Abstract
In recent years, more and more people have become attracted by the idea that the imagination should play a central role in explaining our knowledge of what is possible and necessary and what would be the case if things were different from how they actually are. The biggest challenge for this account is to explain how the imagination can be restricted in such a way that it can play this epistemic role, for there are certainly also unrestricted uses of the imagination in which it fails to yield the requisite knowledge. In this paper, I inquire how Kant’s account of the imagination could inspire the contemporary debate at this point. I first give an overview about Kant’s account of the imagination and its different roles for our cognition of the real world. I then show that some recent attempts to separate the epistemically valuable uses of the imagination from the epistemically worthless ones bear some striking similarities to Kant’s ideas about how the imagination helps us to get insight into metaphysical possibility. By discussing what Kant says about the method of a priori imaginative construction in the case of concepts such as that of matter and that of disembodied minds, I also point to those aspects of his view which make his views really distinct from all contemporary accounts, but which he himself thought bear the greatest potential of making the imagination a source of modal knowledge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
As usual I will refer by the letters ‘A’ and ‘B’ to the first and second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason and their original page numbers. All other quotes are identified by the page numbers of their appearance in the Academy edition of Kant’s works.
For a recent convincing argument that we should take this characterization literally and conclude from this that not all Kantian intuitions represent existing objects see Stephenson (2015).
For the general distinction between sensibility and understanding see also CpR A 50/B 74, A 68/B 93, A 51/B 75, and 9:36. According to a wider notion of the understanding, which also includes what Kant more specifically calls ‘reason’, it is also the capacity to draw inferences between these judgments.
These two variants correspond to two possible readings of the term ‚cognition’ (‘Erkenntnis’) in Kant [see Watkins and Willaschek (2017) for an argument that the second captures the kernel of Kant’s use of the term], see also fn. 13 below.
For the most comprehensive interpretation of Kant’s views on metaphysical modality see Stang (2016).
In the Doctrine of Method of the CpR, Kant explains why the method of construction can reveal something about the general nature of a thing although it involves the representation of an individual imagined object: ‘To construct a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to it. For the construction of a concept, therefore, a non-empirical intuition is required, which consequently, as intuition, is an individual object, but must nevertheless, as the construction of a concept (of a general representation), express in the representation universal validity for all possible intuitions that belong under the same concept. Thus I construct a triangle by exhibiting an object corresponding to this concept, either through mere imagination, in pure intuition, or on paper, in empirical intuition, but in both cases completely a priori, without having had to borrow the patters for it from any experience. The individual drawn figure is empirical, and nevertheless serves to express the concept without damage to its universality, for in the case of this empirical intuition we have taken account only of the action of constructing the concept, to which many determinations, e.g., those of the magnitudes of the sides and the angles, are entirely indifferent, and thus we have abstracted from these differences, which do not alter the concept of a triangle’ (A 714–5/B 741–2).
See also CpR B 155 fn.: ‘Motion of an object in space does not belong in a pure science, thus also not in geometry; for that something is movable cannot be cognized a priori but only through experience. But motion, as description of a space, is a pure act of the successive synthesis of the manifold in outer intuition in general through productive imagination, and belongs not only to geometry but even to transcendental philosophy.’.
For further details see Rosefeldt (forthcoming). The exhibition of a concept not only enables cognition in the sense of knowledge of real possibility, but also cognition in the sense of a representation that is directed towards a really possible object (see fn. 9 above).
It should be stressed that the construction of concept is not the only method for proving that some concept represents a metaphysically possible object. In the Doctrine of Method, Kant makes clear that this method is not suited for some of the pure concepts of the understanding (cf. A 715–7/B 742–4). In general, Kant’s method for showing that these concepts represent metaphysically possible objects is to show that their applicability to what is sensibly given is a necessary conditions for there to be objects of cognition for us at all (cf. his famous Transcendental Deduction of the Categories).
B 130, B 151, B 161, A 99 f.
In the sentence from which this quote is taken Kant only speaks about ‘pure sensible concepts’ (such as those of geometry and arithmetic). However, the following paragraph makes clear that he also thinks in the case of empirical concepts, like that of a dog, it is a schema rather than an image that makes its application possible.
Cf. A 103 f., A 108; for a detailed interpretation of this idea cf. Grüne (2009).
The idea that schemata structure our perceptual content also allows us to give an answer to the question of why exactly schemata are required for the application of a general concepts to particular perceived objects. The idea would be that in order to apply the concept of a dog, say, to an empirical object and thereby to cognise that object as a dog, a subject’s imagination must integrate given empirical intuitions stemming from that object into a single, complex intuition (or “image”) of a dog by successfully performing in accordance with the schema of the concept of a dog.
I will not discuss what for Kant was the most important case of proving the real possibility of the instantiation of a concept, namely that of the so-called ‘pure concepts of the understanding’, i.e. concepts such as that of substance or of cause and effect. Kant not only thought that we need an argument that we are justified in applying these concepts to the actual world, but also that we cannot take it for granted that it is really possible for them to be instantiated. Given the fact that it was one of the core questions of the metaphysical discussion of the seventeenth and eighteenth century whether and how there could be real causal influence among distinct substances this is hardly surprising. However, explaining the details of Kant’s own proof that this is really possible would go far beyond the limits of this paper.
It is likely that by the thing ‚that was persistently present in space yet without filling it (like that intermediate thing between matter and thinking beings, which some would introduce)’ Kant refers to a so-called ‘physical monad’. I will discuss this case below in Sect. 4.2.
See also 20:325.
These three properties correspond to the first three main chapters of the Metaphysical Foundations, the one on ‚phoronomy’, the one on ‚dynamics’ and the one on ‚mechanics’. The imaginative exhibition of these concepts consist in geometrical constructions of objects corresponding to them. Note however, that Kant took the actual compass-and-straightedge constructions to be grounded in, and only expressions of, purely mental constructions (see the above quote from the Eberhardt-Controversy, 8:191 fn.).
In his Metaphysicae cum geometria iunctae usus in philosophia naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam from 1756 (1:473–487).
For a more detailed reconstruction of Kant’s position on this issue one would have to distinguish between the claim that the matter that fills space is infinitely divisible in the Leibnizian sense of consisting of infinitely many simple parts, and the claim that it is is infinitely divisible in the sense of being gunky, i.e. of not consisting of simple parts at all. Kant’s 1756 theory clearly assumes that the number of constituent monads has to be finite. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.).
Cf. 4:503–505; I follow Friedman’s illuminating reconstruction of Kant’s argument here (Friedman 2013, p. 150 f.).
You can illucidate this point by the following imaginative exercise: Assume that A and B are two colliding planets and take your standpoint as the spectator to be the one which is assumed as resting. If you imagine to sit on A, you will imagine the movement as that of B approaching you, if you imagine to sit on B, you will imagine it as that of A approaching you, and if you imagine to float somewhere between A and B, you will imagine the two planets to appoach you from two opposite directions.
For a much more detailed interpretation along these lines see Rosefeldt (2000, 2003, 2016). Again there is a striking similarity to Kung’s work: In a yet unpublished paper, Kung explores the idea that when imagining from a first-person point of view, we ascribe imagined properties to a character he calls ‚Ego’. He then argues that the fact that I can imagine Ego to exist without a body does not provide evidence for the assumption that the real being who is me could exist without a body because I determine only per assignment that this being = Ego (cf. Kung (Ms.)). Kung’s Ego is very similar to what Kant calls ‚the logical I’.
For a more detailed reconstruction of Kant’s reasons for this assumption see Rosefeldt (forthcoming).
I have added ‘in principle’ because the examples I have discussed here only concern the negative side of Kant’s project. In one case we have dealt with a concept (namely that of a physical monad) for which Kant could show that it is metaphysically impossible that something falls under it, and in another one (that of disembodied minds) we could see why Kant thought that we could never know whether it is is metaphysical possible that such objects exist. I have not talked about Kant’s positive account of the metaphysical structure of the spatio-temporal world, not for example about his own explanation of how it is metaphysically possible that matter fills space and what follows from this explanation for the nature of physical bodies (for this topic see his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science). It seems much less clear to me how this positive side of Kant’s account could be made attractive from the point of view of contemporary metaphysics.
For the idea that imagining is a way to inquire into the basic structures of our experience see Balcerak Jackson (2018).
References
Balcerak Jackson, M. (2018). Justification by imagination. In F. Dorsch & F. Macpherson (Eds.), Perceptual imagination and perceptual memory (pp. 209–226). Oxford: Oxford Universty Press.
Chalmers, D. (2002). Does conceivability entail possibility? In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility (pp. 145–200). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Friedman, M. (2013). Kant’s construction of nature: A reading of the metaphysical foundations of natural science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grüne, S. (2009). Blinde Anschauung. Die Rolle von Begriffen in Kants Theorie sinnlicher Synthesis. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
Haag, J. (2007). Erfahrung und Gegenstand. Das Verhältnis von Sinnlichkeit und Verstand. Frankfurt: Klostermann.
Kind, A., & Kung, P. (Eds.). (2016). Knowledge through imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kripke, (1980). Naming and necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Krödel, T. (2012). Counterfactuals and the epistemology of modality. Philosophers’ Imprint, 12(12), 1–14.
Krödel, T. (2017). Modal knowledge, evolution, and counterfactuals. In R. W. Fischer & F. Leon (Eds.), Modal epistemology after rationalism (synthese library). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kung, P. (2010). Imagining as a guide to possibility. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81(3), 620–663.
Kung, P. (2016). You really do imagine it: against error theories of imagination. Noûs, 50(1), 90–120.
Kung, P. (Ms.). Imagining, inside and out.
Longueness, B. (1998). Kant and the capacity to judge. Sensibility and discursivity in the transcendental analytic of the ‘critique of pure reason’. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Malmgren, A. (2011). Rationalism and the content of intuitive judgments. Mind, 120, 263–326.
Nimtz, C. (2009). Conceptual truth defended. In C. Kompa, N. Nimtz, & C. Suhm (Eds.), The a priori and its role in philosophy (pp. 137–155). Paderborn: Mentis.
Nimtz, C. (2010). Philosophical thought experiments as exercises in conceptual analysis. Grazer Philosophical Studien, 81, 189–214.
Roca-Royes, S. (2011). Conceivability and De Re modal knowledge. Noûs, 45, 22–49.
Rosefeldt, T. (2000). Das logische Ich. Kant über den Gehalt des Begriffes von sich selbst. Berlin: Philo.
Rosefeldt, T. (2003). Kant’s self: Real entity and logical identity. In H. Glock (Ed.), Strawson and Kant (pp. 141–154). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosefeldt, T. (2016). Subjects of Kant’s first paralogism. In A. Gomes & A. Stephenson (Eds.), Kant. Philosopher of mind (pp. 221–244). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosefeldt, T. (forthcoming). Kant on imagination and the intuition of time. In Gentry, G., & Pollock, K. (Eds.), The imagination in German idealism and romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stang, N. (2016). Kant’s modal metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stephenson, A. (2015). Kant on the object-dependence of intuition and hallucination. Philosophical Quarterly, 65, 486–508.
Strohminger, M., & Yli-Vakkuri, J. (2017). The epistemology of modality. Analysis, 77, 825–838.
van Inwagen, P. (1998). Modal epistemology. Philosophical Studies, 92, 67–84.
Watkins, E., & Willaschek, M. (2017). Kant’s account of cognition. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 55(1), 83–112.
Williamson, T. (2007). The philosophy of philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yablo, S. (1993). Is conceivability a guide to possibility? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53, 1–42.
Yablo, S. (2002). Coulda, woulda, shoulda. In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility (pp. 441–492). New York: Oxford University Press.
Yablo, S. (2006). No fool’s cold. In M. Garcia-Carpintero & J. Macia (Eds.), Two-dimensional semantics (pp. 327–345). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosefeldt, T. Kant on the epistemic role of the imagination. Synthese 198 (Suppl 13), 3171–3192 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02100-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02100-4