Robert Howell

Ontology and the Nature of the Literary Work

Poems, novels, and other works of literature have long provided prime examples for the ontology of art. Theorists have made many attempts to identify the ontological kind or kinds into which such works, or their major or standard sorts, fall. Familiar suggestions for such kinds include, among others, sequences of word types, norm kinds, and verbal entities essentially linked to the authors and historical processes involved in their creation. These suggestions have been of great philosophical interest, but in my view they all are deficient. Numerous examples, and also more general considerations, show that it is not possible, in any informative, general way, to fix an ontological kind such that, necessarily, all works of literature fall into that kind. Literary works-and, I believe, works of the other arts-do not form such a kind. As interpreters and theorists, we would do well to recognize that fact.

The Transcendental Deduction: Its Structure, Goals, and Opening Claims

We have now seen Kant’s basic picture of knowledge, with its idea that we know single, individuated objects via intuitions and concepts and with its transcendental idealism — its claim that the objects that we know are mere mind-dependent, spatiotemporal things, either objects as those objects appear via our intuitions or else appearances identical to those (synthesized) intuitions themselves. We have also seen, and have just been summing up, Kant’s position about the manifold of intuition. In the case of an intuition that represents a spatiotemporal object like a tree, Kant holds that that intuition is given to us in the form of a manifold that puts before our mind (or is identical to) properties and spatial parts of the object; and that object first occurs before our mind in the form of a manifold of such properties and spatial parts. However, we have observed that, to avoid question-begging, the Transcendental Deduction should at its start make only the minimum assumption that via an arbitrary sensible intuition an object is known, but not an object that is assumed to be subject to the categories.

Combination and Intensionality: B-Deduction § 15

Using the two-part model of the B-Deduction that we have developed in Chapter Four, we now proceed to our intensive study of that version of the Deduction and especially of its first half. In the present chapter, we will focus on § 15 and its use of Kant’s thesis that combination — and so the required combination of the manifold of the sensible intuition in general i — cannot be given. We will approach these matters through our Chapter Four discussion of Kant’s thesis and of the Deduction as a proof from the possibility of experience. While considering the role of § 15 and of that thesis in the argument of the Deduction, I also will introduce an idea that I have mentioned in the Preface — namely, the idea of intensionality. As philosophers know, the idea of the intensionality of, say, claims expressing our thought is very roughly the idea that our thought always grasps its object under some specific characterization, and in such a way that even though this characterization may be coreferential or coextensive with some other characterization, our thought, in grasping the object under the first of these characterizations (say ‘iron’), need not grasp it under the second (say ‘element with atomic number 26’). In the present chapter we will see the details of this idea, and we will begin to see also why it is of interest in the interpretation of Kant.

Kant’s Picture of Knowledge

Kant’s goal in the Transcendental Deduction is to prove the objective validity of the categories. By the categories Kant means certain a priori concepts that are yielded to us by our understanding, or faculty of thought. These concepts include those of substance, cause and effect, and extensive spatial magnitude. Kant counts such concepts as a priori on the ground that they originate in operations or capacities of our mind that are independent of those mental operations involved in our having sense experience. Kant also counts these concepts as a priori because, as he sees it, we take them to apply with necessity and strict universality to all objects (or to all objects of a certain group). And he has, earlier, taken necessity and strict universality to be the marks of the a priori (both of judgments that are known a priori and, in a slightly different sense, of concepts that are possessed and utilized a priori). Yet — and here the question of the objective validity of the categories emerges — suppose that we regard the categories as a priori in this latter sense. Then it is still hardly obvious that the categories do apply with necessity and strict universality to all objects of the relevant group. Hence the problem arises of deducing the categories of the understanding — of justifying our right to employ those categories as though they did apply in that way to all such objects. And, to Kant’s mind, the deduction of the categories is to be carried out by proving their objective validity — that is, by demonstrating, with respect to the relevant set of objects, that the categories in fact apply, with the proper sort of necessity and strict universality, to each object in that set.1

Apperception: B-Deduction § 16

In B-Deduction § 16 Kant now begins the formal Deduction reasoning that starts from the assumption that H knows through i and proceeds by way of the holding of transcendental unity of apperception to the conclusion that the object of i falls under the categories. In particular, he argues that the elements of i, i 1 and i 2, are subject to unity of apperception. Hence not only must H be able to accompany each of i 1 and i 2 by the act of apperceptive thought that Kant calls the I think.1 But, also, H must be able to accompany both of i 1 and i 2 simultaneously by the I think in one act of mind. So H must be able to think the combined thought ‘I think (i 1 and i 2)’ that holds i 1 and i 2 together before H’s thought-consciousness as one combined set of intuition-elements. However, by § 15, combination cannot be given, and therefore (because there is no other possible source, in the case of a being like us) this combination of i 1 and i 2 must be due to an act of synthesis by H’s mind. So the subjection of i 1 and i 2 to unity of apperception requires a synthetic combination of those elements before H’s thought-consciousness — a synthetic combination that Kant argues, in § 16, to be the source of any (knowable or recognizable) combination that those elements have. In B-Deduction § 16, Kant thus shows, if his reasoning is correct, that the subjection of i to transcendental unity of apperception yields a combination of i’s manfold from which all other a priori forms of combination of that manifold follow, including, as we see in later sections of the B-Deduction, the combination that yields the subjection of i’s object to the categories.

Intuition, The Manifold of Intuition, and Its Synthesis

If we ignore the difficulties for Kant that we have so far noted, then the picture of the Transcendental Deduction that we suggested at the beginning of the last chapter runs roughly as follows. Kant seeks to show that the categories apply, with necessity, to all the objects that we do or can know. He seeks to show this conclusion in a non-question-begging manner by beginning with the minimum assumption that, by means of an arbitrary given sensible intuition, an object is known (but not an object that we assume to be category-subsumed). He argues that, because of the way in which we can think in the first-person of all our experiences as ours, it follows that that intuition must be so generated in our mind that the object that it represents to us (and the object that we know via it) necessarily falls under the categories. And he then infers that this same result holds for all the objects that can be represented by our sensible intuitions and so for all the objects that we can know.

The Union of the Manifold of Intuition in the Concept of an Object: B-Deduction § 17

Given our Chapter Seven stipulation, we have the actual-consciousness version of (S) at our disposal. As we have seen, that version of (S) states that H is conscious in thought that the I think accompanies all of i’s elements taken together. In B-Deduction § 17 Kant wishes to show that from the truth of that version of (S) and the opening Deduction assumption (K) (that H knows via i) it follows that the manifold of i is united in the concept of an object. He also must show that the object in whose concept that manifold is united is the object that H knows through i. These new conclusions go considerably beyond the claim, which we have noted already, that the holding of unity of apperception with respect to i implies that i’s elements form a combination and hence require synthesis. These conclusions imply that such a combination is, specifically, a combination of i’s elements such that H thinks there to be a single object — the object that H knows through i — that appears through those elements (or that is, as an appearance, identical to the synthesized manifold of those elements). Or, in other terms, the § 17 line of argument amounts to the reasoning that, to the extent that we self-ascribe our knowledge in a first-person way, our knowledge concerns a single object that is distinct from the mental states through which we know.

Objective Unity of Apperception and the Logical Forms of Judgment: B-Deduction § 18 and § 19

Assuming the correctness of B-Deduction § 17, Kant has shown that (Ti) holds and the manifold of i is united in the concept of an object through the (Ti) thought, thereby yielding H knowledge of the single object that H thinks. ((Ti), it will be recalled, is the claim that, roughly, H thinks that there is a single object that has the features presented by i’s elements.) In the brief § 18 Kant urges that this unity in i’s manifold is objective, not subjective. Then in § 19 he argues that because H’s thinking the (Ti) thought produces such an objective, knowledge-yielding unity, (A) that thought is or is part of a knowledge-yielding judgment about the object that H thinks and knows through i. This judgment has a logical form, roughly a set of relations obtaining among the concepts in the judgment, whose holding is determined by the logical functions of thought in judgment. In § 19 Kant urges also that (B), the logical form of this judgment amounts to or derives from the objective unity of apperception that belongs to the concepts (or further judgments) in the judgment. As he argues in § 20, however, (C) because the logical functions of thought in judgment, through the holding of objective unity of apperception, determine the logical-form relations together of those concepts, the logical functions determine, also, the relations together of the conceptual elements of i’s manifold in such a way that the object that H thinks and knows through i falls under the categories.

Transcendental Unity of Apperception and Its Necessity

As we saw in Chapter Six, (S) is the strong unity-of-apperception claim that all the elements of i are such that H is or can become conscious, in thought, that the I think accompanies all those elements taken together. Given the failure of our Chapter Six arguments for (S), it seems impossible for Kant to prove that i’s elements form a synthesis-established (and necessary) unity within H’s mind in a way that leads to category application to the object of i. So, also, he cannot generalize to the main, B-Deduction first-half conclusion that, necessarily, the object of any sensible intuition in general through which a being like us knows is subject to the categories. And hence in the second half of the B-Deduction he cannot apply that conclusion to the human a priori intuitions of space and time in such a way as to reach the final B-Deduction result that, necessarily, the object of any sensible, empirical intuition through which we know falls under the categories. Kant’s failure to demonstrate (S) thus abruptly halts the argument of the B-Deduction (and of the A-Deduction), and so we must decide how to proceed if something like the Deduction reasoning is to be maintained.

Intuitions and Their Objects

As we noted in Chapter One, in the Transcendental Deduction Kant attempts to prove that the categories apply to all the objects of our possible experience — to all objects that we do or can know. He attempts also to demonstrate that the categories cannot be shown or known to apply to any other objects.1 The basic strand of his argument runs as follows. Kant assumes that we know some arbitrarily selected object — of course through some arbitrary given sensible intuition. From this assumption together with various points about us, the knower, he infers that this object is necessarily subject to the categories. As we see in detail in later chapters, he does so by appealing to the way in which we can think in the first-person of our experiences as ours. Because we can think of all our experiences in that way, the arbitrary given intuition in question must be so generated in our mind that its object is necessarily subject to the categories. Because this object is an arbitrarily selected one (as is the intuition in question), Kant generalizes and concludes that all the objects that we do or can know through sensible intuitions are necessarily subject to the categories. And because the objects that we can know are simply the objects that we can know through our sensible intuitions, he thus holds that the categories apply to all the objects of our possible experience. He goes on to infer that we cannot know or show the categories to apply to any other sort of object.