Phil 285: Kantian Philosophy of Mind

The purpose of this course is to consider a range of topics in the philosophy of mind from a Kantian perspective, whether it be Kant's own or one that is more broadly 'Kantian.' Topics to be discussed include the distinction between sensibility and understanding, whether a naturalistic conception of the self is consistent, the structure of self-consciousness, the relation between the mind and the external world, and the substantiality, simplicity, and identity of the self.

Extensive knowledge of either Kant or issues in philosophy of mind is not presupposed. We will read some central passages from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, secondary literature directly relating to these passages, and contemporary work that focusses on the issues discussed in these passages.

I. Reading Assignments (subject to adjustment)

II. Requirements:

Short Papers

Students must write four short (2-3 pages) purely expository papers over the course of the quarter. No more than one short paper may be turned in per week, two of the papers must be done during the first three weeks (i.e., by Oct. 16), and at least one must be done in the following two weeks. Papers must be turned in by 9:00 Thursday morning.

Term Paper

The term paper (ca. 20 pages) is due Friday December 5th. A projected term paper topic (2-4 pages) must be submitted by Friday November 21. In the recent past, I have given students the opportunity to revise and resubmit their papers after I provided comments on them.

Extensions are permitted only in the most extreme of circumstances (e.g., illness) and must be requested in advance.

Class Participation

III. Texts:

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. & tr. P. Guyer & A. Wood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Karl Ameriks, Kant's Theory of Mind, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, [1982] 2000).

Other assigned material will be made available in the philosophy department library for fotocopying.

IV. Bibliography:

Henry Allison, Idealism and Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Karl Ameriks, "From Kant to Frank: The Ineliminable Subject" in The Modern Subject, eds. K. Ameriks & D. Sturma.

----------- and Dieter Sturma (eds.), The Modern Subject (Albany, SUNY Press, 1995).

Tyler Burge, "Individualism and Self-Knowledge," Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 649-663.

Quassim Cassam, Self and World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Roderick Chisholm, "On the Observability of the Self," Philosophy &Phenomenological Research 30 (1969): 7-21.

Manfred Frank, "Is Subjectivity a Non-Thing, an Absurdity?" in The Modern Subject, eds., K. Ameriks & D. Sturma.

Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

Dieter Henrich, "Self-Consciousness: A Critical Introduction to a Theory," Man and World 4 (1971): 3-28.

Patricia Kitcher, Kant's Transcendental Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

John McDowell, "Having the World in View," Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 431-450.

Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Derek Parfit, "Personal Identity," Philosophical Review 80 (1971): 3-27.

Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).

Sydney Shoemaker, "Self-Reference and Self-Awareness," Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 555-567.

Further Reading:

For Intuition and Concept, Sensibility and Understanding

John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).

-----, "Having the World in View," Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 451-491 (Lectures II and III).

Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Houston Smit, "Kant on Marks and the Immediacy of Intuition," Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 235-266.

Dietmar Heidemann, "Anschauung und Begriff: Eine Begründungsversuch des Stämme-Dualismus in Kants Erkenntnis Lehre," in Aufklärungen, ed. Kristina Engelhard (Berlin: Dunker & Humboldt, 2002), 65-90.

Georg Mohr, Das sinnliche Ich (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1991).

For Transcendental Philosophy, Naturalism, and Self-Consciousness

Robert Pippin, "Kant on the Spontaneity of Mind," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1987): 449-476.

Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

Patricia Kitcher, "Changing the Name of the Game: Kant's Cognitivism Versus Hume's Psychologism," Philosophical Topics 19 (1991): 201-236.

For The Structure of Self-Consciousness

Karl Ameriks, "Understanding Apperception Today," in Kant and Contemporary Epistemology, ed. P. Parrini (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 331- 347.

Dieter Sturma, Kant über Selbstbewusstsein (Hildesheim: Olms, 1985).

Ernst Tugendhat, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1986).

Dieter Henrich, "Fichte's Original Insight" in Contemporary German Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Univ. Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1982), 15-53.

David Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

David Lewis, "Attitudes de se and de dicto," Philosophical Review 87 (1979): 513-543.

John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical," Nous 13 (1979): 3-21.

G.E. Anscombe, "The First Person," in Mind and Language, ed. S. Guttenplan (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 45-65.

Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970).

Pierre Keller, Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Heiner Klemme, Kants Philosophie des Subjekts. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996).

For The External World

Henry Allison, Review of Paul Guyer's Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, in Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 214-221.

Jonathan Vogel, "The Problem of Self-Knowledge in Kant's Refutation of Idealism: Two Recent Views," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 875-892.

Andrew Brook, Kant and the Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

For Self and World

Peter Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959).

Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

[The issue of skepticism regarding the external world has generated a tremendous amount of historical and contemporary literature, too much to list here.]

For the Paralogisms in general

Thomas Powell, Kant's Theory of Self-Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

Michelle Grier, Kant's Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Derk Pereboom, "Is Kant's Transcendental Philosophy Inconsistent?" History of Philosophy Quarterly 8 (1991): 357-372.

For Is the Self a Substance?

Roderick Chisholm, The First Person (Minneapolis: Minnesota, 1981).

James van Cleve, Problems from Kant (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

For Is the Self Simple (or a Unity)?

Colin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991).

Susan Hurley, Consciousness in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998)

For Personal Identity

John Perry, Identity, Personal Identity and the Self (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002)

[Again, there is a massive literature on personal identity.]