Knowledge and objectivity of causality in Kant's idealism

Abstract

In this thesis I examine Kant's account of causality. I begin by framing Kant's position as a response to Hume's scepticism about the idea causation. I argue that Kant's and Hume's distinct theories of human cognition indeed lead the two to hold different views on causality. While Hume only allows that causation be an empty idea, Kant insists that cause is a necessary tool for the mind to have experience in the first place. I show how Kant's view is somewhat superior to Hume's.

Then, I look further into Kant's account of cognition as experience of objects, and identify the faculty of imagination as a Kantian innovation. The imagination is indispensable to the correct functioning of the other two faculties of the mind, namely sensibility and the understanding. Next, I discuss how the reality of causality as an object for possible experience, the legitimacy of our knowledge of causality as a concept for use in possible experience, as well as the correspondence between the two, together ground a real causality for Kant as a result. I name this theory a causal realism, following an interpretation of the notion of realism with respect to Kant's larger idealism, and show that it is a consequence of Kant's conception of the imagination.