Kantian Distinctions in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy_Lagdameo

7/31/2019 Kantian Distinctions in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy_Lagdameo

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KANTIAN DISTINCTIONS IN THE RESOLUTION OF THE

THIRD ANTINOMY

Federico Jos T. Lagdameo

In the Critique of Pure Reason1, Immanuel Kant treats of the traditional problem of free

agency or free will vis--vis causal determinism in the so-called Third Antinomy (A444-452/B472-

480); and its resolution in the section On the Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason

in Regard to All Cosmological Ideas (A531-558/B559-586). Briefly, the problem concerns Kants

reconciliation of his concession to causal determinism2 and his assertion that we remain

nonetheless free rational agents subject to moral responsibility. Put another way, Kant seeks to

reconcile the supposed contradiction obtaining between his espousal of natural determinism

(evinced mainly in the sciences) and his moral libertarian position.

Kants proposed resolution, however, is fraught with difficulty, and if some of his

commentators are to be believed, virtually impossible to accept or even to understand. 3 While the

latter remark seems to be an exaggeration, a closer scrutiny of Kants argumentation tends to

reveal the cogency of such an assessment. For what appears to be virtually impossible to

1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Co., Inc., 1996).

2 [A]ll actions of a human being are determined in appearance on the basis of his

empirical character and the other contributing causes according to the order of nature; and if we

could explore all appearances of his power of choice down to the bottom, there would not be asingle human action that we could not with certainty predict and cognize as necessary from its

preceding conditions. (A549-50/B577-8)

3 See Graham Bird, Part III: Introduction in A Companion to Kant, ed. Graham Bird

(Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 253-254.


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understand may be the several crucial distinctions Kant makes in resolving the Third Antinomy:

those which require not only a careful consideration of their opposition to each other within their

binary set of distinction, but also their systematic relations to each other as sets of binary

distinctions.

In what follows is an identification and discussion of the three sets of distinctions that Kant

introduced in the first Critique and that were requisite in resolving the Third Antinomy of Pure

Reason which he had outlined. The Third Antinomy itself is not lengthily treated herein but is

summarily rehearsed or recalled as is pertinent to the discussions that follow. Specifically and as

hinted above, the discussion will concern the notions comprising the particular sets of distinctions

(I); and later, these sets relation to each other as they form Kants response to the supposed

conflict between his affirmations of causal determinism and human free agency (II).

.

In the course of having to confront the supposedly4 antinomies of pure reason, and in

particular, the Third Antinomy which dealt with the conflicting claims of human freedom and

causal determinism, Kant had equipped himself with conceptual tools through which the antinomy

is shown to be capable of resolution and its conflicting claims free from contradiction. These tools

were sets of distinctions which allowed him to launch the differentiated thesis and antithesis of the

Third Antinomy that consequently elided their initially-perceived opposition to each other. These

three sets of distinctions are the following: noumena and phenomena; transcendental and practical

freedom; and the empirical and intelligible characters of human causality.

4 I say supposedly since Kant obviously presented them with the prior intent of

demonstrating their resolutions derived from an exposition of these principles compatibility with

each other, and hence, their merely apparentopposition to each other. See A529/B557.

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Noumena and phenomena. Although the 1781 edition of the Critique of Pure Reason

obviously contained an account of noumena and phenomena, in the 1787 edition of the first

Critique, Kant provided the initial account of the cleavage between things in themselves and

their appearances in the Preface. There he asserted that space and time are only forms of our

sensible intuition and hence are only conditions of the existence of things as appearances, that is,

human cognition structures objects of experience to be present to us spatio-temporarily (Bxxvi).

Kant thereafter inferred from this assertion that we are barred from any speculative or theoretical

knowledge of any object as thing in itself but have access only to its appearance, i.e., we can

cognize solely an objects sensible intuition but never itself as devoid of the forms of space and

time (Bxxvi, Bxxix).

This above distinction, in fact, is the bedrock of Kants transcendental idealism:

all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., they are mere

presentations thatin the way in which they are presented, viz., as extended beings, or as

series of changeshave no existence with an intrinsic basis, i.e., outside our thoughts

(A491/B519).

Yet while Kant underscored, as in above, that we cannot know objects as they are in

themselves but only their appearances which are conditioned by the structures of the mind; he

indicated nonetheless that it is possible to think or have a thoughtof these objects as noumena.

Such thoughts do not constitute knowledge claims, Kant stressed, but are the result of reasons

demand that appearancesaside from being spatio-temporalhave causes. In other words, for

Kant we can think of noumena because they are necessarily inferred by the mind in its cognition of

appearances: [W]e must be able to think, even if not cognize, the same objects also as things in

themselves. For otherwise an absurd proposition would follow, viz., that there is appearance

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without anything that appears (Bxxvii). Thus, empirical conditions of cognition include not only

space and time, but causality as well, that is, all possible experiences appear as caused.

At this point, it might be helpful to amplify the above distinction as it proves propitious in

resolving the Third Antinomy. Kants transcendental idealism, which he opposes to transcendental

realism, posits two aspects5 of an object: the object as noumenon or as it is in itself, and the object

as phenomenon or as they are conditioned epistemically by the mind. In Kants view, we can have

no knowledge or cognition of the noumenon although we can logically conceive it. On the other

hand, what we know and can know are the objects given to us in experience or through sensible

intuition; these are phenomena that are cognized empirically. Moreover, Kant asserts that no

knowledge is possible or is justifiable beyond the ken of the minds structure of knowing for this is

precisely the limit of experience and possible experience. Claims to the contrary, such as the

pretensions of the metaphysics of his time, are hence characterized as dogmatisms in which

human reason plunges into darkness and contradictions (Aviii).

Recall now that the Third Antinomy involves the thesis that human freedom must also be

assumed in explaining the phenomenal world; and the antithesis that natural causality offers a

comprehensive or total explanation of these appearances (A445/B473). The thesis proof employs

the argumentation for a cause that is itself not an effect, or the absurdity of an infinite regress of

5 I rely here on Henry Allisons treatment of the two prevalent interpretations of Kants

theory, i.e., the two-world or two object reading and the two aspect construal; and subscribe

to Allisons own adherence to the two aspect reading albeit with the clarification that this beinformed with the insight that Kants transcendental idealism is a meta-epistemological stance

rather than a metaphysical one. What Allison means by this is that as a meta-epistemological

position, Kantian transcendental idealism is directed towards answering what can be construed byus as real given our condition, and not in determining what is real. As such, transcendental

idealism must not be appropriated as an alternative ontological account (as opposed to rationalism

or empiricism, for instance), but as an alternative to ontology. Allison does take cognizance,however, of objections coming from Karl Ameriks who avers that Kants idealism is inherently

metaphysical in nature. See Henry E. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism inA Companion

to Kant, ed. Graham Bird (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 111-124.

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causes and effects. Meanwhile, the antithesis rests on the supposed impossibility of human agency

to be inserted within a world thoroughly governed (as steadfastly insisted by Kant) by natural

causality (A445-448/B473-476).

What Kants noumenal-phenomenal distinction purportedly achieves in this respect is to

locate meta-epistemologically6 natural causality in the plane of phenomenality while situating

human freedom in that of the noumenal. Deferring further elaboration of this Kantian maneuver in

the meantime, we can now affirm both free will and the determinism of natural causality as

simultaneously obtaining. For it is this transcendental distinction which opens the possibility for

the resolution of the antinomy.

To turn to how Kant directly addressed the Third Antinomy, we cannot but consider

another set of distinctions he established: transcendental and practical freedoms.

Transcendental and Practical Freedoms. To recapitulate briefly, Kants noumenal-

phenomenal distinction enabled the simultaneity of free will and causal determinism since they are

now explained to be located on different meta-epistemologicalplanes. Still, Kants formulation of

the thesis and antithesis of the Third Antinomy entailed arguments which are not directly

addressed by the transcendental distinction of the things-in-themselves and their epistemically

conditioned appearances. In fact, in the section where he argued for the resolution of the Third

Antinomy, Kant squarely faced the seeming contradiction of a world thoroughly subject to causal

determinism and yet admits of human freedom, not through an appeal to the transcendental

distinction, but by distinguishing which freedom pertinently applies to the discussion at hand.

Accordingly, Kant issues a distinction between a freedom that is a pure transcendental

idea . . . [that] contains nothing borrowed from experience . . . [and] is the basis of the practical

6 Again, in consonance with Allisons interpretation that Kants transcendental idealism

does not espouse dual realities of objects.

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concept of freedom (A533/B561); and a freedom that is the independence of our power of choice

from coercion by impulses of sensibility (A534/B562). Kant expounded on the latter with the

following clarification:

For a power of choice issensible insofar as it ispathologically affected(i.e., affected by

motivating causes of sensibility); it is called animal power of choice (arbitrium brutum) if it

can bepathologically necessitated. The human power of choice, although an arbitriumsensitivum, is an arbitrium not brutum but liberum; for its action is not made necessary by

sensibility, but the human being has a power to determine himself on his own, independently

of coercion by sensible impulses (A534/B562).

Negatively therefore, practical freedom is characterized as being independent from sensible

desires or impulses despite being affected by them. In Kants view, while we are admittedly

subject to the influences of such factors as desires, delight, fears, aversions, we are nonetheless not

ruled by them. Thus, albeit pathologically affected, we are not pathologically necessitated like

animals or brutes.

Positively, practical freedom features the capacity for self-determination, that is, to be

governed by reason or by rational principles (A802/B830). This entails, first, the power to apply

these principles not only in moral matters but also in prudential ones. Second, practical freedom

involves the power to arrive at a rational judgment, and simultaneously to choose to act contrary to

that judgment. Lastly, akin to transcendental freedom, practical freedom is brought under

normative principles for its function instead of causal laws.

Of transcendental freedom, Kant signals it to be a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to

actwithout, i.e., needing to be preceded by another cause by means of which it is determined to

action in turn, according to the law of causal connection (A533/B561). In other words, Kants

transcendental freedom is a power or a capacity to originate a series of effects without having itself

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belong to an empirically caused series. His account of transcendental freedom here is intended

towards its presentation as a type of causality other than natural causality.

In brief, the distinction between transcendental and practical freedom is reliant on the

previous distinction outlined, that of the noumenal and the phenomenal planes: transcendental

freedom, according to Kant, operates in the former. Far from being clear-cut, however, this

distinctionaccording to commentatorssuffers from ambiguity in that practical freedom is

asserted to be grounded on transcendental freedom, and yet Kant offers insufficient explanation for

this.7

In any case, what Kant attempts to do here with his crucial distinction between

transcendental and practical or empirical freedom is to effect a differentiated thesis and antithesis

of the antinomy8; and consequently, to depict the antinomy as a problem in which the question of

whether another type of causality other than the law of nature can be logically admitted. Hence,

Kant steers the antinomy away from being a matter of determining if practical freedom can

compatibly obtain in a causally determined phenomenal world (it can, but Kants Resolution does

not argue it; he establishes this elsewhere); but instead comports it to an issue how we can ascribe

to ourselves moral responsibility in such a world without being caught in a logical contradiction.

[T]o show that this antinomy rests on a mere illusion and that nature at least does not conflict

with the causality from freedomthis was the only goal that we were able to accomplish, and

it was, moreover, our one and only concern (A558/B586)

Similarly, the above consideration provides cogency to the suggestion that Kants efforts in

distinguishing between the two types of freedoms be construed as an instance in which he

7 See Bird, Part III: Introduction, 254.

8 I appeal here to the analysis of how Kant re-composed the original undifferentiated thesis

and antithesis of the Third Antinomy into a differentiatedone in which the noumenal-phenomenaldistinction comes into play as well as transcendental freedoms noumenally causative properties.

See Oscar Bulaong, Class Notes on the Second Main Question: How does transcendental idealism

solve the 3rdAntinomy?

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Thus, Kant argues that given the transcendental distinction which he outlined earlier, our

causal power (freedom) has two aspects or characters which are subjected accordingly to two laws

of causality. One is governed in the realm of appearances by natural causality, by sensible

connections; this is the empirical character of human causality. The other, meanwhile, is ruled by

rational principles; this is the intelligible character.

In Kants Critical Account of Freedom, Andrews Reath illuminates for us these two

characters of human causality through his identification of two features for each of the two

characters. In the case of the intelligible character, the first feature refers to the set of basic

principles, value commitments and priorities, and maxims that guide ones choices by determining

what one sees reason to do in various circumstances.9 I construe this to be thesubstantive content

of ones intelligible character.

The second feature, on the other hand, will be these basic principles, understood as

originating in that persons rational agency -- that is, as principles and values that one has in some

sense adopted or endorsed, and for which one is responsible.10 I take this to mean the rationally-

motivated incorporation and consequent endorsement of thesubstantive contentthrough which the

intelligible character is constituted.

As regards the empirical character, two features are also delineated by Reath. First, he says

that Kant understood a persons empirical character as a set of rules or laws that specify how his

actions follow from temporally prior conditions and that may be inferred from the persons

observed actions.11 The first feature thus pertains to a persons psychological make-up, that is,

9 Andrews Reath, Kants Critical Account of Freedom in A Companion to Kant, ed.

Graham Bird (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 284.

10Ibid.

11Ibid.

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ones passions, inclinations, and desires through which her choices can be causally explained. The

second feature is that these standing dispositions and motivational tendencies [are] themselves

subject to empirical causal explanation.12 Put simply, the second feature entails the admission that

ones psychological make-up (which determines a persons responses and choices) is itself

conditioned by such factors like ones social class, upbringing, education, past experiences, etc.;

or terser still, ones choices result from ones personality which, in turn, are determined by ones

personal history. Hence, personal choices are explained to be part of the causal series which

prevails in the phenomenal plane.

By issuing this distinction, Kant is attempting to reconcile the antinomian claims of both

free will and causal determinism by appealing to the principles contained in the argument for the

intelligible and empirical characters of human causality. Obviously, inasmuch as the empirical

character of human causality is inserted within the chain of natural causes and effects, there is no

freedom (A550/B578). In the case of the intelligible character, however, with human causalitys

ability to incorporate rational substantive content, i.e., the power to subscribe to non-causal

normative principles, freedom is affirmed without having to deny the validity of natural causality.

13

The paradigmatic case that Kant brings forth in advancing this distinction is the telling of

a malicious lie, by means of which a person has brought a certain confusion into society

12Ibid.

13 See A544/B572: But if effects are appearances, is it indeed also necessary that the

causality of their cause, which (cause) itself is also appearance, must be solely empirical? And is it

not possible, rather, that although every effect in appearance does indeed require a connection withits cause according to laws of empirical causality, yet this empirical causality could nonetheless,

without in the least interrupting its connection with natural causes, be an effect of a causality that is

not empirical but intelligible? I.e., could not empirical causality itself be an effect of an action,original in regard to appearances, of a cause that in so far is therefore not appearance but

according to this powerintelligible, although otherwise it also must, as a link in the chain of

nature, be classed entirely with the world of sense?

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(A554/B582). Kant tells us that we can trace the lie to have been caused by the character of the

person involved, which in turn, may have been brought about by bad upbringing, evil company,

partly also in the wickedness of a natural makeup that is insensitive to shame; and partly . . . to

frivolity and rashness (A555/B583). And yet, even when we have accomplished this disclosure of

motivational influencesthe empirical character of the phenomenonKant avers that we still

hold the perpetrator morally accountable. Unfortunate personal history notwithstanding, the person

who lied is not exculpated; s/he is blamed for lying.

Why so? It is because, according to Kant, [t]his blame is based on a law of reason; and

reason is regarded in this blaming as a cause that, regardless of all the mentioned empirical

conditions, could and ought to have determined the persons conduct differently (A555/B583).

The one who lied can be blamed because despite the determining conditions of the person, that is,

despite being fettered to a causal chain of events her/his intelligible character allowed her/him to

have acted otherwise.

II.

The sets of distinctions above were Kants conceptual tools in endeavoring to resolve the

Third Antinomy he recounted in the Critique of Pure Reason. While each set aided14 Kant in

demonstrating how free will is not necessarily precluded by causal determinism, it may not be

apparent as to how they supported and linked with each other in achieving Kants aim.

Consequently, I attempt at a presentation of this matter.

14 At the very least, in Kants own estimation since many of his commentators remain in

dispute in assessing the efficaciousness of his employment of these distinctions in arguing for the

reconcilability of freedom and causality. See Patricia Kitcher, Introduction in Critique of Pure

Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 1996), lviii.

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From the foregoing discussion, it is relatively easy to discern the relation between the

transcendental distinction of noumena and phenomena with the binary set in which the intelligible

and empirical characters of human causality are distinguished. The divide created by the meta-

epistemological planes of noumena and phenomena makes possible a "two-aspect view" or

dualistic characterization of human causality: intelligible and empirical.

The intelligible character which obtains in the noumenal plane is what logically accounts

(as opposed to being ontological) for freedom despite Kants deterministic conception of nature.

The notion of intelligible character's independence from sensible determination is secured from the

principle of causal determinism earlier demonstrated by Kant in the Second Analogy (A189-

211/B232-256) and vice-versa.

Hence, in proving the logical compatibility of the opposing notions of free will and

causality, Kant had to locate them on different planes and this required of him to distinguish the

noumenal and phenomenal spheres. Secondly, he had to account for human causality in both these

planes (since to insist only on its phenomenality is to succumb to the antinomy, while to be

restricted only to a noumenal account begs the question of moral accountability) by positing two

characterizations of it. With the latter, Kant is able to affirm both the antinomian claims in a

qualified manner.

Similarly, the link between the transcendental distinction and the two freedoms delineated

by Kant in the first Critique is relatively straightforward. Transcendental freedom belongs or exists

noumenally, while in the phenomenal realm natural causality prevails. Accordingly, the antinomy

is elided through the distinction between noumena and phenomena and the noumenal location of

transcendental freedom. Without this maneuver, Kant argues, we are left with neither nature nor

freedom (A543/B571).

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Meanwhile, it can be established without much difficulty that Kants account of

transcendental freedom is supported by his depiction of the intelligible character of human

causality. To recall, in the first section of Kants Solution of the Cosmological Idea of Totality in

the Derivation of World Events from their Causes, he designates two kinds of causes, of which

freedom is one and is understood in relation to the above problem as the power to begin a state on

ones own (A533/B561). He then proceeds in identifying two kinds of freedoms, transcendental

and practical, and despite his lengthier treatment of the latter, acknowledges that what is of

pertinence to the antinomian resolution is the former.15

When he does turn to the consideration of the two characters of causality in the subsequent

section, Kants explanation of the intelligible character of human causality is that it is not subject

to any conditions of sensibility and is not itself appearance. Rather, it pertains to the thing in

itself, or to noumena to which transcendental freedom also belongs. Moreover, human cause in its

intelligible character is described to be atemporal and acausal in the same way that transcendental

freedom was earlier outlined by Kant. Arguably, this later account of the intelligible character is an

amplification of transcendental freedom which was only initially and partially elucidated.

How practical freedom stands in relation to the distinction between empirical and

intelligible characters is not immediately apparent, however. It is clearly not tantamount to the

empirical character, but in fact, tends to parallel the intelligible character in many ways. Does the

intelligible character, therefore, include in its comprehension both transcendental and practical

freedoms taken as cause?

15 Hence what happens hereas we find in general in the conflict of a reason that

ventures beyond the bounds of possible experienceis that the problem is in fact notphysiological but transcendental. Hence the question of the possibility of freedom does indeed

challenge psychology; but since it rests on dialectical arguments of the merely pure reason, it must,

along with its solution, engage only transcendental philosophy (A535/B563).

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The fact that practical freedom is understood by Kant to be not necessitated by sensible

determinations; to appropriate rational principles in its operations; and therefore, to originate

actions unconditioned by previously effected events; lends credence to the idea that practical

freedom is an instance of transcendental freedom.16Granted that this is the case, it now begs the

question as to how, given a thoroughgoing causal determinism in the phenomenal plane, can

transcendental freedominstantiated as practical freedom in this casebe logically reconciled to

it. This seems to be the Third Antinomy returning with a vengeance.

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In retrospect, the difficulties presented by Kants resolution of the Third Antinomy can be

tracked down to the several distinctions he had to introduce in order for him to evade the purported

contradiction between freedom and nature. Although these distinctions, notably that of the

noumena and phenomena, allowed him to recast the two antinomial claims in such a manner that

they do not result to a contradiction, these efforts opened up problems of their own which Kant

now had to confront. The distinction between transcendental freedom and practical freedom suffers

from one such difficulty. Kant has left ambiguous how the former grounds the latter, and how both

simultaneously relate to the intelligible character of human causality.

Kant admits, ultimately, that the transcendental freedom that we supposedly have cannot be

proven theoretically since by his own account noumena is beyond cognition. Instead, Kant

employs practical grounds for it: our moral judgments are based on principles carrying an ought-

nature which hereby militates against causal determinism; and our experience of attributing moral

responsibility precludes this as well. For the resolution to the Third Antinomy in the Critique of

16 Reath, Kants Critical Account of Freedom, 280.

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Pure Reason, as claimed by Kant and as rehearsed above, does not prove that we are free. It only

made a case for freedoms logical compatibility with Kants deterministic notion of nature.

Bibliography

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Co. Inc.,1996.

Allison, Henry E. Kants Transcendental Idealism InA Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham Bird.

Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006.

Bird, Graham. Part III: Introduction InA Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham Bird. Malden,Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006.

Bulaong, Oscar, Class Notes on the Second Main Question: How does transcendental idealismsolve the 3rd Antinomy? (First Semester 2009-2010)

Kitcher, Patricia. Introduction In Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar.Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc.,1996.

Reath, Andrews. Kants Critical Account of Freedom InA Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham

Bird. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006.

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Kantian Distinctions in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy_Lagdameo