frierson -- empirical account -- 2005

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Patrick R. Frierson is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at

Whitman College.

Kant's Empirical Accountof Human Action

Patrick R. Frierson

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says, [A]ll the actions ofa human being are determined in accord with the order ofnature, adding that if we could investigate all the appear-ances . . . there would be no human action we could not pre-dict with certainty (A549/B577).1 He gives a striking ex-

ample to illustrate this general point.Let us take a voluntary action, for example, a maliciouslie ... . First of all, we endeavor to discover the motivesto which it has been due, and then, secondly, we pro-ceed to determine how far the action ... can be imputedto the offender. As regards the first question, we tracethe empirical character of the action to its sources, find-ing these in defective education, bad company, in partalso in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensi-tive to shame ... . We proceed in this enquiry just as weshould in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of

its determining causes. But although we believe the actionis thus determined, we nonetheless blame the agent.[A554-55/B 582-83, emphasis added; cf. 5:95-9; 29:1019-20]

In the Groundwork , he reiterates this: [E]verything whichtakes place [is] determined without exception in accordancewith laws of nature (4:455).2 And in the Critique of Practical

1 Throughout this paper, references to Kant are to the Academy Edition ofKants works or to the standard A and B editions of the Critique of Pure Reason.

For English translations, I have made extensive use of the Cambridge Edition ofthe Works of Immanuel Kant, where available, and of translations of the Anthro-pology by Victor Lyle Dowdell (Southern Illinois University Press: 1978), MaryGregor (Martinus Nijhoff: 1974), and Robert Louden (Cambridge UniversityPress: forthcoming).

2 In a lecture on metaphysics, Kant reiterates this, making clear that na-ture here refers not simply to the realm of outer sensebodiesbut to innersensethe mindas well: All things in nature, be they inner or outer events,have their determining cause, they all happen according to natural laws and arealso determined according to them (28:582). Working out the precise relation-ship between inner and outer events is beyond the scope of this paper, although

Philosophers' Imprint

Volume 5, No. 7December 2005

2005 Patrick Frierson


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Patrick Frierson Kants Empirical Account of Human Action

Reason, he insists that if we knew the relevant preconditions,we could calculate a human beings conduct for the futurewith as much certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse (5: 99). 3

it would have important implications for the extent to which Kant allows reduc-tionism with respect to mental events. For my purposes, I focus on showing that

Kant has a causal account of mental events. Whether this is in principle reduci-ble to a physical account is also beyond the scope of this paper.3

Despite these apparently clear statements, some have recently claimed that there

is no Kantian basis for maintaining causal determinism in the psychologica l realm

(Westphal 1995: 362; cf. Gouax 1972):

Kant himself held it to be one of the cardinal achievements of theCritical philosophy, forever to foreclose on both materialist andspiritualist explanations of the mind... . Those are the only twokinds of causal explanations countenanced in the Modern period. Toforeclose on such explanations in psychology is (for ... Kant) to fore-close on the scientific status of psychology. [Westphal 1995: 358]

There are two sorts of criticism generally raised against the notion of a Kantianaccount of causal laws governing mental states. The first and most radicalclaim, articulated here by Westphal, is that for Kant there simply are no causallaws governing human psychology, a claim contradicted in the passage quotedin footnote 2. The second claim, which is often connected (e.g., by Westphal)with the first, is that psychology can never rise to the level of a science.

In general, there are also two lines of argument to establish each of theseclaims. The first argument is based on the requirements for human freedom.Briefly, the argument is that because of Kants emphasis on human freedom, hecannot allow for a science that explains human actions in terms of causal laws.Westphal thus claims that Kant needs Critically justified theoretical reasons fordenying [determinism in psychology] in order to permit himself to describe thehuman will as ... liberum (357-8). I discuss this argument with respect to Reathand Baron in the body of the paper, so I will not take it up here. The second

kind of argument, primarily used to establish the impossibility of psychology asa science, is based on Kants disparaging of psychology in the MetaphysicalFoundations of Natural Science. There Kant says,

The empirical doctrine of the soul must always remain even furtherremoved than chemistry from the rank of what may be called a natu-ral science proper ... . It can ... never become anything more than ahistorical (and as such, as much as possible) systematic natural doc-trine of the internal sense, i.e., a natural description of the soul, butnot a science of the soul, nor even a psychological experimental doc-trine. This is the reason why ... the general name of natural science ...belongs to the doctrine of body alone. [4:471; cf. 28:679]

Many (e.g. Gouax 1972) have taken this passage to imply that Kant opposes any

kind of serious empirical study of the causal principles underlying mental life,

At the same time, Kant insists that human beings aretranscendentally free, uncaused causes of their actions: [A]rational being can ... say of every unlawful action he per-formed that he could have omitted it (5:98). Kants defenseof freedom depends on his transcendental idealism, accord-

ing to which even though our actions are determined bynatural law, they are nonetheless free. Allen Wood aptly de-scribes this as a compatibility of compatibilism and incom-patibilism (Wood 1984: 74), explaining that while humanactions can, on the one hand, be explained by empirical ob-servation and natural sciences, and from this standpoint,our actions are causally determined (Wood 1984:74), thoseactions also have a ground that is not capable of being ob-served, and that ground may be free.4

and some have gone as far as to use this to argue against causal necessity in hu-man actions.

However, Kants argument against psychology as a science employs veryspecific objections to psychology as a science, and Kant allows that psychologycan be a historical systematic natural doctrine of the inner sense (4:471) andeven a natural science ... improperly so called, ... [which] would treat its object... according to laws of experience (4:468). As Hatfield (1990, 1992), Sturm(2001), and others argue, Kant objects to applying to psychology a very particu-lar conception of science, as a study whose certainty is apodictic, which mustthus consist in a priori principles (4:468) and in particular in the application ofmathematics to its subject matter (4:470). Hatfield rightly points out,

While we must give these remarks [in MFNS] their due, they shouldnot be allowed to obscure Kants basic position that the phenomena

of empirical psychology are strictly bound by the law of cause just asare the phenomena of physics. [Hatfield 1992:217]

Neither Kants concern with freedom nor his prohibition of a science of psy-chology show that human beings are not governed by causal laws, nor even thatwe cannot discern (some of) those causal laws.

4 This defense of freedom might not be fully satisfying, but it is Kantian.For fuller defenses of the view, cf. Wood 1984, Allison 1989, Frierson 2003,and Watkins 2005. Watkins in particular (cf. pp. 329-39, 408-19) offers a de-tailed defense of this account of freedom. For the purposes of this paper, I sim-ply take this general account of Kants theory of freedom for granted, with thelittle support I have already offered here. I generally agree with the interpreta-tion of Kants account of freedom offered in Wood 1984 and Watkins 2005.

One important issue on which Wood and I disagree is that I see Kant as claiming


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Kants theory of freedom has important implications forhis empirical psychology. In a lecture on metaphysics, Kantsays,

Freedom cannot be proven psychologically, but rathermorally ... . If I wanted to prove freedom psychologi-

cally, then I would have to consider a human being ... asa natural being, and as such he is not free. [28:773; cf.28:682, A535/B563]

Kant makes room for human freedom transcendentally, notpsychologically, and thus his psychological account of humanaction is left thoroughly deterministic, in the sense that ac-tions follow from prior states in accordance with naturallaws.5 But while Kants theory of freedom has received agreat deal of attention from contemporary philosophers, his

empirical psychology has not been studied in much detail.There is still a need for a clear explanation of how Kantthinks human action can be explained from an empiricalperspective.

In this paper, I lay out Kants determinist account of hu-man action, as found in his empirical psychology. The directbenefit of this description will be to clear up confusion aboutthe relationship between empirical and practical accounts ofhuman action by bringing to light the nature of Kants em-pirical description of human action. This paper will also becrucial for developing more historically accurate and phi-

that actions that follow from reason are just as causally determined as actionsthat proceed from sensuous influences. Occasionally (e.g. pp. 78, 83, 87) Woodseems to suggest that nature only determines action when one is motivated bysensuous influences. As we will see in the course of this paper, reason is justas natural as the senses, from within the perspective of empirical psychology.

5 Of course, this determinism is only empiricaldeterminism, not determin-ism all the way down. Human actions are empirically determined in the sensethat these actions follow from prior states in accordance with laws of experi-ence. But these actions are still ultimately ascribed to transcendentally freeagents, where this freedom consists in those agents notbeing determined at anoumenal level by empirical causes. This is discussed in detail in Wood 1984

and Frierson 2003: 13-30.

losophically sophisticated Kantian accounts of the emotions,moral education, cultural and historical influences on hu-man behavior, and the role of psychology and anthropologyin Kants moral theory.

The structure of this paper is as follows. In section 1, Ipoint out several ways in which recent commentators onKant have mistakenly ascribed freedom a role within Kantsempirical psychology. In section 2, I discuss Kants facultypsychology, which lays the groundwork for the rest of mydiscussion. In section 3, I point out the importance of natu-ral predispositions for Kants account. Finally, in sections 4and 5, I apply the framework of faculties and predispositionsto the lower and higher faculties of desire to show howKants psychology explains actions in general.

1. Contemporary discussions of Kants psychologyThe need for an explanation of Kants empirical psychologyis particularly important today because many discussions ofKants psychology focus on Kants account of moral choicefrom a practical perspective, and this gives the sense thatKants empirical account of action depends on what SimonBlackburn calls a Kantian Captain, free of his or her natu-ral and acquired dispositions (Blackburn 1998: 252). WhenAndrews Reath, for example, discusses Kants theory ofmotivation (Reath 1989: 287), he starts his account with atreatment of respect for the moral law, rather than a detaileddiscussion of how non-moral motives function. The result isthat presuppositions of Kants moral theory unduly influ-ence Reaths psychology, so that he insists on finding free-dom within a Kantian account of motivation. Thus he objectsthat if the moral law determines choice by exerting a forcethat is stronger than the alternatives, moral conduct will re-sult from the balance of whatever psychological forces areacting on the will ... . It is not clear that this model leavesroom for any real notion of will or choice (Reath 1989: 290-


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91). Reath here seems to assume that the possibility of giv-ing a deterministic psychology, from any perspective, is in-compatible with free will.6 But given Kants transcendentalidealism, such a model does leave room for real choice, notwithin the model itself, but from the perspective of practicalreason. More importantly, Kants transcendental idealism,as articulated in the first Critique (especially the SecondAnalogy and the Third Antinomy), shows that it must bepossible to give a causal picture of the kind that Reath op-poses.

Similarly, Marcia Baron argues against speaking of act-ing from the motive of duty on the grounds that the termmotive suggests causation (Baron 1995: 189). She goes on:

This [causal picture of agency] is a familiar picture ofagency from the empiricist tradition. Kants theory of

agency is very different. Our actions are not the result ofa desire or some other incentive that impels us. An in-centive can move us to act only if we let it. [Baron 1995:189]

6 Admittedly, he hedges his claim here by simply saying that it is not clearhow these could be compatible. Moreover, it is not wholly clear whether Reaththinks that his account of respect is psychological-phenomenological or practi-cal-noumenal. His reference to the experience of oneself in the feeling of re-spect (289) suggest that he has an empirical account in mind, as does his sugges-tion that he seeks a theory of motivation that provides the common ground be-tween moral motives and sensible motives (286-7, n7). But even if Reath is

describing motivation from a practical perspective, he fails to acknowledge andeven seems to reject (290-1) the compatibility of this practical picture of motiva-tion with a more determinist empirical one. The failure to keep this distinctionclearly in mind also forces Reath into unnecessary difficulties when trying toreconcile his account with passages where Kant seems to suggest a more empiri-cal role for respect for the moral law (as a feeling [that] then neutralizes oppos-ing non-moral motives). Reath is left with the impression that Kant was notcompletely clear about the distinctive force of his own account of motivation(289n). In fact, however, we might better say that Kant recognized that his dis-tinctive account of motivation from a practical perspective still leaves room for aquite different account from an empirical perspective. (Unfortunately, as I notein my discussion of feeling in section 2, Kant did have some lack of clarity withrespect to the role of respect, even in his psychological account, but this is not

due to the confusion that Reath ascribes to him.)

As evidence for this alternative Kantian picture, Baron ap-peals to an important passage in the second Critique in whichKant argues for freedom on the grounds that one is alwaysconscious of an obligation that ought toand thereforecanbe obeyed (Baron 1995: 189).7 Baron is correct, ofcourse, that for Kant human beings are free and therefore in-centives can move us only if we let them. But this account ofagency is an account of transcendental freedom, an accountthat, for Kant at least, is consistent with the familiar empiricistpicture of agency.8 There is nothing wrong, of course, withfocusing on agency from the standpoint of freedom. Kantinsists that this is the proper standpoint for moral philoso-phy. But Baron claims that Kants theory of agency from thispractical perspective precludes him from having a motive-based psychology in any respect. By implying that there is aconflict between the freedom necessary for moral agency

and empiricist accounts of motivation, Baron, like Reath and7 Baron does not quote the whole passage here and thus gives the impres-

sion that Kants argument for freedom is based on a kind of introspection of afelt power to choose otherwise. She cites Kants suggestion that if someoneclaims that his lust is irresistible, ask him whether he would not control his pas-sion if, in front of his house where he has this opportunity, a gallows wereerected on which he would be hanged immediately after gratifying his lust (PrR30) (Baron 1995: 189). Kant goes on to argue,

But ask him whether, if his prince demanded, on pain of the sameimmediate execution, that he give false testimony against an honor-able man ..., he would consider it possible to overcome his love oflife ... . He would perhaps not venture to assert whether he would do

it or not, but he must admit without hesitation that it would be possi-ble for him. He judges, therefore, that he can do something becausehe is aware that he ought to do it. [5:30]

On the basis of conjectural introspection, one would perhaps not venture tospeculate about ones capacities, but one can infer that one is able to do some-thing from the moral(and thus not psychological) fact that one ought to do it.

8 As we will see, there are important differences between Kants empiricalpsychology and standard empiricist accounts, and some of these differencesmake Kants empirical psychology particularly well suited to fit with his tran-scendental accounts of freedom, but Kants Critique of Pure Reason provides aframework for reconciling transcendental freedom with any empirical descrip-tion of human actions. For further discussion of this claim, see Frierson

(Kants Empirical Markers for Moral Responsibility).


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Blackburn, mistakenly ascribes to Kants empirical psychol-ogy a kind of freedom that Kant thinks is out of place there.

Similarly, Allen Wood has recently argued that our ca-pacity to investigate this causality [of human actions] is vir-tually nonexistent (Wood 2003: 45).9 Wood rightly notesthat given Kants statements in his Critical works, we thinkhe must project anthropology or empirical psychology as amechanistic natural science that altogether excludes humanfreedom and treats human behavior as merely part of themechanism of nature (Wood 2003: 43). However, Woodgoes on to say that the claims of the Critical writings ex-press only metaphysical propositions, and do not indicateanything about any possible program of empirical researchinto human actions (Wood 2003: 44). Wood rightly pointsout that Kant recognizes important challenges to the task of

describing human behavior, including self-deception, thedifficulty of self-observation, and intrinsic limits to anypurely empirical discipline (cf. Wood 1999: 197-201; Wood2003: 48-50), but he wrongly infers from this that self-knowledge, and empirical knowledge of human nature moregenerally, is impossible (Wood 2003: 50). What is worse,Wood seems to think that the impossibility of empirical in-

9 Throughout this paragraph, I refer to Woods 2003 essay Kant and theProblem of Human Nature. Much of that essay is taken virtually verbatim fromWoods longer discussion in Kants Ethical Thought(Wood 1999, chapter 6).

In the volume in which Woods essay appears, Brian Jacobs (a former stu-dent of Woods) gives a more balanced treatment of Kants attitudes towards theempirical investigation of human beings. While taking seriously the problemsfor this investigation that Wood raises, Jacobs rightly insists that although theselaws [of human cognition and behavior] do not have the same level of cer-tainty that Kant ascribes to natural laws, ... they nevertheless suggest that ... theintellectual world is as well governed as the natural one (Jacobs 2003: 108).Moreover, the determination of the empirical self according to natural laws al-lows Kant to conceive of human behavior as nomologically predictable (even ifhuman beings do not have access to the totality of information that would allowfor such prediction) (120). Wood and Jacobs are certainly correct that empiri-cal psychology is difficult. Kant points out that experiments in psychology areimpossible, and even relevant observations are difficult (28:679, cf. 25:438).

But difficulty does not imply that such observations are impossible (28:679).

vestigation of human beings is necessary in order to preservea commitment to noumenal freedom: Kants conjecturesabout noumenal freedom are possible only because we cannever have satisfactory empirical knowledge of the mind(50, emphasis added).10

Both Kants commentators and his critics often underes-timate the importance of transcendental idealism for open-ing up the possibility of a causal account of human action. 11

10 The consequence, for Wood as for others, is that Kants empirical an-thropology always proceeds on the fundamental presupposition that human be-ings are free (44). While this claim is true strictly speaking, it is deeply mis-leading. Kant proceeds on the understanding that humans are free in the sensethat he presents his determinist empirical account of human action with a prag-matic purpose in mind. That is, Kant thinks that understanding the causes ofvarious human behaviors can be put to use to help people improve their facul-ties, both for prudential and for moral purposes. (For more detail, cf. e.g. Frier-son 2003: 48-67, Louden 2000: 68-74). This does not imply that the account of

human nature is any less causally determinist, though it does raise some impor-tant problems for how to understand the relationship between freedom and em-pirical influences (cf. Frierson 2003).

For an excellent example of pragmatic advice that depends on a causal ex-planation of human beings, consider Kants recommendation to distract one-self in certain circumstances:

But one can also distract oneself, that is, create a diversion for onesinvoluntary reproductive power of imagination, as, for example,when the clergyman has delivered his memorized sermon and wantsto prevent it from echoing in his head afterwards. This is a necessaryand in part artificial precautionary procedure for our mental health.Continuous reflection on one and the same object leaves behind it areverberation, so to speak (as when one and the very same piece ofdance music that went on for a long time is still hummed by those re-turning from a festivity, or when children repeat incessantly one andthe same of their kind ofbon mot, especially when it has a rhythmicsound). Such a reverberation ... molests the mind, and it can only bestopped by distraction and by applying attention to other objects; forexample, reading newspapers. [7: 207]

Here Kant assumes that people are free in the sense that he directs this advice tosomeone whom he takes to be capable of acting upon it. But the advice is basedon a picture of human cognition that is determinist in the sense that it traces thecauses of various changes in ones cognitions, from the way in which continu-ous reflection on a single object causes reverberation to the ways that one canundo this reverberation by, for instance, reading newspapers.

11 Even Jeanine Grenberg, who is much more sensitive than most Kant

commentators to the details of Kants psychology, admits that Kants language


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This common focus on freedom in Kants theory of humanaction results in confusion about what Kants empirical ac-count of human action actually is, and this leaves room openfor critics of Kant such as Blackburn to accuse Kant of hav-ing an overly simplistic psychology. Blackburn introduceshis Kantian Captain as prelude to an account of the fun-damental mistake about deliberation that this Captain rep-resents (Blackburn 1998: 250, cf. pp. 243-261). Blackburnpoints out that Kants Captain is bad psychology that makesfor bad ethics. But even Blackburn turns to something like aKantian Captain when he offers his account of what it lookslike to speak from within a moral perspective (Black- burn 1998: 106), and he, like Kant, distinguishes this fromdescribing those who speak from within it (Blackburn 1998:

of impulsion certainly does suggest that ... he is ... advocating a more mechanis-tic theory of action but argues that this is not in fact the case, that in fact hu-man actions do not follow the laws of nature (Grenberg 2001: 151, 175).

Grenberg seems to locate the freedom of action in our capacity to controlthe representations that give rise to desires (and thereby actions). She asksHow does an appeal to representation distinguish feeling from mere physicalforce? That which evokes feelings is not, strictly speaking, a force completelyexternal to an agent, but rather any state of affairs in so far as it has been takenup by an agents capacity to represent it to herself (161). Of course, this con-trast between internal and external causes is one with which any empiricistwould agree, and one that Kant specifically argues is not sufficient for the kindof freedom that is needed for moral responsibility (see 5: 97f.). And one wouldnot expect this merely empirical freedom to be particularly important to distin-

guish Kants accounts from his more determinist contemporaries, since Kantsaw his contribution to freedom of action to lie notin a novel psychological ac-count of empirical freedom but in a new transcendental freedom compatiblewith thoroughgoing natural determinism.

At times, Grenberg seems sensitive to this point. She is much clearer thanother commentators about the specifically first-personal nature of freedom inKants psychology, saying for example that when [an agent] judges her feelingof pleasure to be good ... she attributes it to her own faculty of desire, not from athird person perspective, but from a first person perspective, and she distin-guishes this practical task from theoretical ... knowledge of herself as object(171). But this distinction does not sufficiently inform her overall treatment ofKants account of action, so she still sees a conflict between Kantian freedomand a thoroughgoing natural necessity in psychological explanations of human

action.

106). As in Blackburn, Kants Captain has no place in de-scriptions of human action, but only in discussion of what itmeans to speak from within a moral perspective. The Cap-tain has no role in empirical psychology, so it cannot be anexample of bad psychology.

Unfortunately, simplified accounts of Kants psychologymake it too easy for Blackburn and others to dismiss Kant.And Blackburn rightly claims that Kant, or perhaps histranslators, cannot escape responsibility for the confusionhere (Blackburn 1998: 256). Kant bears some responsibilityfor not laying out his empirical psychology systematically inany published works. (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point ofView, which comes closest, is neither sufficiently systematicnor sufficiently detailed.) His commentators bear responsibility for never making use of the published and unpub-

lished resources that Kant did leave.12

By drawing on theseresources to explain Kants empirical psychology, this paperwill help to clear up some of the confusion that promptsoverly swift dismissals of Kants moral theory.

2. The framework for an account of action: Kants faculty psy-

chology

There are two main aspects of Kants empirical account ofhuman action. The first is rooted in Kants engagement witheighteenth-century faculty psychology. In the context of atradition that describes the soul as involving appetitive andcognitive faculties, Kant develops an account of relation-

12 These resources include Kants three Critiques as well as his Anthropol-ogy from a Pragmatic Point of View, Reflexionen, and lecture notes on anthro-pology and metaphysics. The lectures on metaphysics, in particular, give Kantsmost systematic treatment of empirical psychology. While there has been somequestion about the veracity of these lectures, they have increasingly been takento be reliable, largely because of their overlap with each other and with Kantspublished writings. (See the introduction to the Cambridge Edition of the Lec-tures on Metaphysics for details about their reliability.) I generally take theselectures to be reliable, while backing up key interpretative claims with refer-

ences to published works.


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ships among three main faculties of the soul: desire, feeling,and cognition. This provides Kant with an opportunity toexplain human action as the result of a faculty of desire andto explore the causes of various kinds of desires. Kantsmost detailed accounts of this faculty psychology are in hislectures on empirical psychology, part of his lectures onmetaphysics, and in his lectures on anthropology, whichgrew out of these empirical-psychology lectures.13 The sec-ond aspect of Kants account of human action comes fromhis engagement with emerging theories in biology and natu-ral history and involves Kants account of natural predispo-sitions that underlie human actions. Looking at this secondaspect is necessary in order to understand both the natureand the limits of Kants causal accounts. The primarysources for this aspect of Kants account are taken from his

anthropology, including his historical essays, lectures on an-thropology, and his published Anthropology from a PragmaticPoint of View.

Kants faculty psychology developed in response to threemain trends in eighteenth-century philosophy: Wolffs Leib-nizian rationalism, Crusiuss Pietist response to Wolff, andBritish empiricism.14 The overall structure of Kants empiri-cal psychology is largely set by Wolff, who developed a fac-

13 The recent publications of these metaphysics lectures in English, as part

of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, will make the studyof Kants empirical psychology much easier within the English-speaking world.I hope and expect that the forthcoming publication in the same series of Kantsanthropological writings and lectures from his courses in anthropology will havea similar result.

14 For details on the relationship of these three strands to Kant, see Beck1969; Hatfield 1990: 21-77; Henrich 1957/58 and 1994: 20-7, 70-2; Hilgard1980; and Schneewind 1998. For a close study of the reception of Scottish phi-losophy in eighteenth century Germany, see Kuehn 1987. Other figures arerelevant to Kants psychology, including Tetens, Eberhard, Mendelssohn, andLossius, but a full discussion of the historical background of Kants psychologyis beyond the scope of this essay. Baumgarten and Mendelssohn are particularlyimportant in that both articulated three-fold divisions similar to Kants own (cf.

Hilgard 1980).

ulty psychology in order to reduce diverse faculties to rep-resentation as the single essence of the soul. Kantscourse on metaphysics was based on the textbook of theWolffian Alexander Baumgarten, who followed Wolff in theorganization of empirical psychology. Kant takes overWolffs and Baumgartens distinctions between differentfaculties of soul but resists their attempts to reduce thesefaculties to a single essence.

Instead, Kant follows Crusius in resisting this reduction,and he shifts from a two-fold distinction between cognitiveand appetitive faculties to a threefold distinction betweenthe faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire (cf. 29:877).Each of these three faculties includes several distinct basicpowers, none of which is reducible to others. As HowardCaygill explains, the continuum of representations pro-

posed by Baumgarten is replaced by ... radical distinction[s](Caygill 2003: 180).15 For Kant, the classification of differentbasic powers is important because the concept of cause liesin the concept of power (28:564).16 Different powers reflect

15 This resistance to reducing all faculties to a single sort of representation isparticularly important for the development of the theory of sensibility in KantsCritique of Pure Reason. Cf. Caygill 2003.

16 As Eric Watkins has rightly pointed out, Kant often uses the terms causeand effect in a way that is quite different from Hume (and other empiricists).Often for Kant, a cause just is an underlying power of a substance, and the effectof this power is a change of state of a substance (either the substance with the

power or another one, or both). Thus Watkins emphasizes that what Kant takesto be an effect, namely a continuous change from one determinate state to an-other, is not what Hume understands an effect to be, namely a determinate stateof an object at a particular moment in time ... . Nor is the cause for Kantaphenomenal substanceidentical to the cause for Humea determinate state ata particular moment in time (Watkins 2005: 384). As Watkins points out, thelaw-likeness of changes, for Kant, is due to the fact that these changes are the ef-fects of powers in substances that are themselves unchanging because they aredue to the nature of the substance. Nonetheless, these powers give rise to differ-ent effects in different circumstances. As Watkins emphasizes,

What changes is not the exercise of the forces themselves, but rather

the effects the exercise of forces will have. That is, a given substance

acts in the same way at all times, but this activity can nonetheless


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different specific laws of causation. Within the faculty ofcognition, for instance, Kant includes distinct basic powerssuch as the five senses, imagination, understanding, and rea-son, each of which is governed by its own set of causallaws.17 Because basic powers are the key to any causal ex-planation of phenomena, Kant claims that all physics, of

cause different things to happen because the circumstances of the

substance can be different. [Watkins 2005: 270; cf. 267, 354, 411-12]

Given the role of external circumstances that must obtain for this cause tobe efficacious (411), one can reasonably bring together Kants use of the termcause for causal powers and our more common sense (and admittedly empiri-cist) notion of cause as a preceding event. This strategy is confirmed byKants occasional use of the term cause to refer to prior states of the worldrather than substances (A543/B571; cf. 28:254, 674-5; 29:895).

For any change of state of a substance, then, there is a prior state of the sub-stance that gives rise to the succeeding state, perhaps combined with other as-pects of the world in which that substance is located. This prior state (of sub-stance and world) can rightly be considered a cause of the succeeding state (asKant does with respect to mental events at 28:254, 28:674-5, and 29:895). Atthe same time, there is an underlying power that grounds the connection be-tween these two states in a law-like way, and this underlying power can also beconsidered a cause, though in a different sense.

Throughout this paper, I reserve the term cause for the preceding states ofa substance that give rise to successive states. As we will see, Kants psychol-ogy involves cognitions giving rise to feelings which give rise to desires. I referthroughout to the cognitions, etc., as the causes of their successive states. Inthat sense, I might rightly be lumped in with most commentators ... [who] havepresupposed, whether explicitly or implicitly, that Kant adopts Humes model ofcausation, according to which one determinate event ... causes another determi-

nate event (Watkins 2005: 230). At the same time, the models that I develophere give a prominent role to the importance of causal powers in Kant as the un-derlying grounds of connections between states of a substance. Although I usethe term grounds to refer to the role of powers and cause to refer to antece-dent conditions that make those powers efficacious in a particular case, my ac-count otherwise fits with Watkinss overall approach to Kant on causality.

(Incidentally, the fact that Kants account can be translated in this way be-lies, to some extent, Watkinss pessimism about the possibility of reinterpretingKants theory to make it intelligible on Humean terms. While a full response toWatkins on this point is beyond the scope of this paper, this footnote offers thebeginnings of such a reinterpretation.)

17 Kant explains that he groups the essentially distinct powers into threeclasses in order to treat empirical psychology all the more systematically

(28:262).

bodies as well as of minds, the latter of which is called psy-chology, amounts to this: deriving diverse powers, which weknow only through observations, as much as possible frombasic powers (28:564).18 In both physics and psychology,Kants goal is to reduce the variety of observable phenomenato as few basic powers as possible and to explain the lawsaccording to which those powers operate. In psychology inparticular, we are to seek natural laws of the thinking self based on observations about the play of our thoughts(A347/B405). The result is a clear and comprehensive causalaccount of natural phenomena, whether of bodies, in phys-ics, or of minds, in psychology.

Finally, from British empiricism Kant adopted the prac-tice of explaining each power in terms of laws describingregular connections between phenomena.19 Unlike many of

the British empiricists, Kant does not focus on laying outcausal laws and applying them to understand various men-tal phenomena. Kants focus is on the framework of basicpowers that will ground those causal laws. And Kant allowsa greater plurality of basic powers than most empiricists.Moreover, because these laws are rooted in basic powers,they reflect necessary connections between different phe-nomenal states, rather than mere regularities.20 Most impor-tantly, Kant differs from empiricists in that he does not thinkthat an empirical account of basic powers provides any basis

for epistemology or ethics. In his Critique of Pure Reason,Kant insists that although as far as time is concerned ...,every cognition begins with experience, nonetheless itdoes not all on that account arise from experience (B 1-2, cf.29:951-2). In a similar way, Kant argues that his empirical

18 I have amended the Cambridge Edition translation, translating Geist asmind where they translate it as spirit.

19 Kant would have known of Humes philosophy, at least through Sulzerstranslation of Humes Enquiry. For more on the connections between Kant andHume, see especially Henrich 1957/58 and 1994, Kuehn 1987, Hatfield 1990,and Watkins 2005: 160-70, 232-7, 362-422.

20

For detailed discussion of this point, cf. Watkins 2005, especially pp. 400-8.


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account of human action does not imply that ethical normscan be derived from this account. But when Kant does de-scribe the laws governing the basic powers, his laws aresimilar to those of the empiricists, including a law of asso-ciation governing the imagination and various laws of logicand prejudice governing the understanding.21

When it comes to explaining human action, Kant focuseshis account on desire: all desires have a relation to activityand are the causality thereof (25:1514, cf. 29:1024).22 Kantexplains,

To the extent it [desire] appertains to anthropology, it isthen that in the thinking being, which [corresponds to]the motive force in the physical world ... . [L]ivingthings do something according to the faculty of desire,and lifeless beings do something when they are impelledby an outside force. [25: 577]

Desire plays the same role in psychology that motive forces(momentum, etc.) play in physics. Insofar as a representa-tion is the ground of an action that brings about some stateof affairs, it is a desire: the faculty of the soul for becomingcause of the actuality of the object through the representation of theobject itself = ... the faculty of desire (29:1012; cf. 6:211, 399;7:251). An object here is not necessarily a physical object

21 For the law of association governing the imagination, see 7:174ff. and

corresponding sections in his lectures on anthropology (e.g. 25:883) and empiri-cal psychology (e.g. 28:585, 674). Baumgarten too draws attention to laws ofassociation governing the imagination (see Baumgartens Metaphysica, 561),but this law was particularly prominent among British empiricists (see e.g.Hume 1740: I.iii.vi.4, pp. 88-9 and I.iii.vii.6, p. 97: we are not determined byreason, but by ... a principle of association).

22 For Kant, allaction proceeds from a prior determination of the faculty ofdesire. Thus within Kants empirical account, at least, it is not the case, asSimon Blackburn has suggested, that motivation by means of desire was onething, motivation by apprehension of the Moral Law a different thing (Black-burn 1998: 214). Desire, as the faculty giving rise to action, is necessarily in-volved in any human action. That said, Kant distinguishes between differentsorts of desire, including a desire in the narrow sense (6:212) that is specifi-

cally tied to sensibility and not necessarily involved in every action.

but anything that can be desired, including physical objectsbut also states of affairs.23 The object of desire is a possiblepurpose for an action, and desires, for Kant, naturally giverise to actions. As Kant puts it here, a desire is defined as arepresentation that leads to action, that becomes cause ofthe actuality of an object.24 And when desire is taken in thissense, there are no actions that are not preceded by andcaused by desires, and no desires that do not lead to actions(at least in the absence of external impediments).25

23 One caveat must be added here. For Kant, the tendency of a representa-tion to maintain that representation itself without bringing about a change in theworld does not count as a desire. This is how Kant accounts for aesthetic pleas-ure, where one seeks to maintain a representation but without any desire for anobject of that representation, and Kant is particularly interested in these cases ofdisinterested pleasure (cf. 28:674-5). For further discussion of Kants accountof aesthetic pleasure, see Allison 2001, Ameriks 2003, Ginsborg 1990, Guyer1979, 1993, and Zuckert 2001.

24 This account of desires as representational provides room for semanticconnections between the cognitions and desires. In general, the content of thecognition that gives rise to a desire will be closely linked to the object of desire.For example, the smell of a mango (cognition) will give rise to a desire to con-sume the mango. Theoretically, cognitions could give rise to desires radicallydifferent from themselvesthus a smell of a mango could give rise to a desire toplay baseballbut for Kant these connections do not generally occur because ofthe nature of cognition, feeling, and desire. A full exploration of this issue, andthe ways in which it must be modified for higher desires, is beyond the scope ofthe current paper.

25 Kant does allow for the possibility of a wish [Wunsch] (7:251), a sort ofdesiring without exercising power to produce the object (7:251), which is pos-sible only when one lacks a consciousness of the ability to bring about ones

object (6:213; cf. 25:206, 577-8, 795, 1109-10). In general, a desire is a com-mitment to action that will be realized in the absence of external impediments orsubjective incapacity. In the case of wishes, one is simply aware of the relevantincapacities at the moment of desire, and hence this commitment has no effect inaction.

More generally, one might wonder at this point how Kant could account forconflicts of desire. Although a full treatment of this topic is beyond the scope ofthis paper, the structure outlined here provides the resources for a fuller discus-sion of conflicts of desire. First, Kant claims that in empirical psychology,wholly equal incentives cannot be thought (28:678; cf. 25:278) because in thecase of equal incentives, there would be no choice and thus no action (29:902).An actual determination of the faculty of desire involves either a choice or awish. In the former case, an action follows, and thus choice can come only

when conflicts have already been worked out. In that sense, there is no strict


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25:1514).28 He insists,29

The faculty of desire rests on the principle: I desire noth-ing but what pleases, and avoid nothing but what dis-pleases ... . But representations cannot be the cause of anobject where we have no pleasure or displeasure in it.This is therefore the subjective condition by which alonea representation can become the cause of an object.[29:894]

In these lectures, the cognitionfeelingdesire model of mo-tivation seems to be universal, and Kant even applies thismodel explicitly to the case of motivation by reason. He ex-plains,

[F]reedom is the faculty for choosing that which is goodin itself and not merely good as a means. Thus we arefree when we arrange our actions entirely according tothe laws of the understanding and of reason, and themore we do this, the freer we are, for even if the will isfree from stimuli, it can still be not entirely free. Forsince we desire merely that which pleases us, pleasure isthe cause of our desiring. But the cause of the pleasureis either sensibility or understanding ... . Understandingand reason give laws to the will according to which itmust conform if it is to be free. But we cannot be deter-mined by mere representations of reason; it must alsogive us incentives. [29:899-900; cf. 19:185-6, R6866;28:253-4]

Here Kant holds firm to his cognitionpleasuredesiremodel, pointing out only that there are two very differentkinds of pleasure, depending upon whether those pleasuresare caused by sensible or intellectual cognitions. Elsewhere

28 This close connection between feeling and desire is asymmetrical, forKant, in that all desires are preceded by feelings, but not all feelings bring aboutdesires (cf. 29:877-8). This fact is important for Kants aesthetics.

29 Cf. too 29:878: We can desire or abhor nothing which is not based onpleasure or displeasure. For that which gives me no pleasure, I also do not want.

Thus pleasure or displeasure precedes desire or abhorrence.

Kant makes a similar point, and he develops a vocabularyfor distinguishing between the general genus of feeling thatis a cause of any sort of desire and the narrower sort of feel-ing that is purely sensible:

The cognitive faculty is connected with the faculty of de-

sire by the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The authorcalls it pleasure and dipleasure .That is false, for this is true only of sensible satisfaction. For the understanding can frequently find dissatisfac-tion with that which best satisfies the senses. Thisshould be named the faculty of satisfaction and dissat-isfaction. (29:890, cf. 28:674-5, 29:1013)

In the context of his empirical psychology, Kant generallyposits a feeling of satisfaction [Wohlgefallen] or dissatisfaction[Migefallen] as a cause of any desire, allowing that these

feelings can be either caused by sensibility (in which casethey are properly called pleasures [Lust] or displeasures [Un-lust]) or by the understanding.

In the context of his moral philosophy, however, Kantsometimes suggests that no feeling of any sort precedespurely moral volitions. Some of the strongest language hereis from the second Critique, where Kant says,

What is essential to any moral worth of actions is that themoral law determine the will immediately. If the determina-

tion of the will takes place conformably with the law butonly by means of a feeling, of whatever kind, that has to be presupposed in order for the law to become a suffi-cient determining ground of the will, so that the action isnot done for the sake of the law , then the action will con-tain legality indeed but not morality. [5:71-2; cf. 4:401n,5:9n, 6:212, 29:1024]

One way to read this passage is as an exception to Kantscognitionfeelingdesire model of motivation. On this read-ing, feelings would precede desires only for the cases of non-


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moral motivation. In the case of motivation by the morallaw, the relevant feelings would follow the determination ofones faculty of desire.

A full discussion of these passages would require a de-tailed treatment of the feeling of respect for the moral law,which is beyond the scope of the present essay.30 However,it is worth noting that there is another way to read these pas-sages, one that is consistent with Kants general model ofhuman motivation. The key to reconciling this passage withKants general cognitionfeelingdesire model of motivationis to focus on the claim that feeling cannot play a role as anantecedent determining ground of the will,31 and to readthis restriction as one that applies not to empirical descrip-tions of choice but to ones deliberative bases for choice. Thatis, in the case of motivation by the moral law, one does not

appeal to pleasure as a determining ground of ones choice,but simply to the law as such. In non-moral motivation, oneappeals in deliberation, either directly or indirectly, to thepleasure that one takes in the object of ones choice. In moralmotivation, one makes no such appeal to pleasure. Thiswould be compatible, of course, with saying that pleasureplays a role in a psychological account of moral choice as aconnecting psychological state between cognition of themoral law and ones desire. Here, the thought of the moral

law in all its purity (hence not mixed with any considera-tions of pleasure) causes a pleasure that brings about the de-sire to act in accordance with the moral law. Kant makes asimilar point elsewhere, arguing

30 For detailed studies of these passages, see Allison 1989, Ameriks (Kanton Moral Motivation), Beck 1960, McCarty 1993 and 1994, and Reath 1989.

31 This point is emphasized by Beck (1960: 222-3) and McCarty (1993:425). McCarty in particular makes use of this point to defend an affectivistreading of respect for the moral law that is consonant with the account I defendhere.

One must never say that one places ones end in gratifi-cation, rather that whatever immediately gratifies us isour end, because gratification is only the relation of anend to our feeling. The satisfaction in the rule-governedness of freedom is intellectual. Hence the endis not always self-seeking, if the end is not the alteredcondition of our own senses. [19:190-1, R6881]

In the case of respect for the moral law, no antecedent grati-fication determines ones ends in action, and thus ones ac-tion is not self-seeking, but the immediate interest taken in themoral law itself is a kind of gratification, which in turn mo-tivates desire and thereby action.

For the purpose of this paper, I take the cognitionfeelingdesire model of motivation to be Kants most consis-tent model, even for higher cognitions. Those cases in whichKant claims that intellectual feelings merely follow upon de-sire/choice, rather than grounding it, can be read as present-ing a practical account of motivation. Even in the case ofhigher (intellectual) desires, ones higher cognitions haveimpelling causes that are feelings of satisfaction of dissat-isfaction, but these are not pleasures strictly speaking be-cause they do not depend on the manner in which we are[sensibly] affected by objects (28:254, cf. 29:895). These feel-ings of satisfaction (or even pleasure) do not provide reasons(in the first-personal sense of reasons that one should con-sider in deliberation) for ones actions, though they can stillbe present as empirical causes that connect ones intellectualcognitions with desires.32 At the empirical level, then, thecognitionfeelingdesire model of motivation works evenfor intellectual feelings, though these are feelings of satisfac-

32 Kant even claims that satisfaction and dissatisfaction (though not pleasureand displeasure) play a role in divine motivation (cf. 28:1061-2), and Kant di-rectly compares Gods motivation by satisfaction to the motivation of a personto perform a benevolent deed ... when this being from whom I receive the be-nevolence is happy and has no need of me (28:1065). For more on divine mo-tivation, cf. Kain Kants Account of Divine Freedom.


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tion rather than pleasure.33Within this picture, feelings of satisfaction and dissatis-

faction function as transitions from cognitions to desires(and thereby to actions). Jeanine Grenberg has described theconnection between these practical pleasures and desire indetail (Grenberg 2001: 160-3).34 As she explains, 35

[P]ractical pleasure is itself necessarily related to and isindeed the very vehicle for the expression of the statusof an agents faculty of desire. Technically ... there is adistinction to be made between feeling and desire: feel-ing, an element of the agents sensible nature ... ,de-termines (bestimmt) the faculty of desire ... . For thepurposes of describing action, there is, however, littledistinction to be made between the possession of a prac-tical pleasure and that of a desire. [Grenberg 2001: 163]

In the rest of this paper, I follow Grenberg in downplayingthe distinction between pleasure and desire. Given a practi-cal pleasure, a desire will follow simply because of the na-ture of practical pleasures. The challenge for giving a causalaccount of human action is to explain the origin of thosepractical pleasures/desires.

Given the close connections between feeling, desire, and33 One further refinement of this model that is important vis a vis pleasure is

that Kant, especially in his later accounts of motivation, emphasizes the role ofdispleasure [Unlust] and even pain [Schmerz] rather than pleasure as a primary

motivational force. On this model, then, it is not so much pleasure and desirethat lead to action as pain and aversion. For the purposes of this paper, I amtreating desire and aversion as functioning similarly in motivation, but it isworth noting that Kant emphasizes the latter, especially after his reading of Pie-tro Verris del piacere e del dolore in 1777. Susan Meld Shell has discussed thisin detail in Shell 2003.

34 For further discussions of Kants theory of pleasure in action, which makesome important distinctions that Grenberg ignores, see Zuckert 2001 and Morri-son 2004.

35 Grenbergs account of the connection between pleasure and desire is sup-ported in the passages in Kants Metaphysics of Morals from which she drawsher account. There, as Grenberg points out, Kant simply defines practical pleas-ure as that pleasure which is necessarily connected with a desire (for an object... ) (6: 212).

action, this paper focuses on giving a causal account of hu-man action in terms of the connections between cognitionsand desires. Throughout, these connections are mediated byfeelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. And these desiresall reflect a subjective commitment to action in a particular

case. These desires lead to action except in cases of further(and not fundamentally psychological) interference, as whena sudden accident or unforeseen complication prevents onefrom following through on ones volitional commitment.Thus outlining how cognitions cause desires reflects themost important psychological component of a causal ac-count of human action. This task is complicated, however, because not all cognitions lead to desire or aversion. Evenwithin those cognitions that do affect desire, some lead to de-sire and others lead to aversion. Thus Kant needs some ac-count of why the series goes through in some cases and notothers, and why it leads to the conative state that it does. Inorder to provide the framework for Kants account of howcognitions affect desires, the rest of this section lays out req-uisite details from Kants faculty psychology. In the nextseveral sections (3 through 5), I explain the role of predispo-sitions as causal bases of connections between specific cogni-tions and desires.

In his empirical psychology, Kants approach to both theorigin of cognitions and their connection with desire in-volves further distinguishing between different faculties ofsoul. I have already noted the important distinction betweenthe faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire, which formsthe background for Kants overall account of human action.Cutting across this threefold distinction, however, is a fur-ther distinctionadopted from Baumgartenbetweenhigher and lower faculties of cognition, feeling, and de-sire. The lower faculties are primarily receptive. Thehigher faculties are self-active or spontaneous (28:228,


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29:880, 28:584). In these contexts, Kant generally36 uses theterms self-activity or spontaneity to describe an empiri-cal or comparativefreedom of the higher faculties, a freedomthat is consistent with the view that even those higher facul-ties are causally determined.37 This spontaneity is the kindof spontaneity that Kant describes as a comparative concept

of freedom in the Critique of Practical Reason , the freedomthat comes from that fact that actions are caused fromwithin, by representations produced by our own powers,whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstancesand hence actions are produced at our own discretion(5:96). This inner determination amounts to psychologicalfreedom ... but nevertheless natural necessity (5:97).38

36 In some cases, Kant associates the spontaneity of the higher faculty withthat transcendental freedom that is a condition of possibility of moral responsi-bility. Strictly speaking, describing the higher faculty of desire as free in that

sense is inconsistent with empiricalpsychology. Insofar as one studies humanaction empirically, such action is, as Kant insists in his first Critique, causallynecessitated in accordance with natural laws. But Kant does hold that the pres-ence of a higher faculty of desire is an indication of moral responsibility andhence transcendental freedom. (See Frierson, Kants Empirical Markers ofMoral Responsibility.) Thus he sometimes slips into these properly transcen-dental discussions in lectures on empirical psychology. This effort to discussthe Critical philosophy in lectures on empirical psychology is not particularlysurprising, of course. As a teacher, Kant found an opportunity within the sylla-bus prescribed by Baumgartens text for explaining some of Kants own moreimportant philosophical ideas, a temptation to which he can hardly be blamedfor succumbing.

37 A full defense of this claim requires showing in what ways the higher

faculties, though spontaneous, are nonetheless susceptible to explanation interms of empirical causes. This is the task of the rest of this paper. For a helpfulaccount of this sort of empirical freedom, see Beck 1987: 35-6. This compara-tive freedom is the freedom that Kant refers to in the second Critique as thefreedom of a turnspit (5:97). Brian Jacobs puts the point well in the context ofdiscussing the nature of freedom of the higher faculty of desire (the will) inKants anthropology: the arbitrium liberum that Kant posits against the ani-malistic arbirtium brutum ... is a practical empiricalconcept and one that is ob-servable when a human being resists acting solely according to the pathologi-cal necessity that characterizes animal will (Jacobs 2003: 120).

38 Kant carefully distinguishes this empirical freedom from that transcen-dental freedom which is a condition of possibility of moral responsibility, andwhich involves independence from everything empirical and so from naturegenerally (5:97).

When Kant talks about freedom in the context of his empiri-cal psychology, it is this empirical freedom to which he re-fers, and this leaves room for Kant to give a causal accountof even the higher faculty of desire, as we will see in section5. Thus we can broadly outline six different faculties inKants empirical psychology: higher and lower cognition,

higher and lower feeling, and higher and lower desire.With respect to cognition, the lower faculty is referred to

broadly as sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) and includes the senses(Sinne) and the imagination, each of which is further subdi-vided (cf. 7:140-1, 153ff.; 25:29f., 269f.; 28:59f., 230f., 585,672f., 869f., 737f.; and 29:882f.). The senses include the fiveouter senses as well as inner sense, and the imagination in-cludes memory, anticipation of future events, and the pro-ductive or fictive imagination. The higher faculty of cog-nition is often referred to by the general term understand-ing (Verstand) and includes three specific cognitive powers:reason, the understanding (Verstand) in a narrow sense, andthe power of judgment.39

Kants distinction between higher and lower applies todesire as well as cognition. Just as there is a higher and alower cognitive faculty[,] so there is also a rational and asensible feeling of pleasure or displeasure (and so it is alsowith the faculty of desire) (29:877).40 As with the cognitive

39

Cf. e.g. 7:196, where Kant explains the differences between these facul-ties, and related sections of lectures in empirical psychology (28:73-5, 242-3,863-5; 29: 888-90) and anthropology (25: 537, 773-4, 1032f., 1296, 1476).Kants placement of the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) in the higher cognitivefaculty is a notable departure from Baumgarten, who places it in the lower cog-nitive faculty (seeMetaphysica 606-9). A detailed comparison of Baumgar-ten and Kant on the nature of judgment would reward further study but is be-yond the scope of the present paper.

40 Here I focus on Kants account of the higher and lower faculties of desire,as these are tied to action most directly, but most of Kants account of higherand lower desire applies to feeling as well, although, as already noted, Kantsaccount of the difference between higher and lower faculties of feeling is com-plicated by his efforts to distinguish between intellectual and sensible feelingsfor moral purposes.


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faculty, the distinction between the higher and lower facul-ties of desire is based on the distinction between the sensesand the understanding: all desires are ... [either] intellectualor sensitive (29:894). But in the case of desire, what is rele-vant is not the nature of the desire itself but the cognitivestate that produces the desire.41 The representations whichproduce determinations [of desire] are either sensible or in-tellectual (28: 674-5). Insofar as a desire is the direct resultof the senses or unmediated imagination, it is part of thelower faculty of desire. Insofar as it proceeds from theunderstanding or reason, a desire falls under the higherfaculty of desire. The key difference here is between motiva-tion by immediate intuitions and motivation by principles orconcepts. As Kant explains, every desire42

has an impelling cause. The impelling causes are eithersensitive or intellectual. The sensitive are stimuli or motive causes [Bewegungsursache ], impulses. Theintellectual are motives [Motive] or motive grounds[Bewegungsgrunde] ... . If the impelling causes are repre-sentations of satisfaction and dissatisfaction which de-pend on the manner in which we are [sensibly] affected by objects, then they are stimuli. But if the impellingcauses are representations of satisfaction or dissatisfac-tion which depend on the manner in which we cognizethe objects through concepts, through the understand-ing, then they are motives. [28:254, cf. 29:895]

The distinction between higher and lower faculties of desireis critically important for Kants overall account of humanaction because the causal mechanisms governing desire op-

41 Kant makes the same claim in the context of pleasure, but there Kant iscareful to insist that while there is still a lower and higher faculty of pleasure, allpleasure is sensitive in itself(hence lower).

42 Kant actually says act of the faculty of choice here, but this occurs im-mediately after he has explained that the faculty of choice is simply the facultyof desire insofar as it operates in a context where its activity can bring about itsobject (28:254).

erate quite differently depending on whether they belong tothe higher or lower faculty. Although both faculties are de-termined by impelling causes or incentives (29:895), andin both cases these impelling causes operate by means offeelings43 of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the higher fac-ulty is determined by motives which proceed from theunderstanding, and the lower faculty is determined bystimuli that proceed from the senses (29:885; cf. 29:1015,27:257). As we will see in sections 4 and 5, the difference be-tween higher and lower faculties of desire is reflected in dif-ferent predispositions that underlie Kants causal accounts ofeach faculty.

Before moving on to the next section, it is worth drawingattention to one further distinction within Kants account ofthe higher faculty of desire. Higher desires are caused by

one or more kinds of higher cognition, but these desiresneed not be purely rational. Although all higher desireshave grounds of determination ... [that] lie . . . in the under-standing , these desires can be either pure or affected(29:1014-5). Kant explains this distinction as follows:

The intellectual impelling cause is either purely intellec-tual without qualification , or in some re-spect . When the impelling cause isrepresented by the pure understanding, it is purely intel-

lectual, but if it rests on sensibility, and if merely the means for arriving at the end are presented by the understanding,then it is said to be in some respect. [28:589, emphasisadded; contrast 25:579-80]

For a desire to be purely intellectual, it must be caused by thepure understanding, or pure reason (recall that the under-

43 Although Kant says by representations of satisfaction or dissatisfaction,for Kant representation is a general term, which can refer to any kind of men-tal state. In the context, it is clear that he is not referring to cognitive states here,but to states of feeling.


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standing in the broad sense includes reason). But a desirecan be caused by higher cognition directly without beingcaused by pure reason when someone acts on the basis of aprinciple of the understanding that is directed towards ful-filling some sensible desire (or inclination). Such impurehigher desires proceed from representing to oneself hypo-thetical imperatives as principles for action. These impuredesires are still higher desires, however, because they arecaused not solely by sensible desires but by principles or con-cepts of the understanding directed towards satisfying suchdesires.44 The pure higher faculty of desire, because it in-volves desires that follow from purely rational considera-tions, issues from the representation of categorical impera-tives.45

We can now summarize the results of this section by fill-

ing in Kants taxonomy of faculties of the soul:

44 One way of putting this is that higher desires are those for which Alli-sons incorporation thesis holds (Allison 1990). For Kant, contra Allison, hu-man beings can, sometimes, act purely from instinct or inclination, without in-corporating such instincts or inclinations into any principle of the understanding.Kants language to describe such actions fits the lack of true agency impliedby their failure to fit Allisons account of incorporation. He refers to them as ac-tions proceeding from stimuli or impulse. Most actions, even those that arenot guided by morality, are free in the sense that they are associated with thehigher faculty of desire, where one acts on principles or maxims, even if thesemaxims take the satisfaction of inclination as their end. But one can also act

directly from lower desires. This may help explain both the role of affects inKants philosophy and Kants treatment of weakness of will.

45 This discussion differs from Kants distinction between higher and lowerfaculties in the Critique of Practical Reason. There Kant discusses the distinc-tion in the context of arguing against heteronomous ethical theories, and hedownplays the difference between pure and affected higher desires. In the ac-count in the second Critique, he argues against those who describe the higherfaculty of desire as one within which intellectual cognitions cause pleasure andthereby move the will. By contrast, he insists upon a higher faculty of desire asthe ability for pure reason ... to determine the will without some feeling beingpresupposed (5:24). Here Kant is not necessarily departing from his empiricalmodel within which feelings connect cognitions and desires; he can be read assimply arguing that from a practical perspective, one must not require feelingsas determining grounds of ones choice to obey the moral law.

The faculties (and powers) of the soul

Cognition

(representations)

Feeling

(satisfaction and

dissatisfaction)

Desire

(incentives, impel-

ling grounds)

Higher

(intellectual,

active, spon-taneous)

Understanding

(including the dis-

tinct powers ofjudgment, under-

standing, and rea-

son)

satisfactions or

dissatisfactions

which depend onthe manner in

which we cognize

the objects through

concepts

Motives, motive

grounds (including

both pure and im-pure motives)

Lower

(sensible, pas-

sive, recep-

tive)

Sensibility

(including the dis-

tinct powers of

the senses and

imagination)

Pleasure and dis-

pleasure, satisfac-

tions and dissatis-

factions which de-

pend on the manner

in which we are

[sensibly] affected

by objects(28:254)

Stimuli, motive

causes, impulses

For Kant, this taxonomy is the first step in giving causal lawsfor mental phenomena because each distinct mental powerwill be governed by its own causal laws (28:564), and humanactions will be the result of the operation of the faculty ofdesire, which operation depends on prior operations of cog-nition and feeling. Thus a complete empirical account ofhuman action46 depends upon explaining the causes of each

kind of cognitive state

47

as well as the grounds for connect-ing those cognitive states to the states of feeling and desire towhich they give rise.

46 By complete empirical account of human action, I mean only an ac-count that is as complete as any empirical account can be. Cf. footnote 5 on thelimits of empirical explanation in general.

47 In Kants Empirical Account of Human Cognition, I discuss Kantscausal account of the origin of cognitions. For the purposes of this paper, I takethese cognitions as given and explain their connections to human action (viafeeling and desire).


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3. Human predispositions and the grounds of empirical causal

connections

So far, we have seen that Kant develops his empirical ac-count of action in the context of a faculty psychology. Kanttraces the sources of particular desires to their connectionwith other mental states. But Kant also offers a more generalaccount of the bases for these connections. Human beingsdesire some things rather than others, and this is not simply because we cognize some things rather than others. Wehave cognitions that do not give rise to feelings, and feelingsthat do not give rise to desires.48 To flesh out his naturalisticexplanation of human action, Kant explains why some cog-nitions but not others give rise to desires.

Kant deals with this problem in a way that is deterministin the sense that every connection between a cognition and adesire is a causal connection in accordance with a naturallaw. At the same time, Kants account is not reductive, inthat he sides with Crusius49 against Wolff in arguing that thevariety of human mental states cannot be reduced to a singlekind of power governed by a single kind of law. While Kantcontinues to insist that reducing powers to as few as possibleis a regulative ideal (cf. 28:210, 564; 29:773-822; A648-9/B676-7), he also insists upon a kind of scientific modesty when itcomes to causal explanations of phenomena.50 In a revealingcomparison of Descartes and Newton, Kant distinguishes

48

As noted above, feelings that do not give rise to desire or aversion areparticularly important for Kants aesthetics.

49 Cf. Crusius 1745, 73 and 444; Watkins 2005:91; Hatfield 1990.50 This modesty is epistemic. Kant elsewhere argues that as a metaphysical

matter, it is obvious that there is only one basic power in the soul ... . But thisis a wholly other question: whether we are capable of deriving all the actions ofthe soul, and its various powers and faculties, from one basic power. This weare in no way in the position to do (28:262; cf. 29: 773-822). Although Kantdoes not emphasize this point in other lectures, there is nothing in his laterclaims that precludes the possibility of all human powers in factbeing reducibleto a single one. But when it comes to empirical psychology, we are not justifiedin trying to effect this reduction. For more on the important difference betweenlimits on human explanation and limits on metaphysical possibility, see Ameriks2003, Watkins 2005:264-5.

between two modes of study in the physical sciences in away that points out the danger of allowing the demand forsimplicity to govern scientific explanation:

There are ... two physical modes of explanation: (1) me-chanical philosophy, which explains all phenomena

from the shape and the general motive power of bodies... .(2) The dynamical mode of explanation, when cer-

tain basic powers are assumed from which the phenom-ena are derived. This was first discovered by Newtonand is more satisfactory and complete than the former.Thus to explain something mechanically means to ex-plain something according to the laws of motion, dy-namically, from the powers of bodies. With either ex-planation one never comes to an end. The correct modeof explanation is dynamical physics, which includesboth in itself. That is the mode of explanation of the pre-

sent time. The first is the mode of explanation of Des-cartes, the second that of the chemists. [29:935-6; cf.A649-50/B677-8]

Descartes errs, according to Kant, because he overempha-sizes the reduction of phenomenal explanation to a singlepower (the general motive power). By contrast, Newtonand the chemists rightly postulate additional basic powerswhen these are necessary to explain diverse phenomena.What is more, Kant highlights here that both kinds of expla-

nation take for granted certain causal powers, and these areleft unexplained. Kants psychology follows the example ofthe chemistsand Crusius51rather than strictly mechanistphysics. His focus is on not overly reducing powers to a sin-gle basic one. As he says, there must be several [basic pow-ers] because we cannot reduce everything to one (29:773-822).52

51 Cf. Crusius 1745, 73 and 444; Watkins 2005:91; Hatfield 1990.52 Here again (recall footnote 50), Kant leaves open the metaphysical possi-

bility that the unity of each substance requires that there be only one basicpower (29:822).


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In his biology, especially in the Critique of TeleologicalJudgment, Kant explains at least certain basic powersthosemost relevant to biology and psychologyin terms of thefundamental notion of a natural predisposition (Naturan-lage).53 Kant does not give many causal accounts of the ori-gins of these predispositions, and in that sense they are basicpowers that can be classified but not (easily) reduced to anymore basic level of explanation in terms of efficient causes. 54As he explains in his Conjectures on the Beginning of Hu-man History, we must begin with something that humanreason cannot derive from prior natural causesthat is, withthe existence of human beings , including all of their naturalpredispositions (8:110).

53 A natural predisposition indicate[s] what can be made of a man by na-ture, as opposed to what man is prepared to make of himself (7:285). The

concept is closely related, for Kant, to the notion of a germ (Keime). For moreon Kants account ofAnlagen, as well as the relationship between Anlagen andKeime, see Munzel 1999 and Sloan 2002.

54 Kant does argue that these predispositions can be explained by referenceto final causes, that is, in terms of the ends that they promote. As a heuristicprinciple for researching the particular laws of nature (5:411), one can add tothe principle of efficient causation a principle of final causes (5:387) in orderto supplement the inadequacy of [explanation in terms of efficient causes] in theempirical search for particular laws of nature (5:383). According to this heuris-tic principle, nothing in [an organized product of nature] is in vain, purposeless,or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature (5:376). By relegating theseteleological-biological explanations to the status of a heuristic, a maxim of thereflecting power of judgment (5:398) that is merely subjectively valid

(5:390), Kant is free to explain natural predispositions in terms of purposivestructures without compromising his overall commitment to the fundamentalprinciple that every event in the world in facthas efficient causes.

Thus throughout his anthropology and empirical psychology, Kant offersvarious teleological explanations of human predispositions. With respect to thenatural capacity for dreaming, for example, Kant says that dreaming seems tobe essential: unless dreams always kept the vital force active during sleep, itwould go out (7:175). With respect to that illusion by which someone whois naturally lazy mistakes objects of imagination as real ends, Kant avers thatthis is a means for Nature ... [to] make us more active and prevent us from los-ing the feeling of life (7:274; cf. Wood 1999:207, 215-25). These teleologicalexplanations of various natural endowments are not strictly a part of Kants em-pirically determinist account of human action. Rather, they reflect a differentkind of explanation, one for which the Critique of Judgmentmakes room.

This dependence on unexplained natural predispositionsor basic powers puts Kant in good company with othernaturalist explanations of human beings. Hume, for exam-ple, argues,

When we see, that we have arrived at the utmost extent

of human reason, we sit down contented ... . But if thisimpossibility of explaining ultimate principles should beesteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture toaffirm, that tis a defect common to it with all the sci-ences ... . [Hume 1740: Introduction 9, p. xviii]

If Kants dependence on stipulated principles of human ac-tion without further explanation rules him out of the ranksof determinist empirical psychologists, then Hume must alsobe ruled out of those ranks.55 Unlike Hume, Kant is willingto make use of the notions of predisposition and power toexplain the regularities of human behavior,56 but his willing-ness to leave this aspect of his account without a further

55 With respect to biological (and psychological) predispositions, Kant de-velops distinctive reasons for questioning the attempt to reduce all explanationsto simple mechanistic ones. Kants modification of his mechanistic ambitionswith respect to human psychology is incorporated into a general realization ofthe importance of non-reductive explanations of organized beings, includinghumans as well as birds (2:434) and even grass (5:400). Kants position here isconsistent with popular strategies of seventeenth and eighteenth century mech-anists for dealing with the generation of living beings. Importantly for the pur-poses of this paper, Kants biological limitations on mechanical explanation do

not involve calling into question a fundamental commitment to explanation interms of efficient causes, even if such explanations will not always be availablein particular cases. As Kant insists, the principle that everything that we as-sume to belong to nature (phaenomenon) and to be a product of it must also beable to be conceived as connected with it in accordance with mechanical lawsnonetheless remains in force (5:422). In scientific inquiry, we have an obliga-tion to give a mechanical explanation of all products and events in nature, eventhe most purposive, as far as our capacity to do so allows (5:415; cf. 5:411).For a detailed examination of Kants biology that is broadly consonant with myaccount here, cf. Sloan 2002. For an important discussion of different senses ofmechanism at play in these passages (and in Kants Critique of Judgmentmore generally), cf. Ginsborg 2001:238-43.

56 For a detailed examination of the significance of this difference, cf. Wat-kins 2005:160-70, 232-7, 362-422.


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causal explanation reflects a limit that he and Hume share incommon.

Once he allows for the use of predispositions in explain-ing the development and behavior of living things, Kantdraws on predispositions to provide the background againstwhich to give his causal account of human action. Predispo-sitions fill in the explanation for why certain cognitions leadto desires, others to aversions, and others to no appetitiveresponse at all. Thus to explain why the smell of a particularfood gives rise to a desire for it whereas other smells do notgive rise to any desire (8:111), or why certain kinds of socialinteractions are pleasant and others are not, Kant appeals to basic predispositions in human nature. A full Kantian ac-count of human action, then, must classify and give law-likeform to the predispositions that underlie connections be-

tween various faculties of the soul.

4. Human predispositions in Kants theory of action: the lower

faculty of desire

Kant describes basic predispositions in different ways foreach different faculty of the soul. For the purpose of ex-plaining human action, the most important distinction is be-tween the predispositions related to higher and lower facul-ties of desire, since these predispositions are most directlyinvolved in action. In the rest of this section, I make use ofKants biology and anthropology to give a fuller account ofthe causes of action in the case of the lower faculty. In thenext section, I discuss the causes of action for the higher fac-ulty. Kant does not distinguish between predispositionsrelevant to feeling and those relevant to desire (except in thecase of temperament, on which I do not focus here). Follow-ing Kant, I simplify the role of predisposition by describingthe way predispositions function to govern the connection between cognitions and practical feelings/desires. I thus

bracket any role for predisposition in the connections be-tween feeling and desire.57

For Kant, predispositions are not simply additional effi-cient causes. Rather, Kant seeks to rigorously explain in thedynamical mode of Newton, classifying and characteriz-ing the bases for basic powers of the soul. In this context, therole of predispositions will not be strictly causal in the waythat antecedent states are. That is, one does not simply adda predisposition to a cognition in order to cause a desire,such that

Cognition + predisposition x Desire

Rather, predispositions for Kant play something like the rolethat gravity plays in Newtons account, where it is not the

case that

Earths mass + Gravity falling of apple

That is, gravity is not just another cause, like the mass of theearth. Instead, gravity is what explains why the mass of theearth causes the apple fall.58 I capture this different kind ofexplanation with a vertical arrow (). Thus for Newton,

Earths mass falling of apple

Gravity

57 Cf. footnote 61 for an account of how filling in this detail might go.58 For Newtons use of gravity in explanation, see especially his Principia

(e.g. Definitions III-V). For a detailed discussion of the role of powers in Kantscausal accounts, both in general and in the specific case of gravity, cf. Watkins2005. This paper was largely prepared prior to my engagement with Watkinsswork, but his explanation of the importance of powers in Kants metaphysics ofcausation supports the important role that I give to powers in general and pre-dispositions in particular in this paper. As noted above (footnote 16), my termi-nology here differs from that of Watkins, but our points are generally consonantwith each other.


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For Kant, this is the kind of explanation that will be neededfor why certain cognitions lead to desires and others do not,and predispositions will play a crucial role in these explana-tions.

Before explaining the lower faculty of desire in some de-tail, it is important to note that for Kant, relatively few hu-man actions are motivated directly by the lower faculty ofdesire. Actions motivated by the lower faculty of desire arethose for which there is no conscious deliberation. Such ac-tions include reflexive and instinctual responses, as well asactions done merely from habit. Although this is a relativelysmall sphere of actions, however, they play several impor-tant roles in Kants overall psychology. First, they provide ahelpful model for looking at the higher faculty. Second, aswe will see in the next section, the lower faculty is often in-

directly involved in actions motivated by the higher facultyof desire. Finally, there are important cases, including atleast Kants accounts of affects and habit, and arguably hisaccount of weakness of will, where the lower faculty plays adominant role in motivation.

With respect to the lower faculty of desire, Kant explainsthe role of natural predispositions in connecting cognitionsand desires in terms of instincts, propensities, and inclina-tions.59 The role of instincts in explaining human action is themost straightforward, so I will start with it. In his Anthropol-

ogy , Kant explains, The inner necessitation of the faculty ofdesire to take possession of [an] object before one is familiarwith it is instinct (7:365; cf. 8:111f.; 25:796, 1109, 1111-4,1334, 1339, 1514, 1518-9). In his lectures on anthropology,Kant claims that instincts are the first impulses according towhich a human being acts (25:1518; cf. 8:111f., 25:1109).

59 Kant also discusses passions (Leidenschaften) in connection with the fac-ulty of desire, but these are derivative on his notion of inclination. For more onthe nature of passions, see Borges 2004, Frierson Kant on Affects and Pas-sions, and Sorenson 2002.

Kant is careful to distinguish instincts from acquired bases ofdesire, and generally warns against multiplying instinctsamong human b

frierson -- empirical account -- 2005

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