The New Viator

"I thought at that time that I was enjoying the conversation today with Darius, but I must admit now to uneasiness."  "Why is that?" asked Alisha.  Ashley responded quickly, "I thought Darius agreed with me, but maybe, in retrospect, he was making fun of me."  "I don't think Darius would do that," remonstrated Alisha; "You and Darius seem always to agree on the important issues."  So began innocently enough an important conversation between the two friends.  

Alisha wanted to know all about the fateful conversation Ashley had had with Darius.  She needed to know because there was something in Ashley's demeanor that suggested disorientation. "Ashley, please tell me what happened today when you talked to Darius. What did he say? Did he not respect you? Was he trying to make you think that his fringe thinking was not homophobic?"  

Ashley glanced at the birch tree standing at her right, "Well, it seemed innocent enough at first. I told Darius that I was on a journey of discovery." 

"A journey of discovery," repeated Alisha, "What do you mean by that?" 

Ashley was remembering it all vividly. "I was telling Darius that we today are somewhat like the people in the 15th century that found themselves on a journey either to the celestial city or to eternal damnation. Like them, we are viatores, pilgrims on the way, but our journey is not a death dealing journey out of life, but rather a momentous journey within life itself.  I am on this journey, a journey deeply momentous, a journey in which I hope to find myself, a journey after my authentic gender."  

Alisha knew of her friend's confessed gender fluidity. She understood that Ashley had early on in life understood herself as primary a little girl, but then on entering puberty had thought maybe the she was psychologically an adolescent male, and then in college had actually traveled back and forth between these poles, sometimes even identifying herself as somewhere in between. Alisha had always cared for Ashley, and had been steadfastly interested in her friend's voyage of self-discovery.  There was no reason, after all, why Ashley should have to pick one traditional gender in exclusion of the rest, as both her mother and father had.  Ashley needed to be who she really was, not some projection of an overwrought parent. 

But Ashley was visibly shaken. She wanted to tell Alisha the story of her conversation today with Darius.  Maybe, she thought, Alisha could help her, maybe she could cheer her up. Maybe, in fact, Alisha could make her forget the conversation she had had with Darius. Maybe if she explained to Alisha what had happened, she could be set free from the results of that fateful conversation. "Here is what happened today, Alisha." 

Darius was in the Wal-Mart parking lot looking at his friend's new Ford pickup, when Ashley arrived.  Seeing her, Darius said, "I love the fact that this one ton pick-up can develop so much torque."  

"I do as well, Darius. Although I prefer a Dodge Ram. My dad always loved his Dodge Charger hemi engine." 

"What brings you to the Wal-mart parking lot on this glorious day, Ashley," asked Darius. 

Because Ashley did not know exactly why she was in the parking lot, she replied, "I was thinking how fortunate I was to be in America in this third decade of the 21st century, Darius. It is wonderful to have the freedom to express oneself."  

"You speak rightly, Ashley, but about which freedoms are you most concerned about now?" 

"I enjoy the freedom to try on different gender roles. My life need not be like my mother and father's lives were, lives of quiet desperation where there was an enforced hegemony of gender roles. I don't have to be that which people once claimed I had to be, for I have freedom.  I find myself sometimes interested in living the traditional roles of an America male, but sometimes I just want to be female. I am free now to be no more (or no less) interested in plumbing than knitting. I can be male even if I have biological female parts, or vice-versa.  I can live in relationship with both men and women at the same time. I am liberated to experience the polyamorous life style that does not make me be what somebody else wants me to be!' 

"This is a wonderful thing, Ashley, but do you think that you are able to choose to be other than you are?" 

"I believe it," said Ashley, "for America protects the rights of those like me who do not find deep personal satisfaction either living forever as a male or forever as a female." 

"You speak with conviction," added Darius, "but are you able to do what you say?" 

"What do you mean by that," quipped Ashley to her interlocutor. 

"Are you able actually to choose a gender?" 

"Of course," Ashley quickly replied.

"But if you are choosing a gender, is there some definite gender you are choosing?" 

Ashley did not have to reflect on this for long.  "Of course," she said, "a gender is a definite thing." 

"But what is it for a gender to be a definite thing?  Is a gender a nature?" 

Ashley knew too much to be pulled into Darius' apparent trap.  Clearly, she did not want to suggest that there are Aristotelian natures.  "No, a gender is not a nature, for I choose it." 

Darius continued his interrogation: "Yes, I suppose you are correct. One cannot choose a nature because it is part of the nature of a nature not to be chosen. So what is the 'it' that you choose, Ashley, if it is not a nature?" 

"I choose a determinate set of dispositions to behave, dispositions that make me the one I am," replied Ashley smugly.  

"You choose your dispositions to behave, Ashley?  How does one do this?" Are your dispositions prior to, subsequent to, or are they identical with your gender?"  

"They are identical to it, Darius."  

"So you can choose your dispositions to behave, and these constitute your gender. Is this your position, Ashley." 

"It is so, Darius. Upon a little reflection, one can easily see that this is the case. My gender is constituted by how I will act given different stimulus-response conditionals." 

"But is it the case, Ashley, that you had a disposition to claim that your disposition to behave constitutes your gender identity?" 

"I don't think I understand you, Darius." 

"You claim that you can freely chose your dispositions to behave, and so is it the case that you freely chose to claim that you freely choose your dispositions to behave?" 

"No, Darius. I am free in my claim that to choose a gender identity is to chose dispositions to behave.  If my claim were simply the actualization of a disposition in a particular stimulus-response situation, then it would not be free. I am free, after all." 

"I thank you for your deeply reasoned response, Ashley.  You are indeed no easy foe with whom to dispute.  So I think your position is that you could have done other than claiming that your gender identity could be freely chosen, and your choosing of this involves the taking on of a disposition to behave. Is this right." 

"You speak with rectitude, Darius." 

"So you are saying that you could have done other than choosing the gender identity you choose, and that the a gender identity consists in certain dispositions to behave.  Is this correct."  

"As I said, Darius, this is my position." 

"And you would concur, that dispositions to behave are objective determinates of behavior.  They are that from which actual behaving emerges, right? 

"Yes, if I said that a gender were not something determinate, it would not be anything at all. It cannot be a nature, for if it were, then it could not be freely chosen. One must choose freely one's gender, for otherwise one could not be a viator.  One must be on a road filled with momentous decisions. There is no dignity in simply acting in accordance with a nature that has been determined by something other than the self." 

"I am still failing to follow you completely, Ashley.  Are you saying that the dispositions to behave that constitute your gender identity are freely chosen, or are they determined by something else?" 

"No, Darius.  There are dispositions to behave that I have, and I can identify with some of them and not others. What I identify with is my identity." 

"Let me understand this more deeply, Ashley. You are saying that you have a very complex set of dispositions to behave and that you can choose to identify with some of these dispositions and not others." 

"That is my claim, Darius." 

"Do you know how legislatures determine the districts from which representatives are elected?  They know that in districts there are regions where people tend to vote Democratic and other regions where they tend to vote Republican. If they are a Democratic legislature, they will try to gerrymander the district so that the Democratic regions are in the district and the Republican regions are excluded from it. They thus can elect a Democratic representative. One might say that the identity of the district is Democratic, and that they faithfully will elect Democratic representatives in perpetuity. Is this what you mean by a gender identity?  Are you saying that you can gerrymander dispositions to behave appropriately so that a particular gender identity is manifest?"  

"I have not thought of it in this way, Darius, but the condition you describe seems to me now to be the necessary condition of gender fluidity. We are a complicated set of dispositions to behave, and our identity is manifest by identifying with some of these dispositions and excluding others. After we accept an identity we are engaged in cultivating certain dispositions and suppressing others.  Such cultivation and suppression is the warf and woof of identity formation."  Ashley was obviously happy to be able to use "warf and woof" correctly.  

"Thank you, Ashley. It is important that we get clear on these matters, for failure to clarify may allow a contradiction to lurk in our position, and from a contradiction anything follows." 

"Upon this we agree, Darius. I don't want to argue a position with a hidden contradiction because there is no possible world in which a contradiction can hold, and I have always thought, in fact, that if a position cannot hold in a possible world, it cannot hold in the actual world." 

"Ashley, I am impressed by your modal thinking here, and you are, of course, correct. No impossible state of affairs can obtain in the actual world. But we digress from the main issue. We are trying to determine if you are describing a consistent state of affairs when you say that gender identity is constituted by either cultivating or suppressing already existing dispositions to behave. Your position is that gender identity A just is the inclusion of some set of dispositions G and exclusion of some set of dispositions H, that the original dispositions to behave are, as it were the raw data of your psychology, that these dispositions can change, and that identity is in fact freely organized.  We choose which dispositions with which to identify and with which not to identify." 

"This is my position, Darius, and I think it is self-consistent." 

"But let us reflect more deeply, Ashley. You have said previously that your organization of data is in fact a free one, emerging neither from a nature nor some set of deeper dispositions to behave." 

"I have said this, Darius." 

"So let me ask again, how is this possible?  How can one freely choose to identify and cultivate one set of dispositions over another?  What is that by virtue of which this occurs?  

"Darius, we are essentially free, that is, we have contra-casual freedom. We can do other than what we do, in fact, do.  When we choose to identify with a disposition, we are simply choosing freely." 

"But Ashley," replied Darius, "does this not mean that there are ultimately no dispositions that determine our character?  If we can choose freely to identify with set of dispositions G over H, and this is not determined by a disposition, then should we not say that the original dispositions constituting our raw psychological state is also the result of choosing to cultivate some tendencies we might have and choosing to suppress others?"

"I am not sure about this, Darius. This would mean that we really have no basic determinacy at all.  That is to say, we are just choosing all of our character. But I don't think I want to say that, Darius. I want to say that I could choose to embrace those parts of me that I already am."  

"But is that not the point, Ashley?  You are choosing to be who you are when as a viator, you explore different genders. You want to already be that which you become, right?"

"I think I can agree with that, Darius.  If I am to explore my gender identity, I need to be doing it on the basis of what I am. If I am going to identify myself as X, there must be some grounds of that identification.  But you are suggesting that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, that is to say, if it is on the basis of freedom that I choose to identify with a particular batch of dispositions, and if you further assert that this freedom allows me to cultivate dispositions that are consistent with the identity I wish to adopt and suppress other dispositions not consistent with that identity, then I am really engaged in freely constructing my gender.    But there is something about this that makes me uncomfortable." 

"What is that, Ashley?" 

She reflected a moment: "Part of the justification with exploring other gender identities and making others respect those identities is that we ought not discriminate against others."

Darius stared at Ashley for a long time before responding, "Yes, of course it has always been part of the way we have routinely regarded those having non-standard genders. We treat them as we do because we know at some level that they could not be other than how they are. It is an issue of civil rights, after all. A person can neither change the color of his skin nor change his sexual orientation. This is why we build gender neutral restrooms and enact gender neutral laws to protect minorities from prejudices of those in power. We do this because we realize that others have natural rights that we must respect.  It is not their fault, after all, that they have a non-standard gender identity." 

Ashley looked at Darius inquisitively and said, "But have we just now agreed that what is good for the goose   is good for the gander?  What I mean is that if we have freedom to gerrymander dispositions, cultivating some and suppressing others, would we not have such freedom at the level of the original dispositions themselves?  Don't we always have some identity or other and are we not trying to do those acts consistent with the identity we have?  What I realize now, is that the free choice of identity has likely always been the driving principle here, and that combing our subliminal depths for a real self is likely quite misguided.  After all, what rational support to we really have in the selection of criteria by which we adjudicate that one has a self and that, furthermore, that self posses a determinate nature?"  

Darius replied, "I see you are thinking this through carefully, Ashley. You see the problem now, don't you?  The viator's journey is supposed to be a voyage of self-discovery. Tying on gender roles is supposed to allow one to grasp one's authentic self, one's true nature, as it were, a nature that can finally order the chaos of our psychological life. The goal of the gender search is to find the identity that best fits one's experience and being. Society tolerates those differently-ordered because it respects the rights of all to be happy, and happiness entails that tensions between one's conscious and unconscious life be mitigated.  That is to say, one is a viator because one believes "to thine own self be true."  

"Yes," Ashley admitted. 

"But you know from our earlier discussions on the issue of freely choosing one's identity that, if this freedom be granted -- that is, there is no determinate nature that determinately prescribes or proscribes this choice -- then this freedom likely trickles all the way down to our most fundamental dispositions, and if this be so, then one ought not to regard gender as anything determinate in need of protection by one's civil rights."  

"Yes," replied Ashley, "and I see the problem."

But Darius would not let her finish: "The one holding that gender roles are freely chosen cannot say that gender ought to be protected by civil law. As an effect of free-will, it is not the kind of thing that people could have irrational prejudice about. Moreover, if gender roles are completely determined, then one has really no freedom in trying out other gender roles. Determinism with regards to gender pulls the rug out from underneath our modern would-be viator."

At this point, Ashley looked at Alisha and simply stopped talking. Alisha asked her to explain what happened next with Darius, but for Ashley the day had begun and ended with this conversation. Alisha told Ashley that she had done very well in her conversation with Darius, but Ashley would have none of it, for she knew that she could no longer do the things she had done before, or, if she did them again, she would hitherto have to think very differently about what she was doing. These things saddened her greatly.  

Alisha thought that a trip to the museum might cheer her friend, but Ashley wanted nothing more now than just to go home. So Alisha watched Ashley as the latter walked briskly away. Maybe tomorrow the memory of her conversation with Darius would fade and she could start to think about herself in the ways in which she was accustomed.  But Ashley knew this would likely not happen, and she remained despondent.  Things would likely not be the same ever again.    

Thoughts on Stewardship and Sorge

Stewardship is about care, and Heidegger showed us that Sorge (care) is the way in which Dasein exists. To be Dasein is to be a creature, and Sorge is the sine qua non of Dasein. This seemingly puts Sorge squarely in the order of creation.

Since the care of Dasein is an existential-ontological state tied to temporality, our creaturely stewardship in time is seemingly grounded in the temporality of care, and Dasein's "running ahead" (Vorlaufen) to the possibility of there being no more possibilities for it (death).

But for the Christian, care of the other cannot be simply one ontic possibility among others grounded in something more fundamental, the condition of our possibilities. It is commanded, after all, and the otherness of the command is constitutive of the creature in a way that an ontology making possible mere ontic possibilities is not. The problem is that transcendental subjectivity finally makes the Other merely a pole within the subject. But it is precisely because stewardship is not a possibility for Dasein that entails that the ex-stasis of its acts must be grounded in the Other. What is more Other than the Cross? Where better to encounter la differance upon which human existence ultimately and uneasily rests?

Christian "existence" is ex-static, grounded not in that which makes the everyday possible, but in that which reveals this ground as ungrounded. Revelation can never be a move within transcendental subjectivity nor of the Being within which such subjectivity hides and finds itself. It is the knife that pierces the veil, the veil constituted in the ease of our temporal exstasis, the veil finally blotting out the orthogonal. It is as if moving right or left with dispatch and profundity could move one up or down even a bit.

What if we took seriously the Otherness of God, an inescapable otherness of which the face holds no trace? What if existence itself is constituted upon an Abyss not synonymous with a Ground? What if to talk of this is not to domesticate it, that is, it is not to find a place for it in the Temple of the transcendental subject? What if we have mis-identified the non-being at the heart of our dis-ease?

Limits in theology do not work like in mathematics. We cannot get close to the former as we do the latter. Think a limit that is infinitely qualitatively different than anything most proximate to it. And so we have an analogy to God and Being.

Theology and the Philosophy of Science: The Syntactic and Semantic Views

The Received View in the [hilosophy of science is the syntactic view.  Accordingly, scientific theory is construed as a set of sentences with the laws of the scientific theory being its axioms. By inputting initial conditions and conjoining these conditions to the laws (axioms) of the theory, one deduces future states of the system as theorems.  This is the theory's predictions. The syntactic conception of scientific theory is clearly in the tradition of Euclid, Aristotle, Newton, Carnap and the Logical Positivists. But as we pointed out in the last post, there are problems with the account. 

One problem is that the syntactic view presupposes the so-called analytic/synthetic distinction, that is, the distinction between what is true by definition versus what is true because of the way that the world is. The distinction is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant famously claimed that an analytical statement or proposition is true because the meaning of the predicate is included in the meaning of the subject.  A synthetic statement, on the other hand is ampliative in that the meaning of the predicate is not included in the meaning of the subject.  The first effectively decomposes the meaning of the subject, finding that what makes the subject true also makes the predicate true. The second amplifies the meaning of the subject; it asserts of the subject that something is true that is not included within the very meaning of the subject. 

While this semantic distinction in Kant must be distinguished from the epistemological distinction between what is known "prior to" experience (the a priori) and what is known "after" or on the basis of experience (the a posteriori), we often today simply identify the a priori with analytical judgments and the a posteriori with synthetic judgments.  For instance, "a bachelor is unmarried" is a true analytic statement because one cannot think of married bachelors, but "a bachelor is happy," if it is true, would be a true synthetic statement.  We would know the second on the basis of experience, e.g., surveys, personal observations, controlled experiments, etc. 

W. V. O. Quine famously criticized the analytic-synthetic distinction about seven decades ago, calling it one of the "dogmas" of empiricism.  He claimed that the analytic-synthetic distinction is not a matter of meaning over and against experience, that it is not a matter of the necessary truth of the former over and against the contingent truth of the latter. The distinction is not absolute at all, he avers, but it is merely a matter of degree, of what statements we will give up last.  In our "webs of belief," we hold onto some statements longer than others.  We might say, "water is H20" and "water is odorless," and dutifully subject each statement to our "tribunal of experience."  It is clear that confronted with experience, we would hold onto the truth that water is H20 much longer than water is odorless.  In fact, I can imagine some experience which would compel us to claim that water is not in fact odorless.  Of course, the latter statement could be "saved" from repudiation by declaring that it is not water itself that is not being odorless, but something in the water that is smelling foul.  

Problems with the analytic/synthetic distinction were a profound challenge for the syntactic view of scientific theory because the "bridge rules" of the theory coordinating the theoretical and observational terms were supposed to be a matter of meaning alone.  This theoretical term just means this observational term. In fact, the higher level terms and propositions of the theory could be in principle reduced to phenomenal experience. The classic text of this approach is Carnap's The Logical Construction of the World.  Clearly, if analyticity does not hold by meaning alone, then the very notion of bridge rules is undermined. 

There were, of course, other difficulties with the syntactic approach. It turned out that rigorous axiomatic laws were too cumbersome to be used by actual scientists. Also, because scientific theory was construed in terms of sentences, endless debates in the philosophy of language ensued.  Finally, there were Goedel problems.  As it turns out, no axiom set and system of proof within a theory could prove all of the sentences regarded as true within the theory. The result was the overturning of the syntactic view of scientific theory.  The new approach was called the semantic view of scientific theory.

Emerging in the 1970s and 80s, the semantic view of scientific theory generally identified theories with classes of models or model-types along with hypotheses of how these models relate to nature. A theory thus could thus be cast as a "class of fully articulated mathematical structure-types" using set-theoretical predicates.  (See Demetris Portides, "Scientific Models and the Semantic View of Scientific Theories" in Philosophy of Science, December 2005, pp. 1287-98.)  

Models are thus included in the the theory structure, and are themselves constructed on the basis of data within a context of experimental design and auxiliary theories.  On the semantic view model A is equivalent to Model B if and only if there is a correspondence of the elements and relations of A and B.  (Some advocates claims there must be an isomorphism, some a partial isomorphism and some merely a similarity.) 

Advocates of the semantic view claim that a physical system is represented by a class of model types. Semantic theorists generally hold that data alone does not falsify a theory, but that  data, design and auxiliary theory are important in the construction of data structures. These data structures must be sharply distinguished from the theoretical model, in that the latter is a construction out of the data structure.  But the question arises: What exactly is a data structure? 

It seems that the models in question can be either more abstract, e.g., mathematical structures, or more concrete, e.g., visual models of molecules. Proponents of the semantic view often claims a superiority over the syntactic conception in that scientific theory now is understood as actually focussing on the actual things that scientists treat within their theories.  Moreover, they claim that the semantic view allows that scientific theories can be clearly seen as not simply related to actual chunks of the world, but rather to mathematical objects as idealizations that are connectable to the world. Such idealizations, they claim, are the true objects of science. Accordingly, abstract mathematical structures come to be understood as that which the theory is about. Thus, semantic theories privilege mathematics -- especially "set-theoretical" entities -- over first-order predicate logic.

Rasmus Groenfeldt Winther's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes two general strategies within the semantic view generally.  The state-state approach focuses upon the mathematical models of actual science such that the scientific theory just is a class of mathematical models. Alternatively, the set-model theoretic approach emphasizes that the axioms, theorems and laws of a theory are satisfied, or made true by, certain mathematical structures or models of the theory.  The second approach is often deemed the more fruitful. 

I find Michael McEwan's 2006 article "The Semantic View of Theories: Models and Misconceptions," helpful in understanding what the semantic view is and is not.  McEwan points to the following slogan of the semantic view: A theory is a collection of models (1).  On what he calls the naive semantic view, the "is" here is the "is" of identity. Tarski famously connects models to semantic concepts through the notion of satisfaction.  He uses model-theoretic models in accomplishing this. A model-theoretic model is an interpretation which satisfies a class of statements by specifying a domain of individuals and defining the predicate symbols, relations and functions on this set of individuals.  Accordingly, a theory is a collection of model-theoretic models (2).  

On the model-theoretic model the theory is a set of sentences and the models are interpretations in which the set of sentences turn out to be true. A model-theoretic theory is true for a given model just in case the sentences are true on that model. The class of model-theoretic models make true the model-theoretic theory.  McEwan calls the identification of the model-theoretic theory with the class of its models a naive semantic view.  If, however, the class of models satisfies the sentences of the model-theoretic theory, McEwan no longer dubs this a simple naive semantic view.  He specifies the naive semantic view as having the following conditions (3).

•  It is identified with M, the class of model-theoretic models,
• The models in M are directly defined, 
• The naive-theory is true for model n just in case n is an element in M. 

One problem with the naive theory is that it is difficult to see how any of it touches the world.  As it turns out, no n need represent the world at all! Another problem is that since the theory itself is just the class of models, it is what it is only when each model is true. This means that no model really instances the theory, for the theory would not be that theory if it had other instances!  As McEwan points out, the question of whether the solar system instances Newtonian mechanics is not a non-trivial one, but on the naive theory, it would be true just in case we stipulate that it is so (5).  Simply put, if the naive theory were true, then one could not axiomatize in model-theoretic theory without knowing in advance which interpretations would satisfy the model-theoretic theory.  But we do not always know in advance which interpretations satisfy our theory; there are sometimes unintended models. (Consider the non-trivial question of whether a newly discovered solar system obeys Newtonian laws.) Thus, by modus tollens, naive theory is not true.  McEwan puts the matter bluntly: "There is nothing above and beyond the models themselves to decide whether a theory is applicable to some model or not" (7). 

Fortunately, the semantic view is not identified with the naive theory.  Indeed, the semantic view realizes that the models of M must represent the world in some way.  Clearly, realists and many empiricists would want this to be so. Why not then simply identify n with a physical model?  But how can a physical system be an interpretation of a formal language?  This seems to have the matter backward.  

As it turns out, semantic views are plagued by the representation problem. Consider the claim that one of the models of M (say n) is the faithful representation of the physical world. But on what basis is n the representation? If the theory is the class of models, one of which is the real world, then why identify the theory with the class of models in the first place (8)?

It seems that the semantic view must somehow deal with the representation problem.  However, Bas von Fraasen a theory's models is identified with a class of structures.  He writes: 

The syntactic picture of a theory identifies it with a body of theorems, stated in one particular language chosen for the expression of that theory.  This should be contrasted with the alternative of presenting a theory in the first instance by identifying a class of structures as its models.  In this second, semantic, approach the language used to express the theory is neither basic nor unique; the same class of structures could well be described in radically different ways, each with its own limitations.  The models occupy center stage.  

So what of these model that occupy center stage? What becomes of realism on the semantic view?  If the models are mathematical structures, then are the objects in these models "real enough" for one to claim that one's scientific theory is true of the real world?  Is the wave function a mathematical object and thus real in the sense that a scientific realist wants?  What would distinguish a real physical object from other pretenders?  What about unobservables -- are they real?  What would distinguish an unobservable mathematical object from an on observable "real" one?  The representation problem is clearly a problem for realism. 

While one might claim that the semantic view is the new "received view" in the philosophy of science, there are very strong voices that have emerged which have pointed to the "extra-scientific" or "extra-rational" factors at work in science, factors that seem as almost as deadly to the semantic view as they are to the syntactic view. We shall attend to these in the next post. 

Reflecting Judgments and another Kind of Metaphysics

I. Kantian Background

It is well known that Kant rejected traditional metaphysics, claiming that such metaphysics attempts to know that which "lies beyond the bounds of possible experience." Kant held that metaphysics' grand cognitive failure is due ultimately to the particular constitution of the human understanding.  

We are constituted epistemically by possessing two quite different elements, one spontaneous and one receptive. We have the spontaneous ability to work the world up conceptually. Such conceptual thinking constitutes the form by which anything is known.  When we think we are active in our thinking; we attempt to know by grasping and shaping that which we know.  

But knowing the world does not consist merely in an active, spontaneous, formal grasping of what is known.  There is something, after all, that must be present to be grasped and shaped.  Kant argues persuasively that this content to be shaped is received, i.e, it is an intuition, something given by outer sense, something that is not itself the result of our grasping and shaping. Of course, the matter is a bit more difficult than this. That which is given by outer sense is not the Ding an sich, the thing-in-itself, but is rather an appearance of that thing.  

I believe that the best way to interpret Kant here is by claiming that it is the same thing that is in itself and that appears to us. What appears is not what the thing is in itself, but rather what the thing in itself is for our intuitional capabilities.`The thing in itself as given to us is always patio-temporally formed by the pure forms of sensibility, that is the pure intuitions of space and time.  While we actively organize that which is by the forms of space and time, the entire spatio-temporal formed content is nonetheless received as an appearance of the supersensible thing-in-itself. 

When we are knowing the empirical world rightly, the pure concepts of the understanding are spontaneously applied to the manifold of intuitions, and we have from this the reality of empirical experience as such. Such experience is already given as knowledge with quantity, quality, relation, and modality built into it, as it were.  Most importantly, our empirical experience is always one where there are things that can change while remaining themselves (substances), and things that change because other things have changed (causality). Knowledge of the natural world is thus always mechanistic.  Because we organize the world according to the universal law of causality -- for every event x, there must be some y such that y causes x -- all natural events have some causal explanation such that there are necessary and sufficient conditions why those events happened.  

Our cognition of the natural world is discursive. Intuitions are received and actively organized by concepts. An object is thus that by concept of which the manifold of intuition is united.  Without intuitions, our concepts would be empty, and without concepts, our intuitions would be blind.  When we know anything we begin with the concept (a universal) and subsume intuitions (the particulars) underneath it.  While space "falls within" space and time "falls within time:, particulars "fall under" concepts.  Our judgments of the world are determinative, that is, when we judge something to be the case, we must actively engage in a synthesis, bringing particular percepts under universal concepts according to rules.  These rules actively constitute objects.  

We hear a sound, see a shape, feel a presence, and are confronted with an odor.  The sound, shape, tactile sensation, and odor are synthesized immediately into an experience of a dog.  The dog exists by perduring through time, taking on other qualities without relinquishing its individuality, its being that particular dog, a dog called 'Spot'.  We don't simply know the dog as a particular immediately, it is rather mediately given through application of concept to percept. Since we have no immediate access to the thing-in-itself, we cannot immediately intuit individuals. Such individuality is the result of synthesis and constitution.  

This is very bad news for traditional metaphysics. Such metaphysics had attempted to unhinge the conceptual apparatus of the understanding from its connectedness to intuitions, and allow it to operate purely formally, hoping, as it were, that by formal reflection using the law of non-contradiction, one might be able to fill in the content of the supersensible world.  Kant devotes half of the Critique of Pure Reason to showing that metaphysics falls prey to a transcendental illusion or subreption when it is tempted to think that what is necessary for thinking also displays the contour of reality itself. The problem is that the activity and spontaneity of the formal conceptual is no longer being applied to the passivity and receptivity of intuitional content.  

So it is that metaphysics, once the queen of the sciences, has fallen on hard times. Indeed, Kant believes that when the form of thinking is disconnected from the content to be thought, metaphysics ends in paralogisms and antinomies. Reason now unfettered from intuition can both prove that there is a first cause of the world and not a first cause of the world; it can prove that there is contra-causal freedom and there is no such freedom. Reason, in searching for the unconditioned, still dreams that it can make use of determinative judgment, that it can find in its grasping and shaping that which is ultimately the case.  

But it is a fool's mission. Traditional metaphysics cannot know what is ultimately the case because the very condition for knowledge is that the manifold of intuition must be synthesized according to the rules implicit in the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding. Since this epistemic condition is not met by traditional metaphysics, metaphysics, no matter how sophisticated, can merely spin its castles in the sky.  It cannot know. 

Kant believed, however, that this state of affairs is not the end of the discussion, but merely the beginning. The self-legislation of the understanding which produces nature is at most only half of what is relevant to human beings. Human beings are, unfortunately, naturally metaphysical. We are concerned always with three focal notions: God, freedom and immortality.  If self-legislated nature was all there is, then there could be no God, freedom or immortality. In fact, the entire life of Decartes' res cogitans ("thinking thing") would simply be cut off, cast off, and ignored, as if the experience of the res cogitans were merely an illusion or mistake.  We would be a natural object among natural objects, and like other natural objects caused to be. We would be determined in the contour of our being as other natural objects are determined in the contour of their being. The natural metaphysical inclinations of humanity would need thus to be regarded as the leftovers of human childhood; they are an infantile wish. While we might yet long for God, freedom, and immortality, the world would not be the kind of place that could deliver these things. 

But, of course, the story cannot be that simple.  Kant, after all, is engaged in transcendental reflection, that is, he is looking for the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience as such, and such a looking seems quite disconsonant with there being no res cogitans at all.  

Had not Kant determined that a transcendental unity of apperception was needed to have a stable and consistent synthesizing of the manifold of sensation?  While this transcendental unity cannot be known to be a metaphysical res cogitans, that is, a metaphysical substantial transcendental ego, it is also not the kind of thing that is the result of the application of concepts to spatio-temporal particulars. The existence of the transcendental unity of apperception, and the possibility of transcendental reflection in general seems to cry out for a more comprehensive view of things. After all, if we are the authors of nature through application of the categories onto things, if empirical reality is the result of our self-legislation, then how can we simply halt our curiosity and say that nature is all there is? If it is we who make nature what it is, how can we ignore ourselves, the makers of nature? 

Thus, it is incumbent on Kant to search further to clarify and understand transcendentally what this transcendental subject is. Clearly, this subject is not the empirical subject of psychology, subject, as it were, to all of the psychological laws of conditioning. While psychology might find the psychological self to be determined, this determinism does not properly extend to the transcendental subject that can inquire into the conditions of the very possibility of the empirical psychological self being determined. When one reflects upon the project of transcendental reflection seriously, one realizes that the entire project presupposes something like judgment as it was conceived by Descartes. That great 17th century philosopher thought it a necessary condition to judge rightly or wrongly that one were free to judge. One must accumulate evidence as to why x might be the case or y might hold and on the basis of that evidence judge that x exists or y does. But how is that activity possible without freedom?  

Kant is concerned with the giving of evidence in his transcendental reflections. Such evidence-giving is what the transcendental deductions are all about. To provide a deduction in Prussian court of law is to give a valid  argument and evidence of title. Kant is interested in providing transcendental deductions that show that understanding is entitled to its claims that it does know the empirical world. As Newton thought, but Hume denied, we can have both universal and necessary knowledge of the empirical order. But this giving of transcendental evidence cannot be the result of the mechanism of nature, because the mechanism of nature only holds on the ground of proper application of transcendental reflection, a reflection that shows that human beings are entitled to claim that the can know nature objectively, in terms of both universalizability and necessity. 

But what else do we know about this transcendental subject? Is it merely a knower of the empirical order, or is it engaged in other matters? For Kant, the answer is quite obvious. Human being do not make merely empirical judgments about nature, but the make moral judgments about what ought to be done, and aesthetic judgments about what is beautiful. They make both moral judgments and judgments of taste. 

As it turns out, reason is not completely sidelined by its failure to use determining judgments in carving the beast of ultimate reality at its joints. Reason has other work to do rather than merely to know.  It must do as well. But what ought it to do? No amount of empirical knowledge of nature's is can ever help us determine what we ought to do. One cannot derive an ought from and is, after all. If the ought is to be understood, it won't be understood along the lines of nature, where concepts must synthesize the manifold of sensation into an experience of the world in which the universal law of causality holds. If we are to understand anything about the ought, we need to do it with reason, for such reason need not be mechanical in the way of the understanding. This is the reason that heeds reason!  But Kant had just argued that pure reason is not suited to mime the contour of the supersensible world. So what remains? 

Kant believes we do, in fact, employ reason practically rather than purely in dealing with moral questions. Given that we desire to do x, ought it be the case that we do, in fact, do x? In order to know what to do, we must consult moral law. Acting morally is acting due to this moral law. This acting presupposes freedom which is the condition for the possibility that consulting the moral law can determine the will. This determination of the will constitutes a desire to do x rather than y. Practical reason determines action by consulting the moral law on the basis of freedom. It thus constitutes a noumenal access to the supersensible, an access that allows for the very determination of the supersensible.  

Through the transcendental unity of apperception, the autonomous transcendental subject legislates law into and onto the empirical order. While the supersensible ground of this legislation, the realm of the thing-in-itself, remains indeterminate with respect to this legislation, with respect to the moral sphere, the supersensible becomes determinate. The autonomous transcendental subject through practical reason also self-legislates, this time it legislates the moral law in accordance with the categorical imperative, and accordingly acts due to that moral law alone. This autonomous subject is free to do x or y because such freedom is presupposed by the experience of ought itself.  

So at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, we find Kant in a situation not wholly unlike that of Descartes. Descartes had left us with two disparate domains: one a realm of natural objects governed by mechanical natural law (the res extend), and the other a domain of the thinking subject free to think or do other than what one had thunk or done. This substance dualism of the mechanical deterministic alongside the purposeful and free could not, however, be conceived in such a way as to allow linkage between the two.  Descartes' dualistic causal interactionism seemingly depends upon a connection between the disparate, a connection that, on the grounds of dualism itself, would either need to be a corporeal or a non-corporeal connection. But if either of these, then would there not need to be another connection connecting these?  

Kant had two different self-legislations, one issuing in a domain of determinism and the other one of freedom. His linking of the two has more options than Descartes because while the latter was thinking that he had mined reality, Kant knew that the empirical world is just one of appearance. In his Third Antinomy in the First Critique Kant solves the problem of freedom and determinism simply by pointing that we are transcendentally free even though we are phenomenally determined. While the concept of the supersensible underlying nature is wholly indeterminate, we can nonetheless understand that the supersensible underlying our moral order is determinate in its freedom and it acts out of duty to the moral law.  

But there is a big problem for Kant. How is it possible that a human being that is corporeal and subject to determinism as a natural object, is nonetheless free to have done other than it might have done by choosing to do act x rather than act y because doing act x is acting due to the moral law? How is the kingdom of ends possible, the corporeally-instantiated association of moral agents having dignity on the basis of their freedom. Does this not seem like the ghost of Descartes has returned? The linkage between the autonomous moral agent and the natural product instantiating it must be an identity, but that leaves open the question of the properties that agent has.  Is she really free to do other than what she did do, or is she determined after all?  Saying that determination is merely an appearance and she really is free, means that much of nature will be erroneously said to be determined when it is not. After all, there are nearly 8 billion agents comprising the kingdom of ends, and that number is rising quickly. How can all of these have freedom, but nature in general not? So Kant believes he needs to provide some unity between the results of the two Critiques. 

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant is concerned with judgments of the agreeable, judgments of taste, judgments of the good, judgments of the sublime and teleological judgments. He clarifies considerably his notion of judgment in this critique, distinguishing between determining judgments (bestimmende Urteile) and reflecting judgments (rerflectierende Urteile).  The first cover the type of constitutive judgments Kant had assumed in both Critiques. In a determining judgment, the universal subsumes the particular under it.  In so doing, nature can be thought as being comprised of substantial natural objects which are instances of kinds and related to each other causally. Through such judgments we can think of a world of parts determining one another such as to constitute a whole. 

But a reflecting judgment is not constitutive.  It is rather like being regulative in the way that Kant spoke about this in the Transcendental Dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason.  Reason goes astray when it thinks its judgments have content.  Formally they move from the conditioned to the unconditioned ground of the conditioned, but they cannot establish causality, because the causal connection is a denizen of the empirical order. They can regulate how we think, but cannot fill in the content of what is to be thought. For that we need intuition. A reflecting judgment does not constitute by bringing particulars under universal, but regulates by thinking universals on the basis of given particulars. 

Reflecting judgments start with the given particular, and are free to discover universals that might apply to those particulars. In aesthetic judgments, beauty is ascribed on the basis of the presentation of particulars.  While Kant is sure to claim that beauty is not a property of the thing, it is nonetheless universally and necessarily ascribed on the basis of particular presentations that involve a proper stimulation of the imagination in its interconnectedness with the understanding, an interconnectedness producing a feeling of pleasure. Beautiful objects are thus experienced as purposive although they have no purpose. The purposiveness of the thing is merely formal, depending as it does on the particular interplay of the imagination and understanding, one in which the understanding is stimulated as thinking the parts of the presentation as a function of the whole. It is as if the beautiful object had a final cause determining its parts in accordance with its end. 

What is particularly interesting about reflecting judgments is how they can be used teleologically, and how they might be applied in a more thoroughgoing way. Used teleologically, the judgments allow us to grasp in a more comprehensive form certain empirical processes and laws, particularly of a biological nature.  

It does seem, after all, as if there are processes whose best explanation makes use of functional or purposeful explanations. What is the best way to explain the bird's behavior under the gutter on the house? The bird can be seen flying to and fro with small pieces of straw or little twigs or blades of grass in its beak. To offer an explanation of this flying and selecting of appropriate twigs with which to fly without mentioning that the bird is building a nest is very difficult. Imagine giving an explanation of this behavior by appealing only to mircophysical particles and the relevant laws of nature governing them.  

Kant lived at a time where there was no scientific explanation for how life, no matter how primitive, could arise from inanimate, material conditions. There simply was no way to account for the behavior of purposive beings by appealing to mechanistic laws. I think, however, that while trying to understand nature in Kant's time without appealing to teleological explanations would have been impossible, it is still quite difficult for us today.  

Imagine the bird in the process of building a nest. Let us call the bird and its beak, twigs and flying a supervening level of description with its appropriate ontology. There are birds, and nests, and twigs, etc.  Let us in faithfulness to reductionism claim that there is an ultimate subvenient base such that two molecule-by-molecule replicas at the subvenient level would result in the same state of affairs at the supervening level of the bird. Will will not be type reductionists here but only token reductionists or more fashionably, non-reductive physicalists. We shall claim that for each and every event at the supervenient level there is some state of affairs at the subvenient level such that we can draw a function from the subvenient to the supervenient.  

So does the subvenient level explain the supervening level?  Clearly, the answer is "No, it does not." The subvenient level metaphysically realizes the supervenient level but does not explain it -- at least not yet. So what is the explanation for the bird flying the twigs to a spot under my gutter? One might say now that the best explanation is simply that the bird is behaving as it does because it wants to bring about the building of its nest. But is such an explanation in terms of purpose the same as that of Kant? 

Kant would probably say that there is some slight of hand here. One would need to specify the explanation of why the higher level would supervene upon the lower.  Clearly, it is the case that the bird exerts purposive behavior and that behavior is realized physically, and that the bird thus makes use of fundamental particles and laws in its behaving. But one cannot simply leave it at that, assert an asymmetrical dependency relation and claim that the subvenient ultimately determines the supervenient. That is to smuggle what Kant would call the mechanistic explanation in the back door without explaining how it might actually be that apparent purpose arises from an underlying mechanism.  

My point here is that it is really quite unclear that if Kant were here he would change his mind on the need for real teleological explanations in nature. He might say that his position on teleological explanation was that he used such explanations when mechanistic ones were inadequate. Recalling #77 and #78 in the Critique of Judgment he might say, "I can imagine a being other than I or you who might have different cognitive equipment and might thus be able to understand particulars immediately, not as worked up through concepts. Such a being could perhaps see that there is some deeper mechanism that we will never be able to grasp because of the constitution of our epistemic equipment. Although this fact should be faced squarely, we should in our cognitive lives simply use teleological explanations in nature and afford them truth-conditions and ontological status, for we do not have such intellectual intuition." 

While Kant knows that reflecting teleological judgments likely give the best explanation for natural processes as they were understood in his day, it seems that he wants more out of reflecting judgment. He is searching in his reflecting judgments for both simplicity and unity. He discusses his architectonic task in the Critique of Pure Reason and other places. He is clearly interested in a vision of the world that might fit our natural metaphysical aspirations, a world where God, immortality and freedom are present; a world which is unified and coherent.  He wants to use reflecting judgment to unify his critical philosophy. Kant knows that this unification will not come from the bottom-up as the more basic stuff in the universe determine determine what is at the top.  Instead this must be top-down vision of the world, one where the synthetic universal at the level of the Idea can take us what is disparate and disunited and place it into a unity.

Kant has a story about how this might happen, but it is not deeply worked out. Below I provide the beginning of my own story. 

II. Another Kind of Metaphysics

I think Kant was on the right path in his treatment of reflecting judgment in the Critique of Judgment. Such judgments are a matter of taste and they are made on the basis of intellectual pleasure, that is, they concern beauty.  Kant knew that we had no way of knowing the ultimate metaphysical contour of reality, but he did not simply ignore the problem of the human inclination to do metaphysics.  After all, we are by our very nature interested in the questions of God, immortality and freedom. 

So let's think about doing another kind of metaphysics. Let's think of metaphysics in terms of looking about for some universal that we might be able to apply to given particulars. I am not thinking merely about the particulars of empirical objects or special science specific laws, but all of the facets of existence that are given to us, and which appear prima facie disparate.  We might think of this as a metaphysical theory, but we are not looking at either traditional explanation or prediction from our theory.  We look rather for something more akin to an artistic vision which might both apply to and be adequate to the most abstract features of concrete experience as such. These most abstract features would be the theory's particulars. Our goal is simply to think reality coherently and consistently.  

Let us call M a metaphysical vision, schema or understanding of things which is internally consistent, coherent and parsimonious, and applies to, and is adequately to all of our experience. M would be concerned with unity and would seek an understanding of the parts such that the the human inclination to search for metaphysical knowledge of God, freedom and immortality counts as much in the vision as successful mechanistic scientific explanation. Instead of playing down moral and aesthetic experience, M would seek regulatively to balance that experience alongside of empirical experience. Instead of denigrating certain subjects as not being truth-apt and thus noncognitive, M would assume that there is a way to unify the more truth-apt and the less truth-apt disciplines. The various disciplines in which humans engage, and the natural, social and cultural aspects of human life would all be the data of M.  

Clearly, there are many ways to cast M, but this is to be expected. If constructing M is done correctly, there are likely few disconfirming instances of it. If we are dealing with the most abstract features of concrete experience, and these features are exemplifications of M, then M is necessary. That is not to mean, that holding M as a vision of the world is necessary, only that M exists as a schema that has no disconfirmations given the present state of our empirical knowledge. 

What would be the use of having M? It would give us a way of seeing things that would involve the interplay of imagination and understanding as Kant thought, a way of seeing things that would produce in us a feeling of intellectual pleasure. The reflecting judgment that produces M realizes that there can be many Ms, both synchronically and diachronically. More than one object can be beautiful, after all.  However, M will make the demand of the aesthetic ought on all those capable of understanding.  

If we honestly engage in the reflecting project of providing M, we would, I think, find ourselves doing systematically what we are doing confusedly today. After all, something like a reflecting judgment is at work when we learn a little physics, a little literary theory, get a dash of German social theory, learn something from the news, reflect on the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, watch a crisis in Africa, think about global CO2 levels, and listen to jazz. We are always engaged in unifying our experience, even if the unification produces a view of thing that is chaotic, dissonant, and ultimately pessimistic, a view that downgrades the natural inclinations in us for the ideal and assigns the motives of moral decision-making to psychological egoism, or maybe to a privileged class or race consciousness. Not only individually, but as a culture, we are engaged in unifying experience by suppressing some features of it and highlighting others. What might be the result if we could step back and in an act of critical distantiation see the various features and elements of experience for what they are, and then seek to appropriate what we see in the building of an M that would grant us a view of things that would meet the standards of taste?   

Clearly, very few people would do this, and many would wonder why they should attempt it. But for some the intellectual satisfaction involved with conceiving a world that is consistent, coherent, simple, unified, and applicable and adequate to our deepest yearnings of the human heart might be worth the effort in casting it.  Why would one who could think M not ascribe beauty to it? If we find beauty in the fine arts and music, why could we not find it in a metaphysic that could deliver a view of things that made sense to us? 

This metaphysics is not theology, of course, but it would be concerned with some of that with which theology deals. It would take seriously the wonder of existence itself, and the tragedy of human dwelling in time. It would not abstract away from the questions of guilt, sin, and death, and our desire to find security in the great ideas of God, freedom and immortality. M cannot, of course, fail to deal with God, whose appearance in M ultimately motivates the very project of the casting of M. God appears in M formally as the ultimate theoretical entity for reflecting judgment. It is that which finally makes M coherent; it gives M the very possibility that the parts of M can mutually presuppose themselves.  God is thus at the depth of being; God is the sine qua non for the possibility that M can be cast in a way that cannot be disconfirmed by particular concrete experience.  

The God of M is not, of course, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Reflection cannot, I think, get us to the Trinity or to the Incarnation.  However, neither is the God of M the "God of the philosophers." M does not seek to cast about for a determining metaphysics for natural theology, but simply opens a path for a reflecting metaphysics of a theology of nature. Christian symbols can be exhibitions of M, I think, but other religious symbol systems are possible too.  

If Kant is correct about our cognitive powers, our powers of determining judgments, we can no more grasp the nature of the supersensible than Luther could find the hidden God. The supersensible is essentially mysterious, showing us any determinacy only in moral judgment.  However, reflecting judgment does perhaps make the supersensible determinable, and maybe that is enough for us yearning for beauty in our brief sojourn within the fields of time. 

On Pluhar's Solution to Certain Problems of Uniting the Three Kantian Critiques: Part III

 III

Kant presupposes that both aesthetic and teleological judgments are legitimately made by reasonable men and women, and he is motivated to write the Critique of Judgment in part to justify these judgments. His claim that reflecting judgment (reflectierend Urteil) can mediate between understanding and reason is prefigured by two other mediations, one in the Critique of Pure Reason and the other in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the former, the schema mediates between the pure concepts of the understanding and the imagination and intuition. In the latter, the typus mediates between the moral law of reason and the understanding. 

In the Third Critique, Kant identifies feeling as that which mediates between the cognitive power of the understanding and the power of desire of pure practical reason. Feeling mediates by connecting pleasure with nature. It links the lower will as determined by sense and the higher will as determined by the moral law. While understanding legislates in the domain of nature and reason legislates in the domain of freedom, reflecting judgments -- legislating with respect to pleasure and displeasure -- link these two legislations.  

For Kant, the feeling of pleasure undergirds the universal subjective validity of judgments of taste. This feeling is not directed to something in particular. Instead, as Pluhar writes, it is directed toward the conditions of empirical judgment in general, i.e., to the "harmony of imagination and understanding," to conditions "presupposed to be the same for everyone" (Pluhar, Lxxxviii).  The power of judgment "with its indeterminate concept of nature's subjective purposiveness" governs or legislates to feeling" (CJ, lxxxvii).  Simply put, the power of judgment governs feeling through its employment of an indeterminate concept of the subjective purposiveness of nature.  

Pluhar, in his Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, points out that for Kant, the systematicity of the mental powers -- for instance, judgment mediating between understanding and reason -- mirrors the systematicity of the "worlds with which these mental powers deal" (Pluhar, Lxxxvii).  

Clearly, Kant supposes there are three levels of consideration in each Critique: the level of the supersensible, the realm of appearances, and the powers which legislate the realms. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the supersensible is indeterminate, application of the understanding produces lawfulness giving empirical nature, and the result is cognition.  In the Critique of Practical Reason, the supersensible is practically determined, reason uses final purpose producing freedom, and the result is the specification of the power of desire. In the Critique of Judgment, the supersensible is practically determinable, judgment employs purposiveness with respect to art, and the result is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure (CJ., 38). 

Kant seeks to give accounts of the mediation between understanding and reason at multiple levels. Since his account of aesthetic and teleological judgment involve the supersensible, he must give an account of how the supersensible in judgment, relates to the supersensibles of understanding and reason. Pluhar explains: 

Now understanding and the (theoretical) cognitive power deal with the "world" of appearance as it is but tell us nothing about the "world" underlying it, the supersensible "world" in itself, except that it is logically possible. Reason and the (higher) power of desire deal with the "world" of appearance as it ought to be and also tell us about the supersensible conditions of making it so: supersensible freedom, immortality of the soul, and God. As Kant sees it, he has not (fully) justified his claims about the supersensible, and the three Critiques cannot form a system (and thus be scientific), unless not only the mental powers but also those "worlds," especially as there are in themselves, are show to form a system.  That is why it is especially important for Kant to show not only that the power of judgment, just like understanding and reason, also points to a supersensible, viz., the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness, but also that this supersensbile mediates between the other "two" supersensibles and thus unites the "three" supersensibles in one (Pluhar, lxxxviii).  

While what Pluhar is trying to say may be clear enough, his way of expressing it could cause confusion.  Talk of "one," "two," or "three" supersensibles seems to presuppose there would be some way to individuate supersensibles, but what could this be? Just as regions of space "fall within" other regions, it would seem that supersensibles would do the same. Clearly, other than freedom, immortality and God, there are no discernible supersensible objects that might be classed into different sets. Only these three supersensible beings, the result of reason's practical postulates, give any determinacy to the supersensible. Pluhar is simply pointing out that the indeterminate supersensible underlying nature and its laws, the determinate supersensible underlying morality and its laws, and the determinable supersensible underlying beauty and its laws are one and the same. They together just are the supersensible. 

Pluhar believes that the key to successfully mediating the supersensibles of the understanding and reason is the "supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness." What, however, warrants talk about this latter supersensible basis? The First Problem to which Pluhar attends is this: Given that the three supersensible must be united, on what basis does this unification happen? The solution, he thinks, is Kant's identification of "judgment's indeterminate concept of nature's subjective purposiveess and the indeterminate concept of the supersensible basis of that same purposiveness" (Pluhar, lxxxviii).  Specification of the solution involves solving the problem of the conflict in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment. 

Problem I: Solving the Conflict in the Antimony of Teleological Judgment 

There is an apparent conflict in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment between these two maxims: 

• All material objects and their forms must be judged as possible only in terms of mechanical laws.
• Some material objects cannot be judged possible merely on the basis of mechanical laws, but require laws appealing to the category of final cause. 

Is this conflict one of judgment between the necessity of mechanism and the contingency of purposiveness? Are we then only dealing with two kinds of regulative principles, the first which thinks X rationally in accordance with deterministic efficient causality, and the second construing X rationally in accordance with teleological final causality?  

After citing in an extended footnote Kant scholars who do understand the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment in terms of two different rational regulative principles, Pluhar assures us that Kant is not reneging on the results he established in the First Critique: "The universal laws of nature -- in particular, the principle of necessary efficient (mechanical) causality -- are legislated to nature by our understanding and hence are constitutive and determinative, not regulative" (Pluhar, xc).  The Antinomies are not merely a matter of two regulative uses of reason, but rather they point to the need to buttress mechanical explanations by appeal to another principle. The mechanism of the First Critique is insufficient for judging the totality of natural objects and natural law.  

Pluhar argues that Kant wants to reconcile mechanical and teleological explanation objectively (AK, 413).  In order to do this, the "necessity" of mechanical explanation cannot be an all-encompassing necessity, and the "contingency" of teleological explanation an all-encompassing contingency. But how is this possible? It is possible if we are not dealing with concepts here, but with the things themselves.  Pluhar explains: 

Kant says "objectively," rather than "determinatively," because for the same object or the same causal connection to be determined as both necessary and contingent would imply that they in fact are both necessary and contingent, which would indeed by contradictory and hence would not be possible (Pluhar, xci, fn. 94). 

Pluhar believes that Kant's appeal to objectivity requires an appeal to the supersensible itself.  He writes: 

Kant solves the antinomy between the necessary mechanism and the contingent teleological principle as he solves all his antinomies: by invoking the supersensible. . . Our understanding, Kant argues, has the peculiarity of being discursive, conceptual; and all concepts abstract (to some extent) from the particular: hence our understanding does not determine (legislate) the particular, but determines only the universal leaving the particular contingent.  As for our a priori intuitions, they too cannot determine all the particular that understanding leaves contingent (Pluhar, xci).

In order for the "maxims" of mechanistic and teleological judgment to be applied consistently to material objects, there must be some basis in the supersensible that would allow this. This basis in the supersensible concerns particulars. The particularity of biological organisms can neither be thought conceptually through application of the pure concepts of the understanding nor can such organisms be constituted out of intuitions conforming to the pure a priori forms of sensibility: space and time. So what is their basis? 

Pluhar believes that Kant here makes an appeal to intellectual intuition. 

[Implied is] the idea of a possible different understanding, an understanding that is not discursive (i.e., does not omit the particular in its legislation) but is intuitive. Such an understanding would legislate a "synthetic" universal, i.e., a undersell in the sense of a whole that includes determination of the particular in that whole.  An intuitive understanding would thus be an understanding that simply determines, and hence would be an understating "in the most general sense," for, while any understanding requires intuition (to supply the particular needed for cognition), we are not entitled to assume that any understanding must have, as ours does, an intuition which is separate from it and through which the particular is merely given (empirically) rather than legislated along with the universal. . . Such an understanding's intuition would thus not be a mere receptivity (which is passive), and hence not a sensibility as our own intuition is, but would be an intellectual intuition, a complete spontaneity (i.e., it would be completely active): it would determine objects completely (Pluhar, xcii). 

This type of intuition would not need sensible intuition and imagination for cognition, but "would determine objects in terms of the harmony within this understanding itself" (Pluhar, xcii).  Since intellectual intuition would not require that the particular be provide outside of or to the understanding, the particular could be present along with the universal. If this were the case, however, objects would be constituted as "complete, as things in themselves, no as mere appearances" (Pluhar, xcii).  What is the significance of this? 

If one grants intellectual intuition, then things in themselves would have a particularity in themselves.  Pluhar explains: 

Nature in itself would simply be the intellectual (supersensible) intuition of the intuitive understanding, just as our world of experience simply is the experience that consists of our empirical intuition as structured in harmony with our categories (Pluhar, xcii).  

Has Kant found God theoretically according to Pluhar?  Not quite: 

By the same token, such a supersensible understanding with its supersensible intuitions cannot be called God; rather, the idea of it is utterly inderminate, negative, the mere idea of an understanding that "is not discursive."

 But what Pluhar has found, he believes is enough to solve the antinomy of teleology judgment.  

With this mere idea of an "intuitive understanding," Kant can now solve the antinomy of teleological judgment.  As an intuitive understanding would necessitate even the particular, the mere idea of such an understanding permits us to think of the "contingency" of the particular as being only a seeming contingency, a "contingency for" our understanding with its peculiarity, but as in fact being a necessity.  A merely seeming contingency that is in fact a necessity does not conflict with the necessity implicit in mechanism. Hence "objectively too" it is at least possible to reconcile the mechanistic principle with the teleological, for it is at least possible that the causal connections that we have to judge in terms of purposes and hence as contingent are in fact legislated theoretically and are therefore necessary. The laws covering those necessary but yet particular causal connections would then either have the same basis as mechanism (viz., the intellectual intuition of that intuitive understating) or would perhaps even be identical with the mechanism familiar to us -- identical in the sense of forming part, along with the mechanism familiar to us, of some ideal mechanism, in which case even organisms would be possible on this (ideal) mechanism alone (Pluhar, xciii). 

The solution that Pluhar finds in Kant is that there may be mechanism within the supersensible, one to which human beings have no epistemic access, a mechanism that a "higher understanding" might nonetheless access and legislate. The antinomy of teleological judgment is thus solved because it is possible that a being with intellectual intuition could have access to this mechanism, a mechanism which objectively would allow for our judgments of purposiveness. There is some state of supersensible affairs on the basis of which the thesis and antithesis of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment can both be asserted without contradiction. That is to say, both assertions are consistent with the supersensible, "objective" existence of such an "ideal mechanism" which would allow for purpose as it appears to us. Pluhar claims that this supersensible state of affairs would allow for both objective and subjective purposiveness. 

. . . the antinomy of "teleological" judgment and its solution apply just as much to the subjective purposiveness of nature which is claimed in the principle of reflective judgment itself, for this purposiveness too is clearly contingent in terms of mechanism and yet is a purposiveness of nature and as such is subject to nature's necessity.  Hence it too can be thought without contradiction only if we think of the "contingency" it implies as in fact being a necessity legislated by an intuitive understanding with its intellectual intuition (Pluhar, xciii). 

Prima facie, this seems consistent with this famous passage from Kant:

Since universal natural laws have their basis in our understanding . . . the particular empirical laws must . . be viewed in terms of such a unity as [they would have] if they too had been given by an understanding (even though not ours) so as to assist our cognitive powers . . ." (Ak, 180, 181, 184).  

Because the "solution" to the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment applies both to objective and subjective purposiveness of nature, it applies "to nature's subject purposiveness as judge aesthetically, i.e., to nature's purposiveness without a purpose" (Pluhar, xciv).  Since this purposiveness has both contingency and necessity, it can "be thought without contradiction only if we have recourse to the idea of a supersensible intuition as necessitating the particular" (Ibid.). It is on this basis that Kant can claim that the antinomy of aesthetic judgment and the antinomy of teleological judgment are merely manifestations of one antinomy.  

We are now in a position to understand Pluhar's statement of the "solution" to Problem I concerning the unity of the supersensible.  Pluhar writes: 

Nature's subjective purposiveness is the indeterminate form (or "lawfulness," i.e., regularity or order) that nature has in the particular; and the indeterminate concept of this purposiveness is the indeterminate concept of that form of the particular. But this concept is contradictory (because of the antinomy) unless we think of this purposive form as necessitated (a priori) by an intellectual intuition.  Moreover, just as our a priori concepts and intuitions are the forms that we give to all objects of appearance, so the purposive form that would be necessitated by this intellectual intuition would simply be that intuition. . . Hence, according to our indeterminate concept of this supersensible intuition, the world in itself would be the completely determinate form which that intellectual intuition is (Pluhar, xcv). 

Pluhar further speculates in a footnote that the "purposive form of nature's particular might be only part of the form that the intellectual intuition is." It may be that the intuitive understanding legislates through the same intuition "in terms of the mechanism familiar to us, or in terms of laws pertaining to both the purposive and the mechanistic forms in nature, in nature outside and within us" (Pluhar, xcv, fn 99). Pluhar claims that if the purposive form of nature's particulars were but part of the form of the intellectual intuition, it would "still be necessitated by, and hence would still be based on and (in that part) be, that intellectual intuition" (Ibid.).  

Pluhar is thus arguing that the notion of an intellectual intuition, long held by the majority of Kant scholars as something that the philosopher robustly dismisses, does play an important role in Kant's philosophy after all.  As it turns out, "in order to think of nature's subjective purposiveness without contradicting ourselves we must think of this form as being identical with the form that such an intellectual intuition would be" (Ibid.).  Because the intellectual intuition can be thought of as the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness, the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness is equivalent to the concept of the supersensible basis of that purposiveness. Pluhar wants to clarify: While the concepts are not synonymous, they have the same extension in that the forms to which they refer are identical.  Pluhar explains: 

In order for us to judge, without contradiction, an object as beautiful, this judgment must be taken to imply (noncognitively) that the object has the kind of form that only a supersensible understanding could have given it through its intellectual intuition (Pluhar, xcvi). 

Since the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness is indeterminate, the concept of the supersensible ground of that purposiveness must be indeterminate as well. Moreover, our concept of the form that the intellectual intuition would be and have is also indeterminate. In so far as we contemplate subjective purposiveness, the concepts must be wholly indeterminate, but objective purposiveness does demand some determinacy of concepts, and thus Pluhar believes that "determinate concepts of purposes . . . must be included as details in the otherwise indeterminate concept of [an] intellectual intuition" (Pluhar, xcvii). 

With this, Pluhar believes he has stated and solved Problem I. The question had to do with the universalizability of aesthetic judgments. In response, Kant claims that an indeterminate concept of the supersensible must underly nature's purposiveness if there is going to be any universalizability of judgment. The solution is that one can justifiably treat as equivalent the indeterminate concept of nature's purposiveness for our cognitive power with the indeterminate concept of the of the supersensible basis of that same purposiveness.  

Problem II: The Derminability of the Supersensible

Pluhar's second problem is this: "How can the concept of the supersensible basis of nature's subjective purposiveness make determinable the concept of the supersensible that is contained practically in the idea of freedom, and thus help make the supersensible cognizable practically, even though the concept of the supersensible as a basis of nature's subjective purposiveness in indeterminate?" (Pluhar, xcvii).  How can this supersensible mediate between the other two so that the "three supersensbiles turn out to be one and the same?" (Ibid.). 

Pluhar gives the following argument: 

1. The concept of the supersensible nature of nature's subjective purposiveness is equivalent to the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness.  
2. The concept of nature's subjective purposiveness belongs to the power of judgment. 
3. The power of judgment is a function of the understanding. 
4. Thus, our understanding must be able to think not only the concept of nature's subjective purposiveness, but also the concept of the supersensible basis of that purposiveness.  

But can the understanding do this?  Is it not of the very nature of the supersensible that there be no epistemic access to it?  Again an appeal to intellectual intuition is needed.  Reason can think such an supersensible, but the understanding cannot know it.  

Our understanding is discursive and thus not intuitive.  Intuitions must be given to it through the sensibility.  Because of the limitation of the structure of our understanding, we cannot conceive how an intuitive understanding would be possible. What would be the nature of such an understanding?  Unlike ours, it could legislate not merely the universal, but the particular as well.  It would be able to legislate a "synthetic" universal -- a whole that would make possible the character and combination of the parts -- something we cannot do.  While we can conceive the character and combination of the parts determining the whole mechanically, as it were, we can't understand how the whole could determine the parts.  

This is not to say that we can't have an idea of a whole making possible the character and the combination of its parts.  We have an idea of this, after all; it is called purpose.  We can think of another understanding as causing the particular and determining its form, but we can only conceive this practically.  We have no epistemic access to how it could legislate theoretically the particular.  Our understanding cannot think the particular in any other way than through the category of purpose.  In fact, when we think in terms of purpose, we do so by analogy with our own technically practical ability to produce objects through art by our understanding and reason (Pluhar, xcviii - xcvix). When our understanding thinks by means of judgment's concept of the purposiveness of nature in particular, it thinks the other understanding as an intelligent cause of the world in terms of purpose (Pluhar, xcix). The point is this: Although the concept of supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness remains indeterminate, through an analogy with our technically practical ability, it becomes determinable.  

Kant discusses all of this. By subordinating mechanism to purposive causality, our understanding can conceive of a world whose purposiveness if caused by some intelligence. "It can go on to conceive of this intelligent cause as using mechanism, just as we humans do, as the means to the purposes it pursues (Ak. 414,390), 'as an instrument, as it were' (Ak. 422)" (Pluhar, xcix).  

In subordinating mechanism to purposiveness, understanding does not resolve the antinomy. We cannot think such a subordination.  However, reason can appeal to the notion of an intellectual understanding using intellectual intuition. Understanding and its judgment cannot think the apparent purposive order in nature's particularity as involving necessity, but reason can think of an intellectual intuition that could resolve that antinomy at its supersensible basis. 

The point is that the indeterminate concept of the supersensible underlying nature in the Critique of Pure Reason is now a determinable concept of the supersensible.  How is this?  It is determinable practically, i.e., morally by reason. Pluhar explains: 

While we could not intelligibly have described a mere (utterly indeterminate) "supersensible basis of nature" in moral terms, viz., as being a "nature in itself created, in terms of the final purpose, by a God having all the divine perfections," we certainly can intelligibly describe in such terms a nature in itself created, as an intentional purpose, bu an intelligent cause.  In other words, we can now think of this cause as moral author of the world by reference to the final purpose, and hence we can almost think of nature as being forced by this moral author to cooperate with our attempt to achieve the final purpose" (Pluhar, ci).  

The solution is upon us.  As we have seen in the first problem, the antinomy of teleological (and aesthetic) judgment could only be solved by appeal to the supersensible basis of nature's subject and objective purposiveness.  But the concept of the supersensible basis for nature's purposiveness is at the same time the concept of the intuitive understanding with its intellectual intuition. But since our discursive understanding cannot think the intuitive understanding, it thinks instead the supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness as an intelligent cause of the world, a designer. This concept, now determinable, "mediates" between the indeterminate concept of the supersensible in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the determinate concept of the supersensible in the Critique of Practical Reason.  Simply put, through the mediation of judgment's concept of the supersensible basis of nature's purposiveness, the three supersensibles are united in one.  Pluhar declares, "the substrate of nature was merely made determinate enough to be nature in itself as the purpose brought about by an intelligent cause, and then to be nature in itself as cause by a moral author, a God" (Pluhar, cii). 

Problem III: Mediation and the Spontaneity in the Play of the Cognitive Powers

Kant claimed that nature's purposiveness is "suitable" for mediation because it involves a "spontaneity in the play of the cognitive powers, whose harmony with each other contains the basis of [the] pleasure [that we feel in judging the beautiful" (Ak. 197). Pluhar points out that Kant also claimed that the "essential" part of the Critique of Judgment is the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Pluhar, cii).  Unlike teleological judgment which appeals to reason with its determinate concepts of purposes, judgments of taste are grounded only in the power of judgment (Ibid.).  Why are judgments of taste more suitable for mediation than judgments involving reason and its determinate concepts of purpose? 

Pluhar gives a number of reasons why these judgments are more suitable. Although the mediation involves supersensibles, this mediation is paralleled by a mediation within our the higher cognitive powers, a  mediation of our legislative powers. In fact, there are three levels in which judgment mediates: 1) A mediation among our cognitive powers, 2) a mediation among the worlds of appearance, and 3) a mediation among supersensibles. The power of judgment is to mediate nature and freedom at these three different levels. Subjective purposiveness, that is a purposiveness without a purpose, constitutes the domain of the aesthetic, and this purposiveness "is 'analogous' to or 'symbolic' of the supersensible form that the moral law enjoins us to impose on nature"(Pluhar, ciii). Pluhar explains: 

What makes this purposiveness analogous to supersensible (moral) form is that, since it involves no determinate concept of a natural purpose with its objective with its objective . . . purposiveness, it is a purely formal and free purposiveness. It is formal, as the moral law is formal; it is free, as our will is free to obey or disobey the moral law . . .  Moreover, the 'play' in which our cognitive powers are when we judge subjective purposiveness aesthetically is 'spontaneous': i.e., this play is 'active' inasmuch as it sustains itself . . . and in this respect it is again similar to our will's freedom, which is active by being a special causality  (Pluhar, ciii). 

The role of aesthetic judgment is displayed in consciousness. In judgments of taste we are nonconceptually conscious "of the free harmonious play of imagination and understanding", and this nonconceptual consciousness just is that feeling of pleasure we have in judgments of taste (Pluhar, ciii).  Because there is a connection between this pleasure and the moral law and its freedom, the pleasure presented in judgments of tase our linked to moral feeling, that is, respect for the moral law and our own freedom in performing it. Because of this "spontaneity in the play of the cognitive powers, as accompanied by our awareness of it, can lead to moral feeling" (Pluhar, civ).  

A Problem Not Solved

So there are the three problems and their solutions. But are all things solved?  Pluhar points out that they are not, for the solutions of the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment in the Critique of Judgment conflicts with the solution of the Third Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason.  

The problem is that in "solving" the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, Kant has "pushed" the supersensible in the direction of necessity and has seemingly abandoned freedom. If a non-discursive, intellectual intuition could understand how nature works without appealing to purpose, then the ground upon which the concepts of subjective and objective purposiveness rests, a ground indeterminate but now determinable, seems unable to allow for freedom as it is in itself with regard to the practical reasoning of the Critique of Practical Reason.  

On the other hand, if one were to take very seriously practical reason's declaration that there really is freedom, then the categories of the Critique of Pure Reason which legislate mechanistic determinism fall wholly within in the realm of appearance, and this appearance brings illusion. We human knowers will always understand every event to have a cause, but the causality involved in human action is real. Cognition involves reflection through concepts, and it is with reflection that mechanism arises. But human freedom is real, and ultimately human beings in their moral autonomy escape the fate of the natural. Thus, Kant is solidly a Romantic after all!   

So the mediation proffered by judgment may not be ultimately successful to overcome the Kantian dualism.  Either the determinability at judgment's supersensible is a higher-level mechanism, and no freedom is possible, or there is real freedom, and the mediation by judgment in the direction of such a mechanism is itself only an appearance.  

Overcoming dualism is difficult for the connection between the two domains generally falls into one domain or the other.  It seems to have happened here as well.