Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On the Status of “Things-in-Themselves” in Kant's Critical Philosophy
- 2 Kant on Noumenal Causality
- 3 Kant's Cognitive Anthropocentrism
- 4 Kant on Cognitive Systematization
- 5 Kant's Teleological Theology
- 6 Kant on the Limits and Prospects of Philosophy
- 7 On the Reach of Pure Reason in Kant's Practical Philosophy
- 8 On the Rationale of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- 9 On the Unity of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- Notes
- Name Index
2 - Kant on Noumenal Causality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2018
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 On the Status of “Things-in-Themselves” in Kant's Critical Philosophy
- 2 Kant on Noumenal Causality
- 3 Kant's Cognitive Anthropocentrism
- 4 Kant on Cognitive Systematization
- 5 Kant's Teleological Theology
- 6 Kant on the Limits and Prospects of Philosophy
- 7 On the Reach of Pure Reason in Kant's Practical Philosophy
- 8 On the Rationale of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- 9 On the Unity of Kant's Categorical Imperative
- Notes
- Name Index
Summary
1. THE PROBLEM OF NOUMENAL CAUSALITY
As apart from the manifold of things as we encounter them in ordinary experience, Kant envisioned a realm of things-in-themselves that are grounded in the operations of human reason - noumenal mind things (entia rationis), as it were. And at this level he also envisioned result-productive activity. As he saw it, noumenal causality can take three forms:
1. The quasi-causal agency of things-in-themselves in producing the phenomena
2. The agency of a rational will in making free choices (the “causality of freedom”)
3. The agency of a creative intelligence in the pursuit of purposes within nature (the “causality of purpose”)
The conception of noumenal causality accordingly operates in the Kantian system at three levels: that of things-in-themselves, that of persons, and that of a creator God. Each of these poses characteristic difficulties of understanding. However, the present chapter is concerned with the first two alone. (The second is addressed in Chapter 8 and the third in Chapter 5.)
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant repeatedly characterizes the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich or noumenon) in such terms as “the non-sensible cause” of representations or as “the purely intelligible cause” of appearances (CPuR, A494 = B522). Again and again he employs the language of causal efficacy with regard to things-inthemselves. Thus he speaks of “the representations through which they [things-in-themselves] affect us” (CPuR, A190 = B235; italics added) and elsewhere says that while things-in-themselves “can never be known by us except as they affect us” (Grundlegung, p. 452, Akad.; italics added) they nevertheless represent “a transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance” (CPuR, A288 = B344; italics added). Accordingly Kant writes in the Prolegomena:
And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing in itself but only know its appearances, namely the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something. The understanding, therefore, by assuming appearances, grants the existence of things-in-themselves also. (Prolegomena, sect. 32; p. 314, Akad.)
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- Kant and the Reach of ReasonStudies in Kant's Theory of Rational Systematization, pp. 21 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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