1)
Introduction
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims,
[T]he human being
. . . is obviously in one part phenomenon, but in another part, namely in
regard to certain faculties, he is a merely intelligible object, because the
actions of this object cannot at all be ascribed to the receptivity of
sensibility. We call these faculties
understanding and reason; chiefly the latter is distinguished quite properly
and preeminently from all empirically conditioned powers, since it considers
its objects merely according to ideas . . ..
[R]eason does not give in to those grounds which are empirically given .
. ., but with complete spontaneity it makes its own order according to ideas.
(A546-7/B574-5, see too A299/B355, A550/B578;
Kant’s contrast between certain human faculties and “empirically conditioned powers” seems to suggest that reason and the understanding are not susceptible to empirical influence. Kant’s claim, in his lectures on empirical psychology, that these higher faculties are “self-active” (28:228) and rest on “spontaneity” as opposed to “receptivity” (29: 880, 28:584) seems to confirm this suspicion. Throughout his philosophy, in fact, Kant insists that the understanding and reason operate spontaneously, independent of determination by empirical grounds.
Nonetheless, Kant insists, that “even . . . reason . . . must exhibit an empirical character,” that is, must fit into a series of natural causes and effects (A549/B577, see too A803/B831). And in his lectures on ethics, Kant is adamant about this further determination of reason:
Even one’s reason, as subjected to the laws of nature, can be considered devoid of all freedom . . . . Every act of thought or reflection is itself an occurrence in nature . . . though this actus is an inner occurrence, since it takes place in the man himself. (27:502-4)
With respect to the understanding, too, and in fact for “all cognition[s]” (A86/B118, my emphasis),
we can search in experience . . . for the occasional causes of their generation, where the impression of the senses provide the first occasion for opening the entire power of cognition to them . . . . Such a tracing of the first endeavors of our power of cognition to ascend from individual perceptions to general concepts is without doubt of great utility . . .. (A86-87/B118-119)
This empirical investigation is to be carefully distinguished from “a deduction of the pure a priori concepts,” but for the “quastio facti” seeking the explanation of the “possession of a pure cognition” (A86-87/B118-119) one can give an “empirical deduction, which shows how a concept is acquired through experience and reflection on it” (A85/B117). For Kant, all mental phenomena are causally determined, even those that are rooted in “spontaneous” higher cognitive faculties such as reason or the understanding.
What is more, Kant even suggests that specific experiences play a causal role in bringing about higher cognitions. The “impressions of the senses” are occasioning causes for acts of reason (A86/B118), and
[t]here is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience. . . . As far as time is concerned . . . no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition [my emphasis] begins. (B1, see too 29:951-2)
Kant makes this claim precisely in the context of distinguishing a priori cognitions, the most “pure” of the cognitions associated with the higher faculty of desire, from empirical ones. As he explains, “although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not all on that account arise from experience,” and in that sense that there might well be “cognition independent of experience” (B1-2, see too A85-7/B117-9). Even if not all cognitions are empirically justified, they are all empirically caused. In terms of empirical psychology, one can find a cause for any cognition, and that cause will always be an experience of some kind. But this does not mean that the content of the cognition is limited by the experience that causes it, nor that it is justified by that experience.[1]
The distinction between empirical causes of cognition and a priori justifications for certain cognitions is primarily important for Kant because it helps him make sense of how a priori synthetic judgments are possible (since, contra Locke and other empiricists, the empirical origin of a cognition need not preclude a non-empirical account of the nature and status of that cognition). But also has implications for Kant’s empirical psychology. In particular, Kant’s emphasis on a priori cognition takes place in the context of a transcendental idealism that reconciles (or tries to reconcile) a priori justifications for cognition with empirical, causal accounts of how those cognitions arise. And this means that his transcendental philosophy is compatible with, and may even require,[2] a fully empirical account of human cognition in terms of occasioning causes. In psychology, Kant can seek “natural laws of the thinking self” based on “observations about the play of our thoughts” (A347/B405).
Elucidating Kant’s empirical account of cognition is valuable for at least four reasons.[3] First, given Kant’s claims about the spontaneity of the understanding (and reason), one might reasonably think that these faculties are not susceptible to empirical explanation. Allen Wood, for example, has argued that Kant “holds that empirical psychology is excluded in principle from understanding all rational deliberation” (Wood 1984: 83), and Fred Rauscher has found it necessary to argue at length for an interpretation of Kant that “allows reason to be an entirely natural cause within appearances” (Rauscher 2006: 3).[4] This paper will not only help support Rauscher’s claim that reason can be seen as a natural cause in appearances, but will provide specific details about the operation of that empirical reason.
Second, as Patrick Frierson has pointed out, “a complete empirical account of human action depends upon explaining the causes of each kind of cognitive state as well as the grounds for connecting those cognitive states to the states of feeling and desire to which they give rise” Frierson 2005: 16). Frierson has provided an account of the connections between cognitive states and states of feeling and desire (in Frierson 2005), but he has not yet shown that cognitive states themselves arise in an empirically explicable way. For the sake of a complete empirical account of human action (the importance of which is emphasized in Frierson 2005), an empirical account of cognition is required.
Third, Kant’s empirical account of cognition offers a helpful alternative empirical psychology to accounts offered by empiricists such as Locke and Hume. In particular, Kant, even in his empirical psychology, insists upon the importance for ordinary human cognition of the understanding as distinct from the imagination. In contrast to Hume, who ascribes concepts such as causation and substance to the principles of the imagination (custom, habit, association), Kant argues that insofar as the imagination affects one’s understanding of these concepts, one is likely to be systematically led astray. And Kant makes this claim in his empirical psychology, as a claim about the ways that different cognitive faculties interact.[5]
Finally, Kant’s empirical account of human cognition can help philosophers understand Kant’s transcendental (non-empirical) account of cognition. Howard Caygill has shown the role that Kant’s psychological and anthropological reflections played in Kant’s development of the view that “sensibility and the understanding are generically different but also capable of being conjoined” (Caygill 2003: 188-9). During the period that Kant developed and refined the Critical philosophy, he lectured on empirical psychology, anthropology, and logic. In all three contexts, Kant’s reflections on the empirical nature of human cognition provided a context within which his transcendental idealism developed.
In this paper, I lay out Kant’s empirical account of human cognition. Because Kant did not publish any work devoted to an empirical account of cognition, I start with a section on the sources for Kant’s account. I then turn in section three to a general overview of Kant’s empirical account of cognition, followed by sections on Kant’s empirical account of sensibility (section four) and of the properly functioning higher cognitive faculties (section five). Finally, I turn in sections six and seven to a discussion of ways in which the higher faculties can diverge from proper function, both in the context of ordinary understandings and in cases of mental illness.
2) Sources for Kant’s Empirical Account of Cognition
None of Kant’s best known published works – the three Critiques and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals – lay out an empirical account of cognition in any systematic way. The Critique of Pure Reason, in fact, explicitly distinguishes itself from any empirical study of human reason (A64/B89). And at least one of Kant’s published works – The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science – almost seems to preclude the possibility of a rigorous empirical psychology (see 4:471).[6] In fact, Kant’s empirical account of human cognition never reaches the status of a science in the strictest sense, and he certainly considered his empirical account less significant than his more substantive transcendental project. Nonetheless, Kant did articulate a coherent and fairly detailed empirical account of human cognition.
Kant’s empirical account of human cognition has three primary sources, from which I draw the account in the rest of this paper. First, Kant’s lectures on metaphysics included a substantial section on “empirical psychology,” of which an empirical account of cognition formed a part. These lectures provide the most direct empirical treatment of human cognition. They also lay out the overall structure of human psychology, of which the different faculties of cognition are a part. And these lectures include some very important explanations of cognition from an empirical point of view, such as the explicit claim that a priori cognitions are not innate (28:233). Fortunately, several extant copies of these notes are available, providing “confirmation of the general . . . reliability of the various sets of notes” (Ameriks and Narragon 1997: xiv).[7] Unfortunately, these lectures on empirical psychology give only the briefest accounts of the faculties of cognition. They cannot be a primary source for a detailed empirical account of cognition.
In the lectures on empirical psychology, Kant gives a clue as to a further source for detail about his empirical psychology. In a late psychology lecture, Kant briefly discusses the cognitive faculty, but adds that “anthropology will treat of this in more detail” (28:585, see too 29:907). Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (along with his related lectures and handwritten remarks on anthropology) gives considerably more detail about the cognitive faculties, especially in Kant’s discussions of various cognitive talents and disorders. Unfortunately, Kant’s anthropology gives detail about these faculties in a particular context. His anthropology is meant to be both pragmatic and popular. Because it is pragmatic, anthropology presents empirical accounts of cognition not simply for the sake of information but in order to put to use those accounts, and this emphasis limits the range of Kant’s discussion.[8] The popularity of Kant’s anthropology, emphasized in the letter to Herz where Kant first introduced his interest in anthropology as a discipline (see 10: 146) and reemphasized throughout Kant’s lectures (see 25: 853, 1213), also limits the sort of details that Kant includes, to those that are “customary and interesting” (9:148).[9] Because it is both pragmatic and popular, the more detailed empirical account of human cognition in Kant’s Anthropology tends to give only those details that fit into an entertaining and easily accessible discussion with a practical use.
One
final source for Kant’s empirical account of human cognition is his logic,
especially as presented in his lectures on logic, where Kant leaves himself
room to diverge from logic proper into “applied” (B77/A53) logic, which treats
of human cognition in a more empirical way.
As in the case of the lectures on metaphysics, these notes can generally
be taken as reliable, although any particular passage may be transcribed
falsely. In the case of the logic, we
also have a logic textbook published by Kant’s student Gottlob Benjamin
Jaesche, prepared at Kant’s request (though probably without Kant’s
involvement).[10]
It might seem out of place to look for causal laws in Kant’s logic. In his lectures on logic, Kant explicitly distinguishes the study of the mind involved in logic from that of psychology. He explains,
Some
logicians, to be sure, do presuppose psychological principles in
logic. But to bring such principles into
logic is just as absurd as to derive morals from life. If we were to take principles from
psychology, i.e. from observations concerning our understanding, we would
merely see how thinking does take place and how it is under
various subjective obstacles and conditions; this would lead then to cognition
of merely contingent laws. In
logic, however, the question is not about contingent but about necessary
rules; not how we do think, but how we ought to think. (Jasche Logic,
Laws of logic are necessary laws,
not derived from observation, and hence distinct from the psychological laws
that actually govern the connections between higher cognitions. At the same time, however, Kant claims in his
logic that “like all our other powers, the understanding in
particular is bound in its actions to rules, which we can investigate” (Jasche
Logic,
This
apparent conflict can be resolved by keeping in mind two important details in
Kant’s distinction between logic and psychology. First, Kant’s separation of the two is
unidirectional. Kant warns against using
psychological generalizations in logic, not about using logical laws as
guides in empirical psychology. Second,
Kant’s account of how the mind actually works is not simply a
matter of logic. Logic describes how the
understanding ought to operate, and this will describe how the
understanding in fact operates only if the understanding is functioning
properly. Often the understanding does
function properly, and in those cases, Kant’s logic provides an account of the
psychological laws governing the connections between higher cognitions. But human minds are also susceptible to
“subjective obstacles and conditions” (Jasche Logic,
As already noted, Kant’s psychology and anthropology give some descriptions of these variations from normal function. But, as J. Michael Young points out, “Kant spent a great deal of time in his logic lectures talking about matters which, on his own account, do not belong to logic proper” (Young 1992: xix). Among the most important of these matters is Kant’s account of error, in the course of which he offers psychological accounts of how the understanding can deviate from proper function. One the one hand, Kant asks “How is it possible for a power to depart from its own laws?” and even claims that “the understanding itself cannot err” (24:721; see too 9: 54), suggesting that the laws governing the actual conduct of the understanding are just those that govern the way it ought to be, at least in the absence of influences external to the causal laws governing the understanding itself. Nonetheless, he does insist that humans err (e.g. at 16: 283-4 and 24:18) and even that “every error is to be regarded as a phenomenon that is worthy of an explanation” (24: 296). Such explanations are important tangents in Kant’s lectures on logic, and a proper focus of his anthropology. But by structuring his overall account of mental operations in terms of proper function and deviation, Kant can – without conflating logic and psychology – apply the insights of his logic proper to flesh out his empirical description of human action.
It
should not be too surprising that Kant analyzes the causal laws governing the
higher faculty of cognition by reference to logic, the rules governing its
proper function, and focuses in his anthropology and, improperly, in his
lectures on logic, on “deficiencies and diseases of the soul with respect to
its cognitive powers” (7:202f.). Even
the most ardent empiricist accounts of mind (at least in the 18th
century) turn to apparently logical laws when explaining the operation of
healthy higher cognitive faculties.[13] When Hume sets out to determine the faculty
responsible for “the transition from an impression present to the memory or
sense to the idea of an object, which we call cause or effect,” he asks
“Whether experience produces the idea by means of the understanding or of the
imagination; whether we are determined by reason to make the transition, or by
a certain association and relation of perceptions” (Hume 1740: I.iii.vi.4, pp.
88-9). To determine whether or not
reason is the faculty responsible for this transition, he appeals to a
“principle” that, in accordance with basic laws of deductive logic, would
justify this transition. Hume uses the
apparently logical claim that the transition is not deductively
justified to justify the psychological claim that the cognitive faculty
responsible for the transition is not the understanding (or reason). In this context, Hume treats the laws of
logic as the causal laws governing the operation of reason. In appealing to logic as a source of causal
laws of a properly functioning understanding, Kant’s account is no less
causal-determinist than Hume’s.[14] And in explaining various ways in which the
higher faculties can fall short of proper operation, Kant’s causal account is
actually more sophisticated than Hume’s.[15]
3) The overall structure of Kant’s empirical account of human cognition
Kant’s empirical account of cognition is not laid out in a wholly systematic way. His observations on the causal influences on cognition range from various important taxonomic classifications and specific causal laws to off-the-cuff observations, like the fact that “the mind is more disposed [for reflection] in the morning than in the evening” or that “one is perhaps ill disposed for deep reflection when one comes from a comedy” (25:554). But from these diverse claims about cognition, it is possible to put together a coherent, systematic, and plausible account. Patrick Frierson has described how the structure of Kant’s empirical psychology, including his account of cognition, can be organized around Kant’s notion of “faculties” [Vermögen]. As Frierson explains,
Kant . . . shifts . . . to a threefold distinction between the faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire (cf. 29:877). Each of these three faculties includes several distinct basic powers, none of which is reducible to others . . . . (Frierson 2005: 7; see too Hatfield 1990, Beck 1969, and Henrich 1957/58 and 1994).
Human cognitions are rooted in the “cognitive faculty,” which Kant distinguishes from both feeling and cognition. Within the cognitive faculty, Kant further distinguishes
between “higher” and “lower” faculties of cognition. The lower cognitive faculty is referred to broadly as “sensibility” (Sinnlichkeit) and includes the senses (Sinne) and the imagination, each of which is further subdivided (see 7:140-1, 153ff.; 25:29f., 269f.; 28:59f., 230f., 585, 672f., 869f., 737f.; and 29:882f.). The senses include the five outer senses as well as inner sense, and the imagination includes memory, anticipation of future events, and the “productive” or “fictive” imagination. Kant refers to the higher faculty of cognition by the general term “understanding” (Verstand) and includes within it three specific cognitive powers: reason, the understanding (also Verstand) in a narrow sense, and the power of judgment.[16]
In addition to this faculty psychology, Kant’s account of human cognition, like his empirical accounts of human feeling, desire, and action (see Frierson 2005), depends on the notions of basic power and natural predispositions. A “basic power,” for Kant, refers to the ground in the nature of a particular substance for the changes that substance undergoes: “the concept of cause lies in the concept of power” (28:564, see too A204/B250). Different powers reflect different specific laws of causation. Within the faculty of cognition, the five senses, imagination, understanding, and reason are all distinct causal powers, so each is governed by its own set of causal laws.[17] Because basic powers are the key to causal explanations of phenomena, Kant claims that “all physics, of bodies as well as of minds, the latter of which is called psychology, amounts to this: deriving diverse powers, which we know only through observations, as much as possible from basic powers” (28:564).[18] This reductive approach has limits. Kant seeks to minimize the appeal to distinct basic powers – reducing a variety of erroneous principles of judgment to a few basic powers, for example – but he insists contra Wolff and Baumgarten that powers such as the senses, imagination, and reason are all distinct basic powers, irreducible to a single sort of “representation.” In both physics and psychology, Kant’s goal is to reduce the variety of observable phenomena to as few basic powers as possible (but no fewer) and to explain the laws according to which those powers operate.
Within biology, Kant’s account of basic powers is linked to his account of “natural predispositions” [Naturanlagen]. In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, Kant explains that those basic powers most relevant to biology and psychology are natural predispositions.[19] Like other basic powers, Kant does not give causal accounts of the origins of these predispositions; they can be classified but not reduced to any more basic level of explanation in terms of efficient causes.[20] As he explains in his “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” “we must begin with something that human reason cannot derive from prior natural causes – that is, with the existence of human beings,” including all of their natural predispositions (8:110). Predispositions include such things as instincts, but Kant also identifies the major powers of the cognitive faculties as natural predispositions (A66, 6:444-5, 7: 322, 25:1172, 29:915). Thus the imagination with its laws of association, for example, is a natural predisposition, and while Kant makes use of this predisposition in his causal accounts, he does not causally explain the origin of the predisposition itself.
Kant’s explicit invocation of basic powers, and especially his willingness to allow that basic powers can be natural predispositions, leads him to a two-dimensional causal account of human cognition. For any particular mental state, there are various “occasional causes” (A86/B118), the sort of antecedent states that traditionally play a role in empiricist accounts of causation.[21] But these causes always bring about their effects by means of an underlying basic power, what one might call a substantial (as opposed to an occasioning) cause, or what Kant sometimes refers to as a “ground.” Thus in Kant’s empirical accounts of human faculties, one can distinguish between the occasioning causes of a particular mental state and the underlying grounds that determine the way in which particular occasioning causes give rise to particular mental states. In some cases, these underlying grounds will themselves be effects of prior occasioning causes. With respect to the imagination, for example, the ground of a connection between two mental states will often be a habit, a habit which is in turn the result of past experience of conjunction between the two mental states. In other cases, however, the underlying grounds will be natural predispositions, for which no further explanation in terms of antecedent causes is appropriate. Ultimately, a complete Kantian causal account depends upon tracing all mental states to preceding occasioning causes and the natural predispositions that provide the ultimate[22] grounds of those mental states. As already noted, “all . . . psychology amounts to . . . deriving diverse powers . . . as much as possible from basic powers” (28: 564).
In the rest of this paper, I use the following general framework for laying out this two part Kantian account:
Occasioning Cause à Mental State
↑
Underlying Ground
The horizontal arrow (à) reflects causation of the empiricist sort, where a particular state or event brings about a succeeding one. The vertical arrow (↑) reflects Kant’s broadly Liebnizian commitment to the importance of underlying substantial grounds for (occasioning) causal connections between particular states or events.[23]
In the next section, I briefly lay out Kant’s empirical account of the lower faculties of cognition. My primary purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive treatment of these lower faculties.[24] Rather, I use my discussion of them to illustrate the general framework of Kant’s empirical explanations of cognition, in order to show how Kant applies the same framework to the higher powers (judgment, the understanding, and reason). As I show in the next section,
Kant’s causal accounts of the nature and function of the cognitive powers begin by distinguishing (and categorizing) difference basic powers of the soul and laying out causal laws that govern the normal and healthy functioning of each cognitive power. He goes on to describe variations from this normal and healthy function, emphasizing negative variations due to defects that can arise with respect to one’s cognitive powers.[25] The rest of the paper (sections five through seven) then focuses on the higher faculties, showing first how these function in normal and healthy human beings, then laying out some of the ordinary ways in which human cognition diverges from “healthy” understanding (especially through prejudice), and finally discussing the more extraordinary divergences from healthy function (mental illnesses).
4) Kant’s Empirical Account of the Lower Cognitive Faculty
The lower faculty of cognition includes the senses and the imagination, and Kant explains various causal laws governing the behavior of each. With respect to the senses, Kant is brief. Unlike Hume, however, who simply argues that “impressions . . . of sensation . . . arise in the soul originally, from unknown causes” (Hume 1740: I.I.ii.1, p. 8),[26] Kant at least offers some explanation of the origin of sensory ideas.[27] He says, for instance, that “the sense of touch lies in the fingertips and the nerve endings (papillae) and enables us to discover the form of a solid body by means of contact with its surface” and that “sight is a sense of indirect perception appearing to a certain organ (the eyes) sensitive to agitated matter, namely light, which . . . is an emanation by which the locus of an object in space is determined” (7: 155, 156). Kant gives similar accounts of hearing, smell, and taste. These general accounts of purely sensory cognitions involve mechanical interactions between objects and sensory organs. Connections between these mechanical interactions and corresponding sensory cognitions are simply posited as natural predispositions. For example, Kant explains, “Nature seems to have endowed man . . . with this organ [of touch].” The organs are the basic powers of sensory cognitions, and they are not further explained mechanically in Kant’s account.
Laying out this account of the senses in terms of the framework of natural predispositions described in section three, one gets the following causal structure.
Physical contact of external objects with sense organ à Sensory perception
↑
Nature of Sense Organ
(A natural predisposition)
For example, in the case of light,
Agitated matter (light) hits the eyes à Perception of lighted object
↑
Nature of Eyes
The particular ways in which external objects bring about sensory perceptions differ for each sense organ. The laws characterizing the connections between physical contacts and sensory perceptions – such as the claim that light of a certain wavelength causes the perception “blue” – are the laws of the basic sensory “powers.” As in the case of all natural predispositions, the origins of these laws themselves are not explained, or at best are explained teleologically. But the specific content of the laws – that the perception “blue” is caused by a particular wavelength of light, and what that wavelength is – is determined empirically, and the presence of particular sensory perceptions is explained causally in terms of the laws governing the relevant power/sense organ.
In addition to the senses, the lower cognitive faculty includes the imagination.[28] Again, the goal of Kant’s empirical account is to trace the origin of particular cognitions – say the memory of a delicious meal or the imagining of a unicorn – to their occasioning causes and to discern the general laws that govern the cognitive powers (memory or fictive imagination) on the basis of which a particular occasioning cause brings about a particular subsequent cognitive state. When it comes to laying out the particular laws that govern the imagination, Kant’s account is similar to that of the empiricists. Most imaginative cognitions depend upon sensory cognitions, and cannot go beyond what has been made available by the senses.[29] Even the “productive [produktive] [imagination] is nevertheless not creative [schöpferisch], because it does not have the power to bring forth a sensory representation that was never given to our sensory powers” (7:167-8) Moreover, Kant follows the empiricists in positing a “law of association of ideas” (28:674, see too 7:175-77, 182) as a fundamental law governing the relations between ideas of the imagination.[30] In a passage that could almost be taken straight from Hume, Kant explains how “empirical ideas that have often followed each other produce a mental habit such that, when one is produced, this causes the other to arise as well” (7:176, cf. Hume 1740: I.iii.vi.4 and I.iii.vii.6).[31] Thus for the imagination,
Cognition x à Cognition y
↑
Frequent experience of cognition y following cognition x à Mental Habit
↑
Imagination
(A natural predisposition)
Because of the nature of the imagination, past experiences can give rise to habits of associating ideas with one another, and in the presence of such a habit, a new experience of one idea will cause one to cognize its associated idea in imagination. Relative to the simple account of the senses, the account of the imagination has one extra layer – to explain the origin of a particular mental habit – but the overall result is the same: Kant traces a particular cognition to its occasioning causes in previous states and its ultimate ground in a natural predisposition.
Generally, the imagination effects transitions and connections between sensory cognitions, but sometimes the imagination effects a transition from a sensory cognition to a higher cognition through an association between sensory and rational cognitions. There are two kinds of such association: “symbols” [Symbole] and “characters” [Charaktere] (7: 191). The key difference between the two is the principle according to which they effect a transition from lower to higher cognitions. Symbols effect such a transition according to the principle of analogy: “Symbols are . . . means that understanding uses to give a concept meaning by exhibiting an object for it. But they are only indirect means, by reason of their analogy [Kant’s emphasis] with certain intuition to which the concept can be applied” (7: 191).[32] For example, the expression “We want to bury the hatchet” acts symbolically to mean “We want to make peace” (7: 191) because burying the hatchet is similar to making peace, in that both involve laying down the weapons of war.[33]
Characters effect the transition from a sensory cognition (such as an auditory sensation of a word) to a higher cognition (a concept) through the principle of “association,” that is, through habitual connection: “Characters . . . in themselves signify nothing, but . . . the character accompanies the concept merely as guardian (custos), in order to reproduce the concept when the occasion arises” (7:191).[34] The most important characters are words that refer to concepts: “All language is a signification of thought and, on the other hand, the best way of signifying thought is through language, the greatest instrument for understanding ourselves and others” (7:192). In an important lecture, Kant explains why language is so valuable for signifying concepts:
They [characters, distinguished from symbols] serve to bring forth other representations, as [it were] by means of an index . . .. For our cognitions as signs of the understanding, nothing is as fitting as words, because in themselves they do not signify anything else; thus the understanding can connect the relevant concept with it. (25: 536)
Precisely because they do not function as symbols that are analogous to concepts, words are well suited to be associated with any concepts whatsoever.
Thus for characters, the causal pathway is as follows (taking the word ‘substance’ as an example):
Auditory cognition “Substance” à Concept of Substance
↑
Previous experience of à Habitual connection
“Substance” (the heard word) ↑ between “Substance” (the heard word)
conjoined with the ↑ and ‘Substance’ (the concept)
thought of ‘Substance’ (the concept). . ↑
Imagination (natural predisposition)
Just as in the case of any other habitual connection, words are connected to the concepts to which they refer according to principles of the imagination.[35] As we will see in section 5, this habitual connection provides one important source of higher cognitions in Kant’s empirical account of cognition.
With respect to both the senses and the imagination, Kant’s basic account of the causal laws governing their operation covers the operation of normal or healthy senses and imagination. But Kant’s attention to the well-functioning senses and imagination is sparse relative to his treatment of various influences that can change – usually in ways that are unhealthy – the normal functioning of these faculties. Thus with respect to the senses, Kant devotes a section of his published Anthropology to “the inhibition, weakening, and total loss of the sense powers” through such causes as “drunkenness” and “fainting” (7:165). And with respect to the imagination, Kant discusses the ways in which “intoxicating food or drink” (7:169ff.) can influence the imagination, he lists some “faults of the imagination” (7:181), and he describes various standard ways in which the imagination can lead one astray. For instance,
When one reads or hears of the life and deeds of a man who is great by virtue of his talent . . ., one is generally misled in ascribing considerable stature to him in imagination . . .. Not only the peasant, but even someone fairly well acquainted with the ways of the world, feels strange when the hero, who appearance had been judged by the deeds sung of him, presents himself as a little fellow, and when the sensitive and gentle Hume presents himself as a square-built fellow. (7:173)
This focus on dysfunctions and disorders, and on ways of correcting them, is what one would expect from Kant’s “pragmatic” anthropology. But Kant’s approach is no less causal for this practical focus. In the end, Kant provides an account of causal laws according structured by first presenting the normal functioning faculties of sense and imagination and then discussing various ways of causally influencing these faculties for better or worse. As we will see in the next several sections, this general framework for explaining the causal structure of the lower faculties of cognition will apply to the higher faculties as well. Kant’s empirical account will lay out the normal functioning of a healthy higher cognitive faculty and then propose various problems that can arise with this healthy functioning, offering practical suggestions about how to improve higher cognitions.
5) Kant’s Empirical Account of
the Healthy Higher Faculty of Cognition
One might think that even if Kant can give a causal account of the lower faculty of cognition – the cognitive faculty that is supposed to be primarily “passive” or “receptive” – he will not be able to give a similar account for the “spontaneous” or “self-active” higher faculty (28:228, 29:880, 28:584). But although the accounts of the higher cognitive faculties are in some respects more complicated than those of the lower faculties, Kant does not think that higher cognitive faculties are any less natural, nor any less susceptible to explanation in terms of natural causes, than the lower faculties.
Kant identifies all the basic powers of the soul as natural predispositions (29:915), and “understanding and reason,” the characteristic powers of the higher cognitive faculty, are specifically identified in this way (25:1172). Even “pure concepts” can be traced to “predispositions in the human understanding” (A66, see too Sloan 2002:230), and the three sorts of practical reasoning – technical, pragmatic, and moral – are labeled “predispositions.” In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant even explicitly includes “powers . . . whose . . . use is not drawn from experience but rather derived a priori from principles,” along with “memory, imagination, and the like” among the “natural predispositions” that one has a duty to perfect (6:444-5). However reason and the understanding appear from within the context of epistemology and pure moral philosophy, when considered within the context of anthropology and empirical psychology, they are simply natural predispositions.
Like other natural predispositions, the higher cognitive powers are in a sense left unexplained.[36] Kant gives various teleological explanations for why human beings have these predispositions,[37] and he even offers some conjectures about the causal origins of specific aspects of human reasoning.[38] But Kant generally treats the higher cognitive faculty just like any other natural predisposition, as something which is itself left unexplained, a properly basic power (or set of powers). Just as in the case of other predispositions, however, Kant insist that there are characteristic laws that govern the connections between cognitions within the higher faculty of cognition (see A549/B577, A803/B831; 27:502-4). And in his lectures on logic, Kant claims that the rules of logic precisely describe the operation of the higher cognitive powers as such. As he explains, “No power in nature deviates in its actions from its laws or conditions, under which alone it can function; thus the understanding taken alone never errs” (24:84, see too 24: 93-4, 102-3, 720, 824).
Of course, Kant does recognize that human beings err, and he ascribes error to “subjective laws” (24:18) that will be specifically psychological (as opposed to properly logical). I turn to his account of the sources of error shortly. But first it is important to isolate the behavior of healthy higher cognitive powers and explain how these ought to operate (logic proper) and how they do in fact operate (empirical psychology) in the absence of corrupting factors. Kant compares the description of the unaffected power of the understanding in a complete account of cognition to the classification of the laws of motion, where one abstracts from the role of air resistance:
No force of nature can act contrary to its own laws if it acts alone. But just as bodies in empty space indeed fall in accordance with the laws of gravity or describe perfect parabolas but deviate from this rule on account of air resistance: so other activities of the soul, such as stimulus, imagination, etc., are connected with the judgments of the understanding, and one errs if one takes this mixed effect to be a judgment of the understanding. E.g., we have a propensity to compare concepts qua identitatem et diversitatem, which is mother-wit, but also a propensity to compare them positively or negatively, which is the understanding; the one action mixes with the other. The imagination combines formerly connected concepts; hence imitation as well. (R2244, 16:283-4)
Before discussing the sources of error – the cognitive equivalent of air resistance – Kant describes the ideal cases in which the understanding acts alone. That is, he gives the laws governing the understanding as such. Then he can make the picture more complicated by adding external factors.[39]
The laws governing the higher faculties of cognition include laws of concept formation – the transition from sensory cognitive states to concepts – and laws governing relationships between various “judgments” – including the formation of judgments and the transitions from one judgment or set of judgments to another. Concepts and judgments are higher cognitive states, the equivalent of perceptions for the lower cognitive states. Like his accounts of the senses and unlike his account of the imagination, Kant’s discussion of the laws governing the normal functioning of the higher faculties is very brief in his anthropology (both published and lectures) and lectures on empirical psychology. Unlike the senses, however, where one needs to look to biological accounts of sense organs for more detail about proper function, Kant provides details about the proper functioning of the higher faculties of cognition in his logic.
As in the case of the lower faculties, Kant’s causal account of the healthy understanding ascribes different laws to different specific powers of cognition. With respect to the understanding (in the narrow sense), Kant offers laws governing the formation of concepts and the inference from one judgment/cognition to another. Thus for the formation of concepts, Kant explains that there are three “logical actus of the understanding, through which concepts are generated . . .: 1. comparison . . ., 2. reflection . . ., [and] 3. abstraction” (9:95).[40] Kant gives the following example:
I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a linden. By first comparing these objects with one another I note that they are different from one another in regard to the trunk, the branches, the leaves, etc.; but next I reflect on that which they have in common among themselves, trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, and I abstract from the quantity, the figure, etc. of these; and thus I acquire a concept of a tree. (Jasche Logic, 9:95; see too 24: 252-3, 753, 907)
This account of concept formation is not specifically designed as a causal account, but as a normative logical one. Kant’s point here is not an empirical generalization about how people in fact arrive at concepts, but about how one should acquire concepts. But the account also functions as Kant’s explanation of how a properly functioning understanding acquires new concepts. The progress of cognitions in the higher faculty moves from sensory perceptions of particulars to the formation of general concepts:
Visual perception of a spruce, a willow, and a linden à Concept of tree
↑
Understanding
(Comparison, Reflection, Abstraction)
This concept of a tree is, of course, an empirical concept, but the formation of a priori concepts occurs in a similar fashion. In the first Critique, Kant makes this point in a very general way, insisting that
There is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience. . . . As far as time is concerned . . . no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins. (B1, see too 29:951-2)
In his lectures on metaphysics, Kant reiterates the distinction between empirical causation and a priori justification, but now in order to emphasize a particular psychological point. Kant again emphasizes that “Even the concepts of the understanding, although . . . not drawn from the senses, do arise on the occasion of experience,” giving two examples that are particularly striking for those familiar with Kant’s first and second Critiques: “e.g., no one would have the concept of cause and effect if he had not perceived causes through experience. No human being would have the concept of virtue if he were always among utter rogues” (28:233). Kant here takes his two most famous a priori concepts – causation and virtue – and claims that, within empirical psychology, these concepts have empirical occasioning causes. But Kant goes on to clarify the sense in which, while the senses “do constitute to this extent the ground of all cognitions, . . . not all cognitions have their origin in them” (28:233).
In explaining the role of experience in bringing about a priori concepts, Kant seeks to preserve his philosophical commitment to a priori cognitions while denying the psychological claim that these cognitions are “innate.” He asks, “how do [a priori concepts] come into the understanding?” and insists that “One must not assume them as innate and inborn” (28:233). Instead, he proposes,
[C]oncepts have arisen through the understanding, according to its nature, on the occasion of experience; for on the occasion of experience and the senses the understanding forms concepts which are not from the senses but rather drawn from reflection on the senses . . .. Thus with respect to matter all arise from the senses; with respect to form from the understanding, but they are not inborn in the understanding, but rather come about through reflection on the occasion of experience. We practice this action of reflection as soon as we have impression of senses. (28:233)
In the case of empirical concepts, the form of the concepts is derived from the understanding, while the matter is derived from the particular experiences that prompt the formation of the concept. Thus the concept of “tree” is both caused by the perception (and subsequent comparison) of several trees and gets its content in part from this perception. By contrast, the concept “cause” has a purely formal content, and thus does not depend for its content upon any experience.[41] Nonetheless, the formation of this concept is brought about through perceptions, just as in the case of empirical concepts. The difference is that the perceptions merely trigger the formation of a priori concepts, “through the understanding, according to its nature,” while they are partly constitutive of the content of empirical concepts.[42] In terms of empirical psychology, all cognitions ultimately have sensory causes, but this does not mean that the contents of all cognitions are limited by the experiences that cause them, nor that they are justified by those experiences. Kant sums this up by saying that although sensory cognitions “are still a necessary condition <condition sine qua non>” for concepts of the understanding, “they are no principle of being <principium essendi>” for them.
Once someone has concepts, these concepts can be formed into judgments and judgments can be related to one another. For Kant, different higher cognitive powers – judgment, the understanding, and reason – have different principles governing the formation and connections among judgments. Kant lays out these principles in his logic as normative principles, but given that “the understanding [in the broad sense] taken alone never errs” (24:84), these normative rules also describe the healthily functioning powers of judgment, understanding (in the narrow sense), and reason. For each power, there are several different principles that can justify connections among judgments.
Kant’s account of principles that govern relations amongst judgments is rooted in his broadly Aristotelian account of logic. As he explains in one lecture on logic, “we have no one who has exceeded Aristotle or enlarged his pure logic (which is in itself fundamentally impossible) just as no mathematician has exceeded Euclid” (24: 700, but cf. 24: 796).[43] Kant considers syllogistic reasoning, including the familiar principles of modus ponens and modus tollens (see 9:130), in terms of principles of reason:
The universal principle on which the validity of all inference through reasons rests may be determinatively expressed in the following formula: What stands under the condition of a rule also stands under the rule itself . . . . To every inference of reason belong the following essential three parts:
1. a universal rule, . . .the major proposition . . .,
2. the proposition which subsumes a cognition under the condition of the universal rule, . . . the minor proposition . . .,
3. the . . . conclusion. (9: 120, see too 24: 93, 282-3, 771-3)
Thus, from the cognition of the universal rule that human beings are mortal and the cognition of the proposition that Caius is a human being, one comes to have the cognition that Caius is mortal.
The power of judgment operates according to the principles governing analogy[44] – “things . . . which . . . agree in much, also agree in what remains” – and induction – “what belongs to many things of a genus belongs to the remaining ones too” (9:133, see too 24: 772). And the power of the understanding, in addition to generating concepts, gives rise to judgments through “immediate inference” (9:114, see too 24: 89, 281-2, 769). Principles governing immediate inferences include principles such as that “The inference from the universal to the particular is valid” (9:116), so, for example, one can infer that some human beings are mortal from the judgment that all human beings are mortal.
The principles of the higher cognitive powers are logical principles, and thus they are primarily normative, that is, descriptions of how human being ought to think. But these normative principles also describe how healthy higher cognitive powers in fact operate, at least in the absence of interfering factors. In this ideal case, one can account for the origin of any judgment by appeal to prior cognitive states as well as higher cognitive powers that effect a transition from those prior cognitive states to the new one. Thus, for example, a judgment that “some human beings are mortal” can arise from the cognitive state that involves judging that all human beings are mortal or from the (quite different) cognitive state that judges that some human beings are animals and that animals are mortal. In the former case, the relevant basic power is the understanding; in the latter, it reason. In general,
Prior Judgment à Subsequent Judgment
↑
Higher Cognitive Power
(Governed by characteristic principles)
For example,
Thought that “All human beings are mortal” à Thought that “Some human beings are mortal”
↑
Understanding
(Principle that “inference from universal to particular is valid”)
Or, for another example,
Judgment that many crows are black[45] à Judgment that all crows are black
↑
Judgment
(Principle of induction)
The logical rules
for the formation of concepts and the rules of inference governing connections
between judgments describe the normal functioning of a healthy understanding
isolated from the influence of other powers of the human soul. But human beings, for Kant, are not limited
to learning through the powers of the understanding alone. In most cases, Kant is critical of concepts
that originate through the influence of lower powers of cognitions. The ways in which error arises through the
influence of these lower powers will be the subject of the next section. Before turning to the corrupting influence of
the lower powers, however, it is important to note one important positive way in which the lower powers
of cognition can affect the understanding: instruction. The
case of instruction is important not only because it provides an alternative proper
way for judgments to arise in the higher cognitive faculties, but also because
it provides resources for understanding how the lower faculties corrupt
cognition.
Kant explains, “Instruction can enrich natural understanding with many concepts and equip it with rules” (7:199, see too 7: 204, 224-5; 25:777, 1476). In his lectures on pedagogy, Kant discusses the “cultivation of the mind” (9: 469-77) and in particular the “cultivation of the higher faculties of cognition” (9: 476). For example, “the understanding may at first be cultivated . . . by quoting examples that prove the rules, or . . . by discovering rules for particular cases” (9: 476).
In his Anthropology, Kant explains in more detail how instruction is capable of giving rise to new concepts and new connections between concepts/judgments. This detail comes through Kant’s analyses of both the imagination and the sense of hearing, which Kant takes to be the paradigm sense organ for instruction. With respect to the imagination, Kant’s account of characters – arbitrary signs designating concepts – provides the backbone of a theory of instruction of the higher cognitive powers. As I showed in the last section, Kant allows for transitions from lower to higher cognitions through the power of the imagination by means of either habitual (associative) or analogical (symbolic) connections between signs and concepts. The power of language for communicating concepts makes possible the education of the higher faculties of cognition through instruction.[46] In instruction, the teacher uses words to guide the understanding of the pupil.
In all cases, instruction involves at least some level of imitation: “the mechanism of teaching always forces the pupil to imitate” (7: 225). But different sorts of instruction require imitation to different degrees. Kant distinguishes, for example, between acromatic method, where “someone only teaches,” and erotematic method, where the teacher “asks well” (9:149). The former involves pure imitation; the learner conforms her thoughts to the thoughts of the teacher. The latter, however, gives rise to judgments according to the learner’s own cognitive faculties, not merely in imitation. This approach has advantages because “[t]he best way to understand is to do. That which we learn most thoroughly, and remember the best, is what we have in a way taught ourselves” (9: 477). This erotematic method can be further distinguished into “dialogic or Socratic method,” where “the questions are directed to the understanding” and “catechistic method,” where “questions are directed . . . merely to memory” (9:149, see too 6: 477f.; 24:780). Catechism is different from mere acromatic teaching, because the teaching invokes the memory of the learner herself. Unlike Socratic method, however, this catechesis invokes a lower cognitive faculty (memory, a sort of imagination), rather than a higher faculty. Only Socratic method allows for teaching that teaches through the power of the understanding.[47]
All of these forms of instruction, however, depend upon the imagination at least to communicate the teacher’s thoughts – whether questions or judgments – to the learner through words. In the case of the acromatic method, these words give rise to judgments in the mind of learner directly, through mere imitation: Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of teacher à Spoken (and then heard) phrase “E=mc2” à Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of learner. For catechesis, the words give rise to judgments through imitation (of the question) followed by memories triggered by this question: Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of teacher à Thought (in mind of teacher) of the question “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Spoken (and then heard) phrase “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Thought (in mind of learner) of the question “What formula expresses the relationship between matter and energy?” à Judgment that “E=mc2” in mind of learner. In the case of Socratic instruction, imitative thinking of the question (through imagination) stimulates reflection by the understanding, which gives rise to new thoughts. For an example taken from Kant’s “moral catechism” (6:480)[48]: the judgment (in the mind of the teacher) that “one ought not lie” à the thought (in the mind of the teacher) of the question “Suppose . . . that a situation arises in which you could get a great benefit for yourself . . . by making up a subtle lie . . .: What does your reason say about it?” (6: 481) à words spoken by the teacher and heard by the learner à thought of this question in the mind of the learner à consideration of the situation described in the question à judgment “that I ought not to lie, no matter how great the benefits” (6: 481). In all three cases, the connection between the words spoken by the teacher and the immediate thought in the mind of the learner is grounded in the nature of hearing, a mental habit linking words to concepts, and ultimately in the principle of association, a principle of the imagination. In the eretomatic cases, however, this thought is not the final product of instruction. In order to get to the ultimate judgment that the pupil is to learn, the thought caused immediately by the words must give rise to further thoughts, and the connections with these further thoughts is grounded in either memory (for catechesis) or the understanding (for Socratic instruction). All instruction, then, even when it invokes higher cognitive powers, depends at least in part on the principle of association of the imagination.[49]
6) Ordinary Deviations from Healthy Functioning
in the Higher Cognitive Powers
As
noted in the last section, the connection between normative logical principles
and empirical psychological rules is a very close one for Kant. But Kant recognizes that human beings err,
and he even insists upon the importance of distinguishing
the way that people actually do think “under various subjective obstacles
and restrictions” (
This practice of giving a normative account supplemented by various disorders is consistent with Kant’s practice throughout his anthropology, including his treatment of the lower cognitive faculty (see section 4) and even the faculties of feeling and desire.[51] As Kant explains, we should “make some observations about human beings, how one differs from another in these mental endowments or in their habitual use or misuse, first in a healthy soul, and then also in mental illness” (7:197). Kant’s account of the variations from normative functioning of the higher faculties in his lectures on logic focus on errors that arise in a generally healthy understanding; in the Anthropology, he focuses on the more extreme cases, including mental illness. I discuss ordinary bases for error in this section, and more extreme cases in the next.
In his lectures on logic, Kant traces errors in otherwise healthy understandings to faulty principles, called “prejudices,” connecting cognitions, and he details various causal accounts of the origins of these prejudices. Just as the powers of judgment, the understanding, and reason systematically effect transitions from one cognitive state (a judgment) to another according to specific principles, so too prejudices effect transitions from one cognitive state to another according to principles. And just as the principles governing the powers of the higher cognitive faculties function both as normative rules of inference and as descriptive laws of the causal operation of these higher powers, so prejudices function both normatively (in a negative sense) as accounts of various fallacies and psychologically as descriptions of how a corrupted understanding actually operates.
There are three important aspects of Kant’s account of prejudices. First, Kant explains the basic nature of prejudices, in particular distinguishing prejudices from mere false or unsupported beliefs. This helps show that prejudices are in part explanatory principles rather than mere cognitive states requiring explanation. In that sense, they are like the laws governing cognitive powers. Second, Kant sketches various prejudices, showing how they give rise to various fallacious or poorly supported judgments. Like the first part of Kant’s analysis, this part is much like his account of the specific principles governing the higher cognitive powers. But finally, Kant offers causal accounts of the origin of the prejudices themselves. In this respect, prejudices are unlike the basic principles governing the higher cognitive powers. Prejudices are not natural predispositions in human nature, but must themselves originate from the effect of other occasional causes in the context of other human predispositions.
The nature and variety of prejudices. Throughout his lectures on logic, Kant is careful to distinguish prejudices from mere false judgments. Prejudices, in general, are “provisional judgments . . . accepted as principles” (9:75), and they affect the way in which other cognitions arise. As he explains,
A cognition that is accepted merely by means of a prejudice is not at all a prejudice itself; if we want to speak properly, . . . there are actually only a few prejudices, but . . . infinitely many errors arising from these existing prejudices (24: 167)
Prejudice is the mechanization of reason in principles. A prejudice is a principium for judging based on subjective causes that are regarded as objective . . . . (24: 863)
Prejudices . . . serve, as it were, in place of principles, because prejudices must be principles. (24: 865)
In terms of Kant’s empirical account of cognition, prejudices function in the first place not as erroneous judgments – which might be the consequence of other mental states – but as principles according to which one makes erroneous inferences. That is,
Cognition X à Cognition Y
↑
Prejudice
For example, “the prejudice of the prestige of the age” leads us to favor the writers of antiquity more than we should, thereby “elevating the relative worth of their writings to an absolute worth” (9:79). This prejudice leads people to adopt principles that they otherwise would not adopt, simply because they read of those principles in the ancients.
Belief that Aristotle says, “X” à Belief that X