Apperception

This valuable book provides the student with a short, manageable, comprehensive guide to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), a major psychological measuring instrument. The TAT is effective in telling the clinician how the subject views the self and the world in his or her unique way. This sweeping introduction to this test as well as other lesser-known apperceptive techniques considers children, adolescents, and adults. and gives special attention to cross-cultural issues and the application of apperception techniques to minority populations. Additionally, the interesting history of apperception techniques, sample protocols, and the administration and interpretation of the tests are included.

Bossart (philosophy, U. of CA-Davis) discusses the alleged losses of faith and self in postmodernist thought in the light of the "triumph" and subsequent decline of the transcendental turn in philosophy initiated by Kant. He attacks the transcendental grounding of human experience at its source, showing why it is impossible to derive any categories a priori, and exposes the weaknesses of attempts by Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger to close the gap between transcendental subjectivity and the world. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Der Band enthält zweiundzwanzig Texte von anerkannten Experten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, die sich mit der Theorie der Apperzeption, mit der transzendentalen Deduktion der Kategorien und mit den Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft aus sehr unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auseinandersetzen. Untersucht werden vor allem (1) die philosophischen Quellen der Kantischen Begriffe „Apperzeption" und „Selbstbewusstsein", (2) die historische Entwicklung der Lehre der Apperzeption und der Deduktion der Kategorien in der sogenannten vor-kritischen Phase, (3) Struktur und Inhalte sowohl der A- als auch der B-Deduktion der Kategorien, und schließlich (4) den (Kantischen, aber auch nicht Kantischen) Sinn der Begriffe der „Apperzeption" und des „Selbstbewusstseins".

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically. Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception. Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant's derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood. New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan)

In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting's argument is the claim that all human experience is inherently self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity of thought, or what is called transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff and came to inform all of German Idealism. In this rigorous text, Schulting establishes the historical roots of Kant's thought and traces it through to his immediate successors, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of selfconsciousness and its relation to idealism and situates it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy.

Transparency and Apperception: Exploring the Kantian Roots of a Contemporary Debate explores the links between the idea that belief is transparent and Kant’s claims about apperception. Transparency is the idea that a person can answer questions about whether she, for instance, believes something by considering, not her own psychological states, but the objects and properties the belief is about. This marks a sharp contrast between a first-person and third-person perspective on one’s current mental states. This idea has deep roots in Kant’s doctrine of apperception, the claim that the human mind is essentially self-conscious, and Kant held that it underlies the responsibility that a person has for certain of their own mental states. Nevertheless, the idea of transparency and its roots in apperception remain obscure and give rise to difficult methodological and exegetical questions. The contributions in this work address these questions and will be required reading for anyone working on this intersection of the philosophy of mind and language, and epistemology. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.