Pedro Jesús Teruel

In this paper we examine the issues of the 1764 published essay – specially of its third section – which help us to reconstruct Kant’s position in the mind-body problem. The philosopher explores here the roots of pathological diseases and refers to a theory, exposed by Johann August Unzer in the weekly Der Arzt, which relates the Kantian point of view with the contemporary Functionalism in Philosophy of Mind. In this way we are pursuing a train of thought previously not taken into account in the Kantian research.

La aproximación al fenómeno de la akrasía desde la interpretación filosófica de los datos neurocientíficos trae consigo rendimientos teóricos y prácticos. Entre los teóricos se encuentra la fundamentación neurofisiológica de las acciones acráticas, con el consiguiente aumento de capacidad explicativa respecto de las argumentaciones clásicas ligadas a la noción de hábito. Entre los prácticos se halla su proyección terapéutica en el campo de la psicología y la psiquiatría. Sobre esta base propongo dicha aproximación como teoría con valor explicativo y predictivo que conjuga la reducción interteórica lograda con la evitación del reduccionismo ontológico.

Neither the term ‘emotion’, nor its current meaning, can be found in Kant’s writings. In this chapter I identify one strategy for exploring the realm of emotions by delineating the German notion of Erregung, its German-Latin counterpart Motion, and its semantic field. I argue that there is a link between the embodied aspect of emotions and the classic question of pathos, and that the Kantian approach to emotions is related to the stoic idea of ataraxia. Following the subsequent discussion of akrasia, I turn to its neuroscientific implications, in order to show that weakness of will in general, and especially its role within Kantian philosophy, can be understood from a naturalised model of causation.