Areas of Specialization
Kant's Theoretical Philosophy, Philosophy of Psychology, Freud.

My research has always been divided between Philosophy of Mind/Psychology and Kant.  In recent years, however, most of my work has been on Kant.  After publishing Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (Oxford) in 1990, and a number of preliminary studies, I am completing a book-length study of Kant’s account of the subject of cognition, Kant’s Thinker.  The main thrust of the book is to explain how Kant’s views about the prerequisites for being a cognizer emerged from his distinctive cognitive theory.  The final two chapters compare Kant’s approaches to self-identity and self-knowledge to contemporary views.  I will be on leave in 2007-2008 at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, working on a book on Kant’s ethics.  Some of the pilot studies for that book are listed below.

In 1992, I published Freud’s Dream: A Complete Interdisciplinary Cognitive Science.  My aim was to explain the strengths and weaknesses of psychoanalysis in part by reference to its inter-disciplinary character.  Besides trying to offer a clearer picture of Freud’s achievements and shortcomings, it was also intended as something of a caveat about the dangers of interdisciplinary work in cognitive science.

Patricia Kitcher's CV

Selected recent papers:

“Revisiting Kant’s Epistemology: Skepticism, Apriority and Psychologism,” Noûs, Sept, 1995, V. 29, N 3: 285-315.

“Kant on Self-Consciousness.” Philosophical Review 108, July,1999 :345-386.

“Kant's Epistemological Problem and Its Coherent Solution." Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology, 1999: 415-441.

“On Interpreting Kant's Thinker as Wittgenstein’s ‘I’.”  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXI, July 2000: 33-63.

“What is a Maxim?” Philosophical Topics, vol. 31, nos. 1&2, Spring and Fall 2003.

“Kant on Constructing Causal Representations.” Hugh Clapin, Phillip Staines, and Peter Slezak, eds., Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation. Elsevier, 2004, 217-36.

“Kant’s Argument for the Categorical Imperative.” Noûs XXXVIII, December, 2004, 555-84.

“The Unity of Kant’s Thinker,” Chapel Hill Colloquium, 2006.

“Kant’s Philosophy of the Cognitive Mind,” The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, Paul Guyer, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2006: 169-202.

“The Presupposition of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction,” forthcoming in a volume in the Pittsburgh-Athens conference series

“Kant’s ‘I Think’, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 10^th International Kant Kongress (Sao Paulo).

Teaching

PHILV3654x Philosophy of Psychology
PHILG9255x Kant's Critique of Pure Reason