Beyond Mechanism Rethinking Kant’s Philosophy of Nature With the Critique of
the Power of Judgment
With the advancement of scientific theories and technologies in Early
Modernity, philosophers become increasingly enthralled by the prospect of
giving an exhaustive account of nature in purely mechanistic terms. While some
(e.g., Descartes and Hobbes) affirm that nature is wholly determined by
mechanism, others (e.g., Post-Kantian Idealists and Romantics) contend that
nature is non-mechanistic in important respects. Inspired by the picture of
nature in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science, most readers align Kant with his Early Modern predecessors.
I dub this interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of nature the mechanistic
interpretation. The mechanistic interpretation dominates the scene in the
centuries following Kant’s death. As we shall see below, philosophers and
commentators as diverse in their views as Jacobi, Hegel, Schelling, Goethe,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Helmuth Plessner, Henry Allison,
Allen Wood,
Hannah Ginsborg, Paul Guyer, Peter McLaughlin, James Kreines, Robert
Richards, Yirmiyahu Yovel, John Zammito, and Rachel Zuckert, among many
others, have opted for some degree of mechanistic reading of Kant’s doctrine of
nature. To all mechanistic readers, Kant banishes the special kind of
purposiveness organisms exhibit from nature. To moderate mechanistic readers,
because we cannot know whether this teleology is active in nature and we can
demonstrate that mechanism applies to nature, Kant pushes us to believe that
any seemingly living natural products (such as plants and animals) will
eventually be explained in mechanistic terms. To strong mechanistic readers,
Kant gives us the tools to know that there is no room for internal purposiveness
in nature. Plants and animals only superficially differ from planes, cars, rocks,
and other inanimate objects, for we can prove that the deepest causal
mechanisms driving both kinds of being are the same.
While the mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of nature has
been the most popular, it may undermine the main ambition of the Critique of
the Power of Judgment. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant sets out
with the task of bridging an “incalculable gulf” between the domains of nature
and freedom (CPJ 5:175) and, if we are to believe the letter of the text, he
completes this task. Kant concludes the Third Critique with the triumphant
pronouncement that he has proven the objective reality of freedom in nature
(CPJ 5:474). If his assessment of his work is right, this represents a
monumental achievement, for, without the completion of this task, a critique of
pure reason “would be incomplete” (CPJ 5:168). Kant’s discussion of the
purposiveness of nature occupies him for the entire second part of the third
Critique, undoubtedly playing a significant role in his mission to bridge the gulf
between freedom and nature.
Again, to the mechanistic interpreter, Kant’s picture of nature ousts the
unique nonmechanistic activity specific to living beings from nature. In his
System of Transcendental
Idealism Schelling states that “organic nature furnishes the most visible proof of
transcendental idealism” (1978, 122/490). German Idealists, Romantics, and
Phenomenologists lament that Kant offers us a completely mechanistic picture
of nature, one that makes organic activity something to be explained away by
and reduced to mechanism. For Kant, the natural world is wholly mechanistic,
and the non-mechanistic form of causality characteristic of living beings can
have no place in nature.
One issue with this picture is that we like to think of ourselves – human
beings – not as free-floating spirits existing in a supernatural sphere, but as
organisms – that is, as embodied
creatures situated in nature who act in accordance with a variety of purposes.
By rejecting that there are any non-mechanistic causal structures typical of
organisms in nature, the mechanistic reader suggests that Kant pushes us to
assent to the unintuitive claim that human beings are not organisms at all and
that they do not really act on the basis of an internal purposiveness. If they are
correct, it is difficult to explain why human beings, on Kant’s picture,
seemingly have the power to shape their world, the trajectory of history, and
social, political, and scientific institutions in accordance with purposes nested
in us by our (rational) nature. Another issue with this picture is that it foists an
unattractive anthropocentric understanding of nature onto Kant, rendering him
someone who thinks that plants and animals are nothing but complex inanimate
objects. Most perilously, by furnishing a picture of nature according to which
we can know there is no internally purposive causality, we may worry that Kant
risks leaving the “incalculable gulf” between freedom and nature unbridged –
the mechanistic domain of nature and the non-mechanistic domain of freedom
are, at best, distant islands in the same archipelago.
In this Introduction, I have two goals. One is to animate the reasons why
so many philosophers and commentators have opted for a mechanistic reading
of nature in Kant. The second
is to show that salient aspects of Kant’s philosophy defy the mechanistic
reading – indeed, the goal of my dissertation is to display and motivate a non-
mechanistic reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature. In the end, my hope is to
demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy leaves us with a sophisticated picture of the
human being as an organic being and does not make “sub-human” organisms
out to
be nothing more than complicated machines.
In the first section, I lay out my basic understanding of the mechanistic
reading of Kant. In the second section, I survey just a few prominent
mechanistic readers of Kant throughout history.
In the third section, I present a few ways in which we can mount a non-
mechanistic reading of Kant and make progress in the way of responding to this
challenge. For one, when we introspect, we find that we have the cognitive
resources to spell out the details of the non-mechanistic causality characteristic
of minded human life. Against the mechanist, we might say that we human
beings are purposive and that we exist in nature. Still, the mechanistic reader
might insist that the human being is a special case, and Kant has no means of
showing us that purposiveness is possible in natural products like plants and
animals. In response to this, I appeal to belief [Glaube] in the organism. In this
dissertation, I argue that we can believe that there are organisms in nature, and
this belief plays an indispensable function in theoretical pursuits, morality, and
the overarching project of the third Critique. The final section of my
introduction maps out my systematic defense of believing in the organism,
which is the backbone of my original non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s
philosophy of nature.
1. Mechanistic readings of Kant: A synopsis
Interpreters of Kant have famously reasoned that, because we cannot
empirically cognize the purposiveness of nature or of an organism, we can
never know whether there are organisms in nature. Moreover, observing that we
can demonstrate that mechanism applies to nature, these readers claim that we
ought to believe that nature will one day be completely explained in
mechanistic terms. Others have defended a stronger reading, arguing that, to
Kant, we can know that nature is completely determined by mechanism.
The first camp of readers adopts a moderate mechanistic interpretation
of Kant’s doctrine of nature. To these readers, we attribute non-mechanistic
forms of causality such as purposiveness to nature in the form of a reflecting
judgment, and reflecting judgments never result in cognition. Given that
reflecting judgments never lead to cognition of their objects, we cannot say
whether their objects exist in the natural world. Since we judge nature to be
organic on the basis of such a judgment, the moderate mechanistic reader
reasons that we cannot say whether there are organisms in nature. In addition,
since we can know that mechanism applies to nature, it makes sense to at least
believe that anything that appears purposive will eventually be explained in
mechanistic terms.
Some moderate mechanistic readers defend their view by asserting that
the principle of purposiveness is a mere projection. We attribute purposiveness
to nature because it is convenient for our cognitive lives, allowing us to make
judgments, form concepts, and organize our mental lives in a way we could not
otherwise; but this projection tells us nothing about nature or natural products
(Zammito 1992 and Zuckert 2007). Insofar as he endorses such a reading, John
Zammito falls into the moderate mechanist camp. Zammito insists Kant uses
“merely heuristic” or
“regulative” language when attributing a technique to nature. The “deeper
point” Kant is making
when he attributes a technique to nature is “that our discursive form of thought
can only function with the sort of experience represented by natural art or
“technic”” (1992, 155). However, because Kant denies that we can have
empirical cognition of nature’s purposiveness, Zammito says that we
alternatively comprehend nature’s purposive activity by means of a “projection
of our purposive activity” (1992, 155). Thus, when describing the technique of
nature, Kant is only making a claim about our mental life – that is, we project a
certain image onto nature in order to gain access to certain kinds of mental
states. We cannot, he suggests, know whether purposiveness exists in nature.
Rachel Zuckert thinks of purposiveness as a “form of the unity of the
diverse as such” (2007, 95). Zuckert develops this view of purposiveness in
response to an explanatory gap that she claims is left over by the Critique of
Pure Reason – that is, it does not give us an account of how to deal with the
diversity of nature, and since empirical knowledge seems to require an ability to
form concepts that unify nature’s contingent diversity, it seems to leave us
without the sufficient resources for an account of empirical knowledge. Luckily,
the third Critique introduces us with a principle that establishes the unity of the
diverse in nature; purposiveness is the “epistemic principle that governs the
unity of representations or judgments”, allowing “human subjects [to] render
comprehensible that which is not immediately comprehensible to us – viz.,
whatever intelligibility there might be in the empirically given world beyond
that which derives from our a priori concepts” (2007, 10). When conceiving of
purposiveness as a principle by means of which we unify the diverse, Zuckert
also maintains that the paradigm case of it is purposiveness without purpose, as
this notion of purposiveness is “teleology not in the sense of serving a
previously identified good, but of aiming towards an indeterminate future end,
and this new form of teleology characterizes only and specifically human,
judging subjects” (ibid). So, Zuckert presents us with a remarkably epistemic
notion of purposiveness, according to which it is primarily a principle that
structures our understanding of the world and objects in it. Whether such unity
is actually present in nature we can never know.
An interpreter that is comparatively difficult to pin down but still veers
towards a moderate mechanistic reading is Hannah Ginsborg, who equates
purposiveness with a conformity to normative law (see 2015, esp. Essays 3 and
10). In one of her many essays on the topic of purposiveness, Ginsborg
concludes, “Kant’s claim that we ascribe purposiveness to nature and to our
reflection on beautiful objects amounts to the claim that we are committed to an
‘ought’ which, like that of design, belongs neither to theoretical nor to practical
reason, but which, unlike that of design, has no empirical warrant” (2015, 254).
The suggestion that purposiveness amounts to an “ought” that “has no empirical
warrant” should stand out to us as moderately mechanistic; when we attribute
purposiveness to our reflective processes or to an object, we make no claim
about what these things are, but only make an assessment regarding whether
they conform to our concepts of how they ought to be. Lacking any empirical
warrant, judgments that attribute purposiveness to nature ultimately do not tell
us anything about nature, only further revealing the idiosyncrasies of our mental
lives as judgers.
The moderate mechanistic line is perhaps best summarized by Peter
McLaughlin’s reading of Kant. McLaughlin doubts that we can ever establish
that an organism is real because we cannot cognize the inner purposiveness
characteristic of it. To have empirical cognition of an object, the object would
need to be given to us in sensibility and thought through the understanding.
However, the kind of causality exhibited by an organism cannot be thought
through the understanding, for the understanding is mechanical by its very
constitution and the purposiveness of an organism is inherently non-mechanistic
(see 1990, 176). Unable to think the purposiveness of the organism through the
understanding, we cannot attain empirical cognition of the purposiveness in
question; and lacking empirical cognition of an organism’s purposiveness,
“Organisms…seem to involve a causality sui generis that we cannot recognize
as real” (2014, 156; see also 1990, 47).
But he does not stop short of the merely negative claim that we cannot
recognize the reality of the organism. Based on his commitments regarding
empirical cognition, the inherent mechanism of the understanding, and the laws
that govern mechanism, McLaughlin reaches the strong mechanistic conclusion
that we can know all the entities we judge to be organisms do not really exist.
While we cannot empirically cognize the causality characteristic of an
organism, we are still presented with organisms in outer sense, as objects of
experience. However, all objects of outer sense are subject to the Second Law
of Mechanics – i.e., for every change in matter there is an external cause for that
change. Whatever is subject to the Law of Inertia is mere matter in motion,
which implies that all objects of outer sense are mere matter in motion. Thus,
insofar as they are presented to us in outer sense, the things we call organisms
are not really organisms at all.
A stated outcome of the third Critique is that freedom (and rational
activity) can find expression in nature. However, if we follow the mechanistic
lines above, we either cannot establish or must deny that there is any internal
purposiveness in nature. As far as we know, nature is material all the way down.
Matter as it appears to us is dead, only capable of movement by means of
external principles. For freedom and reason to find expression in nature, this
would need to be by means of some non-mechanistic, internal principle of
causality. If there is no such non-mechanistic causality (because the things we
call internally purposive are just bundles of matter in motion in accordance with
Laws of Physics), it is not possible for non-mechanistic powers guided by
freedom and reason to make their presence felt in the natural world. Kant’s
philosophy banishes all forms of internally purposive, non-mechanistic
causality from nature, and as a result, his project in the third Critique fails. The
incalculable gulf remains.
2. A historical panorama of mechanistic readers
Historically, critics claim to have shown that, in the Critique of the
Power of Judgment, Kant does not give us the resources to establish that
anything non-mechanistic exists in nature. On this basis, these critics have
argued, we cannot know that there is any kind of causality besides mechanism
at work in nature. From this conclusion, this historical panorama of critics has
argued in unison, it follows that Kant’s resolutions in the third Critique are
either unsatisfying or unsatisfactory.
Mechanistic readings abound in the years immediately following the publication of the
Critique of the Power of Judgment. In “The Early Philosophy of Fichte and
Schelling” (2000), Rolf-Peter Horstmann depicts Jacobi and, subsequently,
Schelling as philosophers who accused Kant of being a mechanist. Horstmann
summarizes that, to these thinkers, “teleological explanations, which are framed
in terms of purposes and ends, do not give us insight into what is really going
on in nature; they are heuristic devices that we use whenever we cannot figure
out what really is the case” (2000, 130). According to Horstmann, because of
this Jacobi believes that Kant abandons “the idea that organisms and other
forms of living nature have an ontological status of their own”, and this
abandonment in turn “leads to a conception of reality that conceives of the
world in its totality as a huge mechanism” (ibid). Like Jacobi, Shelling believes
that depriving the organic of a status of its own leads to an excessively
mechanistic conception of nature. Unlike
Jacobi, Schelling envisions a Kantian solution to this problem. As Horstmann
tells us, “This can be achieved by a different interpretation of Kant’s conception
of the supersensible, an interpretation which liberates this idea from the status
of being a merely problematic item, and thus opens the way for giving a
different account of the validity of teleological judgments” (ibid).
Of course, Schelling ultimately gives up on this approach “because it leads to
insoluble problems concerning the determination of the relation that holds
between the world of objects and reality proper” (2000, 132). Thus, it seems
that Kant is mired in a view that leaves us at best agnostic and at worst in denial
about the existence of purposiveness in nature.
A mechanistic picture of nature is the backbone of a programmatic
critique of Kant’s idealism launched by Hegel. According to Karl Ameriks,
“Hegel asserts that the essence of Kant’s idealism is its “subjectivity,” its
wholly limiting the categories to our mind” (1985, 24). That is, Kant’s idealism
is flawed because it does not give us a surefire means of connecting
appearances (or, perhaps better, the means by which we come to cognize
appearances) to reality. Kant’s treatment of purposiveness exemplifies this
problem, since Kant’s doctrine of inner purposiveness, which he appeals to
when explaining the life of organisms, says that teleological judgment is not a
form of determining judgment, and only determining judgment has a “given
objective concept” as its predicate (CPJ 20:223). Thus, Hegel, says Ameriks,
argues that Kant’s excessively subjective doctrine of purposiveness blocks him
from establishing firm knowledge about the existence of purposive things, such
as organisms.
In Chapter 3 of Reason in the World, Jim Kreines opens by stating that “Hegel
opposes
Kant’s skeptical conclusion” that we cannot know living beings manifest inner
purposiveness (2015, 77). In Chapter 8, he also sums up why Hegel’s remarks
on life in the Science of Logic would lead him to a mechanistic reading of Kant
when he writes,
Hegel has defended the possibility of such knowledge beyond Kant’s
strict bounds of sensibility—but without need of anything like a
superior-in-kind intellect capable of grasping reality immediately and all
at once. Since life is a first form of the idea, the same account of
knowledge will carry over to the latter. For the knowledge of the inner
purposiveness of living beings just is knowledge of the reciprocal
process establishing the intimate relation of type and token, concept and
individual. And that is why Hegel’s overall argument supports his
epistemic optimism. It supports his rejection of Kant’s pessimistic view
according to which ideas are only ideas, in the sense that we cannot
know whether they have any true realization, but can only seek
knowledge of such forever without hope of achieving it. (2015, 204)
Kreines’s recapitulation of Hegel’s gripes with Kant on life and purposiveness
affirm the diagnosis I have been giving so far. Hegel adopts a mechanistic – or
“skeptical” and “pessimistic” – reading of Kant’s doctrine of purposiveness,
concluding that we cannot know that a thing is purposive when we judge it to
be such. This leads Hegel to endorse the conclusion that, for Kant, we cannot
know that any organisms are real, a conclusion typical of moderate mechanistic
readings of Kant.
To Hegel, this is an unsatisfying outcome of Kant’s system that future
generations must rectify. The Romantics take a similar, but slightly stronger
approach, asserting that Kant is a cardcarrying mechanist. In The Romantic
Conception of Life, Robert Richards offers a version of this charge against Kant
when he groups Kant alongside Descartes, Newton, and Hume as philosophers
who employed mechanism as “the basic concept by which to understand not
only the inanimate universe, but the living world as well” (2010, xvii). To
Richards, Kant only thought of purposiveness as a heuristic and a placeholder:
“Kant, of course, thought only mechanistic laws could scientifically explain
organisms. As an heuristic expedient, we could regard plants and animals as
purposive; but teleological accounts, he maintained, had epistemic value only as
suggestions leading to efficiently causal explanations” (2010, 159). The
Romantics, in contrast, inverted this relationship – mechanism was merely a
guide into the realer realm of teleology.
Rejecting the mechanists’ reduction of teleology to mechanism restores the
reality and sanctity of life in nature.
Henri Bergson’s 1909 L’évolucion créatrice similarly depicts Kant as
closer to his mechanist predecessors than his Idealist and Romantic successors.
Even though Kant “opened up the pathway to a new philosophy” (1909, 357)
boasting a superior account of intuition compared to that of his predecessors,
Bergson laments that Kant still did not have the resources to explain phenomena
such as consciousness and life.
Kant is again fairly close to his predecessors. He does not admit any
middle ground between the non-temporal and time as scattered out into
distinct moments. And since there is no intuition that transports us into
the non-temporal, every intuition would therefore be, by definition,
sensible. But between physical existence, which is scattered out in
space, and a non-temporal existence, which could be nothing other than
a conceptual and logical existence, such as the one discussed by
dogmatic metaphysics, is there not a place for consciousness and for
life? Yes, incontestably. We catch sight of it the moment we place
ourselves within durée in order to go from there to the moments, rather
than beginning from the moments in order to connect them together in
durée.
In order to account for life, Kant would need access to a form of intuition that is
not reliant upon a “time as scattered out into distinct moments.” Because Kant’s
notion of intuition is grounded upon such an abstract, reified concept of time,
he cannot admit a kind of intuition into his system that tracks what Bergson
calls durée. Without access to a proper notion of durée that is not reducible to
“moments”, the Kantian framework neither leaves room for consciousness nor
the organism.
Phenomenologists and those operating adjacent to the phenomenological
tradition also characterize Kant as a mechanist. One version of this critique in
phenomenology is summed up well in the first chapter of Helmuth Plessner’s
Levels of Organic Life and the Human. Plessner appeals to hermeneutics and
phenomenology as tools necessary for providing a “systematic answer to the
question of the possibility of life understanding itself in the medium of its
experience through history” (1928, 20), a question that one must answer if they
hope to fully understand the human and their place in nature. In contrast, Kant
“treated [the question of the possibility of understanding life] from the restricted
perspective of the possibility of exact sciences or of the mathematizability of
experience” (ibid). To Plessner, Kant is another philosopher in a long line of
philosophers who forewent a genuine analysis of life by relying on the “exact
sciences” (1928, 12). The exact sciences base their knowledge in the
understanding and its categories, limiting knowledge claims to empirical
cognition. While we can empirically cognize the mechanistic activity of a thing,
we cannot cognize its purposiveness. Assuming that living and organic activity
are fundamentally non-mechanistic and instead purposive, Kant’s Critical
philosophy is incapable of giving us knowledge that any organisms exist, and,
subsequently, it cannot give us an adequate explanation for the presence of life
in the world: “[To Kant,] both the mechanical and teleological principles with
respect to organism are mere maxims of inquiry of comparable, but not total,
explanatory power. We simply do not know what, if anything, is “behind” life,
“causing” its basic purposive quality in some ultimate sense.” (Plessner 1982, p.
247)
As I shall show throughout my dissertation, moderate mechanistic – and
even strong mechanistic – interpretations of Kant’s doctrine of nature are
tempting for good reason. For now,
I want to signal that there is a plausible alternative way of reading Kant’s
doctrine of nature.
3. Beyond mechanism
So far, we have seen that, to many interpreters throughout history, Kant
thinks that we neither definitively prove nor conclusively deny the internal
purposiveness of certain natural entities. As a result, the incalculable gulf
between freedom and nature will never be bridged, for the purposive activities
of reason can never be expressed in nature, which is a thoroughly mechanistic
concatenation of objects.
I want to consider two avenues for motivating a non-mechanistic reading of
Kant. The avenues traced here are meant to salvage "the possibility of a third
way between a strong teleology and a brute materialism" in Kant's doctrine of
nature (Weber and Varela 2002, 99). We must accept Kant’s contention that we
cannot determinately judge that there are organisms. But this claim is quite
different from the assertion that we can know that there are no organisms.
Indeed, establishing such a claim would seem to presuppose the truth of the
constitutive thesis of Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment – namely, the
principle that “All generation of material things is possible in accordance with
merely mechanical laws” (CPJ 5:387). However, this principle (and its
antithetical counterpart) cannot be proven true (ibid). So, Kant’s position leaves
us unable to determinately judge whether there are organisms one way or the
other and lends itself to a moderate mechanistic reading with respect to
determining judgments of organic activity. Nevertheless, I show that there is a
positive epistemic attitude that Kant does not prevent us from adopting with
respect to the organism.
First, I want to float an escape route that seems rather cheap, but readily
available, for Kant – that is, Kant never denies that human beings are alive and
that they are capable of making their ends real in the world. We are “acquainted
with” the inner purposive causality characteristic of
minded human life.
Life is the faculty of a substance to determine itself to act from an
internal principle, of a finite substance to change, and of a material
substance to motion or rest, as change of its state. Now we are
acquainted with [kennen wir] no other internal principle in a
substance for changing its state except desiring, and no other internal
activity at all except thinking, together with that which depends on it,
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and desire or willing. (MFNS
4:544, translation modified, my emphasis)
In Kant’s Logic Lectures, acquaintance is defined as a lower, although not the
lowest, degree of cognition. Higher degrees of cognition are more refined,
recruiting mental faculties such as reason and the understanding. In contrast,
acquaintance does not quite reach the level of understanding, comprehension, or
rational insight, although it surpasses mere representation and perception,
which is representation with consciousness (see LL 24:65-6 and 24:133). When
we are acquainted with an object, we are aware of it such that we can compare
it to and distinguish it from other objects (LL 24:134). Although this is a less
refined mental state than full-blown theoretical cognition because we lack a
distinct concept with which to combine our intuition of the object in question,
we at the very least have a direct, intuited, and conscious grasp of that with
which we are acquainted. Indeed, acquaintance is enough to identify the object
to which my representation is related (LL 24:133).
In addition, while Kant denies that the concept of a natural end has objective
reality, but seems content to claim that the “concept of a causality through ends
(of art) certainly has objective reality (CPJ 5:397). It is simply the concept of
nature (and natural products) acting in accordance with concepts the reality of
which cannot be proven. So, combining these insights, we have the resources to
say that we (human beings) are alive, our life is connected to rational activities,
and that some form of our teleological purposive activity exists in nature.
I worry that this response is too easy and wonder if the mechanistic readers
throughout history are not getting at something deeper. After all, mechanists
could be fine with allowing a mental or divine teleology to (somehow) exert its
influence on nature from without. Thus, the mechanist cannot simply be stating
that Kant denies the reality of human purposiveness. Rather, mechanists must
be emphasizing that Kant denies the objective reality of the Naturzweck – the
natural end. In the System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling encapsulates
why the concept of the organism – defined as a natural object that organizes
itself in accordance with a natural end – is essential for bridging the gap
between self-consciousness and nature.
The organism is the condition under which alone the intelligence can
distinguish itself, as substance or subject of the succession, from the
succession itself, or under which alone this succession can be something
independent of the intelligence. That it now appears to us as though
there were a transition from the organism into the intelligence, whereby
an affection of the former brings about a presentation [Vorstellung] in
the latter, is a mere illusion, because we can indeed know nothing of the
representation before it becomes an object to us through the organism:
the affection of the organism therefore precedes the presentation in
consciousness, and must thus appear, not as conditioned thereby, but
rather as the condition thereof. (1978, 127/ 497)
We have neither the space nor the time to unpack this passage in the detail that
it no doubt demands. However, one point is clear: Schelling states that the
organism and the concept of the natural end associated with it is a condition for
“intelligence” – it is constitutive of self-conscious mental activity. It “precedes
the presentation in consciousness”, has an existence of its own independent of
the mind, but is also an indispensable condition for consciousness. That is,
representing the organism in an immediate way – as an “affection” – enables
consciousness, self-consciousness, and intelligent activity in general. In this
sense, the reality of the organism enables mental activity and the two – mental
activity and organic nature – are for this reason radically intertwined. The
internally purposive activity of an organism is an essential precondition for our
own conceptual activity. From the perspective of Schelling (and Hegel), since
Kant denies that there are organisms in nature, his account of mental activity is
incomplete, leaving us rational beings fundamentally alienated from nature.
Of course, at this point, a seasoned Kant scholar might contend that Schelling,
Hegel, and their ilk had different intentions and presuppositions in mind when
formulating their philosophical systems. Faulting Kant for depriving the
concept of an organism objective reality, and therefore
the ability to play a constitutive role in our mental activity, is anachronistic and
gratuitous. Nevertheless, a seasoned scholar of German Idealism might insist
that Kant is missing something essential from his philosophy by denying the
objective reality of the organism and its real internally purposive activity. While
Kant claims that the purposiveness of nature conditions our mental activity,
such purposiveness plays no real role in conditioning mental activity. By
denying its reality, Kant leaves no real role for the purposiveness of nature in
his picture of mental life, and this is a glaring omission on his part.
In what follows I defend a compromise that may make the seasoned Kant
scholar and the seasoned scholar of German Idealism happy. Kant certainly
cannot establish the objective reality of the natural end. This would violate his
commitment to the notion that the Second Law of Mechanics explains all
changes in objects we empirically cognize and contradict the text of the third
Critique. We cannot empirically prove that organisms exist, but we can believe
in the existence of the organism, in the sense that Andrew Chignell constructs in
“Belief in Kant” (2007).
Belief in this sense is something like a “firm, positive, and voluntary attitude
that is subjectively sufficient2 for a particular subject in a particular
circumstance, given his or her interests and ends, and that has implications for
the subject’s rational action, assertion, and deliberation” (2007, 359).
By accepting the claim that organisms exist as a matter of theoretical
belief, we do not attain empirical cognition or knowledge of the existence of
organisms, but this belief can “give direction to our inquiry and motivate the
search for unified, systematic, simple theories, without themselves amount to
Knowledge”, or a mental state for which we do have sufficient objective and
subjective grounds of assent (2007, 353). Believing in organisms can honor the
limitations that Kant sets on our critical faculty of reflecting judgment while
linking reason and nature. After all,
as Kant himself writes in the Canon of the Critique of Pure Reason, “purposive
unity is still so important a condition of the application of reason to nature that I
cannot pass it by, especially since experience liberally supplies examples of it”
(A826/B854). Kant can animate an alternative to the mechanistic reading by
insisting that we believe in the existence of a real, internally purposive unity
like an organism, thereby allowing us to conceive of nature as hospitable to the
internally purposive activities of reason and freedom.
4. A roadmap of the dissertation
I defend a novel non-mechanistic reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature.
The key to my reading is appreciating that Kant allows us, and in some ways
urges us, to believe organisms exist in nature.
Part I of my dissertation analyzes the key concepts involved in my
reading. In Chapter 1, I define purposiveness as a causality according to which
inner principles, not outer principles, determine their effects. I show that this
notion of purposiveness is general enough to extend to all kinds of
purposiveness encountered in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and I
contrast it with the dominant conception of the term that depicts it as a
“lawfulness of the contingent.” Chapter 2 analyzes the terms nature,
mechanism, organism, and life. Most importantly, I show that the very concept
of nature does not exclude the possibility of there being purposiveness in
nature. In
Chapter 3, I offer a novel interpretation of Kant’s concept of life, one that helps
us better envision what sorts of organisms could exist in nature and the
principles of organic activity.
Part II turns from conceptual analysis to the questions of whether and
how there is purposiveness in nature. In Chapter 4 I consider the available
answers to the question “Are there organisms in nature?” Most commentators
argue that we merely judge that there are organisms in nature and that we can
never know whether there really are. However, many of Kant’s overt remarks
about organisms contradict this standard line, revealing that this is not the only
way to interpret him. In Chapter 5, I provide a close reading of the Antinomy
of Teleological Judgment to show that Kant does not make organisms out to be
merely a convenient fiction or a mental projection. Chapter 6 contains a
defense of my non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of nature. I first
lay out various ways in which the text of the third Critique plainly contradicts
and complicates mechanistic interpretations of it before explaining how belief
that there are organisms in nature is not only possible but justified.
The Epilogue contains two appendices. Appendix I offers a non-
mechanistic reading of the Methodology section of the Critique of the
Teleological Power of Judgment. On my reading, belief in the organism is
justified on moral grounds. Failure to positively believe in the existence of the
organism compromises Kant’s moral proof of the existence of God in the
Methodology.
Appendix II is a reflection on Kant’s reception of Aristotelian teleology in the
Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. Here I show that there are two
ways of imagining how Kant could have interpreted Aristotle’s teleology. If
Kant read Aristotle as a realist about teleology, then Kant neglected to clearly
address and critique Aristotle’s teleology in the third Critique. If he read
Aristotle as an anti-realist about teleology, this leaves open the possibility that
the third
Critique represents a critical rehabilitation of Aristotelian teleology.
Though Kant denies that we can cognize teleology in nature, we need
not opt for a mechanistic construal of nature. A non-mechanistic reading makes
better sense of Kant’s remarks about the mechanical inexplicability of nature
and certain natural products, revealing a much more nuanced understanding of
nature in Kant than many have anticipated. Moreover, the nonmechanistic
position makes sense of how human beings, which are not merely mechanistic
actors, can exist in and influence nature. Ultimately, Kant does not affirm that
mechanism gives us a complete picture of nature, for it cannot exhaustively
explain the origins and the activities of organisms.
PART I
Chapter 1. What is purposiveness?
The main question animating our endeavor is the question of whether
there can be any kind of non-mechanistic causality present in nature. The main
form of non-mechanistic causality Kant discusses is purposiveness
[Zweckmäßigkeit].
In this chapter, I provide an analysis of the concept of purposiveness in Kant’s
Critical philosophy. My analysis here shows that purposiveness is, above all
else, a kind of causality. More specifically, purposiveness is causality that is
driven by inner principles as opposed to outer principles.
The chapter proceeds as follows. In section 1, I discuss two important historical
forerunners for Kant’s concept of purposiveness – Baumgarten and Leibniz.
Baumgarten is significant because, by introducing the notion of the nexus of
utility, he carves out conceptual space for a kind of causality that is distinct in
kind from material efficient causality but is not as cognitively robust as final
causality, which involves an agent that represents their intentions to themselves.
Leibniz is also significant because, in his Monadology, he demonstrates how
inner principles can be causally efficacious. Kant differs from Baumgarten
because he does not cash purposiveness out in terms of utility and differs from
Leibniz because he does not posit the existence of infinite irreducible monads
as bearers of inner principles, but Kant inherits the legacy left behind by both
insofar as he leaves a substantive role to a non-mechanistic, inner-principle-
driven form of causality in his philosophy. In section 2, I survey Kant’s broader
theory of causality and situate the concept of a causality in accordance with
inner principles within it. In section 3, I survey every kind of purposiveness
discussed in the Critique of the Power of Judgment to show that purposiveness
just is a causality that has inner principles as its grounds. In section 4, I respond
to a popular view in the literature, which states that purposiveness just is a
“lawfulness of the contingent.” Against the commentators who assert this view,
I argue that Kant only glosses certain forms of objective purposiveness as a
“lawfulness of the contingent”. What these commentators have uncovered is a
definition of a species of the concept, not of the concept as such.
1. Kant’s forerunners: Baumgarten and Leibniz on causality driven by inner
principles
In this section, I provide important historical context for Kant’s doctrine
of purposiveness as a causality driven by inner, as opposed to outer, principles.
As we shall see, Kant builds his doctrine of causality along the lines of
Alexander Baumgarten’s. For Baumgarten, causality is a category of
metaphysics, pertaining to the branch of this science known as “ontology,” or
the study of being and its predicates. Since causality is fundamentally a
metaphysical concept for both Baumgarten and Kant, we should think of
purposiveness, which is a species of causality, as belonging to metaphysics as
well. That is, to say of a thing that it is purposive is to say that it possesses
certain causal powers and stands in particular causal relations to other things.
This characterization of purposiveness may lead some to think that it is identical
with either “utility” or “finality”, both of which are kinds of causality in
Baumgarten’s Metaphysics. However, Kant’s notion of purposiveness is unique.
For Kant, the nexus of ends and the nexus of uses sit under purposiveness, the
former set of concepts being species of the latter.
Kant is not the first thinker to carve out a place for a species of causality the
grounds of which are inner principles in his metaphysics. In works such as the
Monadology, Leibniz also posits the existence of substances that possess
internal principles of change. To the extent that they have such internal
principles, monads are considered entelechies, and living beings are
fundamentally driven by their entelechies. While Kant is no doubt aware of
these and other important tenets of Leibniz’s early 18th century metaphysics,
his doctrine of purposiveness meaningfully modifies Leibniz’s notion of
internal principles as monadic entelechies.
1.1. Baumgarten’s Metaphysics and the place of causality within it
For Baumgarten, causality is a category of ontology, and ontology is a
branch of metaphysics. The very first section of his Metaphysics defines this
term as the “science of the first principles in human knowledge” (§1). Ontology,
more specifically, is “the science of the more general predicates of a being”
(§4). If metaphysics seeks to give us a principled account of the most
fundamental principles of human knowledge, ontology carries out the task of
explaining what beings in general are and what predicates they contain.
Baumgarten introduces the notion of causality as a category of ontology
because causality gives us insight into what a being is and how it came to be.
Before dissecting what causality is, what its various species are, and what it
tells us about a being, we should first study a few more general concepts in
Baumgarten’s Ontology, such as ground, consequence, nexus, substance, and
accident.
One of the most fundamental ambitions of Baumgarten’s Ontology is to
give us the tools not only to explain what things are, but why they are. For the
sake of explaining why things come to be, Baumgarten introduces the key terms
of ground, consequence, and nexus. Early on in Baumgarten’s Ontology, we
learn that a “GROUND is that from which it is knowable why something is”
whereas that which has a ground is a “CONSEQUENCE and DEPENDENT on
it [the ground]”; the connection of ground and consequence is a “NEXUS”
(§13). Baumgarten mobilizes these terms when articulating a central principle
of his Ontology, stipulating that “Each and every thing in every possible thing
has a ground (§20); hence, every possible thing has a sufficient ground [i.e., a
complete and total explanation of why that thing exists] (§21)” (§22).
Now, from everything having a ground and every ground having a consequence
which is dependent upon it, it follows that “Every possible thing is both a
ground and a consequence (§20, 23), and hence connected and rational (§19) in
a double nexus (§14), knowable both a priori and a posteriori” (§24). So, we see
that at the basis of Baumgarten’s Ontology there lie the tools to explain why a
thing is (i.e., a thing’s ground) and the relation between any possible thing and
that by virtue of which it exits (i.e., a nexus of ground and consequence).
Further along in his Ontology, Baumgarten distinguishes between
substance and accident as follows: “A being either cannot exist except as a
determination of another (in something else), or it can (§10). The former is an
accident (a predicate or physical thing, cf. §50, whose being <esse> is
belonging <inesse>, sumbebekos), and the latter a SUBSTANCE (a being per
se, form, entelecheia, ousia, hupostasis, energeia), because it can exist,
although it is neither in something else, nor the determination of something
else” (§191). While accidents inhere in substance, only existing as
determinations, attributes, modes, or relations of a substance (§195), substances
subsist, or persist despite changes in determination, attributes, modes, and
relations. From here, we may begin to see how the notions of ground,
consequence, and nexus explain the dynamic between substances and their
accidents. Substances, as beings that exist and persist despite changes in their
determinations, explain why an accident has come into or out of existence.
Substances ground their accidents, meaning that there is a nexus of substance
and accident: “If accidents inhere in a substance, then there is some ground of
inherence (§20), or POWER, IN THE BROADER SENSE
(efficacy, energy, activity, §216), and a sufficient ground (§22). This [latter] is
POWER IN THE STRICTER SENSE (and sometimes called simply POWER
for the sake of brevity)” (§197). A substance, insofar as it possesses power in
both the broad and strict sense, explains why some accidents and not others
inhere in substance. In other words, substances are grounds of accidents, which
are their consequences, and the nexus of substance and accident is a relation of
a substance exerting its power to produce some accident.
Baumgarten’s ontological account of causality is constructed against the
backdrop of these important concepts. He makes the following remarks when
defining causality: “Between the cause and what is caused there is a NEXUS
(§307, 14), which is called CAUSAL, and insofar as it is attributed to a cause, it
is called CAUSALITY, whereas insofar as it is attributed to what is caused, it is
called DEPENDENCY” (§313). A cause is what Baumgarten calls the
“PRINCIPLE OF BECOMING (of generation)” (§311). Causality, in other
words, describes a nexus, or a relation, between a causal ground and its effect:
That which contains the ground of another is its PRINCIPLE. That
which depends on a principle is something FOUNDED. The principle of
existence is a CAUSE and the thing founded by a cause is the
CAUSED. That which is not able to exist except as caused by another
being posited outside of it is a BEING FROM ANOTHER <ENS AB
ALIO>
(dependent). However, that which is able to exist even if it is not caused
by another being posited outside of it is a BEING FROM ITSELF <ENS
A SE> (independent). (§307)
A causal principle is that which serves as the “principle of existence” of that
which it causes. Baumgarten also makes a fundamental distinction between that
which only exists if it is caused by something external (ens ab alio) versus that
which is able to exist even if it is not caused by something external (ens a se).
In general, then, causality describes a nexus, or a relation, between the principle
of a thing’s existence and its coming to be. Sometimes, the principle of change
is outside of the being changed, in which case the causal changes are dependent
upon an external principle. In other cases, a being is “independent”, or capable
of being the cause of its own changes. Now, after having introduced the
general notion of causality into his Ontology, Baumgarten breaks down various
species of causality. One such species is the “nexus of utility”: “USE is the
actualization of utility. ABUSE is either apparent use or use in which what is
useful perishes. Since one can know from the useful the perfection of that for
which it is useful (§336, 100), the useful and that for it can be useful are
connected, and their nexus can be called the NEXUS OF UTILITY” (§338).
The notion of a “nexus” is built into the fabric of causality. Indeed, causality is
fundamentally a nexus between cause and effect, or a relation between the two
terms, according to which cause grounds the existence of effect. Likewise, there
is a nexus between the useful and that for which it can be useful. Baumgarten
continues,
If someone uses something useful, then through this, the perfection of
another is actualized (§338, 100), and the useful, through use, becomes
the cause of the perfection of that for which it is useful (§307). And this
causal nexus can be called the NEXUS OF USE. When someone uses
something, that thing is useful (§336, 57) and nobody uses what is
entirely useless (§338, 58). However, some useful things are in want of
use (§59) and hence something that nobody uses is useful nonetheless
(§60). (§339)
“The useful” is a cause, meaning it beings about the existence of something
else, its effect. The effect brought about by the useful is “the perfection for
which it is useful”. The nexus describes the relation between the useful as the
cause of the existence of a thing’s perfection. Thus, to say that sunlight is useful
for the growth of a tree is to say that exposure to sunlight grounds or explains
the existence of a certain perfection, namely, the tree’s growth.
Baumgarten’s conception of a “nexus finalis”, or a causal relation of ends, is
derivative upon his notions of use, utility, and the “nexus of use”:
When one uses or abuses something for the sake of actualizing what
seems good to oneself, then this very thing, which seems good to the
agent, is called the END <FINIS> (cf. §248). The causes of the end, or
those things that the agent can use or abuse for the sake of the end, are
called the MEANS (destined, limited (cf. §248), remedies), and the
representation of the end is called the INTENTION. Now, the end is the
principle of use or abuse (§338, 307), and hence is the final cause (§338,
307). (§341)
End and final causality seem to be a species of use and the nexus of utility.
More specifically, an end is “what seems good to oneself,” suggesting that an
end is only proper to beings to which things can seem a certain way (i.e., beings
that represent). But an end is “caused”, or brought into existence, by use of a
“means”. Since a means is that of which an agent makes use for the sake of
realizing an end, it appears that we could classify the nexus finalis as a kind of
nexus utilitatis. That is, a “means” is just one kind of use and an “end” that for
which a means is useful. So, “The causal nexus of means and ends is the
FINAL NEXUS” (§343), and the “final nexus” is just a “nexus of utility”
involving an agent to whom certain ends appear good and certain means appear
conducive to the realization of said ends.
On top of all this, Baumgarten introduces a “representation of the end”
as an intention, carving out what seems to be an even more specific class of
end-directed activity. He adds, “The grounds of an intention in the one
intending are called the IMPELLING CAUSES. The end is the effect of the
action and the means that the agent uses or abuses (§341, 319). Hence, the
complete end is equal to the action and the means. The means and the action are
equal (proportional) to the complete end (§331). Seizing the occasion (§323)
and removing impediments (§221) are means (§341)” (§342). So impelling
causes are responsible for bringing about intentions. But the intention itself
seems to be the principle of the action and the means an agent uses to complete
their end. We might say that an agent’s intention causes them to use a means for
realizing their end.
In sum, a causal nexus describes the relation between a causal principle
and its effect. The relation between these two terms in the nexus is one of
existence: A causal principle explains how its effect was generated or came into
existence. One may wonder why the empty bucket they left in their backyard is
now filled with water. If the answer is that it rained overnight, the downpour is
the causal principle that explains why the bucket is filled to the brim with water
the next morning. A nexus of utility makes the use of something the cause of a
thing’s perfection. For instance, a tree uses minerals in the soil to nourish itself.
In this case, the minerals in the soil which it absorbs through its roots are useful
for its efforts to nourish itself, contributing to its perfection in this way. A final
nexus brings means and ends into the picture, where an end is that which seems
good to an agent and a means that which is useful for the actualization of ends.
Moreover, this sort of nexus involves “intentions” or representations of ends.
My intention to make a pizza leads me to acquire dough, tomato sauce, cheese,
and pepperoni, all of which are means requisite for making the pizza. As such,
my representation of the pizza as an end serves as the impelling cause, guiding
my purchases at the grocery store and each step of my efforts to make the pizza
and hopefully resulting in the realization of the finished product. When
discussing the causal nexus in general and the nexus of utility, Baumgarten
makes no such explicit appeal to agents, what seems good to them, or
representations. Thus, a final nexus is distinct from a nexus of use because it
involves a representation (an intention) as a cause of the reality of actions the
agent uses to bring about an end.
1.2. Leibniz on causality driven by inner principles
In his 1714 Monadology, Leibniz maintains that “the monad’s natural
changes come from an internal principle, since no external cause can influence
it internally” (Monadology 11). By this means, he designates a role for a non-
mechanistic causality driven by inner principles that factors into his conception
of the living being, a concept that, I will show, Kant draws upon and develops
in his own account of the organism. Before getting into the similarities and
dissimilarities between Kant and Leibniz, let us briefly turn to the Monadology
and home in on what Leibniz takes an inner principle driven causality to be.
Monads persist despite the fact that they undergo alterations in their
states. In general, “The passing state which involves and represents a multitude
in the unity or in the simple substance is nothing other than what one calls
perception” (Monadology, 14). That is, perception represents a change in the
state of a monad. On top of this, Leibniz claims that simple substances, or
monads, have an “internal principle” of change. They are impenetrable, or
incapable of being acted upon from without. Instead, their passage from one
state to another, or the emerges of the monad’s various perceptions, is
conducted by the monad tending towards “appetitions,” or, as Leibniz remarks,
“The action of the internal principle which brings about the change or passage
from one perception to another can be called appetition” (Monadology, 15).
Changes in the state of a substance are brought about as a result of in-built
appetites, which drive a thing to alter its state in a particular way and not some
other. Such appetitive changes, importantly, are “inexplicable in terms of
mechanical reasons”: Moreover, we must confess that the perception, and what
depends on it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons, that is, through
shapes and motions. If we imagine that there is a machine whose structure
makes it think, sense, and have perceptions, we could conceive it enlarged,
keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter into it, as one enters into a
mill. Assuming that, when inspecting its interior, we will only find parts that
push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception. And
so, we should seek perception in the simple substance and not in the composite
or in the machine. Furthermore, this is all one can find in the simple substance
—that is, perceptions and their changes. It is also in this alone that all the
internal actions of simple substances can consist.
(Monadology, 17)
By specifying that there are “internal actions of simple substances” that are
distinct in kind from mechanical activity, Leibniz here distinguishes himself
from the Newtonians of the time, who would have tried to explain all motion in
terms of mechanism. Instead, to explain the internally impelled action of
monads, we must understand them as “entelechies”, writes Leibniz: “One can
call all simple substances or created monads entelechies, for they have in
themselves a certain perfection (echousi to enteles); they have a sufficiency
(autarkeia) that makes them the sources of their internal actions, and, so to
speak, incorporeal automata” (Monadology, 18). These passages label certain
monads “entelechies”, or, literally construed, things which have their ends
(teloi) in them. By virtue of possessing their ends, monads are capable of acting
as the “sources of their internal actions.” By contrast, if we are to understand
the activity of mere matter as mechanical, then we are explaining matter as that
which changes on the basis of some principle external to it, as something that
could not be the source of its own actions.
Besides drawing a distinction in kind between monads qua entelechies and
mere machines, Leibniz distinguishes between various grades of entelechy and
entelechic activity. “I think that the general name of monad and entelechy is
sufficient for simple substances which only have perceptions, and that we
should only call those substances souls where perception is more distinct and
accompanied by memory” (Monadology, 19). The perceptions of a monad or
entelechy seem to be even more crude than “sensations”, or perhaps what we
might call representations. “Souls” are those substances capable of having
“distinct” perceptions accompanied by memory. Monads or entelechies in
general need not possess this level of distinctness in their perceptions. Leibniz
likes the perceptions of a sub-psychic monad to “when we faint or when we are
overwhelmed by a deep, dreamless sleep” (Monadology, 20). However, Leibniz
assures us that the soul of a human is “something more.” While most of the
time, we humans are like beasts and our perceptions come about as a result of
our memory of previous perceptions. “But the knowledge of eternal and
necessary truths is what distinguishes us from simple animals and furnishes us
with reason and the sciences, by raising us to a knowledge of ourselves and of
God. And that is what we might call the rational soul, or mind, in ourselves”
(Monadology, 29).In the above passages, we see Leibniz developing the
metaphysical resources to distinguish between degrees of internal activity.
Some entelechies are driven by indistinct perceptions, and these are the crudest.
However, other more sophisticated beings have memory. Still other beings have
reason and the sciences, giving them a
“rational soul” and presumably allowing them to determine themselves in
accordance with the
“eternal and necessary truths” of reason.
Leibniz introduces various classes of entelechy and goes on to define living
beings as entelechy-body composites. This suggests that there are grades or
classes of living being, too, divvied up the sophistication of the soul they
possess:
The body belonging to a monad (which is the entelechy or soul of that
body) together with an entelechy constitutes what might be called the
living being, and together with the soul constitutes what is called an
animal. Now, the body of a living being or an animal is always
organized; for, since every monad is a mirror of the universe in its way,
and since the universe is regulated in a perfect order, there must also be
an order in the representing being, that is, in the perceptions of the soul,
and consequently, in the body in accordance with which the universe is
represented therein. (Monadology, 63)
Here, Leibniz distinguishes between kinds or grades of “living being.” On the
one hand, living beings in general are simply bodies coupled with a monad,
where the monad is an entelechy. Entelechies “have in themselves a certain
perfection” and are capable of serving as the “sources of their internal actions”
(Monadology, 18). Entelechies have indistinct or confused perceptions, or
passing states which “involve and represent a multitude in the unity”
(Monadology, 14). Changes in perception are not explicable in mechanistic
terms (Monadology, 17); that is, we cannot appeal to the influence of prior,
external powers to explain a change in perception or the current state of an
entelechy. Rather, the action of an entelechy is guided by its “appetition”, by
virtue of which an entelechy tends to one perception or another, however
imperfectly (Monadology 15). On the other hand, souls have more distinct
perceptions, sometimes guided by memory and in other cases guided by reason.
Souls belong to animals, who are capable of, at minimum, sensation. Both souls
and entelechies alike possess an organization that is inexplicable in purely
mechanical terms.
Thus each organized body of a living being is a kind of divine machine
or natural automaton, which infinitely surpasses all artificial automata.
For a machine constructed by man’s art is not a machine in each of its
parts. For example, the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or fragments
which, for us, are no longer artificial things, and no longer have any
marks to indicate the machine for whose use the wheel was intended.
But natural machines, that is, living bodies, are still machines in their
least parts, to infinity. That is the difference between nature and art, that
is, between divine art and our art. (Monadology, 64)
Leibniz thinks that the universe is a plenum replete with monads, which are the
only simple substance. For living beings, this ends up meaning that, while each
body consists of infinite many monads, there is a hierarchy of monads: “we see
each living body has a dominant entelechy, which in the animal is the soul; but
the limbs of this living body are full of other living beings, plants, animals, each
of which also has its entelechy, or its dominant soul” (Monadology, 70). The
view that monads are infinite in number combined with the claims that monads
qua entelechies are the principle of life and living beings consist of a hierarchy
of innumerable entelechies commits Leibniz to an apparent pan-vitalism: “Thus
there is nothing fallow, sterile, or dead in the universe, no chaos and no
confusion except in appearance, almost as it looks in a pond at a distance,
where we might see the confused and, so to speak, teeming motion of the fish in
the pond, without discerning the fish themselves” (Monadology, 69). Though I
believe that Kant echoes and builds upon the Leibnizian (cum Aristotelian)
ideas that living beings possess entelechies which serve as an internal principle
of their organization, he is certainly intent to avoid some of Leibniz’s
metaphysical excesses in the Monadology. For instance, whereas Leibniz infers
the existence of God from his application of the principle of sufficient reason to
contingent, mechanically inexplicable truths in nature, Kant is careful to say
that the possibility of such a proof is merely speculative. We also see in the
Third Critique that Kant is not committed to a pan-vitalism: There are powers
other than the internal, formative power endemic to organized beings. Unlike
Leibniz of the Monadology, Kant believes that there is a difference between live
and dead matter and that
Newtonian mechanics can explain the motion of dead matter. Kant also
certainly disagrees with
Leibniz’s preformationist thesis that organic bodies were produced from “seeds”
which were “already there” before the conception of the organic body
(Monadology, 74-5).
Ultimately, Kant shall agree with the Leibnizian theses that “Souls act
according to the laws of final causes, through appetitions, ends, and means”;
“Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or of motions”; and even
that “these two kingdoms, that of efficient and that of final causes, are in
harmony with each other” (Monadology, 79). However, Kant shall depart from
Leibniz insofar as the former does not endorse a principle of pre-established
harmony between all interacting substances. In short, Kant shall reject the
metaphysical excesses of the Leibnizian position in favor of a more modest, but
still metaphysical, account of living activity. Living activity is a kind of
purposive activity, since purposive activity is a causal activity according to
which an internal power determines a substance’s change in state. As Leibniz
states, such activity can proceed in accordance with “appetitions, means, and
ends.” The principles of entelechies can be confused or obscure, those of animal
souls more distinct and precise. We shall see that Kant’s account leaves room
for a comparable distinction between living beings whose principle of purposive
activity is more crude than living beings capable of relatively sophisticated
selfdetermination. Like Leibniz, Kant agrees that living things are mechanically
inexplicable in important respects, famously adding that there will never be a
Newton of a blade of grass who explains purposiveness purely in terms of
mechanism. Let us now turn to Kant’s account to better grasp how he is
adapting the abovementioned features of Baumgartian and Leibnizian
metaphysics into his discussion of purposiveness during the Critical period.
2. Situating purposiveness within Kant’s theory of causality
In this section, I lay out the place of purposiveness within Kant’s
broader theory of causality. Purposiveness is a causality that is driven by inner
as opposed to outer principles. The first part of this section gives an overview
of Kant’s theory of causality. I then turn to Kant’s Critique of the Power of
Judgment to show what precisely Kant means when he makes
purposiveness out to be a causality driven by inner principles.
2.1. Kant’s doctrine of causality
Kant’s general doctrine of causality is consistent with Baumgarten’s,
although it gives the language of substance and accident a more pronounced
role in all kinds of causality. Causality in Kant is typically thought of in terms
of causal powers exercised by one substance upon another. In the Metaphysik
Mrongovius, Kant distinguishes between substance and accident as follows:
“That which exists without being the determination of another is substance; that
which exists only as determination is accident” (LM 29:770). He adds that we
can think of substance as that which is left behind when we strip an existing
thing of all its accidents, although we have no acquaintance with a substance in
which no accidents inhere (LM 29:771). While we can only cognize a
substance through its accidents, “accidents cannot exist other than in the
substance (LM 29:796).
Causality therefore describes the process by means of which one
substance exercises a causal power that alters the states or the accidents
inhering in another substance. Eric Waktins writes that causal interaction
between substances occurs when one substance provides the “ground that
determines the state of another substance…through an indeterminate activity
that is incapable of ever becoming determinate in itself” (2005, 231). A causal
interaction, in other words, occurs when one substance exercises a causal power
upon another, thereby altering the state of the
substance it affects. These causal powers establish a “primitive relation ‘in
between’ substances and their determinations” (2005, 13), and they are
reducible neither to substance nor their determinations. Crucially, on Kant’s
account, a ground is that power by virtue of which a substance has been altered;
a ground therefore explains or accounts for the alteration one substance has
effected upon another. Moreover, the ground or power that brings about this
alteration inheres in the substance: “The basic idea of a model of causality for
which grounds are central is that one substance determines the successive state
of another by means of an unchanging ground that is part of its essential nature”
(2005, 244). Substances have indeterminate, unchanging grounds or powers that
are responsible for (and consequently explain) the effect they bring about.
When I rest my head on a pillow, I create a dent in the pillow. The weight, size,
and shape of my head is the ground that explains the depth and circumference
of the dent in my pillow.
Along these lines, we should also think of the causality of a substance as
an activity of the substance (see Watkins 2005, Ch. 4). In the same lecture
transcripts, Kant defines the activity of a substance as follows: “A substance,
insofar as it contains the ground of that which belongs to the being of one thing,
acts <agirt; G: handelt>;…substance, insofar as its accidents inhere, is in
action, and it acts insofar as it is the ground of the actuality of the accidents”
(LM 29:773). Substance, Kant says, acts just as long as it contains the ground
that explains why certain accidents inhere in it or another substance. A ground,
as we saw above, is a power that is part of the substance’s essential nature and
determines the state of another substance. It is ultimately the exercise of this
power that accounts for why a substance has the accidents that it does.
Kant also appears to think that there are outer grounds, principles, or powers as
opposed to inner grounds, principles, or powers by means of which one
substance can alter the determinate states of another. Passivity, or suffering, is
that kind of activity of a substance by means of which it is determined through
an “outer power”: “What then is genuine passivity <passio>? The acting
substance <substantia agens> determines the power of he substance being acted
upon <substantiae patientis> in order to produce this accident, therefore all
passivity <passio> is nothing more than the determination of the power of the
suffering substance by an outer power” (LM 29:823). In a seemingly
paradoxical twist, Kant thinks of passivity as a kind of activity. A passive
substance comes to express a power of its own, but that power could not have
been expressed unless another, “outer” substance acted upon it. He elects to
illustrate passivity with an intriguing example: “E.g., a representation of a
trumpet sound inheres in me through an external power, but not alone, for had I
no power of representation <vim representativam> then it could be sounded
forever and I could not have a representation. From the union of one substance
with another an effect comes about, namely, the representation of the trumpet
sound” (LM 29:882). Here, Kant appears to be suggesting that the sound
resounding from a trumpet is an “external power” that exerts its influence upon
me, who hears the sound of the trumpet. However, I am not mere receptivity, as
I possess a “power of representation”. This power allows me to formulate a
(fortunately for me) finite representation of the trumpet sound. And so, the
effect, a representation of the trumpet sound, is actually the result of the activity
of my power of representation. That power, nonetheless, was itself effected by
an “external power”: i.e., the blow of the trumpet. Passivity is still an activity
because the accident – in this case, the representation of the trumpet sound –
inheres in me because of the activity of a power I possess. It is mere passivity,
and not something more, because the exercise of my power of representation
alone, without the “external power” of the trumpet blast itself, would not have
been sufficient to produce my representation of the trumpet blast.
In contrast to this activity induced by an external power, Kant also references an “act
<actus> of spontaneity that cannot proceed from an outer principle” (LM
28:285). Kant’s remarks on this form of activity are much more compressed and
do not come with the benefit of an example.
What we can infer is that such activity results from the causal powers intrinsic
to a substance alone. While changes on the basis of an outer ground or principle
require us to appeal to the powers of another foreign substance, attributing
changes to a substance on the basis of an inner ground or principle means we
need not appeal to any foreign substance. Perhaps, to use Kant’s previous
example in this context, one could picture an individual using their own power
of representation to imagine a trumpet sound. In this case, there is no trumpet
blast acting as the external power that in turn determines the state of my power
of representation. Rather, my power of representation is acting of its own
accord, determining its own state, and thereby altering itself.
2.2. Kant on purposiveness as a kind of causality
With this context in place, we are now in a better position to appreciate
what it would mean to say that purposiveness is a kind of causal activity that
“cannot proceed from an outer principle.” Indeed, Kant puts together the third
Critique for the sake of giving this form of causal activity a place in his system.
With his account of purposiveness, Kant reveals to us the manifold ways in
which substances spontaneously act and produce real consequences in the world
on the basis of this pure self-activity.
When seeking an account of purposiveness as such, one would find it
natural to turn to §10 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, titled “On
purposiveness in general.” Kant begins that section by giving a definition of an
“end” [ein Zweck] in accordance with its “transcendental determinations” (or,
“without presupposing anything empirical”). From this perspective, “an end is
the object of a concept insofar as the latter is regarded as the cause of the former
(the real ground of its possibility)” (CPJ 5:220). So Kant defines an end as an
object the concept of which has served as the “real ground” of its possibility.
Purposiveness, then, simply is the “causality of a concept with regard to its
object” (ibid). It is a term that picks out the unique form of causality according
to which “the object itself (its form or its existence) as an effect is thought of as
possible only through the concept” of an effect.
Deploying some of the conceptual machinery laid out above, to call
purposiveness a causality is to say that it is an activity by means of which a
power exercised by a substance alters the state inhering in another. A ground is
the particular causal power that explains the inherence of some accident in a
substance. In the case of purposiveness, a concept of an effect appears to be the
“real ground” of the possibility of the effect. We saw above that a substance that
acts is either passive or spontaneous. A passive substance acts because it has
been affected by some external power. However, in the case of purposiveness, it
does not seem right to say that the acting substance is passive. A concept is not
the sort of principle that emerges in a substance as the result of the influence of
some external power. Rather, individuals generate and use concepts on their
own. Thus, Kant’s definition of purposiveness in this section should lead us to
believe that purposiveness is a kind of causality according to which a concept
serves as the inner, as opposed to outer, principle grounding the reality of an
object.
Kant’s gloss on purposes and purposiveness here might also lead us to
think that an end, which serves as the causal ground of a purposive causality, is
always going to be a concept or at the very least a representation of some
distant desired state. Immediately following this paragraph, Kant goes on to
define the (presumably human) will as “the faculty of desire, insofar as it is
determinable only through concepts, i.e., to act in accordance with the
representations of an end” (CPJ 5:220). The will is the faculty of desire set in
motion by its ends, we might say.
Nonetheless, we will see directly below that there are certain forms of
purposive causality that need not involve representations at all. In other words,
it is possible to explain something purposively without designating a concept or
representation of an effect the real ground of its cause’s possibility. And we
shall see later, when discussing the formal subjective purposiveness
encountered in certain judgments of taste, that some forms of purposiveness do
not even involve purposes. Instead, formal subjective purposiveness seems to
be a causality according to which a non-empirical feeling of pleasure grounds
our ability to maintain a certain mental equilibrium and “linger” upon the
beauty of some object. This exhibits a purposive causality the causal ground of
which is not the concept of an object, but a feeling. Teleological judgments, in
contrast, require us to attribute purposes to nature and products of nature. When
reflecting upon the activity of a tree, for instance, we notice that it reproduces,
and we explain its capacity to reproduce as an expression of its instinct to
preserve itself. The tree reproduces for the sake of preserving its species. Of
course, while it is legitimate to explain the tree as acting for the sake of its self-
preservation, thereby attributing a purposive causality to it, it does not seem
legitimate to say that a concept is the ground of the tree’s purposive activity.
According to Kant, trees cannot have any concepts whatsoever. The cases of
formal subjective purposiveness and inner material objective purposiveness
give us reason to believe that purposiveness is a kind of causality that
sometimes does invoke a concept of an end or a representation of an effect as its
causal ground, but these options do not exhaust what all can serve as the ground
of a purposive causality.
Despite Kant’s including the notions of concept and representation in many of
his basic characterizations of purposiveness, I propose that we think of
purposiveness in general along much broader lines. Purposiveness simply is
that causality according to which an inner principle determines the state of a
substance. Sometimes, the inner principle will be a concept, at other times an
idea, at other times a feeling, and so on. However, what all inner principles
share in common is
that they are activities that do not depend upon the influence of an external
power. Instead, purposiveness is a kind of causality according to which a
substance determines itself to act by means of a principle that emanates from its
nature. The outcome of this activity is the realization of an effect that was
merely potential before the exercise of that causal power. In this sense,
purposive causality is productive, as a purposive actor brings about the reality
of some state by merely projecting it before them.
On my account, purposiveness is a causality according to which inner
principles ground the reality of some state of a substance. These inner principles
are powers that emanate from the essence of a substance and explain and
precipitates a real consequence on their own, although the inner principles in
question are merely potential until their effects have been realized. All forms of
purposiveness we encounter below bear the characteristic marks of this unique
form of causality. A subjectively purposive causality takes a feeling of pleasure,
sometimes empirical and sometimes pure, as the ground of its effect. An
objectively purposive causality has a concept as the ground of its effect.
From what has been said so far, we can see that Kant does not understand the
“nexus of use” and the nexus of purposiveness as coextensive concepts. Rather,
usefulness, as it is discussed in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, belongs
to a species of real objective purposiveness, which is itself a species of
objective purposiveness, which is itself a species of purposiveness, which is
itself a species of causality. We can judge a thing to possess an objective and
material purposiveness in one of two ways: “either if we regard the effect
immediately as a product of art or if we regard it only as material for the art of
other possible natural beings, thus if we regard it either as an end or as a means
for the purposive use of other causes. The latter purposiveness is called
usefulness (for human beings) or advantageousness (for every other creature),
and is merely relative; while the former is an internal purposiveness of the
natural being” (CPJ 5:367). The notion of usefulness is much further down
Kant’s conceptual taxonomy of causality than Baumgarten’s. While
Baumgarten seems to think of utility as among the most generic species of
causality and identifies the nexus finalis as a particular kind of nexus utilitatis,
Kant seems to invert this ordering altogether. A nexus of use is a particular kind
of nexus of ends. Moreover, a nexus of ends is a particular kind of purposive
nexus, and a purposive nexus is one kind of causal nexus. In short, we cannot
identify purposiveness with usefulness, since, for Kant, usefulness is involved
in just one variety of purposive relation.
Instead, when Kant introduces purposiveness to us as a form of causality, we
should think of it as an addendum to an otherwise Baumgartian metaphysics of
causality. Baumgarten specifies that there is a kind of causality according to
which the causal principle is outside that the existence of which it explains.
Likewise, there are causal principles within that the existence of which they
explain. Purposiveness in general is the name Kant gives to the latter species of
causality in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.
Moreover, purposiveness is a species of causality more generic than the
nexus finalis insofar as Kant leaves room for a kind of purposiveness that does
not involve ends at all. Thus, the nexus finalis is just one species of purposive
nexus in Kant’s metaphysics. When, in §10 of the third Critique, Kant defines
purposiveness as the causality of a concept with respect to its object, he adds
the phrase “forma finalis” next to the key term in brackets. Above, we see that
both Baumgarten and Kant admit a nexus finalis into their metaphysics,
according to which an intention, or a representation of an end, serves as the
impelling cause that determines which means an agent will pursue for the sake
of realizing their end. A forma finalis is appreciably different from a nexus
finalis, however. A nexus finalis is a relation of cause and effect such that a
means brings about an end. Forma finalis merely refers to structure or the form
of this causality – a causality that is suited to ends or purposes but need not
involve them. Indeed, Kant makes sure not to reduce purposiveness to a mere
nexus finalis, or causal relation that by definition involves ends, because there
are kinds of purposive activity that do not involve ends at all. The term “forma
finalis” describes the structure of purposive activity, which we see instantiated
in final causality, according to which the representation of an end grounds the
realization of that end; however, the structure of purposive causality outstrips
the means-end relation definitive of final causality. Final causality is a species
or an instance of purposiveness.
What the language of forma finalis shows us is that we should think of
purposiveness as a causal nexus that is amenable to determination by ends or
purposes, but need not involve ends or purposes. This is precisely why Kant
thinks that a purposiveness without purpose is not an utter contradiction in
terms. Later, when indexing the varieties of purposiveness catalogued by Kant,
we shall see why and how it is possible for there to be purposive causalities that
do not involve ends. For now, suffice it to say that purposiveness describes a
causal structure according to which inner principles serve as the grounds
determining their consequences, and purposive inner principles are only ends in
some cases.
Thus, to call purposiveness a causality is to say that it is an activity by
means of which a power exercised by a substance alters the state inhering in
another. A ground is the particular causal power that explains the inherence of
some accident in a substance. In the case of purposiveness, a concept of an
effect is the “real ground” of the possibility of the effect. We saw above that a
substance that acts is either passive or spontaneous. A passive substance acts
because it has been affected by some external power. However, in the case of
purposiveness, it does not seem right to say that the acting substance is passive.
A concept is not the sort of principle that emerges in a substance as the result of
the influence of some external power. Rather, individuals generate and deploy
concepts on their own. Kant’s definition of purposiveness in this section should
lead us to believe that purposiveness is a kind of causality according to which
inner, as opposed to outer, principles ground the reality of an object. However,
the inner principles or grounds of purposiveness are not always concepts.
2.3. Taking stock
Above, we have seen that purposiveness is a kind of causality, and this
understanding of purposiveness reveals some continuities and other
discontinuities between Kant’s metaphysics and the metaphysics of the period,
as exemplified by Baumgarten and Leibniz. Generally speaking, Kant’s account
of causality is consistent with and builds upon Baumgarten’s. To Kant, causality
is a nexus, or a relation, between a substance as ground and determinations of a
substance as its consequences. Like Baumgarten, Kant thinks of substances as
things that possess powers to alter the states of other substances. Such
principles of change can be either external to the substance or internal to it.
Kant conceives of purposiveness as causal activity on the basis of inner
principles. Insofar as this category of causality is more generic than causalities
involving ends and uses, Kant is modifying Baumgarten’s metaphysics with his
doctrine of purposiveness.
Furthermore, while this construal of purposiveness might incline us to read
Kant as straightforwardly adopting the metaphysics of Leibniz’s Monadology,
we see that there are key differences between Kant and Leibniz. For one, Kant
does not think of simple substances as impenetrable, incorporeal monads.
Moreover, he does not think that we can deduce the existence of God from the
existence of monads. He does not subscribe to the pre-formationist and pan-
vitalist theses Leibniz espouses in the Monadology. However, Kant does seem
to draw inspiration from Leibniz in two regards. For one, he thinks that
substances have internal principles of activity and that this activity is not
reducible to the external-principle-driven activity characteristic of machines.
Two, Kant thinks that this non-mechanistic, internally sourced activity is
definitive of living beings We shall see in the coming sections of this chapter
and subsequent chapters that Kant’s definitions of the organism and life
fundamentally involve purposiveness. For now, I move on to demonstrating the
validity of this definition of purposiveness by showing that it is consistent with
every species of purposiveness presented in the Critique of the Power of
Judgment.
3. The varieties of purposiveness
In this section, I index all of the various species of purposiveness to
show that they are consistent with our understanding of purposiveness as a kind
of causality driven by inner, as opposed to outer, principles (3.1 and 3.2). After,
I address a few interpretations of purposiveness that erroneously take Kant’s
gloss of the concept as a “lawfulness of the contingent” to be specifying the
main definition of the term (section 4).
3.1. Subjective purposiveness
In his analysis of the concept of purposiveness, Kant proceeds as usual,
establishing divisions of the main concept and sub-divisions within each
division. The first, most basic division under purposiveness in general is that
between subjective and objective purposiveness. The main distinguishing
feature of subjective purposiveness, on my interpretation, is that it does not
make a concept the ground of purposive causality. Objective purposiveness, we
shall see, does make a concept the ground of its causality. There are two further
subdivisions of subjective purposiveness that I discuss below: material
subjective purposiveness, which has an empirical feeling of pleasure as its
ground and brings about judgments of agreeableness, and formal subjective
purposiveness,
which makes a non-empirical feeling of pleasure the ground of its causality and
brings about judgments of beauty.
In a passage from the section “On the aesthetic representation of the
purposiveness of nature”, Kant’s explanation of what allows us to deem a
natural object purposive may clue us into the structure of subjective
purposiveness. This particular kind of purposiveness is only present if we
connect our representation of an object with a “feeling of pleasure”:
the subjective aspect in a representation which cannot become an
element of cognition at all is the pleasure or displeasure connected
with it; for through this I cognize nothing in the object of the
representation, although it can well be the effect of some cognition or
other. Now the purposiveness of a thing, insofar as it is represented in
perception, is also not a property of the object itself (for such a thing
cannot be perceived), although it can be derived from the cognition of
things. Thus the purposiveness that precedes the cognition of an object,
which is immediately connected with it even without wanting to use the
representation of it for a cognition, is the subjective aspect of it that
cannot become an element of cognition at all. The object is therefore
called purposive in this case only because its representation is
immediately connected with the feeling of pleasure; and this
representation itself is an aesthetic representation of the purposiveness.
(CPJ 5:189).
In this passage, Kant is at pains to distinguish any representations by means of
which I cognize an object (i.e., an intuition or a concept) from the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure. The latter mark the “subjective aspect” of a
representation and, while they can be the “effect of a cognition”, cannot
“become an element of cognition at all.” When we attribute purposiveness to a
thing without “wanting to use the representation of it [the thing’s
purposiveness] for a cognition”, we are picking up on the subjective element of
a thing’s purposiveness. In this case, the thing is purposive because it is
“immediately connected with the feeling of pleasure.” In other words, when we
make an aesthetic judgment about the purposiveness of nature, that judgment
reveals a purposiveness that is somehow tied to the feeling of pleasure, and this
feeling of pleasure has nothing to do with our cognition of nature and the kinds
of representation that contribute to cognition. (Indeed, he appears to be
suggesting that this feeling of pleasure or displeasure may not be
representational at all.) The first edition introduction to the Critique of the
Power of Judgment contains an even more direct line on the relationship
between subjective purposiveness and the feeling of pleasure. There, Kant
states that “the representation of a subjective purposiveness of an object is
identical with the feeling of pleasure” (CPJ 20:228). The capacity to “judge
only about the subjective purposiveness (not about the perfection) of the object”
is none other than the “faculty of aesthetic reflection” (ibid). So, we might say,
our capacity to aesthetically judge is that which allows us to not only represent
the subjective purposiveness of some object but to feel pleasure (or displeasure)
at all.
While the passage above reveals that feelings of pleasure and displeasure factor
into our subjective appraisal of a thing’s purposiveness, Kant does not explain
how pleasure and displeasure themselves serve as purposive causal principles
until the body of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment. When we
who judge make judgments of taste, we ourselves exhibit a variety of subjective
purposivenesses. The first paragraph of the body of the Critique announces as
much: “In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not
relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition,
but rather relate it by means of the imagination (perhaps combined with the
understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The
judgment of taste is therefore not a cognitive judgment, hence not a logical one,
but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood one whose determining ground
cannot be other than subjective” (CPJ 5:203). A judgment of taste “relates”
our representation of an object to the “subject and its feeling of pleasure or
displeasure.” More directly, the “determining ground” of this judgment is a
subjective one. As it turns out, the special subjective determining grounds for
judgments of taste is the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, which itself
“grounds an entirely special faculty for discriminating and judging that
contributes nothing to cognition” (CPJ 5:204). The structure of aesthetic
judgments of taste is such that the feeling of pleasure or displeasure grounds the
very ability to make such judgments.
I characterize subjective purposiveness as a causality according to which
a feeling, which is non-conceptual in the sense that it is not a general
representation of the understanding, serves as ground. Depending on the kind of
feeling that serves as a ground (i.e., whether that feeling is empirical or pure)
will determine the kind of judgment it produces as its output. And whether we
make a judgment of agreeableness or beauty, such judgments attribute a
predicate to an object – an aroma is agreeable and a piece of music is beautiful.
Therefore, subjective purposiveness takes a mere feeling of pleasure as the
ground of an object’s beauty or agreeableness.
3.1.1. Material subjective purposiveness
If an empirical feeling of pleasure or displeasure grounds our judgment that an
object is agreeable or disagreeable, the judgment of agreeableness is the result
of a material subjective purposive causal process. Kant announces a division
between empirical and pure aesthetic judgments along the following lines in the
first paragraph of §14: “Aesthetic judgments can be divided, just like theoretical
(logical) ones, into empirical and pure. The first are those which assert
agreeableness or disagreeableness, the second those which assert the beauty of
an object or the way of representing it; the former are judgments of sense
(material aesthetic judgments), the latter (as formal) are alone proper judgments
of taste” (CPJ 5:223). So, on the one hand, we find empirical aesthetic
judgments, or those that “assert agreeableness or disagreeableness” while on the
other hand we find pure aesthetic judgments which “assert the beauty of an
object or the way of representing it.” We find Kant’s definition of the agreeable
back in §3, where he writes that “The agreeable is that which pleases the
senses in sensation” (CPJ 5:205). Importantly, the form of
sensation that grounds the agreeable is not form we encountered in earlier
writings of Kant’s. When describing the green of a meadow as agreeable, “The
green color of the meadows belongs to objective sensation, as perception of an
object of sense; but its agreeableness belongs to subjective sensation, through
which no object is represented, i.e. to feeling, through which the object is
considered as an object of satisfaction (which is not a cognition of it)” (CPJ
5:206). A subject determines pronounces the scene before them agreeable on the
basis of a sensation. But the sensation that determines the agreeableness of the
scene is not a representation of a thing through the senses. It is instead a
“determination of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure” that is “related solely
to the subject” (CPJ 5:205). As a subjective sensation of pleasure, we might say
that it is an empirical feeling, or a pleasure that a subject feels upon being
presented with a stimulus. All of the elements above should combine to give
us the following account of material subjective purposiveness. A judgment of
agreeableness is grounded in or a result of a subjective sensation of pleasure.
The fact that this judgment arises as the result of a feeling means that the
former is the result of an inner principle. This is a species of purposiveness. It is
a subjective, not an objective, species of purposiveness because the subjective
sensation in question is not a concept. These judgments are grounded upon a
non-conceptual feeling. Lastly, this feeling is not pure, but empirical. The
subjective sensation that brings about our judgment of agreeableness stimulates
us through the senses: “Of a dish that stimulates the taste through spices and
other flavorings one may say without hesitation that it is agreeable” (CPJ
5:208). Because a judgment of agreeableness is grounded on this sort of
subjective stimulation, it will not have a claim to a universal validity, but
instead to a private one. When I say I find a dish agreeable, that does not give
me a legitimate basis to demand that you find that dish agreeable, since my
judgment is made on the basis of my own subjective (private) sensation of
pleasure as a result of tasting the dish. Insofar as my taste of the dish grounds
my judgment of its agreeableness, that dish (or my way of representing it) is
taken to exhibit a material subjective purposiveness.
3.1.2. Formal subjective purposiveness
Given what we know about purposiveness in general and material
subjective purposiveness in particular, we can infer that formal subjective
purposiveness is a causality that functions by positing a non-empirical and non-
conceptual inner principle as its causal ground. Accordingly, what we find in the
text of the third Critique is that formal subjective purposiveness is the variety of
purposiveness we attribute to an object, or our way of judging the object, when
we find the object beautiful. More precisely, if a non-empirical feeling of
pleasure grounds our judgment that something is beautiful, the beauty of the
object is established on the basis of a formal subjective purposiveness.
Judgments of beauty have their principle in the subject. Kant states that
a judgment of taste generally “rests on subjective grounds, and its determining
ground cannot be a concept” (CPJ 5:228). He then adds that when beauty is a
“formal subjective purposiveness,” and that when we judge something to be
beautiful we are not deploying the concept of beauty as some standard of
perfection against which we measure the beauty of a given object (ibid).
Instead, an aesthetic judgment that predicates beauty brings our attention to the
“purposive form in the determination of the powers of representation that are
occupied with it” (ibid). The determining ground of such a judgment is “not a
concept but the feeling (of inner sense) of that unison in the play of the powers
of the mind, insofar as they can only be sensed” (ibid). Thus, what makes a
judgment of beauty unique is that it tracks the feeling that arises when the
faculties of imagination and understanding enter “formal subjective purposive”
free play. A judgment of beauty comes about as a result of the feeling of
pleasure that accompanies this free play.
This pleasure, to be sure, differs from the kind of pleasure we encounter
in a material subjective purposiveness because it is not empirical. In the
following passage – found in §12 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment,
“The judgment of taste rests on a priori grounds” – Kant characterizes pleasure
as a consciousness of the “merely formal purposiveness in the play of the
cognitive powers of the subject”.
The consciousness of the merely formal purposiveness in the play of the
cognitive powers of the subject in the case of a representation through
which an object is given is the pleasure itself, because it [i.e., the
pleasure] contains a determining ground of the activity of the subject
with regard to the animation of its cognitive powers, thus an internal
causality (which is purposive) with regard to cognition in general, but
without being restricted to a particular cognition, hence it contains
merely the form of the subjective purposiveness of a representation in
an aesthetic judgment. (CPJ 5:222)
Pleasure is not an empirically felt sensation in this context. Moreover, this
pleasure is taken to “contain a determining ground of the activity of the subject
with regard to the animation of its cognitive powers”, which betrays its role in
an “internal”, or purposive, causality. In the First Introduction, Kant
distinguishes between a feeling of pleasure that “accompanies sensation” and
another that accompanies reflection. Perhaps what makes this feeling non-
empirical is that it is not attached to an empirical sensation in any way, but
instead tracks the way in which faculties of the mind interact upon being
presented with a certain object.
Indeed, some remarks Kant makes following the long quotation directly
above confirm the notion that the feeling of pleasure unique to formal
subjective purposiveness is tied to a certain disposition of the mind rather than
an empirical representation. Kant specifies the role that pleasure has in this
purposive causality when he adds that this pleasure makes “maintaining the
state of the representation of the mind and the occupation of the cognitive
powers without a further aim” possible (ibid). This pleasure grounds our
propensity to “linger over the consideration of the beautiful” (ibid). In the case
of a material subjective purposiveness, the sensation of pleasure is a
momentary, perhaps fleeting ground of the object’s agreeableness or lack
thereof. In contrast, the feeling of pleasure grounding judgments of beauty leads
to a more sustained state, serving as a means of maintaining a particular state of
mind and lingering on the object of our judgment. Perhaps this indicates that the
pleasure involved here is not a mere stimulus response, but a certain disposition
of the mind to coordinate its activity in a particular way. It is this disposition, in
turn, that makes it possible for us to find, in some loose sense of the term,
beauty in whatever object we behold.
Kant introduces this form of pleasure into the argumentation of the Critique
because the subjective universality of judgments of beauty could neither be
grounded on a mere empirical sensation nor a concept of the understanding. He
writes, “What is strange and anomalous is only this: that it is not an empirical
concept but rather a feeling of pleasure (consequently not a concept at all)
which, through the judgment of taste, is nevertheless to be expected of everyone
and connected with its representation, just as if it were a predicate associated
with the cognition of the object” (CPJ 5:191). Of course, in the Deduction of
Pure Judgments of Taste, Kant will tell us a story about how such judgments
have a claim to a certain subjective universality, and that the subjective
universality of these judgments is guaranteed by the presupposition that judgers
universally possess the same faculties and our faculties ought to interact in the
same way when we behold a beautiful thing. The merely formal pleasure
grounding judgments of beauty “must necessarily rest on the same conditions in
everyone, since they are subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition
in general, and the proportion of these cognitive faculties that is required for
taste is also requisite for the common and healthy understanding that one may
presuppose in everyone” (CPJ 5:292-3). And just as the feeling of pleasure that
grounds judgments of beauty rests on conditions common to everyone, so too is
the formal subjective purposiveness that involves this pleasure “require[d]…of
everyone else” (CPJ 5:293). Unlike a judgment of agreeableness, judgments of
beauty are grounded on a feeling of pleasure that ought to be exhibited by
everyone, and they therefore have a claim to a kind of intersubjective validity.
So, judgments of beauty are grounded in a very special, non-empirical kind of
pleasure. This pleasure “accompanies the common apprehension of an object by
the imagination, as a faculty of intuition, in relation to the understanding, a
faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure of the power of judgment” and
does so “merely for the sake of perceiving the suitability of the representation
for the harmonious (subjectively purposive) occupation of both cognitive
faculties in their freedom, i.e., to sense the representational state with pleasure”
(CPJ 5:292). This pleasure, which does is not induced by a sensation of an
object but merely tracks and allows us to maintain a certain free, harmonious
relation between faculties of our mind, grounds our ascription of beauty to an
object. Thus, we have another case of purposiveness in general because an inner
principle, or the state of pleasure within the subject, is responsible for bringing
about the judgment of beauty as its effect. The judgment could not arise without
the judging subject feeling this non-empirical pleasure. However, it is a
subjective kind of purposiveness because this feeling of pleasure which serves
as inner principle is not a concept. And this subjective purposiveness is formal
insofar as that feeling is not tied to an empirical representation, but to a state of
the mind.
capable of being their own judge of what is beautiful and what is not, there are still subject-
transcendent standards for what constitutes a beautiful work of art.
Nonetheless, judgments of taste are “subjective”, based on our feeling of pleasure. The
subjectivity of such judgments reinforces the notion that beauty is one person’s judgment is
normatively binding in a way that doesn’t force itself upon another judge: “there is no empirical
ground of proof for forcing the judgment of anyone” (CPJ 5:284). Indeed, the subject’s own
feelings are essential to a judgment of taste: “I try the dish with my tongue and my palate, and
on that basis (not on the basis of general principles) do I make my judgment” (CPJ 5:285). The
judgment of beauty is dependent upon the individual’s subjectivity and intersubjectively
binding, but not in a way that compels us like an empirical proof does. The two peculiarities
help us refine the main question of the deduction to a greater degree: How are subjective but
universally binding judgments possible at all?
The goal of Kant’s deduction of pure aesthetic judgments is to demonstrate how judgments that
paradoxically possess these two peculiarities are possible. Stated concisely, subjectively
universal judgments of taste are possible if everyone possesses the same faculties and that those
faculties operate in the same way. As long as we are “justified in presupposing universally in
every human being the same subjective conditions of the power of judgment that we find in
ourselves” we can be sure that this form of judging is possible (CPJ 5:290).
Kant affirms the presupposition that everyone possesses the same faculties interacting
in the same way by observing that a subjective feeling of pleasure accompanies the interaction
our faculties undergo when making a judgment of beauty, and this feeling is universally
communicable: “In all human beings, the subjective conditions of this faculty, as far as the
relation of the cognitive powers therein set into action to a cognition in general is concerned, are
the same, which must be true, since otherwise human beings could not communicate their
representations and even cognition itself” (CPJ 5:290n). If human beings did not possess the
same faculties that interacted in the same ways, they would not be able to communicate their
representations to each other. But we can communicate our representations and cognitions.
Therefore, all of us possess the proper “subjective conditions” for having pure judgments of
taste – i.e., we can feel the a priori pleasure induced by the free play of the imagination and
understanding.
More forcefully, Kant asserts that the kind of pleasure in question, which is neither the
empirical pleasure of enjoyment nor the pleasure involved with contemplating an idea of reason,
must rely on the same conditions for everyone: “This pleasure must necessarily rest on the same
conditions in everyone, since they are subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in
general, and the proportion of these cognitive faculties that is required for taste is also requisite
for the common and healthy understanding that one may presuppose in everyone” (CPJ 5:292-
3). A judgment of beauty requires the faculties of the imagination and the understanding to
interact in a harmonious free play. If judgments of taste were not possible, that would signify a
widespread lack of a healthy, fully functioning faculty of understanding and faculty of the
imagination across judgers. Yet the very fact that judgers reliably form empirical cognitions
indicates that human beings typically do possess these faculties in equal proportion. Thus, we
can conclude that judgments of taste requiring these faculties are possible. Secure in our
knowledge that the imagination and understanding exist and behave in the same way for every
human, “one who judges with taste…may also require the subjective purposiveness, i.e., his
satisfaction in the object, of everyone else, and may assume his feeling to be universally
communicable, even without the mediation of concepts” (CPJ 5:293).
The subjective universality of judgments of taste requires us to step into others’ shoes and
imagine how they would respond to a work of art. Such a reflective capacity might correspond
to the feeling Kant calls the “sensus comunis”: By “sensus communis,” however, must be
understood the idea of a communal sense, i.e., a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes
account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in order as it were to hold
its judgment up to human reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from
subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental
influence on the judgment. Now this happens by one holding his judgment up not so much to
the actual as to the merely possible judgments of others, and putting himself into the position of
everyone else, merely by abstracting from the limitations that contingently attach to our own
judging; which is accomplished by leaving out as far as is possible everything in one’s
representational state that is matter, i.e., sensation, and attending solely to the formal
peculiarities of his representation or his representational state. (CPJ 5:293-4) Judgments of
beauty are possible because we can affirm that all human beings possess the same faculties in
equal measure and that these faculties interact in similar ways in response to similar objects. If
we are all equipped with the same faculties operating in the same way, we must be able to tap
into our fellow human’s mode of representing and form expectations about how they shall or
should judge what is before them. To be sure, occupying such a standpoint requires some degree
of abstraction – two individuals cannot have identical representations of the same thing. Still, I
can put myself into the position of everyone else; the sensus communis just is the feeling that
accompanies this
3.2. Objective purposiveness
So far, we have discussed subjective forms of purposiveness and, in the
process, seen glimpses of Kant’s doctrine of objective purposiveness. My
interpretation of objective purposiveness states that it is a kind of causality
according to which a concept serves as the relevant inner principle grounding
the reality of its object. Kant provides definitions of objective purposiveness at
various points throughout the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Here are just a
few:
In general, therefore, the concept of perfection as objective
purposiveness has nothing at all to do with the feeling of pleasure, and
the latter has nothing to do with the former. A concept of the object
necessarily belongs to the judging of the former, while such a concept is
not necessary at all for the judging of the latter, which can be created by
merely empirical intuition. By contrast, the representation of a
subjective purposiveness of an object is even identical with the feeling
of pleasure…, and between the latter and the former there is a very great
gap. (CPJ 20:228-9)
Objective purposiveness can be cognized only by means of the relation of the
manifold to a determinate end, thus only through a concept…[It] is
either external, i.e., the utility of the object, or internal, i.e., its
perfection. (CPJ 5:226)
To judge objective purposiveness we always require the concept of an end, and
[if that purposiveness is not to be an external one (utility), but an
internal one], we require the concept of an internal end, which contains
the ground of the internal possibility of the object. (CPJ 5:227)
The first of these passages emphasizes that objective purposiveness has
“nothing at all to do with
reflective stance. Capable of such fellow-feeling, I can ensure that my subjective judgments of
taste are not merely private, for I can expect that someone who is roughly in my position should
have roughly the same reaction.
While Paul Guyer (1979) takes Kant’s discussion of common sense to be an
unnecessary detour, I follow Samantha Matherne (2019) in believing that this common sense
plays an important role in Kant’s deduction of pure judgments of taste. As a feeling that tracks
my ability to reflect upon the standpoint of others when beholding, say, an artwork, common
ostensibly allows me to figure out whether or not my aesthetic judgment about that artwork
should be binding on others.
So, Kant defends the idea that judgments of beauty are subjectively universal by
affirming that all judgers are equipped with the same faculties interacting in the same way.
Because we can expect that everyone has the same faculties operating in roughly the same way,
we can have access to a sensus communis – that is, we can occupy a reflective standpoint from
which we can form expectations about how other subjects would react to the object of our
judgment. Thus, judgments of beauty are conditioned by a purposiveness without concepts, but
still have a claim to universality by virtue of the intersubjective presuppositions specified in the
Deduction.
the feeling of pleasure” but instead involves a “concept of the object.” On my
interpretation, this is Kant’s way of saying that the feeling of pleasure is never
a causal ground in cases of objective purposiveness. Rather, a concept serves as
the relevant inner principle in objectively purposive causal interactions. In some
instances, as we will see below, the relevant concept is that of a thing’s utility –
this will correspond to the relative material objective variety of purposiveness –
or a thing’s perfection – this will correspond to the inner material objective
variety of purposiveness. In the former case, when we attribute the concept of
utility to a thing as a means of explaining its purposive activity, we are judging
that the thing’s reality is grounded in the ends of another purposive agent. For
example, when I judge that a tree is good for building myself a cabin, I explain
the reality of the tree (its existence) as useful for my end of shelter from the
environment. In the latter case, when we attribute the concept of perfection to
an object, we are explaining the object as possessing ends that are good for its
own sake and stating that its activity, structure, and so forth are the way that
they are for the sake of those intrinsically valuable ends. For example, when
explaining the behavior of an animal, we can think of its self-preservation as a
kind of perfection. Thus, when the animal lives alongside others of its species in
a pack or a herd, we explain such activity as a result of the animal’s striving for
self-preservation: It exists in a herd because and for the sake of its own drive to
self-preserve. We shall see that there is another strange, perhaps contradictory
form of purposiveness Kant also mentions – formal objective purposiveness –
but only after we have thoroughly surveyed these two significant forms of
material objective purposiveness.
3.2.1. Material objective purposiveness
In general, objective purposiveness is that causality according to which a
concept grounds the reality of its object. One division of objective
purposiveness is real objective purposiveness. Kant states, “Experience leads
our power of judgment to the concept of an objective and material
purposiveness, i.e., to the concept of an end of nature, only if there is a relation
of the cause to the effect to be judged which we can understand as lawful only
insofar as we find ourselves capable of subsuming the idea of the effect under
the causality of its cause as the underlying condition of the possibility of the
former” (CPJ 5:366-7). This passage contains a few remarkable suggestions.
For one, Kant states that our “experience” leads our power of judgment to the
concept of material objective purposiveness. That is, there is something about
the way real, existing objects present themselves to us that suggests the
presence of such a purposiveness. What it is about objects that suggests this
form of purposiveness could be illustrated by an example Kant uses just a few
paragraphs earlier:
For if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its
bones, the placement of its wings for movement and its tail for steering,
etc., one says that given the mere nexus effectivus in nature, without the
help of a special kind of causality, namely that of ends (nexus finalis),
this is all in the highest degree contingent: i.e., that nature, considered as
mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways
without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule,
and that it is therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it,
that one could have even the least ground a priori for hoping to find
such a rule. (CPJ 5:360)
In this example, being presented with and subsequently contemplating the
structure of a bird leads Kant to appeal to a “special kind of causality,” that is,
purposiveness. A purposive causality not only helps Kant (and us) explain why
birds have the particular structure that they do, but is necessary for such an
endeavor. Without appealing to the bird’s ends, we could not explain why its
bones are hollow and why it’s feathered. There is something about merely
beholding objects of nature that indicates the presence of, and perhaps compels
us to assert, this species of purposiveness.
Another remarkable feature of the passage above is what it identifies as the
“real” in “real objective” purposiveness. Part of what seems to make this
species of purposiveness real is that the ends we appeal to in order to explain it
are ends “of nature”. When Kant claims that the ends of objective material
purposive activity are ends of nature, we should read him as saying that these
ends are built into the nature of whatever object they are explaining. The “real”
in “material objective purposiveness” thus tells us two things: one, that we are
attributing purposiveness to a real, existing object; two, that the ends of this
object are a fixture of its nature. In the case of real relative objective
purposiveness, it turns out that some ends of existing objects serve the
purposiveness of other purposive agents. It is the nature of a mahogany tree that
its buoyant, pliable wood could be used to build a ship, and thus that the
mahogany tree exists for the sake of shipbuilding. But Kant insists that such an
explanation would not give us an account of the true or ultimate purpose of a
mahogany tree. After all, the tree is an organism, and as such it exhibits a real
inner objective purposiveness. In other words, it has ends of reproduction,
growth, and selfmaintenance that exclusively serve its own purposiveness and
not that of some other agent.
3.2.1.1. Material relative objective purposiveness
Objective real relative purposiveness is a kind of causality according to
which the concept of an end grounds the realization of that end. But the end in
question in this subspecies of purposiveness has certain definitive features.
Because it is a species of real objective purposiveness, the end here is built into
the nature of a real natural object presented to us in experience. Crucially, this
end is one that serves the purposiveness of some agent other than the object we
are explaining. Real purposiveness is relative “if we regard [its effect] only as
material for the art of other possible natural beings, thus if we regard it…as a
means for the purposive use of other causes” (CPJ 5:367). Kant provides
further elaboration and gives us a useful example when he writes,
the objective purposiveness which is grounded on advantageousness is
not an objective purposiveness of the things in themselves, as if the sand
itself, as an effect of its cause, the seam could not be comprehended
without ascribing a purpose to the latter and without considering the
effect, namely the sand, as a work of art. It is a merely relative
purposiveness, contingent in the thing itself to which it is ascribed; and
although in the examples we have given the species of grasses
themselves are to be judged as organized products of nature, hence as
rich in art, nevertheless in relation to the animals which they nourish
they are to be regarded as raw materials. (CPJ 5:368)
We shall see that grass, considered as a living thing, has ends of its own. But it is
also possible to attribute ends to grass such as the nourishment of cattle. When we
explain that grass exists for the sake of nourishing cattle, we regard it useful for the
purposiveness of other entities.
In the case of relative purposiveness, Kant emphasizes that the end is in a thing
only contingently. The end of nourishing cattle is in grass contingently in the
sense that, without the cattle’s end of nourishment, the grass’s end of nourishing
would not exist. The grass’s relatively purposive end of serving cattle is
therefore only present in the grass if there exist cattle that graze on that grass.
Without cattle, in other words, there would be no use for grass as a source of
nourishment.
Importantly, Kant believes it a sign of hubris to think that the ultimate purposes
of natural products (and nature itself) are only useful for the purposiveness of
other beings. He states, “to say that moisture falls from the air in the form of
snow, that the sea has its currents which float the wood that has grown in
warmer lands there, and that great sea animals filled with oil exist because the
cause that produces all these natural products is grounded in the idea of an
advantage for certain miserable creatures would be a very bold and arbitrary
judgment” (CPJ 5:369). This is not to deny that nature and its products serve
human beings and our purposive agency. It is undeniable that trees serve the
purpose of building sturdy shelter, that vegetation serves the purpose of
nourishing us, and that sea currents serve the purpose of facilitating
transcontinental commerce. Yet, when we study nature, we should find that its
products seem to act in accordance with purposes that serve their own
purposiveness, and this would suggest that nature is not made to serve human
convenience. Nature and its products have their own purposes.
3.2.1.2. Material inner objective purposiveness
Besides the species of material objective purposiveness considered in
the previous section, there is another. In some cases, the effect produced by a
natural thing can also be regarded “immediately as a product of art” (CPJ
5:367). By considering a thing capable of acting artfully, as it were, we
attribute to it a special kind of material objective purposiveness: i.e., a
purposiveness internal to the thing judged. The ends attributed to an entity on
the basis of its internal purposiveness are not useful for the sake of some other
purposive agent, but are conducive to (and explain) the existence of the thing
itself. When we attribute such a real inner objective purposiveness to an object,
we are judging it to be what Kant calls a “natural end.” Thus, we should say that
when a thing is judged to be a “natural end,” it is the kind of entity to which we
assign a real or material internal objective purposiveness.
To be considered a natural end, a thing must possess a purposiveness that takes
(loosely) a representation of itself as a whole as its internal principle and uses
this representation to organize its parts. Kant expresses in two steps. “Now for a
thing to qualify as a natural end it is requisite, first, that its parts (as far as their
existence and their form are concerned) are possible only through their relation
to the whole. For the thing itself is an end, and is thus comprehended under a
concept or an idea that must determine a priori everything that is to be
contained in it” (CPJ 5:373). That is, the parts of a natural end do not happen to
be organized by virtue of some accident. Nor is the thing’s particular
organization an expression of the mechanism of nature. As Kant suggested in an
earlier example, why the structure of a bird takes the shape it does and not some
other is a fact that can only be explained by appealing to its ends (e.g., “A bird’s
bones are hollow for the sake of allowing it to fly”). The idea Kant expresses
here is related, but slightly more specific: The parts of a bird – the placement of
its wings, its weight and wingspan, the color of its feathers, and so forth – are
“possible only through their relation to the whole.” That is, we might think,
there is a concept or an idea of how a bird ought to be organized, and its parts
organize themselves in accordance with this concept or idea.
However, Kant follows this point up by adding that if we stop here, a thing is
merely “the product of a rational cause distinct from the matter.” Thus, the
second step of his explanation of a natural end adds that “if a thing, as a natural
product, is nevertheless to contain in itself and its internal possibility a relation
to ends, i.e., is to be possible only as a natural end and without the causality of
the concepts of a rational being outside of it, then it is required, second, that its
parts be combined into a whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of
their form” (CPJ 5:373). The parts of a natural end reciprocally produce each
other. A heart, we might say, pumps blood into other vital organs, such as the
lungs. The lungs allow a creature to breathe, oxygenate its blood, and dispense
with the carbon dioxide in its blood, contributing both to the heart’s circulatory
efforts and the function of other vital organs. Each part of the body works in
symphony with the other to organize and sustain the thing containing these
parts. The organization of this plan is carried out in accordance with a
“concept” of how the whole is supposed to function – a “concept” that is
presumably built into the thing by nature:
For a body, therefore, which is to be judged as a natural end in itself and
in accordance with its internal possibility, it is required that its parts
reciprocally produce each other, as far as both their form and their
combination is concerned, and thus produce a whole out of their own
causality, the concept of which, conversely, is in turn the cause (in a
being that would possess the causality according to concepts appropriate
for such a product) of it in accordance with a principle; consequently the
connection of efficient causes could at the same time be judged as an
effect through final causes. (CPJ 5:373)
In this passage, we see Kant affirm that the parts of a “body” judged as a natural
end “reciprocally produce each other” in such a way that leads them to
“produce a whole out of their own causality.” The kind of causality responsible
for organizing their parts is a purposive one. The principle or cause of this
organizing causality is the “concept” of the very whole produced out of this
causality. Thus, a body judged as a natural end organizes its parts in accordance
with a concept of its whole, and its organized concatenation of parts is
consequently an effect brought about through final causes – that is, an effect
brought about not by some physical push or pull, but by means of the
representation of the effect.
A thing that possesses a material internal objective purposiveness, or a natural
end, has a special kind of power, one that allows it to organize itself in
accordance with a coherent plan. As Kant puts it, “An organized being is thus
not a mere machine, for that only has a motive power, while the organized
being in itself possesses a formative power, and indeed one that it
communicates to the matter, which does not have it (indeed it organizes the
latter): thus it has a self-propagating formative power, which cannot be
explained through the capacity for movement alone (that is, mechanism)” (CPJ
5:374). This formative power is none other than the purposiveness internal to
the organized being. On the basis of this purposiveness, a being takes a
representation of its “inner natural perfection” (CPJ 5:375) as the principle
for organizing its “matter”. To be sure, we cannot know the details of the
innerworkings of this purposive power in every case; how natural things come
to possess and deploy their standard of inner natural
perfection is a process that is “not thinkable and explicable in accordance with
any analogy to any physical, i.e., natural capacity that is known to us” (CPJ
5:375). As such, our judgment that a thing is a natural end cannot count as an
instance of us deploying a constitutive concept of the understanding or reason,
only providing us with a “regulative concept for the reflecting power of
judgment, for guiding research into objects of this kind” (CPJ 5:375). Still,
observing beings that possess this kind of purposive causality leads us to the
conclusion that there are non-mechanistic forces governing the organization of
nature. The very notion of a natural end thus “leads reason into an order of
things entirely different from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which will
here no longer satisfy us” (CPJ 5:377). The judgment that a thing has a material
internal objective purposiveness is special because it leads us to attribute a
purposive causality to natural products and to nature. Trees, oceans, ducks, and
other human beings, from this perspective, are not mere automata, but are
things that unfold as they actively realize their ends.
3.2.2. Formal objective purposiveness
Formal objective purposiveness is perhaps the strangest species of
objective purposiveness. Kant officially introduces it in §62 of the Critique of
the Power of Judgment by means of examples from geometry. “All geometric
figures”, he opens the section, “that are drawn in accordance with a principle
display a manifold and often admired objective purposiveness, namely that of
serviceability for the solution of many problems in accordance with a single
principle, and indeed each of them in infinitely many different ways” (CPJ
5:362). By studying the figure of a parabola, for instance, we may be able to
solve problems in physics regarding the trajectory of a moving body when
traveling at a particular speed. But, Kant adds, “the purposiveness still does not
make the concept of the object itself possible” (ibid). That is, though it is useful
for the sake of solving problems in physics, we should not infer that the
parabola was invented for the sake of solving this problem. We could also infer
that, while material objective purposiveness has to do with making judgments
about the ends internal to natural objects that we can behold in experience,
formal objective purposiveness will not be about natural things or say anything
at all about the nature of the thing we are explaining. Indeed, formal objective
purposiveness is about merely represented entities and their manifold uses,
which are not built into those entities’ natures.
Though Kant’s preferred example of a geometric figure may not initially seem
illuminating, it reinforces his general characterization of objective
purposiveness as that species of purposiveness that has a concept as its ground.
Formal objective purposiveness invokes a concept of a unified principle as its
ground.
The figure of a circle is an intuition that can be determined by the
understanding in accordance with a principle; the unity of this principle,
which I assume arbitrarily and, as a concept, make into a ground, when
applied to a form of intuition (to space) which is to be found in me
merely as representations and indeed a priori, makes comprehensible
the unity of many rules resulting from the construction of that concept,
which are purposive in many respects, without an end or any other
ground having to be the basis of its purposiveness. (CPJ 5:364,
emphasis in bold added)
Importantly, the concept of a circle is not what grounds the manifold purposive
uses of that figure, which is more accurately portrayed as an image produced in
intuition. It is rather the “unity of [a] principle” taken as a concept and make
into ground that is “applied to a form of intuition” and allows us to apprehend
many rules that seem to emanate from the figure. While it is unclear what
exactly the concept in question is and how it unifies the various rules and
solutions resulting from our judging the figure to be purposive, Kant is often at
pains to emphasize the mental nature of this species of purposiveness: “I
introduce the purposiveness into the figure that I draw in accord with a
concept, i.e., into my own way of representing that which is given to me
externally” (CPJ 5:365). Even though Kant’s emphasis on the intellectual
nature of this species of purposiveness may lead us to wonder why this is not
categorized as a special kind of subjective purposiveness, he insists that this is
an objective purposiveness because it involves a concept as its ground. This
species is “not a judging without a concept, which makes noticeable a merely
subjective purposiveness in the free paly of our cognitive faculties, but an
intellectual judging in accordance with concepts, which gives us distinct
cognition of an objective purposiveness, i.e., serviceability for all sorts of
(infinitely manifold) purposes (CPJ 5:366). More work needs to be done to
show why exactly this purposiveness is objective given how dependent upon
mental processes and representations it seems to be. For our purposes, it
suffices to say that because it involves judging a geometric object to be
purposive in accordance with a concept, this is indeed a species of objective
purposiveness.
4. Is purposiveness just a “lawfulness of the contingent”?
So far, I have been presenting a case for interpreting purposiveness as a
kind of causality that is driven by inner principles. Broadly construed, these
principles include, but are not limited to, feelings of pleasure, representations of
ends, and so forth. Some commentators who are sympathetic to the unity of
purposiveness in the book have emphasized that such unity is achieved only if
we recognize purposiveness as a “lawfulness of the contingent” (cf. Ginsborg
2015 and Zuckert 2007). Ginsborg emphasizes passages in which Kant portrays
purposiveness this way to interpret purposiveness as a “normative lawfulness”
whereas Zuckert takes these passages to mean that Kant wants purposiveness to
account for the “unity of the diverse” (2007, 5).
When closely examining the passages these commentators cite, we
notice a conspicuous theme, one that presents a major impediment to those
readers who take Kant’s characterization of purposiveness as a lawfulness of the
contingent to define the concept of purposiveness in general.
For purposiveness is a lawfulness of the contingent as such. […]with
regard to its products as systems, e.g., crystal formations, various shapes
of flowers, or the inner structure of plants and animals, it proceeds
technically, i.e., as at the same time an art. (CPJ 20:217)
[A perfection is grounded in the concept of something as an end, and
this end] “concerns merely the possibility of things and the lawfulness
of an intrinsically contingent combination of the manifold in the
object. […] The same kind of objective purposiveness observed in
things in nature (especially in organized beings) is now thought as
objective and material and necessarily carries with it the concept of an
end of nature (either real or imputed to it), in relation to which we also
attribute the perfection of things.” (CPJ 20:228)
…since the lawful unity in a combination we cognize as in accordance
with a necessary aim (a need) of the understanding but yet at the same
time as contingent in itself is represented as a purposiveness of the
objects (in this case, of nature)…” (CPJ 5:184)
[Reason] “requires unity, hence lawfulness” when connecting particular,
contingent laws of nature,” and the “lawfulness of the contingent is
called purposive” (CPJ 5:404).
An interpretive issue centering Kant’s definition of purposiveness as a
“lawfulness of the contingent” is that Kant specifically defines purposiveness
this way when discussing objective purposiveness. In the first passage,
purposiveness is a lawfulness of the contingent when judging the technique of
nature, or how it “proceeds at the same time as art”. In Kant’s parlance, we
might think of this as the result of making a teleological judgment about the
inner material purposiveness of nature. Likewise, in the second passage, an end
is characterized as that which “concerns…the lawfulness of an intrinsically
contingent combination of the manifold in the object” when it is deployed in
a judgment that ascribes an objective and material purposiveness to things in
nature. As we saw above, ends or purposes are sometimes, but not always,
involved in purposiveness – there is purposiveness without purpose. And the
last two passages cited above characterize purposiveness as a lawfulness of the
contingent with respect to judgments about the purposiveness of natural things.
Furthermore, the last passage is contained in an Anmerkung to a section in
which Kant the concept of the objective purposiveness of nature as a “principle
of reason” for the reflecting power of judgment. In short, in all of the cases
cited by commentators who center purposiveness as a lawfulness of the
contingent, Kant seems to be characterizing objective purposiveness insofar as
it applies to natural objects.
This should lead us to conclude that purposiveness may be glossed as
the lawfulness of the contingent in the case of either objective purposiveness in
general or material, internal objective purposiveness in particular. Because
objective purposiveness also comes in a formal variety that need not involve a
concept of an end (CPJ 5:364) and Kant seems to associate the lawfulness of
such purposiveness with the concept of an end (cf. the passage from CPJ
20:218 cited above), we should conclude that Kant has teleological judgments
that assign a material, internal purposiveness to nature in mind when he defines
purposiveness as a lawfulness of the contingent. Indeed, in the passages above,
Kant refers to the “inner structure” of objects of nature when attributing to them
a contingent lawfulness, though he does not rule out the possibility that
judgments attributing a relative or outer material purposiveness to nature may
give the contingent a certain lawfulness, too. Regardless of whether there is a
case to apply this gloss on purposiveness to teleological judgments that assign a
material outer or relative purposiveness to objects in nature, one thing is certain:
this gloss on purposiveness should not be taken as a definition of objective
purposiveness in general, nor should it be considered Kant’s definitive
characterization of purposiveness tout court.
Instead, we should consider purposiveness as a “lawfulness of the
contingent” to be illustrating an important point. Objective purposiveness
fundamentally involves concepts, representations that are themselves lawful in
the sense that they pick out marks which apply to and are definitive of objects
in general. For example, the concept of a <body> could be considered “lawful”
in the sense that it allows us to think and pick out bodies in general, regardless
of how the many differences between particular bodies. When attributing an
objective purposiveness to a thing, we are comparing a thing as it currently is to
a concept of what it is supposed to be, thereby arriving at a determination of its
perfection or lack thereof. As such, judgements that ascribe an objective
purposiveness of nature takes the particular, accidental object that we behold in
experience – an “intrinsically contingent combination of the manifold in the
object”, as Kant puts it – and compares it to a concept of what it ought to be.
The concept of what it ought to be is presumably represents a general standard
that the diverse, contingent array of objects presented to us in nature must meet.
For instance, our representation of the “perfect” human body may describe it as
an object that needs a heart to pump blood through its circulatory system. To
judge that a particular human body has a functioning heart is to say that this
body, itself a “contingent combination of the manifold”, conforms to the
concept of a perfect human body. As such, this particular human body with
which I’ve been presented counts as an instance of this concept, even if it has a
shape, size, color, and so on that is unlike any body that’s come before it or any
body that will succeed it. My judgment has in effect given a lawfulness to this
contingent human body, demonstrating that it can and does conform to the
standard of its perfection prescribed by its concept.
5. Conclusion
In this chapter, I have shown that purposiveness is a causality driven by
inner principles. What this means is that the ground of purposive causality is
something within the acting substance, not outside of it. A paradigm example of
this is a representation that grounds the reality of the object of that
representation, as is the case when a shipbuilder builds a ship in accordance
with previously unrealized representation of the ship. However, purposiveness
the inner principles of purposiveness are not exhausted by representations, as
our analysis of the species of purposiveness show us that feelings can also act as
purposive grounds. What counts as an inner principle varies depending on the
kind of purposiveness we are interrogating, and the kind of purposiveness we
are interrogating is determined by the kind of object we set out to explain.
In the next chapter, I focus my efforts on a deeper analysis of just one
particular kind of purposiveness – namely, what Kant calls objective, real, inner
purposiveness, which we attribute to an organisms. Doing so will put us on
even better ground for mounting and responding to the question of whether
organisms exist. It will also give us a richer sense of what the inner principles
driving purposiveness causality are and could be.
Figure 1. The table of purposiveness
Chapter 2. What is the organism?
The goal of this chapter is to analyze the concepts of nature, organism,
and machine, arriving at distinct, but interrelated, characterizations of the terms.
For Kant, an organism is a thing that possesses a real, objective, inner
purposiveness. That is, an organism is a thing that has the causal activity to act
in accordance with inner principles (somehow) built into it. The inner
P
S
F subjective
M subjective
O purposiv
I /
M /
R objective
( .e., artifacts)
I
( .e., organisms)
principles driving the organism’s purposive activity are “ends” [Zwecke].
Organisms are fundamentally distinct from machines, which merely act in
accordance with external principles that are subject to the laws of mechanics.
While we may think that Kant’s canonical characterizations of nature excludes
the possibility that we can conceive of organisms existing in nature, I show that
this is not the case. That is, it is not inconceivable that there are organisms in
nature, to Kant.
The chapter proceeds as follows. I open section 1 with a discussion of the
concept of nature, explaining why the very concept of nature does not exclude
the possibility of organisms. In section 2, I dissect the contrast term for
organism – namely, machines. Machines are mere matter in motion, and their
motion is both propelled and brought to a halt by external principles governed
by the laws of physics. In section 3, I argue that organisms are something more
than matter in motion. In contrast to machines, organisms can act in accordance
with internal principles. These principles are ostensibly not subject to the laws
of mechanics, insofar as they are not a property of matter.
1. Kant on nature
Before commencing with our definitions of the machine and the
organism, we should put forward a working characterization of Kant’s concept
of nature. Nature contains a manner of objects operating in accordance with
deterministic, even mechanistic causes, so does Kant’s concept of nature
foreclose the very possibility of non-mechanistic organisms? Let us examine
Kant’s concept of nature more closely to find out.
In the Introduction to the Antinomies of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant distinguishes between world and nature. World signifies “the
mathematical whole of appearances and the totality of their synthesis in the
great as well as in the small, i.e., in their progress through composition as well
as through division” (A418/B446). He continues, a world is defined as “nature
insofar as it is considered as a dynamic whole and one does not look at the
aggregation in space or time so as to bring about a quantity, but looks instead at
the unity in the existence of appearances” (A418-9/B446-7). Kant follows this
up by contrasting freedom as an unconditioned causality of a cause with a
“natural cause”, which is just a previously conditioned cause (A419/B447). In
these passages, nature is a species of world that is “dynamic” – perhaps
meaning that nature and its objects are judged in accordance with the
“dynamical,” not “mathematical” concepts of the understanding, which would
suggest that nature describes a synthesized manifold of appearances taken to
exist (see A160/B199; B201). The use of “dynamic” to describe the whole of
nature could also have natural scientific connotations, making nature out to be a
whole that is in motion. Either way, nature is defined in relation to how we
“look” at it – we “look” at nature not as a mere aggregate of objects, but as a
unity of existing appearances. Presumably, the existence of these appearances is
to be explained by a series of natural causes.
Earlier, in the A edition of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant defines nature
as “nothing in itself but the sum of all appearances, hence not a thing in itself
but merely a multitude of representations of the mind,” and the unity of these
representations is brought about by our “faculty of cognition” (A114). Kant
strikes a similar note when he says that “we ourselves bring into the
appearances that order and regularity in them we call nature,” and the unity of
nature follows from the conditions for the possibility of our empirical cognition
of objects (A125). That is, because it is necessary that we experience objects by
subsuming given particulars under the universal and necessary concepts of the
understanding, nature, insofar as it consists of the objects we experience, is not
a mere, scattered aggregate of appearances, but a representation of appearances
as subsisting in a unified whole. In these passages, the unity of experience
seems to serve as a sufficient condition for the unity of nature.
Kant concludes the Analogies of Experience with a similar definition of
nature, saying that “By nature (in the empirical sense) we understand the
combination of appearances as regards their existence, in accordance with
necessary rules, i.e., in accordance with laws” (A216/B263). The Analogies are
supposed to leave us with the conclusion that “All appearances lie in one nature,
and must lie therein, since without this a priori unity no unity of experience,
thus also no determination of objects in it, would be possible” (ibid). In other
words, the unity of nature is a necessary condition for the unity of experience as
a sum total of appearances – if we negate the former, then we negate the latter.
As long as our experiences are unified by the concepts of the understanding, so
too are the appearances constituting nature.
If we experience objects – that is, are presented with them in intuition and
subsume those intuitions under concepts of the understanding – then these
objects “lie in one nature.” The concept of causality discussed in the first
Critique does not have ends or purposes as causal grounds, so if we take
organisms to be things that have ends as causal grounds, we cannot experience,
or empirically cognize, the organism. But notice that empirically cognizing
objects is merely sufficient for placing objects in one nature, not necessary for
doing so. Thus, it is possible that there could be natural objects the causality
characteristic of which we do not experience or empirically cognize. There
could be objects of nature that are produced by means of supersensible grounds,
for instance. While we could never experience the causality characteristic of
these objects, they can still be a part of nature.
Kant’s lecture transcripts seem to support the idea that there could be non-
empiricallycognizable causes precipitating events in nature. For instance, in the
Metaphysik L2 Kant writes, “Everything that happens in nature, happens either
according to physical-mechanical laws or according to laws of the power of free
choice. In inanimate nature everything happens according to mechanical laws,
but in animate according to laws of the power of free choice” (LM 28:257).
That there is an animate nature suggests that not every object in nature is a dead
piece of matter subject to all and only the laws of mechanism. In the
Metaphysik Mrongovius, Kant distinguishes between a broad sense (sensu toto)
and a strict sense (proprio) of nature, stating that only the latter refers to “the
summation of all objects of the senses” (LM 29:773). That he would endorse
such a distinction and associate his definition of nature as a sum of appearances
with the “strict” sense suggests that there could be more to nature than that
which appears to and is therefore empirically cognized by us. In the Cosmology
section of the same transcripts, Kant defines nature as the “connection of
appearances according to general laws” (LM 29:860) and later adds that “what
happens in the sensible world is nature” (LM 29:862). Recalling the Third
Antinomy, we need not be committed to the claim that all things that happen in
nature are explicable only according to mechanical laws governing the
“sensible world.” Rather, Kant emphasizes that things insofar as they appear to
us in space and time and we empirically cognize them are part of nature qua
sum total of sensible appearances. He accepts that there can be effects in nature
which are grounded in sources we cannot empirically cognize, such as things in
themselves (LM 29:924). Kant’s most generic definitions of nature – “nature is
also called, and indeed most often, the order of things according to general
laws” (LM 29:934) – also leave it underdetermined what kinds of laws govern
bodies in nature. General laws here could refer to the laws of mechanism, but
they could just as easily refer to the laws of a final causality. Indeed, we shall
that a main presupposition of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment is that we
cannot rule out the possibility that some material things are generation by non-
mechanical laws (CPJ 5:387). The possibility that these laws can be either
mechanical or teleological is reinforced by passages such as these: “physically
nature is a realm of efficient causes, and teleologically [nature is] a realm of
ends” (LM 29:915). There is a teleological, and not merely physical, way to
consider nature.
In On the use of teleological principles in philosophy, Kant opens with a
similar remark regarding the possibility of a teleological view of nature. He
states, “If one understands by nature the sum-total of all that exists as
determined by laws, taking together the world (as nature properly so called) and
its supreme cause, then the investigation of nature (which in the first case is
called physics, in the second metaphysics) can pursue two paths: either the
merely theoretical path or the teleological path” (OTP 8:159). Once again,
nature is generically construed as a sum-total of “all that exists as determined
by laws”, where the kind of law determining things that exist is not specified.
Based on Kant’s subsequent assertion about the courses that our investigations
of nature can take, there are two ways of understanding nature. The theoretical
path investigates nature only by means of empirical cognition, or experience
(OTP 8:159). But this path turns out to be limited, and we “need to start from a
teleological principle where theory abandons us” (ibid). Where “sources of
theoretical cognition are not sufficient,” we are allowed to invoke teleological
principles of nature (OTP 8:160). Moreover, Kant appears to be suggesting,
theoretical cognition will inevitably fall short in our investigations of nature.
What I take Kant’s lecture transcripts to show us is that, ultimately, the
conditional established in the first Critique holds true. It is the case that if we
empirically cognize objects of outer sense then they can be taken to be objects
of nature, and whatever is not part of the sum total of unified appearances we
call nature cannot be empirically cognized. But this leaves open the possibility
that we can take something to be an object of nature without affirming the
antecedent of the above conditional. While saying that something is not a
natural object prevents us from saying it is empirically cognizable, there could
be non-empirically-cognizable objects (or grounds) in (or behind) nature and its
objects. Beyond the Analytic of the first Critique and the lecture transcripts,
Kant suggests that we can have non-empirically-cognitive access to principles,
laws, and objects of nature that are not merely determined by mechanical,
deterministic laws.
Kant’s remarks regarding the regulative use of our ideas in the Appendix
to the Transcendental Dialectic as well as his discussion of reflecting judgment
reinforce the possibility that some objects of nature are not merely the products
of natural or external causes while also maintaining that we could not
empirically cognize the means by which such natural objects come about. When
discussing the regulative use of the idea of God, Kant states, “although an
anatomist can be convicted of error when he relates some organ of an animal’s
body to an end which, as one can clearly show, does not follow from it, it is
nevertheless quite impossible to prove in any one case that a natural
arrangement, whatever it might be, has no end at all” (A688/B716). If one
regulatively posits the existence of a highest intelligence that crafts the
existence of the world in accordance with ends, then researchers, such as
“medical physiologists”, can extend their investigations of nature in accordance
with ends. As long as one is careful when deploying this principle of the
purposive unity of nature regulatively, never venturing to assert the existence of
a highest being as a constitutive principle, they can “extend the use of reason in
regard to experience without doing damage to it in any individual case”
(A691/B720). The regulative use of the idea of God helps us explain natural
products teleologically without pretending to give us empirical cognition of
those products.
Some of Kant’s comments in and around the Antinomy of Teleological
Judgment further indicate that it is possible for there to be natural objects that
may not come about merely in accordance with external or natural causes.
When reflecting upon the form of certain objects in nature, experience leads our
power of judgment to the concept of a natural end (see §64 of the Critique of
the Power of Judgment). A natural end functions in accordance with a causality
that we could not experience – i.e., one directed by ends – but, as far as we can
tell, resides in nature. In the following chapters, we will explore how precisely
we can conceive of such an object as natural. For now, I reiterate that the
concept of nature does not exclude the possibility of an organism, or a thing the
generation and activity of which is the result of a non-mechanistic, purposive
causality. If we take organisms to be things that function in accordance with a
non-mechanistic, internally purposive causality, all that Kant’s system bars us
from doing is empirically cognizing the causality that characterizes an
organism, not from holding that there are or can be organisms in nature.
2. Kant on machines
Before describing what the organism is at the level of conceptual
analysis, we should also explicate its contrast term: the machine. When figuring
out what machines are, we should begin by unpacking a vague but related term
– “mechanism.” We should think of a machine as a natural object the motion of
which is exclusively and exhaustively explained in terms of the mechanistic
causality.
At first, Kant’s notion of mechanism seems vague because it is used in a
number of ways depending on context. Angela Breitenbach's entry for
"mechanism" in the Cambridge Kant Lexicon helpfully identifies just a few
senses of the term, making it easier for us to zero in on which, specifically, is at
issue in the context of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Most broadly,
Breitenbach characterizes this term as a "causal necessity." She cites this
passage from the Critique of Practical Reason in defense of her
characterization: "all necessity of events in time in accordance with the natural
law of causality can be called the mechanism of nature" (CPrR 5:97). In the
Third Critique, Breitenbach adds, Kant is directly concerned with the
mechanism of matter (see CPJ 5:395). Even more specifically, the mechanism
at issue here is that which concerns the effects that the parts of bodies have on
one another "in accordance with mere laws of motion" (CPJ 5:390). The key
contrast term here, to Breitenbach, is natural teleology, or the idea invoked to
explain that certain natural things are mechanically inexplicable have a "self-
propagating formative power" (CPJ 5:374). The language here suggests that
there is a power internal, not external, to the moving thing that explains its
movement.
Building off Breitenbach’s suggestion, I believe that the kind of mechanism at
issue in the third Critique is the conception of causality that describes how
machines commence with and cease motion. In contrast to organisms, machines
are aggregates of matter fundamentally driven by external causal principles. All
of a machine’s changes in state are changes of matter, and all changes of matter
are subject to the Law of Inertia, as characterized in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science: “Every change in matter has an external
cause.” Kant derives this law of mechanics from the initial premise that
“Matter, as mere object of the outer senses, has no other determinations except
those of external relations in space” (MFNS 4:543). All determinations of some
material object are observable in space and time. For any change of state in
matter, we must seek a cause (“by the principle of metaphysics”). But matter,
“as a mere object of the outer senses”, lacks any “essentially internal
determinations or grounds of determination” (ibid). In other words, a material
body is such that, by its very nature, it has to be set in motion or stopped by
means of a causal influence exerted upon it by some outside material body.
Since a material body cannot have any internal determination or ground of
determination, its ground of determination must be external. Thus, every change
in matter has an external (and not an internal) cause.
Machines can only be moved in accordance with external principles of
motion, and their external principles of motion will bring about changes in
matter that are explained by some antecedent change in matter, ad infinitum.
But note that Kant contrasts the external grounds of determination that explain a
machine’s material changes in state with internal grounds of determination. In
the previous chapter, I proposed that purposiveness is a causality that has
internal principles as its grounds. If mechanism is a causality that has external
principles as its grounds, we might think of mechanism and purposiveness as
such as the relevant contrast terms at issue here. However, in the third Critique,
Kant is at pains to contrast mechanism with the form of causality characteristic
of organisms in particular – that is, a real, objective, inner purposiveness.
While machines are fundamentally characterized by the mechanistic causality
described above, organisms are fundamentally characterized by the purposive
causality I turn to discussing next.
But to say that machines function in accordance with the laws of
mechanism is not to say that they are totally inimical to every kind of
purposiveness. Machines surely cannot act in
accordance with inner purposes, for that is reserved for living organisms, as we
shall see below. However, we can understand machines as relatively purposive.
That is, machines can be built so as to serve the purposiveness of another
agent’s purposiveness. A panini press, for instance, is a mere machine that has
the end of grilling pressed sandwiches. But that end serves the purposiveness of
the agent who eventually consumes the sandwich produced by the panini press.
Strictly speaking, we can understand the activity of the panini press as end-
directed, but the true ends of the panini press reside in a living being – in this
case, the hungry human being preparing their lunch. Ultimately, what separates
a machine from an organism is not that it cannot be purposive at all. Rather, a
machine is incapable of being internally purposive, or acting in accordance with
ends that are good for its own sake. A machine can only be an instrument for
the achievement of some internally purposive agent’s ends.
3. Kant on organisms
An organism and a machine are opposed in kind at the level of
conceptual analysis. On the one hand, machines are material objects set in
motion merely by means of external principles. On the other hand, organisms
are objects that, from one perspective, are determined by external principles, but
can also be set in motion by internal principles. In other words, organisms are
internally purposive.
As we saw in the previous chapter, certain natural things have a
particular kind of purposiveness – they are objectively, actually, and internally
purposive. Objective purposiveness, in contrast to subjective purposiveness, is a
kind of causality that has a concept as its principle.
Sometimes, Kant characterizes the relevant concept as a thing’s “perfection”
(see CPJ 20:228). This concept of perfection is the ground of the unity of a
complex manifold: i.e., “in order to represent an objective purposiveness in a
thing the concept of what sort of thing it is supposed to be must come first;
and the agreement of the manifold in the thing with this concept (which
supplies the rule for the combination of the manifold in it) is the qualitative
perfection of a thing” (CPJ 5:227). Defined in terms of perfection, an objective
purposiveness is a causality according to which an antecedent concept of what a
thing is supposed to be determines what the thing is. But Kant provides an even
more specific principle of purposiveness when dividing the into formal and real
kinds of objective purposiveness. A real objective purposiveness is “dependent
on the concept of an end” (CPJ 5:364). An objective material purposiveness,
which is attributed to a thing on the basis of a teleological judgment, is a
causality according to which a concept of an end determines the activity and
organization of a thing. We get an even clearer glimpse into what this might
mean when Kant subdivides objective real purposiveness into two further kinds
– namely, objective real relative purposiveness and objective real inner
purposiveness. The relative kind of this purposiveness characterizes artifacts
and the inner kind of this purposiveness characterizes organisms.
The activity of an artifact is explained by the ends of some
purposiveness besides that of the artifact’s. For instance, my oven toasts a bagel
not for the sake of its own ends, but for the sake of my end of nourishing
myself. I can attribute an objective, real purposiveness to my oven – its activity
is explained by the end of nourishing me. But that end is ultimately in some
purposive thing besides the oven, hence its status as a thing that is only
relatively purposive.
Unlike the oven, the ends conditioning the purposive activity of what I
label an organism reside “in” the organism. Furthermore, the end within an
objectively, really, and internally purposive thing determines the activity and the
structure of the thing in a manner distinct from how external grounds determine
a machine’s changes in state. “It might always be possible that in,
e.g., an animal body, many parts could be conceived as consequences of merely
mechanical laws (such as skin, hair and bones). Yet the cause that provides the
appropriate material, modifies it, forms it, and deposits it in its appropriate
place must always be judged teleologically, so that everything in it must be
considered as organized” (CPJ 5:377). The activities and the structure of an
organism can be explained in terms of “merely mechanical laws”; it is possible
to explain the material constitution of an animal, for instance, by tracing its
material state back to an antecedent, external material cause. The scar on the
side of an elk can be explained by the fact that a cheetah attempted to hunt and
kill it previously. However, there is another way of explaining the parts of an
animal and their organization. The heart of an elk pumps blood in order to
circulate blood throughout its body. Presumably, this is because circulating
blood through its body is good for its survival. In this sense, an end – survival –
is the cause of the activity and the organization of the parts of the elk.
Notice that, while survival is the kind of thing that is taken to be the
principle characteristic of an organism’s causality, it is not an external principle
of activity. In other words, “survival” does not describe a state of matter that
brings about a subsequent change in matter. Rather, survival describes a causal
principle that is internal to the elk and not reducible to a material fact about the
elk. If we did not invoke the ends of things as the internal principles of their
structure and activity,
Kant warns, the structure of these objects would be “in the highest degree
contingent” (CPJ 5:360). If it were conditioned by mechanism alone, nature
could have formed these objects “in a thousand different ways without hitting
precisely upon the unity in accordance with” a teleological causality
(CPJ 5:360). Thus, when describing the form and the organization of the elk,
we say that its parts are arranged in such and such a way, it performs the
activities that it does, and it communes with its fellow elk in such and such a
way in order to survive, and its survival is an immaterial, internal ground of
determination that explains why the elk looks, acts, and interacts the way that it
does.
We are now in a good position to see what exactly makes the concept of
an organism distinct from the concept of a machine to Kant. The activity of
(what I call) an organism is in some cases explicable in purely mechanistic
terms; crucially, in other cases, we must appeal to internal principles to explain
the organism’s activities and structure. These principles are ends of the
organism built into it by nature. Ends ground the organization of an organism’s
parts and its activities in a way that external changes in matter simply cannot.
As Kant puts it, we explain a tree’s growth “in such a way that it is entirely
distinct from any other increase in magnitude in accordance with mere
mechanical laws,” because the tree “first prepares the matter that it adds to itself
with a quality peculiar to its species, which could not be provided by the
mechanism of nature outside of it” (CPJ 5:371). Whereas machines are only
changed by external grounds of determination, organisms such as trees possess
ends as internal grounds of determination, and these ends guide the organism’s
self-organizing activities, such as growth, reproduction, selfmaintenance, and so
forth. The difference between organism and machine is thus spelled out in terms
of being’s ability to express a fundamentally non-mechanistic power:
An organized being is thus not a mere machine, because that has solely
a motive power; while an organized being possesses in itself a formative
power {bildende Kraft}, and indeed one that it communicates to the
matter, which does not have it (it organizes the latter): thus it [i.e., the
organized being] has a self-propagating formative power {bildende
Kraft}, which cannot be explained through the capacity for movement
alone (that is, mechanism). (CPJ 5:374)
This power, I argue below, is the expression of an organism’s life – or its
capacity to determine itself in accordance with inner, not just external,
principles.
If we take the activity of an organism to be inner-principle-driven,
remarks Kant makes about chemistry might lead us to suspect that the activity
of an organism is similar to – if not identical in kind with – a chemical process.
After all, Kant in the Metaphysical Foundations, Kant has the following to say
about the difference between mechanical changes in motion and chemical
reactions: “The effect of bodies in motion upon one another by communicating
their motion is called mechanical; but that of material things, insofar as they
mutually change the association of their parts, even at rest, through their own
powers, is called chemical” (my translation, AK MFNS: 530). Chemical
processes are brought about by powers internal to a materially changing thing.
The result is the generation of a new material thing: “In chemistry one
distinguishes matter, as educed
<tanquam eductum> - what was previously there and only receives new form;
as produced <tanquam productum>, what was not previously there at all” (LM
28:684). However, it’s worth pointing out that chemical reactions might involve
internal changes, but those internal changes are always thoroughly material,
involving material things that “penetrate one another”:
If two matters fill one and the same space, and each of them does this
completely, they penetrate one another. Hence a complete chemical
dissolution would be a penetration of matters, which would nonetheless
be entirely different from mechanical penetration. For in the latter case
it is thought that, as the moved matters approach one another more
closely, the repulsive force of the one can completely surpass that of the
other, so that one or both can have their extension shrink to nothing.
Here, by contrast, the extension remains, and it is only that the matters
together occupy a space, which accords with the sum of their densities,
not outside, but inside one another, that is, through intussusception (as it
is customarily called). (MFNS 4:530-531)
Notice that “extension remains” in this context. That is, the impetus and the
reaction of the chemical process are both, strictly speaking, objects of outer
sense, things that we can behold in space and time. As Michael Bennet
McNulty reiterates, chemical processes might involve an “inner” principle in
some sense, but they are material through and through, consisting of a material
principle exercising a material power to bring about a material effect “As Kant
puts it, chemical changes transform “the innermost constitution of matter” [die
Beschaffenheit der Materie innigst], chemical forces are those “constitutive
powers of matter whereby new matters are brought forth” [die constitutiven
Kräfte der Materie wodurch neue Materien hervorgebracht werden], and
chemistry concerns how the such forces“produce a new matter [eine neue
Materie aus machen]
(LM 29: 117.12, 22 f.,31)” (McNulty 2018, 539)
The fact that chemical processes involve internal processes in some sense, but
those internal processes are still locatable in space and time, sufficiently
distinguishes them from the living activity of the organism. As we shall see, the
ends or internal principles that serve as the ground of living organic activity are
not locatable in space and time. We cannot empirically cognize the causality
characteristic of these entities. While we can empirically cognize all the
components of a chemical reaction, submitting it to mechanical laws, the fact
that we cannot empirically cognize all the steps and components of organic
activities means that the organism’s form and activity cannot be explained by
appeal to purely mechanical laws.
4. Conclusion
Above, I show that organisms and machines are fundamentally distinct
concepts for Kant in the following sense. While the activities and the structure
of a machine are explained merely by external causes, organisms are the kinds
of thing whose activity and structure can also be explained by means of a
certain kind of internal principle. Moreover, though we may think that domains
such as chemistry offer us a tool for reducing organic activity to its mechanistic
correlates, this is not the case. Organisms are different from machines in that
they exhibit a form of causality that is completely distinct in kind from
mechanistic activity. Perhaps most importantly, we also saw that
Kant’s very concept of nature does not prevent us from thinking that there can
be organisms in nature. We shall reserve a more thorough exploration of
whether there are organisms in nature for Part II. For the time being, let us turn
to an analysis of Kant’s concept of life, which we shall see is intimately
connected to his account of the organism, allowing us to distinguish between
various kinds of organism.
Chapter 3. Kant on life and value
In the previous chapter, we analyzed Kant’s concepts of machine,
organism, and nature to show that his concept of nature does not exclude the
possibility that there are organisms in nature. Organisms are internally
purposive entities, or things capable of acting in accordance with purposes that
are (somehow) internal to them.
In this chapter, I flesh out Kant’s concept of the organism by analyzing what he
takes life to be. Life, I argue, is a faculty of a substance to act in accordance
with inner principles. Following my analysis of purposiveness in the previous
chapter, this means that we can alternatively gloss life as a substance’s in-built
faculty of purposiveness. As an organism just is the kind of thing that has a
purposive causality built into it by nature, I suggest that life is the faculty an
organism exercises in order to perform its self-organizing activity. In other
words, if an organism did not possess a faculty of life, it could not determine
itself in accordance with ends. Possessing a faculty of life is necessary for
organic activity.
In section 1, I analyze the organism’s faculty of self-activity – that is, life. I
argue that, in its most generic sense, life is a faculty of a substance to determine
itself in accordance with inner principles. Against the consensus in the
literature, Kant does not build representation into the most generic definition of
life. Thus, there are some forms of life that are fundamentally propelled by
representations – e.g., human life and non-human animal life – but it is at least
conceivable that there could be non- or sub-representational forms of life. In
section 2, I turn to the question, What exactly is the inner principle driving
organic life? I argue that we should read Kant as a forerunner to a recent current
in the philosophy of life and biological theory, one that takes life to be that
which imposes unity in accordance with value.
1. Kant on life
Organisms are the kind of things that exercise a power to organize
themselves in accordance with a particular kind of internal principle – i.e., an
end. However, the ability to exercise a power presupposes the possession of a
capacity to exercise such a power. I cannot intuit unless I possess a capacity for
sensing; I cannot think unless I possess a capacity for understanding; I cannot
comprehend unless I possess a capacity for reason; and so on. In this section, I
show that we can piece together remarks Kant makes about life throughout the
Critical period to reconstruct the following theory of life: to Kant, life is the
capacity of a substance to act in accordance with inner principles. Now, an
organism is a thing that acts in accordance with inner principles (i.e., ends). So,
in order to exercise this activity, an organism must have the capacity to act in
accordance with such principles. Life just is that capacity. Just as it is the case
that if x does not possess a faculty of sensibility then x cannot intuit, so too it is
the case that if x is not alive, x cannot perform the activities characteristic of an
organism.
On my reconstruction, Kant distinguishes between various senses of life, some
of which are more generic and others more specific. I characterize the various
senses of life as Kant’s “levels” of life. The most generic definition of life – or
Kant’s Level 1 definition, as I call it below, states that life is the capacity of a
substance to determine itself in accordance with inner principles. To borrow
Kant’s parlance, this is all that is contained within the concept life. However,
there are marks contained under the concept that correspond to various
divisions of life. Kant introduces
one such division when he announces that the inner principles determining a
thing’s activity can be a representation – an announcement that in turn entails
there may be non-representational inner principles. Further subdivisions (and
subdivisions within subdivisions) are introduced as Kant modifies the various
kinds of representational activities and objects of representation capable of
grounding living activity. Figure 2 depicts the marks contained within and
under the concept in the form of a tree diagram.
together, they are equal to the sphaera of the whole concepts. E.g., all beings on earth
are organized and not organized. The organized ones are plants or animals. Logical
division is nothing other than the taking apart of the sphaera of a concept. This
dividing is something other than taking apart. In the case of division, I distinguish the
manifold under the concept, i.e., the sphaera. In the case of taking apart, I analyze the
concept. (LL 24: 925)
The various divisions and subdivisions of life disclose species and subspecies of the generic
concept in question. In this case, “organized” and “not organized” are divisions of the concept
“beings on earth” that “distinguish the manifold under the concept. In contrast, analyzing the
concept is a matter of “taking it apart.” As we will see below, the constituent parts of the
concept <life> can be summed up as the capacity of a thing to determine itself in accordance
with inner principles. Kant will introduce divisions and subdivisions to this primary definition,
thereby revealing the full “spaera” of the concept.
Figure 2. A schematic representation of the levels of life in Kant’s system
On my view, Level 1 discloses the marks contained within the concept
<life>. That is to say, if a thing did not exhibit the capacity to determine itself in
accordance with inner principles, it would not be alive. Level 2 represents the
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1
T capacity of a
to
itself in
with
principles
T capacity of a
to determine
by repr
inner principles (i.e.,
desiring).
T capacity of susbtan
determine itself
of abstr
( , cognitiv ,
, et .)
(i.e., by
).
T capacity of a
determine
in accordance with
-
(i.e., by
or natur
).
T capacity of a
to determine
repr
inner principles.
first division of the concept life. Here, I divide living things capable of
representing their inner principles from living things that do not represent their
inner principles. At Level 3, I divide living things that represent abstract inner
principles to themselves, such as ideas of reason, from living things that
represent non-abstract representations
to themselves as inner principles, such as sensations. Thus, at Level 3 Kant
divides rational living beings (e.g., human beings) from non-rational living
beings (e.g., animals).
1.1.Level 1 life
Evidence for Kant’s most generic definition of life can be found in the
remark to the Kant’s discussion of the Second Law of Mechanics in the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Here, Kant asserts that human
beings have privileged access to the structure of their own life, writing,
Life is the faculty of a substance to determine itself to act from an
internal principle, of a finite substance to change, and of a material
substance to motion or rest, as change of its state. Now we are
acquainted with [kennen wir] no other internal principle in a
substance for changing its state except desiring, and no other internal
activity at all except thinking, together with that which depends on it,
the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and desire or willing. (MFNS
4:544, translation modified, my emphasis in bold)
Notice that this passage is divided into two parts. The first gives a generic
definition of life. The second describes the particular principle and activities of
life with which we (i.e., human beings) are “acquainted”. On my reading, the
fact that we are acquainted with a particular form or structure of life does not
entail that this is the only kind of life of which we can conceive. Indeed, Kant’s
definition allows us to reject this possibility. As we saw in the previous chapter,
purposiveness is a causality that has inner principles as its grounds of
determination. In our discussion of purposiveness, we saw that inner principles
need not be concepts. For all we know, they need not be representations at all –
in some cases, mere feelings serve as inner principles.
Inner principles can, but need not be, representational. So, activity in
accordance with inner principles can, but need not, involve representations.
This explains why, on Kant’s account, it is possible for us to at least conceive of
irrational life. A tree regrows its branches and leaves because such “self-help” is
conducive to its survival. But its end of survival need not be a conscious
representation that the tree reflects upon in the process of regrowing its
branches and leaves. What precisely that internal ground of activity is we
cannot know. Still, this does not prohibit us from conceiving of the tree’s life in
such a way that the inner principles determining it are sub- or
nonrepresentational.
We also see this generic conception of life in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics.
For instance, in a proof of the immortality of the soul from the Metaphysik
Mrongovius, Kant defines matter as that which is inherently lifeless. It is
inherently lifeless insofar as it has no faculty “for determining itself”,
suggesting that a material body’s “principle of life is something other than
matter” (LM 29:913). From this, it follows that matter “has mere receptivity or
passivity.” In contrast, life is a “spontaneity or the faculty for determining
oneself from inner principles” (ibid). Once again, in this context Kant does not
specify precisely what those inner principles are. They could be representations
such as ideas, desires, concepts, and so forth. What matters is that the principles
associated with the faculty of life are not external causes, but internal ones.
1.2. Level 2 life
Level 2 of Figure 2 depicts the first division Kant introduces to the
concept <life>. There are representational and non-representational forms of
life. The following passages scattered throughout primary texts and lecture
notes reinforce this relationship between life and representation:
The capacity of a being to act according to its representations is called
life. (LM 6:211, emphasis in bold added)
We have an inner principle for acting from representations, and
that is life. Now if a representation harmonizes with the entire power of
the mind, with the principle of life, then this is pleasure. But if the
representation is of the kind that resists the principle of life, then this
relation of conflict in us is displeasure. Objects are accordingly
beautiful, ugly, etc. […] in reference to living beings. But what takes
place only in reference to living beings, of that the ground must be in the
living being; accordingly there must be a faculty in the living being for
perceiving such properties in objects. Pleasure and displeasure is thus a
faculty of the agreement or of the conflict of the principle of life with
respect to certain representations or impressions of objects. (LM 28:247,
emphasis in bold added)
Besides the things which are moved by outer causes, there are living
things which are moved by inner ones. A being is living if its power of
representation can be the ground of the actuality of its objects. Life
is thus the causality of a representation with respect to the actuality
of its objects. (LM 29:894, emphasis in bold added)
These passages reinforce the idea that representation in general, not any faculty
of representation in particular, is the power that a living substance exercises to
determine itself. The kind of representing employed is left undetermined,
meaning that the activity of life could hypothetically be the activity of intuiting,
sensing, thinking, or any number of representational activities. Furthermore,
while life is here represented as a kind of causality, and a representation is
depicted as the cause which brings about a certain effect (i.e., the “actuality of
its objects), the kind of representation determining living action is left
unspecified. That is, an intuition, a concept, an idea, or any number of ideas
could conceivably ground the causality of living substance.
Some commentators have taken these passages to represent Kant’s
definition of life. In other words, they have denied the existence of Level 1 and
instead taken a division introduced at Level 2 as Kant’s most generic definition
of life. For now, I want to emphasize that, while the passages discussed here
may seem like definitions, they are only characterizations of life. More
specifically, seeing as these characterizations are given in Kant’s psychology
lectures, we should be inclined to consider them characterizations of animal life
in general (i.e., including human life, since human beings are animals):
“Animals are not mere machines or matter, rather they have souls; for
everything in the whole of nature is either inanimate or animate. […] An animal
is thus an animated matter, for life is the faculty for determining oneself from an
inner principle according to the power of choice” (LM 28:274-5). While animals
in general determine themselves in accordance with the power of choice,
minded human life and mere animal life are importantly different. Human
beings will have access to concepts and ideas, and on the basis of that have a
will. Animals do not. Still, as Kant insists elsewhere, to say that animals “act
only according to general laws of matter” is misguided and “to think of animals
as machines is impossible”, for we call animals alive and take them to have a
faculty to “alter its own state as a consequence of its own representations” (LM
28:449).
Crucially, in places such as §VIII of the first introduction to the Critique
of the Power of Judgment, Kant identifies desire as “the faculty for being,
through its representations, the cause of the reality of these
representations” (CPJ 20:230n). That is, desire is a faculty according to which
a representation serves as the ground of the reality of its object. Thus, we should
conclude, to be the sort of living thing that can bring about the reality of its
actions or objects as a result of representing that action or object to itself is to be
a living thing that desires. Kant’s remarks in a long footnote within the Preface
to the Critique of Practical Reason reinforce this understanding of desire in
relation to life. Here, Kant is attempting to refute the idea that the supreme
principle of his practical philosophy is empirical. A key piece of this refutation
is his definition of the faculty of desire, which states that “Life is the faculty of
a being to act in accordance with the laws of the faculty of desire. The faculty of
desire is a being’s faculty to be by means of its representations the cause of the
reality of the objects of these representations.” (CPrR 5:9n) This passage is
striking
for several reasons. First and foremost, it emphasizes the intimate connection
between life and desire. Life, it seems, simply is the ability to act in accordance
with “the laws of the faculty of desire,” laws which sometimes come from
practical reason and sometimes come from nature. In addition, this passage is
striking because it reinforces the idea that a living, desiring being is subject to a
kind of causality that does not depend on forces external to it. The following
line of the passage above seems to reinforce this claim, defining the faculty of
desire as a being’s faculty to bring about the reality of an object it represents to
itself by means of this representation. While initially appearing vague and
unintuitive, this definition is actually quite insightful. On the one hand, a
being’s actions are conditioned by external causes. Detecting the scent of coffee
attracts me to pot of coffee in the kitchen, whence the scent originates. In this
case, the reality of the pot of the coffee, the scent emanating from it, and my
detection of that scent condition my actions. On the other hand, a being’s
actions may be conditioned by causes other than these external ones. For
instance, I may want some coffee, but find that there is no coffee in the kitchen.
The absence of coffee coupled with my desire for some leads me to take the
necessary steps to make some coffee, or to cause the reality of a heretofore
merely represented pot of coffee. In this case, my representation of some future
pot of coffee conditions the process of making coffee, exemplifying an action
performed in accordance with the faculty of desire and its laws.
The definitions of desire offered in each of the footnotes quoted above
combine to give us one branch of the initial division of life. For some living
beings, inner principles can be represented, and it is only those living beings
that desire. But for other beings, we could imagine that their inner
purposiveness involves something more crude than representational desires.
Consider, for instance, Kant’s characterization of the power we attribute to an
internally, materially, and objectively purposive thing as a special “formative
power” (CPJ 5:374). In this context, when we attribute such a non-mechanistic
power to a self-organizing natural end, we are stating that it has a purposive
causality. It possesses a plan according to which it organizes its parts as it
grows, develops, heals itself, and so forth.
While we may think that this formative power talk does not correspond
to a view Kant would want to stipulate himself, some of Kant’s remarks
regarding epigenetic theories of the origin of organisms might lead us to think
that he finds such an account of organic activity plausible. In the Methodology
of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant states that the
epigenetic theorist has greater “experiential grounds” for proving their theory
and that reason is “favorably disposed to this explanation because it considers
nature, at least as far as its propagation is concerned, as itself producing rather
than merely developing those things that can initially be represented as possible
only in accordance with the causality of ends” (CPJ 5:424). Thus, “with the
least possible appeal to the supernatural,” the epigenetic theorist can explain
how organisms reproduce without “determining anything” about the first
beginnings of nature (CPJ 5:424). Blumenbach attributes purposiveness to
natural products and without violating the laws of mechanism in his musings on
epigenetics, according to Kant, for he affirms that matter is lifeless, still
reserves a role for the material, but holds that matter must be shaped by a
faculty, or a
“formative drive” [Bildungstrieb] (CPJ 5:424). In this way, Kant seems to be
informally endorsing the view that natural products possess a non-material
formative power for shaping otherwise unshaped the otherwise raw materials of
which they are composed. There is no mention of concepts or representations
guiding this formative power.
The possession of such a power is consistent with Kant’s remarks when
discussing a tree’s ability to grow. He states that “in the separation and new
composition of this raw material” belonging to a tree, we witness an “originality
of its capacity for separation and formation [Scheidungs- und
Bildungsvermögen] in this kind of natural being that remains infinitely far
removed from that of all fine art [Kunst]” (CPJ 5:371). In these passages, a tree
is depicted as the kind of entity that possesses capacities and powers for self-
directed activity. Its capacities and powers, to boot, betray an organization that
exceeds that of fine art in its refinement. These signs point to the presence of a
real, objective, inner purposiveness in the vegetable kingdom.
Though we might imagine that the inner principle involved in the
activity of an ensouled being is representational, Kant need not be committed to
such a claim. Indeed, there are cases in which Kant appears to endorse an
alternative, non-representational kind of teleology in Critical period writings,
such as the Idea for a Universal History: “All natural predispositions of a
creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and
purposively. With all animals, external as well as internal or analytical
observation confirms this. An organ that is not to be used, an arrangement that
does not attain to its end, is a contradiction in the teleological doctrine of
nature” (Idea 8:18). This “teleological doctrine of nature” proposes that there is
an “aim of nature” (Idea 8:18) that is not rational. Natural predispositions in
animals develop purposively. Combining this with an understanding of
purposiveness as a kind of causality according to which inner principles ground
the reality of their consequences suggests an account of the animal according to
which its predispositions are internal principles, guiding a real, objective, inner
purposiveness built into it by nature. What Kant could be a suggesting here is a
quasi-Aristotelian kind of ensoulment, which states that the soul animates the
living body by mobilizing it in accordance with in-built ends.
Indeed, one ramification of this picture of organic teleology is that it
draws Kant’s position very close to Aristotle’s. In the De anima, Aristotle
defines the soul as the “first actuality (entelékheia) of an organic natural body”
(DA II.1, 412b5-6). One way of beginning to parse this notorious definition of
the soul is to scrutinize the term “first actuality.” A first actuality, or an
entelékheia, is literally that which has (échein) ends in it (enteles). On
Aristotle’s view, a soul, one might say, is that which contains the ends of a
natural organic body. While such a body is distinguished from a non-organic
body on the basis that it is capable of receiving life, the soul as entelékheia is
that which actualizes the life of such a body; it is what animates what is merely
potentially a living body. The way in which it animates the body is by inducing
motion in the body for the sake of certain ends. For instance, in the case of a
nutritive soul, the ends of nourishment and reproduction animate a plant and
explain why it spreads its roots in a certain direction, grows to a certain height,
and so forth; animals possess nutritive, appetite, and perceptive “souls”,
explaining why an animal moves toward prey and averts predators; and a
human being possesses all of these as well as an intellective soul, which would
explain why a human being pursues abstract ends such as knowledge and
wisdom (see DA ii 3, 414a31-2).
In short, Aristotle seems to have developed a teleological, or purposive,
understanding of the soul. An organism is a combination of soul and body.
While the body is that which is capable of receiving life, a soul is that which
breathes life into an organic body. To breathe life into such a body is to induce
motion in the body for the sake of certain ends essential to that soul. Again, the
ends of nourishment and reproduction are, in some sense, built into the nutritive
soul, and so all living things strive to nourish themselves and reproduce their
species. Aristotle does not appeal to representation to explain why or how a soul
induces motion in a living body. An organism simply has its ends in it and
observing the organism in motion allows us to deduce that it is acting for the
sake of those ends.
Likewise, according to the Level 1 definition of life, we need not invoke
representation talk to explain the life of the organism. As long as we conceive of
the ends of the tree as internal to it and explain the tree as that which exists for
the sake of its ends (nourishment, reproduction, self-regulation, and so on), we
can (perhaps should) forego attributing representations to the tree. After all, we
cannot know what it is like to be a tree. While it is clear that a tree’s existence is
explainable in non-mechanical, teleological terms, it suffices for us to attribute
ends to the tree without adjudicating on whether those ends are mental states or
not. Yet, along with Aristotle, we may maintain that the purposive activity of a
substance is indicative of its being ensouled, or its possessing the minimum
prerequisite for being counted among the living.
Since trees are not taken by Kant to possess concepts (and likely not
representations either) but can still be understood to act in accordance with
ends, there must be kinds of purposiveness that are non-representational.
Because life is a faculty of inner purposiveness, it follows that there may be
kinds of life that exercise a non-representational purposiveness. So, while
commentators such as Alexandra Newton (2017) have taken the
characterizations of life involving desire to be definitive of Kant’s views on the
subject, attributing to him the view that only animals and humans are alive, on
my account it is still possible to extend life to plants. We can conceive of plants
as exercising a capacity for life that does not involve representations and
therefore not involving desire.
1.3. Level 3 life
Whereas Level 2 distinguishes between living things capable of
representing on the one hand and living things that are not capable of
representing on the other hand, Level 3 marks a further distinction within the
class of only those living things that represent. Some living things have robustly
rational capacities for representing. Other living beings, such as non-human
animals, are limited to irrational capacities for representing.
As the passage from the Metaphysical Foundations quoted above states, we
have intimate acquaintance with a form of life that takes desires as its internal
principle and uses that to condition activities of thinking, feeling, and willing.
Rational living beings possess a faculty of thought and a will in addition to
desiring. Kant defines the will in relation to both the faculty of desire and
thought in §10 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. “The faculty of
desire,” he writes, “insofar as it is determinable only through concepts, i.e., to
act in accordance with the representation of an end, would be the will” (CPJ
5:220). As we saw above, the faculty of desire is a being’s capacity to be, by
means of its representations, that which brings about the objects of its
representations. When the representation guiding that process of realization is a
particular kind of concept (that is, a concept of an end), Kant is now adding that
the faculty of desire is actually the faculty of volition, or the will. For a rational
being, which possesses concepts and a will, life is the capacity of a thing to
determine its state by thinking about, and subsequently willing, the objects of
its desires.
Kant clearly maintains that animals are alive but rejects that they have
robust cognitive capacities like the understanding or apperception. In the
introduction to their edited volume Kant and Animals, Lucy Allais and John
Callanan cite textual evidence for the claims that Kant believes animals have a
power of choice, the ability to feel sensible impulses, experience subjective
necessity, and may possess many other fairly robust mental capacities (see
2020, pp. 2-3). Kant even says that “We call an animal alive because it has a
faculty to alter its own state as a consequence of its own representations” (LM
28: 449). However, Kant stops short of saying that animals think with concepts.
As Naomi Fisher helpfully summarizes in their article “Kant on animal minds,”
But as is clear from the first sentence of the Anthropology, animals have
no ‘I’, no unity of apperception, and no consciousness (Anth 7:127; LM
28:276). Furthermore, animals have no understanding, and so cannot
cognize objects (Logik 9:64–5) and they have no concepts (Logik
24:702), since the understanding is the faculty for the use of concepts.
Moreover, they lack the capacity to make judgments; for example, since
it lacks “the higher cognitive faculty” of the understanding, the ox
cannot judge that the door belongs to the stable (FS 2:59). Because the
understanding is that which takes the material from the senses and
synthesizes this material into objective, conscious cognition, animals
with no understanding are limited to the material from the senses.
(Fisher 2017)
Kant also attributes “feelings and a faculty of desire” to “brutes” in his final
letter to Marcus Herz
(26 May 1789). On top of this, he seems to leave room for the possibility that
even mollusks desire
when he writes, “The human has sense to perceive, understanding to think, and
a will to choose or reject. If he had nothing more than a sensitive faculty and
desiring, he would be like a sensitive plant or a mollusk” (Letters 16:7). And in
the pre-Critical essay The false subtlety of the four syllogistic figures, Kant
states that non-human animals may lack the powers requisite for logically
differentiating between two things, but are capable of physically differentiating
between two things, which means they may be “driven to different actions by
different representations” (False 2:60). For instance, Kant argues that a dog’s
sensations of a delectable roast placed alongside a loaf “are a ground of desire
in the dog which differs from the desire caused by the loaf” (ibid). This is all to
say that Kant typically thinks of animals and other lower life-forms as things
that possess some faculty of representation. Moreover, it may be the case that,
as the very last passage suggests, an animal’s sub-rational representations
ground a sub-rational (or irrational) desire to act in a particular way. Such
passages may provide us with all the ammunition we need to contend that
representations below the level of concepts and ideas can guide the living
activity of nonhuman animals. Animals have a capacity to determine
themselves in accordance with inner principles, where those inner principles a
sensations and desires that do not rise to the level of concepts or cognitions.
1.4. Responding to the literature on life
Across the secondary literature, we encounter commentators and critics
who employ one or several of the definitions of life sketched above. However,
there are two vices reproduced in the literature on Kant’s doctrine of life: Either
commentators locate Kant’s definition of life at the wrong level of the concept
tree or commentators fail to relay the definition of life and its various divisions
and subdivisions of life altogether. What we are left with is a body of literature
that lacks consensus on not only what Kant’s fundamental definition of life
should be, but on what the sphaera of the concept is.
Some commentators locate Kant’s definition of life at Level 2 of Figure 2.
Patrick Leland
(2020) says that Kant understands organisms to be living things with a capacity
for representation. Whereas some commentators distinguish organisms (e.g.
humans and animals) from living beings without a capacity for representation
(e.g. plants), Leland argues that all living beings are organisms, allowing that
Kant granted lower life forms such as plants a capacity to represent. He takes
Kant to be expressing this view straightforwardly when he says, “The capacity
of a being to act according to its representations is called life” (MM 6:211).
Leland sums up his view as follows:
organisms are distinguished by their capacity for endogenously
produced behavior; instincts are the mechanisms for the production of
this behavior; and representations mediate the interface between
instincts and external stimuli. On this view, the capacity for
representation is said to be essential to the nature of a living thing
because the behavior that distinguishes organisms from mechanically
explicable products of nature is mediated by representations. (2020, 2)
Leland’s view is instructive for a number of reasons. For one, he is correct to
observe that Kant does intimately associate living with representing. Second,
his view suggests that there are different kinds of organism, though it does not
quite provide an adequate basis for distinguishing different kinds of organism
from one another. Third, this view’s emphasis on organisms’ endogenous
behavior points us in a fruitful direction. However, it is not entirely clear what it
would mean to say that representation is essential to life. If, as we may suspect,
Leland takes the inner principles determining a living being’s activity to be
representations, then he is mistaking a division of life for the definition of life.
Besides Leland, in “Kant on plants” Tyke Nunez states that “for embodied
beings to be alive is to have a faculty of representation, specifically desire,
through which it can be the cause of the objects of its representations in the
material world” (2021,
p. 9). By indicating that desire is the means by which a living think “can be the
cause of the objects of its representations in the material world”, Nunez is
mistaking a subdivision of a division of life for the definition of life. Likewise,
Alexandra Newton asserts that Kant’s characterization of life as the faculty to
act in accordance with the laws of desire from the Critique of Practical Reason
is his most basic definition of life (Newton 2017).
Then, there are the entries on life from the various Kant lexica. All of
these entries are even less committal than the views expressed in the secondary
literature, often offering us fragments that could be incorporated into a complete
concept tree for <life>, but stopping short of advancing a fundamental
definition of expounding on the divisions beneath the concept. Howard
Caygill’s entry for “life” in his Kant Dictionary exemplifies this tendency:
Kant’s thoughts on life may be divided into three groups, all of which
are found in the CJ. The first group is concerned with what might be
described as the ‘worth of life’ and is exemplified by the footnote to CJ
83. The ‘worth of life’ measured in terms of enjoyment or happiness is
‘less than nothing’; it only receives worth when lived in accordance
with reason or ‘with a view to an end so independent of nature that the
very existence of nature itself can only be an end subject to the
condition so imposed’. Alongside this view of the value of life Kant
holds another, opposed but internally consistent position. This is
summed up by the position from that ‘of itself alone, the mind (Gemüt)
is all life (the life principle itself), and its hindrance or furtherance has
to be sought outside it, and yet in the human beings themselves, and
consequently in connection with their bodies.’ In this view, life is a
complex relationship between the body, the outside world, and the mind
[Gemüt]. This may be related to 1 of CJ where Kant relates the feeling
of life possessed by a subject with the ‘feeling of pleasure or
displeasure’, thus bring together life, the mind, and pleasure and pain. In
the light of this concept of life, many of Kant’s unremarked comments
on ‘life’ in the first part of CJ take on considerable significance. In the
third group, Kant considers life in terms of the ‘organised products’ of
nature; it is in this context that he made the celebrated claim concerning
the absurdity of the hope ‘that maybe another Newton may some day
arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass
from natural laws that no design has ordered’ (CJ 75). (Caygill 1995,
278-9)
While Caygill’s entry does accurately identify few aspects of Kant’s notion of
life, it also demonstrates what is lacking. Caygill is correct to point out Kant’s
relating the “feeling of life” to the feelings of pleasure and displeasure. Caygill
is also correct to point out that Kant classifies the mind as the principle of life at
various points throughout his lectures and writings, although he sometimes also
identifies this principle of life as “the soul.” And Caygill astutely mentions
Kant’s most recognized characterization of a living thing as an organized
product in this passage. That is, living things exhibit an ability to conduct
themselves in an end-directed way, and this is showcased by their ability to
reproduce, self-regulate, and self-preserve (see CPJ 5:370ff). Nevertheless,
there are several matters that Caygill’s entry does not even mention some of
Kant’s most straightforward definitions of life in his written work and lecture
notes. As such, Caygill completely neglects discussion of the role of
representation, desire, thought, purposiveness, will, and a number of other key
faculties in Kant’s doctrine of life. In a sense, Caygill does not even put forward
a proposal for what Kant could mean by life.
The entry on life in the Kant Lexikon (2015) goes beyond Caygill’s
entry, providing much more information about what is included in Kant’s
definition of life. Still, this entry does not settle on one definition to prize above
others. This entry explores the relationship between life and natural ends, life
and the soul, and life and the faculty of desire. Moreover, it makes a number of
striking claims and observations. The entry states that the soul and life are
synonymous ideas to
Kant (2015, 1376) and that life should be understood as a regulative concept of
reason (2015, 1378). Also, noting that Kant associates life with the faculty of
desire, the entry raises the question of whether such an association bodes well
or poorly for the prospect of plant and animal life (2015, 1377). Overall, the
entry contains a number of a provocative suggestions, but leaves the reader with
more questions than answers. It is unclear what the most basic definition of life
is and how the various species of the concept relate to it.
Karen Ng’s entry for “Life” in the Cambridge Kant Lexicon associates
Kant’s notion of life with other important philosophical concepts of his and
comes closest to offering a definition of life. Ng begins by highlighting Kant’s
definition of life as the “capacity to initiate a state (of oneself or another) from
an inner principle” (R3855. This definition seems to echo our most abstract
definition of life, Life 0. Here, life is the capacity to act from some inner
principle, and we can infer that this inner principle may, but need not, be
represented, insofar as it is an inner. Ng rightly notes that this definition of life
shares affinity with Kant’s emphasis on spontaneity and internal purposiveness,
even suggesting that this definition of life leads to Kant’s definition of a
“natural end” in the third Critique. Kant’s critique of hylozoism is also
recapitulated in this entry, leading Ng to conclude that the principle and force
associated with life is an immaterial principle, an idea that perhaps echoes the
claim that soul and life are synonymous from the Lexikon entry (2021, 277).
Crucially, Ng emphasizes that the only means of acquainting oneself with this
life force is through the regulative use of a concept deployed in the form of a
reflective judgment (see CPJ 5:375). Lastly, Ng’s entry reports a number of
fascinating remarks about the relationship between life, pleasure, and pain, as
well as a few about love of life as a natural impulse. As is the case with entries
in other lexica, Ng’s entry offers us tantalizing bits, but does not quite commit
to a single, central definition of life.
The deficits in the secondary literature correspond to obstacles in the
way of a unified doctrine of life. Kant’s remarks on life are scattered and at
times inconsistent. The secondary literature reflects the scattered and conflicting
nature of Kant’s remarks but often stops short of attempting to impose order on
the chaos. When a commentator does attempt to impose order, they opt for one
of the definitions offered in the first subsection without entertaining any of the
other candidate definitions or arguing why the definition of life they choose is
more plausible than any other. In short, the literature sometimes leaves the
question of what Kant’s definition of life is underexplored or acknowledges
Kant’s inconsistencies and vagueness on this point without attempting to
advance a central definition of life.
If we keep in mind that Kant’s definition of life only specifies that it is
the capacity of a thing to act in accordance with principles internal to it and
hold out powers of representation, desire, and so forth as elements that are only
introduced within divisions of the concept, these confusions dissipate. Life is
defined at Level 1. Levels 2 and 3 only pick out various kinds of life and should
therefore only be predicated of certain kinds of living being.
2. What is the inner principle of life?
So far, I have argued that something is an organism only if it is alive. To
be alive is to possess a faculty to determine oneself in accordance with inner
principles. Until now, I have settled for a merely negative appraisal of what
inner principles – that is, they are not external principles, or states of matter that
temporally precede and being about an alteration in another material substance,
inducing either motion or rest. In some cases, we have seen that these inner
principles can be concepts, representations, and even feelings. But what do all
of these have in common that makes them inner principles? Furthermore,
insofar as our conceptual analysis of life allows for the possibility that there are
non- or sub-representational forms of life, how could our account of an inner
principle reflect this feature of the concept?
I argue that we should read the inner principles of the faculty of life as values.
For reasons that will become clearer below, we should also interpret this notion
of value as amoral. For instance, someone can consider robbing a bank as a
good for them, even if stealing is never (in some thicker, more loaded sense of
the term) good. The reading I develop here makes Kant a forerunner of a
somewhat recent trend in the literature on life and the organism. This trend
characterizes the living activity of (at least certain) organisms as a functional
unity that is explained
by and in terms of values. I shall first explain Mark Bedau’s distinction between
three grades of teleology before turning to the evidence for applying this
distinction to Kant. For Kant, I believe that this evaluative conception of the
teleology of living things is most readily applicable to the human being and to
artifacts. For that reason, our analysis will begin by applying the evaluative
account to the task of analyzing these two cases. We will then consider how far
down the chain of living organic activity we can descend.
In his 1992 “Where’s the good in teleology?”, Mark Bedau distinguishes
between three grades of teleology, thereby clarifying what the controversy
regarding teleology in biology really concerns. All three grades ascribe value to
some activity, but only the highest grade deems value genuinely explanatory.
The first grade is formulated in the following way:
[G1] A Bs in order to C iff A Bs and A’s Bing contributes to Cing and
Cing is good for A. According to G1, a teleological explanation of some thing
mentions that its activity contributes to some end and conjoins the claim that the
end is valuable to that explanation. For instance, we say that Amalia powerlifts
in order to get stronger. In our explanation of the relationship between
powerlifting and getting stronger, we note that powerlifting does indeed
augment one’s strength and that having strength is good for Amalia. However,
Amalia’s powerlifting, on G1, merely performs the function of making her
stronger, and any benefits that becoming stronger may have for her is merely
accidental. Increased strength being good Amalia is merely accidental in this
case, not genuinely explanatory of why she powerlifts.
For the sake of screening off accidental benefits, Bedau introduces a slightly
stronger version of G1:
[G2] A Bs in order to C iff [A Bs because A’s Bing contributes to Cing] and
Cing is good.
The bracket around the “A Bs because A’s being contributes to Cing” is meant
to specify that, in the case of G2, the explanation for A’s Bing still does not
depend on the goodness of Cing. Amalia powerlifts because she wants to get
stronger, but the benefits of her increased strength are still not, for whatever
reason, why she chooses to powerlift.
Only the third grade of teleology captures what it means for a value to be
genuinely explanatory.
[G3] A Bs in order to C iff A Bs because [A’s Bing contributes to Cing
and Cing is good]. According to G3, Amalia powerlifts because she wants to get
stronger and because she recognizes that getting stronger is good for her. One
way of conceiving of this decision procedure is to think of it as something
reminiscent to a practical syllogism (see Bedau 1992, section 4):
1. Getting stronger is good for you.
2. Amalia’s powerlifting is a means to getting stronger.
3. Therefore, Amalia powerlifts.
Of course, as Bedau acknowledges, this is an invalid argument. So he adds that
“One could fill this gap by appealing to a background theory about naturalistic
telic mechanisms, which have the ability to convert the value of an end into an
efficient cause of a means to that end. Given an appropriate theory about telic
mechanisms, the premises of the argument above would be sufficient to
guarantee the truth of the conclusion” (1992, 795). One such telic mechanism is
a mind. Adapted to the activity of a mental agent, G3 should be modified as
follows:
[G3.1] A Bs in order to C iff A Bs because A believes the following telic
structure: [A’s Bing is a means to Cing & Cing is good].
If I quit drinking coffee in order to get better sleep, I believe that quitting coffee
is a means of bringing about better sleep and getting better quality sleep is good
for me. But, in accordance with the amoral account of value Bedau develops,
the good of a mental agent does not have to be a genuine good. I could, for
instance, increase my caffeine intake in order to be more productive, believing
that a higher caffeine intake is a means to productivity and that greater
productivity is good for me. However, this course of action is certainly not good
for my health in the long run, and it is certainly not the case that increased
productivity at the expense of one’s health is a genuinely good thing.
Another modified version of G3 explains artifacts.
[G3.3] A Bs in order to C iff A Bs because D made A B in order to C.
An oven warms up in order to cook pizza because I made the oven so that it
could warm up and cook me pizzas. In this case, pizzas are of value to me, the
designer of the oven. That value not only guides my design of the oven, but also
gives me a measure for figuring out whether the oven is working or not. The
oven is in top shape as long as it can cook me pizzas in a timely fashion; the
oven is broken if it cannot serve the purpose of making me pizza. Notice,
however, that my assessment of whether or not this is a good oven depends on
what is valuable to me, the artificer and user of the oven.
One final idea from Bedau’s paper is worth mentioning here. To him, the
controversy about teleology in biology has to do with grade three teleology.
Most biologists find it perfectly fine to believe that there could be grade two
forms of teleological explanation in biology.
Since survival is good (indeed, the paramount good) for forms of life, the scope
difference between grade two and grade three comes into play when
natural selection operates over living populations. The scope difference
concerns whether the goodness of survival plays an essential role within
the natural selection explanation (grade three), or whether the goodness
of survival is merely conjoined to the explanation (grade two). (Bedau
1992, 801)
Biologists worry that attributing grade three teleology to all organisms would
require an appeal to deism, and modern biology has no place for a deity. On top
of that, many believe that teleology in biology requires a single global purpose
that harmonizes all local purposes, but the fact of the matter is that there is
vicious competition in the observable biological world. And lastly biologists
worry that grade three teleology appeals to ad hoc theoretical posits, like vital
forces. For reasons I will forego spelling out here, Bedau thinks it is not out of
the question that grade three teleology may exist in the biological world after all
(see 1992, section 10). What matters most is that grade three teleology is what
biologists find controversial. In addition, grade three teleology is what seems
most consonant with Kant’s depiction of life as a substance’s faculty of
determining itself in accordance with an inner principle.
Kant’s various characterizations of the life of the human being seem to involve
grade three teleology. A human being’s life has desires as its grounds and
produces activities like willing, thinking, and feeling pleasure. Suppose I have a
desire to make my niece happy. On the basis of my desire, I may buy my niece
a birthday present and take her to the zoo. Notice that activity in accordance
with a desire in this context can be easily transposed into a Bedau-style
analysis. Indeed, such an analysis may shed more light on why I adopt the
course of action that I adopted. I buy my niece a nice birthday present and take
to the zoo in order to make her happy, where I believe that the activities of
buying her a nice present and taking her to the zoo contribute to her happiness
and that making her happy is a good thing (hence my desire for it). Such an
analysis of Kant’s notion of human life presupposes that we value that which
we desire. This is strikingly concordant with some of Kant’s remarks on desire
in his lectures on psychology:
The faculty of pleasure and displeasure was the relation of the object to
our feeling of activity, either of the promotion or of the obstruction of
life. But insofar as the faculty of pleasure and displeasure is a faculty of
certain activities and actions which are suitable to it, to that extent there
is a desire. Desire is thus a pleasure insofar as it is a ground of an
activity for determining certain representations of the object. If the
representation is a ground for determining us for the object, then we
desire the object. Dissatisfaction in an object, insofar as it can be the
cause of a representation, is abhorrence. (LM 28:253-4) …we can desire
or abhor nothing which is not based on pleasure or displeasure. For that
which gives me no pleasure, I also do not want. (LM 29:877-8)
I desire nothing but what pleases, and avoid nothing but what
displeases. (LM 29:894)
In these passages, we encounter a deep connection between the desires that
impel living activity and their pleasurableness. In every case, I act on the basis
of desires and desire only what I find pleasurable. While the invocation of
pleasure as a source of or a feeling that tracks desire might seem to make Kant’s
theory of desire shallow, it is worth noting here that pleasure seems to track
something deeper than just a bodily sensation. Appropriately, Kant repeatedly
asserts that there are sensible pleasures and intellectual pleasures. For instance,
“The pleasant and the beautiful is a sensible pleasure, but the good an
intellectual pleasure” (LM 28:587). Pleasure is induced by a wide range of
phenomena and in a wide range of ways. What also stands out is Kant’s
insistence that pleasure tracks the attainment of or failure to attain our desires:
Pleasure is the representation of the agreement of an object or of an
action with subjective conditions of life. (CPrR 5:9n)
Pleasure and displeasure is thus a faculty of the agreement or of the
conflict of the principle of life with respect to certain representations or
impressions of objects. (LM 28:247).
In these contexts, pleasure results from bringing about our desires and therefore
successfully bringing the “principle of life” into fruition. Displeasure results
from feeling thwarted in our lived pursuits.
Putting all of these elements of Kant’s psychology together, I propose that we
think of life as the capacity to act in accordance with what we find valuable. My
desires are predicated on what brings about pleasure, as Kant says above, and
what I find pleasurable is simply that which has value to me. Those values can
be wide-ranging, just as my pleasures could be. I could find an icecold coffee
on a hot morning pleasurable. On that basis, I might drink an ice-cold coffee on
a hot morning in order to feel this pleasure. In this case, the value of that feeling
genuinely explains why I decided to make the iced coffee on a hot morning. But
a human may also have rational interests and derive a certain pleasure from
pursuing those. For instance, a philosopher presumably (read: hopefully)
desires truth. So, a philosopher may write a treatise in order to get at the truth of
some issue. In this case, the philosopher has a belief that their writing a treatise
will contribute to their discovering the truth and that attaining the truth is
(perhaps the one unconditional) good. Their desire for the truth is something
they find valuable, and in this case we once again find that this value is driving
and actively structuring the composition of the treatise.
At this point, I hope to have shown that it is plausible to think Kant’s account
of the activity of a living human being is consistent with the evaluative
conception of teleology developed by Bedau. We may also wonder whether this
conception of life as a value-driven and value-directed activity can suit
subhuman lifeforms, as well. The textual evidence may support this. As we saw
above, Kant forcefully maintains that non-human animals are not mere
machines. In some cases, he even attributes a power of choice to animals and
states that they have an ability to act on the basis of their choices. Furthermore,
Kant frequently distinguishes between higher and lower faculties of desire in
his Lectures on Metaphysics (see, e.g., LM 28:228-9). If desires are the name
for the values that serve as the inner principles of living activity for Kant, the
fact that non-human animals possess, at the very least, a lower faculty of desire
may be enough to establish that an animal can have and act in accordance with
certain values. A bird brings its offspring food because it believes (in some
primitive way) that giving its offspring food will contribute to its survival and it
values the survival of its offspring. All that we would need to make sense of the
fact that an animal has values and acts in accordance with those values is to
attribute a primitive mind to it.
Kant seems rather comfortable doing that throughout his writings and lectures.
Things get more complicated with lifeforms that are lower on the chain
of organic being. Notwithstanding an odd remark about “sensitive plants,” Kant
does admit that “there are also various small degrees of life” in the plant
kingdom (LM 28:205). If life is just a faculty to act in accordance with inner
principles, where those inner principles are the living thing’s values, it would
appear to follow that a plant could act in accordance with its values to some
“small degree.” Moreover, if the concept of life does not exclude the possibility
that these inner principles are nonrepresentational, we may not need to attribute
even a primitive mind to the plant. Perhaps it is possible to say that, in some
minimal and to us inaccessible way, a tree values its growth, selfmaintenance,
and so forth. When we say that it has life, we understand the tree as the kind of
thing that organizes itself in accordance with these values, its roots, branches,
leaves, etc. structured as both means and ends for each other precisely because
such a configuration contributes to the realization of what we might call “tree
values” – e.g., reproduction, self-maintenance, and so forth.
3. Conclusion
The internal-principle-grounded activity of an organism presupposes a
capacity for exercising such an activity. For Kant, this capacity is life. As we
also saw above, we can conceive of various sense of life. Most generically,
though, life is the capacity of a substance to act in accordance with inner
principles. While the literature has mistaken a species of life to be the core
definition of the concept, my analysis helps to clarify that the most generic
definition of life need not involve any sort of representation at all. I have also
shown that Kant’s conception of living activity is strikingly consonant with a
recent trend in the philosophy of life, which takes living activity out to be
teleological in the sense that it involves and is explained in terms of the values
of the living thing.
When I turn my attention to Kant’s daunting Antinomy of the
Teleological Power of Judgment, we shall see that the account of the organism
and life developed in this chapter provide us with a new way of understanding
Kant’s claim that organisms are mechanically inexplicable.
PART II
Chapter 4. Are there organisms in nature?
One conclusion we should take away from Part I is that the very concept
of nature does not prevent us from thinking of nature and natural products as
governed by mechanism and as organized teleologically. We can conceive of a
natural object both as a machine driven by external causes and as a living
organism driven by internal causes. Despite this, we should wonder whether and
how the concepts of mechanism and teleology extend to nature and natural
objects. To be able to think organisms is one thing. However, a significant
question remains unanswered: Are there really organisms in nature? If we can
establish that there are organisms in nature, then we can establish that at least
some forms of non-mechanistic causality are indeed present in nature. Before
even evaluating what Kant says, common sense suggests that the answer to this
question is, “Of course there are organisms in nature.” There are cats, plumeria
plants, human beings, beetles, and all sorts of other lifeforms all over the planet.
They vary in shape, size, complexity, and across many other dimensions, but we
can definitively say that the entities we call organisms are fundamentally
different from rocks, cars, lamps, and “autonomous” vacuums. For this reason,
too, we might scoff at philosophies and philosophers that reject the rather
obvious assertion that there are organisms. Descartes’s view that animals do not
possess intelligence and are therefore mere machines might provoke a cringe
because it represents an affront to the commonsense view. One might
(justifiably) feel a certain sense of unease when faced with the claim that dogs
are no different from clocks.
So, does Kant’s Critical thought on the organism present us with a view that
aligns with
“common sense” or one that is closer to Descartes’s? Recent scholarship puts
forward a reading of
Kant that makes him out to be a Cartesian in this sense. Commentators have
typically thought that
there is considerable evidence in favor of attributing to Kant the view that
nature is mechanistic and that all natural objects are nothing more than
machines – or the mechanistic reading of nature, as I have called it above. To
them, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that we can determinately judge that
nature and natural objects are mechanistic. Those same commentators often
note that judgments which explain nature and natural objects teleologically are
not so readily evidenced by nature. According to the consensus view, while it
makes sense to determinately judge that certain objects are organized in
accordance with mechanism, judging that a thing is a teleologicallystructured
organism is something we do merely reflectively. Whereas we can prove that
mechanism applies to objects, we only reflect upon nature as if it’s
teleologically structured. We should read this “as if” claim as describing an act
of mental projection that is either a mere fiction or descriptive of a state of
affairs that may or may not obtain in nature. In other words, organisms are
either convenient fictions or mere theoretical posits that we can never truly say
exist. Phrased as a response to the titular question, these commentators have
two responses. Some say, on Kant’s behalf, “There are no organisms in nature”
point blank; others say “There may or may not be organisms in nature” giving
both possibilities equal weight.
In this chapter, I frame my forthcoming reading of the Antinomy of the
Power of Teleological Judgment by presenting and analyzing these popular
answers to the question “Are there organisms in nature?”. I first show that
commentators are right to point out that Kant believes there is direct evidence
for attributing mechanism to nature. However, he never quite explicitly states
that we definitively establish that all products of nature are mere machines and
that there could never be organisms. It makes sense that Kant never states these
claims explicitly, for, as I show, Kant’s text contains evidence that nature and
some natural objects are organized purposively.
I finally discuss the difference between determining and reflecting judgment to
add that, while we merely reflectively judge that natural products are
teleological, we need not deny or resort to skepticism about the existence of
organisms. Surely, we can never empirically cognize the causality characteristic
of an organism, but this does not foreclose every path to establishing the
existence of organisms. All of this shall set us up for appreciating my original
answer to the main question up for discussion – namely, for Kant, there are
organisms in nature, and our assent to this proposition is a matter of belief.
1. Evidence for the mechanism of nature
Before discussing the possibility that there are organisms, we must
acknowledge that there are many natural objects which are thoroughly
explained and dictated by the Laws of Mechanics. There is good reason to
believe that a mechanistic understanding of nature should have special priority
in Kant’s philosophy. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the
scope of the Laws of Mechanics extends to all material things. The First Law of
Mechanics scopes over “all changes of corporeal nature” (MFNS 4:541), the
Second Law applies to “every change in matter” (MFNS 4:543), and the Third
Law to “all communication of motion” in matter (MFNS 4:544). If we think of
the “mechanism of nature” as all of nature insofar as it is governed by the Laws
of Mechanics and find that, everywhere we turn, we can explain the changes
material objects undergo in terms of mechanism, that seems like compelling
evidence for the claim that we can determine nature is thoroughly mechanistic.
As Kant states in the body of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, “It might
always be possible that in, e.g., an animal body, many parts could be conceived
as consequences of merely mechanical laws” (CPJ 5:377). An animal body
counts as just one kind of natural object presented to us in outer sense. Since the
Laws of Mechanics apply to all objects presented to us in space and time, we
might also infer that it might always be possible that, for any material body
presented to us in outer sense, its parts can be conceived of as possible as
consequences of merely mechanical laws. In short, physics is a (perhaps the)
true natural science in the sense that it describes the composition of and
interactions among all material bodies in accordance with universal and
necessary laws. To the extent that mechanism describes this physical picture of
nature, it provides an objectively valid picture of nature.
Kant directly endorses the idea that we should strive to explain nature
mechanistically as far as we possibly can all throughout the third Critique: “We
can and should be concerned to investigate nature, so far as lies within our
capacity, in experience, in its causal connection in accordance with merely
mechanical laws: for in these lie the true physical grounds of explanation, the
interconnection of which constitutes scientific cognition of nature through
reason” (CPJ 20:235). Passages like these seem cut-and-dry. “Merely
mechanical laws” are the “true physical grounds of explanation.” Insofar as we
can apply these laws to nature, we gain further insight into its physical
composition and make strides in our natural science. Everywhere we search, we
find that nature can be dissected and analyzed in mechanistic terms. Evidence
for the claim that nature is governed by mechanistic laws is plentiful.
2. Evidence for the teleology of nature
Though there is plenty of evidence supporting the notion that we should
seek to extend our mechanistic explanations of nature as far as possible, two
considerations prevent us from conclusively affirming that nature is all and only
mechanism. The first consideration is negative. Kant frequently asserts that
mechanism is never adequate for explaining all of nature and the objects in it on
its own. The second consideration is positive. In passages often neglected by
commentators, Kant maintains that there is evidence of purposiveness in nature.
Kant never explicitly endorses the notion that the principles of mechanism are
constitutive of nature as such, and even before the beginning of the Antinomy
of the Teleological Power of Judgment, he asserts that mechanism on its own
cannot exhaustively explain the generation of nature and natural products. In
the opening section of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant
states that the organization of certain natural products cannot be explained by
appeal to efficient causes alone. The contingent structure of a bird would
remain unexplained if we considered the bird merely a product of mechanism:
“considered as a mere mechanism, [it] could have formed itself in a thousand
different ways” (CPJ 5:360). To explain the structure of a bird, we need to
appeal to a nexus of final causes, and the need to invoke such a principle in our
explanations of certain natural products indicates that, in certain cases, “the
laws of causality about the mere mechanism of nature do not suffice” (ibid).
Likewise, in §64, Kant adds that the growth of a plant occurs “with a quality
peculiar to its species, which could not be provided by the mechanism of nature
outside it” (CPJ 5:371). In general, the motion of a thing we take to be an
organized being displays a “self-propagating formative power” that cannot be
reduced to mechanism (CPJ 5:375).
It is not just the case that alternative teleological forms of explanation are
appropriate in certain cases; Kant often puts forward the stronger claim that we
must abandon mechanical explanations in some situations. For instance, he
holds that “the power of judgment first makes it possible, indeed necessary, to
conceive in nature, over and above its mechanical necessity, a
purposiveness” (CPJ 20:219). Kant later explains that this necessity arises
because, although we
“can and should” investigate nature in accordance with merely mechanical
laws,
we find among the products of nature special and very widely
distributed genera, which contain within themselves a combination of
efficient causes that we must ground in the concept of an end, even if
we wish to employ only experience, i.e., observation in accordance with
a principle suitable to their inner possibility. If we wished to judge their
form and its possibility merely in accordance with mechanical laws, in
which the idea of the effect must not be taken as the ground of the
possibility of their cause, but vice versa, then it would be impossible to
obtain even one experiential concept of the specific form of these
natural things which would put us in the position to move from their
inner disposition as cause to the effect, since the parts of these
machines, not insofar as each has a separate ground of its possibility but
rather only insofar as all together have a common ground, are the cause
of the effect that is visible in them. (CPJ 20:235)
This passage follows Kant’s statement regarding the possibility of explaining
nature mechanistically referenced in the previous section. On its own, that
passage appeared to support the notion that nature can and should be explained
in accordance with mere mechanical laws. Yet here Kant adds that in our
investigations of nature, we come across natural products the form of which we
cannot explain in simply mechanistic terms. “Physical-mechanical causes”, as
Kant goes on to call them (CPJ 20:236), are insufficient in our attempt to
account for the purposive structures we happen upon in nature. Kant further
illustrates what he means here by invoking the example of a human eye. We
cannot exhaustively explain the form and organization of the human eye in
merely mechanistic terms. We might think that explaining why the eye is
structured as it is necessitates purposiveness. An eye is structured in the way
that it is in order to be used for seeing.
The purpose of seeing conditions or explains the contingent structure and
activity of the eye (see CPJ 20:240), and this purpose is clearly not a physical-
mechanical cause.
Later, my reading of the Antinomy of the Teleological Power of Judgment will
add reinforcement to the points sketched above. In the Antinomy, Kant never
declares that mechanism will one day exhaustively explain nature and actually
stops short of saying that the principle of mechanism should be considered
constitutive of nature. Furthermore, we shall see that Kant consistently
maintains that mechanism will never provide an exhaustive explanation of
nature. Though we should always apply the principle of mechanism as we
possibly can, occasions for suspending this principle are always bound to arise.
But besides the notion that there are appropriate times to suspend mechanistic
explanation, Kant straightforwardly asserts that nature and experience present
instances of internal purposiveness to us. Of course, these presentations never
rise to the level of empirical cognition. Still, consider the following passages,
which we will retread regularly throughout the remainder of the dissertation:
“Experience leads our power of judgment to the concept” of a natural end (CPJ
5:366) and the principle stating that an organized product of nature is a natural
end is “derived from experience, that is, experience of the kind that is
methodically undertaken and is called observation” (CPJ 5:376); whereas the
“cause of the possibility of a natural end”, i.e., an intelligent author of nature, is
merely an idea of reason, “the consequence that answers to it (the product) is
still given in nature” (CPJ 5:405); “purposive unity is still so important a
condition of the application of reason to nature that I cannot pass it by,
especially since experience liberally supplies examples of it” (A826/B854); and
as the question of how organisms arise in the first place is one that reason
compels us to pose, it is necessary for us to “conceive of a particular kind of
causality for it that is not, unlike the mechanism of natural causes, found in
nature” (CPJ 5:411). Kant does not stop here, maintaining, “for things we once
acknowledge [anerkennen] as natural ends” (CPJ 5:415), mechanically causal
explanations will never suffice as a full account of their generation and activity.
And even in the “General Remark on the Teleology”, which follows the
conclusion of the main text of the Methodology, Kant reminds us that the very
concept of ends of nature is
given to us “only through experience” (CPJ 5:476). We find this sentiment
repeated in the proof for the immortality of the soul in Metaphysik L2, when
Kant states the following the premise: “We find in nature a connection of
efficient causes, also connection of ends, this connection is indicated in
organized beings, and the connection of finality <nexus finalis> with living
beings is the highest principle, from which we cannot depart at all” (CPJ
28:592). The principle that we derive from the connection of ends we “find” in
nature is that every organ of a living thing serves a purpose.
From this, Kant says, we can infer that no organ or faculty of the human being
is purposeless. Since some faculties set tasks for the human being that cannot be
completed in one lifetime, there must be a future life. The fact that we find this
connection ends in nature and that it is “indicated in organized beings” is an
indispensable first step of this proof.
So, there is not only reason to deny the claim that mechanism can
exhaustively explain nature. There are also grounds for positively affirming that
we find purposively organized things in nature. At this point, someone might
insist that teleological judgments are reflecting judgments based on regulative
principles. This status makes such judgments merely subjective. In all of the
passages above Kant is confused – he really should be saying that we
sometimes pretend that nature is purposive or merely project that purposiveness
onto nature for the sake of formulating and organizing judgments. Since
reflecting judgments do not refer to any objects in nature and we attribute
purposiveness to things on the basis of reflecting judgments, the attribution of
purposiveness to natural objects is a game of pretend or a heuristically useful
figment of the imagination. Let us turn to an analysis of the difference between
determining and reflecting judgments to see if the text compels us to view
teleological reflecting judgments in this light.
3. The power of judgment and regulative principles
In this section, I consider Kant’s canonical definitions of determining
judgment and reflecting judgment, then discuss the role of regulative principles
throughout the Critical philosophy, placing a special emphasis on their role with
respect to teleological reflecting judgments. Kant formally introduces us to the
power of judgment as a “faculty for the subsumption of the particular under the
general” that “mediates the connection” between reason and understanding with
its “own special principles” (CPJ 20:201-2). In order to establish that the power
of judgment is its own special faculty, we have to assume “the concept of a
purposiveness of nature in behalf of our faculty for cognizing it, insofar as for
this it is required that we be able to judge the particular as contained under the
general and subsume it under the concept of nature”
(CPJ 20:202-3). Our faculty for judging the purposiveness of nature – i.e., our
power of judgment – only gains traction if we first make the assumption that
nature is structured purposively, or is a systematic whole rather than a merely
scattered, disorganized aggregate. It is only by this means that we can ensure
“the purposiveness or fitness of nature to our power of judgment”, representing
nature “as technical” and using the “subjective principles” resulting from this
assumption as guidelines for our actual investigations of nature (CPJ 20:204n).
The power of judgment branches off into two species: determining judgment
and reflecting judgment. Determining judgments are grounded in given
concepts of the understanding as their constitutive principles, and this makes it
possible for us to establish the objective reality of these concepts and
empirically cognize the object of our judgment (Section 3.1). Reflecting
judgments are based on regulative principles or concepts, and we can never
establish the objective reality of such principles or concepts, nor can we
empirically cognize the objects pertaining to these principles or concepts
(Section 3.2). This has prompted readers of Kant to assert that regulative
principles or concepts correspond to mere fictions or mental projections. Below,
I simply sketch the arguments motivating this popular interpretation of Kant
(Sections 3.3 and 3.4). The goal of subsequent chapters is to motivate the
possibility of an alternative reading, one that promotes a belief in the existence
of the organism.
3.1. Determining judgments
Determining judgments proceed from universal to particular and are
based on constitutive principles. What it means to say that these judgments
proceed from universal to particular can be illustrated by analyzing a classic
example of a determining judgment. In the Critique of Pure Reason, a pure
concept of the understanding is described as a “function that gives unity to the
different representations in a judgment” as well as to the “mere synthesis of
representations in an intuition” (A79/B104-5). In other words, a universal a
priori concept of the understanding brings unity to a particular given in
intuition. An example Kant gives is the judgment “All bodies are divisible.” In
this judgment, “the concept of the divisible is related to various other concepts;
among these however, it is here particularly related to the concept of body, and
this in turn is related to certain appearances that come before us” (A68/B93).
The concept <divisible> is a universal predicate that can be attributed to any
number of bodies, and when we employ this concept in a judgment that
attributes that predicate to a particular material body that appears to us, we
make a determining judgment. This is a determining judgment because it
presupposes an a priori universal concept of divisibility and subsumes an
intuited particular under that universal category.
The principles that structure a determining judgment are constitutive.
What Kant seems to mean when he uses the label “constitutive” to describe
these principles is that they serve to constitute experience. Recall that
experience, or empirical cognition, is just that mental state that arises as a result
of subsuming a given intuition under a concept of the understanding (see
A50/B74ff). Such a characterization makes sense of the fact that Kant thinks of
the categories of the understanding as “constitutive concepts”: “concept of
purposiveness is not a constitutive concept of experience at all, not a
determination of an appearance belonging to an empirical concept of the
object; for it is not a category” (CPJ 20:219-22). The categories of the
understanding are necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of experience
or empirical cognition. This makes the categories principles that are constitutive
of experience.
Determining judgments begin with a universal concept and proceed by
subsuming a particular given intuition under that concept. A prime example of
principles or concepts presupposed by a determining judgment are just the
categories of the understanding. As Kant puts it when he’s first contrasting
reflecting with determining, “The power of judgment can be regarded either as
a mere faculty for reflecting on a given representation, in accordance with a
certain principle, for the sake of a concept that is thereby made possible, or as a
faculty for determining an underlying concept through a given empirical
representation” (CPJ 20:211). Determining judgments fundamentally involve a
concept of the understanding and a given intuition subsumed under such a
concept, and the principles of determining judgments are necessary for (i.e.,
constitutive of) empirical cognition. As Kant puts it,
Every determining judgment is logical because its predicate is a given objective
concept.
A merely reflecting judgment about a given individual object, however,
can be aesthetic if (before its comparison with others is seen), the power
of judgment, which has no concept ready for the given intuition, holds
the imagination (merely in the apprehension of the object) together with
the understanding (in the presentation of a concept in general) and
perceives a relation of the two faculties of cognition which constitutes
the subjective, merely sensitive condition of the objective use of the
power of judgment in general (namely the agreement of those two
faculties with each other). (CPJ 20: 223-4)
While determining judgments begin with a “given objective concept,” or a
concept the objective reality of which can be proven in an experience, a
reflecting judgment “has no concept ready for the given intuition.” Instead, as
the case of an aesthetic reflecting judgment illustrates, a reflecting judgment
begins with a given particular intuition and then proceeds by seeking out a
concept for that intuition. Reflecting judgments consists of parts similar to those
of their determining counterparts, but have an inverted structure. The principles
of reflecting judgment are accordingly quite different from those of determining
judgment.
3.2. Reflecting judgment and its principle
Unlike determining judgments, reflecting judgments proceed from
particular to universal and are based on regulative principles. In the First
Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant writes, “To reflect
(to consider), however, is to compare and to hold together given representations
either with others or with one’s faculty of cognition, in relation to a concept
thereby made possible” (CPJ 20:211). Reflecting judgment, which no doubt
counts as an instance or a species of reflection, involves the comparison and
holding together of given representations. However, the given representations
cannot be concepts, for it is only in the process of comparing and holding
together these representations that a concept to which they are related becomes
possible. The particular comes first in reflection; the universal concept comes
second. Following this definition, the text continues, “Reflecting (which goes
on even in animals, although only instinctively, namely not in relation to a
concept which is thereby to be attained but rather in relation to some inclination
which is thereby to be determined) in our case requires a principle just as much
as does determining, in which the underlying concept of the object prescribes
the rule to the power of judgment and thus plays the role of the principle” (CPJ
20:211). All powers of judgment presuppose a principle. While the constitutive
principles of the understanding serve to ground determining judgments and
make experience, or empirical cognition, possible, the structure
of reflection requires us to find a different sort of principle, one that does not
automatically lead to empirical cognition.
The principle of reflecting judgment takes the following form in the First
Introduction: “The principle of reflection on given objects of nature is that for
all things in nature empirically determinate concepts can be found, which is to
say the same as that in all of its products one can always presuppose a form that
is possible for general laws cognizable by us” (CPJ 20:211-12). Without such a
presupposition, “reflection would become arbitrary and blind” and we would
have no guarantee that our reflections agree with nature in any way (CPJ
20:212). To be sure, such a principle does not ground or culminate in empirical
cognition. Only the constitutive principles of determining judgment can
produce such a state. Still, the principle of reflection serves to guide or regulate
our investigations of nature.
These passages teach us a few things. For one, reflection and reflecting
judgment are not merely subjective if we characterize their mere subjectivity as
having only to do with mental acts and their organization. Rather, reflection
occurs in response to “given representations.” Moreover, reflection is not
radically subjective in the sense that there is some expectation that reflection
should agree with nature, as it’s necessary to “presuppose” the principle that,
for all “given objects of nature”, we can find an empirical concept that explains
their form. As Kant later adds, “Thus the power of judgment itself makes the
technique of nature into the principle of its reflection a priori, without
however being able to explain this or determine it more precisely or having for
this end an objective determining ground for the general concepts of nature
(from a cognition of things in themselves), but only in order to be able to reflect
in accordance with its own subjective law, in accordance with its need, but at
the same time in accord with laws of nature in general.” (CPJ 20:214). In order
for our reflections on certain natural products to make sense and to agree with
nature, the power of judgment requires us to presuppose the “technique of
nature.” Though we can never empirically prove that nature has such a
technique, the power of judgment requires us to presuppose that nature is
purposive. Reflection is blind, arbitrary, and cannot even get started without
such a presupposition.
The question therefore becomes, What exactly is the epistemic status of
such a presupposition? It does not seem as though we can empirically cognize,
know, or definitively prove the existence of the objects of such an assumption.
Kant clarifies that the principle of purposiveness is “regulative” (CPJ 5:168;
5:197). We presuppose that nature has a “technique,” or is organized in
accordance with purposes, and thereby make possible teleological reflecting
judgments, which attribute an objective, inner, and material purposiveness to
certain natural products, possible. In the Critique of the Teleological Power of
Judgment, Kant further specifies that “The concept of a thing as in itself a
natural end is therefore not a constitutive concept of the understanding or of
reason, but it can still be a regulative concept for the reflecting power of
judgment, for guiding research into objects of this kind and thinking over their
highest ground in accordance with a remote analogy with our own causality in
accordance with ends; not, of course, for the sake of knowledge of nature or of
its original ground, but rather for the sake of the very same practical faculty of
reason in us in analogy with which we consider the cause of that purposiveness”
(CPJ 5:375). Here, it is significant that Kant refers to the very concept of “a
thing as in itself a natural end” as a “regulative concept for the reflecting power
of judgment.” If the regulative principles of any power of judgment are just
those principles which we presuppose for the sake of formulating a reflecting
judgment upon a given representation that is not blind or arbitrary but
potentially agrees with nature, the concept of a thing in itself as a natural end is
just that kind of a presupposition with respect to teleological judgments. Such a
concept guides our research though it never culminates in “knowledge of nature
or of its original ground.”
One major goal of the remainder of the dissertation is to investigate
what it means to say that the concept of an organism (“the concept of a thing as
in itself a natural end”) is regulative for the reflecting power of judgment.
Clearly, this concept is never going to ground a determining judgment and
therefore it will neither result in empirical cognition nor knowledge of any
object or any property of an object. Still, as we saw previously, there is some
expectation that reflecting judgments take up given representations and judge
them in a way that is not blind and arbitrary, but somehow agrees with nature.
As such, we may suspect that the concept of an organism regulates an act of
reflection that meets these criteria.
However, commentators frequently argue that all regulative concepts
and principles – including those that regulate teleological reflection – do not
refer to anything that exists, serving a merely heuristic purpose. These concepts
are mere convenient fictions. In more optimistic moods, these commentators are
totally non-comital about the existence of these objects’ referents. In both cases,
the moves commentators rely upon are similar – such regulative concepts or
principles can never be involved in empirical cognition, and since empirical
cognition is the only means of establishing a well-grounded existence claim, the
objects picked out by such principles or concepts either cannot or may not exist.
In ways that shall become clear later, I want to resist this dominant
interpretation. For now, let us consider the arguments and ideas animating these
dominant readings of Kant.
3.3. Regulative principles in the Critique of Pure Reason
Skeptical and deflationary readings of regulative principles already have
strong footing in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Commentators widely agree
that since we cannot empirically cognize the objects of pure reason – God, our
freedom, and the soul – either it is completely unclear whether these objects
exist or they flat-out do not exist. Those who infer that these objects may or
may not exist on the basis of their uncognizability adopt a skeptical reading.
Those who deny the existence of these objects based on their uncognizability
adopt a deflationary reading. In this section, I focus on the regulative use of the
idea of the soul to illustrate these readings and their commitments.
Commentators often agree that the regulative use of the idea of the soul
entails the deployment of a mental projection that guides the effort to unify
cognitions of inner sense into a system of cognitions. While they do mention the
object of the idea (i.e. the soul qua substance), they also speak of the use of this
idea as directing something in the subject – the understanding – toward a goal.
It is this second aspect of the use of ideas that has stood out to most
commentators, for they often claim that there is no need to treat the object of the
idea as anything more than a hypothetical posit the existence of which can
never be proven or disproven.
These readers generally hold that the regulative use of ideas of pure
reason does not presuppose any antecedent commitment to the existence of an
object corresponding to the idea. As I mentioned above, they are of two stripes.
Some take a deflationary approach, thinking that, in the regulative use, Kant
flatly denies the existence of any object corresponding to the idea. Others are
skeptics, holding that, in the regulative use, Kant neither affirms nor denies the
existence of any object corresponding to an idea of pure reason. Let us consider
why this is a standard way of reading the Appendix.
The deflationary line is typified by Henry Allison and Frederick
Rauscher. Allison treats the regulative idea of the soul as an epistemic
“application condition” for the logical principle of systematic unity. Such a
systematic unity is a “necessary projection of reason” – one which reason
cannot help but foist upon nature given its assumption that certain
transcendental principles obtain
(2004, 445-6). Assigning the idea of the soul in its regulative use the status of a
“necessary projection of reason” contrasts it with a so-called “pre-given norm”,
which would posit the reality of that which we project and seek when we
regulatively employ the idea (2004, 46). Thus, Allison rejects the reality of an
object corresponding to any idea and considers the objects we seek a mere
projection. Rauscher argues that “The idea of the soul is not taken to
correspond to any reality in itself, but is used functionally to unite various
cognitions of the understanding together to form an empirical science. Like any
idea of reason qua idea […], the idea is taken only to be a placeholder in the
system for organizing cognitions” (2010, 298, my emphasis). Rauscher states
that the idea of the soul does not correspond to any reality in itself, for it serves
its regulative role as long as we assign the role of an imagined “placeholder.”
And so, like Allison, he takes the regulative use of the idea of the soul to serve
an important cognitive function, but considers any commitment to the existence
of an object corresponding to the soul untenable.
Other commentators, such as Cory Dyck (2014), seem torn between
skepticism and deflation. Dyck argues that Kant “emphasizes the necessity of
the presupposition of the soul as the empirically given object of inner
experience” which guides psychological investigation (2014,
200). As such, Kant accepts that there is a single fundamental force of the soul,
but denies that the
rational psychologist can ever achieve cognition of this single force. To boot,
claims Dyck, “it is only in its illusory appearance as a persisting object of inner
experience that the idea of the soul can serve to regulate the investigation into
the soul’s fundamental forces” (2014, 200). Thus, the attempt to derive all of a
subject’s powers from a fundamental power is guided by an illusion. He claims
that the task of seeking an object corresponding to the soul does not require any
commitment to the existence of that object, since it is only an illusory
appearance. On one interpretation of his view, Dyck seems to be an deflationist:
labeling the object corresponding to the idea an illusion suggests that it does not
exist. On another, Dyck is a skeptic: we should posit an empirically given
object, but, since it is illusory, we cannot ever be certain of its existence.
Katharina Kraus (2018) exemplifies the skeptical attitude toward the
objects corresponding to ideas of pure reason. Kraus’s overarching concern in
“The Soul as the ‘Guiding Idea’ of Psychology” is the status of empirical
psychology as a discipline that falls short of science. In order to redeem the
status of empirical psychology, Kraus argues that the object corresponding to
the idea of the soul “delineates the domain of mental phenomena by
representing a projected whole that logically precedes all mental states to be
investigated in psychology” (2018, 77). The idea of the soul thereby provides
“an indispensable guideline for approximating the universality and the logical
perfection of rational sciences” (2018, 77), satisfying Kant’s demand that a
science be a system unified “under one idea” (A832/B861). When explaining
how the regulative use of the idea of the soul works, Kraus draws attention to
the focus imaginarius passage from the first part of the Appendix, stating that
the idea of the soul is “regulatively used in order to hypothetically assume” a
fundamental power into which a manifold of powers is simplified (2018, 84).
She also states that the idea of the soul defines the domain of psychology by
“representing a projected whole that logically precedes all mental states to be
investigated by psychology” (2018, 85, my emphasis).
While she does not clearly commit to a reading of what it means to
“hypothetically assume” a power or to represent a “projected whole”, her
pronouncements evoke a skeptical reading of the regulative use of the idea of
the soul. To label the idea of the soul a mental projection that logically precedes
its parts is to employ this idea as an empty heuristic tool without staking any
commitments to the existence of an object corresponding to the soul.
Many of Kant’s claims in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic
can seem to lend themselves to a skeptical and even a deflationary
interpretation. For starters, most readers who adopt either reading can easily
explain Kant’s definition of the ideas of pure reason in their regulative use as
foci imaginarii (A644/B672). The deflationist, for instance, might hold this out
as evidence that the ideas of pure reason in their regulative use are merely
convenient fictions, imaginary points that we project into the distance in order
to guide the understanding. The skeptic reader, too, might point to the focus
imaginarius passage as proof that regulatively employed ideas are helpful tools
for organizing a manifold of cognitions, but that we need not take a stance on
the existence of any object corresponding to the idea. After all, Kant emphasizes
that the chief purpose of these ideas is to steer the understanding to a certain
goal.
These readings of the Appendix provide a natural explanation of Kant’s
apparent “as-if” attitude throughout the text. Kant claims that employing the
idea of the soul as a regulative principle requires us to treat inner experience as
if it belongs to a simple and personally identical substance (A672/B700). Once
again, the deflationist may interpret the as if language here as suggesting that
we treat the various predicates often fallaciously attributed to the soul (i.e.
substantiality, simplicity, and personal identity) as various properties of a
projected, non-existent entity. Regardless of its unattainability, projecting such
an entity would allow us to effectively unite our cognitions of inner sense so as
to bring about a science of psychology. Likewise, the skeptical reader of this
passage might take Kant’s formulation to indicate the absence of any need to
commit oneself to the existence or non-existence of a simple, substantial, and
personally identical soul.
Third, both skeptical and deflationist readings seem to explain quite easily
Kant’s claim that the ideas of pure reason in their regulative use provide us with
a schema in contrast to giving us the object in the idea. Kant explicitly states
that the regulative use of the idea of the soul can “signify nothing other than the
schema of a regulative concept” (A684/B712). At the outset of the second half
of the Appendix, he identifies the schema produced by the regulative
employment of an idea as that “for which no object is given, not even
hypothetically, but which serves only to represent other objects to us, in
accordance with their systematic unity” (A670/B698). This schema projects a
template for unifying the manifold of cognitions of inner sense into a systematic
unity, thereby guiding the formation of a science. Skeptics and deflationists can
furnish us with a straightforward reading of this process: reason projects a
systematic unity for the understanding, allowing cognizers to steadily progress
toward a systematic unity of cognitions without staking any commitment to the
existence of an unconditioned unity. As long as one aims at the systematic unity
represented in the schema, the task of constructing a science can get underway.
Thus it is clear that the objects pertaining to these ideas and principles can ever
be empirically cognized, or beheld by us in space in time. Nevertheless, as we
shall see later, we ought to avoid the temptation to conclude that we cannot say
these objects exist on the basis of their uncognizability. One major insight I
hope to highlight is that these prominent readings of
Kant’s doctrine of regulative ideas and principles are mistaken in their
assumption that empirical cognition is the only means of assenting to the
existence of some object. There are alternative means of affirming that the
objects of judgments or representations based on regulative principles exist.
Before I explain how this is possible, let’s consider how deflationary and
skeptical readings influence interpreters of Kant’s doctrine of reflecting
judgment and its reliance on regulative principles in the third Critique.
3.4. Back to regulative principles in the Critique of the Power of
Judgment
Most of the readers I have identified with the moderate mechanistic
reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature adopt a skeptical interpretation of
regulative principles in and beyond the Third Critique. To these readers,
regulative principles generally do not entail any ontological commitments to the
existence of some object. Reflecting judgments are based on a regulative
principle. Thus, when we attribute a non-mechanistic purposiveness to nature
via reflecting judgment, we are not making a claim about the existence of
purposiveness in nature. Instead, the regulative principle of purposiveness, or
the assumption that nature is organized in accordance with a technical,
purposive causality and not merely determined by mechanism, is a projection
that serves our mental economy. A skeptical view of regulative principles and
the moderate mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s picture of nature go hand-in-
hand.
Likewise, a deflationary interpretation of regulative principles fuels strong
mechanistic readings of Kant’s doctrine of nature. This connection is expressed
most clearly in the work of
Peter McLaughlin. The central ambition of McLaughlin’s 1990 Kant’s Critique
of Teleological Explanation in Biology is to construct an argument to the
conclusion that that teleological explanation is illegitimate in order to secure the
most important positive claim he wants to defend in the book – namely, that
mechanistic reduction is the only legitimate form of explanation in biology. To
McLaughlin, when evaluating the candidates for a legitimate form of scientific
explanation in biology, we find there are two options: either mechanistic
reductive explanations or teleological explanations count as legitimate forms of
scientific explanation. An explanation counts as legitimate only if it refers to
something that exists. Therefore, if teleological explanations are legitimate, it
would follow that they refer to something that exists. But, crucially, teleological
explanations rest on regulative principles. If an explanation rests on regulative
principles, McLaughlin affirms, then the object of that explanation does not
exist. Therefore, teleological explanations refer to something that does not exist.
This implies that teleological explanations cannot be a legitimate form of
scientific explanation. For this reason, he resolves, "Kant affirms in the end the
exclusive legitimacy of mechanistic-reductionist explanations" (1990, 180).
Notice that McLaughlin advances a deflationary reading of regulative
principles, defending the premise that explanations or judgments resting on
regulative principles tell us nothing about the existence of a thing. McLaughlin
asserts that teleological explanations rely on regulative principles, stressing that
explanations founded on such principles do not refer to anything real.
Let’s explore and evaluate McLaughlin’s reasons for asserting these claims.
One example of a regulative principle is the idea of God as it’s described
in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic: “God has no objective reality,
and the concept has no empirical meaning; but it can at least still function as the
transcendental presupposition of a sensible methodological principle for
empirical science” (1990, 35). Given this kind of statement, we may
understandably wonder, What does McLaughlin mean when he says that a
concept has “no empirical meaning”? We cannot cognize the object pertaining
to the idea of God, surely. But Kant seems to think that such a concept can
guide serve as a “sensible methodological principle for empirical science.” If a
concept can serve as a legitimate principle for empirical science in its regulative
use, this does not automatically mean that it’s utter nonsense or a complete
fiction. To base a legitimate science on such a concept would certainly render
that science illegitimate. Kant must mean something very specific and
idiosyncratic when he claims that a concept like <God> has no empirical
meaning. Indeed, we should read Kant as saying not that such a concept lacks
empirical meaning, but that the object it represents cannot be intuited in space
and time and therefore cannot be empirically cognized, and since it cannot be
empirically cognized it is not in any relevant sense real. McLaughlin deflates
regulative ideas.
McLaughlin thinks that the principle of purposiveness in the third
Critique plays an identical role as the ideas of reason in their regulative use. In
the Critique of the Power of
Judgment, “When we classify and order empirical objects, we presuppose that
nature has order” as our principle of ordering (1990, 36). Again, McLaughlin
seems to be indicating that such a principle is convenient for the sake of
explaining order in nature, but it does not disclose the way nature really is. In
short, on McLaughlin’s view, both the ideas of reason in their regulative use and
the principle of purposiveness of the Third Critique allow us to formulate
certain kinds of explanation, but neither the principles themselves nor the
explanations based upon them tell us anything about what the thing we’re
explaining really is. Teleological explanations rely on
regulative principles. Thus, they do not refer to anything that exists.
The thesis that regulative principles and representations tell us nothing
about the way in which the objects picked out by regulative principles or
representations is crucial for all mechanistic readings of Kant. McLaughlin’s
reading in particular states that the principle of purposiveness is regulative, and
therefore has “no empirical meaning.” It does not, this seems to mean, pick out
or refer to anything that exists. Since the principle of purposiveness is
regulative, even if this principle helps the explainer organize their mental life
and formulate explanations for phenomena that would otherwise be
unexplainable, any explanation that relies upon it will not tell us anything about
the way the world is.
McLaughlin also deploys this understanding of regulative principles in
developing his strong mechanistic reading of nature in Kant. For Kant, when we
call a thing an organism, we attribute to it a kind of purposiveness. When we
attribute any purposiveness to a thing, we do so on the basis of a teleological
judgment. Teleological judgments rest on regulative principles, and this in turn
means that we cannot know that the objects of teleological judgments exist.
Thus, insofar as an organism is the object of a teleological judgment, we cannot
know that any organisms exist. As we shall see later, McLaughlin adds that we
know for a fact that all objects presented to us in outer sense exist. The objects
we label organisms are presented to us in outer sense. Importantly, any object
presented to us in outer sense is merely a machine, thoroughly explained by the
Laws of Mechanics. Thus, anything we label an organism only exists as an
object of outer sense, and since all objects of outer sense are mere machines, an
organism is really just a machine.
The following passage does a good job of illustrating precisely how
McLaughlin reasons from his reading of purposiveness to the claim that
organisms do not exist:
Organisms are objects of experience. Everything that Kant later says
about natural purposes applies to the organism only insofar as it must be
conceived as a natural purpose. The
concept of the organism itself has “objective reality” because there are
actually corresponding things in sense experience, i.e. animals and
plants. The concept of natural purpose has objective reality only if there
are objects of experience that are natural products and can only be
conceived as if they had been produced intentionally by some
understanding. If such things should exist (or if, as Kant tends to
believe, organisms are such things), then the concept of natural purpose,
too, has objective reality, i.e. instantiation in experience; but we can
never know this definitely, since our ability to conceive of particular
objects of experience as non-intentional may change with time and the
progress of science. (1990, 46-7, my emphasis in italics)
Up until the last independent clause, one might read McLaughlin as rejecting a
mechanistic reading of natural purposes, taking it to be a concept that tracks the
existence of a particular kind of entity or property. He states that organisms are
objects of experience, accepts that everything Kant says about a natural purpose
must apply to organisms, and that therefore the concept of a natural purpose
must itself have “instantiation in experience.” On his account, this would be to
say that natural purposes exist, and perhaps that referring to a thing as a natural
purpose means that it really is a natural purpose. However, he qualifies all of
that when he says that “we can never know this [i.e., whether a natural purpose
exists] definitively.” It is unclear what it would mean to “know definitively” on
Kant’s account, but we should take this to be a compressed way of expressing a
commitment shared by all mechanists: The concept natural purpose has no
“objective reality”, we cannot empirically cognize the objects to which this
concept refers, and so we cannot say that organisms exist. Rather, McLaughlin
adds, since the things we label organisms are presented to us in space and time,
we should instead accept that they are nothing more than machines. By
conjoining the claims that we cannot empirically cognize organisms, that
machines are the only things we empirically cognize, and empirical cognition is
the only means of establishing the existence of a thing, McLaughlin puts
forward a strong mechanistic picture of nature that is funded by a deflationary
view of the regulative concept of an organism.
4. Where do we go from here?
There is one interpreter of Kant that takes a firmer-than-skeptical stance
on the status of the presuppositions we make about objects and the world in a
regulative mode. In his 2003 “Kant’s
Principles of Reflecting Judgment”, Paul Guyer characterizes regulative
concepts and principles along the following three criteria:
From Kant’s account of the regulative principles in the Critique of Pure
Reason, we can therefore infer that such principles (a) set a goal of the
systematization; (b) accompany this goal with a transcendental
presupposition that the objects of our inquiry or action make the
attainment of this goal possible and that there is a ground for this
assumption, but one that permits at best a limited transcendental
deduction; and (c) provide a heuristic method for the pursuit of this
goal, but one that is irremediably liable to the contingencies of our
empirical situation. (2003, 18)
The second criterion is of particular note for our purposes. Guyer asserts that
the presuppositions we make about objects and the world when discharging a
regulative principle rise to the level of belief concerning the existence of the
objects in question: “it would be irrational for us to pursue any goal, cognitive
or practical, in the absence of a belief in the possibility of tis attainment. For
that reason, a regulative principle posits, or is accompanied by the posit, that the
domain of our inquiry or action—nature itself—is so constituted as to make the
attainment of our goal possible” (2003, 4). Passages such as these might lead us
to suspect that Guyer puts forward a firmer-thanagnostic stance regarding the
regulative concept of an organism and its role with respect to teleological
judgment. Indeed, with respect to reflecting judgment in general, Guyer writes,
“Each form of reflecting judgment involves an attempt to realize an ideal of the
systematic unity of the relevant material that can only be expected to be realized
within certain limits. In each case, we posit not only an organization internal to
our thoughts, but also a corresponding organization in the objects of our
thoughts, which makes it possible to represent them as so ordered, and we even
further posit an actual ground for that possibility” (2003, 20).
These passages might lead us to suspect that for reflecting judgment and
the regulative concepts they deploy, we posit, as an article of belief, the actual
ground responsible for the form of organization we find in the objects of our
thoughts. However, our reflecting judgments involving the regulative concept of
an organism seem to stand out as an exception to these rules when Guyer states
the following: “although in a general sense we are given the concept of the
organism, that concept is only an abstract concept of a kind of system that
serves as a regulative ideal for our investigations, and in these investigations,
we ultimately seek mechanical concepts of causation that can explain
generation, growth, and self-preservation, even though we may be barred from
completing these explanations” (2003, 45). Despite the fact that Guyer insists
that we have to believe in the existence of the objects pertaining to regulative
principles and concepts in order to avoid rendering our pursuit of these objects
impossible or absurd, here he seems to suggest that we are not entitled to the
same kind of presupposition when deploying the regulative concept of the
organism. When we deploy this regulative concept, we ultimately know that we
are seeking a non-teleological explanation of the natural object. In this sense,
the regulative concept of the organism represents an exception to his general
interpretation of regulative concepts and their objects: We do not believe in the
existence of the object corresponding to the organism, for this concept merely
facilitates the advancement of our mechanistic understanding of nature. This
regulative concept is unique in that it does not elicit belief in the existence of
any object pertaining
to it.
But we should find it puzzling that the regulative concept of an organism is an
exception to the general criterion Guyer announces at the outset of his essay. As
we have seen, Kant affirms that our reflecting judgments and their principles
are neither blind nor arbitrary and that these principles should agree with
nature. Furthermore, Kant tells us that nature furnishes us with examples as
well as provocative hints and suggestions that purposive particulars abound.
Why establish an exception to the rule that regulative concepts require a belief
in the existence of the object pertaining to them when discussing the organism?
While the extant literature on regulative principles contains a push to either
deny or be totally agnostic about the existence of those objects we presuppose
for the sake of reflection, I shall argue that there is ample textual evidence
supporting the rejection of these dominant interpretations and pointing us in a
new direction. Surely, we cannot empirically cognize the predicates we attribute
to an object when we reflect upon it. We cannot empirically cognize the
property of an object by virtue of which we judge to be beautiful, nor can we
empirically cognize the property of a cat by virtue of which its activity appears
organic to us.
Yet, Kant is clear that there is evidence for both nature’s mechanism and
nature’s teleology. Though we have a considerably firmer grasp on the
mechanism of nature, Kant does not outright reject the possibility that nature
and natural products are purposive. Nowhere does he state that organisms are a
mere fiction. And while we might be tempted to infer, based on certain
interpretations of certain passages, that we cannot say whether organisms can
exist one way or the other, Kant is adamant that nature suggests its internal
purposiveness to us; that nature furnishes us with examples of this
purposiveness; that experience leads us to its internal purposiveness; and that
we find this internal purposiveness in nature. Add to this the fact that, while
organisms are the objects of reflection upon nature, reflection is not a mental act
that makes no reference to entities beyond the subject or the subject’s faculties.
Reflection tracks the relation between a given particular (or given particulars)
and the interactions of our mental faculties, and Kant affirms that reflecting
judgments cannot be blind and arbitrary, but ought to agree with nature.
Although we never empirically cognize the inner purposiveness of nature and
natural products, Kant’s philosophy does not confine us to a mechanistic picture
of nature.
In what follows, I argue that we can, and must, believe that there is real internal
purposiveness in nature. That is, we can and must believe there are organisms in
nature. Note that belief, in the sense that I discuss throughout the remainder of
the project, is compatible with the regulative status of the concepts and
principles involved in reflecting judgment. The claim that regulative principles
or concepts can be understood in terms of belief is not a completely novel one;
Andrew Chignell suggests that regulative principles can “fit the profile” of
belief (2007, 351). My contribution to the literature can be summed up as an
elaboration of how precisely the regulative concept of an organism “fits the
profile” of belief. In some sense, my project intends to extend Guyer’s general
criterion regarding the need to believe in the objects pertaining to regulative
principles to the regulative concept of the organism.
My case for this contribution begins with a close reading of the
Antinomy of the Teleological Power of Judgment. We shall see that, in this
section, Kant does not make organisms out to be mere fictions or mental
projections. Rather, there are proper occasions upon which to reflect on nature
as organic. Furthermore, it seems like these proper occasions will endlessly
arise, since mechanism can never provide a complete explanation of nature. In
the following two chapters, I argue for my positive contribution to this
literature. There are theoretical grounds for believing in the objects we
presuppose for the sake of reflection (Chapter 6), and there are also moral
grounds for believing in these objects (Appendix I). We need not infer from the
claim that the causality characteristic of organisms cannot be empirically
cognized to either the claim that there are no organisms or the claim that we
cannot whether there are organisms one way or the other. And this is because it
is possible, and in some cases advisable, to believe in the organism.
Chapter 5. Organisms and nature in the
Antinomy of Teleological Judgment
In the Analytic section of Kant’s Critique of the Teleological Power of
Judgment, we have been introduced to a rather perplexing concept – that of a
natural end. There are certain objects in nature the form of which leads us to
judge that they are objectively, really, and internally purposive. In other words,
there are things in nature that appear to exhibit a purposiveness of their own,
organizing their structure and activities in accordance with ends.
The Antinomy of the Teleological Power of Judgment juxtaposes two
viewpoints with respect to the possibility of purposiveness in nature. On the one
hand, it seems that there cannot be purposive things, such as organisms, in
nature, for everything in nature must be considered subject to the laws of
mechanics: “Insofar as reason has to do with nature, as the sum of objects of the
outer senses, it can be grounded on laws which are in part prescribed a priori to
nature by the understanding itself, and which can in part be extended beyond
what can be foreseen by empirical determinations encountered in experience”
(CPJ 5:386). The mechanistic laws of nature not only explain all objects of
outer sense before us, but have the predictive power to explain what can be
“foreseen by empirical determinations.” Thus, it appears that nothing which
could appear to us in nature cannot be covered by the laws of mechanism. On
the other hand, the laws of mechanics can only explain the unity of nature to a
degree, and there is a unity in nature that seems contingent or gratuitous from
the perspective of the mechanistic mode of explanation. Puzzlingly, according
to
Kant, we resolve the antinomy when we realize that these two viewpoints are
ultimately compatible in our investigations of nature.
The chief goal of this chapter is to offer a close reading of the presentation to
and the resolution of Antinomy, paying special attention to how the Antinomy
affects the possibility that there are internally purposive entities, or organisms,
in nature. Along the way, I emphasize a point that is indispensable for my
purposes – namely, that while Kant clearly denies us the ability to make a
determining judgment about the organism and precluding us from establishing
the objective reality of this concept, this does not warrant a leap to the
conclusion that organisms are a mere convenient fiction or mental projection.
There is a spectrum of possibilities between empirically cognizing the organism
and rendering it a merely imaginary projection. The goal of the next is to
animate that middle-ground. For now, I highlight the merely negative point that
the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment does not license the conclusion that we
can know there are no internally purposive entities in nature.
Another goal of this chapter is to advance a unique account of the mechanical
inexplicability of the organism. Though Kant says that we should apply
mechanistic explanations to nature as far as we possibly can, he contends that
there could never be a “Newton who could make comprehensible even the
generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has
ordered” (CPJ 5:400). Commentators often take this to be Kant’s definitive
pronouncement of the mechanical inexplicability of organisms. Below, I
develop an original account of the mechanical inexplicability of organisms, one
that draws on the conceptual analysis of the organism and life in the previous
chapters of my dissertation.
Sections 1-5 contain a step-by-step analysis of Kant’s presentation of and
resolution to the Antinomy. Section 1 details the presentation of the Antinomy.
Here, I not only discuss the difference between the constitutive and regulative
versions of the Antinomy, but also explain what the ramifications of the
unprovability of the constitutive principles are and consider why we are
justified in applying a teleological maxim of reflection when investigating
nature. This section also offers an original diagnosis of the dialectical error
involved in the Antinomy, one that is consistent with Kant’s pronouncement
that this antinomy has to do with the reflecting power of judgment specifically.
Section 2 discusses the various dogmatic systems rejected in the Antinomy.
Section 3 turns to Kant’s critical inquiry regarding our power of reflecting
judgment. An important takeaway I emphasize here is that, while Kant denies
us the ability to make dogmatic determining judgments about natural ends, this
is merely a negative point, and just because we cannot make determining
judgments does not warrant that organisms are a mere fiction or projection. In
fact, many of Kant’s remarks in (and surrounding) the Dialectic suggest that an
organism is much more than a mental heuristic. Section 4 dissects Kant’s
complicated remarks on the nature of the understanding in sections 76 and 77 of
the Antinomy, drawing attention to those remarks about the range and limits of
mechanical explanation. Section 5 provides a close reading of the final section
of the Dialectic, and my purpose here is to emphasize that the subordination of
mechanism to teleology is crucial for understanding Kant’s resolution to the
Antinomy. Section 6 complements my emphasis on the subordination of
mechanism to teleology by giving an account of the mechanical inexplicability
of organisms that pinpoints precisely where mechanism must yield to teleology
when explaining a natural product.
1. Sections 69-71: Kant’s presentation of the Antinomy
The Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment opens with a
reflection on the difference between the maxims of the reflecting power of
judgment and the structure of the determining power of judgment. On the one
hand, the determining power of judgment is given laws or concepts as its
principles, and it then it applies these laws and concepts to given intuitions. For
this reason, Kant thinks, this species of judgment “is not exposed to any danger
from its own antinomy and from a conflict of principles” (CPJ 5:385). On the
other hand, the reflecting power of judgment is not yet given laws, so it needs to
find its own principle. Upon reflection on what these maxims of the reflecting
power of judgment are, we encounter a conflict. The “unavoidable illusion” that
emerges from reflecting on our maxims can only be dispelled by a thorough
critique of the limits of our power of judgment.
The overall strategy of Kant’s Antinomy of the Teleological Power of
Judgment consists of two moves. The first move is to demonstrate that we
cannot mistake merely regulative principles for reflecting on nature for claims
about the genuine constitution of nature and its objects. Once we are clear about
the difference between these two kinds of claim and how to avoid sliding from
one set to the other, the second move is to show how the principles of judgment
that regulate our reflection on nature are deeply compatible with one another.
Here are the regulative principles governing reflection on nature:
M: All generation of material things and their forms must be judged as
possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.
T: Some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible
according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely
different law of causality, namely that of final causes).
The first proposes that all “generation of material things and their forms” must
be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. What I take
this to mean is that all generation of things in nature must be judged specifically
in accordance with the Second Law of Mechanics, which states that for every
change in matter, there must be some antecedent change in matter. Thus, all
things in nature and their form are purely material results of some antecedent
change in matter. The second states that some products of nature can only be
judged in accordance with an “entirely different law of causality, namely that of
final causes.” What I take this to mean is that the
generation and form of some products in nature cannot be explained by some
antecedent change in matter. Rather, they require an appeal to final causality,
where final causality is a special sort of causal nexus that has an end, which
Kant sometimes glosses the concept of an object insofar as it grounds the reality
of that object. This structure of causality is fundamentally distinct from a
causality governed by merely mechanical laws because mechanical laws only
explain interactions between material objects presented to us in outer sense. An
end is not a material object presented to us in outer sense, hence the need for an
entirely different law of causality.
If we “transform” these principles into claims about the constitution of
objects in nature, we get the following two principles:
M*: All generation of material things is possible in accordance with
merely mechanical laws.
T*: Some generation of such things is not possible in accordance with
merely mechanical laws.
Kant immediately adds that, if these two principles are taken to be “objective
principles for the determining power of judgment,” they would be
contradictory, and so one or the other would be false. However, reason cannot
prove the truth of one or the other of these fundamental principles, as “we can
have no determining principle a priori of the possibility of things in accordance
with merely mechanical laws of nature” (CPJ 5:387). If a genuine antinomy is
taken to consist in two propositions that can actually be proven to be true, as is
the case in the Critique of Pure Reason’s antinomies, then it seems as if M* and
T* do not represent a genuine antinomy at all.
1.1. But what exactly does it mean to say the constitutive thesis cannot be
proven true?
Before reflecting on what the dialectical error of this antinomy consists
in, we should take a moment to unpack the seemingly controversial claim that
the constitutive Thesis of the Antinomy
(i.e., M*) cannot be proven true. After all, in places like the Second Analogy of
Experience, the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason, and the proof of the Second
Law of Mechanics, Kant seems to be telling us that all objects of outer sense are
subject to deterministic laws of causality. What is the difference between what
Kant proves in the 2nd Analogy, the Metaphysical Foundations, and the Third
Antinomy on the one hand and the constitutive Thesis “All generation of
material things is possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws” (CPJ
5:387) on the other hand? Why don’t the conclusions of the former group
foreclose the unprovability of the constitutive Thesis? Is there a genuine
difference, or has Kant simply changed his mind regarding the scope of
causality?
As a means of responding to the set of questions, let us turn back to the
other sections of Kant’s Critical writings mentioned above. In the second
edition of the Second Analogy, Kant takes himself to have established that “All
alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and
effect” (A188/B232). Alterations [Zeitfolge, more often Veränderungen] is the
word Kant uses to describe changes in the determination of some object as it
appears to me – e.g., if the same object that was two feet to the left of me is now
directly in front of me, it has an undergone an alteration. Already we see a
contrast between the conclusion of the Second Analogy and the constitutive
Thesis of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment: While the former is about the
alterations of an object as it appears to us, the latter is about the “generation”
[Erzeugung] of “material beings.” Both the conclusion of the Second Analogy
and the Thesis seem concerned with the very possibility of their objects. The
difference is that, while the Thesis makes a claim about the possibility of
material beings, the Second Analogy makes a claim about the “objects of
experience”. In the Second Analogy, Kant concludes that our empirical
cognition of the alterations a substance undergoes is possible only if we subject
the appearances to the “law of causality”
(A188/B234). Applying this law of causality is a precondition for a particular
mental state – i.e., an empirical cognition – not for the very generation of a
material being. In the Thesis of the Antinomy, Kant is not concerned with the
conditions for the possibility of empirically cognizing an alterations [Zeitfolge,
Veränderungen] of substance, but with the generation [Erzeugung] of material
things.
The Antithesis of the Third Antinomy comes closer to the constitutive Thesis of
the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, stating that “There is no freedom, but
everything in the world happens solely in accordance with the laws of nature”
(A445/B473). The Third Antinomy’s Antithesis concerns the events of
“everything in the world” and subjects them to the “laws of nature” rather than
the law of causality. Kant’s proof for the Antithesis states that freedom as a
“faculty of absolutely beginning a state” contradicts the “causal law”, which
states that “Every beginning of action…presupposes a state of the not yet acting
cause” (A445/B473). Since transcendental freedom is “contrary to the causal
law” and all experiences are governed by this law (per the Second Analogy),
freedom must be an “empty thought-entity”, or something we could never
experience (A447/B475). Moreover, Kant claims, “we have nothing but nature
in which we must seek the connection and order of occurrences in the world”
(A447/B475).
In the Resolution to this Antinomy, Kant famously shows that the Antithesis is
true, but we must qualify the domain in which its truth obtains. An acting
subject can be viewed as “intelligible in its action as a thing in itself, and as
sensible in the effects of that action as an appearance in the world of sense”
(A538/B566). On the one hand, a subject that acts as cause “in its intelligible
character, would not stand under any conditions of time, for time is only the
condition of appearances but not things in themselves” (A539/B567). This
intelligible character could not be cognized or perceived, but “would have to be
thought in conformity with the empirical character,
just as in general we must ground appearances in thought through a
transcendental object”
(A540/B568). This character would ground an appearance from outside the
realm of appearances. In contrast, the thing as it appears to us is “subject to the
causal connection, in accordance with the laws of determination; and to that
extent it would be nothing but a part of the world of sense, whose effects, like
those of any other appearance, would flow inevitably from nature”
(A540/B568). So, the Antithesis of the Third Antinomy is true from the
perspective of outer sense: The actions of a subject as they appear to us in space
and time happen solely in accordance with the general metaphysical laws of
nature. Another aspect to emphasize here is that the Third Antinomy relates to
the actions of a subject, and in this respect it seems to differ from the topic of
the Thesis of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.
Whereas the Second Analogy and the Antithesis of the Third Antinomy discuss the
conditions for the possibility of our empirically cognizing the alterations of a
substance, the Second
Law of Mechanics, as stated in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science, reports that
“Every change in matter has an external cause” [Alle Veränderung der Materie
hat eine äussere Ursache.] (MFNS 4:543). Now we are no longer discussing
alterations or changes of substance as such, but changes undergone by matter
[der Materie]. Matter is defined as that which is movable
(MFNS 4:536) and has mass [die Masse] determinately shaped in the form of a
body [ein Körper] (MFNS 4:537). A material body is infinitely divisible (MFNS
4:537). The motion of a material body (and its parts) are governed by the three
laws of mechanics, which parallel the three Analogies of the First Critique: i.e.,
in all changes of matter, the quantity of matter neither increases nor diminishes;
every change in matter has an external cause; and in all communication of
motion, action and reaction are always equal. The laws of mechanics therefore
govern, and explain, all changes [Veränderung] of matter as well as the motion
[Bewegung] communicated from one material body to another. It is worth
noting that, in the final General Remark of the Mechanics, Kant distinguishes
between “the concept of change in general” [Begriff einer Veränderung
überhaupt] and the generation thereof [der Erzeugung derselben] (MFNS
4:553). While this is far from a straightforward analysis of the relationship
between these two concepts, the grammatical relationship between the terms –
changes presuppose generation – suggests a certain priority of generation over
change. Perhaps we could say that if something changes, then that change was
generated (by some force, power of a substance, etc.). Generation describes the
production or the genesis of that which can be subject to changes in the first
place.
Let us return to the Thesis of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment. Why
doesn’t the truth of the principle of the Second Analogy, the resolution of the
Third Antinomy, and the Second
Law of Mechanics entail the truth of the constitutive Thesis of Antinomy of
Teleological Judgment? An initial, albeit underdeveloped, answer is that there is
an obvious difference in subject matter across the first group and the
constitutive Thesis. The latter has to do with the generation [Erzeugung] of
material things and not the possibility for empirically cognizing or explaining
the changes in the determinations of material things. We might treat questions
of generation as having to do with the origin of material beings, not the
alterations they undergo and why. This much seems to be suggested by Kant’s
prefatory remark when introducing the constitutive principles – namely, that
these principles have to do with the very “possibility of objects themselves”
(CPJ 5:387). We might interpret the content of the constitutive Thesis and
Antithesis as pertaining to the very beginnings of material things – i.e.,
describing how it is even possible that such objects came about, as statements
about their ultimate origins. Things need to come about in order for them to
undergo changes in the first place. In this sense, the constitutive thesis is deeper
than or upstream from the conclusions, resolutions, or principles of the first
Critique and Metaphysical Foundations. It is impossible to give an account of a
change or alteration of the state of the some object without that object having
been generated in the first place. The constitutive Thesis of the Antinomy of
Teleological Judgment gives us a story about how such objects could have
come about.
If this reading is on the right track, then there is a subtle, but important,
presupposition animating Kant when framing the Antinomy of Teleological
Judgment. If it is possible that certain objects were generated by means of a
non-mechanistic causality, then it is possible to judge the production and
activity in nature in accordance with a teleological causality. In contrast, if we
could prove that material things were only generated in accordance with
mechanical laws, it would not make sense to apply teleological explanations to
natural products on any occasion. Think about it this way. If all material things
were indeed generated in accordance with merely mechanical laws, then it is
impossible that, as Kant maintains in the build up to presenting the Antinomy,
nature would even suggest its purposiveness to us in the organization of certain
products. It subsequently wouldn’t make any sense to posit the antithesis of the
regulative maxim as a necessary way of judging of nature. Of course, that we
can never determinately judge nature’s teleology is equally proof that the
constitutive Antithesis can never be proven true. Because it is simply undecided
how material things came about in the first place, it is not incoherent to judge
nature in accordance with both regulative principles of reflecting judgment.
Because the status of how objects of nature were generated remains undecided,
teleology and mechanism represent equally necessary ways of judging nature
and its products.
To be clear, at this point, Kant has not contradicted the laws of mechanics or
the conclusions of the first Critique. In accordance with the laws of mechanics,
all changes in matter observed through outer sense are still completely
determined by the Law of Inertia. In accordance with the first Critique our
empirical cognition of the alterations of substance are only possible in
accordance with the principle of the Second Analogy. However, it is still
possible that there is a supersensible but non-mechanistic cause that generated
natural ends, and therefore it is possible to judge that there is purposiveness in
nature by non-empirically-cognitive (i.e., reflective) means. The unprovability
of the constitutive Thesis makes room for a wider range of epistemic attitudes
and mental acts we can deploy in our investigations of nature.
My account of the constitutive principle of mechanism differs from that of
Peter McLaughlin (1990). McLaughlin follows A.C. Ewing in holding that the
constitutive Thesis proves that Kant thought of mechanism and the concept of
causality as non-identical (1990, 142). Specifically, mechanism is a species of
causality that describes a particular method of explaining a whole by reducing it
to its parts. However, following Marcel Quarfood’s (2004) criticism of
McLaughlin, one might think it is unlikely Kant limits “mechanism” to just this
sort of part-whole reduction. For one, Kant explicitly rejects the whole-to-part
reductionism characteristic of Boylean corpuscular philosophy, while
McLaughlin maintains that this is the style of explanation Kant had in mind
when discussing mechanism (see McLaughlin 1990, 176). Moreover, as
Quarfood points out, Kant appears to have a dynamical conception of
mechanism in mind when introducing the concept in the Metaphysical
Foundations. Quarfood gestures to Kant’s distinction between mechanical and
chemical action as evidence of this (see AK 4:530), which defines mechanism
in terms of the motion communicated between moving bodies.
Following Quarfood, I believe it is more accurate to think of mechanism
as a species of causality, one having to do with the transmission of forces
involved in the motion of material bodies. We might derive further support for
this from the metaphysical tradition immediately preceding Kant. Baumgarten’s
textbook on Metaphysics states, “A MACHINE is a composite being in the
strict sense that is moveable according to the laws of motion” (§433), takes the
determination of a machine by the laws of motion to be its mechanism (§433),
and describes these dynamical relations between mechanical bodies in the world
as a causal nexus (§434). And we may also read Kant as following Baumgarten
in his own Lectures on Metaphysics, when he defines the mechanism of nature
thus: “The arrangement that everything happens in the world according to
standing rules can be called the mechanism of nature. The mechanism of a thing
is otherwise called the arrangement of a thing according to laws of motion…
Thus, in the sensible world, everything goes according to the mechanism of
nature, according to natural necessity.” (LM 29:924) Mechanism is defined in
terms much more general than whole-to-part reduction here, indicating the
arrangement of a thing according to laws of motion and discussed in a sense
that is roughly equated with natural necessity. Kant’s account of mechanism
seems closer to Ginsborg’s (2015) and Quarfood’s (2004) proposals than
McLaughlin’s proposal. At the very least, what these passages seem to show is
that, pace McLaughlin, mechanism means something much broader than
explanation by means of whole-to-part reduction.
On top of this, McLaughlin’s reading (and Quarfood’s, too) neglects discussion
of the important terminological shift from alterations and changes [Zeitfolge,
Veranderungen] to generation [Erzeugen]. This terminological change seems
significant because it makes room for the possibility that nature can be judged
teleologically. If the Second Analogy, Third Antinomy, and Second Law of
Mechanics foreclosed the possibility that non-mechanical things could be
generated, the suggestions induced by our experiences of nature’s contingency
(see CPJ 5:366, 5:386) would in all likelihood not even lead us to the idea of a
natural end. However, nature’s manifold suggestions, reason’s demand for unity
in the face of contingency, and the fact that we cannot rule out the possibility of
a final cause generating material beings lend themselves to both maxims of the
power of teleological judgment being necessary. Just because our empirical
cognition of changes in matter is only possible in accordance with deterministic
laws of causality does not entail that all generation of matter came about in
accordance with laws of mechanism. And the possibility that material things
came about with non- or extra-mechanical laws makes it possible for us to
judge such things non-mechanistically – though never in the form of a
determining judgment.
So, when Kant maintains that the Thesis, constitutively construed, is
unprovable, he is saying that we cannot prove that the origin of material things
happens in accordance with merely mechanical laws. This, in turn, suggests that
only the regulative maxims of judgment are licensed in our research of nature.
As Kant insists, we should apply the first maxim, which explains nature in
accordance with mechanism, as often as we possibly can. But there are proper
occasions for suspending that maxim and employing its antithetical counterpart,
which states that judging the possibility of some products of material nature
requires an appeal to a different “law of causality, namely that of final causes”
(CPJ 5:387).
1.2.Why insert final causes where mechanism will not suffice?
It is unclear why we should infer from “Mechanical laws do not apply”
to “The laws of final causality apply.” One reason why is that, in some loose
sense, experience beckons us to apply this particular form of causality. As early
as §70, when Kant introduces the second maxim of the power of judgment,
Kant says that the second maxim is “suggested by particular experiences that
bring reason into play in order to conduct the judging of corporeal nature and its
laws in accordance with a special principle” (CPJ 5:386). This is strikingly
consonant with Kant’s earlier remark that experience “leads our power of
judgment” to the very concept of a natural end (CPJ 5:366) and his later remark
that the “consequence that answers to it [the concept of a natural end] (the
product) is still given in nature” (CPJ 5:405).
Kant’s remarks here are also consistent with his frequent suggestions
that the application of the second maxim to nature is a process that unites reason
and experience. Consider, momentarily jumping ahead, the story Kant tells at
the end of §76. There, Kant explains that we judge nature in accordance with
final causality when we are presented with a particular that “contains something
contingent with regard to the universal” (CPJ 5:404). Because of its
contingency, this particular cannot be neatly subsumed under a discursive
concept of the understanding. Still, reason stubbornly “requires unity, hence
lawfulness.” As a result of this particular’s mechanical inexplicability and
reason’s demand for unity, “the concept of the purposiveness of nature in its
products” is introduced as a “concept that is necessary for the human power of
judgment in regard to nature but does not pertain to the determination of the
objects themselves” (CPJ 5:404). Notice that this process is initiated by the
discovery of some particular the contingency of which cannot be explained and
completed by the intervention of reason and its concept of the purposiveness of
nature in its products. This interaction between reason and particulars that are
either experienced (in some loose, non-technical sense) or given in nature is
described in §74, as well. There, Kant writes that the concept of a natural end
“is conceivable only by means of reason” but that this concept is used to judge
“that which is given by the objects of experience” (CPJ 5:396). This can never
license the conclusion that a natural end is a concept used by the determining
power of judgment to subsume particulars under a given universal, and so we
could never prove the objective reality of this concept. At the same time, from
the fact that a natural end is not an objectively real given concept of the
understanding it does not follow that this concept has nothing at all to do with
objects in nature. Again, our exposure to certain particulars in experience
suggests to us that this is the “proper occasion” (CPJ 5:387) for judging a thing
to be an organism.
Still, we might wonder, why does reason bring final causality to bear on
these occasions? What about the constitution of this faculty compels us to leap
to teleology and not some other kind of causal configuration when presented
with these radically contingent particulars? We could piece together an answer
to this question by turning back to section IX of the second edition Introduction.
There, Kant reminds us that reason legislates the domain of freedom and its
causality whereas the understanding legislates nature, or the sum total of all
appearances, and the causal connections thereof. On their own, these two
domains are “entirely barred from any mutual influence” (CPJ 5:195). The
determining grounds of freedom in particular are not found in nature, although
the effects of this causality take place in the world. I believe that we should read
freedom’s causality here as fundamentally purposive, involving a cause that is
some supernatural, merely represented end (e.g., the idea of the highest good)
that determines certain real effects. When faced with a contingent particular in
nature that exhibits a purposive unity of its own but is not a rational human
being, reason posits a purposiveness that bears a similar structure to freedom’s
causality, but has a natural rather than a supernatural end as its determining
ground. Thus, the very concept of a natural end comes about as a result of
reason bringing this form of purposiveness associated with freedom to bear on
the natural world, or, as Kant puts it in the first edition Introduction, “through
the combination of reason with empirical concepts” (CPJ 20:243). As Kant
frequently insists, the concept of a natural end that results from the
collaboration of reason with experience can only be used by the power of
judgment in reflecting, never in determining. Because the concept of a natural
end is not thought through the understanding it cannot lead to empirical
cognition of a particular, but this concept can still helpfully guide our
reflections on those radically contingent particulars that seem to defy the laws
of the understanding.
1.3.What exactly is the dialectical error involved in the Antinomy?
So, seeing that the constitutive Thesis and Antithesis cannot be proven
true and do not genuinely contradict each other, we might conclude that maxims
M and T represent the relevant antinomy. But immediately after discussing M*,
T*, and their mutual exclusivity, Kant suggests that the two regulative maxims
are compatible with one another. M and T are compatible because, on the one
hand, M only states that “I should always reflect on them [i.e., objects in
nature] in accordance with the principle of the mere mechanism of nature,
and hence research the latter, so far as I can, because if it is not made the basis
for research then there can be no proper cognition of nature” (CPJ 5:387). The
second maxim does not violate the maxim that I should always reflect on
objects in nature in accordance with the law of mechanics and as far as I
possibly can. However, “on the proper occasion,” it is appropriate to formulate
teleological explanations of things in nature. Indeed, organisms seem to
announce such an occasion. Because human reason can never “discover the
least basis for what is specific in a natural end” my means of mechanistic
explanations, the power of judgment is “forced to think of another principle
than that of the mechanism of nature as the ground of the possibility of certain
forms” (CPJ 5:388).
In this sense, M and T are reminiscent of the thesis and antithesis of the
Antinomy of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment, the resolution of which shows
that “two apparently conflicting propositions do not in fact contradict each
other” (CPJ 5:340). If an antinomy consisting of two maxims is resolved by
showing that the two maxims are not contradictory and the Antinomy of the
Teleological Power of Judgment is between maxims M and T, it would seem as
if Kant has presented and resolved this antinomy in the matter of a few
paragraphs. Sections 71-78 of the Dialectic are either gratuitous or unrelated to
the project of resolving the maxims.
However, we should not be so quick to conclude that the antinomy has
been resolved in section 70, for the title of 71 announces that Kant is going to
provide a “preparation” for the resolution of the above antinomy. Given the
impossibility of proving the truth of either M* and T* as well as the non-
contradictory status of M and T, we should ask ourselves, What exactly is the
antinomy Kant is preparing to resolve? Some commentators insist that the
antinomies just do consist of M* and T*. Seizing on the fact this is an antinomy
of judgment and the constitutive principles are ostensibly a “conflict in the
legislation of reason”, not judgment, other commentators propose that the true
antinomy is between the maxims M and T.
Below, I take it for granted that the second camp is right, and that the
antinomy arises between the two regulative maxims of judgment. However,
there is a separate issue to which we must be attuned before locating and
addressing the antinomy: namely, the issue of what the dialectical error
characterizing the antinomy is. Most commentators state that the main
dialectical error consists in mistaking regulative maxims for constitutive
principles.48 This reading makes sense not only of the fact that Kant does not
take himself to have resolved the antinomy after establishing the unworkability
of the constitutive principles and the deep compatibility of the regulative
maxims. It also coincides with Kant’s insistence, at the end of section 71, that
“All appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of that kind of explanation
which is genuinely physical (mechanical) and that which is teleological
(technical) therefore rests on confusing a fundamental principle of the reflecting
with that of the determining power of judgment” (CPJ 5:389). That is, the
dialectical illusion with which Kant is concerned here tempts us to mistake
maxims that regulate our reflection on nature for objective principles that are
constitutive of nature. However, the literature is somewhat unclear on what the
nature of this slide is. Marcel Quarfood
(2014) states that this mistake consists in interpreting merely regulative maxims
as having some
“determining (or ontological) force” and proposes that this mistake produces
claims similar, but not identical to, the constitutive principles M* and T* (173).
Though I am largely sympathetic to Quarfood’s depiction of the antinomy, one
might still wonder, Why does the dialectical error include claims that Kant does
not explicitly write out? This would seem to fly in the face of his deliberately
writing out two sets of claims and warning us not to confuse the principles of
reflection for the principles of determining judgment. We may also wonder, is
there a more specific way to characterize the error involved in mistaking one for
the other?
Surely, the error in reasoning here must be something like the dialectical
inferences of pure reason of the Critique of Pure Reason. There, Kant writes,
Now at least the transcendental (subjective) reality of pure concepts of
reason rests on the fact that we are brought to such ideas by a necessary
syllogism. Thus there will be syllogisms containing no empirical
premises, by means of which we can infer from something with which
we are acquainted to something of which we have no concept, and yet to
which we nevertheless, by an unavoidable illusion, give objective
reality. In respect of their result, such inferences are thus to be called
sophistical rather than rational inferences. (A339/B397)
The dialectical errors of the Transcendental Dialectic consist of a particular kind
of bad inference. The ideas of reason have a “transcendental (subjective)
reality;” we have “no acquaintance with an object that corresponds to an idea”
(A339/B397). Despite this, an unavoidable illusion tempts us to infer from the
subjective reality of an idea of reason to its objective reality. The culprit behind
dialectical errors is a “sophistical inference.” Sophistical inferences of reason
tempt us to infer the objective reality of the ideas of reason from the fact that
we can conceive of these ideas. On my reading, the error involved in the
Antinomy of Teleological Judgment is a special kind of sophistical inference
that is uniquely suited to the reflecting power of judgment – the error here is a
sophistical inference from analogy. An inference from analogy is a species of
“assent” (Fürwahrhalten) that is unique to reflecting judgment. Kant defines an
analogy as “the identity of the relation between grounds and consequences
(causes and effects), insofar as that identity obtains in spite of the specific
differences between the things or those of their properties that contain in
themselves the ground for similar consequences (i.e., their difference in outside
relation)” (CPJ 5:464n). Kant immediately offers an example, comparing the
artistic activity of a human being to that of an animal.
[I]n comparing the artistic actions of animals with those of human
beings, we conceive of the ground of the former, with which we are not
acquainted [den wir nicht kennen], through the ground of similar effects
in human (reason), with which we are acquainted [den wir kennen], and
thus an analogue of reason, and by that we also mean to indicate the
ground of the artistic capacity in animals, designated as instinct, is in
fact specifically different from reason, but yet has similar relations to
the effect. (CPJ 5:464n)
Between the animal and the human being we see a similarity in the structure of
causality at work. On the one hand, a human being’s concept of a house
grounds their construction of the finished product. On the other hand, when we
watch a beaver build a dam, we reason that its process is similar to ours – it
takes something like a representation of the dam as the ground of its activity
and constructs the dam in accordance with that representation. In both cases, a
similar form of causality is at work. However, we must be careful about the
inferences we are warranted in drawing on the basis of this comparison, for
“from the fact that the human being uses reason in order to build, I cannot infer
that the beaver must have the same sort of thing” (ibid). This would constitute
an illegitimate inference since we have no acquaintance with the ground of
artistic action in animals. In contrast, “we can rightly infer in accordance with
the analogy that the animals also act in accordance with representations (and
are not, as Descartes would have it, machines), and that in spite of their specific
difference, they are still of the same genus as human beings (as living beings)”
(ibid). Kant adds that such an inference is authorized because there is equal
reason – “par
ratio” – for counting humans and non-human animals as members of the same
genus as human beings – i.e., they are both terrestrial living beings.
Beyond the specific mistake referenced above, Kant has more to say about the
character of bad inferences from analogy. Another example of a bad inference
from analogy consists in inferring that, since human beings use the faculty of
understanding in their “artistic action”, a supreme world-cause must have this
faculty, as well. In this case, we lack paritas rationis for considering the highest
being and a human being as part of one and the same species. The human and a
superhuman entity are fundamentally distinct in kind. In the context of
explaining why the existence of God cannot be proven on the basis of an
inference from analogy, Kant writes, “from the fact that among beings in the
world the cause of an effect that is judged as artistic has to be attributed to
intelligence we can by no means infer from analogy that the very same causality
we perceive in humans must also pertain to the being who is entirely distinct
from nature in regard to nature itself” (CPJ 5:465). Because the two beings
compared in the analogy are different in kind, I cannot infer that a property of
one belongs to the other.
The dialectical error in the Antinomy consists in a bad analogical inference,
one that speciously attributes a property of one mode of judging to a mode of
judging that is distinct in kind. Since reflecting and determining are two powers
of judgment – both, roughly, tasked with subsuming particulars under
universals – we are tempted to believe we have equal reason to apply the
principles of the one to the other. As a result of this temptation, we “transform”
the principles of reflection represented by M and T into corresponding
principles of determining objects in M* and T*. However, Kant is at pains in
the Dialectic to remind us that, like our causality and that of a supreme world-
cause, reflecting and determining are importantly distinct in kind. Reflecting is
autonomous, seeking out principles on its own, while determining is
heteronomous, having principles handed to it by another faculty. Thus, despite
the temptation to slide from M to M* or T to T*, we must resist the urge to
think that principles of reflection can determine nature. As I have mentioned,
this interpretation does not necessarily conflict with the camp of readers that
locate the antinomy at the level of the maxims, but spells out the necessary first
step we must take before even addressing the antinomy. That is, before
addressing the antinomy, we must locate and avoid a dialectical error of
judgment that tempts us to infer that reflecting principles of judgment can be
determinative. As is the case in the Transcendental Dialectic of the First
Critique, the Dialectic of the Third warns us of a specious inference we can be
tempted to, but should not, make. Yet, the specious inference in the third
Critique is not an inference of reason; it is an inference of the power of
judgment. As a mode of inference that is special to the power of judgment,
inference according to analogy is the appropriate mistaken inference in this
context. Now that we have a better sense of what the dialectical error involved
in the Antinomy is, we can turn to Kant’s remarks on how not to resolve the
antinomy.
2. Sections 72-73: How not to solve the antinomy
In sections 72-73, Kant surveys various dogmatic proofs of
purposiveness in nature. Some philosophers have attempted to justify the
inference that all that we judge to be teleology really is just mechanism on the
basis that their preferred methods of reflecting on nature reduce it to a merely
mechanistic cause. Other philosophers infer that our ability to judge nature in
accordance with ends allows us to prove the existence of teleology and
teleological properties in nature. The first group Kant calls “idealists” and the
second group “realists” about natural ends. Both camps fall prey to the
erroneous form of analogical inference described above.
Idealists seek to prove that the purposiveness of nature is “at bottom
entirely identical with the mechanism of nature” (CPJ 5:391). Kant surveys and
rejects two forms of idealism. The first, associated with the atomistic theories of
Epicurus and Democritus, contends that the purposiveness of nature is wholly
accidental. Products of nature that appear to betray a purposiveness merely
come about as a product of blind chance, and as a result “nothing is explained,
not even the illusion in our teleological judgments” (CPJ 5:393). We might say
that this doctrine, which purports to have explained that the universe is nothing
but the result of the collision of infinite many material atoms in an infinite void,
explains nothing. While the collision of atoms might give us an account of why
things have the structure that they do, they cannot explain why the universe
came to have this particular structure and not some other one.51 The other form
of idealism grounds the purposiveness of nature in a “lifeless God.” Kant
associates this view with Spinoza. The view seeks to explain the connection of
ends in the things in nature by making them out to be the product of a “blind
necessity”. In doing so, this view fails to provide a principled distinction
between purposive things and non-purposive things, instead giving us a “merely
childish game played with words” (CPJ 5:394). Spinoza’s doctrine of a lifeless
God does not even seem to be worth entertaining as a reflective standpoint, to
Kant, as it is fundamentally incoherent.
51 See the Letter to Herodotus for Epicurus’s basic principles of physics, which states that there
is no principles of compound bodies except atom and void (see Epicurus DL 10.39ff, translated
by Inwood and Gerson, p. 6).
To be sure, Epicureans later introduce the notion of the swerve as an attempt to give an account
of the contingent structure of nature. Rather than moving in a straight line as a result of some
previous collision, some atoms randomly and unexpectedly swerve. Cicero counters that such a
doctrine is ad hoc and ineffective:
For if all atoms swerve, none will ever cohere in a compound; but if some swerve and
some move properly by their own impetus, this will amount, first of all, to assigning
different spheres of influence, so to speak, to the atoms, some to move straight, others
to move crookedly; and second, that very same confused concourse of atoms (and this
is the point which Democritus too had trouble with) will not be able to produce the
orderly beauty of this world. (Cicero, On Goals 1.20, translated by Inwood and
Gerson, p. 46)
If all atoms swerve, none would collide and no compounds would come about. If some atoms
swerve, then those swerves must be caused by some influence, meaning that they are not
spontaneous as Democritus and Epicurus thought, or, they are not influenced by some previous
cause, meaning that they ultimately cannot explain “the orderly beauty of this world.” Cicero, it
turns out, offers us a more thorough version of Kant’s critique of Epicurean “idealism.” For an
illuminating discussion of Kant’s ever-evolving relationship with Epicurean physics, see
Catherine Wilson’s “The Building Forces of Nature and Kant’s Teleology of the Living” (2017).
Next come the “realists” about the purposiveness of nature, who seek to
build the purposiveness of nature into matter. First are the hylozoists, who assert
that life is a property of matter (i.e., zoe is in hule). This is a fundamentally
incoherent position, for matter is by definition inert and dead. Kant proves as
much in his argument for the Second Law of Mechanics. Then come the
Theists, which comes closer to the truth than some of the other views, However,
the dogmatic Theist seems to believe that they can establish the existence of
God in a way “sufficient for the determining power of judgment” (CPJ 5:395).
While positing an intentional God behind nature might be an adequate ground
for reflecting on the purposiveness of nature, it is not a ground for justifying the
purposiveness of nature as a “objective assertion.” Thus, Theism promises to
deliver more than it can, sliding from a maxim suitable for reflecting on nature
to an objective proof of the existence of God.
As McLaughlin (1990) has observed, Kant has no problem sliding from
claims about nature as a whole to claims about particular products of nature –
i.e., organisms – in these sections. On the face of it, this might not seem like an
issue. We can simply translate some of the errors characteristic of judgments
about the whole of nature to considerations about the correct ways to judge
particular natural products. However, if we consider options for conceiving of
organisms that are not neatly mapped out here, Kant might run into issues. One
such position that may pose an issue for Kant is Aristotle’s doctrine of the
organism, as it is developed in De anima. Kant never mentions Aristotle or
Aristotelians anywhere in the body of the third Critique, including the
Antinomy. On top of that, none of the positions in these sections neatly describe
Aristotle’s picture of the organism. Aristotle’s view could perhaps be grouped
under the “realist” camp, insofar as it assumes, like other realist positions, “that
the productive capacity of nature in accordance with final causes must be held
to be a special kind of causality” (CPJ 5:391). (Indeed, if this is an idea that the
realist subscribes to, it would seem as though Kant is more sympathetic to the
realist than to the idealist, who clumsily attempts to collapse the concepts of
purposiveness and mechanism.) Nevertheless, with respect to the organism,
Aristotle is neither a hylozoist nor a Theist. Aristotle’s distance from theism is
obviously clear – he does not posit a God as the source of an organism’s
generation and activity. Rather, the purposiveness of the organism is the result
of a natural organic body’s possession of an entelecheia (a first actuality) (DA ii
1, 412b5). While this may tempt someone to attribute a hylozoism to Aristotle,
he is quite adamant that the entelecheia animating a natural organic body is not
a property of matter. Instead, it is a form that structures and animates, but is not
reducible to, the material body with which it is coupled. In short, Aristotle is not
a hylozoist; he is a hylomorphist. An organism is a particular compound of
matter and form – the body being the matter that a soul, its form, endows with a
certain organization (logos) (DA ii 1, 412b15ff.). Without getting into the thorny
details of how to interpret Aristotle’s hylomorphism in general and its
application to the soul-body compound in particular, it seems sufficiently clear
that the life of an organism is not reducible to what Kant would call mechanism,
not reducible to a property of matter, and not built into creatures by God.
Now, Kant might say that Aristotle’s view on the organism is suspect
because it falls prey to the dialectical illusion at work in the antinomy,
mistaking a maxim for reflecting upon organisms for a principle constitutive of
objects in nature. Kant would flatly reject any such slide, as the “objective
reality of the concept of a natural end is not demonstrable by means of reason at
all (i.e., it is not constitutive for the determining, but is merely regulative for the
reflecting power of judgment)” (CPJ 5:396). Of course, to prove that
Aristotelian hylomorphism falls prey to the
dogmatic fallacy of mistaking a concept that guides our reflection of nature for
a concept of determining judgment, the objective reality of which can be
proven, would require a separate argument by Kant. Such an argument is simply
lacking in sections 72-73 of the Dialectic.
3. Sections 74-75: A critical inquiry into the limits of judgment
If the main error of the Dialectic consists in mistakenly inferring that a
principle of reflection can be involved in determining nature, only a thorough
critique of reflecting and determining allows us to appreciate why this inference
is mistaken by revealing the deep differences in kind between these two modes
of judging. Appropriately, Kant opens section 74 by reiterating the difference
between dogmatic and critical treatments of nature. A critical treatment of a
concept considers it only in relation to our cognitive faculties, “without
undertaking to decide anything about the object” (CPJ 5:395). A dogmatic
treatment, which is associated with the determining power of judgment,
presupposes the objective reality of a concept in order to subsume intuitions
under that concept (CPJ 5:396). Kant here focuses his efforts on showing that
the objective reality of the concept of a natural end cannot be proven, and hence
the purposiveness of nature cannot be treated “dogmatically.”
The concept of a natural end is not one that can be proven to have objective
reality. On the one hand, this concept “is possible only under certain conditions
given in experience” (CPJ 5:396), meaning that it cannot be a condition for the
possibility of experience, and its objective reality cannot be demonstrated, since
only concepts that serve as a condition for the possibility of experience can be
proven objectively real. Because its objective reality cannot be demonstrated,
this concept can never be treated “dogmatically for the determining power of
judgment”, and it is “merely regulative for the reflecting power of judgment”
(CPJ 5:396).
Kant takes the claim that the concept of an organism is not demonstrable
to be reinforced by the fact that “the concept of a natural product” is,
paradoxically, both necessary (reason compels us to think this concept) and
contingent (the laws of mechanics cannot explain why a product judged as a
natural end has the organization that it does). Recalling Kant’s example of the
structure of a bird from the first section of the Critique of the Teleological
Power of Judgment could be helpful here.
For if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones, the
placement of its wings for movement and its tail for steering, etc., one
says that given the mere nexus effectivus in nature, without the help of a
special kind of causality, namely that of ends (nexus finalis), this is all in
the highest degree contingent: i.e., that nature, considered as a mere
machine, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways without
hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule (CPJ
5:360).
This contingent unity of a bird can only be explained by appeal to a purposive
causality that artfully arranges the bird’s parts in the manner described above.
Crucially, the bird is still an object of outer sense, subject to and necessitated by
the Laws of Mechanics. Because these Laws are universal in scope with respect
to objects of nature, Kant must posit a source outside of nature for the
nonmechanistic causality that explains the contingent structure of a natural
product: “it must contain a basis for the possibility of this thing in nature and
yet at the same time a basis of the possibility of this nature itself and its relation
to something that is not empirically cognizable nature (supersensible) and thus
is not cognizable at all for us, in order to be judged in accordance with another
kind of causality than that of the mechanism of nature” (CPJ 5:396). The
concept of a natural end therefore points us to something that is at once in
nature and beyond nature, at once cognizable and un-cognizable. Owing to the
fact that it refers to a supersensible, un-cognizable basis of its possibility, the
concept of a thing as a natural end is “excessive for the determining power of
judgment” and “it cannot be provided with objective reality for determining
judgments” (CPJ 5:396-7). At this juncture, Kant issues us a reminder: even
though this concept is “immanent for the reflecting power of judgment with
regard to objects of experience”, we cannot employ this concept to “decide
anything” about nature and its products (CPJ 5:397). The concept of a natural
end may serve as a principle of reflecting judgment, and this may tempt us to
infer that it can serve as a principle of determining judgment, as well.
Moreover, this temptation may be heightened by the fact that “The concept of a
causality through ends (of art) certainly has objective reality, as does that of a
causality in accordance with a mechanism of nature” (CPJ 5:397).
Nevertheless, we must resist the temptation to infer, from this basis, that the
concept of a natural end can be demonstrated to have objective reality:
the concept of a causality of nature in accordance with the rule of ends,
even more the concept of a being the likes of which is not given to us in
experience at all, namely that of an original ground of nature, can of
course be thought without contradiction, but is not good for any
dogmatic determinations, because since it cannot be drawn from
experience and is not requisite for the possibility of experience its
objective reality cannot be guaranteed by anything. (CPJ 5:397)
Lacking a surefire means of drawing this concept from experience or treating it
as a possibility of experience, the concept of a purposiveness in nature can have
no objective reality.
With this set-up in mind, an important ambiguity and an opportunity to clarify
Kant’s intended position are afoot. On the one hand, he thinks that we cannot
prove the objective reality of this concept, but seems to suggest that our
experience of nature in some sense elicits the formation of the concept of the
organism. In the Analytic, Kant states that “Experience leads our power of
judgment to the concept” of a natural end (CPJ 5:366) and that the principle
stating that an organized product of nature is a natural end is “derived from
experience, that is, experience of the kind that is methodically undertaken and is
called observation” (CPJ 5:376). In the Canon of the first Critique, we even see
Kant claim that , “purposive unity is still so important a condition of the
application of reason to nature that I cannot pass it by, especially since
experience liberally supplies examples of it” (A826/B854). Despite the
concept’s lack of objective reality and our inability to apply it to nature
dogmatically, Kant says, again and again, that something about experience
suggests the presence of this concept in nature. I want to flag this because I
believe that it provides the grounds for qualifying Kant’s claims about the
organism’s lack of objective reality. The existence of an organism can never be
established by means of empirical cognition. Nevertheless, experience suggests
that the causality characteristic of it organizes certain natural products, and, as
the remainder of the Dialectic will show, we certainly have an interest in
imputing this sort of purposiveness to nature.
Though I fully turn my attention to the question of how exactly we
should treat Kant’s claims about the mere ideality of the organism later, for now
I clarify that one of my goals here is to chart a middle ground between two
extremes. Commentators often make Kant’s remarks about teleological
judgment out to be too thin. They assert that teleological judging merely
projects a certain concept onto nature, but that the state of affairs or object we
are projecting is a fiction. In other words, these commentators think that,
because we cannot determinately judge that there are organisms, we either
cannot say or must deny that there are organisms. These commentators are right
to insist that, on Kant’s account, we can never determinately judge that there are
organisms. However, our attitude towards the existence of the organism should
be thicker than a mere projection that licenses nothing stronger than an
agnosticism. As the passages above and the arguments of the next chapter show,
certain particulars present themselves to us in such a way that is jarring,
creating a need for a new concept or mode of judging to explain their
organization and activity. For this reason, we should seek an alternative that is
not quite as robust as determining judgment, but not quite as thin as a mere
projection. Later, I develop that middle ground by proposing that we conceive
of our attitude towards the existence of the organism as a kind of theoretical
belief.
Setting this matter aside and returning to the text, in section 75, Kant reinforces
the point that I cannot mistake the maxims of reflecting judgment for principles
of determining judgment with respect to the concept of the objective
purposiveness of nature in general. Due to the “peculiar constitution of my
cognitive faculties I cannot judge about the possibility of those things [natural
products] and their generation except by thinking of a cause for these acts in
accordance with intentions, and thus by thinking of a being that is productive in
accordance with the analogy with the causality of the understanding” (CPJ
5:398). To say that I cannot help but judge nature this way given the “peculiar
constitution of my cognitive faculties” is not to venture an objective principle
for determining judgment but is merely to state a subjective maxim for
reflecting judgment that is prescribed to it by reason.
Nevertheless, Kant adds that it is necessary for us to subject nature to the
concept of an intention if we hope to make progress in our empirical research of
organisms. Also, by applying the regulative maxim T to nature as a whole, “we
have been able to discover many laws of nature which, given the limitation of
our insights into the inner mechanisms of nature, would otherwise remain
hidden from us” (CPJ 5:398). Nonetheless, with respect to the use of the maxim
applied to the whole of nature, the maxim T is “useful, but not indispensable”.
The maxim is in contrast “essential for” products of nature that seem organized
in accordance with ends – i.e., organisms – because otherwise we could not
explain how such objects come about in the first place. Kant also suggests that
explaining organisms teleologically is of the utmost importance because it
serves as a gateway to preserving the possibility of an intelligent designer of
nature.
Representing something as a natural end, as Kant mentioned earlier and
reiterates here, represents the thing to us as contingent, not necessitated by the
laws of mechanism. As such, Kant infers that organisms “constitute the best
proof of the contingency of the world-whole,” serving as the “common
understanding” as well as the philosopher’s “best basis for proof” of the fact
that organization and origin of natural things can be tied to an intelligent
designer existing outside the world (CPJ 5:399). It is for this reason that
“teleology cannot find a complete answer for its inquiry except in a theology.”
At this juncture, Kant again warns that we cannot infer from the necessity of
applying the regulative maxim T that it can be transformed into a constitutive
principle for determining that the generation of some things is not possible in
accordance with merely mechanical laws (T*). All that the necessity of
applying T to organisms shows is that “because of the peculiar constitution of
our cognitive faculties, and thus the combination of experience with the
supreme principles of reason, we cannot form any concept at all of the
possibility of such a world except by conceiving of such an intentionally acting
supreme cause” (CPJ 5:399). When Kant refers to the supreme principles of
reason, he likely has the tandem of principles from Critique of Pure Reason’s
Transcendental Dialectic in mind – namely, “to find the unconditioned for
conditioned cognitions of the understanding” (A307/B364) and its
corresponding assumption that “when the conditioned is given, then so is the
whole series of conditions subordinated one to the other, which is itself
unconditioned” (A307-8/B364). Of course, it may be controversial to import the
principles here, considering that we are not presented with organisms as
“conditioned cognitions of the understanding.” Still, Kant states that we
represent the existence or form of certain things as the condition of an end;
presumably, under that merely regulative assumption, it makes sense to seek out
the end that has conditioned the thing, then the end that has conditioned that,
and so on and so forth until arriving at the ultimate, unconditioned end of an
“intentionally acting supreme cause.” Tracing back this final causal chain will
never establish an objective proof of the existence of an intelligent original
being, but it will serve the power of judgment in its reflection upon nature,
allowing it to explain the seemingly purposive and contingent structure of
organisms.
Ultimately, we must remember that “we do not actually observe ends in nature as
intentional, but merely add this concept as a guideline for the power of
judgment in reflection on the products of nature” (CPJ 5:399). The involvement
of an intentional cause of natural ends would be something supersensible, lying
beyond the limits of nature. Keeping this in mind allows us to ward off the
specious inference, drawn on the basis of an analogy between our two distinct
modes of judging, that a subjective maxim which states that some things in
nature are judged only to be possible in accordance with a final causality can be
transformed into a determining principle which states that organisms are only
possible by dint of an intentionally acting cause in the world. All that we are left
with is the “restricted formula” that we cannot conceive of organisms “except
by representing them and the world in general as a product of an intelligent
cause (a God)” (CPJ 5:400).
With this restriction in mind, Kant reiterates the mechanical inexplicability of
organisms: “it is quite certain that we can never come to know the organized
beings and their internal possibility in accordance with merely mechanical
principles of nature”, and so it would be absurd to hope for a “Newton who
could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to
natural laws that no intention has ordered” (CPJ 5:400). Mechanical laws can
never explain the contingent structure of an organized being. Still, the
mechanical inexplicability of products of nature does not license “any objective
judgment at all, whether affirmative or negative, about the proposition that there
is an intelligently acting being as world-cause…at the basis of what we rightly
call natural ends” (CPJ 5:400). Instead, we have only the conditional, regulative
maxim that if we are to judge the origin of natural ends within the limits of our,
peculiar cognitive capacities, then we can only explain the possibility of these
natural ends as emanating from an intelligent being. In the next chapter, I
explain that the mechanical inexplicability of organisms has important
theoretical and moral ramifications. For now, Kant has more to say about the
peculiarity of our cognitive capacities and the limits they impose on us in the
following two sections of the
Dialectic.
4. Sections 76-77: On the special character of the understanding
In section 76, Kant launches into a digression concerning the difference
between reason and the understanding as well as the special character of human
understanding. On the one hand, reason demands the unconditioned. On the
other hand, the understanding is stuck in the sublunary realm, working on
material that is given to it in intuition. As a result, concepts of the understanding
can (indeed, must) be made objectively real, while reason’s concepts (God, the
soul, freedom) cannot be proven objectively valid in the same way. The
understanding cannot “keep up with” reason, but it helps us appreciate the fact
that the ideas of reason are valid for all members of the human species, that
“given the nature of our (human) cognitive faculty or even the concept that we
can form of the capacity of a finite rational being in general, we cannot and
must not conceive otherwise” than in the form of ideas of reason that can never
be presented to us in experience (CPJ 5:401).
After this discussion of the differences between understanding and reason, Kant
abruptly reminds us that “It is absolutely necessary for the human
understanding to distinguish between the possibility and the actuality of things”
(CPJ 5:401). Because of the nature of our cognitive faculties, which involve
two heterogenous elements in sensibility and the understanding, we cannot
confuse these two forms of modality. Concepts of the understanding disclose
the possibility of some object while sensible intuitions present us with an actual
object. It is never the case that in thinking objects we can make them actual or
have an intuition without having any concept of it, and this is merely a
symptom of our peculiar cognitive constitution: “the distinction of possible
from actual things is one that is merely subjectively valid for the human
understanding, since we can always have something in our thoughts although it
does not exist, or represent something as given even though we do not have any
concept of it” (CPJ 5:402). For human understanding, then, it is impossible to
derive the actual from the possible (i.e., to bring something into existence by
merely thinking it). Of course, we can conceive of an understanding to which
this distinction does not apply, one for which all the objects it thinks exist and
the non-existence, or contingency, of an object would be impossible to
represent. In our current case, however, “we should conceive all objects in
accordance with the subjective conditions for the exercise of our faculties
necessarily pertaining to our (i.e., human) nature” (CPJ 5:403).
Having applied this same lesson regarding the limitations of our cognitive
capacities to the practical side of his story, Kant applies it to the topic of the
current Dialectic: “it may be conceded that we would find no distinction
between a natural mechanism and a technique of nature, i.e., a connection to
ends in it, if our understanding were not of the sort that must go from the
universal to the particular, and the power of judgment can thus cognize no
purposiveness in the particular, and hence make no determining judgments,
without having a universal law under which it can subsume the particular” (CPJ
5:404). Here, our understanding is not just taken to be limited to conceiving of
the possible and not the actual; it is also the case that the understanding
proceeds from the universal to the particular. Because the understanding must
proceed in this way, it distinguishes natural mechanism from the technique of
nature; a natural mechanism being the sort of thing that can be determined
according to a universal law of the understanding while the technique of nature
cannot. Lacking a universal under which we can subsume a connection of ends
in nature (e.g., a determinate concept of the organism) we can never cognize
such a connection. However, we still encounter contingency in the particular
(consider Kant’s many remarks about nature and experience furnishing us with
examples of organisms discussed above). In the face of this contingency, which
the universal laws of mechanism cannot explain, “reason nevertheless still
requires unity”. Because this unity cannot be found by means of subsuming a
particular under a given universal and reason places an unconditional
requirement on us to impose unity, it is necessary for the human power of
judgment to apply the purposiveness to the products of nature (CPJ 5:404). This
subjective principle of reason – presumably, the principle T, that it is some
products of material nature cannot be judged as subject merely to mechanical
laws – is therefore
“just as necessarily valid for our human power of judgment as if it were an
objective principle” (CPJ 5:404), as our faculty of reason demands unity even
when we cannot subsume a particular under a given universal.
It is worth noting that the necessity of this regulative principle for our human
power of judgment makes this principle seem “as if it were an objective
principle.” The necessity of this maxim could be another reason why we are
tempted to infer that it is constitutive of nature and not regulative. Nevertheless,
having clarified that our human understanding cannot produce the actual from
the possible and is limited to proceeding from universal to particular, Kant
assures us that the maxim T cannot ever be interpreted as a constitutive
principle of determination. Unable to explain the radically contingent structure
of an organism, we seek the aid of reason in commissioning an appropriate
maxim for grasping the unity of such a structure; but merely conceiving of such
a structure as possible does not make it actual.
On this point, Kant opens section 77 by likening the concept of a natural end to
an idea of reason; just as the objects of ideas cannot be given in experience,
neither can the cause of the possibility of a natural end be presented to us in
experience (CPJ 5:405). Importantly, while the cause of such a product is
outside of nature, “the consequence that answers to it (the product) is still given
in nature” (CPJ 5:405). Because the consequence of an end-directed activity is
given in nature it seems tempting to make the idea of a natural end a
constitutive principle of nature – that is, to say that there actually are some
things the generation of which is not possible in accordance with merely
mechanical laws. Still, Kant insists, even though the object we judge to be an
organism is “given in experience”, “it cannot even be determinately (let alone
completely appropriately) judged in accordance with the idea, but can only be
reflected upon” (CPJ 5:405). Kant’s resolution to the antinomy amounts to a
demonstration that the regulative maxims are necessary for our investigations of
nature, cannot be mistaken for principles of determining judgment, and are
ultimately compatible with one another. The key to understanding why they are
not only compatible, but both indispensable for our investigations of nature, is
tied to Kant’s discussion of the non-discursive understanding. When presented
with an object, our understanding can explain it “as a product of the parts and of
their forces and their capacity to combine themselves (including as parts other
materials that they add to themselves)”, representing the thing as mechanically
generated (CPJ 5:408). In other words, when presented with an object, we
explain its structure and generation by appealing to external causes – the
material forces and changes that brought about the current state of the thing. On
the basis of such an explanation, “there arises no concept of a whole as an end,
whose internal possibility presupposes throughout the idea of a whole on which
even the constitution and mode of action of the parts depends” (CPJ 5:408).
Indeed, to consider a thing an organism we need to judge it teleologically, and
teleological explanations and mechanical explanations are two modes of
explanation that are necessarily distinguished by the nature of our
understanding. While it is possible that a body we deem to be an organism
really is just mechanically generated, for the time being, we cannot justifiably
regard material beings as things in themselves. Mechanical explanations and
teleological explanations can exist side by side because things in themselves are
not merely material things and we are capable of attributing a non-mechanistic
causality to the “substratum” underlying material things:
But since it is still at least possible to consider the material world as a
mere appearance, and to conceive of something as a thing in itself
(which is not an appearance) as substratum, and to correlate with this a
corresponding intellectual intuition (even if it is not ours), there would
then be a supersensible real ground for nature, although it is
unknowable for us, to which we ourselves belong, and in which that
which is necessary in it as object of the senses can be considered in
accordance with mechanical laws, while the agreement and unity of the
particular laws and corresponding forms, which in regard to the
mechanical laws we must judge a as contingent, can at the same time be
considered in it, as object of reason (indeed the whole of nature as a
system) in accordance with teleological laws, and the material world
would thus be judged in accordance with two kinds of principles,
without the mechanical mode of explanation being excluded by the
teleological mode, as if they contradicted each other. (CPJ 5:409)
It is conceivable that things in themselves are not material things. Moreover, it
is conceivable that the supersensible real ground of nature, which is
unknowable to us, could only be understood by means of an “intellectual
intuition” – or the representation of a non-discursive understanding, which is at
once actual and possible, at once universal and particular, and so forth. Whereas
objects of the senses would be subject to mechanical laws, “the agreement and
unity of the particular laws and corresponding forms” would be objects of
reason judged in accordance with teleological laws. By separating the
material, mechanically generated perspective on objects from the contingent,
teleologically governed perspective on objects laid out about and appreciating
that caveat that some understanding unlike our human understanding could
conceivably behold the latter, Kant claims to have established that both maxims
of reflecting judgment can subsist alongside one another. Moreover, though it
may be possible to mechanically explain purposive products of nature, that does
not make the teleological principle of judgment dispensable:
one could investigate all the thus far known and yet to be discovered
laws of mechanical generation in a thing that we must judge as an end
of nature, and even hope to make good progress in this, without the
appeal to a quite distinct generation ground for the possibility of such a
product, namely, that of a causality through ends, ever being canceled
out; and absolutely no human reason (or even any finite reason that is
similar to ours in quality, no matter how much it exceeds it in degree)
can ever hope to understand the generation of even a little blade of grass
from merely mechanical causes. (CPJ 5:409-10)
From the perspective of the power of judgment, a “teleological connection of
causes and effects” is necessary for conceiving of the possibility of organisms
and for “studying [organisms] with the guidance of experience” (CPJ 5:410).
The catch is that the ultimate cause of the generation of things we judge to be
organisms can only be sought in the supersensible substratum, and the highest
ground of any connection of final causes and effects can only be “an original
understanding as cause of the world” (CPJ 5:410). Mechanical explanations
allow us to explain objects as they appear to us up to an extent, but those things
we judge to be ends of nature require us to appeal to a supersensible ground for
their generation. Insofar as it is possible to think of that supersensible ground of
the generation of organisms as teleological, teleological explanations can
subsist alongside mechanical ones.
5. Section 78 (and beyond): Unifying mechanism and teleology
The point of section 78, the final section of the Dialectic, is ostensibly to
reiterate that teleology without mechanism is mere “enthusiasm” and
mechanism without teleology is “fantastic.” On the one hand, “no insight into
the nature of things can be attained” if we abandon mechanical explanations of
the products of nature. Assuming that an intelligent cause designed nature’s
laws and products does not advance our “cognition of nature” – we can neither
cognitively grasp the possibility of an intelligent designed a priori or a
posteriori. The former route would require a specious leap from conceiving of
the possibility of such a designer to positing its existence; the latter route resorts
to tautological reasoning and seduce reason into “poetic enthusiasm” (CPJ
5:410).
On the other hand, reason must still conceive of some natural products as
generated by a causality in accordance with ends. Nature “obviously displays an
intentional unity of purpose” that we grasp by stating that certain products in it
are organisms. Though the question of how organisms arise in the first place is
one that reason compels us to pose, it is necessary for us to “conceive of a
particular kind of causality for it that is not, unlike the mechanism of natural
causes, found in nature” (CPJ 5:411). As far as objects in nature are concerned,
judgment must employ its mechanistic maxim, handed to it by the
understanding and not venture to explain their material composition
teleologically; still, if teleology is excluded from out investigations of nature,
reason will be made “fantastic” and sent “wandering about among figments of
natural capacities that cannot even be conceived” (CPJ 5:411). That is, even if
the rational maxim that some objects can be judged according to a purposive is
limited and must be deployed carefully, there is still some “proper occasion”
(CPJ 5:387) in which to deploy the maxim that some products of nature cannot
be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws.
While each of these maxims have their proper domain, Kant denies that they
can be united “in one and the same thing in nature” and treated as “dogmatic
and constitutive principles of insight into nature for the determining power of
judgment” (CPJ 5:411). Here, Kant discusses the example of the generation of a
maggot. If I study the maggot as an object of the senses and explain its
generation as the result of mechanical laws, I cannot conceive of it as produced
by a causality in accordance with ends. Likewise, if I think of the maggot as a
natural end, or as a thing that is both cause and effect of itself (see §64 of the
Analytic), I cannot “count on a mechanical mode of generation for it and take
that as a constitutive principle for the judging of its possibility” (CPJ 5:412). To
reflect upon the maggot as a product of mechanism excludes the constitutive
principle that the maggot may have been generated in accordance with laws that
are not merely mechanical; to reflect upon the maggot as an organism, or a
thing that is the product of end-directed activity, excludes the constitutive
principle that the maggot is only possible in accordance with mechanical laws.
Nevertheless, both principles of reflecting judgment M and T can be related to
one and the same supersensible ground. Kant reaches this conclusion because
he believes it is necessary that the principles of mechanism and teleology
“cohere in a single higher principle” – “because otherwise they could not
subsist alongside one another in our consideration of nature” (CPJ 5:412).
Since he has excluded the possibility that these maxims mutually rest on a
sensible ground in nature, the only available alternative is that they rest on a
supersensible ground outside of nature. Unfortunately, since this uniting
principle is beyond nature, it cannot ever be empirically cognized and proven as
the actual cause of the cases we are studying, meaning that such a principle
cannot provide us with legitimate explanations of a thing, as explanation gives
us an account of the generation of some thing from given laws for the
determining power of judgment. We cannot explain how or why these principles
are based on a common supersensible ground “can by no means be explained”
(CPJ 5:413). Kant reassures us that we should not be troubled by the fact that,
when researching an object in nature, applying one regulative principle (e.g., T)
excludes a firm assertion that the thing came about in accordance with an
opposed set of constitutive laws (e.g., M*). For, if we keep in mind that the
regulative principles we apply in our investigations of nature are never
constitutive principles that determinately explain how these objects came about,
it is still possible that these two regulative principles can be unified in the
common supersensible ground that all appearances presuppose.
Thus, the resolution to the Antinomy is in some sense a reminder of what Kant
mentioned at the outset, in section 70. We should apply the regulative principle
M when explaining the possibility and activity of an organism and try to take
our research on the basis of this principle as far as we possibly can. However,
there will be some proper occasion to deploy T to guide our investigations of
nature. While the constitutive versions of these principles – M* and T* - can
never be considered to subsist alongside one another, it is possible that their
regulative versions – M and T – can rest on the same supersensible ground. This
possibility ensures that the maxims stated at the outset “do not in fact contain
any contradiction” (CPJ 5:387). It could be the case, for instance, that a
designer manipulated the laws of mechanical generation to intentionally guide
the creation of organisms and fashion the particular, otherwise contingent, laws
of nature in accordance with which the world has come about.
What the final section of the Dialectic adds is a more specific account of the
way in which M and T are compatible with one another. Mechanism and
teleology subsist in a relationship of subordination: “the one (mechanism) can
only be subordinated to the other (intentional technism), which, in accordance
with the transcendental principle of purposiveness of nature, can readily be
done” (CPJ 5:414). Here, Kant is elaborating on what it means to say that
positing a teleological explanation of a thing does not exclude a mechanistic
explanation of the thing. It is not the case that the former excludes the latter, as
both explanations are compatible as long as they are employed as maxims, not
constitutive principles. Applying a teleological principle in our judgments about
natural objects does not exclude mechanism “because in a teleological judging
of matter, even if the form which it assumes is judged as possible only in accord
with an intention, still its nature, in accordance with mechanical laws, can also
be subordinated as a means to that represented end” (CPJ 5:414). When
explaining why an animal reproduces, we might appeal to some end in
accordance with which it behaves. The animal reproduces in order to preserve
its species, and the preservation of its species is an end taken to be explanatory
of its behavior. When fleshing out our explanation of why the animal aims to
preserve its species, we might recruit a host of mechanistic causes – perhaps,
we explain, the animal has been primed for survival by its environment, or
perhaps nature selects for those animals that are fit for reproducing, or etc.
However, “we also do not know how far the mechanical mode of explanation
that is possible for us will extend, but are only certain of this much, namely, that
no matter how far we ever get with that, it will still always be inadequate for
things that we once recognize [anerkennen] as natural ends” (CPJ 5:415). What
I take Kant to mean here is that, even if we posit some sort of natural
mechanism that selects for those species most fit for survival, we can still raise
a further question – i.e., Why would nature select only species that possess some
traits and not others? Why does nature, in this case, privilege survival and not
extinction?
Appealing to more mechanisms cannot stop this regress of “why”
questions. This is precisely why, given the constitution of our faculties, “we
must always subordinate all such mechanical grounds to a teleological
principle” (CPJ 5:415, emphasis added). In our investigations of nature, we
should always apply the mechanism of nature as far as we as possibly can in
accordance with the general maxim M. But reflection upon certain products will
lead eventually lead us to suspend M and posit T, as there are some products of
and events in nature that “we can, in spite of those mechanical causes, subject to
investigation only under the concept of an end of reason” (CPJ 5:415). For
those products and events, an explanation appealing to mechanical causes “must
in the end be subordinated to causality in accordance with ends” (CPJ 5:415).
In a sense, what Kant has also given us here is a glimpse into what exactly it
means to say some of nature’s products are mechanically inexplicable. For some
products and events, an explanation appealing to mechanical causes will not
stop the regress of why questions. The only thing that stops the regress is
positing some ultimate end that, though we can never cognize, might shed some
light on why nature is the way that it is. Indeed, as I shall explain in what
immediately follows, it is the regress-creation of mechanism and the regress-
stopping power of teleological explanations that licenses our subordination of
mechanism to teleology.
6. On the mechanical inexplicability of organisms
In previous chapters, I have analyzed the concepts of purposiveness, the
organism, the machine, and life and formulated the following interrelated
interpretation of these terms. Purposiveness is fundamentally a causality that
takes inner principles as its grounds. The organism is a thing to which we
attribute a particular kind of purposiveness – that is, an objective, real,
internally purposive kind. In other words, an organism has an inner principle –
its ends – and organizes itself and acts in accordance with those inner
principles. Life, on my analysis, is most generically construed as the faculty of a
substance to determine itself in accordance with inner principles. If my analysis
is on the right track, this means that life is a substance’s in-built faculty of
purposiveness. Furthermore, if we judge something to be an organism, or to act
in accordance with inner principles, it must have some capacity to act in
accordance with those principles. That capacity is none other than life. A
machine, in contrast to a living organism, is something that can only have
external grounds of determination, and so it can be entirely explained by appeal
to mechanistic laws of generation.
With these tools in mind, I want to offer a new account of the mechanical
inexplicability of organisms – one that makes the mechanical inexplicability of
natural products compatible with the claim that we must subordinate
mechanism to teleology. On the one hand, mechanical explanation requires us
to trace back antecedent changes in matter that externally determined a thing’s
current state of matter. On the other hand, an organism has life, or a capacity to
determine itself in accordance with spontaneous internal grounds that do not, by
definition, conform to the mechanical laws of generation. In what follows, my
proposal is that, given the constitution of our cognitive faculties, mechanical
explanations can never suffice for giving a complete account of the generation
or the activity of an organism. For instance, when asking why a fig tree regrows
its fruits once we have plucked them, tracing back the mechanical causes of the
tree’s regrowth does not stop the regress of “why” questions. Rather, only an
appeal to an internal ground stops the regress. On my reading of Kant, the
ultimate internal ground that determines a thing’s organic activity is (what I
call, following Bedau 1992) a value. The regress of “why” questions cease to a
halt when we state that the fig tree regrows its fruit because regrowing fruit is
conducive to its selfmaintenance, and self-maintenance is something that, in
some loose sense, has value for the fig tree. How this assessment differs from
Peter McLaughlin’s (1990) and builds upon Hanna Ginsborg’s (2015) I explain
below.
McLaughlin’s view makes mechanistic explanation out to be a reduction
or a decomposition of a whole to its parts. Marcel Quarfood (2004) gives us
good reasons to suppose that this is too parochial an understanding of
mechanism on Kant's account. Quarfood notes that mechanism was simply
taken to be coextensive with the "the predetermination of every change by the
preceding state" in Kant's 1790 Progress essay (2004, 200). Moreover, in the
Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, Kant seems to criticize the reductionistic
version of mechanical philosophy McLaughlin apparently attributes
to him: "This method, also called
Korpuskularphilosophie, consists in explanations from "the constitution and
composition of [the] smallest parts, as machines," and it appears to be the same
corpuscularianism that McLaughlin, citing Robert Boyle, presents as an
example of mechanism" (2004, 201; see McLauhglin 1990, 176). Owing to this
rejection, Kant cannot be straightforwardly accepting of Boyle’s conception of
mechanism, as McLaughlin asserts. The conception of mechanism that is
relevant here must be broader.
McLaughlin might point to section 77 of the Dialectic to argue that
there, Kant seems to be suggesting that mechanism is associated with the
discursivity of the understanding, and the discursivity of the understanding is
characterized as an analysis of a whole by reducing it to its parts. In response to
this, Quarfood insists that what is characteristic of a discursive understanding is
that it thinks by means of abstract concepts of the understanding and depends
upon data brought to it by intuition. According to McLaughlin, the intuitive
understanding of section 77 only differs from a discursive understanding in that
it can explain parts from wholes. It still, Quarfood says, "functions in
accordance with the causal law (its holism being a species under the genus
causality" (2004, 201). This reveals yet another reason why McLaughlin's
depiction of the discursivity of the understanding as reflective of a certain
whole-to-part reductionism cannot be right - it suggests that a contrasting
"intuitive" understanding is merely that sort of understanding that proceeds in
the opposite direction when explaining (i.e., from part to whole) but is still
capable of using the concept of causality in doing so. However, Quarfood
maintains that, for a non-discursive understanding, "causality (as based on a
pure concept of the understanding) must be cancelled"
(2004, 201). All of this suggests that McLaughlin's depiction of mechanism as
whole-to-part reduction is not the only means of framing Kant's claim that
organisms are mechanically inexplicable.
Seizing on Quarfood’s suggestion that the sense of mechanism here
must be broader than McLaughlin suggests, I propose that we think of
mechanistic explanations as providing an account of the external causes that
precipitated some change in matter. For any object in spacetime, its current
material state is the result of some prior, external state of matter. In contrast, a
nonmechanistic explanation will not appeal to some prior material event to
explain the current material state of an object. Instead, it will appeal to an
internal principle of determination – something like a representation, a feeling,
or, as I suggest below, a value. This covers cases of mereological explanation,
as Kant’s discussion of parts determining a whole also seem to appeal to those
parts as material things subject to and producing external forces that affect other
parts of the same material whole (see CPJ 5:408). But this characterization is
broader than a mereological analysis because it can be construed etiologically,
as well. External causes are material states that temporally precede other
material states. Mechanism does not simply refer to a particular mereological
causal relation. More generally, it pertains to a causal explanation that tells us
how a thing came about as a result of being passively affected by some prior
material influence.
Mechanistic explanations exclude spontaneity from their ken.
Ginsborg offers a different account of the mechanical inexplicability of
organisms that deploys a broader form of mechanism. According to Ginsborg,
the mechanical inexplicability of organisms is a symptom of the fact that they
exhibit regularities that cannot be explained by mechanism, and matter (or a
material thing) is that which is by definition passive (or acted upon) and not
spontaneous (capable of self-directed activity). As Ginsborg puts it, "The
impossibility of accounting for the existence of organisms in terms of the
workings of matter as such is due to the extreme improbability that matter could
have spontaneously arranged itself into structures with the requisite order and
complexity" (2015, 301). Indeed, we might bring back considerations of Kant's
analysis of the difference between the external principles impelling machines
and the internal principles impelling life to make this claim even stronger: given
the conceptual contrast between machines as driven by purely external causes
and living things as driven by spontaneous, internal causes, it is not just
extremely improbable that matter could have spontaneously arranged itself the
way that a living organism seems arranged. More strongly, it would be
inconceivable that matter could arrange itself in such a way. Matter is, by
definition, dead, only propelled by external causes. In any case, matter cannot
account for the "biological regularities" displayed by the workings of an
organism (2015, 302).
Instead, Ginsborg suggests that the biological regularities exhibited by
organisms come about as a result of its conforming to certain normative
standards or rules. An immediate issue with Ginsborg's view is that it is unclear
what it means for biological regularities to conform to normative standards. A
more helpful model for the point Ginsborg is trying to make might be gleaned
by running her view vis-à-vis Mark Bedau's grades of teleology in his 1992
"Where's the good in teleology?" Bedau adopts an evaluative approach to
teleology, according to which teleology is fundamentally characterized and
analyzed in terms of value (in a neutral sense of the term). Recall that Bedau
distinguishes three grades of teleology along the lines of the explanatory role
value plays in each. A teleological explanation has the following characteristic
structure to Bedau: "A Bs in order to C iff A Bs and A's Bing contributes to
Cing and Cing is good for A" (1992, 787). According to a "Grade 1" analysis of
this statement, the fact that Cing is good for A plays no role in explainig why A
Bs. A's Bing merely happens to bring about good consequences;
"A's Bing is merely conjoined with its contribution to a good consequence"
(1992, 789). To say that Eric exercises in order to maintain good health only
invokes good health as an accidental consequence of his exercising. Grade 2
takes the analysis of teleological explanation a step further insofar as it adds a
crucial "because" to the form of explanation above: "A Bs in order to C iff A Bs
because A's Bing contributes to Cing and Cing is good" (1992, 789). While this
might seem to invoke the value of C as an explanatory ground, Grade 2
interprets the because as only scoping over A's Bing contributes to Cing", and
not the second conjunct "Cing is good." Thus, while Grade 2 also appeals to
good consequences and even adds that Eric exercises *because* it is conducive
to his health, the goodness of health is still not explaining why he exercises.
This leads to Grade 3 teleology. Here, the value of health is finally taken into
account to explain why Eric exercises. According to Grade 3 teleology, value
plays an essential role in explaining why A Bs. This, to Bedau, is “full-blooded”
teleological explanation.
In light of Bedau's analysis, let us return to Ginsborg's claim that there
are biological regularities that cannot be accounted for by appeal to changes in
matter, but only by evaluating organic structures and activities as relative to
some normative standard. On Bedau's analysis, the controversy regarding the
presence of teleology in biological explanation pertains the Grade 3 only. That
is, to the mechanist, it is not a scandal to admit that there are Grades 1 and 2
teleology in nature. Hearts make a sound when they beat in order for doctors to
diagnose health conditions that a patient may suffer from, but we need not
invoke values as explanatory to make this kind of explanation. Moreover, hearts
pump blood because pumping blood contributes to circulating blood throughout
the body, and circulating blood is good for the body. However, the good
consequences of circulating blood do not explain why the heart beats. What
would be controversial is the statement that heart's beat because they recognize
that their beating is good for them (and the body of which they are a part).
Ginsborg's proposal that organisms are fundamentally subject to
normative laws and constraints equivocates between these grades of activity,
and so it presents a view that may not be inexplicable by the mechanist’s lights
after all. This equivocation is apparent in the examples Ginsborg chooses to
motivate her view: "The regularity with which an acorn grows into an oak, or a
heart circulates blood, is lawlike in so far as these processes conform to laws
that acorns ought to (are meant to, are supposed to) grow into oaks, or that the
heart ought to circulate blood. Regarding organic regularities as lawlike in this
way requires that we regard organisms and their parts as subject to normative
standards and constraints: and this is just what it is to regard them as purposes"
(2015, 278). The problem with Ginsborg’s view is that it is possible to "subject"
these entities to normative standards and constraints in totally different ways. A
heart can be subject to normative standards and constraints in a way that is
teleological but does not offend or violate the endeavor to mechanistically
explain it. Indeed, a Grade 2 analysis of why the heart pumps blood seems
totally compatible with a mechanical explanation of the heart. A heart pumps
blood because pumping circulates blood throughout the body and circulating
blood happens to be what a wellfunctioning heart ought to do. But what a heart
ought to do plays no role in explaining why the heart beats in order to circulate
blood. In other words, the heart conforms to the normative standard of what it
ought to be, but merely coincidentally. If we take Ginsborg to be saying that the
mechanical inexplicability of an organism amounts to the claim that the
mechanist cannot account for any grade of teleology, this claim seems off. After
all, the mechanist can accept that the heart pumps blood because doing so
circulates blood through the body and circulating blood happens to be good for
the body. What the mechanist could not explain is the circulation of blood
being good for the body determining the pumping of the heart.
The controversy surrounding an organism and its mechanical
inexplicability does not merely have to do with the fact that its activity or
regularity happens to conform to some normative standard or value. Rather,
what is inexplicable in mechanistic terms is the suggestion that organisms have
some good or value and that that good or value determines their activity or
structure. To say that the organism is mechanically inexplicable is to say that the
mechanist cannot explain why or how a normative standard or value genuinely
explains the structure and the activity of an organism. In Bedau's parlance,
organisms seem to possess a third grade of teleology, which would suggest that
their workings are determined by the goodness (again, in a neutral, a-moral
sense of "good") of some activity. A predator hunts in order to feed itself and its
family, and feeding itself and its family is good for both. On a Grade 3 analysis,
the goodness of feeding itself and its family explains why the predator behaves
the way that it does, why it has the features that it does and not some others (a
lithe but muscular body, sharp fangs, etc.), and so forth.
Ginsborg's account does not diagnose the sense in which value comes to
bear on our analysis of the organism in precise enough terms, and because of
this it does not quite explain what is mechanically inexplicable about the
organism. In Bedau's manner of speaking, a genuine teleological explanation
appeals to value as a way of explaining the activity and structure of a thing. In
Kant's manner of speaking, this is to say that, for an organism, value serves as
an internal cause of an organism's behavior and structure. Insofar as mechanists
take the activities and structure of an organism to be the result merely of an
antecedent state of matter, they cannot explain how the value of some activity
brings about "biological regularities." Value, in its neutral, a-moral sense, is not
a state of matter that precipitates some other change in matter. Furthermore,
value appears to be just the sort of thing that can qualify as a spontaneous
"internal" principle of purposive causality.
Bringing the explanatory framework developed by Bedau to bear on
Kant's thesis that organisms are mechanically inexplicable gives us a new way
of understanding the mechanical inexplicability thesis. The form and the
activity of an organism is so puzzling to us because it is taken to be motivated
by a value, where value is the immaterial, internal principle of an organism’s
structure or activity. To say that there will never be a Newton of a blade of grass
is to say that the laws of mechanics could never explain how or why value can
serve as an internal principle of an organism's activity and form. It is to say that
the mechanist cannot account for the way in which value imposes unity on the
world.
In this sense, mechanism is necessary but merely regulative because, on
the one hand, explaining how nature and objects in it came to be requires us to
trace back the series of external material causes that precipitated the current,
material state of nature and natural products. On the other hand, organisms are
mechanically inexplicable because, as far as we know, the mechanist cannot
explain life. All the things we judge to be organisms are alive. Insofar as life is a
capacity to act in accordance with inner principles and a mechanistic
explanation proceeds by giving the external causes of some material state,
mechanism cannot be constitutive of living phenomena.
To put this point plainly, consider the question “Why does a tree
reproduce?” One route is to answer that the tree reproduces because material
process within the tree caused it to sprout an acorn, and that process was itself
initiated by some previous material state of the tree, and that material state of
the tree was perhaps precipitated by a chemical reaction between the tree’s roots
and the soil, and so on. Notice that if we proceed along these lines, there will
always be a prior external cause for some state – we can go on tracing the
external-causal chain of the tree’s reproductive activity ad infinitum. But the
question “Why does the tree reproduce?” can be interpreted slightly differently,
in such a way that stops a mechanist cannot answer, for “If the mere mechanism
of nature is assumed as the basis for the explanation of its purposiveness, then
one cannot ask why the things in the world exist” (CPJ 5:434). The tree
reproduces in order to maintain itself and its species, where the maintenance of
itself and its species is taken to be, in some sense, the good of the tree. The
mechanist cannot explain by what means the good of a tree arises or by what
means the good of a tree causes reproduction. And it is in this sense that a tree is
mechanically inexplicable.
Besides stopping a potential infinite regress of causes, defining
mechanical inexplicability in terms of value allows us to better appreciate why
it is internally purposive things that are mechanically inexplicable for Kant. The
mechanist cannot give us an account of how values determine the activity of a
thing from within it. The relevant values of the tree are not established relative
to some other purposive agent (e.g., the birds living on it, the soil into which it
digs its roots, and so on). They are values built into the tree, so to speak.
At this point, someone may worry that what I suggest here violates
Kant’s commitment to the Second Law of Mechanics. Nevertheless, the “why”
questions I describe here only come about in the context of investigations of
nature that take place in accordance with mere maxims of reflection. So,
positing a value as the ultimate internal ground of an organism’s activity does
not guarantee that we will ever cognize that internal ground. This ground is not,
and cannot ever be, given to us in outer sense. What this might give us a theory
that suggests why organisms have the contingent structure that they do.
Ultimately, admitting that organisms and their life are mechanically
inexplicable does not violate this law of mechanics, though it shows us that, due
to the constitution of our cognitive faculties, mechanical explanations will never
stop the infinite regress of why questions an organism triggers. It is in this sense
that the mechanical mode of explanation “will still always be inadequate for
things that we once acknowledge as natural ends” (CPJ 5:415); it is in this
sense that “no human reason (or even any finite reason that is similar to ours in
quality, no matter how much it exceeds it in degree) can ever hope to
understand the generation of even a little blade of grass from merely mechanical
causes” (CPJ 5:410).
7. Concluding remarks
Above, I have provided an outline of Kant’s Antinomy of the
Teleological Power of Judgment. Along the way, I have taken a stance on
several key issues in the literature. For one, I endorse an interpretation of the
Antinomy that characterizes the dialectical error as a bad analogical inference
stating that the principles of reflecting judgment can be deployed in determining
judgments on the basis that these two modes of judging are the same in kind. By
attuning us to important differences between these two faculties, Kant is at
pains to show that we are never licensed in inferring that the principles of
reflection can be deployed in determining nature. I have also provided an
interpretation of the mechanical inexplicability of the organism that builds on
Hannah Ginsborg’s, arguing that what is mechanically inexplicable is the
organism’s life, or its capacity to determine its activity in accordance with an
internal ground of activity. Yet, perhaps most importantly given the aims of
what is to come, I have been at pains to emphasize that Kant may deny that we
can determinately judge that there are organisms, but, given the many situations
in which Kant stresses that nature and experience furnish us with examples of
organisms, we should not read him as stating that the organism is a mere fiction
or projection on account of this denial. The goal of the next chapter is to answer
one question: If we cannot empirically cognize organisms but they are
something more than mere fictions or mental projects, what should our attitude
toward the existence of organisms in nature be?
Chapter 6. Believing in organisms: Kant’s
nonmechanistic philosophy of nature
In the previous chapters, we have traversed Kant’s texts to define core
concepts, such as purposiveness, nature, organism, mechanism, and life.
Equipped with our analyses of these terms as well as key portions of the third
Critique, we are now finally able to respond to the mechanistic readers
surveyed in the Introduction and Chapter 4. Recall that, traditionally,
interpreters attribute to Kant the view that nature is determined by and
completely explicable in terms of Newton’s Laws of Mechanics. This tradition,
which is anchored in the conception of nature developed in the Second Analogy
of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as the Mechanics section
of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, puts forward a
mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of nature.
To these readers, Kant thinks that our mechanistic explanations of nature
genuinely capture the structure of nature and natural products. Moderate
mechanistic readers, claim that, since we cannot empirically cognize the
causality characteristic of an organism, we cannot know that organisms exist.
Moreover, because we cannot know whether nature contains organisms, Kant
encourages us to believe that mechanism can one day exhaustively explain
nature.
Strong mechanistic readers take things a step further. Whether or not we
can grasp the causality characteristic of them, the things we call organisms are
presented to us as objects of empirical cognition. If something is an object of
empirical cognition, then the laws of physics give us an exhaustive picture of
what that object is and why it exists. If the laws of physics furnish us
with a picture of reality according to which objects are nothing but matter in
motion, it follows that those things we judge to be organisms are nothing but
matter in motion. In short, to the strong mechanist, Kant’s philosophy leads us
to the conclusion that we can know organisms do not exist. In general,
mechanistic readings draw Kant’s picture of nature closer to an Early Modern
mechanistic one. It is either possibly or necessarily the case that all natural
entities we take to be alive are mere matter in motion. Frogs, trees, dogs, and
beetles only superficially differ from clocks, trains, and other inanimate objects,
for the deepest causal mechanisms driving both kinds of being are really the
same. Mechanistic readings seem natural to adopt when we consider some of
Kant’s remarks on organisms and teleology. Kant states that the concept of a
natural end has no objective reality because we cannot cognize the world-cause
that would make the existence of such ends possible (i.e., an intelligent God).
Generally, these readers emphasize, Kant makes any judgment of teleology in
nature a reflecting judgment, and while reflecting judgments tell us something
about the subject, they tell us nothing about objects. Mechanistic readers also
insist that
Kant says Newton’s Laws of Mechanics explain the alterations of all material
things, and the things we call organisms certainly appear to be material things.
Thus, mechanistic readers also encourage the reduction of the life sciences to a
mathematizable physics.
Though the First Critique and the Metaphysical Foundations have tempted
many toward a mechanistic reading of nature, Kant’s remarks in the Critique of
the Power of Judgment may
steer us in another direction altogether. In this text, Kant frequently mentions
that that there are proper occasions to apply the concept of a natural end in our
investigations of nature and that observation presents us with examples of
organisms. Kant also affirms that “the mere mechanism of nature is incapable
of providing an explanatory ground of the generation of organized beings” (CPJ
5:389), that “we can never adequately come to know the organized beings and
their internal possibility in accordance with merely mechanical principles of
nature” (CPJ 5:400, my emphasis), and that “the mechanism of nature…is not
by itself sufficient for conceiving of the possibility of an organized being” (CPJ
5:421-2). Statements like these contradict the strong mechanistic reader’s push
to reject the very possibility of organisms and appear to presuppose a picture of
nature and the organism that may undermine even a moderate mechanistic
reading.
In this final chapter, I detail my non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s
doctrine of nature and the organism. I show that we can strongly commit to the
potential truth of the claim that there are organisms even though we can never
know whether organisms exist. Against strong mechanists, Kant nowhere
endorses the claim that we can know there are no organisms. Against moderate
mechanists, I argue that Kant gives us the resources to believe in the existence
of organisms. Belief, rather than knowledge, is the positive epistemic attitude
we should adopt towards the existence of the organism.
Section 1 provides a sketch of some Kantian terminology that plays an
indispensable role in articulating the commitments of mechanistic and non-
mechanistic readers. Section 2 summarizes the arguments that moderate and
strong mechanists make in favor of their views. In section 3, I raise several
complications for the mechanistic reading. For one, Kant plainly states that
experience leads us to the concept of an organism and that nature furnishes us
with examples of organisms (3.1). Additionally, in the Antinomy of Teleological
Judgment, Kant plainly states that we can never prove the principle that all
material things are generated in accordance with mechanistic laws only (3.2).
Finally, he distances himself from those philosophers who have affirmed that
there are no organisms in nature (3.3). In section 4, I outline my non-
mechanistic reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature. While mechanists are right to
maintain that we can neither empirically cognize organisms directly nor know
that organisms exist, the text leaves open the possibility that we may believe in
the existence of the organism in nature (4.1). Furthermore, it is fully consistent
with the text to hold that the target of our belief is a natural object, not merely a
mental act such as a judgment (4.2). We do not merely believe in the usefulness
of some reflecting judgment for the sake of our cognitive economy. When we
believe in the organism, we make a positive commitment to the existence of a
certain kind of natural entity. Section 5 closes with reflections on how this
reading interacts with Kant’s transcendental idealism and with his moral
philosophy. Notably, one consequence of the reading I develop here is that Kant
may be a antireductionist about life science.
1. A note on cognition, knowledge, and belief
Before delving into the nuances of each available position and offering
my alternative, let us briefly discuss how Kant characterizes cognition
[Erkenntnis], knowledge [Wissen], and belief [Glaube]. Understanding each
term shall leave us with a better grip on how mechanistic readers differ from
one another and where non-mechanists depart from mechanists.
When I discuss cognition, I refer specifically to the representational
state introduced at the outset of the Critique of Pure Reason’s Transcendental
Logic. In this sense of the term a cognition is a representational state that a
subject forms when they combine a given intuition with a concept of the
understanding. An intuition is any representation that we receive in space and
time through our faculty of sensibility, and to Kant such a representation
“contains only the way in which we are affected by objects” (A51/B75). For
instance, the redness of a rose is something we are given as a sensible intuition.
In contrast, a concept is a representation that we spontaneously think. Kant
glosses the understanding, which is our faculty of concepts, as a “faculty for
thinking of objects of sensible intuition” (A51/B75). For instance, upon sensing
the redness of a rose, my faculty of understanding leads me to abstractly
compare this rose to other roses, to consider the causal process that culminated
in the existence of this rose, and so on. These two heterogenous faculties and
the species of representation proper to each are necessary for forming a
cognition; without one or the other, cognition is impossible. As Kant puts it,
“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”
(A51/B75). Cognition is a state a subject achieves when they combine a given
intuition and a concept of the understanding in a particular way.
Whereas cognition is a representational state that involves thinking
about objects given to us in space and time, knowledge [Wissen] and belief
[Glaube] are modes of assent [Fürwahrhalten], or epistemic attitudes that we
adopt towards propositions. There are a wide variety of ways in which one can
assent to a proposition, and each is distinguished by considering
whether we have sufficient objective grounds or subjective sufficient grounds
for assent. Ideally, an individual has sufficient objective and subjective grounds
for assent, the result of which is knowledge. The right kinds of objective
grounds are “perceptual, memorial, or introspective states”, and those states
serve as sufficient objective grounds only if they render the proposition in
question “probable to a degree that licenses assent with a moderate-to-high
degree of probability” (Chignell 2007, 327). We could think of principled
observation, data compiled on the basis of those observations, reflection on the
legitimacy of the data, and so forth as ingredients that contribute to the
formation of sufficient objective grounds. Subjective grounds consist in the
“subject’s own determination that the assent is based on sufficient objective
grounds,” and those grounds are sufficient only if “the everyday process of
using memory, a priori reasoning, introspection, and so forth” allows the subject
to establish a high degree of confidence in the sufficient objective grounds
motivating the proposition in question (Chignell 2007, 328). Subjective grounds
generally correspond to one’s level certainty with respect to their objective
grounds.
Combining the elements of our discussion so far, we might think of a
cognition as prime candidate for a sufficient objective ground of assent. Direct
perceptual acquaintance with an object accompanied by a concept that I have
legitimately applied to it in a judgment seems like just the kind of evidence that
would license an assent with a moderate-to-high degree of probability. My
cognizing that the petals of a flower are of a certain color and shape, that the
flower has a certain scent, that the stem of the flower is thorny, and so forth may
license my claim to knowing that this flower is a rose and not a lily.
In contrast to knowledge, Kant writes that “if assent is only subjectively
sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient, then it is
called Belief” (A823/B851). Andrew Chignell glosses belief as a “firm,
positive, and voluntary attitude that is subjectively sufficient2 for a particular
subject in a particular circumstance, given his or her interests and ends, and that
has implications for the subject’s rational action, assertion, and deliberation”
(Chignell 2007, 357). Subjective grounds that are sufficient2 are grounds with
some nonepistemic merits. For instance, assent to the proposition that there is a
future life has the nonepistemic merit of allowing us to avoid rendering the
moral law practically absurd (2007, 334). Belief is a state characterized by a
lack of sufficient objective grounds – we cannot appeal perceptual, memorial,
etc. states to show that the propositions we believe in are probable with a
moderate to high degree of certainty. Since the subjective grounds of belief are
merely nonepistemic reasons for desiring or valuing the truth of these assents,
we have no direct route to proving their truth.
Based on Kant’s characterization of each term, it appears that there will
never be an instance in which cognition serves as evidence for a belief. The
moment we have cognition of something we have evidence that can ground a
much stronger variety of assent than belief. Instead, belief is the right kind of
assent to form towards a proposition like “God exists.” We can never cognize
God since God cannot be presented to us in space and time. Still, Kant explains
that we have a special interest in presupposing that God exists as a precondition
for investigating nature as a purposive unity (A826/B854). Thus, while we lack
sufficient objective grounds for knowing that God exists, we have a special
subjective interest in holding the existence of God to be true.
This special subjective interest licenses our belief in a wise creator of nature.
2. Surveying mechanistic readings of Kant
Now that I have laid out my understanding of these key terms, I
summarize the three interpretations I will weigh in this paper.
•Strong mechanistic reading: To Kant, the things we call organisms may
seem to exhibit internally purposive activity, but we know that no such
activity is possible in nature. Thus, we can be certain that we will
eventually explain this apparent internal purposive activity in
mechanistic terms.
To the strong mechanistic reader, we cannot empirically cognize the internally
purposive causality characteristic of an organism, but we are still presented with
organisms in outer sense, as objects of empirical cognition. However, the
existence of objects of empirical cognition can only be explained by the Laws
of Mechanics – more precisely, the Law of Inertia. Whatever is subject to the
Law of Inertia is mere matter in motion, which implies that if x is an object of
empirical cognition, then x is determined merely by external causes. Thus,
insofar as they are objects of empirical cognition, the things we call organisms
are completely determined by external causes, not internal causes such as ends.
As long as we assume that Newtonian mechanics applies to all of nature, we
know that there is no internally purposive activity in nature. Since organisms
are by definition things that exhibit internally purposive activity and no such
activity exists in nature, we can know that organisms, strictly speaking, do not
exist in nature.
•Moderate mechanistic reading: To Kant, the things we call organisms
may seem to exhibit internally purposive activity, but we cannot grasp
the principle of such activity. In contrast, we can cognize the material
external principles that contribute to a mechanistic explanation of a
thing’s activity. Thus, we have reason to believe that this apparent
internally purposive activity will one day be explained in mechanistic
terms.
Moderate mechanistic readers set out with the observation that we cannot
cognize the causality by virtue of which we judge a thing to be an organism.
McLaughlin also neatly summarizes how a moderate mechanist begins with this
insight and arrives at the conclusions definitive of their
position. The kind of causality exhibited by an organism cannot be thought
through the understanding, for the understanding represents mechanistically and
the purposiveness of an organism is inherently non-mechanistic. Moreover, we
may judge that a rose drinks water through its roots because it strives to
survive, but the relevant causal ground in this explanation – the rose’s desire to
survive – is not something that we can behold in space and time. Unable to
think or intuit the purposiveness of the organism through the understanding, we
cannot attain empirical cognition of the purposiveness in question; and lacking
empirical cognition of an organism’s purposiveness, “Organisms. . . seem to
involve a causality sui generis that we cannot recognize as real.” We lack
cognitive access to the full picture of organic causality, and this bars us from
knowing whether there are organisms “out there” in nature one way or the
other.
In contrast, we can cognize mechanistic causal relations. We perceive
that a rose wilts because its soil has been oversaturated. The current material
condition of the rose – its drooping colorlessness – is explained and precipitated
by some antecedent material state – the wetness of the soil. Thus, to the
moderate mechanist, there are plentiful, cognitively accessible examples of
nature’s mechanism all around us. This situation motivates the belief that we
will one day exhaustively explain apparent instances of internal purposiveness
in nature in mechanistic terms.
Mechanistic readers of all varieties believe that Kant’s views on
reflecting judgment lend further support to their interpretation. Kant states that,
when we attribute purposiveness to nature, we do so on the basis of a reflecting
judgment. In contrast, on the occasions that we provide a mechanistic
explanation of some natural object, we do so in the form of a determining
judgment. While determining judgments can reliably capture the structure of
nature, reflecting judgments are
based on regulative principles, and only tell us about the cognitive economy of
the subject. As long as the purposiveness of nature is a predicate of a merely
reflecting judgment, it says nothing about objects in nature.
• Non-mechanistic reading: To Kant, the things we call organisms seem to
exhibit an internally purposive activity. In addition, Kant expresses
certainty that mechanical laws will “never adequately” (CPJ 5:400)
explain the internally purposive activity of the things we call organisms.
Thus, we can (and in certain cases should) believe that some things in
nature are in fact produced as a result of internally purposive activity.
While there could be more radical versions of non-mechanistic interpretations
of Kant, which might claim that we do in fact empirically cognize organisms,
the version of non-mechanist interpretation I develop here begins by agreeing
with mechanistic readers of all stripes – we neither cognize the causal structure
definitive of organic activity nor determinately judge that there are organisms in
nature. However, a non-mechanist disagrees that we have the grounds to know
that there are no organisms in nature. For reasons that will become clear below,
a non-mechanist also denies that we can know mechanism will one day give us
an exhaustive picture of nature. For all we can know, there will always be
phenomena in nature that occasion a non-mechanistic explanation of whatever
is before us that appeals to internal purposiveness. Thus, the nonmechanist
maintains that we can (and in some cases must) form the belief that there are
organisms in nature. This is considerably stronger than the moderate
mechanist’s belief that there may or may not be organisms in nature and
diametrically opposed to the strong mechanist’s knowledge that organisms do
not exist. Finally, the non-mechanistic reader rejects the notion that reflecting
judgment is incapable of telling us anything about nature and the objects in it.
Below, we shall see that reflecting judgments require a firm presupposition
about the existence of certain objects in nature. In what remains, I offer a
defense of this non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of nature.
3. Complications with the strong mechanistic reading
The strong mechanist claims, on Kant’s behalf, that we can know there
are no organisms. There are several reasons why this interpretation should strike
us as unattractive. For one, this interpretation overlooks all those passages in
which Kant plainly states that experience and nature furnish us with examples
of organisms. Two, the strong mechanist assumes that we can know that all
material things are in fact produced in accordance with the laws of mechanism.
However, Kant firmly pronounces that such a thesis can never be proven true.
Finally, the strong mechanist commits Kant to a dogmatic form of “idealism” he
himself would find unacceptable.
3.1. Experience’s and nature’s organic suggestions
The strong mechanist wants us to arrive at the conclusion that Kant
gives us the tools to definitively prove there are no organisms in nature.
Nevertheless, one rather pronounced reason not to endorse this conclusion
surfaces when we attend closely to Kant’s verbiage when he discusses the
organism. Reaching back into the Canon of the First Critique, we see Kant
claim that, “purposive unity is still so important a condition of the application of
reason to nature that I cannot pass it by, especially since experience liberally
supplies examples of it” (A826/B854). Kant states that “Experience leads our
power of judgment to the concept” of a natural end (CPJ 5:366) and that the
principle stating that an organized product of nature is a natural end is “derived
from experience, that is, experience of the kind that is methodically undertaken
and is called observation” (CPJ 5:376). Whereas the “cause of the possibility of
a natural end”, i.e., an intelligent author of nature, is merely an idea of reason,
“the consequence that answers to it (the product) is still given in nature” (CPJ
5:405). As the question of how organisms arise in the first place is one that
reason compels us to pose, it is necessary for us to “conceive of a particular
kind of causality for it that is not, unlike the mechanism of natural causes, found
in nature” (CPJ 5:411). What these passages and passages like them suggest is
that something about the way in which nature presents itself to us leads us to
reflect upon objects such that they are generated and act in accordance with
ends. Furthermore, as we have seen above, Kant maintains that, “for things we
once acknowledge [anerkennen] as natural ends” (CPJ 5:415), mechanically
causal explanations will never suffice as a full account of their generation and
activity. As Kant indicates in the
“General Remark on the Teleology” following the conclusion of the main text
of the Methodology, the very concept of ends of nature is given to us “only
through experience” (CPJ 5:476).
Similar remarks about the purposiveness of nature spill over into Kant’s
lectures, as well. For instance, when laying out what he considers the best proof
for the immortality of the soul in Metaphysik L2, he states the following the
premise: “We find in nature a connection of efficient causes, also connection of
ends, this connection is indicated in organized beings, and the connection of
finality <nexus finalis> with living beings is the highest principle, from which
we cannot depart at all” (LM 28:592). The principle that we derive from the
connection of ends we “find” in nature is that every organ of a living thing
serves a purpose. From this, Kant says, we can infer that no organ or faculty of
the human being is purposeless. Since some faculties set tasks for the human
being that cannot be completed in one lifetime, there must be a future life. The
fact that we find this connection ends in nature and that it is “indicated in
organized beings” is an indispensable first step of this proof.
In light of these passages, one ought to ask mechanistic readers, What
exactly are we acknowledging when we acknowledge a thing as a natural end?
What is the nature of that acknowledgement such that it licenses certainty about
the fact that mechanical explanations “will still always be inadequate” for those
things? The strong mechanist is, to reiterate, correct in their assertion that we
cannot empirically cognize organisms. But Kant seems to be suggesting that
nature and experience still lead us to, suggest, and even give us examples of the
concept of the organism. Assuming that nature is not lying to us and that we are
not merely deluded, organisms must be something other than mere machines.
We cannot reduce the causality characteristic of the organism to the merely
external causality of mechanism.
3.2. The unprovability of the constitutive thesis of the Antinomy of Teleological
Judgment
Besides Kant’s overt remarks about nature’s and experience’s
suggestions that there are organisms, we may also point directly to a key step of
the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment to disprove the strong mechanistic
reading. Concerning the Antinomy’s antithesis, Kant does definitively and
forcefully reject that the concept of an organism “can be treated dogmatically
for the determining power of judgment” (CPJ 5:396). We cannot deploy the
concept of a natural end as a universal predicate under which we may subsume
particulars, or the manner in which we would use schematized concepts of the
understanding to produce determining judgments with the material supplied by
intuition. But saying that (i) we cannot determinately judge that there are
organisms is not the same as saying that (ii) we can prove that there are no
organisms in nature. The strong mechanist seems to arrive at (ii) by means of
Kant’s remarks about objects of nature and the scope of the Second Law of
Mechanics. However, a proof that there cannot be any organisms in nature
presuppose the truth of the constitutive thesis of the Antinomy - namely, that
“All generation of material things is possible in accordance with merely
mechanical laws” (CPJ 5:387). Yet, Kant insists that no constitutive principle
can be proven true (ibid). So the strong mechanist must take themselves to be
arriving at a claim other than (ii). (And they surely cannot be relying (i), for that
claim alone does not license an inference to the conclusion that we can know
there are no organisms in nature.)
Kant’s position appears not to be a strong mechanistic one according to
a certain interpretation of strong mechanism. The strong mechanist would fall
into a dialectical error themselves if they were committed to the thesis that we
can determinately say all things are generated merely in accordance with
mechanical laws of nature. Instead, the strong mechanist must be committed to
something more like the regulative maxim of mechanism – namely, that we
must judge all objects in nature to arise in accordance with laws of mechanism.
This seems more like the appropriate line to attribute to McLaughlin, as he
himself states, “We must judge all natural things mechanistically because for us
only mechanical objects can be explained” (1990, 168). Here, McLaughlin
appears to be restating the maxim that, per Kant, “I should always” employ
when reflecting upon natural products (CPJ 5:387). Nevertheless, while Kant
maintains that we should extend this maxim as far as we possibly can, “this is
not an obstacle to the second maxim” – i.e., that it is possible to judge natural
products in accordance with a teleological causality. There are proper occasions
to suspend this maxim and to judge that some objects are not merely
mechanically determined. If the strong mechanist’s line requires us to adopt the
view that Kant really only means to endorse the regulative maxim and that we
should reject the teleological maxim entirely, this seems to fly in the face of
Kant’s constant reminders that these two maxims can coexist in our reflections
upon nature.
The strong mechanist’s thesis must be that, as far as we can judge, we
ought to assume that organisms are mere machines. This is the most expedient
way to make advances in our natural scientific investigations of nature.
However, as we have seen, these investigations run up against a limit – “we can
never adequately come to know the organized beings and their internal
possibility in accordance with merely mechanical principles of nature, let alone
explain them” (CPJ 5:400). Merely mechanical explanations will never slake
reason’s (subjective) demand that we give an account of the generation and
activity of an organism, where that account elicits an appeal to an intelligent
author of nature. Interpreted this way, the strong mechanist’s line does not
justify the conclusion that we can know there are no organisms in nature, but
innocuously affirms Kant’s regulative maxim of mechanism.
3.3.Strong mechanism as a bad “idealism”
A final reason to reject strong mechanism is that it commits Kant to a
form of “idealism” that he explicitly rejects in §§72-73 of the Critique of the
Teleological Power of Judgment. According to the “idealists” discussed in these
sections, “all purposiveness in nature is unintentional” (CPJ 5:391). In other
words, all purposiveness of nature is reducible to or actually explained by the
mechanism of nature. There are two species of “idealism” in this sense. One
species, which is “ascribed to Epicurus or Democritus”, asserts that “blind
chance is assumed to be the explanation not only of the correspondence of
generated products without our concepts of ends, hence of technique, but even
of the determination of the causes of this generation in accordance with the laws
of motion” (CPJ 5:393). The fact that we happen to represent certain forms of
nature as end-directed is a mere accident, a product of “blind chance.” Kant
rejects this idealism because, by means of it, “nothing is explained” (ibid).
The second species of idealism explains that the teleology of nature is
grounded in a “blind necessity”: “the connection of ends in the world must be
assumed to be unintentional” or explained by the necessity of nature (CPJ
5:391-2). This position strips the purposive organization of nature of any
contingency, and this spells a problem for this view, since without contingency
“no unity of purpose can be thought” (CPJ 5:393). Ultimately, this form of
idealism does not give an explanation of the purposiveness of nature at all, for
stating that all ends are unified by virtue of the fact that they are accidents
inhering in a necessary substance does not make the purposive unity of nature
any more comprehensible. Simply stating that the purposiveness of nature is
necessitated by an unintentional original ground does not tell us why nature is
organized in this particular way and not some other.
If strong mechanists are right, Kant adopts an “idealist” position that he
plainly rejects. The strong mechanist argues that, while we label certain things
organisms, we know (as a matter of fact) that there are no organisms in nature.
This presupposes that the apparent purposiveness of a natural product is
actually explained by and grounded in universal and necessary laws of motion.
But Kant insists that reducing teleology, or rather what appears to have
purposiveness, to some unintentional ground – whether it is a law of nature, an
unintelligent God, or blind chance – makes no progress toward explaining why
nature has the contingent structure that it does. Any position that states
teleology is a mere illusion and brutely asserts that nature is thoroughly and
exhaustively necessitated by the laws of motion simply punts on the question of
why nature and natural products exhibit an end-directed unity; a strong
mechanistic reading attributes this type of uninformative reading to Kant. These
particular “why” questions are inevitable because, as Kant repeatedly states,
nature liberally furnishes us with examples of its purposiveness at every turn.
Explaining why nature and natural products are apparently organized in
accordance with ends requires something more than stubbornly affirming that
absolutely everything is determined by the laws of motion.
Additionally, the Third Critique urges a more nuanced reading of Kant’s
doctrine of the organism.
Let us now turn to the task of assembling an alternative non-mechanistic
understanding of the organism.
4. Beyond moderate mechanism and towards a non-mechanistic
interpretation of Kant
What the above considerations show us is that Kant never quite states
that we can know there are no organisms. Rather, the text appears to pull us
away from this conclusion. Naturally, one might retreat to a moderate
mechanistic reading – we may not be able to prove that there are no organisms,
but we can know that mechanism applies to at least some of nature. While we
cannot know that mechanism explains all of nature, we can still believe (and do
science as if) all of nature is mechanism.
In this section, I argue that Kant gives us the resources to make a more positive
commitment towards the existence of the organism. Given the character of
Kant’s remarks about organisms, we should not brutely deny the existence of
organisms. But I show that Kant means for us to positively affirm, in the sense
of have belief in, the existence of organisms in nature. Section 4.1 opens by
defending the claim that belief is the proper epistemic attitude to adopt vis-à-vis
the existence of the organism, and Section 4.2 defends the claim that this belief
really does target the object corresponding to an organism, not merely our
judgments about organisms.
4.1. What’s the right epistemic attitude to adopt towards the organism?
All mechanistic readers are justified when they state we lack the
adequate grounds to know that there are organisms. We have witnessed how the
strong mechanist errs in claiming that we can maneuver from this claim to the
conclusion that we know there are no organisms in nature. The moderate
mechanist also errs when they believe that mechanism can one day give us a
complete picture of nature. As I have shown above, Kant states that mechanism
will never be proven constitutive of nature and that certain natural products can
never be explained in mechanistic terms. Yet, lacking knowledge that there are
organisms, how can we explain these decidedly antimechanistic remarks in a
way that does not violate our cognitive limitations?
While we cannot know that there are organisms, another form of assent
may allow us to make a firm commitment to the existence of organisms – that
is, belief. Chignell correctly observes that there are various species of belief in
Kant. While multiple forms of belief may accurately apply to the existence of
the organism, one type of belief seems especially appropriate in this context –
namely, theoretical belief. Chignell defines this species of belief as follows:
Theoretical Belief: S is permitted to form a Theoretical Belief that p if and only
if
(a) S has set a contextually appropriate contingent end e,
(b) a hypothetically necessary condition of S's attaining e is S's
having a firm assent that p or some relevant alternative to p,
(c) p is a logically possible, "merely theoretical" proposition for
or against which S does not have sufficient objective
grounds,
(d) S's available objective grounds, if any, render p at least as
likely as any relevant alternative to p (though not likely
enough to count as Conviction). (Chignell 2007, 350)
We might think that the anatomist, the medical physiologist, the archaeologist
of nature, and so forth have a contingently appropriate end of explaining the
structure of animal or human bodies, chronicling the species of animals present
in nature, and so forth. To explain such phenomena, these researchers attaining
their ends is firmly assenting to the statement that there are organisms, or
beings organized in accordance with ends. Indeed, as early as the Appendix to
the Dialectic of the First Critique, Kant maintains that in certain fields
scientists must make a bold assumption
[man darin ganz dreist…annimt] that there are natural products organized in
accordance with ends (A688/B716). Furthermore, Kant insists here, in
symphony with many of the passages mentioned previously, that our
accumulated observations can authorize [uns bisherige Beobachtung
berechtigen kann] this bold assumption (ibid). Ultimately, it is certainly
logically possible that there are organisms, since we cannot prove the truth of
the constitutive Thesis of the Antinomy. The available objective grounds –
recall experience’s suggestions and nature’s offerings discussed above – render
the existence of organisms at least as likely as any alternative to this
proposition.
Certain mechanistic readings commit the biologist and the biologically
inclined philosopher to a contradiction. We can judge that certain things are
mechanically inexplicable organisms, but (on a strong mechanistic reading) we
know for a fact that those things are not organisms. If the target of our
biological investigations is an organism, we can be certain, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, that that target is null. By denying the objective reality of the organism
to this degree, Kant makes the biologist out to be a modern-day Don Quixote,
concerning themselves with an explanandum that is a figment of their
imagination. Similarly, according to the moderate mechanist, the biological
philosopher ought to believe that their explanations will some day be made
obsolete by mechanism. Knowing that biological explanations are doomed to
succumb to mechanistic ones, the biologist might justifiably resort to defeatism,
concluding that there is no reason to continue their research.
However, we must recall that Kant says we can never prove that all
material things are generated in accordance with merely mechanical laws. On
top of that, it is necessary that we judge objects in accordance with non-
mechanical laws in some cases, according to Kant. Differently stated, there are
circumstances in which we need to apply teleological judgments to nature, and
those circumstances demarcate the object and domain of theoretical biology.
Since there is a
contextually appropriate need for biology to have (and investigate) a proper
object and domain, it is possible to form a theoretical belief in the existence of
the organism.
By theoretically believing that organisms exist in nature, we “give
direction to our inquiry and motivate the search for unified, systematic, simple
theories, without themselves amount to
Knowledge”, or a mental state for which we do have sufficient objective and
subjective grounds of assent (Chignell 2007, 343). Theoretically believing that
there are organisms in nature can honor the limitations that Kant sets on our
critical faculty of reflecting judgment while allowing us to avoid the
performative absurdity of judging nature in a manner we know not to befit
nature. Equipped with this belief, we gain more than adequate motivation for
continuing research (both scientific and philosophical) into the structure and
activity of those things we are compelled to recognize as purposive.
4.2. What is the target of our belief in the organism?
At this point, a mechanistic reader might agree that, though we can
neither empirically cognize the organism nor know that there are organisms,
belief seems warranted in this context. However, the mechanist might press that
the target of belief is our own judgment. That is, we believe that our teleological
reflecting judgments are useful for our cognitive economy, but belief in this
context does not correspond to any object or its existence. Why should we
consider the target of our beliefs the objects in nature we take to be organisms,
not merely the reflecting
judgments we form about those objects? In order to formulate an answer to this
question, we must first consider what reflecting judgment is and what reflecting
judgments are about.
4.2.1. Reflecting judgment and its principles
In general, “To reflect (to consider), however, is to compare and to hold
together given representations either with others or with one’s faculty of
cognition, in relation to a concept thereby made possible” (CPJ 20:211).
Reflecting judgment, which we might consider a species of reflection in
general, involves the comparison and holding together of given representations.
A few lines down Kant clarifies that the concept one finds as a result of
reflecting corresponds to “given empirical intuitions” (CPJ 20:213). The
process of reflection begins with given intuitions and finds a concept that can
explain the contingent structure of nature or some object in it.
All powers of judgment presuppose and are guided by a principle. While
the constitutive principles of the understanding serve to ground determining
judgments and make experience, or empirical cognition, possible, the structure
of reflecting judgment requires us to find a different sort of principle, one that
does not automatically lead to empirical cognition. The principle of reflecting
judgment takes the following form in the First Introduction to the Third
Critique: “The principle of reflection on given objects of nature is that for all
things in nature empirically determinate concepts can be found, which is to say
the same as that in all of its products one can always presuppose a form that is
possible for general laws cognizable by us” (CPJ 20:211-12). Without such a
presupposition, “reflection would become arbitrary and blind” and we would
have no guarantee that our reflections agree with nature in any way (CPJ
20:212). To be sure, such a principle does not ground or culminate in empirical
cognition. Only the constitutive principles of determining judgment can produce
such a state. Still, the principle of reflection serves to guide or regulate our
investigations of nature.
These passages teach us a few things. For one, reflecting judgment is not
merely subjective if we characterize their mere subjectivity as having only to do
with mental acts and their organization. Rather, reflecting judgment occurs in
response to given empirical intuitions. Moreover, reflecting judgment is not
radically subjective in the sense that there is some expectation that reflection
should agree with nature, as it’s necessary to “presuppose” the principle that, for
all “given objects of nature”, we can find an empirical concept that explains
their form. As Kant later adds, “Thus the power of judgment itself makes the
technique of nature into the principle of its reflection a priori, without however
being able to explain this or determine it more precisely or having for this end
an objective determining ground for the general concepts of nature (from a
cognition of things in themselves), but only in order to be able to reflect in
accordance with its own subjective law, in accordance with its need, but at the
same time in accord with laws of nature in general.” (CPJ 20:214). In order for
our reflections on certain natural products to make sense and to agree with
nature, the power of judgment requires us to presuppose the “technique of
nature.” Though we can never empirically prove that nature has such a
technique, the power of judgment requires us to presuppose that nature is
purposive. Lacking such a presupposition, reflecting judgment is blind,
arbitrary, and rudderless.
The question therefore becomes, what exactly is the status of such a
presupposition? It does not seem as though we can empirically cognize, know,
or definitively prove the existence of the objects of such an assumption. Kant
clarifies that the principle of purposiveness is “regulative” (CPJ 5:168; 5:197).
We presuppose that nature has a “technique”, or is organized in accordance with
purposes, and thereby make possible teleological reflecting judgments, which
attribute an objective, inner, and material purposiveness to certain natural
products, possible. In the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant
further specifies that
[t]he concept of a thing as in itself a natural end is therefore not a
constitutive concept of the understanding or of reason, but it can still be
a regulative concept for the reflecting power of judgment, for guiding
research into objects of this kind and thinking over their highest ground
in accordance with a remote analogy with our own causality in
accordance with ends; not, of course, for the sake of knowledge of
nature or of its original ground, but rather for the sake of the very same
practical faculty of reason in us in analogy with which we consider the
cause of that purposiveness. (CPJ 5:375)
Here, it is significant that Kant refers to the very concept of “a thing as in itself
a natural end” as a “regulative concept for the reflecting power of judgment.” If
the regulative principles of any power of judgment are just those principles
which we presuppose for the sake of formulating a reflecting judgment upon a
given representation that is not blind or arbitrary but potentially agrees with
nature, the concept of a thing in itself as a natural end is just that kind of a
presupposition with respect to teleological judgments. Such a concept guides
our research though it never culminates in “knowledge of nature or of its
original ground”.
4.2.2. Is the target of our belief a judgment or an object?
In light of this quick analysis of reflecting judgments and their
principles, I propose that the target of our belief in the organism is not merely a
mental act or representation, but an object. In short, our belief in the organism is
expressed as a presupposition about the organization of nature and natural
objects, one that we must make in order to even form a reflecting teleological
judgment.
This line represents a departure from the consensus. Commentators
frequently argue that all regulative concepts and principles – including those
that regulate teleological reflection – do not refer to anything that exists, serving
a merely heuristic purpose. These concepts are mere convenient fictions. In
more optimistic moods, these commentators are totally non-comital about
the existence of these objects’ referents. In both cases, the moves commentators
rely upon are similar – such regulative concepts or principles can never be
involved in empirical cognition, and since empirical cognition is the only means
of establishing a well-grounded existence claim, the objects picked out by such
principles or concepts either cannot or may not exist. Because of their
deflationary views about regulative principles, these interpreters often reason
that these principles cannot even refer to objects in nature, but always refer to
mental states or acts.
One interpreter who notably departs from this trend is Paul Guyer. In his
2003 “Kant’s Principles of Reflecting Judgment”, Guyer characterizes
regulative concepts and principles according to the following three criteria:
From Kant’s account of the regulative principles in the Critique of Pure
Reason, we can therefore infer that such principles (a) set a goal of the
systematization; (b) accompany this goal with a transcendental
presupposition that the objects of our inquiry or action make the
attainment of this goal possible and that there is a ground for this
assumption, but one that permits at best a limited transcendental
deduction; and (c) provide a heuristic method for the pursuit of this
goal, but one that is irremediably liable to the contingencies of our
empirical situation. (Guyer 2003, 18)
The second criterion is of particular note for our purposes. Guyer asserts that
the presuppositions we make about objects and the world when discharging a
regulative principle rise to the level of belief concerning the existence of the
objects in question: “it would be irrational for us to pursue any goal, cognitive
or practical, in the absence of a belief in the possibility of tis attainment. For
that reason, a regulative principle posits, or is accompanied by the posit, that the
domain of our inquiry or action—nature itself—is so constituted as to make the
attainment of our goal possible”
(2003, 4). The transcendental presupposition that “accompanies” a regulative
principle or
conceptis something we posit as an article of belief. Furthermore, there is an
actual ground backing this assumption, such that it is possible for us to realize
this presupposed goal.
While all of this might lead us to suspect that we can attach a similar
presupposition and belief to the regulative concept of an organism, Guyer
inexplicably singles this concept out as an exception to the rule:
although in a general sense we are given the concept of the organism,
that concept is only an abstract concept of a kind of system that serves
as a regulative ideal for our investigations, and in these investigations,
we ultimately seek mechanical concepts of causation that can explain
generation, growth, and self-preservation, even though we may be
barred from completing these explanations. (2003, 45)
Here, Guyer suggests that we are not entitled to the same kind of presupposition
when deploying the regulative concept of the organism. When we deploy this
regulative concept, we ultimately know that we are seeking a non-teleological
explanation of the natural object. In this sense, the regulative concept of the
organism represents an exception to his general interpretation of regulative
concepts and their objects: We do not believe in the existence of the object
corresponding to the organism, for this concept merely facilitates the
advancement of our mechanistic understanding of nature. This regulative
concept is unique in that it does not elicit belief in the existence of any object
pertaining to it.
Against the interpretive consensus, I maintain that we can presuppose that the
object of the regulative concept of the organism is realized in nature as a
precondition for reflectively judging nature as teleological. Our presupposition
about the possibility of organisms in nature should take the form of a positive
belief in the existence of the organism. Kant is clear that there is evidence for
believing in organisms. Though we have a considerably firmer grasp on the
mechanism of nature, Kant does not outright reject the possibility that nature
and natural products are purposive. Nowhere does he state that organisms are a
mere fiction. And while we might be tempted to infer, based on certain
interpretations of certain passages, that we cannot say whether organisms can
exist one way or the other, Kant is adamant that nature suggests its internal
purposiveness to us; that nature furnishes us with examples of this
purposiveness; that experience leads us to its internal purposiveness; and that
we find this internal purposiveness in nature. Although we never empirically
cognize the inner purposiveness of nature and natural products, Kant’s
philosophy does not confine us to a mechanistic reading of the internal
purposiveness of natural products.
We must presuppose that there are organisms in nature in order to make
teleological reflecting judgments about nature, and we ought to regard this
presupposition as a belief about nature and natural products. Reflecting
judgment generally is not a mental act that lacks any reference to entities
beyond the subject or the subject’s faculties. Such judgments track the relation
between a given particular (or given particulars) and the interactions of our
mental faculties, and
Kant affirms that reflecting judgments cannot be blind and arbitrary, but ought
to agree with nature. By believing that the object corresponding to our
regulative concept of the organism exists, our teleological reflecting judgments
are neither arbitrary nor blind. Moreover, the theoretical pursuits we form on
the basis of these judgments are neither contradictory nor absurd. Belief in the
existence of the organism forms the basis for a legitimate use of teleological
reflecting judgments in our empirical investigations of nature.
5. Conclusion: Assessing the systematic implications of a non-mechanistic
reading
In conclusion, I want to situate my non-mechanistic reading within the grand
scheme of
Kant’s philosophy in two ways. One, I want to emphasize that a non-
mechanistic reading sits more comfortably with Kant’s transcendental idealism
than a mechanistic one. The mechanist leaves open the possibility that there are
no organisms in nature just so long as we accept that the Laws of Mechanics
exhaustively explain what an object is. However, a noteworthy implication of
Kant’s transcendental idealism is that the Laws of Mechanics do not give us an
exhaustive picture of what an object is. To take just one example, Lucy Allais’s
interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism stipulates that objects of outer
sense have “intrinsic natures”, and because physics cannot explain these
natures, it leaves us with a depiction of the world that is “not ontologically
complete or self-subsistent” (Allais 2015, 242). We need not subscribe to any
one interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism for to support this claim,
either.
Though a mechanistic account of nature gives us the empirical scientific
picture of what the organism is, it does not give us an exhaustive ontological
account of the thing we label an organism. The understanding is a key
ingredient in empirically cognizing the activity of the organism, which is
present to us in outer sense and explainable in terms of mechanism. But this
perspective does not furnish an “ontologically complete” picture of what an
object is, for it neglects any features of or perspectives on the object we do not
cognize. We have seen that, while we cannot cognize the causality characteristic
of an organism, we still have the grounds to at least theoretically believe that
there are organisms in nature.
Bringing mechanistic and non-mechanistic readings of Kant’s doctrine
of nature into conversation with his transcendental idealism shows us that each
reading has downstream consequences for the status of the organism. By
holding that we can know there are no organisms
in nature, the strong mechanist banishes organisms from nature; likewise, the
moderate mechanist’s belief that mechanism may one day give us a complete
explanation seems to leave the organism in the realm of things-in-themselves.
But the non-mechanist affirms that there are organisms in nature. An object in
nature can be fully explained by the laws of physics qua object of empirical
cognition, but there is more to an object in nature than what appears to us in
outer sense. We have good reason to believe that some objects act and are
organized purposively. While we do not have direct cognitive access to or
knowledge about these activities and structures, nowhere does Kant bar us from
placing the target of our belief in nature. This points us to the possibility that
cognition does not even give us an ontologically complete understanding of
natural products.
A second way in which the non-mechanistic reading affects Kant’s
broader philosophical system is that it helps explain his proof of the existence
of God in the Appendix to the Critique of Teleological Judgment. Earlier, I
mentioned that there are various species of belief and several of them may
accurately apply to the organism. In accordance with this, Kant sometimes
seems to state that for moral purposes, we must believe in the existence of the
organism. Concisely, the Appendix’s moral proof of God that suggests that if we
deny the existence of the organism, we deny the existence of God. Thus, for the
sake of satisfying our highest moral interests, we ought to morally believe in the
existence of the organism. A moral belief in the organism blocks any premature
denial of the possibility of proving God’s existence, paving the way for a
critically qualified teleological proof of the existence of God on moral grounds.
Furthermore, a moral belief is a commitment that must be more robust than a
flaccid agnosticism, which states that it either may or may not be the case that
there are organisms. While we can never determinately judge
that a thing is an organism or definitively know that organisms exist in nature, it
is still possible to (and necessary that we) maintain a moral belief in the
existence of the organism. Adequately justifying this reading of the Appendix
demands a future paper of its own.
Finally, a non-mechanistic understanding of nature has consequences for
Kant's philosophy of science. On my reading, Kant urges us to endorse a
theoretical belief that there are entities driven by an internally purposive
causality in nature. This non-mechanistic causality is not reducible to the
mechanistic causal explanations emblematic of Newtonian physics. A science
that seeks to understand life – i.e., biology – is tasked with studying the effects
of this internally purposive causality in nature, and it is therefore built atop a
belief in the existence of this causality.
This does not mean that such a science is built on a fiction or mere epistemic
projections. Rather, Kant is indicating that some disciplines – specifically, those
that depend upon regulative principles or ideas, such as psychology, chemistry,
and in this case biology - require practitioners to adopt a firm commitment to
the existence of that which they seek to explain. As long as practitioners
collectively hold this rational belief, such a science like biology can have an
intersubjective validity. A non-mechanistic reading of Kant's philosophy of
nature should lead us to reexamine what counts as a natural science for Kant;
even those disciplines that Kant does not count among the ``proper'' sciences
have a unique role in helping us understand nature. More work needs to be done
to examine this expanded conception of Kantian natural science in detail. For
the time being, I only emphasize the point that Kant gives us the tools to
scientifically study the internally purposive activity and structure of those
natural phenomena we identify as living things.
Presently, we can reflect on what we have accomplished here. Above, I
argued that, if mechanists were right, we would have trouble explaining Kant’s
frequent and direct remarks about the mechanical inexplicability of organisms.
If all organisms are of the same kind as inanimate objects, then it would turn out
that those objects we take to be organic are not mechanically inexplicable at all.
To make matters worse, if we could definitively prove organisms do not exist, it
would make no sense to assume that organisms exist, and without such an
assumption, we have no basis for a moral proof of the existence of God, as it is
framed in the Appendix of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.
Against the strong mechanist, we have seen several reasons for denying the
claim that we can know there are not organisms in nature. Against the moderate
mechanist, Kant can be read as promoting theoretical (and perhaps moral) belief
in the organism. We must commit to the existence of the organism in certain
scientific pursuits (and to avoid rendering nature a moral desert).
What my arguments here show is that, although we cannot empirically
cognize the organism or know that there are organisms in nature, we must
believe that there are. By believing in the organism, we can commit ourselves to
the possibility that there are organisms without ever claiming that it is possible
to empirically cognize them. Nature is something more than a nexus of merely
mechanistic causes. Just as “the proposition: that a human being is itself a
machine, is utter foolishness” (LM 28:449), so too is the proposition that nature
is itself a machine.
Conclusion. Beyond Mechanism
In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant claims to have proven
the objective reality of freedom and to have bridged the incalculable gulf
between freedom and nature left over by the first two Critiques. Philosophers
writing in the wake of Kant have enabled a collective skepticism towards these
results of the third Critique, for they have historically favored a mechanistic
interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of nature. According to this lineage, nature is
wholly mechanistic while freedom and reason are purposive. While there is a
certain purposiveness inherent in our mental lives, nature is thoroughly
mechanistic. The deep structural dissimilarity between these two domains
makes it unlikely that the incalculable gulf can be bridged.
As just one means of salvaging Kant’s stated mission and conclusion in the
third Critique, I have motivated the possibility of mounting a non-mechanistic
interpretation of nature in Kant’s philosophy. My non-mechanistic interpretation
holds that we are justified in believing that there is internal purposiveness in
nature, though we can never empirically cognize this purposiveness or know
that such purposiveness is out there. Our belief that this form of causality can
exist in nature makes it easier for us to see how Kant can claim that freedom (a
non-mechanistic, internally purposive form of causality) exists in and
influences nature.
While I have aimed to defend a more modest form of non-mechanism, I
am aware that the evidence I have provided can lend itself to a stronger form of
non-mechanism. For instance, future readers might notice that Kant’s remarks
about the examples of purposiveness exhibited by nature lend themselves to
direct perceptual awareness of the purposiveness of nature. Such passages may
form the basis for a reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature that draws it much
closer to those of
Schelling and Hegel, who essentially held that we do have direct cognitive
access to the purposiveness of nature.
Again, my aim has been much more modest. Kant’s critics and interpreters have
overwhelmingly favored a mechanistic interpretation of his doctrine of nature.
By articulating a reading of Kant that allows us to believe that there are non-
mechanistic, internally purposive organized entities in nature, several new
insights come into view. One, a non-mechanistic reading provides us with a
novel account of how Kant promises to bridge the incalculable gulf between
freedom and nature. By forming the positive belief that there are internally
purposive entities in nature, it is possible to conceive of more sophisticated
forms of end-directed activity (e.g., the activity of a human being who,
endowed with the faculty of reason, structures their life in accordance with ends
that cannot possibly be realized in a single lifetime) as embedded in and
influencing nature, too. Two, I have wanted to show that this reading of Kant
significantly softens him. On my non-mechanistic reading, Kant urges us to
believe that non-human entities like animals and plants are alive. The
systematic commitments underpinning Kant’s picture of nature make these
entities out to be more than just mechanical beasts and lifeless vegetables.
There is life in nature, and that life extends all the way down to cruder, sub-
rational organisms. Last, my reading offers a path to a new interpretation of the
purpose of existence according to Kant. In The End of All Things, Kant argues
that human beings feel compelled to posit a final end of existence because, if
this “final end is not to be achieved, then creation itself appears purposeless,
like a play having no resolution and affording no cognition of any rational aim”
(End 8:331). A non-mechanistic understanding of Kant shows us that his
philosophy has yet another avenue for affirming that existence is purposeful. By
observing the purposive organization of nature and realizing the limits of
reducing certain kinds of non-mechanistic activity to mechanistic principles, we
stave off the existential malaise that might ensue from contending that the
purposive activity we encounter in nature is completely reducible to
mechanistic principles (i.e., that nature is ultimately purposeless). Believing
that internal purposiveness exists in nature is another gateway for conceiving of
existence as purposeful, as something more than a “play having no resolution.”
Overall, I hope to have evoked a picture of Kant’s philosophy of nature that
separates him from his mechanistically inclined Early Modern predecessors and
draws him closer to German Idealists and Romantics, who reserved a more
robust, ineliminable place for living creatures in nature.
EPILOGUE
Appendix I. From organisms to God:
Kant’s non-mechanistic moral philosophy
Above, I have defended of a non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s
doctrine of nature. According to my non-mechanistic reading, Kant’s
encourages the formation of a strong, positive commitment to the existence of
organisms in nature. This commitment takes the form of a belief in, rather than
knowledge about, the existence of organisms in nature. A non-mechanistic
reading contradicts prevailing mechanistic readings of Kant, which maintain
that we should either believe that nature is entirely mechanistic or that we can
know nature is entirely mechanistic. From the perspective of the tools and
problems of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, there are complications with the
mechanistic reading and straightforward reasons to adopt a non-mechanistic
reading. The goal of this essay is to lend further support to the non-
mechanistic reading by exploring the practical grounds for such an
interpretation. According to my reading, the high-reaching moral goals of the
Methodology section of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment are
not even possible unless we believe in the organism. The sense of “belief” I
have in mind here is connected to Kant’s discussion of the term in the Canon of
Pure Reason, from the Transcendental Doctrine of Method of the Critique of
Pure Reason. I follow Andrew Chignell in claiming that belief is a mode of
assent that has objectively insufficient but subjectively sufficient grounds. More
specifically, a subject has an incentive to believe in something on the basis of
nonepistemic merits – “a property of an assent that makes it valuable or
desirable for a subject—given his or her needs, interests, and goals—but which
does not do so by way of directly indicating that the assent is true” (Chignell
2007, 334). There are also specific species of belief, according to Chignell, one
of which is moral belief.
According to my non-mechanistic reading, an important task of the
Methodology is to establish the claim that we must morally believe in the
organism. Lacking such a belief, we cannot attain the absolutely necessary
moral ends of establishing that our freedom impacts nature and that God exists.
While we can never determinately judge that organisms actually exist in nature,
it is still possible to (and necessary that we) maintain a moral belief in this
proposition.
In very condensed form, here is the story of the Methodology I tell
below. Organisms exhibit an internal purposive unity. If the purposive unity
represented by an organism is not possible in nature, then an intelligent,
supreme world-cause did not design nature after all. Conversely, if an intelligent
world-cause did design nature and its laws, organisms are possible. Many
commentators claim (or are open to the claim) that, for Kant, there cannot be
organisms in nature. In some sense, this is right. Kant insists that we can never
determinately judge that there are organisms in nature. Nevertheless, assuming
the truth of the abovementioned conditional, affirming that organisms do not
exist entails a denial of the possibility of a supreme, intelligent world-cause. Yet
we (according to Kant) have a deep-seated moral interest in ensuring that an
omniscient world cause is possible. For the sake of satisfying this moral end, I
argue that we must morally believe in the existence of the organism in nature.
This moral belief blocks any premature denial of the possibility of proving
God’s existence, paving the way for a critically qualified teleological proof of
the existence of God on moral grounds.81
My defense of a non-mechanistic reading of the Methodology takes the
following form. Section 1 introduces the goals of a “Methodology” more
generally and the aims of the Methodology of the Critique of the Teleological
Power of Judgment in particular. Section 2 gives an overview of the moral
proof of the existence of God in the Methodology. Section 3 recaps the core
tenets of mechanistic readings of Kant’s doctrine of nature to walk us through
how a mechanist would read the Methodology. I also discuss issues with both
moderate and strong mechanistic readings of the Methodology. Section 4
defends my non-mechanistic reading of the Methodology. The definitive
characteristic of my non-mechanistic reading of the Methodology is the claim
that we must morally believe in the existence of the organism in order for
Kant’s moral proof of the existence of God to work. In Section 5, I conclude by
reflecting on how my reading of the Methodology explains why Kant is
justified in concluding that he has proven the objective reality of freedom at the
end of the third Critique.
1. What is the goal of a methodology?
What is the goal of a Doctrine of Method (or a “Methodology”, as Kant
sometimes calls it)? Perhaps it is the case that, as Norman Kemp-Smith
commented on the First Critique’s Doctrine of Method, such a doctrine’s
“entire teaching…has already been more or less exhaustively expounded in the
earlier divisions” of the text of which it is a part (Kemp-Smith 1992, 563).
Closer inspection reveals many reasons to reject the notion that a Doctrine of
Method is gratuitous. More recently, A.W. Moore has argued that the Doctrine
of Method of the First Critique is significant because it “contains Kant’s most
sustained and most reflective account of what is generally regarded as the
distinctive style of argument that he initiates in the Critique: transcendental
argument” (2010, 312). In other words, the methodology section of this text
contains indispensable insights regarding the style of proof Kant takes himself
to be performing and the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from such
proofs. Indeed, a doctrine of method (or methodology) in general is broadly
concerned with these issues – namely, what is the nature of a transcendental
proof and what is the nature of conclusions drawn from those proofs. A
methodology is indispensable because it clarifies the lessons that we can take
away from the critique of any faculty. Put differently, a methodology provides a
plan for the proper use of the faculty in question (e.g., that of pure reason,
practical reason, aesthetic judgment, etc.; see A707/B735) in light of the limits
of that faculty.
Without poring over all its details, we can appreciate how this project is
carried out in the respective parts of the Doctrine of Method in the first
Critique. In the Discipline of Pure Reason, Kant is primarily concerned with
spelling out the limits of our legitimate use of pure reason, so as to prevent it
from committing perilous dialectical errors. The Canon of Pure Reason
supplements this negative task by outlining the positive uses that remain for
pure reason once we safeguard it from error (A795/B823ff.). The Architectonic
of Pure Reason gives us a sense of how we can go about creating a systematic
unity of cognitions by means of reason, thereby showing how reason
contributes to establishing a science (A834/B862). The History of Pure Reason
casts a “cursory glance” at the “whole of [pure reason’s] labor hitherto”
(A852/B880), sketching the task that remains for pure reason. From this bird’s
eye vantage point, we can see that the point of the methodology section is to
reinforce the limits and sketch the forthcoming task of a particular faculty.
In the Critique of Practical Reason, we see that the goal of a doctrine of
method is not only malleable, but tailored to the faculty in question: “Here the
doctrine of method is understood, instead as the way in which one can provide
the laws of pure practical reason with access to the human mind and influence
on its maxims, that is, the way in which one can make objectively practical
reason subjectively practical as well” (CPrR 5:151). By means of “observations
anyone can make”, Kant intends to show that our minds have a “receptivity to a
pure moral interest and hence the moving force of the pure representation of
virtue” (CPrR 5:152) and from there to prove that pure practical reason has a
particular sort of “access to the human mind.” Once he has established the
particular way in pure practical reason influences the human mind, Kant can
then develop a plan for the cultivation of the moral subject (CPrR 5:154-5).
Again, the goal here is to demarcate the limits of the proper use of a faculty
(pure practical reason) and develop a plan for extending its use given its limits.
At this point, we see a theme developing. “On the methodology of
taste”, the appendix to the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment, adds
another wrinkle to the notion of methodology we should carry into the second
half of the third Critique. The topic of this half of the Critique – beautiful art –
cannot be studied scientifically. The goal of the doctrines of method in the first
two Critiques paved the way for natural science and a metaphysics of morals.
Here, Kant’s goal is to develop the path for bringing about beautiful art in the
studio and in society. In the studio, “the master must demonstrate what the
student is to do and how he should accomplish it” (CPJ 5:355). This is not
achieved by handing the student a universal principle under which they must
subsume a predicate. Rather, the master cultivates the student’s genius and the
freedom of their imagination by presenting them with examples of great art and
criticizing their student’s technique. Beautiful art is also useful insofar as it
enhances humanity’s “universal feeling of participation” and one’s ability to
communicate their inmost self, enabling the cultivation of our common sense
and taste (see CPJ §40). Importantly, the methodology of taste has an important
moral and instrumental role: “it is evident that the true propaedeutic for the
grounding of taste is the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of the
moral feeling” (CPJ 5:356). Beholding and reflecting upon beautiful art is, in
some way, supposed to prepare us to be better moral agents.
The Methodology of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment
is a complicated and challenging portion of a complicated and challenging text.
Yet, in some ways, it represents the zenith of Kant’s Critical project. The task of
the third Critique, as Kant lays it out in the Introduction, is to bridge the
“incalculable gulf” between nature and freedom (CPJ 5:176). By the end of the
Methodology, Kant claims to have proven that “freedom is the only concept of
the supersensible that proves its objective reality (by means of the causality that
is thought in it) in nature” (CPJ 5:474). In other words, Kant takes himself to
have completed the project he set out to complete.
Like the Methodology of Taste, the Methodology of the Teleological
Power of Judgment depicts the limits and proper application of a particular
faculty – i.e., the faculty of teleological judgment – while showing how the
object of this faculty – in this case, the organism and not beautiful art – serves
an indispensable moral purpose. Like its cousins from the first two Critiques,
the Methodology critically circumscribes the limits of teleological judgment
and prescribes a number of legitimate uses for the faculty. However, like its
sibling – the Methodology of Taste – the Methodology of the Teleological
Power of Judgment is an instrument for morality, giving Kant a path to a proof
of the existence of God. Indeed, the main goal of this Methodology is to
establish a moral proof of the existence of God that will help ensure the
“objective reality” of freedom. In other words, Kant wants to show us that it is
possible for freedom to have an effect on nature. In order for freedom to have
an effect on nature, Kant must mount and defend a moral proof of the existence
of God. This is precisely why the heart of this Methodology is dedicated to such
a proof.
2. The third Critique’s moral proof of the existence of God
Despite his insistence that “one could easily adapt” his moral proof of
the existence of God “to the form of logical precision” (CPJ 5:450), Kant’s
proof is complicated. Before tracing each step of the proof, it is perhaps useful
to clearly state the conclusion Kant claims to have reached – namely, “we must
assume a moral cause of the world (an author of the world) in order to set
before ourselves a final end in accordance with the moral law; and insofar as
that final end is necessary, to that extent (i.e., in the same degree and for the
same reason) is it also necessary to assume the former, namely, that there is a
God” (CPJ 5:450). Kant quickly qualifies that this conclusion does not provide
the concept God with objective validity, but only that, if moral thinking is to be
consistent, we must assume that God exists (CPJ 5:450-1n). Kant claims to
have reached the conclusion that moral action in the world is possible only if we
assume that there is a supreme author of the world. Denying the existence of
such a supreme author is tantamount to blocking the possibility of morality.
Accordingly, his strategy for morally proving the existence of God is to
establish that there is action in accordance with the moral law. For as long as
Kant establishes this, then he can justifiably infer that this action has an
unconditioned cause, and that unconditioned cause must be a supreme moral
cause of the world.
The first step in Kant’s proof is to assume that things conditioned in
accordance with ends exist. For every conditioned thing, Kant reminds us, “one
can seek the supreme ground for this causality, thus the unconditioned for what
is conditioned” (CPJ 5:448). We can apply this search for an unconditioned
cause to one of two orders: either the physical or the teleological order. In the
teleological order, which is at issue here, we assume that there are things
conditioned by ends and seek the “final end” of that conditioned thing. Notice,
then, that the first step in Kant’s proof for the existence of God is significant for
my purposes – namely, things that are conditioned in accordance with ends
exist. Without this assumption, we could not seek their unconditioned cause –
i.e., a supreme intelligent world author.
As we trace back the causal chain to an unconditioned cause, Kant says
that “the most common human reason is compelled” to the following claim: “if
reason is to provide a final end a priori at all, this can be nothing other than
the human being (each rational being in the world) under moral laws” (CPJ
5:448). By this point, Kant has repeatedly asserted in previous sections (§§82-
84, 86) that the human being, considered as a moral being, must be the final end
of nature’s purposiveness. Here Kant supplements this claim to a greater degree,
reasoning that, “if the world consisted entirely of lifeless beings or even in part
of living but nonrational beings, then the existence of such a world would have
no value at all, because there would exist in it no being that has the slightest
concept of value” (CPJ 5:449). So, we must assume that the world just does
consist of living beings that act in accordance with ends. Furthermore, beings
that act in accordance with ends could either be considered relative ends in the
world, or beings that have value relative to another purposively acting thing, or
absolute final ends. Only beings that recognize and act in accordance with
moral laws can be absolute or final ends of nature, for the moral laws “prescribe
something to reason as an end without a condition” (CPJ 5:449). Assume that
there are no beings in the world that could act in accordance with moral laws. If
this assumption is held true, “there is either no end at all for the existence of a
world in its [a rational moral being’s] cause, or it is grounded in an end without
a final end” (CPJ 5:450). Kant flatly denies the first disjunct as a possibility. As
for the second, we have already seen that, as long as we assume there are things
conditioned in accordance with ends, there must be a final end. Thus, Kant
maintains that there must be beings in the world that could act in accordance
with moral laws.
Insofar as action in accordance with the moral law is free action, Kant
thinks that it would be absurd to claim that free activity can make an impact on
the world if the highest good is unattainable in the world. As he puts it, we can
only strive after “the highest good in the world”, the pursuit of which is only
possible through freedom (CPJ 5:450). Now, if we were to conceive of
ourselves as merely natural beings, the highest final end we could set for
ourselves is “the highest physical good that is possible in the world”, or
happiness (CPJ 5:450). This presents an issue for us. On the one hand, it seems
like we are limited to pursuing our own happiness and are barred from attaining
the highest good – after all happiness is a satisfaction that could be possible in
the world while the highest good appears to be ever-beyond our reach. On the
other hand, we are plainly obligated to pursue the highest good in the world,
although it does not seem possible. Kant expresses this quandary when he
writes, “the concept of the practical necessity of such an end [i.e., the highest
good], by means of the application of our own powers, is not congruent with the
theoretical concept of the physical possibility of producing it” (CPJ 5:450).
The physical world’s apparent inhospitability towards our pursuit of the highest
good requires us to “connect our freedom with any other causality (as a means)
than that of nature” (CPJ 5:450). In other words, we may be able to make sense
of our pursuit of the highest good if some supernatural causal power has
designed nature so that it can serve this pursuit.
Assuming the existence of God allows us to overcome this impasse and
establish that the highest good could be possible in the world. If there is no
supreme world-cause that has fashioned nature and its laws in such a way that it
is possible to bring about the highest good, then it would make no sense to act
for the sake of the highest good. Thus, in order for moral action to make sense
to an agent, “he must assume the existence of a moral author of the world, i.e.,
of God, from a practical point of view, i.e., in order to form a concept of at least
the possibility of the final end that is prescribed to him by morality” (CPJ
5:453).
However, recall that the entire proof presupposes that there is a condition for
which we can seek an unconditioned cause. In this case, we are operating within
a teleologically ordered nature. What is conditioned has been conditioned in
accordance with ends, just as the unconditioned cause of our activity is
teleological. Kant’s proof, in other words, requires us to assume that there are
objects that have been conditioned by a final causality. For our purposes, this
lends further support to the thesis that we must, for the sake of morally proving
the existence of God, assume that there is internal purposiveness in nature – i.e.,
that there are organisms.
Formulating any reading of the Methodology requires us to explain how
freedom can be objectively real. Explaining how freedom can be objectively
real requires us to explain how Kant’s moral proof of God begins with
organisms and leads us to God. Let us now turn to a consideration of how the
mechanist would lead us along this path – if they can at all.
3. Mechanistic readings of the Methodology
There are two kinds of mechanistic reader of Kant’s doctrine of nature.
According to the moderate mechanist, Kant does not give us the tools to know
whether there are organisms in nature. Citing this lack of epistemic clarity, the
moderate mechanist states that we are warranted in our belief that mechanism
can one day exhaustively explain nature. A strong mechanist argues that, since
the laws of physics give us a complete picture of all of material nature, we can
know that there are no organisms in nature.
While I will not rehash the general complications with the mechanistic readings
of Kant’s doctrine of nature here, it is rather obvious how these readings of the
Methodology would block Kant from achieving his goals in that section. Recall
that we must assume there are beings organized in accordance with purposes in
nature for the moral proof of the existence of God to commence. If we deny that
there are such entities, we cannot affirm that the human being is the highest of
end nature. If we cannot assume that the human being is the highest end of
nature, we cannot assume that the highest end is attainable in the world. If the
highest end is not attainable in the world, there simply is no reason to posit the
existence of a God that has designed the world such our free activity is possible
in it.
By adopting a mechanistic reading of any variety, one triggers a cascade of
negated consequents and undermines Kant’s proof of the moral existence of
God. The strong mechanist asserts that we can prove there are no organisms in
nature and thus that nature is entirely mechanistic. From knowledge of the fact
that there are no objects in nature designed in accordance with purposes, we
cannot affirm that there is a highest end of nature at all. Devoid of any ends
whatsoever, nature is a moral desert – God does not (perhaps cannot) intervene
to design nature such that it is amenable to the free pursuit of our highest ends.
Likewise, the moderate mechanist allows for the belief that nature is governed
solely by the laws of mechanism and therefore that there are no organisms in
nature. As we see here, adopting such a belief comes with a cost – namely, we
compromise the moral proof of the existence of God and risk undermining the
entire project of the third Critique. No matter which mechanistic line we adopt,
such a reading makes it difficult – if not impossible – to see how Kant
establishes the existence of God and subsequently the objective reality of
freedom. Adopting a mechanistic doctrine of nature undercuts the entire critical
project.
4. A non-mechanistic reading of the Methodology
Luckily, another reading of the text is available to us. According to a
non-mechanistic reading of Kant’s doctrine of nature, we are justified in
assenting to the claim that organisms exist in nature. This assent takes the form
of a belief.
Belief is a “firm, positive, and voluntary attitude that is subjectively
sufficient2 for a particular subject in a particular circumstance, given his or her
interests and ends, and that has implications for the subject’s rational action,
assertion, and deliberation” (Chignell 2007, 359). Assent is a mental attitude
involving objective grounds and subjective grounds of assent. Ideally, an
individual has sufficient objective and subjective grounds for assent, the result
of which is knowledge. The right kinds of objective grounds are “perceptual,
memorial, or introspective states” (Chignell 2007, 327), and those states serve
as sufficient objective grounds only if they render the proposition in question
“probable to a degree that licenses assent with a moderate-tohigh degree of
probability” (ibid). Principled observation, data compiled on the basis of those
observations, reflection on the legitimacy of the data, and so forth are
ingredients that contribute to the formation of sufficient objective grounds.
Subjective grounds consist in the “subject’s own determination that the assent is
based on sufficient objective grounds” (Chignell 2008, 328), and those grounds
are sufficient only if “the everyday process of using memory, a priori reasoning,
introspection, and so forth” allows the subject to establish a high degree of
confidence in the sufficient objective grounds motivating the proposition in
question. Subjective grounds are one’s level certainty with respect to their
objective grounds. Subjective grounds that are sufficient2 are grounds with some
nonepistemic merits. For instance, Kant thinks that we must believe in God in
order to explain the purposive unity of nature. Belief is a state characterized by
a lack of sufficient objective grounds – we cannot appeal perceptual, memorial,
etc. states to show that the propositions we believe in are probable with a
moderate to high degree of certainty. Beliefs are subjectively sufficient2,
meaning that we have nonepistemic reasons for desiring or valuing the truth of
these assents, though we have no direct route to knowledge of their truth.
The relevant variety of belief for a non-mechanistic reading of the
Methodology is moral belief. Andrew Chignell defines this kind of belief as
follows:
Moral belief: S is permitted to form a Moral Belief that p if and only if
a) S has set an “absolutely necessary” moral end e,
b) A necessary condition of S’s attaining e is S’s having a firm
assent that p, and
c) P is a logically possible proposition for or against which S
cannot have subjective sufficient grounds. (2007, 356)
The central task of the Methodology of the Critique of the Teleological Power
of Judgment cannot come into fruition unless we morally believe in the
organism. Organisms exhibit an internal purposive unity. If the purposive unity
represented by an organism is not possible, then an intelligent, supreme world-
cause did not design nature after all. Conversely, if an intelligent worldcause
did design nature and its laws, organisms are possible. Most commentators have
claimed we are justified in knowing or believing that there are no organisms in
nature. However, because we according to Kant have a deep-deep-rooted moral
interest in proving that an omniscient world cause is possible and because a
belief in the organism is indispensable for such a proof, these commentators
deny Kant any path to succeeding in this proof.
We must morally believe that there are organisms in nature because a
failure to do so spells the failure of Kant’s moral proof of the existence of God.
This moral belief directly contradicts the strong mechanist’s claim that we know
there are no organisms and the moderate mechanist’s claim that we can believe
there are no organisms. Despite lacking empirical cognition of the causality
characteristic of an organism and knowledge that organisms exist, it is
necessary that we maintain a moral belief in the existence of the organism.
Justification for this moral belief can be gleaned as early as the opening
sections of the Methodology. Kant shows us that, if we do not conceive of there
being organisms in nature, we cannot conceive of nature as a system of ends.
Moreover, if we do not conceive of nature as a system of ends, we cannot posit
an intentionally acting, teleological, and intelligent final end of nature, or that
being for which nature as a system of ends exists, i.e., the human being. At the
outset of §86, Kant reminds us that without the human being, there would be no
final end in nature and nature would be nothing but a “mere desert, existing in
vain and without final end” (CPJ 5:442), for “a good will is that alone by means
of which his existence can have absolute value and in relation to which the
existence of the world can have a final end” (CPJ 5:443). It is the human
being’s possession of a will, and their corresponding status as a moral being,
that instills them with desires loftier than those associated with mere happiness,
and such lofty desires allow the human being to use nature for the sake of ends
that transcend nature. Because the human being alone is capable of such
activity, they must be the final end of nature.
Notice that the resulting conception of God is not based on theoretical grounds, but on practical
or ethical ones. It is our conceiving of the human being as a moral being that explains how they
can serve as the ultimate end of nature. Furthermore, the moral human being’s pursuits only
makes sense if we assume that there is an intelligent world-cause who designed nature in such a
way that it could serve a final end. Whereas beginning with our theoretical observations about
end-directed activity in nature only presented us with specious proofs for the existence of God,
reflecting on the human being’s status as the final end of nature drives us to conceive of a God
that designs a world that is suitable to moral activity.
This picture of the human being and their relationship to nature as a
system of ends leads us to the notion of a supreme principle of the connection
of all the ends in nature:
Now since we recognize the human being as the end of creation only as
a moral being, we have in the first place a ground, at least the chief
condition, for regarding the world as a whole interconnected in
accordance with ends and as a system of final causes, but, above all, a
ground for a principle for conceiving, for the relation of natural ends to
an intelligent world-cause that is necessary given the constitution of our
reason, of the nature and the properties of this first cause as the supreme
ground in the realm of ends, and so for determining the concept of it –
which physical teleology, which could only produce concepts that are
indeterminate and for that very reason unsuited for both theoretical as
well as practical use, could not do. (CPJ 5:444)
In its attempt to infer, by theoretical means, from the presence of ends in nature
to the existence of God, the physicotheologist faltered. But if we begin by
recognizing that the human as a moral being is the end of all creation, we find
two things. One, we find that a human considered as a moral being is a
necessary condition for “regarding the world as a whole interconnected in
accordance with ends as a system of final causes” (ibid). This much is
consistent with Kant’s previous remarks on the relationship between nature as a
system of ends and the human being as its final end. In addition, considering the
moral being as a final end of creation serves as a “principle for conceiving…of
the nature and the properties of” a first cause of nature that serves as the
“supreme ground in the realm of ends” (ibid). While reflecting on the physical
ends of nature cannot secure a path to the existence of God, reflecting on the
human being’s status as a moral agent can.
Again, this line on the Methodology should suggest that, if we deny the
existence of the organism, we deny the existence of God. But it is even more
telling that the moral proof of the existence of God offered in §87 plainly
requires us to assume that objects conditioned in accordance with ends exist, for
it is only by this means that one can “one can seek the supreme ground for this
causality, thus the unconditioned for what is conditioned” (CPJ 5:448). So, we
must assume the existence of the organism for the sake of mounting a
successful moral proof for the existence of God. If we deny the existence of the
organism, we cannot even get a moral proof for the existence of God underway.
More forcefully, denying the possibility of the organism results in the denial of
the possibility of there being purposiveness in nature; denying the possibility of
purposiveness in nature rules out the possibility that nature exists for the sake of
some final end; and ruling out the possibility that nature exists for the sake of
some final end forecloses the possibility of a supreme intentional world-cause
that designs nature and its mechanical laws in such a way that it is compatible
with the pursuit of final ends.
Kant's 1786 essay "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?"
might seem to suggest that assuming the existence of organisms is actually
sufficient not necessary for a proof of God’s existence. There, Kant clearly
states, "we must assume the existence of God when we want to judge about the
first cause of everything contingent, chiefly in the order of ends which is
actually present in the world" (Orient 8:139). Notice, though, that God’s
existence is a necessary condition for making a judgment about the “first cause
of everything contingent.” A judgment about organisms and an assumption
about the existence of organisms are two entirely different things. Moreover,
without positing the very existence of an "order of ends which is actually
present in the world", the need for an intelligent God would not even arise in
the first place. After all, Kant appears to maintain that if the world were
mechanistic at its very foundation and origins, the causality of a supreme and
intelligent world-cause would be gratuitous. Yet, we are not only presented with
cases of contingently organized natural products, but also have a moral interest
in proving the existence of God. It makes sense to pursue the highest good in
the world, "to prevent it [the highest good], along with morality, from being
taken merely as a mere ideal" (Orient 8:139), only if God exists. While
assuming God’s existence is necessary for making judgments about
contingently organized natural products and their ultimate origins, we still must
form a firm assent that organisms exist in order to get our moral proof of the
existence of God started and explain the possibility of the highest good in the
world. On this note, the form of assent that we adopt with respect to the
organism is a Moral Belief - that is, it is necessary to assume that organisms
exist to deliver on the absolutely necessary moral end of proving the existence
of God. To coin a term, the organism seems to play the role of a second-order
Moral Belief - that is, we must believe in the organism to believe in God, and
our belief in God as an intelligent author gives the concept of the highest good
objective reality. The very presence of “purposiveness in the world certainly
forces us to think of a supreme causality and its causality by means of
intelligence” (CPJ 5:483-4, my emphasis).
Overall, my interpretation represents a decisive push away from
mechanistic readings of the third Critique. Strong mechanists overtly deny that
there are organisms and consequently deny that God has designed nature in
such a way that our highest ends are realizable. Moderate mechanistic readings
encourage us to believe that nature can be fully explained in mechanistic terms.
But if we keep the domino effect that occurs when we reject the organism in
mind, we see that this is an unappealing way of interpreting the Methodology.
We must rule out the possibility that organisms do not exist because adopting an
attitude of unbelief, or asserting the non-existence of the organism, entails a
denial of the existence of a supreme omniscient world-cause. While we can
never definitively prove (or disprove) the existence of the organism or God, in
the Methodology, Kant means to teach us that a belief in the organism is
indispensable for moral purposes. We must believe in the organism because,
otherwise, we foreclose the possibility that
God made nature amenable to our highest ends.
5. Conclusion: Non-mechanism and the project of the third Critique
Throughout the Analytic and the Dialectic of the Critique of the
Teleological Power of Judgment, we encounter reasons to turn away from
mechanistic readings of Kant’s doctrine of nature. Kant claims that nature
presents us with examples of purposive unity and proper occasions to suspend
the maxim that we ought to judge nature as if it is conditioned solely in
accordance with mechanistic laws; Kant also asserts that reason can never prove
the principle that all generation of material things comes about in accordance
with merely mechanical laws and distances himself from philosophies that have
attempted to reduce the purposive unity of nature to “unintentional” (i.e.,
mechanistic) grounds. In other words, these portions of the text supply us with
reasons to believe that there are organisms in nature on theoretical grounds.
Because of Kant’s stated position, we can believe that there are organisms in
nature.
What the reading of the Methodology laid out above adds is that we must
believe in the existence of organisms in nature. Forming a moral belief in the
existence of the organism is a necessary first step in Kant’s moral proof of the
existence of God. That assuming the presence of purposive entities in nature
initiates the proof of the existence of God is evident even beyond the main text
of the Methodology. Kant reinforces this assertion in the “General Remark on
the Teleology”. Following the conclusion of the main text of the Methodology,
he states that the very concept of ends of nature, which is given to us “only
through experience”, “promises the concept of the original ground of nature”
(CPJ 5:476). He later adds, the very presence of “purposiveness in the world
certainly forces us to think of a supreme causality and its causality by means of
intelligence” (CPJ 5:483-4). With assertions like this in mind, Kant solidifies
his position that it is necessary to assume that organisms exist in order to
deliver on the absolutely necessary moral end
of proving the existence of God. On my version of a non-mechanistic reading,
this assumption takes the form of a moral belief.
If we take a bird’s eye view of the text, we can see that the organism
plays an indispensable role in the master argument of the third Critique.
Assuming the organism’s existence is not only necessary for proving the
existence of God, but demonstrating that the highest good and morality can be
realized in the world. If we do not assume that organisms exist, we cannot
assume that an intelligent author has designed nature such that it is compatible
with our pursuit of the highest good, and if we do not assume this intelligent
author, we have no way of closing the gap between freedom and nature. In the
first-edition Preface to Kant’s first major work immediately following the third
Critique – Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason – Kant takes himself
to have closed the gap with the moral proof of the Methodology. We can only
conceive of an ultimate end of all things if God exists, and we need to conceive
of an ultimate end of all things because “only in this way can an objective
practical reality be given to the combination, which we simply cannot do
without, of the purposiveness of freedom and the purposiveness of nature” (Rel
6:5). This synopsis of the argument resonates with what we have been told in
the Methodology, as there the gap between freedom and nature cannot be closed
by means of anything we empirically cognize, only by our belief that there is a
God (CPJ 5:474). As I have shown above, that moral proof for the existence of
God cannot even get started unless we assume that there is purposiveness in
nature, or that there are organisms. Just as the moral proof of the existence of
God would be impossible without a moral belief in the existence of organisms
in nature, so too would the fruit of this proof
(the reality of freedom) be impossible without such a belief.
Appendix II. Did Kant care about Aristotle?
On §§72-73 of the Critique of the
Teleological Power of Judgment
Sections 72-73 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment contain a
critique of various dogmatic explanations of the purposiveness of nature. On the
one hand, ``idealists'' such as the Epicurean atomists and Spinoza make
teleology out to be a mere fiction, arguing that the purposiveness of nature is
reducible to either “blind chance” or a necessary world-cause. On the other
hand, “realists” such as hylozoists and theists brutely assert that they can prove
the reality of teleology, explaining that the source of a thing's teleological
structure is either a material property of the thing or a feature bestowed upon it
by some intelligent world-designer. Both realists and idealists falter because
they mistake claims about how we ought to reflect upon nature for claims about
the real constitution of nature.
Conspicuously, one titan of teleology is missing from Kant's discussion
of ``the systems'' of teleology – namely, Aristotle. Clearly, Aristotle was not an
idealist like the Epicureans and Spinoza. This might lead us to surmise that
Aristotle must be counted among the realists. The issue is that Aristotle was
neither a theist nor a hylozoist.
This interpretive situation points us in two potential directions. In a
more pessimistic mood, we may suspect that Kant completely overlooked
Aristotle, whether by accident or out of indifference to the Aristotelian position.
Yet, perhaps it is the case that Kant deliberately omits discussion of Aristotle in
his definitive work on teleology from the Critical period, signaling a tacit
endorsement – maybe even a critical rehabilitation – of Aristotle’s explanation
of nature’s purposiveness.
At first glance, it may make sense to be pessimistic about Kant's
philosophical relationship with Aristotle's teleology. Kant neither cites nor
ostensibly paraphrases Aristotle in his seminal text on teleology. Moreover,
Kant's stated remarks about Aristotle in lecture manuscripts and primary texts
may suggest that Kant only had a passing familiarity with the Corpus
Aristotelicum.88 Nevertheless, if we adopt a particular interpretation of Kant's
philosophy of nature I have developed elsewhere, I conclude that it is possible
to end the story of Kant and Aristotle's philosophical relationship on a happier
note.
The paper proceeds as follows. In the first section, I survey Kant’s
critiques of dogmatic explanations of the purposiveness of nature (1.1) and then
consider what Kant’s preferred explanation of the purposiveness of nature may
be (2.2). In section 2, I do the same for Aristotle. In section 3, having shown
that Aristotle's views are not adequately covered in the critiques of dogmatic
teleology in sections 72 and 73 of the Third Critique, I conclude that there are
apparently two available options. Either Kant completely overlooked Aristotle's
teleology or Kant is carrying the torch of Aristotelian teleology in the Third
Critique. More weight can be added to the latter,
88 Consider, for instance, Kant's various remarks about Aristotle's philosophy in his Lectures on
Metaphysics. There, Aristotle is portrayed as a philosopher who claims ``all our concepts came
from the senses'' (LM 28:232); who argues that ``concepts of the understanding are not innate
but rather acquired'' (LM 29:761); who is supposedly a direct precursor of Locke's philosophy
(while Leibniz is straightforwardly a ``follower of Plato'') (ibid); who states that ``nothing is in
the intellect which was not first in the senses'' (ibid); who ``said that all cognitions were
empirical, or that they were based on the first principles of experience'' (LM 28:542); who sets
up a ``(so-called) physiology of reason, because he views a priori cognition as something that
can be acquired empirically'' (LM 29:958), etc. In other words, Kant brazenly claims that
Aristotle is something like an Early Modern Empiricist in Ancient Greece.
In the Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, Kant curiously states that
``Plato and Aristotle did maintain a pure and morally determinate concept of God'' (LPDR
28:1126) for the sake of their moral philosophies. Kant's least controversial remarks about
Aristotle in primary texts can be found in places such as the Prolegomena to any future
metaphysics and What real progress has metaphysics made in Germany?, both of which
associate Aristotle's theoretical philosophy with the establishment and use of categories.
Rarely is text from the Corpus Aristotelicum cited to support or elaborate upon these
interpretive claims. Conveniently, most of the philosophical positions attributed to Aristotle are
phrased in Kantian terms that only dubiously map onto Aristotle's terminology.
optimistic conclusion if we take my non-mechanistic reading of Kant's
philosophy of nature onboard. If we appreciate that Kant urges us to believe that
there are non-mechanistic causal structures in and throughout nature though we
can never know that this is the case, we could understand the third Critique's
remarks on teleology as a development of Aristotelian teleology.
1. Kant on the purposiveness of nature
1.1.Kant’s critiques of dogmatic explanations of nature’s purposiveness
Kant takes aim at idealist and realist explanations of nature’s
purposiveness. The idealist attempts to explain away nature’s purposiveness –
or to prove that nature’s purposiveness is “at bottom entirely identical with the
mechanism of nature” (CPJ 5:391). They achieve this either by arguing that any
apparent purposiveness is really the result of a necessary world-cause
(Spinozism) or by arguing that any apparent purposiveness is really the result of
blind chance (Epicureanism). The realist asserts that they can prove the reality
of nature’s purposiveness by tracing it back to a hyperphysical intelligent author
(theists) or by building purposiveness into matter (hylozoists). Before piecing
together what Kant’s preferred explanation of nature’s purposiveness may be,
let’s consider his critiques of idealist and realist explanations of nature’s
purposiveness one-by-one.
One form of idealism grounds the purposiveness of nature in a “lifeless
God.” Kant associates this view with Spinoza. The view seeks to explain the
connection of ends in the things in nature by demonstrating that they are
actually a product of “blind necessity.” However, Kant thinks that this view fails
to provide a principled distinction between purposive things and nonpurposive
things, instead giving us a “merely childish game played with words” (CPJ
5:394). In other words, the Spinozist view merely asserts that purposive natural
structures are really nonpurposive, but it does so without drawing a principled
distinction between purposive and nonpurposive structures. For this reason, it
does not explain anything at all.
Another form of idealism Kant associates with the atomistic theories of
Epicurus and Democritus. This view contends that the apparent purposiveness
of nature is really just a product of blind chance or purely accidental.
Nonetheless, like the Spinozist view, if the Epicurean is correct “nothing is
explained, not even the illusion in our teleological judgments” (CPJ 5:393). By
reducing the purposiveness of nature to the blind, accidental collision of
material atoms, question of why the atoms took this configuration and not some
other persists. The Epicurean (or Democritean) atomist is just as incapable of
answering this why question as the Spinozist. Thus, all idealists fail to explain
away the purposiveness of nature.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who claim that they can
prove the purposiveness of nature is real take things a step too far. According to
theists, we can establish the existence of God in a way “sufficient for the
determining power of judgment” (CPJ 5:395). As long as an intelligent God
exists, the purposive design of nature that God has furnished must also exist.
However, while positing an intentional God behind nature as an article of faith
might be an adequate ground for reflecting on the purposiveness of nature, it is
not a ground for justifying the purposiveness of nature as a “objective
assertion.” Thus, though Kant thinks that theism is on the right track, it still
promises to deliver more than it can, sliding from a maxim suitable for
reflecting on nature to an objective proof of the existence of God.
Last, there are the hylozoists. This view is especially important for our
purposes because someone might make the mistake of thinking that Kant sorts
Aristotle into this camp. As we shall see, Kant’s characterization and critique of
hylozoism will reveal that Aristotle could not be counted among the hylozoists.
Hylozoism is the view that seeks to prove the reality of nature’s
purposiveness by showing that purposiveness is a material component of some
object. Ultimately, the issue with this view is that it attempts to “endow matter
as mere matter with a property (hylozoism) that contradicts its essence” (CPJ
5:375). Matter is only capable of being changed by external causes (MFNS
4:543), and, Kant adds, “the inertia of matter is, and means, nothing else than its
lifelessness, as matter in itself” (MFNS 4:544).91 In contrast to matter, there is
life, or “the faculty of a substance to determine itself to act from an inner
principle, of a finite substance to change, and of a material substance to motion
or rest, as change of its state” (MFNS 4:544). Whereas matter “in itself” can
only be changed by external causes, a living substance has an internal principle
of change. Moreover, insofar as matter can only undergo changes when it is
affected from without, by an external cause, matter qua matter cannot be alive.
If we take hylozoism to be a position that endows matter “in itself” with life, it
is a fundamentally incoherent and contradictory position, for it holds that matter
in itself both is and is not alive.
91 Kant offers more definitions of matter in the Lectures on Metaphysics. In the Metaphysik
Mrongovius, he states that “Matter is that which can be intuited in space” and continues, “By
matter one always understood something passive that lies at the basis of all appearances” (LM
29:841). In the sense that it is passive and changeable, it is contrasted with form: “Matter and
form go through all parts of philosophy. Matter is the determinable – form the determination”
(LM 29:847-8). Later in the same lecture, Kant adds that “Matter and form are met with in
every whole. Matter as the data <data> and form as the manner of connecting them” (LM
29:850). Again, mere matter is passive, acted upon from without. Form is that which determines
matter and not just in any arbitrary way, but in a manner that connects given matter into a
whole.
Kant gives further elaboration to this relationship between matter and life in the Psychology
portions of his Lectures on Metaphysics. For example, in a proof of the immortality of the soul
that “is good against materialists”, Kant begins with the following premises: “All matter is
lifeless, has no faculty for determining itself, and the principle of life is something other than
matter” (LM 29:913). From this, it follows that matter “has mere receptivity or passivity.” In
contrast, life is a “spontaneity or the faculty for determining oneself from inner principles”
(ibid). Matter, therefore, cannot have a principle of life and is instead entirely lifeless. So the
body, which is completely made up of matter, cannot be the principle of life; for the human
being, the principle of life must be the soul, since presumably the principle of life can only be
either the body or the soul. Death, or the extinction of the body, turns out to be a
“promotion of the life of the soul” (LM 29:914). While we can never in fact know that the
substance underlying the body has life, we can infer from the fact that our body qua mere matter
is lifeless to the possibility of some not-merelymaterial principle of life that organizes our
material bodies.
Now, there is a potential second way of interpreting hylozoism and Kant’s
critique of the view. According to this view, matter is endowed with life by a
world-soul. This version of hylozoism is perhaps a call back to 17th century
Cambridge Neo-Platonists such as Ralph Cudworth, hylozoism “makes all
Body, as such, and therefore every smallest atom of it, to have Life Essentially
belonging to it” (see TIS, Ch. 3, 1-2). Such hylozoists, says Cudworth, turn out
to be atheists “carrying more then Semblance and Disguise of a Theist, than
other Atheists” (TIS Ch. 3, pp. 106-7), because rather than claiming an
intelligent God designed nature in accordance with purposes, they argue that
some corporeal God-like force (a “Numen”) is responsible for nature’s
purposive design.
I believe that this version of hylozoism falls prey to the same issue as the first
version. He asserts that a hylozoism that endows matter with life in a manner
reminiscent of the Cudworthian hylozoist produces a “circle in explanation”
(CPJ 5:394). Though Kant is not entirely clear about what this circle is, I
contend that we can piece it together by attending to Kant’s critique of the first
version of hylozoism. According to this second kind of Cudworth-style
hylozoist, whatever endows matter with life (i.e., the Numen) is itself a
corporeal thing. The act of endowment would seem to be an instance of
mechanistic causality—a change in the state of a material thing
materialism, carefully considered, kills everything” (Dreams 2:330), echoing the first version of
hylozoism mapped out above. If life is characterized as a capacity of a substance to bring about
change internally, hylozoism’s main vice is that it attributes such a principle to a thing that can
only change by means of external causes. In other words, the hylozoist takes matter itself to be
alive when it cannot be anything other than dead, or incapable of inner principle driven activity.
(This is precisely why the thesis of materialism – or the thesis that everything is merely matter –
“kills everything”.) By saying that all matter is alive, the hylozoist therefore applies life to that
which cannot be alive.
The hylozoist’s transgression can also be gleaned from remarks in the Inaugural
Dissertation: “Nothing material at all comes into being or passes away, and all the changes
which take place in the world concern its form alone” (ID 2:418). Matter cannot contain a
principle of change “because, if you concede that matter itself is in flux and transitory, there
would be nothing left at all which was stable and enduring, which would further advance the
explanation of phenomena in accordance with universal and constant laws, and which would,
therefore, further the advance of the understanding” (ID 2:419). There is, in other words, a
discontinuity between form as a source of change and matter, which can merely be changed
from without. With this in mind, we can characterize the error of hylozoism as breaking this
continuity and asserting a contradiction, for it maintains that matter both has an internal
principle of change and cannot possibly have an internal principle of change.
precipitated by some antecedent, spatially distinct state of another material
thing. Thus, this second version of hylozoism is still defending the view that
matter is capable of self-movement, contradicting the essence of matter.
Whether it’s mysteriously “in” matter or the endowment of a corporeal deity,
both hylozoists commit the error of attributing to matter a property it could not
possibly possess. Whichever route we take, “Hylozoism thus does not
accomplish what it promises” (CPJ 5:395).
1.2. Kant’s preferred explanation of nature’s purposiveness
These critiques of dogmatic explanations of nature’s purposiveness may
leave us wondering what Kant’s preferred explanation is. Although Kant rejects
the possibility that we can demonstrate the unity characteristic of an organism
to be the product of a soul using the body as its instrument or the soul acting as
“artificer” of the body (CPJ 5:375-6), I want to suggest that Kant is open to a
view according to which an organism is a certain compound of immaterial form
and material body. Kant maintains that
An organized being is thus not a mere machine, for that has only a
motive power, while the organized being possesses in itself a formative
power, and indeed one that it communicates to the matter, which does
not have it (it organizes the latter): thus it has a self-propagating
formative power, which cannot be explained through the capacity for
movement alone (that is, mechanism). (CPJ 5:374)
In passages like these, Kant seems to be spelling out a conception of a natural
product that is endowed with a power to act in accordance with inner principles,
and therefore cannot be a merely material thing. In addition, that power is not
reducible to matter, is not a property of matter “in itself.” Rather, it is a power
that “communicates” with matter and organizes it, and it is a power that “cannot
be explained” by means of mechanism alone. Certainly, Kant will never hold
that this power is something we can behold in outer sense and empirically
cognize. Perhaps we can attribute such a power to the natural products we judge
to be organisms on the basis of an assumption, an hypothesis, or, as I want to
argue, a belief. Nonetheless, what seems clear is that hylozoism is a position
that is conceptually distinct from the position articulated in the passages cited
above. Hylozoism is a fundamentally contradictory view that takes life to be a
property of matter “in itself.” Ruling out the possibility that life is a property of
matter “in itself” does not imply that it is impossible for a faculty or power of
life to communicate with, interact with, or give a particular form or
organization to matter.
It is apparent that Kant is a critic of hylozoist theories of the organic, but that
his rejection of hylozoism does not imply a rejection of the very possibility of
organisms. For instance, in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Kant condemns the appeal
to immaterial principles as the “resort of lazy philosophy”, but quickly goes on
to qualify that he is nonetheless “convinced that Stahl, who is disposed to
explain animal processes in organic terms, was frequently closer to the truth”
than his contemporaries who ignored “immaterial forces” and stuck to
“mechanical causes” (Dreams 2:331).97 Stahl maintains the possibility of
organisms and attributes the life of the organism to an immaterial principle such
as the soul, while Stahl’s hylozoist contemporaries reduce the organism’s
principle of life to some material part of them (e.g., a particular gland, organ,
etc.). Kant’s predilection for Stahl’s view is by no means a full-throated
endorsement of it, and his attitude towards Stahl changes throughout the
Critical period (see Pecere 2021, sections 2 and 3). Even in the years following
the publication of the Third Critique, Kant maintains a preference for views of
the organism that associate its life with something other than a merely material
principle.
For instance, in his 1796 essay On the Organ of the Soul, Kant takes a strong
stance against Samuel
Sömmering’s hylozoist theory of “animated matter” which claims to have
proven that the soul resides ventricular fluids on the basis of anatomical
discoveries. Kant forcefully responds that to locate the soul in the material brain
would be a “contradiction” (Organ 12:33). Any attempt to prove that “the
principle of living force in animal bodies [and] the seat of the soul” is material
constitutes “a malicious temptation for the metaphysician to dare a step beyond
his limit in the field of physiology” (Letters 13:398). Instead, such living forces
or the soul must be non-material, and though we can never empirically establish
the reality of this non-material principle, we can still conceive of the soul as a
“virtual presence, which belonged only for the understanding, and which just
for that reason is not spatial” (Organ 12:31).
Kant repeatedly and explicitly rejects hylozoism throughout his philosophical
career. To him, it suffers from several vices. For one, it pretends to deliver
empirical cognition of something that can never be empirically cognized – i.e.,
the purposiveness of nature. Second, it is an inherently contradictory position.
Matter can only be moved by external causes and is lifeless; life is characterized
by movement from internal causes; to attribute life to matter is assert a
contradiction (i.e., mere matter both cannot and can be alive). Nevertheless, we
see that a rejection of hylozoism does not entail a rejection of the very
possibility that there are organisms in nature.
Kant sometimes conceives of the life of an organism as a not-merely-material
principle that structures corresponding matter. Though we can neither
empirically cognize nor empirically prove that this not-merely-empirical
principle exists, we cannot prove its non-existence. Thus, we should not take
Kant’s rejection of hylozoism to be a wholesale rejection of the organism in
general. With this in mind, let us now return to the question of whether Kant
addresses Aristotle’s teleology in the Critique of the Teleological Power of
Judgment.
2. Aristotle on the purposiveness of nature
2.1. Aristotle’s critiques of dogmatic explanations of nature’s purposiveness
There are several reasons for thinking that arguments offered in sections
72 and 73 do not target Aristotle at all. For one, Kant never explicitly mentions
Aristotle (or Aristotelianism) in the body of the Critique of the Power of
Judgment. While Democritus, Epicurus, Spinoza, and many other philosophers
are referenced in the body of the text, Aristotle is conspicuously absent. Given
the absence of Aristotle, we may be inclined to think that his teleology – despite
its influence – is not in Kant’s sights at all. Two, a broad overview of Aristotle’s
thought on the purposiveness of nature reveals that Aristotle himself rejected all
the same explanations of nature’s purposiveness that Kant rejected.
Aristotle rejects what Kant would call Epicurean idealism, or the
doctrine of “accidentality”, on several fronts. Kant associates the Epicurean (or
Democritean) philosophies with the proclamation that “accidentality” or “blind
chance” is the ultimate source of the world’s purposive organization. Aristotle
forcefully dismantles such a position:
There are others who make the spontaneous the cause of the heavens
and the cosmic systems. For they say that spontaneously the vortex
come to be and the motion which separated out and established
everything in the present order. And this is itself really incredible. For
they also say that the animals and the plants neither come to be nor exist
by luck, but rather nature or intelligence or something like that is their
cause. For it is not just as luck has it that each of these comes to be out
of a seed, but out of this one an olive and out of that one a human. But
the heaven and the most divine things that we see they say to have come
about spontaneously, without the sort of cause of the animals and the
plants. Indeed, if things are this say, this would itself be worth knowing,
and it would have been good to say something about it. In other respects
what they say is absurd, yet it is even more absurd to say these things
when nothing we observe in the heavens comes about spontaneously,
and many things that do not come about by luck, they say incidentally
do come about by luck. Indeed the opposite of this should be the case.
(Physics ii 4, 196a24– b5)
Spontaneous, blind causes cannot make sense of the regularities exhibited in the
world, to Aristotle. If we had any indication that this were the case, however,
asserting a spontaneous, blind cause would be an incentive for probing deeper,
not an ultimate explanation. So it is not only absurd to say that plants, animals,
and the things we observe in the heavens come about accidentally, by means of
blind chance – it is also absurd to stop inquiring once one has asserted blind
chance as the principle of some phenomenon.
One could add that perhaps Kant not only has the attribution of blind chance as
a principle to this idealist position, but that his invocation of Epicurus and
Democritus serves to indicate that this idealist position invokes atoms as the
ultimate source of the world’s organization. Aristotle plainly rejects
Democritean atomism (as well as any physical atomism in general) when he
argues that the function of a thing cannot be accounted for merely by referring
to configurations of shapes and the differences between them; two things can
have the same shape (an eye of a dead person and the eye of a living person)
while one is functional and the other is not:
Does, then, configuration and color constitute the essence of the various
animals and of their several parts? For if so, what Democritus says will
be strictly correct. For such appears to have been his notion. At any rate
he says that it is evident to everyone what form it is
human species “cannot be the work of chance” in On the use of teleological principles in
philosophy (OTP 8:166), indicating that he would disapprove of the Epicurean approach in
human sciences as well.
that makes the man, seeing that he is recognizable by his shape and
color. And yet a dead body has exactly the same configuration as a
living one; but for all that is not a man. So also no hand of bronze or
wood, or constituted in any but the appropriate way, can possibly be a
hand in more than name. For like a physician in a painting, or a flute in
a sculpture, in spite of its name it will be unable to do the function that
its name implies. Precisely in the same way no part of a dead body, such
I mean as its eye or its hand, is really an eye or a hand. To say, then, that
shape and color constitute the animal is an inadequate statement, and is
much the same as if a woodcarver were to insist that the hand he had cut
out was really a hand. (Parts of Animals i 1, 640B29–1A6)
Atomists argue that the form or the arrangement of nature is a product of its
atomic structure. However, Aristotle argues that two things can have “exactly
the same configuration” and have the exact same “shape and color” without
performing the same functions or being organized in the same way. A dead
body has the same atomic structure or configuration as a living one, but the
living body is capable of functioning in the way a dead body can. By reducing
nature to its most basic atomic structures, the atomist does not explain the
apparent teleological organization of nature, but only leaves the question of
why nature is structured this way and not some other way open.
Kant labels another camp of idealists “fatalists”. Fatalists, like Spinoza, argue
that the world, as a system of ends, is ultimately grounded in a supreme, but
necessary and unintelligent, world-cause: “on this system the connection of
ends in the world must be assumed to be unintentional” and necessary (CPJ
5:391-2). Aristotle not only refutes this sort of idealism, but attributes it to
Democritus. By making mere necessity out to be the ultimate cause of nature
and demoting teleological explanations, Democritus inverts the proper
relationship between necessity and teleology:
It is clear that necessity in natural things is that which we call the matter
and the motion for these things. And both explanations must be given,
but more the cause for the sake of something. For this is the cause of the
matter, but the matter is not the cause of the end, and the principle
comes from the definition and the account, just as in products of art.
Since a house is this kind of thing, these other things must come to be
and constitute it, out of necessity. And since health is this, these other
things must come to be and constitute it, out of necessity. And similarly
with a human: if this, then that. (Physics ii 9, 200a30–b4)
Here, Aristotle maintains that the necessity of natural things, associated with the
“matter and the motion for these things” must be accounted for. Nevertheless,
this sort of explanation has no priority over a teleological one: “For this [“the
cause for the sake of something”] is the cause of the matter, but the matter is not
the cause of the end”. Any explanation that accounts for the matter and the
motion of things will be a part of an important part of a teleological
explanation, but a teleological explanation is never reducible to an explanation
that invokes necessity. Thus, Aristotle’s thought is fundamentally at odds with a
fatalist system.
Now let us consider whether Aristotle is a “realist.” One kind of realist – the
“theist” – asserts that nature is purposive on the grounds that nature was
produced by an original intelligent being. In the first book of his Metaphysics,
Aristotle praises Anaxagoras for stating that intelligence
[noûs] is the cause of the cosmos and its order (see Metaphysics i 3, 984B11-
22). However, Anaxogras uses this principle as a crutch more so than a genuine
explanatory tool: “Anaxagoras uses intelligence as a deus ex machina for the
making of the world, and when he is at a loss to tell for what cause something
necessarily is, then he drags intelligence in, but in all other cases he ascribes
events to anything rather than to intelligence” (Metaphysics i 4, 985a18–21).
The theist generally fails, on Aristotle’s account, because they do not provide a
genuine explanation of the purposiveness of nature. The “intelligence” of an
original being only tuns out to be a label attached to phenomena that cannot be
explained by other sorts of causes (Johnson 2006, 113; and Johnson 2006,
Section 4.4). Clearly, Aristotle himself is not going to rely on positing the
existence of such a being to explain the purposive organization of nature and
natural products.
By process of elimination, we might reason that Aristotle is a hylozoist and that
Kant’s critique of hylozoism amounts to a rejection of Aristotelian teleology. In
the next section, I argue that, no matter what reading of Aristotle we adopt, it
makes little sense to attribute what Kant called “hylozoism” to Aristotle. Some
claim that Aristotle is a “realist” about teleology, others that Aristotle is an
“anti-realist.” Neither reading of Aristotle warrants the conclusion that he
endorses either the view that all matter is alive or the view that life is a property
of matter in itself.
2.2.Aristotle’s preferred explanation of nature’s purposiveness
There are two prominent ways of interpreting Aristotle’s teleology.
Some readers opt for an “anti-realist” reading of Aristotle’s teleology, which
makes teleology out to be a stance or a perspective we adopt in our
investigations of nature, but that stance or perspective merely allows us to
consider the world as if it were organized in accordance with ends. In contrast,
“realist” interpretations argue that, for Aristotle, nature really is organized in
accordance with final causes. Moreover, to the realist, final causes are more
basic than and condition material and efficient causes. That is, we posit material
and efficient causes as hypothetically necessary means of explaining the
teleological essence of nature. Neither reading makes Aristotle out to be a
proponent of the view that life is a property of mere matter, and therefore it
makes little sense to attribute a hylozoist conception of purposiveness to
Aristotle. Furthermore, both readings helpfully illustrate that Aristotle is
committed to a distinctly hylomorphic view of nature’s purposiveness.
2.2.1. Aristotle as a “realist”
According to Monte R. Johnon’s “realist” reading of Aristotle developed
in Aristotle on Teleology (2006), “Aristotle offers us a way to think about ends
and goods as natural phenomena, as objective causes out there in the world, and
not merely as products of the human mind”, though minds can be conscious of
the goods or ends in nature (290). But what precisely does it mean for an end or
a good to be a “natural phenomenon” and “objective cause”? To illustrate this, it
might be useful to turn to a few concrete examples of teleological explanation
throughout Aristotle’s corpus. Consider the case of a living thing. For Aristotle,
a living thing is “natural”, and its nature
is spoken of in two ways: being on the one hand as matter, on the other
as substance. And the latter as both the mover and the end. Thus the soul
is this [substance, mover, and end] of the animal, either the whole soul,
or some part of it. It follows from this that, for the person investigating
nature, it would be more important to speak about the soul than about
the matter, insofar as the matter is a nature more on account of this [the
soul], than the other way around. (Parts of Animals i 1, 641a25–31)
Here, Aristotle distinguishes two senses of the “nature” of a living being. On the
one hand, a living being is natural because it is an entity made up of material
such as bones, flesh, organs, and so forth. On the other hand, it is a “substance”
[ousías]. The substantial nature of a living being stipulates that it is a thing with
a soul, and that the soul serves as the thing’s source of motion and its end. In
other words, a living thing is moved by and exists for the sake of its soul.
When investigating nature, a researcher ought to focus on the soul, for
the soul has a sort of explanatory priority over mere matter. This priority is
illustrated by Aristotle in the following way later in the Parts of Animals:
Since every organ is for the sake of something, each of the parts of the
body are for the sake of something, and since that for the sake of which
they exist is some activity, it is clear that the whole body is constituted
for the sake of some manifold activity. For the sawing does not come
about for the benefit of the saw, but the saw for the sake of sawing,
since the sawing is an activity. Therefore the body as well exists
somehow for the sake of the soul, and the parts are for the sake of the
functions towards which each of them naturally grows. (Parts of
Animals i 5, 645B14-20)
In an explanation of a living thing, a specification of the functions, powers, and
capacities of the thing precedes an understanding of the material composition of
its body. For this reason, Aristotle characterizes the body and its parts as
elements that exist for the sake of some activity; as Johnson puts it, “no animal
has feet, but lacks the ability to walk, or has lungs but lacks the ability to breath
air” (2006, 173). In this same way, the ends of a living thing constitute its
material composition.
An organic body could not even exist if it did not have ends.
While Aristotle’s insistence that ends are part of a living thing’s nature
might tempt us to conclude that Aristotle makes life a property of matter, we
should keep in mind that teleological and material causes differ in kind. If we
keep this in mind, we shall see that even a realist reading like Johnson’s
prohibits us from locating teleology in matter, as the hylozoist does. Rather, as
Aristotle argues,
Everything is defined with respect to its function: the function of each
thing—what it is able to do—is what it truly is, for example an eye is
really an eye, if it can see, while if a thing is not so able, then it is that
only nominally, for example a dead man or a statue of a man [is only
nominally a man]. Or consider a wooden saw, which is but a likeness of
a saw. So it is even with flesh: the function of this is less clear than it is
with the tongue. So again with fire, though its function is even less
clear, naturally, than the function of flesh. (Meteorology iv 12, 390a10–
16)
That is, everything, even mere matter like the elements earth, air, fire, and
water, is defined in terms of its ends or functions. On this picture, it makes no
sense to render any form of purposiveness a feature of the material composition
of a thing. Rather, a thing’s ends or functions reside in a distinct and deeper
level of explanation than its material composition. A hylozoist takes the
material to be explanatory bedrock and seeks to reduce purposiveness to some
feature of a thing’s material composition. For Aristotle, hylozoism is not even a
conceptually tenable position to adopt, for the ends of a thing specify a
distinctly non-material aspect of its “nature”. All of this suggests that, if Kant
reads Aristotle as a “realist”, Kant simply has not addressed his view in sections
72 and 73 of the Dialectic. Unlike an “idealist”, Aristotle does not seek to
explain away teleology by reducing it to blind chance or necessity. Unlike a
theist, Aristotle does
not think that a hyperphysical intelligent being is the source of nature’s
purposiveness. Finally, unlike a hylozoist, Aristotle does not think of
purposiveness as a property of mere matter and does not assert that all matter is
alive. Like the realist, Aristotle subscribes to the possibility that there is life in
nature. But life is neither created by God nor a property of matter; instead, the
purposiveness of an organism is associated with its soul, where its soul is a non-
material, formal, final, and locomotive cause of the organism:
And the soul is cause and starting point of the living thing. But these are
said in many ways and the soul is a cause in the three senses [of cause]
that we have distinguished. For the soul is cause of the animate bodies
‘whence the motion’, and ‘that for the sake of which’, and as substance.
That it is [a cause] as substance is clear. For the substance is the cause
of existence for everything. And animation is existence for animals, but
the cause and starting point of this is the soul. Again, the thing in a
complete state constitutes the account of what exists in potentiality. And
it is apparent that the soul is cause as an end and for the sake of which.
For, just as reason creates for the sake of something, in the same way so
does nature, and this is its end. And the soul is by nature this kind of
thing [i.e. an end] in living things. For all the natural bodies are
instruments of the soul; just as the natural bodies of animals, so those of
plants, since these things are for the sake of the soul. But ‘that for the
sake of which’ is twofold, both the ‘of which’ and the ‘for which’. (De
anima ii 4, 415b7–21)
That the soul is a “substantial” cause of an organism, or the reason for its
existence, should be obvious to us – without such a principle, an organism
could not exist. That a soul is a final cause is apparent from the fact that its
body exists for the sake of certain functions. The roots of a tree exist for the
sake of nutrition, the stomach of an animal exists for the sake of digesting its
food, the triceps of a body exist for sake of generating force when pushing, and
so forth. Since souls are nothing other than the functions of a form-matter
compound, a body has a particular shape and structure for the sake of
performing the functions specified by its soul. Likewise, without a soul, a body
would be incapable of certain kinds of movement. While a body could be
driven by all sorts of external pushes and pulls, without its soul it could not act
for the sake of a desire, for example. In sum, as Aristotle puts it in the
Generation of Animals, “there is no face, nor flesh, not having a soul in it”
(Generation of Animals ii 1, 734B22).
Seeing as Aristotle makes the life of an organism a function of its soul
and does not reduce a thing’s functions to a merely material state of the thing,
we might read Aristotle as possessing a distinctly hylomorphic (or perhaps
teleomorphic) conception of purposiveness. A thing’s ends interact with its
material composition, determining the development, structure, and shape of its
physical body. Its ends are inscribed into its soul, and the soul of a living thing
is part of its nature, in Aristotle’s terms. A realist reading of Aristotle simply
maintains that formal, final, and locomotive causes of a thing specify features of
that thing’s nature, and all of these features of a thing’s nature are distinct from,
and not reducible to, those features specified by a material explanation of the
thing. Thus, the final causes organizing and animating the material body of an
organism are not a property of that material body, though these causes are a
feature of the organism’s poly-causal nature.
2.2.2. Aristotle as an “anti-realist”
Of course, there is another way of understanding Aristotle’s teleology.
Besides reading Aristotle as committed to the position that ends and functions
are built into a thing’s nature, one can adopt an “anti-realist” reading of
Aristotle. This is precisely the reading Wolfgang Wieland develops in his 1975
essay “The Problem of Teleology”, in which he argues that for Aristotle
teleology is a mere concept of reflection, or a type of “as-if” reasoning. Wieland
reaches this conclusion by first reassessing the role of chance [tuchê] in
Aristotle’s science. Typically, commentators interpret Aristotle’s teleology as
the “universal and supreme principle of Aristotle’s physics” (Wieland 1975,
142). The consensus treats chance as an obstacle to a comprehensive
teleological account of the physical world and attempts to explain it away.
Wieland responds that we should not explain chance away; rather, we ought to
realize that chance is essential for understanding the natural world and that
chance does not represent an obstacle to a teleological explanation of nature.
But explaining the deep compatibility between chance and teleology requires
Wieland to propose a unique interpretation of Aristotle’s teleology: “where we
speak of chance, teleological structures are already presupposed. With chance,
an apparent ‘as if’ teleology is involved; this is present if a goal is reached,
although there was no intention to reach it as such” (Wieland 1975, 144). It is a
matter of fact that there are chance events in nature. Additionally, the only way
to explain these chance events is to treat final causes not as necessary states, but
as states that merely could have occurred.
What Wieland concludes is that Aristotle’s doctrine of chance
demonstrates that “teleology is a form of thinking which can be applied only to
the individual connections between events within the world” and “telos is a
concept of reflection” (1975, 146). By treating teleology in this way, Wieland is
hoping to defend Aristotle from critics who argue that his treatment of nature
lacks scientific rigor. Because teleological explanation is merely a “concept
which makes possible a more exact search for causes simply by presenting
itself as a guideline for the exploration of a particular” (1975, 152), Aristotle
does not commit himself to a teleology that would spook the soberminded
scientist. Furthermore, Wieland observes that for Aristotle “in interpreting
nature one must in general employ teleological categories” (1975, 146,
emphasis added). However, this teleological account of nature that we are
compelled to form is only one aspect of what should be a tetracausal
explanation of nature: “the very fact that the final cause stands on the same
level
conceptually as the other three causes makes it unlikely that it is the universal
principle of nature from which everything can be derived” (1975, 147). Thus,
teleology represents just one way of explaining nature among several other
ways of explaining it. Teleology is not a self-sufficient universal cosmic
principle, but one of several reflective standpoints that we must adopt if we
want to explain nature.
Notice how similar this reading of Aristotle’s teleology is to the
conventional reading of Kant’s teleology. For Kant, the teleological manner of
investigating nature is a necessary but regulative maxim of the reflecting power
of judgment. This means that we should never mistake it for a constitutive
principle, which would reveal to us the actual, ontological constitution of
nature. Nevertheless, while we should always seek to explain nature in
mechanistic terms, there are proper occasions for us to judge nature
teleologically (CPJ 5:387-8). Indeed, Kant sometimes speaks as if nature
presents us with entities and scenes that are totally contingent from the
standpoint of the understanding and its mechanistic manner of representing, and
these situations plainly require us to deploy the teleological mode of judging
nature (CPJ 5:404). Still, the teleological mode of judging represents just one
mode of judging nature, and it subsists alongside the mechanistic mode of
judging nature, as the two potentially share a common supersensible principle
(CPJ 5:412). In short, the anti-realist reading of Aristotle reveals a number of
parallels: Both Aristotle and Kant think of teleology as a way of reflecting upon
nature, argue that we must deploy this form of reflection in certain contexts, and
reason that this form of explanation coexists alongside other ways of explaining
nature. In light of all these parallels, Wieland surmises that teleology had
roughly the same value to Kant and Aristotle: “in his [Aristotle’s] work
teleology has no greater (and to be sure, no smaller) importance than it has in
Kant’s philosophy” (1975, 159).
On an anti-realist reading, Aristotle cannot even be enumerated among
the dogmatic philosophers outlined in sections 72 and 73. Each of those
philosophers make the mistake of taking themselves to have established the
existence or non-existence of teleology on the basis of their reflections upon
nature. However, on Wieland’s reading, Aristotle maintains that teleology is
merely a principle of reflection, never a means of gaining insight into the real
constitution of nature. In this sense, Wieland’s reading makes Aristotle’s
teleology a precursor to Kant’s position, opening up the possibility that Kant’s
Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment represents a revival of
Aristotelian teleology. What Kant means to show us, by not ever mentioning
Aristotle, is that Aristotle was not a dogmatic teleologist at all. Instead, Aristotle
is a role model for our critically circumscribed teleological reflections upon
nature. Moreover, just as the realist reading showed us that Aristotelian
teleology is not hylozoist but hylomorphic. Final causality represents a different
kind or aspect of causality than material causality, and the one is not reducible
to the other. Rather, the principle of life in an organism can be understood as (at
least) a formal and final cause that organizes a particular kind of material body.
3. Did Kant care about Aristotle’s explanation of nature’s purposiveness?
Above, we have seen that Kant defines hylozoism primarily as the thesis
that life is a property of matter. Given his general definitions of life and matter,
hylozoism is an inherently contradictory position and can never serve as an
adequate starting point for a research program. In his survey of the various
dogmatic explanations of purposiveness in nature, Kant places hylozoists within
the camp of the “realists”, who speciously assert that teleology is real on the
grounds that they can discover “the life of matter”, or a faculty of life somehow
built into a material body. Since Aristotle is neither an Epicurean, nor a
Spinozist, nor a theist, this might lead us to conclude that he is a hylozoist and
that Kant’s critique of hylozoism is a rejection of Aristotelian teleology.
However, on both “realist” and “anti-realist” readings of Aristotelian teleology,
we find that Aristotle is not a hylozoist. Rather, Aristotle has a sophisticated
hylomorphic, or perhaps better yet teleomorphic, view of life. Life is a not-
merely-material, but instead formal and final cause that organizes matter in a
certain way. If this concept of life is taken to be a real feature of nature and
organisms, Kant does not enumerate this view in his discussion of the systems
of teleology. If this conception of life corresponds to a mode of reflection we
should adopt when explaining certain natural products, Kant seems to be
sympathetic to Aristotelian teleology.
Nonetheless, this apparent sympathy should be puzzling in light of the
fact that Kant never explicitly addresses the Aristotelian position on teleology.
Perhaps it is the case that Kant simply did not read or care to discuss Aristotle.
(After all, what evidence do we have that Kant actually read Aristotle?)
Skepticism that Kant genuinely engaged with Aristotle should be warranted by
the fact that, in his flagship text on teleology, Kant does not even mention
Aristotle (or Aristotelian teleology). It may further concern us that, when Kant
mentions Aristotle by name, he seems to present only caricatures of his
philosophy without providing any textual evidence to back his interpretations.
Assuming Kant did have some passing familiarity with Aristotle’s teleology, we
have seen that it is possible he could have adopted a realist or an anti-realist
reading of Aristotle’s teleology. Either Kant read Aristotle as a realist, which
means that Kant ignored the view in his supposedly exhaustive taxonomy of the
dogmatic systems of teleology, or he read Aristotle as an anti-realist, which
means that Kant’s position in the Critique of the Teleological Power of
Judgment represents a revival of Aristotelian teleology. In other words, either
Kant did not care to address the most influential theory of teleology in the
history of Western philosophy at all or Kant did not care to spell out how he
inherited the fruits of this position in his major work on teleology.
But there is a happier note we can conclude on. Elsewhere, I argue that
we can (and ought to) read Kant as adopting a non-mechanistic understanding
of nature. While most Kant interpreters argue that Kant either urges us to
believe that organisms cannot exist in nature or gives us a method for
definitively proving that there cannot be organisms in nature, elsewhere I have
shown that Kant actually pushes us to commit to the existence of organisms in
nature. According to my reading, it is possible and advisable to form a belief in
the existence of organisms in nature. This belief is rational – that is, it is not a
commitment to a convenient fiction or to an inherent absurdity, but a
commitment to an entity or structure that could possibly exist. This belief has
important theoretical and moral implications – without it, our theoretical
pursuits screech to a premature halt, and, with respect to his moral philosophy,
Kant is unable to explain how humans can act freely and pursue the highest
good in nature. This belief effectively makes it possible for us to avoid
pronouncing nature a dead machine.
If we read Kant as a non-mechanistic, who urges us to form this
sophisticated, firm, and positive relationship towards the existence of
teleological structures such as organisms in nature, we can locate him
somewhere in between the brute realist and the skeptical anti-realist. More
importantly, on this reading, it seems as though Kant is deploying the tools of
his transcendental philosophy to restore the Aristotelian picture of nature. Like
Aristotle, Kant postulates that there must be teleologically organized beings in
the natural world; unlike Aristotle, Kant specifies that this postulation is a
belief. Organisms are neither a brute fact nor a convenient fiction, but an article
of rational belief. We must presuppose that they exist in nature if we hope to
complete our theoretical investigations of nature and bring about our highest
moral ends. By subscribing to this
middle position, it appears as though Kant has run Aristotelian teleology
through his transcendental architectonic, leaving us with a critically qualified
means of affirming that there is life in nature.
