THE ROLE OF THE IMAGINATION IN KANT'S THEORY OF EXPERIENCE
Wilfrid Sellars
Page 3
Source: http://www.ditext.com/sellars/ikte.html
III
25. The upshot of the preceding section is that perceptual consciousness involves the constructing of sense-image models of external objects. This construction is the work of the imagination responding to the stimulation of the retina. From this point on I shall speak of these models as image-models, because although the distinction between vivid and less vivid features of the model is important, it is less important than (and subordinate to) the perspectival feature of the model (its structure as point-of-viewish and as involving containing and contained features).
26. The most significant fact is that the construction is a unified process guided by a combination of sensory input on the one hand and background beliefs, memories, and expectations on the other. The complex of abilities included in this process is what Kant calls the "productive" as contrasted with the "reproductive" imagination. The former, as we shall see, by virtue of its kinship with both sensibility and understanding unifies into one experiencing the distinctive contributions of these two faculties.
27. Notice once again that although the objects of which we are directly aware in perceptual consciousness are image-models, we are not aware of them as image-models. It is by phenomenological reflection (aided by what Quine calls scientific lore) that we arrive at this theoretical interpretation of perceptual consciousness.
28. Notice also that the construction of image-models of objects in the environment goes hand in hand with the construction of an image-model of the perceiver's body, i.e., what is constructed in an image-model of oneself-in-one's environment. The perspectival character of the image model is one of its most pervasive and distinctive features. It constitutes a compelling reason for the thesis of the transcendental ideality of the image-model world. Image-models are "phenomenal objects." Their esse is to berepresentatives or proxies. Their being is that of being complex patterns of sensory states constructed by the productive imagination.
29. Still more important is the fact that although the image-models are perspectival in character, the objects in terms of which they are conceptualized are not. Thus, applesare not perspectival in character. The concept of an apple is not the concept of a perspectival entity. Apples are seen from a point of view. Apples are imagined from a point of view. A spatial structure is imagined from a point of view. Yet the concept of a spatial structure, e.g., a pyramid, is not the concept of a point-of-viewish object. Thus we must distinguish carefully between objects, including oneself, as conceived by the productive imagination, on the one hand and the image-models constructed by the productive imagination, on the other.
30. We are now in a position to put the elements of visual perception which we have been distinguishing together.
31. In the first place, the productive imagination is a unique blend of a capacity to form images in accordance with a recipe, and a capacity to conceive of objects in a way which supplies the relevant recipes. Kant distinguished between the concept of a dog and the schema of a dog. The former together with the concept of a perceiver capable of changing his relation to his environment implies a family of recipes for constructing image models of perceiver-confronting-dog.
32. The best way to illustrate this is by a very simple example, for our perceptual experience does not begin with the perception of dogs and houses. The child does not yet have the resources for such experience. But though the child does not yet have the conceptual framework of dogs, houses, books, etc., he does, according to Kant, have an innate conceptual framework--a proto-theory, so to speak, of spatio-temporal physical objects capable of interacting with each other; objects--this is the crux of the matter--which are capable of generating visual inputs which vary in systematic ways with their relation to the body of a perceiver.
33. Consider the example of a perceiver who sees a pyramid and is walking around it, looking at it. The concept of a red pyramid standing in various relations to a perceiver entails a family of concepts pertaining to sequences of perspectival image-models of oneself-confronting-a-pyramid. This family can be called the schema of the concept of a pyramid.
34. Notice that the pyramid schema doesn't follow from the concept of a pyramid alone. It follows from the complex concept of pyramid in such-and-such relations to a perceiver. This accounts for the fact that whereas the concept of a pyramid is not a point-of-viewish concept, the associated schemas concern sequences of perspectival models of a pyramid.
35. It is in terms of these considerations that Kant's distinction between (a) the concept of an object, (b) the schema of the concept, and (c) an image of the object, as well as his explication of the distinction between a house as object and the successive manifold in the apprehension of a house is to be understood. "The object is that in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension."
36. To sum up, the productive imagination generates both the complex demonstrative conceptualization
This red pyramid facing me edgewise
and the simultaneous image-model, which is a point-of-viewish image of oneself confronting a red pyramid facing one edgewise. We are now in a position to understand Kant's distinction between the productive and the reproductive imaginations. The principle of the reproductive imagination is the "association of ideas"; more exactly, the association of objects. The connection between the associated items is contingent, and dependent on the happenstances of experience. As an association ofobjects it presupposes the constitution of objects by the productive imagination. And the principle of such constitution is not happenstance, but conformity to the recipe--schemata derived from concepts. We are also in a position to understand the precise sense in which the productive imagination mediates between "the two extremes, . . . sensibility and understanding . . ." (A124) and is ". . . an action of the understanding on the sensibility" (B152).
We Make it Easy to Succeed
Successwaves, Intl.
Brain Based Accelerated Success Audios
 |