Kant's Theory of Mind

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Abstract This book presents the first extensive analysis in English of Kant's systematic criticism of dogmatic accounts of the mind as a distinctive object. This criticism has been much admired, especially in Anglophone circles, but interpreters have rarely paid attention to its full historical context and the many different dimensions of its treatment of the mind. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant organizes his criticism in terms of four fundamental fallacies or ‘paralogisms’ of ‘rational psychology’, and he discusses these under the heading of four traditional topics: substantiality, simplicity, identity, and ideality of the soul. A close analysis of Kant's earlier work, including notes from his lectures on metaphysics (most of which have been only recently published in German), demonstrates that Kant's most fundamental views here concern several topics that are not listed as one of the four explicit paralogism headings. In particular, his views on causality, judgement, and the mind's immateriality, independence (freedom), and immortality have a hidden and central importance. Throughout his career, Kant's views evolved on these topics, especially in the period of the extensive revisions of the paralogisms for the second ed. of the first Critique, when Kant published his major works on ethics, the Groundwork and the second Critique. In this period, he also developed his most sophisticated discussions of apperception and transcendental idealism. The volume outlines and evaluates the history and structure of each of Kant's major arguments in this area, and it comments on their relation to major lines of interpretation and developments in contemporary philosophy. It concludes that Kant's ultimate position on most doctrines concerning the mind is much closer to rationalism than is generally appreciated, and that this position also maintains, for the most part, a revolutionary critical perspective that remains highly relevant for current discussions.