Kant on Empirical and Transcendental Functions of Memory

Article Sidebar

Cover
PDF (Spanish) PDF
Published: 2019-09-10
Keywords:
Kant, memory, cognition, experience, synthesis

Main Article Content

Hector Luis Pacheco Acosta
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

Abstract

This paper analyses the features of Kant’s view of memory, which Kant himself described explicitly in his lectures on anthropology and implicitly in the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. I shall offer a review of literature on Kant’s view of memory up to this day. I suggest that memory is a cognitive faculty that has the power to store and reproduce representations. Kant distinguishes among three different kinds of memorization which are relevant for human cognition. I offer reasons to hold that imagination and memory must be differentiated by their functioning, although the first one grounds the second one. Finally, I hold that certain functions of memory need to be presupposed at a transcendental level, in which memory would play a fundamental function with regard to the possibility of experience.


Article Details

Issue

No. 32 (2020): January-june

Section

Articles
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term "Work" shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher a nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons 3.0 License Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC 3.0, or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions: (a) Attribution: Other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;(b) Noncommercial: Other users (including Publisher) may not use this Work for commercial purposes;
4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
5. Authors are permitted, and Eidos promotes, to post online the preprint manuscript of the Work in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work is expected be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Eidos's assigned URL to the Article and its final published version in Eidos.


References

Bader, R. M. (2017). Inner Sense and Time. In A. Gomes and A. Stephenson (Eds.), Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self (pp. 124-137). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Baumgarten, A. G. (2013). Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant’s Elucidations, Selected Notes and Related Materials. C. D. Fugate and J. Hymers (ed. and trans.). London: New York. Bloomsbury. (First published 1739/41757/71779).


Bennet, J. (1966). Kant’s Analytic. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Brandt, R. (1999). Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht” (1798), Kant-Forschungen 10. Berlin: F. Meiner Verlag.


Brook, A. (1994). Kant and the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Caygill, H. (1995). A Kant Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Cicero. (1967). De oratore. Books I, II (2 vols.). E. W. Sutton (trans.). London: William Heinemann LTD.

Descartes, R. (1991). The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. III, The correspondence. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch and A. Kenny (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Dietrich, H. (1991). Die Erfindung des Gedächtnisses. Frankfurt am Main: Keip.


Ewing, A. C. (1967). A Short Commentary on Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. Chicago: Chicago University Press.


Förster, E. (1993). Factual Notes. In E. Förster (Ed.), Immanuel Kant: Opus Postumum (pp. 257-288). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Gibbons, S. (1994). Kant’s Theory of Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Hanna, R. (2005). Kant and Nonconceptual Content. European Journal of Philosophy, 13, 247-290. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0966-8373.2005.00229.x


Heidegger, M. (1990). Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. R. Taft (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.


Joyce, R. (1997). Cartesian Memory. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 35(3), 375-393. Doi:10.1353/hph.1997.0046


Kant, I. (2007a). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). In R. B. Louden (Ed. and trans.), Anthropology History and Education (pp. 227-429). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Kant, I. (2007b). Lectures on Pedagogy (1803). In R. B. Louden (ed. and trans.), Anthropology History and Education (pp. 434-485). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Kant, I. (1998 [1781/1787]). Critique of Pure Reason. In P. Guyer, and A. W. Wood (eds. and trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Kant, I. (1996). Critique of practical reason (1788). In M. J. Gregor (ed. and trans.). Practical Philosophy (pp. 133-272). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Kant, I. (1900ff.). Kant‘s gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe (Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ed.) (29 vols. to date). Berlin: G. Reimer [later W. de Gruyter].


Kitcher, P. (1990). Kant’s Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.


Krüger, J. G. (1756). Versuch einer Experimental-Seelenlehre. Halle & Helmstädt: C. H. Hemmerde.


Llewelyn, J. (2000). The Hypocritical Imagination: between Kant and Levinas. London and New York. Routledge.


Locke, J. (1959). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. A. Campbell Fraser (Ed.), Vol 1. New York: Dover.


Makkreel, R. (2014). Self-Cognition and Self-Assessment in Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology. In A. Cohen (Ed.), Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology (pp. 18-37). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Matherne, S. (2015). Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception. Ergo, 2(29), 737-777. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0002.029


McLear, C. (2017). Intuition and Presence. In A. Gomes and A. Stephenson (Eds.), Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self (pp. 86-103). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Mei, M. (2011). Notio intellectus divini quomodo prodeat. Eine Untersuchung über die gnoseologische Bedeutung unserer Gotteserkenntnis. In L. Kreimendahl, M. Muslow and & F. Vollhardt (Eds.), Aufklärung, Band 23: Die natürliche Theologie bei Christian Wolff (pp. 97-122). Hamburg:
Felix Meiner Verlag.


Nagel, G. (1983). The Structure of Experience: Kant’s System of Principles. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.


Nuzzo, A. (2015). Forms of Memory in Classical German Philosophy. In D. Nikulin (Ed.), Memory: A History (pp. 184-219). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Paton, H. J. (1936). Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the first half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Vol I. United Kingdom: Allen & Unwin.


Paton, H. J. (1929). Self-Identity. Mind, 38(151), 312-329. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XXXVIII.151.312


Powell, C. T. (1990). Kant’s Theory of Self-Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon Press.


Prichard, H. A. (1909). Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. London: Oxford University Press.

Rockmore, T. (2012). Kant on Unconscious Mental Activity. In P. Giordanetti, R. Pozzo and M. Sgarbi (Eds.), Kant’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (pp. 305-326). Berlin: De Gruyter.


Rousseau, J. J. (1979). Emile or On Education. A. Bloom (Ed.), New York: Basic Books.


Stephenson, A. (2017). Imagination and Inner Intuition. In A. Gomes and A. Stephenson (Eds.), Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self (pp. 104-123). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Strawson, P. (1966). The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.


Svare, H. (2006). Body and Practice in Kant. Dordrecht: Springer.


Waxman, W. (1991). Kant’s Model of the Mind: A New Interpretation of Transcendental Idealism. New York: Oxford University.


Wilson, H. L. (2011). The Pragmatic Use of Kant’s Physical Geography. In S. Elden and E. Mendieta (Eds.), Reading Kant’s Geography (pp. 161-172). Albany: State University of New York Press.


Wolff, C. (1972). Psychologia Rationalis. In J. École (Ed.), Christian Wolff: Gesammelte Werke, II, 6 (pp. 50-572). Hildesheim: Georg Olms. (First published 1740).


Wolff, C. (1968) Psychologia Empirica. In J. École (Ed.), Christian Wolff: Gesammelte Werke, II, 5 (pp. 22-611). Hildesheim: Georg Olms. (First published 1738).