The Reductive Division of the Source
We return to Kant’s claim that pure concepts develop “with the opportunity” of experience. First, this means that these concepts would not develop without experience. They would exist ready formed in the minds of children and would have no need for the sensible manifold to be operational. Kant firmly rejects this hypothesis. Experience is the indispensable opportunity for the development of pure conceptual forms, as Zöller acknowledges: “[A]lthough experience does not constitute the origin of the categories, something about experience is nevertheless an essential factor in the transcendental deduction of the categories; for it is only with respect to possible experience that categories refer a priori to objects.”7
The question then is how to recognize and limit the impact of this “essential factor” without “falsely empiriciz[ing]” the transcendental deduction. The area of epigenetic unfolding sits very precisely – as we recall, along with all the difficulty it presents – between the production of experience by pure concepts (inasmuch as they are its form or condition of possibility) and the “exhibition” or “development” of these concepts by experience. How do we measure the precise extent of this “development”?
Zöller responds that Kant “limits the function of empirical factors in the production of such a priori forms as the categories to that of ‘occasioning causes’”8 whose action must not be pushed too far. Besides, the critique of Locke developed in §13 of the Deduction warns against this temptation. Kant writes:
[I]n the case of these concepts [the categories], as in the case of all cognition, we can search in experience, if not for the principle of their possibility, then for the occasional causes (Gelegenheitursachen) of their generation, where the impressions of the senses provide the first occasion for opening the entire power of cognition to them. [. . .] Such a tracing of the first endeavors of our power of cognition to ascend from individual perceptions to general concepts is without doubt of great utility, and the famous Locke is to be thanked for having first opened the way for this. Yet a deduction of the pure a priori concepts can never be achieved in this way; it does not lie down this path at all, for in regard to their future use, which should be entirely independent of experience, an entirely different birth certificate (Geburtsbrief) than that of ancestry from experiences must be produced (Abstammung von Erfahrungen).9
The transcendental deduction and psychological derivation thus have nothing in common. It is impossible to trace back from perceptions to pure concepts insofar as sense perception leaves no trace on thought that might subsequently give rise to a form of internal perception of the categories, a type of logical experience that would be the opportunity sought, the starting point of a derivation of the transcendental elements. Zöller emphasizes this point firmly: obviously epigenesis cannot result from occasional causes, and the discovery of categorial “content” is not of the order of a perception of thinking by itself. This conception would lead to a “physiology of human understanding,” in other words, to a pure and simple psychologism.
Note 4275 is absolutely clear on this point. We recall that in it Kant distinguishes epigenesis first from preformationism (Crusius), then from dogmatic idealism that denies the role of experience (Plato/Malebranche), and lastly from the empiricism that considers that concepts and judgments are founded on “impressions” (Aristotle/Locke). Epigenesis allows for the development of the transcendental, but this development cannot come from innatism, nor from a pure intellectual intuition, nor from experience.
Hence we again run up against the difficulty for which it seems that Zöller has but one solution. In order to protect both the idea of a presence triggered by experience and the idea of the purity of epigenesis, it is necessary to isolate the true site of epigenesis as strictly as possible, identifying and limiting its source very clearly in order to better restrict its playing field.
Rejecting “Empiricist” Readings
Zöller claims that however interpreters have apprehended the production relation, they have all accorded too extensive a role to experience. This is especially the case in readings by Judy Wubnig, A.C. Genova, and Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer. We shall spend some time considering these readings.
“Form of the materials” and “epistemological environment”
Zöller argues that in Judy Wubnig’s article “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” she makes the mistake of comparing the mind to a living organism and explaining the analogy in §27 by asserting that the categories form the relation to objects while themselves being subject to a formation process.10 According to Wubnig, epigenesis is a “theory that living organisms have the ability to take in materials and reform them.”11 Thus, for example, “the cow has the ability to take in grass and water and to form flesh, blood, bone, milk, etc.”12 The animal “forms herself from the materials she takes in.”13 She adds: “Caspar Wolff and Johann Blumenbach, who were major proponents of the theory of epigenesis, emphasized that the living organism has the power to form materials in this way. Wolff called this the ‘vis essentialis’ and Blumenbach called it the ‘formative drive’ (‘der Bildungstrieb’ or ‘nisus formativus’).”14
In this interpretation, Kant treats the mind as analogous to a living organism since “it has the power to form materials (sensible intuitions) into objective experience, and the categories are the principles of the organization of these materials.”15 The mind would therefore be both formative and formed. Zöller calls this conception a “constructivist phenomenalism,” a theory of the fabrication – facticity – that concurs with a “neo-empiricism” that is unacceptable within the framework of transcendental philosophy.16
In “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” A.C. Genova also undertakes an overly biologizing interpretation of the transcendental in which we shall see that he corroborates many of the points in the contemporary “skeptical argument.” In contrast to Wubnig, Genova emphasizes the production of knowledge over the production of the “material” elements of the mind. He makes reference to post-Darwinism17 – we’ll return to the legitimacy of this move – and highlights the importance of adaptation in the growth process. He seeks to explain how the theory of epigenesis argues that the complex adult organism results from the gradual self-differentiation of a relatively simple embryo in an appropriate environment.18 This approach emphasizes the idea of adjustment: the formative activity must develop in a favorable environment to which it adapts. By analogy with this adaptive economy, it is evident that once the categorial agreement has been produced, it also adapts to its environment (its “epistemological environment”19) and adjusts itself to experience via some reworking.
Genova anticipates in a very interesting manner the contemporary meaning of epigenetics as a set of non-genetic transformation mechanisms of the organism. He writes: “Biological epigenesis and transcendental idealism function in analogous ways in their respective contexts. [. . .] The epigenetic explanation functions as a synthetic principle of dynamic interaction by means of which external environmental factors and internal genetic potentialities are related [. . .].”20 Similarly,
Kant’s principle of self-consciousness serves as a principle of interaction between the activity of intelligence and the manifold of empirical data resulting in self-produced, progressive differentiations of objectivity. Its “epigenetic” products are objects of knowledge. Analogous to the development of a biological organism, our mental faculties develop under the influence of the epistemological “environment,” i.e., our process of thinking, as stimulated by sensation, differentiates itself progressively.21
Again, Zöller is highly critical of this type of approach, in which Kant is supposed to have anticipated the perspective of neo-Darwinism by allowing the idea of environmental factors of the transcendental. Zöller argues that “the notion of knowledge’s progressive self-differentiation cannot be claimed as a well-founded interpretation of transcendental epigenesis.”22 This excessive “biologization” can only alter the purity of a prior
i production and generation.
Original acquisition and derived acquisition
Zöller considers de Vleeschauwer’s interpretation in his book La Déduction transcendantale dans l’œuvre de Kant to be more acceptable, even if ultimately no more convincing.23 De Vleeschauwer sets out to illuminate the meaning of the analogy by referring to the distinction Kant draws between “original acquisition” and “derived acquisition” in Response to Eberhard (1790), discussed in the introduction.24
This distinction is borrowed from the legal field. In The Doctrine of Right, Kant defines original acquisition as taking possession of an object of choice that has never belonged to anyone. By contrast, derived acquisition is taking the possession of a good that previously belonged to someone. Kant emphasizes the fact that the first acquisition opens the history of a good (the history of future property), but that it is not itself “based [. . .] on history.”25 It is derived from pure “principles.”26 These “moments,” he continues, are:
1. Apprehension of an object that belongs to no one [. . .]; 2. Giving a sign (declaratio) of my possession of this object and of my act of choice, to exclude everyone else from it; 3. Appropriation (appropriatio) as the act of a general will (in Idea) giving an external law through which everyone is bound to agree with my choice.27
The concept of original acquisition makes it possible to think the existence of an intermediary instance between something that will never be acquired, a sort of permanent property, without an appropriation process, and that which is acquired after a series of other acquisitions (“derived acquisition”). If this situation is transposed into the field of cognition, we can see that, like original acquisition, epigenesis is situated between an innate property and a reappropriation.
Epigenetic production is just that – a production that assumes an act of appropriation, namely the appropriation by the mind from exactly that which it produces – which is another definition of its spontaneity. This appropriation assumes a movement, an extension, and a time. And yet it is not derived. The mind is the first and only acquirer of its own product. De Vleeschauwer calls this type of epigenesis “generatio originaria.”28
De Vleeschauwer connects this generation to its focus: for Kant there is certainly an innate ground to the faculty of knowledge, which relates to the constitution of the mind via the dual structure of receptivity and spontaneity. Acquisition occurs starting from this base that is innate, unknowable, and unintelligible in itself. The pure forms of cognition (pure intuitions, categories, and principles) are not contained in this base – otherwise it would be a matter of innatism or preformationism. But they relate to it as their condition of possibility. The playing field of epigenesis is thus situated between an innate ground and the constitution of the pure elements of cognition.
De Vleeschauwer goes on to explain that it would be wrong to think, however, that experience has no generating power in the production of a priori determinations. The production of the categories and the agreement with appearances is not only the objectification of their base or foundation. It contains something “more” than that which is contained in the focus. Experience solicits epigenetic unfolding and thus assumes an active role in it. The analogy with epigenesis makes it possible to “mark the fact that the original acquisition is made through the direct solicitation of experience. Consequently, this term evokes Kant’s simultaneous opposition to empiricism and innatism.”29
In Zöller’s view, the unacceptable argument is the idea that experience plays a role in soliciting epigenesis, which appears to distance it from its focus. He posits that to attribute a truly generative function to experience (as if it in some sense drew out the categories, as if it called for their birth) amounts to “assimilat[ing] transcendental epigenesis to the illegitimate concept of an equivocal generation of a priori forms out of an a posteriori material.”30
Some Reminders about Metaphysical Knowledge
How then can we identify and define the relationship of the a priori and the a posteriori in transcendental epigenesis? How can we avoid “falsely empiricizing” transcendental epigenesis?
As I have said, Zöller insists on the need to further circumscribe the source, to situate the focus more carefully, and to further limit the pure generating power.
To understand the analogy in §27, it is necessary to recall that transcendental philosophy is an “epistemology of metaphysical knowledge.”31 Indeed, Zöller proposes that we understand Kant’s question regarding the foundation from the very specific demands of this epistemology. Metaphysical knowledge is unique in that it is “1) a priori as opposed to the a posteriori knowledge of the empirical sciences; 2) synthetic as opposed to the analytic knowledge of logic; and [. . .] 3) discursive as opposed to the intuitive knowledge of mathematics.”32
What is the relation between this definition and the problem presented in §27? Unlike logic and mathematics, metaphysics, as a priori discursive knowledge, must understand the relation to the objects whose definitions it presents in and by itself.
It is Kant’s original insight, historically developed between the Inaugural Dissertation (1770) and the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), that the two peculiarities of metaphysical knowledge, its a priori origin and its a priori objective reference, are intimately related and cannot be accounted for separately.33
Nevertheless, the articulation of these two constitutive features, the origin and the a priori reference, must be justified. Indeed, discursive knowledge is knowledge by concepts alone, which means that it is not related to any intuition. How then can it be proven that the a priori forms refer to experience? This is exactly what the transcendental deduction is intended to prove. But the deduction is split: Kant distinguishes between the “metaphysical” deduction and the strictly “transcendental” deduction. The split in the source starts here. In order to better situate the focus of epigenesis, Zöller will show that it appears in the development of only one of the “two” deductions, namely the Transcendental Deduction.
The Metaphysical Deduction and the Transcendental Deduction
What are these two deductions? Kant explains: “In the metaphysical deduction the origin of the a priori categories in general was established through their complete coincidence with the universal logical functions of thinking; in the transcendental deduction, however, their possibility as a priori cognitions of objects of an intuition in general was exhibited (§20, §21).”34 Zöller interprets this distinction as follows: the metaphysical deduction is about the problem of origin understood as the first base or focus; the question of the innateness and thus the impenetrable nature of the structure of our cognitive power. The transcendental deduction is, for its part, about the proof of the a priori reference of the categories to objects. “The unintelligibility of our cognitive constitution pertains directly only to the issue of a priori origin as addressed in a metaphysical deduction. The issue of the objective reference [the agreement of the categories to objects], the genuine concern of a transcendental deduction, is not directly affected by it.”35 Zöller even goes so far as to say that epigenesis is concerned only with the objective reference of the categories, not the categories themselves, whose origin would then be dealt with properly in the metaphysical deduction.
It is this a priori reference of the categories to possible experience (experience considered in its principal conditions) that is disclosed in the transcendental deduction and figuratively represented in the phrase, “the epigenesis of pure reason.” There is “epigenesis of pure reason” insofar as the understanding generates a priori knowledge concerning possible experience. This generation of non-empirical, metaphysical knowledge of possible experience comes about in what Kant considers the “first application” (B152) of the understanding to sensibility.36
Epigenesis is only about the agreement, the Übereinstimmung, and not, he repeats, about “the essence” of the categories.
The analogy of generation is therefore concerned not with the origin of the ca
tegories (which are not, strictly speaking, engendered), but rather with their objective reference only. In other words, there is no epigenesis of the categories, there is only an epigenesis of the relation of the categories to objects. I should add that the metaphysical deduction also covers the dual problem of the origin of the categories and the agreement of the categories with the objects; it reveals the dynamic relation between the two. But epigenesis, developed solely in the transcendental deduction, deals only with the second problem. And this is supposed to prove that the transcendental is well and truly founded and that it exhibits no instability, nor any facticity. “Correlation” – the objective reference in this instance – is well rooted in a ground more ancient than itself, a legitimate ground that is also recognized in the metaphysical deduction.
Preformed Epigenesis
Zöller grants this ground, this innate focus, the role of a restrictive condition that leaves epigenesis very little initiative. The unfathomable nature of the foundational structure of our cognitive power limits a priori production. Epigenesis is autonomous, and yet it is not free. Epigenesis cannot do as it wishes.
Zöller argues that Kant cannot explain why we have these specific categories and them alone, nor why we have only these types of judgments. Indeed in §21 Kant writes:
[F]or the peculiarity of our understanding, that it is able to bring about the unity of apperception a priori only by means of the categories and only through precisely this kind and number of them, a further ground may be offered just as little as one can be offered for why we have precisely these and no other functions for judgment or for why space and time are the sole forms of our possible intuition.37
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 8