BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

52
conclusion. Immaterialism seems to be the more rational option after all.
However, let us see how the argument continues.
In returning to discuss the idea of a thinking being, which due to the
constitution of our sensibility appears to us as extended, Kant now says
again that this being (which is now given the status of a substance!) may
well be conceived of as having conscious thoughts, even if we cannot
observe them. This means, he argues, that the very same thing that from
one perspective may be called embodied [körperlich], may from another
be thought of as a thinking being, whose thoughts we cannot observe
even if we may observe the signs [Zeichen] of this thinking.
In such a way the very same thing that is called a body in one relation
would at the same time be a thinking being in another, whose
thoughts, of course, we could not intuit, but only their signs in
appearance. (A 359)
If this line of argument is accepted, Kant concludes, we would no longer
say that it is minds [Seelen], considered as a particular kind of substance,
that think. We would simply say that human beings think.
Thereby the expression that only souls (as a particular species of
substances) think would be dropped; and instead it would be said, as
usual, that human beings think, i.e., that the same being that as outer
appearance is extended is inwardly (in itself) a subject, which is not
composite, but is simple and thinks. (A 359-360)
Kant has now put forward an hypothesis about the ontological nature of
thinking beings, which, even if it is nothing but an hypothesis, 96 is claimed
to be consistent with transcendental philosophy. Exactly what this
hypothesis is, is, I think, not unambiguously clear. However, whatever it
is, it does not seem to point towards traditional immaterialism, i.e. the
idea that the mind is an immaterial substance in its own right, a
substance essentially different from the body, and that conscious thoughts
may be ascribed only to this kind of substance only. In fact, this idea is
explicitly rejected in the above passage. We are asked not to say that
minds [Seelen], considered as a particular sort of substance, think.
Instead he tells us to say simply that human beings [Menschen] think.
What exactly is meant here by the term ‘human being’? What theory
or hypothesis is implied by this term and the way it is used here? This is
still far from clear. What is clear, however, is that the theory implied
96
Cf. A 360.
THE EMBODIED MIND