A Failure of Recognition Pt. 2 Philosophy 224 A Failure of Recognition Pt. 2

Immanuel Kant is the thinker who is often characterized as the culmination of modern philosophy. His work can reasonably be described as a synthesis of the rationalist and empiricist strains of modern philosophy. His account of the person or self, like much else in his philosophy, is a response to the challenge of Hume. The basic tenor of this response: empirical realism and transcendental idealism. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

As Kant reports it, Hume, “woke me from my dogmatic slumber.” Hume’s arguments against causation (like the similar ones against the concept of the person) seemed to Kant to both hit the mark and to be absolutely destructive in their implications. They were particularly destructive, as we’ve already noted, of accounts of moral responsibility. Kant and Hume

A Humean Starting Point In the selection from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Kant begins with an essentially Humean critique of the tradition of rational psychology. Rational psychologists like Descartes and Leibniz (and Locke in a sense too), all make the same mistake according to Kant: attempting to derive conclusions about the nature of the person from an analysis of the activity of thinking. A Humean Starting Point

As Kant explains it, a paralogism is a “syllogism in which one is constrained, by a transcendental ground, to draw a formally invalid conclusion” (A341/B399). All the paralogisms are based on the same fallacious move: Fallacy of Equivocation. The Third paralogism concerns the tendency we have to attribute enduring identity to the unity of our conscious experience. Paralogisms

Central to Kant's criticisms in this third paralogism is the Kantian doctrine of apperception. Kant denies that the metaphysician is entitled to conclude that the self is identical based on the fact of self-awareness on the grounds that the activity of self-consciousness does not yield any object for thought. “The identity of the consciousness of Myself in different times is therefore only a formal condition of my thoughts and their connection, but it does not prove at all the numerical identity of my subject…” (117c2). Apperception

Hypostatization, not Hypostasis Thus, the identical self is for Kant, like it is for Hume, a kind of hypostatization. The idea of the person, although it is one to which we are naturally led in our quest for the unconditioned ground of thought, does not correspond to any object that is (or could be) actually given to us in experience. Hypostatization, not Hypostasis

A distinctly Non-Humean Conclusion While the self is not a possible object of experience, Kant does not join Hume in relegating the idea of the person to the realm of fiction. Instead, he insists that though the self established by the unity of apperception is a merely functional self, it is nonetheless “…necessary and sufficient for practical use…” (118c2). That is, it is essential and available for morality. A distinctly Non-Humean Conclusion

Why do we need the Person? The concept of person is for Kant a practical requirement, that is, it is necessary for any account of responsibility or moral goodness. One argument for this necessity is seen in his book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Why do we need the Person?

One of the issues Kant addresses in the book is the old Platonic/Christian idea that the world of experience is evil. Kant denies this, arguing instead that the world and human beings are neither good nor evil. In the case of human beings, freedom precludes any such designation. Human beings are, however, predisposed to good. Is the world Evil?

This predisposition can be seen in three different features of our natural being. Animality, in which Kant locates our drives for self-preservation, reproduction, and sociality. Humanity, which is essentially comparative in nature and where Kant locates our desires for honor and various forms of the regard of others (jealousy). Personality, which is where Kant locates the capacity to take moral law as incentive for action. What makes us good?

Moral vs. Psychological Personality This account of personality as the capacity to act morally is the ground for a distinction which seem familiar, but which for Kant motivates and develops in a unique way: moral vs. psychological personality. The person as a psychological fact is the self of apperception. The person as a moral fact is “…a subject whose actions can be imputed to him…” which is just “…the freedom of a rational being under moral laws…” (121c2). Moral vs. Psychological Personality

“exalted above any price” The significance of this distinction plays a large role in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue. Taken as a natural kind, humans are just one more piece of nature, different in capacity, but not different in value from other animals. Taken as a moral person, however, humans are absolutely valued, are ends in themselves, and thus possessed of an absolute dignity which is the source and object of our moral requirements. “exalted above any price”

The dignity that comports with our moral personality is the source of the only appropriate motive for right action: respect. Our dignity as human beings is grounded in our capacity to choose actions predicated on our respect for the moral law, and by extension, for the moral personality of our fellow humans. Kant’s deontological ethics can be captured by the principle: Act always in such a way that you treat yourself and others always as ends in themselves and never as means. Achtung, Baby.

Kant’s Enduring (Non-Moral) Legacy The account of the psychological person that Kant offers us remains extremely influential up to the present day. It is, by and large, the model that dominates cognitive science. The account includes: A faculty theory of the mind (functionalism). Insistence on the fundamental interplay of concepts and sensation. The faculties’ activities are essentially synthetic. Kant’s Enduring (Non-Moral) Legacy