Kant’s First Analogy and the Second Postulate
October 24, 2009
I had positioned the computer and had my drink glass and some nice music and then noticed that only my reading glasses were missing. I check the office (one of three official places for the glasses) and then went to the bed room, and also not there, and then I thought about the table where I had just decided were not there, and suddenly, a flash, and I noticed that the glass were in sight, i.e., I was wearing them.
I wish I could fathom all that Kant would be able to do from this experience. There seems to be two possible experiences. Either the glass just came into existence when I spotted them, or else I was wearing them the entire time and did not realize it.
According to Kant’s First Analogy (endurance of matter) I would have realized that I had been wearing them the entire time and had not been conscious of them. I would reject the judgment that the glasses had just come into existence.
There is no a priori reason for either experience. The creation seems the more immediate and intuitive. Or rather, there is one a priori reason and that is the judgment of the understanding ((regarding the endurance of things) that the glasses were on my nose the entire time.
[Schopenhauer will disagree and appeal to the principle of causation, i.e., it is impossible to understand how something could just suddenly come into existence, for no cause could be found.]
So I judge that they did not come into existence, and then by inference I can consider that I was not aware of the glasses. Not to be aware of something that exists. So I have to remember what had just happened, the sequence in the pursuit of the glasses (they having to be somewhere, per the analogy), and I remember that I was looking for the glasses to start a composition (which at that time was something else) and that I had been thinking about the composition and not paying attention to what I was doing. It’s hard to imagine how we must have realized that we can be unconscious of the external world, (or semi-conscious, surely we will have to maintain), and still maintain its independence of existence. Before we can imagine the semi-consciousness (or automatic pilot, as it were), we first have to recognize an externally existing world which continues during the period where I was semi-conscious of it.
And I guess that is where the First Analogy comes in, in that we will have noticed that we have figured out the dream world and the imaginary world, and this will require an externally existing objective world for the contrast to the imaginary and dream, i.e., for us to recognize the internal object (in opposition to the external object). We will have noticed our dream in contrast to the following perceptions (of the external world) and we will not integrate the dream into the preceding and following perceptions as equal, but rather will judge the perceived world to continue unchanged (in quantity of mater) and the dream to have been a reflection of that world, and which exists only within the brainarium, i.e., as a specter/appearance/Erscheinung.
In the Second Postulate of Understanding, Kant will get into this. We conceive an enduring object called the world which abides and we must then also recognize that world (and not just dream it up, a rather odd notion, i.e., dreaming up something that is not dreamed up) as objective (the Deduction). We then judge of this external world that it endures (First Analogy). It is only in this way that we can conceive of the internal world and recognize ourselves as perceivers.
Filed under: Kant