Kant, organisms, and representation

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 79:101223 (2020)
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Abstract

Some interpreters claim Kant distinguishes between organisms and living things. I argue that this claim is underdetermined by the textual evidence. Once this is recognized, it becomes a real possibility that Kant’s various remarks about the essential properties of living things generalize to organisms as such. This, in turn, generates a puzzle. Kant repeatedly claims that the capacity for representation is essential to the nature of a living thing. If he does not distinguish between living things and organisms, then how might the capacity for representation be essential to the latter? Drawing on the writings of Kant and his contemporaries, I reconstruct a framework within which representational capacities might conceivably be thought to play this role. On this view, what distinguishes an organism from mechanically explicable products of nature is its capacity for endogenous behavior that is instinctual and representationally mediated.

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Patrick R. Leland
Pacific Lutheran University

Citations of this work

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Kant and the determinacy of intuition.Jacob Browning - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):65-79.

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