Rational Psychology - Introduction

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Kant's Critique of Rational Psychology

Rational Psychology

Kant states that a metaphysics of the soul is generated by the demand for the “absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject itself”  The branch of metaphysics devoted to the topic of absolute unity of the thinking subject is Rational Psychology.

Rational psychologists, among whom are Descartes or Leibniz  seek to demonstrate the substantiality, simplicity, and personal identity of the soul.

According to Kant, they  attempt to derive conclusions about the nature and constitution of the “soul” a priori, simply from an analysis of the activity of thinking. A classic example of such an attempt is provided by Descartes, who deduced the substantiality of the self from the proposition  “I think.”  This move is apparent in the Cartesian inference from "I think" to the claim that the “I” is therefore “a thing” that thinks. According to  Descartes,  thought is an attribute, and thus presupposes a substance in which it inheres. Kant emphasizes the a priori basis for the metaphysical doctrine of the soul by claiming that in rational psychology, the “I think” is supposed to provide the “sole text.”  It is this feature of the discipline that serves to distinguish it from any empirical doctrine of the self (any empirical psychology).

Kant's criticisms of rational psychology draw on a number of distinct sources, one of which is the Kantian doctrine of apperception. Kant denies that the metaphysician is entitled to his substantive conclusions on the grounds that the activity of self-consciousness (transcendental apperception, often formulated in terms of the necessary possibility of attaching the “I think” to all my representations does not yield any object for thought.

The claim that the ‘I’ of apperception yields no object of knowledge (for it is not itself an object, but only the “vehicle” for any representation of objectivity as such) is fundamental to Kant's critique of rational psychology. Kant spends a considerable amount of time in the sections on the paralogisms noting repeatedly that no object is given in transcendental self-consciousness, and thus that the rational psychologist's efforts to discern features of the self, construed as a metaphysical entity, through reason alone are without merit.

According to Kant,  the arguments are guilty of the fallacy of sophisma figurae dictionis, or the fallacy of equivocation/ambiguous middle. Kant suggests that in each of the syllogisms, a term is used in different senses in the major and minor premises.

Kant's Paralogisms have received considerable and focused attention in the secondary literature. See Ameriks (1992), Brook (1994), Kitcher, Patricia (1990), Powell (1990), Sellars (1969, 1971), Wolff, R. P. (1963). See also Allison (1983, 2004), Bennett (1974), Buroker (2006), Guyer (1987).

Adopted from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/


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First posted in
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/rational-psychology-introduction/2utb2lsm2k7a/5061#view