Kantian Nonconceptualism

Kantian Nonconceptualism
Author: Dennis Schulting
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2016-12-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1137535172

This book offers an array of important perspectives on Kant and nonconceptualism from some of the leading scholars in current Kant studies. As well as discussing the various arguments surrounding Kantian nonconceptualism, the book provides broad insight into the theory of perception, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and aesthetics. His idealism aside, Kantian nonconceptualism is the most topical contemporary issue in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In this collection of specially commissioned essays, major players in the current debate, including Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, engage with each other and with the broader literature in the field addressing all the important aspects of Kantian nonconceptualism. Among other topics, the authors analyse the notion of intuition and the conditions of its generation, Kant’s theory of space, including his pre-Critical view of space, the relation between nonconceptualism and the Transcendental Deduction, and various challenges to both conceptualist and nonconceptualist interpretations of Kant. Two further chapters explore a prominent Hegelian conceptualist reading of Kant and Kant’s nonconceptualist position in the Third Critique. The volume also contains a helpful survey of the recent literature on Kant and nonconceptual content. Kantian Nonconceptualism provides a comprehensive overview of recent perspectives on Kant and nonconceptual content, and will be a key resource for Kant scholars and philosophers interested in the topic of nonconceptualism.

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content
Author: Dietmar H. Heidemann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2014-06-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317981553

Conceptualism is the view that cognizers can have mental representations of the world only if they possess the adequate concepts by means of which they can specify what they represent. By contrast, non-conceptualism is the view that mental representations of the world do not necessarily presuppose concepts by means of which the content of these representations can be specified, thus cognizers can have mental representations of the world that are non-conceptual. Consequently, if conceptualism is true then non-conceptualism must be false, and vice versa. This incompatibility makes the current debate over conceptualism and non-conceptualism a fundamental controversy since the range of conceptual capacities that cognizers have certainly has an impact on their mental representations of the world, on how sense perception is structured, and how external world beliefs are justified. Conceptualists and non-conceptualists alike refer to Kant as the major authoritative reference point from which they start and develop their arguments. The appeal to Kant attempts to pave the way for a robust answer to the question of whether or not there is non-conceptual content. Since the incompatibility of the conceptualist and non-conceptualist readings of Kant indicate a paradigm case, hopes have risen that the answer to the question of whether Kant is a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist might settle the contemporary controversy across the board. This volume searches for that answer. This book is based on a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content
Author: Dietmar H. Heidemann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-06-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317981561

Conceptualism is the view that cognizers can have mental representations of the world only if they possess the adequate concepts by means of which they can specify what they represent. By contrast, non-conceptualism is the view that mental representations of the world do not necessarily presuppose concepts by means of which the content of these representations can be specified, thus cognizers can have mental representations of the world that are non-conceptual. Consequently, if conceptualism is true then non-conceptualism must be false, and vice versa. This incompatibility makes the current debate over conceptualism and non-conceptualism a fundamental controversy since the range of conceptual capacities that cognizers have certainly has an impact on their mental representations of the world, on how sense perception is structured, and how external world beliefs are justified. Conceptualists and non-conceptualists alike refer to Kant as the major authoritative reference point from which they start and develop their arguments. The appeal to Kant attempts to pave the way for a robust answer to the question of whether or not there is non-conceptual content. Since the incompatibility of the conceptualist and non-conceptualist readings of Kant indicate a paradigm case, hopes have risen that the answer to the question of whether Kant is a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist might settle the contemporary controversy across the board. This volume searches for that answer. This book is based on a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.

Kant's Shorter Writings

Kant's Shorter Writings
Author: Robert Hanna
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 144386272X

This collection highlights the importance of Kant’s shorter writings, which span the entire intellectual career of this seminal thinker. It contrasts with other philosophical studies of Kant’s work, which typically focus on a specific period of his career, and on either his theoretical philosophy or his practical philosophy. These shorter works offer a framework for understanding several central questions of critical philosophy in the context of Kant’s complete corpus of writings. As such, this volume provides a ground-breaking approach to contemporary Kant studies by offering a new interpretive perspective to enable Kant scholars to advance their research projects. At the same time, it allows a general overview of Kant’s work for a broader non-scholarly audience interested in his critical philosophy and its context.

The Contents of Perceptual Experience: A Kantian Perspective

The Contents of Perceptual Experience: A Kantian Perspective
Author: Anna Tomaszewska
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2014-10-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110372657

The book addresses the debate on whether the representational content of perceptual experience is conceptual or non-conceptual, by bringing out the points of comparison between Kant’s conception of intuition and the contemporary accounts of non-conceptual content, encountered in the writings of G. Evans, Ch. Peacocke, F. Dretske, T. Crane, M. G. F. Martin, and others. Following R. Aquila’s reading of Kant’s conception of representation, the author argues that intuition (Anschauung, intuitus) provides the most basic form of intentionality – pre-conceptual reference to objects, which underlies the acts of conceptualization and judgment. The book advances an interpretation of Kant’s theory of experience in the light of such questions as: Does conscious perceptual experience of objects require that subjects possess concepts of these objects? Do the contents of experience differ from the contents of beliefs or judgments? And if they do, what accounts for this difference? These questions take us to the most puzzling philosophical topic of the relation between mind and world. Anna Tomaszewska argues that this relation does not involve conceptual capacities alone but also, on the most basic level of perceptual experience, pre-cognitive “sensible intuition,” enabling relatedness to objects that remains uninformed by concepts. In a nutshell, on her interpretation, Kant can be taken to subscribe to the view that perceptual cognition does not have rational underpinnings.

Kant’s Lectures / Kants Vorlesungen

Kant’s Lectures / Kants Vorlesungen
Author: Bernd Dörflinger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110387581

Although they were not written by Kant himself, the transcripts of his lectures constitute an important source for philosophical research today. Some of the contributions presented in this volume discuss the authenticity and significance of these transcripts, for example the status of Kant's lectures on logic and anthropology, while others shed light on the historical formation of specific writings, for instance the texts on the philosophy of religion. The contributions provide new insights into Kant's philosophy, that, if looking at Kant's published writings alone, we would not be able to gain. In a number of cases, a critical analysis of Kant's lectures gives us a better understanding of his published works. Thus his lectures on metaphysics shed new light on his Critique of Pure Reason, while the lecture on natural law is a valuable source for the understanding of his published legal writings.

Kant's Radical Subjectivism

Kant's Radical Subjectivism
Author: Dennis Schulting
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2017-06-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319438778

In this book, Dennis Schulting presents a staunch defence of Kant’s radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge. This defence is mounted by means of a comprehensive analysis of what is arguably the centrepiece of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Radical subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge is to be understood as the thesis that the possibility of knowledge of objects essentially and wholly depends on subjective functions of thought, or the capacity to judge by virtue of transcendental apperception, given sensory input. Subjectivism thus defined is not about merely the necessary conditions of knowledge, but nor is it claimed that it grounds the very existence of things. Novel interpretations are provided of such central themes as the objective unity of apperception, the threefold synthesis, judgement, truth and objective validity, spontaneity in judgement, figurative synthesis and spatial unity, nonconceptual content, idealism and the thing in itself, and material synthesis. One chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the Deduction by Kant’s most prominent successor, G.W.F. Hegel, and throughout Schulting critically engages with the work of contemporary readers of Kant such as Lucy Allais, Robert Hanna, John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and James Van Cleve.

The Kantian Mind

The Kantian Mind
Author: Sorin Baiasu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 831
Release: 2023-07-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 100090394X

The thought of Immanuel Kant is fundamental to understanding Western philosophy. Spanning epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion, the sheer scope and originality of Kant’s ideas have decisively shaped the history of modern philosophy. The Kantian Mind is an outstanding guide and reference source to Kant's thought and a major new publication in Kant scholarship. Comprising forty-five chapters by a stellar team of contributors, the collection is divided into four clear parts: Background to the Critical Philosophy Transcendental Philosophy (Critique and Doctrine) Posthumous Writings and Lectures Kant and Contemporary Kantians. In addition to coverage of Kant's main works, the volume contains chapters on a broad range of topics including Kant's views on logic, mathematics, the natural sciences, anthropology, religion, politics, and education. The concluding chapters cover the influence of Kant's thought on contemporary analytic and continental philosophy. Including suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, The Kantian Mind is essential reading for all students and scholars of Kant and contemporary Kantian thought. It will also be extremely helpful to those in related humanities and social sciences disciplines such as religion, history, politics, and literature.

Seeing More

Seeing More
Author: Samantha Matherne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2024-04-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198898304

Samantha Matherne defends a systematic interpretation of the philosopher Immanuel Kant's theory of imagination. To this end, she offers an account of what kind of mental capacity Kant takes imagination to be in general, as well as an account of the way in which we use this capacity in theoretical, aesthetic, and practical contexts. In contrast with more traditional theories of imagination, as a kind of fantasy that we exercise only in relation to objects that are not real or not present, Matherne argues that Kant theorizes imagination as something that we exercise just as much in relation to objects that are real and present. Thus she attributes to Kant a view of imagining as something that pervades our lives. In order to bring out this pervasiveness, Matherne explores Kant's account of how we exercise our imagination in perception, ordinary experience, the appreciation of beauty and sublimity, the production of art, the pursuit of happiness, and the pursuit of morality. However, she also argues that Kant's analysis of this wide range of phenomena is underwritten by a unified theory of what imagination is, as a remarkably flexible cognitive capacity that we can exercise in constrained and creative, playful and serious ways.