[Xmca-l] Re: Kant's Imagination

[mike cole]

That seems like a lot of tying together, Larry. Crudely, the Enlightenment
grail of certain, rational, grounded knowledge used the strong sense of
representation as constituent of the grail.

Look what I stumbled over by checking the stanford encyclopedia of
philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=imagination+

Be careful when you go to that site. The clue is the little plus at the end
of the instruction.That  plus is entries on "imagination in xxxxx".

Seems like a great resources for this conversation.
mike

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 4:29 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> This may or may not add clarity. Stephen H Watson wrote this about Kant in
> a chapter he named [Abysses]
> “Kant had proceeded some 600 pages into the first “Critique” before he had
> reached the problem of abysses. He had faithfully followed out the the
> Enlightenment’s search for foundations, its peculiar form of the {recherche
> de la verite} as it was called. He had deployed the schemata of the
> Enlightenment’s beliefs. Transcendental arguments, always, at least in
> Kant, were regressive. “If knowledge is to be possible” – it postulated a
> complete [picture] of knowledge as well as possibility. And, no one doubted
> it – let alone Kant, for whom Newton, Galileo, and Euclid provided the
> texts for an archive of pure reason. The systems, the {principiae} were
> introjected: the schemata for synthesis – the bringing of the manifold of
> sensation into a unity, the necessary unity of knowledge, of concepts, of
> judgement, and thereby, of objects. And , consistently, self-critically,
> and the anathema to all neo-Kantianism, Kant’s {Dialectic} would not allow
> these ground to go themselves ungrounded. Reason seeks the conditions of
> the conditions, a higher unity that might ground the certainty of the
> understanding. The search for grounds, for justification, for legitimation,
> for necessity is not tangenital to what had gone before: it is necessary. A
> final grounding is requisite that might satisfy the search, providing a
> complete determination or ground for logical and ontological possibility
> such that it might be affirmed, finally and ultimately, that “everything
> that exists is completely determined. Being thus could be claimed to be
> fully rational, that is, both orderly and intelligible.
> It was Kant’s insight [trope perhaps] to have recognized that this
> project, the project of all {metaphysics rationalis} was part and parcel
> theological. In short the project of rationality was {onto-theo-logical}.
> Because all particularity [manifoldness] would be a limit to this
> onto-theo-logical project, the search for the conditions of the conditions
> would be the highest being. {ens summon}. With this ultimate grounding Kant
> would find completeness. Transcendental logic [as a logic of truth] would
> have been vindicated. Objectivity would have finally been assured in
> accordance with a necessity that had driven the search after truth since
> Plato’s dialectic. {Natural} was Kant’s word for it, and it would bring
> Hegel’s response that this approach still exhibited an indefensible
> psychology. This search also contained a certain delirium, an illusion that
> transcendental ideas could receive “experience”.  This project was a “focus
> imaginarius”.
>
>
> This may be too detailed but gives a flavour of the dream underpinning the
> movement of the imaginal to the representational.
>
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
>
>
> From: Ed Wall
> Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 3:20 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Kant's Imagination
>
>
> Annalisa
>
>      There is much that could be said, but I will leave that for others
> and  briefly quote Casey quoting/paraphrasing Kant:
>
> Kant reinforced imagination’s mediatory role by distinguishing between two
> kinds of imagining: a reproductive type, which is intimately connected with
> memory and perceptual apprehension, and a productive type which is
> contiguous with conceptual thinking. Thus imagination stands precisely
> midway between sensibility and understanding. Kant says, “The two extremes,
> namely sensibility and understanding, must stand in necessary connection
> with each other through the mediation of this transcendental function of
> imagination.”
>
> There is, I note, something further which I, personally, need to think
> about as Casey continues The “transcendental function” referred to in this
> passage is effected by means of the transcendental schema, a product of
> productive imagination and the explicit basis for imagination’s mediatory
> role.
>
> Whatever quibbles one has with all this, most ‘modern’ Western
> philosophers who have taken on imagination at some point acknowledged
> Kant’s view of imagination (that doesn’t mean they agreed with it). In
> other words, Kant’s views regarding imagination were enormously influential
> in the West.
>
> I should note that Aristotle had similar views.
>
> Ed
>
> > On Dec 8, 2015, at  3:12 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Hi esteemed others,
> >
> >
> > I would like to follow the practice Mike asked of us to separate topics
> out to new fibers as they arise, and Kant came up in a few different
> threads. Since I'm keen to understand more about Kant through reading and
> considering the discourse of all the eloquent members here, I am taking the
> initiative to start a new thread.
> >
> >
> > Would anyone like to explain (in easy language) why Kant is relevant to
> our discussion on imagination (and perhaps fantasy)?
> >
> >
> > I hope this post doesn't receive an audience of crickets, or even a long
> list of links to read tomes and tomes of philosophical treatise. I just
> hope to have a conversation about it.
> >
> >
> > Anyone?
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> >
> > Annalisa
>
>
>
>
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch