Abstract
In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents an argument for the centrality of <motion> to our concept <matter>. This argument has long been considered either irredeemably obscure or otherwise defective. In this paper I provide an interpretation which defends the argument’s validity and clarifies the sense in which it aims to show that <motion> is fundamental to our conception of matter.
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Notes
Friedman (2013, p. 43) calls the argument “especially obscure and cryptic.” Watkins considers it “dogmatic,” and states that the argument “hardly amounts to a satisfactory justification” of the fundamentality of <motion> (1998, p. 578). Other commentators (e.g. Hoppe 1969, pp. 42–43, 63–66; Walker 1971, 123; Dahlstrom 1991, pp. 271–290, 285) have taken the argument to at best show that motion is empirically necessary for human beings to have experience.
Here and throughout I take a “determination” [Bestimmung] to denote a predicate, which itself is ambiguous between a conceptual item and the worldly feature which the concept picks out. I will use corner brackets to indicate the concept and italics the worldly feature.
This is slightly more specific than what Kant might mean, which is merely that of an outer thing, a thing whose individuation conditions are subject to principles of externality and exclusion. Perhaps such a thing could exist without existing in space, but it could not be an object of outer sense for human beings, and perhaps not for any finite epistemic subject.
There is also the issue that Kant seems to regard <motion> as a determination which merely possibly rather than actually applies to matter—i.e. all matter need not actually be in motion. This point is abetted by Kant’s subsequent claim, in the Phoronomy, that matter is the movable in space (4:480). This modal feature is not something that could be given to the senses. See Watkins (1998, p. 579). Part of the confusion here stems from the fact that Kant construes modal language in such a way that the modal term makes no contribution to the content of the judgment (A74/B99-100; cf. JL 9: 115). For discussion see Leech (2012). I shall use <motion> rather than <movable>, with the understanding that Kant is concerned with the real possibility of an object with this determination.
For this objection see, e.g., Pollok (2006, p. 571, note 30).
One might object here that this is already an empirical claim, for the knowledge that one has an outer sense whose form is space is itself empirical. This objection seems to confuse conditions of acquisition with conditions of warrant. This is precisely the distinction that Kant emphasizes at the beginning of the Introduction to the B edition of the first Critique (B1-2).
For discussion of the Prolegomena passage see Allais (2007). For discussion of the status of phenomenal substance as consisting of relational properties see Van Cleve (1988), Pereboom (1991), Langton (1998, 2006), Warren (2001, ch. 2) and Pereboom (2011, chs. 5–6). Kant’s position that matter consists only of extrinsic qualities or relations is not a denial that matter has qualities which play the role of intrinsic qualities, as it were. These are the “comparatively internal” qualities Kant speaks of above, which are “self-sufficient and persistent”. But the qualities so picked out in the MFNS are not ones which denote absolutely intrinsic qualities, because these are unknowable to us (Letter to Reinhold, 1789 11:36–37; cf. CPR: Amphiboly, A277/B333; Notes on Logic: R2999 (c. 1770–1771), 16:609; Mrongovius Metaphysics (1782–1783), 29:820–821; Dohna-Wundlacken Logic (1792) 24:728). I discuss this point further in Sect. 3 below. Note also that in making the claim that matter is composed only of extrinsic relations, we need not, with Langton and Warren, endorse the claim that the thing-in-itself/phenomenal distinction maps cleanly onto the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction. See Ameriks (2001) and Watkins (2002) for criticism of such a claim.
If one finds the claim that a material object consists of relational properties perplexing, then one could put Kant’s claim this way: all the facts about material objects supervene on facts concerning their relational properties. No non-relational properties are part of the supervenience base. Given Kant’s distinction between phenomena and things as they are in themselves, it is plausible that he would deny that the relevant phenomenal supervenience base is itself fundamental. Presumably then, the relational properties in this supervenience base must themselves depend on relational and or non-relational properties of things in themselves. As Kant says in a late metaphysics lecture, “A phenomenon is in itself no substance, with respect to our senses we call the appearance of substance itself substance. But this phenomenal substance <substantia phenomenon> must have a noumenon as substrate. This can be called transcendental idealism.” (Dohna Metaphysics 28:682). Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging clarity on this point.
While Kant construes motion as change or alteration of place in the Critique of Pure Reason (A32/B48), in the MFNS he is careful to distinguish his conception of motion from that of alteration of place. There can be motion in the sense with which Kant is concerned without there being an alteration of place (e.g. as with the rotation of a point). See MFNS 4:482.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging clarification on this point.
Kant makes such a claim in the first Critique as well. For example, he says that “For this [viz. the representation of alteration] acquaintance with actual forces is required, which can only be given empirically, e.g., acquaintance with moving forces, or, what comes to the same thing, with certain successive appearances (as motions) which indicate such forces” (Second Analogy, A207/B252; see also the Refutation of Idealism, B277-8). For discussion of the point that Kant construes our awareness of forces in terms of awareness of their effects see Warren (2001, p. 50) and Watkins (2004, p. 476).
Kant discusses “interstitial” views of density in the General Remark to Dynamics (4:523–524). He also takes Lambert and other “mathematical students of nature” to task in the MFNS, Remark to Proposition 1 of the Dynamics chapter (4:497–498), concerning their conception of the “absolute” manner in which matter occupies space, using precisely the assumption from the Anticipations discussed above. For extensive discussion see Friedman (2013, pp. 121–130). See also Friedman’s (2013, p. 234) point that the “concept of an intensive (as opposed to a purely extensive) filling of space can, in the end, be given the structure of a mathematical magnitude only by reference to a spatio-temporal quantity (motion) and not by reference to merely geometrical quantities (such as volume) alone.”
Kant also indicates in the Remark to Proposition 1 of the Mechanics (MFNS 4:539–540) that changes in intensive magnitudes, such as velocity, cannot float free of changes in extensive magnitude. While this falls short of a general claim, it seems plausible that he takes the supervenience claim to hold for all intensive magnitudes of outer objects and not just velocity.
Kant’s claim concerning the connection between alteration and motion is not unique. Baumgarten argues for a similar conclusion in his Metaphysica, with which Kant was well-versed. See Baumgarten’s (2013) argument that “there can be no alteration in a composite world without motion” at §415. Of course, Baumgarten’s specific argument for this conclusion differs significantly from Kant’s.
What about mathematical representations? They lack sensation (they have form but no sensory ’matter’), and thus do not count as sensory representations.
What about changes solely in inner sense? First, Kant seems to deny that inner sense has its own “manifold” (B67, B158-9). See Allison (2004, p. 279), Valaris (2008) and Schmitz (2015) for discussion. Kant also seems to deny the existence of inner sense without outer when he says in Metaphysik K\(_{2}\) (1790 s) that, “I would have no inner sense if I had no outer sense” (LM 28:771). There is also the argument of the Refutation of Idealism to consider. Kant is there concerned to show that the consciousness of one’s own existence is “simultaneously the immediate consciousness of the existence [Dasein] of other things outside or external [äußer]” to one (B276). So I take it that, for Kant, the awareness of representations resulting from affections of sensibility ultimately depends on the occurrence of some affection of specifically outer sense.
At the very least, such an affection would seem to require a change in the subject, since the subject changes from not being affected by the object to being affected by it. This doesn’t require any further empirical commitment, on Kant’s part, to the nature of this affection, e.g. whether it involves local motion.
Pollok (2006, p. 569) rightly says that the “possibility of such affection by matter presupposes that it can be determined through motion.” He also seems to interpret Kant’s argument in terms of motion as a condition of being given an object [see Pollok (2001, p. 154)]. However, Pollok ultimately seems to take this as an empirical argument since he says that “the spatial distance between the subject of cognition and the object of cognition must be somehow traversed.” If my interpretation is cogent then Kant need not be understood as making any such empirical claim.
Friedman construes Kant’s motion argument in terms the establishment of a relative region of space, or reference frame, centered on one’s own body, which “builds in” the concepts of movability and relative motion. See Friedman (2013, pp. 43–44). However, this interpretation seems to presuppose a great deal more than the conditions of having an outer (spatial) form of sensibility and the relational constitution of the properties of spatial objects, both of which are points to which Kant is antecedently committed. For that reason I believe my interpretation is preferable.
One might object here that no experience is needed for the grasp of <impenetrability>, since it consists only of concepts of force, resistance (force in the opposite direction of motion), and space. While Kant does not make his reasoning explicit here (far from it), it seems clear from his writings on negative magnitudes [e.g. The Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy of 1763, 2:171–172, 179–180 in Kant (1992, p. 211, 218)] that he would not have regarded as a purely conceptual issue the cancellation of motion that comes with the real opposition between the repulsive force of a resisting object and the penetrating force of an approaching one (see Warren 2001, ch. 1; Chignell 2010). For Kant, the relation between motions in opposite directions is a primary example of real rather than logical opposition. The rest that results from such opposition is thus a real state of an object, knowable only through experience, as opposed to conceptual (logical) opposition, which can be grasped independently of experience. If that is correct then we need to ask where the extra-conceptual element would come from. It cannot be simply space, since our intuitive grasp of space tells us nothing of cancellation of forces within it. Moreover, Kant goes so far as to deny, in the First Postulate of the Critique of Pure Reason, that we could generate a concept of force independently of experience (A222/B269). Such concepts would be mere “figments of the brain” [Hirngespinste] unless they can “borrow the example of their connection from experience”. So there must be something else, other than the a priori concepts and forms of intuition, in virtue of which we come to grasp the relevant cancellation. This is precisely what I take Kant to construe as the importance of the tactile sensation of resistance. Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging clarity on this point.
I thus disagree with Plass, Watkins, and Pollok that the status of <matter> as empirical depends merely on the fact that we cannot know the concept to be instantiated without having had some outer experience or other. See Plaass (1966, pp. 288–289), Watkins (1998, p. 571, note 15), Pollok (2001, p. 30; 2006, p. 570). It is not, as they claim, that we can think of matter as impenetrable but cannot know the reality of matter until we have sensation of it as filling a space. Rather, we cannot even think of matter as filling (as opposed to merely occupying) space, unless we have had sensations of resistance. So it is the content and not merely the issue of the instantiation of <matter> that makes it empirical.
See also CPR: Amphiboly, A277/B333; : R2999 (c. 1770-1), 16:609; (1782-3), 29:820–821; (1792), 24:728.
It may be that Kant thinks that our ignorance of the essence of a thing is compatible with our knowing at least some of a thing’s essential properties; see, e.g. Metaphysik L\(_{2}\) (1790/91) LM 28:553. What Kant seems most clearly to deny is that we have any cognition or knowledge of the fundamental ground, as such, from which all of an objects (non-accidental) properties spring. Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging clarity on this point.
See also Pollok (2001, p. 151).
See the discussion of repulsive force and motion in the previous section above, as well as in Warren (2010, nn. 56, pp. 239–240).
The difference is that between an “absolute” notion of space filling, which is all or nothing—i.e. admitting of no compression of any degree, and the dynamical view, which takes space filling to admit of a degree, measured as the extent of outward-directed force by which a parcel of matter opposed compression. For relevant discussion see Warren (2010).
For an examination of this view as it appears in Kant’s metaphysics lectures see Warren (2010, pp. 208–210).
For example, there is a great deal of resemblance between the discussion of science in the Preface and the discussion in the Architectonic section of the first Critique (see A845-9/B873-7).
For example, Stan (2017) explicitly distances his interpretation of Kant’s mechanics from the assumptions of the Transcendental Aesthetic. However, Stan also is explicit that his account is a neo-Kantian rational reconstruction.
Such a discussion would need to show how <motion> has to (i) provide a basis from which other cognitions may be (asymmetrically) derived and (ii) do so in a manner that is consistent only with one particular way of expositing the concept, as Kant indicates in his discussion of exposition in the Transcendental Aesthetic (B40). With respect to (i), it is clear that at least one mark of <matter> is taken by Kant to be derived synthetically and a priori—viz. the mark <attraction>. Kant argues that attractive force is not an original part of the given concept <matter>. It is added to the concept via the complex “balancing argument” of the Dynamics, Propositions 5 and 6. I hope to pursue issues surrounding Kant’s conception of the fecundity of <motion> in future work.
Thanks to Michael Bennett McNulty, Lydia Patton, Konstantin Pollok, Nick Stang, Eric Watkins, and audiences at the 2014 UK Kant Society and 2015 Pacific APA for helpful comments and questions on this paper and related material.
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McLear, C. Motion and the affection argument. Synthese 195, 4979–4995 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1438-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1438-4