Ignorance of Things in Themselves

Rae Langton

The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, eds. Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, Gideon Rosen,
Seana Shiffrin (Norton Press, forthcoming)

1. Skepticism and Humility

Many philosophers have wanted to tell us that things may not be quite as they seem:

many have wanted to divide appearance from reality. Democritus wrote presciently in the

fifth century BC—

by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by

convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void.1

Plato argued for a different division: the imperfect, changeable things we see around us

are mere appearance, and reality is an independent realm of perfect, invisible, eternal

forms. Much later, Descartes wondered whether the familiar world of stoves and dressing

gowns, streets and people, might turn out to be mere appearance—not because it is less

real than the realm of atoms, or Forms, but because, for all we know, the stoves and

dressing gowns, streets and people, don’t exist at all.2 Perhaps I am dreaming, or

deceived by an Evil Demon, who interferes with my mind (like that evil neuroscientist of

science-fiction!), so that what appears to me is nothing like what’s really there.

That Demon still haunts the halls of philosophy, despite Descartes’s own efforts

to banish him. The mere possibility of his deceptive machinations persuades some

                                                                                                               
1
Trans. C.C.W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus. Fragments, A Text and
Translation with Commentary, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, cited by
Sylvia Berryman, ‘Democritus’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
2
Descartes, Rene, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), trans. John Cottingham,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
 
philosophers that, even if there is actually no Demon, and appearance captures reality

very nicely, we nevertheless can’t be quite sure that it does. This means we don’t know

what we thought we knew. We confront skepticism. We don’t have knowledge of ‘the

external world’. We are ignorant of ‘things in themselves’, in some sense of that phrase:

we lack knowledge of things independent of our minds. (REF ‘Scepticism’, this volume).

Kant described scepticism as a scandal, and in 1781 he published his Critique of

Pure Reason to set the scandal to rest.3 The Critique is a brilliant but formidably difficult

work. In it, Kant aims to show that skepticism is wrong because, roughly, we could not

have thoughts at all, unless we had thoughts about things. Perhaps he was trying to say

that appearance just is reality: for provided we are thinking at all, we can’t be wholly

ignorant of things.

Whether Kant set skepticism to rest is one question. Whether he was really trying

to, is another. For Kant said something else as well, famously and often. Although we

have knowledge of things, these things are only ‘phenomena’, and ‘we have no

knowledge of things in themselves’. Are those the words of someone offering a cure for

skepticism? The sceptic says we have knowledge only of appearances: Kant says have

knowledge only of phenomena. The skeptic says we have no knowledge of things

independent of our minds: Kant says we have no knowledge of things ‘in themselves’.

Appearance is not reality after all. It looks like Kant is saying just what the sceptic says—

doesn’t it?

                                                                                                               
3
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1929).
 
 Evidently it depends what Kant means by ‘things in themselves’. If ‘things in

themselves’ means things independent of our minds, then being ignorant of them is a way

of being a sceptic. Instead of having a cure for skepticism, Kant has the disease. To be

sure, Kant’s proposal relieves the symptoms: he offers a wealth of argument about the

very special knowledge we have of objects—but they are phenomenal objects, mere

appearances. What a disappointment, if we were hoping for knowledge of reality, of

things independent of our minds. What consolation is it to learn that we have special

knowledge, if it’s knowledge of mere appearance? Kant’s subtle arguments about the

conditions of our thought look irrelevant, if they deny knowledge of reality, and land us

in skepticism again.

What, though, if Kant means something quite different by ‘things in themselves’?

Then ignorance of ‘things in themselves’ needn’t be skepticism. Knowledge of

phenomena needn’t restrict us to knowledge of mind-dependent appearance. That is

exactly the idea we’re going to pursue here. We won’t go into Kant’s famous arguments

against skepticism—about how we can’t think, unless we think about objects. We’re

going to look instead at what ‘ignorance of things in themselves’ amounts to. We’ll take

seriously the possibility that you and I, right now, are ignorant of things in themselves,

just as Kant said—and that we can welcome this conclusion, without thereby welcoming

skepticism.

The key idea is this. The phrase ‘things in themselves’ does not mean ‘things

independent of our minds’. It means ‘the way things are independently’—that is,

independently of their relations not just to our minds, but to anything else at all.
 We are often interested in the relations one thing bears to another. Sometimes the

relevant relations are spatial: the tennis ball flew over the net, and over the white line.

Sometimes the relevant relations are biological: Jane is Jim’s cousin, and Joan’s grand-

daughter. But when we talk about the relations a thing has to other things, we tend to

assume there is something more to the thing than those relations. There is more to Jane

than being Jim’s cousin and Joan’s grand-daughter. There is more to the tennis ball than

its passage over the net, and over the white line. Now, Kant sometimes uses the word

‘phenomenon’ to mean, quite generally, an object ‘in a relation’ to some other object.

And he sometimes talks about this assumption that there must be something more to an

object than its relations to other things:

The understanding, when it entitles an object in a relation mere

phenomenon, at the same time forms, apart from that relation, a
representation of an object in itself. (B306, emphasis added)

He also says:

Concepts of relation presuppose things which are absolutely [i.e.

independently] given, and without these are impossible. (A284/B340)

This absolute or independent thing, which isn’t exhausted by its relations to other

things, is something to which we can give the name ‘substance’, which just means

an independent thing that has an independent, or intrinsic, nature.

Substances in general must have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore

free from all external relations. (A274/B330)

Putting this all together, the idea that there is a thing ‘in itself’ turns out to be the

idea that there is something to an object over and above its relations to other things:

something more to you than being the son or daughter of A, the cousin of B, the grand-

child of C; something more to the tennis ball than its spatial relations to nets and lines on
a tennis court. A thing that has relations to something else must have something more to

it than that: it must have some intrinsic nature, independent of those relations. It is this

something else, this something more, that is the thing ‘in itself’.

If we take this idea at face value, it promises to solve the difficulty we face.

Ignorance of things ‘in themselves’ is not skepticism. It doesn’t rule out knowledge of

things independent of our minds. It rules out knowledge only of a thing’s non-relational,

intrinsic properties.

We can know a lot! Appearance is reality: things as they appear to us are things as

they really are. But something is still ruled out: namely, knowledge of how things are

independent of their relations to other things. Appearance is reality, but it’s not all of

reality. We can know a lot about the world, but we can’t know everything about it: we

can’t know its independent, intrinsic nature.

To say we can know a lot about something, but not everything, is not skepticism,

but a kind of epistemic modesty—so let’s call it ‘humility’. And since it is at the center of

Kant’s philosophy (or so I’m arguing), let’s call it ‘Kantian humility’.4 In what follows,

I’m going to say why Kant believed it. And then I’ll say why you, too, should believe it.

2. Humility in Kant

I’ve suggested that Kant’s distinction between ‘phenomena’ and ‘things in themselves’ is

a contrast not between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’, but between extrinsic and intrinsic

aspects of something. On this usage, if we say a tennis ball fell over the white line, we

                                                                                                               
4
Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998; 2001)
 
ascribe to it a relational, hence ‘phenomenal’, property; whereas if we say it is spherical,

we ascribe to it an intrinsic property, which concerns the tennis ball as it is ‘in itself’.

Let’s summarize the distinction this way.

Distinction ‘Things in themselves’ are things that have intrinsic

properties; ‘phenomena’ are their extrinsic, or relational
properties.

Against this backdrop, ignorance of things in themselves is not skepticism, but ignorance

of certain properties—intrinsic properties:

Humility We have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of things.

This could be construed as the idea that we have no knowledge of any of the

intrinsic properties of things, and that (I think) is the idea we should ascribe to Kant.

Admittedly, it sounds odd. If an intrinsic property is a property something has

independent of its relations to other things, then many of those seem perfectly accessible

to us: for example, the sphericality of the tennis ball. But Kant himself seemed to think

we lack knowledge of any intrinsic properties: we do have knowledge of certain physical

properties of things, such as their shape, and their powers of attraction and

impenetrability; but he thinks these are not intrinsic, as the following passages illustrate.

The Intrinsic and Extrinsic. In an object of pure understanding the intrinsic

is only that which has no relation whatsoever (so far as its existence is
concerned) to anything different from itself. It is quite otherwise with a
substantia phaenomenon [phenomenal substance] in space; its intrinsic
properties are nothing but relations, and it itself is entirely made up of
mere relations. We are acquainted with substance in space only through
forces which are active in this and that space, either drawing other objects
(attraction) or preventing their penetration (repulsion and impenetrability).
We are not acquainted with any other properties constituting the concept
of the substance which appears in space and which we call matter. As
object of pure understanding, on the other hand, every substance must
have intrinsic properties and powers which concern its inner reality. (A
265/B321)
 Substances in general must have some intrinsic nature, which is therefore
free from all external relations....But what is intrinsic to the state of a
substance cannot consist in place, shape, contact, or motion (these
determinations being all external relations). (A274/B330)

All that we know in matter is merely relations (what we call its intrinsic
properties are intrinsic only in a comparative sense), but among these
relations some are...enduring, and through these we are given a
determinate object...It is certainly startling to hear that a thing is to be
taken as consisting wholly of relations. Such a thing is, however, mere
appearance. (A285/B341)

Kant thinks the physical world is made up of matter, ‘phenomenal substance’, but that

matter somehow ‘consists wholly of relations’. He is drawing on a dynamical account of

matter (further developed in his works on physical theory) according to which matter is

constituted by forces. He has a proto field theory, which had an important historical role

to play, influencing scientists who went on to develop field theory proper in the

nineteenth century.5 And familiar physical properties—shape, impenetrability, attractive

power—count, for him, as extrinsic or relational properties.

Whether that is right way to classify them depends how we understand the

intrinsic/relational distinction. We have said, loosely, that an intrinsic property is one that

doesn’t depend on relations to anything else. Some philosophers have tried to make this

more precise by saying a property is intrinsic just in case it is compatible with isolation—

i.e. it does not imply the existence of another wholly distinct object.6 On this way of

                                                                                                               
5
According to Faraday’s biographer, see Williams, L. P. Michael Faraday: A
Biography (London: Chapman and Hall, 1965).
 
6  For some efforts to define ‘intrinsic’ see e.g. Rae Langton and David Lewis, ‘Defining

Intrinsic’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1998), 333-45; I.L.

thinking, a tennis ball’s sphericality will be intrinsic: a tennis ball can be spherical and be

the only thing in the universe. And the tennis ball’s bounciness will also be intrinsic.

After all, a tennis ball can be bouncy and be the only thing in the universe, although, to be

sure, it will not bounce unless there is something else for it to bounce off! On the face of

things, shape properties like sphericality, and dispositional properties like bounciness, are

intrinsic: something could have them, and exist all on its own.

If Kant nonetheless describes them as relational, perhaps he has a different

conception of intrinsicness in mind. Perhaps he thinks a thing’s shape properties are

relational because they depend on a relation to the parts of the thing. For example, the

sphericality of the tennis ball depends on how the parts making up its surface are

equidistant from its center. Perhaps he thinks dispositional properties are relational

because they depend on how something would relate to other things if they were there.

For example, whether something is bouncy depends on what it would do in relation to

something else—if, say, it were dropped on the ground, or thwacked against a tennis

racket.

Some metaphysicians like to ponder the distinction between intrinsic and

relational properties, but we needn’t settle it here. All we need is that Kant denies us

knowledge of any intrinsic properties, in some defensible sense of ‘intrinsic’, and that

this is what he means by denying us knowledge of ‘things in themselves’.

Why does Kant deny us knowledge of intrinsic properties? The answer, I suggest,

has two parts. First, he thinks, as many philosophers do, that our knowledge is

                                                                                                               
Humberstone, “Intrinsic/Extrinsic,” Synthese 108 (1996), pp. 205-267. The ‘isolation’
test has many difficulties which I won’t go into here.  
 
 
‘receptive’: our minds need to be causally affected by something, if we are to have

knowledge of it.

The receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so

far as it is affected in any way, is called ‘sensibility’ [....] Our nature is
such that our intuition can never be other than sensible, that is, it contains
only the way in which we are affected by objects. (A51/B75)

Our knowledge of things is receptive, ‘sensible’: we gain knowledge only through being

affected by objects.

Receptivity Human knowledge depends on sensibility, and sensibility is

receptive: we can have knowledge of an object only in so
far as it affects us.

This simple fact about our knowledge, he seems to think, dooms us to ignorance of things

in themselves.

Properties that belong to things as they are in themselves can never be

given to us through the senses. (A36/B52)

It is not that through sensibility we are acquainted in a merely confused

way with the nature of things as they are in themselves; we are not
acquainted with that nature in any way at all. (A44/B62)

Why should the ‘receptivity’ of knowledge imply ignorance of things in

themselves? Many philosophers have wondered about this on Kant’s behalf, and some

have criticized him roundly on the topic. P.F. Strawson wrote:

knowledge through perception of things...as they are in themselves is

impossible. For the only perceptions which could yield us any knowledge
at all of such things must be the outcome of our being affected by those
things; and for this reason such knowledge can be knowledge only of
those things as they appear...and not of those things as they...are in
themselves. The above is a fundamental and unargued complex premise
of the Critique.7

                                                                                                               
7P.F.  Strawson,  Bounds  of  Sense,  p.  250.    
Is Kant really taking this for granted, as a ‘fundamental and unargued complex premise’?

Perhaps not. Perhaps he has good reason to connect receptivity to ignorance—but a

reason that has gone unnoticed.

Here is a simple suggestion. According to receptivity, we have knowledge only of

what affects us. But things ‘as they are in themselves’ do not affect us: the intrinsic

properties of things do not affect us. If Kant believed this, then that, together with his

commitment to receptivity about knowledge, would certainly explain why we are

ignorant of things in themselves.

A case can be made that this is just what Kant believes. I confess that, as a matter

of interpretation, it is controversial. Here is not the place to do it justice. It involves

detailed investigative work of a kind we historians of philosophy find strangely thrilling,

although we’re aware not everyone shares our enthusiasm. But here at least are two small

gestures in this direction. In an early philosophical treatise Kant argues that—

a substance never has the power through its own intrinsic properties to
determine others different from itself, as has been proven.8
According to Kant, the causal powers of a substance are something over and above its

intrinsic properties. At this stage of his thinking he believes that they require an

additional act of creation on God’s part—an act which is ‘obviously arbitrary on God’s

part’. He took this idea about the insufficiency of intrinsic properties for causal power to

imply not only the contingency of causal power, but the inertia of intrinsic properties.

The idea returns in the Critique of Pure Reason:

                                                                                                               
8
Kant, Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (1755),
Ak. Vol. 1, 415. English translation (here amended): “A New Exposition of the First
Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge,” in L.W. Beck et al., eds., Kant’s Latin Writings:
Translations, Commentaries and Notes (New York: P. Lang, 1986).
 
 when everything is merely intrinsic...the state of one substance cannot
stand in any active connection whatsoever with the state of another.
(A274/B330)9

Receptivity requires that if we are to have knowledge of something, we have to be in

active causal connection with it: but we’re not in active causal connection with a thing’s

intrinsic properties. Receptivity means we can be acquainted with the causal powers of

things, the ways they relate to each other and to ourselves: but however deeply we

explore this causal nexus, we cannot reach the things in themselves.

3. Why We are Ignorant of Things in Themselves

Kant said we are ignorant of things in themselves: ignorant of the intrinsic properties of

things. The picture I have painted on his behalf is, I hope, appealing, in certain respects:

Kantian humility does not, at least, condemn us to skepticism. But the picture will not

appeal to everyone. Kant’s conclusion seems too strong: we have no knowledge of any of

the intrinsic properties of things. His reasons invoke a seemingly idiosyncratic conception

of intrinsicness: a tennis ball’s sphericality and bounce are not among its intrinsic

properties. And they invoke a seemingly implausible causal thesis: intrinsic properties are

causally inert. So however this interpretation succeeds as a way to understand Kant, it is

unlikely to succeed in reaching a wider audience.

But wait. There is a conclusion very similar to Kant’s that is significantly closer

to home. Kant says we are ignorant of the intrinsic properties of things: and he is right,

though not for quite the reasons we have been looking at. And if he is right, of course,

then you too should believe we are ignorant of things in themselves.

                                                                                                               
9  The context is a discussion of Kant’s predecessor, Leibniz, who denied causal

interaction between substances.  

 Imagine that a detective is investigating a murder case. She puts together the

clues. The murderer had a key, since no windows were broken. He was known to the dog,

since there was no barking. He had size ten shoes—there are his footprints. More and

more of the picture begins to be filled out. He wore gloves, since there were no

fingerprints. He had a tame parakeet—there are green feathers on the rug. The detective

learns a lot about the murderer. Does she know who he is? She knows who the murderer

is in relation to other things—houses, shoes, parakeets, and so on. She knows that the

murderer is whoever fits this role. But does she, so to speak, know the murderer in

himself? Is there something more to the murderer than being a possessor of keys,

parakeets and shoes? Of course. There must, in the end, be more to something or

someone than their merely relational properties, as Kant pointed out. And ultimately, let

us hope, the detective finds herself in a position to identify the person who exists

independently of these relations to other things: ‘Aha! There is one person who fits this

role. There is one person who is known to the dog, wears size ten shoes, has a tame

parakeet, could have a key, and that person is…. Pirate Pete!’ Then she knows who the

murderer is. Then she knows who fits the role: she knows, so to speak, the murderer ‘in

himself’.

Some philosophers have suggested we are in a situation rather like that of the

detective. An important recent attempt to show this is that of David Lewis, whose

‘Ramseyan Humility’ explicitly claims inspiration from ‘Kantian’ humility.10 We are

                                                                                                               
10  David Lewis, ‘Ramseyan Humility’ in Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical

Naturalism, eds. Robert Nola and David Braddon-Mitchell (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2009) 203-222. This section is in turn inspired by Lewis’s argument, though it is very far
from doing him justice. There have been many attempts to respond, but see e.g. Jonathan
trying to find out, not about a murderer, but about the fundamental features of the world.

We put our best theorists on the job, and they tell us a lot. Suppose we want to find out

about our tennis ball. They tell us that a tennis ball is whatever fits this sort of profile: it’s

something that can be hit across a net with a tennis racket, something that has a specific

degree of resistance and elasticity, something that is readily visible to human eyes in

normal conditions, something that will roll smoothly downwards when placed on a slope.

These relational descriptions, suitably filled out, give us a story about the role something

must fit if it’s to be a tennis ball. They capture the relational or (if you like) ‘phenomenal’

aspect of the tennis ball. Is there something more to the tennis ball than this relational

role? Of course there must be, just as there is something more to Pirate Pete than his

relations to keys and parakeets.

And our theorists can tell us about this ‘something more’. They tell us not only

that the tennis ball can land over the white line, not only that it is spherical and bouncy,

but that it is made of rubber and felt, which in turn are made of very tiny parts called

molecules, which in turn are made up of tinier parts, called atoms, which in turn are made

up of still tinier parts, called protons, neutrons and electrons—and more, with names too

peculiar to recount here. Our experts give detailed descriptions of the tiny parts

something must have, and their particular arrangements, if that something is to fit the

‘tennis ball’ role. They are giving us a splendid account of what the tennis ball is, ‘in

itself’. What more could there be to know about what the tennis ball is, ‘in itself’?

                                                                                                               
Schaffer, ‘Quiddistic Knowledge’, Phil. Studies 123 (2005), 1-32; Anne Whittle, ‘On an
Argument for Humility’, Philosophical Studies 130 (2006), 461-97.
 
 
 We certainly know a lot about the tennis ball. In Kant’s terms, we know a lot

about the tennis ball as ‘phenomenon’—how it relates to tennis rackets, nets and players.

And yes: we also know a lot about the tennis ball ‘as it is in itself’, what its parts are

made of and how they are arranged. But now shift the question: what exactly do we know

about those tiny parts of the tennis ball?

Take the electron, for example. Our story about the electron has something in

common with the detective’s story about the murderer. It captures a complicated

relational profile. An electron is whatever it is that fits a distinctive role, whatever it is

that fits the ‘electron’ pattern of relating to other things. An electron is the thing that

repels other things we call ‘electrons’, attracts other things we call ‘protons’. It’s the

thing that, in company with lots of other electrons, makes the light-bulb go on, makes

your hair stand on end on a cold, dry day, and so on. The physicist will have a more

detailed story, but it will nevertheless be a story that has this relational form. ‘Electron’

refers to whatever fits the physicist’s relational ‘electron’ role, just as ‘the murderer’

refers to whoever fits the detective’s relational ‘murderer’ role.

The detective discovers who the murderer is, ‘in himself’ as we put it, when she

discovers who fits the relational ‘murderer’ role: namely Pirate Pete. The physicist

discovers what the electron is when she discovers what fits the relational ‘electron’ role:

namely… what? Here the analogy with the detective breaks down. The detective is able

to find out who the murderer is, apart from the story about how the murderer relates to

keys, shoes, parakeets. But the physicist is unable to find out what the electron is, apart

from the story about how the electron relates to protons, hair and light bulbs. For the

detective, there is something more to say. For the physicist, there is nothing more to say.
The electron is, to borrow a phrase from Kant, merely a ‘something=x’ about which we

can say nothing, or rather nothing more than what’s given in our relational description.

The upshot: we know the electron as ‘phenomenon’, so to speak, but we don’t know the

electron ‘as it is in itself’.

Here is another way to bring out the point. Suppose, inconveniently, more than

one person fits the role given by the detective’s list of clues: suppose Pirate Pete, and

Pirate Percy, and Pirate Peggy all have keys, parakeets, large shoes, and so on. Then

although the detective knows a lot, she still doesn’t know who the murderer is. That, or

something like it, is the situation we face with the electron. Consider the thing, whatever

it is, that fits the electron role. We are supposing its intrinsic properties are not inert (we

are leaving that part of Kant behind), but are the causal grounds of its power to repel

other electrons, attract protons and so on. We are, indirectly, in causal contact with those

intrinsic properties—but, receptivity notwithstanding, that is still not enough for us to

know what those intrinsic properties are. Why not? Suppose we give a name to the

intrinsic property responsible for this complex causal profile: let’s call it ‘negative

charge’, or ‘NC’ for short. Now let’s draw on Kant’s insight about the contingency of

causal power, which is shared, in some form, by many philosophers today (including

Lewis). This contingency means that NC could have been associated with a completely

different relational, causal profile; and a different intrinsic property—call it NC*—could

have been associated with the electron’s relational, causal profile. But now ask: is the

electron’s intrinsic property NC, or NC*? We don’t know, any more than the detective

knows whether the murderer is Pirate Pete or Pirate Percy. So we are faced with humility

again.
 Humility: we have no knowledge of the most fundamental intrinsic
properties of things.

This is admittedly a modified version of humility: the conclusion is less drastic than

Kant’s. We are not denied knowledge of all intrinsic properties: the tennis ball is

spherical, is made of rubber and felt, which in turn are constituted by molecules, elements

and subatomic particles. We know a lot about the intrinsic nature of the tennis ball.

But we do lack knowledge of things in themselves. Kant was right to say it, and

we need to accept it. It’s not so bad. It’s not skepticism. It is what it is. We face the sad

fact that we know less than we thought: there are some intrinsic properties of which we

shall forever be ignorant. And, sadly, they are the most fundamental properties of all.