Critique of Critical Philosophy: empiricism and its place in Kantian philosophy.

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A critique of critical philosophy Empiricism and its place in Kantian philosophy. Sjoerd van Hoorn Introduction Let me start with a Greek word. The word is κριτικος (kritikos) which, according to Liddell & Scott, means „able to discern‟. It is related to κριτεος (kriteos), „ to be judged‟, and even to κρισις (krisis), „decision, judgement‟. The verb is κρινο (krino), „separating, distinguishing‟. A standard to judge by, we call a “criterion”, virtually a transliteration from the Greek, as are “critic” and “crisis”. There is thus an intimate semantic bond, not only between discerning, judging and distinguishing but even between these three and something – a crisis – that needs to be weathered, like the horse in a story by Dylan Thomas weathered a hard corner. The making of a decision or judgement is something for which we often don‟t like to take responsibility; a trial both for us and for the object of our judgement. Judging, discerning, distinguishing or discriminating, however, are what we need to engage in – I use the word “engage” advisedly – if we are to free ourselves from our self-elected state of disenfranchisement. Being critical, then, is essential to being autonomous; it is essential to giving the law unto oneself that one be able to tell, that is to say, distinguish, right from wrong and true from false, invalid from valid. Critical thinking, criticism, critical philosophy, in a word, Kritik, is at the heart of the Enlightenment. Critical philosophy has a wide scope. Nevertheless it does not lack in powers of concentration where the indispensable origins of the Enlightenment are concerned. The Enlightenment originated in science, particularly, though not exclusively, natural science. When Galileo famously muttered under his breath that the earth revolves whether the church liked the idea or not, he was implicitly saying that the science of astronomy answers only to the criteria of science as opposed to considerations of religion or good taste. Galileo appealed to an idea of science that has a dignity of its own. Science is a matter of validity in its own right. The man of science knows what fulfils the criteria of this dignity and what does not. He distinguishes; he is critical. He appeals to standards that constitute the final measure of his claims to truth. These cannot be any old standards. If the scientist is critical in the full sense, he needs to be critical of his own idea of critique too. He has to found his criteria or standards. He requires a foundation of thinking. That is, he needs a science of science. This science is philosophy, particularly critical philosophy. 1. Critical philosophy Science and experience Critical philosophy is concerned in the first instance with the foundation of science. Science here means Wissenschaft, which is not just natural science, but properly, knowledge. So critical philosophy is concerned with the foundation of knowledge. Here I want to discuss the relation that the critical view of knowledge – knowledge insofar as its foundation is

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concerned: the question how knowledge is possible – must have with perception and experience. All knowledge starts with perception, as Kant says in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, but that does not mean that all its validity derives from perception. Perception must make sense if it is even to begin to contribute to knowledge, and what is it for perception to make sense? For something to make sense is for it to have meaning, that is to be conceptual. Perception has to be converted in one way or another into thinking if it is to be more than an occurrent idea, more than what is present to the mind at the moment of perception itself. This can mean several things. One thought is that perception constitutes knowledge. Science is considered to be a systematization of perception, thought a storehouse of pictures of what one saw at one time or another. Another thought is that the relation of perception and thinking is in a manner of speaking the other way round. Rather than perception being knowledge and concepts merely being representatives of perceptions, perception is itself in some sense made possible by thinking. There could not even be anything present to the mind without the involvement of thinking. This latter view is the Kantian view of knowledge. Why should we be interested in the Kantian view of knowledge, except from a historical point of view? Kantian philosophy and particularly its continuation in the late nineteenth century engaged with trends in the philosophy of science, that again concern us today. Philosophers such as Hermann Cohen, Ernst Cassirer, Heinrich Rickert, Bruno Bauch, Alois Riehl and Richard Hönigswald discuss matters such as the place of evolution-theoretic considerations in the philosophy of science and epistemology that could not be more topical then than they are now. There is a great deal to be gained by considering these ideas. Here I especially discuss the relation between empiricism, which was the prevalent theory of science around 1900 as it is today, and Kantian views of science. If we are to understand the Kantian take on experience, if we are to grasp its importance, we have to first understand why the notions of perception and experience have a role within critical philosophy at all. What is it about perception that makes a critique of pure experience of such importance to critical philosophy? Or to put it differently, why are Kantians exercised by empiricism? There is, of course, a historical answer that could be given. In the second half of the nineteenth century German-speaking philosophy and science were dominated by empiricism, much as English-speaking philosophy and science are currently dominated by the analytic philosophy that seems to have inherited most of empiricism‟s flaws. Empiricism was, as it were, the official enemy of neo-kantianism. The new professoriate that was looking for advancement in the 1880s and beyond thus knew at whom to aim their fire if they wanted to establish a reputation of their own, especially since Mach, Wundt and so on were an ancien regime it was interesting to do battle with.1 The answer I am most interested in is an answer from the point of view of philosophy itself. This looks at the logical theory of concepts and the epistemological theory of the justification of statements. For this answer I turn to the work of two philosophers who are in a broad sense of the term, neo-kantians, namely Alois Riehl and Richard Hönigswald.

1 It is interesting in this respect to consider that although we now often speak of continental philosophy as

opposed to analytic philosophy, analytic philosophy largely was continental philosophy. British philosophy

up to the Second World War was largely divided into idealist, Hegelian philosophers and Realists. Only

when Austrian empiricism joined forces with the new mathematical logic (which in itself was not

empiricist) and vestiges of British empiricism did British philosophy become analytic philosophy.

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2. Empiricism as critical philosophy. Riehl on empiricism Critical philosophy is the investigation of knowledge as knowledge. Critical philosophy, that is does not investigate nature. It investigates the conditions of investigating nature, or indeed, anything else. As the etymology of the noun phrase expressing the concept suggests, „critical philosophy‟ wants to make out the nature of knowledge, that is, to discern and distinguish the form and the value of knowledge as such. Critical philosophy judges knowledge. That, according to Alois Riehl, is precisely what makes it critical. Die Sokratische Weisheit des Nichtwissens, in Fragen, die den Umkreis der Erfahrung überschreiten, ist

ihre Maxime. Sie will das Wissen von Beimischung metaphysischer Konzeptionen reinigen, von seinem

Bereich diese überschwenglichen Begriffen ausschließen . Und wie die Einsicht in das Nichtwissen nach

Sokrates den ersten Schritt zur Selbsterkenntnis für den Einzelnen bedeutet, so bedeutet die kritische

Philosophie den ersten und entscheidenden Schritt zur Selbsterkenntnis für die Vernunft im Allgemeinen.2

Critical philosophy progresses in a Socratic spirit. It professes ignorance. We cannot know that which goes beyond the limit of experience. Critical philosophy seeks to purify knowledge from metaphysical conceptions that have adulterated it. And just as the individual person has made the first step towards self-knowledge if he realizes that he is ignorant, so critical philosophy is a first but decisive step towards the self-knowledge of reason. Riehl continues with the question with which I have begun this essay. Das Erkennen erkennen wollen! Ist dies nicht widersinnig, wiederspricht dieses Vorhaben nicht sich selbst?

[…] [S]oll der Verstand in seiner eigenen Sache Richter und Partei zugleich sein?3

Isn‟t it evidently contradictory to ask that knowledge achieves self-knowledge, that is, knowledge of knowledge itself? Isn‟t that like appointing someone judge in his own case? The eye can look at itself in a mirror, but the mind has to be its own mirror. Of course this simile won‟t do any real philosophical work. We have yet to show the way the critique of knowledge is possible. Critical philosophy is a product of the Enlightenment. The essence of critical philosophy, which is at the same time the essence of Enlightenment thinking, is independent thinking. It is to have investigated thought, which is to say to have thought one‟s thoughts through. In a phrase that is strongly reminiscent of Descartes Riehl remarks that “Einmal im Leben muß jeder eine zeit der Aufklärung erfahren, einmal im Leben die überkommenen

Anschauungen in Frage stellen. Er wird sonst nicht wahrhaft zur Vernunftwesen [..].4

Only those thoughts that one has thought through for oneself are really one‟s own. This makes the Enlightenment a crucial phase for thought, whether the thought of an individual

2 Riehl Philosophie der Gegenwart, 1913, p.52.

3 Riehl op.cit. p.53.

4 Riehl op.cit p. 70

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or the thought of mankind as a whole, to pass through on the way to the goal of independence and autonomy. Locke was not only the first critical philosopher, he was also a paragon of Enlightenment values. He was guided only by reason in both scientific and religious affairs, and wished for everyone to be so guided. It wouldn‟t do to accept the opinions of others. That would be like trying to see with someone else‟s eyes. This is the essence of the Enlightenment, but in fact Locke had articulated all the period‟s important ideas. The great Enlightenment thinker also was the originator of critical philosophy – at least “der Sache nach”. The Essay concerning Human Understanding had its seeds in a discussion on morality and religion. How, Locke wondered, can one know about these things? Rather than engaging the problems of morality and religion directly, one ought first to ask the epistemological question how one could know about such matters. What precisely are we able to obtain knowledge of? Human understanding, the Verstand, in the sense that it has the capability of knowing reality and truth, has become the primary topic of philosophical investigation. The point of such an investigation is to find out what human understanding can take in. It finds out the limits to which its light reaches as opposed to what will remain in the dark as far as human understanding goes. If one knows this one can be at one‟s ease about what one cannot know. One can also find the middle way between fantasies of omniscience on the one hand and paralyzing doubts about the possibility of knowing anything at all. The thought has a rather Kantian ring to it: Die Absicht Lockes mit seiner Kritik des Verstandes ist keine andere als die Absicht Kants mit der Kritik

der Vernunft. Die Gewißheit und den Umfang der Erkenntnis zu bestimmen ist das Ziel der Untersuchung

Lockes.5

Locke‟s goal is the same as Kant‟s, or rather, the other way round. Riehl is right to read Locke in this way. Although he conveniently neglects Locke‟s thoughts on language (indeed he simply leaves out Book III of the Essay in his discussion altogether6), this famous passage supports Riehl‟s reading of Locke The Commonwealth of Learning, is not at this time without Master-Builders, whose mighty Designs, in

advancing the Sciences, will leave lasting Monuments to the admiration of Posterity; But every one must

not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham; and in an Age that produces such Masters as the great –-

Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some other of that Strain; „tis ambition enough to be

employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish that lies in

the way to Knowledge; which certainly had been very much more advanced in the World, if the

Endeavours of ingenious and industrious Men had not been much cumbred with the learned but frivolous

use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible Terms, introduced into the Sciences, and there made an Art of, to

that Degree, that Philosophy, which is nothing but the true Knowledge of Things, was thought unfit, or

uncapable to be brought into well-bred Company and polite Conversation.7

Questions about human understanding are a humble part, in Locke‟s view of the larger project of natural science. After Kant philosophy is a science (Wissenschaft) in its own right.

5 Riehl op.cit p.73.

6 Riehl does have what we would now call a philosophy of language, which he presents in Beiträge zur

Logik. I have not yet studied Riehl‟s more extensive writings on Locke in his Philosophischer Kritizismus. 7 John Locke (P.H. Nidditch, ed.) An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Oxford, 1975, Epistle to the

Reader, pp.9-10.

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Philosophy stands in judgement of the special sciences, but only where their presuppositions are concerned. Philosophy is not concerned with reality in the way the special sciences are, yet it does not stand apart from them. It is perhaps the primus inter pares among the sciences, but not their queen. But I digress. Riehl explains that in Locke‟s vocabulary “ idea” stands for anything that is the content or object (Inhalt oder Gegenstand) of consciousness, anything with which the mind occupies itself, perceives or thinks. Both the sensation of an impression (die bloße Empfindung eines Sinneseindruckes) and the most abstract of thoughts are ideas in the Lockean sense. Of these ideas only simple ideas, whether of sensation (the outer sense) or reflection (the inner sense) immediately come from experience. The principle of empiricism, all our knowledge is based in experience and ultimately derives from it, applies only to what Riehl calls the content or material of knowledge: the simple ideas or sensory impressions that come from perception. All other ideas consist of this material, and if they don„t they are not valid. Riehl sums up and goes on Was also Locke über den Ursprung der Erkenntnis wirklich lehrte, ist nur dies: äußere und innere

Wahrnehmung liefern den Stoff zu allen Ideen, auch zu jenen, die der Geist selbst bildet, wie sie auch die

Veranlassung zu ihrer Entwicklung geben. Wir müssen diese Lehre als Voraussetzung nehmen um die

wichtigste Leistung der Verstandeskritik Lockes in seinem Sinne zu verstehen. Diese aber ist seine Kritk

eines Hauptbegriffes aller metaphysischen Philosophie, – [..] des Begriffes der Substanz.8

Locke„s bête noire, then, is the scholastic concept of substance. A substance is the substratum, that which underlies the accidents, that is the (observable) properties. The concept of substance is the central concept of the philosophical systems of both Locke„s own time and the history of philosophy. We need not be detained by the history of the concept of substance here, suffice it to say that a substance is the thing itself, that which is the essence of the thing, that which holds all a thing„s properties (accidents, as tradition calls them) together.9 Note that the concept of substance as it is meant here does not include any mention of being sensible. Indeed, a sustance is precisely that which has all the properties but cannot itself be said to be had by any property. According to Locke (Essay, Book II, ch. XXIII) substance cannot be perceived. All that can be known of a thing, are its sensible properties. There is no substratum, no underlying thing, to be known. Water is something which is fluid, colourless and transparant and potable, a stuff which has its greatest density at 4 c and freezes at 0 c. Is this all there is to know? Locke has a great deal of fun comparing the defenders of the idea of substance to an Indian philosopher who held that the world rests on an enormous elephant, which in its turn rests on a presumably even more enormous tortoise; to the question what the tortoise rested on, he replied that it must be something, but he didn„t know what it was. Substance can only be conceived as the unknown thing holding together it properties. The obvious difficulty is that there seems to be a difference between a collection of properties and a thing which has these properties, after all a house is not just the collection of the materials of which it is made. Yet some metaphysical glue which does the holding together is not to be found.

8 Alois Riehl Philosophie der Gegenward, 1913, p.77.

9 These characterizations of the concept of substance are not, of course, logically equivalent. My interest in

the concept of substance as far as this paper goes is to characterize its place within an empiricist conception

of valid knowledge. The point is to show that the principle of empiricism eliminates a metaphysical

concept from a scientific (epistemologically proven) ontology.

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Still there is something more to be said. As Riehl puts it, Locke succesfully argued against the material view of substance. Substance after Locke does not belong to the content or material of our knowledge, it belongs to its form. By disposing of the concept of substance as it figured in seventeenth-century thinking before him, Locke prepared the formal conception of substance. Riehl summarizes Locke„s critique of the concept of substance in two propositions “the essence of substance as such is unknown, since substance is the presupposition of an unknown something. The essence of the cohesion of properties cannot be understood, because experience only gives us the coexistence, not the dependence or the necessary connection of the properties. However, despite its unknowablity the presupposition of substance is necessary for experience. Substance, that is, cannot be perceived but we must presuppose that it exists if we are to make sense of sensation. Riehl on Hume Riehl considers Locke to be the first critical philosopher because he examined knowledge as knowledge and by so examining it was able to distinguish valid knowledge from invalid knowledge. Hume takes Locke„s views in his stride and he goes the extra mile.

The criterion of validity according to Locke is observability. This criterion becomes a problem in Hume„s view. For whereas Hume does not exactly leave the empiricist point of view behind, he does turn it upon itself. Hume asks what justification we have for considering observability to be the ultimate criterion of validity. He answers that insofar as there is an explanation of this attitude toward purported knowledge, it is not of the order of justification. Hume has what Riehl calls a biological theory of knowledge.

Riehl argues that Hume developed a critique of experience (Kritik der Erfahrung). Where Locke limits his investigation of experience to describing its structure, and to some extent, its genesis, Hume examines experience with a view to the claims made for it regarding validity. What does Hume„s critique of experience consist in?

Hume holds that all knowledge that is not a priori consists of experience. Experience is not the same as perception. Experience comes about when one„s mind moves from what is present to the senses to what is hypothetical or future. According to Hume, then, all a posteriori reasonings are causal in nature. That is to say, causal reasoning is experience. “Immer dann, und nur dann, wenn wir von einer dem Bewußtsein gegebenen Wahrnehmung durch Schlußfolgerung zur Vorstellung einer nicht gegebenen übergehen, haben oder machen wir Erfahrung.”10 Always and only when we move by reasoning from a perception that is given to consciousness, to an idea of what is not given, do we have an experience or experience. This mental process (Vorgang in unserem Geiste) requires a principle that ties that which is given and that which isn„t given together. This principle is the presupposition of a causal relation, the principle of causality. To test experience comes down to the testing (Prüfung) of causality.

Riehl develops Hume„s familiar argument with reference to contemporary science. We discover many causal relations in the world, such as the principle that making molecules move at greater speed causes something to rise in temperature. What we never perceive however, is the causal connection itself. That is to say, if we test experience by what Riehl calls pure experience (reine Erfahrung) we find that there is no pure experience of the causal link. Riehl says that we do not have a pure experience of force (Kraft). All we have from

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Riehl op.cit. pp.88-89.

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experience is the constant conjunction of the same things. (Was die Erfahrung wirklich lehrt ist die beständige Verbindung gleicher Dinge.)11 In an argument in which he skillfully weaves together Hume„s account of induction with the account of causality, Riehl shows that if we have always seen A being followed by B, we cannot validly conclude that B will always follow A, because this conclusion rests reality being uniform, and we can only assume that it is on the basis of experience.

Das heißt: die Erfahrung hängt von dem allgemeinen Kausalsatze ab, nicht dieser satz von der Erfahrung. –

Wir müssen uns hier immer gegenwärtig halten, daß Erfahrung bei Hume nicht bloße Wahrnehmung oder

reine Erfahrung bedeutet, sondern Erweiterung der Wahrnehmung durch Folgerung auf eine mit ihr

verknüpfte, aber nicht wahrgenommene Tatsache; das Prinzip dieser Folgerung und eben damit der

„Erfahrung“ ist die Kausalität.12

It is at this point, that experience consists of causal reasonings (Folgerungen) that

Riehl considers Hume to have made a great critical discovery. Since experience cannot be justified by another experience, there must be another principle at work here. This is what Riehl calls Hume„s biological theory of knowledge. We believe in causal relations since we have become acustomed to one particular type of thing (event) always up to now being followed by another particular type of thing (event). Riehl argues that Hume cannot legitimately take the biological view, since the thought that one has discovered the natural principles of experience cannot have firmer ground that experience itself, since we require experience to discover these principles. It is an argument that applies equally to all naturalizations of epistemology. To say that knowledge is really an empirical matter of psychology or biology is to neglect the thought that these sciences are themselves branches of knowledge that have to be founded.

The reasons that Riehl nevertheless considers this to be a crucial point of critical philosophy are twofold. First, Hume investigates experience, in the sense that his philosophy is a critique of experience: he distinguishes what experience genuinely teaches us from what it may purport to teach us but cannot. Second – and this is the point particularly meant above – Hume in a sense looks at the conditions of experience. What is it about experience that leads us to think in causal terms. By asking this question, Hume has taken a decisive step in the direction of turning philosophy into an enquiry into the subject as a source of knowledge. 3. Hönigswald on Empiricism. Zum Begriff der „exacten Naturwissenschaft“ According to Riehl Hume provided the pattern for contemporary empiricism. Knowledge is legitimated by experience, which is itself a purely natural matter. Knowledge comes from perception, which is a purely psychological matter that may be measured.13 In two early papers Richard Hönigswald discusses a version of this conception of empiricism with

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Riehl op.cit. p.95. 12

Riehl op.cit. p.96. 13

Alois Riehl “Logik und Erkenntnistheorie” in Wilhelm Dilthey et.al. Die Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil I,

Abteilung vi, systematische Philosophie, Berlin, 1924, pp.68-97.

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peculiar reference to the work of Ernst Mach, the leading Austrian theoretician of science at the end of the nineteenth century.14 In Zum Begriff der „exacten Naturwissenschaft” Hönigswald„s goal is to explain the relation between experience (in a broad sense not committed to the Humean notion) and pure thinking. By explaining how exact natural science is possible, Hönigswald wants to contribute to an understanding of the sources of thinking and experience, which would ultimately result in an understanding of Being. What does the concept of „exact natural science‟ consist in? Natural science, according to Hönigswald is the systematic connection (Verknüpfung) of the content of our sensory experience and its extension by means of appropriate auxilliary ideas and hypotheses. „Exact‟ broadly includes precision, but here it applies to what is law-like and expressed in its law-likeness in the language of mathematics. If natural science is based in experience, and what is exact is expressed in the language of mathematics, two questions arise: first, „in welchem Ausmass is Mathematik auf die das Object der Naturwissenschaft bildenden Data der sinnlichen Erfahrung anwendbar.“ To what extent is mathematics applicable to the data of sensory experience that make up the object of natural science. Hönigswald„s second question is if the idea of exactness adds anything to the concept of natural science that is not already part of the concept. Is exact natural science a necessary pleonasm so to speak? As we will see the answer to the second question follows from the answer to the first. To answer his first question Hönigswald begins with a discussion of the characteristics of experience. There are two elementary characteristics that all perceptions have. Each perception has a particular quality, a how, on the one hand, and on the other hand it has a particular quantity, an intensity, a how strong. We attribute these characteristics of perception to the object of our experience. These characteristics form the basis or the primary content of our representation (Darstellung) of the world, hence the basis of natural science.Quality distinguishes one mental (psychischen) element from another. Quantity or intensity on the other hand, is conceived as the size-value (Grössenwerth) of an element in a concrete case.

So far, so empirical. The distinction Hönigswald here uses for the sake of argument is one in fact used by Wilhelm Wundt. At this point, however, Hönigswald switches on the critical apparatus. Is there a qualitative distinction, if the expression be permitted, between quality and quantity? Can they be distinguished at all or does the quantitative factor have a determining influence on the sensation of quality in any concrete case? Incidentally, something is concrete if it is determined by time or by space and time, which includes anything mental since the mental is determined by time.15

Hönigswald argues by example. A room seen at dawn differs a great deal from the same room seen in the full light of day. That is to say, these views of a room are qualitatively different, although they differ only with respect to the difference of the observer„s sensations of light „und doch ist es bloss die „Intensität“ unseren Lichtempfindungen, die in diesem Falle unsere qualitativ volkommen verschiedenen Bewusstseinszustände bedingt“.

Quality and intensity (quantity) really (that is, „im Grunde genommen“) are abstractions. They are inseparable in consciousness (im Bewusstsein untrennbar), though

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Richard Hönigswald Zum Begriff der „exacten Naturwissenschaft“, Leipzig, 1900. And Zur Kritik der

Machschen Philosophie, Berlin, 1903. 15

Alois Riehl Beiträge zur Logik, Leipzig, 1912, p.6 “Konkret nennen wir das der Zeit nach oder zugleich

dem Raume und der Zeit nach Bestimmte, das Wirkliche im Gegensatze zu dem bloss Vorgestellten […]”

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they may count as conceptual determing elements of our basic processes of consciousness. In the process of consciousness itself quality and intensity form an original indivisble unity. This is to say that in consciousness there is only quality; the intensity of a perception, such as the sensation of light, makes up its how, that is, its quality just as much as, say, colour does.

Hönigswald then advances another argument that throws a new light on his attack on the quality-quantity distinction. He produces what we would now call a thought-experiment. What would be the content of consciousness of a being that had no mental functions with the sole exception of sensory perception? This conceptless creature, according to Hönigswald, would experience no quantity, only qualities. There would only be the incomparble heterogeneity of sense-perception, no measure or number. The intuition of space and time does not come from sense perception itself. Sense-data are not quantitative. The quantitative differences in experience are added from without. The force of a sensation, or its intensity, is a conceptual, linguistic determining element that cannot be found as a separable element in consciousness.

We connect the qualitative determined ideas with the idea of space in which we place them. Thereby we subordinate these qualitatively determined idea to the laws of space, that is, number. We have made the qualitatively determined ideas into objects of a measurable or calculable size.

The introduction of number entails strict generality and unconditional necessity (strenge Allgemeinheit und unbedingte Notwendigkeit). Hönigswald emphazises that the purpose of his paper is to throw light on the factual relation between sensory quality (matter) and quantity, which is to say the relation the sensory processes that form the basis of our thought-forms (Gedankengebilde) – judgements – have with quantity on the one hand and number (Zahl) on the other hand.

Perception as such as opposed to thought is not countable or calculable. Hönigswald means that quantity is of the order of the conceptual. If perception as such has no quantitative dimension and the data of perception are the object of natural science, what does Hönigswald„s theory entail for our view of natural science?

The object of experience appears to us as determined in two directions: mathematically-quantitatively by the laws of space expressed in numbers and immediately and specifically by the qualities representing (darstellend) the elementary sensory content of experience, i.e. by form and matter, „der Punkt an dem sich der antike Aristotelische Realismus und der Kant„sche Transcendentalismus berühren“. Form and matter, however, are not unproblematically conceived of together.

Is mathematics (form) still mathematics if it is applied mathematics (applied to matter)? If geometry is the science of pure form whose essence and power lie in its capability to generalize in separation from sensory quality (matter), then geometry loses all these characteristics when it enters into a relationship with qualitatively determined individual matter. Mathematics cannot express quality by mathematical means.

A mathematical expression of a purely mathematically („phoronomically“) construed motion must change if this motion takes place in or happens to a substrate given to the senses. If motion occurs in qualitatively determined matter, it is no longer purely mathematically conceivable. Mathematics changes insofar as empirical matter is concerned.

Although by entering into this relationship mathematics loses some of its characteristics as a pure science, it bestows a greater certainty on the data of natural science than purely inductive reasoning ever could and allows natural science to draw conclusions that induction could not reach on its own.

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When Newton said the ancients distinguished rational from practical mechanics, he pointed out the difference between theoretical and practical or pure and applied mathematics, or in other words between mathematics and exacter Naturwissenschaft.

Exact natural science rules in all fields in which a certain simplicity, generality and realtive stability of form meet with a qualitatively unchanging substrate to form a sensorily given appearance-series (Erscheinungsreihe). If the field is too complex and the material substrate changes too much, empirical induction cannot be constructed and exact natural science isn„t possible. So biology is not an exact natural science. Exact natural science has nothing to say about the purely qualitative. The latter is too diverse to be brought under the single category of the quantitative.

Mathematics cannot tell us anything about the qualitative, but it is essential where the quantitative is concerned. „Exact natural science“, then, is a pleonasm. Laws predicting motion must be mathematical (exact) if they are to be laws of natural science. Thus far goes Hönigswald„s earliest account of the relation between mathematics and experience in science. It is not without its problems. If Hönigswald has given an account of what it is about mathematics that makes it somewhat probematic in its application to sense-data, he has not said much about the relation between mathematics and thinking or concepts. He simply presupposes that mathematics is a thinking matter. He also presupposes that thinking „applies“ to perception and that it is clear what this „application“ means. Some of these questions become clearer in the light of the paper on Mach and this is what I turn to now. Zur Kritik der Machschen Philosophie Zum Begriff der „exacten Naturwissenschaft“ Eine kritische Studie asks a question that is important to critical philosophy, but it does not reflect at any great length on the significance of the concept of critique. Zur Kritik der Machschen Philosophie – Eine Erkenntnistheoretische Studie does pay explicit attention to the concept of critical philosophy. The point of critical philosophy is never merely to show up the formal contradictions in a theory, but especially to find out the logical and psychological presuppositions of the failings and contradictions that ail a theory. In the case of the epistemology and philosophy of science of Ernst Mach, the inconsistencies for the most part lie in the misconception (Verkennen) of the problems of which philosophical criticism (i.e. Kritizismus) provided the classical formulation. The other point which Hönigswald wishes to bring out is that „these old problems“ again plague Mach, especially when he does not know that they do. Mach„s special concern is method. Indeed his philosophical programme consists of the ideal of a single unified universal method. Mach in other words, is a methodological monist. All of Mach„s questions are at the service of this methodological programme. These questions are about the traditional problems of epistemology: the subject-object relation, the character of reality, the truth-conditions of propositions and so on. Epistemology is the foundation of Mach„s enterprise. According to Mach himself his epistemology isn„t traditional epistemology. In Mach„s view we should leave behind us the thought that there needs to be a subject knowing the object. To Mach science is not a system of concepts brought about by a constant (beharrendes) subject beyond time, but rather by a natural construct of only relative stability. All of mental life, including science itself, is just a biological phenomenon which is subject to Darwinian conditions, namely the struggle for

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life and natural selection – even Mach„s own theory answers to this description. Hönigswald„s now aims at tracking down Mach„s epistemological presuppositions. Mach„s philosophy is anti-metaphysical. He envisions a concept of the world whose content is pure experience. This programme is bound to the idea of a „given“ that is free from any preconceptions whatever. Mach„s view is that the world does not contain things and a subject that meets them. Subject nor object exist, neither the mental nor the physical can be said to be. All these things are mere thought-things. All that is actually given are perceptions, colours, sounds, differences in temperatures, tactile sensations, spaces and times. These are elements that are simply given. Concepts such as „I‟ and „body‟ are symbols for series of sensations that we use for sheer practical and economic purposes. Mach„s doctrine of elements conceives of the world as consisting of a Heraclitean flux, an unceasing flow of sense-data. How does this doctrine, Hönigswald asks, relate to Mach„s only formal principle, the principle of economy (Ökonomie)? The principle of economy is the expression of a physiologically speaking goal-oriented behaviour, with the help of which the individual with the minimum of effort moves about in the world. The principle of economy has no categorial function at all. That is to say, economy is not in Mach„s view a condition of experience, nor is it a logical presupposition of the objects of experience. It is no more than an ordering principle that serves a certain practical goal.

The concept of category has no place in Mach„s philosophy since it is tied to the concept of the I. Kant conceived of categories as logical functions. Through the categories a manifold by the syntheses of the Verstand is presented as belonging to the necessary unity of self-consciousness. So in the eyes of transcendental philosophy it is only because of logic – because of a self-identical subject with its categories – that economy could be possible at all. In Mach„s doctrine of elements this transcendental principle is not seen as binding, since it sets no store by categorial functions of thought in the first place. Moreover Mach is opposed to the concept of category since categories imply the existence of the thing in itself. In philosophical criticism the subject formally makes appearances (Erscheinungen) out of things existing independently of us. The concept of appearance determined by the formal function of the subject refers to its correlate, the thing in itself that manifests itself in the appearance, hence cannot be reached by the categories of the subject. The word „Erscheinung“ signifies a relation to something existing of itself. And just like he is compelled by logic to believe in the I, the Kantian also has to believe in a basis for the appearances that is independent of the subject. Economy on the contrary is not constitutive of experience, it is only a regulative principle with the help of which the relatively constant I-complex designs (einrichtet) his surroundings. That is to say, this is how Mach would have it. However, his presuppositions threaten the status of the principle of economy as a mere regulative principle. The I-complex too is a variable part of nature carried along by the Heraclitean flux. The fixing of the flux of elements is the goal of natural science. But is this goal attainable and is a natural science of the absolute flux at all possible? Since consciousness flows as much as reality does, the former can„t fixate the latter – neither movement nor stillness can exist for such a subject. For the I-complex would have to be constant if an economic fixation of the flux were to be possible. The consequence of this is that Mach is commited to a concept of the I-complex that is locked within its own bounds, divorced fom the world, precisely because Mach does not accept the Kantian notion of the subject which is bound up with the world!

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Hönigswald„s main objection to the principle of economy is that it is hard to see how it could be possible in a Machian world. The world according to Mach consists of colours, sounds et cetera. How could formal points of view, value-judgements, methods, ideas of purpose come about at all? The reflecting man appears in this world as a deus ex machina. How can any formal engagement with the world occur in a world of elements? „Elements flow“ and „nature is just there“ moreover presuppose a formal concept of time. Time is the formal condition of the flux, which is only possible if the other elements are in time. Time, then, cannot be an element on a par with the other elements, since the sensation of time accompanies every other sensation. Time is not an element at all, it is a formal condition of the possibility of every element. The connection of elements in the I-complex depends on time. The idea of of this connection, however, is inseparable from the idea of a constant and simple subject. Time can only „flow by“ something that is stable relative to it and only a simple thing can be stable (constant). Therefore the idea of a stable I-complex had to be revised as well. It turns out that the I of transcendental philosophy that Mach rejected is necessary after all. To sum up, if Mach wants to salvage the principle of economy and the I-complex, the latter has be constant and the principle of flux cannot hold. Or Mach retains the principle of flux, but then he finds himself confronted with a difficulty of principle. He has to presume that there is a constant and simple I outside of the flux. Hönigswald neatly expresses the results of his argument so far Der Fluß der Elemente trägt unseren Philosophen auf den Boden des erkenntnistheoretischen Kritizismus

zurück. Er landet glücklich an jenem „höchsten Punkt, an den man allen Verstandesgebrauch, selbst die

ganze Logik und nach ihr die Transzendentalphilosophie heften muß“, der synthetische Einheit der

Apperzeption.16

On pain of inconsistency Mach must now return explicitly to consider the

fundamental principle subject-object relation. Actually Mach has never really left this point of view. The idea of the only relative constancy of the I-complex had to be given up to maintain the principle of economy. The latter presupposes a constant subject, since change can only happen relative to something constant. Mach, like that other anti-metaphysician, Lichtenberg made the mistake of thinking there can be thinking without a thinker. Actually there has to be an I. This I is not the objectifiable I, the secondary I, or the person, but the primary I, the „erkennende, niemals erkannte Subjekt das wir zur Möglichkeit der Erfahrung unentbehrlich brauchen“. This I not only determines its ideas, it is also determined by them, so it is in a sense relative, but it is indivisible and constant (beharrend). Mach has to presuppose such an I since it is the presupposition of all psychological (mental) events. This ad hominem argument against Mach has a secondary place, since Mach himself has indirectly said a number of important things about the subject-object relation.

To Mach the principle of economy is a maxim of practical behaviour. It is supplemented by the principle of continuity and constance. Continuity is a customary mental connection of two things which is constant under changed circumstances too. Economy, constance and continuity are three sides of the same coin – healthy thinking. They have the function of maintaining a relatively stable complex, that is, a thing. Only things have economic value. This is a crucial point: only constant things make science possible. For if

16

Zur Kritik der Machschen Philosophie, pp.22-23.

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nature is to be represented, it has to be constant. That means it has to be subordinated to the principle of economy continuity and stabilty.

Hönigswald against this quotes Kant (KdrV, 722): the order and regularity of the appearances that we call nature, we ourselves impress upon it. Since the subjective conditions of the knowledge of nature are the grounds of possibility of being able to know nature in the first place, they are also the objective conditions of nature. Hönigswald then quotes Mach himself, who said that we construct the „subjective uniformity of our surroundings“, „sufficient“ for a scientific adaptation of thinking. And Kant again: the understanding (Verstand) lays down the law for nature, since it makes experience possible in the first place. The rules according to which this happens are the most general laws of nature. So, Hönigswald concludes, economy, continuity and stability appear to be concepts that prescribe a priori laws to nature. Wir stehen unversehens im Zentrum der Kantschen Gedankenkreises. Die „Natur“ wird für Mach erst zu

einem möglichen Objekte der Erfahrung, resp. der Naturwissenschaft, d.h. überhaupt „faßbar und

nachbildbar“, insoferne sie die ihr vom Subjekte gestellte Minimumaufgabe erfüllt und der Begriff der

Ökonomie, resp. der Kontinuität und Stabilität ist die logische Bedingung aller Erfahrung. – Einen solchen

Begriff aber nennt man seit Kant eine Kategorie.

And it appears that Mach is caught in a trap. Hönigswald„s conclusions obviously gainsay the avowed principles of Mach„s philosophy. However, his philosophy nowhere offers a basis for the refutation of these objections. If there were a sharp distinction between the biological and psychological view of science on the one hand and the logical view on the other hand, Hönigswald„s thesis about the categorial function of the principle of economy would lose its power. Categories are logical functions applied to intuitions (Anschauungen). Economy can be thought as a categorial function at least where the boundaries between it and logic are blurred. And that is precisely what we find. The basic presuppositions of Mach„s philosophy don„t allow a distinction between the logical and the psychological-biological. Mach holds, after all, that science is merely another biological phenomenon, an instrument of survival. So logic and economy cannot be separated. The definition of the concept of economy as simple sensory reaction behaviour, however, stands in the way of a logical view of this judgement, since a judgement is the explicitation of the concept. The definition of the conceptual as reaction behaviour that is part and parcel of the principle of economy is unable to say anything about the logical character of concepts, their objective validity. Mach, of course, considers the distinction between logic and psychology to be only practical, so he cannot refute Hönigswald„s argument that economy has a categorial role by distinguishing the two. Neither can he put logic and psychology together as an inseparable whole, since that would lead to the abolition of the „practical“ distinction between subject and object. So, Hönigswald concludes, the categorial function of the principle of economy reveals the true nature of this „practical relation“. Science can only graps the flux of experience by the principle of economy: the „given“ is only possible by virtue of this categorial principle. The principle of economy is a category since it is a formal principle which is the logical presupposition of the possibility of material knowledge. It brings about the unity of intuition which provides the object. However, the unity of the object refers to the unity of the subject – self-consciousness. For only because I recognize the perceptions unified in the object as my own, as those of the constant subject of these perceptions, do I obtain the idea of a unified object. The „practical

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subject“ of Mach, then, must be simple and constant. The practical object can only be practical if it is determined by the subject. So, though Mach pretends to have overcome traditional epistemology, he is pulled back into its fold because of his own presuppositions. Moreover his distinction between the practical and the theoretical cannot be maintained. The subject-object distinction is in Mach„s view only practical, the doctrine of elements (the idea of the Heraclitean flux) is theoretical. But how can this distinction itself be made without relying on the subject-object distinction: how can the flux of elements be studied if there is no subject studying it? Mach needs the subject-object distinction and he needs the categorial functions of the subject to organize experience so that science can get a hold on it. The principle of economy must function as a categorial principle. The question is whether the principle of economy is capable of fulfilling this function. That is to say, can economy maintain the constance of objects? Hönigswald confronts economy with the concept of experience in order to test whether it could make experience possible. An object of experience can only be conceived as real since only real objects are are generally valid and only generally valid objects are objects of experience. If we conceive of our individual perceptions as generally valid ideas, we relate them to reality. But reality is independent of perception and so it cannot be given in perception. Therefore experience presupposes things that exist independently of perception. That is to say, there can only be a real object of experience, a generally valid one, for me if I add, in thinking, something that is independent of experience. The category mediates experience only by its relation to that which exists independently of perception.

„Im Ökonomieprinzip entdecken wir von alldem nichts“. The principle of economy lacks all inner relation to the concept of reality as the presupposition of all experience. Unlike the category, economy isn„t reality in its logical form. It is only a regulative principle, ordering experience according to certain norms. The mere fact that economical behaviour may be advantageous in some evolutionary sense doesn„t make economy a presupposition of all experience, that is „die Vorstellung eines beharrenden Realen selbst involvierendes Formalprinzip.“. „Ökonomie setzt – kurz gesagt die Realität schon voraus. Die Ökonomie ist keine Kategorie, weil sie der

Beziehung auf das Objekt, der von aller wahrnehmung unabhängigen Realität, d.h.des Algemeingültigkeit

begründenden logischen Characters entbehrt.“

Critical thoughts on empiricism concluded The upshot of this is that empiricism has made a vital contribution to the critical enterprise. Astoundingly its Enlightenment version is philosophically much more sophisticated than its late nineteenth century benefactor. Whereas Mach simply assumed that reality, the flux of elements, forms the basis of science, Hume criticized that very thought.

All the same Hume wasn‟t able either to make good on the implicit validity claim of his own philosophical presuppositions. Hume, as Riehl remarks in passing, argues that our presupposition that causal relations and the objects of perception actually exist have a biological ground. It is because we simply cannot not believe in their reality that it makes no sense not to believe in them – we cannot however, justify our so believing. Similarly Mach argued that we organize our experiences economically, but there is no theoretical basis for this behaviour. Both claims however, presuppose the possibility (and the actuality) of

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theoretical validity. The idea that science or knowledge have biological grounds is itself established on the basis of the science (the science of knowledge) it purports to reduce to biology. Such a reductive claim however, neglects the truth-claim that science must qua science always make.

Moreover,as we have seen, empiricism on other grounds too fails in its own terms. It lacks the requisite theory of the subject, as has just become evident in my discussion of Hönigswald‟s criticisms of Mach. Hönigswald has made equally incisive criticisms of Hume, though the Scottish philosopher is, unlike Mach, a thinker he deeply admires for his perceptive and sagacious considerations of the possibilities of experience. Hume criticized knowledge claims based on experience and explained these claims as a function of the imagination. But imagination cannot constitute the subject that is the necessary a priori requisite for any kind of knowledge. Hume too must revise his considerations regarding the subject, taking into account the unity of apperception that I have just discussed.

Empiricism, then, has pride of place in critical philosophy, but it cannot do without Kantian considerations.