From eb2d039a8ae87cd869caa1274ea66b6e42c26927 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jack Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2024 11:54:35 +0800 Subject: [PATCH] Add new blog post --- .../index.md | 125 +++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 122 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/content/posts/kant-view-of-mind-and-consciousness/index.md b/src/content/posts/kant-view-of-mind-and-consciousness/index.md index a19fe45d7..580d84a3f 100644 --- a/src/content/posts/kant-view-of-mind-and-consciousness/index.md +++ b/src/content/posts/kant-view-of-mind-and-consciousness/index.md @@ -63,9 +63,9 @@ to the model have not even been assimilated by it. Kant's Critical Project and How the Mind Fits Into It ----------------------------------------------------- -The major works so far as Kant's views on the mind are concerned are the monumental _Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)_ and -his little, late _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_, first published in 1798 only six years before his death. -Kant's view of the mind arose from his +The major works so far as Kant's views on the mind are concerned are the monumental __Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)__ +and his little, late __Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View__, first published in 1798 only six years before his +death. Kant's view of the mind arose from his [general philosophical project](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/) in CPR the following way. Kant aimed among other things to, @@ -165,3 +165,122 @@ structure (Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition). It must associate spatio-tem spatio-temporally structured items (Synthesis of Reproduction in the Imagination). And it must recognize items using concepts, the Categories in particular (Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept)_. This threefold doctrine of synthesis is one of the cornerstones of Kant's model of the mind. We will consider it in more detail in the next Section. + +The 'deduction of the categories' should now be complete. Strangely enough, the chapter has only nicely got started. In +the first edition version, for example, we have only reached about one-third of the way through the chapter. At this +point, Kant introduces the notion of transcendental apperception for the first time and the unity of such apperception, +the unity of consciousness. Evidently, something is happening (something, moreover, not at all well heralded in the +text) + +We can now understand in more detail why Kant said that the subjective deduction is inessential. Since the objective +deduction is about the conditions of representations having objects, a better name for it might have been 'deduction of +the object'. Similarly, a better name for the subjective deduction might have been 'the deduction of the subject' or +'the deduction of the subject's nature'. The latter enquiry was inessential to Kant's main critical project because the +main project was to defend the synthetic _a priori_ credentials of physics in the objective deduction. From this point +of view, anything uncovered about the nature and functioning of the mind was a happy accident. + +### Attack on the Paralogisms, 1st Edition + +The chapter on the Paralogisms, the first of the three parts of Kant's second project, contains Kant's most original +insights into the nature of consciousness of the self. In the first edition, he seems to have achieved a stable position +on self-consciousness only as late as this chapter. Certainly his position was not stable in TD. Even his famous term +for consciousness of self, 'I think', occurs for the first time only in the introduction to the chapter on the +Paralogisms. His target is claims that we know what the mind is like. Whatever the merits of Kant's attack on these +claims, in the course of mounting it, he made some very deep-running observations about consciousness and knowledge of +self. + +:::tip +To summarize: in the first edition, TD contains most of what Kant had to say about synthesis and unity, but little on +the nature of consciousness of self. The chapter on the Paralogisms contains most of what he has to say about +consciousness of self. +::: + +### The Two Discussions in the 2nd-edition TD and Other Discussions + +In other new material prepared for the second edition, we find a first gloss on the topic of self-consciousness as early +as the Aesthetic (B68). The mind also appears in a new passage called the Refutation of Idealism, where Kant attempts to +tie the possibility of one sort of consciousness of self to consciousness of permanence in something other than +ourselves, in a way he thought to be inconsistent with Berkeleian idealism. This new Refutation of Idealism has often +been viewed as a replacement for the argument against the Fourth Paralogism of the first edition. + +Elsewhere in his work, the only sustained discussion of the mind and consciousness is, as we said, his little, late +__Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View__. By 'anthropology' Kant meant the study of human beings from the point of +view of their (psychologically-controlled) behaviour, especially their behaviour toward one another, and of the things +revealed in behaviour such as character. Though Kant sometimes contrasted anthropology as a legitimate study with what +he understood empirical psychology to be, namely, psychology based on introspective observation, he meant by +anthropology something fairly close to what we now mean by behavioural or experimental psychology. + +Kant's View of the Mind +----------------------- + +### Method + +Turning now to Kant's view of the mind, we will start with a point about method: Kant held surprisingly strong and not +entirely consistent views on the empirical study of the mind. The empirical method for doing psychology that Kant +discussed was introspection. + +Sometimes he held such study to be hopeless. The key text on psychology is in The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural +Science. There Kant tell us that “the empirical doctrine of the soul … must remain even further removed than chemistry +from the rank of what may be called a natural science proper”. (In Kant's defence, there was nothing resembling a single +unified theory of chemical reactions in his time.) The contents of introspection, in his terms inner sense, cannot be +studied scientifically for at least 5 reasons. + +1. Having only one universal dimension and one that they are only represented to have at that, namely, distribution in + time, the contents of inner sense cannot be quantified; thus no mathematical model of them is possible. +2. “The manifold of internal observation is separated only by mere thought”. That is to say, only the introspective + observer distinguishes the items one from another; there are no real distinctions among the items themselves. +3. These items “cannot be kept separate” in a way that would allow us to connect them again “at will”, by which Kant + presumably means, according to the dictates of our developing theory. +4. “Another thinking subject does not submit to our investigations in such a way as to be conformable to our purposes” - + the only thinking subject whose inner sense one can investigate is oneself. +5. “Even the observation itself alters and distorts the state of the object observed”. Indeed, introspection can be bad + for the health: it is a road to “mental illness” ('Illuminism and Terrorism', 1798, Ak. VII:133; see 161). + +In these critical passages, it is not clear why he didn't respect what he called anthropology more highly as an +empirical study of the mind, given that he himself did it. He did so elsewhere. In the Anthropology, for example, he +links 'self-observation' and observation of others and calls them both sources of anthropology + +Whatever, no kind of empirical psychology can yield necessary truths about the mind. In the light of this limitation, +how _should_ we study the mind? Kant's answer was: transcendental method using transcendental arguments (notions +introduced earlier). If we cannot observe the connections among the denizens of inner sense to any purpose, we can study +what the mind _must_ be like and what capacities and structures (in Kant's jargon, faculties) it _must_ have if it is to +represent things as it does. With this method we can find universally true, that is to say, 'transcendental' +psychological propositions. We have already seen what some of them are: minds must be able to synthesize and minds must +have a distinctive unity, for example. Let us turn now to these substantive claims. + +### Synthesis and Faculties + +We have already discussed Kant's view of the mind's handling of space and time, so we can proceed directly to his +doctrine of synthesis. As Kant put it in one of his most famous passages, “__Concepts without intuitions are empty, +intuitions without concepts are blind__”. Experience requires both percepts and concepts. As we might say now, to +discriminate, we need information; but for information to be of any use to us, we must organize the information. This +organization is provided by acts of synthesis. + +> By _synthesis_, in its most general sense, I understand the act of putting different representations together, and of +> grasping what is manifold in them in one knowledge + +If the doctrine of space and time is the first major part of his model of the mind, the doctrine of synthesis is the +second. Kant claimed, as we saw earlier, that three kinds of synthesis are required to organize information, namely +apprehending in intuition, reproducing in imagination, and recognizing in concepts. Each of the three kinds of synthesis +relates to a different aspect of Kant's fundamental duality of intuition and concept. Synthesis of apprehension concerns +raw perceptual input, synthesis of recognition concerns concepts, and synthesis of reproduction in imagination allows +the mind to go from the one to the other. + +They also relate to three fundamental faculties of the mind. One is the province of Sensibility, one is the province of +Understanding, and the one in the middle is the province of a faculty that has a far less settled position than the +other two, namely, Imagination + +The first two, apprehension and reproduction, are inseparable; one cannot occur without the other. The third, +recognition, requires the other two but is not required by them. It seems that only the third requires the use of +concepts; this problem of non-concept-using syntheses and their relationship to use of the categories becomes a +substantial issue in the second edition, where Kant tries to save the universality of the objective deduction by arguing +that all three kinds of syntheses are required to represent objects. + +Acts of synthesis are performed on that to which we are passive in experience, namely intuitions (_Anschauungen_). +Intuitions are quite different from sense-data as classically understood; we can become conscious of intuitions only +after acts of synthesis and only by inference from these acts, not directly. Thus they are something more like +theoretical entities (better, events) postulated to explain something in what we do recognize. What they explain is the +non-conceptual element in representations, an element over which we have no control. Intuitions determine how our +representations will serve to confirm or refute theories, aid or impede our efforts to reach various goals. + +#### Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition \ No newline at end of file