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Spatial Perception and Geometry in Kant and Helmholtz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Gar Hatfield
Gar Hatfield*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

Can there be an empirical science of the mind? Opinions are divided. If within the purview of ‘mind’ we include the phenomena that are associated with such words as ‘reasoning’, ‘understanding’, and ‘judging’, then many philosophers would take the answer to be an obvious no. As these philosophers might say, understanding and judgment are “normative” notions; they are not processes, but achievements, and trying to investigate them empirically would make as much sense as trying to determine the meaning of the words ‘just’ and ‘right’, or of the term ‘good art’, by tape-recording random snatches of conversation and cataloguing the instances of these words and their contexts. But not everyone is so pessimistic. Indeed, tens of millions of dollars currently are being wagered on the chance that just like the solar system or the chemical elements, the mind can be made the object of empirical study.

Type
Part XIV. Invited Paper: Psychology and Epistemology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 568 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I wish to thank Richard Healey, Patricia Kitcher, and Nancy Maull for helpful discussion on the topic of this paper, and Wilda Anderson and Alfonso Caramazza for criticism of various portions of an earlier draft.

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