Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Co-seeing and seeing through: reimagining Kant’s subtraction argument with Stumpf and Husserl

Mac Cumhaill, Clare

Co-seeing and seeing through: reimagining Kant’s subtraction argument with Stumpf and Husserl Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

I draw on Carl Stumpf’s essay “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie” (1891), and his precocious On the Psychological Origin of the Idea of Space (1873), to set out a charge he raises against Kant’s form/matter distinction. The charge rests, I propose, on the supposition that colourless extension, or empty space, cannot be seen. I consider an objection that Stumpf raises against Kant’s notorious ‘subtraction’ argument. Kant supposes that we can ‘take away’ from the representation of a body all that the understanding thinks in relation to it and extension would yet remain (Remainder), separate from all sensation (Separateness). Stumpf denies both claims but I suggest he needn’t. I outline a way of defending Remainder without Separateness, extrapolating from some neglected descriptive phenomenology in Husserl’s 1907 “Thing and Space” lectures: we see empty regions insofar as we see things through them. Finally, by appeal to so-called ‘structural’ features of visual experience, I detail a distinctive approach to making the subtraction argument intelligible.

Citation

Mac Cumhaill, C. (2020). Co-seeing and seeing through: reimagining Kant’s subtraction argument with Stumpf and Husserl. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 28(6), 1217-1239. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2019.1695579

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 16, 2019
Online Publication Date Mar 10, 2020
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date Mar 25, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Print ISSN 0960-8788
Electronic ISSN 1469-3526
Publisher Routledge
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 28
Issue 6
Pages 1217-1239
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2019.1695579

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (1.8 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.






You might also like



Downloadable Citations