langton, rae – contingency and humility.pdf

8/11/2019 Langton, Rae Contingency and Humility.pdf

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Contingency and Humility

Rae Langton, MIT Linguistics and Philosophy

[Draft November 2010: please dont cite]

Introduction

Anyone accepting an invitation to speak about Kant and modality confronts a

forbidding array of choices. Should we begin with the relationship between

necessaryand a prioriand the accepted dogma that, for Kant, these coincide?

After all, the Critiqueof Pure Reasonbegins with the question How are synthetic a

priori judgments possible? and Kant cites the necessity of certain synthetic

judgments as proof that they are a prioriwhether a judgment that 7+5=12, that

space has three dimensions, or that every event has a cause. We could try to connect

Kants contribution to modality with wider arguments about whether the necessary

and the a prioricome apart, and whether Kant himself thought they did, contrary to

received dogmaas my commentator, Nick Stang, has forcefully argued.1

Should

we begin with the idea of transcendental necessity, one of Kants most distinctive

contributions to modality? The idea that certain judgments, the aforementioned

and more, turn out to be, not necessarysimpliciter, but instead are non-obvious

necessary conditions for uncontroversial features of our thought or experience. Or

should we begin with Kants provocative idea that freedom, somehow, is

necessity?the radical, but deeply puzzling, idea that a free will and a will under

moral laws are one and the same.

1Nick Stang, Did Kant Confuse Necessity and A Priority?,Nous, forthcoming.


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There are many places we could begin, but Ill begin, not, perhaps, at the

place thats best all things considered, but at a place where I might have something

to say.

Im interested in a connection between contingency and ignorance, or

epistemic humility: how a certain kind of contingency about causal power might

lead to a conclusion, Kants conclusion, that we are ignorant of things in

themselves. I dont take this to be a conclusion about transcendental idealism;

ignorance of things in themselves is, I just said, a kind of epistemic humility. The

phrase things in themselves means (roughly) things as they are independent of

other things; not just things as they are independent of our minds.

(Correspondingly, phenomena means things as they are in a relation to other

things (B307). So ignorance of things in themselves is not idealism: to say there are

features of the world beyond our epistemic grasp is not to say the world, or any part

of it, depends on human thought or perception. Ignorance of things in themselves, is

just ignorance of the intrinsic propertiesof things.2There is no denying Kant was

an idealist: but that (Ive elsewhere argued) is another, distinct, story. This reading

of Kant is controversial, as Im well aware; but, for good or ill, thats my starting

point.

My chief aim is to draw out a connection between contingency and

Humility, in Kant, and also (since this is a conference where we are connecting past

and present) in a recent, similar argument from David Lewis. I shall be looking at

2This is argued in more detail in Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance ofThings in Themselves(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; 2001)


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whether one can resist Humility (whether Kants or Lewiss) by denying this

contingency.

There will be a further, subsidiary focus on a quite different topic, that of

necessity and co-existence: what Kant took to be the metaphysically necessary

conditions of co-existence; and, later, the transcendentally necessary conditions of

our experience of co-existence. This theme may appear idiosyncratic, and unrelated

to our main theme: but it comes up naturally, first as part of Kants early argument

for the contingency I have in mind; second, as illustrative of a distinction between

metaphysical and transcendental necessity, in the transition from Kants early work

to the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason; and third, as a surprising echo

in the work of David Lewis. Indeed I shall go so far as to suggest that Lewis

himself, though championpar excellenceof metaphysical necessity, can none the

less be seen as offering a transcendental argument for some of his conclusions,

among them, an argument for the transcendental necessity of some conditions for

co-existence. So you will be hearing about a Lewis who is more like Kant than you

might have thought: a Lewis who is friendly to transcendental necessity, and the

Third Analogy, and agrees that we are ignorant of things in themselves.

1. Contingency and Humility in Kant

1.1. Substance and intrinsicality

We find early expression of the contingency I have in mind in the development of

Kants dynamic theory of substance and matter, spelled out first of all in a number

of pre-critical writings, beginning with Thoughts on the New Estimation of Living

Forces (1747):


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Either a substance is in a connection and relation with things external

it, or it is not. Since any independent being contains the completesource of all the properties it has within itself, it is not necessary to

its existence that it stand in connection with other things. Hence

substances can exist and nevertheless have no external relation

toward others at all, they can exist and stand in no real connectionwith others.3

A substance is independent of other things, so it can exist without bearing external

relations to other things. Whatever involves connection with other things is

something that is not necessary to the existence of substance in itself. The

existence of these substancesthese simple, indivisible monadsis not sufficient

for the existence of relations or connections among them. Its a contingent matter

that substances bear such relations or connections.

There is an implicit contrast between two sorts of properties: intrinsic

properties of the substance, compatible with the substance existing on its own; and

external relation or connection that is something over and above the substance

and its intrinsic properties. This picture is filled out in thePhysical Monadology

(1756): physical monads are substances that are independent, but endowed with

forces that enable them to interact, and constitute matter.

Prop. VII.Whatever is intrinsic to substance, i.e. the substantial

itself, is not properly defined by space. The substance itself is thesubject of extrinsic properties [forces], and those extrinsic properties

are something properly to be sought in space. But, you say,

substance is there in this little space, and present everywhere within

it; therefore if one divides space, does not one divide substance? Ianswer: space is the field of the external presence [force] of the

element (monad). If one divides space, what is divided is theextensive magnitude of the external presence [force] of the monad.But besides external presence, i.e. the relational properties of the

substance, there are other intrinsic properties, without which the

relational properties [forces] would not exist, because there would be

no subject in which they inhered. But the intrinsic properties are not

3Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces(1747)Ak. Vol. 1 p. 21.


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in space, precisely because they are intrinsic. Nor by the division of

extrinsic properties are these intrinsic properties divided, any morethan the subject itself, i.e. the substance, is divided....In the field of

activity of a substance you will not find a number of things, of which

one could exist separated and isolated from another. For what is

present in one region of space adjacent to what is present in anothercannot be separated as if it existed in itself, since both presences are

nothing more than extrinsic properties of one and the same

substance, and accidents do not exist without their substances. Prop.

VIII. The force by which the simple element of a body fills its spaceis the same as that which others call impenetrability.4

Again we have the two classes of properties: intrinsic properties, and their opposite,

namely external presences, relational determinations, forces, properties

incompatible with isolation. Kants aim is to solve a puzzle about the infinite

divisibility of space, but that purpose doesnt concern us here. Our interest is in the

picture of material substance, echoed many times in the later Kant, for instance in

the Amphiboly.

Matter is substantia phaenomenon. I search for that which belongsto it intrinsically in all parts of the space which it occupies, and in all

the actions it performs...I have nothing that is absolutely intrinsic,

but only what is comparatively intrinsic, and that is itself againconstituted by external relations ...The transcendental object which

may be the ground of this appearance that we call matter is a mere

something. (A277/B333)

TheIntrinsicandExtrinsic.In an object of the pure understanding

the intrinsic is only that which has no relation whatsoever (so far as

its existence is concerned) to anything different from itself. It is

quite otherwise with a substantia phaenomenonin space; itsintrinsic properties are nothing but relations, and it itself is entirely

made up of mere relations. We are acquainted with substance in

space only through forces which are active in this and that space,

either drawing other objects (attraction) or preventing theirpenetration (repulsion and impenetrability). We are not acquainted

with any other properties constituting the concept of the substance

which appears in space and which we call matter. As object of pure

understanding, on the other hand, every substance must have

4Nova Dilucidatio, Ak. Vol. 1, pp. 481-2; Beck pp. 122-4.


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intrinsic properties and powers which concern its inner reality. (A

265/B321)

The picture we are drawing out distinguishes a true substance (Kant sometimes

speaks of it as a first subject, conforming to the pure concept of substance),5

with its intrinsic properties, from certain relational determinations or forces,

whose dynamic interactions constitute phenomenal substance or matterand,

crucially, whose existence is not necessary to the substances as independent

beings.

1.2. Contingency of Mutual Relation: New Exposition

This contingency becomes a centerpiece of KantsNew Exposition (1755).

Proposition XIII. Finite substances are, through their solitary

existence, unrelated, and are evidently not connected by interaction,except in so far as they are maintained by the principle of their

common existence (namely the divine intellect) in a pattern of

mutual relations.

Demonstration.Single substances, of which neither is thecause of the existence of the other, have a separate existence, i.e. an

existence that is absolutely intelligible without all the others.Therefore if the existence simpliciter of a substance is posited, there

is nothing in that which proves the existence of other substancesdifferent from itself. Indeed, since relation is a determination that

looks toward something else (i.e. it will not be intelligible in a being

viewed entirely by itself), the relation and its determining reason

cannot be understood through the existence of the substance asposited in itself. If, therefore, nothing more is added to this

existence, there would be no relation among beings and clearly no

mutual interaction. Therefore, in so far as single substances have anexistence independent of other substances, there is no place for their

mutual connection [...], and it must be granted that their relationdepends on a common cause, namely God. (413)

5The pure concept [of] substance would mean simply a something that can bethought only as a subject, never as a predicate of something else. (A147/B186)


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A substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties

to determine others different from itself, as has been proven. (415)

The determinations of substances look toward each other, i.e.

substances that are different from one another act reciprocally...[I]f

the external phenomenon of universal action and reaction...is that ofmutual approach, it is...Newtonian attraction. (415)6

The mutual relation of substances requires a conceptual plan in a

corresponding creative thought of the divine intellect. This thoughtis plainly arbitrary on Gods part and can therefore be omitted or not

omitted at His own pleasure. (414)7

Kant here aims to establish a Principle of Co-existence, which says substances

mustbear certain mutual relations towards each other, if they are to co-exist in a

single world. It prefigures the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason (well

come back to this). And the argument for contingency, hinted at inNew Estimation,

comes through loud and clear.

The argument thus has two significant modal conclusions: the necessityof

mutual relation with respect to co-existence; and the contingencyof mutual

relation with respect to intrinsic facts. Well focus on the latter, but shall return

briefly to the former at the end of this section.

The relational determinations of substances are not given by the substances

on their own, endowed with the intrinsic properties they have in existing on their

own. The relational determinations are not intrinsic, and not necessitated by

properties that are intrinsic: they cannot be understood through the existence,

6I substitute the metaphorical look toward each other (invicem respiciant), for theungrammatical are correspond to each other of Reuschers translation in Beck

(ed.).7Emphasis added.Ak. Vol. 1, pp. 412-415; Beck pp. 100-4. (Note that Reuschers

translation in Beck (ed.) makes an error in the scope of the negation in the passage


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simpliciter, of substances. If nothing is added to the existence of substances there

would be no relation among beings (413). If a substance has a power to relate to, or

affect, other substances, that is not something it achieves in virtue of its intrinsic

properties: a substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties to

determine others different from itself (415). For relations among substances to

exist, something must be added through an act of God, and that this act is

obviously arbitrary and can be omitted or not omitted at His own pleasure (414).

The argument poses a number of interpretive questions. What exactly are the

relational determinations supposed to be? The heady level of abstraction tempts us

to think that Kant has in mind relations, or relational properties, rather generally,

and perhaps he does. But we learn later that he has in mind some very particular

physicalrelational properties: he mentions Newtonian attraction, and it seems

possible to include in the story the second fundamental force of his matter theory,

namely repulsion or impenetrability.

A second question: is this supposed to be an issue about concepts, or about

metaphysics? The talk of relation not being intelligible in a being viewed

entirely by itself suggests that the topic concerns our concepts. Perhaps the idea is:

intrinsic-property-concepts are not the same as relational-property-concepts, and

propositions about the former dont logically imply propositions about the latter.

However, the talk of Gods creation suggests the topic is metaphysics: in creating

substance with its intrinsic properties, God has not done enoughto create relational,

quoted above from the Sixth Application, Beck p. 104, which Ive corrected (thanksto Margaret Wilson for confirmation).


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or (better) extrinsic properties.8 The relational determinations are not to be taken

as concepts, but as metaphysically robust properties. The contingency of their

existence is a metaphysical matter.

Third, supposing that metaphysically robust properties are at stake, in what

sense do the relational determinations of attraction and impenetrability fail to

be intrinsic? They appear to pass standard tests for intrinsicness, such as the

isolation test: something existing all on its own can, it seems, have the powerto

attract, even if it cant exercise it. Perhaps we should bring an amended notion of

intrinsicness to our interpretation? Perhaps an intrinsic property is one that can be

possessed independent of other entities and of lawsGod might add to creation.9

Fourth, there is a puzzle about the mutuality of these relations or powers:

in what sense are they, unlike most causal relations, to be understood as

symmetrical or reciprocal? This question is a large one and recurs in the Third

Analogy.10

Fifth, there is a distributive/collective ambiguity. Does Kant mean that one

substance, taken individually, is insufficient to establish that substances relational

determinations? (This is what I have elsewhere called unilateral reducibility.) Or

8Lloyd Humberstone advises using intrinsic/extrinsic to label metaphysically

robust properties, non-relational/relational to label what he calls property-concepts, but I dont religiously follow this advice here. Intrinsic/Extrinsic,

Synthese 108 (1996), 205-67.9For an amendment on these lines see Langton, Kantian HumilityCh. 5, similar to

an option in Langton and Lewis, Defining Intrinsic. (There we extend the isolationtest in other ways not addressed here. A property is a basic intrinsic iff it is

independentof loneliness and accompaniment: its presence is compatible with

isolation, and with accompaniment; so is its absence.)10I cant do justice to this here, but for excellent discussion see Eric Watkins, Kantand the Metaphysics of Causality.


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does he mean that all the substances, taken collectively, are insufficient to establish

the relational determinations that hold among them? (This is what I have

elsewhere called bilateral reducibility.) There are textual reasons in favor of each

of these, but of course they compete.

So even if we agree that the argument aims to establish a conclusion about

contingency, its evident that many interpretive possibilities present themselves, and

it is with some hesitation that we narrow them down.

But we had better. So lets pursue the following thought on Kants behalf,

without further defense. The causal powers of attraction and impenetrability are not

themselves intrinsic properties; and they are not necessitated by the intrinsic

properties of substances, taken collectively. No matter how many substances God

creates, with their intrinsic properties, thats not enough to establish their causal

powers of attraction and impenetrability, not enough to establish physical relations

among them, and not enough for them to co-exist in the same world.

The first thing to observe about this conclusion is, that while the

contingency we have described does concern causality, it is not the problem (or the

mainproblem) raised by Hume. It is not about the causallynecessary connection, or

absence thereof, between two events. Rather it is about a metaphysicallynecessary

connection, or absence thereof, between two classes ofproperties: causal powers,

and intrinsic properties.11

Nor does this contingency concern the modality of

propositions, first and foremost, but rather of properties, features of the world.

11See Eric Watson, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, for sustained

development of the argument that Kant has considerably more than event causationin mind, both here and in the Critical period.


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Talking about what God could or couldnt create provides the perfect vehicle for its

discussion.

A second thing to observe is that this contingency flies in the face of

Leibnizian metaphysics. Leibniz took the appearances for things in themselves, as

Kant says later on (A264/B320).12Leibniz thought there was a necessary

connection between physical phenomena and monadic things in themselves,

because ultimately, they are not really distinct existences (in Humes phrase): the

realm of physical phenomena coincides with the realm of monadic things in

themselves. According to Leibniz,

There is...no other difference between a thing as phenomenon and

the representation of the noumenon which underlies it than between

a group of men which I see at a great distance and the same men

when I am so close that I can count the individuals. It is only, [theLeibnizian] says, that we could never come so close to it. This,

however, makes no difference in the thing, but only in the degree of

our power of perception.13

If making a world were like making a crowd, all God would have to do would be to

make a crowd of loose and separate individual substances (to borrow another

phrase from Hume). The reduction of physical phenomena to monadic things in

themselves goes hand in hand with his reduction of relations, and relational causal

powers, to the intrinsic properties of monads. The forces of Leibnizs dynamic

physics are relational properties that, strictly speaking, are nothing over and above

the intrinsic properties of monads. Causal power, physical force, turns out to

involve no real connection between monadic substances, but is nothing over and

12See Kantian Humilitych. 4. for discussion of whether this is correct, as an

interpretation of Leibniz, and for debts to secondary literature on Leibniz. [Refs.]


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above the intrinsic living force of simple substances, each of which is, strictly

speaking, a windowless microcosm.

It is this picture that Kant is rejecting. For Kant, if the substances dont have

real causal interactions, arising from metaphysically robust causal powers, they

dont even co-exist. And making a world with real connections involves more than

making individual substances with their intrinsic properties: it involves an

additional act of creation. So Kant, unlike Leibniz, makes a metaphysical

difference in the thing: a metaphysical difference between relational phenomena

and things in themselves.14

What, if anything, follows from this contingency, for Kant? I have

suggested, on Kants behalf, that the intrinsic properties are for this reason causally

inert, and that is why Kant says it is never through its intrinsic properties that a

substance has the power to determine others different from itself. I have suggested

that this basic assumption persists through Kants intellectual career, into the

Critical period and beyond. For example, it emerges again, in the Amphiboly of the

Concepts of Reflection, in the context of his critique of Leibniz.

Monads are supposed to serve as the raw material for the wholeuniverse, despite having no active force (ttige Kraft), except for that

consisting in representations (which, strictly speaking, are active

only within the monads). That is why Leibnizs principle of the

possible reciprocal community of substances had to be a pre-established harmony, and not a physical influence. For when

everything is merely intrinsic...the state of one substance cannot

13On a Discovery (1790),Ak.Vol. 8, p. 208; Allison pp. 124-125.14Kants conclusion may have something in common with Lockes doctrine of

superadded force, if we agree with Margaret Wilson rather than Michael Ayers onthe voluntarism debate.


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stand in any active connection whatsoever with the state of another.

(A274/B330)

This and other passages reveal a continuing commitment to the contingency argued

for in theNew Exposition.15

We have spent a long time on the contingency of mutual relation. Lets not

forget, though, that other modal conclusion of theNew Exposition, which Kant

indeed took to be the main point of it all: namely the principle that mutual relation

is necessary for co-existence. Whatever the merits of Kants argument, its clear,

first, that he is ruling out the idea that co-existence, the relation that enables things

to be (as we might say) world mates, is simply primitive; and second, as we have

just seen, he is identifying these mutual relations as causalindeed he has some

very specific physical relations in mind. The upshot, it seems, is that you and I

inhabit the same world, partly because the forces ofgravitytie us togetheran odd,

but somehow reassuring, thought.

Let us turn, now, to the potential epistemological implications of the

contingency which has been our main topic.

1.3. From Contingency to Humility

It is no accident that the modal mistake Kant saw in Leibniz is one that has an

epistemological dimension. Leibnizs necessity supports, if you like,

epistemological Ambition, the opposite of Humility. That necessary connection

between phenomena and things in themselves offers an epistemological route from

15See also A213/B260; B293-4, and for more references, Kantian Humilitypp. 133-

8.


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phenomena to things in themselves. If we can take the appearances to be nothing

over and above the things in themselves, or monads, then acquaintance with

appearances yields acquaintance, albeit confused, with things in themselves. Via

perception, we are actually acquainted, albeit confusedly, with the monads

themselves, indeed, the entire universe of monads. Acquaintance with a crowd is

acquaintance with the people that make up the crowd. Acquaintance with the

general roar of the ocean is acquaintance with the individual waves that make up

that roar. Acquaintance with matter, constituted by the physical forces of Leibnizs

dynamics, is acquaintance with the living forces intrinsic to the monads. Thats

why Kant can say that, for Leibniz, a distinction between phenomena and things in

themselves is not a difference in the thing but only a difference in our perception.

Suppose we reject this necessary connection, as Kant has done. All of a

sudden, the bridge crumbles: knowledge of phenomena cannot yield knowledge of

things in themselves. If relational causal powers are something different to the

substances as they are in themselves, then knowledge of relational causal powers no

longer straightforwardly yields knowledge of them as they are in themselves.

I believe this thought appears in the Critique, for example in the

Transcendental Aesthetic:

Everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition...containsnothing but mere relations, of locations in an intuition (extension), of

change of location (motion) and of laws according to which thischange is determined (moving forces). What presents itself in this or

that location, or, beyond this change of location, what activitiesoccur within the things themselves, is not given through these

relations. Now through mere relations one cannot be acquainted

with a thing as it is in itself. We may therefore conclude that since

external sense gives us nothing but representations of mere relations,this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an


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object upon the subject, and not the intrinsic properties that belong to

the object as it is in itself. (B67)

I have only gestured at the case that needs to be made here, but it will have to do for

the present.

2. Contingency and Humility in Lewis

2.1. Roles and Realizers

David Lewis has argued, in Ramseyan Humility, that, whether or not Humility is

right as an account of Kant, it is just plain right. The idea that we find out nothing

about [things] as they are in themselves, is true... or at least something very like it

is.16Kantian (or Kantian) ignorance of things in themselves is, he says,

ignorance of the intrinsic properties of substances. The substances

that bear these intrinsic properties are the very same unhidden

substances that do indeed affect us perceptually. But they affect us,and they affect other things that in turn affect us, in virtue of their

causal powers, which are among their relational properties. Thereby

we find out about these substances as bearers of causal powers, but

we find out nothing about them as they are in themselves.

Things affect other things in virtue of their causal powers, and the things in

themselves behind those powersthings in themselvesremain hidden.

Suppose instead you were to think, with Lewis and many other

contemporary philosophers, that it is after all in virtue of intrinsicproperties that

things affect other things. Would the grounds for Humility disappear? No they

would not, precisely because of the contingency we have been talking about. Even

if we dont go so far as to conclude that the intrinsic properties are inert, it remains

16David Lewis, Ramseyan Humility, 203.


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true for Kant, for Lewis, and for many contemporary philosophers, that intrinsic

properties are only contingently the grounds of causal powers or dispositions.

This is enough to leave the intrinsic properties themselves as a something-

we-know-not-what. As Lewis says,

To be the ground of a disposition is to occupy a role, but it is one

thing to know that a role is occupied, another thing to know whatoccupies it.

For Lewis, this thought is spelled out in terms of a contingent relationship between

a role and what realizes that role.

Being the ground of a certain disposition is only one case amongmany of role occupancy. There are a variety of occupied roles,among them nomological roles and others as well. Quite generally,

to the extent that we know of the properties of things only as role-

occupants, we have not yet identified those properties. No amount of

knowledge about what roles are occupied will tell us whichproperties occupy which roles.17

Lewis is happy to agree with Kant that we have no knowledge of things in

themselves, but he does not find the predicament ominous in the way I initially

described it who ever promised me, he says, that I was capable in principle of

knowing everything?18Ominous or not, it is, he thinks, our predicament.

2.2. Ramsification and Humility

Lewiss own argument relies, like Kants, on the contingency of the association

between certain relational and intrinsic propertiesin this case, relational role

properties and intrinsic realizer propertiesbut it proceeds from Ramseyan, not

Kantian, premises, about how theoretical terms get their meaning.

17Ramseyan Humility, 1.


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Imagine science were to give us a grand, final theory of the world, says

Lewis; a theory T which would yield the fundamental, intrinsic properties that play

an active role in the workings of nature. The language of this theory contains terms

implicitly defined by the theory. The theory has a unique actual realization, and the

terms of the theory name fundamental properties. The theory, incidentally, leaves

out what Lewis calls idlers, i.e. fundamental properties (if any) that are actually

instantiated but play no active role. It also leaves out aliens, i.e. fundamental

properties that are not actually instantiated.

Besides our grand, final theory, there is the rest of our language, our old

language, call it O, which happens to be rich enough to express our observations.

We get the Ramsey sentence of T by replacing the names in T with existentially

quantified variables. The Ramsey sentence says that T has at least one actual

realization. It implies the O-language sentences that are theorems of T.

The upshot of this is that any predictive success for the theory T is also a

predictive success for the Ramsey sentence. If the theory T has more than one

possible realization, observation wont help us know which realization is actual,

because no possible realization gives us evidence that goes beyond the Ramsey

sentence. If our theory T has more than one realization, then there are some

fundamental properties that remain hidden from us.

Does our theory have more than one possible realization? Yes it does,

because of the contingency of the association between relational role properties and

intrinsic realizer properties. Lewis argues for this contingency in two ways. He

18Lewis, Ramseyan Humility, 4.


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offers, first, a permutation argument. Suppose you permute two fundamental

properties F1 and F2, named by T, and leave everything else fixed. F2 would then

be found where F1 had been, and vice versa; and the laws governing F2 would be

just the same as the laws governing F1 had been, and vice versa. This permutation

yields a different realization of Tand we cant tell which one is actual. Lewis also

offers a replacement argument. Instead of permuting properties from Ts actual

realization, we replace those properties with members of those classes of properties

the theory leaves out, the idlers or aliens. After all, while idlers are actually

inactive, they could be active; and while aliens are actually uninstantiated, they

could be instantiated. So, replace a property from Ts actual realization with a

property that had been a mere idler, or alien, before. This gives us a new

possibilityand again, we cant tell which of these possible realizations is the

actual one.

This sketch doesnt do justice to Lewiss argument, nor the dizzying turns

he takes from this point on. But the basic thought can be expressed in terms of a

familiar picture from functionalist philosophy of mind.19Just as our concept of

pain gets its meaning from its place in our theory about how pain is related to

other mental states and behaviour, so in physics, our concept of positive charge

gets its meaning from its place in our theory about how things having positive

charge interact with things having negative charge, and so on. Pain contingently

refers to a neural state, and the role-property of pain is multiply-realizable, by

neurons, circuit boards, ectoplasm, Swiss cheese (according to Putnam in an early


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functionalist paper). Likewise electron contingently refers to whatever actually

realizes the role of electrons, and the role property of being an electron is multiply

realizable by what? All we can say is: different possible realizer properties. When

it comes to our theory of mind, we can dig into other theories to give us a sense of

what the different possible realizers of role properties might be; but when it comes

to our theory of the physical world, we can dig no deeper. We know what realizes

the pain role, for us, namely certain neural states. But what realizes the positive

charge role? We can only shrug.

3. Humilities compared

There are differences between the Kantian and Lewisian pictures, and not only in

their supplementary premises.

Take the question: why are intrinsic properties needed in the first place? On

the Kantian story I have been sketching, intrinsic properties are needed for the

existence of a substance that is an ultimate subject. As he puts it in Physical

Monadology, besides external presence, i.e. relational determinations of substance,

there are other, internal, determinations, without which the relational determinations

would not be, because there would be no subject in which they inhered20(Physical

Monadology, 1756). (Recall that this notion of substance matches, as I have argued,

the pure concept of substance described in the Critique.) Later he says, the

19This analogy is a theme in Christopher Robichaud, What Lies Beneath? A

Defense of Categorical Humility, MIT PhD Dissertation 2010.20Kant, Physical Monadology Prop. VII (1756), Ak. Vol. 1, trans. in L.W. Beck et

al. eds., Kants Latin Writings: Translations, Commentaries and Notes(New York:P. Lang, 1986).


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understanding, when it entitles an object in a relation mere phenomenon, at the

same time forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in itself

(B307); that concepts of relation presuppose things which are absolutely [i.e.

independently] given, and without these are impossible (A284/B340). These

independent bearers of relations are substances, and substances in general must

have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore free from all external relations

(A274/B330). In short, intrinsic properties are needed because an independent thing

needs independent properties; a substantial bearer of relational properties must have

something to it that isnt exhausted by the relational properties.

Why are intrinsic properties needed, in the first place, for Lewis? The most

important role, in the present context, is that they are needed as realizers for role

properties, and in particular as the categorical bases for dispositional properties.

Thats why, for Lewis, the fundamental intrinsic properties remain causally potent,

although unknown.21The requirement that roles have realizers, or that dispositional

properties must have categorical bases, is not the same as a requirement that

substances have some intrinsic properties or other.

Notwithstanding their differences, Kant and Lewis have something in

common. They agree that we are ignorant of things in themselves. They agree that

there exist certain intrinsic properties, and that we dont know what they are. And

they agree that this is ignorance is due to a certain contingency.

21Gareth Evans, Things Without the Mind, in Philosophical Subjects: Essays

Presented to P.F. Strawson,ed. Zak van Straaten (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1980), pp. 76-116, p. 102.


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something more, of doomed aspirations, of our inextinguishable desire to find firm

footing somewhere beyond the bounds of experience (A796/B824). Kants attitude,

as much as anything, tells against any trivializing, debunking account of his

philosophy.Lewis agrees we are missing out, but does not find the deprivation

ominous. But if you find it so, there are remedies at hand.

One obvious remedy is to deny the contingency. One neednt deny it in the

way that Leibniz did. Leibniz affirmed necessary connection by denying distinct

existence: he took the appearances for things in themselves, he took the world of

relational, causal powers constituting matter to be nothing over and above the world

of monads. But faced with these challenges from Kant and Lewis, one could deny

the contingency a different way.

4.2. Causal Structuralism

We could escape Ramseyan Humility by denying a gap between relational role

properties and intrinsic realizer properties. We could say, with Sydney Shoemaker,

that the role a property plays is not, after all, something contingently worn, not a

cloak that can be thrown off (so to speak) when travelling from world to possible

world.

What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity,is its potential for contributing to the powers of things that have it... ifunder all possible circumstances properties X and Y make the samecontribution to the powers of the things that have them, X and Y are

the same property. (Causality and Properties, p. )

On this account, nomological role is essential to a property: playing the positive

charge role, for example, is essential to whatever property it is that realizes positive

charge. What in fact plays the positive charge role could not fail to play the positive


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charge role. This account of properties brings a certain necessity into nature that is

absent on the Lewis picture, and absent on any traditional account of dispositions. It

may have implications for the modality of laws of nature: perhaps laws are no

longer contingent, but metaphysically necessary (Ellis and Lierse 1994, Hawthorne

2001, Bird 2007). It may have implications for our assumptions about intrinsicality:

if these fundamental properties are essentially tied to their nomic role, perhaps they

are no longer intrinsic. These conundrums I shall flag, and leave aside. What seems

clear is that proponents of this approachcausal structuralists, dispositional

essentialistsare happy about its epistemological advantages, as Shoemaker

himself seems to be:

If two properties can have exactly the same potential for contributingto causal powers, then it is impossible for us even to know (or haveany reason for believing) that two things resemble each other bysharing a single property. (Causality and Properties, p. 215)

Shoemaker cites this epistemological concern as one ground (among several) for his

causal account of properties. So there is one remedy. If one denies contingency this

way, perhaps one can avoid paying the price of Humilityor at any rate avoid

paying the price ofRamseyanHumilityas Lewis himself concedes.

What, though, of Kantian Humility? If causal structuralists put necessity into

nature by building a necessary connection between causal powers and intrinsicor

perhaps we should say categoricalproperties, Kant puts necessity into nature a very

different way. In place of a metaphysically necessaryconnection between classes of

properties (categorical and dispositional), there is a transcendentally necessary

connection between experience and its objects. But as, we shall see, Kants

transcendental necessity provides no escape route from Humility.


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4.3. Transcendental Necessity in Kants Third Analogy

A transcendental argument begins with some ordinary and obvious feature of our

thought, or experience; and then moves on to identify some surprising, far from

obvious, necessary conditions of that thought, or experience. It is an understatement

to say that Kant put transcendental arguments on the philosophical map. And it is,

of course, a transcendental argument we find, when Kant returns to the topics of the

New Expositionin the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason.

All substances, in so far as they can be perceived to co-exist in

space, are in thorough-going reciprocity...Now suppose that aplurality of substances as appearances were each completely

isolatedso that none would act on the other, and would receive

from the other no reciprocal influence. I say that the co-existence of

these substances would be no object of possible perception, and thatthe existence of one of them could not lead through the way of

empirical synthesis to the existence of the other...Each substance

must therefore contain in itself the causality of certain properties in

the others, and at the same time contain in itself the effects of thecausality of others, that is, they must stand in dynamical community

if their co-existence in a possible experience is to be known. Now,

with respect to objects of experience, something is necessaryifexperience of the objects themselves would be impossible without it.

Therefore it necessary that substances in the [field of] appearance, in

so far as they are co-existent, should stand in a thorough-going

community of mutual interaction. (A213/B260)

While both modal theses fromNew Expositionare present in some form, Kant is

doing something quite new.

His main point is to affirm the necessity of mutual relation, with respect to

co-existence, but now his interest is not in metaphysical necessity, but

transcendental necessity. The issue is not what it takes to form a world of co-

existing objects, but what it takes for us to experiencea world of co-existing

objects. Forget God. Forget divine acts of creation. What must we take the world to

be like, if we are to experienceourselves as part of it, co-existing with other parts?


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The contingency argument ofNew Expositionis there in the background.

The passage is not an easy one, and takes up a relatively unfamiliar aspect of

causation (simultaneous, reciprocal relations holding between substances, rather

than successive, asymmetric relations between events). But perhaps we can see it as

proceeding by reductio. Suppose (per impossibile)there were a plurality of

substances as appearances each of which was completely isolated from the others.

Such substances would not act upon each other, and would not be objects of

possible perception. Hence they would not be substances as appearances, contrary

to the hypothesis. Hence substances as appearances must not be isolated, but stand

in dynamical community. In the background is the thought that independence of

substance implies contingency: that isolated, or isolable, substances do not have

what it takes to get the causal power that would allow them to interact, and thereby

to co-exist. The mere existence of substances, each of which is capable of existing

by itself, is not sufficient for interaction among them.

But Kant now gives up on that problem. He abandons the question of how a

substance might be endowed by a creator with relations in order to form a world. He

affirms the contingency ofNew Exposition, and then makes it irrelevant. The point

is that these isolated substances would not be objects of possible perception. The

point is that is that if we are to have experience of things co-existing with us, and

each other, at the same time, we must already be (or think of ourselves as being)

part of a world of causally interactive substances. What matters for us is this

transcendental necessity.

4.4. Transcendental Necessity in Lewis?

David Lewis, like Kant, put a lot of things on the philosophical map. But

transcendental arguments are not famously among them. Perhaps, though, it

is not too much of a stretch to see Lewiss arguments in these terms. Lewis


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does move from some uncontroversial features of our thought, to some very

surprising conditions of that thought. Even more delightfully in the present

context, Lewis reasons from some uncontroversial features of our thought,

to a conclusion something like Kants Principle of Co-existence, in the

New Exposition, and his Principle of Community in the Third Analogy.

You think Im joking? My tongue is only half in cheek.

We begin with a routine feature of our thinking. We think that

things might have been different in ever so many ways, as Lewis puts it in

the opening paragraphs of On the Plurality of Worlds.

This book of mine might have been finished on schedule. OrI

might be defending not only a plurality of possible worlds, but

also a plurality of impossible worldsOr there might never

have been any people. Or the physical constants might have hadsomewhat different values, incompatible with the emergence of

life. (Lewis 1986a, p.1)

The fact we begin with is simple. We think modally: we think some things

could have been different, others couldnt have been. It then turns out that,

surprisingly, that this modal sort of thinking we do is itself possible only if

there is (or we think there is) a multiverse of really existing possible worlds,

whose actuality is a merely indexical matter. Ours is actual, but different

from the others only in being ours. To put Lewiss argument in Kantian

idiom: it turns out that a necessary condition of the possibility of modal

thinking is a commitment to real possible worlds. What we have here is, I

am suggesting, the transcendental necessity of modal realismitself. 22

22The mixed modalities are odd, but not (I think) a problem. The situation isanalogous to that of someone who argues for the transcendental necessity of


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Better still, modal realism turns out to have some requirements of its

own, and these bring us to Lewiss analogue of Kants principles. Lewis

asks a question which could have come from KantsNew Exposition, about

the conditions under which individuals could co-exist and form a world.

What, then, is the difference between a sum of possible individuals

that is a possible world, and one that is not? What makes two thingsworldmates? How are the worlds demarcated from one another? Why

dont all the possibilia comprise one big world? Or at the other

extreme, why isnt each possible neutrino a little world of its own?

(1986a 70)

And then he proposes a solution like Kants: a system of real, physical

relations are the ground of co-existence.

[N]othing is so far away from us in space, or so far in the past or

the future, as not to be part of the same world as ourselves []

So we have a sufficient condition: if two things arespatiotemporally related, then they are worldmates. The

converse is much more problematic. Yet that is more or less the

doctrine that I propose. Putting the two halves together: thingsare worldmates iff they are spatiotemporally related. There

are no spatiotemporal relations across the boundary between one

world and another; but no matter how much we draw a boundarywithin a world, there will be spatiotemporal relations across it.(1986a 70-1)

For Lewis, spatiotemporal relations are the necessary glue, that binds

individuals into one world. In KantsNew Exposition, that work is done by

mutual relations that are causal (not, in the first instance, spatial),

including the actions of such forces as gravity. Lewis agrees about the need

causal realism: who thinks its a necessary condition of the possibility of

experience (e.g. in order to distinguish experience of events from experience

of things) that we attribute causal necessity to the world (e.g. by regarding

events as occurring in a necessary sequence, cf. Kants Second Analogy).


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for causal connectedness as well as spatialbut thinks he neednt mention

them, since he gets them for free.

There is a second way in which the worlds are isolated: there is

no causation from one to the another. If need be, I would put thiscausal isolation alongside spatio-temporal isolation as a

principle of demarcation for worlds. But there is no need. Under

a counterfactual analysis of causation, the causal isolation of

worlds follows automatically.

For Kant, in theNew Exposition, it was the other way around: Kant thinks,

at this early stage, that he gets space for free, since spatial relations

supervene on dynamical ones. (And Kant, of course, would detest Lewiss

reductionism about causation, causal power, and law.)

Look at where we have arrived. We have Lewiss version of Kants

principle of Co-existence, in theNew Exposition, if we construe Lewis as

offering an argument about metaphysics: it is metaphysically necessary that

worldmates have real physical connections.

Or we have Lewiss version Kants Principle of Community, in the

Third Analogy, if we construe Lewis in the terms I have been suggesting.

Admittedly it is not quite the Principle of Community: there is no special

role for reciprocal, symmetrical causal relations (this also applies to theNew

Expositionprinciple of Co-existence); there is no special role for

simultaneous temporal relations. But we have, still, a principle Kant might

well applaud.I am spatiotemporally and causally connected with all the

other things in my world; otherwise we would not even co-exist.

Look at how we got here.We began with an uncontroversial premise

about our modal thought, and reasoned to some highly non-obvious


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conditions of that thought, namely modal realism itself. This in turn required

us to think we are in causal and spatio-temporal community with all the

individuals with whichand with whomwe co-exist. If that is not a

transcendental argument, Im not sure what is.

5. Conclusion

We have looked at how one can avoid Humility, by moving to a necessity in nature

offered by causal structuralism. Properties are identified with their causal profile,

with the result that they necessarily interact as they do. Necessarily, if something

has positive charge, it attracts something that has negative charge. We have also

looked at how Kant moves to a different kind of necessity, a transcendental

necessity, about matters of co-existence. We have even explored the antecendently

unlikely prospect of a Kantian transcendental argument we could develop on

Lewiss behalf, about matters of modality and co-existence.

One might wonder whether transcendental necessity does a job that is

comparable to the necessity in causal structuralism. If contingency was the problem,

do both these affirmations of necessity offer a solution, a way to escape or soften

the Humility that is otherwise our fate? No: after all, Kant has transcendental

necessity, andHumility. The problem is that for Kant, unlike the causal

structuralist, the old contingency still holds, as weve just seen. Whatever the

mutual causal relations are that enmesh us in the natural world, it is not through the

things as they are in themselves that those relations holdfor, as he puts it earlier,

and still believes, a substance never has the power, through its own intrinsic

properties, to determine others different from itself.

So for Kant, the transcendental necessity of the Third Analogy is compatible

with the metaphysical contingency of theNew Exposition. The transcendental


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necessity of our experiencing a causally interactive world is compatible with the

metaphysical contingency that things in themselves remain insufficient for causally

interactive power. And for that contingency, the price, it seems, is Humility; we

have no insight into the intrinsic nature of things (A277/B333).

References

Alexander Bird,Natures Metaphysics: Laws and Properties (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2007)

Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, Dispositional Essentialism,AustralasianJournal of Philosophy72 (1994), 27-45.

John Hawthorne, Causal Structuralism, Philosophical Perspectives 15

(2001), 361-378.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,tr. Norman Kemp Smith (London:

Macmillan, 1929).

_____Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , tr. J. Ellington (Indianapolis:

Library of Liberal Arts, 1970).

_____Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio(1755),Ak.Vol. 1. English translation: A New Exposition of the First

Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge, in L.W. Beck et al., eds., Kants

Latin Writings: Translations, Commentaries and Notes(New York: P.Lang, 1986).

_____Monadologia physica(1756),Ak. Vol. 1. English translation:

Physical Monadology, in L.W. Beck et al. eds., Kants Latin Writings:Translations, Commentaries and Notes(New York: P. Lang, 1986).

Langsam, Harold. Kant, Hume, and Our Ordinary Concept of Causation,

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research54 (1994), pp. 625-647.

Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; 2001)

_____Elusive Knowledge of Things in Themselves,Australasian Journal

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(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) 203-222

Lewis, David (1986a). On the Plurality of Worlds(Oxford: Blackwell)

Lewis, David (1986b). Philosophical Papers. Volume 2(Oxford: Oxford

University Press).

Locke, Dustin. A Partial Defense of Ramseyan Humility, in Conceptual

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Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding(1689), ed. P.

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Australasian Journal of Philosophy83 (2007), 41-60.

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Inwagen (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980).

Anne Whittle, On an Argument for Humility, Philosophical Studies130

(2006), 461-97.

langton, rae – contingency and humility.pdf

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