Philosophy 290-8

We will look at the views of a number of philosophers, especially Kant, on the question of what consciousness or self-consciousness adds to representations. Other philosophers we will examine are Descartes, Arnauld, Malebranche, Locke, and Leibniz. We will focus on the clarity and distinctness of a representation, and we will consider how they relate to conceptualization and judgment, and to self-consciousness. This will put us in a position to better understand Kant’s idea that the unity of consciousness makes possible the unity of a complex representation.