Philosophie-Delor

- Philosophy – Delor: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/
- Philosophy: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/philosophy/
- A Reading List for Critical Thinking: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/philosophy/reading_list/
- What Is Philosophy: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/philosophy/what-is-philosophy/
- What Is Quality: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/philosophy/what-is-qualety/
- Minimum Standards for Productive Philosophical Discussion: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/philosophy/mindeststandards/
- Ethics: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/ethics/
- Hume’s Is–Ought Problem and Its Solution: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/ethics/hume_is_ought/
- Criticism and Reviews: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/critics/
- The Misconception of Utilitarianism: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/critics/utilltarissmus/
- Professor Hanno Sauer: The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/critics/sauer_moral/
- How not to Prove Hume's Law: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/critics/how-to-prove-humes-law/
- Satirical Criticism: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/
- As Free as a Turnspit: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/kants-idealissmus/
- The Two Dogmas of Königsberg-7: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/kants-imperativ/
- Expressivism: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/expressivism/
- Parfit and the Normative Parallel World: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/parfit/
- Thick Rules: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/thick-rules/
- The Gospel of Searl: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/satire/the-gospel-of-john/
- Publications: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/publications/
- About the Author: https://philosophie-delor.github.io/en/about/


This is the second part of a two-part critique of Kant. The first part — ["The Two Dogmas of Königsberg-7"](/en/satire/kants-imperativ//) — deals with the categorical imperative and universal human dignity.

##  As Free as a Turnspit

The civilisation of Königsberg-7, whose demolition was documented in [Part 1](/en/satire/kants-imperativ/), has since gone extinct. Galactic archaeology has never conclusively established whether the extinction bore any relation to the Königsbergers' philosophy. The Königsbergers themselves would have emphatically denied any connection. After all, their philosophy was not empirical, and the extinction was.

What the archaeologists found were three metaphysical pillars on which the entire ethics rested. The field of galactic architectural criticism classifies this construction method as "inverted statics": a technique in which the load-bearing capacity of a building depends on nobody entering it.


## The Gnab Gansen

The philosophers of the third galaxy to the left of the Crab Nebula had developed a cognitive organ they called the "Gnab Gansen" — a mental instrument that revealed moral truths through pure introspection. When asked how one could verify whether the Gnab Gansen worked, they declared the question meaningless because it was empirical. When asked why different Gnab Gansens produced different moral truths, they declared the deviating Gnab Gansens defective. When asked how to distinguish a defective Gnab Gansen from a functioning one, they referred to the Gnab Gansen.

The civilisation has since gone extinct. Whether this had anything to do with the Gnab Gansen could never be determined, because the investigating committee had conducted its inquiry exclusively by means of the Gnab Gansen. *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* nonetheless recommends the planet "for anyone interested in the architecture of intellectual dead ends. You will, however, need a space suit."

Kant's ethics stands or falls with the possibility of *synthetic a priori judgments*: judgments that say something new about the world and yet are supposed to hold prior to all experience. *A priori* means: before experience. Kant understands this to mean the conditions that make cognition possible in the first place: the forms of intuition, space and time, together with twelve categories such as causality, substance, unity, and plurality. From these conditions he seeks to derive more than mere empirical data — namely, claims about the essence of things, the "things in themselves," which are precisely what experience does not give us access to.

In doing so, Kant locates space, time, and the categories exclusively in consciousness, not in reality itself. At its core, this is a reissue of Plato's separation of appearance from true reality. It is just no longer called the Theory of Forms but Transcendental Idealism. Even the division of twelve categories into four groups of three reads like a continuation of those ancient idealisations that run from the Pythagoreans through Plato and Plotinus all the way into German Idealism.

Analytic judgments such as "all bachelors are unmarried" merely unfold what is already contained in the concept. They hold a priori but say nothing about the world. Synthetic judgments such as "water boils at 100°C at sea level" say something about the world but require experience. Kant now asserts a third kind: judgments that are at once substantive and independent of experience. His moral law is supposed to be such a judgment; the cognitive faculty responsible he calls practical reason.

It is true that we come equipped with structures that precede our individual experience. What is false is the assumption that these structures exist only in consciousness and not also in reality. That they are conditions of cognition does not prove they are merely subjective. This is precisely where evolutionary epistemology comes in: what is *ontogenetically* a priori — prior to the experience of the individual organism — is *phylogenetically* a posteriori, i.e. a product of evolutionary history (Vollmer, 1975). Our cognitive structures are not transcendental mysteries but evolutionarily developed adaptations to real structures in the world. Kant's a priori is not a supra-empirical authority but stored empirical experience. From the conditions of the possibility of cognition it does not follow, in any case, that these structures exist only in the mind.

Moritz Schlick argues in 1918: every judgment is either analytic or synthetic; a judgment that simultaneously goes beyond definitions and cannot be touched by experience would be, by construction, immunised against all testing (Schlick, 1918/1925). Hans Hahn demonstrates in 1933: the necessity of mathematical propositions is explained by their analytic nature; whoever wants necessity *plus* empirical content gets neither (Hahn, 1933). Quine pulls the floor out from under the entire arrangement in 1951: even the strict division between analytic and synthetic cannot be sustained (Quine, 1951).

Kant nowhere shows *how* practical reason arrives at its cognitions. He asserts a cognitive organ whose verdicts by definition cannot fail against experience. That the source is called "reason" rather than "revelation" changes nothing about the structure. Karl Popper calls the procedure of stipulating a result and declaring the source untouchable *immunisation against criticism* — and formulates its prohibition as a methodological ground rule (Popper, 1934/1959, p. 82). One might also say: Kant's practical reason is a Gnab Gansen.


## The Institute for Conditions Research

The universities of Königsberg-7 had a department for "Conditions Research." Its sole purpose was to investigate under what conditions cognition was *possible*. In three hundred years the department produced 42,000 papers on the conditions of the possibility of cognition, including several award-winning studies on the conditions of the possibility of the conditions of the possibility of cognition. It was the best-funded department on the planet, and it had never produced a single cognition.

Kant's philosophy does exactly that: it investigates under what conditions cognition, experience, and morality are possible. Even if moral action required freedom of the will — which the turnspit section below refutes — it would not follow what one ought to do. One cannot derive cognition from the conditions of the possibility of cognition — one can only learn *how* we may acquire cognition, not *which* cognition is true. Or, less politely: it is as though someone had founded an institute devoted exclusively to researching under what conditions one can play the piano. The conditions were excellent. The music was missing.

That Kant prefixes his philosophy with the label "transcendental" is worth noting. "Transcendental" — to *surpass* something. Kant's philosophy stands at the beginning of German Idealism — Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. That is no coincidence. It is the consistent unfolding of a confusion: mistaking reflections on the framework of cognition for cognitions about the world.


## The Turnspit

The inhabitants of Königsberg-7 had a theory of freedom. It ran as follows: if our freedom were merely freedom from external compulsion, we would be no better than turnspits that turn because they have been wound up. Therefore our freedom must be of an altogether different kind. To make this possible, they divided reality into two halves: one in which causality held, and one in which it did not. Morality was relocated to the second half, along with freedom, the soul, and a considerable quantity of unanswered questions that no longer bothered anyone there. Galactic architectural criticism classifies this procedure as a "metaphysical tax haven."

In the *Critique of Practical Reason*, Kant writes:

> "…and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter, it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which, when once wound up, accomplishes its motions of itself." (CPrR, AA V, 97)

Kant therefore needs more than turnspit freedom. He claims that human beings create their own character, without any causal determination from within or without (CPrR, AA V, 98). This self-created character must in turn come about without causality — otherwise it would not itself be free.

First, this contradicts the natural sciences: causality is a feature of reality, not a pair of spectacles. Second, it is self-contradictory: an acausal sphere that acts upon the causal world is a contradiction — either something acts causally, in which case it belongs to the causal order, or it does not, in which case it cannot cause any actions. Third, the question leads to a dilemma: every act of will is either determined by causes — then it is not free. Or it arises without causes — then it is not free but random. Schopenhauer puts the point: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

Kant's ethics of duty is thus, judged by his own criteria, genuinely no better than the philosophy of a turnspit. The turnspit keeps turning even when the meat has long since burned. The categorical imperative demands truth even when civilisation perishes for it. The difference: the turnspit at least works as long as the spring is wound.


## The Cosmic Notary

The Königsbergers had noticed that their ethics had a problem: duty and well-being persistently came apart in the real world. The solution was not to reexamine the ethics but to postulate a "cosmic notary" who recorded every morally correct action and arranged for compensation at the end of time. When the Vogons demolished the planet, the question remained to whom the cosmic notary was supposed to present his records. The answer was: to himself. The philosophers considered this sufficient. The physicists were not consulted.

Kant noticed the same problem and did the same thing. In the *Critique of Practical Reason*:

> "Thus morality leads inevitably to religion, through which it extends itself to the idea of a powerful moral lawgiver outside of man, in whose will that is the ultimate end (of the creation of the world) which at the same time can and ought to be man's ultimate end." (CPrR, AA V, 129)

A philosopher constructs an ethics. The ethics does not work without a supernatural guarantee. Instead of reexamining the ethics, he postulates the guarantor. The philosophers of the third galaxy to the left of the Crab Nebula call this procedure "Reverse Occam": the systematic multiplication of metaphysical entities to rescue failed theories.

In the preface to the *Critique of Pure Reason*, the programme is stated openly: "I had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith." (CPR, B xxx)


## The Enlightenment

That the same Kant writes in "What is Enlightenment?" (1784): "Have the courage to use your own understanding!" — deserves attention. One need only look at social media: everyone there is convinced they are using their understanding. Flat-earthers use their understanding. Homeopaths use their understanding. Conspiracy theorists of every stripe use their understanding — with a devotion that is hard to match.

What is missing is a methodological criterion for *how* the understanding is to be used — namely, so that its results can fail against reality and one is prepared to discard them when they do. Precisely this criterion Kant does not supply. He supplies the opposite: a method for shielding the deliverances of reason against reality.

That he labels this "Enlightenment" changes matters about as much as the fact that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea labels itself "democratic."


## Conclusion

Together with the two dogmas from [Part 1](/en/satire/kants-imperativ/), the result is an ethics that says nothing about reality but is embedded in every Western constitution. The foundation of an alternative is laid out in my paper [The Solution to the Is-Ought Problem](https://philpapers.org/rec/DELTST).

As for the inhabitants of Königsberg-7: their extinction, as noted, demonstrably had nothing to do with their philosophy. Then again, nobody has been able to demonstrate the contrary either. The cosmic notary's records were, regrettably, not to be found.


## References

Albert, H. (1991). *Traktat über kritische Vernunft*. Mohr Siebeck. (Originally published 1968)

Hahn, H. (1933). *Logik, Mathematik und Naturerkennen*. Verlag Gerold.

Kant, I. (1785). *Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals*. J. F. Hartknoch.

Kant, I. (1787). *Critique of Pure Reason*. 2nd edition. J. F. Hartknoch.

Kant, I. (1788). *Critique of Practical Reason*. J. F. Hartknoch.

Popper, K. R. (1959). *The Logic of Scientific Discovery*. Hutchinson. (Originally published 1934)

Quine, W. V. O. (1951). Two Dogmas of Empiricism. *The Philosophical Review*, 60(1), 20–43.

Schlick, M. (1925). *Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre*. 2nd edition. Verlag von Julius Springer. (Originally published 1918)

Vollmer, G. (1975). *Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie*. S. Hirzel Verlag.