kant quine and human experience

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Kant, Quine, and Human Experience Author(s): Kenton F. Machina Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), pp. 484-497Published by: on behalf of Duke University Press Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183889Accessed: 25-04-2015 03:03 UTC

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KANT, QUINE, AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Q UINE has on occasion asserted that some statements are more central than others in our conceptual scheme, farther from the "observational edge" of this scheme and hence less vulnerable

to experimental disconfirmation.1 Quine's imagery and his examples of central statements suggest that these statements represent quite fundamental theoretical commitments of ours when it comes to accounting for our experience. Kant, on the other hand, has claimed that there are some synthetical propositions which can be known by us to be true a priori. Many of these propositions obtain this peculiar status, according to Kant, by expressing fundamental theoretical commitments we have in organizing our experience.2 Moreover, according to Quine we have considerable latitude in constructing our total theoretical framework for handling experience, since our experience grossly underdetermines the theory.3 But this means that especially when it comes to the central statements we are confronted mainly with man's own contribution to the scheme, rather than a contribution from man's experience.4 This result also has a Kantian ring to it. It is, after all, well known that Kant thought that a priori knowledge of synthetical propositions is possible for us only because these propositions are made true by what man does to his perceptions

they describe, in a way, man's own contribution to his outlook, rather than the contribution of the senses.5

These similarities between the views of Kant and Quine could lead one to suppose these two philosophers pretty much of one mind on these matters. To be sure, Kant talks confidently of a distinction between

1 Willard Van Orman Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., i96i), pp. 42-43, and "Necessary Truth," Ways of Paradox (New York, i966), p. 56. Footnotes in this paper will contain only bibliographical information or references to the work of other commentators on Kant.

2 Cf., e.g., Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Fernunft, ist ed. (I78i), pp. 2 and I56. English versions of passages from the Critique of Pure Reason (to be abbreviated henceforth as "CPR") will be taken from Norman Kemp Smith's I933 translation unless otherwise noted. Page references to the first German edition will be preceded by "A," to the second edition by "B."

3 "Two Dogmas," loc. cit. 4 Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., i960), p. 5. 5 E.g., see CPR, p. A47, B64.

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synthetical and analytical propositions-a distinction against which Quine has railed on a number of occasions. But after all is said and done, one still may perhaps think of Quine as a kind of rehabilitated Kant-or alternately as a rather degenerated Kant-depending on the over-all appeal each may happen to have. My ostensive purpose in this paper is to show that the similarities between Kant and Quine cited above are actually quite superficial; in the process of showing that, I hope to elucidate several important features of Kant's own view which I find intriguing, and which are important even for folks who are impressed by Quine's approach. Moreover, if I am correct about the grounds of the disparity between Kant and Quine I believe that the reasoning which displays that disparity will also reveal that some contemporary British and American philosophers who take their task to be the exhibition of fundamental features of our conceptual framework are not nearly as Kantian as is often supposed. (Here I have in mind, for example, P. F. Strawson in Individuals. 6) In this paper, however, I discuss only Quine and Kant-in fact, mostly Kant.

We can begin by looking more closely at Quine's account of centrality. Here we find that "logic, arithmetic, game theory, theoretical parts of physics" illustrate the portion of our system of beliefs which is "farther from the observational or experimental edge" of that system.7 But it would be a mistake to suppose that the centrality of these portions of theory is to be defined by their logical relations to the remaining portions. Rather, the characteristic in virtue of which the statements in these disciplines obtain centrality is simply this: we are not likely to give up these statements, even in the face of experience which does not accord with our theory. We will prefer, to a greater or lesser extent, to change some other portion of our over-all system of beliefs whenever a change is required in order to account for new and un- foreseen experiences.8 This fact about our preferences might cease obtaining; tomorrow, or in the next decade, we might begin to enjoy changing a law of logic, or some basic law of physics, upon the slightest occasion. Then these disciplines would cease being central in our system, and whatever statements, if any, we might frivolously choose to continue to believe steadfastly, no matter what, would become the central ones for us. At present, however, we find that it is

6 London, 1959. 7 "Necessary Truth," loc. cit. A slightly different list is given in "Two

Dogmas," p. 44. 8 "cTwo Dogmas," P. 43-

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more work to change our logic or our physics at the drop of every hat than it is to give up certain other, more "observational" statements, because the logical relations between our beliefs dictate that a change in one currently central place will require a multitude of changes in other places. Hence the current status of these disciplines.

It is this notion of centrality which I wish to contrast with Kant's views on synthetical propositions known a priori to be true (hereafter to be known as SAPPs). Unfortunately, Kant's position cannot be spelled out as easily as Quine's. Kant has been the subject of widely differing interpretations, and his own statements are often not clear. For example, it is often claimed that at least part of the time Kant thought of the distinction between analytical and synthetical propositions as being grounded introspectively, so that an analytically true proposition is just one whose truth follows from the particular conscious mental contents one has when one believes it.9 We cannot become entangled in these disputes here. With respect to the synthetical character of the SAPPs, it will be enough for our purposes just to note that, whatever the details of his analysis, Kant meant to indicate that synthetical propositions are not true merely in virtue of conceptual or linguistic considerations. This feature of the SAPPs makes them like Quine's central statements, in so far as Quine denies that the central statements can be thought true merely in virtue of linguistic considerations. (Quine, of course, denies that there are any statements which are made true by solely linguistic features.) I mention the matter of the synthetical character of Kant's SAPPs merely to lay it aside. The fundamental difference between Kant and Quine which I wish to emphasize is not to be discovered by toying with the role of the synthetical/ analytical distinction, despite the attention given currently in the literature to Quine's anti-Kantian views on the viability of this distinction. Using Kant's language, Quine would agree that the SAPPs are synthetical.

Rather than focusing on the synthetical character of Kant's SAPPs, I intend to draw attention to their a priori nature; in particular, I think it essential to understand in detail the epistemological relation which Kant claimed he saw between human experience and the SAPPs. It is here that Kant diverges from Quine in the important and interesting way that I wish to examine. I do not intend here to evaluate

9 Jonathan Bennett, e.g., claims to discern something of such a view in Kant, although he denies its primacy. See his Kant's Analytic (Cambridge, i966), PP. 7-8.

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Kant's arguments for his position; it will be enough just to describe it, sympathetically.

As I understand him, Kant claims that the SAPPs fall into two main groups: (i) the (true) propositions of ordinary arithmetic, and the (true) propositions of that geometry which describes the space we live in perceptually, and (2) the (true) propositions of "pure natural science"-better described, I think, as the (true) propositions of critical metaphysics.10 The first group is discussed in the Critique's (CPR's) "Transcendental Aesthetic," where we are told that they are worthy of the title "a priori" because they describe features which (a) are guaranteed to be present in all of our appropriate perceptions since we ourselves are constructed in such a way that we cannot help but include these features in these perceptions, and (b) are somehow open to an inspection by us, without our having any ordinary perceptual experience, or at least separately from our ordinary perceptual experience. From fact (b), perhaps together with some phenomenological claims about our spatial and temporal perceptions, we are apparently supposed to be able to infer fact (a); so (b) is the more fundamental reason for calling these SAPPs "a priori." (Kant refers to the inspection mentioned in [b] as "a priori intuition.") This first group of SAPPs will not play an important role in the ensuing discussion. I mention this group primarily to point out that the basis of their apriority, according to Kant, is different from the basis of the apriority of the second group of SAPPs, to which we now turn our attention.

Roughly speaking, group (i) SAPPs are supposed to be a priori because they describe special features of the flow of our perceptions, while group (2) SAPPs describe special features of our experience of "objective" objects and of ourselves as continuing individuals. In order to highlight the distinction between group (i) and group (2) SAPPs, it could be said that the propositions in group (i) are true of each human's perceptions whether or not he believes or even entertains these propositions. But that same human could not even have experience of objects whose existence is independent of his own perceptions, nor could he experience himself as a continuing individual person, unless he actually held various beliefs about his perceptions- beliefs which can be summarized by the group (2) SAPPs. That is, a man has to view his perceptions in a certain light-he has to conceptu- alize them in a certain way and believe certain things of them-before

10 The phrase "pure natural science" (reine Naturwissenschaft) occurs, e.g., in CPR, p. B2o.

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he can be said to have experience of independently existing objects or of himself as a continuing entity distinct from the other objects of his experience. If a man fails to do this with his perceptions, they become a mere stream of consciousness, a play of lights and sounds, not even unified to the extent that they can be said to belong to one consciousness. Personal identity and objective experience stand or fall together, and in the case at hand, they both fall. As I understand it, this is the core of Kant's position in the "Analytic" of the CPR, and is what he is getting at when he says:

Experience ... rests on ... a synthesis according to concepts of an object of appearances in general. Apart from such synthesis it would not be knowledge, but a rhapsody of perceptions that would not fit into any context according to the rules of a completely interconnected (possible) consciousness, and so would not conform to the transcendental ... unity of apperception. Experience depends, therefore, upon a priori principles of its form, that is, upon universal rules of unity in the synthesis of appearances. The objective validity of these principles, as necessary conditions of experience, and indeed of its very possibility, can always be exhibited in experience."

Kant did not mean to say that in order to have this sort of objective experience it is necessary for a man actually to formulate and believe the group (2) SAPPs explicitly. He did mean to say, though, that in order to have objective experience a man must operate intellectually as though he had formulated and accepted them.12 For example, one of the group (2) SAPPs is "Every alteration has a cause." If Kant is right, Aunt Millie may not understand this proposition when it is put to her, but if she has experience she does always assume, in the way she thinks about her flow of perceptions, that the particular changes she experiences have causes. Hence, whenever we find a human being who has experience of this objective sort we can be sure he (at least implicitly) believes all the group (2) SAPPs and is busily subsuming his perceptions under the concepts employed in these SAPPs. I suppose it is because the individual must actually (at least implicitly) believe these SAPPs before he can have experience that Kant usually refers to them as "judgments" (Urteile) rather than "propositions" (Sdtze). (But sometimes he talks as if "judgment" is interchangeable with

11 CPR, p. AI56, Bi95. I have altered Kemp Smith's translation slightly. Cf. pp. Aio8, A96-97, Ai io, and Bi6i.

12 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (orig. pub. I783), IV, 370 in the Academy edition of Kant's works, and trans. by Mahaffy, Carus, and Beck (Indianapolis, I 950), pp. i i 8- i i9.

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"proposition"-for example in CPR, p. B3.) Often it makes no difference whether we think of "proposition" and "judgment" as synonyms in Kant. I take it that group (i) SAPPs are a case in point: these propositions are true no matter whether anyone even entertains them. But the group (2) SAPPs can be true of experienced objects and events only when they are believed at least implicitly, because only then can there be any human experience at all.'3 (Nevertheless, I shall stub- bornly continue referring to them as SAPPs, rather than, say, SAPJs, if only for the sake of the tongue.)

Kant often contends (as in the passage quoted above) that if his group (2) SAPPs were not true for a given man's case, that man would have no experience at all. We are now in a good position to see why Kant makes such claims, although we have not examined his arguments in detail. When Kant talks about "experience" (Erfahrung) in this way, it is clear that he is not talking about a stream of sense data, or sensations, perceptions, or (as he would say) intuitions (Anschauungen).14 In short, Kant speaks of experience in a way that is quite foreign to modern empiricist ears, including Quine's. Perhaps the clearest Kantian account of this notion of experience is the following:

Experience is empirical knowledge, that is, a knowledge which determines an object through perceptions. It is a synthesis of perceptions, not contained in perception but itself containing in one consciousness the synthetic unity of the manifold of perceptions.'5

He certainly never meant to claim that our sensations or "intuitions" would cease if we did not understand them through his group (2) SAPPs. They are not experience. They need to be knowingly intuited

13 Hence I am interpreting Kant as doing much more toward answering the skeptic than is sometimes supposed. S. K6rner, e.g., in his Kant (New York, I955), pp. 24-25, seems to represent Kant merely as saying, "Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are very impressive and completely correct; I have discovered that in order that these disciplines be correct the following fundamental propositions must be presupposed." If Korner were right, Kant would merely have begged Hume's question. Moreover, the particular reasons for pessimism about the possibility of defeating skepticism via transcendental argument evinced by Barry Stroud in "Transcendental Arguments," Journal of Philosophy (i968), pp. 24 I-256, are avoided by the fact that implicitly believing the group (2) SAPPs makes them true of one's own experience.

14 For an accurate and clear account of Kant's notion of intuition, cf. Jaakko Hintikka, "On Kant's Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)," in The First Critique, ed. by Penelhum and MacIntosh (Belmont, Cal., i969), pp. 38-53.

15 CPR, p. AI77, B2i8.

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before a man has experience; that is, at least some of them must be thought of by the experiencer as intuitions of objective objects or events.

Although this notion of experience is now unfamiliar in most English-speaking philosophical circles, it is not at all an odd or useless notion. It is especially well motivated if one accepts Kant's view that personal identity is bound up with the organization of one's perceptions according to the SAPPs, for if he is right about that, then there would be no way to assign perceptions to persons unless persons are utilizing the SAPPs in organizing the perceptions. But even if we do not accept Kant's view that the person disappears if the organization goes, the special notion of experience as being more than a mere stream of perception retains much usefulness in isolating a phenomenon worth talking about-namely, the kind of experience which, from the point of view of the experience, includes experiences of public objects, the sort of objects about which he can be right or wrong, the sort of objects one can check up on by asking a friend. It is only such an experience that requires group (2) SAPPs to be true of it, according to Kant.

(Actually, one somewhat important qualification needs to be added to my account of Kant's view of the relation between experience and the group [2] SAPPs. These SAPPs are known to be a necessary condi- tion of human experience only if perceptions are temporal and spatial in certain ways, and only if the sole way we have of being directly aware of an individual thing is to sense it either internally or externally. In Kant's language, the group [2] SAPPs are argued on the assumption that human intuition is sensible, that the form of outer intuition is space, and that the form of inner intuition is time. Space plays a much smaller role than time. In addition, a few special characteristics of space and time are also required for the arguments even to begin to go through. But we need not concern ourselves with this for now.)

Finally, we are in a position to see that it is true enough that in Quine's view the statements which are central in the scheme of anyone with even a moderate sense of intellectual elegance represent fundamental theoretical commitments in the organization of his experience; and it is similarly true that we can say that for a given person Kant's group (2) SAPPs "represent fundamental theoretical commitments in the organization of his experience" (as we noted at the start of this paper). But the notion of experience which occurs in Quine's view is quite different from the notion which occurs in Kant's; and the relation which holds between commitments on the one hand and experience on the other is not the same relation in Quine that it is in Kant. On Kant's view, if one gives up believing his group (2) SAPPs, one's

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experience vanishes, while on Quine's view when one abandons central statements, one is merely changing one's account of "experience," albeit quite radically. It is in fact tempting to say that for Quine, central statements describe "experience," while for Kant SAPPs are constitutive of "experience," since utilizing them creates "experience," and there is no other way to have "experience." Ultimately, the "experience" which thus gets itself accounted for in Quine is the sum of our "surface irritations, which exhaust our clues to an external world."'6 The sum of our sensory stimulations to which Quine refers corresponds very roughly to that which Kant called the manifold of outer sense. If we then go on to ignore Kant's (very important) special doctrines about how we sense what is going on in our own minds, we can say that the "experience" of which Quine speaks is pretty much the same thing as the rhapsody of perceptions of which Kant speaks. And we have already discussed why Kant thinks "experience" is distinct from this rhapsody. Hence we now have a fair summary view of that distinction between Quine's theory and Kant's to which I intended to draw attention in this paper.

My interpretation of Kant's position and the subsequent charac- terization of the difference between Kant and Quine is, however, subject to at least one important misconstrual, which I now will try to forestall. It might be thought that Kant meant to define "experience" by reference to his group (2) SAPPs, so that it would be trivially ''analytically" true to say that experience is characterized by these SAPPs. In other words, Kant might be supposed to have simply refused to countenance anything's counting as (human) experience unless it fit the descriptions provided by the group (2) SAPPs. If this were a correct reading of Kant, not only would he have failed to provide an answer to Hume, but also the difference between Kant and Quine to which I have devoted this paper would be a quite uninter- esting verbal difference. As things actually stand, however, I think this reading of Kant is not correct, and that even though Kant and Quine are in the final analysis operating with different notions of experience, understanding the contrast between their positions can be quite suggestive.

16 Word and Object, p. 22. Note that this is quite compatible with Quine's further claims that "the points of condensation in the primordial conceptual scheme are physical things" and that it is a mistake to seek "an implicit sub- basement of conceptualization" below the level of talk about physical things. The basic levels of our conceptual scheme are not to be confused with the data which these levels are to account for. Sensory stimulations are the data.

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It is easy to misconstrue Kant in the way just described. In fact, as I understand them, the arguments in the CPR's "Analytic" which Kant gives in order to justify each of the group (2) SAPPs appeal almost exclusively to conceptual connections-that is, they look like arguments via conceptual analysis. It is easy to suppose then that Kant ultimately is merely analyzing his own artificially constructed complex concept of human experience, and finding in it the requirements he himself put there covertly to begin with. While it is true, however, that the arguments do have something of this analytical character, they nevertheless all proceed from at least some empirical premises-namely, the premises that humans are able to be aware of individual entities only via (outer and inner) sensation, that all human sense perception is temporal merely because our perceptual mechanism makes it that way, and that we do have experiences. Only a complete analysis of the Trans- cendental Analytic would reveal whether there are also further empirical premises in Kant's arguments, but it is enough for our purposes here just to note that all the arguments for the group (2) SAPPs utilize at least one empirical premise."7 So the situation is this: Kant claims to be able to prove that his group (2) SAPPs must be true of (objective) experience, but only if the experiencer is a creature with certain limited sorts of faculties. It is an empirical matter that we are such creatures. The only special feature built by Kant into the very concept of experience from the outset is its objectivity. It is always assumed we are talking only about the kind of general experience which, from the point of view of the experience, includes experiences of public objects. So ultimately it is an empirical truth that these SAPPs must characterize our (objective) experience.

Against this interpretation of Kant, it may be urged (on the assumption that a legitimate distinction between a priori and empirical knowledge exists) that the SAPPs are, after all, supposed to be known a priori. My interpretation makes it look as if they are not a priori at all, but empirical. It must now be shown that the interpretation I propose does not in fact have this objectionable consequence. I take my clue for the solution of this difficulty from CPR, pages A237-238, B297:

while the understanding, occupied merely with its empirical employment, and not reflecting on the sources of its own knowledge, may indeed get along quite

17 Here I am in essential agreement with at least A. C. Ewing and G. J. Warnock, to mention only two who have stated their positions on this matter quite unequivocally. Cf. Ewing's A Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago, I938), p. 72, and Warnock's "Every Event Has a Cause," in Logic and Language, Second Series, ed. by Antony Flew (Oxford, I 953), p. I 07.

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satisfactorily, there is yet one task to which it is not equal, that, namely, of determining the limits of its employment .... This demands just those deep inquiries which we have instituted.

This passage indicates that Kant did not think of his group (2) SAPPs as new discoveries: the common man has been operating all along in accordance with the principles Kant enunciates for the organization of experience. In fact, Kant could hardly have claimed anything else for, as we said earlier, his view is that no normal human being can have "experience" without employing the group (2) SAPPs (and no normal human being can have sense perceptions which do not fit the descriptions given by the group [i] SAPPs).

For this reason, Kant tells us that his purpose is "not to extend knowledge, but only to correct it, and to supply a touchstone of the value or the lack of value, of all a priori knowledge.'"'18 He leaves it to the mathematicians to find out the truths of geometry and arithmetic- the group (i) SAPPs-but he holds that all of us in a sense already know his group (2) SAPPs. In what sense, exactly, do we already know the latter SAPPs? It has to be a weak sense, since we may never have entertained these propositions consciously at all. Nevertheless, it seems to me the sense can be described with the phrase, "Knowledge is justified true implicit belief." That is, Kant is saying that we all implicitly believe the group (2) SAPPs because we recognize and use instances of them in organizing our experience. Of course Kant also maintains that these SAPPs are true. But most importantly, we are justified in our implicit belief because we make the beliefs true merely by believing them to be true of our intuitions. (This sort of rational justification does not, of course, amount to a conscious basing of the belief on some consciously entertained evidence. But neither does it reduce merely to the claim that the beliefs are in fact true.) If I am right, then, the key to understanding why Kant thought the group (2) SAPPs are already known a priori by all of us is to understand how we make them true by implicitly believing them.

Unfortunately, the key which we seek lies buried in the wonders of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. As I understand him, Kant in this so-called deduction maintains that we manufacture particular instances of certain special concepts (the "categories") whenever we apply these concepts to our perceptions, so long as we are logically consistent in the way we go about our application. In other words, to pick out two perceptions and believe of them, for example,

18 CPR, P. AI2, B26.

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that they are perceptions of the same persisting object is in fact to make them into such perceptions, provided that no other beliefs logically conflict. This process is supposed to work only because the categories are very special concepts; one cannot perform this magic with just any concept. The categories' distinctiveness rests on the fact that they are, in a sense, devoid of empirical content: for example, there is nothing internal to any two given perceptions which could guarantee that they are perceptions of the same persisting object, or which could show that they are not such perceptions. It is left up to us to decide whether they are or whether they are not. The concept of a persisting object is a (schematized) category. Similar remarks can be made about the other most important categories, cause and effect. One can take any two perceptions and decide to make the first one a perception of some event which caused the event perceived in the second one- provided only that one does not thereby contradict some other belief. It is because the categories are devoid of empirical content in this sense that Kant repeatedly insists that an "empirical deduction" of them, a la Locke, is bound to fail: one cannot prove there are enduring objects or actual causes and effects by pointing to the content of individual perceptions or sets of perceptions. On the contrary, one must decide, for example, that perception A is a perception of the same object as perception B. That we can make these decisions without fear of being shown up by the facts illustrates the empirical emptiness of the categories involved.

The group (2) SAPPs spell out the requirements for employing the categories in such a way that our various perceptions can be made into experiences which are then assigned to one unified experience belonging to one consciousness; moreover, they develop the logical relations between the categories, and the logical consequences of the fact that the (schematized) categories will be applied to temporal and sometimes to spatial perceptions. That is why Kant thinks the implicit believing of them makes them true of one's experience. After all, when one implicitly believes one of these SAPPs, that means that he actually applies the relevant categories in concrete cases to his perceptions, in accordance with the principles enunciated by the SAPP. But if Kant is right in the Transcendental Deduction, such application, if done consistently, is guaranteed to, be correct. (If it is not done consistently, the unity of experience is undermined, and it is no longer possible to assign the experiences involved to just one person.) Hence the relevant SAPPs will automatically be satisfied by the experience of any one person who implicitly believes them, for they do nothing

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more than spell out in the most general way what follows when the categories are systematically and consistently applied to perceptions of the form which we enjoy, in order to create objective experience.

Note that this interpretation of Kant's views accords nicely with his contention that we do not have a priori knowledge of matters beyond the pale of the experienceable. For when we disconnect the SAPPs from our intuitions, we lose the only guarantee we have for their truth.

Hence the purpose of the arguments in the CPR is not to give us knowledge of the group (2) SAPPs for the first time (whether that knowledge be a priori or otherwise), since all of us already have the knowledge without benefit of Kant's efforts.

I wish to maintain that Kant's group (2) SAPPs are known a priori, according to Kant, merely in the weak sense described above. This kind of (implicit) knowledge could reasonably be called a priori, since the relevant beliefs get their rational justification from their peculiar self-satisfying character, rather than from inductive evidence. Note that according to this view we have such a priori knowledge without any need to contemplate any transcendental arguments. This is as it should be, in order to accord with Kant's attitude that all of us already share this a priori knowledge. (Here again, the situation with respect to the group [i] SAPPs is different: These are almost exclusively the property of experts, even though all of us have perceptions of which they must be true.)

The purpose of the CPR's Analytic then is to explain all this, rather than to give us new knowledge of new SAPPs. By far the main effort of the Analytic is directed toward proving, by means of a priori tracing of complex entailment relations between various concepts, that creatures with cognitive faculties of a certain given type have experience if and only if they employ group (2) SAPPs in the interpretation of their perceptions, that such employment makes these principles true of the resulting experience, and that self-consciousness for these creatures goes hand-in-hand with the employment of these principles. But this effort is undertaken only because Kant thinks that we are the creatures about whom these results are obtained. Here is the point at which the empirical material enters Kant's discussion. It is an empirical matter, argued for or asserted in the Aesthetic, and in the beginning of the Analytic, that we are creatures with the cognitive faculties of the relevant type. And it is an empirical matter that we do in fact have experiences of the objective sort. (This, in fact, is an empirical matter about which we can be certain since it does not depend on where our perceptions are "coming from," but only how we think of them.) By

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putting this empirical material together with the conceptual result mentioned above, we can obtain the conclusion that the group (2) SAPPs are in fact employed by us to whatever extent we have unified experience, and that we can make them true of our experience (and thus unify it) by using them to organize and interpret our perceptions.

In this way we obtain an empirical proof that the group (2) SAPPs are true-at least if Kant has not made any mistakes. (Interestingly, this proof does not work for the group [i] SAPPs. We come to know them, if at all, on quite different grounds.) Kant would have felt very uncomfortable with my labeling this proof "empirical," because he bought the skeptical arguments put forth by Hume that empirical evidence cannot yield conclusive evidence for something's being necessary, but he nevertheless thought the conclusions drawn by the CPR to be quite certainly and necessarily true. Many critics have pointed out, however, that Kant really has no good reason for supposing human beings will always remain the same with respect to their cognitive faculties. I believe this criticism, if it is indeed a criticism, to be correct. At the same time, it is possible to say this much in defense of Kant's attitude on the issue. The empirical material in the proof is not obtained by inductive generalization from experiences, and neither of course is the very important conceptual result of the Analytic. Sometimes I believe Kant thought of a proposition as a priori if it is known without appeal to generalization from experienced instances.

Although we do obtain an empirical proof of the group (2) SAPPs from the Aesthetic and Analytic, Kant's purpose is not to get us to believe these SAPPs, but rather to draw our attention to their peculiar epistemological status as experience-makers. This effort provides us with answers to Hume's challenges to our implicit a priori knowledge of these SAPPs. In order to have the implicit knowledge in the first place it is not, after all, necessary that one be able to answer Hume. But in order to do a good job in epistemology it is necessary to take up Hume's difficulties and defeat them with "transcendental" knowledge -that is, knowledge of the grounding of the SAPPs-according to Kant.

Assuming then that my interpretation of the CPR is correct, and that the objections to that interpretation have been answered, we may go on to ask whether there are morals to this story that have not already been expounded in the telling of it. I think there are. One easy lesson to be learned from all this is that Kant was not merely doing "descriptive metaphysics" in Strawson's sense of the phrase.19 For Strawson's

19 P. F. Strawson, Individuals (London, I959), p. iii. Neither was Kant doing

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"descriptive metaphysics" is just the business of describing "the actual structure of our thought about the world." But Kant in addition to describing our thought was trying to show that we have to think in the way we do if there is to be any world for us at all.

Another, less obvious, lesson is that if Kant's claims are plausible at all, Quine might well devote some time to distinguishing between those conceptual frameworks which yield experience in Kant's sense and those which do not. We might try a rough translation of Kant's views into Quine's language in order to make this point clearer: "Given the types of sensory stimulations which human beings can currently receive," according to our twentieth-century Kant, "there are certain minimal conditions which any conceptual framework must meet if the person utilizing that framework is to have an account of his stimulations that qualifies him as having experiences of public objects. We need to find these conditions and spell them out in detail; we also need to see whether those conceptual schemes which allow public objects necessarily also allow a continuing perceiver, and vice versa; and we need to see whether out of all this we don't get additional constraints on what can count as an adequate radical translation of one language into another, so long as these languages are used by people." Now I am quite willing to admit that something of Kant may very well have been lost in this translation, but then Quine appreciates how difficult it can be to make a good translation. In any case, the issues raised by this twentiety-century Kant are important ones, for all of us, even if the original Kant's list of SAPPs was defective in many ways.

KENTON F. MACHINA

Indiana University

what Strawson calls "revisionary metaphysics"-at least not in the Aesthetic and Analytic. If Kant was doing metaphysics, there must be some third sort not mentioned by Strawson.

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