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Miller on Kant First, a point of inadvertent irony. During the paper Miller discusses, inter alia, two subjects concerning which he invokes the name of Aristotle: (1) the transparency view of consciousness, and (2) the activity/passivity view of consciousness. Now what I find ironic about these two items is that Aristotle is the antipode of both Kant and Rand on these points. Rand and Kant thought the consciousness had an identity; Aristotle did not. (29. Page numbers refer to the article as it appeared in Objectivity.) And both Rand and Kant thought that consciousness was an active process; Aristotle that it was passive. (33) Hm. Are we sure that Rand and Kant are antipodes? I make a similar point on pages 63-4 in chapter four of my book, "Ayn Rand, Objectivists, and the History of Philosophy." But enough of irony; on to the critique. Miller’s main point is that Rand is right when she accuses Kant of the claim that knowledge is a delusion. The word “delusion” appears ten times on the first five pages of his essay. The first two occurrences are taken from a longish quotation from pp. 32-3 of Rand’s book "For the New Intellectual." I assume most SOLOHQ readers have that book so I will only quote the lines in which “delusion” appears. (The quotation begins with “is a distortion” and end with “perceived by man.”) Here are Rand’s words: “This proves, said Kant, that man’s concepts are only a delusion, but a collective delusion which no one has the power to escape.” (28 in Miller) Miller comments on p. 30 that according to Rand, “Kant is using a persuasive definition, redefining ‘knowledge’ as a delusion but continuing to use the word because of its comforting, anti-skeptical connotations.” These are the claims. Where is the evidence? Rand does not give a single quotation from Kant. Since she used the words “said Kant” we would like to know where he said what she said he said. The 'Critique' is a big fat book and it would help if she provided a quotation or two. Alas, there are none. There might be a reason for this lack of citation. "For the New Intellectual" is, as Miller point out on p. 28, “a polemic and a manifesto for Rand’s intellectual followers rather than a work of scholarly exegesis. . .Indeed, I think that Walsh has compiled detailed and persuasive evidence that the explicit statements regarding reason and reality which Rand has attributed to Kant do not agree with Kant’s own characterization of his position.” (28-9) I agree. Kant did not say any of the things Rand attributes to him. He did not say these things, at least, explicitly [N.B.]. And since there is no such statement on Kant’s part we have to “read between the lines,” so to speak. Or with the deconstructionists, read against the lines. Well, maybe not that bad. Kant doesn’t redefine “knowledge is a delusion” explicitly, but maybe it’s implied or presupposed. So what about the “implications or presuppositions of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology—regardless of whether Kant acknowledged them as such?” Is Rand correct “when she asserts that ‘the entire apparatus of Kant’s system…[rests] on a single point: that man’s knowledge is not valid because his consciousness possesses identity.’” (29) Hicks call this the “obstacle” view, of which more in due course. Miller agrees with Rand and seeks to defend her by quoting Kant. Before he gets to an actual quotation, he tells us that the ancient skeptics accepted the following syllogism: 1. The mind can only know reality only if it has no determinate nature of its own. 2. But the mind does have a determinate nature of its own. 3. Therefore, the mind cannot know reality. Kant comes along and agrees with them. But he sought to “evade the snares of skepticism by redefining ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’.” Kant redefines ‘knowledge’ as ‘delusion.’ The word “delusion” appears quite often in CPR, but I could find no place where Kant said, “knowledge is a delusion.” In fact, the first two references I checked concerned comments Kant was making about David Hume calling metaphysics a delusion. (Likewise with the references in the "Critique of Practical Judgment.") Fortunately we need not check every reference, although the interested reader is welcome to try, since Miller is actually going to quote Kant on delusion, and I will rely on him. After claiming that Kant will redefine knowledge as delusion, we do get a quotation, but unfortunately it is not from Kant; it’s from Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer, for Kant “the world presenting itself to the senses has no true being…and that the grasp of it is a delusion rather than knowledge.” (30) Two observations. (1) This is not a statement by Kant. (2) Even if we give it some probative value, it doesn’t say what Miller said it would say. It doesn’t say “Kant defined ‘knowledge’ as ‘delusion"; rather it says that grasping the world by the senses “is a delusion rather than knowledge.” [Emphasis mine] This is a different kettle of fish. It suggests that knowledge is something else and whatever it is, it is not to be equated with “grasping the world by the senses.” All that this shows is that Schopenhauer agrees with Rand on Kant, but that is not what Miller promised us. We want proof that Kant redefined knowledge as delusion. Or, lacking proof, something at least suggesting that conclusion. But wait. Miller is soon going to get to Kant. On p. 31, after reviewing two of Walsh’s objections to Rand, Miller writes, "Rand’s reply to Walsh’s objections would presumably be that Kant is using the terms ‘reality’ and ‘delusion’ in an equivocal fashion. The shift in meaning is quite explicit and recurs throughout Kant’s 'Critique of Pure Reason,' for example, in the following passage from ‘The Antinomy of Pure Reason’ where Kant distinguishes his position from two others: His position, called transcendental idealism, holds that ‘everything intuited in space or time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is mere representations, which, in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as series of alterations, have no existence outside our thoughts.'” If this is Miller’s proof for the equivocal use of ‘delusion,’ if fails, since the word ‘delusion’ does not appear even once in the quotation from Kant, whereas in order to use a term equivocally, one has to use the term twice, but in two different senses. (See Kelley’s 'The Art of Reasoning' for more on this.) Where is the term “delusion?” Where is the “equivocation?” Am I focusing too much on “explicit?” Given this, one is left with the unpalatable alternative of “guessing” what Miller means. After all, he selected this passage and one might well ask, Why? Perhaps he reads “appearance” as equivalent to “delusion?” Since appearances have “no existence outside our thoughts,” might not they be construed as “delusions?” But I think this is a dead end. Kant is quite explicit (and by “explicit” I mean “stated in the text”) about this. At A293-B350 he writes, “Still less may appearance and delusion [schein] be regarded as being the same.” And this quotation is excerpted from the Introduction to the Transcendental Deduction titled “On Transcendental Illusion” [I’m using “illusion’ and “delusion” as synonyms here. I think Rand would have been satisfied if it could be proven that Kant’s entire system was an illusion or a delusion.] If one wants to know what, according to Kant, qualifies as delusion or illusion, this may be the place to look. But I’m going to stop here, since I’m only guessing what Miller might have meant. Perhaps he can let us know in a post. The most interesting part of Miller’s effort begins with a suggestion he makes on p. 33. He writes, “I believe that Kant’s argument really turns on a more fundamental distinction [than the distinction between two kinds of consciousness] which is, ironically, expressed in terms of the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form.” [I don’t find this ironic at all, since a lot of CPR owes a large debt to Aristotle and his terminology.] Now what is interesting about Miller’s suggestion comes home when he states and we recall that all three of these thinkers employ the matter-form distinction. So what's the difference? If this distinction is something that Aristotle and Rand share, then we can hardly bash Kant for using the same distinction. But maybe Rand uses it in a radically different way than either of the other two thinkers. And that will be Miller’s claim. Aristotle claims that the form is part of the object. Kant claims that form is contributed by the subject. Rand, as Miller points out, rejects both moves. Following Peikoff in OPAR (46f) he writes, “The objectivist epistemology must contain a theory of form different from both Aristotle’s and Kant’s theories.” (34) Miller tells us what such a theory might look like. “The form is not in the external object considered as independent of being perceived; nor is the form ‘in the mind’ as an object of perception in its own right. It is instead a relational state arising from the interaction between the object and our perceptual systems.” (34) Now where do you suppose such a theory had its origin? Well, obviously Kant and Aristotle are excluded. After all, Miller is presenting Rand’s theory as different from either Aristotle or Kant. But there is one big boy who is sometimes called the Father of Philosophy. You guessed him—Plato. He writes about this theory in the Theaetetus and has Socrates say the following: SOCRATES: Think of it, then, in this way. First, to take the case of the eyes, you must conceive that what you call the color white has no being as a distinct thing outside your eyes nor yet inside them, nor must you assign it any fixed place. Otherwise, of course, it would have its being in an assigned place and abide there, instead of arising in a process of becoming. (153d-153e. Miller cites Peikoff for the reference to the Theaetetus but Peikoff only cites entire dialogue. I hope I got quotation he had in mind.) Friedlander provides the following gloss: Perceptual qualities arise as a result of the encounter between the sensory organs and the objects of perception. Color is used as an illustration. It is not something in itself, either in the object or in the eye, but rather in a motion in between. (Plato, III, 157) So in the end, another irony, number three for those who are counting--Rand turns out to be, on this issue, a Platonist! But you know me. Anyone who hangs with Aristotle for 20 years can’t be all bad. Now don’t you Aristotle fans get discouraged--Kelley (ES 99) cites Aristotle as holding a similar view and cites De Anima III, 2 as a source. In re-reading the chapter I tend to agree with Hamlyn that it is a rather “rambling chapter” and I could find no statement in the chapter that is as concise and to the point as the quotation from the Theaetetus, and interested readers can check this out for themselves. Now Miller thinks that this theory will get him home free. Now the mind can be active, as Rand claims, without “distorting its subject matter.” (34) If form is “a relational state” then the mind can’t be deceiving us when it perceives reality. But there are some questions that need to be raised and answered. (1) If form is a relation, and this is part of the famous matter-form distinction, what is the matter of the relation? Does the relation have a matter, and if not, why call it part of the matter-form distinction? (2) Isn’t this a futile attempt to ignore what the mind contributes to the knowing process? Especially when you recall that, for Objectivists, the nature of any relation is determined by the entities that enter into the relation? Think of Kelley’s example of two cars colliding. He asks where is the collision? If a Subaru hits an Oldsmobile, is the crash in the Subaru or in the Olds? It is in neither Kelley states. The collision (sRo) is a relation between the two cars, and is not a property of either car. But notice, if the Subaru hits a jet of steam coming from under the street, then there is no collision, just some water droplets on the car. To understand any relation we need to know about the relata. As Rand states, “relationships are relationships among entities.” (ITOE 18) Relations are dependent on entities for their very existence and nature. There are no relations without entities that are related. In recognition of this fact, Kant set out in CPR to examine in detail one of the primary relata in the knowing relation, to wit: the human mind. This is Kant’s project, and on Objectivist principles, a necessary one. One final topic. I promised to say something more on the topic of “obstacle” vs. “condition” of knowledge. Early on in the paper Miller had to admit that Walsh did an excellent job of showing that Kant never uses the skeptical argument concerning the identity of consciousness being an obstacle to perception or knowledge. Miller then had to go on to “read between the lines” in order to get Kant to say “knowledge is delusion.” Hicks references the same argument by Rand in his book on postmodernism. Despite what Miller says in his article, Kant is explicit when he refers to “conditions” and not “obstacles” to knowledge. Just consider the following: "Now if sensibility were to contain a priori presentations constituting the condition under which objects are given to us, it would to that extend belong to transcendental philosophy;. And since the conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given to us precede the conditions under which these objects are thought ...” A16-B30. Now consider this quotation. Socrates is speaking. "Now take the acquisition of knowledge. Is the body an obstacle or not, if one takes it into partnership in the search for knowledge? What I mean is this. Is there any certainty in human sight and hearing, or is it true, as the poets are always dinning into our ears, that we neither hear nor see anything accurately? Yet if these senses are not clear and accurate, the rest can hardly be so, because they are all inferior to the first two. Don't you agree?" (Cebes and Simmias agree. Phaedo 65a-b) This is hardly conclusive. But unless one has strong reasons for not taking these thinkers straight, as Rand herself recommends in PWNI, then let’s take them straight. Socrates is talking about the senses and the body as being “obstacles” in the quest for knowledge. Kant, on the other hand, is talking about the conditions for knowledge, not obstacles to knowledge. According to Kant, we’re not blind because we have eyes, Rand to the contrary notwithstanding.
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