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.

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. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Alex Byrne sets out and defends a theory of self-knowledge-knowledge of one's mental states. Inspired by Gareth Evans' discussion of self-knowledge in his The Varieties of Reference, the basic idea is that one comes to know that one is in a mental state M by an inference from a worldly or environmental premise to the conclusion that one is in M. (Typically the worldly premise will not be about anything mental.) The mind, on this account, is 'transparent': self-knowledge is achieved by an 'outward glance' at the corresponding tract of the world, not by an 'inward glance' at one's own mind. Belief is the clearest case, with the inference being from 'p' to 'I believe that p'. One serious problem with this idea is that the inference seems terrible, because 'p' is at best very weak evidence that one believes that p. Another is that the idea seems not to generalize. For example, what is the worldly premise corresponding to 'I intend to do this', or 'I feel a pain'? Byrne argues that both problems can be solved, and explains how the account covers perception, sensation, desire, intention, emotion, memory, imagination, and thought. The result is a unified theory of self-knowledge that explains the epistemic security of beliefs about one's mental states (privileged access), as well as the fact that one has a special first-person way of knowing about one's mental states (peculiar access).

Platonic Architectonics: Platonic Philosophies & the Visual Arts examines philosophical structures of Plato in their structural, spatial, and architectonic implications. It examines elements of Plato's philosophical systems in relation to other philosophical systems, including those of Anaximander, Plotinus, Proclus, Nicolas Cusanus, Marsilio Ficino, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida. It also examines Plato's philosophy in relation to architectonic conceptions in the arts, including the work of Leon Battista Alberti and Piero della Francesca in the Renaissance, Paul Cezanne, and the Cubists and Deconstructivists in the twentieth century. Platonic Architectonics presents new interpretations of philosophical texts, artistic treatises, and works of art and architecture in Western culture as they are interrelated and related to Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical structures. It demonstrates the importance of philosophy in the production of the visual arts throughout history and the importance of the relation between the work of art and the philosophical text and artistic treatise.

Virtues of Thought is an excursion through interconnecting philosophical topics in Plato and Aristotle, under the expert guidance of Aryeh Kosman. Exploring what these two foundational figures have to say about the nature of human awareness and understanding, Kosman concludes that ultimately the virtues of thought are to be found in the joys and satisfactions that come from thinking philosophically, whether we engage in it ourselves or witness others’ participation. Kosman examines Aristotle’s complex understanding of the role that reason plays in practical choice and moral deliberation, and the specific forms of thinking that are involved in explaining the world and making it intelligible to ourselves and others. Critical issues of consciousness and the connection between thinking and acting in Aristotle’s philosophical psychology lead to a discussion of the importance of emotion in his theory of virtue. Theories of perception and cognition are highlighted in works such as Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. When his focus turns to Plato, Kosman gives original accounts of several dialogues concerning Plato’s treatment of love, self-knowledge, justice, and the complex virtue known as sophrosyne in such texts as Charmides and the Republic. Bringing together in a single volume previously unpublished essays along with classics in the field, Virtues of Thought makes a significant contribution to our study of ancient Greek philosophy.

This book assesses and defends Kant’s Critical epistemology, and the rich yet neglected resources it provides for understanding and resolving fundamental issues regarding human experience, perceptual judgment, empirical knowledge and cognitive sciences. Kenneth Westphal first examines Kant’s methods and strategies for examining human sensory-perceptual experience, and then examines Kant’s central, proper, and subtle attention to judgment, and so to the humanly possible valid use of concepts and principles to judge particulars we confront. This provides a comprehensive account of Kant’s anti-Cartesianism, the integrity of his three principles of causal judgment, and Kant’s account of disciminatory perceptual-motor behaviour, including both sensory reafference and perceptual affordances. Westphal then defends the significance of Kant’s subtle and illuminating account of causal judgment for three main philosophical domains: history and philosophy of science, theory of action and human freedom, and philosophy of mind. Kant’s Critical Epistemology will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Kant and the relations of his thought to contemporary philosophical debates and to the sciences of the mind.

This volume examines (1) the philosophical sources of the Kantian concepts "apperception" and "self-consciousness", (2) the historical development of the theories of apperception and deduction of categories within the pre-critical period, (3) the structure and content of A- as well as B-deduction of categories, and finally (4) the Kantian (and non-Kantian) meaning of "apperception" and "self-consciousness".