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Immanuel Kant

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Submitted By lightsout151
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Eric Melino
Professor Ndovie
PHI 101
3/7/13
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. Kant was a solid albeit unspectacular, student. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed education that preferred Latin and religious instruction instead of mathematics and science. Kant lived a predictable life. He never married. Kant was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author before starting on his major philosophical works. He studied at the University of Königsberg. He is best known for his work in philosophy of ethics and metaphysics. Immanuel Kant “rejected the empiricists blank slate hypothesis on the grounds that the mind was not simply a passive receptacle of neutral sense data (Palmer 102).” He replaced some of these ideas with categories, which were formal and active features of the mind. Kant’s model of the mind can be broken down into three categories: the mind is complex set of abilities, the functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity, and these functions called synthesis. “Kant held surprisingly strong and not entirely consistent views on the empirical study of the mind. The empirical method for doing psychology that Kant discussed was introspection (Brook).” Kant’s synthesis is broken down into three parts: apprehending in intuition, reproducing in imagination, and recognizing in concepts. Each of these three concepts relates to a different aspect of fundamental duality of intuition and concept. “Synthesis of apprehension concerns raw perceptual input, synthesis of recognition concerns concepts, and synthesis of reproduction in imagination allows the mind to go from the one to the other (http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/western/lect_9.html).” The first two, apprehension and reproduction, are inseparable. The third one only requires concepts. Problems arise with

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