Magnetic matter

Kant writes the following:

Thus we cognize [erkennen] the existence of a magnetic matter [magnetischen Materie] penetrating all bodies [alle Körper] from the perception of attracted iron filings, although an immediate perception of this matter is impossible for us given the constitution of our organs (A226/B273; trans. Guyer/Wood).

I like this passage because it clarifies an important point: when Kant typically talks about what transcends “possible experience,” he does not have in mind what it is physically impossible for us to experience. Among the things that we cannot experience in the relevant sense of “cannot” include God and the soul—not, e.g., magnetic matter. If magnetic matter transcended experience the way that God and the soul do, then Kant would not say that we cognize its existence.

On the other hand, this passage is at least a little confusing. First, when Kant speaks of magnetic matter penetrating “all bodies,” does he mean that it penetrates all bodies or that it penetrates any body? The former suggests that what he has in mind is a very pervasive sort of material: there is nothing that is not penetrated by a magnetic field. The latter makes no such suggestion—it merely implies (although perhaps this is also a bold thesis!) that there is no kind of material that blocks a magnetic field.

If the latter is the right answer, we may run into a second puzzle. For if magnetic matter is just the sort of stuff that is on my refrigerator (or less anachronistically, material like the lodestone, which attracts iron filings), can we not perceive it? Why does Kant claim that we cannot?

I suspect that Kant’s point is that there are some minerals or elements that are responsible for magnetization and that they are scientific posits that we cannot perceive directly. Thus, there is no denial of the claim that we can see the lodestone. What we cannot see are the particular elements that are responsible for its attraction of iron filings.

Still, I really know nothing about the history of the science of magnetization or about Kant’s own beliefs about magnetization. Can anyone speak more authoritatively about any of this?

Kant: Wrong for America

This video seems to be making its rounds around philosophy blogs. I saw it on Leiter Reports, who got it from Crooked Timber.... Funny.

Intuitions/objects being “subject” to the categories

Apologies to those who check in here once in a while. I’ve been very busy over the past year, and this blog just could not be a priority (although there were a few discussions in comments to past posts).

Lately I have been struggling with the Transcendental Deduction again. One frustration that I have with commentary on the Deduction is the claim that Kant wants to show that intuitions or objects are (perhaps necessarily) “subject to the categories.” This horrible locution is quite ambiguous. It could mean that intuitions/objects are fit to be subjected to the categories (they are “subject” to the categories in a way similar to the way in which citizens are “subject” to the state’s laws). But it could also mean that intuitions/objects are simply subsumed under the categories, regardless of the appropriateness of this activity (intuitions/objects would be “subject” to the categories as a punching bag is “subject” to blows). These are very different claims, and there are passages suggesting that either goal is Kant’s.

James Van Cleve (Problems from Kant, 1999) makes a similar point, focusing the expressions “we must apply categories” and “categories must apply”:

Even if Kant could show that some of his categories must be employed in any judgment we make (and that all of them must be employed on some occasion or other), this would not be enough for his purposes. For that result in conjunction with the rest of the Transcendental Deduction would yield no conclusion stronger than this: all my representations are connected in judgments that use Kant’s categories. But Kant wants to show that the categories are objectively valid—that they actually apply to objects of experience. To reach this conclusion he needs the further premise that any categories used in judging are actually exemplified by the items judged about. …
    I fear that some may have overlooked this obvious point because of the easy verbal slide from “we must apply categories” to “categories must apply.” One may slip without noticing it from one to the other, but between the two there is no small distance (89).

This seems to me to be exactly right. Writers on Kant ought to be careful about making this slide. They also ought to be more careful about saying that intuitions or objects are “subject” to the categories.

Making an object actual

In the B-Preface to the first Critique, Kant writes the following:

Insofar as there is to be reason in these sciences [i.e., sciences generally], something in them must be cognized a priori, and this cognition can relate to its object in either of two ways, either merely determining the object and its concept (which must be given from elsewhere), or else also making the object actual. The former is theoretical, the latter practical cognition of reason (Bix-x; trans. Guyer and Wood).

I confess that this is one of those passages that I’ve always skimmed over, not worrying much about what it means. But now I’m curious about how to interpret the suggestion that in (a priori) practical cognition reason makes an object actual. The only thing that comes to mind is that in making an “object actual” reason makes something happen. But this doesn’t seem right. Do those more schooled in Kant’s practical philosophy have an opinion?

Kant and the formation of planets

I hope within the next month or so to have one or two slightly substantive posts. Until then, I thought I’d point people to this article that notes that the Hubble telescope has allegedly confirmed one of Kant’s theories about the origin of planets.

Does anyone know where Kant says this? I confess that I do not know. And the article does not say.

My thanks to Chris Swoyer for pointing me to the URL.

Kant humor

Darby Conley (“Get Fuzzy”) finds a secondary use for one’s copy of the Critique of Pure Reason. My thanks to June Kim for pointing me to it.

Guyer’s new book on Kant

Brian Leiter has announced that Paul Guyer has written a Routledge Philosophers book on Kant (looks like it came out this past June). I’ll be curious to see how, if he does, he responds to the scholarship that has appeared on the first Critique since Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (1987).

Hanna on Kant and analytic philosophy; Kant’s grave; and the seven bridges of Königsberg

Sorry to those who check in here: I’ve been busy settling in to my new home, preparing for my classes, and getting research done when I can. I haven’t had much time to update this blog. I’m currently reading Robert Hanna’s Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. As he emphasizes, he takes seriously that Kant has interests in semantics, not merely epistemology (“If I am correct, then the overarching purpose of the first Critique is to explain how a mental representation can refer to its object” (67)). I like that he gives so much emphasis (in §2.2) to those passages where Kant talks about “sense and significance” and the conditions on concepts having this property. This is an issue of some concern to me. I’m also sympathetic to his treatment of the problem affection (113-19; although I’m not yet sure I understand his interpretation of transcendental idealism). But this isn’t a review; and anyway, I’m not quite halfway through the book.

Since my attention is elsewhere these days, and thus since I feel that I have little of substance to say, I thought I’d just mention a web site that I came across recently. It’s called “Find a Grave.” Apparently one can upload to the site photos of the graves of famous individuals—including Kant’s. For those who aren’t going to Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) in the near future, this will have to do (I recall reading somewhere, however, that this grave site is not the original; that was destroyed in World War I or II). Be sure to click “view all images.”

Also, recently I was on Wikipedia, and I found an entry on the problem of the seven bridges of Königsberg. Perhaps those more educated than I am already knew what this problem was. But I have been wondering about it since I bought my copy of James Van Cleve’s Problems from Kant years ago. On the cover is an illustration of Königsberg, with its seven bridges. The note on Van Cleve’s book states that these bridges were “the subject of a famous problem in topology,” but did not note what the problem was. Well, now I know….

Moving to Oklahoma; limited blogging

For the next year, starting this fall, I shall be a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. I’m really looking forward to the new position. Besides some sections of Introduction to Philosophy, I’m going to get to lead seminars on the British Empiricists and on Kant’s first Critique.

My upcoming move will mean that for the next few weeks or so, I will have limited access to Kant Blog. During longer periods in which I will have no access to the internet, I may turn off comment moderation so that others’ comments do not take too long to appear. I’ll delete any spam messages later. If I forget to do this, however, and you submit a comment, please be patient. It will eventually appear.

Kuehn and the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy

I read Manfred Kuehn’s Kant: A Biography a number of years ago. For a few years I had posted on my office door a passage from this book in which Kuehn recounts how, in Kant’s day, a duel was fought over the interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason. Anyway, a couple of months back I met Kuehn for the first time (very briefly), and he told me that in his essay, “Kant’s critical philosophy and its reception—the first five years (1781-1786),” which is in the Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (630-63, ed. Paul Guyer, 2006), he notes how a student at around the same time physically assaulted another in defense of Kantian philosophy and how the academic senate judging him over this incident questioned whether they needed to read the Critique in order to do so (659).

Well, Tuesday was a lazy July 4 for me, so rather than do research work, I decided finally to read Kuehn’s essay. It’s interesting and very readable. He (1) first describes the initial and immediate reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason, including the notorious Garve-Feder review, then (2) Kant’s response to this article. Kuehn suggests that the review’s impact on Kant’s later formulations of the critical philosophy deserves more attention than it has until now received. Kuehn next (3) briefly mentions Johannes Schulz’s slightly later exposition of the Critique. A longer section (4) is dedicated to how the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals arose initially as a response to work on Cicero by Christian Garve. Kuehn then (5) describes some essays that Kant wrote on the Enlightenment and history, which include negative reviews of work by his former student, Johann Gottfried Herder. There is (6) a very short section on Kant’s response to J.A.H. Ulrich (and Schulz) in a well-known footnote to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, (7) a longer section on Kant’s contribution to the “pantheism dispute,” and finally (8) a short section reflecting on how influential Kant had become in five years.

Among the things that I enjoyed about this essay is Kuehn’s recounting of Johann Georg Hamann’s initial review of the Critique, which was not actually published until 1800 (632-33). Hamann was both blunt and colorful about the obscurity of the Critique. Moreover, I did not know that J.G.H. Feder was perplexed by Kant’s disgruntlement at his comparisons of Kant to Berkeley (636). One gets throughout Kuehn’s article a sense of how important it was to Kant to make his ideas felt in Germany after the first publication of the Critique.