KANT ON FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM by daboin

Few problems are more well-known in philosophy than the traditional dispute over the seemingly
irreconcilable notions of free will and determinism. What makes the topic of so much interest to us is that no
matter what angle one takes, serious implications on the nature of responsibility (or better yet, the possibility
of morality) are at stake. In the eighteenth century, the age of Newton, the prevalent worldview was of a
mechanistic and clockwork universe in which all events were explicable in terms of immutable scientific
laws. In other words, nature was seen as deterministic. Did the fact that human actions could be reducible to
such laws and even predictable from the perspective of, say, a Laplacean demon imply the absence of moral
responsibility? Immanuel Kant famously tackled the issue of free will and determinism in his Critique of Pure
Reason. While the work as a whole might is read as a validation of the principles of Newtonian science since
it argues against David Hume’s psychological view of causality, Kant nonetheless concludes that freedom is a
legitimate possibility. In this paper I will explore why exactly this is so, as his brand of “compatibilism”
demands special attention due to the fact that it relies entirely on the distinction between appearances and
things-in-themselves. After laying out the argument’s structure, I will point out some of its main difficulties
while endorsing its general cogency.

Kant presents the conflict between freedom and determinism in the Third Antinomy of the first Critique. It is
important to understand why it is placed in this part of the book. Doing so will require a working definition of
the term “antinomy.” As far as the best textual definition offered by Kant, we have to go to his late work,
Metaphysics of Morals. In it he defines an antinomy as “an unavoidable dialectic in which both thesis and
antithesis make equal claims to the validity of two conditions that are inconsistent with each other” (MM 44).
There is a specific reason such conflicts arise. Reason, Kant writes, “is the faculty of the unity of the rules of
understanding [i,e, judgments] under principles” (A302/B359). This means that objects per se are not in the
domain of reason’s principles. In Kant’s words, reason “never applies directly to experience or any object”
(A302/B359). The unity of reason, he writes, “presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of
cognitions” (A645/B673). This gives rise to what he calls the idea of that which “alone makes possible the
totality of cognitions” (A322/B379). This idea, can take one of three forms, including that of “the absolute
unity of the series of conditions of appearance ” (A334/B391). In trying to “rationalize” all the appearances in
conjunction, while at the same time not possessing any concepts itself, reason must resort to the
understanding, and from this arises a conflict between the two (the intricacies behind this really lie outside the
scope of this paper). We can say, in short that this conflict between reason and the understanding is essentially
and the antinomy regarding freedom and necessity will arise.

As the definition states, the conflict consists of a thesis and an antithesis. Each represents one side of the
conflict. The thesis exhibits “the side of dogmatism,” (A 466/B394) or reason, with its anti-regressive (anti-
understanding), pro-transcendental ideas, with which one can “grasp the whole chain of conditions fully a
priori and comprehend the derivation of the conditioned, starting with the unconditioned” (A467/B495). The
maxims of the antithesis, on the other hand, will endorse “a principle of pure empiricism” that not only
applies to explaining the appearances, but to dissolving “the transcendental ideas of the world-whole itself”
(A466/B394). The issue of the Third Antinomy, regarding freedom and necessity, then, can be said to relate
to completeness in the sense of the causal series. It arises out of reason trying to apply causality (one of the
categories of the understanding) to the totality of appearances. If there is completeness, which the thesis is in
favor of, it will imply freedom, as we shall see. If completeness is not presupposed, it means the impossibility
of freedom as well as of morality. Let us now look at the thesis and antithesis in more detail. Starting with the
thesis:

Thesis: “Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only one from which all the appearances of the
world can be derived. It is also necessary to assume another causality through freedom in order to explain
them” (A444/B472)

The proof on the side of the thesis may appear in some sense to be a restatement of older ideas of a Prime
Mover like that espoused by Thomas Aquinas in his classical proofs of God’s existence. However, it is not
meant to be that. More than that, it wants to say that there is a type of causality beyond that of nature (as is
rather explicit from the text of the thesis itself). The proof demands that we imagine a world of pure necessity,
that is, one where every event that happens is the result of the previous event in place (like the domino effect).
By logic, it appears, if this is the only form of causality, there is an infinite chain of events, or no beginning, in
Kant’s words “no completeness of the series on the side of the causes descending one from the other”
(A446/B474). This, however, is contradictory according to the laws of necessity, which see everything as
caused. The idea, then, is self-destructive if taken exclusively. Imagine an infinite chain of dominoes, there
would seem to be no way to explain that everything is caused by necessity due to a previous state unless one
stops a potential infinite regress and posits a sort of first causality that does not depend on a previous state.
That is to say, “absolute causal spontaneity beginning from itself” must be the first cause (I decided to push
the dominoes, and so they all fall). This is what Kant calls transcendental freedom, and it can occur at any
moment, not just this first moment. As he writes, the fact that a series in time needs a beginning allows us to
conceive that “different series may begin on their own as far as their causality is concerned, and to ascribe to
the substance in those series the faculty of acting from freedom” (A450/B478). For Kant, an action that I
freely choose, freely in the absence of empirical laws, gives rise to the validity of actions chosen freely, that is
to say to free will. These actions, of course, do not look in the world of appearances any different from other
events, since “as far as time is concerned this occurrence is only the continuation of a previous series”
(A450/B478).

Now, on to the much simpler antithesis:

Antithesis: “There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens solely in accordance with laws of
nature” (A445/B473)

The antithesis here is explained as follows: it demands that we imagine this cause that is presumably not
causable by a previous state. By doing so, one “presupposes a state that has no causal connection at all with
the cause of the previous one, i.e., in no way follows it.” That is to say, why would my decision to push the
first domino lead to the dominoes falling all in a determined way? There seems to be a double beginning,
because there is no connection between my “spontaneity” and the “series” which does not allow for a unity of
experience. Transcendental freedom, them, is “a combination between the successive state of effective causes
in accordance with which no unity of experience is possible (A447/B475). Furthermore, what if substances
have always existed? As Kant says in 449/B477, the thesis’ being possible relies on the idea that there is an
“absolutely first state of the world.” Eternal substance–which the unity of experience demands– renders this
idea of a first beginning futile. But even if this beginning was true, the faculty of freedom would “would in
any case have to be outside the world” (A451/B479) since it is what begins alterations in the world, and
everything in world runs on alteration. This, of course, is problematic, for it is a “bold presumption” to
assume that outside the totality of everything there is this object which “cannot be given in any possible
perception.” And it would have no place in the world of Nature and substances because the “connection of
appearances necessarily determining one another in accordance with universal laws” would basically
disappear. Alongside freedom, nature is essentially not nature, for it just lawlessness. As written, “the laws of
the latter [nature] would be ceaselessly modified by the former” and would lead to a nature that is not “regular
and uniform” but rather “confused and disconnected” (A451/B479).

It is relevant here to see that if the antithesis were true, morality would be a chimera. In one instance, Kant
writes that demonstrating this transcendental freedom is important because it grounds the practical concept of
freedom. He defines this latter conceptions as “the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by
impulses of sensibility” (A534/B562). This is essentially what can be called negative conception of freedom
since it is defined by what it is not, that is, it is not determined by anything empirical. If the antithesis were
true we see that this would be impossible due to the fact that determination by sensibility would basically be
all that human action would be reduced to.

Kant’s resolution to this antinomy, which has such clear moral implications, starts with the point that
appearances and things in themselves are distinct, which means that the former “must have grounds that are
not appearances” (A536/B564). In other words, an effect can be “regarded as free in regard to its intelligible
cause” (A537/B565). By intelligible, of course, we mean “that in an object of sense which is not itself
appearance” (A38/B66). This should not affect that there is a determinism in appearances. Thus what Kant is
suggesting is a dual-aspect view of causality. As such, an action of ours can be seen through different lenses
without contradiction. It gives the thesis that freedom exists breathing room, because the freedom it advocated
is seen as possible (although through different means), and this solution us to understand better and appreciate
Kant’s excellent definition of antinomy from the Metaphysics of Morals. We must recall that it emphasized
the idea of inconsistency over contradiction amongst thesis and antithesis, and we get this inconsistency
between freedom and necessity if taken solely from the perspective of appearances, but not if the thesis (or the
defense of freedom) is taken from the perspective of the noumenal, in which case both freedom and the
necessity of nature are compatible.

A metaphor to understand this dual-aspect view of might run as follows: Suppose that a spectator will get to
see me for an entire day from afar, with no direct contact with me. His goal is to create a narrative of my day.
The first thing I do that day is I get out bed and get ready to go to class. The spectator watches and writes
down that my body with the help of gravitational forces gets out of my bed and walks a certain direction and
gets to a certain destination because it never fell. I, however, do not think my morning in that way. I know
another dimension to the cannot be readable from the physical motions alone. The spectator’s view, for
instance, cannot tell why I am going to class (because I have to take a test), and cannot tell where I am going
until I get to the place. He only knows how I do it, and can reduce this to natural laws working in conjunction
through cause and effect. I then write down what I am doing from my richer perspective: “I have decided to
get out bed, get ready for class, and walk to school.” Now both narratives are correct, and while the metaphor
is not necessarily perfect, it gets to the fact that something can be described in terms of natural laws or in
terms of something else– a causality of spontaneity, perhaps, for my decision to go to school was not naturally
determined as much as freely chosen. The greater point of this metaphor is to show that different descriptions
of the same events can be, as Kant writes, “independent of the other” (A557/B585) and not mutually exclusive
or contradictory.
In looking at freedom like this, one sees clearly that Kant would be an incompatibilist in the absence of the
distinction between appearances and things in themselves. This is the only way freedom is possible because if
only the spectator’s view of reality were true then there would be no room for freedom, for everything in
nature could be reducible to certain laws. On the other hand, the intelligible (analogous to the in-my-mind
aspect) is totally un-seeable, but one cannot rule it out because of that. Again, another useful picture might be
that of one car behind the other. You can see this as one car behind another on the highway because they
started moving at different times or because one is slower than the other. One of the two being true is
something you can essentially swear on. Now, it may look like one car is chasing the other, but just from
seeing one cannot confirm this, nor rule it out with apodictic certainty.

As Kant writes of our mental faculties, “we would accordingly form an empirical and at the same time an
intellectual concept of its causality, both of which apply to one and the same effect” (538/B566). This is
because “no before or after applies” to the intelligible. The acting subject, considered as noumenon, “would
not stand under any conditions of time, for time is only the condition of appearances but not of things in
themselves” (A539/B567). In other words, there is “no connection with appearances as causes” encountered
in its actions. This means that Kant is a compatibilist of the sort that would accept the compatibility of
freedom of the will with necessity, if, of course, freedom were true, which is something that we can believe
since it is possible.

Is Kant correct in his resolution of the problem? I answer here that Kant seems to have done well here. First of
all, he did not make an outlandish discovery, such as the discovery of the transcendent idea of freedom nor did
he reject it outright. All he did was say that it is legitimate to believe in freedom, and this is only if one
accepts the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. The main I problem I saw lies in the
lack of justification Kant provides for believing that transcendental freedom can occur at any moment and not
just at the first moment (the Prime Mover moment). How is such a thing possible? For me it seems to imply
the reality of time in the noumenal world in the sense that there are different instances due to the multiple
instantiations of transcendental freedom. One also has to wonder if this transcendental freedom is necessarily
tied to the practical conception of freedom as much as Kant wants us to believe. At one point, to recall, he
calls the former the ground of the latter. Henry Allison, however, points to a part of the Critique which seems
to separate the two (although he thinks the issue is not necessarily unsolvable). We get a possibly important,
albeit slightly long quote in the Canon of Pure Reason:

“But whether in these actions [of practical freedom], through which it prescribes laws, reason is not itself
determined by further influences, and whether that which with respect to sensory impulses is called freedom
might not in turn with regard to higher and more remote efficient causes be nature — in the practical sphere
this does not concern us, since in the first instance we ask of reason only a precept for conduct; it is rather a
merely speculative question, which we can set aside as long as our aim is directed to action or omission”
(A803/B831).

In the end, Kant leaves us with questions, as expected, but he also provides us with a genuinely appealing
(possible) solution to the problem of freedom. It is a form of compatibilism which is one sense very weak, and
in another possibly strong. There is, quite simply, no way for us to know in any non-vague way about the
mind-independent world of things in themselves. As such, he may be postulating an idea of freedom that is
either a fiction or the ultimate truth. Whichever it is, our theoretical reason will not know, and he believes
practical reason does not really care for this either– the possibility satisfies enough.
WORKS CITED/REFERENCED

Allison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, rev.

ed. 2004

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2007.