BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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CAUSALITY AND COMMON SENSE PHYSICS
practice as present in the adult. Only in so doing may we explain how it
is possible for us to move around in the world without constantly taking
explicit notice of our own movements and the movement of each and
every object in our environment. Our interaction with those objects
typically takes place ‘all by itself’, showing that we possess what I call a
primitive physics on a level other than that which our conscious thoughts
normally operate. It is a physics present in practice, in what we do. By
mastering this practice, we show we have a decentered knowledge of the
world, that is, a knowledge in which the dynamic network of objects and
forces in which we live our lives has the status of a network of
independently existing phenomena.
For the most part our interest in this network is based on the potential
use we may make of it, and we typically give more attention to those
elements that are of immediate relevance to the projects we are involved
in. These will normally be those objects and events close to us. However,
our knowledge also includes more distant objects and events, even the
movement of celestial bodies. This is why it is possible for us to use such
movements in time-determining practices, such as when we use the
movement of the sun to measure the periods of the day. In a previous
chapter I argued that time-determination by means of the sun may be
conceived of as a practice. I think that we may now see it as a special
version of the general practice of interaction we have defined above.
Other special versions are time determination by means of time glasses or
mechanical clocks. These all make possible exact and fine-grained
determinations of time. In this sense they are similar to the practices
developed within ancient geometry, replacing the old methods of
measuring size by means of hands, feet or other body parts. These more
specialized practices all grew out of original human practices, being more
sophisticated versions of these original practices. 20
11.7 A very brief remark on transcendental apperception
I have almost finished without discussing what in Kantian terminology is
called transcendental apperception. As readers of Kant are well aware,
this notion forms the very core of the transcendental arguments of the
20 As I take Kant’s cognitive and epistemic theory in the Critique to be a theory of
practice in general, both of these kinds of practices are included, at least
implicitly, in this theory, I think. This is why I claim that the Critique may be
read both as a theory of science (i.e. scientific practice) and a theory of our
everyday interaction with the world making possible what we may call Haben
einer Welt.