Patricia Kitcher

Last updated
Patricia Kitcher
Born1948
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Wellesley College (B.A.); Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Scientific career
Fields Kant Philosophy of psychology
Institutions Columbia University
Doctoral advisor George W. Pitcher

Patricia W. Kitcher (born 1948) is the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, [1] widely known for her work on Immanuel Kant and on philosophy of psychology. She has held many positions at different universities, is a founding chair of a committee at the University of California, and has a lead role in multiple professional organizations. Kitcher's most notable interests throughout her career regard cognition and Kantian ethics. She is the author of multiple papers and two books.

Contents

Education and career

Born Patricia Williams, she attended Wellesley College and then graduate school in philosophy at Princeton where she studied with George Pitcher. Kitcher has held faculty positions at the University of Vermont, the University of Minnesota, and University of California, San Diego, and a visiting position at University of Michigan. In 1998 she went to Columbia University where she became the Mark van Doren Professor of the Humanities and chair of the philosophy department. She lives in New York City with her husband, Philip Kitcher, also a philosopher at Columbia, with whom she has two sons, Andrew and Charles.

She has served as department chair in three different universities and was the founding chair of the University of California committee on the status of women. She was also president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, president of the North American Kant Society, and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Philosophy.

Philosophical work

Kitcher's interest in cognition manifested early and has continued to shape and inform her work throughout her career. Her doctoral dissertation defended a psychological continuity criterion for personal identity but extended the scope of the psychological criterion beyond that traditionally posited to include broader and more abstract cognitive characteristics, such as cognitive approach or cognitive style. Since then her work has ranged widely from traditional philosophy of psychology, to Sigmund Freud, and ultimately to her major interest, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

In her early work Kitcher wrote a number of papers in philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. She argued for the viability of intentional psychology and the autonomy of functionalist psychology from neurophysiology. Later work predominantly concentrated on analysis of problems stemming from the interpretation of Kant's first Critique. Kitcher has written numerous articles on the forms of intuition, Kant's epistemology, self-consciousness, and on how transcendental arguments work.

Kitcher has written two books that also pursue psychological themes. Kant's Transcendental Psychology was a radical departure from most Kant exegesis. The book makes two main claims about the Critique of Pure Reason . First, contra Peter Frederick Strawson, Kitcher argues that to understand synthetic a priori knowledge, it is essential to consider transcendental psychology. Second, she explicates a Kantian argument for the necessity of an integrated thinking subject, which serves as a reply to David Hume's denial of the unity of the self.

Kant's Thinker (2011), was called "an ambitious and challenging work" by Paul Guyer in the European Journal of Philosophy . [2] In this book, she continues work on "a central theme of her earlier work: how to understand Kant's view of the unity of self-consciousness in the Critique of Pure Reason ." [3]

In Freud's Dream Kitcher argued that Freud was the first cognitive scientist: Psychoanalysis should be thought of as an exercise in interdisciplinary theory construction, and as such, it illuminates the pitfalls to which such interdisciplinary approaches are subject. (Kitcher jokes that her arguments managed to alienate all readers: Freudians, because she exposes the mistaken foundation of psychoanalysis, and anti-Freudians, because she portrays his program as scientifically legitimate.)

Around the turn of the new century, Kitcher's interests turned toward Kantian ethics. Her works from this period provide an account of Kantian maxims and an interpretation of Kant's argument for the Formulation of the Universal Law for the Categorical Imperative.

Awards

Kitcher has recently been recognized for her work in education and in her academic field. In 2017, she won the Society of Columbia Graduates' Great Teacher Award. [4] The awards is given annually to an outstanding professor for their ability to make effective oral presentations, the ability to relate positively to students outside the classroom, and for their "recognized standing in their respective academic disciplines."

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immanuel Kant</span> German philosopher (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. He has been called the "father of modern ethics", "father of modern aesthetics" and, by bringing together rationalism and empiricism, the "father of modern philosophy".

A subject is a unique being that exercises agency or participitates in experience, and has relationships with other beings that exist outside itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German idealism</span> Philosophical movement

German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment.

<i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> 1781 book by Immanuel Kant

The Critique of Pure Reason is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", it was followed by his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition, Kant explains that by a "critique of pure reason" he means a critique "of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience" and that he aims to reach a decision about "the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics". The term "critique" is understood to mean a systematic analysis in this context, rather than the colloquial sense of the term.

Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment, it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt. The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority, which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transcendental idealism</span> Philosophical system founded by Immanuel Kant

Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). By transcendental Kant means that his philosophical approach to knowledge transcends mere consideration of sensory evidence and requires an understanding of the mind's innate modes of processing that sensory evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theoretical psychology</span> Domain of psychology concerning theory and philosophy

Theoretical psychology is concerned with theoretical and philosophical aspects of psychology. It is an interdisciplinary field with a wide scope of study.

<i>The Bounds of Sense</i> 1966 book by Peter Strawson

The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a 1966 book about Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) by the Oxford philosopher Peter Strawson, in which the author tries to separate what remains valuable in Kant's work from Kant's transcendental idealism, which he rejects. The work is widely admired, and has received praise from philosophers as one of the first thorough works on the Critique of Pure Reason in the analytic tradition, although Strawson's treatment of transcendental idealism has been criticized.

In philosophy, transcendence is the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning, of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages. It includes philosophies, systems, and approaches that describe the fundamental structures of being, not as an ontology, but as the framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. These definitions are generally grounded in reason and empirical observation, and seek to provide a framework for understanding the world that is not reliant on religious beliefs or supernatural forces. "Transcendental" is a word derived from the scholastic, designating the extra-categorical attributes of beings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Kitcher</span> British philosopher (born 1947)

Philip Stuart Kitcher is a British philosopher who is John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of literature, and more recently pragmatism.

Mou Zongsan was a Chinese philosopher and translator. He was born in Shandong province and graduated from Peking University. In 1949 he moved to Taiwan and later to Hong Kong, and he remained outside of mainland China for the rest of his life. His thought was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant, whose three Critiques he translated from English, possibly first, into Chinese, and above all by Tiantai Buddhist philosophy.

Robert Buford Pippin is an American philosopher. He is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago.

A priori and a posteriori are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics, tautologies, and deduction from pure reason. A posteriori knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge.

A transcendental argument is a deductive philosophical argument which takes a manifest feature of experience as granted, and articulates what must be the case so that such experiences are possible. Transcendental arguments may have additional standards of justification that are more demanding than those of traditional deductive arguments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul W. Franks</span>

Paul Walter Franks is the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies at Yale University. He graduated with his PhD from Harvard University in 1993. Franks' dissertation, entitled "Kant and Hegel on the Esotericism of Philosophy", was supervised by Stanley Cavell and won the Emily and Charles Carrier Prize for a Dissertation in Moral Philosophy at Harvard University. He completed his B.A and M.A, in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to this, Franks received his general education at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and studied classical rabbinic texts at Gateshead Talmudical College.

Transcendental Humanism in philosophy considers humans as simultaneously the originator of meaning, and subject to a larger ultimate truth that exists beyond the human realm (transcendence). The philosophy suggests that the humanistic approach is guided by “accuracy, truth, discovery, and objectivity” that transcends or exists apart from subjectivity.

Béatrice Longuenesse is a French philosopher and academic, who is the Silver Professor of Philosophy Emerita at New York University. Her work focuses on Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the philosophy of mind. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Longuenesse is one of the most prominent living Kant scholars, and her works have generated significant discussion around parts of Kant's corpus that were previously largely overlooked.

Andrew Brook is a Canadian philosopher, author and academic particularly known for his writings on Immanuel Kant and the interplay between philosophy and cognitive science. Brook is Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Carleton University, former President of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, and former President of the Canadian Philosophical Association.

Sebastian Angus Gardner is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy in the University College London. He is known for his expertise on Kant, German Idealism, Sartre and Freud, and for his philosophical interpretations and investigations in the subject of psychoanalytic theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Palmquist</span> Philosopher

Stephen Richard Palmquist is an American philosopher, currently living in Los Angeles. He taught philosophy at various universities in Hong Kong from 1987 to 2021. A Patheos article referred to him as "one of the greatest living interpreters of Kant".

References

  1. "Patricia Kitcher". Columbia University. Retrieved 6 August 2013.
  2. Guyer, Paul (2013-09-01). "A Declaration of Interdependence Kant's Thinker, by A1 - Patricia Kitcher . New York: PB - Oxford University Press, 2011, xiv + 312 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-975482-3". European Journal of Philosophy. 21 (3): 495–505. doi:10.1111/ejop.12043. ISSN   1468-0378.
  3. Marshall, Colin (2011-12-01). "Kant's Thinker". British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 19 (6): 1226–1229. doi:10.1080/09608788.2011.624727. ISSN   0960-8788. S2CID   144171727.
  4. , Patricia Kitcher wins Society of Columbia Graduates' 2017 Great Teacher Award.
  5. Sulloway, Frank J. "Review of Freud's Dream" (PDF).{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Stang, Nick (2011-10-17). "Review of Kant's Thinker". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. ISSN   1538-1617.