「観念論論駁」に基づくカント的自己認識論の考察

抄録

The aim of this paper is to understand Kant’s argument in the chapter “Refutation of Idealism” in the Critique of Pure Reason.

In “Refutation of Idealism,” Kant claims that experience of external objects is required for making a judgment about the temporal relation of one’s own inner mental episodes. Paul Guyer and Georges Dicker proposed an influential way of understanding this controversial claim. According to their interpretation, Kant claims that one can make such a judgment (e.g., I saw a desk after seeing a chair) only by appealing to some objective states of affairs (the desk was brought into the room after the chair had been removed). However, many commentators claim that there are many counterexamples against this interpretation. For instance, memory often contains sufficient information to make a judgment about the temporal relation of inner mental episodes.

In this paper, I propose another way of understanding Kant’s claim. Experience of external objects is required not because it is a necessary method, as Guyer and Dicker thought, for making judgments about the temporal relation of mental episodes. The necessity for experience of external objects should be understood in terms of commitment. In making a judgment about the temporal relation of mental episodes,one has to think that the temporal relation of one’s mental episodes corresponds to an objective state of affairs. Without this thought, the judgment one makes could not be regarded as significant. This is what Kant has in mind in “Refutation of Idealism.”

Furthermore, this paper clarifies a feature of Kant’s theory of self-knowledge in light of this interpretation. Kant and other contemporary theorists, such as Christopher Peacocke and Michael Tye, have claimed that inner and outer experiences are connected. They differ in how they treat introspection, a means of learning about one’s own mental episodes. Kant’s theory of self-knowledge in “Refutation of Idealism” is developed without denying introspection because it does not deal with methods of making judgments about the temporal relation of mental episodes, but with commitments in making such judgments. This is a distinctive feature of his theory because some contemporary theorists attempt to do away with introspection based on an alleged connection between inner and outer experience.