Friday, April 16, 2010
One sentence at a time.
We discussed this in class a bit but I still don't understand it. "If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any wise affected, is to be entitled sensibility, then the mind's power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called the understanding" (93). I will accept this definition of receptivity and sensibility. (I am taking them to mean the same thing as I don't see why any difference that could be drawn between them would matter) They are an ability of our mind that lets us receive the impressions he mentions on page 42. The part that reads, "... mind's power of producing representations from itself." This would be my definition of memory but Kant is calling it the "spontaneity of knowledge," which he says should be called understanding. I'm not so sure that we should call understanding the mind's power of producing representations. Can I understand something without making a representation of it? The first reason I think not is because i can surely make a representation of something that doesn't accurately correspond to the real world - in which case we ought not call it understanding at all. Also, note that Kant stresses the word spontaneity when describing understanding. I see how spontaneity is an important faculty of the mind but not so much when talking about understanding. Can anyone shed some light on this? I'm entangling myself with all these definitions...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well, memory is a power of re-producing, not producing. It seems to require both sense and understanding and thus is further along than the fundamental faculties of receptivity and spontaneity Kant describes here. The categories or rules that govern experience such that the given sense manifold can be perceived as distinct, related objects - these cannot be derived from the given and thus cannot be receptive or depend on receptivity for any part of their content. Thus they must be spontaneous, generated out of the mind itself solely by its own power.
ReplyDeleteIs Kant correct about this? Perhaps not. Why does he think it is true? Because, as he has argued, it seems that expereince would be impossible without being brought about, in some way, by the mind's own rules, since nothing universal or necessary can arise from merely received, given sense data (as Hume argues).
For Kant, either Hume was right and there is no necessity OR we are spontaneously responsible for necessity a priori. Or so I'm thinking right now.
Thanks for the insight - especially at 6:15am, haha. I find that tough to grasp and still need to give it some more thought... I'm still not sure of understanding...
ReplyDelete