Kant and Rational Psychology
Kant and Rational Psychology

Author: Corey Dyck

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014-03

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 019968829X

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Corey W. Dyck presents a new account of Kant's criticism of the rational investigation of the soul in the 'Critique of Pure Reason', in light of its 18th-century German context. He reinterprets the aims and results of the Paralogisms, and illuminates Kant's discussion of the soul's substantiality, simplicity, personality, and existence.

Kant and Rational Psychology
Kant and Rational Psychology

Author: Corey W. Dyck

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-03-20

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0191512621

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Corey W. Dyck presents a new account of Kant's criticism of the rational investigation of the soul in his monumental Critique of Pure Reason, in light of its eighteenth-century German context. When characterizing the rational psychology that is Kant's target in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason chapter of the Critique commentators typically only refer to an approach to, and an account of, the soul found principally in the thought of Descartes and Leibniz. But Dyck argues that to do so is to overlook the distinctive rational psychology developed by Christian Wolff, which emphasized the empirical foundation of any rational cognition of the soul, and which was widely influential among eighteenth-century German philosophers, including Kant. In this book, Dyck reveals how the received conception of the aim and results of Kant's Paralogisms must be revised in light of a proper understanding of the rational psychology that is the most proximate target of Kant's attack. In particular, he contends that Kant's criticism hinges upon exposing the illusory basis of the rational psychologist's claims inasmuch as he falls prey to the appearance of the soul as being given in inner experience. Moreover, Dyck demonstrates that significant light can be shed on Kant's discussion of the soul's substantiality, simplicity, personality, and existence by considering the Paralogisms in this historical context.

The Sciences of the Soul
The Sciences of the Soul

Author: Fernando Vidal

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 0226855880

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Fernando Vidal’s trailblazing text on the origins of psychology traces the development of the discipline from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth. Originally published in 2011, The Sciences of the Soul continues to be of wide importance in the history and philosophy of psychology, the history of the human sciences more generally, and in the social and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe.

The Powers of Aristotle's Soul
The Powers of Aristotle's Soul

Author: Thomas Kjeller Johansen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-10-18

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0191633011

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Aristotle is considered by many to be the founder of 'faculty psychology'—the attempt to explain a variety of psychological phenomena by reference to a few inborn capacities. In The Powers of Aristotle's Soul, Thomas Kjeller Johansen investigates his main work on psychology, the De Anima, from this perspective. He shows how Aristotle conceives of the soul's capacities and how he uses them to account for the souls of living beings. Johansen offers an original account of how Aristotle defines the capacities in relation to their activities and proper objects, and considers the relationship of the body to the definition of the soul's capacities. Against the background of Aristotle's theory of science, Johansen argues that the capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. He develops detailed readings of Aristotle's treatment of nutrition, perception, and intellect, which show the soul's various roles as formal, final and efficient causes, and argues that the so-called 'agent' intellect falls outside the scope of Aristotle's natural scientific approach to the soul. Other psychological activities, various kinds of perception (including 'perceiving that we perceive'), memory, imagination, are accounted for in their explanatory dependency on the basic capacities. The ability to move spatially is similarly explained as derivative from the perceptual or intellectual capacities. Johansen claims that these capacities together with the nutritive may be understood as 'parts' of the soul, as they are basic to the definition and explanation of the various kinds of soul. Finally, he considers how the account of the capacities in the De Anima is adopted and adapted in Aristotle's biological and minor psychological works.

Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics
Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics

Author: Courtney D. Fugate

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-05-24

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0191086452

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Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics explores the metaphysics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (17141762) and its decisive influence on Immanuel Kant. For over a century, scholars have recognized the significance of Baumgarten's Metaphysics, both because of its impact on Kant's intellectual development, and because of the way it fundamentally informed the work of generations of German philosophers, including Moses Mendelssohn, Thomas Abbt, Johann Gottfried Herder, Solomon Maimon, Johann August Eberhard, and arguably even Georg Friedrich Hegel. However, Baumgarten's Metaphysics has only recently become available in reliable German and English translations; as such, many scholars have been excluded from the discussion and the significance of Baumgarten's work has remained largely unexplored. Thus with the appearance of these translations, interest in Baumgarten's work has surged. This collection provides an anchor for this emerging discussion by presenting chapters by some of the scholars most responsible for Baumgarten's current reputation, together with some of the best young scholars in this emerging field.

The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul
The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul

Author: Simona Ginsburg

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-03-12

Total Pages: 665

ISBN-13: 0262039303

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A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications. After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”