Article ID: CBB320829578

Kant on the Spontaneous Power of the Mind (2017)

unapi

It is well known that at the heart of Kant’s Critical philosophy is the claim that the mind possesses an essentially spontaneous power or capacity (Vermögen). It is also sometimes maintained that Kant’s appeals to this spontaneous power are intimately tied to his recognition of there being a fundamental and irreducible normative dimension to judgement. However, I attempt to complicate this picture by way of appeal to some less appreciated influences upon the development of Kant’s epistemology. A different conception of the role of spontaneity in judgement has clear precedents, I claim, in the works of Cudworth and Rousseau. There the imagined role for the active power of the mind is not to identify criteria that might serve as norms for epistemically responsible judgement. Rather the spontaneous power of the mind is cited as the source of representational contents that secure the truth conditions of our everyday claims to empirical knowledge.

...More
Included in

Article Federico Boccaccini; Anna Marmodoro (2017) Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern Philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy (pp. 435-442). unapi

Article Federico Boccaccini; Anna Marmodoro (2017) Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern Philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy (pp. 435-442). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB320829578/

Similar Citations

Article Sarah Hutton; (2017)
Salving the Phenomena of Mind: Energy, Hegemonikon, and Sympathy in Cudworth (/isis/citation/CBB731645284/)

Article Federico Boccaccini; Anna Marmodoro; (2017)
Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB647362818/)

Book Waxman, Wayne; (2014)
Kant's Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind (/isis/citation/CBB001421736/)

Book Nolan, Lawrence; (2011)
Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate (/isis/citation/CBB001035171/)

Chapter Thompson, Helen; (2012)
The “Fair Savage”: Empiricism and Essence in Sarah Fielding's The History of Ophelia (/isis/citation/CBB001200745/)

Book Avramides, Anita; (2001)
Other Minds (/isis/citation/CBB000102009/)

Article Douglas Hedley; (2017)
Gods and Giants: Cudworth’s Platonic Metaphysics and His Ancient Theology (/isis/citation/CBB571151709/)

Book Greenberg, Robert; (2001)
Kant's Theory of a priori Knowledge (/isis/citation/CBB000101728/)

Article Ben-Chaim, Michael; (2000)
Locke's ideology of “common sense” (/isis/citation/CBB000111464/)

Book Alexandrescu, Vlad; (2009)
Branching Off: The Early Moderns in Quest of the Unity of Knowledge (/isis/citation/CBB001021823/)

Article Leduc, Christian; (2014)
The Epistemological Functions of Symbolization in Leibniz's Universal Characteristic (/isis/citation/CBB001201188/)

Chapter Farzad Mahootian; (2020)
Kant, Cassirer, and the Idea of Chemical Element (/isis/citation/CBB657452257/)

Article Marcus Willaschek; Eric Watkins; (2020)
Kant on cognition and knowledge (/isis/citation/CBB232801261/)

Article Tobias Rosefeldt; (2021)
Kant on the epistemic role of the imagination (/isis/citation/CBB840115611/)

Chapter Joachim Schummer; (2020)
The Operational Definition of the Elements: A Philosophical Reappraisal (/isis/citation/CBB928776970/)

Book Seigel, Jerrold E.; (2005)
The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB000930043/)

Book Kramnick, Jonathan Brody; (2010)
Actions and Objects from Hobbes to Richardson (/isis/citation/CBB001250460/)

Book Carmela Morabito; (2020)
Il motore della mente. Il movimento nella storia delle scienze cognitive (/isis/citation/CBB028669021/)

Authors & Contributors
Boccaccini, Federico
Rosefeldt, Tobias
Willaschek, Marcus
Ziebart, K. Meredith
Waxman, Wayne
Marmodoro, Anna
Concepts
Philosophy
Epistemology
Philosophy of mind
Psychology
Theories of knowledge
Natural philosophy
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
19th century
20th century
Early modern
Medieval
Places
Germany
France
Europe
Great Britain
Institutions
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment