Bøker av Lawrence J. Kaye

Kant¿s Projective Representation: Substance, Cause, Time, and Objects is a textually thorough study of Kant¿s account of mental representation that yields a new understanding of the primary doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason. Lawrence J. Kaye argues that in the Transcendental Deduction, the analytic unity of concepts establishes the necessary unity of consciousness, which also constitutes representation. In the First Analogy, Kant argues that our ability to represent sequences, simultaneity, and durations rests on the conceptually prior representation of persistence. Without persistence in empirical perceptions, we must represent persistence with identities across intuitions that project an external world of persistent matter. The other Analogies explain how we represent sequences through necessitated state transitions in objects and how we represent simultaneity through mutual influence. These pure unifications that constitute representation are the schematized (relational) categories¿instances of the same types of unifying functions that underlie the concepts of substance, causation, and community. We know a priori that all perceptual experiences will project a world with this structure, which is synthetic a priori metaphysical knowledge. This interpretation also shows how Kant reconciles realism and idealism: we empirically represent a world that is external to consciousness, but we do so by using unities that are purely mental constructions.

Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories: Unity, Representation, and Apperception is a distinctively new reading of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. Lawrence J. Kaye has discovered a number of previously overlooked arguments and explanations, one of the most significant being an argument that demonstrates that the use of concepts requires the necessary unity of consciousness. He also provides a detailed investigation of Kant's account of representation in the first edition of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories and shows how it can be understood as a unique type of functional role view. This view of representation leads to a new understanding of Kant's blend of realism and idealism.Kant's notion of transcendental apperception (a priori self-awareness) is also carefully explained. Kaye shows that there is an extremely tight inter-relation between the unity of consciousness, representation, and apperception that constitutes a well-supported framework, one that offers a surprisingly strong set of replies to Hume's skeptical challenges. He applies this framework to produce a coherent and detailed explanation of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, offering a thorough, paragraph-by-paragraph examination of the text in both editions. This work should not only be of interest to Kant scholars, but also to any philosophers and cognitive scientists who are invested in any of the following topics: the unity and structure of consciousness, concepts, mental representation, self-awareness, and realism and idealism.