BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

Is this all there is to say, then? The limit to the human understanding
that Kant has just defined, seems to imply that the answer is yes. We are
therefore in for yet another unexpected turn of the discourse, when Kant
now puts forward a suggestion as to how we may conceive of the
presence of spirits in physical space. They are present in space as activity:
37
Such spirit-natures would be present in space, but present in space in
such a way that they could always be penetrated by corporeal beings;
for the presence of such spirit-natures would involve being active in
but not filling space. 70
The way this observation is phrased might lead us to think that Kant is
here merely putting forward an hypothesis towards which he is himself
neutral or even skeptical, and which is, consequently, of little significance
or relevance to his own thinking. However, we should not rush to
judgment. What he is doing is presenting a theory of how a spirit can be
conceived, without contradiction, to be present in space alongside
physical objects, or even in the same place as them, without interfering
with the repulsive forces offered by such objects due to their material
character. Spirits can do this because they do not exist in space in the
same way as material objects do, that is, as extended objects filling up
space. They exist in space as activity. A few lines later Kant makes a
connection between this idea, which has so far been discussed only at a
general level (i.e. concerning spirits in general), and the question of how
the mind [Seele] may exist in the body. The relevance of this question to
the more general discussion of spirits is clear: if the mind is a spirit in the
sense just suggested, then we can understand how it is possible for it to
inhabit the same space as its body without conflicting with the material
properties of this body. This is possible because the mind is present in the
body not as an entity with its own extension or repulsive forces, but
merely as activity. And even if he does not say so explicitly, I think we
may here add that it is present as the activity of the body, or perhaps
better, as the activity of the embodied self.
It is apparent from the many reservations Kant brings to his
presentation of this theory that he does not wish it to be accorded the
status of hard science. The best we can say in its favor, he seems to be
saying, is that it is not contradicted by experience. From this we might be
tempted to conclude, again, that he attaches little significance to the
theory, but I think that would be a mistake. His reservations tell us
70 Ak II: 322.
THE EMBODIED MIND