Form without cosmos: A psychiatric-cognitive critique of transcendental synthesis, spontaneity, and the methodological split between philosophy and psychology

Abstract

The general objective of this article is to propose an epistemological and psychiatric-cognitive critique of the absolutization and reification of form in philosophy (in Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein), grounding a ‘third way’ that reintegrates formal analysis, psychogenesis, praxis, and clinical-neurological evidence under the central thesis that form does not ground the world but bears witness to it. Kant maintains that understanding does not passively receive the unity of objects but synthesizes the manifold of sensibility according to a priori forms and categories. It nevertheless remains insufficiently explained how the transcendental I performs this synthesis and where the organizing force of the forms applied to experience originates. When the organism effectively unifies elements, it does so primarily in relation to praxis rather than purely contemplative gnosis. Cognitive form is therefore understood as a stabilization of the interaction among cosmos, organism, body, action, nervous system, language, and social coexistence. The paper further argues that Kantian transcendentalization inaugurates or intensifies a recurrent procedure in modern and contemporary philosophy: the absolutization of form and its separation from the cosmic, psychological, bodily, and practical sources that give it force. This procedure reappears, with differences, in Husserlian intentionality, Heideggerian existential analysis, and Wittgensteinian accounts of use, language games, and forms of life. Finally, the article examines the methodological split between philosophy and psychology and proposes a reintegration of formal analysis, psychogenesis, clinical evidence, and the intelligibility of the cosmos.