Is it the Understanding or the Imagination that Synthesizes?
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Janum Sethi
Abstract
A common reading of Kant’s notion of synthesis takes it to be carried out by the imagination in a manner guided by the concepts of the understanding. I point to a significant problem for this reading: it is the reproductive imagination that carries out the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction, and Kant claims repeatedly that the reproductive imagination is governed solely by its own laws of association. In light of this, I argue for a different division of the labor of synthesis between the imagination and the understanding. On my view, while the reproductive imagination puts representations together in accordance with laws of association, the understanding recognizes (some of) these combinations of representations as necessary in virtue of corresponding to a connection in the objects represented. I conclude by suggesting that a virtue of my account is that it can make sense of Kant’s claim that the relational categories are merely regulative for intuitions.
Acknowledgments
I first presented this paper at a virtual workshop on Kant and the Norms of Cognition, organized by Konstantin Pollok in July 2021. I am grateful to Konstantin for the invitation and to him and the other participants for their very helpful comments on my paper. For discussion, comments, or advice, I also thank Lucy Allais, Corey Dyck, Hannah Ginsborg, Thomas Land, Samantha Matherne, Alexandra Newton, Karin Nisenbaum, Clinton Tolley, Eric Watkins, participants at the Pacific NAKS Study Group meeting at Claremont College in February 2022, as well as participants at the Berlin Summer Colloquium in June 2022.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Abhandlungen
- The Place of Judgments of Perception in Kant’s Transcendental Cognitive Theory
- True Need in Kant
- Die Raum- und Zeitlehre Alois Riehls im Kontext realistischer Interpretationen von Kants transzendentalem Idealismus
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Zur begrifflichen Herkunft von „Neukantianismus“: Eine Streitsache der Hegel-Schule zwischen Rosenkranz, Michelet und Lassalle (Königsberg/Berlin 1858/1862)
- Kant and the Norms of Cognition
- Introduction
- Kant’s Ontology of Appearances and the Synthetic Apriori
- Kant on Time II: The Law of Evidence of the Critique of Pure Reason
- Is it the Understanding or the Imagination that Synthesizes?
- Self-Legislating Machines: What can Kant Teach Us about Original Intentionality?
- Buchbesprechungen
- Dennis Schulting: Kant’s Deduction from Apperception. An Essay on the transcendental Deduction of the Categories. [KSEH 203]. De Gruyter ²2019. 344 pages. ISBN: 978-3-11-058430-1.
- Bernd Ludwig: Aufklärung über die Sittlichkeit. Zu Kants Grundlegung einer Metaphysik der Sitten. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2020. 226 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-465-04411-6. [Rote Reihe 118].
- Reflexion, Gefühl, Identität in Anschluß an Kant/Reflection, Emotion, Identity. From Kant Onwards. Ed. by Ana Marta González and Alejandro G. Vigo. Berlin 2019, 130 p., ISBN 9783428157785.
- Georg Friedrich Meier: Schriften über das ewige Leben der Seele: (1) Beweis, daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebt, 2. Aufl.; (2) Vertheidigung seines Beweises des ewigen Lebens der Seele und seiner Gedancken von der Religion; (3) Abermalige Vertheidigung seines Beweises, daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebe. Hrsg. von Paola Rumore. [Christian Wolff. Gesammelte Werke. III. Abteilung: Materialien und Dokumente. Band 164]. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2021. 366 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-487-16070-2. [= Beweis]
- Wolfgang Hottner: Kristallisationen. Ästhetik und Poetik des Anorganischen im späten 18ten Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020. 278 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-8353-3628-5.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Abhandlungen
- The Place of Judgments of Perception in Kant’s Transcendental Cognitive Theory
- True Need in Kant
- Die Raum- und Zeitlehre Alois Riehls im Kontext realistischer Interpretationen von Kants transzendentalem Idealismus
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Zur begrifflichen Herkunft von „Neukantianismus“: Eine Streitsache der Hegel-Schule zwischen Rosenkranz, Michelet und Lassalle (Königsberg/Berlin 1858/1862)
- Kant and the Norms of Cognition
- Introduction
- Kant’s Ontology of Appearances and the Synthetic Apriori
- Kant on Time II: The Law of Evidence of the Critique of Pure Reason
- Is it the Understanding or the Imagination that Synthesizes?
- Self-Legislating Machines: What can Kant Teach Us about Original Intentionality?
- Buchbesprechungen
- Dennis Schulting: Kant’s Deduction from Apperception. An Essay on the transcendental Deduction of the Categories. [KSEH 203]. De Gruyter ²2019. 344 pages. ISBN: 978-3-11-058430-1.
- Bernd Ludwig: Aufklärung über die Sittlichkeit. Zu Kants Grundlegung einer Metaphysik der Sitten. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2020. 226 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-465-04411-6. [Rote Reihe 118].
- Reflexion, Gefühl, Identität in Anschluß an Kant/Reflection, Emotion, Identity. From Kant Onwards. Ed. by Ana Marta González and Alejandro G. Vigo. Berlin 2019, 130 p., ISBN 9783428157785.
- Georg Friedrich Meier: Schriften über das ewige Leben der Seele: (1) Beweis, daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebt, 2. Aufl.; (2) Vertheidigung seines Beweises des ewigen Lebens der Seele und seiner Gedancken von der Religion; (3) Abermalige Vertheidigung seines Beweises, daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebe. Hrsg. von Paola Rumore. [Christian Wolff. Gesammelte Werke. III. Abteilung: Materialien und Dokumente. Band 164]. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2021. 366 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-487-16070-2. [= Beweis]
- Wolfgang Hottner: Kristallisationen. Ästhetik und Poetik des Anorganischen im späten 18ten Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020. 278 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-8353-3628-5.
