metonymy4u

Kant’s stance on the ontology of practical reason is the source of infinite debate. Some read Kant’s first critique as limited to the epistemology of science, others view it as the foundation of all subsequent critiques. Those in the first camp would say that Kant firmly believed that we can, through the practical faculty of a rational free agent, create a noumenal existence for ourselves that goes beyond the phenomenology of mere acceptance (description). Others hold that Kant was indeed attempting to destroy ontology (metaphysics) where-ever he encountered it, including the ethical sphere. Where then does the confusion lie? Bergson suggests it lies in Kant’s confusion about space and time. By describing our most basic experiences in terms of separable intuitions (space for outer, time for inner) Kant supposedly confused the issue of how an ought can be related to an is. The categorical separation of epistemological entities (ought and is) correlates to an overall habit of epistemological separation (seen also in the space/time separation), which opens the door to rationalism in ethics, though it be banished from speculation (description).

Perhaps it works like this?

We see how things change and tend to think of them as changing in number (but not in type) or changing in type (but not in number). To conceive categories of type and number (what Bergson called qualitative and quantitative multiplicities, respectively) is evolutionarily adaptive.

(Remember: Kant did not have access to Darwin!).

But to reify them is error. Because in order to understand number, I must understand distinctness: one apple here and another one there.

I must possess the habit of time prior to the habit of space. Because it is only by remembering the “past” that I can compare one apple to another. Without time, I would just see apple….apple. Not this apple…. and now that apple. This is why time for Bergson is the primary awareness. Not as some internal version of space. Not some token of primary intuition, of which space is also a token. Time is primary intuition for Bergson.

Having broken down the categorical descriptions of space and time, we can now see both description and duty along a spectrum. Which indeed is how a child experiences it: as she grows she learns to name, then learns to appreciate. But there is no one point in “time” when she jumps from one to the other. The process is an evolution.

So too for us: I can describe a chair, I can paint a chair, and I can debate the uses of the chair.

Tell me please exactly when one of those events begins and another one ends?