Kant and Cognitive Science

Indirectly through 19 th century intermediaries, Immanuel Kant (1720-1804) has had an enormous influence on cognitive research, indeed could be viewed as the intellectual godfather of cognitive science. In general structure, Kant’s model of the mind was the dominant model in the 19th century empirical psychology that flowed from his work (Herbart, Helmholtz, Wundt) and then again, after a hiatus during which behaviourism reigned supreme (roughly 1910 to 1965), toward the end of the 20th century, especially in cognitive science. The models of the mind of thinkers otherwise as different as Sigmund Freud and Jerry Fodor are both broadly Kantian, for example. Kant held that cognition requires application of concepts as well as sensory input, and that cognition proceeds by way of synthesis, indeed by way of three kinds of synthesis. He advanced a functionalist model of the mind almost 200 years before functionalism was officially articulated. And he developed a distinctive form of inference to the best explanation to study the mind. All these things are now orthodoxy in cognitive science. But he made discoveries that have not be taken up by cognitive science, too. He maintained that consciousness and specifically unified consciousnes