1 00:00:00,720 --> 00:00:07,650 So today, we're going to continue with the critique of judgement, 2 00:00:07,650 --> 00:00:19,440 and in particular we're going to look at cance solution or explanation of the puzzle or the problematic feature of judgements of taste. 3 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:24,130 That was identified last week in The Analytic of the Beautiful. 4 00:00:24,130 --> 00:00:35,530 So remember, the strategy is that in the analytic certain features, the judgements of taste have are identified and least supposedly in the deduction. 5 00:00:35,530 --> 00:00:42,990 An explanation of how it's possible for them to have those apparently problematic features is given. 6 00:00:42,990 --> 00:00:50,130 As I say, it's just supposedly in this because material relevant to both of these projects is 7 00:00:50,130 --> 00:00:58,470 scattered throughout the critique in both sections entitled The Analytic and the Deduction. 8 00:00:58,470 --> 00:01:10,530 So the big problem or problematic feature of judgements of taste is what Kant describes as their subjective universality, 9 00:01:10,530 --> 00:01:16,210 or as he sometimes puts it, that subjective universalist validity, 10 00:01:16,210 --> 00:01:27,450 their subjective in his sense, in that they're not based on concepts and the perception of a property in the object, 11 00:01:27,450 --> 00:01:32,850 but rather they're based on some fact about the judge. Some feature of the judge. 12 00:01:32,850 --> 00:01:43,710 And in the case of judgements of taste, it's based on pleasure. And the points very much emphasised last week was that it's based only on pleasure. 13 00:01:43,710 --> 00:01:48,960 The pleasure itself is not based on concepts. The judgement is not based on concepts. 14 00:01:48,960 --> 00:01:54,150 Judgement is based only on the pleasure. And the pleasure is a pleasure. 15 00:01:54,150 --> 00:02:04,470 Connected with an intuition of the object, which, remember in his vocabulary, is a sense perception of the object, 16 00:02:04,470 --> 00:02:13,380 which is a representation of a particular rather than a general representation, which is what a concept would be. 17 00:02:13,380 --> 00:02:23,400 So judgements of taste are subjective in this sense, and they also have this feature of universality. 18 00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:39,440 And what that amounts to is that when you make a judgement of taste, you believe that everyone else ought to agree with you. 19 00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:50,810 Universal in the sense of everyone ought to agree. 20 00:02:50,810 --> 00:02:59,750 And as we discussed at the end last time, he get he appears to give at least two reasons why judgements of taste have this feature. 21 00:02:59,750 --> 00:03:12,260 The first is that they're based on disinterested pleasure. And so it seems to you as if your pleasure in it doesn't result from some desire 22 00:03:12,260 --> 00:03:20,960 for the existence or non-existence of the object that might be unique to you. 23 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:26,120 And second is this point that we argue over whether things are beautiful. 24 00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:32,330 So, as he puts it, we blame others who we just have bad taste. 25 00:03:32,330 --> 00:03:41,630 That implies that we think they ought to agree that everybody ought to agree. 26 00:03:41,630 --> 00:03:50,360 Now, as Kant clarifies in this first quotation on the handout, he says, 27 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:57,500 the assertion is not that everyone will fall in with our judgement, but rather that everyone ought to agree with it. 28 00:03:57,500 --> 00:04:06,860 Here I put forward my judgement of taste as an example of the judgement of common sense and a tribute to it on that account, exemplary validity. 29 00:04:06,860 --> 00:04:12,830 So that's important. It's not a prediction that everybody who looks at the object will agree with you. 30 00:04:12,830 --> 00:04:22,100 It's a claim that everybody ought to. And in fact, we persist in claiming this, Kant notes, even when we see that other people don't agree. 31 00:04:22,100 --> 00:04:30,620 That's the hope. That's what makes argument possible. We think everybody ought to agree, even though we see they don't. 32 00:04:30,620 --> 00:04:39,020 He thinks this is an interesting contrast of judgements of the agreeable in which even when we see everybody agrees that something's agreeable, 33 00:04:39,020 --> 00:04:42,530 we don't require that everybody ought to agree. 34 00:04:42,530 --> 00:04:50,810 So that he puts it in that somewhat paradoxical seeming way to bring to highlight this feature the judgements of taste. 35 00:04:50,810 --> 00:04:59,210 At one point we didn't mention last week is that Kant thinks this explains this feature of universality, 36 00:04:59,210 --> 00:05:07,400 explains why we talk as though beauty is a property of objects, even though it's not. 37 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:14,290 So the word beautiful is an adjective, which at least normally is grammatically an adjective, 38 00:05:14,290 --> 00:05:22,460 which at least normally is used to attribute properties to objects in various ways. 39 00:05:22,460 --> 00:05:31,130 We speak as if beauty is the property of the object, and he thinks the reason for this is this feature of thinking. 40 00:05:31,130 --> 00:05:38,720 Everybody ought to agree because this is going to be very important as we go along. 41 00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:47,000 When you judge that something has a property, you also think everybody ought to agree. 42 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:54,020 So if you're looking at an object and you judge that it is square, you also think everybody ought to agree. 43 00:05:54,020 --> 00:06:00,200 Everybody sees the object. That is odd to agree that the object is square. 44 00:06:00,200 --> 00:06:05,660 So cognitive judgements and not just judgements of taste or whether sometimes self logical 45 00:06:05,660 --> 00:06:14,000 judgements also have this feature of expecting or believing everybody ought to agree. 46 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:20,390 And that he thinks it's that analogy in virtue of which we talk about beauty as if it's a property of objects, 47 00:06:20,390 --> 00:06:23,900 that what that's what makes that way of speaking appropriate, 48 00:06:23,900 --> 00:06:30,950 because there's that similarity between judgements of taste and judgements attributing a property to the object. 49 00:06:30,950 --> 00:06:39,530 Now, as an interesting aside here, Kant uses this also to defend a kind of formalism about beauty. 50 00:06:39,530 --> 00:06:47,840 So he thinks it follows from this that colours and tones can't be beautiful. 51 00:06:47,840 --> 00:06:53,840 They can only be agreeable. And he has a kind of a funny reason for this. 52 00:06:53,840 --> 00:06:59,910 He thinks it's because we can't be sure that everybody sees the same colours as we do. 53 00:06:59,910 --> 00:07:08,210 The colours look the same way to everybody. So this is a very venerable philosophical question. 54 00:07:08,210 --> 00:07:17,000 How do I know that when I see red, I have the same experience as you do when you see Red Cat? 55 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,260 Thanks. We can't be sure that we do have that same experience. 56 00:07:21,260 --> 00:07:35,310 And so if the redness gives me pleasure, I can't expect you to agree because I can't be sure that you're having the same experience of redness. 57 00:07:35,310 --> 00:07:44,100 So it's a funny worry to kind of insist on as a reason why you're not justified in judging colours to be beautiful. 58 00:07:44,100 --> 00:07:52,380 You can find them agreeable. That's no problem because you're not claiming with judgements to be agreeable that everyone ought to agree. 59 00:07:52,380 --> 00:07:56,580 And he also says that the purity of a colour can be beautiful. 60 00:07:56,580 --> 00:08:01,650 That's OK, because that's a formal feature of the colour. 61 00:08:01,650 --> 00:08:09,220 It's not the quality of redness, but the undifferentiated nature of the redness or the purity of the redness. 62 00:08:09,220 --> 00:08:13,800 And he thinks all colours, insofar as they're pure, are beautiful. 63 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:24,940 But it's not in virtue of the qualitative character of the colour, but rather in virtue of the purity. 64 00:08:24,940 --> 00:08:33,540 OK. So universality, very important and very puzzling because it seems difficult to explain how you could be 65 00:08:33,540 --> 00:08:41,070 justified going nearly on your own pleasure in believing that everybody ought to agree. 66 00:08:41,070 --> 00:08:48,060 So, for example, you can't be justified by having perceived beauty in the object. 67 00:08:48,060 --> 00:08:58,800 It's not like the judgement that a thing is square. It's not on that basis that you are justified in believing. 68 00:08:58,800 --> 00:09:05,400 Everybody ought to agree because beauty is not a property of the object and you can't be justified in believing. 69 00:09:05,400 --> 00:09:09,930 Everybody ought to agree by having a proof that the thing is beautiful. 70 00:09:09,930 --> 00:09:17,730 Obviously that would would do that would justify you in believing everybody ought to agree. 71 00:09:17,730 --> 00:09:22,240 But as we saw last week, judgements of taste not based on concepts. 72 00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:29,160 And it follows from that, that you can't get a proof showing that something's beautiful. 73 00:09:29,160 --> 00:09:36,990 So that way of justifying the expectation of agreement is not available. 74 00:09:36,990 --> 00:09:45,930 And moreover, you don't make this claim based on evidence that the objects can please everyone. 75 00:09:45,930 --> 00:09:51,330 Empirical evidence, I should say. That's an important qualification. 76 00:09:51,330 --> 00:09:59,220 It's not as a result of checking doing a survey to see if the object pleases everyone. 77 00:09:59,220 --> 00:10:11,250 It's not on that basis that you make this claim that everyone ought to agree. 78 00:10:11,250 --> 00:10:15,630 And once again, we mentioned this last week that one reason why that's so. 79 00:10:15,630 --> 00:10:26,820 Is that that would also base your judgement on concepts, the concepts of being liked by others as one reason. 80 00:10:26,820 --> 00:10:35,960 So cance very typical of his approach to a lot of problems. 81 00:10:35,960 --> 00:10:45,350 Points out a number of features that seem to suggest that some phenomenon or some kind of judgement, some form of knowledge is not possible. 82 00:10:45,350 --> 00:10:55,190 And then he goes on to try and explain how, in fact, it is possible, despite these apparent obstacles to its possibility. 83 00:10:55,190 --> 00:11:04,280 And I think you can understand what he goes on to do as being based on an attempt to show that we are justified, 84 00:11:04,280 --> 00:11:11,930 though not empirically, in believing that everyone can take pleasure in an object that we judged to be beautiful. 85 00:11:11,930 --> 00:11:19,160 So remember, I said that the problematic feature was that we believe everybody ought to agree with our judgement. 86 00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:26,120 Well, connected with that is the belief that everybody can take pleasure in the object. 87 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:35,090 It's a well-known principle of cance mainly in his moral philosophy that if you ought to do something, then you're capable of doing it. 88 00:11:35,090 --> 00:11:40,280 So this is the principle sometimes summarised as ought implies can. 89 00:11:40,280 --> 00:11:48,650 So if you ought to agree with our judgement of taste, then we are committed to the claim that you're capable of great. 90 00:11:48,650 --> 00:11:57,890 Of agreeing with that judgement of taste. 91 00:11:57,890 --> 00:12:06,470 And if you are capable of agreeing with the judgement of taste, since judgements of taste are based on pleasure, 92 00:12:06,470 --> 00:12:21,110 we're also committed to the view that you are capable of taking pleasure in the object that we are taking pleasure in. 93 00:12:21,110 --> 00:12:28,990 And what he goes on to argue, in effect. Or when he goes on to explain, 94 00:12:28,990 --> 00:12:43,300 is how it's possible to be justified in believing that everybody else is capable of taking pleasure in the object that we are taking pleasure in. 95 00:12:43,300 --> 00:12:50,450 But once again, as I mentioned, if we're justified in believing everybody's capable of taking pleasure in the object, 96 00:12:50,450 --> 00:13:02,190 that can't be based on experience. We have to be to use the term I mentioned last week a priori, 97 00:13:02,190 --> 00:13:15,130 I justified in believing that everyone is capable of taking pleasure in the object that pleases us a priori justified. 98 00:13:15,130 --> 00:13:25,970 Remember, just means justified, but not based on experience. 99 00:13:25,970 --> 00:13:38,340 And I think the reason for this is to go back again to something I mentioned last week, that this is a claim about what is always the case. 100 00:13:38,340 --> 00:13:45,240 So, again, everyone can take pleasure in the object without exception. 101 00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:53,400 The claim is not just so far as we've seen, everyone can take pleasure in the object. 102 00:13:53,400 --> 00:14:01,570 It's a claim that everyone, without exception, can. And one of the marks of a priori judgements, right. 103 00:14:01,570 --> 00:14:07,170 Prior knowledge is that they are in this sense about what is always the case. 104 00:14:07,170 --> 00:14:15,570 Without exception, they have to be a priori justified if they're justified at all. 105 00:14:15,570 --> 00:14:25,680 Because experience only tells you can't tell you what is the case without exception, because it is limited. 106 00:14:25,680 --> 00:14:28,770 So if we're justified at all in believing that everybody, without exception, 107 00:14:28,770 --> 00:14:35,850 can take pleasure in the object, we've got to be a priori justified in believing that. 108 00:14:35,850 --> 00:14:41,400 And since he likes to assimilate various different concepts, 109 00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:47,080 he also thinks you can argue this on the grounds that there's an element of necessity to our judgement. 110 00:14:47,080 --> 00:14:51,660 The necessity comes in and the claim that everyone ought to agree. 111 00:14:51,660 --> 00:14:58,740 This is again typical of Kant of using the very same word as applies to mathematical necessity. 112 00:14:58,740 --> 00:15:05,490 So the claim the two plus two must must equal four to the notion of an obligation or a duty. 113 00:15:05,490 --> 00:15:12,540 He does this in his ethics as well, where it compares moral laws to laws of nature. 114 00:15:12,540 --> 00:15:22,980 Typical of him. But he thinks that the key point here for this is that because necessity is involved in the sense of we ought to agree. 115 00:15:22,980 --> 00:15:27,420 Experience can't justify that belief that everybody ought to agree, 116 00:15:27,420 --> 00:15:32,580 because experience only tells us about what is the case, not about what must be the case. 117 00:15:32,580 --> 00:15:37,180 But here, the must, as I say, is a moral must. 118 00:15:37,180 --> 00:15:46,290 Well, not the case of agreement, but it's certainly not a natural or mathematical must. 119 00:15:46,290 --> 00:15:55,920 OK, so I've summarised this at the bottom there by saying Point D. 120 00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:59,610 We can be justified in believing everyone ought to agree with our judgement of taste. 121 00:15:59,610 --> 00:16:07,470 If and only if we can be a priori justified in believing everyone can take pleasure in the object. 122 00:16:07,470 --> 00:16:16,410 So the question is going to be, how can we be a priori justified in believing everyone can take pleasure in the object? 123 00:16:16,410 --> 00:16:24,780 And this is in quotation number three, the way Kant puts it. It's from Section 36 of the critique of judgement. 124 00:16:24,780 --> 00:16:33,870 How is the judgement possible, which going nearly upon the individual's own feeling of pleasure and an object independent of the concept of it. 125 00:16:33,870 --> 00:16:40,020 Judges this as a pleasure attached to the representation of the same object in every other individual. 126 00:16:40,020 --> 00:16:48,960 And so a priori, i.e. without being allowed to wait and see if other people will be of the same mind. 127 00:16:48,960 --> 00:17:00,430 This is the principle question that the critique of judgement is going to try and answer. 128 00:17:00,430 --> 00:17:05,650 OK, so his answer is incredibly obscure. 129 00:17:05,650 --> 00:17:13,000 And a lot of people have a great deal of difficulty making sense of what he says. 130 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:17,830 I'm going to present one reading. I don't know if it's right. 131 00:17:17,830 --> 00:17:24,250 And it's worth taking a look at that of the secondary literature on this to get a sense of. 132 00:17:24,250 --> 00:17:30,910 Well, A, the difficulty that even the very best cat scholars have in figuring out what he means, but B, 133 00:17:30,910 --> 00:17:46,010 also the diversity of interpretations offered major work on Kentz Theory of Taste is by Paul Guire, called Kant and the claims of Taste. 134 00:17:46,010 --> 00:17:52,690 Another major work is by Henry Allicin called Cance Theory of Taste. 135 00:17:52,690 --> 00:18:03,250 Gaia has also written an interesting paper on this topic, which surveys a lot of the literature on it called Harmony of the Faculties Revisited. 136 00:18:03,250 --> 00:18:12,550 And that's in a book of his essays called Values of Beauty. 137 00:18:12,550 --> 00:18:23,800 But basically, Kant's answer is that we can be a priori justified in thinking that everyone else can agree 138 00:18:23,800 --> 00:18:31,540 with us or rather a priori justified and thing everyone else can take pleasure in the object. 139 00:18:31,540 --> 00:18:36,100 If and only if we can be justified in believing that our own pleasure arises 140 00:18:36,100 --> 00:18:42,850 from what he calls the harmonious freeplay of imagination and understanding. 141 00:18:42,850 --> 00:18:50,380 That's the bottom line. That's the answer. That's the explanation of how it's possible to be a priori justified, 142 00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:58,720 based only on your own pleasure in believing that everybody else can take pleasure in the object. 143 00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:04,330 Only if you can be justified in thinking that your own pleasure comes from the harmony of the faculties, 144 00:19:04,330 --> 00:19:13,350 the harmonious freeplay of imagination and understanding. 145 00:19:13,350 --> 00:19:14,910 So how does he get there? 146 00:19:14,910 --> 00:19:27,990 Well, one step seems to be that we can only be have this apro or justified belief that everybody else can take pleasure in the object. 147 00:19:27,990 --> 00:19:34,710 If we can be justified in believing that our own pleasure arises from some mental state mental condition, 148 00:19:34,710 --> 00:19:44,060 mental activity, which we can know a priori, Ibe, that everyone else can be in when they perceive what we perceive. 149 00:19:44,060 --> 00:19:46,740 That's the claim about the source of our pleasure. 150 00:19:46,740 --> 00:19:53,190 We can just be justified in believing that our pleasure arises from some source, some mental condition, 151 00:19:53,190 --> 00:19:59,700 which we can also know a priori I everybody else can be in when they're perceiving the object. 152 00:19:59,700 --> 00:20:05,310 Then we can be justified in thinking they will get pleasure to. Our pleasure comes from that source. 153 00:20:05,310 --> 00:20:15,700 They all share that source, that mental condition. Therefore, we can be justified in thinking that they can take pleasure as well. 154 00:20:15,700 --> 00:20:20,790 It seems clear enough. That's one step along the way. 155 00:20:20,790 --> 00:20:25,650 And this also recalled some remarks he made about its disinterest in this last 156 00:20:25,650 --> 00:20:33,900 week regarding our belief that the source of our pleasure can't be unique to us. 157 00:20:33,900 --> 00:20:45,660 The next step is the claim that the only mental condition or kind of mental condition, 158 00:20:45,660 --> 00:20:51,450 which we can know a priori that everyone else can be in when they perceive the thing, 159 00:20:51,450 --> 00:21:00,270 we perceive our mental conditions that enable us to apply concepts to what we perceive. 160 00:21:00,270 --> 00:21:09,330 So two kinds of mental states activities, conditions that enable us to make cognitive judgements. 161 00:21:09,330 --> 00:21:20,040 Those are the only ones we can know a priori. Everyone else can be in when they perceive what we perceive. 162 00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:24,570 And that also seems to be a claim along the way. 163 00:21:24,570 --> 00:21:34,530 And so, again, like I mentioned before, when we do apply a concept to what we perceive, we believe everybody else ought to agree with our judgement. 164 00:21:34,530 --> 00:21:40,980 But moreover, I provided our judgements justified at least. 165 00:21:40,980 --> 00:21:44,910 We're also a priori justified in believing everyone else can be in the same 166 00:21:44,910 --> 00:21:51,270 mental condition that enabled us to apply that concepts to what we perceive. 167 00:21:51,270 --> 00:22:00,000 So there's a parallel here in two respects between cognitive judgements and what's true of judgements of taste. 168 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:05,640 We expect everybody to agree. We think everybody ought to agree with our judgement when it's a cognitive judgement. 169 00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:09,870 And we can also be a priori justified in believing that everybody can be in the 170 00:22:09,870 --> 00:22:15,100 same mental condition that enabled us to apply the concept to what we perceive. 171 00:22:15,100 --> 00:22:25,100 This is the case of cognitive judgements. The additional step is that these are the only mental conditions that we can be a priori justified 172 00:22:25,100 --> 00:22:37,530 in knowing everybody else can be in when they proceed with the things that we perceive. 173 00:22:37,530 --> 00:22:48,360 And once you have that step, it follows that it's got to be the case, that our pleasure comes in, 174 00:22:48,360 --> 00:23:01,410 beauty comes from some mental state activity condition that enables us to apply concepts to what we perceive as in a cognitive judgement. 175 00:23:01,410 --> 00:23:09,320 I mean, that is a cognitive judgement to apply concepts to what you perceive. 176 00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:21,170 Now, Kent has a theory also very obscure in its own right about what these mental conditions are that he presents in the critique of pure reason. 177 00:23:21,170 --> 00:23:32,300 The first of his three critiques. And just going to go through this a bit. 178 00:23:32,300 --> 00:23:43,580 So in order for us to apply concepts to what we perceive there, to faculty's that for our purposes that are very important. 179 00:23:43,580 --> 00:23:58,760 First is what he calls the imagination. He seems to mean something rather similar to what we mean by imagination, but also rather different. 180 00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:09,710 So he defines the imagination as the faculty of representing an intuition that which is not itself present. 181 00:24:09,710 --> 00:24:16,460 And remembering what he means by intuition is not so different from what we might mean. 182 00:24:16,460 --> 00:24:29,490 But it's also very important for Kant that the imagination has an absolutely fundamental central role in sense experience. 183 00:24:29,490 --> 00:24:35,280 In particular, in order for us to apply concepts to what we perceive in a sense, 184 00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:48,440 experience, the imagination, as he puts it, has to combine or synthesise intuitions. 185 00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:57,800 That's a key point. Imagination combines different perceptual representations in order. 186 00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:08,100 And that's one of the things that is one of the things that makes possible to apply concepts to what we perceive. 187 00:25:08,100 --> 00:25:12,460 So take a look at quotation for on the handout. 188 00:25:12,460 --> 00:25:21,430 This is from the critique of Pure Reason, where he's describing an activity that he calls the synthesis of reproduction in imagination. 189 00:25:21,430 --> 00:25:26,860 And he thinks this is necessary in order for us to be able to apply concepts to what we perceive. 190 00:25:26,860 --> 00:25:34,090 So he says experience as such necessarily presupposes the reproducibility of appearances. 191 00:25:34,090 --> 00:25:44,770 When I seek to draw a line in thought or to think of the time from one noon to another, or even to represents to myself some particular number, 192 00:25:44,770 --> 00:25:50,200 obviously the various manifold representations that are involved must be apprehended by me in thought. 193 00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:52,510 One after the other. 194 00:25:52,510 --> 00:26:00,790 But if I was always to drop out of thought, the preceding representations, the first parts of the line, the antecedent parts of the time period, 195 00:26:00,790 --> 00:26:05,230 or the units in the order represented and did not reproduce them while advancing 196 00:26:05,230 --> 00:26:11,080 to those that follow a complete representation would never be obtained. 197 00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:15,550 Now that's actually reasonably clear. I think what he's talking about, 198 00:26:15,550 --> 00:26:25,570 if in your mind you're drawing a line you can't forget about or delete the first parts of the line as you're going on to the next parts. 199 00:26:25,570 --> 00:26:33,430 You've got to keep them there or as in his vocabulary, reproduce them a moment later when you're drawing the later parts of the line. 200 00:26:33,430 --> 00:26:38,230 Otherwise, you won't be able to represent the whole line. 201 00:26:38,230 --> 00:26:47,350 Imagination has to keep in this picture of things reproducing the earlier parts of the line that you drew in order to complete it, 202 00:26:47,350 --> 00:26:52,240 in order to represent a whole line. It's in this sense, 203 00:26:52,240 --> 00:27:01,030 this is one of the ways an example of one of the ways in which imagination has to combine representations to the 204 00:27:01,030 --> 00:27:08,020 representations of the earlier parts of the line that you drew with representations of the later parts of the line. 205 00:27:08,020 --> 00:27:14,680 Imagination combines these in part by reproducing the earlier ones. 206 00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:20,830 And that's how you get a representation in your mind of one line. 207 00:27:20,830 --> 00:27:31,450 Now, this is an example of drawing something in your head, but he thinks this also happens in sense perception. 208 00:27:31,450 --> 00:27:43,730 You have to remember what you're looking at and that it's the same thing as what you saw before across time as well. 209 00:27:43,730 --> 00:27:49,940 OK. So that's part of what goes on in our experience. 210 00:27:49,940 --> 00:27:57,740 In order for us to be able to apply concepts to what we perceive now, this is by no means. 211 00:27:57,740 --> 00:28:01,820 The suggestion is by no means that this is a conscious thing we're doing all the time. 212 00:28:01,820 --> 00:28:08,330 This is something the mind just naturally does when it receives sensory input. 213 00:28:08,330 --> 00:28:09,620 It combines these things. 214 00:28:09,620 --> 00:28:19,790 The imagination combines the different bits of the input that he puts in the manifold of intuition that we're getting combined. 215 00:28:19,790 --> 00:28:24,410 Certain parts in certain ways. This is one example. 216 00:28:24,410 --> 00:28:32,540 Next thing that happens in ordinary judgements, according to the first edition of a particular reason, 217 00:28:32,540 --> 00:28:37,130 is what he calls the synthesis of recognition in a concept. 218 00:28:37,130 --> 00:28:44,150 So he goes on to say, if we were not conscious that what we think is the same as what we thought a moment before, 219 00:28:44,150 --> 00:28:48,020 all reproduction in the series of representations would be useless. 220 00:28:48,020 --> 00:28:55,310 So that synthesis of reproduction mentioned earlier for it would in its present state be a new representation, 221 00:28:55,310 --> 00:29:00,180 which would not in any way belong to the act whereby it was to be gradually generated. 222 00:29:00,180 --> 00:29:06,680 The manifold of the representation would never therefore form a hole. And he gives an example. 223 00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:14,210 If in counting I forget that the units which now hover before me have been added to one another in succession. 224 00:29:14,210 --> 00:29:19,460 I should never know that its total is being produced through this successive edition of units to unit. 225 00:29:19,460 --> 00:29:29,180 And so I would remain ignorant of the number for the concept of the number is nothing but the consciousness of this unity of synthesis. 226 00:29:29,180 --> 00:29:35,780 So the thought is it's fine for the imagination to combine together various representations, 227 00:29:35,780 --> 00:29:41,270 but you've got to know what unites them before in order to apply concepts to what you're looking at. 228 00:29:41,270 --> 00:29:50,210 Indeed, that's what it is to apply concept to. What you're looking at is to group together the say, the five units as five. 229 00:29:50,210 --> 00:29:57,920 What unites them is that they are a group of five. The thought seems to be into the consciousness of what unites them. 230 00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:09,640 That is what the understanding enables you to do by supplying you with a concept that represents what unites them. 231 00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:21,370 That's the thought in the first Katik. That's what goes on normally in order to be able to apply a concept to what you're perceiving. 232 00:30:21,370 --> 00:30:24,420 Imagination combines different representations. 233 00:30:24,420 --> 00:30:35,020 The understanding supplies a concept that represents the unity that those combined representations possess. 234 00:30:35,020 --> 00:30:45,910 Now, complexity here. One of many is that the imagination and the understanding are working very closely together. 235 00:30:45,910 --> 00:30:52,930 So the imagination combines representing certain representations with these rather than those, 236 00:30:52,930 --> 00:30:58,900 because the imagination is guided by a concept of the understanding. 237 00:30:58,900 --> 00:31:04,810 So it's not as though, although reading out these examples like that might suggested, 238 00:31:04,810 --> 00:31:10,690 the combination happens first and then you just notice, oh, that's what it has in common. 239 00:31:10,690 --> 00:31:22,120 The imagination is guided by concepts in order to make the combinations that it makes. 240 00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:29,460 So this is just an analysis of what's going on. Not a sort of temporal. 241 00:31:29,460 --> 00:31:41,410 Series of stages. OK, this needs to happen in order for experience to be possible. 242 00:31:41,410 --> 00:31:51,730 Kat says, certainly needs to happen in order for us to be able to apply a concept to what we perceive. 243 00:31:51,730 --> 00:31:59,740 So it's going to be some mental condition like that that our pleasure comes from the beauty. 244 00:31:59,740 --> 00:32:05,800 But of course, and this is point D under number two, 245 00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:18,010 it can't actually be a matter of applying a concept to what we perceive because our pleasure is not based on concepts very important for him. 246 00:32:18,010 --> 00:32:23,530 So it's got to be something like I just described. 247 00:32:23,530 --> 00:32:32,600 But delete the bit where you apply the concept to it. 248 00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:43,070 The implication seems to be that it's just the imagination, combining particulars, grouping stuff together, 249 00:32:43,070 --> 00:32:53,080 but without then applying a concept that represents what those things grouped together have in common. 250 00:32:53,080 --> 00:33:03,610 Now, that, as I say, is a bit obscure, but. 251 00:33:03,610 --> 00:33:12,310 Paul Guya, who I mentioned, thinks he's found a passage where I can't actually gives an example of this happening. 252 00:33:12,310 --> 00:33:16,510 Can't hardly ever gives examples to illustrate any of the things he says. 253 00:33:16,510 --> 00:33:28,180 So if this is right, that would be very helpful. And this is the fifth passage on your handout, and it's from Section 53 of the critique of judgement. 254 00:33:28,180 --> 00:33:37,120 So remember, I said, see, the implication seems to be that we get pleasure from the imagination combining perceptual representations together. 255 00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:44,770 Well, in this passage, Cantor's talking about music and our experience of melody and harmony. 256 00:33:44,770 --> 00:33:49,180 And he says, although this mathematical form. 257 00:33:49,180 --> 00:33:50,650 So the mathematical, 258 00:33:50,650 --> 00:33:59,410 mathematically describable relationships between tones arranged in harmonies and melodies is not represented by means of determinate concepts. 259 00:33:59,410 --> 00:34:08,200 As we listen to music to it alone belongs the delight which the mere reflection upon such a number of concomitant or consecutive sensations. 260 00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:14,560 Couples with this their play as the universally valid condition of its beauty. 261 00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:22,450 And it is wet with reference to it alone that tastes can lay claim to a right to anticipate the judgement of every human being. 262 00:34:22,450 --> 00:34:28,870 But mathematics certainly plays not the slightest part in the charm and movement of the mind produced by music. 263 00:34:28,870 --> 00:34:36,070 Rather, is it only the indispensable condition of that proportion of the combining as well as changing impressions, 264 00:34:36,070 --> 00:34:39,190 which makes it possible to grasp them all in one. 265 00:34:39,190 --> 00:34:48,670 And to let them conspire towards the production of a continuous movement and quickening of the mind by affections that are in unison with it. 266 00:34:48,670 --> 00:35:01,900 The basic thought there seems to be that in just the way that when you're listening to a melody, you group certain certain notes together. 267 00:35:01,900 --> 00:35:05,050 That is the sort of thing that's happening whenever we perceive beauty. 268 00:35:05,050 --> 00:35:16,890 The thought seems to be it's that kind of grouping, but without a concept representing what unites them from which our pleasure in beauty arises, 269 00:35:16,890 --> 00:35:26,590 that the fact that there's no concept representing what these combined representations have in common is what counts, 270 00:35:26,590 --> 00:35:30,280 trying to show by talking about mathematics here. 271 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:37,990 So these things that you grouped together, the tones that you grouped together when you're listening to a melody, 272 00:35:37,990 --> 00:35:42,880 they do stand in certain relations to one another. That can be described. 273 00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:48,970 But his point here is that you're not representing them with a concept as standing in those relations, 274 00:35:48,970 --> 00:35:55,630 as you're listening to the music, or if you are, at least that's not where the pleasure comes from. 275 00:35:55,630 --> 00:36:11,730 Your imagination is grouping them together independently of the concepts that could be applied to it to represent the unity they have. 276 00:36:11,730 --> 00:36:22,350 That seems to be supported by his general model of what goes on when you perceive stuff is that you group things together, 277 00:36:22,350 --> 00:36:29,700 intuitions together with the imagination. And when you perceive something as beautiful, you do that, too. 278 00:36:29,700 --> 00:36:46,160 But you don't apply a concept or at the very least, you don't get pleasure from having a plot, a concept to the intuitions you group together. 279 00:36:46,160 --> 00:37:01,230 As I say, whether this is what Kant means is kind of anyone's guess, but this seems to be as reasonable a reconstruction as many others. 280 00:37:01,230 --> 00:37:08,900 This, it seems to be, is what the harmonious freeplay of imagination and understanding amounts to. 281 00:37:08,900 --> 00:37:21,540 It's play in the first place because you're not using imagination and just understanding to acquire knowledge, as you would if you had a a concept. 282 00:37:21,540 --> 00:37:30,930 So their cognitive faculties, faculties, whose function is to get your knowledge, but you're not using them for that purpose. 283 00:37:30,930 --> 00:37:43,660 You're using them in a kind of play. That's why he describes it as play seems clear enough. 284 00:37:43,660 --> 00:37:55,120 It's free play because the just the imagination is combining various representations but is not guided by concepts. 285 00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:59,410 In so doing so, it's free of concepts. 286 00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:11,050 It's combining these together not because some concept of an object is guiding it to combine them in the way it does. 287 00:38:11,050 --> 00:38:22,660 But it's doing so independently of that. Furthermore, why is it a harmony between imagination and sanding? 288 00:38:22,660 --> 00:38:23,560 Well, guys, 289 00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:37,450 take on this is that it's a harmony because the imagination here satisfies the understanding's usual demand for some combined representations. 290 00:38:37,450 --> 00:38:55,800 Even though the understanding doesn't apply a concept, and it's in that sense that they're in harmony. 291 00:38:55,800 --> 00:39:03,150 So that's what the Bahaman harmonious freeplay of imagination and understanding is. 292 00:39:03,150 --> 00:39:11,040 And we can know that this is a state of mind that anybody can be in when faced with an object, which we can. 293 00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:19,530 The thought seems to be because this is a state of mind that is required in order to apply concepts to the thing. 294 00:39:19,530 --> 00:39:30,180 These are acts of the mind that are required in order to apply a concept to the thing. 295 00:39:30,180 --> 00:39:42,420 Or at least they're of the same kind as those acts, then we can be confident that everybody else can take pleasure in the object. 296 00:39:42,420 --> 00:39:48,150 We're justified thinking. Our pleasure comes from harmonious Freeplay, a priori justified thinking. 297 00:39:48,150 --> 00:39:53,640 Everybody else can be in a state of harmonious Freeplay when they perceive the object. 298 00:39:53,640 --> 00:40:03,720 Therefore, aper are justified in believing that everybody else can take pleasure from the object. 299 00:40:03,720 --> 00:40:18,160 That's how justified judgements of taste are possible. Or rather, how it's possible to be justified in believing everybody ought to agree. 300 00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:25,730 Or maybe not because it's so obscure. But that's one possible way of going. 301 00:40:25,730 --> 00:40:31,730 Now, a number of points here that might arise often in Canada. 302 00:40:31,730 --> 00:40:38,900 At least my experience of reading Kant. It's not always clear whether when he is trying to explain how something's possible, 303 00:40:38,900 --> 00:40:45,170 if his goal is to establish that it is possible or if he's assuming it's possible. 304 00:40:45,170 --> 00:40:50,720 And just explaining how so we know it's possible is one reading a lot of the time. 305 00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:53,690 And he's just trying to explain how. 306 00:40:53,690 --> 00:41:00,950 So when he asks how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible, for example, how is mathematical knowledge possible? 307 00:41:00,950 --> 00:41:12,470 He clearly thinks it is possible. And the goal is just to explain how it's not to establish that it is possible. 308 00:41:12,470 --> 00:41:22,810 Maybe when you get that explanation, you also get considerations that establish that it is possible here to we might ask that same question. 309 00:41:22,810 --> 00:41:30,560 Is he assuming that it is possible to be justified in believing everybody ought to agree? 310 00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:34,340 And he's just trying to explain how that's possible. 311 00:41:34,340 --> 00:41:45,410 Or is he trying to establish as well that it is possible to be justified in believing everybody ought to agree with your judgement of taste. 312 00:41:45,410 --> 00:41:50,090 That's often something that's rather obscure here. 313 00:41:50,090 --> 00:41:54,830 I think at the very least, we can say he's trying to explain how it's possible. 314 00:41:54,830 --> 00:42:01,790 Second issue that arises from this is so I mentioned that provided you can be justified 315 00:42:01,790 --> 00:42:07,670 in knowing that your pleasure comes from the harmonious Freeplay of your faculties, 316 00:42:07,670 --> 00:42:12,080 then your expectation of agreement is justified. 317 00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:22,970 The question arises, how can you be justified in believing that your pleasure comes from that source on any given occasion? 318 00:42:22,970 --> 00:42:33,590 Well, Kant is quite open about the fact that you can't be certain in any given occasion that your pleasure does come from harmonious Freeplay. 319 00:42:33,590 --> 00:42:39,200 And in fact, this is similar to claims he makes in his moral philosophy about how we can never 320 00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:44,870 really be certain that we're acting from duty as opposed to from inclination. 321 00:42:44,870 --> 00:42:54,950 There, he says, there might always be some secret, unacknowledged interest or inclination that is really motivating us. 322 00:42:54,950 --> 00:43:03,440 And it's not our duty. And a similar thought may perhaps be motivating him here that unbeknown to us, 323 00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:13,350 we may still be motivated by interest or our pleasure may still arise from interest rather than from the harmonious Freeplay. 324 00:43:13,350 --> 00:43:21,690 So now saying you can't be certain is now is different from saying you can never be justified in thinking that it comes from the harmonious Freeplay, 325 00:43:21,690 --> 00:43:28,320 you can consider whether there are any interests that you might have and the existence of the object, of course. 326 00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:34,380 And if you can't think of any, then that might give you some grounds or justification, 327 00:43:34,380 --> 00:43:39,470 even if it's not certainty for thinking that your pleasure comes from harmonious Freeplay. 328 00:43:39,470 --> 00:43:45,690 So that concession doesn't sort of leave us in a total state of ignorance or say that we're 329 00:43:45,690 --> 00:43:50,820 in a total state of ignorance about whether our pleasure comes from harmonious Freeplay. 330 00:43:50,820 --> 00:43:56,500 But he does acknowledge that we can't be certain about the sources of our pleasure. 331 00:43:56,500 --> 00:44:03,240 OK, so that is the deduction. 332 00:44:03,240 --> 00:44:09,760 I like to finish by discussing what he says about judgements of the sublime. 333 00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:25,160 So in the 18th century, in addition to the beautiful, the sublime was a very important category of aesthetic property or aesthetic experience. 334 00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:36,210 So it sort of signified a kind of disturbing feeling or rapturous terror of the kind that you get when you enjoy the sight of storms at sea, 335 00:44:36,210 --> 00:44:45,900 ruined castles, volcanoes, waterfalls, hurricanes, all that stuff that the romantics would really enjoy. 336 00:44:45,900 --> 00:44:52,100 A lot of theories about it in the 18th century. 337 00:44:52,100 --> 00:45:01,130 And Burke, Edmund Burke, who's best known as author of Reflections on the Revolution in France and and as a sort 338 00:45:01,130 --> 00:45:07,100 of intellectual ancestor to political conservatives of certain stripe these days, 339 00:45:07,100 --> 00:45:16,370 early in his career wrote work on aesthetics about the beautiful and the sublime, which can't read. 340 00:45:16,370 --> 00:45:24,590 And Burke's basic thought was that we call something sublime if it causes a feeling of delight because it seems painful and dangerous, 341 00:45:24,590 --> 00:45:40,020 but it's perceived from a safe, safe distance. And he is going to have his own take on this category of aesthetic experience. 342 00:45:40,020 --> 00:45:49,350 So he thinks there's a number of similarities between judgements of taste, judgement of the sublime, which I'll just go through quickly to begin. 343 00:45:49,350 --> 00:45:55,470 So they're both based on pleasure, not based on concepts either. 344 00:45:55,470 --> 00:46:00,630 And they're or they're based on pleasure, connected with the intuition of the object. 345 00:46:00,630 --> 00:46:08,380 And not, as I say, based on concepts. Judgements of the sublime are also singular judgements. 346 00:46:08,380 --> 00:46:17,640 And he thinks they also possess that key feature of universality. We think everyone ought to agree. 347 00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:21,720 But lastly, most importantly for his discussion, 348 00:46:21,720 --> 00:46:34,410 he thinks pleasure in the sublime arises from a kind of accord between imagination and a certain faculty of concepts, but not the understanding. 349 00:46:34,410 --> 00:46:51,090 It's a faculty he calls reason and reason in his vocabulary has a certain set of concepts proper to it, which he calls ideas or rational ideas. 350 00:46:51,090 --> 00:46:56,880 And these are concepts of things that it would not be possible to have an intuition. 351 00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:08,370 So the concept of God is an idea, concept of freedom, concept of immortality, concept of infinity. 352 00:47:08,370 --> 00:47:15,060 All of these are ideas, special concepts associated with this other faculty of reason, 353 00:47:15,060 --> 00:47:24,420 not the faculty of understanding that makes helps make experience possible, could never have intuitions of these things. 354 00:47:24,420 --> 00:47:31,560 But we have concepts of them and they play some of them a certain role in various parts of our thinking. 355 00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:45,540 According to Kant, so moral action is only possible on the assumption that we're free to use one of the most important examples for him. 356 00:47:45,540 --> 00:48:00,830 But of course, we have no empirical evidence of our freedom because in the world of experience, everything is governed by causal necessity. 357 00:48:00,830 --> 00:48:13,040 So it's an idea in that sense. So these ideas are going to be important to his explanation of his talk of the sublime two kinds of the sublime. 358 00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:22,880 He talks about versus the mathematically sublime. And these are things that, as he puts it, are absolutely great. 359 00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:31,820 So great without qualification, those things in comparison with which everything else is little. 360 00:48:31,820 --> 00:48:34,040 And then he makes a rather surprising move. 361 00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:44,570 He says nothing we ever see is, strictly speaking, sublime, because everything we can possibly imagine or experience, 362 00:48:44,570 --> 00:48:52,880 we can also imagine being small in comparison with something else regarded in some other relation. 363 00:48:52,880 --> 00:49:05,570 However, sometimes inexperience, we perceive something that our imagination cannot hold in its entirety. 364 00:49:05,570 --> 00:49:08,840 So remember, I mentioned at the example of the line, 365 00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:16,820 you've got to hold the earlier parts in order as you proceed to the later parts of the line in order to represent the whole thing. 366 00:49:16,820 --> 00:49:21,500 Sometimes we can't do that with our imagination when we perceive something. 367 00:49:21,500 --> 00:49:26,690 Some things are just so big. You forget about the earlier parts you looked at as you're surveying the whole thing. 368 00:49:26,690 --> 00:49:33,800 That seems to be the thought. And it gives an interesting example of a travel writer who describes the pyramids and he 369 00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:39,980 thinks this is the reason this guy suggests that you stand neither too close to the pyramids, 370 00:49:39,980 --> 00:49:46,700 not too far away to appreciate them close enough so that as you survey them, you can't hold the whole thing in your mind. 371 00:49:46,700 --> 00:49:55,670 So you're near enough to it that it's just so vast that you can't get a representation of the whole thing by surveying it in your mind. 372 00:49:55,670 --> 00:50:03,530 That seems to be the basic thought. Now, these things are not, of course, absolutely great, as he puts it. 373 00:50:03,530 --> 00:50:18,530 But what they do is bring to our minds the idea of infinity, of what is, properly speaking, sublime. 374 00:50:18,530 --> 00:50:33,940 And the fact that we can think of it, think of infinity indicates to us that we have a faculty in us that is not limited to sensation. 375 00:50:33,940 --> 00:50:45,760 As he puts it, a faculty of mine transcending every standard of sense, namely reason, and that gives us pleasure. 376 00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:54,850 But we can only get that pleasure through a kind of displeasure at our imaginations, inability to contain the whole thing. 377 00:50:54,850 --> 00:51:00,610 Similar strategy goes with the dynamically sublime, which I'll just go through quickly, 378 00:51:00,610 --> 00:51:12,400 dynamically sublime is nature seen as something mighty and fearful, but which has no dominion over us and which we are therefore not afraid of. 379 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:27,250 So once again, similar to Burke, we see nature as dynamically sublime when we see something extremely powerful from a position of safety. 380 00:51:27,250 --> 00:51:34,270 And this cat thinks brings to our mind the thought of our ability to overcome nature. 381 00:51:34,270 --> 00:51:43,240 Where do we have the ability to overcome nature? Well, in moral action, we can overcome our inclinations. 382 00:51:43,240 --> 00:51:49,360 And he doesn't. I don't think say this explicitly, but it seems to be invited. 383 00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:59,410 Is the thought that we can overcome the order of causal necessity because we have freedom or at least we must presuppose freedom. 384 00:51:59,410 --> 00:52:05,260 In the case of moral action and the site of some really powerful nature over there that 385 00:52:05,260 --> 00:52:14,140 can't hurt us brings to mind this fact about us or this idea within us of moral agency, 386 00:52:14,140 --> 00:52:20,680 of overcoming nature within us and nature outside. 387 00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:30,670 And that, he says, is pleasurable, even though what we're looking at, it's fearful that thought of our moral vocation. 388 00:52:30,670 --> 00:52:40,630 And he puts it is a pleasurable experience. And that's why with the sublime, you have this combination of displeasure and pleasure and why, 389 00:52:40,630 --> 00:52:49,250 properly speaking, only the human mind is sublime, not nature. 390 00:52:49,250 --> 00:52:56,000 And it's because of this moral element that we can expect everybody to agree with judgements of the sublime. 391 00:52:56,000 --> 00:53:04,370 And that's because we can expect on moral grounds everybody to be capable of feeling for the sublime, 392 00:53:04,370 --> 00:53:09,620 because we can expect them to be capable of moral feeling. 393 00:53:09,620 --> 00:53:15,000 Thanks so much.