The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (28 page)

26
This is not one of Hume’s own favoured words. It occurs only once in the
Enquiry
(p. 122), and not at all in the
Treatise
.

27
For scepticism about whether there can be a good Humean account of these processes, see Bennett (
1971
), §52; Stroud (
1977
), pp. 240ff.; and Bennett (
2001
), §286. Cf. also Husserl (
1962
), §20.

28
Note that the status of geometry is one of the issues on which Hume changes his mind between the
Treatise
and the
Enquiry
. In the former he regards geometry as dealing (inexactly) with matters of fact; see I.ii.4 and pp. 70–72. (But see also p. 69 for something more in keeping with the
Enquiry
view.)

29
But of course, it lacks anything corresponding to Leibniz’ idea that an infinite intellect could arrive at truths of the second kind in some quite different way, namely by calculating what is for the best. Jonathan Bennett argues, in Bennett (
1971
), §23, that it differs from Leibniz’ distinction in a yet more profound way. He thinks that relations of ideas include ‘present-tense statements about [perceptions]’ (p. 247). (In effect, then, he would drop the qualification ‘in abstraction from any of our particular impressions’ in the definition I gave of processes of the first kind.) I suggest that Bennett has overlooked the fact that Hume, in his account of matters of fact, is concentrating on those that are ‘absent’, or, as we could also say, on those that are ascertained by reasoning.

30
This phrase occurs in the subtitle of the
Treatise
, which is ‘Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects’.

31
This makes his cavalier treatment of his own counterexample to the doctrine that all simple ideas are copied from impressions all the more remarkable; see n. 15.

Note: we should not forget that there is, in ‘the experimental method of reasoning’, still a place for pure deductive reasoning. It is by means of pure deductive reasoning, for instance, that we are able to recognize the powerlessness of pure deductive reasoning itself to derive most of our beliefs from our impressions; cf.
Enquiry
, pp. 29–30.

32
This is, in effect, a quasi-realist account of causal necessity (see
Ch. 1
, §3); see Blackburn (
2000
). One of the many objections that might be levelled against it is the following. If this inducement is itself a causal connection, as it had presumably better be, then I cannot feel it without violating Hume’s own insistence that ‘there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of … necessary connexion’ (
Enquiry
, p. 63). On one view, this is just the sort of objection that Hume himself has in mind when he famously writes, in the Appendix to the
Treatise
, ‘There are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz.
that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences
, and
that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences
’ (p. 636, emphasis in original).

33
‘Reasonably’ confident – but see the previous note.

34
See Introduction, n. 30. But see also the next note.

35
Cf.
Treatise
, p. xiv, where there is a suggestion that ‘metaphysics’ is simply an umbrella term for ‘every kind of argument, which is in any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended.’ On that understanding too, there can be no objection to metaphysics, as indeed Hume goes on to emphasize (cf.
Enquiry
, pp. 15–16).

36
Part of this striking vision, omitted from the quotation above, is that even logic has as its ‘sole end’ ‘to explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculty, and the nature of our ideas’ (p. xv). This is a view that will later be severely criticized by Frege: see e.g. Frege (
1997g
), pp. 246ff./pp. 157ff. in the original German, and see further
Ch. 8
, §6.

37
See e.g.
Enquiry
, pp. 98–99, 127, and 136ff., for conclusions about relations between, respectively: liberty, praise, and blame; evidence and testimony; and cause and effect.

38
See also
Enquiry
, pp. 60–61, where Hume contrasts mathematical ideas and non-mathematical ideas on the grounds that the former have a clarity which the latter (for very good reason and to very good purpose) lack. Jonathan Bennett, in Bennett (
1971
), p. 243, complains that this conflicts with the passage cited in the main text, where non-mathematical ideas are said to be ‘clearly distinct … from each other.’ But I suspect that what Hume really means, when he says that non-mathematical ideas lack the clarity of mathematical ones, is something hinted in the passage cited in the main text, namely that non-mathematical
terms
lack the clarity of mathematical ones, in other words that it is unclear, from our use of non-mathematical terms, which of various (clear) ideas are supposed to attach to them.

39
Cf. the remarks about liberty with which he frames his discussion of that topic, in
Enquiry
, p. 95.

40
See e.g. the apparently conflicting claim about contrariety in 2nd
Enquiry
, p. 288. Is this a change of view?

41
See Russell (
1992b
), p. 261.

42
The latter, as we shall see in
Ch. 11
, §3a, is essentially what Carnap does.

43
See esp. 2nd
Enquiry
, Appendix I, and the telling reference to metaphysics on p. 289. Cf. also
Treatise
, III.i.1; and see further Stroud (
1977
), pp. 173–176.

44
Cf. Wittgenstein (
1978
), Pt IV, §29.

45
This of course bears on the Novelty Question which I posed in §6 of the Introduction. It will come especially to the fore again in
Ch. 21
, §6.

46
See also ibid., III.ii.2, for a similar story about our concept of justice. And cf. n. 24.

47
Cf. Deleuze (
1991
), p. 104.

48
As I pointed out in
Ch. 1
, n. 22, this is scepticism that survives into the
Enquiry
; see pp. 149–150.

49
For an interesting discussion of this section of the
Treatise
, see Bennett (
2001
), Ch. 38, esp. §§288–290. For some additional complications, see Craig (
1987
), pp. 88–89.

50
E.g. Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §240. See further
Ch. 10
, §3. See also Bennett (
2001
), p. 320.

51
E.g., in the later work, Wittgenstein (
1978
), pp. 194–199 and 379–382; and, in the earlier work, Wittgenstein (
1961
), 6.2331.

52
Wittgenstein’s gloss on this phrase at Wittgenstein (
1978
), p. 387, is very Humean.

Chapter 5 Kant The Possibility, Scope, and Limits of Metaphysics

1. Introduction

At this point in the narrative something extraordinary happens. What has gone before and what will come after are both largely to be understood in terms of what occurs here. Like the central node in a figure ‘X’, this point can be seen as a singularity that draws together the various strands above it and issues in those below.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was, like Leibniz, a philosophical eclectic. He made free and creative use of the various attempts at sense-making that other great philosophers had bequeathed to him, including some of the most general attempts that we have observed. But he did so in a way that was highly measured. It needed to be. Much of what had been bequeathed to him was in conflict with much else. The most distinctive feature of his eclecticism was the way in which he took rival systems of thought and rooted out inveterate assumptions that were common to them. On the one hand this enabled him to show that some of the fundamental points of controversy between them were ill-conceived. On the other hand it enabled him to salvage and to reconcile some of their apparently irreconcilable insights. In the process he in turn bequeathed a philosophical system of breathtaking depth and power. At the end of
Chapter 1
I outlined a sense in which Spinoza was a post-Cartesian philosopher. In just the same sense, there would never be a great philosopher after this point who was not a post-Kantian philosopher.

Nor was Kant oblivious to the significance of what he was doing. Apart from anything else, he had contracted too much of Hume’s self-consciousness for that to be possible. He knew that, in drawing together what he did in the way he did, and in dispelling the impression that it could not be drawn together, he had effected a revolution in our very understanding of what it is to make sense of things. He also thought that this liberated sense-making of the kind which, if the suggestion I made in §5 of the Introduction is correct, depends on just such a reflexive understanding, that is to say sense-making of the very kind that metaphysicians pursue, sense-making at the highest level of generality. He was famously emboldened to say, in the Preface to
the first edition of his masterwork, his first
Critique
,
¹
that ‘there cannot be a single metaphysical problem that has not been solved here, or at least to the solution of which the key has not been provided’ (Axiii).
²

What gave him the courage even to contemplate such a revolution in our understanding of what it is to make sense of things? His commitment to a certain ideal, whose pursuit he took to be the defining characteristic of enlightenment, namely to dare, when attempting to decide ultimate matters of truth and value, and therefore when attempting to make the most general sense of things, to appeal to no other authority than the authority of one’s own reason.
³

But given the self-consciousness of his commitment to this ideal, it was inevitable that he should seek not only to pursue it, but also to justify it, and
should do so, moreover, under its own guidance. Kant put pure reason on trial. And he appointed pure reason itself as both judge and jury. In his own terms he provided a
critique
of pure reason (Axi–xii).
⁴

Here we see what is by now a familiar reflexivity. Once again there is a connection with the suggestion I made in the Introduction. Granted my suggestion, such reflexivity is a hallmark of metaphysics. There is good reason to think that, even if Kant had not enjoyed the wider philosophical significance that he did, this critique of his would have been pivotal to our enquiry.
⁵

2. Bad Metaphysics and Good Metaphysics

Let us begin with Hume. This is appropriate not just because Hume has been the most recent focus of our attention, but also because Kant himself was greatly exercised by Hume’s stirrings, especially by his onslaught against the excesses of traditional metaphysics. In the
Prolegomena
– Kant’s own brief summary of the main ideas of his first
Critique
– nobody else’s name occurs with anything like the frequency of Hume’s. And in one of the best known sentences of that book Kant writes:

I freely admit that the remembrance of
David Hume
was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy. (4:260, emphasis in original; cf. 4:257)
⁶

Kant’s attitude to Hume, as I intimated in the previous chapter, can usefully be summarized in another metaphor, if a trite one: the metaphor of the baby and the bathwater.
⁷

Let us begin with the bathwater. Kant is persuaded that much of what has hitherto passed for good metaphysics is to be thrown out, either on broadly semantic grounds, for failing to make sense, or on broadly epistemic grounds, for failing to have a suitable warrant in experience. Indeed, as we shall see in §6, he goes further than Hume by insisting not only on the
prevalence of such bad metaphysics but also, absent a certain restraint that we need to learn, on its unavoidability. There are certain metaphysical questions and pseudo-questions that we have neither the power to ignore nor the wherewithal to answer (Avii). And until we have properly assimilated this fact, we cannot help trying to answer them. The outcome is bad metaphysics, of the very sort that Hume decried.