Kant on Causation: On the Fivefold Routes to the Principle of Causation

Chapter Three: The Fivefold Routes to the Principle of Causation

Chapter Three The Fivefold Routes to the Principle of Causation POSSIBLE ARGUMENT STRATEGIES Although there is significant disagreement concerning Kant’s goal in the Second Analogy, there is even more disagreement concerning the general strategy Kant employs in his attempt to prove the causal principle. In this chapter I will examine the five main strategies that have been attributed to Kant. The first main strategy is suggested by Arthur O. Lovejoy in his article “On Kant’s Reply to Hume.”1 Lovejoy claims that Kant simply adopts Wolff’s general strategy for proving the causal principle. Through this strategy Wolff and Kant attempt to prove the causal principle by first showing the supposed necessity of assuming that principle as the basis of the distinction between merely subjective, and objectively valid, perceptions of change, between veridical representations and “mere dream.”2 That is, they attempt to show that without the causal principle it would be impossible to make the distinction between veridical representations and dreams.3 Kant is then supposed to show that “we actually make [the distinction] between purely subjective phenomena and the world of objective realities.”4 From this Kant is supposed to conclude that the causal principle is true. 45 1. “On Kant’s Reply to Hume,” 284–308. 2. Ibid., 296. 3. Ibid., 290. 4. Ibid., 290. 46 KANT ON CAUSATION I will call this the Veridical Strategy and I will represent it as follows: 1. If the causal principle is false, then it is not possible to make the distinction between purely subjective phenomena and the world of objective realities. 2. We do, as a matter of fact, make the distinction between purely subjective phenomena and the world of objective realities. 3. If we actually make the distinction, then it is possible to make this distinction. Therefore, the causal principle is true.5 We can take our clue for the second main strategy from Peter Strawson. Strawson argues that Kant begins by establishing a criterion for distinguishing between our successive perceptions of events and our successive perceptions of coexistent objects. According to Strawson, Kant holds that in the case of our perceptions of objective successions (events) “the order they have is a necessary order.”6 In cases of coexistent objects, however, our perceptions possess “order-indifference.” That is, “they could have occurred in the opposite order to that in which they in fact occurred.”7 So according to Strawson’s Kant, the lack or possession of order-indifference on the part of our perceptions is . . . our criterion—whether we reflectively realize the fact or not—of objective succession or co-existence.8 So according to Strawson, Kant’s idea is that we could not empirically apply . . . the concepts of objective change and objective co-existence without implicitly using the notions of a necessary order, and of order-indifference, of perceptions.9 The crucial point on Strawson’s reading is that the fact that we successfully employ this criterion will in the end provide the grounding for the causal principle. According to Strawson, Kant holds there is a close connec5 . As far as I can tell Lovejoy is the only commentator who argues that Kant adopted the Veridical Strategy. 6. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, 134. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 137. 47 The Fivefold Routes to the Principle of Causation tion between the concepts of a necessary order and of order-indifference and the causal principle. For “these notions in turn could have no application unless the relevant causal principles applied to the objects of the perceptions .”10 So according to Strawson we should see Kant as arguing that I can distinguish between an objective coexistence and objective change only if I can apply the concept of a necessary order of perceptions. Yet in order to apply this concept, the relevant causal principles must apply to the objects of my perceptions. For, according to Strawson, Kant argues that “to conceive this order of perceptions as necessary is equivalent to conceiving the transition or change from A to B as itself necessary, as falling, that is to say, under a rule or law of causal determination.”11 Since according to Kant we can distinguish between objective coexistence and objective succession, the causal principle is true. This second main strategy I will call the Event/Object Strategy, and I will represent it as follows: 1. If the causal principle is false, then it...