TIME AND INNER SENSE
The arguments by which Kant seeks to show that time is not a
determination of things in themselves but only a form of perception
are, _mutatis mutandis_, identical with those used in his treatment of
space.[1] They are, therefore, open to the same criticisms, and need
no separate consideration.
[1] Cf. B. 46-9, Secs. 4, 5 and 6 (a), M. 28-30, Secs. 5, 6 and
7 (a) with B. 38-42, Sec. 2 (1-4), and Sec. (3) to (a) inclusive,
M. 23-6, Secs. 2, 3, and 4 (a). The only qualification needed is
that, since the parts of time cannot, like those of space,
be said to exist simultaneously, B. Sec. 4 (5), M. Sec. 5, 5 is
compelled to appeal to a different consideration from that
adduced in the parallel passage on space (B. Sec. 2 (4), M. Sec.
2, 4). Since, however, B. Sec. 4 (5), M. Sec. 5, 5 introduces no
new matter, but only appeals to the consideration already urged
(B. Sec. 4, 4, M. Sec. 5, 4), this difference can be neglected.
B. Sec. 5, M. Sec. 6 adds a remark about change which does not
affect the main argument.
Time, however, according to Kant, differs from space in one important
respect. It is the form not of outer but of inner sense; in other
words, while space is the form under which we perceive things, time is
the form under which we perceive ourselves. It is upon this difference
that attention must be concentrated. The existence of the difference
at all is upon general grounds surprising. For since the arguments by
which Kant establishes the character of time as a form of perception
run _pari passu_ with those used in the case of space, we should
expect time, like space, to be a form under which we perceive things;
and, as a matter of fact, it will be found that the only _argument_
used to show that time is the form of inner, as opposed to outer,
sense is not only independent of Kant's general theory of forms of
sense, but is actually inconsistent with it.[2] Before, however, we
attempt to decide Kant's right to distinguish between inner and outer
sense, we must consider the facts which were before Kant's mind in
making the distinction.
[2] B. 49 (b), M. 30 (b). See pp. 109-12.
These facts and, to a large extent, the frame of mind in which Kant
approached them, find expression in the passage in Locke's _Essay_,
which explains the distinction between 'ideas of sensation' and 'ideas
of reflection'.
"Whence has it [i. e. the mind] all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.... Our
observation, employed either about external, sensible objects, or
about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected
on, by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all
the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of
knowledge...."
"First, Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do
convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according
to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them: and thus
we come by those ideas we have of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft,
Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those, which we call sensible qualities;
which, when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they, from
external objects, convey into the mind what produces there those
perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending
wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I
call _sensation_."
"Secondly, The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the
understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our
own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got;
which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on, and consider, do
furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not
be had from things without; and such are Perception, Thinking,
Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the
different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and
observing in ourselves, do, from these, receive into our
understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our
senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and
though it be not sense as having nothing to do with external objects,
yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal
sense. But, as I call the other sensation, so I call this
_reflection_; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets,
by reflecting on its own operations within itself."[3]
[3] Locke, _Essay_, ii, 1, Secs. 2-4.
Here Locke is thinking of the distinction between two attitudes of
mind, which, however difficult it may be to state satisfactorily, must
in some sense be recognized. The mind, undoubtedly, in virtue of its
powers of perceiving and thinking--or whatever they may be--becomes
through a temporal process aware of a spatial world in its varied
detail. In the first instance, its attention is absorbed in the world
of which it thus becomes aware; subsequently, however, it is in some
way able to direct its attention away from this world to the
activities in virtue of which it has become aware of this world, and
in some sense to make itself its own object. From being conscious it
becomes self-conscious. This process by which the mind turns its
attention back upon itself is said to be a process of 'reflection'.
While we should say that it is by perception that we become aware of
things in the physical world, we should say that it is by reflection
that we become aware of our activities of perceiving, thinking,
willing, &c. Whatever difficulties the thought of self-consciousness
may involve, and however inseparable, and perhaps even temporally
inseparable, the attitudes of consciousness and self-consciousness may
turn out to be, the distinction between these attitudes must be
recognized. The object of the former is the world, and the object of
the latter is in some sense the mind itself; and the attitudes may be
described as that of our ordinary, scientific, or unreflecting
consciousness and that of reflection.
The significance of Locke's account of this distinction lies for our
purposes in its anticipation of Kant. He states the second attitude,
as well as the first, in terms of sense. Just as in our apprehension
of the world things external to, in the sense of existing
independently of, the mind are said to act on our physical organs or
'senses', and thereby to produce 'perceptions' in the mind, so the
mind is said to become conscious of its own operations by 'sense'. We
should notice, however, that Locke hesitates to use the word 'sense'
in the latter case, on the ground that it involves no operation of
external things (presumably upon our physical organs), though he
thinks that the difficulty is removed by calling the sense in question
'internal'.
Kant is thinking of the same facts, and also states them in terms of
sense, though allowance must be made for the difference of standpoint,
since for him 'sense', in the case of the external sense, refers not
to the affection of our physical organs by physical bodies, but to the
affection of the mind by things in themselves. Things in themselves
act on our minds and produce in them appearances, or rather
sensations, and outer sense is the mind's capacity for being so
affected by outer things, i. e. things independent of the mind. This
is, in essentials, Kant's statement of the attitude of consciousness,
i. e. of our apprehension of the world which exists independently of
the mind, and which, for him, is the world of things in themselves. He
also follows Locke in giving a parallel account of the attitude of
self-consciousness. He asks, 'How can the subject perceive itself?'
Perception _in man_ is essentially passive; the mind must be
_affected_ by that which it perceives. Consequently, if the mind is to
perceive itself, it must be affected by its own activity; in other
words, there must be an inner sense, i. e. a capacity in virtue of
which the mind is affected by itself.[4] Hence Kant is compelled to
extend his agnosticism to the knowledge of ourselves. Just as we do
not know things, but only the appearances which they produce in
us,[5] so we do not know ourselves, but only the appearances which we
produce in ourselves; and since time is a mode of relation of these
appearances, it is a determination not of ourselves, but only of the
appearances due to ourselves.
[4] Cf. B. 67 fin., M. 41 init.
[5] It is here assumed that this is Kant's normal view of the
phenomenal character of our knowledge. Cf. p. 75.
The above may be said to represent the train of thought by which Kant
arrived at his doctrine of time and the inner sense. It was reached by
combining recognition of the fact that we come to be aware not only of
the details of the physical world, but also of the successive process
on our part by which we have attained this knowledge, with the view
that our apprehension of this successive process is based on 'sense',
just as is our apprehension of the world. But the question remains
whether Kant is, on his own principles, entitled to speak of an inner
sense at all. According to him, knowledge begins with the production
in us of sensations, or, as we ought to say in the present context,
appearances by the action of things in themselves. These sensations or
appearances can reasonably be ascribed to external sense. They may be
ascribed to sense, because they arise through our being _affected_ by
things in themselves. The sense may be called external, because the
object affecting it is external to the mind, i. e. independent of it.
In conformity with this account, internal sense must be the power of
being affected by something internal to the mind, i. e. dependent upon
the mind itself, and since being affected implies the activity of
affecting, it will be the power of being affected by the mind's own
activity.[6] The activity will presumably be that of arranging
spatially the sensations or appearances due to things in
themselves.[7] This activity must be said to produce an affection in
us, the affection being an appearance due to ourselves. Lastly, the
mind must be said to arrange these appearances temporally. Hence it
will be said to follow that we know only the appearances due to
ourselves and not ourselves, and that time is only a determination of
these appearances.[8]
[6] B. 68 init., M. 41 init.
[7] The precise nature of the activity makes no difference to
the argument.
[8] In B. 152 fin., M. 93 fin. Kant expresses his conclusion
in the form that we know ourselves only as we appear to
ourselves, and not as we are in ourselves (cf. p. 75). The
above account, and the criticism which immediately follows,
can be adapted, _mutatis mutandis_, to this form of the view.
The weakness of the position just stated lies on the surface. It
provides no means of determining whether any affection produced in us
is produced by ourselves rather than by the thing in itself;
consequently we could never say that a given affection was an
appearance due to _ourselves_, and therefore to _inner_ sense. On the
contrary, we should ascribe all affections to things in themselves,
and should, therefore, be unable to recognize an _inner_ sense at all.
In order to recognize an inner sense we must know that certain
affections are due to _our_ activity, and, to do this, we must know
what the activity consists in--for we can only be aware that we are
active by being aware of an activity of ours of a particular
kind--and, therefore, we must know ourselves. Unless, then, we know
ourselves, we cannot call any affections internal.
If, however, the doctrine of an internal sense is obviously untenable
from Kant's own point of view, why does he hold it? The answer is
that, inconsistently with his general view, he continues to think of
the facts as they really are, and that he is deceived by an ambiguity
into thinking that the facts justify a distinction between internal
and external sense.
He brings forward only one argument to show that time is the form of
the internal sense. "Time is nothing else than the form of the
internal sense, i. e. of the perception of ourselves and our inner
state. For time cannot be any determination of external phenomena; it
has to do neither with a shape nor a position; on the contrary, it
determines the relation of representations in our internal state."[9]
[9] B. 49 (b), M. 30 (b).
To follow this argument it is first necessary to realize a certain
looseness and confusion in the expression of it. The term 'external',
applied to phenomena, has a double meaning. It must mean (1) that of
which the parts are external to one another, i. e. spatial; for the
ground on which time is denied to be a determination of external
phenomena is that it has nothing to do with a shape or a position. It
must also mean (2) external to, in the sense of independent of, the
mind; for it is contrasted with our internal state, and if 'internal',
applied to 'our state', is not to be wholly otiose, it can only serve
to emphasize the contrast between our state and something external to
in the sense of independent of us. Again, 'phenomena,' in the phrase
'external phenomena', can only be an unfortunate expression for
things independent of the mind, these things being here called
phenomena owing to Kant's view that bodies in space are phenomena.
Otherwise, 'phenomena' offers no contrast to 'our state' and to
'representations'. The passage, therefore, presupposes a distinction
between states of ourselves and things in space, the former being
internal to, or dependent upon, and the latter external to, or
independent of, the mind.
It should now be easy to see that the argument involves a complete
_non sequitur_. The conclusion which is justified is that time is a
form not of things but of our own states. For the fact to which he
appeals is that while things, as being spatial, are not related
temporally, our states are temporally related; and if 'a form' be
understood as a mode of relation, this fact can be expressed by the
formula 'Time is a form not of things but of our own states', the
corresponding formula in the case of space being 'Space is a form not
of our states but of things'. But the conclusion which Kant desires
to draw--and which he, in fact, actually draws--is the quite different
conclusion that time is a form of _perception_ of our states, the
corresponding conclusion in the case of space being that space is a
form of perception of things. For time is to be shown to be the form
of inner sense, i. e. the form of the perception of what is internal
to ourselves, i. e. of our own states.[10] The fact is that the same
unconscious transition takes place in Kant's account of time which, as
we saw,[11] takes place in his account of space. In the case of space,
Kant passes from the assertion that space is a form of things, in the
sense that all things are spatially related--an assertion which he
expresses by saying that space is the form of phenomena--to the quite
different assertion that space is a form of perception, in the sense
of a way in which we perceive things as opposed to a way in which
things are. Similarly, in the case of time, Kant passes from the
assertion that time is the form of our internal states, in the sense
that all our states are temporally related, to the assertion that time
is a way in which we perceive our states as opposed to a way in which
our states really are. Further, the two positions, which he thus fails
to distinguish, are not only different, but incompatible. For if space
is a form of things, and time is a form of our states, space and time
cannot belong only to our mode of perceiving things and ourselves
respectively, and not to the things and ourselves; for _ex hypothesi_
things _are_ spatially related, and our states _are_ temporally
related.
[10] Cf. B. 49 (b) line 2, M. 30 (b) line 2
[11] Cf. pp. 38-40.
Kant's procedure, therefore, may be summed up by saying that he
formulates a view which is true but at the same time inconsistent with
his general position, the view, viz. that while things in space are
not temporally related, the acts by which we come to apprehend them
are so related; and further, that he is deceived by the verbally easy
transition from a legitimate way of expressing this view, viz. that
time is the form of our states, to the desired conclusion that time is
the form of inner sense.
The untenable character of Kant's position with regard to time and the
knowledge of ourselves can be seen in another way. It is not difficult
to show that, in order to prove that we do not know _things_, but only
the appearances which they produce, we must allow that we do know
_ourselves_, and not appearances produced by ourselves, and,
consequently, that time is real and not phenomenal. To show this, it
is only necessary to consider the objection which Kant himself quotes
against his view of time. The objection is important in itself, and
Kant himself remarks that he has heard it so unanimously urged by
intelligent men that he concludes that it must naturally present
itself to every reader to whom his views are novel. According to Kant,
it runs thus: "Changes are real (this is proved by the change of our
own representations, even though all external phenomena, together with
their changes, be denied). Now changes are only possible in time;
therefore time is something real."[12] And he goes on to explain why
this objection is so unanimously brought, even by those who can bring
no intelligible argument against the ideality of space. "The reason is
that men have no hope of proving apodeictically the absolute reality
of space, because they are confronted by idealism, according to which
the reality of external objects is incapable of strict proof, whereas
the reality of the object of our internal senses (of myself and my
state) is immediately clear through consciousness. External objects
might be mere illusion, but the object of our internal senses is to
their mind undeniably something real."[13]
[12] B. 53, M. 32.
[13] B. 55, M. 33.
Here, though Kant does not see it, he is faced with a difficulty from
which there is no escape. On the one hand, according to him, we do not
know things in themselves, i. e. things independent of the mind. In
particular, we cannot know that they are spatial; and the objection
quoted concedes this. On the other hand, we do know phenomena or
the appearances produced by things in themselves. Phenomena or
appearances, however, as he always insists, are essentially states or
determinations of the mind. To the question, therefore, 'Why are we
justified in saying that we do know phenomena, whereas we do not know
the things which produce them?' Kant could only answer that it is
because phenomena are dependent upon the mind, as being its own
states.[14] As the objector is made to say, 'the reality of the object
of our internal senses (of myself and my state) is immediately clear
through consciousness.' If we do not know things in themselves,
because they are independent of the mind, we only know phenomena
because they are dependent upon the mind. Hence Kant is only justified
in denying that we know things in themselves if he concedes that we
really know our own states, and not merely appearances which they
produce.
[14] Cf. p. 123.
Again, Kant must allow--as indeed he normally does--that these states
of ours are related by way of succession. Hence, since these states
are really our states and not appearances produced by our states,
these being themselves unknown, time, as a relation of these states,
must itself be real, and not a way in which we apprehend what is real.
It must, so to say, be really in what we apprehend about ourselves,
and not put into it by us as perceiving ourselves.
The objection, then, comes to this. Kant must at least concede that
we undergo a succession of changing states, even if he holds that
_things_, being independent of the mind, cannot be shown to undergo
such a succession; consequently, he ought to allow that time is not a
way in which we apprehend ourselves, but a real feature of our real
states. Kant's answer[15] does not meet the point, and, in any case,
proceeds on the untenable assumption that it is possible for the
characteristic of a thing to belong to it as perceived, though not
in itself.[16]
[15] B. 55, M. 33 med.
[16] Cf. pp. 71-3.