Kant on the Objectivity of Empirical Knowledge

Abstract

Kant took the challenge of skepticism about empirical knowledge very seriously, declaring it a scandal to philosophy that there was no known proof of the existence of the external world.¹ What is troubling about Kant’s discussion of skepticism is its apparent generality. In the Preface to the, first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason he speaks of it without distinguishing among various kinds and representatives of skepticism, and his considering Hume to be perhaps the most profound (geistreichste) of the skeptics doesn’t betray an appreciation of the varieties of skepticism.² In fact, however, the unfolding of Kant’s philosophical program displays distinct, systematically related responses to the distinct kinds of skepticism concerning the external world represented by Sextus Empiricus, Descartes’s demon, and Hume, This chapter considers Kant’s program for responding to skepticism about the external world and, with that, for defending the objectivity of empirical knowledge claims in the first Critique. After sketching Kant’s program, I will argue first, that the position he defends constitutes a distinctively subjectivist epistemology, and hence makes an unsatisfactory defense of the objectivity of empirical knowledge claims; second, that the direct argument for his position is not sound, so that he has not defended the objectivity of empirical knowledge claims; and third, that Kant fails to address second-order questions about the justification of his philosophical theory of knowledge.