Kant's Transcendental Psychology

311 Pages·1994·16.779 MB·English

by  Kitcher, Patricia;Kant, Immanuel

Kant's Transcendental Psychology
This page intentionally left blank
Kant's
Transcendental
Psychology
Patricia Kitcher
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland Madrid
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1990 by Patricia Kitcher
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1993.
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kitcher, Patricia.
Kant's transcendental psychology
by Patricia Kitcher.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-19-505967-0
ISBN 0-19-508563-9 (pbk)
1. Cognition.
2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804—Contributions in psychology.
3. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
I. Title. BF311.K57 1990 128'.092—dc20
89-78463
2 4 6 8 9 7 53
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For P.S.K.
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
Many people have helped me in the course of my study of Kant and in
writing this book. At Wellesley, Ingrid Stadler spent hours taking me
through the three Critiques, more hours, I fear, than I have spent teach-
ing any undergraduate. I also benefited from Richard Rorty's Kant
seminar at Princeton. Over the years my correspondence with Gary
Hatfield has been a source of inspiration and support. Hatfield's own
work and his responses to mine have encouraged me to believe that it
is not crazy to take Kant's psychology seriously and to try to understand
it in its own context.
Three people have been kind enough to read the entire manuscript
and to offer their criticisms: Henry Allison, Philip Kitcher, and Jonathan
Vogel. It was particularly kind of Professor Vogel to send detailed
criticisms, since we only met once. Henry Allison read drafts of each
of the chapters, which we then discussed at length. Anyone writing on
Kant would be extraordinarily fortunate to have such a critic and I hope
that I have used his expertise wisely. Philip Kitcher read more drafts of
these chapters than either he or I care to remember. I am also grateful
for Jill Buroker's comments on Chapters 2 and 3, many of which led
me to make substantial revisions. While we were colleagues at Min-
nesota, John Earman and I had several conversations about Leibniz.
More recently, I have been able to discuss Kant's predecessors with
Nicholas Jolley. Although I have learned from both, neither of these
fine scholars should be blamed for any mistakes in my interpretations
of Leibniz or Hume. I would also like to thank four research assistants,
Randy Wojtowicz, Warren Dow, and Valerie and Gary Hardcastle, for
their careful and prompt help, and the Committee on Research at the
University of California, San Diego, for funding them. I am particularly
viii PREFACE
grateful to the Hardcastles for organizing the bibliography and the
indices.
A book project incurs personal debts as well. I am grateful to my
father for spending many lunch hours in Sterling Memorial Library at
Yale hunting for obscure German books, and to both my parents for
supporting my work long before it was fashionable to have working
daughters. In the last two years of intensive work on the book, my sons,
Andrew and Charles, have never complained about my not being able
to do things for them; they only expressed the wish that I did not have
to work so hard. This book could not have been written without the
enormous patience and loving support of my husband, Philip Kitcher.
For a year he met the children virtually every day after school so that
I could have enough time to complete it.
Finally I would like to thank the editors of the Philosophical Review
for permitting me to use materials from several articles. Although I
rewrote the chapters completely, many of the ideas and arguments from
"Discovering the Forms of Intuition" (Philosophical Review XCVI,
1987: 205-248) and "Kant's Paralogisms" (Philosophical Review XCI,
1982: 515-547) recur in Chapters 2 and 7. The basic idea for Chapter
4, and indeed for the book, was presented in "Kant on Self-Identity"
(PhilosophicalReview XCI, 1982:41-70), although I have changed many
of the arguments as my ideas have changed. I am also grateful to J.-C.
Smith and to D. Reidel for permission to use material from section III
of "Kant's Dedicated Cognitivist System" (in J.-C. Smith, ed., Historical
Foundations of Cognitive Science, Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1989,
pp. 189-209).
A Note on References: In the notes I give the reference for citations,
other than those from the Critique of Pure Reason, in the Akademie
Edition (Kant's gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Koniglichen Preus-
sischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols., Berlin: Walter de Gruy-
ter and predecessors, 1902-), by citing the volume number and pages
after "AA," as well as the standard English source. For the Critique, I
use the standard "A" and "B" citations from Kemp Smith (Norman
Kemp Smith, trans., Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, New
York: St. Martin's, 1968) in the text.
La Jolla, California P.W.K.
February 1990
Contents
1. What Is Transcendental Psychology?, 3
The "Dark Side" of the Critique, 3
Countercurrents: Reinhold to Austin, 5
Kant Against "Psychology," 11
Transcendental Psychology, 14
In Defense of Transcendental Psychology, 21
2. The Science of Sensibility, 30
What the Transcendental Aesthetic Is About, 30
Early Modern Theories of Spatial Perception, 32
Kant's Analysis of Spatial Perception, 35
Intuition, Matter, and Form, 35
Pure Forms (and Nativism), 37
The Method of Isolation, 39
Distance, Extent, and Shape, 40
Touch: Leibniz Versus Berkeley, 41
Kant's Empirical Assumptions, 43
The Isolation Argument, 44
Two Arguments of the Metaphysical Exposition, 45
The Standard View, 45
The First Argument, 46
The Second Argument, 48
The Transcendental Exposition, 49
The Role of Geometry, 49
Geometry and the Space of Perception, 50
Parsons's Interpretation, 53
Kant's Results, 54
The Forms of Intuition and Contemporary Evidence, 55
Depth Perception, 55
Is the Space of Perception Euclidean?, 56