No judging power moves itself to judge unless it reflects on its own action; for if it moves itself to judge it must know its own judgment. (Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, II. 48).
Abstract
Each of Kant’s three Critiques offers an account of the nature of a mental faculty and arrives at this account by means of a procedure I call ‘faculty analysis’. Faculty analysis is often regarded as among the least defensible aspects of Kant’s position; as a consequence, philosophers seeking to inherit Kantian ideas tend to transpose them into a different methodological context. I argue that this is a mistake: in fact faculty analysis is a live option for philosophical inquiry today. My argument is as follows: Faculty analysis is a live option for certain kinds of philosophical theories if so-called “agentialist” views about the nature of belief are correct. There are good reasons for thinking that such views are correct. So faculty analysis should not be dismissed out of hand. Since the first premise in this argument bears a lot of weight, a large part of the paper is devoted to clarifying and defending it, in part by arguing that Kant himself holds a version of agentialism about belief.
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Notes
The Critique of Pure Reason offers an account of the faculty of theoretical reason (in its non-empirical use). The Critique of Practical Reason investigates the “practical faculty of reason” (praktisches Vernunftvermögen). The Critique of the Power of Judgment gives accounts of both the faculty of judgment (Urteilsvermögen) and the faculty of pleasure and displeasure (Gefühl der Lust und Unlust). Compare the chart Kant provides in the introduction to KU at 5:198.
References to the Critique of Pure Reason use the A- and B-edition pagination; translations are from Kant (1998), tacitly modified where appropriate. References to other works of Kant’s are by volume- and page-number of the Academy Edition (= Kant 1902ff) using the following abbreviations:
- JL:
-
Logik, ed. Jäsche
- KU:
-
Kritik der Urteilskraft
- LM:
-
Lectures on Metaphysics
It is widely held that transcendental arguments form the most important part of Kant’s methodology (see Stern 1998 for an overview). I do not wish to dispute this. My claim is that another distinctive method can be found in the Critical Philosophy.
It might be objected that this limitation counts against the theory. I discuss this objection in section V.
I will expand on this in Sect. 3.
Throughout this paper I use the terms ‘faculty’, ‘capacity’ and ‘power’ interchangeably. Although in his lectures on metaphysics Kant draws a terminological distinction between these (Vermögen, Fähigkeit, and Kraft, respectively; see e.g. LM, 28:434 and 29:823), in the Critique of Pure Reason he is less strict, referring to sensibility and understanding sometimes as capacities (e.g. A19/B33), sometimes as faculties (e.g. A51/B75), and sometimes as powers (e.g. A261/B317). Thanks to an anonymous referee for requesting clarification here.
Kant’s frequent use of juridical metaphors attests to this, most famously his claim that the Transcendental Deduction is concerned, not with a question of fact, but with a question of “lawfulness” (A85/B117).
Compare similar passages at Axi, B25, A680/B708, and 9:14.
A referee for this journal suggested that the self-knowledge Kant aims at consists in reason’s coming to know, in the Transcendental Dialectic, where it oversteps the bounds of sense. This sounds right to me, but there is no conflict here, since self-knowledge of this sort presupposes the self-knowledge in my sense that is articulated in the Transcendental Analytic.
For discussion, see Boyle (2009b).
In support of this, consider that if Kant did draw the distinction, the capacity responsible for beliefs would have to be the understanding, or intellect—one of the two “stems” of human cognition (cf. A15/B29). But the understanding is “a faculty for judging” (A69/B94). Indeed, for Kant, all thinking is judging, since “[t]hinking is cognition through concepts” (ibid.), and “the understanding can make no other use of […] concepts than that of judging by means of them” (A68/B93). It might be objected that thinking is distinct from believing, since the latter does, while the former does not, involve commitment to the truth-value of a thought. I will address this point shortly.
Kant distinguishes between a wide and a narrow sense of this term, where understanding in the wide sense comprises the understanding in the narrow sense as well as the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) and reason. For the purposes of this paper, we can abstract from these complexities. I will throughout be talking about understanding in the wide sense.
See A820/B848-A831/B859 and Ak. 9:65–75, where different modes of Fürwahrhalten are distinguished.
Wolff (1995: pp. 124–128 and 275–279).
See A70/B95.
Following tradition, by affirmation Kant means the ascription of a predicate to a logical subject (‘S is P’), by denial the “oppos[ing]” (A72/B97) of predicate to subject (‘S is not P’).
Where does this leave Fürwahrhalten? Kant’s doctrine of Fürwahrhalten is complex; discussing it here would lead too far afield. For our purposes it suffices to note the following: Like the modality of judgment, Fürwahrhalten concerns the thinker’s attitude towards the truth-value of a proposition. But unlike the former, it also considers the “subjective causes” (A820/B848) of taking such an attitude and therefore introduces additional distinctions. This suggests that the doctrine is compatible with the claim that Kant’s theory of judgment covers at least part of the same ground as a contemporary theory of belief and judgment. For discussion see Chignell (2007) and Watkins and Willaschek (2017). Thanks to an anonymous referee for requesting clarification of this point.
See e.g. A52/B76 and Ak. 9:11–12.
“General logic […] considers only […] the form of thinking […]” (A55/B79). See also A52/B76.
I cannot defend this claim here, but it is relatively uncontroversial. See Tolley (2012) for discussion. Very roughly, pure thought is thought involving the categories, which, as “concepts of an object in general” (B128) determine, in their schematized version, the conditions that any thought that amounts to cognition must meet.
See B137 and A320/B376f. Exegetically, the situation is more complex, as Kant’s use of ‘cognition’ (Erkenntnis) presents some difficulties of interpretation. But we can ignore these here. For a recent discussion see Watkins and Willaschek (2017).
Rules of PGL include, among others, the Principle of Non-Contradiction as well as the principle that a judgment must be grounded in an objectively sufficient reason (see JL, 9:52–53). Rules of TL include, e.g., the Second Analogy (the principle that, among appearances, every event is caused in accordance with a law of nature).
“In logic […] the question is not […] how we do think, but how we ought to think. […] Logic is to teach us the correct use of the understanding, i.e., that in which it agrees with itself.” (JL, 9:14). See also A60/B84f.
See e.g. A59/B84 and JL, 9:51. See also A294–295/B350–351, where Kant describes error as the understanding’s deviating from its own laws.
This is why Kant speaks of various perfections of cognition; see JL, 9:36–80.
See again A294–295/B350–351, where Kant discusses the case in which the understanding is made to “deviate from its own laws” because what “determines it to judgment” are merely subjective grounds deriving from sensibility. Thanks to an anonymous referee for requesting clarification here.
It might be objected that this makes the constitutivity claim trivial: In this sense, any set of norms is constitutive of the activity for which it is normative. But this objection misfires. The fact that in some countries driving on the right is the correct way to drive does not make driving on the right constitutive of driving.
Following Rawls’s (1999 [1955]) classic distinction between what subsequently came to be called constitutive and regulative rules, it is sometimes thought that a rule cannot be both constitutive and normative; see the recent debate between Tolley (2012) and Dunlop (2014) for just this view in relation to Kant’s conception of logic. But this is mistaken. As Kern (2006: pp. 212–218) argues, a rule can be both constitutive and regulative.
The notions of causation and explanation here are to be taken in a wide sense, which allows for the possibility that rational causation—the kind of causation involved in the actualization of a rational capacity—may be a distinctive kind of causation. See Marcus (2012) for discussion.
Failure to appreciate this leads some commentators to hold that the rules of thinking are either normative or causal, but not both—so that it looks as if Kant is being inconsistent. See e.g. Willaschek (2010: p. 169f).
Thus, Kant says that error, which is an exercise of the understanding that fails to conform fully to the rules of thinking, is caused by the “unnoticed influence of sensibility on understanding” (A294/B350). See also the discussion of the “subjective causes” of judgment that is part of the doctrine of Fürwahrhalten (see p. 5 above). Thus, “persuasion” is defined as the case where one’s assent “has its ground merely in the particular constitution of the subject” (A820/B849). The particular constitution of the subject is clearly external to the capacity for understanding, which is shared among subjects. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.
This is helpfully brought out in Smit (1999).
See Coope (2013) for helpful discussion of this point in relation to Aquinas, whose position is close to Kant’s here.
Compare the following passage: “Matter and form. These are two concepts that ground all other reflection, so inseparably are they bound up with every use of the understanding” (A266/B322, emphasis added).
Compare the discussion of skill and telling in Haugeland (1998).
The requirement that there be an understanding, if only partial, of the relevant norms and that this understanding inform the thinker’s activity of judging distinguishes an activity that is self-conscious in my sense from one in which a creature revises her mental states in a way that merely de facto satisfies applicable norms. Exactly when a thinker counts as possessing this understanding is a question I do not address here.
Compare the passages in which Kant says that we find such knowledge in ourselves cited above on p. 4 and in note 9.
This question is of course one of the forces driving the recent development of experimental philosophy. See Mallon (2016) for an overview.
See Williamson (2007) for extensive discussion.
See the point about logical self-knowledge at the beginning of this section. Thanks to an anonymous referee for requesting clarification of the final point of contrast.
My response to Strawson’s worry follows that offered by Smit (1999: pp. 208–209).
For this conception of faculty analysis I am indebted to Smit (1999) as well as Boyle (unpubl.).
See note 5 above.
Compare Moran (2001: p. 101). Moran here describes the phenomenon by saying that a question about the agent’s psychology is transparent to a question about the world (as do many others). But this is compatible with my formulation in the text. In the case of belief (as opposed to other propositional attitudes), the deliberative question (what to believe?) is typically equivalent, from the agent’s perspective, to the world-directed question ‘what is the case?’.
Thus, a distinction is often drawn between simply “finding oneself” with a belief, on the one hand, as when one unreflectively acquires beliefs, for example, on the basis of perception, and “actively making up one’s mind,” on the other, as when one goes through an explicit process of reflection on what to believe and adopts a belief as a result of such a process. See e.g. Kornblith (2012: p. 86).
Compare the discussion of this point in connection with Kant in Sect. 2.2.
So, for instance, that S takes herself to have sufficient evidence for p is, on this view, explanatory of S’s believing that p. We may of course challenge her assessment of the evidence. But this does not undermine the explanatory character of the claim, though it might indicate that S’s exercise of her powers was in some way deficient and that this calls for special explanation.
Compare the case of a masked disposition.
I borrow this distinction from McDowell (1996).
See Kornblith (2012: pp. 88–97).
Consider that someone who happily accepts not-p as well as p, and understands that these are contradictory, thereby calls into question the idea that her doxastic capacities are well-functioning.
See Burge (2010) for a version of this objection.
For helpful discussion and comments on earlier versions of this material I am grateful to Wolfram Gobsch, the participants of the conference ‘The Current Relevance of Kant’s Method in Philosophy’, held at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2016, as well as three anonymous referees for this journal.
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Land, T. Epistemic agency and the self-knowledge of reason: on the contemporary relevance of Kant’s method of faculty analysis. Synthese 198 (Suppl 13), 3137–3154 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02027-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02027-2