TITLE:
Kant’s Emergence and Sellarsian Cognitive Science
AUTHORS:
Richard McDonough
KEYWORDS:
Kant; Sellars; Emergentism; Functionalism; Epigenesis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.4 No.1,
February
10,
2014
ABSTRACT: The paper argues, against current views
that see Kant as giving abstract descriptions of cognitive mechanisms (after
the fashion of functionalism in cognitive science), that Kant sees mental
phenomena as akin to emergent phenomena in a sense traditionally opposed to
mechanism. After distinguishing several relevant notions of emergence, the
paper distinguishes several of Kant’s basic emergentist theses, including his
emergent materialism in chemistry and a species of mental emergence modelled on
that chemical emergence. However, Kant’s doctrine of the epigenesis of pure Reason is argued to be Kant’s most fundamental
emergentist thesis. The paper argues that Kant’s notion of mental emergence
sheds light on some very puzzling aspects of his remarks about the unity of
intuition and concept emphasized by Wilfrid Sellars. The paper sketches some of
the problems in contemporary cognitive science and shows how a Sellarsian emergentism inspired by Kant
addresses some of these problems and provides an interesting alternative to the
kind of mechanistic positions that have tended to dominate the field. Finally,
the paper locates the present emergentist reading with respect to the perspectivist
reading of Kant.