KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

122 Antinomy of Freedom
must appear if they should want to appear; and there is no
contradiction in the assertion that the fact that it rained yesterday
was also the appearance (effect) of a thing in itself (say, the freedom
of Julius Caesar). Many abstruse assertions are in this sense possible,
i.e. unfalsifiable, so long as they merely assert something
descriptive about the supersensible. 88 Thus, there must also be some
positive grounds for singling out human freedom from among the
manifold inhabitants of the intelligible world. Kant adduces two
such grounds.
1) While we cannot have any empirical or theoretical knowledge
about things in themselves but only about phenomena, there is,
however, one thing in itself to which we nonetheless have direct
access, namely, to ourselves as moral agents, to our moral freedom
as rational beings. This kind of access, which Kant articulates in
later writings, is called here in a somewhat undifferentiated manner
simply "mere apperception":
Man, however, who knows all the rest of nature solely through the senses,
knows himself also through mere apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and
inner determinations which he cannot regard as impressions of the
senses. He is thus to himself, on the one hand phenomenon, and on the
other hand, in respect of certain faculties the action of which cannot be
ascribed to the receptivity of sensibility, a merely intelligible object. We
entitle the faculties understanding and reason. (B*574-5)
Reason "determines" the understanding according to an idea, and
the understanding makes "empirical use" of the concepts.
Apperception should not be confused with the introspective
knowledge of one's own subjectivity that Kant discusses as inner
sense. Apperception is thus not experience in the proper sense,
because it is not mediated by the senses; it is knowledge only in the
sense that practical reason, too, is called a "faculty of knowledge".
Kant gives an indication of how the causality of freedom is supposed
to act: practical reason "determines" according to an idea and the
understanding carries it out. In the terminology of the Critique of
Judgment we might say: moral-practical purpose determines
(appears as) technical-practical purpose. It is also important for the
later discussion of the antinomy of judgment to point out that Kant
explicitly restricts this type of causality to humans, since only we
have this apperception: "In lifeless, or merely animal, nature we
88 Cf. the reflection quoted in fn 73. Cf. also Beck, Commentary, p. 187; Butts,
Double Government, pp. 247ff; Broad, Kant, pp. 275f.