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ABSTRACT
I argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics are both examples of what I call methodological conservativism. Methodological conservativism involves the claim that a subset of common first-order beliefs is immune to revision. I argue that there are striking differences between their respective commitments to this position, however. For Kant, his conservativism is based upon a commitment to the reliability of particular results of the sciences of his day. For Strawson, in contrast, his conservativism is based upon his attempted liberation of arguments for the necessity of a certain conceptual scheme from any particular scientific commitments. In fact, for Strawson, no change in scientific commitments could displace the conceptual scheme employed to navigate the manifest world of ordinary perceptual experience. Each approach brings with it challenges with regard to how to accommodate potential scientific theory change.
Acknowledgements
Part of this paper was delivered at a conference on Kant’s method and its reception in Frankfurt in 2015. I am grateful to Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Guido Kreis and especially Gabriele Gava for discussion of some of these themes at that event. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for detailed comments that greatly clarified my claims here.
Notes
1 I am adapting the term from Cowie (‘Conservatism in Metaethics’) who uses it in the context of metaethics.
2 As will be seen, I use Strawson as a representative of one way in which transcendental arguments can be deployed. For more extensive recent discussion of Strawson’s relation to Kant, see Allais, ‘Strawson and Transcendental Idealism’; Allison, ‘Transcendental Deduction and Transcendental Idealism’; Cassam, ‘Knowledge and Its Objects’; Glock, Strawson and Kant; Gomes, ‘Unity, Objectivity, and the Passivity of Experience’; Moore, ‘One World’.
3 For discussion of transcendental arguments, see Aquila, ‘Two Kinds of Transcendental Arguments in Kant’; Bardon, ‘Performative Transcendental Arguments’; Cassam, ‘Transcendental Arguments, Transcendental Synthesis and Transcendental Idealism’; Franks, All or Nothing; Stapleford, Kant’s Transcendental Arguments; Stern, Transcendental Arguments, Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism, ‘Transcendental Arguments’; Stroud, ‘Transcendental Arguments’, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism; Vahid, ‘Nature and Significance or Transcendental Arguments’.
4 Henceforth, the ‘First Critique’. References to Kant’s other writings are to the Cambridge Edition series of Kant’s works. Abbreviations used are as follows:
5 For an interesting discussion of how to consider the role of apriority for Kant, see Politis, ‘Apriority of the Starting-Point of Kant’s Transcendental Epistemology’.
6 The question ‘how are synthetic a priori judgments possible?’ is not meant to ask whether such judgements are possible, since on this reading Kant held that their possibility is shown by their actuality. For an examination of the Transcendental Deduction along these lines, see Edgar, ‘Explanatory Structure of the Transcendental Deduction and a Cognitive Interpretation of the First Critique’. For readings whereby some substantive knowledge is assumed, see Ameriks, ‘Kant’s Transcendental Argument as a Regressive Argument’; Engstrom, ‘Transcendental Deduction and Skepticism’. Which strand of argumentation is crucial for understanding Kant’s transcendental idealism is a contested issue, however, as shall be discussed. For examination, see Ameriks, ‘Kant’s Transcendental Argument as a Regressive Argument’ reprinted in Ameriks, Interpreting Kant’s Critiques and O’Shea, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
7 Methodological conservativism, whether in regard to premises or conclusions, is a distinct position from the mere advocacy of transcendental arguments in general. For one could feasibly have a methodologically conservative position regarding substantial and unrevisable premises that does not involve transcendental argumentation (e.g. G. E. Moore’s proof of an external world (Moore, ‘Proof of an External World’)); similarly, one could have a methodologically conservative approach regarding some conclusions that have been reached in some way other than by transcendental argumentation (arguably Hume’s sceptical solutions to his own sceptical challenges in the Treatise involve a strategy of this sort – for discussion, see O’Shea, ‘Hume’s Reflective Return to the Vulgar’). All transcendental argumentation is conservative with regard to some initial assumed premise of course, whether it is substantial or not, since this is what is supposed to generate the requisite anti-sceptical leverage. What constitutes a ‘substantial’ philosophical commitment is of course itself controversial, but for my purposes here, it can be roughly determined in terms of what a rational interlocutor might be able to deny without the performative contradiction suggested above. Transcendental arguments need not be conservative with regard to their conclusions either: it is possible that the conclusions of such arguments are ones that recommended revision to our ordinary ways of thinking. I am grateful for an anonymous reviewer’s pressing me for some much-needed clarification here.
8 Originally published in the Memoires de l’academie des sciences de Berlin 4, 1750, 324–33. I make use here of a translation by Michael Saclodo and Pater Wake, available at the Euler Archive (http://eulerarchive.maa.org/pages/E149.html).
9 Euler claims that the relational (or, as Euler puts it, ‘metaphysical’) conception of space would entail that a body in water, whose position is determined by its immediately surrounding relations to the water around it, would retain its ‘position’ even when the water itself moved, a conclusion denied by the ‘mathematical’ analysis. I do not evaluate the cogency of this argument here.
10 ‘Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy’ and Concerning the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (the ‘Inaugural Dissertation’), both in Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Kant nevertheless resists Euler’s conclusions at various points.
11 For a discussion of the relationship between mathematical and metaphysical methodology in Kant, see Callanan, ‘Mendelssohn and Kant on Mathematics and Metaphysics’.
12 Kant is probably referring to a well-known geometrical proof of the infinite divisibility of space in Keill, see Physical Monadology, 1:478, in Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770 and Inquiry, 2:279, in Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770.
13 I discuss the Argument from Geometry in the following section.
14 E.g. see Bx, Bxv-xvi, A4/B8, B4-5, B15, B20, A39/B55-6, A94/B127-8.
15 See Moore, ‘Proof of an External World’; Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling.
16 For a sample of the relevant discussion, see Allais, ‘Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic’; Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge; Shabel, ‘Kant’s “Argument from Geometry”’.
17 There are some differing readings of the strategy of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Allison, for example, argues that the preceding Metaphysical Exposition is sufficient for Kant’s idealist conclusions (Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism); Allais argues that Kant’s claim is that if transcendental idealism were false, then the propositions of geometry would lack referents (and presumably a truth-value) which is different from the claim that they would lose their modal status (Allais, ‘Kant’s Argument for Transcendental Idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic’). I am inclined towards Guyer’s reading (Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge) here nonetheless (see also Shabel, ‘Kant’s “Argument from Geometry”’).
18 For discussion of Kant’s philosophy of science and the impact of science in general within his philosophy, see Brittan, Kant’s Theory of Science; Buchdahl, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science the Classical Origins; Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences; Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences; McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation; Watkins, Kant and the Sciences.
19 For discussion of the First Analogy, see Addis, ‘Kant’s First Analogy’; Cleve, ‘Substance, Matter, and Kant’s First Analogy’; Sacks, ‘Kant’s First Analogy and the Refutation of Idealism’; Ward, ‘Kant’s First Analogy of Experience’.
20 Ameriks, ‘Kant on Science and Common Knowledge’, 33. Many of the same points are repeated in Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy, Ch. 1.
21 For the origins of reflective equilibrium as a methodology, see Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast; Rawls, Theory of Justice. For a recent overview of its problems and prospects, see Cath, ‘Reflective Equilibrium’.
22 See Cath, ‘Reflective Equilibrium’ for discussion.
23 Strawson, Individuals, 9 also identifies Aristotle as a precursor.
24 Strawson, Individuals, 9. For discussion of descriptive metaphysics, see Burtt, ‘Descriptive Metaphysics’; Haack, ‘Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics’; Macdonald, ‘Real Metaphysics and the Descriptive/Revisionary Distinction’.
25 Strawson, Individuals, 25. For some discussion, see Cassam, Self and World, ‘Space and Objective Experience’, Self and World; Harrison, ‘Strawson on Outer Objects’.
26 The locus classicus is Stroud, ‘Transcendental Arguments’. For further discussion, see Stroud, Significance of Philosophical Scepticism; ‘Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invulnerability’; Stern, Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism, ‘Transcendental Arguments: A Plea for Modesty’.
27 I turn to this, however, in fn. 29. For some relevant discussion, see my Callanan, ‘Making Sense of Doubt’.
28 A similar claim is made in Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, where Strawson claims that any change to our world-view would nevertheless always remain
a human world-picture: a picture of a world of physical objects (bodies) in space and time including human observers capable of action and of acquiring and imparting knowledge (and error) both of themselves and each other and of whatever else is to be found in nature.
29 I do not mean to imply that Strawson is unaware of this feature of his project or that he lacks strategies for addressing it. The argument of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, for example, seems to include a claim that we cannot make sense of how a scientifically informed determinism might undermine our recourse to reactive attitudes, at least not without forgoing conceptualizing ourselves as forming ‘human society’ (Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’, 24). My complaint is only that descriptive metaphysics both lacks and needs an account as to why this is the case, if it is true. As an anonymous reviewer rightly points out to me, a version of this issue is explicitly addressed in Strawson’s ‘Perception and its Objects’. There Strawson tentatively suggests the relativity and parity of the common-sense and scientific standpoints, and criticizes the ‘hardliner’ scientific realist for whom the latter standpoint is ‘superior’ (Strawson, ‘Perception and Its Objects’, 112). Strawson claims that without such appeals to relativism, the scientific realist is committed to claim that the common-sense picture of experienced objects is a necessary and moreover ineliminable enabling condition for their own theorizing against the fundamental accuracy of that very picture. Thus, Strawson concludes that this position must conclude that ‘our thought is condemned to incoherence’ albeit an incoherence ‘we can perfectly live with and could not perfectly well live without’ (‘Perception and Its Objects’, 112). An evaluation of these kinds of defences is beyond the scope of this paper – my aim here has only been to emphasize that metaphilosophical manoeuvres of just this kind, e.g. presenting a choice between relativism and the merits or otherwise of living with a self-conception of human thinking as condemned to incoherence, are required by the methodological conservativism of descriptive metaphysics.