Kant's Compatibilism and His Two Conceptions of Truth

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164 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2000) 164–188 0279–0750/00/0100–0000© 2000 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by

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164

KANT’SCOMPATIBILISM

AND HIS TWOCONCEPTIONS

OF TRUTH

HAROLD LANGSAM

Abstract: Kant is a compatibilist, in that he holds that the truth of determin-ism is compatible with the existence of free will, but he is also a conditionalincompatibilist, in that he holds that if appearances were things in them-selves, then both determinism and incompatibilism would be true, and there-fore freedom would not obtain. The problem for Kant interpreters has beento reconcile Kant’s compatibilism and conditional incompatibilism; in par-ticular, the challenge is to show how Kant’s transcendental idealism (his viewthat appearances are not things in themselves) makes compatibilism true. Inthis paper, I explain how Kant’s views can be reconciled, and I argue that therelevance of transcendental idealism here is that it shows that determinism isknown to be true, not in accordance with the familiar correspondence notionof truth, but only in accordance with a weaker notion of truth, Kant’s empir-ical notion of truth, which is a kind of coherence notion of truth.

1.

According to standard philosophical terminology, a compatibilist is some-one who holds that the truth of determinism is compatible with the exist-ence of free will, whereas an incompatibilist holds that determinism andfree will are incompatible. By these standards, Kant certainly seems to bea compatibilist, for in section 9 (part III) of the “Antinomy of PureReason” chapter of the first Critique, he explicitly purports to prove thecompatibility of free will and determinism.1 But according to Allen Wood,Kant “is probably most often regarded as an incompatibilist, and not


KANT’S COMPATIBILISM 165

without justification” (1984, p. 73). But what possible justification couldthere be for regarding a professed compatibilist as an incompatibilist?

In attempting to answer this question, let us begin with Hud Hudson’sobservation that Kant can be characterized as a conditional incompatibilist:he holds that if appearances were things in themselves, then incompat-ibilism would be true (1994, pp. 23–4). In Kant’s words,

For if appearances are things in themselves, freedom cannot be upheld. Nature will then bethe complete and sufficient determining cause of every event. The condition of the event willbe such as can be found only in the series of appearances; both it and its effect will benecessary in accordance with the law of nature. (A536/B565)

In other words, if appearances were things in themselves, then bothdeterminism and incompatibilism would be true, and therefore freedomwould not obtain.

Of course, conditional incompatibilism is not a kind of incompatibilism;Kant famously holds that appearances are not things in themselves (i.e.,he does not affirm the antecedent of his conditional incompatibilism),and therefore he is not led to affirm incompatibilism. Nevertheless, Ibelieve that if we can understand why Kant holds to conditional incom-patibilism, we shall also be able to understand what justification theremight be for regarding Kant as an incompatibilist simpliciter.

Although Kant holds that free will and determinism are compatible,Kant also holds that being free and being determined are incompatible: anaction cannot both be free and determined. In Henry Allison’s usefulphrase, Kant has an “incompatibilist conception of freedom” (1990, p. 28,emphasis added): it is part of his conception of freedom that a free actionis not determined.2 It is Kant’s incompatibilist conception of freedomthat lies at the basis of his conditional incompatibilism. Kant’s reasoningseems to be as follows. He claims to have shown in the Second Analogythat, so long as the universe of discourse is restricted to appearances, it isan a priori synthetic truth that every event has a cause (the “principle ofcausality”), a cause that determines the event. Kant of course holds thatappearances are not things in themselves, and since he believes that thereare things in themselves, he holds that there are things in the world thatare not appearances. It follows that the principle of causality does notapply to everything in the world. But now let us suppose that appear-ances are things in themselves; in other words, let us suppose that theantecedent of Kant’s conditional incompatibilism is true. In Kant’s words,“let us suppose that the distinction, which our Critique has shown to benecessary, between things as objects of experience and those same thingsas things in themselves, had not been made” (Bxxvii). What Kant seemsto be supposing here is that everything in the world is an appearance,and therefore the principle of causality, which applies to appearances,



applies to everything in the world: “In that case all things in general, asfar as they are efficient causes, would be determined by the principle ofcausality, and consequently by the mechanism of nature” (Bxxvii, emphasisadded). So according to Kant, if appearances were things in themselves,determinism would be true “unrestrictedly.” Given Kant’s incompatibilistconception of freedom, unrestricted determinism is incompatible with theexistence of free will: “I could not, therefore, without palpable contradic-tion, say of one and the same being, for instance the human soul, that itswill is free and yet subject to natural necessity, that is, is not free” (Bxxvii).In sum, Kant is a conditional incompatibilist because he holds that ifappearances were things in themselves, determinism would be true unre-strictedly, and given his incompatibilist conception of freedom, he musthold that unrestricted determinism is incompatible with free will. And sowe are justified in viewing Kant as an incompatibilist simpliciter in so faras the determinism at issue is of the unrestricted kind.

Nevertheless, Kant presents himself as a compatibilist, because he holdsthat unrestricted determinism is not the kind of determinism “at issue.”For Kant holds that appearances are not things in themselves, and there-fore only a restricted kind of determinism obtains, and according to Kant,this kind of determinism is compatible with free will. The challenge forKant interpreters has been to explain how, in light of his incompatibil-ist conception of freedom (his “conceptual incompatibilism”), Kant cancoherently hold that his “restricted” variety of determinism is compatiblewith free will.3 (The challenge cannot be avoided by denying that Kant isa conceptual incompatibilist, because as the above discussion suggests,if we deny that Kant is a conceptual incompatibilist, then we shall beunable to explain why Kant is a conditional incompatibilist.)4

Commentators such as Lewis White Beck (1960, pp. 191–2; 1987,pp. 42–3), Jonathan Bennett (1974, pp. 199–201), and Terence Irwin (1984,pp. 37–8) have all argued that this interpretive challenge cannot be met;they conclude that Kant’s compatibilism and conceptual incompatibilismcannot be reconciled. The common substance of their arguments can beexpressed as follows. In purporting to show the compatibility of free willwith the kind of determinism that he believes to obtain in the world,Kant utilizes the restricted applicability of the principle of causality, itsapplicability only to appearances, not to things in themselves. All events,being temporal, are appearances, and therefore, in accordance with theprinciple of causality, have phenomenal causes that determine them. Butsince not everything in the world is an appearance, there is no contradic-tion in assuming that events also have noumenal causes, causes that are notappearances. The principle of causality does not apply to noumenal causes,and therefore there is no contradiction in assuming that a noumenalcause does not itself have a determining cause. Applying these considera-tions to human actions, it follows that there is no contradiction in assuming



that human actions, despite having phenomenal causes that determinethem, also have noumenal causes that are themselves uncaused. Kantconcludes that there is no contradiction in assuming that human actions,although determined by their phenomenal causes, are free in virtue oftheir uncaused noumenal causes. But (and here is the difficulty for Kantinterpreters) in light of his conceptual incompatibilism, Kant seems to beunwarranted in drawing this conclusion. As we saw earlier, Kant holdsthat an action cannot both be free and determined, and so it is unclearhow Kant is entitled to conclude that it is possible for an action to be freedespite its being determined by phenomenal causes. As Bennett puts thepoint, “what is needed is to make natural [i.e., phenomenal] causalityunclutch” (1974, p. 200), but it seems that all Kant’s transcendental ideal-ism enables him to do is posit noumenal causes in addition to the “clutch-ing” phenomenal ones. What Kant needs is a way for it to be possiblethat human actions are not determined, whereas it seems that all tran-scendental idealism gives him is a way for it to be possible that humanactions have causes other than their determining ones.

Is there a more charitable way to interpret Kant so that his com-patibilism is not in blatant contradiction with his conceptual incom-patibilism? In this paper I shall argue that there is. What Kant needs is away for it to be possible that human actions are not determined, anddespite appearances to the contrary, he has one: I shall argue that itis a consequence of Kant’s views that it is possible that events are notdetermined by phenomenal causes. How does this square with the prin-ciple of causality? I shall argue that the proper interpretation of Kant’sprinciple of causality is that every event must be represented as having aphenomenal cause that determines it; it is compatible with this principlethat in fact events do not have phenomenal causes, but are merely repres-ented as having such causes. But if Kant holds that it is possible thatevents do not have phenomenal causes, how can he also consistentlyaffirm determinism? How can he justify his repeated insistence that eventsdo have phenomenal causes that determine them?

In order to answer this question, I shall need to argue that Kant em-ploys two distinct notions of truth: the familiar correspondence notion oftruth, and a kind of coherence notion of truth which Kant refers to asempirical truth.5 It is the distinction between these two notions of truththat provides the key to understanding Kant’s compatibilism. When Kantaffirms determinism, he is affirming only the empirical truth of determin-ism, not its “correspondence” truth; according to Kant, what is known tobe true in the “correspondence” sense is merely that events are repres-ented as having phenomenal causes, not that they actually have phe-nomenal causes. Earlier I stated that Kant is a compatibilist in the sensethat he holds that a certain restricted kind of determinism is compatiblewith free will. Kant’s determinism is restricted in that it is true only in



the empirical sense and not in the “correspondence” sense. For Kant’scompatibilism amounts to the claim that the truth of determinism in theempirical sense is compatible with the truth in the correspondence senseof the claim that human actions are free. Such compatibilism is consist-ent with Kant’s conceptual incompatibilism only because the truth ofdeterminism in the empirical sense is compatible with the truth in thecorrespondence sense of the claim that events are not determined byphenomenal causes. Transcendental idealism is relevant to Kant’s argu-ment for compatibilism not because it allows him to posit noumenalcauses, but because it enables him to argue that determinism is known tobe true only in the empirical sense.

My goal in this paper is to defend the interpretation of Kant’s views oncausation outlined in the previous two paragraphs. My argument will beorganized as follows. In brief, what I need to show is that Kant’s claimsin the Second Analogy are compatible with the view that events do nothave phenomenal causes that determine them. I begin by interpretingKant as arguing in the Second Analogy only for the claim that all eventsmust be represented as having causes (section 2). The obvious objectionto this interpretation is that Kant claims to have proven the apparentlystronger claim that all events have phenomenal causes. I begin my responseto this objection by arguing that Kant employs two distinct notions oftruth: the familiar correspondence notion, and a distinctively Kantianvariant of the coherence notion of truth, a notion which, as alreadynoted, Kant refers to as empirical truth (section 3). Once this distinctionis in place, I argue that Kant’s claim in the Second Analogy and else-where that all events have phenomenal causes must be understood as theclaim that it is (merely) empirically true that all events have phenomenalcauses (section 4). The empirical truth of this claim is shown to be aconsequence of the “correspondence” truth of the claim that all eventsmust be represented as having phenomenal causes. I then argue that theempirical truth of the claim that all events have phenomenal causes iscompatible with the “correspondence” truth of the claim that no eventshave phenomenal causes (section 5). As I have already explained, it isthe compatibility of these two claims that lies at the basis of Kant’scompatibilism.

2.

In the Second Analogy, Kant attempts to show that all events must berepresented as having causes. More precisely, his conclusion is that it is acondition of experiencing an event that it be represented as having acause: “If, then, we experience that something happens, we in so doingalways presuppose that something precedes it, on which it follows according



to a rule . . . The experience of an event [i.e. of anything as happening] isitself possible only on this assumption” (A195/B240, emphasis added).The presupposition in question is an empirical judgment: “If, then, myperception is to contain knowledge of an event, of something as actuallyhappening, it must be an empirical judgment in which we think the se-quence as determined; that is, it presupposes another appearance in time,upon which it follows necessarily, according to a rule” (A201/B246-7).Kant’s principle of causality is an “indispensable law of empirical repres-entation” (A199/B244), and in the Second Analogy, Kant’s only concernwith events is with their conditions of perceptual representation.

Most commentators on the Second Analogy assume that Kant is arguingthere for the claim that all events have phenomenal causes, and theyinterpret Kant’s argument accordingly. I address these commentators insections 3 and 4; in this section, I simply assume that Kant is arguingmerely for the claim that all events must be represented as having causes,and I explain how Kant’s argument for this claim should be understood.I begin by making some remarks about the Transcendental Deduction,for Kant’s premises for his argument in the Second Analogy are takenfrom the conclusions of the Transcendental Deduction. In the first half ofthe B Deduction, Kant concludes, inter alia, that it is a necessary conditionof being a thinker that the objects of one’s thought (and, in particular,the manifold of one’s intuition) be characterized by necessary unity, anecessary unity that can be comprehended by the thinker. Kant’s conclu-sion is meant to apply to any thinker whose intuition is sensible, notintellectual. In the second half of the B Deduction, Kant describes thenature of the necessary unity that characterizes the objects of our kindof sensible intuition, sensible intuition whose forms are space and time.According to Kant, spatiotemporal objects are characterized by neces-sary unity in that they each occupy determinate positions in the onespace and time, thereby standing in determinate spatiotemporal rela-tions with every other spatiotemporal object (B160-1). In other words,spatiotemporal objects are all necessarily united with each other in thatthey all stand in determinate spatial and temporal relations with eachother.

If in the second half of the B Deduction Kant is concerned with thenature of the necessary unity characteristic of the objects of our intuition,in the Analytic of Principles Kant is concerned with how this necessaryunity is comprehended by the thinker. Of course Kant has already con-cluded in the Transcendental and Metaphysical Deductions that thecategories will be needed for this task. But in the Analytic of Principles,and especially in Chapter II, the System of all Principles of Pure Under-standing, Kant attempts to show how particular categories are neededto comprehend different aspects of necessary unity, thereby generatinga priori synthetic knowledge. In the Second Analogy, Kant’s concern is



with showing how the category of causality is needed to comprehendrelations of temporal succession.

Suppose I experience two distinct states of affairs, A and B. Given theconclusions of the Transcendental Deduction, I have a priori knowledgethat A and B are temporally related to each other. In particular, eitherA and B exist at the same time, or they exist at different times. Thesepossible temporal relations can be comprehended by me in the sense thatI can represent them in my experience. For example, in experiencing Aand B, one thing that may happen is that I experience B as succeeding A.Kant’s concern in the Second Analogy is with how I am able to representin experience such relations of succession.

At this stage of the dialectic, it may not yet be clear what the problemis supposed to be here. Why can’t I experientially represent temporalrelations by perceiving them? After all, time is a form of intuition; weintuit things as being in time. But if I intuit both A and B as being intime, why can’t I also intuit, that is, perceive, how they are related intime?

One problem here is that time is merely a form of inner intuition, notouter intuition.6 What I intuit as being in time are not A and B, but myapprehensions of A and B. Of course, given that the apprehensions of Aand B are in time, A and B must be in time also,7 but they are notintuited as being in time. Nevertheless, they can be experienced as being intime, and, in particular, they can be experienced as standing in determinatetemporal relations. How is that possible?

It may still be unclear why there is any need for the categories here.Even if I can’t intuit B as succeeding A, perhaps I can experience B assucceeding A by judging that B is succeeding A while I am intuiting B.This suggestion is basically correct,8 but the difficulty is to explain howI am able to judge that B succeeds A. In particular, the difficulty is toexplain how it is that I possess a concept of objective time that enablesme to make such a judgment. For the fact that time is a form of my innerintuition does not explain how I am able to conceive of the objects of myouter intuition as standing in temporal relations to each other. However,not only am I able to conceive of the objects of my outer intuition in thisway, but Kant claims to have shown in the Transcendental Deductionthat I have a priori synthetic knowledge that objective states of affairsstand in determinate temporal relations to each other. Since this know-ledge is a priori and synthetic, the concepts that are employed in thisknowledge must be a priori concepts; more precisely, they must be cat-egories.9 So in order to experience B as succeeding A, it is true that Imust think, or judge, that B succeeds A, but in order to make such ajudgment, I must employ one of the categories. Which category is re-quired here; which will allow me to represent B as succeeding A? Giventhat the schema of causation is the “real upon which, whenever posited,



something else always follows” (A144/B183), the answer is obvious. Inorder to experience B as succeeding A, I must represent B as the effectof a cause, the cause being either A or some state of affairs existingsimultaneously with A. In virtue of representing A and B in this manner,I also represent B as succeeding A, since effects succeed their causes andI am representing the cause of B as existing at the same time as A.

The conclusion of the argument is that in order to experience twostates of affairs as standing in the temporal relation of succession, I mustrepresent the later as caused by a state of affairs existing simultaneouslywith the earlier. But since events always involve successive states of affairs(an event occurs when “some state which did not previously exist, comesto be,” A191/B236-7), Kant’s conclusion can also be expressed in termsof the experience of events: it is a necessary condition of experiencingsomething as an event that it be represented as having a cause.

3.

I have interpreted Kant as arguing in the Second Analogy for the claimthat all events must be represented as having causes. But Kant also claimsto have proven the apparently stronger claim that all events have causes.How are we to reconcile Kant’s alternative formulations of his conclu-sion? My solution is that one formulation represents Kant’s conclusion interms of the correspondence notion of truth; the other formulation representsKant’s conclusion in terms of his empirical notion of truth. Kant purportsto show in the Second Analogy that it is true (correspondence notion) thatit is a necessary condition of experiencing an event that it be representedas having a cause; it is a consequence of the “correspondence” truth ofthis claim that it is empirically true that all events have causes.

I argue for this interpretation as follows. In this section, I argue thatKant does in fact employ these two distinct notions of truth. In thefollowing section, I argue that Kant’s claim that all events have phenom-enal causes must be understood as the claim that it is empirically truethat all events have phenomenal causes, not as the claim that it is “corres-pondence” true that all events have phenomenal causes.

Why do I maintain that Kant employs these two distinct notions oftruth? What seems to be clear is that Kant distinguishes between twodifferent ways in which certain statements can be understood: accordingto Kant, certain statements have both an empirical sense and a transcend-ental sense. The question then arises as to what this empirical/transcend-ental distinction amounts to. The standard interpretation seems to bethat the two senses that a statement can possess derive from two distinctmeanings that certain terms in those statements possess; in particular,according to the standard interpretation Kant holds that terms such as



‘appearance’ and ‘thing in itself’ have both an empirical meaning anda transcendental meaning.10 I shall offer a different account of Kant’sempirical/transcendental distinction; I shall argue that the two sensesthat some statements possess derive from two notions of truth that can beapplied to those statements. To understand a statement in accordancewith its empirical sense is to interpret it in accordance with its empiricaltruth conditions; to understand a statement in accordance with its tran-scendental sense is to interpret it in accordance with its correspondencetruth conditions. If my argument is successful, then I will have shownthat Kant does employ two distinct notions of truth, the familiar corres-pondence notion and Kant’s own empirical notion of truth.

A critical passage for understanding Kant’s empirical/transcendentaldistinction is his discussion of rain at A45-6/B62-3. Kant addresses thequestion of whether rain is a thing in itself or an appearance. Kant con-cludes that it is “correct” to say that rain is a thing in itself, so long as theconcept of a thing in itself is taken “in a merely physical [i.e., empirical]sense,” but that in so far as the “question as to the relation of the repres-entation to the object” is “transcendental,” “the drops of rain [are] mereappearances.” Thus Kant seems to be saying that the claim that rain is athing in itself is true when taken in an empirical sense, but false whentaken in a transcendental sense. But what exactly does this distinctionbetween an empirical and transcendental sense amount to?

The standard interpretation would say that Kant is distinguishing herebetween two different senses of the terms ‘appearance’ and ‘thing in itself,’an empirical and a transcendental sense. The idea would be that the claimthat rain is a thing in itself is true when ‘thing in itself’ is understoodaccording to its empirical sense, but false when understood according toits transcendental sense. The transcendental sense is that which Kantutilizes when he explicates his transcendental idealism. Of course it is aquestion of great controversy among Kant interpreters as to how thetranscendental sense should be understood; here I will simply set forthmy view that to consider a thing as it is in itself is to consider its intrinsicproperties, properties it has independently of its relations to human minds,whereas to consider a thing as appearance is to consider a certain set ofits relational properties, those properties that constitute how it appears tohuman minds.11 By contrast, the empirical senses of these terms seem tobe explicated by Kant at the beginning of the “rain” passage (A45/B62):

We commonly distinguish in appearances that which is essentially inherent in their intui-tion and holds for sense in all human beings, from that which belongs to their intuitionaccidentally only, and is valid not in relation to sensibility in general but only in relation toa particular standpoint or to a peculiarity of structure in this or that sense. The former kindof knowledge is then declared to represent the object in itself, the latter its appearance only.But this distinction is merely empirical.



So the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, whenthese terms are understood in their empirical senses, is a distinction withinthe realm of appearance (this term now being understood in its transcend-ental sense).

The standard interpretation of the empirical/transcendental distinctioncan now be applied to the “rain” passage as follows. In ordinary circum-stances, we take the rainbow to be a mere appearance, but the rain to bea thing in itself, and in so doing, we make a true judgment. Why? Becausecontext dictates that the judgment should be understood empirically, thatis, the terms ‘appearance’ and ‘thing in itself’ should have their empiricalmeanings in this context. And when the term ‘thing in itself’ is understoodempirically, the claim that rain is a thing in itself is true, because “rainwill then be viewed as that which, in all experience and in all its variouspositions relative to the senses, is determined thus, and not otherwise, inour intuition” (A45/B63). By contrast, when we address the issue of tran-scendental idealism, the terms ‘thing in itself’ and ‘appearance’ acquiretheir transcendental senses, and the claim that rain is a thing in itselfbecomes false.

The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores Kant’s warningthat the empirical distinction between appearances and things in them-selves potentially involves an error. The warning comes in the continu-ation of the “rain” passage (A45/B62-3):

If, as generally happens, we stop short at this point, and do not proceed, as we ought, totreat the empirical intuition itself as mere appearance, in which nothing that belongs to athing in itself can be found, our transcendental distinction is lost. We then believe that weknow things in themselves, and this in spite of the fact that in the world of sense, howeverdeeply we enquire into its objects, we have to do with nothing but appearances.

According to the standard interpretation that I just described, the claimthat rain is a thing in itself, when uttered in some ordinary context, istrue. But that is precisely what Kant seems to be denying in the passagejust quoted. For Kant is saying that if in some ordinary context we makethe perfectly appropriate judgment that the rain (as opposed to the rain-bow) is a thing in itself, and then “as generally happens, we stop short atthis point, and do not proceed” to acknowledge the lesson of transcend-ental idealism that perceptual objects are “nothing but appearances,”our perfectly appropriate judgment results in our believing a falsehood,the falsehood that “we know things in themselves.” For we do haveknowledge of the rain, but we mistakenly believe that rain is a thing initself,12 and we therefore mistakenly conclude that we have knowledgeof things in themselves. So Kant is saying that even in ordinary contextsthe claim that rain is a thing in itself is false, so long as the truth oftranscendental idealism is being ignored (which according to Kant is



what “generally happens”). But if Kant holds that this claim is false bothin ordinary contexts and in “transcendental” contexts (i.e., contexts inwhich transcendental idealism is being explicated), then presumably healso holds that the claim means the same thing in both contexts, and, inparticular, that the term ‘thing in itself ’ means the same thing in bothcontexts. But according to the standard interpretation, the term ‘thing initself ’ means something different depending on whether it is uttered in anordinary or transcendental context, and therefore the claim that rain is athing in itself is true in the former kind of context and false in the latter.

It may be thought that a slight modification of the standard interpreta-tion can meet the above objection. According to this modified interpreta-tion, Kant’s distinction between empirical and transcendental senses isnot a distinction between two meanings that the terms ‘thing in itself ’ and‘appearance’ currently have in our language; rather, Kant is recommend-ing that we change our language so as to give each of these terms both anempirical and transcendental meaning. According to this interpretation,Kant acknowledges that, as currently used, the terms ‘thing in itself ’ and‘appearance’ are univocal, and their univocal meanings are what werepreviously identified as their transcendental meanings. The problem withthis situation (according to Kant) is that, given the truth of transcend-ental idealism, many of our utterances containing the term ‘thing in itself ’are false, utterances such as “The rain is a thing in itself.” The point ofKant’s distinction between empirical and transcendental senses is that ifwe make a slight modification to our language, we can change thesefalsehoods into truths. For although it is false to claim that rain is a thingin itself whereas the rainbow is mere appearance, it is nevertheless appro-priate to make such a claim, for such a claim tracks a real distinctionwithin the realm of appearances, a distinction between “that which isessentially inherent in their intuition and holds for sense for all humanbeings” and “that which belongs to their intuition accidentally only, andis valid not in relation to sensibility in general, but only in relation to aparticular standpoint or to a peculiarity in structure in this or that sense”(A45/B62). So if we change the meanings of ‘thing in itself ’ and ‘appear-ance’ to reflect this (empirical) distinction, claims such as “The rain is athing in itself” will turn out to be true. On the other hand, we do notwant to give up the original meanings of these terms, or else we lose themeans to express the doctrine of transcendental idealism. So according tothis modified version of the standard interpretation, Kant’s recommenda-tion is that in “transcendental” contexts, philosophical contexts in whichtranscendental idealism is at issue, we allow the terms ‘thing in itself ’ and‘appearance’ to keep their original meanings, meanings which shall hence-forth be considered “transcendental” meanings. However, in everydaycontexts the two terms will acquire new “empirical” meanings that willallow our utterances containing these terms to come out true.



I objected to the standard interpretation of the empirical/transcend-ental distinction on the ground that it ignored Kant’s warning about theerrors implicit in our ordinary judgments; I object to the modified versionof the standard interpretation because of its assumption that these errorscan be avoided by a simple change of a term’s meaning. On Kant’s view,that we mistakenly take mere appearances such as rain to be things inthemselves is not a consequence of some arbitrary feature of our lan-guage, a feature that can be modified by mere stipulation. Rather, it isthe innate structure of the human mind that leads us astray here. For Ishall argue that one of the lessons of the Transcendental Deduction isthat it is a necessary condition of having experience that we mistakenlyjudge what we experience (i.e., appearances) to be things in themselves.These mistaken judgments are unavoidable because they are necessaryconditions of experience, and, a fortiori, they cannot be avoided by chang-ing the meanings of some terms in our language. For in virtue of possess-ing minds with certain kinds of structures, we also possess certain a prioriconcepts, concepts that must be applied in experience in the form of theaforementioned mistaken judgments. We have the language that we doso as to be able to express these mistaken judgments, and given that it isa necessary condition of having experience that we make these judgments,we shall be unable to change our language so as to avoid making them.

I conclude that Kant’s distinction between empirical and transcendentalsenses is not a distinction between two different meanings for the terms‘appearance’ and ‘thing in itself.’ Rather, I take Kant to hold that the terms‘appearance’ and ‘thing in itself ’ are univocal: to consider a thing as it isin itself is to consider its intrinsic properties, properties it has independ-ently of its relations to human minds, whereas to consider a thing asappearance is to consider a certain set of its relational properties, thoseproperties that constitute how it appears to human minds. But then whatdoes the distinction between empirical and transcendental senses amountto? I claim that Kant is distinguishing here between two different notionsof truth: to understand a claim in terms of its transcendental sense is tograsp its correspondence truth conditions; to understand a claim in termsof its empirical sense is to grasp its empirical truth conditions. As notedearlier, empirical truth is a certain kind of coherence notion of truth. Theclaim that rain is a thing in itself is empirically true but transcendentallyfalse, that is, it is false when evaluated with respect to a correspondencenotion of truth.

In order to motivate and defend this interpretation of Kant’s empirical/transcendental distinction, I first need to defend my claim that, accordingto Kant, it is a necessary condition of experience that we mistakenlyjudge appearances to be things in themselves. These judgments are mis-taken in the sense that they are transcendentally false, and it is transcend-ental idealism that teaches us that such judgments are transcendentally



false. Kant’s warning in the “rain” passage about the errors implicit inour ordinary judgments can now be understood as follows. If we judgethat rain is a thing in itself, for example, and “as generally happens, westop short at this point” (A45/B62) and fail to acknowledge the truth oftranscendental idealism, then we are likely to understand this judgmentin transcendental terms, for the correspondence notion of truth is the onewith which we are all familiar. Transcendental idealism alerts us to theneed for a different conception of truth, a conception according to whichsuch ordinary judgments will turn out to be true. For it is appropriate tojudge that rain is a thing in itself but rainbows are mere appearances,and what is needed is a conception of truth that can make sense of thisappropriateness. Unfortunately, at this early stage of the Critique, Kantis not yet in a position to argue for the needed conception of truth. Butonce we understand why Kant holds that it is a necessary condition ofexperience that we judge appearances to be things in themselves, we shallalso be in a position to see what the nature of this second, empiricalnotion of truth must be.

In section 2, I pointed out that Kant concludes in the first half of theB Deduction that appearances must be characterized by necessary unity.In the second half of the B Deduction, Kant characterizes the nature ofthis necessary unity. In particular, I emphasized Kant’s claim that thespatiotemporal objects of our intuition are necessarily united with eachother in that they stand in determinate spatiotemporal relations with eachother. But the necessary unity of spatiotemporal objects with each otheris only one aspect of the necessary unity that characterizes appearances.A perhaps more basic aspect of this necessary unity is that the manifoldof intuition is composed of spatiotemporal objects. For Kant defines anobject as “that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuitionis united” (B137). My manifold is characterized by necessary unity in thatI conceptualize the appearances of this manifold as objects. There is “inter-objectual” necessary unity in virtue of the spatiotemporal relations inwhich objects stand, but there is also “intra-objectual” necessary unityholding among the parts of an object with each other.

In conceptualizing, or representing, some portion of the manifold as anobject, I am representing the parts of the manifold that correspond to thisrepresentation as necessarily united with each other. What the concept ofobjects adds to the concepts of properties and their instantiations is theidea that the world of property instantiations is divided into groups,groups of property instantiations that belong to the same object. In experi-encing the world, we experience not merely the instantiation of variouskinds of properties, but we experience these properties as instantiated inobjects; we experience these property instantiations as belonging to groups,groups of property instantiations that belong to the same object. In short,we experience properties as properties of objects. Moreover, in experiencing



some set of properties as properties of the same object, we experiencethese properties as standing in relations of necessary unity with each other.So the manifold of appearance is characterized by necessary unity in sofar as we represent its parts as properties of objects.

What I now need to do is show that in representing appearances asproperties of objects, we are at the same time representing these appear-ances as things in themselves. I have already noted that in representing aset of properties as properties of the same object, I am representing themas united with each other in a certain kind of way. Moreover, I am also(implicitly) representing these properties as not united with properties ofother objects in this kind of way. In other words, the properties of anobject are united with each other in a way in which they are not unitedwith the properties of other objects; that is the force of saying that thereis more than one object here. Objects are in this sense distinct from otherobjects; that an object has its properties is one kind of fact, and that theobject stands in various kinds of relations to other objects is a distinctkind of fact. We might say that it is part of the concept of an object thatit has properties that are intrinsic and nonrelational, properties that theobject has independently of its relations to other objects. It is these intrinsicproperties that stand in relations of necessary unity with each other andthat in an important sense constitute the object.

Now let’s say that I am experiencing some portion of the manifold ofappearance as a distinct object, and I am representing the properties ofthis object as united with each other in a way in which they are not unitedwith the properties of any other object. Note that among these otherobjects is myself, the consciousness, mind, or subject that is having theexperience. So in representing these properties as united with each other,I am representing them as not united with (the properties of ) the subjectthat is apprehending them. In other words, the subject represents thatwhich appears to him as objects that are distinct from him. More spe-cifically, he represents that which appears to him as the properties thatconstitute these objects, that is, as intrinsic properties that the objectshave independently of their relations to the subject. But I have alreadyclaimed that to represent certain properties as an object’s intrinsic prop-erties just is to represent those properties as characterizing the object as itis in itself. In other words, in representing the manifold of appearance ascomprising properties that constitute objects, the subject is (mis)representingwhat in Kant’s view are mere appearances as things in themselves.

Recall that in order to defend my interpretation of Kant’s empirical/transcendental distinction, I first needed to show that it is Kant’s viewthat it is a necessary condition of experience that we mistakenly judgeappearances to be things in themselves. I have now completed this task;let me summarize the steps in my argument. On Kant’s view, it is anecessary condition of experience that what we intuit (which in Kant’s



view is a manifold of mere appearances) be characterized by necessaryunity. The manifold we intuit is characterized by necessary unity in thatwe represent it as consisting of groups of properties that stand in relationsof necessary unity with each other to constitute objects. In representingthese properties as constitutive, we represent them as intrinsic properties,as properties that the objects have independently of their relations toother objects, and, in particular, independently of their relations to therepresenting subject. But to represent a thing’s intrinsic properties is torepresent the thing as it is in itself. So in representing the manifold ofappearances as comprised of the constitutive properties of objects, we arerepresenting these appearances as things in themselves. Therefore, it is anecessary condition of experience that we represent, or judge, what (inKant’s view) are mere appearances as things in themselves. In Kant’swords, “that which lies in the successive apprehension is here viewed asrepresentation, while the appearance which is given to me, notwithstand-ing that it is nothing but the sum of these representations, is viewed as theirobject” (A191/B236, emphasis added).

These judgments that appearances are things in themselves areexperiential judgments: they are judgments made about what is beingexperienced while it is being experienced. Experiential judgments are notconsidered judgments; after considering them, we sometimes acknowledgethat they are mistaken. It is a necessary condition of experiencing rainthat I experientially represent it as a thing in itself, but it is also a neces-sary condition of experiencing a rainbow that I experientially represent itas a thing in itself. Our considered judgment is that only the rain is athing in itself while the rainbow is a mere appearance. On Kant’s view,neither the rain nor the rainbow is a thing in itself. What Kant needs is adifferent notion of truth, a notion of truth which applies only within therealm of appearance, according to which our considered judgment istrue. This different notion of truth is Kant’s empirical notion of truth,and we are finally in a position to understand it.

Kant addresses the problem of an empirical notion of truth immedi-ately after the above-quoted acknowledgement that what are mere rep-resentations are mistakenly viewed in experience as the objects of theserepresentations (A191/B236, emphasis added):

Since truth consists in the agreement of knowledge with the object, it will at once be seenthat we can here enquire only regarding the formal conditions of empirical truth, and thatappearance, in contradistinction to the representations of apprehension, can be representedas an object distinct from them only if it stands under a rule which distinguishes it from everyother apprehension and necessitates some one particular connection of the manifold. Theobject is that in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule ofapprehension.



What is the relevance of Kant’s talk of rules in this passage? We sawearlier that to represent an appearance as an object is to represent it asconsisting of properties that stand in relations of necessary unity witheach other. The nature of these relations of necessary unity are describedin the synthetic principles of pure understanding. So to represent anappearance as an object is to represent it as falling under rules, the rulesin question being the synthetic principles of pure understanding.13 Theseprinciples can be viewed as rules for connecting appearances with otherappearances in certain kinds of ways;14 in Kant’s words, the rules “neces-sitate some one particular connection of the manifold” of appearance(A191/B236). It is a necessary condition of experience that we representappearances as falling under these rules, but that is of course no guar-antee that the appearances really do fall under these rules, that is, that theyconnect with other appearances in the appropriate ways. If some appear-ance really does cohere with other appearances in the appropriate ways,then it is empirically true that the appearance is a thing in itself (eventhough it is also transcendentally false that the appearance is a thingin itself ); if the appearance does not so cohere, then what is empiricallytrue is that the appearance is a mere appearance. It is necessary that weexperientially represent both the rain and the rainbow as things in them-selves, but it is only the former representation that is empirically true,because rain-appearances, but not rainbow-appearances, cohere with otherappearances in accordance with the principles of pure understanding.The empirical conception of truth is thus a coherence conception of truth;15

nevertheless, Kant can still say that this conception of truth involves “theagreement of knowledge with its object” (A58/B82, A191/B236), for thecoherence in question is a coherence among appearances (the “object” ofempirical knowledge), not a coherence merely among judgments aboutappearances.

The kind of coherence at issue here is determined by the principlesof pure understanding, for it is these principles that specify the rules forhow an appearance is to cohere with other appearances if it is to beempirically true that the appearance is a thing in itself. Since our prim-ary interest in this paper is with Kant’s theory of causation, I will brieflysketch how a principle of pure understanding can function as a rule ofthis kind by focusing on the principle of causality. I argued in section 2that Kant purports to show in the Second Analogy that it is a necessarycondition for representing an appearance as an event that it be representedas having a cause. I am now claiming that the principle of causality alsofunctions as a rule that helps to specify how an appearance must coherewith other appearances if a judgment about that appearance is to beempirically true. In other words, Kant’s conclusion in the Second Analogythat it is a necessary condition for representing an appearance as an event



that it be represented as having a cause operates as the rule that if it is tobe empirically true that an appearance is an event, then it must be empir-ically true that the appearance has a cause. And if it is to be empiricallytrue that the appearance has a cause, then there must be some otherappearance such that it is empirically true that this other appearance isthe cause of the first appearance. In other words, if the first appearance isto “count” as an event, then there must be some other appearance that“coheres” with the first in accordance with the law of cause and effect.The nature of the coherence in question relates to the representation ofregular succession, for the schema of causation is the “real upon which,whenever posited, something else always follows” (A144/B183). In otherwords, if it is to be empirically true that appearance A is the cause ofappearance B, then appearances of kind A and B must be related to eachother in such a way that it is empirically true that appearances of kind Aand kind B are events, and events of kind A are always followed byevents of kind B.16 The empirical truth of these latter claims will requirenot only that appearances of kind A and B cohere with each other inappropriate ways, but also that they appropriately cohere with otherrelevant appearances.

Our discussion of Kant’s empirical/transcendental distinction may besummarized as follows. Kant’s distinction between empirical and tran-scendental senses derives from his employment of two distinct notions oftruth, the familiar correspondence notion, and his own empirical notionof truth. The latter is a coherence notion of truth that is applicable onlyto judgments about appearances. A judgment is empirically true if theappearances that fall under it cohere with other appearances in appropri-ate ways, that is, in the ways specified by the relevant principles of pureunderstanding and categorical schemata.

4.

In the Second Analogy and elsewhere, Kant claims that all events havephenomenal causes. In this section I argue that this claim must be under-stood empirically, not transcendentally: Kant is arguing for the empiricaltruth of the claim that all events have phenomenal causes, not for itstranscendental (i.e., correspondence) truth.

Kant should not be interpreted as arguing in the Second Analogy forthe transcendental truth of the claim that all events have phenomenalcauses, for the simple reason that it is clear from Kant’s discussion in theAntinomies that he holds that it is not transcendentally true that allevents have phenomenal causes. Suppose it were transcendentally truethat all events have phenomenal causes. Let us also assume that it istranscendentally true that there is at least one event. Consider any event



and its phenomenal cause. Any phenomenal cause of an event is itself anevent, and therefore will itself have a phenomenal cause (A542/B570),which being an event will have a phenomenal cause in its turn. In otherwords, the existence of an event implies the existence of an infinite seriesof subordinate causes of that event. But according to Kant’s solution tothe Antinomies, the existence of such an infinite series of phenomenalcauses is impossible.17 So assuming the existence of events, Kant musthold that it is not transcendentally true that all events have phenomenalcauses.

Therefore Kant should be interpreted as arguing in the Second Ana-logy for the empirical truth of the claim that all events have phenomenalcauses. Kant’s argument should be understood as follows. In section 2, Iexplained Kant’s argument for the claim that it is a necessary conditionof experiencing an appearance as an event that it be represented as hav-ing a cause. Given my identification of transcendental truth with thefamiliar correspondence notion of truth, the argument I presented insection 2 should be understood as Kant’s argument for the claim that it istranscendentally true that it is a necessary condition for experiencing anappearance as an event that it be represented as having a cause. But it isa trivial consequence of this claim that it is empirically true that all eventshave phenomenal causes. For in section 3 I showed that Kant’s claim thatit is a necessary condition for representing an appearance as an event thatit be represented as having a cause operates as the rule that if it is to beempirically true that an appearance is an event, then it must be empiric-ally true that the appearance has a (phenomenal) cause. In other words,all appearances are such that if it is empirically true that some appear-ance is an event, then it is empirically true that the appearance has aphenomenal cause. Equivalently, it is empirically true that all appear-ances that are events have phenomenal causes. Since the empirical con-ception of truth only applies to appearances, we may delete the referenceto appearances and say simply that it is empirically true that all eventshave phenomenal causes.

5.

In section 1 I claimed that Kant’s compatibilism amounts to the viewthat the empirical truth of determinism is compatible with the transcend-ental (i.e., correspondence) truth of the claim that human actions arefree. Given Kant’s conceptual incompatibilism, if it is to be transcendent-ally true that human actions are free, then it must also be transcendent-ally true that human actions are not determined. So on my interpretationof Kant’s compatibilism, Kant is committed to the empirical truth ofdeterminism being compatible with the transcendental truth of the claim



that no human actions are determined. In this section, I argue that thesetwo claims are compatible; in particular, I argue that the empirical truthof the claim that all events have (determining) phenomenal causes iscompatible with the transcendental truth of the claim that no events havephenomenal causes.

These two claims are compatible because the empirical truth of theclaim that all events have phenomenal causes implies nothing as to whetheror not it is transcendentally true of any given event that it has a phenom-enal cause. Kant makes this clear in his discussion of the solution to theAntinomies. Consider, for example, the following passage:

The series of subordinated causes, and . . . the series that proceeds from the conditioned tounconditioned necessary existence . . . can never be regarded as being in themselves in theirtotality either finite or infinite. Being series of subordinated representations, they exist onlyin the dynamical regress, and prior to this regress can have no existence in themselves asself-subsistent series of things. (A505-6/B533-4)

The “series of subordinated causes” comprises causes such that it is em-pirically true that they exist; assuming the soundness of Kant’s argumentin the Second Analogy, it is empirically true that such a series of subordin-ated causes exists. What Kant is (at least) saying in this passage is thatthe empirical truth of this claim implies nothing about whether the claimis transcendentally true.18 In particular, Kant notes that the empiricaltruth of the claim that some event has a cause does not imply the tran-scendental truth of the claim that the event has an infinite number ofsubordinate causes, nor does it imply the transcendental truth of theclaim that the event has a finite number of subordinate causes. For theempirical truth of the claim that some event has a cause does not evenimply the transcendental truth of that very claim, let alone the transcend-ental truth of either of the stronger claims that the event has a finite orinfinite number of subordinate causes.

More generally, the empirical truth of claims that causes exist impliesnothing about the transcendental truth of claims that causes exist, forempirical truth is a coherence conception of truth, whereas transcend-ental truth is the correspondence notion of truth. To say that it is tran-scendentally true that some event A is the cause of some event B is,according to Kant’s anti-Humean view of causation, to say that a necessaryconnection holds between A and B. But the empirical truth of the claimthat A is the cause of B does not require the existence of any necessaryconnections; it only requires that the relevant appearances cohere witheach other in appropriate ways. To put the point another way, in orderfor it to be empirically true that A is the cause of B, it is not necessarythat A should have actually caused B (for the empirical conception of



truth is not a correspondence notion); rather, it is necessary only that theempirical evidence support the claim that A is the cause of B. For to saythat the relevant appearances must cohere with each other in appropriateways is just to say that the appearances in question must provide suffi-cient evidence for the claim in question (see note 14). It cannot be part ofthe empirical evidence for the claim that A is the cause of B that A is thecause of B, because the existence of necessary connections cannot bediscovered on the basis of experience (B3-4). Of course, if I experiencesome appearance B as an event, then (given the argument of the SecondAnalogy) I will experience B as having a cause, but what I cannot experi-ence is that some particular event A is the cause of B. If I am to discoverthat A is the cause of B, I must do so in the standard way: by discoveringevidence for this claim, such evidence consisting, inter alia, of relations ofsuccession holding between appearances of type A and appearances oftype B. On Kant’s view, it is a necessary condition of experience that werepresent the phenomenal world as containing events that stand in neces-sary connections with each other, but what the particular necessary con-nections are can only be discovered empirically, by means of evidencethat supports the existence of necessary connections but does not entailthem. Therefore the existence of the relevant evidence suffices to establishthe empirical truth of a causal claim, but not its transcendental truth.

It follows that the empirical truth of the claim that A caused B (or thatB has a cause at all) is compatible with its transcendental falsity. Andsimilarly, the empirical truth of the claim that all events have phenom-enal causes is compatible with the transcendental truth of the claim thatno events have phenomenal causes.

6.

The argument for my interpretation of Kant’s compatibilism may now bebriefly summarized as follows. Recall that the difficulty for Kant inter-preters here is to explain how Kant can be both a compatibilist and aconditional incompatibilist. My solution is as follows. As we saw, Kant isa conditional incompatibilist in the sense that he holds that if appear-ances were things in themselves, then incompatibilism would be true. Weare now in a position to explain why Kant holds that conditionalincompatibilism is true. In conceiving the possibility that appearances arethings in themselves, Kant is conceiving a world in which the principle ofcausality, and therefore determinism, is true in a transcendental sense(i.e., is true in accordance with the correspondence notion of truth). Giventhe transcendental truth of determinism in such a world, it is reasonable



to assume that in such a world the question of whether the truth ofdeterminism is compatible with the existence of free will should be con-strued as the question of whether the transcendental truth of determinismis compatible with the transcendental truth of the claim that free willexists. And given Kant’s conceptual incompatibilism (i.e., his view that anaction cannot be both free and determined), he must answer this questionin the negative; in other words, he is a conditional incompatibilist.

But whereas a conditional incompatibilist is someone who answersnegatively to the question of whether the truth of determinism is compat-ible with the existence of free will, as that question should be construed ina certain unactualized conceivable world, a compatibilist simpliciter is some-one who answers positively to the question of whether the truth of deter-minism is compatible with the existence of free will, as that questionshould be construed in our actual world. Our world, according to Kant, isa world in which appearances are not things in themselves; in other words,it is a world in which transcendental idealism obtains. In this world,according to Kant, our knowledge that the principle of causality obtainsis the knowledge that it is empirically true that every event has a phenom-enal cause; similarly, our knowledge that determinism obtains is the know-ledge that it is empirically true that determinism obtains. Therefore, Kantconcludes that the question of whether compatibilism is true should beconstrued as the question of whether the empirical truth of determinismis compatible with the transcendental truth of the claim that free willexists. (It is the transcendental truth of the claim that free will exists thatis relevant here because it is the transcendental truth of this claim that isrelevant to moral responsibility.) Kant takes himself to be a compatibilistbecause he answers affirmatively to this question; he answers affirma-tively to this question because, as shown in the previous section, theempirical truth of determinism is compatible with the transcendental truthof the claim that no events have (determining) phenomenal causes, and isconsequently also compatible with the transcendental truth of the claimthat free will exists.

In sum, Kant’s conditional incompatibilism is compatible with hiscompatibilism because Kant’s position that the transcendental truth ofdeterminism is incompatible with the transcendental truth of the claimthat free will exists is compatible with his position that the empirical truthof determinism is compatible with the transcendental truth of the claimthat free will exists. Previous interpreters of Kant’s compatibilism havefocused almost exclusively on Kant’s discussion of noumenal causes; Ihave attempted to show that the key to interpreting Kant’s compatibilismis to get clear about his theory of phenomenal causation.19

Corcoran Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Virginia



NOTES

1 See, for example, A558/B586: “What we have alone been able to show, and what wehave alone been concerned to show, is that . . . causality through freedom is at least notincompatible with nature.” All quotations from the Critique are taken from the Kemp Smithtranslation.

2 Kant sets forth his incompatibilist conception of freedom at A532-4/B560-2. Accordingto Kant, “transcendental freedom” is a necessary condition for the freedom of the will andits actions (A534/B562). Kant defines transcendental freedom as “the power of beginning astate spontaneously. Such causality will not, therefore, itself stand under another cause deter-mining it in time, as required by the law of nature” (A533/B561, emphasis added). In otherwords, a necessary condition for the will being free is that its actions not be determined.(More precisely, the necessary condition is that the will have the power to act without beingdetermined to so act, but we need not be concerned with such details here.)

3 Compare Allison (1990, p. 28), who remarks that the “Kantian project requires . . . thereconciliation of . . . determinism with an incompatibilist conception of freedom.”

4 Interpreters who do deny that Kant is a conceptual incompatibilist include Meerbote(1984) and Hudson (1994). I note that Meerbote does acknowledge that the “textual evid-ence is not wholly in favor of [his] interpretation” (1984, p. 139; see also pp. 157ff.). Forcriticism of Meerbote’s view, see Allison (1990, pp. 76–82); for criticism of Hudson’s view,see Allison (1996b, pp. 125–7).

5 Empirical truth should not be confused with empirical knowledge. Empirical knowledgeis knowledge “which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience”; it is to be con-trasted with a priori knowledge, knowledge that is “independent of experience” (B2). Whereas“empirical truth” is Kant’s name for a certain kind of coherence notion of truth, a notionwhich is most usefully contrasted with the correspondence notion of truth. This coherencenotion of truth is appropriately characterized as empirical because it is applicable only tojudgments about objects of experience (see section 3).

6 See A23/B37: “Time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuitedas something in us.”

7 See A34/B50-1: “But since all representations, whether they have for their objects outerthings or not, belong, in themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner state; andsince this inner state stands under the formal conditions of inner intuition, and so belongsto time, time is an a priori condition of all appearance whatsoever. It is the immediatecondition of inner appearances (of our souls), and thereby the mediate condition of outerappearances. Just as I can say a priori that all outer appearances are in space, and aredetermined a priori in conformity with the relations of space, I can also say, from theprinciple of inner sense, that all appearances whatsoever, that is, all objects of the senses,are in time, and necessarily stand in time relations.” For exposition of this passage, seePaton (1936, vol. 1, pp. 148–51).

8 See Paton (1936, vol. 1, p. 149): “It is by thought, not by intuition, that we ascribeobjective temporal position to moving bodies.”

9 See B234: “In order that this relation [the relation of succession between two objectivestates of affairs] be known as determined, the relation between the two states must be sothought that it is therefore determined as necessary which of them must be placed before,and which of them after, and that they cannot be placed in the reverse relation. But theconcept which carries with it a necessity of synthetic unity can only be a pure concept thatlies in the understanding, not in perception.”

10 For the standard interpretation, see Allison (1983, pp. 6–10) and Bird (1962, pp. 36–51).



11 Thus I oppose a two-worlds interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism, for Itake Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves to be a distinction,not between two kinds of objects, but between two distinct kinds of properties (noumenaland phenomenal properties) that a single object may possess. On the other hand, my ver-sion of a “two-aspects interpretation” of transcendental idealism also differs sharply fromAllison’s version, for whereas Allison holds that “transcendental idealism, on a double-aspect reading, does not require that phenomenal and noumenal properties be assignedto the same thing” (1996a, p. 15), I claim that transcendental idealism does have thisrequirement. Note that there is no implausibility in claiming that an object can have bothnoumenal and phenomenal properties, for on my interpretation, this is just to say that anobject can have both intrinsic properties (noumenal properties) and certain kinds of rela-tional properties (phenomenal properties). In advocating a “metaphysical” version of the“two-aspects” interpretation of transcendental idealism in contrast to Allison’s “methodo-logical” version, I take myself to be following Paton (1936, vol. 1, pp. 61–2). For a recentdetailed and thorough defense of a metaphysical version of the two-aspects interpretation,see Westphal (1997).

12 See also Kant’s example of the rose, which “is itself only appearance,” but is neverthe-less “treated by the empirical understanding as a thing in itself” (A29/B40).

13 See A158-9/B197-8: “That there should be principles at all is entirely due to the pureunderstanding. Not only is it the faculty of rules in respect of that which happens, but isitself the source of principles according to which everything that can be presented to us asan object must conform to rules.”

14 Why can the principles be viewed in this way? The content of the principles pertains tothe different kinds of relations of necessary unity that we attribute to appearances in repres-enting them as objects. But the principles also specify (via the categorical schemata) howappearances must be “connected” to each other if they are to provide evidence for theexistence of such relations of necessity. These evidential relations do not themselves consistof relations of necessity, for according to Kant, the existence of relations of necessitycannot be discovered on the basis of experience (B3-4). So, for example, if I represent someappearance as an event, I must represent it as having a cause. But if I am to discover thecause of that event, I require evidence in the form of appearances of appropriate kindsbeing connected by the relation of regular succession. The kind of evidence required isspecified by the schema of causation. This connection between evidence and Kant’s empir-ical notion of truth is discussed further in section 5.

15 See, for example, A492/B520-1: “The empirical truth of appearances in space and timeis, however, sufficiently secured; it is adequately distinguished from dreams, if both dreamsand genuine appearances cohere truly and completely in one experience, in accordance withempirical laws.” See also A451/B479, where Kant seems to identify the “criterion of empir-ical truth” with “that connection of appearances determining one another with necessityaccording to universal laws, which we entitle nature.” In the Prolegomena (Ak IV, 290),Kant is even more explicit about his employment of a coherence notion of truth: “Thedifference between truth and dreaming is not ascertained by the nature of the representa-tions which are referred to objects (for they are the same in both cases), but by theirconnection according to those rules which determine the coherence of the representations inthe concept of an object, and by ascertaining whether they can subsist together in experi-ence or not.” Commentators who hold that Kant employs a coherence notion of truthinclude Allison (1968, pp. 178, 184–5) and Robinson (1988, p. 168). Allison, for example,writes as follows: “This [i.e., the transcendental idealist’s] interpretation of objectivity interms of the necessary synthetic unity of representations quite obviously implies a coherencetheory of truth, and such a theory is indeed the logical consequence of Kant’s transcendental



re-interpretation of the theory of ideas. The empirical idealist, since he is also a transcend-ental realist, posits the existence of an external object corresponding to the ideas in hismind. The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, since he regards all appearances asrepresentations ‘in us,’ cannot meaningfully talk about such an external, correspondingobject, and thus he naturally judges the objectivity of appearances in terms of their internalcoherence.”

16 This is not to say that the empirical truth of the claim that appearance A is the causeof appearance B turns out to be no different than the “correspondence” truth of this claim,where the claim in question is understood as employing the Humean regularity concept ofcausation. For Kant is very clear that the claim that appearance A is the cause of appear-ance B should not be understood as employing the Humean regularity concept. When Kantargues in the Second Analogy that all events must be represented as having causes, he isarguing that we must apply the category of causation to events, and the category of causa-tion contains the notion of a necessary connection between cause and effect, and is thus notthe Humean regularity concept. Kant is very clear throughout the Critique that the conceptof causation with which he is concerned is not the Humean regularity concept; see, forexample, B5: “The very concept of a cause so manifestly contains that concept of a neces-sity of connection with an effect and of the strict universality of the rule, that the conceptwould be altogether lost if we attempted to derive it, as Hume has done, from a repeatedassociation of that which happens with that which precedes.” See also A91-2/B123-4.Regardless of whether Kant’s concern is with empirical or transcendental senses of claimsabout causation, the concept of causation he employs is always the same; what differs is thenotion of truth he applies to evaluate the claim. Here I differ with Wood (1984, especiallypp. 86–9), who claims that Kant employs two concepts of causation, one with regard to thesensible world, and one with regard to the intelligible world. Wood claims that Kant doesnot apply the concept of causal efficacy to objects in the sensible world; for an argumentagainst Wood’s position, see my 1994 (especially sections 4, 6 and 7).

17 See, for example, A514/B542: “In neither case, whether the regress be in infinitum or inindefinitum, may the series of conditions be regarded as being given as infinite in the object.The series are not things in themselves, but only appearances, which, as conditions of oneanother, are given only in the regress itself.” But the “regress itself” does not contain aninfinite number of past causes: “But of this empirical regress the most that we can everknow is that from every given member of the series of conditions we have always still toadvance empirically to a higher and more remote member. The magnitude of the whole ofappearances is not thereby determined in any absolute manner; and we cannot therefore saythat this regress proceeds to infinity. In doing so we should be anticipating members whichthe regress has not yet reached, representing their number as so great that no empiricalsynthesis could attain thereto, and so should be determining the magnitude of the world(although only negatively) prior to the regress – which is impossible. Since the world is notgiven me, in its totality, through any intuition, neither is its magnitude given me prior tothe regress” (A519/B547). See also A520/B548: “I cannot say, therefore, that the world isinfinite in space or as regards past time. Any such concept of magnitude, as being that ofa given infinitude, is empirically impossible, and therefore, in reference to the world as anobject of the senses, absolutely impossible.” See generally sections 5–9 in the “Antinomy ofPure Reason” chapter.

18 I say “at least” because I believe that Kant is making a stronger claim in this passage.I submit that in saying that these causes “exist only in the dynamical regress” (emphasisadded), Kant is claiming that it is only empirically true that these representations arecauses, in the sense that it is empirically true but transcendentally false that they are causes.See, for example, A387 (emphasis added): “Neither bodies nor motions are anything outside



us; both alike are mere representations in us; and it is not, therefore, the motion of matterthat produces representations in us; the motion itself is representation only, as also is thematter which makes itself known in this way. Thus in the end the whole difficulty which wehave made for ourselves comes to this, how and why the representations of our sensibilityare so interconnected that those which we entitle outer intuitions can be represented accord-ing to empirical laws as objects outside us.” Kant seems to be saying here that although ourappearances are interconnected in such a way as to allow us to represent matter as causallyefficacious, in fact matter is not causally efficacious. In other words, it is empirically truethat events have phenomenal causes, but it is not transcendentally true.

19 I would like to thank Eric Watkins, Bill Diggs, John Marshall, Jay Morris and GeorgeThomas for helpful comments and discussion. An earlier version of this paper was pre-sented at the University of Virginia; thanks to all who provided comments on that occasion.

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Kant's Compatibilism and His Two Conceptions of Truth

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