Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Leland, Patrick R.

Titel

Kant, organisms, and representation

Ist Teil von

• Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 2020-02, Vol.79, p.101223-101223, Article 101223

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Some interpreters claim Kant distinguishes between organisms and living things. I argue 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.