Beyond Materialism

March 30, 2022

Foundational elements of my thought are buried deep in books that no one wants to read. One of these books is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I've spent so much time reading and trying to figure out Kant, building my whole worldview on the foundations of his thought, that I often take it as a given that people just know what he's about. Whenever I am reminded of the unfortunate fact that the books I read don't get magically implanted into the minds of all the people I talk to, I generally exclaim out loud at my telephone and type "Man, you gotta read Kant!" Very rarely, though, do I actually send this message, as even I realize that you can't make people read Kant just by yelling at them.

Thus, this essay will serve as a brief introduction to Kant and transcendental idealism. It is no way meant to thoroughly explain Kant's ideas as a whole, or reflect the many twists and turns that his thought has been subjected to in the intervening years. The purpose here is to open up your mind to his ideas and encourage further exploration, whether that means reading his books or just thinking about it for yourself.

While Kant certainly has important antecedents, he is also in certain ways a distinct break from what came before. Therefore, he works as an appropriate starting point for a modern person looking to understand idealism. It can be argued that idealism began with Plato, but his dialogues full of mythological set-ups (nowadays we might call them 'thought experiments') and pedantic semantics, while thoughtful and creative, are often less convincing to the modern scientific-minded reader. Kant, on the other hand, belongs to an era that could be called "modern," being only a few hundred years ago as opposed to a few thousand, and his ideas are presented in a way that rings more true to a 21st century reader.

The important question to first address is: What was Kant trying to do? While it may seem to many that philosophers — especially those dealing in metaphysics — are simply playing "language games" or having semantic fun, this explanation does us little good. In response to the question, "Why would someone devote their time to philosophical questions?" instead of dismissing the question altogether by saying that they are wasting their time, it pays to be more generous and consider why someone would consider it valuable.

Developing a view of the world is important for determining a way of life. It helps one come up with principles that help guide their actions, not only as an individual, but as a part of a group. These principles can be extended to questions about how to organize people in general, i.e. politics. Political ideas do not just emerge from material conditions; they are based on deeper metaphysical principles, whether one recognizes those principles or not.

Most people develop their worldview unconsciously and idiosyncratically, often not noticing that they are doing so. Philosophy is the art of organizing these idiosyncrasies into a set of consistent principles. Along the way, one might find that certain idiosyncrasies can be supported logically, while others are cast off as mere fabrications or whimsies.

One of Kant's primary concerns when developing his metaphysics, or way of viewing reality, is free will. He is responding to the trends of thought prevalent in his world at the time, primarily Newtonian mechanics. If Newton is right and all physical actions are governed by certain fixed laws, and we humans are purely physical beings, then we can not possibly have free will. However, if we don't have free will, then many parts of our lives don't make sense. If there is no free will, why do we punish criminals? How can there be morality? And why do we deliberate over actions at all? It is embedded deep into the human condition to believe that one is free to act as one chooses. Thus, there's a contradiction here. Kant respected Newton and did not want to start denying his ideas outright, mostly because such a denial simply goes against reason; but at the same time, he also wanted to find a way to preserve free will.

While later idealists following Kant took a more romantic view toward the world, Kant was quite pragmatic. He hated the perception that metaphysics was simply religious dogmatism or dreamy mysticism. He believed that he could develop metaphysics into a science and prove, with mathematical certainty, that free will and Newtonian mechanics are compatible. This is part of why he described his system as “transcendental idealism,” and not pure idealism.

I'd like to begin with an idea that might make more sense to modern readers than anything Kant says. Let's think about our eyes, and how they allow us to see the outside world. Our eyes do not receive, as stimuli, an image of the world around us. Instead, they receive millions of stimuli in the form of rays of light, which are then used to construct an image. Each of these rays of light are treated equally; the eye simply accepts them. So, place a mug down on the desk in front of you. When you consider the stimuli that your eyes are receiving, there is no difference between those coming from the mug, and those coming from the desk. By which I mean, there is nothing about the stimuli you are receiving that tells you these are two separate objects. (Sure, they may be two different colours, but the surface of your desk is also many different colours, and you still recognize that as a single object.) In fact, nothing about the stimuli you are receiving allows you to differentiate any objects from each other at all. It is just a collection of light waves.

The separation of objects from each other is a function of the way our mind interprets the stimuli we receive via our senses. It is in no way given to us by our senses themselves. This is the basis of Kant's metaphysics.

The conclusion here being that there is no way to be sure that our interpretation of the world actually lines up at all with the way the world actually is. It might; it might not. Kant does not make any claim one way or the other; in fact, he says that any attempt to make a claim one way or the other is beyond our capability. This is why he rejects all prior metaphysical systems. All these attempts end up leading to a series of paradoxes that he labels 'antinomies.' Without getting into those, we can see how Kant has made a clear distinction regarding the limits of human thought. We can only see the world in the limited way in which we see it, and the way we see it is a product of our own limitations — i.e. the limitations of human reason.

The objects that we sense — what we interpret — Kant calls phenomena. However, what these objects are independent of our interpretation — how they would be "in themselves” — he calls noumena. The vital idea here is that we, ourselves, are also subject to this distinction. As in, the physical body that we perceive, that we use to interact with the material world, is phenomenal. It is subject to the same interpretive problem. What we actually are — what some might call our soul, or spirit — is noumenal.

Our interpretive abilities are not limited to only the separation of objects, however. In fact, the separation of objects is reliant on another interpretive act: the imposition of space and time.

The limitations of reason that we mentioned earlier are important. In order to determine what is interpretation and what is real, Kant considered the basic conditions of our thought. We can imagine many things that aren't real, but there are certain things that we simply can't imagine. One of these is an object that is not occupying space. The very concept of an object itself implies space in which it can exist. To Kant, this means that space is a necessary pre-condition of our thought. This is a limitation, and one that carries over to our interpretation of the world around us. The reason we interpret the world as objects existing in space, is because that's the only way that we can interpret the world; not because that is necessarily the way it is.

The same is true of time. Our thoughts follow each other sequentially; we don't just think everything all at once. Once again, Kant believes that we project this limitation of ours onto our perception of the world.

Now, the true beauty here is that while the phenomenal realm is necessarily subject to space and time, and therefore all the mechanistic Newtonian laws that negate free will, the noumenal realm is not. In fact, the very fact that we internally deliberate on moral choices proves that we are not subject to these laws, because if we were, there would be no point in doing so. Kant emphasizes the moral content of our actions here; the fact that we can choose to ignore our base desires and instead act based on moral principles is our freedom. We are not slaves to mechanical whims, but rational beings capable of suppressing our individual desires for the sake of higher principles.

We are in this way both subject to Newtonian mechanics in our phenomenal sense, and also free actors in our noumenal sense. With this system, Kant bridges the gap between materialistic science, which is great at explaining physical actions, but offers no moral principles; and Christian ethics, which doesn't make sense when thrown into a purely determined mechanistic world, but provides principles that encourage good moral behaviour.

There are, of course, plenty of holes one can choose to prick in this system, and many have done so, including Kant's most ardent followers. I have tried to explain the concepts to the best of my ability, but obviously there is no substitute for his books themselves. His three Critiques — The Critique of Pure Reason, which deals with metaphysics and includes most of what I've described here; The Critique of Practical Reason, which deals with ethics, and which I have touched on only barely; and The Critique of Judgement, which deals with aesthetics and natural philosophy (this combination will make sense when you get there), which I have not talked about at all — are the main ones.

However, what I'd like to return to is what I mentioned at the beginning: the question of why develop a metaphysical system at all. I have described for you the problems Kant was facing — how to reconcile deterministic physics and free will — and how he went about dealing with them — the separation of phenomena and noumena. Like I said, his arguments are not logically fool-proof, and there is certainly a discussion to be had about whether or not he broke his own rules a few times regarding the limits of speculation.

But what I respect most about Kant includes his dedication to morality as the basis of freedom. In his eyes, free will is not the freedom to do whatever we want, but instead the freedom to regulate ourselves. His freedom is the freedom to look beyond our own selfish desires and act based on principles such as equality and mutual respect. I don't have the space here to delve too deep into the specifics of his moral system — this lecture by Michael Sugrue might be a good start — but it has certainly been supremely influential to my development as a person.

Another aspect I admire is that he leaves the door open to spirituality, without prescribing exactly what that spirituality entails. He does strongly suggest that belief in the Christian God is the most rational way to go, but that is not implicit in the system itself. He sets a hard limit to science, and says, "Here is what we can know about; the rest is left to faith." At the same time, he does not deny the ability of scientific research to explain our world, and encourages further research and observation. Some might say that Kant is trying to eat his cake and still have it afterwards, but I don't see why they are so attached to this mutual exclusivity between science and religion. After all, most of the greatest scientists in human history have been religious. This dichotomy between science and religion did not exist in the past, and still doesn't exist for many people in the world.

If philosophy is the art of developing a principled way of life, then Kant is one of the most successful philosophers in history. He shines a light on the inherent problems of a purely materialistic worldview, while also avoiding the pitfalls of a purely subjective solipsism (to an extent.) Unlike many who followed in his footsteps, he does not leap into fantastical imaginings and speculation, but stays grounded, focusing on laying out a concrete framework for metaphysics as a science.

While Kant’s books are often thought of as impenetrable, his foundational ideas are profound and deceptively simple. His skepticism regarding space and time might initially strike one as nonsensical, but it unlocks a beautiful moral worldview that emphasizes human freedom. Instead of developing his skepticism into nihilistic absurdities, Kant uses it to empower people to think of themselves as free and, in a certain sense, divine. He is hopeful for the future and believes in the capacity of each one of us to do the right thing when the moment presents itself. For all that, he is a hero of mine, and I believe that a thoughtful consideration of his ideas is well worth the effort.