Date of Award

1-1-2013

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Philosophy

Content Description

1 online resource (vi, 253 pages)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Robert C Howell

Committee Members

Robert G Meyers, Ron McClamrock

Keywords

Direct Reference, I think, Kant, Reflexivity, Self-Awareness, Self-consciousness (Awareness)

Subject Categories

Epistemology | Metaphysics | Philosophy

Abstract

I aim to explore, in this dissertation, whether Kant has a plausible view on self-awareness in his Critique of Pure Reason, and that if the answer is positive, then in what way one could best appreciate his insight; and besides that, I also want to explore how Kant's view sheds light on contemporary debate on self-awareness. I aim to consider two questions addressed by Howell (2006) as below: (A) how exactly the I think functions, designatively, to represent the self and bring it to our thought-awareness, and (B) how, theI thinK orI, a simple representation and a mere designation of self, nevertheless yields its possessor genuine first-person awareness? In order to answer these two questions, I shall reconstruct Kant's model of self-awareness by interpreting his views and revising it by adding details which rely on resources from contemporary literature. Specifically, I shall reconstruct a model which fits with Kant's framework of his view on self-awareness but integrates technical terms from contemporary literature as tools for clarifying the details of the Kantian model interpreted as such.

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