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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Kant's philosophy is inconsistent regarding the application of categories to things in themselves

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Kant argues that categories like cause-effect cannot be meaningfully applied to things in themselves, because without intuition a category has no sense and is entirely empty of content
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    • 2.Things in themselves cannot be intuited
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    • 3.Kant applies the category of cause-effect to things in themselves by arguing that things in themselves affect us
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Kant's distinction between 'constitutive' and 'regulative' uses of categories does not resolve the affection problem, since affection requires causal constitution, not mere regulation.
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    • 2.In the Critique of Pure Reason (A190/B235), Kant defines causation as a rule governing the temporal succession of appearances, making it strictly appearance-relative by its own definition.
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    • 3.Applying this appearance-relative concept of causation to things in themselves, as affection requires, violates the very semantic conditions Kant himself specifies for legitimate category use.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Jacobi's objection in the 'David Hume' appendix (1787) establishes that one cannot enter Kant's system without presupposing things in themselves cause representations, yet cannot remain in it while doing so.
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    • 2.Kant's own transcendental deduction argues that objective validity of categories is secured exclusively through their relation to possible experience, not through any mind-independent grounding.
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    • 3.Therefore, invoking things in themselves as causal grounds for experience simultaneously requires and undermines the transcendental deduction's account of categorical legitimacy.
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