The Trouble With Truth in Kant's Theory of Meaning

North American Philosophical Publications
The Trouble with Truth in Kant's Theory of Meaning

Author(s): Robert Hanna
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 1-20
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications
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History of Philosophy
Quarterly
Volume
10,
Number
1, January
1993
THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH IN KANT'S
THEORY OF MEANING
Robert Hanna
I. Introduction
WHAT,
to
pose
a
very
old
question,
is truth? Kant's famous
reply
to
that
query
in the
Critique of
Pure Reason runs as follows:
The nominal definition of
truth,
that it is the
correspondence
of
cognition
with
its
object,
is assumed as
granted;
the
question
asked is as to what is the
general
and sure criterion of the truth of
any
and
every
cognition?1
It will be noticed that Kant
s
reply
consists of two
parts:
a concession to
the traditional doctrine of
truth,
and the
raising
of another
question.
Kant
concedes to traditional
philosophy
the notion that the nominal definition
of truth
(or "truth")
is
"correspondence" (?bereinstimmung);2
and the new
question
he raises is that of the "criterion"
(Kriterium)
of truth?the test
for truth. Kant s eventual answer to his own
question
is that even on the
assumption
that the nominal definition of
empirical
truth3 is
"correspon
dence,"
nevertheless the criterion of
empirical
truth is what he calls
"coherence"
(Zusammenhang).4
The aim of this
paper
is to
explore
Kant's
theory
of
empirical
truth from
the
standpoint
of his
theory
of
meaning.
In the
end,
this
exploration
will
produce
two main conclusions:
(1)
that Kant identifies the
meaning
of an
empirical judgment
or
proposition
with a rule
specifying
the
empirical
conditions under which the
judgment
is
true;
and
(2)
that Kant's doctrine
of
empirical truth, according
to which "coherence" is the criterion of
truth,
leads him into serious
skeptical
difficulties. In other
words, although
Kant's
theory
of
(empirical) meaning
is
certainly verificationist?in
the
manner of the middle
Wittgenstein, Ayer,
C.I.
Lewis,
and
Schlick)5?nev
ertheless he cannot
adequately
answer his own
question
as to the nature
of an effective criterion of
empirical
truth. And in
light
of Kant's influence
on the
origins
of 20th
century verificationism,6
his trouble with truth is
neither anachronistic nor
insular;
it carries
problematic consequences
for
verificationist semantics
quite generally.
1
2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
QUARTERLY
II. Objective Validity and Empirical Truth
Central to Kants doctrine of the
meaning
of a
judgment
or a
proposition
is his doctrine of
"objective validity" (objektive G?ltigkeit)
or
"objective
reality" (objektive Realit?t). Objective validity
is an essential feature of
both
empirical concepts
and
empirical judgments;
the
objective validity
of
either a
concept
or a
judgment
is
equivalent
to its
being
a well-formed
semantic content: to its
having
"sense"
(Sinn)
or
"meaning" (Bedeutung)
(KrV: 192; A155/B194).
Let us look first at
empirical concepts,
and then at
empirical judgments.
For Kant a
concept
is an
intrinsically general logical content,
a content
which
ranges
over
many particular objects:
"it is a
general representation
or a
representation
of what is common to several
objects."8
Like other
logical entities,
a
concept
must be well-formed. Kant
provides
a definitive
account of the well-formedness of
concepts
in the first
Critique:
We demand in
every concept, first,
the
logical
form of a
concept
in
general,
and
secondly,
the
possibility
of
giving
it an
object
to which it
may
be
applied.
In
the absence of such
object,
it has no
meaning (Sinn)
and is
completely lacking
in content
....
Now the
object
cannot be
given
to a
concept
otherwise than in
[empirical] intuition;
for
though
a
pure
intuition can indeed
precede
the
object
a
priori,
even this intuition can
acquire
its
object,
and therefore
objective
validity, only through
the
empirical intuition,
of which it is the mere form.
Therefore all
concepts
...
relate to
empirical intuitions,
that
is,
to the data of
possible experience. Apart
from this relation
they
have no
objective validity,
and in
respect
of their
representations
are a mere
play
of
imagination
or of
understanding. (KrV: 259; A239/B298)
Thus there are two basic formation-constraints on
every empirical concept.
The first constraint is
simply
that a
given concept, according
to its
form,
must be consistent with the laws of
logic.
The second is that the
concept
will be
objectively valid,
or
empirically meaningful,
in virtue of
relating
to
some
empirical object
or another.9 This
empirical object-relatedness
in turn
implies
a relation to an intuitive
manifold,
or a set of sense-data
(see
also
KrV:
160-161; B143-145).
When a
concept
lacks all relation to an
empirical
object (or
to an intuitive
manifold),
it is in a certain
way semantically empty
or vacuous:
"concepts
...
can have no
meaning (Bedeutung),
if no
object
is
given
for them"
(KrV: 181; A139/B178).
Thus Kant
employs
an
empiricist
criterion of
meaningfulness
for
empirical concepts.10
Now what about the
objective validity
of
empirical judgments?that is,
the
objective validity
of
universal, particular,
or
singular categorical syn
thetic a
posteriori judgments? According
to
Kant, concepts ranging
over
sensible intuitions are combined
together by
virtue of various
logical
connec
tives or
functions,
in a
single synthetic
act of
mind;
and the result of this act
is an
empirical judgment
which relates in a mediated
way
to sensible
objects:
Concepts
are based on the
spontaneity
of
thought,
sensible intuitions on the
receptivity
of
impressions.
Now the
only
use which the
understanding
can
make of these
concepts
is to
judge by
means of them. Since no
representation,
save when it is an
intuition,
is in immediate relation to an
object,
no
concept
KANT'S THEORY OF MEANING 3
is ever related to an
object immediately,
but to some other
representation
of
it,
be that other
representation
an
intuition,
or itself a
concept. Judgment
is
therefore the mediate
cognition
of an
object,
that
is,
the
representation
of a
representation
of it. In
every judgment
there is a
concept
which holds of
many
representations,
and
among
them of a
given representation
that is immedi
ately
related to an
object. (KrV: 105; A68/B93)
Certainly
there is much to be said about Kant's views on the nature of
empirical judgment,11
but for
present purposes
I want to concentrate on
the
particular
fact that
just
like
empirical concepts, empirical judgments
also must
possess objective validity
if
they
are not to be
semantically
"vacuous" in the sense of
lacking
an
empirical application.
The
objective
validity
or
reality
of an
empirical judgment,
like that of an
empirical
concept,
consists in a relation to an intuited
empirical object,
an
object
of
appearances.
But an
empirical judgment
also relates to
objects through
its
logical
form
or
grammar,
not
merely through
its
empirical conceptual
content alone. An
empirical judgment
consists in a
predicative
relation to an
object;
this is
what Kant means when he
speaks
of
judgment
as
the "mediate
cognition
of an
object."
The
object correlating
with an
empirical judgment
is neither
a mere sensum
(the sensory
content of a
perception,
or the matter of a
conscious
empirical intuition),
nor
any
other sort of bare
particular,
but is
instead an
"object
of
experience."
An
object
of
experience
is
essentially
an
object-under-a-characterization:
an
object
which exists in relation to a
predicative judgment
about it. More
specifically,
for Kant an
object
of
experience
is an
empirical state-of affairs.
Since
"experience
is
cognition
by
means of connected
perceptions" (KrV: 171; B161),
an
object
of
experi
ence is never a
single
sensum but rather is
always
a
well-ordered
array
of
perceived
sensa in time and
space (KrV: 219-220; A189-191/B235-236).
Now
strictly speaking,
the
objective validity
of an
empirical concept
is
logically parasitic upon
the
objective validity
of the
empirical judgments
into which that
concept
enters as a
logical
and semantical constituent. We
must take
seriously
Kant's
slogan, quoted above,
that "the
only
use which
the
understanding
can make of these
[empirical] concepts
is to
judge by
means of them." And this will allow us to formulate what
might
be called
"Kant's Context
Principle:" only
in the context of whole
empirical judg
ments do
empirical concepts
have
objective validity.12
But what
incorporates concepts
into
judgments;
what accounts for the
unity
of the
empirical judgment?
For
Kant,
the answer to this
question
is
quite straightforward:
the
unity
of the
judgment,
and
thereby
the combi
natory principle
for
concepts,
is
explained by
an
appeal
to the formal
unity
of a
single
consciousness. In this
way
the
unity
of
a
judgment's logical form,
and more
specifically
the
unity
of the function of
singular predication,
rests
on the transcendental
unity
of
apperception:
I find that
a
judgment
is
nothing
but the manner in which
given
modes of
cognition
are
brought
to the
objective unity
of
apperception.
This is what
QUARTERLY
intended
by
the
copula
'is'. It is
employed
to
distinguish
the
objective unity
of
given representations
from the
subjective.
It indicates their relation to
original
apperception
and its
necessary unity. (KrV: 159; B141-142)
According
to the Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories (as
formu
lated in the B edition?see
especially
B143 and
B170-171),
the
categorial
rules
required
for
forming empirical judgmental
or
propositional contents,
are also
necessary
for
determining objects
of
experience.
The
applicability
of these rules is
grounded
on the transcendental
unity
of
apperception
which underlies
every empirical judgment:
[The
relation of sensible
representations
to
original apperception]
holds
good
even if the
judgment
is itself
empirical,
and therefore
contingent, as,
for
example,
in the
judgment
"Bodies are
heavy."
I do not here assert that these
representations necessarily belong
to one another in
empirical intuition,
but
that
they belong
to one another in virtue
of
the
necessary unity
of
apperception
in the
synthesis
of
intuitions,
that
is, according
to
principles
of the
objective
determination of all
representations,
insofar as
cognition
can be
acquired by
means of these
representations?principles
which are all derived from the
fundamental
principle
of the transcendental
unity
of
apperception. Only
in
this
way
does there arise from this relation a
judgment,
that
is,
a relation
which is
objectively
valid.
(KrV: 159; B142)
For an
empirical judgment
to have
objective validity
or
meaning, then,
is
precisely
for it to correlate with an
object
of
experience according
to
categorial principles,
via the
original unity
of
apperception.
Not
only, however,
is the
judgment's
relation to an
object grounded
on a
priori principles
or
rules;
it also embodies a
specific
rule. This
gives
Kant
another
way
of
characterizing
a
judgment: "judgments,
when considered
merely
as the condition of the unification of
in a
consciousness,
are rules"
(Prol: 48; 305).
The
proper
function of the mean
ing
or
propositional
content of an
empirical judgment,
on the Kantian
view,
is to determine
uniquely
its correlative
object by
means of its
specific
semantic rule. As Kant
puts
it:
If we
enquire
what new
character relation to an
object
confers
upon
our
representations
... we find that it results
only
in
subjecting
the
representations
to a
rule,
and so in
necessitating
us to connect them in some one
specific
manner;
and
conversely,
that
only
in so far as our
representations
are neces
sitated in a certain order
...
do
they acquire objective meaning (objektive
Bedeutung). (KrV: 224; A197/B242-243)
The
synthesis
of
perceptions
found in
every
empirical judgment
thus
consists in the
application
of a rule. This rule constitutes the
meaning
or
objectively
valid
predicative
content of the
judgment.
To understand an
empirical judgment
is
simply
to know
how, by
means of a
specific rule,
to
bring
perceptions
and other
representations
under a
single unity
of
consciousness,
thereby conferring
on the
judgment
a
relation to an
object
of
experience.
Every meaningful empirical judgment
thus
incorporates
a rule for the
organization
and
anticipation
of
sensory experiences.13
But what is the connec
tion between Kants
theory
of
objective validity
and the
concept
of
empirical
truth? For
Kant, only judgments
can be true or false in the strict sense:
Truth or
illusion is not in the
object,
insofar as it is
intuited,
but in the
judgment
about
it,
insofar as it is
thought.
It is therefore correct to
say
that
the senses do not err?not because
they always judge rightly
but because
they
do not
judge
at all. Truth and
error, therefore,
and
consequently
also illusion
as
leading
to error are
only
to be found in the
judgment, i.e., only
in the relation
of the
object
to our
understanding. (KrV: 297; A293/B250)
Moreover, according
to Kant in the
Logic, empirical judgments
come to be
true in the
following
way:
"truth must consist in the
correspondence
of a
cognition
with that determinate
(bestimmten) object
to which it refers
(bezogen)" (Log: 56; 51,
translation modified
slightly).
In other
words?put
ting
aside the
tricky
issue of the
precise
nature of
"correspondence"
for
later treatment in section III?an
empirical judgment
is
true,
under certain
conditions, merely by referring
to an
object
of
experience. Every objectively
valid
empirical judgment, by
virtue of its
meaning, picks
out its
unique
"truth-maker."
This
characterization, however,
leads to an
apparent difficulty
in Kant's
view. We have seen that for Kant a
judgment
is
objectively
valid
just
in
case it is
meaningful,
that
is, just
in case it correlates with an
object
of
experience according
to a rule. And we have
just
seen that the
object
of
experience
correlated with the
judgment by
virtue of its
meaning
is that
judgment's
truth-maker. But this seems to
identify
a
judgment's having
a
meaning
with its
being
true. Are all
meaningful judgments
true? And what
about false
judgments:
are
they meaningless?
Of course
not; by
no means all
empirically meaningful judgments
are
true;
and false
judgments
must be
every
bit as
objectively
valid as true
judgments. Resolving
this
apparent difficulty brings
out several
extremely
important
but little-noticed features of Kant's doctrine of
empirical
mean
ing
and truth. Kant makes it clear that it is
possible
for an
objectively
valid
judgment
to be false:14
If truth consists in the
correspondence
of
cognition
with its
object,
that
object
must
thereby
be
distinguished
from other
objects;
for
cognition
is
false,
if it
does not
correspond
with the
object
to which it is referred
(bezogen),
even
though
it contains
something
which
may
be valid of other
objects. (KrV: 97;
A58/B83;
see also
Log: 56; 51)
This text
expresses
an
absolutely
crucial
point.
The case of false
empirical
judgments
shows
us that it is one
thing
for the
subject
term of a
judgment
to
refer through empirical
intuition to an
empirical object (or
intuitive
manifold)
in the actual act of
judging,
and
quite
another
thing
for the entire
judgment
to be
semantically
correlated with an
object
of
experience.
For in
the case of the false
judgment
the intuited
object
of reference is not identical
with the
object
of
experience
with which the entire
judgment
is semanti
cally
correlated
by
means of its semantic rule. If the
object
of reference
were identical to the
object
of semantic
correlation,
then since the
object
of
semantic correlation is the
judgment's "truth-maker,"
the
judgment
would
automatically
be
true;
but that is
contrary
to the
hypothesis
that it is false.
QUARTERLY
As Jaakko Hintikka has
pointed out,15
Kant's
paradigm
of
singular
reference is the bare intuition
("in
whatever manner and
by
whatever
means a mode of
cognition
may
relate to
objects,
intuition is that
through
which it is in immediate relation to them"
[KrV: 65; A19/B33]);
but the
semantic correlation between an
empirical judgment
and its
truth-making
object
of
experience
takes
place necessarily through concepts (together,
of
course,
with
empirical intuitions).
In
effect, then,
in order to account for
false
judgments
we must
distinguish
on Kant s behalf here between the
"referential function" of the
subject
term in an
empirical judgment
insofar
as it relates to
actually-presented
intuitive
manifolds,
and the "attributive
function" of the same
subject
term taken in
conjunction
with the
predicate
term of the
judgment.16
In false
judgments
the
subject
term
picks
out an
intuitive manifold
"referentially"
or
directly given through empirical
intu
ition;
but the
conceptual
content of the whole
empirical judgment
corre
lates
"attributively"
or
descriptively
with an
object
of
experience
not
directly given
in
empirical
intuition.
In other
words,
the
object
of
experience
with which a
given empirical
judgment
is correlated
"attributively" by
virtue of its
conceptual meaning
is a
possible object
of
experience,
not
necessarily
an actual
object
of
empir
ical intuition. As Kant
puts
it:
That an
object
be
given
... means
simply
that the
representation through
which
the
object
is
thought
relates to actual or
possible experience. (KrV: 193;
A156/B195)
Similarly,
at the level of the
judgment's
constituent
concepts,
to be
objec
tively
real or valid is
simply
for those
concepts
to
"apply
to
possible things"
(m?gliche Dinge) (KrV: 240; A221/B268).
In this
way,
the trick of
empirical
truth is "to determine whether a
cognition corresponds
with the
very object
to which it is referred"
(Log: 56; 50-51,
slightly)?that
is,
to be able to tell whether the
possible object
of
experience
described
by
the
judgment-content
is identical with the actual intuited
object
referred
to
by
the
subject-term
of the
judgment.
Thus the fact of false
judgment,
with its attendant contrast between the
"referential"
(intuitively picked-out) object
of the
empirical judgment
and
the "attributive"
(conceptually specified) object
of the
judgment, gives
us a
preliminary
handle on Kant's
theory
of
empirical
truth. An
empirical
judgment
is false
just
in case its
subject
term
picks
out an intuitive
manifold that is non-identical with the
possible object
of
experience
corre
lated with the
judgment by
virtue of its
meaning
or semantic rule. It follows
that an
empirical judgment
is true if and
only
if the intuitive manifold
picked
out in the actual
empirical
world
by
the "referential" or intuitive
functioning
of the
subject
term is identical with the
possible object
of
experience "attributively"
or
semantically
correlated with the
conceptual
content of the entire
empirical judgment.
All of this leads
up
to an
extremely important point.
For an
empirical
judgment
to be
objectively valid,
is not
automatically
for it to be
empirically
true,
but rather
only
for it to take a truth-value.11 This is the same as to
say
that the
objective validity
of an
empirical judgment
consists in the
specification
of the
empirical
conditions under which the
judgment
is true.
This,
in
turn,
is the same as to
say
that an
empirical judgment
contains a
semantic rule for
determining
the conditions of its own
verification. If those
conditions do not obtain in the actual circumstances of
judging,
then the
judgment
is false. The semantic rule of the
judgment
must then be
actually
and
effectively applied
to an intuitive manifold in the
phenomenal
world
in order for it to be true. A
judgment lacking any specification
of the
possible
empirical
conditions of its verification is
empirically meaningless.
There
fore,
Kant's
theory
of
meaning
for
empirical judgments
is not
only
truth
theoretic,
but truth-theoretic in
precisely
the
verificationist
sense
whereby,
according
to the middle
Wittgenstein's
influential
remark,
"the sense of a
proposition
is the method of its verification."18
III. The Nature of Kantian Correspondence
According
to
Kant, then,
one can cash out the
meaning
of
"meaning,"
for
empirical judgments (and
for
empirical concepts by implication
from Kant's
Context
Principle),
in terms of the
meaning
of "truth." But
what, precisely,
does Kant mean
by
"truth"
(Wahrheit)?
We have seen how Kant's account
of false
objectively
valid
judgments directly implies
a
theory
of
empirical
truth;
but how does this
comport
with what Kant
actually says
about
empirical
truth?
In the famous
passage quoted
at the
beginning
of this
paper,
Kant
points
out that the nominal definition of truth
(or "truth")
is
"correspondence" (see
also Krv:
194, 258; A157/B197, A237/B296).
And
an
empirical judgment
or
proposition
is true if and
only
if the intuitive manifold
picked by
the
subject-term
of the
judgment
is identical with the
possible object
of
expe
rience
semantically
correlated with the whole
judgment by
virtue of its
meaning.
This
provides
a
way
of
partially interpreting
an
important pas
sage
we have
glanced
at
already:
"truth must consist in the
correspondence
of a
cognition
with that determinate
object
to which it refers." We now know
three
things
about this terse
text,
on the
assumption
that the
type
of truth
being
discussed here is
empirical
truth:19
(a)
that
"cognition"
here means
"empirical judgment;" (b)
that "determinate" must mean
"uniquely speci
fied as
experientially possible by
an
objectively
valid
propositional
con
tent;"
and
(c)
that "refers" means
"picks
out in the actual
phenomenal
world
through empirical
intuition." But
beyond
these facts it remains
necessary
to
interpret
the crucial term
"correspondence."
"Correspondence"
for Kant is an
objective property
of a
judgment-con
tent,
and not a
subjective property
of the mental states of a
judger.20
This
objective property
is
relational, taking
as terms both the
propositional
content of an
empirical judgment
and its
object.
In what
sense, then,
do
QUARTERLY
true Kantian
empirical judgments objectively "correspond"
with
reality?
An
empirical judgment
for
Kant,
as we have
seen,
is a semantic
complex
made
up
of
logical
functions and
empirical concepts
in a
synthetic unity
under a
single
formal consciousness. As a
unity,
and considered
as a
semantic
rule,
the
objectively
valid
judgment uniquely specifies
a
possible
empirical
state-of-affairs. The
correspondence-relation
thus takes us
from
the semantic to the
experiential. But,
as Gerold Prauss
points out,
it is a
mistake to think of Kantian
"correspondence"
as a
peculiar
sort of
compar
ative resemblance between
judgments
and their
truth-making empirical
objects.21
Kant is well-aware
of,
and
avoids,
the
puzzles
of the
"picture-theory"
of
correspondence.22
Instead of
taking
the
as
pictorial,
I think it is
necessary
to think of Kantian
"correspondence"
in terms of a
formal
semantic
correlation,
or
mapping.
A semantic
complex
can be understood
to
"correspond"
to
empirical reality
if and
only
if constituents of the seman
tic
complex
can be
systematically
correlated with constituents of
empirical
reality.
Kant's
theory
of
concepts, together
with his transcendental
psychology,
provides
a
way
of
understanding
how this
part-part
correlation can be
understood.
First,
as has
already
been
pointed out, empirical concepts
are
traceable to
objects
of
particular empirical intuitions,
the bare
appearances
or sensa.
Secondly, logical
functions of
judgments
are identical for Kant to
transcendental
synthetic functions,
or the
categorial principles:
In order to discover such a
principle [of
the
system
of
pure categories
of the
understanding],
I looked about for an act of the
understanding
which com
prises
all the rest and is differentiated
only by
various modifications or
moments,
in
bringing
the manifold of
representations
under the
unity
of
thinking
in
general.
I found this act of the
understanding
to consist in
judg
ing....! finally
referred these functions of
judging
to
objects
in
general,
or rather
to the conditions of
determining judgments
as
objectively valid;
and so there
arose the
pure concepts
of the
understanding. (Prol: 65-66; 323-324)
Now if we assume the truth of Kant's transcendental idealism
(the
view
that the mind
directly
contributes formal structures of various sorts to the
phenomenal
world a
priori [Prol: 34-37; 290-295]),
and also the truth of the
Transcendental
Deduction,
then it follows that the
logical
functions of
judgment (in
the
guise
of
categories
of the
pure
understanding)
are carried
directly
over into the structures of the
empirical objects
of
cognition
through
a direct
application
to the manifold of
empirical
intuitions:
That act of the
understanding by
which the manifold of
(be they
intuitions or
concepts)
is
brought
under one
apperception,
is the
logical
function of
judgment....All
the
manifold, therefore,
so far as it is
given
in a
single empirical intuition,
is determined in
respect
of one of the
logical
functions of
judgment,
and is
thereby brought
into one consciousness. Now the
categories
are
just
these fucntions of
judgment,
insofar as
they
are
employed
in determination of the mainfold of a
given intuition....Consequently
the
manifold in a
given
intuition is
necessarily subject
to the
categories. (KrV: 160;
B143)
The
uniting
of
representations
in a
consciousness is
judgment. Thinking
therefore is the same as
judging,
or
referring representations
to
judgments
in
general....The logical
moments of
judgments
are so
many possible ways
of
uniting representations
in consciousness. But if
they
serve as
concepts, they
are
concepts
of the
necessary
unification of
representations
in a consciousness
and so are
principles
of
objectively
valid
judgments....Experience
consists in
the
synthetic
connection of
appearances
(perceptions)
in
consciousness,
so far
as this connection is
necessary.
Hence the
pure concepts
of the
understanding
are those under which all
perceptions
must first be subsumed before
they
can
serve for
judgments
of
experience,
in which the
synthetic unity
of the
percep
tions is
represented
as
necessary
and
universally
valid.
(Prol: 48; 304-305)
In a
word, then,
the semantic content of an
empirical judgment
contains a
"logical syntax"
or an
ordered set of
logical functions,
and those
logical
functions are in turn identical with a
priori
structures of
experience,
which
supply necessary
conditions for
objects
of
experience.
Therefore the
logical
functions of
judgment necessarily carry
over
into
empirical reality
itself.
And this transcendental account
neatly explicates
Kant's notion of "cor
respondence"
with an
object
of
experience:
an
empirical judgment
corre
sponds
with an
object
of
experience simply
because the
judgment's
semantic constituents
(its concepts
and
logical functions) necessarily
cor
relate
one-to-many (in
the case of
empirical concepts
and their
sensory
extensions)
or one-to-one
(in
the case of
logical
functions and
necessary
rules in
experience)
with
aspects
of
objects
of
experience.
If a
given judg
ment
is?by
virtue of
falling
under the schematized
categories?objectively
valid,
then it must
correspond
with an
empirical
state-of-affairs or
object
of
experience,
since the
meaning
of the
judgment uniquely specifies
the
possible object
of
experience
which is its truth-maker.
This transcendental fact of
correspondence
is what Kant also calls "tran
scendental truth:"
All our
cognition
falls within the bounds of
possible experience,
and
just
in
this universal relation to
possible experience
consists that transcendental
truth which
precedes
all
empirical
truth and makes it
possible. (KrV: 186;
A146/B185)
Only through
the fact that these
concepts [that is, pure
or a
priori concepts,
the
categories] express
a
priori
the relations of
perceptions
in
every experience,
do we know their
objective reality,
that
is,
their transcendental truth.
(KrV:
241; A221-222/B269)
The transcendental truth of the
categories
is
just
their
necessary applica
bility
to
objects
of
experience.
This
guarantees
the
objective validity
of an
empirical judgment
and its
correspondence-relation;
for the transcenden
tal truth of the
categories
entails the semantic correlation between
any
empirical judgment
and its
truth-making object
of
possible experience.
Looking
at it more
broadly,
we can thus see that Kant's
theory
of
empirical
meaning,
taken
together
with his transcendental idealism and the Tran
scendental
Deduction, trivially yield
a
correspondence-theory
of truth.
And here is an
important consequence
of this identification of
"correspon
QUARTERLY
dence" and "transcendental truth." As Kant
points out,
transcendental
truth
"precedes
all
empirical
truth and makes it
possible." Correspondence
in this sense is thus
merely
a
necessary
condition of the
possibility
of
empirical
truth: it entails at best the truth-valuedness of the
empirical
judgment. Establishing
the
still leaves
open
the
question
of
distinguishing
between the
empirical
truth and
empirical
falsity
of
meaningful empirical judgments.
To the
correspondence
of a
given
empirical judgment
with its
truth-making possible object
of
experience
Kant must add a sufficient condition?or criterion?of
empirical
truth.
This fact about Kantian
correspondence
seems to
explain
Kant's
calling
the traditional
conception
of
truth-as-correspondence
a
merely
"nominal"
definition of truth.
According
to Kant in the
Logic,
"nominal" definitions
are
concepts
which contain the
meaning arbitrarily assigned
to a certain
name,
and which
therefore
designate only
the
logical
essence of their
object,
or
merely
serve to
distinguish
it from other
objects. (Log: 144; 143)
Whatever else a nominal definition
may be,
it cannot serve as an
effective
criterion for the correct
application
of the
concept being
defined since it
contains
only
the
"logical
essence" of its
object.
A
logical
essence
supplies
the
categorial
features of an
object (Log: 67; 61),
but it is
insufficiently
specific
for the actual determination of that
object. By contrast,
a "real
definition" will be able to serve as a
conceptual
criterion:
I here mean real definition?which
...
contains a clear
property by
which the
defined
object
can
always
be
cognized
with
certainty,
and which makes the
explained concept
serviceable in
application (Anwendung). (KrV: 261;
A242
n.)
What Kant
requires, then,
is not
merely
the nominal definition of the
concept
of
empirical
truth
(i.e., "correspondence"),
but also a real definition
which
supplies
a
criterion for that
concept's
correct
application.
IV. Coherence and the Criterion of Empirical Truth
As we have
just
seen,
there is an
important
and
quite specific
sense in
which for Kant the truth of an
empirical judgment
involves a relation of
correspondence
to states of affairs in the
empirical
world. But this relation
alone is not sufficient to determine whether a
given empirical judgment
is
empirically
true or false. What is needed is a criterion for
applying
the
concept
of
empirical
truth?for
telling
the difference between true and false
judgments
in
particular
cases. On Kant's view the
complete
nature of
empirical
truth is
fully
disclosed
only by way
of an
adequate
answer to the
question
about the criterion of
empirical
truth. This answer will
supply
not
just
a nominal definition of
empirical truth,
but also a real definition.
There
is, according
to
Kant,
no
absolutely
universal and sufficient crite
rion of all truth?such as the Cartesians'
logico-psychological
criterion of
"clarity
and distinctness." Such
a criterion would have to be at once
fully
general
and
yet
sensitive to
particular empirical conditions;
it would also
have to
comprehend
both a
posteriori
and a
priori propositions;
but these
requirements
cannot be
jointly
satisfied
(KrV: 97-98; A59/B83). Although
there is no
absolutely
universal sufficient criterion of all
truth,
neverthless
something
can be said
by
Kant about
empirical
truth-criteria. For Kant
speaks explicitly
of a
"sufficient criterion of
empirical
truth"
(KrV: 538;
A651/B679).
But what is this criterion of
empirical
truth? We can
approach
the answer to this
question gradually, by surveying
several
necessary
conditions of
empirical
truth.
In the first
place,
a basic
necessary
condition on the truth of all
judg
ments is that
they
be consistent with the laws of formal
logic.
This is what
Kant calls the
"purely logical
criterion of truth"
(KrV: 98; A59/B84).
On at
least one of Kant's accounts of
analyticity,
the
purely logical
criterion of
truth is
universally necessary
and sufficient for the truth of
analytic
judgments (KrV: 190; A151/B191).
But formal
consistency
is
by
no means
sufficient for the truth of
every judgment?in particular,
it is insufficient
for the truth of
empirical judgments,
which are
both
logically
self-consis
tent and
logically contingent.
Another
necessary
condition for the truth of an
empirical judgment
is of
course its
objective validity,
or
relatedness to a
possible object
of
experience
as a
truth-maker of that
judgment.
But since
objectively
valid
empirical
judgments may
be
false,
this relatedness is
again
not sufficient for the truth
of
any given empirical judgment.
But Kant adds a third
necessary
condition. This condition is essential
for
closing
the
important gap,
noted in section
II,
between the
conceptual
or "attributive" correlation of an
empirical judgment
with a
merely possible
object
of
experience,
and the intuitive or
"referential" relation of the
subject
term of the
judgment
to an
immediately-presented
intuitive manifold. In
false
judgments,
the
object
of
experience semantically correlating
with
(or
"corresponding to")
the whole
judgment
fails to be identical with the
intuitive manifold
actually presented
in intuition. So the trick of
empirical
truth is to be able to tell
just
when the
possible object
of
experience
and
the
presented
manifold are
identical.
Kant's
proposal
for
determining
this
identity
is
that,
in addition to
logical
consistency
and
objective validity,
the
empirical judgment
must also relate
perceptions
or sensa in such a
way
that there is "coherence
(Zusammenhang)
of the
representations
in the
concept
of an
object" (Prol:
34; 290).
In other
words,
the
empirical judgment
must involve a coherent
synthesis
of
empirical
intuitions under
categorial concepts
in order to be
empirically
true. Not
only that,
but it is also the case for Kant that
?/there
is a coherent
synthesis
of
empirical
intuitions under
categorial concepts,
then the
judgment
is
empirically
true. Hence this last
necessary
condition
also
provides
for Kant a criterion for the
empirical
truth of
empirical
judgments.
QUARTERLY
In a
word, then,
Kant's
empirical
truth-criterion is "coherence." But
just
what does Kant mean
by
"coherence" in this
regard?
One should not assume
that Kant's use of this term is
self-explanatory.
In fact it is crucial to see
what Kantian coherence is not.
First,
we must
distinguish
coherence-the
ories of the test of truth from coherence-theories of
epistemic justification.
Kant
employs
the notion of coherence
only
insofar as it acts as a truth-cri
terion,
not insofar as it
may justify
the belief in
particular
truth-claims.23
Secondly,
it is essential here not to be
anachronistically
affected
by
the
Hegelian
doctrine of truth
so as to construe Kantian coherence as Jiolistic
coherence. Holistic coherence of a
given judgment (or
of a
belief)
is the
property
of
belonging
to maximal set of
judgments (or beliefs)
such that
each member of the set bears
consistency
or entailment relations to all of
the others. The
Hegelian
coherence-doctrine of truth
(which may
be re
garded
either as a
theory
of the definition of
truth,
or as a
theory
of the test
of
truth)24 says
that a
given judgment
is true if and
only
if it coheres in this
sense. On the
Hegelian account,
the truth of a
given judgment
cannot be
constituted or determined
except by relating
it to all the other
judgments
in the relevant
totality.
Now Kant is
certainly
no semantic or truth-the
oretic
holist;
he does not believe that
only
the
totality
of
empirical judg
ments will determine the
meaning
or truth of a
given judgment.25
On the
contrary,
he thinks that
meaning
is determined
by
a set of a
priori categor
ial rules
governing logical
functions of the human
cognitive
faculties
together
with their
application
to
possible sensory data,
and that
empirical
truth is determined
by
the
application
of
empirical concepts
to actual sets
of
perceptions
in
judgments
of
experience.
If Kant's coherentism about the test of
empirical
truth is
non-holistic,
then what sort of coherentism
precisely
is it? The answer to this
question
is
given
most
completely
in the
following passage:
When an
appearance
is
given us,
we are still
quite
free as to how we should
judge
the matter. The
appearance depends upon
the
senses,
but the
judgment
upon
the
understanding;
and the
only question
is whether in the determina
tion of the
object
there is truth or not. But the difference between truth and
dreaming
is not ascertained
by
the nature of the
representations
which are
referred to
objects (for they
are the same in both
cases),
but
by
their connection
according
to those rules which determine the coherence
(Zusammenhang)
of
the
representations
in the
concept
of an
object,
and
by ascertaining
whether
they
can subsist
together
in an
experience
or not.
(Prol: 34; 290)
The non-holistic coherence described here is
simply
a
property
of the
synthetic operations
of mind
underlying
a
judgment, whereby
the mind
effectively applies conceptual
rules to
perceptions;
Kantian coherence
is,
in
a
word,
effective semantic
rule-application.
Coherence in this
sense
sup
plies
what Kant calls the "formal conditions of
empirical
truth"
(KrV: 220;
A191/B236),
or the
general
criterion of
empirical
truth.
Thus Kantian
coherence,
as the criterion of
empirical truth,
is
strictly
a
rule-theoretic notion. The
empirical
truth of a
judgment
results from
an
effectively applied rule,
and
falsity
results from an
ineffectively applied
rule.
What, however,
is the difference between an
effective and an ineffec
tive
application
to
sensory experiences
of a semantic rule?26 The answer to
this
question
is
directly
addressed in the
following
two
important passages,
both taken from the
Analytic
of
Principles:
Since truth consists in the
correspondence
of
cognition
with the
object,
it will
be at once seen
...
that
appearance,
in contradistinction to the
representations
of the
apprehension,
can be
represented
as an
object
distinct from them
only
if it stands under a rule which
distinguishes
it from
every
other
apprehension
and necessitates some one
particular
mode of connection of the manifold. The
object
is that in the
appearance
which contains the condition of this
necessary
rule of
apprehension. (KrV: 220; A191/B236)
If, then, my perception
is to contain
cognition
of an
event,
of
something
as
actually happening,
it must be an
empirical judgment
in which we think the
sequence
as
determined;
that
is,
it
presupposes
another
appearance
in
time,
upon
which it follows
necessarily, according
to a rule. Were it not
so,
were I to
posit
the antecedent and the event were not to follow
necessarily thereupon,
I should have to
regard
the succession as a
merely subjective play
of
my
imagination (Einbildung);
and if I still
represented
it to
my
self as
something
objective,
I should have to call it a mere dream. Thus the relation of
appear
ances
(as possible perceptions) according
to which the
subsequent event,
that
which
happens, is,
as to its
existence, necessarily
determined in time
by
something preceding
in
conformity
with a rule?in other
words,
the relation
of cause to effect?is the condition of the
objective validity
of our
empirical
judgments,
in
respect
of the series of
empirical perceptions,
and so of their
empirical
truth.
(KrV: 227; A201-20?/B246-247)
Here,
Kant
carefully distinguishes
between two sorts of successions of
appearances,
or
objects
of
perception,
in time: a
rule-governed
causal
succession;
and a
subjective
succession
according
to which
perceptions
occur in
a
merely
"accidental order"
(zuf?lliger Weise) (KrV: 209;
A177/B219).
For
illustration,
he uses the
example
of a boat
moving
down
a
stream;
the various
positions
of the boat in the
sequence
are not
arbitrary:
the lower
positions
of the boat in the stream must follow the
higher
positions,
and cannot
precede
them
(KrV: 221; A192-193/B237-238). By
contrast, however,
someone
looking
at a house
might happen
to
generate
a
sequence
of
perceptions
from
top
to
bottom,
or bottom to
top,
or side to
side: this
subjective sequence
tells us
nothing necessary
about the struc
ture of the house but
only something
about that thinker's
idiosyncratic
way
of
tracking
that house in
space
and time
(KrV: 221; A192-193/B237
238).
This distinction between a
necessary
or
rule-governed
causal
ordering
of
perceptions,
and a
merely subjective
or
arbitrary ordering
of
perceptions,
establishes for Kant the distinction between an
object
of
experience
which
exists
independently
of our
idiosyncratic perceptual
modes of
tracking
objects,
and those
idiosyncratic perceptual
modes themselves. In a
word,
then,
where a
thinker/judger
has
effectively applied
a rule to
perceptions,
according
to
Kant,
there we find a true
judgment
of
experience
and a
genuine object
of
experience;
where the
sequence
of
perceptions
for the
QUARTERLY
thinker/judger
is not
rule-governed,
there we find a
merely subjective
perspective
on
objects
and the
possibility
of error.
Kant's discussion of the nature of
empirical
error
brings
out a further
important point. Sometimes,
errors in
empirical judgment
occur
precisely
when an
arbitrary ordering
is mistaken for a
necessary ordering,
as when
the
apparent
motion of the
planets
is mistaken for their real motion
(see
Prol:
34-35; 291).
Kant calls this sort of error "an error of
judgment (in
so-called
sense-deception)" (KrV: 350; A376).
But in several
places,
Kant
makes it clear that even over and above the
question
of
avoiding
errors of
this
type,
the criterion of
empirical
truth is above all what allows
one to
distinguish
between real or
waking experiences
in outer sense or
space,
and
merely imaginary
or
illusory experiences
in inner sense or time
(say,
dreams or
hallucinations).
For
example
he writes:
In order to determine to which
given
intuitions
objects
outside me
actually
relate,27
and which therefore
belong
to outer sense
(to which,
and not to the
faculty
of
imagination, they
are to be
ascribed),
we must in each
single
case
appeal
to the rules
according
to which
experience
in
general,
even inner
experience,
is
distinguished
from
imagination. (KrV: 36;
Bxli
n.,
translation
modified
slightly;
see also KrV:
414; A451/B479)
An error of
empirical judgment, then, may
consist in a
confusion between
outer
sensory sequences
and inner
imaginary sequences, quite indepen
dently
of the issue of the
possible
confusion between
subjective
and
objec
tive
orderings
in
waking experience.
The sort of error which confuses inner
experience
and outer
experience
Kant calls a "delusion of
imagination (in
dreams)" (KrV: 350; A376).
There are then for Kant
really
three distinct sorts of successions of
percep
tions:
(1) objective,
real
(waking)
successions
(with necessary ordering), (2)
subjective,
real
(waking)
successions
(with arbitrary ordering),
and
(3) imag
inary,
unreal
(dreamt
or
hallucinated)
successions.
Corresponding
to these
three sorts of succession are two distinct sorts of error: a confusion of
(1)
with
(2) (the "sense-deception");
and
a confusion of
(1)
with
(3) (the
"delusion of
imagination").
So while in
general,
as Kant
puts it, "empirical
illusion"
may
occur
whenever "the
faculty
of
judgment
is misled
by
the influence of
imagination" (KrV:
298; A295/B352),
the
imagination may
mislead the
faculty
of
judgment along
two different dimensions. Nevertheless in either
case,
according
to
Kant,
we
distinguish empirical
truth from
falsity by appealing
to the notion of effective
rule-application:
the order of
perceptions
must be a
necessary
one.
We can now see what the coherence-criterion of
empirical
truth
really
amounts to. For Kant
an
empirical judgment
is
materially
or
empirically
coherent if and
only
if the
empirical judgment contains,
and
effectively applies,
a
necessary
or causal rule for the
ordering
of its
perceptual
contents. Then
adding
the
coherence-component
to the other two
necessary components
of
the Kant's
analysis
of
empirical truth,
it follows that for Kant an
empirical
judgment
is true if and
only
if
(1)
the
judgment
is
logically self-consistent,
(2)
the
judgment
is
objectively valid,
(3)
the
judgment, according
to its semantic content
(the
rule
expressing
its
objective validity), organizes perceptions
in a
necessary rule-governed (i.e.,
causal) way.
If Kant is
correct, then,
the rule-coherence criterion of truth
completes
the
provision
of a real
definition
of
empirical
truth.
But
unfortunately
for
Kant,
all is not well with his
theory
of
empirical
truth.
For Kant's criterion of
empirical
truth
appears
to be
generally insufficient
for
telling empirically
true
judgments apart
from
empirically
false
judgments.
Here is the nub of the
problem.
Kant seems to
assume,
falsely,
that
every
dreamt
sequence
of
perceptions
must be an
arbitrary sequence.
But
although
many
or even most dreams or hallucinations are
quite
discontinuous and
arbitrarily-ordered,
there is nevertheless
nothing logically
inconsistent in
conceiving
the idea of a
perfectly
well-ordered dream or
hallucination. It is
true
that,
unlike
waking, non-hallucinatory experiences,
such a
dream will
not
ultimately
fit
comfortably
into a
law-governed
holistic
totality
of
expe
riences,
but a
given
dream or hallucination
might easily
be well-formed.
Suppose, then,
that a causal rule is
projected
onto a series of
perceptions
in
hallucination,
or in a
dream; suppose
one dreams of or hallucinates a
boat
going
downstream. Then
although
the order in the
perceptions
is a
necessary one,
nevertheless the well-formed dreamt or hallucinated
object
would
by
no means
correctly
reflect the actual
empirical
world. In other
words,
it seems that for
every putatively
effective
application
of a
necessary
rule to
perceptions,
there can be an
exactly
similar
imaginary-counterpart.
If
so,
then the
application
of such a rule cannot discriminate between a
real
waking rule-governed sequence
of
perceptions,
and an
unreal dreamt
or hallucinated
rule-governed sequence
of
perceptions.
In this
way
Kant's account of coherence as the criterion of
empirical
truth
seems
merely
to lead him into an old
problem:
what can be called
"episte
mological
dream
skepticism,"
as found in the first of Descartes' Medita
tions.28
Epistemological
dream
skepticism
consists in
drawing
out the
consequences
of the fact that
particular waking experiences
cannot be
distinguished
with
certainty
from
phenomenally identical,
or
counterpart,
dreaming experiences. Epistemological
dream
skepticism
must be distin
guished
from what can be called "universal dream
skepticism":
the lurid
suggestion
that for all we
know,
all the
experiences
of
our
lives
might
be
dreamt?so all our
empirical judgments might
be false. While the
hypoth
esis of universal dream
skepticism
is
quite implausible
and
perhaps
even
incoherent, epistemological
dream
skepticism
involves a rather more mod
est and
plausible (therefore
more
troublesome)
line of
argument.
More
explicitly, epistemological
dream
skepticism
can be
argued
for in
the
following way: (1)
There is no certain criterion for
distinguishing
QUARTERLY
between
particular waking
and
dreaming experiences; (2) Therefore,
no
particular perceptual judgment
is known with
certainty
to be true. In the
Kantian
context,
it is
possible
to reformulate
epistemological
dream
skep
ticism as
follows:
(1*)
For
every necessary rule-governed sequence
of
perceptions
in
waking experience
there is a
counterpart necessary
rule
governed
dreamt or hallucinated
sequence
of
perceptions
from which the
former cannot be
distinguished; (2*) Therefore, any given putatively
true
empirical judgment might
be false. In a
word,
Kant cannot
supply
any
effective criterion for
distinguishing
between
genuine
or
waking
rule-co
herence,
and
imaginary
rule-coherence. He cannot tell for certain when
the
intuitively-given
manifold is identical with the
semantically-correlated
truth-maker of an
empirical judgment,
and when it is not identical with it.
And that is because he cannot tell in
particular
cases
with
certainty
whether the intuitive manifold is
merely inner,
with an internal source
(hence
a mere
"phantom
of the brain"
[KrV: 125; A91/B124]),
or
whether it
is
really outer,
with an
external
source.
Now at this
point
someone
might
be inclined to think that Kant has
answered this
very problem
in the "Refutation of
Idealism;"
but she would
be mistaken. Kant
explicitly
admits that
although
his "Refutation" estab
lishes that there must be an external
empirical
world if
empirical
self-con
sciousness is to be
possible,
he has not removed the
epistemological
dream
skeptical problem:
From the fact that the existence of outer
things
is
required
for the
possibility
of a determinate consciousness of the
self,
it does not follow that
every
intuitive
representation
of outer
things
involves the existence of these
things,
for their
representation
can
very
well be the
product merely
of the
imagination (as
in
dreams and
delusions)....
All that we have here
sought
to
prove
is that inner
experience
in
general
is
possible only through
outer
experience
in
general.
(KrV: 247; B278-279)
Curiously,
in
light
of this
admission,
Kant then
goes
on to remark that
whether this or that
supposed experience
be not
purely imaginary,
must be
ascertained from its
special determinations,
and
through
its
congruence
(Zusammenhaltung)
with the criteria of all real
experience. (KrV: 247; B279)
Commenting
on this
remark,
PF. Strawson
suggests
that Kant has
thereby
made an
adequate
response
to the
epistemological
dream
skeptic.29
But
that does not seem to be an accurate
gloss
on what Kant has
actually
said.
Kant has not solved the
difficulty;
he has
only
asserted that
we can
sometimes tell the difference between
waking
and
dreaming experiences
by appealing
to the
necessary
rules of the
organization
of
experience.
That
may
be
so;
but how can we do so?
Merely asserting
that
we can sometimes
tell the difference misses the relevant
point
at issue: the search for an
effective criterion of
empirical
truth. Kant has
supplied
no such criterion.
And this fact has dire
consequences
for Kant's
theory
of
meaning.
The
failure of the criterion of
empirical
truth entails that the
objective validity?
the
meaning?of any empirical judgment
is not
uniquely
determined. For
the
objective validity
of a
judgment is, according
to
Kant,
the
specification
of the
empirical
truth-conditions of that
judgment.
If truth-conditions
are
not
fixed,
then
empirical meanings
are not
fully
determinate.
V. Conclusion
By way
of the
epistemological dream-skeptical problem,
we have been led
to the
unhappy
result that there is
Something
Rotten in the state of Kant's
verificationist semantic
theory:
If the truth-rules
constituting
the
objective
validity
of
particular empirical judgments
cannot be
guaranteed
in
any
particular
case to be
effectively applied
to
perceptions
so as to be able to
distinguish
between
waking
and
dreaming,
then how can the semantic
rules
(which
are after all for Kant
nothing
but the
truth-rules)
be
guaranteed
to determine the
meanings
of
particular judgments
of
experience?
Kant's
theory
of
empirical meaning
and
truth,
it
seems,
cannot
finally
provide
an answer to this
question.
But it would be a mistake to think that
this
problem
is
unique
to Kant's transcendental semantics. For it is
plausible
to hold that Kant's
difficulty
can be
generalized
into a
basic
problem
about
the effective determination of
particular empirical meanings
on
any
veri
ficationist semantic
theory.
The root of the issue is the
question
of
how,
and
indeed
whether, particular
semantic rules?construed as rules of
empirical
truth-determination?can
ever be
effectively applied
to
empirical
data
so as
to fix truth-conditions. Has
any
20th
century
verificationist
supplied
a satis
factory response
to
epistemological
dream
skepticism?
I think not.
Indeed,
in
light
of the
famously
inconclusive debate between Neurath and Schlick over
this
very issue,30
it seems correct to claim that Kant's trouble with truth
carries over
directly
into mainstream 20th
century
verificationist semantics.31'32
University of
Colorado at Boulder
Received June
16,
1992
NOTES
1. I.
Kant, Critique of
Pure
Reason,
trans. N. K. Smith
(New
York: St. Martins
Press, 1965), p. 97, A58/B83;
see also Kritik der reinen
Vernunft,
ed. W.
Weischedel,
Immanuel Kants
Werkausgabe,
vols. 3-4
(Frankfurt
am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1986), p.
102.
Following
standard
practice,
I will henceforth cite the German edition of the first
Critique by giving page
numbers of the first
(A)
and second
(B)
editions
only.
Internal
references to the first
Critique
will include the abbreviation
"KrV,"
followed
by
the
English
and German
page
numbers
respectively.
In a few
places
I have modified
Kemp
Smith's translation for reasons of
philosophical clarity.
In
particular,
I translate
"?bereinstimmung"
and its
cognates by "correspondence"
and its
cognates,
and
"Erkenntnis" and its
cognates by "cognition"
and its
cognates.
On the reasons for
the former choice see note 2
below;
on the reasons for the latter
choice,
see note 14.
2.
My primary
aim in
translating "?bereinstimmung" by "correspondence,"
rather than
by Kemp
Smiths
"agreement,"
is to indicate the
continuity
of Kant's
theory
of truth with traditional doctrines of truth?in
particular,
with
Aquinas's
QUARTERLY
description
of truth as the
"adequation
of intellect and
thing" (De Veritate, qu. 1),
and with Leibniz's observation that truth is
"correspondence
of the
propositions
which are in the mind and the
things
which
they
are about"
(New Essays
on Human
Understanding, trans,
P. Remnant and J. Bennet
[Cambridge: Cambridge
Univer
sity Press, 1981],
book
IV, chapter V, p. 398). "Agreement"
does
not,
in
my opinion,
properly convey
the essential idea of the traditional doctrine of truth: that truth
consists in a certain
specifiable
relation between the truth-bearer
(the judgment
or
proposition)
and the
object
of the truth-bearer
(the fact).
3. In this
paper
I focus on Kant's account of the definition and critierion of
empirical
truth?the truth of
synthetic
a
posteriori propositions?and
do not deal
directly
with the issue of
non-empirical
truth: the truth of
analytic
or
synthetic
a
priori propositions. Still,
if Kant's
theory
of truth is to be
fully general,
there has
to be some
way
in which even a
priori
truths can be
brought
under the rubric of
"correspondence."
But it seems doubtful that this can be done. See note 19 below.
4. I.
Kant, Prolegomena
to
any
Future
Metaphysics,
trans. J. W.
Ellington
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), p. 34; Prolegomena
zu einer
jeden k?nftigen
Metaphysik
die als
Wissenschaft
wird
auftreten k?nnen,
ed.
K?niglich
Preussischen
Akademie der
Wissenschaften,
Kants
gesammelte Schriften,
vol. 4
(Berlin: Georg
Reimer, 1911), p.
290. Internal references to the
Prolegomena
will include the
abbreviation
"Prol,"
followed
by English
and German
page
numbers
respectively.
5.
Wittgenstein's
influential remarks on verificationist semantics are recorded
in F. Waismann's
Wittgenstein
and the Vienna
Circle,
trans. J. Schulte and B.
McGuinness
(New
York:
Harper
and
Row, 1979), pp. 47,
227. See also A. J.
Ayer,
Language, Truth,
and
Logic,
second edition
(New
York:
Dover, 1952), pp. 10-16,
33-39,
and
87-102;
C. I.
Lewis, "Experience
and
Meaning,"
The
Philosophical Review,
vol. 43
(1934), pp. 125-46;
and M.
Schlick, "Meaning
and
Verification,"
The Philo
sophical Review,
vol. 45
(1936), pp.
339-69. Peter Strawson was one of the first
Kant-commentators to note that Kant's
theory
of
meaning
has a
strongly
veri
ficationist
flavor;
see The Bounds
of
Sense
(London: Methuen, 1966), pp.
16-18.
6.
According
to
Ray
Monk in
Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The
Duty of
Genius
(London:
Jonathan
Cape, 1990), p. 158, Wittgenstein
read the first
Critique
in 1919. It is
therefore not at all
implausible
to
suppose
that
Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian
verificationism of the late 1920s and
early
30s?and
by extension,
that of the
Vienna Circle?was
significantly
influenced
by
Kant. This
supposition
is backed
up by
a remark made
by Wittgenstein
in 1931-32: "This is the
right
sort of
approach.
Hume,
Descartes and others had tried to start with one
proposition
such as
'Cogito
ergo
sum' and work from it to others. Kant
disagreed
and started with what we
know to be so and
so,
and went on to examine the
validity
of what we
suppose
we
know." See D.
Lee, ed., Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge
1930-1932
(Oxford:
Black
well, 1980), pp.
73-74. The direct Kantian influence on C. I. Lewis is most evident in
Mind and the World Order
(New
York:
Dover, 1956);
first
published
in 1929.
7. For the
purposes
of this discussion I will treat
'objektive G?ltigkeit'
and
'objektive
Realit?t' as
synonymous expressions. Henry
Allison holds that there is a
systematic
distinction to be drawn between Kant's uses of the two
terms;
see Kant's
Transcendental Idealism
(New
Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983), pp.
134-35.
This seems
unlikely, given
Kant's
tendency
to use both terms
virtually interchange
ably; see,
for
instance,
KrV:
192-193; A155-156/B194-195.
But even if such a subtle
distinction in
usage exists,
it will not affect the
points
I want to make.
8. I.
Kant, Logic,
trans. R. S. Hartman and W. Schwarz
(Indianapolis:
Bobbs
Merrill, 1974), p. 96,
slightly; Logik,
ed.
K?niglich
Preussischen
Akademie der
Wissenschaften,
Kants
gesammelte Schriften,
Vol. 9
(Berlin:
Walter de
Gruyter, 1923), p.91.
Internal references to the
Logic
will include the abbreviation
"Log"
followed
by English
and German
page
numbers
respectively.
9. Kant's doctrine of the
objective validity
or
meaning
of an
empirical concept spells
out what C. I. Lewis later calls the
"sense-meaning"
of
categorematic expressions:
"sense-meaning
is intension in the mode of a criterion
by
which one is able to
apply
or
refuse to
apply
the
expression
in
question
in the case of
presented things."
See
Lewis,
"The Modes of
Meaning,"
in T.
Olshewsky, eds.,
Problems in the
Philosophy of Language
(New
York:
Holt, Reinhart,
and
Winston, 1969), p. 129;
this
paper
was
originally
published
in 1943-44.
10. It is
important
to
recognize
a
special
constraint on the
employment
of this
empiricist meaning-criterion.
For Kant it is
quite possible
to have "thinkable" con
cepts
of
non-phenomenal (noumenal) (KrV: 271; B310),
or even
impossible (KrV: 130;
A96) objects. Moreover,
Kant
says
of the
pure concepts
of the
understanding
that
they
have a
"meaning" (Bedeutung)
which is
"purely logical, signifying only
the bare
unity
of the
representations" (KrV: 186; A147/B186).
Thus some Kantian
concepts
will still have a "thin"
meaningfulness
while nevertheless
lacking objective
valid
ity?that is, meaningfulness
in the "thick" or
empirical
sense.
11. See Robert
Hanna,
"Kant's
Theory
of
Empirical Judgment
and Modern
Semantics," History of Philosophy Quarterly,
vol. 7
(1990), pp. 335-51,
for more
details on Kant's
theory
of
empirical judgment.
12. What I am
calling
"Kant's Context
Principle" anticipates Frege's
famous
semantic
context-principle,
as
expressed
in The Fountains
of Arithemtic,
trans. J.
L. Austin
(Evanston,
IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1980), p.
x: "never.
.
.ask
for the
meaning
of a word in
isolation,
but
only
in the context of a
proposition."
13. This Kantian doctrine is
replicated
almost
exactly
in
Ayer's
account of
empirical propositions: "every synthetic [that is, empirical] proposition
is a rule for
the
anticipation
of future
experience,
and is
distinguished
in content from other
synthetic propositions by
the fact that it is relevant to different situations." See
Language, Truth,
and
Logic, p.
101.
14. Gerold Prauss
points
this out in
Erscheinung
bei Kant
(Berlin:
Walter de
Gruyter, 1971), pp.
64-68. And the fact that Erkenntnisse can be false shows us
precisely why
'Erkenntnis' must be translated
by 'cognition'
and not
by 'knowledge:'
the
concept
of
knowledge
includes the
concept
of
truth,
and so the translation of
'eine Erkenntnis ist
falsch* by 'knowledge
is false' would be an
oxymoron.
15. Jaakko
Hintikka,
"On Kant's Notion of
Intuition,"
The First
Critique,
eds.
Terence Penelhum and J. J. Macintosh
(Belmont,
CA:
Wadsworth, 1969), pp.
38-53.
16. The
important
distinction between the "referential" and "attributive" seman
tic functions in
subject-predicate propositions
is
emphasized
in Peter Strawson's
famous
article,
"On
Referring;"
see The
Philosophy of Language, ed.,
A. P. Martinich
(New
York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), pp.
219-34
(originally published
in
1950).
17. This
important point
is missed
by
Strawson in The Bounds
of Sense, p.
30.
But
Henry
Allison
sees it
correctly
in Kant's Transcendental
Idealism, pp.
72-73.
18.
Wittgenstein,
as
quoted
in Waismann's
Ludwig Wittgenstein
and the Vienna
Circle, p.
227.
19. It
may
be that Kant intends this account to be
applicable
to the truth of a
priori propositions
as well. But how can
analytic
or
synthetic
a
priori judgments
"correspond"
to
anything?
Since both
types
of
judgments
are
necesasarily true,
it
would seem to follow that
they correspond
to
every possible empirical
state of
affairs. But if a
judgment corresponds
to
everything,
then it
corresponds specifically
to
nothing.
One
might
then
charitably
conclude that Kant's
theory
of truth-as-cor
respondence
is intended to
apply
to
empirical judgments only.
20. It is crucial to
distinguish
between
truth-as-correspondence,
and what Kant
calls
"holding
for true"
(F?rwahrhalten) (KrV: 646; A82^B850). "Holding-for-true"
encompasses
a set of doxic
propositional attitudes;
such attitudes are treated in
empirical
psychology
and
applied logic (KrV: 95; A54-55/B78-79). By contrast,
the
propositional
QUARTERLY
content of the
judgment
and its truth are treated
objectively
in transcendental
psychology
and transcendental
logic.
21. G.
Prauss,
"Zum
Wahrheitsproblem
bei
Kant," Kant-Studien,
vol. 60
(1969),
pp.
167-68.
22. The
picture-theory
of
correspondence
states that a
judgment
is true
just
in
case it can be
directly
and
successfully compared
with its
object.
But Kant
points
out that
every comparison
is itself a
judgment;
thus the
picture-theory
of corre
spondence
entails a vicious
regress
of
increasingly higher-order judgments
in order
to establish the truth of lower-order
judgments;
see
(Log: 55; 69-70).
23. A
qualification
is needed here. Kant does seem to defend what could
fairly
be called a
"coherence-theory"
of the
justification
of
empirical
beliefs
(KrV: 98-99,
645; A60/B85, A820/B848).
But this sense of "coherence" is distinct from that
according
to which the test of
empirical
truth is "coherence." The coherence of
judgments required
for
justification
is the same as a holism of the set of
empirical
beliefs,
while the test of
empirical
truth is effective
rule-application.
24. On the nature of a
coherence-theory
of truth see Alan
White,
"The Coherence
Theory
of
Truth,"
in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. P. Edwards
(New
York:
Macmillan, 1967),
vol.
1, pp.
130-33.
25. It is
possible
to draw
a fruitful contrast here between Kant and W. V. O.
Quine, who?famously?defends
semantic holism in "Two
Dogmas
of
Empiricism,"
in From a
Logical
Point
of
View
(New
York:
Harper
and
Row, 1961), pp.
20-37.
Quine
's semantic holism is of course
closely
tied to his attack on the Kantian and
verificationist
appeal
to the
analytic/synthetic
distinction.
26. The
question,
"what is it to follow a rule?" is of course a central
preoccupation
of the later
Wittgenstein
in
Philosophical Investigations,
trans. G. E. M. Anscombe
(Oxford:
Basil
Blackwell, 1968), paragraphs
185-242. It is not difficult to see these
remarks
as,
at least in
part, Wittgenstein's
self-critical reflections on his own
earlier verificationism.
27. The German term here is
'korrespondieren,'which,
if I were not
already using
'correspondence'
in a technical
sense,
I would translate
by 'corresponds.'
But that
would
only
lead to confusion in this context.
28. On the nature of
epistemological
dream
skepticism (as opposed
to other sorts
of dream
skepticism)
and Descartes'
response
to
it,
see Robert
Hanna,
"Descartes
and Dream
Skepticism Revisited,"
Journal
of
the
History of Philosophy,
fvol. 30
(July 1992), pp.
377-98.
29. See
Strawson,
The Bounds
of Sense, p.
150.
30. The central issue of the Neurath-Schlick debate is whether atomic observa
tion-sentences
("protocol sentences")
are
infallibly
true?as
Carnap
had
argued
in
the
Aufbau?or
are instead dubitable under some
empirical
conditions
(say,
dream
conditions).
See O.
Neurath,
"Protocol
Sentences,"
and M.
Schlick,
"The Foundation
of
Knowledge,"
both in
Logical Positivism,
ed. A. J.
Ayer (New
York: Free
Press,
1959), pp. 199-208,
209-227. See also C.
Hempel,
"On the
Logical Positivists'Theory
of
Truth," Analysis,
vol. 2
(1935), pp.
49-59.
30. To be
sure, epistemological
dream
skepticism
is not the
only major problem
for verificationist semantics.
See,
for
example,
Carl
Hempel's
famous 1950
paper,
"Empiricist
Criteria of
Cognitive Significance:
Problems and
Changes,"
in The
Philosophy of Language,
second
edition,
ed. A. P. Martinich
(New
York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), pp. 13-25;
and also
Quines
even more
famous,
"Two
Dogmas
of
Empiricism," published
in 1957. What has not been noticed
by
critics of
the verificationist
theory
of
meaning,
I
think,
is the
important
extent to which its
main
problems
are
recapitulations
of
problems
in Kant's
theory
of
meaning.
32. Earlier versions of this
paper
were
presented
at the
University
of
Wyoming,
and to the North American Kant
Society.
I would
especially
like to thank Robert
Greenberg,
Paul
Loeb, Christopher Shields,
Peter F.
Strawson,
and an
anonymous
referee for this
journal,
for
helpful
critical comments on earlier drafts.

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