Transcendental unity of apperception: concept, essence and examples

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Transcendental unity of apperception: concept, essence and examples
Transcendental unity of apperception: concept, essence and examples

Video: Transcendental unity of apperception: concept, essence and examples

Video: Transcendental unity of apperception: concept, essence and examples
Video: 7 The "Self" & Synthetic Unity of Apperception - Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Dan Robinson) 2024, March
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The world is relatively constant. But the vision of a person in relation to him can change. Depending on what kind of vision it is, he answers us with such colors. You can always find proof of this. The world has everything that a person wants to see. But some focus on the good, while others focus on the bad. This is the answer to why each person sees the world differently.

Unity and identity

The environment depends on what things a person pays attention to the most. His sense of self is determined solely by his own opinion, attitude to circumstances and everything that happens around him. Unity and identity in the self-consciousness of the subject is a prerequisite for cognitive synthesis. This is the transcendental unity of apperception, which should cut off any anomalies in the thinking of the individual.

versatility of personality
versatility of personality

What a person thinks howrefers to ongoing events - all this determines his emotions, feelings and forms a certain idea, point of view and similar manifestations. Everything that is subject to the human mind can happen in the world. Such a concept as the transcendental unity of apperception presupposes the existence of self-consciousness, reflecting the way of thinking of a person in relation to any event in life and the surrounding world without the manifestation of sensory evaluation.

Match and mismatch

It is important to have tolerance and not be surprised at the presence in the world of many different things at the same time: beautiful and terrible. What does it mean to be tolerant? It is to consciously accept the imperfection of the world and oneself. You need to understand that everyone can make mistakes. The world is not perfect. And this is due to the fact that everything around a person may not correspond to the idea of him or another person.

For example, they want to see someone as a brunette, but he is red. Or the child should be calm and obedient, and he is fidget and naughty. Therefore, the transcendental unity of apperception presupposes tolerance, which manifests itself in the fact that there is an understanding of the possible inconsistency of other people and the surrounding world with someone's expectations and ideas. The world is what it is - real and permanent. Only the person himself and his worldview change.

our perception
our perception

Different people, different perceptions

In philosophy, the transcendental unity of apperceptions is a concept introduced by Kant. He first used it in his Critique of Pure Reason.

The philosopher shares the original andempirical apperception. In life, you can often meet a situation where people, being participants in the same events, can talk about them in different ways. It depends on the personal perception of the person. And sometimes it seems that these are two completely different cases, although they are talking about the same thing.

What is apperception?

This is a conditional perception of everything that surrounds a person. It depends on personal experience, ideas and acquired knowledge. For example, a person involved in design, having entered a room, will first of all evaluate its furnishings, color design, arrangement of objects, and so on. Another person, a florist, entering the same room, will pay attention to the presence of flowers, what they are and how they are cared for. Therefore, the same room, two different people will perceive and evaluate differently.

different vision of the same object
different vision of the same object

In philosophy, the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception suggests that the revealed structure of the "I" can be used to explain a priori synthetic knowledge. This meaning is embedded in the concept of "transcendental".

Forms and Laws

Kant says that, knowing the pure forms of such a synthesis, by which he understands categories, people can anticipate laws. In turn, phenomena must obey these laws as a consequence of possible experience. Otherwise, these laws will not reach the empirical consciousness, will not be perceived.

Therefore, the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception presupposes a higherthe foundation of knowledge, which is analytical in nature. The very concept of "I" already in itself has an idea of the synthesis within it of all possible ideas. But the analytic unity of apperception itself can take place only because of its original synthetic nature. Kant calls the connection with objective categorical syntheses the objective unity of self-consciousness. It is different from the subjective, which is based on random or personal associations.

Manuscript analysis

Self-consciousness philosopher interprets as a purely spontaneous act, indicating that pure apperception belongs to the highest cognitive abilities. In connection with such representations, it is not surprising that Kant sometimes identifies the unity of apperception (original) and understanding.

German philosopher Kant
German philosopher Kant

An analysis of the philosopher's manuscripts showed that on the eve of the presentation of his work "Critique of Pure Reason" he interpreted the "I" in the spirit of rational psychology. This means that "I" is a thing in itself, accessible to apperception (direct intellectual contemplation). The rejection of such a position subsequently led to inconsistencies in the structure of the argument.

Later, the concept of "transcendental apperception" and its unity served as the basis for the creation of Fichte's scientific works.

Sphere of use of the concept

In general, this phenomenon has been considered by many philosophers and representatives of other sciences. It is widely used in psychology, medicine, sociology and other areas of human existence. Kant combined the possibilities of people. He singled out empiricalapperception, which means knowing oneself, and transcendental, indicating a pure perception of the world. For example, Herbart I. speaks of this concept as a process of cognition, a person obtaining new knowledge and combining it with existing ones. Wundt W. characterizes apperception as a mechanism that structures personal experience in the human mind. Adler A. became famous for his opinion that a person sees what he wants to see. In other words, he notices only what fits his concept of the world. This is how a certain model of personality behavior is formed.

Such a concept as the transcendental unity of apperception, in simple terms, characterizes a person's ability to interpret his own worldview. This is his personal attitude or assessment of the world and people. This understanding is present in medicine and sociology.

Differences

Such an interesting science as rational psychology was refuted by Kant. In it, the concept of transcendental apperception with its unity does not mix with the transcendental subject, its bearer, about which practically nothing is known. It is on the mistaken identification of these terms that rational psychology is based. It is believed that in itself this concept is only a form of thinking that differs from the transcendental subject in the same way that a thought differs from a thing.

It is very important to note that impressions come down, first of all, to one general idea of the subject. Based on it, basic and simple concepts are developed. In this sense, Kant meant the synthesis of apperception. At the same time, heargued that the forms of this synthesis, combinations of impressions, the concept of space, time and basic categories are the innate property of the human spirit. This does not follow from observation.

man and his philosophy
man and his philosophy

With the help of such a synthesis, a new impression, thanks to comparison and comparison, is introduced into the circle of previously developed concepts and impressions held in memory. So it gets its place between them.

Search and install

Selective perception, or apperception, examples of which were given above, indicates an attentive and thoughtful perception of the surrounding world, based on one's own experience, knowledge, fantasies and other views. All these categories are different for different people. First of all, a person looks at what corresponds to his goals, motives and desires. Through the prism of his addiction, he studies and describes the world around him.

If a person has a strong feeling inside himself, which is called "I want", then he begins to search for what corresponds to his desire and contributes to the realization of his plan. Feelings are also influenced by the attitudes and mental state of the individual.

Based on the fact that the synthetic unity of apperception leads a person to cognition of the world around him through the prism of his mental images and sensations, we can say the opposite. For example, for each person with whom communication takes place, another person has one or another attitude towards her. This is social apperception. It includes the influence of people on each other through ideas, opinions and joint activities.

The very concept of apperception is divided into types: cultural, biological and historical. It is congenital and acquired. Apperception is very important for human life. The person himself has the ability to change due to the influence of new information, to realize, perceive, supplement his knowledge and experience. It is clear that knowledge changes - the person himself changes. The thoughts of a person affect his character, behavior, ability to put forward hypotheses about other people, phenomena and objects.

perception of the environment
perception of the environment

The philosophical concept of apperception, the definition of which tells us about the conscious perception of everything around us on the basis of personal experience and knowledge, is of Latin origin. It is widely used in psychology. The result of such a process will be the clarity and distinctness of the elements of consciousness. This is a key property of the human psyche, expressing the predetermination of the perception of phenomena and objects of the external world in accordance with the characteristics of psychological experience, accumulated knowledge and the state of the individual in particular.

For the first time, the term apperception was proposed by the German philosopher and mathematician Leibniz G. V. He also studied logic, mechanics, physics, legal science, history, was a scientist, philosopher and diplomat, inventor and linguist. Leibniz is the founder and first president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The scientist was also a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Leibniz used this term to designate consciousness, reflective acts that give a person the idea of "I". Apperception is different from perception,unconscious perception. He explained the difference between perception-perception (the internal state of the monad) and apperception-consciousness (reflective cognition of this state within the person). Leibniz G. W. introduced the difference between these concepts in a polemic with the Cartesians, who accept unconscious perceptions as "nothing".

Development

Subsequently, the concept of apperception was most developed in German philosophy and psychology. This was facilitated by the work of I. Kant, I. Herbart, W. Wundt and others. But even with differences in understanding, this concept was considered as the ability of the soul, spontaneously developing and being the source of a single stream of consciousness.

Leibniz limited apperception to the highest level of knowledge. Kant did not think so, and shared transcendental and empirical apperception. Herbart is already introducing the concept of apperception into pedagogy. He interprets it as the awareness of new information by the subjects under the influence of a store of experience and knowledge, which he calls the apperceptive mass.

Wundt turned apperception into a universal principle that explains the beginning of all mental life in a person, into a special mental causality, an internal force that determines the behavior of a person.

In Gest alt psychology, apperception is reduced to the structural integrity of perception, which depends on the primary structures that arise and change depending on their internal laws. Perception itself is an active process where information is received and used to generate hypotheses and test them. The nature of such hypothesesdepends on the content of past experience.

When an object is perceived, traces of the past are also activated. Thus, the same object can be perceived and reproduced in different ways. The richer experience a particular person has, the richer his perception will be, the more he will be able to see in the event.

I see as I want to see
I see as I want to see

What a person will perceive, the content of the perceived, depends on the task set by this very person and the motives of his activity. The content of the reaction is significantly influenced by the factor of the subject's attitude. It develops under the direct influence of the experience that was obtained earlier. This is a kind of readiness to perceive a new object in a certain way. Such a phenomenon was studied by D. Uznadze together with his collaborators. It characterizes the dependence of perception itself on the state of the subject, which is determined by previous experience. The influence of the installation extends to the operation of different analyzers and is wide. In the process of perception itself, feelings take part, which can change the meaning of the assessment. If there is an emotional attitude to the subject, then it can easily become an object of perception.

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