Kant’s account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant’s position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore and (...) Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime. I illustrate the worry by juxtaposing the finitist reading with analytical cubism. -/- . (shrink)

Kant's most sustained discussion of obscure representations can be found in the first book of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. What is puzzling is that in the middle of the section devoted to the topic, Kant asserts that “because this field can only be perceived in his passive side as a play of sensations, the theory of obscure representations belongs only to physiological anthropology, and so it is properly disregarded here.” So, do obscure representations belong to pragmatic (...) anthropology or not? Kant's official position is that they do not, yet the textual evidence—we find discussions of obscure representations in 20 years of his work on pragmatic anthropology—suggests that they do, in fact, belong here. Most of the literature on obscure representations focuses on their contribution to cognition and none has clarified what it would mean to assume a “pragmatic point of view” on obscure representations, and to study them in the context of pragmatic anthropology. My aim in this paper is to provide such clarification, focusing on Kant's discussion of our propensity to “play with” obscure representations and what he calls our “art of obscuring.”. (shrink)

Le présent essai tente de tirer au clair les différentes significations des termes « conscient » et « conscience » dans la philosophie critique de Kant et en particulier dans la Critique de la raison pure. On considère d’abord les divers types de représentations et ce que veut dire Kant lorsqu’il les dit « avec » ou « sans » conscience. On considère ensuite le concept de conscience tel qu’il apparaît dans la Déduction transcendantale des catégories, où il ne réfère (...) pas à une qualité de représentations particulières, mais à une attitude active de l’esprit. Considérée dans son ensemble, la conception kantienne de la « conscience » mêle inséparablement un aspect que nous appelons, après T. Nagel, « conscience phénoménale », et un aspect proche de la « conscience d’accès » selon N. Block, dans lequel cependant la conscience de soi, exprimable par la proposition « Je pense », joue un rôle central. Cette combinaison fait de Kant un interlocuteur unique dans les débats contemporains sur la conscience et son rôle dans notre vie mentale, ainsi que sur l’IA et sa signification pour l’avenir de l’humanité. (shrink)

Critics have charged constitutive panpsychism with inconsistency. Panpsychists reject physicalism for its seeming inability to explain consciousness. In making this argument, they commit themselves to the idea of "revelation": that we know, in some especially direct way, the nature of consciousness. Yet they then attribute properties to ourconsciousness---like being constituted out of trillions of simpler experiential parts---that conflict with how it seems introspectively. This seems to pose a dilemma: either revelation is false, and physicalism remains intact, or revelation is true, (...) and constitutive panpsychists are hoist by their own petard. But this is too simplistic. Constitutive panpsychists can say that our minds contain innumerable phenomenal states that are "confused" with one another: immediately present to introspection only en masse, not individually. Accepting revelation does not require ignoring the attentional, conceptual, and interpretive limitations of introspection, and these familiar limitations remove the tension between panpsychism and relevation. (shrink)