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Contingency and Humility

Rae Langton, MIT Linguistics and Philosophy
[Draft November 2010: please dont cite]


Introduction

Anyone accepting an invitation to speak about Kant and modality confronts a
forbidding array of choices. Should we begin with the relationship between
necessary and a prioriand the accepted dogma that, for Kant, these coincide?
After all, the Critique of Pure Reason begins with the question How are synthetic a
priori judgments possible? and Kant cites the necessity of certain synthetic
judgments as proof that they are a prioriwhether a judgment that 7+5=12, that
space has three dimensions, or that every event has a cause. We could try to connect
Kants contribution to modality with wider arguments about whether the necessary
and the a priori come apart, and whether Kant himself thought they did, contrary to
received dogmaas my commentator, Nick Stang, has forcefully argued.
1
Should
we begin with the idea of transcendental necessity, one of Kants most distinctive
contributions to modality? The idea that certain judgments, the aforementioned
and more, turn out to be, not necessary simpliciter, but instead are non-obvious
necessary conditions for uncontroversial features of our thought or experience. Or
should we begin with Kants provocative idea that freedom, somehow, is
necessity?the radical, but deeply puzzling, idea that a free will and a will under
moral laws are one and the same.

1
Nick Stang, Did Kant Confuse Necessity and A Priority?, Nous, forthcoming.
2
There are many places we could begin, but Ill begin, not, perhaps, at the
place thats best all things considered, but at a place where I might have something
to say.
Im interested in a connection between contingency and ignorance, or
epistemic humility: how a certain kind of contingency about causal power might
lead to a conclusion, Kants conclusion, that we are ignorant of things in
themselves. I dont take this to be a conclusion about transcendental idealism;
ignorance of things in themselves is, I just said, a kind of epistemic humility. The
phrase things in themselves means (roughly) things as they are independent of
other things; not just things as they are independent of our minds.
(Correspondingly, phenomena means things as they are in a relation to other
things (B307). So ignorance of things in themselves is not idealism: to say there are
features of the world beyond our epistemic grasp is not to say the world, or any part
of it, depends on human thought or perception. Ignorance of things in themselves, is
just ignorance of the intrinsic properties of things.
2
There is no denying Kant was
an idealist: but that (Ive elsewhere argued) is another, distinct, story. This reading
of Kant is controversial, as Im well aware; but, for good or ill, thats my starting
point.
My chief aim is to draw out a connection between contingency and
Humility, in Kant, and also (since this is a conference where we are connecting past
and present) in a recent, similar argument from David Lewis. I shall be looking at

2
This is argued in more detail in Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of
Things in Themselves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; 2001)
3
whether one can resist Humility (whether Kants or Lewiss) by denying this
contingency.
There will be a further, subsidiary focus on a quite different topic, that of
necessity and co-existence: what Kant took to be the metaphysically necessary
conditions of co-existence; and, later, the transcendentally necessary conditions of
our experience of co-existence. This theme may appear idiosyncratic, and unrelated
to our main theme: but it comes up naturally, first as part of Kants early argument
for the contingency I have in mind; second, as illustrative of a distinction between
metaphysical and transcendental necessity, in the transition from Kants early work
to the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason; and third, as a surprising echo
in the work of David Lewis. Indeed I shall go so far as to suggest that Lewis
himself, though champion par excellence of metaphysical necessity, can none the
less be seen as offering a transcendental argument for some of his conclusions,
among them, an argument for the transcendental necessity of some conditions for
co-existence. So you will be hearing about a Lewis who is more like Kant than you
might have thought: a Lewis who is friendly to transcendental necessity, and the
Third Analogy, and agrees that we are ignorant of things in themselves.


1. Contingency and Humility in Kant

1.1. Substance and intrinsicality
We find early expression of the contingency I have in mind in the development of
Kants dynamic theory of substance and matter, spelled out first of all in a number
of pre-critical writings, beginning with Thoughts on the New Estimation of Living
Forces (1747):
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Either a substance is in a connection and relation with things external
it, or it is not. Since any independent being contains the complete
source of all the properties it has within itself, it is not necessary to
its existence that it stand in connection with other things. Hence
substances can exist and nevertheless have no external relation
toward others at all, they can exist and stand in no real connection
with others.
3


A substance is independent of other things, so it can exist without bearing external
relations to other things. Whatever involves connection with other things is
something that is not necessary to the existence of substance in itself. The
existence of these substancesthese simple, indivisible monadsis not sufficient
for the existence of relations or connections among them. Its a contingent matter
that substances bear such relations or connections.
There is an implicit contrast between two sorts of properties: intrinsic
properties of the substance, compatible with the substance existing on its own; and
external relation or connection that is something over and above the substance
and its intrinsic properties. This picture is filled out in the Physical Monadology
(1756): physical monads are substances that are independent, but endowed with
forces that enable them to interact, and constitute matter.
Prop. VII. Whatever is intrinsic to substance, i.e. the substantial
itself, is not properly defined by space. The substance itself is the
subject of extrinsic properties [forces], and those extrinsic properties
are something properly to be sought in space. But, you say,
substance is there in this little space, and present everywhere within
it; therefore if one divides space, does not one divide substance? I
answer: space is the field of the external presence [force] of the
element (monad). If one divides space, what is divided is the
extensive magnitude of the external presence [force] of the monad.
But besides external presence, i.e. the relational properties of the
substance, there are other intrinsic properties, without which the
relational properties [forces] would not exist, because there would be
no subject in which they inhered. But the intrinsic properties are not

3
Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747) Ak. Vol. 1 p. 21.
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in space, precisely because they are intrinsic. Nor by the division of
extrinsic properties are these intrinsic properties divided, any more
than the subject itself, i.e. the substance, is divided....In the field of
activity of a substance you will not find a number of things, of which
one could exist separated and isolated from another. For what is
present in one region of space adjacent to what is present in another
cannot be separated as if it existed in itself, since both presences are
nothing more than extrinsic properties of one and the same
substance, and accidents do not exist without their substances. Prop.
VIII. The force by which the simple element of a body fills its space
is the same as that which others call impenetrability.
4


Again we have the two classes of properties: intrinsic properties, and their opposite,
namely external presences, relational determinations, forces, properties
incompatible with isolation. Kants aim is to solve a puzzle about the infinite
divisibility of space, but that purpose doesnt concern us here. Our interest is in the
picture of material substance, echoed many times in the later Kant, for instance in
the Amphiboly.
Matter is substantia phaenomenon. I search for that which belongs
to it intrinsically in all parts of the space which it occupies, and in all
the actions it performs...I have nothing that is absolutely intrinsic,
but only what is comparatively intrinsic, and that is itself again
constituted by external relations ...The transcendental object which
may be the ground of this appearance that we call matter is a mere
something. (A277/B333)

The Intrinsic and Extrinsic.In an object of the pure understanding
the intrinsic is only that which has no relation whatsoever (so far as
its existence is concerned) to anything different from itself. It is
quite otherwise with a substantia phaenomenon in space; its
intrinsic properties are nothing but relations, and it itself is entirely
made up of mere relations. We are acquainted with substance in
space only through forces which are active in this and that space,
either drawing other objects (attraction) or preventing their
penetration (repulsion and impenetrability). We are not acquainted
with any other properties constituting the concept of the substance
which appears in space and which we call matter. As object of pure
understanding, on the other hand, every substance must have

4
Nova Dilucidatio, Ak. Vol. 1, pp. 481-2; Beck pp. 122-4.
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intrinsic properties and powers which concern its inner reality. (A
265/B321)

The picture we are drawing out distinguishes a true substance (Kant sometimes
speaks of it as a first subject, conforming to the pure concept of substance),
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with its intrinsic properties, from certain relational determinations or forces,
whose dynamic interactions constitute phenomenal substance or matterand,
crucially, whose existence is not necessary to the substances as independent
beings.

1.2. Contingency of Mutual Relation: New Exposition
This contingency becomes a centerpiece of Kants New Exposition (1755).
Proposition XIII. Finite substances are, through their solitary
existence, unrelated, and are evidently not connected by interaction,
except in so far as they are maintained by the principle of their
common existence (namely the divine intellect) in a pattern of
mutual relations.
Demonstration.Single substances, of which neither is the
cause of the existence of the other, have a separate existence, i.e. an
existence that is absolutely intelligible without all the others.
Therefore if the existence simpliciter of a substance is posited, there
is nothing in that which proves the existence of other substances
different from itself. Indeed, since relation is a determination that
looks toward something else (i.e. it will not be intelligible in a being
viewed entirely by itself), the relation and its determining reason
cannot be understood through the existence of the substance as
posited in itself. If, therefore, nothing more is added to this
existence, there would be no relation among beings and clearly no
mutual interaction. Therefore, in so far as single substances have an
existence independent of other substances, there is no place for their
mutual connection [...], and it must be granted that their relation
depends on a common cause, namely God. (413)


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The pure concept [of] substance would mean simply a something that can be
thought only as a subject, never as a predicate of something else. (A147/B186)
7
A substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties
to determine others different from itself, as has been proven. (415)

The determinations of substances look toward each other, i.e.
substances that are different from one another act reciprocally...[I]f
the external phenomenon of universal action and reaction...is that of
mutual approach, it is...Newtonian attraction. (415)
6


The mutual relation of substances requires a conceptual plan in a
corresponding creative thought of the divine intellect. This thought
is plainly arbitrary on Gods part and can therefore be omitted or not
omitted at His own pleasure. (414)
7


Kant here aims to establish a Principle of Co-existence, which says substances
must bear certain mutual relations towards each other, if they are to co-exist in a
single world. It prefigures the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason (well
come back to this). And the argument for contingency, hinted at in New Estimation,
comes through loud and clear.
The argument thus has two significant modal conclusions: the necessity of
mutual relation with respect to co-existence; and the contingency of mutual
relation with respect to intrinsic facts. Well focus on the latter, but shall return
briefly to the former at the end of this section.
The relational determinations of substances are not given by the substances
on their own, endowed with the intrinsic properties they have in existing on their
own. The relational determinations are not intrinsic, and not necessitated by
properties that are intrinsic: they cannot be understood through the existence,

6
I substitute the metaphorical look toward each other (invicem respiciant), for the
ungrammatical are correspond to each other of Reuschers translation in Beck
(ed.).
7
Emphasis added. Ak. Vol. 1, pp. 412-415; Beck pp. 100-4. (Note that Reuschers
translation in Beck (ed.) makes an error in the scope of the negation in the passage
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simpliciter, of substances. If nothing is added to the existence of substances there
would be no relation among beings (413). If a substance has a power to relate to, or
affect, other substances, that is not something it achieves in virtue of its intrinsic
properties: a substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties to
determine others different from itself (415). For relations among substances to
exist, something must be added through an act of God, and that this act is
obviously arbitrary and can be omitted or not omitted at His own pleasure (414).
The argument poses a number of interpretive questions. What exactly are the
relational determinations supposed to be? The heady level of abstraction tempts us
to think that Kant has in mind relations, or relational properties, rather generally,
and perhaps he does. But we learn later that he has in mind some very particular
physical relational properties: he mentions Newtonian attraction, and it seems
possible to include in the story the second fundamental force of his matter theory,
namely repulsion or impenetrability.
A second question: is this supposed to be an issue about concepts, or about
metaphysics? The talk of relation not being intelligible in a being viewed
entirely by itself suggests that the topic concerns our concepts. Perhaps the idea is:
intrinsic-property-concepts are not the same as relational-property-concepts, and
propositions about the former dont logically imply propositions about the latter.
However, the talk of Gods creation suggests the topic is metaphysics: in creating
substance with its intrinsic properties, God has not done enough to create relational,

quoted above from the Sixth Application, Beck p. 104, which Ive corrected (thanks
to Margaret Wilson for confirmation).
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or (better) extrinsic properties.
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The relational determinations are not to be taken
as concepts, but as metaphysically robust properties. The contingency of their
existence is a metaphysical matter.
Third, supposing that metaphysically robust properties are at stake, in what
sense do the relational determinations of attraction and impenetrability fail to
be intrinsic? They appear to pass standard tests for intrinsicness, such as the
isolation test: something existing all on its own can, it seems, have the power to
attract, even if it cant exercise it. Perhaps we should bring an amended notion of
intrinsicness to our interpretation? Perhaps an intrinsic property is one that can be
possessed independent of other entities and of laws God might add to creation.
9

Fourth, there is a puzzle about the mutuality of these relations or powers:
in what sense are they, unlike most causal relations, to be understood as
symmetrical or reciprocal? This question is a large one and recurs in the Third
Analogy.
10

Fifth, there is a distributive/collective ambiguity. Does Kant mean that one
substance, taken individually, is insufficient to establish that substances relational
determinations? (This is what I have elsewhere called unilateral reducibility.) Or

8
Lloyd Humberstone advises using intrinsic/extrinsic to label metaphysically
robust properties, non-relational/relational to label what he calls property-
concepts, but I dont religiously follow this advice here. Intrinsic/Extrinsic,
Synthese 108 (1996), 205-67.
9
For an amendment on these lines see Langton, Kantian Humility Ch. 5, similar to
an option in Langton and Lewis, Defining Intrinsic. (There we extend the isolation
test in other ways not addressed here. A property is a basic intrinsic iff it is
independent of loneliness and accompaniment: its presence is compatible with
isolation, and with accompaniment; so is its absence.)
10
I cant do justice to this here, but for excellent discussion see Eric Watkins, Kant
and the Metaphysics of Causality.
10
does he mean that all the substances, taken collectively, are insufficient to establish
the relational determinations that hold among them? (This is what I have
elsewhere called bilateral reducibility.) There are textual reasons in favor of each
of these, but of course they compete.
So even if we agree that the argument aims to establish a conclusion about
contingency, its evident that many interpretive possibilities present themselves, and
it is with some hesitation that we narrow them down.
But we had better. So lets pursue the following thought on Kants behalf,
without further defense. The causal powers of attraction and impenetrability are not
themselves intrinsic properties; and they are not necessitated by the intrinsic
properties of substances, taken collectively. No matter how many substances God
creates, with their intrinsic properties, thats not enough to establish their causal
powers of attraction and impenetrability, not enough to establish physical relations
among them, and not enough for them to co-exist in the same world.
The first thing to observe about this conclusion is, that while the
contingency we have described does concern causality, it is not the problem (or the
main problem) raised by Hume. It is not about the causally necessary connection, or
absence thereof, between two events. Rather it is about a metaphysically necessary
connection, or absence thereof, between two classes of properties: causal powers,
and intrinsic properties.
11
Nor does this contingency concern the modality of
propositions, first and foremost, but rather of properties, features of the world.

11
See Eric Watson, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, for sustained
development of the argument that Kant has considerably more than event causation
in mind, both here and in the Critical period.
11
Talking about what God could or couldnt create provides the perfect vehicle for its
discussion.
A second thing to observe is that this contingency flies in the face of
Leibnizian metaphysics. Leibniz took the appearances for things in themselves, as
Kant says later on (A264/B320).
12
Leibniz thought there was a necessary
connection between physical phenomena and monadic things in themselves,
because ultimately, they are not really distinct existences (in Humes phrase): the
realm of physical phenomena coincides with the realm of monadic things in
themselves. According to Leibniz,
There is...no other difference between a thing as phenomenon and
the representation of the noumenon which underlies it than between
a group of men which I see at a great distance and the same men
when I am so close that I can count the individuals. It is only, [the
Leibnizian] says, that we could never come so close to it. This,
however, makes no difference in the thing, but only in the degree of
our power of perception.
13


If making a world were like making a crowd, all God would have to do would be to
make a crowd of loose and separate individual substances (to borrow another
phrase from Hume). The reduction of physical phenomena to monadic things in
themselves goes hand in hand with his reduction of relations, and relational causal
powers, to the intrinsic properties of monads. The forces of Leibnizs dynamic
physics are relational properties that, strictly speaking, are nothing over and above
the intrinsic properties of monads. Causal power, physical force, turns out to
involve no real connection between monadic substances, but is nothing over and

12
See Kantian Humility ch. 4. for discussion of whether this is correct, as an
interpretation of Leibniz, and for debts to secondary literature on Leibniz. [Refs.]
12
above the intrinsic living force of simple substances, each of which is, strictly
speaking, a windowless microcosm.
It is this picture that Kant is rejecting. For Kant, if the substances dont have
real causal interactions, arising from metaphysically robust causal powers, they
dont even co-exist. And making a world with real connections involves more than
making individual substances with their intrinsic properties: it involves an
additional act of creation. So Kant, unlike Leibniz, makes a metaphysical
difference in the thing: a metaphysical difference between relational phenomena
and things in themselves.
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What, if anything, follows from this contingency, for Kant? I have
suggested, on Kants behalf, that the intrinsic properties are for this reason causally
inert, and that is why Kant says it is never through its intrinsic properties that a
substance has the power to determine others different from itself. I have suggested
that this basic assumption persists through Kants intellectual career, into the
Critical period and beyond. For example, it emerges again, in the Amphiboly of the
Concepts of Reflection, in the context of his critique of Leibniz.
Monads are supposed to serve as the raw material for the whole
universe, despite having no active force (ttige Kraft), except for that
consisting in representations (which, strictly speaking, are active
only within the monads). That is why Leibnizs principle of the
possible reciprocal community of substances had to be a pre-
established harmony, and not a physical influence. For when
everything is merely intrinsic...the state of one substance cannot

13
On a Discovery (1790), Ak. Vol. 8, p. 208; Allison pp. 124-125.
14
Kants conclusion may have something in common with Lockes doctrine of
superadded force, if we agree with Margaret Wilson rather than Michael Ayers on
the voluntarism debate.
13
stand in any active connection whatsoever with the state of another.
(A274/B330)

This and other passages reveal a continuing commitment to the contingency argued
for in the New Exposition.
15

We have spent a long time on the contingency of mutual relation. Lets not
forget, though, that other modal conclusion of the New Exposition, which Kant
indeed took to be the main point of it all: namely the principle that mutual relation
is necessary for co-existence. Whatever the merits of Kants argument, its clear,
first, that he is ruling out the idea that co-existence, the relation that enables things
to be (as we might say) world mates, is simply primitive; and second, as we have
just seen, he is identifying these mutual relations as causalindeed he has some
very specific physical relations in mind. The upshot, it seems, is that you and I
inhabit the same world, partly because the forces of gravity tie us togetheran odd,
but somehow reassuring, thought.
Let us turn, now, to the potential epistemological implications of the
contingency which has been our main topic.

1.3. From Contingency to Humility
It is no accident that the modal mistake Kant saw in Leibniz is one that has an
epistemological dimension. Leibnizs necessity supports, if you like,
epistemological Ambition, the opposite of Humility. That necessary connection
between phenomena and things in themselves offers an epistemological route from

15
See also A213/B260; B293-4, and for more references, Kantian Humility pp. 133-
8.

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phenomena to things in themselves. If we can take the appearances to be nothing
over and above the things in themselves, or monads, then acquaintance with
appearances yields acquaintance, albeit confused, with things in themselves. Via
perception, we are actually acquainted, albeit confusedly, with the monads
themselves, indeed, the entire universe of monads. Acquaintance with a crowd is
acquaintance with the people that make up the crowd. Acquaintance with the
general roar of the ocean is acquaintance with the individual waves that make up
that roar. Acquaintance with matter, constituted by the physical forces of Leibnizs
dynamics, is acquaintance with the living forces intrinsic to the monads. Thats
why Kant can say that, for Leibniz, a distinction between phenomena and things in
themselves is not a difference in the thing but only a difference in our perception.
Suppose we reject this necessary connection, as Kant has done. All of a
sudden, the bridge crumbles: knowledge of phenomena cannot yield knowledge of
things in themselves. If relational causal powers are something different to the
substances as they are in themselves, then knowledge of relational causal powers no
longer straightforwardly yields knowledge of them as they are in themselves.
I believe this thought appears in the Critique, for example in the
Transcendental Aesthetic:
Everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition...contains
nothing but mere relations, of locations in an intuition (extension), of
change of location (motion) and of laws according to which this
change is determined (moving forces). What presents itself in this or
that location, or, beyond this change of location, what activities
occur within the things themselves, is not given through these
relations. Now through mere relations one cannot be acquainted
with a thing as it is in itself. We may therefore conclude that since
external sense gives us nothing but representations of mere relations,
this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an
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object upon the subject, and not the intrinsic properties that belong to
the object as it is in itself. (B67)

I have only gestured at the case that needs to be made here, but it will have to do for
the present.

2. Contingency and Humility in Lewis
2.1. Roles and Realizers
David Lewis has argued, in Ramseyan Humility, that, whether or not Humility is
right as an account of Kant, it is just plain right. The idea that we find out nothing
about [things] as they are in themselves, is true... or at least something very like it
is.
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Kantian (or Kantian) ignorance of things in themselves is, he says,
ignorance of the intrinsic properties of substances. The substances
that bear these intrinsic properties are the very same unhidden
substances that do indeed affect us perceptually. But they affect us,
and they affect other things that in turn affect us, in virtue of their
causal powers, which are among their relational properties. Thereby
we find out about these substances as bearers of causal powers, but
we find out nothing about them as they are in themselves.

Things affect other things in virtue of their causal powers, and the things in
themselves behind those powersthings in themselvesremain hidden.
Suppose instead you were to think, with Lewis and many other
contemporary philosophers, that it is after all in virtue of intrinsic properties that
things affect other things. Would the grounds for Humility disappear? No they
would not, precisely because of the contingency we have been talking about. Even
if we dont go so far as to conclude that the intrinsic properties are inert, it remains

16
David Lewis, Ramseyan Humility, 203.
16
true for Kant, for Lewis, and for many contemporary philosophers, that intrinsic
properties are only contingently the grounds of causal powers or dispositions.
This is enough to leave the intrinsic properties themselves as a something-
we-know-not-what. As Lewis says,
To be the ground of a disposition is to occupy a role, but it is one
thing to know that a role is occupied, another thing to know what
occupies it.

For Lewis, this thought is spelled out in terms of a contingent relationship between
a role and what realizes that role.
Being the ground of a certain disposition is only one case among
many of role occupancy. There are a variety of occupied roles,
among them nomological roles and others as well. Quite generally,
to the extent that we know of the properties of things only as role-
occupants, we have not yet identified those properties. No amount of
knowledge about what roles are occupied will tell us which
properties occupy which roles.
17


Lewis is happy to agree with Kant that we have no knowledge of things in
themselves, but he does not find the predicament ominous in the way I initially
described it who ever promised me, he says, that I was capable in principle of
knowing everything?
18
Ominous or not, it is, he thinks, our predicament.

2.2. Ramsification and Humility
Lewiss own argument relies, like Kants, on the contingency of the association
between certain relational and intrinsic propertiesin this case, relational role
properties and intrinsic realizer propertiesbut it proceeds from Ramseyan, not
Kantian, premises, about how theoretical terms get their meaning.

17
Ramseyan Humility, 1.
17
Imagine science were to give us a grand, final theory of the world, says
Lewis; a theory T which would yield the fundamental, intrinsic properties that play
an active role in the workings of nature. The language of this theory contains terms
implicitly defined by the theory. The theory has a unique actual realization, and the
terms of the theory name fundamental properties. The theory, incidentally, leaves
out what Lewis calls idlers, i.e. fundamental properties (if any) that are actually
instantiated but play no active role. It also leaves out aliens, i.e. fundamental
properties that are not actually instantiated.
Besides our grand, final theory, there is the rest of our language, our old
language, call it O, which happens to be rich enough to express our observations.
We get the Ramsey sentence of T by replacing the names in T with existentially
quantified variables. The Ramsey sentence says that T has at least one actual
realization. It implies the O-language sentences that are theorems of T.
The upshot of this is that any predictive success for the theory T is also a
predictive success for the Ramsey sentence. If the theory T has more than one
possible realization, observation wont help us know which realization is actual,
because no possible realization gives us evidence that goes beyond the Ramsey
sentence. If our theory T has more than one realization, then there are some
fundamental properties that remain hidden from us.
Does our theory have more than one possible realization? Yes it does,
because of the contingency of the association between relational role properties and
intrinsic realizer properties. Lewis argues for this contingency in two ways. He

18
Lewis, Ramseyan Humility, 4.
18
offers, first, a permutation argument. Suppose you permute two fundamental
properties F1 and F2, named by T, and leave everything else fixed. F2 would then
be found where F1 had been, and vice versa; and the laws governing F2 would be
just the same as the laws governing F1 had been, and vice versa. This permutation
yields a different realization of Tand we cant tell which one is actual. Lewis also
offers a replacement argument. Instead of permuting properties from Ts actual
realization, we replace those properties with members of those classes of properties
the theory leaves out, the idlers or aliens. After all, while idlers are actually
inactive, they could be active; and while aliens are actually uninstantiated, they
could be instantiated. So, replace a property from Ts actual realization with a
property that had been a mere idler, or alien, before. This gives us a new
possibilityand again, we cant tell which of these possible realizations is the
actual one.
This sketch doesnt do justice to Lewiss argument, nor the dizzying turns
he takes from this point on. But the basic thought can be expressed in terms of a
familiar picture from functionalist philosophy of mind.
19
Just as our concept of
pain gets its meaning from its place in our theory about how pain is related to
other mental states and behaviour, so in physics, our concept of positive charge
gets its meaning from its place in our theory about how things having positive
charge interact with things having negative charge, and so on. Pain contingently
refers to a neural state, and the role-property of pain is multiply-realizable, by
neurons, circuit boards, ectoplasm, Swiss cheese (according to Putnam in an early
19
functionalist paper). Likewise electron contingently refers to whatever actually
realizes the role of electrons, and the role property of being an electron is multiply
realizable by what? All we can say is: different possible realizer properties. When
it comes to our theory of mind, we can dig into other theories to give us a sense of
what the different possible realizers of role properties might be; but when it comes
to our theory of the physical world, we can dig no deeper. We know what realizes
the pain role, for us, namely certain neural states. But what realizes the positive
charge role? We can only shrug.

3. Humilities compared
There are differences between the Kantian and Lewisian pictures, and not only in
their supplementary premises.
Take the question: why are intrinsic properties needed in the first place? On
the Kantian story I have been sketching, intrinsic properties are needed for the
existence of a substance that is an ultimate subject. As he puts it in Physical
Monadology, besides external presence, i.e. relational determinations of substance,
there are other, internal, determinations, without which the relational determinations
would not be, because there would be no subject in which they inhered
20
(Physical
Monadology, 1756). (Recall that this notion of substance matches, as I have argued,
the pure concept of substance described in the Critique.) Later he says, the

19
This analogy is a theme in Christopher Robichaud, What Lies Beneath? A
Defense of Categorical Humility, MIT PhD Dissertation 2010.
20
Kant, Physical Monadology Prop. VII (1756), Ak. Vol. 1, trans. in L.W. Beck et
al. eds., Kants Latin Writings: Translations, Commentaries and Notes (New York:
P. Lang, 1986).
20
understanding, when it entitles an object in a relation mere phenomenon, at the
same time forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in itself
(B307); that concepts of relation presuppose things which are absolutely [i.e.
independently] given, and without these are impossible (A284/B340). These
independent bearers of relations are substances, and substances in general must
have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore free from all external relations
(A274/B330). In short, intrinsic properties are needed because an independent thing
needs independent properties; a substantial bearer of relational properties must have
something to it that isnt exhausted by the relational properties.
Why are intrinsic properties needed, in the first place, for Lewis? The most
important role, in the present context, is that they are needed as realizers for role
properties, and in particular as the categorical bases for dispositional properties.
Thats why, for Lewis, the fundamental intrinsic properties remain causally potent,
although unknown.
21
The requirement that roles have realizers, or that dispositional
properties must have categorical bases, is not the same as a requirement that
substances have some intrinsic properties or other.
Notwithstanding their differences, Kant and Lewis have something in
common. They agree that we are ignorant of things in themselves. They agree that
there exist certain intrinsic properties, and that we dont know what they are. And
they agree that this is ignorance is due to a certain contingency.

21
Gareth Evans, Things Without the Mind, in Philosophical Subjects: Essays
Presented to P.F. Strawson, ed. Zak van Straaten (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980), pp. 76-116, p. 102.
21
We can put the contingency in sloganeering form. First, for Kant: God could
make the intrinsic facts one way, and the relational facts a different way. God could
make the facts about substances and their intrinsic properties one way, and facts
about their causal powers a different way. Next, for Lewis: God could make the
relational facts one way, and the intrinsic facts a different way. God could make the
facts about the role-properties one way, and facts about the realizer properties a
different way. Both ways, the contingency in questionperhaps with help from
supplementary premisesrenders the intrinsic properties inaccessible. So
contingency, it seems, can lead to Humility.
To what extent are supplementary premises required? A premise, for
example, about the receptivity of knowledge, for Kant: must we add in, for Kant, the
idea that in order to have knowledge of something we must be affected by it? (That
is what I have elsewhere argued, perhaps mistakenly.) And a premise about the
Ramsified meaning of theoretical terms, for Lewis: if we left this premise aside,
might the contingency of the association between causal powers and their intrinsic,
categorical bases still be enough for Humility? The question about how far
contingency might take us pretty much on its own is an interesting one; but we shall
have to leave it for another occasion.

4. Denying Contingency
4.1. Humility and Loss
Supposing we are ignorant of things in themselves: how sad should we feel? Kant,
for one, lamented it. Kant thinks we are missing out on something in not knowing
things as they are in themselveswhy else would he speak of our yearning for
22
something more, of doomed aspirations, of our inextinguishable desire to find firm
footing somewhere beyond the bounds of experience (A796/B824). Kants attitude,
as much as anything, tells against any trivializing, debunking account of his
philosophy. Lewis agrees we are missing out, but does not find the deprivation
ominous. But if you find it so, there are remedies at hand.
One obvious remedy is to deny the contingency. One neednt deny it in the
way that Leibniz did. Leibniz affirmed necessary connection by denying distinct
existence: he took the appearances for things in themselves, he took the world of
relational, causal powers constituting matter to be nothing over and above the world
of monads. But faced with these challenges from Kant and Lewis, one could deny
the contingency a different way.

4.2. Causal Structuralism
We could escape Ramseyan Humility by denying a gap between relational role
properties and intrinsic realizer properties. We could say, with Sydney Shoemaker,
that the role a property plays is not, after all, something contingently worn, not a
cloak that can be thrown off (so to speak) when travelling from world to possible
world.
What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity,
is its potential for contributing to the powers of things that have it... if
under all possible circumstances properties X and Y make the same
contribution to the powers of the things that have them, X and Y are
the same property. (Causality and Properties, p. )

On this account, nomological role is essential to a property: playing the positive
charge role, for example, is essential to whatever property it is that realizes positive
charge. What in fact plays the positive charge role could not fail to play the positive
23
charge role. This account of properties brings a certain necessity into nature that is
absent on the Lewis picture, and absent on any traditional account of dispositions. It
may have implications for the modality of laws of nature: perhaps laws are no
longer contingent, but metaphysically necessary (Ellis and Lierse 1994, Hawthorne
2001, Bird 2007). It may have implications for our assumptions about intrinsicality:
if these fundamental properties are essentially tied to their nomic role, perhaps they
are no longer intrinsic. These conundrums I shall flag, and leave aside. What seems
clear is that proponents of this approachcausal structuralists, dispositional
essentialistsare happy about its epistemological advantages, as Shoemaker
himself seems to be:
If two properties can have exactly the same potential for contributing
to causal powers, then it is impossible for us even to know (or have
any reason for believing) that two things resemble each other by
sharing a single property. (Causality and Properties, p. 215)

Shoemaker cites this epistemological concern as one ground (among several) for his
causal account of properties. So there is one remedy. If one denies contingency this
way, perhaps one can avoid paying the price of Humilityor at any rate avoid
paying the price of Ramseyan Humilityas Lewis himself concedes.
What, though, of Kantian Humility? If causal structuralists put necessity into
nature by building a necessary connection between causal powers and intrinsicor
perhaps we should say categorical properties, Kant puts necessity into nature a very
different way. In place of a metaphysically necessary connection between classes of
properties (categorical and dispositional), there is a transcendentally necessary
connection between experience and its objects. But as, we shall see, Kants
transcendental necessity provides no escape route from Humility.

24
4.3. Transcendental Necessity in Kants Third Analogy
A transcendental argument begins with some ordinary and obvious feature of our
thought, or experience; and then moves on to identify some surprising, far from
obvious, necessary conditions of that thought, or experience. It is an understatement
to say that Kant put transcendental arguments on the philosophical map. And it is,
of course, a transcendental argument we find, when Kant returns to the topics of the
New Exposition in the Third Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason.
All substances, in so far as they can be perceived to co-exist in
space, are in thorough-going reciprocity...Now suppose that a
plurality of substances as appearances were each completely
isolatedso that none would act on the other, and would receive
from the other no reciprocal influence. I say that the co-existence of
these substances would be no object of possible perception, and that
the existence of one of them could not lead through the way of
empirical synthesis to the existence of the other...Each substance
must therefore contain in itself the causality of certain properties in
the others, and at the same time contain in itself the effects of the
causality of others, that is, they must stand in dynamical community
if their co-existence in a possible experience is to be known. Now,
with respect to objects of experience, something is necessary if
experience of the objects themselves would be impossible without it.
Therefore it necessary that substances in the [field of] appearance, in
so far as they are co-existent, should stand in a thorough-going
community of mutual interaction. (A213/B260)
While both modal theses from New Exposition are present in some form, Kant is
doing something quite new.
His main point is to affirm the necessity of mutual relation, with respect to
co-existence, but now his interest is not in metaphysical necessity, but
transcendental necessity. The issue is not what it takes to form a world of co-
existing objects, but what it takes for us to experience a world of co-existing
objects. Forget God. Forget divine acts of creation. What must we take the world to
be like, if we are to experience ourselves as part of it, co-existing with other parts?
25
The contingency argument of New Exposition is there in the background.
The passage is not an easy one, and takes up a relatively unfamiliar aspect of
causation (simultaneous, reciprocal relations holding between substances, rather
than successive, asymmetric relations between events). But perhaps we can see it as
proceeding by reductio. Suppose (per impossibile) there were a plurality of
substances as appearances each of which was completely isolated from the others.
Such substances would not act upon each other, and would not be objects of
possible perception. Hence they would not be substances as appearances, contrary
to the hypothesis. Hence substances as appearances must not be isolated, but stand
in dynamical community. In the background is the thought that independence of
substance implies contingency: that isolated, or isolable, substances do not have
what it takes to get the causal power that would allow them to interact, and thereby
to co-exist. The mere existence of substances, each of which is capable of existing
by itself, is not sufficient for interaction among them.
But Kant now gives up on that problem. He abandons the question of how a
substance might be endowed by a creator with relations in order to form a world. He
affirms the contingency of New Exposition, and then makes it irrelevant. The point
is that these isolated substances would not be objects of possible perception. The
point is that is that if we are to have experience of things co-existing with us, and
each other, at the same time, we must already be (or think of ourselves as being)
part of a world of causally interactive substances. What matters for us is this
transcendental necessity.

4.4. Transcendental Necessity in Lewis?
David Lewis, like Kant, put a lot of things on the philosophical map. But
transcendental arguments are not famously among them. Perhaps, though, it
is not too much of a stretch to see Lewiss arguments in these terms. Lewis
26
does move from some uncontroversial features of our thought, to some very
surprising conditions of that thought. Even more delightfully in the present
context, Lewis reasons from some uncontroversial features of our thought,
to a conclusion something like Kants Principle of Co-existence, in the
New Exposition, and his Principle of Community in the Third Analogy.
You think Im joking? My tongue is only half in cheek.
We begin with a routine feature of our thinking. We think that
things might have been different in ever so many ways, as Lewis puts it in
the opening paragraphs of On the Plurality of Worlds.
This book of mine might have been finished on schedule. OrI
might be defending not only a plurality of possible worlds, but
also a plurality of impossible worldsOr there might never
have been any people. Or the physical constants might have had
somewhat different values, incompatible with the emergence of
life. (Lewis 1986a, p.1)

The fact we begin with is simple. We think modally: we think some things
could have been different, others couldnt have been. It then turns out that,
surprisingly, that this modal sort of thinking we do is itself possible only if
there is (or we think there is) a multiverse of really existing possible worlds,
whose actuality is a merely indexical matter. Ours is actual, but different
from the others only in being ours. To put Lewiss argument in Kantian
idiom: it turns out that a necessary condition of the possibility of modal
thinking is a commitment to real possible worlds. What we have here is, I
am suggesting, the transcendental necessity of modal realism itself.
22


22
The mixed modalities are odd, but not (I think) a problem. The situation is
analogous to that of someone who argues for the transcendental necessity of
27
Better still, modal realism turns out to have some requirements of its
own, and these bring us to Lewiss analogue of Kants principles. Lewis
asks a question which could have come from Kants New Exposition, about
the conditions under which individuals could co-exist and form a world.
What, then, is the difference between a sum of possible individuals
that is a possible world, and one that is not? What makes two things
worldmates? How are the worlds demarcated from one another? Why
dont all the possibilia comprise one big world? Or at the other
extreme, why isnt each possible neutrino a little world of its own?
(1986a 70)

And then he proposes a solution like Kants: a system of real, physical
relations are the ground of co-existence.
[N]othing is so far away from us in space, or so far in the past or
the future, as not to be part of the same world as ourselves []
So we have a sufficient condition: if two things are
spatiotemporally related, then they are worldmates. The
converse is much more problematic. Yet that is more or less the
doctrine that I propose. Putting the two halves together: things
are worldmates iff they are spatiotemporally related. There
are no spatiotemporal relations across the boundary between one
world and another; but no matter how much we draw a boundary
within a world, there will be spatiotemporal relations across it.
(1986a 70-1)

For Lewis, spatiotemporal relations are the necessary glue, that binds
individuals into one world. In Kants New Exposition, that work is done by
mutual relations that are causal (not, in the first instance, spatial),
including the actions of such forces as gravity. Lewis agrees about the need

causal realism: who thinks its a necessary condition of the possibility of
experience (e.g. in order to distinguish experience of events from experience
of things) that we attribute causal necessity to the world (e.g. by regarding
events as occurring in a necessary sequence, cf. Kants Second Analogy).

28
for causal connectedness as well as spatialbut thinks he neednt mention
them, since he gets them for free.
There is a second way in which the worlds are isolated: there is
no causation from one to the another. If need be, I would put this
causal isolation alongside spatio-temporal isolation as a
principle of demarcation for worlds. But there is no need. Under
a counterfactual analysis of causation, the causal isolation of
worlds follows automatically.

For Kant, in the New Exposition, it was the other way around: Kant thinks,
at this early stage, that he gets space for free, since spatial relations
supervene on dynamical ones. (And Kant, of course, would detest Lewiss
reductionism about causation, causal power, and law.)
Look at where we have arrived. We have Lewiss version of Kants
principle of Co-existence, in the New Exposition, if we construe Lewis as
offering an argument about metaphysics: it is metaphysically necessary that
worldmates have real physical connections.
Or we have Lewiss version Kants Principle of Community, in the
Third Analogy, if we construe Lewis in the terms I have been suggesting.
Admittedly it is not quite the Principle of Community: there is no special
role for reciprocal, symmetrical causal relations (this also applies to the New
Exposition principle of Co-existence); there is no special role for
simultaneous temporal relations. But we have, still, a principle Kant might
well applaud. I am spatiotemporally and causally connected with all the
other things in my world; otherwise we would not even co-exist.
Look at how we got here. We began with an uncontroversial premise
about our modal thought, and reasoned to some highly non-obvious
29
conditions of that thought, namely modal realism itself. This in turn required
us to think we are in causal and spatio-temporal community with all the
individuals with whichand with whomwe co-exist. If that is not a
transcendental argument, Im not sure what is.

5. Conclusion
We have looked at how one can avoid Humility, by moving to a necessity in nature
offered by causal structuralism. Properties are identified with their causal profile,
with the result that they necessarily interact as they do. Necessarily, if something
has positive charge, it attracts something that has negative charge. We have also
looked at how Kant moves to a different kind of necessity, a transcendental
necessity, about matters of co-existence. We have even explored the antecendently
unlikely prospect of a Kantian transcendental argument we could develop on
Lewiss behalf, about matters of modality and co-existence.
One might wonder whether transcendental necessity does a job that is
comparable to the necessity in causal structuralism. If contingency was the problem,
do both these affirmations of necessity offer a solution, a way to escape or soften
the Humility that is otherwise our fate? No: after all, Kant has transcendental
necessity, and Humility. The problem is that for Kant, unlike the causal
structuralist, the old contingency still holds, as weve just seen. Whatever the
mutual causal relations are that enmesh us in the natural world, it is not through the
things as they are in themselves that those relations holdfor, as he puts it earlier,
and still believes, a substance never has the power, through its own intrinsic
properties, to determine others different from itself.
So for Kant, the transcendental necessity of the Third Analogy is compatible
with the metaphysical contingency of the New Exposition. The transcendental
30
necessity of our experiencing a causally interactive world is compatible with the
metaphysical contingency that things in themselves remain insufficient for causally
interactive power. And for that contingency, the price, it seems, is Humility; we
have no insight into the intrinsic nature of things (A277/B333).


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_____
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_____
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