Udo Thiel

Cudworth and Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness

One of the few things that most philosophers working within various traditions agree about is that the notion of consciousness is a key, or fundamental notion, both in epistemology and in any theory of the self. Discussions of consciousness as we know them began in earnest in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century — largely under the influence of Cartesianism. This at least is the acknowledged historical source of present-day contributions to the theory of consciousness. In this paper I am concerned with another treatment of the notion of consciousness in early modern philosophy, the importance of which has not been sufficiently recognized by scholars, namely the treatment of the issue by the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688); and I shall examine and evaluate Cudworth’s contribution by way of considering it in the context of seventeenth century thought.1 Now, some might argue that it is rather misleading to speak, as I do in the title of this paper, of seventeenth century theories of consciousness, for, so it might be said, even though Cartesians and some other philosophers may have raised a number of issues which are relevant to a theory of consciousness, there really were no worked out theories of consciousness in the seventeenth century.

Between Wolff and Kant: Merian's Theory of Apperception

Analysant la conception de laperception developpee par J. B. Merian comme intermediaire entre la definition wolffienne et la definition kantienne de la notion, lA. montre que lapproche de Merian differe a la fois de celle de Wolff et de la theorie empiriste de son epoque, pour se rapprocher de celle de Kant

Varieties of Inner Sense. Two Pre-Kantian Theories

Analyse des theories pre-kantiennes du sens interne developpees par C. Meiners (1747-1810) et M. Hissmann (1752-1784) dans le sens dune psychologie materialiste et empiriste, fondee sur la reception des notions de reflexion et amour-propre depuis J. Locke, B. Basedow et J. G. Feder, dune part, et sur la reception de la notion daperception et lidee de sensation de la nature des idees depuis Leibniz, dautre part

Self and Sensibility: From Locke to Condillac and Rousseau

It is well known that Locke’s philosophy played an important role in the French Enlightenment. Locke’s impact in general has been the subject of several scholarly works, and there are of course also studies on particular issues such as John Yolton’s survey of Locke’s importance to French materialism. In this paper, I focus on an aspect of Locke and French eighteenth-century thought that has been somewhat neglected: the notion of the human subject as a “sensible Being.” In The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility Stephen Gaukroger highlights the significance of the notion of sensibility in mid-eighteenth-century France: sensibility is thought of as “a unified phenomenon having physiological, moral and aesthetic dimensions” and as something that “lies at the basis of our relation to the physical world: it is what natural understanding has to be premised on.” Sensibility is considered the foundation of cognition. This is clearly Locke’s idea when he talks about the “sensible Qualities” that are conveyed to the mind from “external Objects.” Our relation to the external world “depends wholly on our Senses,” Locke says. Sensation is the source of ideas that we acquire of qualities in the objects. This is what Locke means when he says in the first sentence of the Essay that, like other animals, we are “sensible Beings,” i.e., endowed with the faculty of sensation. The world is given to us in an immediate kind of way through sensory perception. Sensation is “immediate” in the sense that no other mental activities, no other ideas are required for the production of sensory ideas. The eye perceives light “only by being directed toward it.” The “bright Sun-shine,” for example, “forces it self immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the Mind turns its view that way.” It is for this reason that Locke ascribes passivity to sensation, at least “for the most part”: what the mind “perceives it cannot avoid perceiving.” There is another sense in which we are “sensible Beings,” however. It may seem that for Locke access to the inner world, to our own selves is not immediate, for he says that it requires reflection, an inner sense, which in turn requires a special attention to the operations of our own minds. We do not acquire ideas of these operations “till the understanding turns inwards upon itself, reflects on its operations, and makes them the object of its own contemplation.” It may seem odd, however, to say, as Locke does here, that we have an immediate relation to the external world but not to our own selves. Are we not present to our own self in an immediate kind of way as well? Locke would say that there is such an immediate self-presence, but that this immediacy

Physiologische Psychologie des Selbstbewusstseins zwischen Wolff und Kant

Abstract Having outlined the development of early modern conceptions of selfconsciousness, this paper then examines and critically evaluates the late eighteenth- century empirical psychology of Karl Franz von Irwing, a German enlightenment thinker. Irwing’s four volume work Erfahrungen und Untersuchungen über den Menschen is devoted to an empirical ‘science of man’. In terms of the notions of consciousness and self-consciousness, he nevertheless follows Wolff in that he adopts the latter’s idea that the capacity to distinguish among perceptions must be assumed for self-consciousness to be possible. As it turns out, however, Irwing’s main interest is in line with his general project and concerns the empirical development of self-consciousness. He argues that non-conceptual, immediate selfawareness or Selbstgefühl has its origin in the sense of touch, but that a conceptually mediated form of self-consciousness requires in addition the development of certain mental activities which are in turn dependent on language. Further he accounts for what he calls ‘continued self-consciousness’ in which consists our personality. Irwing does not explain diachronic personal identity, however, as he is instead concerned only with how the idea of identity develops. This points to the limitations of a project such as Irwing’s, as it avoids the fundamental philosophical issues concerning self-consciousness and personal identity.

Gap? What Gap? On the Unity of Apperception and the Necessary Application of the Categories

In some Anglophone Kant literature (Van Cleve 1999; Gomes 2010; Stephenson 2014), the problem has been raised of an alleged ‘gap’ in Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Deduction (henceforth ‘the Deduction’) for the necessary application of the categories to objects of experience, hereafter called ‘the Gap’.2 The Gap is construed in terms of the difference between arguing that we must apply categories in order to be able to think of, experience, or perceive objects and arguing that the categories must so apply, or in other words, that the categories are exemplified by the objects that we think of, experience, or perceive. The first argument doesn’t imply the second one. Kant appears to claim it does. Hence the Gap. If this is indeed the case, there is a serious problem with Kant’s claim that by means of showing that the categories are derived from the subjective functions of thought we are able to tell how knowledge of objects is possible. At most, Kant will have shown that there are certain necessary ways in which we think of, experience, or perceive objects, but not that the objects of thought, experience, or perception necessarily conform to our necessary ways of thinking, experiencing, or perceiv-

Hume on the Self and His ‘Overall Philosophical Scheme’

This paper focuses on the question of how Hume’s analysis of the special issue of personal identity relates to his philosophy as a whole. In order to examine this question the paper looks at two central and much debated issues: Hume’s account of the self as a bundle of perceptions as introduced in Book I of the Treatise and his second thoughts on personal identity in the Appendix to Book III.

The Early Modern Subject Revisited – Responses to Barth, Lenz, Renz and Wunderlich

Abstract: Responding to comments on The Early Modern Subject, this paper focuses on a strictly limited range of issues: methodology, Descartes on consciousness, and Locke and Hume on personal identity. 1) Ursula Renz’s comments prompt an explanation of the notion of development in historical studies of philosophy. 2) Contra Christian Barth, although it is difficult to determine what kind of self-relation consciousness is for Descartes on the basis of the texts, it is argued that a higher-order reading is a more plausible interpretation than a first-order reading. 3) It is shown that Locke’s account of personal identity can usefully be characterized as ‘subjectivist’, in spite of Martin Lenz’s objections. 4) And finally, in consideration of Falk Wunderlich’s comments, the paper argues against both a traditional ‘ontological’ reading and a ‘sceptical realist’ interpretation of Hume’s bundle theory of the mind.

Unities of the Self: From Kant to Locke

Abstract This paper re-evaluates the relation between Kant and some of the most important philosophers traditionally labelled ‘empiricists’ on the topic of the unity of the self. Although Kant was familiar with at least some of the writings of the philosophers dealt with here, this paper’s concern is not with the question of influence or development, but with systematic aspects of Kant’s relation to the empiricist tradition. It is argued that Kant’s relationship to empiricist thought on this issue is more complex than one might be tempted to think. There are several different notions of unity within the empiricist tradition. Moreover, the philosophers considered here, thinkers as diverse as Locke, Condillac, Hume, Feder, Priestley, Reid and Tetens, work with more than one notion of the unity of the self, as does Kant. Locke’s contribution at the beginning of early modern thought about unity turns out to be closer to Kant’s account than that of other empiricists in that Kant develops further the Lockean idea of consciousness as a unifying activity. In general terms Kant’s account can be seen as continuous with the debate about unity among empiricist thinkers, it does not constitute a simple break with that tradition.

John Locke, Essay über den menschlichen Verstand

John Lockes Essay uber den menschlichen Verstand (zuerst 1690 erschienen) ist eines der einflussreichsten Bucher der Philosophiegeschichte. Es behandelt vorwiegend erkenntnis- und wissenschaftstheoretische Themen, nimmt aber auch Stellung zu Fragen aus der Philosophie des Geistes, der Religionsphilosophie und der Ethik. Locke war einer der Initiatoren und fuhrenden Kopfe der europaischen Aufklarung. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Essay wird auch in der Philosophie der Gegenwart vehement fortgesetzt. Die elf Beitrage dieses Bandes, die Bibliographie und ein ausfuhrliches Glossar machen das Buch zu einem wichtigen Begleittext zu Lockes Werk. Mit Beitragen von: Michael Ayers, Reinhard Brandt, John Colman, Bertram Kienzle, Heiner F. Klemme, Lorenz Kruger, Michel Malherbe, Rolf W. Puster, G.A.J. Rogers, Rainer Specht, Jurgen Sprute und Udo Thiel