Article ID: CBB840115611

Kant on the epistemic role of the imagination (2021)

unapi

In recent years, more and more people have become attracted by the idea that the imagination should play a central role in explaining our knowledge of what is possible and necessary and what would be the case if things were different from how they actually are. The biggest challenge for this account is to explain how the imagination can be restricted in such a way that it can play this epistemic role, for there are certainly also unrestricted uses of the imagination in which it fails to yield the requisite knowledge. In this paper, I inquire how Kant’s account of the imagination could inspire the contemporary debate at this point. I first give an overview about Kant’s account of the imagination and its different roles for our cognition of the real world. I then show that some recent attempts to separate the epistemically valuable uses of the imagination from the epistemically worthless ones bear some striking similarities to Kant’s ideas about how the imagination helps us to get insight into metaphysical possibility. By discussing what Kant says about the method of a priori imaginative construction in the case of concepts such as that of matter and that of disembodied minds, I also point to those aspects of his view which make his views really distinct from all contemporary accounts, but which he himself thought bear the greatest potential of making the imagination a source of modal knowledge.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB840115611/

Similar Citations

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

Book Scribner, F. Scott; (2010)
Matters of Spirit: J. G. Fichte and the Technological Imagination (/isis/citation/CBB001023206/)

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/)

Article John J. Callanan; (2017)
Kant on the Spontaneous Power of the Mind (/isis/citation/CBB320829578/)

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

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

Article Patricia Kitcher; (2017)
Kant on the Faculty of Apperception (/isis/citation/CBB094133705/)

Chapter Wunderlich, Falk; (2001)
Kant's Second Paralogism in Context: The Critique of Pure Reason on Whether Matter Can Think (/isis/citation/CBB000101475/)

Article Frierson, Patrick; (2009)
Kant on Mental Disorder. Part 2: Philosophical Implications of Kant's Account (/isis/citation/CBB000932522/)

Article Clinton Tolley; (2020)
Kant on the place of cognition in the progression of our representations (/isis/citation/CBB063404893/)

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

Article Matherne, Samantha; (2014)
The Kantian Roots of Merleau-Ponty's Account of Pathology (/isis/citation/CBB001201142/)

Article Domski, Mary; (2010)
Kant on the Imagination and Geometrical Certainty (/isis/citation/CBB001034596/)

Article Sorana Corneanu; (2021)
Logic and the Movement of Reasoning: Pierre Gassendi on the Three Acts of the Mind (/isis/citation/CBB212055494/)

Book Fabio Minazzi; (2021)
Epistemologia storico-evolutiva e neorealismo logico (/isis/citation/CBB163381119/)

Book Boniolo, Giovanni; (2007)
On Scientific Representations: From Kant to a New Philosophy of Science (/isis/citation/CBB000831314/)

Article Ruthenberg, Klaus; (2009)
Paneth, Kant, and the Philosophy of Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB000932193/)

Authors & Contributors
Boccaccini, Federico
Willaschek, Marcus
Callanan, John J.
Francesco Brusori
Waxman, Wayne
Marmodoro, Anna
Concepts
Philosophy
Epistemology
Psychology
Imagination
Philosophy of science
Natural philosophy
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
Early modern
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Germany
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