Abstract
This paper takes a fresh look at Kant’s transcendental idealism with a new reading of negative noumena as abstract entities. It shows that the three criteria for abstractness, i.e., non-spatiotemporality, causal inefficacy, and non-indiscernibility, are true of Kant’s negative noumena. Phenomena, by contrast, are concrete entities in space and time, which can be understood as spatiotemporally instantiated noumena. Kant’s distinction between noumena in the positive and negative sense will be reinterpreted as a distinction between non-spatiotemporally instantiated concrete entities and uninstantiated abstract entities. It argues that noumenal ignorance is confined to positive noumena, which can be identified with things in themselves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A 291–292/B 347–348.
- 2.
The concept of noumenon is first introduced in the chapter titled “On the Ground of the Distinction of All Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena” (hereafter referred to as the “Phenomena-Noumena Chapter”; A 235/B 294).
- 3.
To be more precise, while noumena are beings of understanding or objects of thought, phenomena are beings of the conjunction of sense and understanding, requiring both intuition and concept.
- 4.
B 307–309.
- 5.
A 290/B 346.
- 6.
AA:29, 811.
- 7.
AA:28, 544.
- 8.
A 292/B 348.
- 9.
A 291/B 348. The corresponding something encompasses any logically possible object of thought. This pair of something and nothing stands under the highest concept of an object in general because Kant allows even a conjunction of contradictory predicates to represent an object in its broadest and loosest sense, “for object can also be thought with impossible predicates” (AA:29, 811).
- 10.
A 290–291/B 347.
- 11.
A 292/B 348.
- 12.
A 596/B 624.
- 13.
AA:2, 202–203; AA:20, 360; AA:28, 549.
- 14.
A 218/B 265.
- 15.
A 218/B 265.
- 16.
B xxvi; B 302. Real possibility is, therefore, not only subject to the law of contradictions, but also to the a priori laws governing the construction of an object in general, which are determined by the formal conditions of experience. Similarly, Kant also distinguishes material or real necessity from merely formal and logical necessity (AA:28, 557–558). The former kind of necessity cannot be ascertained by considering conceptual content alone, but depends on the general laws of experience in conjunction with empirical knowledge.
- 17.
A 218/B 265–266.
- 18.
There is no question that noumena fall within the gap between logical and real possibility, but it is unclear how the boundaries of the gap are to be determined. Nick Stang belongs to the few Kant scholars who address the modal space between logical and real possibility in a systematic manner, but he grants real possibility to noumena. Stang distinguishes between four different kinds or levels of real possibility, which he calls formal real possibility, empirical-causal real possibility, noumenal-causal real possibility, and finally real possibility of noumena (Stang 2016, 197–227). Whereas the first three kinds of real possibility are applicable to phenomena, the last kind is a sort of uncognizable possibility for noumena. The first three can be seen as further characterizations of real possibility, but granting real possibility to noumena would violate Kant’s identification of noumena as the fourth kind of nothing discussed previously. Stang bases his concept of real possibility for noumena on the unschematized category of possibility as applied to noumena (Stang 2016, 267–271). I have no objection to noumena being conceived by using unschematized categories, but the unschematized category of possibility should be understood as logical possibility rather than a special sort of real possibility.
- 19.
AA:4, 332.
- 20.
Lewis (1986, 83).
- 21.
Although it appears natural to grant temporal existence to abstract artifacts such as the novels of Harry Potter, this is controversial. If an entity can start to exist, it should also be capable of ceasing to exist, but it is unclear under what conditions the novels of Harry Potter would cease to exist. Would they cease to exist when all printed or electronic copies are destroyed, and no one reads and remembers the stories anymore? Or would they continue to exist once they have been created?
- 22.
Parsons (2007, 1–2).
- 23.
A 494/B 522.
- 24.
A 261/B 317.
- 25.
In Kant’s words: “If an object is presented to us several times, but always with the same inner determinations (qualitas et quantitas), then it is always exactly the same if it counts as an object of pure understanding [my italics], not many but only one thing (numerica identitas)” (A 263/B 319).
- 26.
B 72.
- 27.
A 286/B 342–343.
- 28.
I argued against the allegedly “human-only” validity of space and time for Kant in another paper (Lau 2015).
- 29.
Lewis (1986, 73).
- 30.
Leibniz (1989, 213).
- 31.
A 44/B 61–62; A 270/B 326.
- 32.
A 42/B 59; A 387; A 494/B 522; A 537/B 565; A 566/B 594.
- 33.
Lau (2010).
- 34.
It has been objected that the terminology of “two-world” versus “two-aspect” is misleading and should be replaced by other distinctions such as the one between phenomenalist and anti-phenomenalist (see Allais 2015, 8–9). Since the difference between the two terms does not have real significance for my paper, I am content with the more popular distinction between the two-world and two-aspect interpretations.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Allison (2004, 459).
- 39.
AA:9, 91.
- 40.
A 320/B 377.
- 41.
A 19/B 33.
- 42.
A 258/B 314.
- 43.
In Kant’s words: “Now through a pure category, in which abstraction is made from any condition of sensible intuition as the only one that is possible for us, no object is determined, rather only the thought of an object in general is expressed in accordance with different modi” (A 247/B 304). In the abstraction of all sensible intuitions, pure concepts of understanding only determine the thought of an object in general or in abstracto, and their objects are “objects thought merely through the understanding,” which is the literal sense of noumena. Such objects of thought or abstract entities are neither proper objects of cognition nor real constituents of the world, but they still play an indispensable role in Kant’s epistemology.
- 44.
A 598/B 626; cf. A 225/B 272–273.
- 45.
AA:2, 73.
- 46.
AA: 2, 73.
- 47.
A 599/B 627.
- 48.
B 307.
- 49.
B 72.
- 50.
B 307.
- 51.
Stang also draws a distinction between negative noumena in a broader and in a narrower sense, referring to the latter as “merely negative noumena” (Stang 2016, 302). While agreeing on the relation between negative noumena in the broader sense and positive noumena, our views on the nature of negative noumena in the narrower sense differ substantially. As is traditional, Stang does not entertain the possibility of reading negative noumena as abstract entities.
- 52.
A 289/B 345–346.
- 53.
Kitcher (2001, 204).
- 54.
Kitcher (2001, 204).
- 55.
Kitcher (1991, 140–141).
- 56.
A 346/B 404.
- 57.
The transcendental subject can be compared to the idea of a Turing machine, which is an abstract device to represent mechanical procedures or algorithms. It does not refer to any concrete device in the world, although every concrete computer can be viewed as a particular instantiation of it. I developed this idea in greater detail in another paper (Lau 2014).
- 58.
A 250.
- 59.
I agree with Stephen Palmquist on this point: “The negative noumenon corresponds to the transcendental object [K1:A358] in much the same way as the positive noumenon corresponds to the thing in itself, and the phenomenon to the transcendental appearance” (Palmquist 1986, 140).
- 60.
Since my interpretation does not assume the existence of positive noumena and instead ascribes the grounding role to negative noumena as abstract entities, it can be classified broadly under the two-aspect interpretation, although it differs significantly from the mainstream versions of it. In any case, it is a non-phenomenalist interpretation, since it rejects the idea that objects of empirical cognition exist as (constructions out of) mental representations.
- 61.
Lau (2008).
- 62.
A 539/B 567.
- 63.
Work on this article was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Project No.: CUHK 14601518).
References
Allais, Lucy. 2004. Kant’s “One World”: Interpreting Transcendental Idealism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12: 655–684.
———. 2007. Kant’s Idealism and the Secondary Quality Analogy. Journal of the History of Philosophy 45: 459–484.
———. 2015. Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and His Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Allison, Henry E. 1983. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
———. 2004. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Revised and enlarged ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bird, Graham. 2006. The Revolutionary Kant: A Commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason. Chicago: Open Court.
Guyer, Paul. 1987. Kant and the Claim of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitcher, Patricia. 1991. Kant’s Transcendental Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2001. Kant’s Thinker. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langton, Rae. 1998. Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lau, Chong-Fuk. 2008. Freedom, Spontaneity and the Noumenal Perspective. Kant-Studien 99 (3): 312–338.
———. 2010. Kant’s Epistemological Reorientation of Ontology. Kant Yearbook 2: Metaphysics: 123–145.
———. 2014. Kant’s Transcendental Functionalism. The Review of Metaphysics 68: 371–394.
———. 2015. Die Ambition der Kantischen Metaphysik: Entwurf einer transzendental-funktionalistischen Interpretation. In Das neue Bedürfnis nach Metaphysik - The New Desire for Metaphysics, ed. M. Gabriel, W. Hogrebe, and A. Speer, 93–111. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1989. The Principles of Philosophy, or, the Monadology. In Philosophical Essays, ed. R. Ariew and D. Garber, 213–224. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Lewis, David. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Palmquist, Stephen R. 1986. Six Perspectives on the Object in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Dialectica 40 (2): 121–151.
Parsons, Charles. 2007. Mathematical Thought and Its Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prauss, Gerold. 1974. Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich. Bonn: Grundman.
Stang, Nicholas. 2016. Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strawson, Peter F. 1966. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen.
Van Cleve, James. 1999. Problems from Kant. Oxford: Oxford University of Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lau, CF. (2023). Kant’s Negative Noumena as Abstracta. In: Moss, G.S. (eds) The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-13861-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-13862-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)