Doing what Kant did.
February 18th, 2010
Doing what Kant would have done, and what I could not have done without Kant’s cue.
My wife noticed the long line of cars and made reference to it, out on the distant valley road. I looked and sure enough it was a long line of cars. And that was rare for a Wed night. And we both wondered why, i.e., looked for the cause, and I found one (as a possibility) in the area being bible country and the Christians could be returning from Wednesday night supper at the churches. Since then I thought also that there could have been an accident which held up traffic for a while and then release many at once and all together.
What I happened to realize as I was thinking about this, was that I didn’t need to get into any of that. I could just have accepted it as unusual and let it go at that. But I instinctively looked about for a cause, and even though nothing whatsoever in the spectacle before my eyes could possibly have suggested anything except a variation in and illusive thing called traffic; and maybe that is already a lot and while other representations of road traffic density might come to mind, they would all be specters of traffic. And yet I automatically looked about for a cause. I did not even have to see this specter as anything special. I could always have looked at the traffic on the road and see blank roads, and roads with one car, and some with two and some with a bunch, and where mainly it is a blank road or a one car road. And so I could have just been looking at one of those many car roads that appear to me now and then. It’s not even necessary that I realize that a one car road is the same road as a two car road or a no care road. Even that is seeing all this in a special way.
Essentially, Kant is telling us, we produce the cause of ourselves. We never see cause, but we are hardwired to recognize cause and thus be on the look out for it. We see a single road which is more and less traffic and where less traffic is extremely rare (during the week nights), and so we see a deviation and not just a variation. We see something different. We see an event. Something has happened. This is not normal. This is out of kilter. Something has happened.
And even if I could not come up with a cause for this it would be in my mind as an unconnected specter, a something funny for which there is a cause, but none that I can think of. Maybe the next day something would have suggested Wednesday night church supper and I would recalled this unintegrated datum in my subconscious and there and then recognize the cause (and here certainly only a plausible cause and only possible). Or perhaps I would read of a traffic tie up at that time. Or something.
[Reflection. This “unintegrated datum” is evidence of the role of the Transcendental Object = X. There is a single nature (our conception) which results in a single experience, and all perceptions are apprehended with this single experience in mind, in anticipation of a connection (corresponding to the categories) and integration with all perceptions. This is the great achievement of Kant, the explanation as to how it is that something that we dream up, the object to be represented in the specter, can be recognized as existing on its own, i.e., being a real object independently of our concepts. This real object is the object of experience, the conception that all specters of any kind are connected in this single object called nature. And so perception itself is undertaken and determined by this single (unified) all-encompassing experience , namely that all specters are works in accordance with laws of nature. All apprehensions are for the sake of the recognition of an object and that object is an object of this single nature. And so experience is essentially singular. We hold in subconscious abeyance the “unintegrated datum” and maybe never ever recall it, or maybe something will be said or seen and that datum will be brought to mind in order that it might be connected into this single experience. But it is kept separate and there is only the natural presupposition (per our minds) of explanation per laws of nature.]
So what we see Kant doing is catching himself in the typical thinking patterns and coming to see that the solution for the Critique would be to explain Hume’s knowledge of his “shrinking” table (as the distance from it increased). Hume show that the specter told him nothing whatsoever about any necessity and so where it would be impossible to think that the table were not shrinking. But he knew that it did. Thus the cause was within his own way of recognizing objects, but Hume could not accept that for then his entire conception would collapse. This is identical with recognizing an event, namely a happening, for while the specters numerous and different and similar, all that is given in the perception is the fact of a given specter (in time and space). It is synthetic to see it in time and it is synthetic to see it as an event, as the result of a cause, a happening. Not just is, but an happening, i.e., something arising in time and in an earlier time did not exist (a necessary presupposition for experience), and so which is an effect. So there is the perception in time (wrong time to have lots of cars on the road) and the thought that this perception (of the specter) has occured.
Entry Filed under: Kant
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