Beiser on the Metaphysical Interpretation of the Categories
From German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801:
Are the categories psychological rules of thought, as subjective idealists believe? If not, are the categories logical, epistemological, metaphysical, or what? What is the relationship between the transcendental understanding and Kant’s transcendental psychology?
Kant explicitly refuted the interpretation of his categories as metaphysical entities, which he called the fallacy of hypostasis, or mistaking a condition of knowledge of objects as a condition of objects in general. However, the metaphysician can avoid hypostasis while claiming that the regulatory ideas (e.g. God, freedom) are in fact on the same level as the constitutive concepts (e.g. existence, causality). To return to the running chess analogy, the metaphysician is arguing that, while we might be able to play chess without trying to win and yet not break the rules, chess could not have been invented without the idea of winning, and so the idea of winning is not just regulative of chess but constitutive of chess as well.
Kant even admits that the understanding can’t be applied to sensation unless there were a regulatory idea of (their) systematic unity, so it seems that so-called regulatory ideas are equally as constitutive of experience as categories and thus even admit of their own transcendental deduction from experience alone. Consider that the transcendental subject reflects exactly this blurring of regulation and constitution in the sense that the transcendental subject doubles as a regulatory idea (freedom) and constitutive concept/category (unity).
I take my cue here from the doctrine that non-human animals have experience, but they do not have reason such that they might form a coherence of their representations. Now if reason is necessary for the conceptualizing perceptions and thus for experience, we will have to say that non-human animals have reason (for unifying sense) at the same time we say that they don’t have reason (for unifying understanding). This doesn’t pose a contradiction anymore than it is a contradiction for someone to play chess without trying to win, even though chess could not have been invented without the ideal of trying to win. Non-human understanding may engage the senses without being able to be coherent if the understanding has momentum towards the senses but insufficient inertia to go through them, beyond the senses and towards understanding’s own inherent ends (i.e. the ideas of e.g. God, freedom).
So non-human animals have subjectivity/reason in the sense that there is a general unity of their sensations (the momentum the senses acquire from their engagement with the activity of the understanding), which Kant calls a transcendental unity with indeterminate bounds. The “reason” of non-human animals is one that simply says “Unify!” or “Conceptualize!” in the sense that the aimless chess player is still made possible by the aim to win - their “reason” simply says “Play!” or “Make valid moves!” Humans have subjectivity/reason in the sense that there are particular unities of their representations (the momentum of the understanding, unimpeded by sense, runs to the world, the monad, God, and freedom), which Kant calls the cosmological ideas, or determinately bounded ideas of reason (though not determinable in experience, since they are beyond sense). The reason of humans is one that not only commands “Unity!” in general but begs for understanding’s unity with itself by coaxing the understanding away from its enslavement to the senses, towards freedom or autonomy (and thus it is no surprise that the ideas of reason are just the understanding’s own categories but extended, e.g. causality to freedom).
This account divorces unity and freedom on the level of the understanding’s relationship with the senses (so animals have subjectivity, but aren’t free), but this account unifies unity and freedom on the level of the understanding’s autonomous self-relating (so human subjectivity, as able to pursue coherence, is in principle free because it is the source of the spontaneity or autonomous momentum by which the understanding’s representations are synthesized into coherence).
Are the categories psychological rules of thought, as subjective idealists believe? If not, are the categories logical, epistemological, metaphysical, or what? What is the relationship between the transcendental understanding and Kant’s transcendental psychology?
Kant explicitly refuted the interpretation of his categories as metaphysical entities, which he called the fallacy of hypostasis, or mistaking a condition of knowledge of objects as a condition of objects in general. However, the metaphysician can avoid hypostasis while claiming that the regulatory ideas (e.g. God, freedom) are in fact on the same level as the constitutive concepts (e.g. existence, causality). To return to the running chess analogy, the metaphysician is arguing that, while we might be able to play chess without trying to win and yet not break the rules, chess could not have been invented without the idea of winning, and so the idea of winning is not just regulative of chess but constitutive of chess as well.
Kant even admits that the understanding can’t be applied to sensation unless there were a regulatory idea of (their) systematic unity, so it seems that so-called regulatory ideas are equally as constitutive of experience as categories and thus even admit of their own transcendental deduction from experience alone. Consider that the transcendental subject reflects exactly this blurring of regulation and constitution in the sense that the transcendental subject doubles as a regulatory idea (freedom) and constitutive concept/category (unity).
I take my cue here from the doctrine that non-human animals have experience, but they do not have reason such that they might form a coherence of their representations. Now if reason is necessary for the conceptualizing perceptions and thus for experience, we will have to say that non-human animals have reason (for unifying sense) at the same time we say that they don’t have reason (for unifying understanding). This doesn’t pose a contradiction anymore than it is a contradiction for someone to play chess without trying to win, even though chess could not have been invented without the ideal of trying to win. Non-human understanding may engage the senses without being able to be coherent if the understanding has momentum towards the senses but insufficient inertia to go through them, beyond the senses and towards understanding’s own inherent ends (i.e. the ideas of e.g. God, freedom).
So non-human animals have subjectivity/reason in the sense that there is a general unity of their sensations (the momentum the senses acquire from their engagement with the activity of the understanding), which Kant calls a transcendental unity with indeterminate bounds. The “reason” of non-human animals is one that simply says “Unify!” or “Conceptualize!” in the sense that the aimless chess player is still made possible by the aim to win - their “reason” simply says “Play!” or “Make valid moves!” Humans have subjectivity/reason in the sense that there are particular unities of their representations (the momentum of the understanding, unimpeded by sense, runs to the world, the monad, God, and freedom), which Kant calls the cosmological ideas, or determinately bounded ideas of reason (though not determinable in experience, since they are beyond sense). The reason of humans is one that not only commands “Unity!” in general but begs for understanding’s unity with itself by coaxing the understanding away from its enslavement to the senses, towards freedom or autonomy (and thus it is no surprise that the ideas of reason are just the understanding’s own categories but extended, e.g. causality to freedom).
This account divorces unity and freedom on the level of the understanding’s relationship with the senses (so animals have subjectivity, but aren’t free), but this account unifies unity and freedom on the level of the understanding’s autonomous self-relating (so human subjectivity, as able to pursue coherence, is in principle free because it is the source of the spontaneity or autonomous momentum by which the understanding’s representations are synthesized into coherence).