KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Transcendental Idea of Freedom 121
causality. Since nature is not a thing in itself but a phenomenon, it
must have an intelligible substrate that appears. Every event has a
cause in the phenomenal world that precedes it in time; but every
event is also the appearance of something that lies in the intelligible
world. Kant now interprets the relation of a thing in itself to its
appearance as a kind of cause and effect relation and speaks of the
"intelligible cause of appearances" (B566). "Such an intelligible
cause is not determined with respect to its causality by appearances,
although its effects appear and thus can be determined by other
appearances" (B*565). Every event, every link in the causal chain of
phenomena, thus has two causes: a phenomenal cause preceding it
in time and a noumenal cause that appears in it. The inhabitants of
the intelligible world, that "underlie" the successive links of the
phenomenal causal chain, are completely independent of one
another, since they are neither spatio-temporal nor need they fall
under the categories. If human agents should possess a faculty that
is only supersensible, such as freedom, then this faculty could also
"appear," that is, be the cause of an effect in the phenomenal world.
"Thus the effect can be free in respect of its intelligible cause, and at
the same time in respect to appearances be regarded as their result
according to the necessity of nature" (B*565). The notion, Kant concludes,
that there could be "natural causes" (like humans), that
"have a faculty which is intelligible only" (like freedom) is compatible
with the "law of causality" as long as the phenomena of these
intelligible causes agree with the causal laws (B573). What Kant
seems to mean is that the moral ought of freedom 87 could appear as
an empirical willing to carry out this or that action in the phenomenal
world. At least this can be conceived without contradiction.
With this 'proof' Kant has of course proved much too much.In
this sense every event can be called free. About things in themselves
we cannot affirm or deny anything determinate except how they
87 The precise mechanism of the causality of intelligible freedom in the material
world is not described by Kant. From some remarks in connection with the Fourth
Antinomy is becomes clear that a phenomenal action itself is not to be considered
the appearance of freedom as a thing in itself. Kant distinguishes between the
ground of the existence (Fourth Antinomy) and the ground of the causality (Third
Antinomy) of a phenomenon (B446, B589). The construction seems to be as
follows: the free arbitrary will (noumenon) follows a moral rule; this decision
appears as empirical arbitrary will (arbitrium brutum) to perform a certain
action, thus bringing it about. Thus freedom is the ground of the causality of the
empirical willing of an action. Cf. also CJ, Blv; W 5,271)