langton ignorance of things in themselves
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Ignorance of Things in Themselves
Rae Langton
The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, eds. Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, Gideon Rosen,
Seana Shiffrin (Norton Press, forthcoming)
1. Skepticism and Humility
Many philosophers have wanted to tell us that things may not be quite as they seem:
many have wanted to divide appearance from reality. Democritus wrote presciently in the
fifth century BC—
by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void.1
Plato argued for a different division: the imperfect, changeable things we see around us
are mere appearance, and reality is an independent realm of perfect, invisible, eternal
forms. Much later, Descartes wondered whether the familiar world of stoves and dressing
gowns, streets and people, might turn out to be mere appearance—not because it is less
real than the realm of atoms, or Forms, but because, for all we know, the stoves and
dressing gowns, streets and people, don’t exist at all.2 Perhaps I am dreaming, or
deceived by an Evil Demon, who interferes with my mind (like that evil neuroscientist of
science-fiction!), so that what appears to me is nothing like what’s really there.
That Demon still haunts the halls of philosophy, despite Descartes’s own efforts
to banish him. The mere possibility of his deceptive machinations persuades some
1Trans. C.C.W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus. Fragments, A Text and Translation with Commentary, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, cited by Sylvia Berryman, ‘Democritus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2 Descartes, Rene, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), trans. John Cottingham, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
philosophers that, even if there is actually no Demon, and appearance captures reality
very nicely, we nevertheless can’t be quite sure that it does. This means we don’t know
what we thought we knew. We confront skepticism. We don’t have knowledge of ‘the
external world’. We are ignorant of ‘things in themselves’, in some sense of that phrase:
we lack knowledge of things independent of our minds. (REF ‘Scepticism’, this volume).
Kant described scepticism as a scandal, and in 1781 he published his Critique of
Pure Reason to set the scandal to rest.3 The Critique is a brilliant but formidably difficult
work. In it, Kant aims to show that skepticism is wrong because, roughly, we could not
have thoughts at all, unless we had thoughts about things. Perhaps he was trying to say
that appearance just is reality: for provided we are thinking at all, we can’t be wholly
ignorant of things.
Whether Kant set skepticism to rest is one question. Whether he was really trying
to, is another. For Kant said something else as well, famously and often. Although we
have knowledge of things, these things are only ‘phenomena’, and ‘we have no
knowledge of things in themselves’. Are those the words of someone offering a cure for
skepticism? The sceptic says we have knowledge only of appearances: Kant says have
knowledge only of phenomena. The skeptic says we have no knowledge of things
independent of our minds: Kant says we have no knowledge of things ‘in themselves’.
Appearance is not reality after all. It looks like Kant is saying just what the sceptic says—
doesn’t it?
3 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929).
Evidently it depends what Kant means by ‘things in themselves’. If ‘things in
themselves’ means things independent of our minds, then being ignorant of them is a way
of being a sceptic. Instead of having a cure for skepticism, Kant has the disease. To be
sure, Kant’s proposal relieves the symptoms: he offers a wealth of argument about the
very special knowledge we have of objects—but they are phenomenal objects, mere
appearances. What a disappointment, if we were hoping for knowledge of reality, of
things independent of our minds. What consolation is it to learn that we have special
knowledge, if it’s knowledge of mere appearance? Kant’s subtle arguments about the
conditions of our thought look irrelevant, if they deny knowledge of reality, and land us
in skepticism again.
What, though, if Kant means something quite different by ‘things in themselves’?
Then ignorance of ‘things in themselves’ needn’t be skepticism. Knowledge of
phenomena needn’t restrict us to knowledge of mind-dependent appearance. That is
exactly the idea we’re going to pursue here. We won’t go into Kant’s famous arguments
against skepticism—about how we can’t think, unless we think about objects. We’re
going to look instead at what ‘ignorance of things in themselves’ amounts to. We’ll take
seriously the possibility that you and I, right now, are ignorant of things in themselves,
just as Kant said—and that we can welcome this conclusion, without thereby welcoming
skepticism.
The key idea is this. The phrase ‘things in themselves’ does not mean ‘things
independent of our minds’. It means ‘the way things are independently’—that is,
independently of their relations not just to our minds, but to anything else at all.
We are often interested in the relations one thing bears to another. Sometimes the
relevant relations are spatial: the tennis ball flew over the net, and over the white line.
Sometimes the relevant relations are biological: Jane is Jim’s cousin, and Joan’s grand-
daughter. But when we talk about the relations a thing has to other things, we tend to
assume there is something more to the thing than those relations. There is more to Jane
than being Jim’s cousin and Joan’s grand-daughter. There is more to the tennis ball than
its passage over the net, and over the white line. Now, Kant sometimes uses the word
‘phenomenon’ to mean, quite generally, an object ‘in a relation’ to some other object.
And he sometimes talks about this assumption that there must be something more to an
object than its relations to other things:
The understanding, when it entitles an object in a relation mere phenomenon, at the same time forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in itself. (B306, emphasis added)
He also says:
Concepts of relation presuppose things which are absolutely [i.e. independently] given, and without these are impossible. (A284/B340)
This absolute or independent thing, which isn’t exhausted by its relations to other
things, is something to which we can give the name ‘substance’, which just means
an independent thing that has an independent, or intrinsic, nature.
Substances in general must have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore free from all external relations. (A274/B330) Putting this all together, the idea that there is a thing ‘in itself’ turns out to be the
idea that there is something to an object over and above its relations to other things:
something more to you than being the son or daughter of A, the cousin of B, the grand-
child of C; something more to the tennis ball than its spatial relations to nets and lines on
a tennis court. A thing that has relations to something else must have something more to
it than that: it must have some intrinsic nature, independent of those relations. It is this
something else, this something more, that is the thing ‘in itself’.
If we take this idea at face value, it promises to solve the difficulty we face.
Ignorance of things ‘in themselves’ is not skepticism. It doesn’t rule out knowledge of
things independent of our minds. It rules out knowledge only of a thing’s non-relational,
intrinsic properties.
We can know a lot! Appearance is reality: things as they appear to us are things as
they really are. But something is still ruled out: namely, knowledge of how things are
independent of their relations to other things. Appearance is reality, but it’s not all of
reality. We can know a lot about the world, but we can’t know everything about it: we
can’t know its independent, intrinsic nature.
To say we can know a lot about something, but not everything, is not skepticism,
but a kind of epistemic modesty—so let’s call it ‘humility’. And since it is at the center of
Kant’s philosophy (or so I’m arguing), let’s call it ‘Kantian humility’.4 In what follows,
I’m going to say why Kant believed it. And then I’ll say why you, too, should believe it.
2. Humility in Kant
I’ve suggested that Kant’s distinction between ‘phenomena’ and ‘things in themselves’ is
a contrast not between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’, but between extrinsic and intrinsic
aspects of something. On this usage, if we say a tennis ball fell over the white line, we
4 Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; 2001)
ascribe to it a relational, hence ‘phenomenal’, property; whereas if we say it is spherical,
we ascribe to it an intrinsic property, which concerns the tennis ball as it is ‘in itself’.
Let’s summarize the distinction this way.
Distinction ‘Things in themselves’ are things that have intrinsic properties; ‘phenomena’ are their extrinsic, or relational properties.
Against this backdrop, ignorance of things in themselves is not skepticism, but ignorance
of certain properties—intrinsic properties:
Humility We have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of things. This could be construed as the idea that we have no knowledge of any of the
intrinsic properties of things, and that (I think) is the idea we should ascribe to Kant.
Admittedly, it sounds odd. If an intrinsic property is a property something has
independent of its relations to other things, then many of those seem perfectly accessible
to us: for example, the sphericality of the tennis ball. But Kant himself seemed to think
we lack knowledge of any intrinsic properties: we do have knowledge of certain physical
properties of things, such as their shape, and their powers of attraction and
impenetrability; but he thinks these are not intrinsic, as the following passages illustrate.
The Intrinsic and Extrinsic. In an object of pure understanding the intrinsic
is only that which has no relation whatsoever (so far as its existence is concerned) to anything different from itself. It is quite otherwise with a substantia phaenomenon [phenomenal substance] in space; its intrinsic properties are nothing but relations, and it itself is entirely made up of mere relations. We are acquainted with substance in space only through forces which are active in this and that space, either drawing other objects (attraction) or preventing their penetration (repulsion and impenetrability). We are not acquainted with any other properties constituting the concept of the substance which appears in space and which we call matter. As object of pure understanding, on the other hand, every substance must have intrinsic properties and powers which concern its inner reality. (A 265/B321)
Substances in general must have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore free from all external relations....But what is intrinsic to the state of a substance cannot consist in place, shape, contact, or motion (these determinations being all external relations). (A274/B330) All that we know in matter is merely relations (what we call its intrinsic properties are intrinsic only in a comparative sense), but among these relations some are...enduring, and through these we are given a determinate object...It is certainly startling to hear that a thing is to be taken as consisting wholly of relations. Such a thing is, however, mere appearance. (A285/B341)
Kant thinks the physical world is made up of matter, ‘phenomenal substance’, but that
matter somehow ‘consists wholly of relations’. He is drawing on a dynamical account of
matter (further developed in his works on physical theory) according to which matter is
constituted by forces. He has a proto field theory, which had an important historical role
to play, influencing scientists who went on to develop field theory proper in the
nineteenth century.5 And familiar physical properties—shape, impenetrability, attractive
power—count, for him, as extrinsic or relational properties.
Whether that is right way to classify them depends how we understand the
intrinsic/relational distinction. We have said, loosely, that an intrinsic property is one that
doesn’t depend on relations to anything else. Some philosophers have tried to make this
more precise by saying a property is intrinsic just in case it is compatible with isolation—
i.e. it does not imply the existence of another wholly distinct object.6 On this way of
5 According to Faraday’s biographer, see Williams, L. P. Michael Faraday: A Biography (London: Chapman and Hall, 1965). 6 For some efforts to define ‘intrinsic’ see e.g. Rae Langton and David Lewis, ‘Defining Intrinsic’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1998), 333-45; I.L.
thinking, a tennis ball’s sphericality will be intrinsic: a tennis ball can be spherical and be
the only thing in the universe. And the tennis ball’s bounciness will also be intrinsic.
After all, a tennis ball can be bouncy and be the only thing in the universe, although, to be
sure, it will not bounce unless there is something else for it to bounce off! On the face of
things, shape properties like sphericality, and dispositional properties like bounciness, are
intrinsic: something could have them, and exist all on its own.
If Kant nonetheless describes them as relational, perhaps he has a different
conception of intrinsicness in mind. Perhaps he thinks a thing’s shape properties are
relational because they depend on a relation to the parts of the thing. For example, the
sphericality of the tennis ball depends on how the parts making up its surface are
equidistant from its center. Perhaps he thinks dispositional properties are relational
because they depend on how something would relate to other things if they were there.
For example, whether something is bouncy depends on what it would do in relation to
something else—if, say, it were dropped on the ground, or thwacked against a tennis
racket.
Some metaphysicians like to ponder the distinction between intrinsic and
relational properties, but we needn’t settle it here. All we need is that Kant denies us
knowledge of any intrinsic properties, in some defensible sense of ‘intrinsic’, and that
this is what he means by denying us knowledge of ‘things in themselves’.
Why does Kant deny us knowledge of intrinsic properties? The answer, I suggest,
has two parts. First, he thinks, as many philosophers do, that our knowledge is
Humberstone, “Intrinsic/Extrinsic,” Synthese 108 (1996), pp. 205-267. The ‘isolation’ test has many difficulties which I won’t go into here.
‘receptive’: our minds need to be causally affected by something, if we are to have
knowledge of it.
The receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is affected in any way, is called ‘sensibility’ [....] Our nature is such that our intuition can never be other than sensible, that is, it contains only the way in which we are affected by objects. (A51/B75)
Our knowledge of things is receptive, ‘sensible’: we gain knowledge only through being
affected by objects.
Receptivity Human knowledge depends on sensibility, and sensibility is receptive: we can have knowledge of an object only in so far as it affects us.
This simple fact about our knowledge, he seems to think, dooms us to ignorance of things
in themselves.
Properties that belong to things as they are in themselves can never be given to us through the senses. (A36/B52) It is not that through sensibility we are acquainted in a merely confused way with the nature of things as they are in themselves; we are not acquainted with that nature in any way at all. (A44/B62) Why should the ‘receptivity’ of knowledge imply ignorance of things in
themselves? Many philosophers have wondered about this on Kant’s behalf, and some
have criticized him roundly on the topic. P.F. Strawson wrote:
knowledge through perception of things...as they are in themselves is impossible. For the only perceptions which could yield us any knowledge at all of such things must be the outcome of our being affected by those things; and for this reason such knowledge can be knowledge only of those things as they appear...and not of those things as they...are in themselves. The above is a fundamental and unargued complex premise of the Critique.7
7P.F. Strawson, Bounds of Sense, p. 250.
Is Kant really taking this for granted, as a ‘fundamental and unargued complex premise’?
Perhaps not. Perhaps he has good reason to connect receptivity to ignorance—but a
reason that has gone unnoticed.
Here is a simple suggestion. According to receptivity, we have knowledge only of
what affects us. But things ‘as they are in themselves’ do not affect us: the intrinsic
properties of things do not affect us. If Kant believed this, then that, together with his
commitment to receptivity about knowledge, would certainly explain why we are
ignorant of things in themselves.
A case can be made that this is just what Kant believes. I confess that, as a matter
of interpretation, it is controversial. Here is not the place to do it justice. It involves
detailed investigative work of a kind we historians of philosophy find strangely thrilling,
although we’re aware not everyone shares our enthusiasm. But here at least are two small
gestures in this direction. In an early philosophical treatise Kant argues that—
a substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties to determine others different from itself, as has been proven.8
According to Kant, the causal powers of a substance are something over and above its
intrinsic properties. At this stage of his thinking he believes that they require an
additional act of creation on God’s part—an act which is ‘obviously arbitrary on God’s
part’. He took this idea about the insufficiency of intrinsic properties for causal power to
imply not only the contingency of causal power, but the inertia of intrinsic properties.
The idea returns in the Critique of Pure Reason:
8Kant, Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (1755), Ak. Vol. 1, 415. English translation (here amended): “A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge,” in L.W. Beck et al., eds., Kant’s Latin Writings: Translations, Commentaries and Notes (New York: P. Lang, 1986).
when everything is merely intrinsic...the state of one substance cannot stand in any active connection whatsoever with the state of another. (A274/B330)9
Receptivity requires that if we are to have knowledge of something, we have to be in
active causal connection with it: but we’re not in active causal connection with a thing’s
intrinsic properties. Receptivity means we can be acquainted with the causal powers of
things, the ways they relate to each other and to ourselves: but however deeply we
explore this causal nexus, we cannot reach the things in themselves.
3. Why We are Ignorant of Things in Themselves
Kant said we are ignorant of things in themselves: ignorant of the intrinsic properties of
things. The picture I have painted on his behalf is, I hope, appealing, in certain respects:
Kantian humility does not, at least, condemn us to skepticism. But the picture will not
appeal to everyone. Kant’s conclusion seems too strong: we have no knowledge of any of
the intrinsic properties of things. His reasons invoke a seemingly idiosyncratic conception
of intrinsicness: a tennis ball’s sphericality and bounce are not among its intrinsic
properties. And they invoke a seemingly implausible causal thesis: intrinsic properties are
causally inert. So however this interpretation succeeds as a way to understand Kant, it is
unlikely to succeed in reaching a wider audience.
But wait. There is a conclusion very similar to Kant’s that is significantly closer
to home. Kant says we are ignorant of the intrinsic properties of things: and he is right,
though not for quite the reasons we have been looking at. And if he is right, of course,
then you too should believe we are ignorant of things in themselves.
9 The context is a discussion of Kant’s predecessor, Leibniz, who denied causal interaction between substances.
Imagine that a detective is investigating a murder case. She puts together the
clues. The murderer had a key, since no windows were broken. He was known to the dog,
since there was no barking. He had size ten shoes—there are his footprints. More and
more of the picture begins to be filled out. He wore gloves, since there were no
fingerprints. He had a tame parakeet—there are green feathers on the rug. The detective
learns a lot about the murderer. Does she know who he is? She knows who the murderer
is in relation to other things—houses, shoes, parakeets, and so on. She knows that the
murderer is whoever fits this role. But does she, so to speak, know the murderer in
himself? Is there something more to the murderer than being a possessor of keys,
parakeets and shoes? Of course. There must, in the end, be more to something or
someone than their merely relational properties, as Kant pointed out. And ultimately, let
us hope, the detective finds herself in a position to identify the person who exists
independently of these relations to other things: ‘Aha! There is one person who fits this
role. There is one person who is known to the dog, wears size ten shoes, has a tame
parakeet, could have a key, and that person is…. Pirate Pete!’ Then she knows who the
murderer is. Then she knows who fits the role: she knows, so to speak, the murderer ‘in
himself’.
Some philosophers have suggested we are in a situation rather like that of the
detective. An important recent attempt to show this is that of David Lewis, whose
‘Ramseyan Humility’ explicitly claims inspiration from ‘Kantian’ humility.10 We are
10 David Lewis, ‘Ramseyan Humility’ in Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, eds. Robert Nola and David Braddon-Mitchell (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) 203-222. This section is in turn inspired by Lewis’s argument, though it is very far from doing him justice. There have been many attempts to respond, but see e.g. Jonathan
trying to find out, not about a murderer, but about the fundamental features of the world.
We put our best theorists on the job, and they tell us a lot. Suppose we want to find out
about our tennis ball. They tell us that a tennis ball is whatever fits this sort of profile: it’s
something that can be hit across a net with a tennis racket, something that has a specific
degree of resistance and elasticity, something that is readily visible to human eyes in
normal conditions, something that will roll smoothly downwards when placed on a slope.
These relational descriptions, suitably filled out, give us a story about the role something
must fit if it’s to be a tennis ball. They capture the relational or (if you like) ‘phenomenal’
aspect of the tennis ball. Is there something more to the tennis ball than this relational
role? Of course there must be, just as there is something more to Pirate Pete than his
relations to keys and parakeets.
And our theorists can tell us about this ‘something more’. They tell us not only
that the tennis ball can land over the white line, not only that it is spherical and bouncy,
but that it is made of rubber and felt, which in turn are made of very tiny parts called
molecules, which in turn are made up of tinier parts, called atoms, which in turn are made
up of still tinier parts, called protons, neutrons and electrons—and more, with names too
peculiar to recount here. Our experts give detailed descriptions of the tiny parts
something must have, and their particular arrangements, if that something is to fit the
‘tennis ball’ role. They are giving us a splendid account of what the tennis ball is, ‘in
itself’. What more could there be to know about what the tennis ball is, ‘in itself’?
Schaffer, ‘Quiddistic Knowledge’, Phil. Studies 123 (2005), 1-32; Anne Whittle, ‘On an Argument for Humility’, Philosophical Studies 130 (2006), 461-97.
We certainly know a lot about the tennis ball. In Kant’s terms, we know a lot
about the tennis ball as ‘phenomenon’—how it relates to tennis rackets, nets and players.
And yes: we also know a lot about the tennis ball ‘as it is in itself’, what its parts are
made of and how they are arranged. But now shift the question: what exactly do we know
about those tiny parts of the tennis ball?
Take the electron, for example. Our story about the electron has something in
common with the detective’s story about the murderer. It captures a complicated
relational profile. An electron is whatever it is that fits a distinctive role, whatever it is
that fits the ‘electron’ pattern of relating to other things. An electron is the thing that
repels other things we call ‘electrons’, attracts other things we call ‘protons’. It’s the
thing that, in company with lots of other electrons, makes the light-bulb go on, makes
your hair stand on end on a cold, dry day, and so on. The physicist will have a more
detailed story, but it will nevertheless be a story that has this relational form. ‘Electron’
refers to whatever fits the physicist’s relational ‘electron’ role, just as ‘the murderer’
refers to whoever fits the detective’s relational ‘murderer’ role.
The detective discovers who the murderer is, ‘in himself’ as we put it, when she
discovers who fits the relational ‘murderer’ role: namely Pirate Pete. The physicist
discovers what the electron is when she discovers what fits the relational ‘electron’ role:
namely… what? Here the analogy with the detective breaks down. The detective is able
to find out who the murderer is, apart from the story about how the murderer relates to
keys, shoes, parakeets. But the physicist is unable to find out what the electron is, apart
from the story about how the electron relates to protons, hair and light bulbs. For the
detective, there is something more to say. For the physicist, there is nothing more to say.
The electron is, to borrow a phrase from Kant, merely a ‘something=x’ about which we
can say nothing, or rather nothing more than what’s given in our relational description.
The upshot: we know the electron as ‘phenomenon’, so to speak, but we don’t know the
electron ‘as it is in itself’.
Here is another way to bring out the point. Suppose, inconveniently, more than
one person fits the role given by the detective’s list of clues: suppose Pirate Pete, and
Pirate Percy, and Pirate Peggy all have keys, parakeets, large shoes, and so on. Then
although the detective knows a lot, she still doesn’t know who the murderer is. That, or
something like it, is the situation we face with the electron. Consider the thing, whatever
it is, that fits the electron role. We are supposing its intrinsic properties are not inert (we
are leaving that part of Kant behind), but are the causal grounds of its power to repel
other electrons, attract protons and so on. We are, indirectly, in causal contact with those
intrinsic properties—but, receptivity notwithstanding, that is still not enough for us to
know what those intrinsic properties are. Why not? Suppose we give a name to the
intrinsic property responsible for this complex causal profile: let’s call it ‘negative
charge’, or ‘NC’ for short. Now let’s draw on Kant’s insight about the contingency of
causal power, which is shared, in some form, by many philosophers today (including
Lewis). This contingency means that NC could have been associated with a completely
different relational, causal profile; and a different intrinsic property—call it NC*—could
have been associated with the electron’s relational, causal profile. But now ask: is the
electron’s intrinsic property NC, or NC*? We don’t know, any more than the detective
knows whether the murderer is Pirate Pete or Pirate Percy. So we are faced with humility
again.
Humility: we have no knowledge of the most fundamental intrinsic properties of things.
This is admittedly a modified version of humility: the conclusion is less drastic than
Kant’s. We are not denied knowledge of all intrinsic properties: the tennis ball is
spherical, is made of rubber and felt, which in turn are constituted by molecules, elements
and subatomic particles. We know a lot about the intrinsic nature of the tennis ball.
But we do lack knowledge of things in themselves. Kant was right to say it, and
we need to accept it. It’s not so bad. It’s not skepticism. It is what it is. We face the sad
fact that we know less than we thought: there are some intrinsic properties of which we
shall forever be ignorant. And, sadly, they are the most fundamental properties of all.