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German Idealism as Constructivism
By Tom Rockmore The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-35007-3
CHAPTER 1
Kant, Idealism, and Cognitive Constructivism
Kant, who is clearly one of the several most important Western philosophers, discusses an astonishing range of topics. I will be primarily focusing on his solution to the cognitive problem. Though Kant is not well read in the history of philosophy, he is often understood, as he explicitly suggests, as responding to Hume, but also to others — for instance, Wolff and Leibniz. Kant is also often believed to synthesize empiricism and rationalism in the critical philosophy. I do not want to deny such ways of considering Kant against the historical background, but rather to add to them. I think Kant should also be seen as responding if not to Plato, at least to Platonism. The Platonic element in the critical philosophy is sometimes discussed with respect to Kant's moral theory. I believe that Platonism is central as well to Kant's theory of cognition. It is then not by accident that the critical philosophy provides a Platonic formulation of the cognitive problem. In short, as Kant reads Plato — or, if there is a difference, Platonism — the latter provides a problem to which the Copernican turn proposes a solution.
After extensive debate, there is still no agreement about even the main lines of the critical philosophy. My interpretation of the critical philosophy is based on a reconstruction of the relationship between Parmenides, Plato, and Kant. Plato takes over the Parmenidean view that there is a way the mind-independent world (or reality) is, and that a claim to know requires an identity of identity and difference — or in other words, the Parmenidean claim for an identity between thought and being. Since this is not a treatise on Plato, it is not necessary to discuss his writings in detail. Suffice it to say that Plato's cognitive solution consists in three points: first, he invokes an ontological difference between appearance and reality; second, he denies the reverse inference from appearance to reality, or, in more modern language, from effect to cause, in disqualifying any form of the familiar representational approach to cognition; and, third, he rejects the Platonic view that philosophers can intuit reality.
Kant's approach to the problem of knowledge closely follows the Platonic view in invoking an ontological dualism, in his case between appearances and noumena (or things in themselves), two synonymous terms that refer to mind-independent reality. He assumes that, as in Plato's day, there are still only two main approaches to knowledge: cognitive intuition and cognitive representation. He further follows Plato in rejecting cognitive representation; unlike Plato, he also refuses cognitive intuition, which he denies to human beings, hence denying we can know reality.
Kant's proposed solution is the so-called Copernican turn, or the view that we can claim to know only what we in some sense construct. This solution follows the Platonic way of framing the cognitive problem in suggesting that, though we cannot know the mind-independent world, we do know appearances. Copernicanism, which takes its name from the view of the Polish astronomer, is a heliocentric astronomical approach that goes back to ancient Greek cosmological speculation. Heliocentrism was anticipated, for instance, in ancient Greece by Aristarchos of Samos. In the B preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant calls attention to Copernicanism in further implying that the critical philosophy is a form of cognitive constructivism. Kantian constructivism is often mentioned but only rarely studied in any detail. If the critical philosophy is cognitively constructivist, then Kant — who has been studied as much if not more than anyone else in the modern tradition — is paradoxically still not well known.
On Interpreting the Critical Philosophy
I intend to interpret Kant's critical philosophy as constructivist for the obvious reason that Kant himself calls attention to the relation between his position and Copernicanism. If Copernicanism is constructivist and if the critical philosophy is Copernican, then it is also constructivist. Kant initially favors representationalism before turning to constructivism. Though early and late he consistently employs representationalist vocabulary, constructivism and representationalism are mutually exclusive epistemic strategies.
In different ways, constructivism runs throughout the critical philosophy. Kant takes a constructivist approach to morality, aesthetics, and cognition. His moral and his aesthetic theories both require the subject to ascertain a universal principle. According to Kant, a necessary condition of morality is for the moral subject to identify a universalizable maxim to guide moral action. Similarly, on the basis of taste, the aesthetic subject must infer a universal rule from the singular aesthetic object in a judgment of beauty at least in principle acceptable to all observers. If Kantian moral theory is constructivist, then so is his aesthetic theory.
I will be concentrating on Kant's cognitive constructivism, which precedes his moral and aesthetic constructivism. It is not easy to interpret Kant's concept of cognition, which is increasingly obscured by an enormous and rapidly growing debate. Kant provides a theory as well as a meta-theory about how to interpret the critical philosophy. He also provides a series of conflicting indications in his writings. Kant, who is a hermeneutical holist, rejects interpretation based on passages torn out of context in favor of interpretation through the idea of the whole (CPR, B xliv, p. 123). Yet there has never been any agreement about how to identify the idea of the whole of the critical philosophy or even its central theme, idea, or insight. Conflicting indications in the texts perhaps reflect Kant's own indecision about the nature of his project. Readings of the critical philosophy tend to follow Kant's hints that it is representational, often without any clear indication of what that entails. Does Kant think we can successfully represent, hence know the mind-external world? Or does he merely believe we can know that it exists? The difference is important and Kant's view of the matter is unclear.
In rejecting a representational approach in favor of a constructivist reading of the critical philosophy, I will be arguing against specific indications in Kant's own writings. His understanding of his central problem in the so-called critical period is simply but misleadingly stated in his famous letter to Herz. Here he formulates the cognitive problem in representational language by pointing to the relation of the representation (Vorstellung) to what is represented in asking the question: "What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call 'representation' to the object [Gegenstand]?" which motivates what in the first Critique became the initial and most important statement of his critical philosophy. This representational formulation suggests his position should be understood as still another form of the causal theory of perception that dominated early modern philosophy at the time Kant was active and which remains dominant. Yet the Herz letter is misleading if Kant later changed his mind in opting for constructivism instead of representationalism.
The Representational Approach to Knowledge
It is difficult to determine Kant's precise view of cognition. There are at least four possibilities. As concerns cognition, he could be either a representationalist, a constructivist, inconsistently favor one or the other approach, or again reject all these possibilities. He sometimes seems to favor representation; he also insists on a constructivist approach in passages about the Copernican revolution and elsewhere. It is possible that Kant, who often seems to hesitate between alternative solutions, is simultaneously attracted to different possibilities. Though the texts are unclear, probably the best way of reading the different things he says about cognition is through a later turn, sometime after he composed the Herz letter, away from representationalism to constructivism.
Kant intervenes in the late-eighteenth-century debate, which is dominated by a causal theory of perception, hence by cognitive representationalism. Kantian representationalism carries this epistemic approach to a high point — never later surpassed — while revealing its limits. If Kant had done nothing else, then since (as he points out) representationalism fails, he would probably be known as another in a long line of causal theorists of perception widely scattered through modern philosophy.
"Representation," which means many different things in different contexts, takes on many artistic, political, psychological, mathematical, and other subforms. The term suggests an approach to cognition in which something — the representation — stands in for, takes the place of, and also points beyond itself to something else, which is said in this way to be represented. As a cognitive strategy, "representation" is understood in different ways. Thomas-Fogiel, who follows Marin, distinguishes four views of representation. These views include (1) to re-present or to reflect; (2) presence and absence; (3) the substitution of one thing for another; (4) to outline or trace the contours of something in according it visual form. To represent by re-presenting or reflecting something is the basis of the familiar reflection theory of knowledge — a staple of Marxism since Engels and officially adopted by Lenin, and which probably originates in book 10 of the Republic at 596D, where Socrates talks about carrying a mirror around with him.
What is representation? Plato and then later Locke and other modern thinkers take opposing views. We cannot know Plato's view, if he had one. In the well-known theory of forms, which is often ascribed to him, Plato seems to identify forms (or ideas) and the real (or reality). According to the theory of forms, things are appearances that imitate, or participate in, concepts or mind-independent reality, which can only be known through cognitive intuition, hence directly. Plato's rejection of the very idea of appearances as knowledge motivates his attack on artistic imitation as cognition, leading to his refusal of art and art objects of all kinds. The Platonic attack on representation is strongly contested in modern philosophy. The post-Platonic debate on representation as well as the later development of aesthetics can be reconstructed as a series of efforts to rehabilitate representationalism against Plato's rejection of representation as well as his attack on art and art objects of the most varied kinds.
An anti-Platonic approach to knowledge through representation is extremely widespread in the seventeenth century — that is, prior to the emergence of the critical philosophy. Cognitive representationalism links together such different cognitive strategies as rationalism (which considers the conditions of knowledge) and empiricism (which focuses on human knowledge). In modern times, a representational approach to cognition often relies on the canonical distinction between primary and secondary qualities drawn by Galileo, Descartes, and especially Locke. Representation is routinely identified with such sources as Locke, British empiricism, and the Port Royal School. According to the traditional interpretation, Locke is an externalist, not an internalist. For Locke as well as many modern thinkers, ideas in the mind are caused by, and hence refer to, the external world. Locke's statement "Whatever the mind perceives in itself, or as the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding, that I call idea" underlies his conviction that we know the world through ideas that represent it. His anti-Platonic approach to cognitive representation is hugely influential in the modern tradition. The so-called Port Royal Logic proposes a theory of signs that link the represented thing and its representation.
Kant famously calls attention to Hume as awakening him from his dogmatic slumber. The view that Hume's influence is pervasive in the critical philosophy is supported by recent research. Hume belongs to British empiricism, which centers on a representational approach to cognition influentially formulated by Bacon and Locke and contested by Reid, Berkeley, Hume, and others. Representationalism, or the causal theory of perception, stands or falls on the ability to justify the crucial anti-Platonic inference from effect to cause — in one prominent version, from an idea in the mind to the world. This difficulty, which has never been resolved, undermines the later anti-Platonic effort to answer Plato's ancient attack on representation and artistic imitation. This same difficulty returns in Kant's more complex approach to cognitive representation.
Kant's evolving view of representation is convoluted, unclear, and perhaps inconsistent. In the precritical Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), he suggests that "the word 'representation' is understood with sufficient precision and employed with confidence, even though its meaning can never be analyzed by means of definition." But in the Dohna-Wundlacken Logic — presumably based on lectures given in the 1790s, hence in the critical period — he states that representation "cannot be explained at all." In the seminal passage in the first Critique describing his relation to Plato, he indicates that sensation (a change in the state of the subject), perception and cognition (or an objective perception) all fall under the general heading of representation. Cognition, Kant insists, is in general either intuitive or conceptual. Yet, since he favors a categorial approach to experience, he rules out intuitive cognition and hence rules out a Platonic approach to cognition, which leaves only representation.
In the critical philosophy, representationalism concerns the link between noumena and phenomena, the latter a term Kant frequently seems to use as a synonym for appearance. By "appearance," Kant — perhaps distantly following Plato — understands the representation of a mind-independent object, which affects the subject through sensation, or sensory intuition, in turn giving rise to an appearance (see CPR, B 33, p. 172).
Kantian theory of knowledge resembles classical modern causal theory of perception, hence representationalism, in two ways: with respect to vocabulary and through the causal relation between world and mind. Kant frequently uses the term "representation" in place of the modern representationalist term "idea," a word that has another usage in the critical philosophy. Further, like classical modern representationalists, he describes the causal input, which derives from the impact of the mind-independent world on the mind. Yet the Copernican turn that arguably lies at the epicenter of the critical philosophy — a cognitive approach often supposed to be representational — is not representational but in fact is based on the failure of representationalism.
Kant's attitude toward representationalism is inconsistent. Three intractable difficulties arise in any effort to classify Kant as a representationalist. To begin with, since Kant insists on the subjective contribution to cognition, and even though he uses representationalist terminology, the specific anti-Platonic backward inference necessary for representationalism is not possible but rather impossible in the critical philosophy. Second, representationalism and constructivism are inconsistent, and, through the Copernican turn, he is clearly committed to constructivism. Finally, it would be clearly inconsistent to claim to represent the real while denying knowledge of noumena, or things in themselves. Hence Kant is not and cannot be a representationalist, or at least he cannot be a representationalist as "representation" is usually understood.
Representationalism and the Double Aspect Thesis
It is sometimes argued that Kant is a representationalist in a nonstandard sense of the term concerning the so-called double aspect view. The double aspect view is not a theory. It is rather a cognitive thesis embedded within a theory — in this case, in the critical philosophy within which, depending on the interpretation, it is sometimes thought to play a central role.
Kant, who often has difficulty in choosing between alternatives, typically defends, consciously or unconsciously, more than one approach. I have been suggesting that, following Plato (though he perhaps also defends or earlier defended representation), through his commitment to constructivism, Kant later turns away from representation, a cognitive approach that runs throughout the modern debate. The double aspect thesis indicates his hesitation about whether to defend or to abandon representationalism. This thesis is presented in different ways in Kant's writings, especially in respect to the possibility of morality (CPR, B xxvii, p. 115), where it plays a crucial role, and as concerns the cognitive problem (CPR, B xviii, p. 111).
There are different metaphysical and non-metaphysical ways of reading the critical philosophy. A metaphysical reading of the critical philosophy includes a so-called ontological commitment. In the double aspect thesis, the twofold metaphysical commitment includes the view that the mind-independent world affects the subject; it also includes the further view that the effect (or result) and the cause (or the thing in itself) are two aspects of the same thing. In that sense, the double aspect theory is an extreme form of the modern causal theory of perception — extreme in that the cause and the effect of the subject's affection through the thing in itself (noumenon or mind-independent reality) are presumed to be identical. In the context of the critical philosophy, this amounts to collapsing the crucial distinction between phenomena and noumena on the assumption that at the limit, there is not any distinction between appearance and reality. This approach suggests that Kant intends in the critical philosophy to meet the Parmenidean requirement for knowledge as the grasp of the mind-independent world. Yet if what we perceive is constructed by the subject, then we cannot infer noumena or things in themselves from representations or appearances; hence we can make no positive cognitive claims about reality. In that case, thought can only be identical with being — and hence meet the Parmenidean criterion for cognition — if as its condition the subject must construct what it knows.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from German Idealism as Constructivism by Tom Rockmore. Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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