Leaving the Soul Apart. An Introductory Study

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2018

This paper examines whether Kant’s Critical philosophy offers resources for a conception of empirical psychology as a theoretical science in its own right, rather than as a part of applied moral philosophy or of pragmatic anthropology. In contrast to current interpretations, this paper argues that Kant’s conception of inner experience provides relevant resources for the theoretical foundation of scientific psychology, in particular with respect to its subject matter and its methodological presuppositions. Central to this interpretation is the regulative idea of the soul, which supplies principles of systematicity at different levels. Firstly, the idea defines the way in which we must reflect on mental beings, i.e., those beings that fall in the domain of psychology. Secondly, it provides a principle for the unification of a systematic body of psychological laws. In consequence, by approaching the object of psychology from the perspective of the self-conscious subject, who––in virtue of being capable of inner experience––first constitutes a psychological reality, Kant’s theory offers an attractive alternative to reductionist conceptions of psychology.

2018

Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), is a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. This general introduction to Volume 1 sets the stage for the entire, printed collection. As the collection forms part of a Critical Concepts in Psychology series, this selection of major works focuses mainly on works that have a direct psychological relevance. From the mid 19th Century onwards, psychology began to separate itself from philosophy, and the development of psychological thought about consciousness links intimately to the development of psychology itself. In order to trace this development, the four volumes of this collection follow a rough, historical sequence. Volume 1 deals with The Origins of Psychology and the Study of Consciousness. Volumes 2 and 3 deal with contemporary Cognitive and Neuropsychological Approaches to the Study of Consciousness. And Volume 4 focuses mainly on New Directions: Psychogenes...

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2012

The problem of determination of the limit of conscious and unconscious, in some meaning is adequate to the problem of segregation of rational soul in the structure of internal life. From what does consciousness begin?

CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS REVIEW, 2003

2016

The soul, doubtless, is immortal where a soul can be discerned Robert Browning IN_HIS UNZEITGEMÄSSE LAUDATIONS OF Descartes, Galen Strawson 1 repeats that there is nothing in the world so directly certain and evident as consciousness. This is often forgotten, and right. And yet not so perfectly, transparently right as we (and Renée Descartes, and

Philosophica Critica, 2017

The paper deals with the notion of the soul or psyche in German physician and thinker Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869), his place in 19 th century German thinking of unconscious, his reception in C. G. Jung (or in E. Neumann) and contemporary post-Jungians (J. Hillman, W. Giegerich) and in contemporary philosophy (A. Nicholls, M. Liebscher, M. Bell). Even though today it is Jung who is considered a "scandalous" revivalist of "soul", i.e. Psychologie mit Seele in the western scientific discourse, this thesis is not totally true. In fact, Jung constituted continuity with older-pre-Freudian-authors who conceptualized the notion of unconscious (and "soul" with it) long before the old term Soul/die Seele was used by Jung. Carus' notion, however, does not constitute a rediscovered soul as it was conceived by medieval theology because it is conceived as biological, i.e. mainly unconscious with its own inherent evolutionary programming.

Early Science and Medicine

Over the last few decades, a conspicuous number of studies has been devoted to the development of psychology (or, 'the science of the soul') from Antiquity to the early modern era. Two aspects (often intertwined) of the early modern history of the study of the soul have, in particular, received much scholarly attention: questions related to the immortality of the soul and the discussion concerning the disciplinary status of psychology as a discipline that borders both on natural philosophy and metaphysics.1 This focus seems justified, given that these topics were hotly debated throughout history and that they

The Monist, 2017

In his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt Brentano proposed a view of consciousness that neither has room nor need for a subject of mental acts, a soul. Later he changed his mind: there is a soul that appears in consciousness. In this paper I will argue that Brentano's change of view is not justified. The subjectless view of consciousness can be defended against Brentano's argument and it is superior to its predecessor.

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Leyden professor of medicine Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’?