Paper on the Kant's Second Analogy

Summary and Explication of the Second Analogy

Kant believes that humans might know objective happenings, and this is the conclusion to the argument that he makes as his Second Analogy. Here, subjective happenings are where Kant says, “I would therefore not say that in appearance two states follow one another, but rather only that one apprehension follows the other, which is something merely subjective, and determines no object, and thus cannot count as the cognition of any object (not even in the appearance)” (A195). Thus Kant thinks that subjective happenings are when the mind is given an occurrence without access to a network of causes and effects, which reason determines1. Before he said this, Kant identified, “In our case I must therefore derive the subjective sequence of apprehension from the objective sequence of appearance” (A193). That is, the objective nature of the sequence is that it is identified in a particular place in time.
This Analogy can be seen as a counterargument to Hume's criticism that there is no way to know causation, only very close correlation. By arguing that one may have in his possession a network of causality, Kant believes one can know a succession of a happening, and therefore that one thing causes another. The example of succession is the example of a ship moving (A192) is given to elaborate this point. Kant believes that “Insofar as they are, merely as representations, at the same time objects of consciousness, they do not differ from their apprehension, i.e., from their being taken up into the synthesis of the imagination, and one must therefore say that the manifold of appearances is always successively generated in the mind” (A190). This is indicative of my interpretation of Kant because in this sentence, Kant explains that our a priori synthesis of a given cause and effect is what posits a cause and effect relation in the first place, which means that reason is put on to causes and not vice versa. In addition to this, Kant says, “Therefore I always make my subjective synthesis (of apprehension) objective with respect to a rule in accordance with which the appearances in their sequence, i.e., as they occur, are determined through the preceding state, and only under this presupposition alone is the experience of something that happens even possible” (CPR 308). That is, Kant says that our subjective synthesis of apprehension is applied to the happening, and not the other way around, which is what nullifies Hume's problem of causation [please see footnote for additional commentary].2 Hume's argument that causation cannot be known ignores the fact that causes happen in the spanse of a causal network which means that it is unreasonable for certain absurdities to arise. In this way, it seems absurd that a pillow could cause a bowling ball to dent, because there is an intricate web of causes that lead us to think that this is absurd.
One place where he talks about the causal network I speak of is when he says that it is an exclusive act to represent an occurrence in a specific place because “the representation follows in accordance with a rule, I represent something as an occurrence, or as something that happens, i.e., I cognize an object that I must place in time in a determinate position, which, after the preceding state, cannot be otherwise assigned to it” (A198-199, B244). That is, once one places a cause and effect happening as an occurrence in a specific place in time, the causal network says that this could not be anywhere else. Kant's argument is that the application of this causal network means “this synthesis is a synthesis of apprehension...then the order in the object is determined, or, to speak more precisely, there is therein an order to the successive synthesis that determines an object, in accordance with which something would necessarily have to precede and, if this is posited, the other would necessarily have to follow” (B246-247).It's important to note that this causal network relies on succession, but not necessarily lapse of time. “Here one must note that it is the order of time and not is lapse that is taken account of; the relation remains even if no time has elapsed” (A203). It seems like the nature of reason poses random shifts to not apply. Kant's lead ball example (B249), says that “if I lay the ball on the pillow the dent follows its previously smooth shape; but if (for whatever reason) the pillow has a dent, a leaden ball does not follow it” (italics mine). There is no way that the lead ball would be caused by the dent in the pillow. It's implied that the nature of reason, the causal network I identify and that Kant implies, is what keeps an agent from believing that the bowling ball is caused by the dent. This absurdity says it is not causality but the nature of reason that makes this the case (and not the other way around).


Critical Material

Kant's Second Analogy stands as indicative of the general position that Kant makes in the entire critical project. This is because Kant wants to take rationality out of nature and put it into reason itself, hence the title of the work, The Critique of Pure Reason. This fact is essential to understanding the Second Analogy because the nature of causation for Kant rests on reason itself. For this reason, the Second Analogy works as an excellent counterargument to Hume's general problem with causality. There seems to be an implicit fluidity to Kant's version from his account of moments. Kant's realization is that no cause and effect pair, if they are identified as occurring in a specific time, are truly so isolated that one could dismiss their causality.
What did Kant get right in this argument? I think this is a pretty accessible argument, given the nature of most of Kant. The philosopher is reacting to an implicit enemy, Hume, and I think this is a pretty good counterargument to Hume. Kant's argument implicitly relies on appearances in that the relation between cause and effect is based on what agents are given. Just because Kant is not mentioning the thesis that we cannot know things in and of themselves, does not mean he is not doing it. One criticism would be to pose the question of what would happen if one could know what noumena are. It is conceivable to think of a noumena-realizing machine, for the purposes of discussion. I think that Kant's Second Analogy has room for this. That is, even if one found out noumena by the noumena-realizing machine, I think Kant's Second Analogy would still stand because of its description of causality. If noumena were somehow perceptible, the nature of these relations would not change. In this way, this supports my claim that Kant's Second Analogy is accessible because even if one does not accept the phenomena versus noumena distinction, he might oblige the Second Analogy.