing them.

The question, then, is whether Kant himself regards the distinction between things in

themselves and appearances as metaphysical or epistemological. Unfortunately, the text cannot

answer this question. Allen Wood notes this problem:

I think much of the puzzlement about transcendental idealism arises from the fact that Kant himself formulates transcendental idealism in a variety of ways, and it is not at all clear how, or whether, his statements of it can all be reconciled, or taken as statements of a single, self-consistent doctrine. I think Kant’s central formulations suggest two quite distinct and mutually incompatible doctrines.4

Compare, for example, the following two passages:

We should consider that bodies are not objects in themselves that are present to us, but rather a mere appearance of who knows what unknown object; that motion is not the effect of this unknown cause, but merely the appearance of its influence on our sense.5 We can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only insofar as it is an object of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance…we [assume] the distinction

3 Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, Connecticut: Yale University Press (1983). 4 Allen Wood, Kant, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing (2005), pages 63-64. 5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, New York: Cambridge University Press (1998), A387; my italics.

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between things as objects of experience and the very same things as things in themselves.6

Because such inconsistencies preclude the possibility of arriving at a univocal interpretation of

the text, commentators, including Wood, have been forced to rely on such extra-textual

considerations as charity when adjudicating between the metaphysical and epistemological views.

Though this approach has benefits, it raises the question: what elements of Kant’s philosophy

must we sacrifice in order to adopt either interpretation?

In this paper, I address this question in three sections. In section one, I outline three

central roles things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy. In section two, I examine

Strawson’s interpretation (commonly called the “two-worlds” view) and argue that he fails to

account for the role things in themselves play in Kant’s moral philosophy. In section three, I

examine Allison’s interpretation (commonly called the “dual-aspect” view) and argue that he

fails to account for the role things in themselves play in affecting the faculty of intuition—a

crucial aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. I conclude by arguing that, though each view

fails to meet all of these constraints, the problem may not lie in the details of the interpretations.

There is another possibility: transcendental idealism may not itself be a single, self-consistent

doctrine.

I. THE ROLES OF THINGS IN THEMSELVES

Though Kant is quite clear that we can cognize (and hence know) only appearances, and

not things in themselves, he uses the notion of a thing in itself throughout his philosophy. In

“Things in Themselves,” Robert Adams outlines the four roles this notion plays in Kant’s work,

6 KrV, Bxxvi-Bxxvii; my italics.

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but I am here only concerned with three.7 The first role (the negative role) arises in the context of

Kant’s theoretical philosophy, specifically, the “Transcendental Aesthetic,” in which Kant

specifies the a priori conditions under which we intuit the matter of experience. The second role

(the affecting role) arises in Kant’s transcendental account of how appearances occur. Lastly, the

third role (the moral role) arises in the context of Kant’s practical philosophy, specifically, in his

attempt to ground the possibility of freedom, God and the soul in the noumenal realm. We shall

consider these three roles in order.

1) The central thesis behind the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is that the faculty of intuition

comprises two a priori forms: space and time. An object, for Kant, counts as a possible object of

experience if and only if it can be given in intuition, and hence ordered in time and, if it is an

outer intuition, space. Against this picture of what possible objects of experience are, Kant

contrasts things in themselves. He holds that we experience objects not as they are in themselves,

but only as they appear in relation to our faculty of intuition, in time and space. This use of the

thing in itself to clarify what appearances are not constitutes the negative role the concept plays

in Kant’s philosophy.

2) Kant bases his transcendental psychology on primarily two faculties of the mind: the

intuition and the understanding. In terms of producing experience, the understanding plays an

active part; it actively organizes the manifold of intuition under the rubric of a priori categories,

e.g., causality. By contrast, the intuition plays a passive part; it receives the manifold through an

interaction with something else, presumably beyond the range of our experience. Kant identifies

7 Robert Adams, “Things in Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1997), pages 801-825. I have left out the regulative role because it does not directly pertain to my discussion of Allison and Strawson.

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things in themselves as the source of this interaction, and perhaps to avoid illicit metaphysical

commitments, he characterizes that relation in terms of “affection” or “grounding.”8

3) One of Kant’s central concerns in the first Critique is reconciling Newtonian physics

with morality. At the level of appearances, Kant is a Newtonian: he holds that everything in the

empirical world happens in accordance with the laws of nature. This includes not only natural

events, but also human action. Consequently, Kant asks: given that physical laws (as specified

by Newton) determine all events in the empirical world, how are freedom and morality possible?

Kant answers this question by positing the noumenal realm. He argues that so long as there could

be a realm independent of the empirically determined order of our experience, there remains at

least the logical possibility of God, morality and the soul. These moral postulates, then,

constitute the third role things in themselves play in Kant’s work.

Of these three roles, the first two— the affecting role and the negative role—have the

largest influence on how Strawson and Allison respectively formulate their interpretations of

transcendental idealism. Strawson emphasizes role (2), and, as a result, his interpretation

presents the relationship between things in themselves and appearances in terms of a quasi-

casual “A-relation,” i.e. the relation that holds between things in themselves and intuition.9

Conversely, Allison emphasizes role (1), the negative role, and as a result, his interpretation

maintains an identity between things in themselves and appearances, where the two differ only

insofar as the latter is considered as a thing in space and time and the former as a thing in the

abstract.

8 See, e.g., KrV, A380. Regarding the locution “ground,” Wood writes that Kant uses this “perhaps because it seems to him more abstract and metaphysically non-committal, better suited to express a relation that can never be cognized empirically but only thought through the pure understanding.” Wood, Kant, page 64. 9 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236.

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II. The Two-Worlds View

The two-worlds view proceeds from a metaphysical interpretation of transcendental

idealism. Advocates of this view hold that things in themselves and appearances are numerically

distinct entities related to one another through a casual process, which Kant articulates in terms

of affection. Experience, then, is in part the result of things in themselves affecting the intuition

such that they produce in us spatiotemporal representations, appearances. This leaves us with

two distinct realms: the noumenal realm, from which the process of affection proceeds, causing

in us mental representations of things; and the phenomenal realm, in which these representations

are structured by the active faculties of the mind, appearing to us as objects (bodies in space and

time) governed by the physical laws of nature.

Strawson’s own interpretation of transcendental idealism agrees with this general picture

of the two-worlds view. He begins with the basic two-worlds thesis “there exists the sphere of

supersensible reality, of things, neither spatial nor temporal, as they are in themselves.”10 In the

realm of things in themselves, he continues, “there obtains a certain complex relation (or a class

of cases of this relation) which we can speak of, on the model of a causal relation, in terms of

‘affection’ and ‘being affect by.’”11 Strawson refers to this complex relation as the “A-relation”

and explains that while the A-relation holds only in the noumenal realm, it is responsible for

producing phenomena (hence, experience): “experience is the outcome of this complex quasi-

causal relation holding in the sphere of things in themselves; and the co-operation of all the

elements so far mentioned [i.e. the intuition and understanding] is essential to its production.”12

While the objects of experience are real in the sense that they enjoy “their own states and

10 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236. 11 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236. 12 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 236.

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relations irrespective of the occurrence of any particular states of awareness of them,” their

existence wholly depends on the operations of the mind; and thus, “apart from perceptions, they

are really nothing at all.”13 Such ideality, then, gives appearances a distinct ontological status:

though grounded in the noumenal realm, they remain nothing over and above perceptions

metaphysically dependent on the mind (but not any particular mind).

Once we consider this doctrine in relation to Kant’s epistemology, however, difficulties

arise. The following schema of the two-worlds view illuminates these problems:

a) Things in themselves exist.

b) Things in themselves cause appearances.

c) We can cognize only appearances.

A tension arises between claims (a) and (b) and claim (c). If we accept (c), then it seems we

must accept the following two corollaries:

C1) We cannot cognize things in themselves (and hence cannot know whether

they exist).

C2) We cannot know whether things in themselves cause appearances.14

Both corollaries conflict with the metaphysical claims above, so we must either deny (a) and (b)

or deny (C1) and (C2). If we deny (C1) and (C2), then Kant begins to resemble a rationalist,

insofar he would have to hold that we can cognize the true nature of things by virtue of reason

alone. Kant would doubtless resist such a conclusion, since he considers the rationalists

“dogmatic” and prone to metaphysical speculation.15 However, if we deny (a) and (b), then Kant

becomes a kind of idealist, in that he would have to reject the existence of extra-cognitive objects

13 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 237. 14 This schema, with a few minor changes, comes from Rae Langton, Kantian Humility, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1998), pages 7-8. 15 KrV, Aix.

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in favor of mental items. Though Kant regards his philosophy as a form of realism, at least at the

empirical level, Strawson resolves the tension above by opting for this alternative, thus rendering

Kant an idealist. Before considering Strawson’s conclusion, however, an overview of Kant’s

epistemology is required.

The contradiction between claims (a) and (b) and claim (c) derives from Kant’s doctrine

that the categories of the understanding have legitimate application only with respect to objects

of possible experience, not things in themselves. Experience, on Kant’s view, consists in the

interplay of the understanding and the intuition. Though both faculties are necessary for

experience, neither is by itself sufficient: the intuition only receives the matter of experience,

while the understanding only provides structures (concepts) for organizing it—hence, Kant’s

famous dictum, “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”16

One condition for our ability to cognize objects, then, is that the object be given in intuition.

Since things in themselves cannot be given in intuition, it follows that the categories of the

understanding cannot be applied legitimately to these things. Indeed, Kant’s criticism of the

rationalists, and, specifically Leibniz, consists in his claim that the pure concepts of the

understanding, e.g., God and the soul, are by themselves insufficient for real knowledge, and that

something else is needed, namely, empirical content.

The problem, however, is that claims (a) and (b) specify a categorical relation (causality)

that obtains outside of experience. By claiming that things in themselves affect intuition, Kant

thus appears to violate the basic tenet of his epistemology, that the concepts of the understanding

apply only to appearances, not things in themselves. Moreover, Kant cannot claim that things in

themselves exist, since, on his view, existence is also a category. Hence, not only does the

16 KrV, A51/B75.

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doctrine of affection violate his epistemology, but so does the basic claim that things in

themselves exist. On these grounds, Strawson rejects (a) and (b), the metaphysical theses, and

argues that Kant is at best an inconsistent Berkeley.17 “The only element in transcendental

idealism which has any significant part to play in to structures,” he writes, “is the

phenomenalistic idealism according to which the physical world is nothing apart from

perceptions.” 18

Consequently, Strawson dismisses the practical role things in themselves play in Kant’s

philosophy, role (3). His point is that, without things in themselves, Kant does not face the

problem of contradicting himself when talking about things at the transcendental level. However,

Kant’s talk about things in themselves is not as contradictory as Strawson thinks, and much of

the problem here rests on Kant’s semantic theory. Strawson takes the standard interpretation of

this theory, arguing that, on Kant’s view, a concept (or lexical item, for that matter) is

meaningful just in case its object can be given or instantiated in possible experience.19 Kant

articulates this theory in various forms throughout the first Critique, though perhaps the most

concise articulation occurs at (A239/B298-A242/B300):

It is also requisite for one to make an abstract concept sensible, i.e., display the object that corresponds to it in intuition, since without this [intuition] the concept would remain (as one says) without sense, i.e., without significance.

If Kant’s point is that a concept without empirical application lacks meaning or sense altogether,

then any proposition about things in themselves, including, importantly, those that arise in the

context of Kant’s practical philosophy, become meaningless.20

17 Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, page 4. 18 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, page 246. 19 Strawson, Bounds of Sense, pages 263-270. 20 This would, then, be a point of overlap between Kant and the Logical Positivists, who tried to reduce meaningful propositions to only those that are analytic or empirically verifiable.

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However, this is not Kant’s considered view—or, at least, not of all it. Rather, Kant’s

point is that our concepts of things in themselves lack a use, not a meaning. 21 In the

“Transcendental Analytic,” for example, he writes: “even after abstraction from every sensible

condition, [the pure concepts of the understanding have] significance, but only a logical

significance.”22 As this passage suggests, Kant deploys two levels of meaning: logical meaning

and empirical meaning. We can think of the former as something like syntactic meaning and the

latter as something like semantic meaning. Though our concepts of noumena and things in

themselves have no use in the empirical world, they retain meaning at a syntactical level. It is

mistaken, therefore, to attribute to Kant the view that all concepts that lack empirical use are

meaningless, since such a view disregards the distinction between the two types of meaning.

Furthermore, Kant holds that while we cannot cognize things in themselves, we can

nevertheless think them. In the preface to the second edition, he articulates this distinction:

To cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility…But I can think whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself, i.e. as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding object somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities.23

Unlike cognizable objects—which include only those objects for which we have concepts that

could, at least in principle, be instantiated—thinkable objects are those whose concepts can be

thought without contradiction.24 The range of objects we can think is, therefore, far broader than

the range of objects we can cognize. Indeed, it may be infinitely broader, for we can think

21 J.P. Nolan, “Kant on Meaning: Two Studies,” Kant-Studien, Vol 70 (1979), pages 113-130. 22 KrV, A147/B186. 23 KrV, Bxxvi. 24 I say “in principle” to include concepts like UNICORN. Though no unicorn is actual, we could nevertheless specify the empirical conditions under which UNICORN could correctly pick out an object in the world. Hence, unicorns count as possible objects of experience, and are therefore cognizable, at least in principle. In other words, the extension of ‘possible objects of experience’ includes objects in all possible worlds, near and far.

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anything that is logically possible, but can cognize only those things that are really possible.25 In

turn, this distinction plays a central role in Kant’s practical philosophy. Insofar as we can think

the concepts God, the soul and freedom consistently, that is, without logical contradiction, then

we can believe, though not know, that morality is grounded in the noumenal realm. By opening

up this possibility, Kant is not contradicting his epistemology, as Strawson would have it, but is

instead stressing the extent to which our moral commitments are based on faith, rather than

knowledge, and hence, his famous expression, “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room

for faith.”26

A coherent view begins to emerges once we consider (a), (b) and (c) in relation to the

thought/cognition distinction. Recall that claim (c) entails only that we cannot cognize things in

themselves, though it makes no mention of our capacity to think them. If we read (a) and (b) as

deriving from thought alone, and not cognition, then Kant can consistently hold all three claims;

that is, he can think things in themselves exist, and he can think things in themselves affect the

intuition, as logical possibilities, while at the same time maintaining minimal metaphysical

commitments. Henry Allison proposes a version of this reading, and though it presents a

deflationary view of Kant, who, at times, appears to lament the fact that while we can think about

things in themselves, we cannot know much about them, his interpretation does absolve Kant

from many of the charges the two-worlds view raises.

III. THE DUAL-ASPECT VIEW

Unlike the two-worlds view, which identifies transcendental idealism as the centerpiece

of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, the dual-aspect view holds that the distinction between things

25 Adams, “Things in Themselves,” pages 801-825. Adams provides an analysis of how logical and real possibility work in Kant’s critical philosophy. 26 KrV, Bxxx.

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in themselves and appearances is motivated by Kant’s overall epistemic concerns. Advocates of

this view insist that Kant’s Copernican revolution consists not in the claim that there exist two

distinct realms, of which we can know only one, but rather in his epistemic doctrine that the a

priori principles of the mind determine how humans experience objects.27 Given how we

necessarily structure experience, this view holds, it is epistemically possible that objects of

experience would have an existence in themselves, outside of space, time and the categories of

the understanding. To talk about things in themselves, then, is to talk about the things we intuit

but from a different perspective: the transcendental perspective. Hence, Kant’s distinction

hinges not on metaphysical concerns, but on how we consider the objects of experience: either

we can consider such objects in relation to the conditions of our cognizing them, i.e., as

appearances, or we can consider these very same things apart from those condition, i.e., as things

as they exist in themselves.28

Allison’s interpretation of transcendental idealism takes a stronger stance regarding the

ontological nature of things in themselves, arguing that they are not real in any rich sense but

rather serve as mere methodological postulates. His strategy is to show that the concept of a

thing in itself (as well as other associated concepts, such as noumena, the transcendental object

and the object in general = X) derives from transcendental reflection, and is thus only a product

27 KrV, Bxvi, Here Kant famously compares his philosophy to a Copernican revolution. For a dual-aspect interpretation of this remark, see Henry Allison, “Kant’s Transcendental Humanism,” The Monist (1971), pages 182-206. 28 Gerold Prauss offers a dual-aspect reading of Kant’s use of the terms ‘things in themselves’ and ‘things as they exists in themselves.’ He argues that the frequent occurrence of the adverbial ‘things as they exists in themselves” in Kant’s work designates a special way of considering the very same objects of our experience. When Kant uses ‘thing in itself,’ Prauss further argues, it is only meant as an abbreviated form of the adverbial locution. See Gerols Prauss, Kant und das Problem der Dinge an Sich, Bonn (1974), and for a nice assessment of Prauss, see Karl Ameriks, “Recent Work on Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1982).

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of Kant’s methodology. In the “Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection,” Kant defines

transcendental reflection as:

The action through which I make the comparison of representations in general with the cognitive power in which they are situated, and through which I distinguish whether they are to be compared to one another as belonging to the pure understanding or to pure intuition.29

Such reflection establishes Kant’s epistemic procedure for distinguishing objects; what makes an

object an appearance rather than a thing in itself is, in other words, its relation to our cognitive

faculties, i.e., how we consider it. Just as we consider objects as appearances, standing in a

determinate relation to our cognitive faculties, so too can we consider those very same objects as

things in themselves, standing apart from those faculties. Moreover, that we consider objects in

this way does not commit us to the existence of non-spatial, atemporal, non-causal entities—and

this line of thinking finds an analogue in the sciences. As Allison points out, physicists

frequently consider bodies in abstraction from certain properties, such as weight, but this does

not show that weightless objects exist. Rather, it merely shows that bodies can be “conceived

although not experienced apart from their relation to other bodies.” 30 Thus, if we accept

Allison’s methodological approach to things in themselves, the problematic metaphysical theses

drop out, leaving us with only an epistemic procedure for distinguishing objects.

As this sketch of Allison’s interpretation suggests, his view emphasizes the negative role

things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy, but does not account for the positive roles,

29 KrV, A261/B317. 30 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” pages 53-54. Allison acknowledges that this analogy cannot be pressed too far, since in the case of the sciences we are dealing with a determinate, empirical concept. Nevertheless, he argues, “the fact remains that the transcendental context does involve a genuine example of ‘considering’. Moreover, our ability to consider objects in this way is precisely what is meant by the claim that we can ‘think’ things as they are in themselves; while the unique features of the transcendental context is the fact that it involves an abstraction from everything empirical explains why we cannot know them as such.”

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including, specifically, the role of affection. It should be made clear here that affection is not a

problem at the empirical level: insofar as the mind, considered as an empirical entity, can be

affected by other (empirical) objects via the senses, no difficulties arise for Kant. “Not only is it

the case that Kant can,” Allison writes, “but also that he does, talk about the mind as affected by

empirical objects.”31 Difficulties arise only when we are dealing with transcendental affection,

that is, the affection that holds between things in themselves and intuition. Allison, then, must

reconcile his negative formulation of what things in themselves are (or, perhaps more accurately,

are not) with Kant’s positive remarks about these things. Indeed, if things in themselves are

appearances considered in abstraction from our cognitive abilities, how can we account for

Kant’s (positive) assertion that they affect the mind?

Allison’s answer to this question is ingenious and swift. He argues that, as conceived

through transcendental reflection, the proposition ‘something affects the mind’ expresses a

purely formal, a priori condition of our having representations. Furthermore, we can substitute

‘something’ with ‘things in themselves’ without changing the cognitive value of the proposition:

for a thing in itself just is, by definition, that non-spatial, atemporal and hence purely intelligible

‘something’ that is said to affect the mind upon transcendental reflection.32 Consequently, the

proposition ‘things in themselves affect the mind’ does not express a synthetic truth about things

in themselves—that is, it does not yield knowledge that, as Kant articulates it, goes “beyond” the

concept—but rather states an analytic truth about how such a ground must be conceived.33

Nor does such a proposition introduce unknowable entities. As Allison argues,

transcendental reflection provides only a formal, a priori account of how we must conceive of

31 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 67. 32 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 68. 33 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 76.

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affection in general; it does not, contra the metaphysical interpretation, specify a causal relation

that obtains outside of experience. Thus, when Kant says transcendentally that things in

themselves affect the mind, he is not speaking of a new set of entities, but is instead talking

generally about the familiar objects of experience considered in an abstract way. If we are asked

to explain at the transcendental level what that something of affection is, we can legitimately say

nothing more than this: it is something that cannot be described spatiotemporally, i.e., a thing in

itself. However, if we move down, as it were, to the empirical level, we can answer the question

in more substantive terms: light, particles, air, etc., these are the things that affect our minds. In

neither case, however, are we dealing with different objects. Rather, we are dealing with

numerically identical objects considered in different ways: one abstractly and the other

empirically. Allison, thus, writes that “the key to the Kantian response to this ‘objection of

objections’ must be the affirmation of the merely analytical nature of the claims involved, which

is itself a consequence of their purely formal, i.e., methodological, status.”34

Allison’s interpretation, then, renders claims (a) and (b) of the two-worlds view into the

following:

d) We can consider things in themselves at the transcendental level.

e) A thing considered at the transcendental level can be considered only as something

that affects the mind.35

Claim (d) reiterates the methodological nature of transcendental idealism. Unlike claim (a),

which states that things in themselves exist, claim (d) entails only that there are two ways of

considering the objects of experience, one of which requires abstracting away from our cognitive

powers. Claim (e) turns the statement ‘something affects our minds’ into an analytic truth about

34 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page74. 35 This schema is again barrowed from Langton, Kantian Humility, pages 8-9.

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things in themselves.36 Consequently, the claim (b) that things in themselves cause appearances

is false. If things in themselves are identical with the class of empirical object, described in an

abstract, transcendental way, then they cannot cause appearances, for to say otherwise makes no

sense. The two-worlds view, thus, mistakenly construes the proposition ‘something affects our

minds’ as a synthetic, metaphysical thesis about things in themselves, when it is, according to

Allison, merely a methodological claim about how causal relations in general must be conceived.

Though perhaps more charitable than the two-worlds view, Allison’s interpretation first

encounters problems at the exegetical level. Under Allison’s analysis, all transcendental

propositions concerning affection express an analytic truth about the class of empirical objects

considered abstractly, as things in themselves. A consequence of this approach is that it leaves

no room for our ignorance of things in themselves, and hence it turns claim (c)—the claim that

we cannot cognize things in themselves—into the following tautology:

f) Things considered at the transcendental level just are things considered in abstraction

from their relation to our cognitive powers.

Such an approach to things in themselves is indeed difficult to reconcile with the text. If we

accept (f), then we must accept that the concept of a thing in itself contains no substantive

content beyond the negative predicates which transcendental reflection permits, i.e., that things

in themselves are non-spatial, atemporal and purely intelligible. However, Kant appears to hold

that, if our cognitive faculties were constituted otherwise, we could say more about things in

themselves. At A565/B593, for example, he writes that while we cannot know a thing in itself,

we can nevertheless think “it as a thing determinable by its distinguishing and inner predicates.”

The question, then, is: if things in themselves just are appearances considered abstractly, how

36 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 68.

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and why would Kant think of them as possibly possessing distinguishing and inner predicates?37

Moreover, Kant frequently laments the fact that we cannot know such predicates. In the “Canon

of Pure Reason,” for example, he writes of our “unquenchable desire to find a firm footing

beyond all bounds of experience.”38 It is indeed difficult to see how this unquenchable desire

could be a desire to disprove the analytic (f).39 Could we desire, in other words, to show that

things considered at the transcendental level are not things considered abstractly? The problem

both passages highlight is, in short, a problem with analyticity. If Kant’s considered view is that

(f) exhausts all possible knowledge of things in themselves, then he would not be further

compelled to treat the concept of a thing in itself as if it contained content of which we cannot

know. But he does treat the concept this way, and this is no doubt a problem for Allison’s

interpretation.

To be sure, Allison’s interpretation is a rational reconstruction of Kant’s philosophy, and

as such, it need not square with everything the text says about things in themselves, but only

present a coherent account of transcendental idealism. Nevertheless, there are reasons for

questioning whether Allison’s is a coherent interpretation, and this is the second problem his

view encounters. In one sense, Allison’s account of transcendental affection succeeds; by

rendering claim (b) into claim (e), he shows that there is no longer the problem of non-spatial,

atemporal and unknowable entities affecting the mind. Though this strategy saves Kant from the

difficult task of explaining how things in themselves cause appearances, it does not eliminate the

problem of transcendental affection altogether. In the place of the old, metaphysical problem,

there is a new, methodological problem: though produced by transcendental reflection, claim (e)

37 Langton, Kantian Humility, pages 10-11. 38 KrV, A796/B824. 39 Langton, Kantian Humility, page 10.

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still smuggles in a category of the understanding—something, in other words, is still affecting the

mind.40 At the end of his analysis, Allison addresses this problem: “This concept [affection]

does, indeed, involve a use of the categories, but the use is purely logical, defining how

something must be conceived in transcendental reflection.”41 This is a curious remark, since

transcendental reflection requires that we abstract away from space, time and all categories of the

understanding, including, of course, causality. There is a sense in which Allison, then, fails by

his own lights; he fails, that is, to abstract completely away from the categories when analyzing

transcendental affection. Consequently, while Allison’s interpretation accounts for roles (1) and

(3) of things in themselves, it does not provide an adequate account of (2), the role of affection.

IV. CONCLUSION

In this paper, I have argued that neither Strawson’s nor Allison’s view accounts for every

role things in themselves play in Kant’s philosophy. Strawson’s interpretation accounts for (1)

and (2), but it does not meet (3), the role things in themselves play in Kant’s moral philosophy.

The source of this problem lies in Strawson’s attempt to eliminate things in themselves. By

turning Kant into a Berkeleian of sorts, Strawson obscures the central role the noumenal realm

plays in grounding the possibility of God, the soul and freedom. By contrast, Allison’s view

accounts for (1) and (3), but it does not meet (2), the role things in themselves play in

transcendental affection. The source of this problem is twofold. First, Allison’s attempt to turn

claims about things in themselves into analytic truths does not square with Kant’s talk of our

inability to know the inner predicates of these things. Second, his attempt to explain away the

problem of transcendental causality in terms of transcendental reflection fails, since engaging in

40 Langton, Kantian Humility, page 11. 41 Adams, “Things in Themselves, Noumena, and the Transcendental Object,” page 76.

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transcendental reflection is eo ipso engaging in the consideration of things abstractly, away from

space, time and the categories of the understanding.

The exegetical difficulties associated with transcendental idealism have consequently

forced commentators to assess the adequacy of each interpretation in light of extra-textual

consideration, e.g., charity. On these grounds, the dual-aspect view is preferable. Not only does

it avoid the metaphysical problems elicited by the two-worlds view, but it also captures the

overall epistemic concerns motivating Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Wood, for example, writes:

The identity interpretation [i.e. the dual-aspect view]…helps us to recognize the real nature of transcendental idealism, by presenting it metaphysically as a form of unremarkable realism, but one conjoined with the distinctive epistemological thesis that our knowledge is subject to limits.42

Though these kinds of considerations are virtually indispensable when deciding which version of

Kant’s doctrine to adopt, the fact still remains that the text underdetermines both the dual-aspect

view and the two-worlds view. Plainly stated, Kant formulates transcendental idealism in both

metaphysical and epistemological terms, resulting in the disparate roles things in themselves play

and, concomitantly, the current debate between Allison, Strawson and their respective traditions.

To undercut the debate, one may, then, ask: is transcendental idealism really a single, self-

consistent doctrine? Metaphysically speaking, it might be the case that it is not; it might, after

all, just be a set of incompatible doctrines. Though epistemically, it is nonetheless conceivable

that an alternative interpretation may come along and succeed where the two previous traditions

have failed. For methodological reasons, then, I think the proper question to ask is not whether

transcendental idealism is, in fact, a single, self-consistent doctrine, but rather whether we ought

to regard it as such. The answer to this question, I believe, should be in the affirmative: for

regardless of whether transcendental idealism actually is a unified doctrine, it is nevertheless

42 Wood, Kant, page 76.

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helpful, perhaps as a regulative idea of Kantian exegesis, to think of it as if it were such a

doctrine.43

43 For their endless support and guidance, I thank the Philosophy Department at Lewis & Clark College. Specifically, I thank Rebecca Copenhaver and J.M. Fritzman, without whom this paper would still be somewhere in the noumenal realm.