KANTIAN DISTINCTIONS IN THE RESOLUTION OF THE THIRD ANTINOMY

Federico Jos T. Lagdameo

In the Critique of Pure Reason1, Immanuel Kant treats of the traditional problem of free agency or free will vis--vis causal determinism in the so-called Third Antinomy (A444-452/B472480); and its resolution in the section On the Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason in Regard to All Cosmological Ideas (A531-558/B559-586). Briefly, the problem concerns Kants reconciliation of his concession to causal determinism2 and his assertion that we remain nonetheless free rational agents subject to moral responsibility. Put another way, Kant seeks to reconcile the supposed contradiction obtaining between his espousal of natural determinism (evinced mainly in the sciences) and his moral libertarian position. Kants proposed resolution, however, is fraught with difficulty, and if some of his commentators are to be believed, virtually impossible to accept or even to understand.3 While the latter remark seems to be an exaggeration, a closer scrutiny of Kants argumentation tends to reveal the cogency of such an assessment. For what appears to be virtually impossible to

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1996). [A]ll actions of a human being are determined in appearance on the basis of his empirical character and the other contributing causes according to the order of nature; and if we could explore all appearances of his power of choice down to the bottom, there would not be a single human action that we could not with certainty predict and cognize as necessary from its preceding conditions. (A549-50/B577-8) See Graham Bird, Part III: Introduction in A Companion to Kant, ed. Graham Bird (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 253-254.
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understand may be the several crucial distinctions Kant makes in resolving the Third Antinomy: those which require not only a careful consideration of their opposition to each other within their binary set of distinction, but also their systematic relations to each other as sets of binary distinctions. In what follows is an identification and discussion of the three sets of distinctions that Kant introduced in the first Critique and that were requisite in resolving the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason which he had outlined. The Third Antinomy itself is not lengthily treated herein but is summarily rehearsed or recalled as is pertinent to the discussions that follow. Specifically and as hinted above, the discussion will concern the notions comprising the particular sets of distinctions (I); and later, these sets relation to each other as they form Kants response to the supposed conflict between his affirmations of causal determinism and human free agency (II).

I. In the course of having to confront the supposedly4 antinomies of pure reason, and in particular, the Third Antinomy which dealt with the conflicting claims of human freedom and causal determinism, Kant had equipped himself with conceptual tools through which the antinomy is shown to be capable of resolution and its conflicting claims free from contradiction. These tools were sets of distinctions which allowed him to launch the differentiated thesis and antithesis of the Third Antinomy that consequently elided their initially-perceived opposition to each other. These three sets of distinctions are the following: noumena and phenomena; transcendental and practical freedom; and the empirical and intelligible characters of human causality.

I say supposedly since Kant obviously presented them with the prior intent of demonstrating their resolutions derived from an exposition of these principles compatibility with each other, and hence, their merely apparent opposition to each other. See A529/B557. 2

Noumena and phenomena. Although the 1781 edition of the Critique of Pure Reason obviously contained an account of noumena and phenomena, in the 1787 edition of the first Critique, Kant provided the initial account of the cleavage between things in themselves and their appearances in the Preface. There he asserted that space and time are only forms of our sensible intuition and hence are only conditions of the existence of things as appearances, that is, human cognition structures objects of experience to be present to us spatio-temporarily (Bxxvi). Kant thereafter inferred from this assertion that we are barred from any speculative or theoretical knowledge of any object as thing in itself but have access only to its appearance, i.e., we can cognize solely an objects sensible intuition but never itself as devoid of the forms of space and time (Bxxvi, Bxxix). This above distinction, in fact, is the bedrock of Kants transcendental idealism: all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., they are mere presentations thatin the way in which they are presented, viz., as extended beings, or as series of changeshave no existence with an intrinsic basis, i.e., outside our thoughts (A491/B519). Yet while Kant underscored, as in above, that we cannot know objects as they are in themselves but only their appearances which are conditioned by the structures of the mind; he indicated nonetheless that it is possible to think or have a thought of these objects as noumena. Such thoughts do not constitute knowledge claims, Kant stressed, but are the result of reasons demand that appearancesaside from being spatio-temporalhave causes. In other words, for Kant we can think of noumena because they are necessarily inferred by the mind in its cognition of appearances: [W]e must be able to think, even if not cognize, the same objects also as things in themselves. For otherwise an absurd proposition would follow, viz., that there is appearance

without anything that appears (Bxxvii). Thus, empirical conditions of cognition include not only space and time, but causality as well, that is, all possible experiences appear as caused. At this point, it might be helpful to amplify the above distinction as it proves propitious in resolving the Third Antinomy. Kants transcendental idealism, which he opposes to transcendental realism, posits two aspects5 of an object: the object as noumenon or as it is in itself, and the object as phenomenon or as they are conditioned epistemically by the mind. In Kants view, we can have no knowledge or cognition of the noumenon although we can logically conceive it. On the other hand, what we know and can know are the objects given to us in experience or through sensible intuition; these are phenomena that are cognized empirically. Moreover, Kant asserts that no knowledge is possible or is justifiable beyond the ken of the minds structure of knowing for this is precisely the limit of experience and possible experience. Claims to the contrary, such as the pretensions of the metaphysics of his time, are hence characterized as dogmatisms in which human reason plunges into darkness and contradictions (Aviii). Recall now that the Third Antinomy involves the thesis that human freedom must also be assumed in explaining the phenomenal world; and the antithesis that natural causality offers a comprehensive or total explanation of these appearances (A445/B473). The thesis proof employs the argumentation for a cause that is itself not an effect, or the absurdity of an infinite regress of I rely here on Henry Allisons treatment of the two prevalent interpretations of Kants theory, i.e., the two-world or two object reading and the two aspect construal; and subscribe to Allisons own adherence to the two aspect reading albeit with the clarification that this be informed with the insight that Kants transcendental idealism is a meta-epistemological stance rather than a metaphysical one. What Allison means by this is that as a meta-epistemological position, Kantian transcendental idealism is directed towards answering what can be construed by us as real given our condition, and not in determining what is real. As such, transcendental idealism must not be appropriated as an alternative ontological account (as opposed to rationalism or empiricism, for instance), but as an alternative to ontology. Allison does take cognizance, however, of objections coming from Karl Ameriks who avers that Kants idealism is inherently metaphysical in nature. See Henry E. Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism in A Companion to Kant, ed. Graham Bird (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 111-124. 4
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causes and effects. Meanwhile, the antithesis rests on the supposed impossibility of human agency to be inserted within a world thoroughly governed (as steadfastly insisted by Kant) by natural causality (A445-448/B473-476). What Kants noumenal-phenomenal distinction purportedly achieves in this respect is to locate meta-epistemologically6 natural causality in the plane of phenomenality while situating human freedom in that of the noumenal. Deferring further elaboration of this Kantian maneuver in the meantime, we can now affirm both free will and the determinism of natural causality as simultaneously obtaining. For it is this transcendental distinction which opens the possibility for the resolution of the antinomy. To turn to how Kant directly addressed the Third Antinomy, we cannot but consider another set of distinctions he established: transcendental and practical freedoms. Transcendental and Practical Freedoms. To recapitulate briefly, Kants noumenalphenomenal distinction enabled the simultaneity of free will and causal determinism since they are now explained to be located on different meta-epistemological planes. Still, Kants formulation of the thesis and antithesis of the Third Antinomy entailed arguments which are not directly addressed by the transcendental distinction of the things-in-themselves and their epistemically conditioned appearances. In fact, in the section where he argued for the resolution of the Third Antinomy, Kant squarely faced the seeming contradiction of a world thoroughly subject to causal determinism and yet admits of human freedom, not through an appeal to the transcendental distinction, but by distinguishing which freedom pertinently applies to the discussion at hand. Accordingly, Kant issues a distinction between a freedom that is a pure transcendental idea . . . [that] contains nothing borrowed from experience . . . [and] is the basis of the practical Again, in consonance with Allisons interpretation that Kants transcendental idealism does not espouse dual realities of objects. 5
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concept of freedom (A533/B561); and a freedom that is the independence of our power of choice from coercion by impulses of sensibility (A534/B562). Kant expounded on the latter with the following clarification: For a power of choice is sensible insofar as it is pathologically affected (i.e., affected by motivating causes of sensibility); it is called animal power of choice (arbitrium brutum) if it can be pathologically necessitated. The human power of choice, although an arbitrium sensitivum, is an arbitrium not brutum but liberum; for its action is not made necessary by sensibility, but the human being has a power to determine himself on his own, independently of coercion by sensible impulses (A534/B562). Negatively therefore, practical freedom is characterized as being independent from sensible desires or impulses despite being affected by them. In Kants view, while we are admittedly subject to the influences of such factors as desires, delight, fears, aversions, we are nonetheless not ruled by them. Thus, albeit pathologically affected, we are not pathologically necessitated like animals or brutes. Positively, practical freedom features the capacity for self-determination, that is, to be governed by reason or by rational principles (A802/B830). This entails, first, the power to apply these principles not only in moral matters but also in prudential ones. Second, practical freedom involves the power to arrive at a rational judgment, and simultaneously to choose to act contrary to that judgment. Lastly, akin to transcendental freedom, practical freedom is brought under normative principles for its function instead of causal laws. Of transcendental freedom, Kant signals it to be a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to actwithout, i.e., needing to be preceded by another cause by means of which it is determined to action in turn, according to the law of causal connection (A533/B561). In other words, Kants transcendental freedom is a power or a capacity to originate a series of effects without having itself

belong to an empirically caused series. His account of transcendental freedom here is intended towards its presentation as a type of causality other than natural causality. In brief, the distinction between transcendental and practical freedom is reliant on the previous distinction outlined, that of the noumenal and the phenomenal planes: transcendental freedom, according to Kant, operates in the former. Far from being clear-cut, however, this distinctionaccording to commentatorssuffers from ambiguity in that practical freedom is asserted to be grounded on transcendental freedom, and yet Kant offers insufficient explanation for this.7 In any case, what Kant attempts to do here with his crucial distinction between transcendental and practical or empirical freedom is to effect a differentiated thesis and antithesis of the antinomy8; and consequently, to depict the antinomy as a problem in which the question of whether another type of causality other than the law of nature can be logically admitted. Hence, Kant steers the antinomy away from being a matter of determining if practical freedom can compatibly obtain in a causally determined phenomenal world (it can, but Kants Resolution does not argue it; he establishes this elsewhere); but instead comports it to an issue how we can ascribe to ourselves moral responsibility in such a world without being caught in a logical contradiction. [T]o show that this antinomy rests on a mere illusion and that nature at least does not conflict with the causality from freedomthis was the only goal that we were able to accomplish, and it was, moreover, our one and only concern (A558/B586) Similarly, the above consideration provides cogency to the suggestion that Kants efforts in distinguishing between the two types of freedoms be construed as an instance in which he
7

See Bird, Part III: Introduction, 254.

I appeal here to the analysis of how Kant re-composed the original undifferentiated thesis and antithesis of the Third Antinomy into a differentiated one in which the noumenal-phenomenal distinction comes into play as well as transcendental freedoms noumenally causative properties. See Oscar Bulaong, Class Notes on the Second Main Question: How does transcendental idealism solve the 3rd Antinomy? 7

establishes the logical possibility of moral responsibility despite the antinomy; and not the other way around, i.e., Kant employed the antinomy to argue for transcendental and practical freedoms. Empirical and Intelligible Characters. So far, we have examined Kants two sets of distinctions which enabled the possibility of considering free will as not incompatible with causal determinism. The first distinction delineated two meta-epistemological planes on which objects can be understood as having two aspects; the second specified the aspects of freedom that are revealed in relation to these planes. The third set of distinctions I intend to elucidate on dwells on the two characters of human causality, the empirical and the intelligible, which account for how human freedom can be a cause in both aspects: the first as being conjoined to the series of causes and effects in the phenomenal world, and hence subject to causal determinism; the second as noumenally atemporal and acausal, and hence transcendentally free from natural causality. In A538-541/B566-569 we encounter Kants discussion of these two characters; below are some significantalbeit lengthypassages: What in an object of the senses is not itself appearance I call intelligible. Accordingly, if what in the world of sense must be regarded as appearance has, when taken in itself, also a power which is not an object of sensible intuition but through which it can still be the cause of appearances, then the causality of this being can be considered from two sides: as intelligible, according to its action as that of a thing in itself; and as sensible, according to the effects of this causality as those of an appearance in the world of sense. Thus regarding such a subjects power we would frame an empirical as well as an intellectual concept of causality, these concepts occurring together in one and the same effect (A538/B566). Any efficient cause, however, must have a character, i.e., a law of its causality without which it would not be a cause at all. And thus in a subject of the world of sense we would have, first, an empirical character. . . . Second, one would have to grant to the subject also an intelligible character. . . . The first character could also be called the character of such a thing in appearance, the second the character of the thing in itself (A539/B567).

Thus, Kant argues that given the transcendental distinction which he outlined earlier, our causal power (freedom) has two aspects or characters which are subjected accordingly to two laws of causality. One is governed in the realm of appearances by natural causality, by sensible connections; this is the empirical character of human causality. The other, meanwhile, is ruled by rational principles; this is the intelligible character. In Kants Critical Account of Freedom, Andrews Reath illuminates for us these two characters of human causality through his identification of two features for each of the two characters. In the case of the intelligible character, the first feature refers to the set of basic principles, value commitments and priorities, and maxims that guide ones choices by determining what one sees reason to do in various circumstances. 9 I construe this to be the substantive content of ones intelligible character. The second feature, on the other hand, will be these basic principles, understood as originating in that persons rational agency -- that is, as principles and values that one has in some sense adopted or endorsed, and for which one is responsible. 10 I take this to mean the rationallymotivated incorporation and consequent endorsement of the substantive content through which the intelligible character is constituted. As regards the empirical character, two features are also delineated by Reath. First, he says that Kant understood a persons empirical character as a set of rules or laws that specify how his actions follow from temporally prior conditions and that may be inferred from the persons observed actions.11 The first feature thus pertains to a persons psychological make-up, that is,

Andrews Reath, Kants Critical Account of Freedom in A Companion to Kant, ed. Graham Bird (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), 284.
10

Ibid. Ibid. 9

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ones passions, inclinations, and desires through which her choices can be causally explained. The second feature is that these standing dispositions and motivational tendencies [are] themselves subject to empirical causal explanation.12 Put simply, the second feature entails the admission that ones psychological make-up (which determines a persons responses and choices) is itself conditioned by such factors like ones social class, upbringing, education, past experiences, etc.; or terser still, ones choices result from ones personality which, in turn, are determined by ones personal history. Hence, personal choices are explained to be part of the causal series which prevails in the phenomenal plane. By issuing this distinction, Kant is attempting to reconcile the antinomian claims of both free will and causal determinism by appealing to the principles contained in the argument for the intelligible and empirical characters of human causality. Obviously, inasmuch as the empirical character of human causality is inserted within the chain of natural causes and effects, there is no freedom (A550/B578). In the case of the intelligible character, however, with human causalitys ability to incorporate rational substantive content, i.e., the power to subscribe to non-causal normative principles, freedom is affirmed without having to deny the validity of natural causality.
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The paradigmatic case that Kant brings forth in advancing this distinction is the telling of a malicious lie, by means of which a person has brought a certain confusion into society
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Ibid.

See A544/B572: But if effects are appearances, is it indeed also necessary that the causality of their cause, which (cause) itself is also appearance, must be solely empirical? And is it not possible, rather, that although every effect in appearance does indeed require a connection with its cause according to laws of empirical causality, yet this empirical causality could nonetheless, without in the least interrupting its connection with natural causes, be an effect of a causality that is not empirical but intelligible? I.e., could not empirical causality itself be an effect of an action, original in regard to appearances, of a cause that in so far is therefore not appearance but according to this powerintelligible, although otherwise it also must, as a link in the chain of nature, be classed entirely with the world of sense? 10

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(A554/B582). Kant tells us that we can trace the lie to have been caused by the character of the person involved, which in turn, may have been brought about by bad upbringing, evil company, partly also in the wickedness of a natural makeup that is insensitive to shame; and partly . . . to frivolity and rashness (A555/B583). And yet, even when we have accomplished this disclosure of motivational influencesthe empirical character of the phenomenonKant avers that we still hold the perpetrator morally accountable. Unfortunate personal history notwithstanding, the person who lied is not exculpated; s/he is blamed for lying. Why so? It is because, according to Kant, [t]his blame is based on a law of reason; and reason is regarded in this blaming as a cause that, regardless of all the mentioned empirical conditions, could and ought to have determined the persons conduct differently (A555/B583). The one who lied can be blamed because despite the determining conditions of the person, that is, despite being fettered to a causal chain of events her/his intelligible character allowed her/him to have acted otherwise.

II. The sets of distinctions above were Kants conceptual tools in endeavoring to resolve the Third Antinomy he recounted in the Critique of Pure Reason. While each set aided14 Kant in demonstrating how free will is not necessarily precluded by causal determinism, it may not be apparent as to how they supported and linked with each other in achieving Kants aim. Consequently, I attempt at a presentation of this matter.

At the very least, in Kants own estimation since many of his commentators remain in dispute in assessing the efficaciousness of his employment of these distinctions in arguing for the reconcilability of freedom and causality. See Patricia Kitcher, Introduction in Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 1996), lviii. 11

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From the foregoing discussion, it is relatively easy to discern the relation between the transcendental distinction of noumena and phenomena with the binary set in which the intelligible and empirical characters of human causality are distinguished. The divide created by the metaepistemological planes of noumena and phenomena makes possible a "two-aspect view" or dualistic characterization of human causality: intelligible and empirical. The intelligible character which obtains in the noumenal plane is what logically accounts (as opposed to being ontological) for freedom despite Kants deterministic conception of nature. The notion of intelligible character's independence from sensible determination is secured from the principle of causal determinism earlier demonstrated by Kant in the Second Analogy (A189211/B232-256) and vice-versa. Hence, in proving the logical compatibility of the opposing notions of free will and causality, Kant had to locate them on different planes and this required of him to distinguish the noumenal and phenomenal spheres. Secondly, he had to account for human causality in both these planes (since to insist only on its phenomenality is to succumb to the antinomy, while to be restricted only to a noumenal account begs the question of moral accountability) by positing two characterizations of it. With the latter, Kant is able to affirm both the antinomian claims in a qualified manner. Similarly, the link between the transcendental distinction and the two freedoms delineated by Kant in the first Critique is relatively straightforward. Transcendental freedom belongs or exists noumenally, while in the phenomenal realm natural causality prevails. Accordingly, the antinomy is elided through the distinction between noumena and phenomena and the noumenal location of transcendental freedom. Without this maneuver, Kant argues, we are left with neither nature nor freedom (A543/B571).

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Meanwhile, it can be established without much difficulty that Kants account of transcendental freedom is supported by his depiction of the intelligible character of human causality. To recall, in the first section of Kants Solution of the Cosmological Idea of Totality in the Derivation of World Events from their Causes, he designates two kinds of causes, of which freedom is one and is understood in relation to the above problem as the power to begin a state on ones own (A533/B561). He then proceeds in identifying two kinds of freedoms, transcendental and practical, and despite his lengthier treatment of the latter, acknowledges that what is of pertinence to the antinomian resolution is the former.15 When he does turn to the consideration of the two characters of causality in the subsequent section, Kants explanation of the intelligible character of human causality is that it is not subject to any conditions of sensibility and is not itself appearance. Rather, it pertains to the thing in itself, or to noumena to which transcendental freedom also belongs. Moreover, human cause in its intelligible character is described to be atemporal and acausal in the same way that transcendental freedom was earlier outlined by Kant. Arguably, this later account of the intelligible character is an amplification of transcendental freedom which was only initially and partially elucidated. How practical freedom stands in relation to the distinction between empirical and intelligible characters is not immediately apparent, however. It is clearly not tantamount to the empirical character, but in fact, tends to parallel the intelligible character in many ways. Does the intelligible character, therefore, include in its comprehension both transcendental and practical freedoms taken as cause?

Hence what happens hereas we find in general in the conflict of a reason that ventures beyond the bounds of possible experienceis that the problem is in fact not physiological but transcendental. Hence the question of the possibility of freedom does indeed challenge psychology; but since it rests on dialectical arguments of the merely pure reason, it must, along with its solution, engage only transcendental philosophy (A535/B563). 13

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The fact that practical freedom is understood by Kant to be not necessitated by sensible determinations; to appropriate rational principles in its operations; and therefore, to originate actions unconditioned by previously effected events; lends credence to the idea that practical freedom is an instance of transcendental freedom.16 Granted that this is the case, it now begs the question as to how, given a thoroughgoing causal determinism in the phenomenal plane, can transcendental freedominstantiated as practical freedom in this casebe logically reconciled to it. This seems to be the Third Antinomy returning with a vengeance.

~0~ In retrospect, the difficulties presented by Kants resolution of the Third Antinomy can be tracked down to the several distinctions he had to introduce in order for him to evade the purported contradiction between freedom and nature. Although these distinctions, notably that of the noumena and phenomena, allowed him to recast the two antinomial claims in such a manner that they do not result to a contradiction, these efforts opened up problems of their own which Kant now had to confront. The distinction between transcendental freedom and practical freedom suffers from one such difficulty. Kant has left ambiguous how the former grounds the latter, and how both simultaneously relate to the intelligible character of human causality. Kant admits, ultimately, that the transcendental freedom that we supposedly have cannot be proven theoretically since by his own account noumena is beyond cognition. Instead, Kant employs practical grounds for it: our moral judgments are based on principles carrying an oughtnature which hereby militates against causal determinism; and our experience of attributing moral responsibility precludes this as well. For the resolution to the Third Antinomy in the Critique of

16

Reath, Kants Critical Account of Freedom, 280. 14

Pure Reason, as claimed by Kant and as rehearsed above, does not prove that we are free. It only made a case for freedoms logical compatibility with Kants deterministic notion of nature.

Bibliography Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 1996. Allison, Henry E. Kants Transcendental Idealism In A Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham Bird. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006. Bird, Graham. Part III: Introduction In A Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham Bird. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006. Bulaong, Oscar, Class Notes on the Second Main Question: How does transcendental idealism solve the 3rd Antinomy? (First Semester 2009-2010) Kitcher, Patricia. Introduction In Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 1996. Reath, Andrews. Kants Critical Account of Freedom In A Companion to Kant. Ed. Graham Bird. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006. 15

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