David Hume is famous for his skeptical critique of any and all claims to our having knowledge of the world because he claimed that we can have no real knowledge of the world outside of our own minds since all our “knowledge” might simply be the creation of the mind itself. How can we know that there is a real world “out there” since we cannot get out there to see it for ourselves? We are trapped, Hume claimed, in the “ego-centric predicament” of not being able to know that what we experience is not simply a creation of our own minds.
Immanuel Kant claimed to have been shaken out of his rationalistic “dogmatic slumber” by Hume’s critique of the possibility of any real knowledge at all. He set about to create an epistemological model which would guarantee that we do in fact have knowledge of the world outside of our minds. He argued that while it is the case that our minds provide the “structure” of our knowledge by means of what he called the “categories of the understanding”, such as space, time, and causation, the actual “content“ of our knowledge, involving sensations of color, weight, and size, for instance, arranged in space, time and causality, are the direct result of sensory impressions.
This way of thinking about the formation of our knowledge, Kant argued, admits that while we cannot get “outside” of or beyond our minds to experience the world “as it is” in and of itself, we can and do in fact know the world as filtered by the structure of our minds. This way of looking at the problem Kant argued allows for both Hume’s skepticism on the one hand and as much real knowledge of the world as we need to do science and have everyday experience. Kant did deny that we can have any knowledge of the real world “as it is in and of itself”, but he argued we have all we need to carry on scientific investigations.
Thus Kant claimed to have eliminated Hume’s skepticism by an understanding of the relation between the mind and reality which allowed for Hume’s skepticism and for real knowledge at one and the same time. This, of course, left us without any knowledge of how the world “really is” apart from the structure of our minds, but Kant did not think this was a real problem. We have the only kind of knowledge we need to live and gain scientific knowledge without having to worry about the question whether or not reality “really” is as we see it. Thus Kant solved Hume’s skept as dicism by redefining what we mean by knowledge.
Kant went on to argue in his later books that the kind of knowledge we seek can only be approached through a study of “practical reason”, or morality, as distinguished from the “pure reason”, of science. The latter, which we have discussed above, he termed discussed in his Critique of Pure Reason, while the former he took up in his Critique of Practical Reason. In the former he had pretty much eliminated the possibility of any knowledge about both the “real world” outside of our minds and anything “beyond”, such as God and anything eternal. In the latter, however, he reasoned “backwards” from our everyday moral experience to the possibility of God without making any reference to the “categories of the understanding”.
Thus, as he put it in one place, Kant had “done away with knowledge of reality in order to make room for faith”. Thus in his own mind not only had he solved Hume’s skeptical problems , but he had opened the way for speculative reasoning, based strictly on moral experience, about that aspect of human experience that really matters most. Kant really was the “watershed” between modern philosophy and contemporary thought. As some scholars have put it, Kant was the “continental divide” between the old thought world and the
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7 responses to “Kant Solves Hume’s Problem”
One big potential problem for all of the pre-20th century philosophers is that the domains of Psychology and Physics exhausted the “world.” That is, they failed to appreciate the primacy of biology, and the co-evolution of organisms and their niches. JJ Gibson and his followers appreciated this perspective and a number of others (perhaps Merleau-Ponty et al). As I see it, Gibson and his ilk, like Wittgenstein, “dissolved” the problem. Kant didn’t solve Hume’s problem so much as he buried it or told us to look the other way via some logamachistic sleight of hand.
Hey Lou – so good to hear from you :O) I think you are right – the “pre-moderns” worked within a narrow box when it comes to conceptuality, etc. As you know, i find Polanyi’s way of dealing with such issues much more helpful. Thanks for writing and changing the focus for both Hume and Kant. Paz, jerry
Sorry, contrarian view here. You have provided, IMHO, a “whiggish” take on things, e.g. a tale told from the perspective of Kant being a high point in western philosophy.
Alternative take: Hume creates an artificial problem which can only arise if one accepts certain Cartesian assumptions: (1) Humans are mental spectators set off against what comes to be called an “external” world; (2) Humans now defined as “epistemological- subjects” aim at certainty, not truth; (3) this leads to a specific quandary: either perfect certitude or skepticism; (4) Hume just follow this pre-formatted path, i.e. perfect certainty is out of the question, thus we are left with some form of skepticism. (5) Kant then inherits a specious dilemma which he should resolve by challenging assumptions. Instead, staying with the inherited either-or formatting, he doubles down on a position which separates ‘mind” and world, makes certitude central to rationality, and then needs some separate reality–and life-adjusting faculty called “”faith.”
A quite different way to respond to Hume.
–Start with persons, not as epistemological subjects, but as living beings in a living world, e.g. concerned participants engaged in multiple dealings with their milieu (which is anything but ‘external”–e.g. air to breathe, food to eat.)
–An example: I’m hungry. I go to the cupboard, get peanut butter and crackers, make some sandwiches and eat. At no time do I demand absolute certainty that I am not perhaps fooled by a hologram.
–The whole “ego-centric predicament” is simply not an issue within the primacy of praxis. It is only an issue when I begin with a particular multi-dimensional assumption; “man as mind” OVER HERE ; ”world” OUT THERE; primary concern of “man” (gender specificity is needed) : INFALLIBLE CERTITUDE that representations in mind correspond to objects in world.
–Kant does little to disrupt the inherited formatting. Indeed, he reinforces it by overemphasizing the reason/faith split.
–Hume had provided hints for a better path. ‘Belief” will always be an important component in the way humans comport themselves. Here, though, “belief “ can mean a (fallible) position arrived at based on solid evidence, not a “ belief” in spite of evidence. Kant seems to prefer the latter since, instead of championing a reasonableness which emphasizes beliefs well justified by reasons, he continues to treat rationality and belief as two separate realms.
Some good ideas here, my man :O) I think all those “modern” guys were boxed in by narrow assumptions about how the mind works. They need Polanyi’s interaction between mind and body to get free from their dualistic assumptions. Hope youse guys are OK up there in the north world :O) Paz, jerry and Mari
thanks. “interaction” provides the key for moving beyond Modernity’s logical atomism. Location-wise we have spent the winter in the Ft. Lauderdale area, avoiding cold weather and driveway shovelling.
Best to you and Mari.
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Not sure “interaction” solves the problem because it presume two distinct, potentially incommensurate, realms “interacting.” Maybe “transaction” a la Dewey&Bently (1948)?
Hey Lou again :O) How about some version of “symbiosis” ? Paz, Jerry