Kant's Second Analogy Part II

{Part II on blogspot}

The temporal sequence is accordingly the only empirical criterion of the effect in relation to the causality of the cause that precedes it . The glass is the cause of the rise in of the water above its horizontal plane, though both appearances are simultaneous. For as soon as I draw the water into the glass from a larger vessel, something follows, namely the alteration of he horizontal state which the water had there into a concave state that it assumes in the glass.
This causality leads to the concept of action, this to the concept of force, and thereby to the concept of substance. Since I will not crowd my critical project, which concerns solely the sources of synthetic a priori cognition, with analyses that addresses merely the elucidation (not the amplification) of concepts, I leave the detailed discussion of these concepts to a future system of pure reason – especially since one can already find such an analysis in rich measure even in the familiar textbooks of this sort. Yet I cannot leave untouched the empirical criterion of a substance, insofar as it seems to manifest itself better and more readily through action than through the persistence of the appearance.
Where there is action, consequently activity and force, there is also substance, and in this alone must the seat of this fruitful source of appearances be sought. That is quite well said; but if one would explain what one understands by substance, and in so doing avoid a vicious circle, then the question is not so easily answered. How will one infer directly from the action to the persistence of that which acts, which is yet such an essential and singular characteristic of the substance (phaenomenon)? Yet given what we have already said, the solution of the question is not subject to such a difficulty, though after the usual fashion (proceeding merely analytically with its concepts) it would be entirely insoluble. Action already signifies the relation of the subject of causality to the effect. Now since all effect consists in wthat which happens, consequently in the changeable, which indicates succession in time, the ultimate subject of the changeable is therefore that which persists, as the substratum of everything that chagnes, i.e., the substance. For according to the principle of causality actions are always the primary ground of all change of appearances, and therefore cannot lie in a subject that itself changes, since otherwise furhter actions and another subject, which determines this chagne, would be required. Now on this account action, as a sufficient empirical criterion, proves substantiality without it being necessary for me ifrt to seek out its persistence through compared perceptions, a way in which the completeness that is requisite for the quantity and strict universality of the concept could not be attained. For that the primary subject of the causality of all arising and perishing cannot itself arise and perish in the field of appearances) sis a certain inference, which ladsd to empriical necessity and persistence in existence, consequently to the concept of a substance as appearance.
If something happens, the mere arising, without regard to that which comes to be, is already in itself an object of investigation. It is already necessary to investigate the transition from the non-being of a state to this state, assuming that this state contained no quality in the appearance. This arising concerns, as was shown in section A, not the substance (for that does not arise), but its state. It is therefore merely alteration, and not an origination out of nothing. If this origination is regarded as the effect of a foreign cause, then it is called creation, which cannot be admitted as an occurrence among the appearances, for its possibility alone would already undermine the unity of experience, though if I consider all things not as phenomena but rather as things in themselves and as objects of mere understanding, then, though they are substances, they can be regarded as dependent for their existence on a foreign cause; which, however, would introduce entirely new meanings for the words and would not apply to appearances as possible objects of experience.
Now how in general anything can be altered, how it is possible that upon a state in one point of time an opposite one could follow in the next – of these we have a priori not the least concept. For this acquaintance with actual forces is required, which can only be given empirically, e.g., acquaintance with moving forces, or, what comes to be the same thing, with certain successive appearances (as motions) which indicate such forces. But the form of such an alteration, the condition under which alone it, as the arising of another state, can occur (whatever the content, i.e., the state, that is altered might be), consequently the succession of the states itself (that which has happened), can still be considered a priori according to the law of causality and the conditions of time.
If a substance passes out of a state a into another state b, then the point in time of the latter is different from the point in time of the first state and follows it. Likewise the second state as a reality (in the appearance) is also distinguished from the first, in which it did not yet exist, as b is distinguished from zero; i.e., if the state b differs from the state a even only in magnitude, then the alteration would be arising of b-a, which did not exist in the prior state, and with regard to which the latter = o.
The question therefore arises, how a thing passes from one state = a into another one = b. Between two instants there is always a time, and between two states in those instances there is always a difference that has a magnitude (for all parts of appearances are always in turn magnitudes). Thus every transition from one state into another happens in a time that is contained between two instants, of which the former detemines the state from which the thing proceeds and the second the state at which it arrives. Both are therefore boundaries of the time of an alteration, consequently of the intermedeiate state between two states, and as such they belong to the whole alteration. Now every alteration has a caues, which manifests its causality in the entire time during which the alteration proceeds. Thus this cause does not produce its alteration suddenly (all at once or in an instant), but rather in a time, so that as the time increases from the initial instant a to its completion in b, the magnitude of the reality (b-a) is also generated through all the smaller degrees that are contained between the first and the last. All alteration is therefore possible only through a continuous action of causality, which, insofar as it is uniform, is called a moment. The alteration does not consist of these moments, but it is generated through them as their effect.
That is, now, the law of continuity of all alteration, the ground of which is this: That neither time nor appearance in time consists of smallest parts, and that nevertheless in its alteration the state of the thing passes through all these parts, as elements, to its second state. No difference of the real in appearance is the smallest, just as no difference in the magnitude of times is, and thus the new state of reality grows out of the first, in which it did not exist, thorugh all the infinite degrees of reality, the idfferences between which are all smaller than tat between o and a.
What utility this proposition may have in research into nature does not concern us here. But how such a proposition, which seems to amplify our cognition of nature so much, is possible completely a priori, very much requires our scrutiny, even though it is obvious that it is real and correct, and one might therefore believe oneself to be relieved of the question how it is possible. For there are so many unfounded presumptions of the amplification of our cognition thoruhg pure reason that it must be adopted as a general principle to be distrustful of them all and not to believe and accept even the clearest dogmatic proof of this sort of proposition without documents that could provide a well-grounded deduction.
All growth of empirical cognitions and every advance in perception is nothing but an ampliifcation of the determination of inner sense, ie.e, a progress in time, whatever the objects may be, either apperaances or pure intuitions. This progress in time determines everything, and is not itself determined by anything further: i.e., its parts are only in time, and given through the synthesiss of it, but they are not given before it. For this reason eveyr transition in perception to something that follows in time is a determination of time thorugh the generation of this perception and, since that is always and in all its parts a magnitiude, the generation of a perception as a magnitude through all degrees, of which note is the smallest, from zero to its determinate degree. It is from this that the possibility of cognizing a priori a law concerning the form of alterations becomes obvious. We anticipate only our own apprehension, the formal condition of which, since it is present in us prior to all given appearance, must surely be able to be cognized a priori.
In the same way, then, that time is the a priori sensible condition of the possibiloiyt of a contiuous progress of that which exists to that which follows it, the understanding, by means of the unity of apperception, is the a prior condition of the possibility of a continuous determination of all positions for the appearances in this time, through the series of causes and effects, the former of which inevitably draw the existence of the latter after them and thereby make the empriical cognition of temporal relations (universally) valid for all time, thus objectively valid.