CHAPTER 7. Real Repugnance and Belief about Things-in-Themselves: A Problem and Kant’s Three Solutions

Abstract

Kant famously claims that it can be rational to accept propositions on the basis of non-epistemic or broadly practical considerations, under certain circumstances, even if those propositions include “transcenden-tal ideas ” of supersensible objects. But he also worries about how such “ideas ” (of freedom, the soul, noumenal grounds, God, the kingdom of ends, things-in-themselves generally) acquire positive content in the absence of an appropriate connection to intuitional experience. How can we be sure that the ideas are not empty “thought-entities [Ge-dankendinge]”—that is, speculative fancies that do not and perhaps even cannot have referents in reality (A771/B799)? This is a fair question, and when he is focused on it Kant often is-sues dire warnings about the casual employment of “empty ” ideas, es-pecially in metaphysical speculation: Representations that are devoid of all intuition (to which, as concepts, no cor-responding intuition can be given) are absolutely empty (without cognition of their object). (8:214) How can two people conduct a dispute about a matter the reality of which nei-ther of them can exhibit in an actual or even in a merely possible experience, about the idea of which [they] only brood in order to bring forth from it some-thing more than an idea, namely the actuality of the object [Gegenstand] it-self? (A750/B778) To demonstrate the reality of our concepts, intuitions are always required. If they are empirical concepts, then the latter are called examples. If they are pure concepts of the understanding, then the latter are called schemata. But if

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