The world is relatively constant. But the vision of a person in relation to him can change. Depending on what this vision is, he answers us with such colors. You can always find evidence of this. In the world there is everything that a person wants to see. But some emphasize the good, while others emphasize the bad. This is the answer to why each person looks at the world differently.
Unity and identity
From what things a person pays attention most of all, and the environment depends. His sense of self is determined solely by his own opinion, attitude to circumstances and everything that happens around him. Unity and identity in the self-awareness of the subject is a prerequisite for cognitive synthesis. This is the transcendental unity of apperception, which should cut off any anomalies in the thinking of the individual.
What a person thinks, how he relates to events, all this determines his emotions, feelings and forms a certain idea, point of view and similar manifestations. In the world, everything that is subject to the human mind can happen. Such a concept as the transcendental unity of apperception presupposes the presence of self-consciousness that reflects a person’s way of thinking in relation to any event in life and the surrounding world without manifestation of sensory evaluation.
Compliance and Non-Compliance
It is important to have tolerance and not be surprised at the presence in the world at the same time of a variety of things: beautiful and terrible. What does it mean to be tolerant? It is consciously accepting the imperfection of the world and of oneself. You must understand that everyone can be wrong. The world is not perfect. And this is due to the fact that everything around a person may not correspond to the idea of him or another person.
For example, they want to see someone as a brunette, and he is red. Or the child should be calm and obedient, and he is a fidget and a naughty man. Therefore, the transcendental unity of apperception presupposes tolerance, which manifests itself in the fact that there is an understanding of the possible discrepancy between other people and the world around one's expectations and ideas. The world as it is is real and permanent. Only the person himself and his worldview are changing.
Different people - different perceptions
In philosophy, the transcendental unity of apperceptions is a concept introduced by Kant. For the first time, he used it in his Critique of Pure Reason.
The philosopher shares the initial and empirical apperception. In life, you can often find a situation where people, being participants in the same events, can talk about them differently. It depends on the personal perception of the person. And it so happens that one gets the impression that these are two completely different cases, although they are talking about the same thing.
What is apperception?
This is a conditional perception of everything that surrounds a person. It depends on personal experience, perceptions and acquired knowledge. For example, a person engaged in design, by going into a room, will first of all evaluate his situation, color design, arrangement of objects, etc. Another person, a florist, going into the same room, will pay attention to the presence of flowers, what they are and how to care for them. Therefore, one and the same room, two different people will perceive and evaluate differently.
In philosophy, the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception suggests that the revealed structure of the “I” can be used to explain a priori synthetic knowledge. This meaning is embedded in the concept of "transcendental."
Forms and laws
Kant says that, knowing the pure forms of such a synthesis, by which he understands categories, people can anticipate laws. In turn, phenomena must obey these laws, as a consequence of possible experience. Otherwise, these laws will not reach empirical consciousness, will not be perceived.
Therefore, the transcendental synthetic unity of apperception presupposes the highest foundation of knowledge, which is analytical in nature. The very concept of “I” already in itself has an idea of the synthesis within it of all possible ideas. But, the analytical unity of apperception itself can take place solely due to its original synthetic nature. Kant calls the connection with objective categorical syntheses the objective unity of self-consciousness. It is different from subjective, which is based on random or personal associations.
Manuscript analysis
The philosopher interprets self-awareness as a purely spontaneous act, indicating that pure apperception belongs to the highest cognitive abilities. In connection with such representations, it is not surprising that Kant sometimes identifies the unity of apperception (initial) and reason.
An analysis of the philosopher’s manuscripts showed that on the eve of the presentation of his work “Critique of Pure Reason” he interpreted the “I” in the spirit of rational psychology. This means that the “I” is a thing in itself, accessible to apperception (direct intellectual contemplation). The rejection of this position subsequently led to inconsistencies in the structure of the argument.
Later, the concept of "transcendental apperception" and its unity served as the beginning for the creation of Fichte's scientific works.
Scope of use of the concept
In general, this phenomenon has been considered by many philosophers and representatives of other sciences. It is widely used in psychology, medicine, sociology and other areas of human life. Kant combined the capabilities of people. He emphasized empirical apperception, which means to know oneself, and transcendental, indicating a pure perception of the world. For example, Herbart I. speaks of this concept as a process of cognition, a person receiving new knowledge and combining them with existing ones. Wundt V. characterizes apperception as a mechanism that structures personal experience in the human mind. Adler A. became famous for the view that a person sees what he wants to see. In other words, he notices only that which fits his concept of the world. And so a certain model of personality behavior is formed.
Such a concept as the transcendental unity of apperception, in simple words, characterizes a person's ability to interpret his own worldview. This is his personal attitude or assessment of the world and people. This understanding is present in medicine and sociology.
Differences
Such an interesting science as rational psychology was refuted by Kant. In it, the concept of transcendental apperception with its unity does not mix with the transcendental subject, its carrier, about which practically nothing is known. It is on the erroneous identification of these terms that rational psychology is based. It is believed that in itself this concept is only a form of thinking that differs from a transcendental subject in the same way that thought is different from a thing.
It is very important to note that impressions are reduced, first of all, to one general idea of the subject. On the basis of it, the basic and simplest concepts are developed. In this sense, Kant meant the synthesis of apperception. At the same time, he argued that the forms of this synthesis, the combination of impressions, the concept of space, time and the main categories are the inherent property of the human spirit. This does not follow from observation.
With the help of such a synthesis, a new impression, thanks to comparison and juxtaposition, is introduced into the circle of previously developed concepts and impressions held in memory. So it gets its place between them.
Searches and Installations
Selective perception, or apperception, examples of which were given above, indicates a careful and thoughtful perception of the world, based on our own experience, knowledge, fantasies and other views. All these categories are different for different people. First of all, a person looks at what corresponds to his goals, motives and desires. Through the prism of his addiction, he studies and describes the world around him.
If a person has a firm feeling within himself, which is called “I want”, then he begins the search for the one that corresponds to his desire and contributes to the realization of what was planned. The sensations are also affected by attitudes and the mental state of the individual.
Based on the fact that the synthetic unity of apperception leads a person to the knowledge of the world through the prism of his thoughts and feelings, the opposite can be said. For example, to each person with whom communication takes place, another person has this or that relation to her. This is a social apperception. It includes the influence of people on each other through ideas, opinions and joint activities.
The very concept of apperception is divided by type: cultural, biological and historical. It is congenital and acquired. Apperception is very important for human life. The man himself has the ability to change due to the influence of new information, to realize, perceive, complement his knowledge and experience. It is clear that knowledge is changing - the person himself is changing. Thoughts of an individual influence its character, behavior, ability to put forward hypotheses in relation to other people, phenomena and objects.
The philosophical concept of apperception, the definition of which tells us about the conscious perception of everything around on the basis of personal experience and knowledge, has a Latin origin. It is widely used in psychology. The result of this process will be clarity and distinctness of the elements of consciousness. This is a key property of the human psyche, expressing the predetermination of the perception of phenomena and objects of the external world in accordance with the characteristics of psychological experience, accumulated knowledge and the state of the individual in particular.
For the first time, the term apperception was proposed by the German philosopher and mathematician G. Leibniz. He was also engaged in logic, mechanics, physics, legal science, history, was a scientist, philosopher and diplomat, inventor and linguist. Leibniz is the founder and first president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The scientist was also a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Leibniz designated consciousness with this term, reflective acts that give a person a thought about the "I". Apperception is different from perception, unconscious perception. He explained the difference between perception-perception (the internal state of the monad) and apperception-consciousness (reflective cognition of this state inside a person). Leibniz G.V. introduced a distinction between these concepts in a controversy with the Cartesians who accept unconscious perceptions as "nothing."
Development
Subsequently, the concept of apperception was most developed in German philosophy and psychology. This was facilitated by the work of I. Kant, I. Herbart, W. Wundt and others. But even with differences in understanding, this concept was considered as the ability of the soul, spontaneously developing and being the source of a single stream of consciousness.
Leibniz limited apperception to the highest level of cognition. Kant did not think so, and shared a transcendental and empirical apperception. Herbart is already introducing the concept of apperception into pedagogy. He interprets it as the awareness by subjects of new information under the influence of a stock of experience and knowledge, which he calls an apperceptive mass.
Wundt turned apperception into a universal principle that explains the beginning of a person’s entire psychic life, into a special psychic causation, inner strength, which determines the personality’s behavior.
In gestalt psychology, apperception is reduced to the structural integrity of perception, which depends on the primary structures that arise and change depending on their internal laws. Perception itself is an active process where information is received and used to put forward hypotheses, as well as test them. The nature of such hypotheses depends on the content of past experience.
When a perception of an object occurs, traces of the past are also activated. So, the same subject can be perceived and reproduced in various ways. The richer the experience of a particular person, the more intense his perception, the more he will be able to see in the event.
What a person will perceive, the content of what is perceived, depends on the task set by that same person and the motives of his activity. The content of the reaction is significantly affected by the installation factor of the subject. It develops directly under the influence of the experience that was obtained earlier. This is a kind of willingness to perceive a new object in a certain way. Such a phenomenon was studied by D. Uznadze together with his collaborators. It characterizes the dependence of perception itself on the state of the subject, which is determined by previous experience. The influence of the installation extends to the work of various analyzers and is widespread. In the process of perception itself, feelings are involved that can change the meaning of the assessment. If there is an emotional attitude to the object, then it can easily become an object of perception.