Existence of an External World

1.35n,   1.36-39    G.-c.1890-2


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# 4. KANT AND HIS REFUTATION OF IDEALISM*

  36. Kant's refutation of idealism in the second edition of
the Critic of the Pure Reason has been often held to be
inconsistent with his main position or even to be knowingly
sophistical. It appears to me to be one of the numerous passages in
that work which betray an elaborated and vigorous analysis,
marred in the exposition by the attempt to state the argument
more abstractly and demonstratively than the thought would
warrant.
  In "Note 1," Kant says that his argument beats idealism

* 37-38 is " Notes on the Question of the Existence of an External World." c. 1890.36 and 39 are
from fragmentary alternative mss. of that same date.
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at its own game. How is that? The idealist says that all that
we know immediately, that is, otherwise than inferentially,
is what is present in the mind; and things out of the mind are
not so present. The whole idealist position turns upon this
conception of the present.
  37. The idealistic argument turns upon the assumption
that certain things are absolutely "present," namely what we
have in mind at the moment, and that nothing else can be
immediately, that is, otherwise than inferentially known. When
this is once granted, the idealist has no difficulty in showing
that that external existence which we cannot know
immediately we cannot know, at all. Some of the arguments used
for this purpose are of little value, because they only go to
show that our knowledge of an external world is fallible; now
there is a world of difference between fallible knowledge and
no knowledge. However, I think it would have to be admitted
as a matter of logic that if we have no immediate perception of
a non-ego, we can have no reason to admit the supposition of
an existence so contrary to all experience as that would in
that case be.
  38. But what evidence is there that we can immediately
know only what is "present" to the mind? The idealists
generally treat this as self-evident; but, as Clifford jestingly says,
" it is evident " is a phrase which only means " we do not know
how to prove." The proposition that we can immediately
perceive only what is present seems to me parallel to that other
vulgar prejudice that "a thing cannot act where it is not." An
opinion which can only defend itself by such a sounding phrase
is pretty sure to be wrong. That a thing cannot act where it
is not is plainly an induction from ordinary experience, which
shows no forces except such as act through the resistance of
materials, with the exception of gravity which, owing to its
being the same for all bodies,does not appear in ordinary
experience like a force. But further experience shows that
attractions and repulsions are the universal types of forces. A thing
may be said to be wherever it acts; but the notion that a
particle is absolutely present in one part of space and absolutely
absent from all the rest of space is devoid of all foundation.
In like manner, the idea that we can immediately perceive only
what is present seems to be founded on our ordinary experience
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that we cannot recall and reexamine the events of
yesterday nor know otherwise than by inference what is to happen
tomorrow. Obviously, then, the first move toward beating
idealism at its own game is to remark that we apprehend our
own ideas only as flowing in time, and since neither the future
nor the past, however near they may be, is present, there is as
much difficulty in conceiving our perception of what passes
within us as in conceiving external perception. If so, replies
the idealist, instead of giving up idealism we must go still
further to nihilism. Kant does not notice this retort; but it is
clear from his footnote that he would have said: Not so; for it
is impossible we should so much as think we think in time
unless we do think in time; or rather, dismissing blind
impossibility, the mere imagination of time is a clear perception of
the past. Hamilton* stupidly objects to Reid's phrase
"immediate memory"; but an immediate, intuitive consciousness of
time clearly exists wherever time exists. But once grant
immediate knowledge in time, and what becomes of the idealist
theory that we immediately know only the present? For the present
can contain no time.
  39. But Kant does not pursue this line of thought along
the straight road to its natural result; because he is a sort of
idealist himself. Namely, though not idealistic as to the
substance of things, he is partially so in regard to their accidents.
Accordingly, he introduces his distinction of the variable and
the persistent (beharrlich), and seeks to show that the only way
we can apprehend our own flow of ideas, binding them together
as a connected flow, is by attaching them to an immediately
perceived persistent externality. He refuses to inquire how
that immediate external consciousness is possible, though such
an inquiry might have probed the foundations of his system.