is transcendental psychology possible?

New Ideas in Psychology 17 (1999) 195}203

Is transcendental psychology possible?1

Richard F. KitchenerDepartment of Philosophy, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523, USA

For decades, Kant scholars have written about the questions of whether Kant had(or needed) a `transcendental psychology,a whether the very possibility made anysense, the relation between the Subjective Deduction and the Objective Deduction ofthe Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 1787/1964), etc. With the exception of individualssuch as Kemp Smith (1962) and Wol! (1963), most Kant scholars view transcendentalpsychology as `the dark side of the Critiquea (Strawson, 1966)*at best non-existent,but if existent, then certainly incoherent, its uncertainty deriving from its veryconceptual impossibility.

Although some historians of psychology might be interested in Kant's transcenden-tal psychology as part of the question of Kant's view of psychology (Leary, 1982),most contemporary psychologists would have little interest in this issue and perhapsrightly so, for few of them would have an inkling of what a transcendental psychologyis supposed to be, and if they did, few would see any connection between it andcontemporary cognitive psychology.2

All of this may now be changed thanks to Patricia Kitcher's book. For not onlydoes it raise, once again, the tenability of a transcendental psychology in Kant'sepistemology, it gives us a fresh interpretation of what it is; more importantly, it raisesthe question of whether contemporary cognitive psychology may not best be charac-terized as a kind of transcendental psychology. Since transcendental psychology iswildly di!erent from how most psychologists (would) view the nature of their disci-pline, and assuming that cognitive psychology lies at the basis of any adequatepsychology, psychologists may need to reconceptualize how they view the nature of

1Critical study of Patricia Kitcher: Kant's transcendental psychology (New York: Oxford University Press,1990). 287 pp.

2Aside from Leary (1982), few recent historians of psychology have written on Kant's psychology, whichis scattered across several works: Kant (1787/1964; 1786/1970; 1798/1974), including Kant's lectures onpsychology (Kowalewski, 1965). Among the older works are Buchner (1897), Meyer (1870), and Satura(1971); for an illuminating modern study, see Hat"eld (1990,1992).

0732-118X/99/$ - see front matter ( 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S 0 7 3 2 - 1 1 8 X ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - 5

psychology. Although this may not mean that psychologists will engage in empiricalresearch di!erently than they do now, it does mean that they may need to think aboutthe nature of psychology in a rather di!erent (and non-traditional) way; it may alsomean that this approach will sanction a priori conceptual analyses as a legitimate partof cognitive psychology.

1. Kant's transcendental psychology

Although few of the older generation of psychologists may have read Kant, the riseof cognitive psychology (in the 1960s) opened up a deep intellectual canal runningdirectly back to Kant (Gardner, 1985; Mischel, 1967; Sloman, 1978). For in many way,Kant was a cognitive psychologist par excellence whose views provide a backdrop forunderstanding many of the issues facing contemporary psychology today*the natureof representation and intentionality, the constructive nature of mental representa-tions, the importance of rule-based processes and operations underlying our mentallife, the crucial role of schemas, etc.3

Although Kant may be the father of cognitive psychology4 and cognitive science,not all parts of Kant seem equally relevant to contemporary psychologists. Indeed,much of Kant may seem impenetrable to contemporary psychologists. This is espe-cially true of the question of a transcendental psychology. What was that supposedto be?

Three di!erent kind of psychology were recognized and discussed by Kant: rationalpsychology, empirical psychology, and transcendental psychology (Hat"eld, 1990,1992; Kitcher, 1990; Leary, 1982; Richards, 1980). Rational psychology was a purelya priori theory of the immaterial soul and its functions, whose results were framed inwhat modern thinkers would call analytic propositions*roughly, those propositionstrue by virtue of the meaning of their terms. Empirical psychology was the empiricalinvestigation into our natural minds and how they operate via introspection, andhence was a posteriori, resulting in non-analytic, synthetic propositions. Transcenden-tal psychology had a task somewhere in between, resulting (apparently) in thosedisputed propositions that were both a priori and synthetic. Kant was very critical ofthe possibility of a rational psychology and, in fact, argued against it in the Para-logisms of Pure Reason section of the Critique of Pure of Reason (Kant, 1787/1964,

3A colleague of mine tells this story: when coaxing his class to see why Kant's philosophy is relevanttoday, he asked, `What mental furniture do you need in order to have ordinary experience?a Silence,followed by the meek voice of a co-ed: `categories and schemas.a `Whata, my colleague charge, `you'vebeen reading Kant behind my back?a `No,a she said, `I learned that in my cognitive psychology class.a

4 If Kant wasn't the father of cognitive psychology, who was? Given the current interest in arti"cialintelligence models of cognition and the importance of Chomskian linguistics, another possibility would beDescartes. How then should one distinguish Cartesian psychology from Kantian psychology? Is it correctto ascribe to Descartes a purely rationalisitic methodology, or was Descartes committed to the hypothetico-deductive method? Before answering the question of a Cartesian psychology, these latter questions mustsurely be addressed.

196 R.F. Kitchener / New Ideas in Psychology 17 (1999) 195}203

A341-8/B399-406; A349-405/B407-4325). Kant's attitude towards an empirical psy-chology, by contrast, was ambivalent: he was critical of the possibility of an empiricalpsychology based upon the method of introspection because, inter alia, it lacked thenecessary features of being experimental and mathematical (Kant, 1786/1970). But hedid countenance the possibility of an empirical psychology that employed the externalobservations of one's behavior and interactions with others, one that was historicallybased*what he called an `anthropologya (Kant, 1798/1974)*and what we mighttoday call a hermeneutical or narrative psychology. Although the issues of thepossibility of a rational psychology and an empirical psychology are important ones,and have been extensively discussed, the issue of a transcendental psychology isanother matter.

Transcendental psychology, unlike empirical psychology, is concerned with `thepsychology of the knowing minda (Hat"eld, 1990; Kitcher, 1990). As Kant (1787/1964)says: `I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much withobjects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode ofknowledge is to be possible a prioria (A11-12/B25). &Transcendental' refers not to whatis transcendent of our experience of the natural world, but with the a priori conditionsnecessary for our knowledge of the natural world (where &a priori' meant*rough-ly*independent of experience). As such, it was some kind of hybrid of the empiricaland the normative! For many individuals*including both psychologists and philos-ophers*such a psychology would be viewed as impossible, since it confuses thepsychological, which is empirical, and the epistemological, which is normative.

The question of the relation between psychology and epistemology in Kant'sprogram has a long history, but its contemporary relevance appears to be thefollowing: as traditionally conceived (at least since Kant), psychology is concernedwith contingent empirical questions*questions of fact*whereas epistemology isconcerned with normative questions, with questions of justi"cation, rightness, valid-ity, correctness, etc.*questions de jure. The standard view is that these are radicallydi!erent, and hence that psychology can provide no answers to normative questions,nor be relevant to them. Indeed, among philosphers the attempt to answer normativequestions by empirical means is often called the fallacy of psychologism.

Given this dichotomy, where does a transcendental psychology stand? If it is put onthe empirical (factual) side, it would have no relevance to the proper normative task ofepistemology; but, if it were put on the normative side, how could it be called a&psychology' at all?

Problems such as these have led most Kant scholars to suggest that the concept ofa transcendental psychology makes no sense. But if so, then why has such a notionpersisted among Kant scholars?

The answer (at least to many individuals) has been that Kant seems to needsomething like this in order for his epistemology to be complete. In Kant's epistemol-ogy, incoming sensations are conceptualized by Kant as being separate and discrete.

5Following standard citation practice, A represents the pagination of the "rst edition and B representsthe pagination of the second edition.

R.F. Kitchener / New Ideas in Psychology 17 (1999) 195}203 197

But our experience of the world is that of a coherent and well-ordered realm ofexperience, consisting of medium-sized public objects in three-dimensional space, withcasual powers, etc. Clearly, sensory input must be somehow transformed into thiscoherent output and (so it has seemed) this requires a series of acts of temporalsyntheses. These activities have been ascribed to certain psychological faculties*thisfaculty psychology is the subject of a transcendental psychology, which generatesexperience from impoverished sensory input.

Psychologists will recognize these generative operations or mechanisms as (at leastsimilar) to information-processing mechanisms postulated to occur between thereception of incoming data and the "nal output. Indeed, it is precisely this conver-gence between the generative (synthetic) output activities of Kant and the informationprocessing requirements of contemporary cognitive psychology that is the subject ofmuch of Kitcher's book.6

2. Kitcher's book

The heart of Kitcher's book is concerned with the nature of Kant's transcendentalpsychology. Chapter 1 is an overview of the question of a transcendental psychologyin Kant. Kitcher defends the necessity of such a psychology in Kant and o!ershere (and elsewhere) an interpretation of what a transcendental psychology is (orshould be).

Chapter 2 concerns Kant's theory of sensation (space perception), while Chapter 3is about the controversial issue of the role of a transcendental psychology in Kant's`transcendental deduction.aChapter 4 is about Hume's atomistic theory of sensation,with Chapter 5 being devoted to the issue of mental unity (self-identity). Chapter 6picks up from Chapter 3, and Chapter 7 is concerned with Kant's discussion of`Paralogismsa (invalid arguments). Finally, Chapter 8 is a conclusion regarding theconnection between Kant's transcendental psychology and cognitive psychology. Assuch, this last chapter may have the most interest for contemporary psychologists.

3. Transcendental psychology and cognitive psychology

How is Kant's transcendental psychology related to contemporary cognitive psy-chology? As Kitcher puts it: `transcendental psychology analyzes cognitive tasks todetermine the general speci"cations for a mind capable of performing those tasksa(p. 13). It `seeks to determine the necessary and universal elements of humancognitiona (p. 19). Hence, a transcendental psychology is concerned with analyzinga cognitive task into its necessary subtasks and thus is essentially engaged in what has

6 In addition, there are obvious similarities here between Kant's transcendental psychology andPiagetian genetic epistemology (Kitchener, 1986). In fact several Kant scholars (Henrich, 1976; O'Neil,1984) have made this point.


come to be called task analysis (Marr, 1982; Newell & Simon, 1972; see also Chomsky,1965; Haugeland, 1981), which can be seen as a kind of functional analysis. Some ofthese tasks*the more primitive ones*require elements or subfaculties that area priori (not derived from sensation); hence, Kant suggests, they must come from thevery formal structure of the mind, which consists of a collection of rules, operations,and transformations. The aim of a transcendental psychology is to specify what thesea priori elements are. In particular, it appears that a transcendental pshychology isconcerned with the following sequence of tasks and/or arguments:

1. We begin with a cognitive task we actually perform (e.g., a judgment or representa-tion).

2. This task is analyzed into its necessary subtasks (elements, processes, operations).3. These subtasks are shown to involve certain kinds of mental capacities.4. It is shown that these capacities cannot have been learned (acquired) from experi-

ence.5. Therefore, these capacities are a priori, originating in the cognitive faculties of the

mind.6. Therefore, these capacities are necessary and universal (a priori).7. Therefore, these capacities are `purea (a priori).8. Therefore, these capacities are transcendental.

For example, given certain sensory input, there must be some process that producesintuitions as output (Kitcher, 1990, p. 37), viz., perception in space and time. Giventhat (as input) sensations occur discretely and atomically, and given that (as output)our experience of the world is a coherent, three-dimensional world of objects, it is clearthat certain transformations (operations, acts of `synthesisa) are required to transformthis input into a uni"ed output.

These capacities, Kant suggests, could not have been acquired from experience;therefore, they are a priori and originate in the (formal) stucture of the mind, i.e., theseoperations (capacities) are due to (and orginate in) these capacities in our faculties.Such faculties are necessary and universal if we are to execute the cognitive tasks wedo execute. Hence, such faculties are transcendental faculties, and those cognitivetasks we do perform (e.g., representations) are due to the mind's contribution.Therefore, our knowledge of the world's is (partly) due to the formal contribution ofthe mind.

It thus appears that Kant's transcendental psychology is a cognitive psychol-ogy*perhaps the paradigm-case of a cognitive psychology*since it is knee-deep incognitive faculties, subfaculties, and cognitive operations. But what kind of cognitivepsychology is it? and, in particular, is it an empirical psychology? If it is empirical, howwould it di!er from an ordinary empirical psychology, which presumably is a poste-riori and synthetic? If it is normative, how does it di!er from rational psychology,transcendental epistemology, or the a priori, conceptual analyses of the philosopher?

It is clear, "rst of all, that transcendental psychology is supposed to be bothempirical and normative. In fact, Kitcher suggests that transcendental psychologyinvolves two types of inseparable investigations: epistemic analysis and empiricalanalysis.


Epistemic analyses are arguments

showing that we must have a certain type of faculty (2) if knowledge, ora particular kind of knowledge, is to be possible; arguments showing thata particular set of faculties is su$cient for knowledge, or for a particular type ofknowledge (p. 19).

Empirical analyses are arguments

showing that, given an account of the cognitive tasks that we perform thatwould be accepted by all parties to the dispute, it follows that we possess one orseveral of the types of faculties noted in [epistemic analyses] (p. 19).

Now, one question that arises is why epistemic analyses are needed in a transcen-dental psychology. For the program of a transcendental psychology can be carried, itwould appear, even if skepticism were true; or to put it di!erently, a transcendentalpsychology need not assume we actually have knowledge; it's task is just to indicatewhat conditions are necessary if we do have knowledge.

The point is important because (presumably) one wants to distinguish transcenden-tal epistemology from transcendental psychology (or if one cannot, one wants toknow why). Transcendental epistemology apparently is not equivalent to transcen-dental psychology, nor to that part of it that engages in epistemic analyses. But if not,how are they related, since both engage in epistemic analyses? Cannot transcendentalepistemology take over the job of epistemic analysis?

Kitcher claims that because epistemic analysis is normative and empirical analysisis empirical, transcendental psychology is a hybrid discipline, a blend of the normativeand the empirical (p. 21). Furthermore, even if transcendental psychology does notengage in epistemic analysis, it may be normative in the following sense, viz., taskanalysis is a normative endeavor, and `normative claims are established by normativeargumentsa (p. 21). Presumably this means (or entails) that its results are a priori,conceptual, and necessary. But does task analysis have these features?

In engaging in task analysis, one is engaging in an activity that produces resultsthat, given the kind of cognitive creatures we are, are necessary and not merelycontingent. Presumably, therefore, there is only one way to perform a given task,although why this is assumed is not clear. Although Marr (1982) may write as if hiscomputational level analysis results in claims about what is necessary, Newell andSimon (1972) clearly allow for the possibility of there being several ways to accomplisha task.

Second, such as analysis results in elements that are universal and necessary ina special Kantian sense, viz., not derived from sense-experience but rather innate(although Kitcher disallows this). Thus, task analysis would apparently be unlikeordinary empirical psychology in being (in some sense) non-empirical, a point Newell andSimon (1972) were at pains to stress, and one Anderson (1990) has recently also made.

Suppose one provides a task analysis of a particular kind of task, i.e., decomposethis task into several sub-tasks, and indicates how these sub-tasks are combined to


produce the accomplishment of the larger task. Has one speci"ed what the systemmust do in order to reach the end, or only what will result in that end? Severalindividuals appear to interpret task analysis in the former (strong) way as involvinga necessary condition. But why adopt this interpretation? Why cannot there be severalways to accomplish the larger task, several ways to prove a particular theorem in"rst-order logic, to checkmate an opponent, etc. Of course, if one builds in more andmore constraints, or speci"es the task in greater detail, the number of ways ofaccomplishing the task decreases until we appear to have only one means. But asNewell and Simon (1972) point out, task analysis is relative to one's equipment athand. Furthermore, even if a particular task allows only one way to reach the goal,why assume this is true for all tasks?

What then is the function ordinary empirical psychology? Apparently, it has therole of showing that these transcendentally established faculties and operations reallyexist. But why do we need empirical psychology to prove that we reason, judge,perceive, and represent? Furthermore, how would such an empirical psychologyproceed, i.e., what method would it use? Kitcher does not want to restrict &empirical'to direct observation of sensory data, since (as she correctly points out*p. 194), thiswould be too restrictive. But now the question concerns how an empirical psychologywould di!er from a transcendental psychology, since empirical psychology willinvolve considerable inferring and analyzing. In short, the role of empirical psychol-ogy vis-a-vis transcendental psychology remains opaque.

What is clear, however, is that transcendental psychology is saturated with norma-tive issues and components. Indeed, in arguing what cognitive sub-tasks must occur inorder for experience to result, the transcendental psychologist is engaging in epi-stemologizing, which is a normative enterprise, and as such is a priori.

How is transcendental psychology di!erent from a rational psychology? If taskanalysis is purely conceptual (as Kitcher appears to think), why would not it belong towhat used to be called rational psychology*the province of the purely conceptual?For on the standard view, task analysis would appear to be purely philosophical,purely conceptual, and hence would appear to belong to rational psychology ratherthan empirical psychology.

In short, the problem concerns the question of what a transcendental psychologywould be, in particular, whether a transcendental psychology has any task to contrib-ute over and above what an empirical psychology, a rational psychology, and atranscendental epistemology could accomplish. As Kitcher characterizes it, it is acombination of the normative and the empirical. But if so, how do these two partsrelate to each other? In particular, can the empirical part be epistemically rel-evant/empirically relevant to the normative part? Can the normative part be empiric-ally relevant to the empirical part?

I raise these questions not as objections to Kitcher's interpretation but merely tohighlight what kinds of questions Kitcher's kind of transcendental psychologyraise. This is not a #aw in her account; on the contrary, it is to her credit that herinterpretation of Kant raises these (old) questions in a crisp and fresh way. Put dif-ferently, anyone interested in naturalistic epistemology and its correlative issues can illa!ord to ignore Kitcher's insightful and penetrating book.


This applies to philosophers naturally. But it also applies to pshychologists, for ifone reads (as Kitcher apparently does) cognitive science as inescapably a transcenden-tal psychology*witness the preeminence of the accounts of Marr (1982) and Newelland Newell (1972)*then surely cognitive psychologists will have to face the question:What is the nature of contemporary cognitive psychology? Is it like Kant's transcen-dental psychology (Boden, 1988; Sloman, 1978), or not? If it is, then cognitivepsychology may be, a fortiori, a blend of the normative and the empirical. But if so,then the current, standard interpretation of the nature of psychology*psychology isa purely empirical science*will have to be given up, inviting a ressessment of therelation between the normative and the empirical. It may turn out, therefore, thatpsychology is more like philosophy than most individuals have thought.

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