Kant Against Kant II

From Appendix B of The Refutation of Kant

The amphiboly diagnostic has a clear structure. First, identify a concept that operates in two domains. Second, show that the concept has different conditions of application in each domain. Third, show that the philosopher under criticism has applied the concept as if the conditions from one domain held in the other, generating conclusions that are valid in the first domain but unauthorized in the second. The philosopher’s error is not a failure of logic within either domain but a failure to notice that he has crossed from one domain to the other without adjusting the conditions of application.

Kant applies this diagnostic to Leibniz with considerable precision. Leibniz, according to Kant, operated entirely within the domain of pure understanding. He treated the concepts of reflection as if they applied to things in themselves, considered through reason alone, and then transferred his conclusions to objects of experience without noticing that the conditions of application had changed. The result was the metaphysics of monads, pre-established harmony, and the identity of indiscernibles.

Take the example Kant develops most fully. Two drops of water, considered through pure understanding, are identical if their concepts contain the same determinations. Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles follows: if two objects are conceptually indiscernible, they are numerically the same object. But when the two drops are given in sensible intuition, in space, the difference of their spatial positions is sufficient for numerical difference regardless of conceptual identity. The principle holds for objects of pure understanding. It does not hold for objects of experience. Leibniz “took the appearances for things in themselves” (A264/B320) and applied a principle valid for the one to the other.

The same pattern repeats across all four concepts of reflection. Realities in pure understanding cannot oppose each other; realities in experience can (two forces pulling in opposite directions produce zero net motion). The inner in pure understanding is what has no relation to anything external; the inner in experience is always a matter of further relations. Matter precedes form in pure understanding; form precedes matter in sensible intuition. In every case, Leibniz’s error is the same: treating a conclusion valid within pure understanding as if it held for experience without performing the transcendental reflection that would have revealed the different conditions of application.

Kant summarizes the error in a single sentence at A271/B327: “Leibniz intellectualized the appearances, just as Locke totally sensitivized the concepts of understanding.” The diagnostic is that a key concept operating in two distinguishable domains has been applied across domains without acknowledgment that the conditions of application differ. The inference between domains is not argued for. It is performed by treating the concept as if it were univocal when it is not.

Kant treats this diagnostic as one of his central contributions. It is not a minor appendix to the Analytic but the correction that clears the ground for the critical philosophy. The rationalist metaphysics of the seventeenth century rested, in Kant’s account, on a systematic amphiboly, and identifying the amphiboly was the first step in replacing the rationalist framework with the critical one. “For just this reason,” Kant writes at A270/B326, “the exposition of the deceptive cause of the amphiboly of these concepts, as the occasion of false principles, is of great utility in reliably determining and securing the boundaries of the understanding.”

The diagnostic Kant applies to Leibniz and the diagnostic this book applies to Kant are exactly the same.

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VERIPHYSICS: The Refutation of Kant: The Fault in the Foundation and the Key to the Closed Door by Vox Day is now available for Amazon Kindle, KU, and audiobook.