(routledge studies in eighteenth-century philosophy) david landy-kant's inferentialism_ the case...

Kants Inferentialism

Kants Inferentialism draws on a wide range of sources to present a read-ing of Kants theory of mental representation as a direct response to the challenges issued by Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature . Kant rejects the conclusions that Hume draws on the grounds that these are predicated on Humes theory of mental representation, which Kant refutes by present-ing objections to Humes treatment of representations of complex states of affairs and the nature of judgment. In its place, Kant combines an account of concepts as rules of inference with a detailed account of perception and of the self as the locus of conceptual norms to form a complete theory of human experience as an essentially rule-governed enterprise aimed at pro-ducing a representation of the world as a system of objects necessarily con-nected to one another via causal laws. This interpretation of the historical dialectic enriches our understanding of both Hume and Kant and brings to bear Kants insights into mental representation on contemporary debates in philosophy of mind. Kants version of inferentialism is both resistant to objections to contemporary accounts that cast these as forms of linguis-tic idealism and serves as a remedy to misplaced Humean scientism about representation.

David Landy is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, United States.

1 Naturalization of the Soul Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century Raymond Martin and John Barresi

2 Humes Aesthetic Theory Taste and Sentiment Dabney Townsend

3 Thomas Reid and Scepticism His Reliabilist Response Philip de Bary

4 Humes Philosophy of the Self A E Pitson

5 Hume, Reason and Morality A Legacy of Contradiction Sophie Botros

6 Kants Theory of the Self Arthur Melnick

7 Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume Timothy M. Costelloe

8 Humes Diffi culty Time and Identity in the Treatise Donald L.M. Baxter

9 Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Chris W. Surprenant

10 The Post-Critical Kant Understanding the Critical Philosophy through the Opus postumum Bryan Wesley Hall

11 Kants Inferentialism The Case Against Hume David Landy

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

Kants Inferentialism The Case Against Hume

David Landy

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Landy, David. Kants inferentialism : the case against Hume / David Landy. 1 [edition]. pages cm. (Routledge studies in eighteenth-century philosophy ; 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. 2. Hume, David, 17111776. I. Title. B2798.L293 2015 121'.3dc23 2014048745

ISBN: 978-1-138-91308-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-69160-2 (ebk)

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This book is dedicated to those without whom it would not be possible, much less actual: Rick, Judy, Madeline, Violet, and, more than anyone else, Margo.

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix Notes on the Texts xi

Introduction 1

1 Humes Theory of Mental Representation 19

2 Two Objections to Humes Theory of Mental Representation 52

3 The A-Deduction and the Nature of Intuitions 107

4 The Object of Representation 173

5 Self and World in the Analogies of Experience 198

6 The Inferential Self 234

Postscript on Transcendental Idealism 276

Index 305

Acknowledgments

Portions of the following chapters have been previously printed as follows. My thanks to these publishers for allowing me to reprint this material here.

PREFACE

The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept, Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg . Eds. Jim OShea and Eric Rubenstein. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 2010: 2846.

CHAPTER 1

Humes Theory of Mental Representation, Hume Studies , 38, 1 (April 2012): 2354.

CHAPTER 2

Sellars on Hume and Kant on Representing Complexes, European Jour-nal of Philosophy , 17, 2 (August 2009): 224246.

A Sellarsian Kantian Critique of Humes Theory of Concepts, Pacifi c Philosophical Quarterly , 88, 4 (December 2007): 445457.

CHAPTER 3

Inferentialism and the Transcendental Deduction, Kantian Review , 14, 1 (March 2009) 130.

CHAPTER 6

A Rebuttal to a Classic Objection to Kants First Analogy, History of Philosophy Quarterly , 31, 4 (October 2014): 331345.

x Acknowledgments

POSTSCRIPT ON TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

What Incongruent Counterparts Show, European Journal of Philosophy , 21, 4 (December 2013): 507524.

Portions of this manuscript were written with the generous support of the San Francisco State University Presidential Award and the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. The book also benefi tted greatly from the feedback I received on it from the students in my Fall 2013 graduate seminar on the fi rst Critique , especially Tyler Olsson and Aaron Franklin. As always, Margo Landy provided an enormous amount and vari-ety of support. Any faults that remain after the contributions of so many helpful readers are of course all my own.

Notes on the Texts

For citations from Kants works other than the Critique of Pure Reason I have employed the convention of listing the volume and page number of the Akademie edition followed by the title and page number of the transla-tion used. For the fi rst Critique , I follow the common convention of citing only the page numbers from the A and B German editions. For consistencys sake, I have made use of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant for all of the English translations included. My thanks to Cambridge for giving me permission to use this material. I employ the following titular abbreviations.

Correspondence Correspondence . Trans. and Ed. Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Theoretical Philosophy Theoretical Philosophy After 1781 , Ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath. Trans. Gary Hatfi eld, Michael Friedman, Henry Allison, and Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Notes and Fragments Notes and Fragments , Ed. Paul Guyer. Trans. Curtis Bowman Paul Guyer and Frederick Rauscher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Logic Lectures on Logic , Trans. and Ed. J. Michael Young, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Metaphysics Lectures on Metaphysics , Trans. and Ed. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1997.

For citations from Humes A Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Con-cerning Human Understanding I employ the standard convention of citing the book, chapter, section, and paragraph number from the Clarendon edi-tion, followed by the page number from the Selby-Bigge/Nidditch edition.

Introduction

THE PREMISE THAT CANNOT BE DENIED

Legend has it that the way that Kants Transcendental Deduction operates is by beginning with a premise that even the most ardent skepticHumewould accept, and then showing that accepting this premise already com-mits one to a whole host of other robust philosophical theses: the validity of the Categories, immediately, and that which comprises the rest of the fi rst Critique , mediately. Just what this premise is, whether it must be accepted, and how it is that by accepting it one becomes committed to all of these other theses has long been the subject of much scholarly and philosophical debate.

One aspect of this debate has been a concern over exactly how much is to be included in such a premise. This is because, prima facie , Kant seems to run into the following obvious structural diffi culty. The more robust this premise is, the more plausible it is that much follows from it, but also the less likely it is that the skeptic will be forced to accept it. Conversely, the less robust the premise is, the more likely that the skeptic will agree to it, but the less plausible it is that anything very interesting follows from it. So, various interpreters over the years have tried to strike a balance between these two competing approaches to the Deduction: some making the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied more robust and spending their time showing why skep-tics are nonetheless committed to it, and others making it less robust and spending their time showing how accepting it still commits one to various of Kants other philosophical theses. 1

One central thesis of this book is that all of this hand-wringing has been for naught. The legend surrounding the Transcendental Deduction is noth-ing but a myth, although like many such stories, it does have as its origin fact. While the argument of the Transcendental Deduction does begin with a premise that Kant holds that nobody can deny, and Kant also holds that the validity of the Categories and that which comprises the rest of the Critique do follow from this premise (with proper supplementation), the interpretive thesis that it is with the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied that his argument

2 Introduction

begins is simply false. Kant is not entitled to, nor does he take himself to be entitled to, any such premise. The-Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied must be earned, and it is in the sections of the Critique that precede the Transcenden-tal Deduction that Kant does this work.

In particular, it is in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Metaphysical Deduction where Kant argues that the theory of mental representation that serves as Humes grounds for rejecting the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied is inadequate to its task, and that it must be replaced by Kants own par-ticular brand of what we would now call inferentialism: in Kant this takes the form of the thesis that concepts are rules for relating intuitions to one another by subsuming them under conditions that prepare them to be used in various syllogisms. This point brings out another central thesis of this book: that both Hume and Kant are fi rst and foremost engaged in projects aimed at giving a philosophical account of the nature of mental representa-tion. Reading Hume as engaging in a project of this sort fell out of favor in the second half of the twentieth century, although recently scholars have recognized the importance that a theory of mental representation must play for Hume and have begun investigating this aspect of Humes philosophy anew. 2 The reason for the de-emphasis of this aspect of Humes philosophi-cal system is likely a combination of a number of factors including but not limited to a reaction against the association between Hume and the Logi-cal Positivists, a general resurgence in analytic metaphysics following the innovative work of Kripke and Lewis, and the work of interpreters such as Fogelin and Stroud on Humes skepticism. The twin reactions against this fi nal sort of reading of Hume are also likely causes: one of these casts Hume as a naturalistic scientist of man and the other, the so-called New Hume approach, casts him as a robust metaphysical realist. 3

Kants Critique likewise enjoys a long and rich history of being under-stood in a variety of ways (perhaps as many ways as there are trends in contemporary philosophical thinking). Since just the middle of the twentieth century it has prominently been read as a treatise in epistemology, metaphys-ics, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. 4 Unlike Hume scholarship, though, the tradition of reading the Critique as including as an essential part a philosophical account of mental representation enjoys a steady and robust history, especially recently. 5 The current study occupies a place in that tradi-tion the explication of which must begin with the great twentieth-century philosopher Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars is, perhaps, more highly regarded for his contributions to contemporary fi elds such as the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but his infl uence on historical scholarship on Kant is no less important. Most prominently, Sellars instigates a debate about Kant that is very much at the forefront of Kant scholarship today: that over the nature and reach of conceptual representation in Kants theory of men-tal representation. Sellars himself takes Kant to be confused on the issue, although he presents what he takes to be the proper extrapolation of Kants most central commitments on the issue. 6

Introduction 3

McDowell, engaging with Sellars, argues for a thoroughly conceptualist reading of Kant. He holds that for Kant all representation is conceptually structured. McDowells reading of Kant has become the target of a great deal of criticism from Kant scholars such as Hanna, Ginsborg, and Allais, all of whom argue in their own ways that we must fi nd a place in Kant interpretation for non-conceptual representations as well. 7 Meanwhile, there has all along been a quiet movement of scholars back toward understanding and defending some version of Sellarss Kant. 8

As I understand that interpretation, its most important thesis is that for Kant all representations of a complex state of affairs as complex must be conceptually structured. This, however, does not preclude the possibility of non-conceptual representation because some representations will not be called upon to represent anything as complex. I will argue that distin-guishing between these two kinds of representationscognitions on the one hand, and sensations on the otherone can chart a path that will satisfy the demands of both the conceptualist and non-conceptualist alike. So, it is a version of this return-to-Sellars line of interpretation that I will defend here, although I will eschew Sellarss claim that Kant was confused about these matters. I hold instead that some of the consequences of these theses that Sellars thought Kant missed he did not, and that some of the places where Sellars parts from Kant are so much the worse for Sellars.

Longuenesses Kant and the Capacity to Judge will also fi gure promi-nently in what is to follow. That is because Longuenesses focus there is squarely on a topic that is of primary importance here: the nature of con-cepts, intuitions, and judgments. While it will become clear that I agree with much of what Longuenesse saysmost prominently that Kant holds that concepts are something very much like inferential rulesthere are also several important points of disagreement between us. For example, as I will discuss in Chapter 2, Longuenesse holds that such rules represent imma-nent universals, but I argue that this cannot be how Kant understands them because it leaves him without an answer to the problem of the unity of the proposition, which serves as one of his most important arguments against Hume. Longuenesse and I also agree that intuitions must have a conceptual structure ( contra the non-conceptualists above), but we disagree about how this structure is imported into intuitions, when its proper fi rst application is in judgments (Chapter 3). Finally, it is my intention to give an account of the sorts of rules that concepts arerules of inference that are valid but not in virtue of their logical formthat I believe fi lls an important lacuna in the literature on Kant, including Longuenesses own work. All of this, I argue, creates a picture of Kants theory of mental representation that is impor-tantly different in key respects from any previous interpretation of Kant and is an incredibly powerful theory in its own right.

Of course, understanding Hume and Kant as each presenting a philo-sophical account of mental representation has important consequences for understanding Kants arguments against Hume. On at least one reading

4 Introduction

of the so-called Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied, Humes most powerful objection to it is that it purports to make a claim about a single subject of experience persisting through time and that, according to the theory of men-tal representation that he defends in the Treatise , we can represent no such thing. To Hume, the-Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied cannot be denied not because it is so compelling but rather because it is literally nonsensical. There is nothing there to deny. It follows from Humes theory of mental representation that our idea of the self is an idea of a bundle of perceptions, and we cannot form an idea of a single subject of experience persisting through time. So, any premise that purports to have such an idea as part of its content is absurd.

If this is Humes objection to Kant, it makes Kants project in the Critique much more diffi cult than has previously been supposed and that much more impressive if it succeeds. Before he can even so much as begin to attempt to prove the truth of the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied, he must fi rst dem-onstrate its representational possibility. That is, his fi rst task must be to show that we can and how we can represent ourselves as single subjects of experience persisting through time. Only then can he proceed to argue for his claim that such a premise cannot be denied and that the robust philo-sophical theses that constitute the remainder of the Critique follow from it. What I hope to show here is that this is precisely Kants methodology. Among the other things that Kant does in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Metaphysical Deduction is to demonstrate that the theory of mental rep-resentation that Hume presents in the Treatise fails, and to put the lessons learned from the failures of Humes theory toward replacing that theory with one of his own. Thus, by the time the Transcendental Deduction starts, Kant has already undermined the grounds on which Hume would deny the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied and has given some positive reason for thinking that not only was Humes particular theory wrong but also that its replacement will be one that can accommodate the kind of mental represen-tations Kants work in the Critique will require.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE CASE AGAINST HUME

My argument for this reading of the dialectic between Hume and Kant will take place over the course of six chapters. In the fi rst chapter, I will show that the most well-known of Humes arguments employ not only his famous Copy Principle but also what I will call the Representational Copy Prin-ciple. This latter principle states that a perception is of that of which it is a copy. On its own, this would be a woefully inadequate theory of mental representation because it would leave Hume unable to account for either of two important phenomena: misrepresentation and complex representation. Thus, I demonstrate how Hume amends this version of the Representational Copy Principle to account for our more sophisticated representational

Introduction 5

capacities. With this more robust theory in hand, Hume goes on to show that some of the ideas at the core of his predecessors philosophical system have a much more mundane content than those philosophers had supposed. In particular, he arguesbeginning with his own theory of mental represen-tation as a premisethat we can have no idea of necessary connection (or that our idea of necessary connection is just an idea of constant conjunc-tion), that we can have no idea of the external world (or that our idea of the external world is just an idea of certain of our perceptions), and that we can have no idea of the self (or that our idea of the self is just an idea of a bundle of perceptions). These three theses together form the hard core of Humes representational idealism and are the targets at the forefront of Kants refutation of Hume.

With Humes arguments before us, the challenge that Kant faces in the Critique is set, and so in the second chapter I present Kants arguments against Hume. In particular, I argue that Kant meets Humes challenge by demonstrating that the theory of mental representation that grounds Humes conclusions is untenable. Kant must demonstrate that Humes account of mental representation fails to adequately capture some feature of mental representation that Hume himself would agree that it ought to explain. Thus, Kants rejection of Hume cannot, as a superfi cial reading of Kants arguments would have it, begin with a rejection of Humes conclusions, although Kant does at times make it seem as though this is how he will proceed. To be successful, Kant cannot object to Hume on the grounds that we can represent a single subject of experience, or necessary connections, or the external world. Instead, Kant must meet Hume on his own terms and show that Humes theory fails to meet the goals that Hume himself sets for it. Thus, as I will show, Kant begins his refutation of Humes account in the Transcendental Aesthetic with a critique of Humes account of complex representation, of representations of complex states of affairs as complex.

Once Hume amends the Representational Copy Principle his theory of complex representation is that a complex of representations represents the items represented by each of its component representations as being arranged in the way that those representations are arranged. So, for example, to repre-sent a spatial complex, one forms a picture of it in which the elements of the picture are arranged as the items pictured are. Similarly, to represent a tem-poral complex, one forms a movie of it in which the elements of the movie are arranged in the same temporal order as the events represented are, etc. It is to this amended version of Humes theory that Kant objects. His argument, initiated in the Aesthetic, continues through a number of other parts of the Critique and is that the content of any representation structured in only this way will necessarily be indeterminate. Such representations cannot represent complex states of affairs as complex because they are incapable of specifying what complex state of affairs they represent.

This charge is only the fi rst part of Kants critique of Humes theory of mental representation. In the remainder of the second chapter, I outline

6 Introduction

what moves are available to Hume within the constraints of his theory to repel Kants attack, and I present other arguments in response to each of these moves. The most straightforward reply to be made on Humes behalf is to leverage his theory of general ideas as a way of disambiguating such representations. Not just any succession of representations will count as a representation of a succession, on this line, but only those that are also subsumed under the general idea succession. Not just any picture in which one fi gure is taller than another will be a picture of a fi gure as being taller than another but only those that are also subsumed under the general idea taller than.

Kant, of course, has a radically different theory of general ideas, but again, in order to motivate that theory, he must fi rst show where Humes the-ory fails. In this case, Kant argues that in order for Humes theory of general ideas to do the work of saving his theory of complex representation, Hume must be able to account for how a representation is subsumed under the relevant general idea. That is, Kant demands that Hume provide an account of predication. I present this demand in the context of the problem of the unity of the proposition, a problem that was clearly at the forefront of both Humes and Kants thinking. Here, the dialectic takes another twist because Hume explicitly rejects the claim that there is any such thing as predication at all. He holds that a judgment, typically conceived of as the joining of two representations, a subject and a predicate, is correctly construed as a single idea, properly enlivened. This does not release Hume from his obligation of explaining how his theory of general ideas interacts with his theory of repre-sentation more generally, and I spend the remainder of this chapter present-ing a dialectic of moves suggested by Humes and Kants theories, ultimately concluding that Kants arguments against Hume are a success.

This refutation of Humes theory of mental representation is the fi rst step in Kants freeing himself of the constraints of Humes conclusions. Before he can proceed with the argument of the Deduction, though, which will begin with a premise that directly contradicts Humes conclusion about the representation of the self and will proceed to rejecting Humes other impor-tant conclusions about the representation of necessary connection and the external world, Kant must fi rst tentatively outline what the theory of mental representation is that he would put in place of the one he has just rejected. Beginning in the Metaphysical Deduction, Kant presents just such a theory, and he presents it in a way that demonstrates precisely how his theory can solve the very problems that undid Humes: the problem of forming com-plex representations of complex states of affairs as complex and the prob-lem of the unity of the proposition.

Kants solution is not, as one might have expected, to reject Humes pic-ture theory of representation, but it is rather to retain the thesis that our mental representations function by being pictures, while replacing both the elements and structure that Hume held compose such pictures. For Hume, our mental pictures are composed of bits of sensory data structured by the

Introduction 7

various kinds of associations that we form between them. Kant replaces the elements of Humes pictures ( minima sensibilia ) with intuitions and replaces Humes structures (matter-of-factual associative relations) with the norma-tive structure of concepts-qua-inferential-rules. Kants own theory addresses the fi rst of his objections to Humes accountthat Humes pictures do not represent determinate complex states of affairsby replacing the structures that Hume employs with a set of structures both rich and specifi c enough to guarantee a one-to-one correspondence between the relations that structure our pictur ing and the relations that are thereby pictur ed . Because normative inferential relations can be created and changed as needed, they can also be used to create pictures of whatever relations it is that are in need of pictur-ing. The inferential licenses, forbearances, etc., that in part constitute the content of a concept such as larger than can be made to match all and only those relations that constitute the relation of being larger than.

Likewise, Kants inferentialist theory of mental representation also avoids the second objection that he raises to Humes account. The problem of the unity of the proposition is essentially the problem of how to combine inde-pendently meaningful expressions in a way such that the resulting combina-tion is not merely an aggregate of expressions but is a judgment that makes a claim. In conceiving concepts as inferential rules, Kant abandons the thesis that concepts are independently meaningful expressions in need of being combined in judgments with intuitions (singular, determinate representa-tions). Rather, Kant casts concepts as markers of the inferential relations in which intuitions stand to one another. That is, a judgment makes a claim about the world in virtue of the fact that it is the means by which intuitions are related to one another to form a picture of the world as a whole.

Using this theory to solve these problems puts at least two items imme-diately on the agenda for Kant and for this study of Kant. Firstly, since intuitions are the elements in Kants picture theory, one needs an account of what an intuition is, how it represents, and what it represents. Secondly, since concepts-qua-inferential-rules are the structure in Kants picture theory, one likewise needs an account of what a concept is, how it represents, and what it represents. Each of these is explained over the course of the follow-ing two chapters (3 and 4), which engage the A-Deduction and B-Deduction respectively.

In the third chapter, I begin with the contrast between Humes and Kants accounts of how we represent complex states of affairs as complex. I begin by showing Kants deep commitment to the thesis that all such representa-tions are only possible via the deployment of concepts. This commitment has important consequences for how we understand the account of intu-itions that Kant gives in the A-Deduction because he is there also explicit that intuitions are representations of complex objects as complex. Com-bining these two theses one arrives at the conclusion that intuitions must themselves be conceptually structured. Of course, this creates a bit of a new puzzle since according to the theory outlined above it is intuitions that are

8 Introduction

the elements of Kants pictures, and it is diffi cult to see how they themselves are also pictures in this sense. The solution is to see that the elements that compose intuitions are what Kant calls sensations and that these are not, strictly speaking, structured by concepts but do have a structure that mod-els that of concepts. The role of sensations in intuitions provides the cru-cial link between Kants inferentialism about concepts, and thus his picture theory more generally, with perception. This in turn allows for Kant to give a robust sense to his claim that mental representations picture the world. Because our inferences are traceable back to certain appearances that come before us, the picture that we form using such appearances serves as an explanation of those very appearances, an explanation that, for Kant, has an ineliminable ontological component.

That is the topic that of the next chapter, which continues the discussion of the nature of intuitions and adds crucial details concerning the nature of the concepts-qua-inferential-rules that link them. In particular, I there argue that the best way to understand the various claims that Kant makes about intuitions, objects, necessity, concepts, and the world as governed by causal laws is by taking him to hold that an intuition is a representation of an object as the necessary connection of its parts and that we represent such objects by employing rules of inference that are valid not just in virtue of their logical form but also in virtue of the content of the representations in the judgments that they involve. So, for example, in licensing the inference from

1. This elephant tail in front of me is grey,

to

2. If I turn my head, there will be a grey elephant body in front of me,

we thereby picture an elephant as the necessary connection of its tail and body. Of course, sadly, not all elephant tails are connected to elephant bod-ies, and so there is a sense in which this is not a valid inference at all. That is, the concept elephant might license this inference, and since there are tail-less elephants, there is sense in which we ought to abandon the use of that concept. That is, we can discover that the pictures we use to represent the world are incorrect, or that they provide inadequate explanations of the order and coherence of experience. In such cases, we change the inferences we regard as valid and thereby change the systems of concepts that we use to picture the world. So, Kants account of mental representation has rich resources for explaining how scientifi c theories, explanations of the causal structure of the world, can change, a surprising result for a philosopher who is all too often criticized for giving the particular details of Newtonian sci-ence too privileged an epistemic place.

The following chapter, 5, explores these resources in more detail by turn-ing to the First and Second Analogies, which are not only where Kant is

Introduction 9

often portrayed as most directly responding to Hume but also where he delineates what he takes to be the regulative principles that govern the ade-quacy of our representations of the world. Kants goal in the Analogies is to present the specifi c form that these meta-inferential rules will take for creatures like us, creatures whose forms of intuition are space and time. In detailing how Kants arguments in the fi rst two Analogies interact with his inferentialist theory of concepts, I present two novel defenses of his conclu-sions. First, I contend that Kants argument in the First Analogy does not consist in the simple quantifi er-scope fallacy of which he has been accused and that this charge arises because of misinterpretation of his goal there. Kant intends to demonstrate the conditions not only for representing time as a unity of past, present, and future but also the unity appropriate to having a single standard of times passage. Next, I defend a reading of Kants argu-ment in the Second Analogy as aimed at the conclusion that we can only represent the determinate order of temporal events by representing such events as being governed by specifi c causal laws (as opposed to represent-ing them as merely governed by some law or other). This defense draws on the details of the theory of mental representation that is defended in earlier chapters and specifi cally on Kants answer to the problem he fi nds in Hume regarding determinate complex representation.

What the arguments and theories culled from the examinations of the Transcendental Deduction and Analogies yield is a sophisticated inferen-tialist theory of concepts that has at its core the thesis that we represent the world by picturing the lawful relations of alterations of the states of a single sempiternal substance. We form a picture of that substance by placing representations of the parts of it, intuitions, into inferential relations with another via applying concepts to them in judgments, which concepts serve to locate those intuitions in a system of inferences that we refi ne as we learn more about the world that is so pictured. Thus, I take Kants inferential theory of concepts to yield a kind of scientifi c realism. What is pictured is substance, the real in appearance, and by replacing one picture of sub-stance (one system of concepts-qua-inferential-rules) with another, we form increasingly accurate pictures of that which is real.

At this point in the dialectic, Kant has earned back two of Humes three important conclusions. Because the rules of inference that structure our mental pictures, on Kants account, serve to represent objects in the world as necessarily connected, and because they thereby represent such objects as distinct from our perception of them and as continuing to exist when we are not perceiving them, Kant now has on offer a theory that demonstrates precisely how we can resist Humes conclusions regarding the ideas of nec-essary connection and the external world. That leaves just Humes thesis about the self: that we can have no idea of a single subject of experience persisting through time, and that is the subject of the fi nal chapter.

The sixth chapter addresses the question of how to use Kants theory of mental representation to account for the representation of the self. Focusing

10 Introduction

on what Kant says about the transcendental unity of apperception in the Deductions and on his arguments against the Rational Psychologist in the Paralogisms, I argue that, unlike representations of objects, the representation of the self, for Kant, is a representation not of any object but rather of just the representational properties of the I think. Thus I side with those scholars who defend the claim that the I think is a purely formal representation and against those who hold that what is represented by the I think is essentially a substance (noumenal or phenomenal). While representations of objects bear an essential relation to certain appearances that come before us, i.e., to perception, the representation of the self does not. I give cash value to the formalists contention by explicating the notion of a formal representation in terms of the inferences that the representation I think licenses, forbids, etc. In particular, in the Paralogisms, Kant presents three analytic proposi-tions that together exhaust everything that can be said about the self, and each one of these turns out to concern only the inferential properties of the representation I think. Namely, the I think can never be predicated of any other representation, it is representationally simple, and it is univocal within a given subjects thought. Any representation meeting these three criteria, for Kant, is a representation of a single subject of experience persisting through time, and any representation that fails to meet any one of them is not.

Kant is a kind of functionalist, that is, about the representation of the self. Classical functionalism is the thesis that a mental state is the mental state that it is in virtue of its causal role. Kants thesis, by contrast, is that the self (not just a particular mental state) is a self in virtue of its inferential role. Thus, the unity of the self, the transcendental unity of apperception that Kant argues in the Deduction is a necessary precondition for all experi-ence, is the unity of the subject of certain inferential norms, and to achieve this unity is just to be subject to certain meta-norms. Specifi cally, it is to accompany ones representations with a further representation that has the inferential properties listed above.

With this fi nal piece of Kants theory articulated, the dialectic between Hume and Kant is completed. Hume begins with his theory of mental rep-resentation. Using that theory he concludes that we cannot so much as rep-resent necessary connections, the external world, or the self. Kant begins his refutation of Hume by fi rst arguing that Humes theory of mental rep-resentation fails on its own terms. He then replaces that theory with one of his own. Finally, he shows how his new theory can account for precisely the representations that Humes theory predicted we could not have. In trac-ing this dialectic, my hope is to recapture the genuine and philosophically robust arguments that one of the worlds greatest thinkers made against one of the worlds other greatest thinkers. I hope to show that not only does Kant address Hume head on in a way that has not been understood before but also that his arguments against Hume succeed and that what we are left with is a powerful theory of mental representation worthy of standing side by side with even the most sophisticated contemporary accounts.

Introduction 11

WAS HUME KANTS TARGET IN THE CRITIQUE ?

While the arguments that I consider over the course of the book are them-selves strong evidence of the historical accuracy of understanding Kant as responding to Hume, it will be worth pausing for a moment here to con-sider that question in a more focused way, especially as this has long been a matter of some controversy. I will begin by reviewing the state of the discipline regarding what Kant seems to have read of Hume and when, and what this implies about Kants ability and possible inclination to aim his objections at Humes arguments and conclusions. After that I will con-sider the arguments of two recent Kant scholarsGary Hatfi eld 9 and Eric Watkins 10 for the conclusion that we ought not to read Kant as respond-ing to Hume. Finally, I will briefl y discuss two prominent recent studies that share the approach to Kant through Hume that I take here: Henry Alli-sons 11 and Paul Guyers. 12

To begin, Humes Enquiry was fi rst published in 1748 and was trans-lated into German in 1755. Kant owned a copy of this translation at the time of his death, and so it seems reasonable to suppose that he owned and read it well before the completion of the Critique . 13 Thus, Kant would have had sustained access to that version of Humes account of our idea of causation, which for Kant forms the centerpiece of Humes challenge (and which he thought Hume ought to have extrapolated to encompass at least the other Categories, and one presumes the concept of the self as well.) 14

Kant also would have had access to section 1.4.5 of the Treatise , Con-clusion of this Book, via Hamanns translation of it, which was published in a Knigsberg newspaper in 1771. Thus, Kant would have read at least these passages of Humes, which contain brief statements of his accounts of causation, the external world, and the self, as well as a suggestion that he considers each of these ideas not only illegitimate but also meaningless. Here is Hume on our concept of the self:

Nay, even to these objects we coud never attribute any existence, but what was dependent on the senses; and must comprehend them entirely in that succession of perceptions, which constitutes our self or person .

T 1.4.7.3; SBN 266, emphasis added

And on the imaginations role in the representation of cause and effect and the external world:

Tis this principle, which makes us reason from causes and effects; and tis the same principle, which convinces us of the continud existence of external objects, when absent from the senses.

T 1.4.7.4; SBN 266

12 Introduction

And again on causation, this time with an emphasis on the meaninglessness of ideas of necessary connection:

And how must we be disappointed, when we learn, that this connexion, tie, or energy [between causes and their effects] lies merely in ourselves, and is nothing but that determination of the mind, which is acquird by custom, and causes us to make a transition from an object to its usual attendant, and from the impression of one to the lively idea of the other? Such a discovery not only cuts off all hope of ever attaining satisfaction, but even prevents our very wishes; since it appears, that when we say we desire to know the ultimate and operating principle, as something, which resides in the external object, we either contradict ourselves, or talk without a meaning .


In addition to the Enquiry and this section of the Treatise , Kant would also likely have had access to the extended engagement with and citations from the Treatise in the German translation of Beatties An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism , which is known to have been available to him in the Knigsberg university library, as well as those in various reviews of the Treatise in German periodi-cals. 15 In Beattie, Kant would have read quotations from the Treatise such as the following, which concern Humes accounts of the self qua a bundle of perceptions, the incomprehensibility of the external world as anything but certain of our perceptions, and of our idea of cause qua the idea of a certain habit of mind, respectively:

though that author [Hume], in his Treatise of Human Nature , has asserted, yea, and proved too, according to his notions of proof, that the human soul is perpetually changing; being nothing but a bundle of perceptions, that succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are (as he chuses to express it) in a perpetual fl ux. 16 Philoso-phers, says he, have distinguished between objects, and perception, of the senses; but this distinction is not comprehended by the generality of mankind. 17 [. . .] when we think we perceive our mind acting on matter, or one piece of matter acting upon another, we do in fact per-ceive only two objects or events contiguous and successive, the sec-ond of which is always found in experience to follow the fi rst but that we never perceive, either by external sense, or by consciousness, that power, energy, or effi cacy, which connects the one event with the other. By observing that the two events do always accompany each other, the imagination acquires a habit of going readily from the fi rst to the sec-ond, and from the second to the fi rst and hence we are led to conceive a kind of necessary connexion between them. But in fact there is neither necessity nor power in the objects we consider, but only in the mind that

Introduction 13

considers them and even in the mind, this power of necessity is nothing but a determination of the fancy, acquired by habit, to pass from the idea of an object to that of its usual attendant. 18

So, while it is certainly true that Kant did not have direct access to the detailed arguments of the entire Treatise , he would have had the oppor-tunity for a robust examination of the abbreviated arguments from the Enquiry and many of the conclusions from the Treatise , as well as second-hand accounts of much of the important reasoning from the parts of the Treatise that he had not been able to read himself. All of this combined with Kants own explicit descriptions of his project as inspired by and directed at Hume 19 would certainly seem to suffi ce for an at least prima facie case for reading the Critique as at least in part a response to Hume. If such an interpretation produces robust philosophical and historical outcomes, as I can only hope that the current study does, that will be more evidence still.

That is a brief sketch of the positive historical grounding of the case for reading Kant as responding to Hume and a promissory note for a positive philosophical grounding. The next item on the agenda is to consider briefl y some recent arguments against such an interpretation. One such argument comes from Gary Hatfi eld, who proposes that Kants main aim the Critique is a negative one: to limit the scope of knowledge claims such as to refute the ambitions of speculative metaphysicians. This is in contrast to the positive project that many commentators have seen as Kants primary aim: to justify the application of the pure a priori concepts of the understanding to objects of possible experience. Accordingly, Hatfi eld casts Kant as taking Hume as an ally against the speculative metaphysicians and precisely not as present-ing a skeptical threat to commonsense and science, and thus as standing in need of refutation.

Hatfi eld announces that part of his motivation for advancing this inter-pretive thesis is to save Kant from precisely the dilemma with which this introduction began. He reasons that if the Deduction is aimed at refuting the skeptic, then it must begin with a premise that the skeptic would accept. If anything interesting follows from this premise, then it will not be one that the skeptic accepts, and if it is such as to be acceptable to the skeptic, then nothing interesting can follow from it. Certainly, abandoning the attempt to understand the Critique as a whole as purporting to refute the skeptic is one way out of this dilemma. I have already proposed the outlines of my own way through it, which is not entirely dissimilar. The difference is that my proposal does not aim to take the skeptic out of the sights of the entire Critique but only out of the Deduction in particular. The Deduction is not aimed at Hume because by the time the Deduction begins, Hume has already been refuted. The premises that Hume has to accept on this scenario are only those regarding the criteria of success that he has adopted for his own theory of mental representation. Kant shows that Humes theory fails to meet these criteria and so is free to abandon the conclusions to which

14 Introduction

Humes theory leads him and start afresh in the Deduction. At that point, the goal is not to refute the skeptic anymore but rather to show that those concepts that Hume rejects as impossible to possess are not only possible but also that their application to objects of possible experience is entirely justifi ed.

Of course, this is a response to Hatfi eld only insofar as the project of this book is a success. If it is, then I will have addressed Hatfi elds motivation for seeking a way to read Kant and Hume as allies. That, however, does not address the evidence he presents for his interpretation. This evidence con-sists mostly in a close reading of parts of the A-edition of the Critique where Kant states that neither ordinary nor scientifi c knowledge stands in any need of defense by philosophy. As Guyer points out, 20 this claim is compatible with Kants holding that such a justifi cation is nonetheless possible, and that Humes skepticism leads philosophy to a position from which it would be impossible, and thus as seeing the need for a corrective. Furthermore, Hat-fi eld concedes that in the Prolegomena and B-edition Kant is concerned with refuting the skeptic but argues that this is due more to pressure from Kants philosophical audience than to any real conviction of Kants that such a defense was necessary. 21 That, however, requires both refusing to take Kant at his word when he testifi es in those later pieces that this was part of his original intention and supposing that, again despite Kants own statements to the contrary, that the Prolegomena and B-edition were not mere refram-ings of the same material but were rather drastic reconceptualizations of the entire Critical project. That is certainly a live interpretive option, but if an interpretation can be found that takes Kant more at his word, this would seem to be a better option. Again, my hope is that this study can provide at least the outlines of one such interpretation.

Finally, Eric Watkins has offered several reasons for thinking that Kant was not out to refute Hume, the most germane of which is that Kant does not offer an argument that proceeds from premises that Hume accepts to a conclusion that Hume rejects. 22 Again, the dialectic that I have briefl y described above is meant to address precisely this kind of concern about Kants arguments. If one goes hunting for the Premise-That-Even-Hume-Must-Accept in the Deduction, or even farther along in the Analogies, as Watkins does, one is bound to fail in ones search. This is because, by the time one reaches the Deduction, Hume has already been refuted. Given the nature of this refutationKants demonstrating that Humes theory of men-tal representation cannot account for certain phenomena that are clearly among its explanandaone can cast that argument in the form that Wat-kins demands, although in a rather roundabout way. One would begin by assuming that Humes theory of mental representation is adequate (for the purposes of reductio ), take as another premise that certain phenomena must be accounted for by any adequate theory of mental representation, and pro-ceed by showing that Humes theory is not adequate by this standard. So, again, the best argument that Kant really does take himself to be arguing

Introduction 15

against Hume is to show exactly how his arguments against Hume work. It is to that work that I will turn before one fi nal introductory consideration.

A fi nal word is also in order about two prominent recent studies that do take Hume to be Kants target in the Critique : Allison, Custom and Reason and Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste . While each of these important books shares the approach to Kant through Hume of the current study, each also differs from what will follow in fundamental ways that take the three studies down widely divergent paths. In both cases, it is the authors reading of Hume where this difference begins.

Guyer reads Humes arguments as reaching conclusions about our knowledge of necessary connection, the external world, and the self. As I have suggested above, I understand Humes arguments as being much more radical: as reaching conclusions about our ability to represent such things. So, whereas Guyer interprets the dialectic between Hume and Kant as being concerned fi rst and foremost with epistemology and its metaphysical under-pinnings, I read it as one regarding theories of mental representation. Chap-ter 1 presents my interpretation of Hume along these lines and a defense of the particular theory of mental representation that I attribute to him. The rest of the book, of course, presents and defends my reading of Kant as responding to this Hume. Given this early and fundamental departure from Guyer, I will not have the opportunity to engage his text much during the rest of the book.

Unlike Guyer, Allison does understand Hume as offering a theory of men-tal representation as a key component of his arguments concerning neces-sary connection, the external world, and the self. Unfortunately, he quickly abandons on Humes behalf the thesis at the center of this theory: that a representation of a complex state of affairs is just a complex of representa-tions. He does so on the grounds that it is incompatible with Humes Copy Principle and that it does not allow Hume to account for representing a complex as complex. In the fourth section of Chapter 1, I demonstrate that with a small emendation of the letter of Humes theory, though not its spirit, Hume can use a version of the Copy Principle to give an account of the con-tent of complex ideas. In Chapter 2, I present Kants critique of this theory, which does depend, in part, on an argument that Humes theory ultimately fails on this score. I do not, however, take that to be evidence that Hume did not hold such a theory, nor that his theory did not represent a worthwhile attempt to account complex representation using the austere resources that Hume grants himself. So, rather than abandon Humes claim, I argue that it is this claim, and the corresponding failure of Humes theory, that provides the impetus for Kant to provide the radical new account of mental represen-tation that he does. I think we do Hume no favors by dismissing his theory as quickly as Allison does, and we do Kant no favors by neglecting his argu-ments against that theory and the structure that such arguments impose on the theory that he presents as a response to it. Thus, as with Guyers book, the approach that Allisons book takes also diverges signifi cantly early from

16 Introduction

the one taken here, and not much interaction between the two is possible from that point on. In comparing these three accounts, it will again be the fruitfulness of each interpretation as a whole that will, in the end, I think, decide which is best. So, it is to the work of presenting my interpretation that I now turn.

NOTES

1 . A clear and concise catalogue of many of the various possible positions here can be found in Van Cleve, Problems From Kant , 7984. Notable attempts to navigate the Deduction with an eye toward this particular diffi culty can be found in Wolff, Kants Theory of Mental Activity , 10517; Strawson, Bounds of Sense , 85117; Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism , 13740; and Engstrom, Transcendental Deduction and Skepticism. Castaeda, Role of Apperception, rejects entirely the need to make any concessions intended to persuade the Humean skeptic at all. And, of course, there are those who deny the veracity of the legend entirely and who argue that Kant and Hume are actually on the same side after all. See Wolff, Humes Theory of Men-tal Activity, and Kuehn, Kants Transcendental Deduction. Rosenberg, Transcendental Arguments Revisited, argues that the key to resolving the issues concerning the Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied lies in understanding the Transcendental Deduction as a practical argument that has, as its fi rst premise, not a statement that cannot be denied but rather an intention that is constitutive of what it is to be the kind of creature that Kant takes us to be. I argue in Landy, Premise That Hume Must Accept, that while this suggestion helps Kant in several ways, it does not address the problem of the nature of the representation that is at the crux of the The-Premise-That-Cannot-Be-Denied.

2 . Cf. Garrett, Humes Naturalistic Theory of Representation, and Schafer, Humes Unifi ed Account of Mental Representation.

3 . Cf. Winkler, New Hume; Stroud, Hume ; Fogelin, Humes Skepticism ; Strawson, Secret Connexion .

4 . Cf. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism ; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge ; Brook, Kant and the Mind ; Kitcher, Kants Transcendental Psy-chology ; Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences .

5 . Cf. Strawson, Bounds of Sense ; Bennett, Kants Analytic ; Sellars, Science and Metaphysics ; McDowell, Having the World in View ; Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge ; Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy .

6 . Sellars, Science and Metaphysics . 7 . Hanna, Kant and Nonconceptual Content; Ginsborg, Was Kant a Non-

conceputalist; Allais, Non-Conceptual Content. 8 . Rosenberg, Accessing Kant ; OShea, Kants Critique . 9 . Hatfi eld, Prolegomena and Critiques ; Hatfi eld, What Were Kants Aims

in the Deduction. 10 . Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality . 11 . Allison, Custom and Reason . 12 . Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste . 13 . Guyer, Knowledge Reason, and Taste , 5; Warda, Immanuel Kants Bucher ,

50; Hatfi eld, Prolegomena and Critiques , 186, n6. 14 . Ak 4:260; Theoretical Philosophy , 57.

Introduction 17

15 . Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste , 6, n5; Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany , 169.

16 . Beattie, Essay , 53. 17 . Beattie, Essay , 162. 18 . Beattie, Essay , 19596. 19 . Ak 4:260; Theoretical Philosophy , 57. 20 . Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste , 10. 21 . Hatfi eld, What Were Kants Aims in the Deduction. 22 . Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality , 2005.

REFERENCES

Allais, Lucy. Kant, Non-Conceptual Content and the Representation of Space. Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (2009): 383413.

Allison, Henry. Kants Transcendental Idealism . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Allison, Henry. Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise . Oxford: Clarendon, 2008.

Beattie, James. An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism . Edinburgh: Denham & Dick, 1805.

Bennett, Jonathan. Kants Analytic . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Brook, Andrew. Kant and the Mind . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Castaeda, Hector. The Role of Apperception in Kants Transcendental Deduction

of the Categories. Nos 24 (1990): 14757. Engstrom, Stephen. The Transcendental Deduction and Scepticism. Journal of the

History of Philosophy 32 (1994): 35980. Fogelin, Robert. Humes Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature . London:

Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1985. Friedman, Michael. Kant and the Exact Sciences . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1992. Garrett, Don. Humes Naturalistic Theory of Representation. Synthese 152 (2006):

30119. Ginsborg, Hanna. Was Kant a Nonconceptualist? Philosophical Studies 137 (2008):

6577. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge . Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1987. Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kants Response to Hume . Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2008. Hanna, Robert. Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy . Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2001. Hanna, Robert. Kant and Nonconceptual Content. European Journal of Philoso-

phy 13 (2005): 24790. Hatfi eld, Gary. The Prolegomena and Critiques of Pure Reason . In Kant Und

Die Berliner Aufklarung: Akten Des Ix. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses , edited by Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Ralph Schumacher, 185208. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001.

Hatfi eld, Gary. What Were Kants Aims in the Deduction? Philosophical Topics 31 (2003): 16598.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature . Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

18 Introduction

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature . Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason . Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Kant, Immanuel. Theoretical Philosophy After 1781 . Edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath. Translated by Gary Hatfi eld, Michael Friedman, Henry Allison, and Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Kitcher, Patricia. Kants Transcendental Psychology . New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Kuehn, Manfred. Kants Transcendental Deduction: A Limited Defense of Hume. In New Essays on Kant , edited by Bernard den Ouden, 4772. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.

Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 17601800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy . Kingston, ON: McGill-Queens University Press, 1987.

Landy, David. The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept. In Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg , edited by Jim OShea and Eric Rubenstein, 2846. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 2010.

Longuenesse, Beatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge . Translated by Charles T. Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

McDowell, John. Having the World in View . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

OShea, James. Kants Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction and Interpretation . London: Acumen Press, 2012.

Rosenberg, Jay. Transcendental Arguments Revisited. Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 61124.

Rosenberg, Jay. Accessing Kant: A Relaxed Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Schafer, Karl. Humes Unifi ed Account of Mental Representation. European Jour-nal of Philosophy 21 (2013). doi: 10.1111/ejop.12022.

Sellars, Wilfrid. Science and Metaphysics . Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1967.

Strawon, Galen. The Secret Connexion . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Strawson, Peter. The Bounds of Sense . London: Methuen Ltd., 1966. Stroud, Barry. Hume . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1977. Van Cleve, James. Problems From Kant . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Warda, Arthur. Immanuel Kants Bucher . Berlin: Breslauer, 1922. Watkins, Eric. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality . Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 2005. Winkler, Kenneth. The New Hume. The Philosophical Review 100 (1991): 54179. Wolff, Robert Paul. Humes Theory of Mental Activity. The Philosophical Review

69 (1960): 289310. Wolff, Robert Paul. Kants Theory of Mental Activity . Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1963.

1 Humes Theory of Mental Representation

The goal of the current chapter will be to demonstrate that some of Humes most important conclusions in the Treatise are fi rst and foremost conclu-sions about what the human mind can and cannot represent. That is, they are conclusions about what our ideas can be ideas of . In particular, the three most important of Humes conclusions for current purposes can be expressed as follows.

(NC) We have no idea that is an idea of a necessary connection . (EW) We have no idea that is an idea of the external world . (SSE) We have no idea that is an idea of a single subject of experience

persisting through time.

The fi rst thing to notice about these conclusions is that there is an air of paradox about them. Each claims that we have no idea with a certain kind of content. Of course, it is natural to think that in order to understand each of these claims, one must understand the words that comprise them, and in order to understand those words, one must have ideas with the correspond-ing content. So, in order to understand the claim that we have no idea that is an idea of necessary connection, for example, one must have an idea of necessary connection. If not, there is no way to understand what is being claimed here. Thus the air of paradox. It is for this reason that Hume pres-ents his arguments and conclusions in both of two ways.

Humes goal in the Treatise is not just to articulate his own theory of human nature but also to show that the theories of his predecessors cannot possibly be right. In order to accomplish the latter task, he must engage his predecessors, and at times that engagement requires him to write in a way that belies his own theoretical commitments. So, for instance, he has to write as if the idea of necessary connection is perfectly intelligible, in order to demonstrate that we cannot possibly have such an idea. It is well known that Hume often puts aside his own theoretical commitments to speak with the vulgar. What is less noted is that he does the same in order to speak with the philosophical. Hume writes in at least three voices throughout the Treatise : in the voice of a scientist of man (which is what


Hume takes himself to be), in the voice of the lay person, and in the voice of his philosophical predecessors. 1 The above conclusions are all expressed in the last of these voices, even though in the voice of the scientist of man, they are strictly speaking nonsensical.

Of course, Humes conclusions can also be said in the scientists voice. When carefully articulating his own views, he writes more strictly and keeps to showing not that we do not have an idea of necessary connection, for example, but rather that our idea of causation is just an idea of constant conjunction, etc. He argues not that we have no idea of a single subject of experience persisting through time but rather that our idea of the self is just an idea of a bundle of perceptions. He argues not that we have no idea of the external world but rather that our idea of the external world is just an idea of certain of our perceptions. So, each of the conclusions above can be rendered more strictly as a positive thesis about what our ideas are ideas of, but in order to engage his predecessors, Hume is instead willing to use these somewhat paradoxical formulations.

Here are a few examples of places at which Hume uses an idiom that makes it clear that these representational theses are exactly the kinds of conclusions that his arguments are meant to establish. During the course of his arguments concerning necessary connection he writes that,

We never therefore have any idea of power. T 1.3.14.11; SBN 161, emphasis added

About the external world he writes,

To begin with the senses, tis evident these faculties are incapable of giving rise to the notion of the continud existence of their objects, after they no longer appear to the senses.


Finally, about the self he writes,

If any impression gives rise to the idea of the self , that impression must continue invariably the same, thro the whole course of our lives; since self is supposd to exist after that manner. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derivd; and consequently there is no such idea.

T 1.4.6.2; SBN 2512, emphasis added.

We will have occasion to return to each of these passages farther on, but it is worth noting here at the outset that Humes idiom is an explicitly rep-resentational one. In each case his concern, as stated, is with the idea of

Humes Theory of Mental Representation 21

such-and-such, and his conclusions are all that we cannot have certain ideas with this controversial content.

Supposing that Hume is concerned with determining what our ideas can and cannot represent brings with it certain advantages. To begin, consider the following puzzle concerning the precise status of Humes Copy Principle that has been the subject of a good deal of hand-wringing amongst Hume scholars in recent decades. Recall that the Copy Principle states that all simple ideas are copies of some simple impression and that it fi gures promi-nently in many of Humes most famous and powerful arguments. On the one hand, if the Copy Principle is a mere empirical generalization, it lacks the authority to be used to refute the claims of Humes predecessors that we have such controversial ideas as those of necessary connection, the exter-nal world, or the self. It would seem that each of these, rather than being undermined by the Copy Principle, would be counterexamples to it. On the other hand, the only alternative to the Copy Principles being an empirical generalization would seem to be that it is an a priori principle. This alter-native is unattractive for at least two reasons. Firstly, accepting it severely undermines Humes commitment to pursuing a purely empirical science of man. Secondly, Hume explicitly denies that there can be any a priori princi-ples regarding the causal connections between ideas, and the Copy Principle has an explicit causal component. So, the Copy Principle cannot be an a priori principle. Various attempts have been made by recent commentators to avoid spearing Hume on the horns of this dilemma. 2

What I will argue here is that all of these efforts have been misplaced because there is an important sense in which it is not the Copy Principle that is meant to do this work in Humes arguments at all. The Copy Principle is a claim about the matter of factual relations of simple ideas to their corre-sponding simple impressions: the former are all copies of the latter. That is, simple ideas all exactly resemble and are caused by some simple impression. This kind of claim alone, however, cannot be all that is in play in Humes arguments. As I have suggested, Humes conclusions are all regarding what our ideas are ideas of. We do not have an idea of necessary connection. We do not have an idea of the external world. We do not have an idea of the self, Etc. What the Copy Principle earns Hume is that we do not have an idea that is a copy of, for instance, a necessary connection. That does not establish that we do not have an idea that is of a necessary connection, however, without the additional premise that our ideas are of that of which they are copies. This premise is what I will call the Representational Copy Principle and is, I will argue, the premise that does all the heavy lifting in Humes purported refutations of his predecessors. 3

Thus, it is not the Copy Principle that stands in need of dialectical supportit might be a mere empirical generalizationbut the Representa-tional Copy Principle that does. Of course, not much would be gained if the Representational Copy Principle faces the same fatal dilemma that the Copy Principle does, and so I will further argue that it does not. In particular, I will


argue that the problems that face understanding the Copy Principle as an a priori principle do not apply to understanding the Representational Copy Principle as one. In particular, rather than violating Humes commitment to empiricism, the Representational Copy Principle qua a priori principle simply expresses this commitment. Furthermore, since the Representational Copy Principle is not itself a thesis that claims that any particular causal connections actually obtain, that it is an a priori principle does not violate Humes condemnation of purportedly a priori knowledge of such causal connections.

My procedure here will be as follows. In the fi rst section I will pres-ent and critique Don Garretts infl uential solution to the dilemma concern-ing the status of the Copy Principle. I will there draw what I take to be a crucial distinction between a perceptions pictorial content and its repre-sentational content, and argue that Garretts reading of the Copy Principle concerns only the pictorial content of perceptions, but that what is needed for Humes purposes is an argument concerning their representational con-tent. In the next section, I will present three of Humes most important argu-ments from the Treatise , noting the crucial role that the Representational Copy Principle plays in each of these arguments. In the third section, I will demonstrate how the Representational Copy Principle does not fall prey to the same objections that the Copy Principle does. In the fi nal section, I make an important modifi cation to the Representational Copy Principle concern-ing complex ideas that will be of crucial importance to us going forward with Kants critique of Hume.

GARRETTS DEFENSE OF THE COPY PRINCIPLE

Before we look at Garretts defense of Humes use of the Copy Principle, there are a few pieces of business that require our attention. First of all, there is the defi nition of the Copy Principle. The Copy Principle states that every simple idea is a copy of some simple impression. The key notion here is that of being a copy, and Hume is fairly clear about just what this entails. For x to be a copy of y requires that two conditions be met. These condi-tions are each necessary for x to be a copy of y , and together are jointly suf-fi cient for that. The fi rst condition is that x must be caused by y . Of course, cause must be construed in the proper Humean way here, so that for x to be caused by y is for x and y to be constantly conjoined, and for y to always precede x . So, when Hume sets out to prove the Copy Principle in the open-ing pages of the Treatise , he observes that exactly these two parts of the causal condition are met.

I fi rst make myself certain, by a new review, of what I have already asserted, that every simple impression is attended with a correspondent idea, and every simple idea with a correspondent impression. From this


constant conjunction of resembling perceptions I immediately conclude, that there is a great connexion betwixt our correspondent impressions and ideas, and that the existence of one has a considerable infl uence upon that of the other. Such a constant conjunction, in such an infi nite number of instances, can never arise from chance; but clearly proves a dependence of the impressions on the ideas, or of the ideas on the impressions. That I may know on which side this dependence lies, I consider the order of their fi rst appearance ; and fi nd by constant expe-rience, that the simple impressions always take the precedence of their correspondent ideas, but never appear in the contrary order.

T 1.1.1.8; SB 4

Correspondent impressions and ideas are constantly conjoined, and the former always precede the latter. Thus, Hume can conclude that impres-sions are the cause of ideas (in the proper Humean sense of cause).

The second condition that must be met for x to be a copy of y is that x must exactly resemble y . Again, here is Hume in the opening pages of the Treatise offering evidence that this condition is met in the case of ideas and impressions.

The fi rst circumstance, that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity.

T 1.1.1.3; SB 2

Of course, Hume goes on to limit his resemblance thesis to simple ideas and impressions only, and so correspondingly limits the Copy Principle to just these as well. It is important to note here another restriction in scope that Hume places on the resemblance thesis at the end of this quotation. An idea can exactly resemble an impression even if the degrees of force and vivacity of the two are different. This is because the exact resemblance thesis concerns specifi cally what Hume elsewhere calls the circumstances of these perceptions, and what I will call their pictorial content .

The circumstance, or pictorial content, can best be explicated by way of an analogy. Consider the picture on the following page.

The pictorial content of this picture consists of four black lines of equal length arranged at ninety-degree angles to one another against a white background. That is in what the picture consists. For another picture to exactly resemble this one, it would also have to consist in four lines of this length arranged at ninety-degree angles to one another against a white back-ground. The pictorial content of an image, including impressions and ideas, is constituted entirely by intrinsic features of that image.

This is a point that I have made elsewhere about Humes exact resem-blance thesis in order to explicate the notions of force and vivacity, which are not part of the pictorial content of perceptions precisely because they


are not intrinsic features of a perception. 4 What concerns us here, how-ever, is a slightly different contrast. Notice that in describing the image above, we made no reference to what that image is an image of . That is, we described the intrinsic features of that picture but did not mention, for instance, that it is a picture of a building as seen from directly above, or a book seen from straight on, etc. We can call what a picture is a picture of the representational content of that image, and it will be important for what follows to notice that it is, pre-theoretically, at least possible for the pictorial content of an image and the intentional content of that same image to come apart. For instance, there are certain abstract paintings that cer-tainly have pictorial content (a bunch of red, yellow, and blue paint splashes on a white canvas) but which do not have any representational content (these paintings are not paintings of anything). Conversely, in typical cases, words have no relevant pictorial content (they are not iconic representa-tions; dog does not look like a dog) but do have representational content (they are representations). 5

Given the ambiguities surrounding the notion of representation (not to mention idea, perception, et al.) in Modern philosophy, it is worth spend-ing some time to get as clear as possible on the distinction between these two kinds of content. Hume uses circumstances and I will use pictorial content to mean those intrinsic features of an image that make it the image that it is. So, the color and arrangement of the lines in the picture above are

Figure 1.1


part of the pictorial content of that image, but that the image is made of pixels (as it is as I type this) or of ink on paper (as it is in the hardcopy of this book) is not part of this pictorial content. 6 A picture drawn on hemp paper can have the same pictorial content as a picture drawn on papyrus. Etc. The image consists of four black lines of such-and-such a length arranged in a square against a white background, and this is its pictorial content.

Now contrast the pictorial content of an image with its representational content, which we will explicate further in a moment. This typographical mark has as its pictorial content two zig-zagging lines each placed one on top of the other but does not thereby have any representational content. It does not mean anything in written English, it is not being used to pic-ture anything, etc. Of course, it could be so used: we might introduce this mark as the new symbol for hydrogen; we might use it to picture waves approaching the shoreline, etc. Such uses would imbue that mark with rep-resentational content. Pictorial content is, at least prima facie , independent of representational content and refers only to the intrinsic features of an image, qua image, whether or not these features come to be used to form a representation or not.

To turn now to representational content, or to what a representation is a representation of , we can begin by noting that since at least as early as Descartesthink objective realitythe notion of representational con-tent has been a diffi cult one to explicate clearly. This is in part because in Descartess writing the notion of an ideathe primary vehicle of represen-tational contentis an infelicitous conglomeration of phenomenological, epistemological, ontological, and representational theses. Many of these confusions remain in Humes work, and while Kant goes to some length to detangle some of them, he also has infelicities of his own. In what follows, I will do my best to extricate what is useful for current purposes and leave behind what is not.

We can begin with an example. Suppose I form the following explicit judgment (say, by thinking it): That rat is fat. Suppose further, though, that there is no rat in the immediate vicinity, and that it is my dimly lit cat that is the cause of this thought. Finally, suppose that my cat is not fat (he is quite svelte). One can, I think, discern in this example at least the following ele-ments, each of which is related in its own way to the term representation.

(a) The judgment itself (be it a mental item, or act, etc.), as well as each of its elements, are represent ings . 7

(b) The cat that I took to be a rat is what we might call the de facto refer-ent of the phrase that rat. 8

(c) What I thought I was seeing, a rat, is what I will say is represent ed by the phrase that rat. 9

(d) Finally, something (the rat that is represent ed , the cat that is the de facto referent) is represented as being fat (even though nothing in the immediate vicinity is fat at all).


Both Hume and Kant note the intimate relation between (c) and (d), although each understands this relation differently. While the judgment here predi-cates fat of the rat, the phrase that appears as the subject of that judg-ment, that rat appears to have a predicative structure of its own. This can be brought out by noticing the close tie between that phrase and the judgment, That is a rat. In fact, one of the foci of the next chapter will be Humes attempt to reduce representations with the form of (d)judgments that attribute a property to a thingto representations with the form of (c)representations that represent a propertied-thing, as we might put it (a fat rat). Given the close relation between these two senses of repre-sentation, for the purposes of the current chapter, we can follow Hume in treating these as of a piece, although in later chapters we will have to fol-low Kant in distinguishing the two. So, I will use representational content to mean what is represent ed by a represent ing in contrast to its de facto referentand what that which is represented is represented as . 10

In the above example, the representational content of that rat has a rat as its representational content, a rat is what that phrase is a representation of . The judgment that rat is fat has as it representational content that that rat is fat. It is a judgment that represents the rat as being fat. Similarly, if I claim on Humes behalf that no idea has the representational content nec-essary connection, what that claim will amount to is that no represent ing has as its represent ed a necessary connection, nor does it represent its rep-resented as being a necessary connection (or as being necessarily connected to any other represented).

Returning to Humes Copy Principle, it states that all ideas are copies of impressions, i.e., that all ideas are caused by, and have exactly the same pic-torial content as, some corresponding impression. Important for us to note is that, as formulated here, the Copy Principle does not speak at all toward the representational content of impressions or ideas. It is merely a thesis concerning the causal relations between impressions and ideas and the rela-tion of their pictorial content. It is the former relation that is of particular concern to those who have worried about the epistemological status of the Copy Principle in the Treatise , and we are now in a position to turn to Gar-retts defense of that status.

Garretts defense is aimed fi rst and foremost at critics of Hume such as Antony Flew, who claims that while the evidence that Hume offers in favor of the Copy Principle justifi es its use as a defeasible empirical generalization, Humes actual use of it implies that it is a necessary truth.

. . . such sentences as all our ideas [. . .] are copies of our impressions [. . .] [are] ambiguous: most of the time they are taken to express a contin-gent generalization; but at some moments of crisis [Hume] apparently construes them as embodying a necessary proposition. Such manoevres have the effect of making it look as if the immunity to falsifi cation of


a necessary truth had been gloriously combined with the substantial assertiveness of a contingent generalization. 11

The idea here is that if the Copy Principle is, as it seems to be in the opening pages of the Treatise , a mere empirical generalization, then Humes use of it to argue that we do not have ideas such as those of necessary connection, the external world, or the self cannot be justifi ed. These should be seen as counterexamples to that principle rather than as violations of it. On the other hand, what would make the Copy Principle strong enough to play this role is if it were not an empirical generalization but a necessary proposition. It cannot, however, be necessary because the Copy Principle asserts that a certain causal relation holds between impressions and ideas, and all causal relations are contingent for Hume. Thus, Humes use of the Copy Principle in the Treatise is unwarranted.

Garretts defense of Humes use of the Copy Principle centers on the claim that rather than mysteriously grant the Copy Principle the status of a neces-sary truth, and thus violate some of his deepest commitments to empiricism, Hume grants the Copy Principle the status of an empirical generalization with a good deal of evidence in its favor and uses it as one among many pieces of evidence weighing against the claim that we have certain contro-versial ideas:

. . . there is no need to interpret Hume as maintaining that it is either a priori or necessary that every simple idea has a corresponding simple impression. He need only maintain that we have found this to be the case, thereby raising a reasonable expectation that the search for an original impression for a problematic idea will shed light (due to the greater clarity and vivacity of impressions) on whether the idea really exists and, if it does, on its nature. 12

According to Garrett, Hume treats the Copy Principle as a well-grounded empirical generalization. It has a good deal of evidence in its favor, but it is neither necessary nor a priori . Impressions are more forceful and vivacious than ideas, and so if we have some evidence that every idea is a copy of some impression, it seems prudent to seek out the original impression for particularly obscure ideas in order to gain a better understanding of them. If we cannot fi nd such an impression, given that the idea was questionable to begin with, we have some good evidence that we do not really have such an idea.

Furthermore, Garrett points out that the Copy Principle is not the only piece of evidence in play in the debate over these controversial ideas.

In each of these cases, admitting a counterexample to the Copy Principle would mean not merely violating the Resemblance Thesis but vi

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