Heterogeneity and Interaction: The Kantian Solution to the Problem of the Soul-Body Commercium

CLAUDIA JÁUREGUI

Buenos Aires

Jornada; Jornadas kantianas; 2015

Grupo de Estudios Kantianos

In the chapter on the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, Kant presents a solution to the metaphysical problem of the interaction between the soul and the body. The problem arises insofar as they are considered as completely heterogeneous things in themselves. But according to the transcendental idealism, matter is not a thing in itself. It is an outer appearance. And the problem of the interaction between the soul and the body is finally reduced to the problem of the connection between inner and outer appearances in a coherent experience. Nevertheless, Kant stresses that inner and outer appearances are also heterogeneous. And this heterogeneity is, on my view, no less problematic than the heterogeneity between the simple soul and the composed matter considered as things in themselves.Even transposed to the field of phenomena, the problem remains therefore unsolved.