Universality and Particularity in Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Kant deems that time and space are the elements that depend on the mind; moreover, he says that some physical objects exist independently of the mind. Thus, there are differences between ideas and objects. Descartes and Lock are the philosophers who are enthusiastic about how to draw some references to one object from another. Kant took after Descartes' and Locks' ideas to think that appearances are the representations that the mind impacts on physical objects but not on the objects themselves. Thus, all the facts about space and time and the objects in this frame can be conceived only when they appear in front of the intellectual mind. Actually, Kant's transcendental idealism should be considered as empirical idealism because he has imposed a space and time which he calls an intuition method for which we can take a look at. By looking at this frame, we are using our sensible perceptions, and this makes his theory become an empirical theory.


Now if this intellectual mind is an individual then it will lead us to a denial that there is not a common time and space frame in any unified world. Kant's picture will give us a single object plus a number of many different individual minds in which they are similar to Leibniz's monads. If each object appears in front of an individual subject in a different event of a different space and time frame then what is the connection in which all individual minds have to one another? For some critics, they have a common connection in space since the space frame acts like the Cartesian coordinate system that can apply to all physical objects, but for me time is not a common frame since each individual mind live in a different time frame in the chronology of history. A person who lives in the modern era will have a different viewpoint than the viewpoint of a person who lives in the classical era. However, if we find that John Lock has a persuasive theory then we can sponsor his viewpoints about the main and the auxiliary qualities of material objects. It is not because that they have many characteristics that we cannot conceive except when we use the scientific tool to conceive but it is because of our own sensible agents that make them appear in front of us with different colors,different tastes and sounds which all of these object do not possess in their instrinsic nature. To call the whole physical world in term of transendental idealism we must talk about the mutual difference between the appearance of the things-in-themselves according to each empirical subject since each individual can make a difference. Any idea that is presented by each individual will be impacted with the label "empirical" which is a representation or a description or an activity of the subjects who are perceiving the physical objects and it is these activities that will produce a physical world in which those individuals exist.


When there is no sun's light our eyes will not perceive colors, so the objects that we see will be blocked with a black color although they have their own colors; the sun's light is a representation that makes our brain change and makes us have a distorted perception. A black color has two different qualities, one primary quality and one secondary quality, but in the above example, black color is a production that exists independent of the mind. A black color in the dark or in the light still has a black color while a green color in the dark will become black color and under the light will have a green color, and this is an example of the particularity of idealism. Black color has another different meaning; i.e., it is an empty set in which it does not contain anything including the sun's light; thus, empty space means black color and all physical objects that have black color are perceived the same as with black color by the mind. Thus, according to the mind, the empty space and the objects that have black color have one similar quality while the truth is that they have different qualities in each of them; and this is an example of the universality of idealism.


The third circumstance that can show the universality and particularity of Kant's space and time is that he says that taste and color are not the necessary conditions under which the objects themselves become our sensible object; they are connected with the forms as the effects accidentally added by the construction of our sensible agents. Thus, they are not a priori representations but they are only our basic senses. In another word, there is not any color or any space that can characterize what a subject can understand in its natural instinct. They characterize an object only when this object appears in front of a subject. However, space is a part of the form which must be imposed by a subject and so it can be understood as a priori knowledge. In contrast, color is a part of a sensible agent; thus, it is nothing but the material that is imposed by a subject and is an accident appearance in the construction of a subject that can be altered in different ways from one subject to another. Space and time are the general manner in which physcial objects can be appeared as having the same characteristics while color is the manner in which the objects appear as accidents. Kant accepts that all objects except human beings may not have sensible forms and so may not perceive as the objects in space; thus, if each individual among us has this sensible agent then it may be necessary that objects appear to each of us without space. In both cases, the necessity is that if a subject is an experience subject who has certain laws then everything will appear to him or her in the general manner that are applicable by those laws and each individual mind that imposes a space that is something that each mind can possess the same way then all the different minds will be similar to this are in which all our agreements about space will be a ridiculous fact as to the case in which all of us perceive colors in the same way. Kant obviously wants to say that an object of experience appears necessarily as having a space characteristic and does not appear necessarily as having a color characteristic.

Reason vs. Assertion

Reasoning is also known in another term as logic, and the first modern philosopher who gave praise very much to it is Descartes. He was the one who discovered his own existence by just reasoning; Descartes says, "I think therefore I exist." Another philosopher who gave a lot of credits for reasoning is Hegel with his famous dicussion in his big book, Science of Logic, Hegel believes in his absolute logic as the only method in searching for truth. He says, "the rational is the real, and the real is the rational." Did he overstated his compliment for logic? Should logic be given the highest honor in playing its role as an excellent instrument in science and philosophy?


First of all, do all human beings live according to their own reasoning? Is it always the case that you must give a sounding reason before you eat? Nobody has to reason for eating a breakfast or a lunch; we eat just because of a natural reason: hungriness. We eat because we are hungry, and hungriness is not a reason but a state or a mood that we are always in if we don not eat. Eating is not caused by a reasoning; it is a disposition or a condition, a sufficient condition. By saying that eating is a sufficient condition, I mean eating is sufficient in order to maintain our lives because if we don't eat we will die. Living and eating have the same meaning. Thus, when I say I eat because I am hungry, or I eat because I have to is not a reasoning even it can be put into a logical statement if-then or because-of statement. Assertion is a condition that falls into this case. When I say that I am going to eat my lunch in 15 minutes, I am making an assertion without reasoning. An assertion is sometime known as a demand; however, it can also be presented by a reasoning. An assertion is not necessarily a reasoning all the time; sometime, when we demand something, we want to achieve it without reasoning. Most of the times, we need reasons why we do this or why we do that, and this is when an assertion becomes a reasoning.


Reasoning, in contrast, is more than just a reason. As I already stated above in the introductory paragraph that Reasoning means logic, and logic is a formal instrument that is used in science, especially in mathematics. In the instroductory part of Hegel's Science of Logic, Hegel taks about his pre-suppositional ideas for logic. The reason why I use the term presupposition is because Hegel made good intellectual guesses by giving good evaluations when he was trying to introduce the Science of Logic to his readers. Before reading Hegel's book, I never had an idea that logic was the absolute tool to use to search for the truth. It was because I was not an excellent logician and because I lacked the knowledge to believe that logics was the best tool ever known. Talking about why I use the term presupposition, I mean I want to differentiate it with hypothesis. The term hypothesis is a mathematical term that is used especially in geometry to prove the trueness of a theorem. To come to a conclusion that this theorem is right, we need to prove it using two parts: a hypothesis and a conclusion. There must be several operational equations or tasks to be done to connect a hypothesis to a conclusion. The difference between a hypothesis and a presupposition is that in a hypothesis, we are given real facts, and facts that are known as information while what is given in a presupposition is just an intellect guess. We can presuppose about anything and almost about everything even we do not know for sure if what we suppose has ever really happened or not. For example, when a science-fiction writer writes a story about space-ship aliens, he or she presupposes that the universal aliens exist in such and such planet or in such and such galaxy without any true knowledge or any specific knowledge of whether those aliens really exist.


Back to Hegel's Introduction to Logic, Hegel has made good presuppositions before proving in the body part of his book that logics is a science and also the best way in searching for the truth. However, to believe in everything Hegel wrote about the truth of logics depends on how well the readers understand his viewpoints and every proof that he presented in his book. For myself, I know that there are people who would not believe in Hegel, especially the Christians, Since a lot of Christians believe in miracles, and since miracles are phenomena or events that cannot be explained scientifically or logically, the Christian would not think that the rational is the real. Miracles are events that are sometimes known as unreal or mystical; therefore, miracles are not rational events; for example, sometimes, science cannot explain why a blind person can see without taking any therapy or any medecine and we know that Jesus is the one who did a miracle so that a blind man could see, and this is an event that no science can explain it according to its scientific methods. Thus, we see that what Hegel says is not correct because the irrational in Jesus' case would be the real thing that happened in the history of the Bible. So, not everything that is real that would be rational as Hegel said. To conclude for the reason why I use the term presupposition to refer to Hegel's intellectual ideas bout his logics, the above explantion is perhaps an enough proof to give out as a reason.


But that is not all what I want to say in this discussion, even logic is not always true because of the above example, I do believe that logic is one of the best tools to use in searching for the truth. This is where I have to go back to what I mean by an assertion. If we achieve our assertions, we prove that our own reasoning is true. In geometry, theorems are the assertions that are always proved to be true. When a scientist or a mathematician asserts something, they will set out to prove it true by mathematical methods or by scientific experiments, Finally, do we always live according to mathematical reasoning or a sound argument? I will leave this question to the readers to answer because sometimes we do something just because our natural instincts require us to do and because of eating so that we can live is a natural way nobody needs a reason not to.

A Discussion of Hegel's Introduction to Logic

Hegel's Introduction to Logic is an interesting text, more interesting to discover about the so-called logic than the contents of Science of Logic itself. But perhaps he has over-evaluated logic. Is it true that as he put it in a statement that "But in the first place it is most inept to say that Logic abstracts from all content, that it teaches only the rules of Thinking without going into what is thought or being able to consider its nature. For since Thinking and the Rules of Thinking are the subject of Logic, Logic has directly in them its own peculiar content"?


First of all, Hegel acknowledges that there are two separate parts of knowledge: the rules of Thinking which is the Form of Knowledge and the Thinking which is the Content of Knowledge. It is also that this Content of Knowledge is known as material of knowledge but is rawer than the content itself because the material of knowledge has not yet become the Object of the Thinking or has not been connected with the subject by the means of the Form of Knowledge; in another word, Thinking is empty in itself towards the material of knowledge. Next, these two constituents then have a reciprocal relation and cognition is then constructed out of them in a best mechanical fashion called Logic, and unless these constituents are placed in a relation, thought is something incomplete and has to adapt itself to its raw material. Of course, Hegel's important statement in this part is that: "Truth is supposed to be the agreement of thought with its object, and in order to bring about this agreement (for this agreement is not there by itself) thinking must accommodate and adapt itself to its object." This is where he began his Logic with.


When thinking is connected with material, the material becomes Matter, or Object of Thought. However, in the Older Metaphysic world - Hegel's language - Thought in its relation to Object does not go out of itself into the Object, and the Object is a thing-in-inself that also remains as something beyond Thought. The Older Metaphysic which Hegel talks about refers to Platonic and Kantian systems of thoughs whereas "that alone is what is really true in them; that what is really true is not things in their immediacy, but only things when they have been taken up into the Form of Thought, as conceptions" are pointing towards Plato's ideas of abstract concepts or essence and the necessary conflict of the reflections is what Kant calls the antinomies in his Prolegomena. But above all is Hegel's acknowledgmetnt that the contradiction in those antinomies is necessary and "is the lifting of Reason above the limitations of Understanding, and the dissolution of these." And this is an interesting point where my opposing thought had to stop myself to think while reading him. But it was not very explosive until I have finished the next statements. In latter passages, Hegel who seems to forget what he just said opposes Kant's famous statement that "we can never understand things-in-themselves" with a serious voice. He writes:


Instead of starting from this point to make final
step upwards, knowledge recognizing the unsatisfactory
nature of the determinations of Understanding, flies
straight back to sensible existence, thinking to find
therein stability and unity. But on the other hand,
since this knowledge knows itself to be knowledge
only of appearances, its insufficiency is confessed,
yet at the same time it is supposed that things, as
though only the kinds of objects were different, the
other kind,namely things in themselves, did not fall
within knowledge, and the other kind, namely Appearances
did so fall.


He then concludes mockingly "It is as though accurate perception were attributed to a man, with the proviso that he yet could not perceive Truth but only untruth. Absurd as this could be, a true knowledge which did not know the object of knowledge as it is in itself, would be equally absurd." Here again, Hegel gives more credits to his Logic by thinking that things-in-themselves can become reasonably and order cognitive if they are to be related in a manner where they can be drawn together under one subject using logic. This is where my opposing point is going to the highest intense because it seems that Hegel has just contradicted himself with the previous thoughts that contradiction is a useful means to uplift Reason. When he fist said that contradiction was one of the instruments to help uncover an illogical link that may come up in a logic chain, right away, I thought that this point of view couldn't be wholly true for since this would mean nothing in the case of one subject that is considered in different perspectives where no perspective can make the arguments in relation to the subject become wholly logical. Moreover, in seeking for the correct answer, if there are 2 propositions that are both right or both wrong, then it is easier to approach a certain conclusion than one is right and the other is wrong. If the righ one that is actually the wrong one that is presupposed to be the right then the wrong one is always considered to be right, and if so we can never have a precise knowledge of which is truly right and which is truly wrong. The first presupposition is a wrong one or a right one is very dangerous; sometimes it's better that we don't presuppose anything wrong or right but just list out some seem-to-be-conflict propositions as Kant did for his antinomies, and then proceed to prove whether which one is more correct than the other.