KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

114 Antinomy of Freedom
the Third and Fourth both can be true. 74 The resolution section on
the Third Antinomy is thus essentially an argument as to why the
reformulated thesis could be true and why the Antithesis without
reformulation is or ought to be false .
In his "Essay on the Progress of Metaphysics" Kant says
about the dynamical antinomies:
Thirdly, proposition and counterproposition can also contain less than
needed for logical opposition and thus both be true — as in logic two
judgments opposed to one another merely by the difference of the subjects
(iudicia subcontraria) —, as this in fact is the case with the antinomy of the
dynamical principles, if namely the subject of the opposing judgments is
taken in a different sense in each. (W 3,628;; Ak 20,291)
Accordingly, the subject, "thing," in the thesis and the antithesis is
to be taken in a "different sense"; therefore there is no contradiction
but only a subcontrary opposition. Kant's analysis of the various
kinds of opposition was described earlier in this chapter. According
to the square of oppositions, subcontrary oppositions normally have
the form, "quidam S est P; quidam S non est P." Kant generalizes
the form so that it includes not only statements in which the same
predicate is asserted and denied of different subjects, but also those
in which the same subject is taken in different senses, or even all
pairs of judgments of which both can be true but not both false.
Kant presents no deliberations on the subcontrary antinomies
comparable to the Zeno-digression on the contrary antinomies.
However, as Wolff 75 has pointed out, Kant does present an example
in the "Observation" on the Fourth Antinomy that can serve to illustrate
the resolution of the subcontrary opposition of cosmological
propositions. There, Kant mentions the "controversy between two
famous astronomers, which arose from a similar difficulty in
regard to the choice of a standpoint":
The one had argued that the moon revolves on its own axis, because it
always turns the same side towards the earth. The other drew the opposite
conclusion that the moon does not revolve on its own axis, because it
always turns the same side towards the earth. Both inferences were correct,
according to the point of view which each chose in observing the moon's
motion. (B489)
The two statements emphasized by Kant seem to contradict
one another; but the seeming contradiction turns out to be a subcon-
74 Cf. also Prolegomena, §53.
75 Wolff, Der Begriff, pp. 56-7.