BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

122
may without doubt help us recognize and positively evaluate passages in
which Kant approaches the same sort of reflections. 101
Beyond Wittgenstein, the broader Wittgensteinian tradition forms a
context in which concepts and practices are discussed in ways that may
also help us in our interpretation of Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied
rationality. Here I will focus on John Campbell and the notion of
working concepts introduced in his book Past, space, and self. 102 Here he
reflects on our most primitive physical thinking, that is, our
understanding of the physics of our environment. This physics is first and
foremost a practical knowledge, he argues, a knowledge that we exercise
in our everyday interaction with the physical world, such as in lighting a
fire, throwing a rock, or putting up an umbrella. 103 Central to the idea of
this physics, qua practical knowledge, is the notion of working concepts.
A working concept is a concept typically present at a pre-linguistic level,
more specifically, it is present as a certain skill performed in our physical
interaction with the world. As such skills are found not only in human
beings, working concepts may be ascribed even to animals. 104
One of Campbell’s examples is causality. One way to think of this
concept is that it makes possible our ability to make explicit causal
judgments of the form ‘x caused y’. But there are cases in which one's
grasp of causality does not have to do with such explicit judgments but
rather consists in one’s practical grasp of its implications for one’s actions,
he argues. Here causality appears as a working concept. According to
Campbell, Aristotle gives some early examples of working concepts in the
Physics. We can contrast the theoretical understanding of the causal
properties of particular types of wood, for example, or different metals,
such as iron or silver, with the understanding possessed by the carpenter
or metalworker. The artisan’s grasp of causal properties is not a matter of
having a detached picture of them. It has to do rather with the structure
101 Let me also add, however, that I see the similarities between Kant and
Wittgenstein just indicated to be so explicit, that some sort of historical influence
may legitimately be hypothesized from Kant to Wittgenstein. On a general level,
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin (1973) have contended that Wittgenstein’s
philosophical project belongs within a Kantian tradition as both philosophers are
critical towards metaphysics. For a more detailed discussion of the relation
between Kant and Wittgenstein, cf. Engel (1970). Engel here argues convincingly
that Wittgenstein must have been well acquainted with Kant's Logic, cf.
especially Engel (1970), 494ff.
102
Campbell (1994).
103
Ibid., 41.
104 Ibid., 46ff.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE