display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 21452 | I can only determine my existence in time via external things [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The determination of my existence in time is possible only by means of the existence of actual things that I perceive outside of myself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B275) | |
| A reaction: This may be the germ of Hegel's much more social view of the self. Kant is only concerned with the question of identity across time. |
| 5582 | As balls communicate motion, so substances could communicate consciousness, but not retain identity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A series of elastic balls can successively communicate motion to one another. If mental substances communicated consciousness in this way, the last substance would be conscious of the previous states, but would not be the very same person. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A364) | |
| A reaction: A nice attack on John Locke's proposal, though Locke was aware of this scenario, and claimed the identity followed the consciousness. Clearly, though, if I share my thoughts with you, you don't instantly become me! |
| 2965 | For Kant the self is a purely formal idea, not a substance [Kant, by Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: Kant insists that the 'I' of consciousness is purely formal, and does not carry with it any positive conception of the self as substance. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A398-9) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.169 | |
| A reaction: We might agree that a self does not involve any awareness of the substance of which it is constituted, but it is hard to see why we might get so worked up about the past, present and future of something which is 'purely formal'. |
| 5549 | Mental representations would not be mine if they did not belong to a unified self-consciousness [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B132) | |
| A reaction: Kant's 'transcendental ego' may only be a posh way of restating the Cartesian Cogito. Descartes was keen to assert not only that there must be a thinker, but also that its essence was to be unified in a manner beyond the physical (Ideas 2303 and 1400). |