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v*kants first analogy and the

refutation of idealism
by Mark Sacks

n what follows I will address Kants concerns in the First

Analogy and in the Refutation of Idealism. Because the
two discussions have a similar trajectory, it is of interest to
identify some of the dierences between them. As we will see, the
manifest dierences are indicative of more signicant underlying
dierences, regarding two ways of construing transcendental
proofs.

I
The Similarity between the Two Discussions. That the First
Analogy and the Refutation of Idealism progress in the same
general direction is clear.
The First Analogy (A182/B224-A189/B232) sets out to prove
that:
The apprehension of any change in appearances is possible only
insofar as this change is itself a mere alteration of an underlying
substance, which itself cannot be experienced to change.1

The Refutation (B274-B279) sets out to prove that:

Being conscious of my own temporally extended existence is at
the same time a consciousness of objects in space around me.

Both discussions are thus aimed at establishing: (a) the existence

of an independent objective domain (more robustly construed
1. This formulation diers in two ways from the statement Kant provides of the
principle he intends to prove in the First Analogy. First, I am deliberately omitting
the claim about the preservation of mass, since for present purposes discussion of
that contentious claim is not relevant. Second, I have chosen to emphasize that the
proof is conned to the limits of possible experience, to establishing how the world
in our experience of it must be. There is no need to make the case that this is what
Kant takes himself to be doing, but his formulation of the principle, in both editions,
does not make this clear.
*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London,
on Monday, 5th December, 2005 at 4.15 p.m.

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in the one case than in the other), and (b) that the existence of
such a world is transcendentally necessitated, that is, that it is a
condition of us having experience, in a more or less rudimentary
sense of the term experience.
Given this identication of their common brief, it is also clear
that both arguments promise to fall in with what has come to be
known as the structure of a transcendental argument (although
Kant does not use the term in relation to either of them). They
argue from premises that the sceptic supposedly cannot or would
not deny, to the conclusion that the presuppositions of those
premises are precisely things that the sceptic, confusedly, does
try to deny.

II
The Dierent Premises. Why did Kant add the Refutation of
Idealism in the second edition of the CPR? The mere fact of its
addition does not, of course, mean that there must be a dierence
in content. The proof is very short, less than a page, and might
well be seen as nothing more than a succinct restatement of what
has already been established. This sort of view is not uncommon.
Thus, to take an example from a recent commentator:
The refutation oers no arguments not already implicitly contained in the Analogies. Its addition to the second edition of
the Critique was for the explicit purpose of drawing out the
anti-idealist ramications of the Analytic, ramications that, to
Kants surprise, had not been appreciated by commentators of
the rst edition. Although Kant oers this section as a proof, it
is on my view better understood as the critical culmination of
themes developed in the Analogies. [Abela, p. 186.]

While this is right about the purpose of the Refutation, and of

its addition at this point in the text, it is less obviously right that
it can be regarded without loss as merely a rehearsal, oering an
argument that is essentially no dierent from that oered in the
Analogies. Indeed, in explaining its addition, Kant allows that
while the Refutation involves no change in the position, it is an
addition that aects the method of proof (Bxl n.).

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Given that the Refutation makes no mention of causality

and does not discuss relations of simultaneity between events
or objects, the closest parallel is surely with the rst of the
three Analogies: both discussions culminate in the necessity
of there being an objective world that is independent of our
perceptions. (This formulation is deliberately ambiguous between
two readings which will be distinguished shortly.) It is to that
parallel, then, that attention should turn here. And to bring out
the dierence between the argument of the Refutation and that of
the First Analogy, it will help to start from a dierence between
their premises. While the dierence in the arguments is not clearly
brought out, it is clear that there is a dierence between the
premises of the two arguments.2
We can roughly identify a common starting point to the
two arguments: that I am aware of alterations in perceptual
content, or of changing appearances. But these formulations
conceal the relevant ne-grain. The statement that I am aware
of alterations in perceptual content, or of changing appearances,
is ambiguous. The ambiguity can be seen most readily in the
phrase perceptual content: which can be construed to mean
either my own subjective mental content, or that state of aairs
given to me through perception, that objective content of which
I am perceptually aware. Thus my feeling cold is my subjective
perceptual content, and it being cold out there is a state of
the environment which may be given to me in perception. In
ordinary usage it is less easy to see the same ambiguity in talk
of changing appearances, but in Kant that phrase is precisely
ambiguous between empirical and transcendental senses: in the
empirical sense, to be aware of changing appearances is to be
aware of changing subjective states, whereas to be aware of
changing appearances in the transcendental sense is to be aware
of changes in empirically real objects. Correspondingly, the
premise in question, that I am aware of changing appearances,
can be taken minimally, to mean only that I am aware of changes
in my own subjective mental states; or it can be taken to mean
that I am aware of there being a change in those objective states
2. Various commentators highlight this: see for example Gardner: 181; Guyer: 2078,
279; Allison: 298 (who sees the premise of the Refutation as a more specic claim
that is included in the generality of the premise of the First Analogy).

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of the world which are given in perception, in those states of

aairs of which I am perceptually aware.
Now, it is hardly contentious that the minimal construal is the
one that is in play in the Refutation of Idealism. Kant explicitly
starts from the fact of subjective or inner experience, which
for Descartes is indubitable [B275]. He qualies this subjective
consciousness, saying that I am conscious of my own existence as
determined in time [B275], but the temporal ordering assumed
is only of my inner or subjective states. The premise remains
minimally construed, involving no more than that our inner
experience is temporally structured: in the above proof it has
been shown that outer experience [= the conclusion] is really
immediate, and that only by means of it is inner experience [=
the premise] not indeed the consciousness of my own existence,
but the determination of it in time possible. [B2767].
The identication of the premise in the case of the First
Analogy can seem less clear. Indeed, the principle underlying
all three Analogies is introduced in a way that can seem to fall
foul of just this ambiguity. Thus he says:
The general principle of the analogies is: All appearances are, as
regards their existence, subject a priori to rules determining their
relation to one another in one time.3

This formulation, taken on its own, would appear to leave

open the question of what is meant by appearances here: it
could mean empirical appearances mere subjective contents
or it could mean transcendental appearances, empirically real
objects that are independent of my inner mental contents. The
restatement of this general principle in the second edition drops
talk of appearances, referring instead to perceptions:
The principle of the analogies is: Experience is possible only
through the representation of a necessary connection of
perceptions.4

3. A177.
4. B 218.

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Although this seems less ambiguous, it still seems to invite

interpretation, particularly in the context of Kants system, as to
whether by perceptions here he means inner states, subjective
contents, or the objective states of aairs apprehended by those
perceptual acts.5 It is perhaps signicant that in this second
edition formulation of the general principle of the Analogies
Kant seems to have moved closer to construing the changes in
terms of subjective mental states.6
Contrary to this drift, however, the principle of the First
Analogy in both editions speaks of appearances,7 and the
discussion itself in the First Analogy, which is essentially
unchanged from the rst edition, makes it clear that he is
here using appearances in the transcendental sense, to mean
the empirically real objects of perception, rather than the mere
subjective states. Thus, in the rst paragraph of the First Analogy
he says There must be found in the objects of perception , that
is, in the appearances, the substratum which represents time
in general (B225); or later, For this permanence is our sole
ground for applying the category of substance to appearance
(A184/B227); or Substances, in the [eld of] appearance, are the
substrate of all determination of time (A188/B231). And then
in summarizing the results of the First Analogy, Kant writes
that the preceding principle has shown that all appearances
of succession in time are one and all only alterations, that
is, a successive being and not being of the determinations of
substance which abides. . . Still otherwise expressed the principle
is, that all change (succession) of appearances is merely alteration
(A189/B232).
This suggests that there is some lack of clarity as to what the
underlying premise is: it seems to shift between the statement
of the general principle underlying the Analogies, and the
specic construal in the argument of the First Analogy. A
5. On this issue of the appropriate interpretation of the general principle of the
Analogies, cf. Guyer 208210.
6. It might be an attempt to bring the principle of the Analogies closer in line with
the starting premise of the Refutation, which was also being added in this edition.
7. In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is
neither increased nor diminished (B224)/ All appearances contain the permanent
(substance) as the object itself, and the transitory as its mere determination, that is,
as a way in which the object exists. (A182)

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reasonable view here would be that Kants argument in the First

Analogy can aord this lack of clarity, because it runs on either
construal: it applies to any perception of change whatsoever.
Kant is asking after the conditions under which we can
experience a change or succession of states, and it makes no
dierence whether the change is of internal, mental states, or
occurs in the external object-world with which we are confronted
in experience. That this is so is suggested when Kant says
earlier, in the Aesthetic, that alterations are real, this being
proved by change of our own representations even if all outer
appearances, together with their alterations, be denied.8 It might
therefore appear not to matter to him how minimally we construe
the alterations in question.
Such a view of the argument is endorsed by several
commentators.9 And it stands to explain some of the obvious
anti-sceptical promise of the First Analogy: if even experiencing
the lapse of time between mental occurrences requires the
permanence of substance, then this is surely a strong candidate
for an anti-sceptical transcendental argument. It would also
suggest that the argument of the First Analogy has the
Refutation of Idealism as a specic instance of it the Refutation
resulting when the events and objects in question are taken to
be narrow psychological entities.10 While some such intended
8. A37/B53.
9. See, for example, Allison 1983: 298; or Melnick 1973. Despite this, in the chapter
on the First Analogy (199215) Allison connes his examples to those of change in
the external world (e.g. pp. 204.), and seems to overlook the possibility of merely
inner change from one perceptual content or state to another, even where it might be
used to counter his argument (p. 206). Melnick similarly uses examples that are all
of objective change in the external world, and says towards the end of his Argument
from Empirical Veriability, that space is as involved in this argument as time.
It is the coming to be of states of aairs in space to which it pertains. In this
sense the argument is in the spirit of Kants marginal note that the argument in
the First Analogy ought to be recast in terms of space (Kempt Smith, 1918, p. 361).
However Melnicks concluding comment to the chapter removes all doubt as to his
understanding of the First Analogy: Finally, it must be noted that the argument
from empirical veriability itself is not sucient to establish an important element
of Kants claim in the rst Analogy, for the argument only purports to show that all
spatial coming to be and ceasing to be requires the notion of substance, whereas the
claim of the First Analogy extends to the coming to be and ceasing to be of mental
states. (p. 77).
10. As we have seen, this is the line taken by Abela, for example. Guyer specically
avoids this conation, bringing out the distance between the argument of the
Analogies and of the Refutation (Guyer, pp. 2078, 279).

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generality in the construal of the premise could explain Kants

equanimity in the face of the ambiguity in question, there are
reasons for thinking that we cannot rest contented with it. We
need to separate the two construals of the premise because, as
I hope to bring out, the argument does not run equally well on
the one as on the other. It makes all the dierence whether the
events are taken to be narrowly psychological or not.
It should also be clear that there stands to be a strategic
dierence between these two construals of the premise in the
context of an argument designed to refute idealism and answer
a sceptic about our knowledge of the external world. The
more rudimentary construal does not go beyond the individual
subjects mental set, and to that extent is a premise that even
the Cartesian sceptic would accept. To this extent the more
rudimentary construal has all the obvious hallmarks of the
standard starting point to a transcendental argument. And given
this, it is not surprising that when it comes to the Refutation
of Idealism, Kant is clear in endorsing the more rudimentary
construal as the premise of his argument.11
But to assess properly the signicance of this dierence
between the two premises, it is necessary to see how the argument
progresses in each case from the given starting point.

III
The Argument of the Refutation. Kants starting premise in
this proof is that I am conscious of my own inner states, or
representations, as temporally determined. Of course temporal
determination might involve either co-existence or sequential
ordering. But since co-existence cannot be made sense of without
the capacity to recognize sequential ordering viz. that neither
follows or is followed by the other we can concentrate on the
latter. So at its most basic, the starting premise is just that I
am, or at least can be, aware of my inner or subjective states as
sequential.

11. That the premise is not doubted by the Cartesian sceptic is not to say that
it cannot be doubted. For a discussion of whether we can doubt the temporal
determination of our inner experience, see for example Allison 304.

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How does the argument proceed from this premise? Kants

proof in the Refutation runs thus:
I amconscious of my own existence as determined in time. All
determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. [But this permanent cannot be an intuition in me. For
all grounds of determination of my existence which are to be met
with in me are representations; and as representations themselves
require a permanent distinct from them, in relation to which their
change, and so my existence in the time wherein they change, may
be determined.] Thus perception of this permanent is possible
only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence
of actual things which I perceive outside me. ...In other words,
the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.12

The rst sentence of this passage sets out the starting premise,
which we have already identied. It is fairly straightforward to
see why, as Kant goes on to say, the experience of a change
between mental states, without which we could not experience
them as temporally ordered, requires something permanent as
the backdrop against which to make sense of the experience.
Without such a backdrop the two or more inner states would be
incommensurable, there would be no way of plotting them in relation to one another. (This thought is of course familiar from the
First Analogy.) But the next move is problematic, on two counts,
one more serious than the other. First, Kant contends that the
permanent in relation to which the transition between mental
states is plotted, cannot be a further mental state (an intuition
in me).13 It is not clear that this is right: a tickle might be superseded by a twinge, where the temporal succession is made sense
of in relation to an ache that abides throughout. There might be
a response to this, put in this way, since all three representations
seem to be in need of a unied backdrop in relation to which
they can be plotted. This however leads on to the next point.
12. B2756. The sentence in square brackets is the alteration Kant makes to the
passage in the Preface to the B edition, Bxl (p. 34, n.)
13. On Kants account, as he brings out in the passage, this intuition would have to
be a further representation for present purposes we can leave aside questions that
might be raised about this contention.

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Kant moves from the claim that representations require a

permanent distinct from them, in relation to which their change
may be determined, to the conclusion: Thus perception of this
permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not
through the mere representation of a thing outside me. But
the move from the necessity of there being some permanent in
perception distinct from the representations, to it being a thing
outside me seems unjustied. There is room for something to
be distinct from particular mental states that are experienced as
changing, while still being part of the subjects mental content.
(Indeed, it might still be part of what is given to me in inner
intuition.)14 What masks this possibility is Kants perceptual
atomism, whereby mental states are always discrete perceptions
or representations. Given such atomism it is indeed the case
that there is no fabric distinct from representations, other than
the fabric of the world, in relation to which the changing
representations can be experienced. Without that atomism, for
example on a Jamesian view of the stream of consciousness, the
waning of one representational state and the waxing of another
can be calibrated and so experienced on the background simply
of the indenitely rich, seamless stream of psychological content
that encompasses both, and from which both are abstracted. The
step from the need for something permanent that is distinct from
the representations in question, to that permanent being a thing
that is outside me, is thus enthymemetic: and once the hidden
premise is brought out, the proof seems to lose its claim to be
a transcendental proof, since the conclusion is no longer simply
presuppositional to experience: it is seen to rest on an hypothesis
14. That is, it is not the mere concept of an abiding self, a res cogitans. This bears
upon Allisons point (p. 2989), that Kant insists that we need an intuition of
something abiding, and not merely a concept of such a thing, on the grounds that
only in intuition are we given something determinate in relation to which temporal
ordering of states can be determined. The point is right (and indeed ties up with
a form of transcendental proof that we will return to later): the mere thought or
concept of me as a permanent subject would not be sucient. But it is not right
that this in itself forces appeal to something external as the permanent in relation
to which our mental states stand to be temporally determined. Allison notes that
Kant here rests on a Humean view that all we inwardly intuit are representations
and not the abiding self that has those impressions, but he does not note the atomism
that is in play. The point here is that the mere rejection of that atomism might be
enough to unhinge the argument for there being nothing internal that can serve as
the permanent required.

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(about the nature of the mind) to which alternatives are in fact

available.15
So much by way of discussion of the Refutation of Idealism.
It would seem that the mere consciousness of my empirically
determined existence is not necessarily at the same time
an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things
outside me.

IV
The Argument of the First Analogy. I turn now to discuss the
First Analogy. The argument is that if we are to be in a position
to perceive change, then there must be something permanent
abiding across the perceived change, and that permanent must
itself be something that we can perceive. Since bare time is not
a possible object of perception, there must be something that
lls time. And that something cannot itself be experienced to go
out of existence, or to come into existence; or rather, if it were
experienced to do either, then that change would itself have to
be plotted onto some further perceptual background. Wherever
the process comes to rest, there we will have a bedrock in relation
to which all change can be experienced to occur, and which itself
cannot be experienced to go out of existence. And that would
simply be to establish it as substance, not in the metaphysical
sense but in the transcendental sense. That is, the proof does
not establish that there is something that is the bearer of all
change and which itself cannot go out of existence; rather, it is
that there is something that in experience is only ever the bearer
of change, but which itself cannot be experienced to go out of
existence. Experience is so structured that within it there will be
something that plays the role that substance traditionally plays
within metaphysical systems.
Before we can judge the strength of the argument, we need
to ask what kind of change is in question here. We have seen
that there are two possible construals of the kind of change
in play. One possibility is that it is, or at least can be, only
a change in the subjects perceptual states: a change from one
perceptual state to another, or more simply, from one perceptual
15. For a related discussion of Kant and James, see my Objectivity and Insight, Ch. 3.

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state to its absence, or vice versa. And if that is what is in play,

then one might distinguish further between perceptual states
that are object-directed, and those that are purely qualitative
states. For the moment I leave aside this distinction I will
come back to it shortly. If the change is taken in this way, as
the change in the sequence of perceptions from one perception
to another, etc., then the argument would be that for those
perceptions to form a succession, a temporally ordered series,
there must be some way of calibrating them: and for that bare
time would not do, since In bare succession existence is always
vanishing and recommencing, and never has the least magnitude
(A183/B227). To render the perceptions commensurable, there
must be some abiding backdrop in relation to which they, and
the distance between them, can be mapped, or tracked. And
from this point on, all being well, the argument would then
run along the lines just outlined to the desired conclusion.
(But of course we have seen reason to think that all may not
be well: that such permanence as may be established by this
line of argument, need not be that of an independent object
world.)
The other possibility is that the change in play is taken to be a
change observed in the state of the object world: the change, say,
from perceiving two paperclips on a table, to perceiving only one.
For those two states to be commensurable, as they must be if
we are to witness the change, they must be experienced as being
alterations of a single abiding world that encompasses them both.
Without that they are disconnected from one another, with no
scope for asking even about which came rst, or how far apart
in space and time they are. And the same goes for any further
change, such as the remaining clip being removed, or perhaps the
disappearance of the entire table on which the paperclips lay in
the rst place. All of these changes can be made sense of only as
alterations to an abiding object world. And again, all being well,
the argument would run from this to the intended conclusion
about substance.
As we have noted, Kant himself does not distinguish clearly
enough in this context between these two dierent senses
of what is observed to change or alter: the change only
of successive subjective or inner states, and the change of
successive states in the external world. To the extent that the

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First Analogy is run along the lines of the rst, minimal,

construal, it does not dier from the argument in the Refutation
of Idealism (and consequently suers the same weakness).
That is, where the transition is only between inner states,
mere subjective representations, the dependence of them being
temporally ordered on an abiding external world may indeed
seem to hold only if we can assume atomism in addition to
the successive experience.16 Given psychological holism, there is
no reason why two successive experiences would be cast adrift
(an inaccurate metaphor in the context) in the absence of an
abiding external world on the background of which they could
be set. The unifying factor could then be internal to the stream
of which the succession of subjective states was an integral
part. The position is dierent however to the extent that the
successive experiences are presented as perceptions of external
objects. We can allow that empirical unity of consciousness
does not require calibrating those experiences in relation to
an external world, since they could be plotted in relation to
their location within the unied stream of consciousness in
which they both occur. But there is a calibration of contents
that would not be possible just in those terms. It is one thing
to be able to order the perceptions temporally, it is another
to be able to order temporally the perceptual contents in
relation to one another. Temporally ordering the contents in
relation to one another either as sequential or as coexistent
requires a continuous narrative history of those contents.
And for that to be possible, a unied objective framework
must be assumed, in relation to which those contents are
related.
Take a mundane change in the empirical world, say, the
window breaking, the paperclip no longer being on the table,
or the spots on the dice not being where they formerly were.
For experience of any such changes to be possible, there must
be a unied object-domain within which the states comprising
the change can be related to one another. Without resort to
an external world abiding across object-directed experiences,
the experiences would be rendered incommensurable, like
16. There is no need for present purposes to investigate further whether this reliance
on a particular psychological model is ultimately right.

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the contents of distinct dreams. This is in part what Kant

has in mind when he says, concluding the First Analogy,
that if the underlying substrate were to lose its continuity,
appearances would then relate to two dierent times, and
existence would then ow in two parallel streams which is
absurd.17

V
The Strategic Dierence Between the Two Arguments. There are
then two arguments to be distinguished here. One, to the eect
that empirically determined unity of consciousness (i.e. holding
all my temporally ordered representations together) requires
appeal to something abiding outside me. The other, to the eect
that experiencing the contents of my representations as related
to one another at the object-level, requires experience of such an
abiding world along with a substantial substratum to it. It seems
that Kant endorses both: the Refutation of Idealism clearly
advocates the rst line of argument, while the First Analogy runs
the second line of argument (perhaps not always distinguishing
it distinctly enough from the rst).
Keeping the two arguments distinct brings out the strategic
dierences between them. They dier in the strength of their
premises, and of their conclusions. Regarding the conclusions,
both promise an anti-sceptical result: the one, that there must
be an external world, the other, that that world must contain
substance which itself may alter but cannot change. However for
present purposes the relevant dierence is between the premises.
The Refutation argument fails to oer a fully transcendental
proof insofar as it appears to turn on a particular psychological
theory to which alternatives are available. The First Analogy line
of argument does not suer this restriction, and to this extent
seems more promising. But given that it is the more promising
of the two, we need now to address its weakness, namely that it
starts from a more substantial premise than the other one which
the sceptic might be able to reject in a way that he could not reject
the starting premise of the other. To that extent, it too threatens
17. A188/B2312. This seems to me a far clearer way of bringing out the point of this
passage than Guyers construal of it which seems overly complex (Guyer, p. 230).

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not to oer what we might want from a fully transcendental

proof.
Of course Kant, having reached the Analogies, would have
considered himself entitled to start from the assumption that
we have experience of an empirically real world that contains
objects that are empirically independent from us.18 That much
is after all established by the transcendental deduction. Ocially
all that remains for him to do in the Analogies is to apply those
general conclusions to the temporal dimension of experience. In
these terms, i.e. internal to the progression of Kants system, the
more robust starting point of the First Analogys argument is
not contentious, and is no longer one from which the sceptic can
distance himself. However, given the nature of the transcendental
deduction, we might have doubts about whether this is so.19 It is
commonly hoped that a construal of the Analogies might make
up for some of the obscurity and lack of conviction carried by
the transcendental deduction.20 And it is as well to see whether
the argument can retain any anti-sceptical force without reliance
on the transcendental deduction.
The question then is about the status of the premise, that we
experience change in the object world. As it stands, it clearly
seems to be the sort of proposition that the sceptic would not go
along with: since he is in the business of doubting our knowledge
that there is an independently existing world, he is not likely to
grant that we experience changes in that world. The premise
can however be construed less contentiously, and yet retain its
force.21
It is not necessary that the change involved be objective, i.e. an
occurrence in the real world which we perceive. It need only
be a change in what we might refer to as objectual contents.
By objectual contents I mean object-related contents that
are experienced as objective, leaving aside the question about
18. But again, see Guyer, pp. 207f.
19. These doubts might rest in part on the above points about the kind of perceptual
atomism Kant endorses, which is also in play in the transcendental deduction, and
partly on concerns over the even more contentious aspects of Kants transcendental
psychology.
20. See for example Strawson, 117121.
21. This involves a departure from Kant but then so does the worry we are currently
addressing.

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whether they actually are objective. And a change is objectual if

it is a change in such objectual content. This is still more than
merely an objective change between the subjects perceptions,
that is, the change from having one perceptual state to having
some other. It tells us something about the object-level narrative
running through the contents of those experiences. But even the
sceptic must allow that we do have, and readily make sense of
having, perceptions with such changing objectual contents (the
sky seeming to get darker, the noise seeming to get louder). It
seems phenomenologically undeniable that we experience such
objectual changes (whether they are objective or not). And this
is enough to drive the argument.22
Suppose I were dreaming: Within a given dream, with its
unied object-world, I can make sense of objectual relations, say
between the beach with the tide going out, and the same beach
with the tide coming in, or of two successive representations
of the same unchanged beach. I could even, within the dream,
experience the sea drying up and leaving a cracked sea-bed
behind. All of these are objectual relations that can be made sense
of because the presupposition of a single unied object-world is
being met. But I cannot make sense of experiencing the demise
of that entire objectual world. That dream-world can come to an
end, of course, and I then experience the dream having ended;
but I do not experience the demise of the entire objectual content
of the dream, since that would precisely require plotting that
objectual content in relation to what came after it but the
dream has ended. That objectual world cannot be related to the
objectual world then presented outside the dream, or in another
dream. The very question whether the dierent dream contents
are two snapshots of the same beach, or two dierent beaches
some determinate distance apart from one another is devoid
of sense. For that to make sense there would have to be an
assumption of an abiding external world.
The isolated dream-worlds outlined here model in a graphic
way what would happen in the case of dierent perceptual states,
22. It could perhaps be argued, further, that without some objectual or quasiobjectual relations between experiences, there could be no awareness of any change
in the content of perceptions at all, and that without that there could be no awareness
of there being even the change from having one perceptual state to having another.
This stronger line of argument can be left aside for present purposes.

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each with their objectual contents but with no assumption of a

common objectual matrix encompassing them all: they would be
cut o one from the objectual narrative of the other. We might
indeed say that without an assumption of an abiding world, each
perceptual state would be cut o even from its own objectual
narrative.23 The experience of a glass, or of a beach, would not
leave room for conceiving of a possible perception of this glass,
or that wave, breaking. Because conceiving even that change
would require plotting the perception of it, as a possible event,
onto an abiding object world. And even the Humean sceptic
makes sense of that degree of change in objectual content.
And so we reach the conclusion that the construal of
such change and relatedness in objectual content to which we
are anyway committed, carries with it a commitment to a
unifying object world that transcends those particular contents.
But this argument runs, we have just seen, even within the
objectual contents of a dream. The possibility of having those
dream contents changing objectually, commits us to positing a
unied objectual framework encompassing them, a framework in
relation to which those contents can change and which cannot
itself be experienced to change. If two or more experiences
are to have objectual contents, which contents can themselves
be calibrated (as opposed to the experiential states being
calibrated as contentful occurrences but regardless of their
specic contents), and this not just in terms of qualitative
similarity of the contents, but in terms of objectual relations
between those contents, then there has to be a common objectdomain encompassing the discrete contents.
Of course since we are now dealing with objectual contents that
are not known to be objective (ontologically independent of their
apprehension), this cannot be known either of the postulated
substance on the background of which they are objectually
related. Nevertheless, we have seen that as long as those contents
are experienced as objective, so too must the assumed unity of an
invariant substratum hold good. This is just to say that what is
proved is internal to the order of the object-world we experience;
it is substance in the transcendental, or presuppositional, rather
23. And so, to borrow Kants phrase from another context, it would be less even
than a dream (A112).

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than metaphysical sense that is being established. This precisely

shadows Kants empirical realism and transcendental idealism.

VI
Conclusion. The discussion above has concentrated on the
dierent premises underlying the Refutation and the Analogy,
and attempted to indicate how, despite the dierence in strength
between these premises, both premises can serve in arguments
aimed at undermining scepticism about the external world. It
remains to note a further dierence between the two proofs: the
method of proof in the Analogy, whether on an objective reading
or on the merely objectual interpretation, is importantly dierent
in kind from that of the Refutation. I will bring this out very
briey.
The argument of the Refutation as presented here, like
the standard construal of transcendental arguments, can be
regarded without loss as working out conceptual implications
or presuppositions; and it is in the nature of such argument that
it is not tied for its validity to a perspective or point of view. By
contrast, the transcendental proof at work in the First Analogy,
at least as presented above, is essentially tied to the point of view
of an embedded subject. It is only from the perspective of the
phenomenologically situated subject, experiencing or observing
the change in the object-world, that we can recognize the
impossibility of that objectual or objective change being given
unless it is also experienced as being a mere alteration of some
backdrop that remains invariant across the change. And the
conclusion of the argument is valid only within the framework of
a subject that is so embedded. In this, it again captures something
of the epistemic modesty characteristic of Kants combination of
empirical realism and transcendental idealism. There is no proof
here that substance cannot go out of existence; it is proved only
that its going out of existence is not a possible experience.
It seems appropriate to think of such arguments as
phenomeno-logical arguments, as opposed to ordinary logical
arguments. And the epistemic modesty of such arguments, their
connement to establishing merely empirical realism, can also be
brought out in this way. The argument runs for any subject so

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mark sacks

positioned as to have experience as of objective relations: that

experience will be possible only to the extent that the condition
of permanence across the experienced object domain is met,
whether that domain and those objectual relations are objective
or merely objectual. And this can usefully be put by saying
that the argument runs even subject to the phenomenological
epoche; subject to the bracketing of the external world, of
everything beyond the phenomenologically given content and its
presuppositions.
Much more needs to be said of course about the nature of such
phenomeno-logical proofs.24 For present purposes it is sucient
to have pointed to this further dierence between the two proofs
under discussion here.25
Dept of Philosophy
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester, CO4 3SQ
msacks@essex.ac.uk

References
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Allison, H. (1983), Kants Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and a Defence.
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Guyer, P. (1987), Kant and the claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. (Especially chs. 9 and 1214.)
Kant, I. (1973), Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.
Longuenesse, B. (1998), Kant and the Capacity to Judge. New Jersey: Princeton
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Melnick, Arthur (1973), Kants Analogies of Experience. Chicago: Univeristy of
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Sacks, M. (2000), Objectivity and Insight. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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of Philosophical Studies.
Strawson, P.F. (1966), The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen.
Vogel, Jonathan (1993), The Problem of Self-Knowledge in Kants Refutation of
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24. I have said more about this kind of proof in Sacks 2005.
25. My thanks to Lucy OBrien, and to audiences at the universities of Reading and
Middlesex, at which versions of this paper were presented.