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Chapter 14 - Cognition as Synthesis

from Part III - Kierkegaard and the Concept of Thought Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2025

Eleanor Helms
Affiliation:
California Polytechnic State University
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Summary

This chapter develops and analyzes how thought experiments connect thinking with actuality. Superficially, imaginary constructions are mere possibilities that diverge from actuality. However, Kierkegaard also characterizes thought experiments as a kind of experience, providing concrete, fulfilling content for an otherwise empty concept – that is, providing what Kant calls a “synthesis” between thought and experience. Two Ages shows how the work of synthesis can begin from observations and move toward understanding or from understanding toward fulfillment in experience. In Works of Love, I propose, we find material for a basic taxonomy of thought experiments that distinguishes them by whether the thought experiment offers cognition of (a) objects or (b) concepts and whether it (a) proceeds from existing concepts or (b) guides the reader in gaining new ones. This taxonomy mirrors Kant’s distinctions between constitutive and regulative concepts and determining and reflecting judgments. It also anticipates the proposals of recent rationalist accounts of intuition that thought experiments provide nonsensory presentations.

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Kierkegaard and the Structure of Imagination
Rethinking Thought Experiments with Kant and Ørsted
, pp. 230 - 247
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Cognition as Synthesis
  • Eleanor Helms, California Polytechnic State University
  • Book: Kierkegaard and the Structure of Imagination
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009594929.019
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  • Cognition as Synthesis
  • Eleanor Helms, California Polytechnic State University
  • Book: Kierkegaard and the Structure of Imagination
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009594929.019
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Cognition as Synthesis
  • Eleanor Helms, California Polytechnic State University
  • Book: Kierkegaard and the Structure of Imagination
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009594929.019
Available formats
×