KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

76 Kant's Logic
then both conflicting propositions can be false. If I say it [the/every body] is
either good-smelling or it is not good-smelling (vel suaveolens vel non
suaveolens), then both judgments are contradictorily opposed, and only the
first [i.e., "every body is good-smelling"] is false, but its contradictory
opposite, namely, some bodies are not good-smelling, includes also the
bodies which do not smell at all: in the previous opposition (per disparata)
the contingent condition of the concept of the bodies (the smell) remained
with the conflicting judgment and was not cancelled out by it, therefore the
latter was not the contradictory opposite of the former. (B*531)
Kant's presentation here may be somewhat clumsy, but the
problem is relatively straightforward. In constructing this opposition
we have implicitly assumed something about bodies which in
fact must be explicitly legitimated. 35 As Kant would put it: the
"logical illusion ... arises entirely from lack of attention to the
logical rule" (B353). This kind of illusion could only lead to an
antinomy if the presupposition is made not simply through lack of
attention, but is in some sense "natural and unavoidable"; in this
case the dialectical (logical) illusion would also be transcendental.
This is supposed to be the case, according to Kant, with certain propositions,
for instance, about the world. Kant then extends the same
argument to these propositions about the world. For instance there
is a contradiction between the affirmative and the negative
propositions:
3) The world is finite
4) The world is not finite.
However, if we replace (4) with the infinite judgment:
1) The world is infinite,
we have a contrary opposition in which both propositions could be
false. The same argument can be made for the two contradictories:
and
1) The world is infinite
2) The world is not infinite.
35 Überweg writes, for instance: "These principles do not apply to those
judgments, whose predicates stand to one another in the relation of contrary or
positive opposition. Rather, in this relation under certain presuppositions ... both
judgments can be false .... Both can be false ... if the subject cannot be ascribed the
concept that is superordinated to the two contrary predicates as the concept of their
common genus (a relation which is called by Kant dialectical opposition)."
(System der Logik, §81, p. 213).