Kant's Dynamical Principles: The Analogies of Experience

This paper examines Kant’s account of causal knowledge by paying particular attention to the Critique of Teleological Judgment where Kant is concerned not with his well-known account of causality as the transcendental conditions of experience but with the possibility of causally explaining concrete objects in nature and, more specifically, material nature. The chapter develops an interpretation of Kant’s maxim of mechanism as a purely regulative principle that enables us to make determining judgments about mechanical causes. It concludes that knowledge of particular mechanical causes is essentially dependent on both constitutive and regulative principles.

Kant-Studien, 2017

There are two traditional ways to read Kant's claim that every event necessarily has a cause: the weaker every-event some-cause (WCP) and the stronger same-cause same-effect (SCP) causal principles. The focus of the debate about whether and where he subscribes to the SCP has been in the Analogies in the Critique of Pure Reason (Guyer, Allison, and Watkins) and in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Friedman). By analysing the arguments and conclusions of both the Analogies and the Postulates as well as the two Latin principles non datur casus and non datur fatum that summarise their results, I will argue for the novel thesis that the SCP is actually demonstrated in the Postulates of the First Critique.

Kant Yearbook, 2015

In the Second Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), Kant attempts to address Hume’s causal skepticism. Kant argues that the concept of cause must be employed in order to identify objective changes in the world, and that, therefore, all events are caused. In this paper, I will challenge Kant’s argument in the Second Analogy, arguing that we can identify objective changes without using the concept of cause, but by using the concept of logical condition instead. Rather than objectively ordering our perceptions through the idea that one thing that was perceived is the cause of the next thing that was perceived, the first necessitating the second, we can objectively order our perceptions through the idea that the first thing perceived is the logical condition of the second. In terms of Kant’s debate with Hume, I find that, though my objection undermines some of Hume’s own conclusions, it does allow Hume to avoid Kant’s argument against his causal skepticism.

Kant on the Human Standpoint, 2009

Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, hrsg. v. Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing und David Wagner,, 2018

In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason we find the idea that providing a causal explanation for a certain natural phenomenon is necessarily equivalent with providing a sufficient reason for the occurrence of that phenomenon. In this work, I examine, first, this fundamental equivalence between the principle of causality and the principle of sufficient reason as it is presented in the “Second Analogy of Experience” and second, I explore this equivalence in contrast with other forms of explanations, in the light of the distinction between mechanical causality and teleological causality, as presented in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. I aim to show, contrary to what Béatrice Longuenesse² has argued, that the principle of sufficient reason, in the context of scientific explanation of nature, cannot be either identified with or otherwise reduced to the principle of causality in “Second Analogy of Experience”.

2019

Journal for General Philosophy of Science - Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 1975

Kant's answer to Hume is seen to comprise the following: agreement with Hume that causal connection cannot be inferred from experience; moving beyond Hume in making causal conceptions presuppositions of experience (where "experience" has the full force of "scientific knowledge", and not merely its minimal meaning o1 spatio-temporal representations in appearance); distinguishing causality from other, more basic presuppositions of experience (where experience is tacitly defined in terms less strong than those associated with the advance to scientific knowledge). Not only is causality a Verknuep]ung, rather than a Bedingung, thereby relegating it to a lower level of generality, but its presence in the

Kant on Causality. In the schematism of the categories of the Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories of the Analytic of Conceptions of the Transcendental Analytic, and in the Second Analogy of Experience of the Analytic of Principles, the first part of Transcendental Analytic, both of which are included in the first division of the Transcendental Logic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant affirmed a transcendental idealist view of causality as an a priori form, a category of the understanding, the second of the categories of relation, derived from the hypothetical judgment of relation. The judgment of causality and dependence (cause and effect), he says, is not analytic a priori nor synthetic a posteriori, but is a synthetic a priori judgment, wherein the intellect expresses an a priori form by means of a judgment, unifying it with a conglomeration of phenomena. Consequently, causality has only a subjective validity within the realm of phenomena, not an objective, extra-mental noumenal one. Efficient causality, therefore, for the agnostic Kant, is not valid to demonstrate, for example, the existence of an extra-mental transcendent God. For Kant, "every synthetic a priori judgment is a complex whole, necessarily formed of three elements: 1) Sensible intuition is the first element as the matter of judgment; it comprises the experientially given which is passively received, and the a priori sensible form. 2) The concept, or a priori intellectual form, is the second element. 3) The schematism, or intermediary of the imagination 1 is the third element. For example, in order to pronounce this a priori synthetic judgment, 'The rising of liquids in a void has a cause,' the understanding, in Kant's view, formulates a hypothetical judgment, as 'If one posits the rising of a liquid, one necessarily posits its cause.' This judgment is such that there is between the two terms a bond of non-reciprocal dependence, that of effect upon cause. The raising of the liquid depends on the weight of the atmosphere , and not vice versa. Thus, when a savant perceives the concrete fact of a liquid raising itself in a void, the a priori form of causality is released in his spirit; and, beyond the frame of temporal succession (schematism of the concept of causality) and in virtue of the principle or general law that 'all changes occur in following the liaison of effects and causes,' he pronounces the scientific judgment, 'the raising of liquids in a void is produced by atmospheric pressure." 2 Describing Kant's views on causality and dependence (cause and effect) in the Critique of Pure Reason, Howard Caygill writes that "within the 'Transcendental Analytic,' causalitymore properly 'causality and dependence (cause and effect)'-features as the second of the categories of relation. These are derived from the pure judgements of relation, the second of which concerns the logical relation of ground to consequence. Causality, along with the other categories, is justified in the deduction as a form of 'connection and unity' which 'precedes all experience' and without which experience would not be possible. However, along with the other 8 By an "arbitrary" order Kant does not, of course, mean an order of succession that is not determined, but only one that is determined by subjectively conditioned direction of attention. Cf. below, p. 377.