A Critical Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

In the modern context the investigation of the human cognitive capacities is a task that falls to the philosophy of mind. The first Critique, on the other hand, does not expressly undertake to provide a comprehensive account, or even a ‘theory’, of all our intellectual abilities and achievements. But if we read the work somewhat against the grain, we can certainly find many elements here that furnish significant contributions in this direction, and specifically to the frequently neglected epistemological task of a transcendental psychology. There is certainly no reason to regard the latter as an entirely ‘imaginary’ science, as Strawson claims in a remarkably categorical manner (1966: 32). The very programme of the first Critique already prescribes a particular direction for the philosophy of mind and encourages us to develop one, not indeed directly, but specifically in the context of a critical investigation of the possibility of knowledge in general. Yet Kant’s emphatic methodological division between a transcendental theory and an empirically verifiable theory must also cast doubt upon a recent attempt to interpret the first Critique as a direct contribution to the field of cognitive science in the contemporary sense (Brook 1994). The decisive problem here is not so much the fact that the modern cognitive sciences necessarily lay beyond his horizon, but that disciplines such as neurophysiology, psycholinguistics and information theory essentially are essentially concerned with empirical rather than transcendental questions. It is therefore no accident that the principal thesis underlying Kant’s philosophy of mind, the thesis of transcendental idealism itself, plays an entirely subsidiary role in Brook’s version of the argument. (From amongst the vast literature concerning contemporary philosophy of mind cf. Beckerman 1999 and Kim 1996; for Kant specifically, cf. Ameriks 20002, Klemme 1996, and Sturma 1985).