Metaphysics, Science, and Kant I have been encouraged by John Range, as part of the preparation for my talk in Paris on May 20 to some French philosophers, to look into Kant's position. This look has been a very brief one, considering the enormous amount written on the subject, so maybe I can get some useful corrections from this group William James, at the end of his book "Psychology: The Briefer Course", said of the scientists who would one day illuminate the problem of the connection of mind to matter: "the necessities of the case will make them `metaphysical'. Meanwhile the best way in which we can facilitate their advent is to understand how great is the darkness in which we grope, and never forget that the natural science assumptions with which we started are provisional and revisable things." I agree with his claim, suggested here and also elsewhere in his writings, that science, while it has not yet provided a full understanding, may allow us to gradually approach better understandings of nature and ourselves within it. I agree also with Einstein---and Newton, I believe---that the way of science is to survey the empirical evidence, try to create a mathematical/logical theory that will account for the evidence, and then engage in further probings of nature in order to test, and try to falsify, the theory, in order to create a still better one. According to this view science is a work in progress, and the aim is not to achieve `certainty', but rather to devise theories of increasing adequacy and scope. History suggest that there may be a natural sequence of theories that are quasi-stable: they last for an extended period before giving way to their successor. So I when I speak of "physical reality" it should be understood that I am speaking of a provisional theoretical idea that enters into a proposed stage of our quest for ever more adequate and extended understandings of nature and our place within it, not some absolute eternal aspect of Nature herself as she really is. But I do think that a human conscious experience is a reality that is an aspect of Nature herself, but that it is probably not possible to fully capture such individual realities in a theory that is a logical structure that persists over time and is shared by many scientists. Kant's metaphysics. From Oxford Companion to Philosophy Kant p.435 "The central concern of Kant's greatest masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, is with the possibility of metaphysics, understood as philosophical knowledge that transcends the bounds of experience. For Kant such knowledge claims to be both synthetic and a priori. In other words, metaphysics purports to provide necessary truths which, as such, cannot be based on empirical evidence (their apriority), but which claim more for their referents than can be derived from an analysis of their concepts (their syntheticity). The propositions `God exists' and `Every event has a cause' are examples of such claim. By contrast, propositions which merely explicate ... are termed analytic. Since the truth of the latter can be ascertained..., Kant thought these were nonproblematic. Accordingly, the fundamental philosophical task is to account for the possibility of synthetic a prior knowledge; and since Kant believed that mathematical propositions are of this nature, accounting for their possibility likewise became an integral part of his project. ... Copernican .... It follows that we can know them only as they appear, not as they may be in themselves. Accordingly, for Kant human knowledge is limited to "appearances" or "phenomena", whereas things in themselves or noumena are thinkable but not actually knowable. Kant termed this doctrine transcendental idealism, and given this idealism, which he sharply distinguished from that of Berkeley, the possibility of synthetic a prior knowledge of objects of possible experience is easily explicable, since such objects must necessarily conform to the conditions under which they can become objects for us. This whole project assumes, however, that the human mind is, in fact, endowed with such conditions, and demonstrating this is the main task of the Transendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic. In the former Kant argued that space and time are subjective forms of human sensibility, through which the manifold of sense is given to mind, rather than either self-subsisting realities (Newton) or relations between self-subsisting things (Leibniz). He also argued that only this conception of space is capable of accounting for the possibility of geometry. In the latter, he first tried to establish by means of `transcendental deduction' that certain pure concepts, including substance and causality, are universally valid with respect to possible experience, since they are necessary conditions of the empirical thought of an object. On the basis of these results, he then argued for a set of synthetic a priori principles regarding nature, considered as the sum total of objects of possible experience. Prominent among these are the principles that substance in nature remains permanent thoughout all change, and that every alteration has a cause. Metaphysics p.557 It is Kant who stands at the culmination of all this, being oppsed to what he regarded as the speculative metaphysics,,, but concerned with the limits of human understanding. ... Kant's account of what is necessary about human understanding and the limitations, by comparison, of reason presented a kind of watershed of metaphysics, ... I find this all quite clear. I do agree that mind does seem to bring in "something", and just what that something is needs to be analysed. My own reflections on mathematical proofs had already made me realize that mind brings in something, and data on language acquisition has reinforced that opinion. And I certainly agree with James that the explicating the mind-matter connection does involve `metaphysics' in the broad sense, of trying to form ideas about the nature of the world about us, and about our own nature. But this way of science that I pursue appears to me very diifferent from the "metaphysics" as understood and pursued by Kant: "The central concern of Kant's greatest masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, is with the possibility of metaphysics, understood as philosophical knowledge that transcends the bounds of experience. For Kant such knowledge claims to be both synthetic and a priori. In other words, metaphysics purports to provide necessary truths which, as such, cannot be based on empirical evidence (their apriority), but which claim more for their referents than can be derived from an analysis of their concepts (their syntheticity). The propositions `God exists' and `Every event has a cause' are examples of such claim. My understanding seems to me to be confirmed by what Copleston says about these matters: (p. 212) ...a stimulus to undertake a critical investigation of metaphysics, summoning the latter before the tribunal of reason.... we must recall what metaphysics means for Kant. ...he disagreed with Locke,... He did not accept ...innate ideas. But ...believed that there are concepts and principles with which the reason derives from within itself on the occasion of experience. A child is not born with, for example, an idea of causality. But... There are, therefore, a priori concepts and principles. These concepts are "pure" ... empty of all empirical content or material. Now, the metaphysicians [here Kant would mean, I believe the "speculative" metaphysicians] have assumed ... to apprehend supersensible realities. [Kant is certainly rejecting THAT sort of speculative metaphysics: that is ONE of his main points. But he also tries to put forth something positive in its place]...we must undertake a critical investigation of the powers of pure reason itself. `a critical investigation into the faculty of reason with reference to all cognitions which it may strive to attain independently of all experience'. ... While I do agree that mind may have some pre-experience proclivities or "forms FOR experience to conform to", i.e., some schemata into which experiences, when they come, will naturally fit, I have some doubts as to the profitability of trying to deduce them from pure reason alone. In any case, my own efforts involve making maximal, not minimal, use of the content of experience. Kant seemed to be claiming that he could deduce, via his transcendental approach, that every change has a cause, and that substance must persist thoughout all change. Thus he claimed to be deducing from his transcendental arguments (not based on the empirical facts) these properties that were ASSUMED in Newtonian physics. I have not examined his arguments, but am pretty sure that they cannot be correct: quantum theory seems to me to provide counter examples. I do believe the issue of natural proclivities of thought to be an interesting and probably important one. But I believe that Kant has not delivered a correct answer, and believe that the way of science outlined above is a good way, and perhaps a better way, to advance our understanding of ourselves and the nature of which we are a part. In any case, that way of science is the way that I am pursuing, and there are many important questions within that approach pertaining to empirical validation and support, and they I are what I most need to tend to. My present project is to spell out what I see to be significant support for the vN/W QT of mind supplied by the data presented in Harold Pashler's 1998 book "The Psychology of Attention".