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Rethinking Kant on Individuation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Eric M. Rubenstein
Eric M. Rubenstein
Affiliation:
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In the section of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection Kant writes:

Suppose that an object is exhibited to us repeatedly but always with the same intrinsic determinations (qualitas et quantitas). In that case, if the object counts as object of pure understanding then it is always the same object, and is not many but only one thing (i.e., we have numerica identitas). But if the object is appearance, then comparison of concepts does not matter at all; rather, however much everything regarding these concepts may be the same, yet the difference of locations of these appearances at the same time is a sufficient basis for the numerical difference of the object (of the senses) itself. Thus in the case of two drops of water we can abstract completely from all intrinsic difference (of quality and quantity), and their being intuited simultaneously in different locations is enough for considering them to be numerically different.

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Articles
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Kantian Review , Volume 5 , March 2001, pp. 73 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2001

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References

Notes

1 Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Pluhar, W. S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), A263/B319.Google Scholar

2 Gracia, J. J. E., Individuality: An Essay on the Foundations of Metaphysics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 179.

4 We should keep in mind throughout that I am not concerned with issues of identity over time.

5 Castañeda, H. N., ‘Individuation and non-identity’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1975), 133.Google Scholar

6 Popper too distinguishes these problems, and uses the distinction to criticize Anscombe and Lukasiewicz. But he then goes on to conflate questions of individuation at a time with identity over time. Popper, K.. ‘The principle of individuation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume, 27 (1953), 97–120.Google Scholar

7 Strawson, P. F., Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 119.

9 Gracia, J., ‘Christian Wolff on individuation’, in Barber, K. F. and Gracia, J. J. E. (eds.), Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 220.Google Scholar

10 K. Barber, ‘Introduction’, ibid., p. 4.

11 Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Leibniz, , Discourse on Metaphysics (New York: St Martin's Press, 1988), §8.Google Scholar

13 Leibniz, , Monadology, in Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, tr. Loemker, L. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1970), §9.Google Scholar

14 Leibniz, , New Essays on Human Understanding, tr. and ed. Remnant, P. and Bennett, J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 230.Google Scholar

15 Leibniz, , Discourse on Metaphysics, §8.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., §13.

17 Ibid., §9.

18 Leibniz, , Monadology, §9.Google Scholar

19 Carl Posy has helped me appreciate how deep the epistemic concerns run in Leibniz.

20 Leibniz, , Monadology, §53.Google Scholar

21 Because it is not relevant to my concerns, I will safely ignore Leibniz's views about the possibility of freedom, given the appearance of determinism.

22 Leibniz, , ‘Letter to Louis Bourguet’, in Philosophical Papers, p. 662.Google Scholar

23 Invoking a familiar point, this is to distinguish ‘Object’ in the weighty sense from ‘object’ as mere logical subject — the distinction between Gegenstand and Objekt. Kant's point would then be that while we can judge sameness and difference for sensible objects, we can make no such judgements about non-sensible ones. Nor can we make any claims about the individuation of such non-sensible objects.

24 Thanks to Mary MacLeod, Carl Posy and Jorge Gracia for help at various stages of this project. Additional thanks to two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions and comments.