Kant and the mind /

Brook (Carleton Univ.) aims to show that a historically faithful rendering of Kant's philosophy of mind will improve today's research in cognitive science. To his credit, Brook realizes that so much of Kant has already been taken on board by cognitive science that further study of Kant would seem unlikely to repay the effort. Nevertheless, Brook pins his hopes on the fact that few contemporary commentators understand what Kant meant by "synthesis" or "unity of consciousness." These expressions do not refer to the self-identity of the mind over time (which Brook says Kant denied), but rather to the mind's capacity for combining concepts and data into a unitary experience. Brook skillfully shows what this reading implies for other views commonly attributed to Kant. In Brook's hands, Kant's "transcendental" conditions of mind are simply the mind's most general empirical conditions. Kant's philosophy of mind turns out to be logically detachable from his commitment to free will, God, and immortality. At one point, Brook even renders Kant compatible with behaviorism and materialism! Although philosophers lacking any sense of the history of psychology will find Brook revealing, those familiar with the late 19th century debates over "act" versus "content" psychologies will recognize the ground being covered. Ultimately, the book works best as an antidote to blind spots in recent Kant scholarship. Graduate; faculty. S. Fuller; University of Pittsburgh