apprehension, association, affinity

Part of Kant's transcendental deduction (A119-23) takes us from the empiricist starting point to the position of transcendental idealism. Kant argues from the fact of perceptions as semantic grounds to the necessity of our unifying contribution to those perceptions.

Three steps:

I could not apprehend perceptions, if there were not contiguity between them. Otherwise perceptions would be encountered dispersed and isolated in my mind.
I could not associate perceptions, if there were not a subjective ground for recalling them. Otherwise I would not be able to bring perceptions to an image, or else representations would reproduce each other without distinction.
I could not determine those perceptions as a thing unless they are also associable; I could only be conscious of those perceptions as determinable if they belong to one consciousness. But one consciousness is only possible through the unity of apperception. Therefore, there must be an affinity to perceptions, which provides an objective ground of association.

By showing that there is an object affinity of perceptions, grounded on the unity of apperception, Kant has shown that, while perceptions are still our epistemic starting point, we could make no progress in our cognition unless we contributed objective rules of unity to all of our conscious sensory experience.

In the background, Kant is also setting up a modal question about perception. Perceptions are the ground for any cognitive claim to actuality. A concept is more than merely possible when its object is grounded in perception. The givenness of perception provides independent epistemic grounds to say that the concept is meaningful.

But Hume presented a dilemma about perceptions. All of our cognition is grounded in perception. If I have perceived all of the shades of blue except one, can the concept of that missing perception be considered cognition? Can we talk about possible perceptions in a meaningful way?

The above argument suggests that we can. Perceptions, as conscious appearances, are also subject to the transcendental unity of apperception, and thus, the pure functions of understanding. There are no simple perceptions, thus perceptions can be taken apart and recombined according to the rules laid out by the principles of pure understanding. We can thus ground possible perceptions through the same transcendental principles that would ground the real possibility of an empirical object.

Creative Slack

Jeffrey gets into the psychology of the banal political commentary in this year's parades.

The very act of joining a club is, after all, a calculated attempt to improve or cement one's status and fortune through contrived interaction with a group of similarly desperate social climbers

I never expect much from Krewe D'Etat. And that allows me to be pleasantly surprised. I thought Muses was a bit humdrum this year as well. Although I ended the night in an overall bad mood, after seeing my beloved Dervish turned into a lesbian version of The Corner Pocket.

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Political Speech and the First Amendment

Last night, as I stumbled home from the frigid Saint's parade, I thought about the problematic manner in which Progressive frame the recent Citizen's United decision. I keep coming across arguments against the personhood of corporations - and they drive me insane. First, it completely misunderstands the issue. The question is whether we can use our property as speech. And that seems undeniable. But it has nothing to do with treating corporations like persons. Second, misunderstanding the problem makes progressives look untrustworthy. No one thinks corporations are persons. And when the public realizes that this is not what is going on, they'll see progressives as sophists, constructing arguments out of the air.

So it is imperative that progressives understand the problem with the proper framework. That way we can provide proper, clear responses to civil libertarians without talking past each other. After all, civil libertarians and progressives usually agree. And I don't hold progressives as the only ones to blame. Although progressive haven't framed their issue well, it appears that civil libertarians are often relying on a superficial understanding of the First Amendment.

Precedence is usually ignored by the civil libertarian, since they often take the First Amendment to be straightforward. The problem is that it is not straight forward. Even if we grant you a right to use your property for political speech, the question of what constitutes your property is not obvious. The example I thought of last night was religion. Citizens might incorporate (or not) their religious institution; the religious institution is the property of the congregation. Yet we have clear laws that restrict the presence of political speech in religious worship. While they can take a stand on social issues, they cannot endorse candidates. Otherwise, and this is the key point, they risk their religious tax exemption.

While the church is the property of its congregation, it also holds a special contractual relationship with the government. The government, then, has a stake in the church. Not such that it owns the church, but insofar as it grants them special rights - rights which allow the churches to flourish where they might otherwise fall under the weight of business taxes. Churches don't have to operate like a business because the congregation doesn't share the full burdens of ownership. Similarly for corporations.

Progressive needs to be following the arguments and examples set out by constitutional lawyers such as Lawrence Lessig. For example, in this article Lessig draws together a number of important points by looking at cases in supreme court precedence. His argument takes the form I'd been thinking through, looking at similar cases were we allow the government to restrict speech acts, and then comparing those cases with corporate speech.

First, look at an institution where we have allowed the government to restrict speech acts:

Yet in 1991, in an opinion by Chief Justice Robert's former boss, Chief Justice Rehnquist, in the case of Rust v. Sullivan, the Court found no First Amendment problem at all with the government's restriction on doctors' speech. Indeed, it wasn't even a difficult case according to the Court ("no question but that the statutory prohibition contained in § 1008 is constitutional.")

Why? How? Well the doctors at issue worked in family planning clinics that had received at least some of their funds from the government. And in exchange for that benefit, the government was free to gag the doctors however it wished.

Then compare it to the corporation:

But of course, corporations do receive a gift from the government. The government limits the legal liability of investors in that corporation in exchange for their risking their capital to spur innovation and growth. That benefit is significant.

So it seems that the progressive argument against Citizen's United is getting strong. Greenwald, my favorite civil libertarian, notes Lessig's argument and will hopefully write a response soon.

To me, Lessig's argument seems strong. While it is filled out with legal facts, the argument itself is one that I, a layperson, could arrive at on my own. It gets to the heart of the matter without being rhetorically complex. And, most importantly, it doesn't rely on the false argument about the personhood of corporations.

Shorter Lessig:
The government gives fiscal rights to corporations, so it has a stake in their political speech.