Kant describes the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity. What this means is that our capacity to judge what is true is responsible for its own exercises, which is to say that we issue our judgments for ourselves. To issue our judgments for ourselves is to be self-conscious – i.e., conscious of the grounds upon which we judge. To grasp the spontaneity of the understanding, then, we must grasp the self-consciousness of the understanding. I argue that what Kant requires for (...) explaining spontaneity is a conception of judgment as an intrinsic self-consciousness of the total unity of possible knowledge. This excludes what have been called ‘relative’ accounts of the spontaneity of the understanding, according to which our judgments are issued through a capacity fixed by external conditions. If so, then Kant conceives of understanding as entirely active. Or, to put it another way, he conceives of this capacity as absolutely spontaneous. (shrink)

A comprehensive and practical study tool, introducing Kant's thought and key works and exploring his continuing influence.

The question of our place in nature has long been with us. One answer lies in comparing humans with other animals , thereby highlighting the uniquely human. To this end, I examine the distinction between humans and brutes as delineated by Descartes, Kant, and the Chicago pragmatist George Mead. This selection not merely assures a wide-spectrum of opinion still alive today, it marks a general historical shift from the metaphysical dualism of Descartes' mechanical world and spiritual self, to the epistemic (...) dualism of Kant and his double sense of self, finally to Mead's naturalistic monism, in which consciousness emerges naturally from the non-conscious. Apart from illuminating issues current in the animal-rights literature, examining this single topic casts a new light on these figures, especially Kant and Mead . Descartes' dualism is understandable simply given his scientific commitments, and the chasm he found in the human/brute gap was as much a result of this scientific motivation as any religious or moral one. For Kant, brutes lack the power to judge, understand, or reason. But more importantly, they lack autonomy and are therefore without moral worth. The unbridgeable chasm, metaphysical for Descartes, became for Kant primarily moral. Brutes do have representations and desires, however, and, by virtue of being alive, an immaterial principle; Kant consequently rejected Descartes' animal-machine hypothesis. Darwin's account of the human/brute gap and Mead's Darwinistic psychology are discussed. Selfhood and consciousness are unique to humans, although brutes are conscious in another sense. Mead's different uses of 'consciousness' are separated in order to clarify this difference as well as the role of language in the emergence of mind. Mead argued that humans perceive social objects prior to physical objects while brutes perceive none of these, lacking the capacities of universalization and object-manipulation. Like Descartes and Kant, Mead minimized brute experience, thereby maintaining a wide gulf between humans and brutes despite his Darwinian naturalism. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Kant is able to maintain the distinctiveness of his position in opposition to Hume's naturalism (contrary to the arguments of R. A. Mall and L. W. Beck) without invoking premises which are question begging with regard to Hume's scepticism. The argument of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, as presented in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, is considered in relation to the two sets of criticism that have been levelled at it from (...) its publication up to the present day, both of which aim to demonstrate that synthetic a priori judgements are subjectively necessary but without objective validity. The first set of criticisms involves problems raised with regard to the status of transcendental arguments. The difficulties identified here (by B. Stroud, M. S. Gram, and others) are that the Deduction can either, at best, show that it is necessary for experience to be regarded in a certain way without demonstrating anything as to the nature of experience as such, or the argument is circular in that it begins by making assumptions regarding the nature of our experience. Alternatively, if the Deduction is taken to establish the objective nature of concepts via an analysis of the conditions under which it is possible for us to have some knowledge of ourselves, then incoherence is said to arise because this requires either an implausible reflective theory of consciousness (according to D. Henrich) or that we have knowledge of the subject-in-itself (as held by J. G. Fichte and other contemporaries of Kant). Through a consideration of both the historical and contemporary manifestations of these criticisms, the thesis advances an interpretation of the Deduction, with special attention paid to the role and nature of the subject, which does not fall prey to the alleged incoherence. As such, the thesis defends both the distinctiveness and legitimacy of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

One of the principle aims of the B version of Kant’s transcendental deduction is to show how it is possible that the same “I think” can accompany all of my representations, which is a transcendental condition of the possibility of judgment. Contra interpreters such as A. Brook, I show that this “I think” is an a priori (reflected) self-consciousness; contra P. Keller, I show that this a priori self-consciousness is first and foremost a consciousness of one’s personal identity from a (...) first person point of view. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une réinterprétation originale du rôle cognitif du Je pense kantien qui se veut pertinente pour la phénoménologie et pour la philosophie actuelle de l’esprit. L’étude du rapport entre temporalité phénoménale et cognition catégoriale constitue le fil conducteur de cette recherche. Elle mène à la question capitale du statut ultime du Moi, du sens du Je du Je pense. Que désigne-t-il : un épiphénomène contingent, une représentation sui generis, une métareprésentation, un acte indéconstructible, un événement fonctionnel, une forme (...) logique ? Recèle-t-il une véritable unité ou plutôt une multiplicité productrice d’unité ? Représente-t-il une identité réelle ou un changement identifiable, un référent vide ou ‘saturé’ ? La réponse à toutes ces questions dépend notamment de la façon de concevoir l’efficacité du Je, c’est-à-dire de l’articulation entre inconscient cognitif, conscience de soi et conscience de quelque chose en général. En pensant Kant avec la philosophie moderne et contemporaine, l’auteur tente d’élucider l’instabilité inévitable du passage critique à un Cogito postmétaphysique. (shrink)

Dennis Schulting offers a thoroughgoing, analytic account of the first half of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the B-edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that is different from existing interpretations in at least one important aspect: its central claim is that each of the 12 categories is wholly derivable from the principle of apperception, which goes against the current view that the Deduction is not a proof in a strict philosophical sense and the standard reading that in (...) the Deduction Kant only gives an account of the global applicability of the categories to experience. This novel approach enables a reappraisal of Kant's controversial claim that transcendental self-consciousness is not only a necessary condition of objective experience but also sufficient for it. The book provides an extensive analysis of Kant's theory of transcendental apperception and also explains why the argument of the Transcendental Deduction is both a regressive and a progressive argument. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

ÖZ Bu yazıda Kant’ın zaman kuramını inceleyecek ve zaman kuramının, ben’i zamansal bir yapıda nasıl kurduğunu göstermeye çalışacağım. Kant'ın Arı Usun Eleştirisi’nde ortaya koyduğu zaman kuramında zaman, tüm görülerin temelinde zorunlu bir tasarım olarak bulunur ve a priori verilidir. Kant’ın genel bilgi kuramı içerisinde zaman, duyusal deneyimden türetilmiş bir kavram değil, arı usun a priori bir kavramı ve deneyime ilişkin düşünmemizi olanaklı kılan a priori bir görü olarak varsayılmaktadır. Öte yandan, zamanı iç duyunun a priori bir görüsü olarak ve iç (...) deneyimlerimizi düzenleme yolu olarak gören Kant’ın zaman kuramı, ben düşüncesi üzerine kurulu insan anlağının zamansal bir yapı içerisinde bir çözümlemesini de verir. Bu çalışmada amacım, zamansallık ve birleşik ben’in nasıl çözülmez bir biçimde birbirine bağlı olduklarını ve Kant’ın zaman kuramının birleşik benler kuramı için ne tür bir temel sağladığını ortaya koymaktır. -/- ABSTRACT In this paper I will examine Kant ’ s theory of time, and try to show how his theory of time constitutes the self within a temporal framework. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant’s claim about time as a necessary representation lies behind all our intuitions and is given as a priori. Time, in his general account of knowledge, is not an empirical concept taken from sensory experience, but it is presupposed as a priori concept of pure reason and a priori intuition which makes possible our thinking about experience. On the other hand Kant’s theory of time seeing time as a priori intuition of the inner sense and as the way we regulate our inner experience presents an analysis of human mind based on the idea of the self within a temporal framework. My purpose in this work is to examine how temporality and the unity of the self are indissolubly linked, and what kind of foundation Kant’s theory of time provides for the unified of selves through change. Key Words: Kant, time, metaphysics, self, consciousness. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996.