Alame-Jones, Deborah (2018) The Contemporary Relevance of Kant’s Transcendental Psychology. Doctoral thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
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Alame-Jones, Deborah (2017) Contemporary relevance of Kant's transcendental psychology.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Kant’s transcendental psychology against the orthodoxy of the dominant analytic school of philosophy, in an aim to salvage it from criticisms that resulted in the widespread view that Kant had little to say about the mind that was correct or useful. Historically, this had led to the near exclusion of Kant’s views of the mind from mainstream philosophical debate; those who acknowledged intellectually the psychological import of the work deemed as having transgressed the bounds of proper philosophy. It is argued that this was, and still is, an unfortunate and narrow view, since an interpretation which fully embraces the transcendental aspect can provide invaluable insights and direction for contemporary research in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. A major focus of this work is to provide a rigorous conceptual analysis of the modern problem of consciousness and to show that every approach has become a response, positive or negative, to the Cartesian distinction between body and mind. Today, more than three hundred years after Descartes’ philosophical dualism, this powerful and persuasive argument still continues to hold fast. Cognitive neuroscientists have amassed a deep and detailed understanding of how our brains process information from the external world, but the question of how this information is transformed into conscious experience is deemed an unsolved problem. It is proposed that, although Kant never uses the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia, his theory of the transcendental subject is a valuable tool in unravelling the philosophical complexities that are commonplace in current theories.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Kant, Transcendental psychology |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
| Divisions: | Theses and Dissertations > Doctoral Theses |
| Depositing User: | Users 10 not found. |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Feb 2020 10:43 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Feb 2020 10:43 |
| URI: | https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1194 |
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