Speaker Series: Janum Sethi, “Kant on Empirical Self-Consciousness”

Janum Sethi (University of California – Berkeley) will present a talk, “Kant on Empirical Self-Consciousness”. A reception will follow.

Abstract:
Kant is often acknowledged as being the first to clearly distinguish between two kinds of self-consciousness: consciousness of oneself as subject, or transcendental self-consciousness, and consciousness of oneself as object, or empirical self-consciousness. What is less clear is how Kant himself understands the latter notion. I criticize the standard interpretation on which a subject is empirically self-conscious when she represents the world from her particular spatiotemporal point of view. Instead, I argue, empirical self-consciousness is a subject’s consciousness of mental states that she finds herself in as a result of her particular psychological associations. On my view, Kant’s claim that subjects can be both transcendentally and empirically self-conscious amounts to the claim that we can be conscious of ourselves as governed by both normative and natural laws.