Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Using reason

Unlike many philosophers of his time, Kant believed that knowledge of

what is right and wrong is not something that exists in nature, or is given
to us by God. He argued that we decide what is morally right for
ourselves by using reason. Instead of judging the morality of an action by
its outcome, Kant thought we should have unbreakable rules of morality.
If we think something is wrong, then it must be wrong for everyone, at all
times.

Two worlds

Kant said that we know about things through our senses. But we cannot
experience things as they actually are—we only know what we can see,
touch, hear, and so on. He said there are two different worlds—the world
of things as we experience them, and another world that we do not have
any way of experiencing, and therefore that we cannot know.

How do we know the world?

In his most important book, Critique of Pure Reason, Kant draws

connections between reason, rational thinking, and experience, to show
how we learn about the world. He introduced ideas that changed the way
people thought about philosophy, and it immediately made him famous

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Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self
(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/

1. A Sketch of Kant's View of the Mind

Will focus on Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) work on the mind and

consciousness of self and related issues.

Some commentators believe that Kant's views on the mind are dependent on his
idealism (he called it transcendental idealism). For the most part, that is not so.
At worst, most of what he said about the mind and consciousness can be
detached from his idealism. Though often viewed as a quintessentially German
philosopher, Kant is said to have been one-quarter Scottish. Some philosophers
(often Scottish) hold that ‘Kant’ is a Germanization of the Scottish name
‘Candt’, though many scholars now reject the idea. It is noteworthy, however,
that his work on epistemology, which led him to his ideas about the mind, was a
response to Hume as much as to any other philosopher.

In general structure, Kant's model of the mind was the dominant model in the
empirical psychology that flowed from his work and then again, after a hiatus
during which behaviourism reigned supreme (roughly 1910 to 1965), toward the
end of the 20th century, especially in cognitive science. Central elements of the
models of the mind of thinkers otherwise as different as Sigmund Freud and
Jerry Fodor are broadly Kantian, for example.

Three ideas define the basic shape (‘cognitive architecture’) of Kant's model and
one its dominant method. They have all become part of the foundation of
cognitive science.

1. The mind is complex set of abilities (functions). (As Meerbote 1989 and
many others have observed, Kant held a functionalist view of the mind
almost 200 years before functionalism was officially articulated in the
1960s by Hilary Putnam and others.)
2. The functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity are
spatio-temporal processing of, and application of concepts to, sensory
inputs. Cognition requires concepts as well as percepts.
3. These functions are forms of what Kant called synthesis. Synthesis (and
the unity in consciousness required for synthesis) are central to
cognition.

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These three ideas are fundamental to most thinking about cognition now. Kant's
most important method, the transcendental method, is also at the heart of
contemporary cognitive science.

 To study the mind, infer the conditions necessary for experience.

Arguments having this structure are called transcendental arguments.

Translated into contemporary terms, the core of this method is inference to the
best explanation, the method of postulating unobservable mental mechanisms in
order to explain observed behaviour.

To be sure, Kant thought that he could get more out of his transcendental
arguments than just ‘best explanations’. He thought that he could get a priori
(experience independent) knowledge out of them. Kant had a tripartite doctrine
of the a priori. He held that some features of the mind and its knowledge had a
priori origins, i.e., must be in the mind prior to experience (because using them
is necessary to have experience). That mind and knowledge have these features
are a priori truths, i.e., necessary and universal (B3/4)[1]. And we can come to
know these truths, or that they are a priori at any rate, only by using a priori
methods, i.e., we cannot learn these things from experience (B3) (Brook 1993).
Kant thought that transcendental arguments were a priori or yielded the a priori
in all three ways. Nonetheless, at the heart of this method is inference to the best
explanation. When introspection fell out of favour about 100 years ago, the
alternative approach adopted was exactly this approach. Its nonempirical roots in
Kant notwithstanding, it is now the major method used by experimental
cognitive scientists.

Other things equally central to Kant's approach to the mind have not been taken
up by cognitive science, as we will see near the end, a key part of his doctrine of
synthesis and most of what he had to say about consciousness of self in
particular. Far from his model having been superseded by cognitive science,
some important things have not even been assimilated by it.

2. Kant's Critical Project and How the Mind Fits Into It

The major works so far as Kant's views on the mind are concerned are the
monumental Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) and his little, late Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View, first published in 1798 only six years before
his death. Since the Anthropology was worked up from notes for popular
lectures, it is often superficial compared to CPR. Kant's view of the mind arose
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from his general philosophical project in CPR the following way. Kant aimed
among other things to,

 Justify our conviction that physics, like mathematics, is a body of

necessary and universal truth.
 Insulate religion, including belief in immortality, and free will from the
corrosive effects of this very same science.

Kant accepted without reservation that “God, freedom and immortality” (1781/7,
Bxxx) exist but feared that, if science were relevant to their existence at all, it
would provide reasons to doubt that they exist. As he saw it and very
fortunately, science cannot touch these questions. “I have found it necessary to
deny knowledge, … in order to make room for faith.” (Bxxx, his italics).

Laying the foundation for pursuit of the first aim, which as he saw it was no less
than the aim of showing why physics is a science, was what led Kant to his
views about how the mind works. He approached the grounding of physics by
asking: What are the necessary conditions of experience (A96)? Put simply, he
held that for our experience, and therefore our minds, to be as they are, the way
that our experience is tied together must reflect the way that physics says that
objects in the world must be tied together. Seeing this connection also tells us a
lot about what our minds must be like.

His pursuit of the second aim, and specifically his critique of some arguments of
his predecessors that entailed that we can know more about the mind's
consciousness of itself than Kant could also, led him to some extraordinarily
penetrating ideas about our consciousness of ourselves.

In CPR, Kant discussed the mind only in connection with his main projects,
never in its own right, so his treatment is remarkably scattered and sketchy. As
he put it, “Enquiry … [into] the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the
cognitive faculties upon which it rests … is of great importance for my chief
purpose, … [but] does not form an essential part of it” (Axvii). Indeed, Kant
offers no sustained, focussed discussion of the mind anywhere in his work
except the popular Anthropology, which, as we just said, is quite superficial.

In addition, the two chapters of CPR in which most of Kant's remarks on the
mind occur, the chapter on the Transcendental Deduction (TD) and the chapter
on what he called Paralogisms (faulty arguments about the mind mounted by his
predecessors) were the two chapters that gave him the greatest difficulty. (They
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contain some of the most impenetrable prose ever written.) Kant completely
rewrote the main body of both chapters for the second edition (though not the
introductions, interestingly).

In the two editions of CPR, there are seven main discussions of the mind. The
first is in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the second is in what is usually called
the Metaphysical Deduction (for this term, see below). Then there are two
discussions of it in the first-edition TD, in parts 1 to 3 of Section 2 (A98 up to
A110) and in the whole of Section 3 (A115-A127)[2] and two more in the
second-edition TD, from B129 to B140 and from B153 to B159, the latter
seemingly added as a kind of supplement. The seventh and last is found in the
first edition version of Kant's attack on the Paralogisms, in the course of which
he says things of the utmost interest about consciousness of and reference to
self. (What little was retained of these remarks in the second edition was moved
to the completely rewritten TD.) For understanding Kant on the mind and self-
knowledge, the first edition of CPR is far more valuable than the second edition.
Kant's discussion proceeds through the following stages.

2.1 Transcendental Aesthetic

Kant calls the first stage the Transcendental Aesthetic.[3] It is about what space
and time must be like, and how we must handle them, if our experience is to
have the spatial and temporal properties that it has. This question about the
necessary conditions of experience is for Kant a ‘transcendental’ question and
the strategy of proceeding by trying to find answers to such questions is, as we
said, the strategy of transcendental argument.

Here Kant advances one of his most notorious views: that whatever it is that
impinges on us from the mind-independent world does not come located in a
spatial or a temporal matrix, not even a temporal one (A37=B54fn.). Rather, it is
the mind that organizes this ‘manifold of raw intuition’, as he called it, spatially
and temporally. The mind has two pure forms of intuition, space and time, built
into it to allow it to do so. (‘Pure’ means ‘not derived from experience’.)

These claims are very problematic. For example, they invite the question, in
virtue of what is the mind constrained to locate a bit of information at one spatial
or temporal location rather than another? Kant seems to have had no answer to
this question (Falkenstein 1995; Brook 1998). Most commentators have found
Kant's claim that space and time are only in the mind, not at all in the mind-
independent world, to be implausible.
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The activity of locating items in the ‘forms of intuition’, space and time, is one
of the three kinds of what Kant called synthesis and discussed in the chapter on
the Transcendental Deduction. It is not entirely clear how the two discussions
relate.

2.2 Metaphysical Deduction

The Aesthetic is about the conditions of experience, Kant's official project. The
chapter leading up to the Transcendental Deduction, The Clue to the Discovery
of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding (but generally called the
Metaphysical Deduction because of a remark that Kant once made, B159) is
totally unlike this.

Starting from and taking for granted the logic of Aristotelian syllogisms and the
Aristotelian categories, Kant proceeds by analysis to draw out the implications
of this logic for the conceptual structure within which all thought and experience
must take place. The structure in question is the system of the forms of
judgment; the resulting theory is the theory of what Kant called the Categories.
Kant seems to have thought that he could deduce the conceptual structure of
experience from the components of the Aristotelian system.

Thus, in Kant's thought about the mind early in CPR, there is not one central
movement but two, one in the Transcendental Aesthetic and the other in the
Metaphysical Deduction. The first is a move up from experience (of objects) to
the necessary conditions of such experience. The second is a move down from
the Aristotelian forms of judgment to the concepts that we have to use in
judging, namely, the Categories. One is inference up from experience, the other
deduction down from conceptual structures of the most abstract kind.

2.3 Transcendental Deduction, 1st Edition

Then we get to the second chapter of the Transcendental Logic, the brilliant and
baffling Transcendental Deduction (TD). Recall the two movements just
discussed, the one from experience to its conditions and the one from the forms
of valid inference to the concepts that we must use in all judging (the
Categories). This duality led Kant to his famous question of right (quid juris)
(A84=B116): with what right do we apply the Categories, which are not
acquired from experience, to the contents of experience? (A85=B117). Kant's
problem here is not as arcane as it might seem. It reflects an important question:
How is it that the world as we experience it conforms to our logic? In briefest
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form, Kant thought that the trick to showing how it is possible for the Categories
to apply to experience is to show that it is necessary that they apply (A97).[4]

TD has two sides, though Kant never treats them separately. He once called
them the objective and the subjective deductions (Axvii). The objective
deduction is about the conceptual and other cognitive conditions of having
representations of objects. It is Kant's answer to the quid juris question. Exactly
how the objective deduction goes is highly controversial, a controversy that we
will sidestep here. The subjective deduction is about what the mind, the
“subjective sources” of understanding (A97), must as a consequence be like. The
subjective deduction is what mainly interests us.

Kant argues as follows. Our experiences have objects, are about something. The
objects of our experiences are discrete, unified particulars. To have such
particulars available to it, the mind must construct them based on sensible input.
To construct them, the mind must do three kinds of synthesis. It must generate
temporal and spatial structure (Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition). It must
associate spatio-temporally structured items with other spatio-temporally
structured items (Synthesis of Reproduction in the Imagination). And it must
recognize items using concepts, the Categories in particular (Synthesis of
Recognition in a Concept). This threefold doctrine of synthesis is one of the
cornerstones of Kant's model of the mind. We will consider it in more detail in
the next Section.

The ‘deduction of the categories’ should now be complete. Strangely enough,

the chapter has only nicely got started. In the first edition version, for example,
we have only reached A106, about one-third of the way through the chapter. At
this point, Kant introduces the notion of transcendental apperception for the first
time and the unity of such apperception, the unity of consciousness. Evidently,
something is happening (something, moreover, not at all well heralded in the
text). We will see what when we discuss Kant's doctrine of synthesis below.

We can now understand in more detail why Kant said that the subjective
deduction is inessential (Axvii). Since the objective deduction is about the
conditions of representations having objects, a better name for it might have
been ‘deduction of the object’. Similarly, a better name for the subjective
deduction might have been ‘the deduction of the subject’ or ‘the deduction of the
subject's nature’. The latter enquiry was inessential to Kant's main critical
project because the main project was to defend the synthetic a priori credentials

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of physics in the objective deduction. From this point of view, anything
uncovered about the nature and functioning of the mind was a happy accident.

2.4 Attack on the Paralogisms, 1st Edition

The chapter on the Paralogisms, the first of the three parts of Kant's second
project, contains Kant's most original insights into the nature of consciousness of
the self. In the first edition, he seems to have achieved a stable position on self-
consciousness only as late as this chapter. Certainly his position was not stable
in TD. Even his famous term for consciousness of self, ‘I think’, occurs for the
first time only in the introduction to the chapter on the Paralogisms. His target is
claims that we know what the mind is like. Whatever the merits of Kant's attack
on these claims, in the course of mounting it, he made some very deep-running
observations about consciousness and knowledge of self.

To summarize: in the first edition, TD contains most of what Kant had to say
about synthesis and unity, but little on the nature of consciousness of self. The
chapter on the Paralogisms contains most of what he has to say about
consciousness of self.

2.5 The Two Discussions in the 2nd-edition TD and Other Discussions

As we said, Kant rewrote both TD and the chapter on the Paralogisms for the
second edition of CPR, leaving only their introductions intact. In the course of
doing so, he moved the topic of consciousness of self from the chapter on the
Paralogisms to the second discussion of the mind in the new TD. The new
version of the Paralogisms chapter is then built around a different and, so far as
theory of mind is concerned, much less interesting strategy. The relationship of
the old and new versions of the chapters is complicated (Brook 1994, Ch. 9).
Here we will just note that the underlying doctrine of the mind does not seem to
change very much.

CPR contains other discussions of the mind, discussions that remained the same
in both editions. The appendix on what Kant called Leibniz’ Amphiboly
contains the first explicit discussion of an important general metaphysical
notion, numerical identity (being one object at and over time), and contains the
first argument in CPR for the proposition that sensible input is needed for
knowledge. (Kant asserts this many times earlier but assertion is not argument.)
In the Antinomies, the discussion of the Second Antinomy contains some
interesting remarks about the simplicity of the soul and there is a discussion of
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free will in the Solution to the Third Antinomy. The mind also appears a few
times in the Doctrine of Method, particularly in a couple of glosses of the attack
mounted against the Paralogisms. (A784=B812ff is perhaps the most
interesting.)

In other new material prepared for the second edition, we find a first gloss on the
topic of self-consciousness as early as the Aesthetic (B68). The mind also
appears in a new passage called the Refutation of Idealism, where Kant attempts
to tie the possibility of one sort of consciousness of self to consciousness of
permanence in something other than ourselves, in a way he thought to be
inconsistent with Berkeleian idealism. This new Refutation of Idealism has often
been viewed as a replacement for the argument against the Fourth Paralogism of
the first edition. There are problems with this view, the most important of which
is that the second edition still has a separate fourth Paralogism (B409).
Whatever, though the new passage utilizes self-consciousness in a highly
original way, it says little that is new about it.

Elsewhere in his work, the only sustained discussion of the mind and
consciousness is, as we said, his little, late Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point
of View. By ‘anthropology’ Kant meant the study of human beings from the
point of view of their (psychologically-controlled) behaviour, especially their
behaviour toward one another, and of the things revealed in behaviour such as
character. Though Kant sometimes contrasted anthropology as a legitimate study
with what he understood empirical psychology to be, namely, psychology based
on introspective observation, he meant by anthropology something fairly close
to what we now mean by behavioural or experimental psychology.

3. Kant's View of the Mind

3.1 Method

Turning now to Kant's view of the mind, we will start with a point about
method: Kant held surprisingly strong and not entirely consistent views on the
empirical study of the mind. The empirical method for doing psychology that
Kant discussed was introspection.

Sometimes he held such study to be hopeless. The key text on psychology is in

The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. There Kant tell us that “the
empirical doctrine of the soul … must remain even further removed than
chemistry from the rank of what may be called a natural science proper” (Ak.
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IV:471). (In Kant's defence, there was nothing resembling a single unified
theory of chemical reactions in his time.) The contents of introspection, in his
terms inner sense, cannot be studied scientifically for at least five reasons.

First, having only one universal dimension and one that they are only
represented to have at that, namely, distribution in time, the contents of inner
sense cannot be quantified; thus no mathematical model of them is possible.
Second, “the manifold of internal observation is separated only by mere
thought”. That is to say, only the introspective observer distinguishes the items
one from another; there are no real distinctions among the items themselves.
Third, these items “cannot be kept separate” in a way that would allow us to
connect them again “at will”, by which Kant presumably means, according to
the dictates of our developing theory. Fourth, “another thinking subject [does
not] submit to our investigations in such a way as to be conformable to our
purposes” – the only thinking subject whose inner sense one can investigate is
oneself. Finally and most damningly, “even the observation itself alters and
distorts the state of the object observed” (1786, Ak. IV:471). Indeed,
introspection can be bad for the health: it is a road to “mental illness”
(‘Illuminism and Terrorism’, 1798, Ak. VII:133; see 161).

In these critical passages, it is not clear why he didn't respect what he called
anthropology more highly as an empirical study of the mind, given that he
himself did it. He did so elsewhere. In the Anthropology, for example, he links
'self-observation' and observation of others and calls them both sources of
anthropology (Ak. VII:142–3).

Whatever, no kind of empirical psychology can yield necessary truths about the
mind. In the light of this limitation, how should we study the mind? Kant's
answer was: transcendental method using transcendental arguments (notions
introduced earlier). If we cannot observe the connections among the denizens of
inner sense to any purpose, we can study what the mind must be like and what
capacities and structures (in Kant's jargon, faculties) it must have if it is to
represent things as it does. With this method we can find universally true, that is
to say, ‘transcendental’ psychological propositions. We have already seen what
some of them are: minds must be able to synthesize and minds must have a
distinctive unity, for example. Let us turn now to these substantive claims.

3.2 Synthesis and Faculties

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We have already discussed Kant's view of the mind's handling of space and
time, so we can proceed directly to his doctrine of synthesis. As Kant put it in
one of his most famous passages, “Concepts without intuitions are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51=B75). Experience requires both
percepts and concepts. As we might say now, to discriminate, we need
information; but for information to be of any use to us, we must organize the
information. This organization is provided by acts of synthesis.

By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the act of putting different
representations together, and of grasping what is manifold in them in one
knowledge [A77=B103]

If the doctrine of space and time is the first major part of his model of the mind,
the doctrine of synthesis is the second. Kant claimed, as we saw earlier, that
three kinds of synthesis are required to organize information, namely
apprehending in intuition, reproducing in imagination, and recognizing in
concepts (A97-A105). Each of the three kinds of synthesis relates to a different
aspect of Kant's fundamental duality of intuition and concept. Synthesis of
apprehension concerns raw perceptual input, synthesis of recognition concerns
concepts, and synthesis of reproduction in imagination allows the mind to go
from the one to the other.

They also relate to three fundamental faculties of the mind. One is the province
of Sensibility, one is the province of Understanding, and the one in the middle is
the province of a faculty that has a far less settled position than the other two,
namely, Imagination (see A120).

The first two, apprehension and reproduction, are inseparable; one cannot occur
without the other (A102). The third, recognition, requires the other two but is
not required by them. It seems that only the third requires the use of concepts;
this problem of non-concept-using syntheses and their relationship to use of the
categories becomes a substantial issue in the second edition (see B150ff.), where
Kant tries to save the universality of the objective deduction by arguing that all
three kinds of syntheses are required to represent objects.

Acts of synthesis are performed on that to which we are passive in experience,

namely intuitions (Anschauungen). Intuitions are quite different from sense-data
as classically understood; we can become conscious of intuitions only after acts
of synthesis and only by inference from these acts, not directly. Thus they are
something more like theoretical entities (better, events) postulated to explain
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something in what we do recognize. What they explain is the non-conceptual
element in representations, an element over which we have no control. Intuitions
determine how our representations will serve to confirm or refute theories, aid or
impede our efforts to reach various goals.

3.2.1 Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition

The synthesis of apprehension is somewhat more shadowy than the other two. In
the second edition, the idea does not even appear until §26, i.e., late in TD. At
A120, Kant tells us that apprehending impressions is taking them up into the
activity of imagination, i.e., into the faculty of the mind that becomes conscious
of images. He tells us that we can achieve the kind of differentiation we need to
take them up only “in so far as the mind distinguishes the time in the sequence
of one impression upon another” (A99). Kant uses the term ‘impression’
(Eindrucke) rarely; it seems to be in the same camp as ‘appearance’
(Erscheinung) and ‘intuition’ (Anschauung).

The idea behind the strange saying just quoted seems to be this. Kant seems to
have believed that we can become conscious of only one new item at a time.
Thus a group of simultaneous ‘impressions’ all arriving at the same time would
be indistinguishable, “for each representation [Vorstellung], in so far as it is
contained in a single moment, can never be anything but absolute unity” (A99).
Kant's use of Vorstellung, with its suggestion of synthesized, conceptualized
organization, may have been unfortunate, but what I think he meant is this. Prior
to synthesis and conceptual organization, a manifold of intuitions would be an
undifferentiated unit, a seamless, buzzing confusion. Thus, to distinguish one
impression from another, we must give them separate locations. Kant speaks
only of temporal location but he may very well have had spatial location in
mind, too.

The synthesis of apprehension is closely related to the Transcendental Aesthetic.

Indeed, it is the doing of what the Aesthetic tells us that the mind has to be able
to do with respect to locating items in time and space (time anyway).

3.2.2 Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination

The synthesis of reproduction in imagination has two elements, a synthesis

proper and associations necessary for performing that synthesis. (Kant explicitly
treats them as separate on A125: “recognition, reproduction, association,
apprehension”.) Both start from the appearances, as Kant now calls them, which
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the synthesis of apprehension has located in time. At first glance, the synthesis
of reproduction looks very much like memory; however, it is actually quite
different from memory. It is a matter of retaining earlier intuitions in such a way
that certain other representations can “bring about a transition of the mind” to
these earlier representations, even in the absence of any current representation of
them (A100). Such transitions are the result of the setting up of associations
(which, moreover, need not be conscious) and do not require memory. Likewise,
no recognition of any sort need be involved; that the earlier representations have
become associated with later ones is not something that we need recognize.
Memory and recognition are the jobs of synthesis of recognition, yet to come.

To our ears now, it is a little strange to find Kant calling this activity of
reproduction and the activity of apprehension acts of imagination. Kant
describes the function he had in mind as “a blind but indispensable function of
the soul” (A78=B103), so he meant something rather different from what we
now mean by the term ‘imagination’ (A120 and fn.). For Kant, imagination is a
connecting of elements by forming an image: “… imagination has to bring the
manifold of intuitions into the form of an image” (A120). If ‘imagination’ is
understood in its root sense of image-making and we see imagination not as
opposed to but as part of perception, then Kant's choice of term becomes less
peculiar.

3.2.3 Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept

The third kind of synthesis is synthesis of recognition in a concept. To

experience objects for Kant, first I have to relate the materials out of which they
are constructed to one another temporally and spatially. They may not require
use of concepts. Then I have to apply at least the following kinds of concepts:
concepts of number, of quality, and of modality (I am experiencing something
real or fictitious). These are three of the four kinds of concepts that Kant had
identified as Categories. Note that we have so far not mentioned the fourth,
relational concepts.

In Kant's view, recognition requires memory; reproduction is not memory but

memory does enter now. The argument goes as follows.

[A merely reproduced] manifold of representation would never … form a whole,

since it would lack that unity which only consciousness can impart to it. If, in
counting, I forget that the units, which now hover before me, have been added to

13
one another in succession, I should never know that a total is being produced
through this successive addition of unit to unit … [A103; see A78=B104].

In fact, as this passage tells us, synthesis into an object by an act of recognition
requires two things. One is memory. The other is that something in the past
representations must be recognized as related to present ones. And to recognize
that earlier and later representations are both representing a single object, we
must use a concept, a rule (A121, A126). In fact, we must use a number of
concepts: number, quality, modality, and, of course, the specific empirical
concept of the object we are recognizing.

Immediately after introducing recognition, Kant brings apperception and the

unity of apperception into the discussion. The acts by which we achieve
recognition under concepts are acts of apperception. By ‘apperception’, Kant
means the faculty or capacity for judging in accord with a rule, for applying
concepts. Apperceiving is an activity necessary for and parallel to perceiving
(A120). This is one of the senses in which Leibniz used the term, too. To
achieve recognition of a unified object, the mind must perform an act of
judgment; it must find how various represented elements are connected to one
another. This judgment is an act of apperception. Apperception is the faculty
that performs syntheses of recognition (A115). Note that we are not yet dealing
with transcendental apperception.

To sum up: For experiences to have objects, acts of recognition that apply
concepts to spatio-temporally ordered material are required. Representation
requires recognition. Moreover, objects of representation share a general
structure. They are all some number of something, they all have qualities, and
they all have an existence-status. (Put this way, Kant's claim that the categories
are required for knowledge looks quite plausible.)

3.3 Synthesis: A 90° Turn

With the synthesis of recognition, TD should be close to complete. Kant merely

needs to argue that these concepts must include the categories, which he does at
A111, and that should be that.

But that is not that. In fact, as we said earlier, we are only about one-third of the
way through the chapter. The syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and
recognition of single objects march in a single temporal/object-generational line.
Suddenly at A106 Kant makes a kind of 90o turn. From the generation of a
14
representation of individual objects of experience over time, he suddenly turns to
a form of recognition that requires the unification and recognition of multiple
objects existing at the same time. He moves from acts of recognition of
individual objects to unified acts of recognition of multiple objects which “stand
along side one another in one experience” (A108). This 90o turn is a pivotal
moment in TD and has received less attention than it deserves.

The move that Kant makes next is interesting. He argues that the mind could not
use concepts so as to have unified objects of representation if its consciousness
were not itself unified (A107–108). Why does consciousness and its unity appear
here? We have been exploring what is necessary to have experience. Why would
it matter if, in addition, unified consciousness were necessary? As Walker
(1978, p. 77) and Guyer (1987, pp. 94–5) have shown, Kant did not need to start
from anything about the mind to deduce the Categories. (A famous footnote in
The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science [Ak. IV:474fn.] is Kant's
best-known comment on this issue.) So why does he suddenly introduce unified
consciousness?

So far Kant has ‘deduced’ only three of the four kinds of categorical concepts,
number, quality, and modality. He has said nothing about the relational
categories. For Kant, this would have been a crucial gap. One of his keenest
overall objectives in CPR is to show that physics is a real science. To do this, he
thinks that he needs to show that we must use the concept of causality in
experience. Thus, causality is likely the category that he cared more about than
all the other categories put together. Yet up to A106, Kant has said nothing
about the relational categories in general or causality in particular. By A111,
however, Kant is talking about the use of the relational categories and by A112
causality is front and centre. So it is natural to suppose that, in Kant's view at
least, the material between A106 and A111 contains an argument for the
necessity of applying the relational categories, even though he never says so.

Up to A106, Kant has talked about nothing but normal individual objects: a
triangle and its three sides, a body and its shape and impenetrability. At A107,
he suddenly begins to talk about tying together multiple represented objects,
indeed “all possible appearances, which can stand alongside one another in one
experience” (A108). The solution to the problem of showing that we have to use
the category of causality must lie somewhere in this activity of tying multiple
objects together.

15
The passage between A106 and A111 is blindingly difficult. It takes up
transcendental apperception, the unity and identity of the mind, and the mind's
consciousness of itself as the subject of all its representations (A106–108). I
think that this passage introduces either a new stage or even a new starting point
for TD. Here many commentators (Strawson, Henrich, Guyer) would think
immediately of self-consciousness. Kant did use consciousness of self as a
starting point for deductions, at B130 in the B-edition for example. But that is
not what appears here, not in the initial paragraphs anyway.

What Kant does say is this. Our experience is “one experience”; “all possible
appearances … stand alongside one another in one experience” (A108). We
have “one and the same general experience” of “all … the various perceptions”
(A110), “a connected whole of human knowledge” (A121). Let us call this
general experience a global representation.

Transcendental apperception (hereafter TA) now enters. It is the ability to tie

‘all appearances’ together into ‘one experience’.

This transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible appearances,

which can stand alongside one another in one experience, a connection of all
these representations according to laws. [A108]

It performs a “synthesis of all appearances according to concepts”, “whereby it

subordinates all synthesis of apprehension … to a transcendental unity” (A108).
This, he thought, requires unified consciousness. Unified consciousness is
required for another reason, too. Representations

can [so much as] represent something to me only in so far as they belong with
all others to one consciousness. Therefore, they must at least be capable of being
so connected [A116].

The introduction of unified consciousness opens up an important new

opportunity. Kant can now explore the necessary conditions of conscious
content being unified in this way. To make a long story short, Kant now argues
that conscious content could have the unity that it does only if the contents
themselves are tied together causally.[5]

With this, his deduction of the relational categories is complete and his defence
of the necessity of physics is under way. The notion of unified consciousness to

16
which Kant is appealing here is interesting in its own right, so let us turn to it
next.[6]

3.4 Unity of Consciousness

For Kant, consciousness being unified is a central feature of the mind, our kind
of mind at any rate. In fact, being a single integrated group of experiences
(roughly, one person's experiences) requires two kinds of unity.

1. The experiences must have a single common subject (A350); and,

2. The consciousness that this subject has of represented objects and/or
representations must be unified.

The first requirement may look trivial but it is not. For Hume, for example, what
makes a group of experiences one person's experiences is that they are
associated with one another in an appropriate way (the so-called bundle theory),
not that they have a common subject. The need for a subject arises from two
straight-forward considerations: representations not only represent something,
they represent it to someone; and, representations are not given to us – to
become a representation, sensory inputs must be processed by an integrated
cognitive system. Kant may have been conscious of both these points, but
beyond identifying the need, he had little to say about what the subject of
experience might be like, so we will say no more about it. (We will, however,
say something about what its consciousness of itself is like later.)

Kant called the unity of consciousness both the unity of consciousness (A103)
and the unity of apperception (A105, A108). The well-known argument at the
beginning of the first edition attack on the second paralogism (A352) focuses on
the unity of consciousness at a given time (among other things) and what can (or
rather, cannot) be inferred from it about the nature of the mind (a topic to which
we will return below). The attack on the third paralogism focuses on what can be
inferred from unified consciousness over time. These are all from the first
edition of CPR. In the second edition, Kant makes remarks about unity unlike
anything in the first edition, for example, “this unity … is not the category of
unity” (B131). The unity of consciousness and Kant's views on it are
complicated issues but some of the most important points include the following.

By ‘unity of consciousness’, Kant seems to have the following in mind: I am

conscious not only of single experiences but of a great many experiences at the
same time. The same is true of actions; I can do and be conscious of doing a
17
number of actions at the same time. In addition to such synchronic unity, many
global representations, as we called them, display temporal unity: current
representation is combined with retained earlier representation. (Temporal unity
is often a feature of synthesis of recognition.) Any representation that we acquire
in a series of temporal steps, such as hearing a sentence, will have unity across
time (A104; A352).

Kant himself did not explicate his notion of unified consciousness but here is
one plausible articulation of the notion at work in his writings.

The unity of consciousness =df. (i) a single act of consciousness, which (ii)
makes one conscious of a number of representations and/or objects of
representation in such a way that to be conscious by having any members of this
group is also to be conscious by having others in the group and of at least some
of them as a group.

As this definition makes clear, consciousness being unified is more than just
being one state of consciousness. Unified consciousness is not just singular, it is
unified.

Kant placed great emphasis on the unity of consciousness, both positively and
negatively. Positively, he held that conceptualized representation has to be
unified both at and across time. Negatively, from a mind having unified
consciousness, he held that nothing follows concerning its composition, its
identity, especially its identity across time, nor its materiality or immateriality.
He argued these points in his attacks on the second, third and fourth
Paralogisms.

4. Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self

Many commentators hold that consciousness of self is central to the Critical

philosophy. There is reason to question this: unified consciousness is central, but
consciousness of self? That is not so clear. Whatever, the topic is intrinsically
interesting and Kant achieved some remarkable insights into it. Strangely, none
of his immediate successors took them up after his death and they next appeared
at the earliest in Wittgenstein (1934–5) and perhaps not until Shoemaker (1968).
Kant never discussed consciousness of self in its own right, only in the context
of pursuing other objectives, and his remarks on the topic are extremely
scattered. When we pull his various remarks together, we can see that Kant

18
advanced at least seven major theses about consciousness of and knowledge of
self. We will consider them one-by-one.

4.1 Thesis 1: Two Kinds of Consciousness of Self

The first thesis:

1. There are two kinds of consciousness of self: consciousness of oneself

and one's psychological states in inner sense and consciousness of
oneself and one's states via performing acts of apperception.

Kant's term for the former was ‘empirical self-consciousness’. A leading term
for the latter was ‘transcendental apperception’ (TA). (Kant used the term ‘TA’
in two very different ways, as the name for a faculty of synthesis and as the
name for what he also referred to as the ‘I think’, namely, one's consciousness of
oneself as subject.) Here is a passage from the Anthropology in which Kant
distinguishes the two kinds of consciousness of self very clearly:

… the “I” of reflection contains no manifold and is always the same in every
judgment … Inner experience, on the other hand, contains the matter of
consciousness and a manifold of empirical inner intuition: … [1798, Ak.
VII:141–2, emphases in the original].

The two kinds of consciousness of self have very different sources.

The source of empirical self-consciousness is what Kant called inner sense. He

did not work out his notion of inner sense at all well. Here are just a few of the
problems. Kant insists that all representational states are in inner sense,
including those representing the objects of outer sense (i.e., spatially located
objects):

Whatever the origins of our representations, whether they are due to the
influence of outer things, or are produced through inner causes, whether they
arise a priori, or being appearances have an empirical origin, they must all, as
modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense. [A98–9]

However, he also says that the object of inner sense is the soul, the object of
outer sense the body (including one's own). He comes close to denying that we
can be conscious of the denizens of inner sense—they do not represent inner

19
objects and have no manifold of their own. Yet he also says that we can be
conscious of them — representations can themselves be objects of
representations, indeed, representations can make us conscious of themselves. In
its role as a form of or means to consciousness of self, apperception ought to be
part of inner sense. Yet Kant regularly contrasted apperception, a means to
consciousness of oneself and one's acts of thinking, with inner sense as a means
to consciousness of—what? Presumably, particular representations: perceptions,
imaginings, memories, etc. Here is another passage from the Anthropology:

§24. Inner sense is not pure apperception, consciousness of what we are doing;
for this belongs to the power of thinking. It is, rather, consciousness of what we
undergo as we are affected by the play of our own thoughts. This consciousness
rests on inner intuition, and so on the relation of ideas (as they are either
simultaneous or successive). [1798, Ak. VII:161]

Kant makes the same distinction in CPR:

… the I that I think is distinct from the I that it, itself, intuits …; I am given to
myself beyond that which is given in intuition, and yet know myself, like other
phenomena, only as I appear to myself, not as I am … [B155].

Since most of Kant's most interesting remarks about consciousness of and

knowledge of self concern consciousness of oneself, the ‘I of reflection’ via acts
of apperception, we will focus on it, thought empirical consciousness of self will
appear again briefly from time to time.

4.2 Thesis 2: Representational Base of Consciousness of Oneself and One's

States

How does apperception give rise to consciousness of oneself and one's states? In
the passage just quoted from the Anthropology, notice the phrase “consciousness
of what we are doing” — doing. The way in which one becomes conscious of an
act of representing is not by receiving intuitions but by doing it: “synthesis …,
as an act, … is conscious to itself, even without sensibility” (B153); “… this
representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging
to sensibility” (B132).

Equally, we can be conscious of ourselves as subject merely by doing acts of

representing. No further representation is needed.

20
Man, … who knows the rest of nature solely through the senses, knows himself
also through pure apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and inner
determinations which he cannot regard as impressions of the senses
[A546=B574].

How does one's consciousness of oneself in one's acts of representing work?

Consider the sentence:

I am looking at the words on the screen in front of me.

Kant's claim seems to be that the representation of the words on the screen is all
the experience I need to be conscious not just of the words and the screen but
also of the act of seeing them and of who is seeing them, namely, me. A single
representation can do all three jobs. Let us call an act of representing that can
make one conscious of its object, itself and oneself as its subject the
representational base of consciousness of these three items.[7] Kant's second
major thesis is,

2. Most ordinary representations generated by most ordinary acts of

synthesis provide the representational base of consciousness of oneself
and one's states.

Note that this representational base is the base not only of consciousness of one's
representational states. It is also the base of consciousness of oneself as the
subject of those states—as the thing that has and does them. Though it is hard to
know for sure, Kant would probably have denied that consciousness of oneself
in inner sense can make one conscious of oneself as subject, of oneself as
oneself, in this way.

For Kant, this distinction between consciousness of oneself and one's states by
doing acts of synthesis and consciousness of oneself and one's states as the
objects of particular representations is of fundamental importance. When one is
conscious of oneself and one's states by doing cognitive and perceptual acts, one
is conscious of oneself as spontaneous, rational, self-legislating, free—as the
doer of deeds, not just as a passive receptacle for representations: “I exist as an
intelligence which is conscious solely of its power of combination” (B158–159),
of “the activity of the self” (B68) (Sellars, 1970–1; Pippin, 1987).

So far we have focussed on individual representations. For Kant, however, the

representations that serve as the representational base of consciousness of
21
oneself as subject are usually much ‘bigger’ than that, i.e., contain multiple
objects and often multiple representations of them tied together into what Kant
called ‘general experience’.

When we speak of different experiences, we can refer only to the various

perceptions, all of which belong to one and the same general experience. This
thoroughgoing synthetic unity of perceptions is the form of experience; it is
nothing less than the synthetic unity of appearances in accordance with concepts
[A110].

This general experience is the global representation introduced earlier. When I

am conscious of many objects and/or representations of them as the single object
of a single global representation, the latter representation is all the representation
I need to be conscious not just of the global object but also of myself as the
common subject of all the constituent representations.

The mind could never think its identity in the manifoldness of its
representations… if it did not have before its eyes the identity of its act, whereby
it subordinates all [the manifold] … to a transcendental unity… [A108].

I am conscious of myself as the single common subject of a certain group of

experiences by being conscious of “the identity of the consciousness in …
conjoined … representations” (B133).

4.3 Thesis 3: Consciousness in Inner Sense is Only of How One Appears to

Oneself

Neither consciousness of self by doing apperceptive acts nor empirical

consciousness of self as the object of particular representations yields
knowledge of oneself as one is. On pain of putting his right to believe in
immortality as an article of faith at risk, Kant absolutely had to claim this. As he
put it,

it would be a great stumbling block, or rather would be the one unanswerable

objection, to our whole critique if it were possible to prove a priori that all
thinking beings are in themselves simple substances. [B409]

The same would hold for all other properties of thinking beings. Since Kant also
sometimes viewed immortality, i.e., personal continuity beyond death, as a

22
foundation of morality, morality could also be at risk. So Kant had powerful
motives to maintain that one does not know oneself as one is. Yet, according to
him, we seem to know at least some things about ourselves, namely, how we
must function, and it would be implausible to maintain that one never conscious
of one's real self at all. Kant's response to these pressures is ingenious.

First, he treats inner sense: When we know ourselves as the object of a

representation in inner sense, we “know even ourselves only .. as appearance
…” (A278).

Inner sense … represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we

appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as
we are inwardly affected [by ourselves] (B153)?

This is the third thesis:

3. In inner sense, one is conscious of oneself only as one appears to

oneself, not as one is.

So when we seem to be directly conscious of features of ourselves, we in fact

have the same kind of consciousness of them as we have of features of things in
general—we appear to ourselves to be like this, that or the other, in just the way
that we know of any object only as it appears to us.

Then he turns to consciousness of oneself and one's states by doing apperceptive

acts. This is a knottier problem. Here we will consider only consciousness of
oneself as subject. Certainly by the second edition, Kant had come to see how
implausible it would be to maintain that one has no consciousness of oneself,
one's real self, at all when one is conscious of oneself as the subject of one's
experience, agent of one's acts, by having these experiences and doing those
acts. In the 2nd edition, he reflects this sensitivity as early as B68; at B153, he
goes so far as to say that an apparent contradiction is involved.

Furthermore, when we are conscious of ourselves as subject and agent by doing

acts of apperceiving, we do appear to ourselves to be substantial, simple and
continuing. He had to explain these appearances away; doing so was one of his
aims, indeed, in his attacks on the second and third Paralogisms. Thus, Kant had
strong motives to give consciousness of self as subject special treatment. Let us
sneak up on the way he did so via a couple of intermediate theses. His treatment
of the issue and attendant critique of the inflated views on it of his rationalist
23
predecessors led him to some remarkable insights into reference to and
consciousness of self.

4.4 Thesis 4: Referential Machinery of Consciousness of Self

Kant generated the special treatment he needed by focussing first on reference to

self. Here are some of the things that he said about reference to oneself as
subject. It is a consciousness of self in which “nothing manifold is given.”
(B135). In the kind of reference in which we gain this consciousness of self, we
“denote” but do not “represent” ourselves (A382). We designate ourselves
without noting “any quality whatsoever” in ourselves (A355). This yields his
fourth thesis about consciousness of and knowledge of self.

4. The referential machinery used to obtain consciousness of self as

subject requires no identifying (or other) ascription of properties to
oneself.

This is a remarkably penetrating claim; remember, the study of reference and

semantics generally is usually thought to have begun only with Frege. Kant is
anticipating two important theses about reference to self that next saw the light
of day only 200 years later.

1. In certain kinds of consciousness of self, one can be conscious of

something as oneself without identifying it (or anything) as oneself via
properties that one has ascribed to the thing (self-reference without
identification) (Shoemaker 1968),[8]

and,

2. In such cases, first-person indexicals (I, me, my, mine) cannot be

analysed out in favour of anything else, in particular anything
descriptionlike (the essential indexical) (Perry 1979).

Was Kant actually aware of (1) and/or (2) or had he just stumbled across
something that later philosophers recognized as significant?

One standard argument for (1) goes as follows:

24
My use of the word ‘I’ as the subject of [statements such as ‘I feel pain’ or ‘I see
a canary’] is not due to my having identified as myself something [otherwise
recognized] of which I know, or believe, or wish to say, that the predicate of my
statement applies to it [Shoemaker 1968, pp.558].

A standard argument for (2), that certain indexicals are essential, goes as
follows. To know that I wrote a certain book a few years ago, it is not enough to
know that someone over six feet tall wrote that book, or that someone who
teaches philosophy at a particular university wrote that book, or … or … or … ,
for I could know all these things without knowing that it was me who has these
properties (and I could know that it was me who wrote that book and not know
that any of these things are properties of me). As Shoemaker puts it,

… no matter how detailed a token-reflexive-free description of a person is, … it

cannot possibly entail that I am that person [1968, pp. 560].

Kant unquestionably articulated the argument for (1):

In attaching ‘I’ to our thoughts, we designate the subject only transcendentally

… without noting in it any quality whatsoever—in fact, without knowing
anything of it either directly or by inference [A355].

This transcendental designation, i.e., referring to oneself using ‘I’ without

‘noting any quality’ in oneself, has some unusual features. One can refer to
oneself in a variety of ways, of course: as the person in the mirror, as the person
born on such and such a date in such and such a place, as the first person to do
X, and so on, but one way of referring to oneself is special: it does not require
identifying or indeed any ascription to oneself. So Kant tells us.[9]

The question is more complicated with respect to (2). We cannot go into the
complexities here (see Brook 2001). Here we will just note three passages in
which Kant may be referring to the essential indexical or something like it.

The subject of the categories cannot by thinking the categories [i.e. applying
them to objects] acquire a concept of itself as an object of the categories. For in
order to think them, its pure self-consciousness, which is what was to be
explained, must itself be presupposed. [B422]

25
The phrase ‘its pure self-consciousness’ seems to refer to consciousness of
oneself as subject. If so, the passage may be saying that judgments about
oneself, i.e., ascriptions of properties to oneself, ‘presuppose … pure self-
consciousness’, i.e., consciousness of oneself via an act of ascription-free
transcendental designation.

Now compare this, “it is … very evident that I cannot know as an object that
which I must presuppose to know any object … .” (A402), and this,

Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented

than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = X. It is known only through the
thoughts which are its predicates, and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any
concept whatsoever, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any
judgment upon it has always already made use of its representation.
[A346=B404]

The last clause is the key one: “any judgment upon it has always already made
use of its representation”. Kant seems to be saying that to know that anything is
true of me, I must first know that it is me of whom it is true. This is something
very like the essential indexical claim.

If reference to self takes place without ‘noting any properties’ of oneself, the
consciousness that results will also have some special features.

4.5 Thesis 5: No Manifold in Consciousness of Self

The most important special feature is that, in this kind of consciousness of self,
one is not, or need not be, conscious of any properties of oneself, certainly not
any particular properties. One has the same consciousness of self no matter what
else one is conscious of — thinking, perceiving, laughing, being miserable, or
whatever. Kant expressed the thought this way,

through the ‘I’, as simple representation, nothing manifold is given. [B135]

And this,
the I that I think is distinct from the I that it … intuits …; I am given to myself
beyond that which is given in intuition. [B155]

We now have the fifth thesis to be found in Kant:

26
 5. When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one has a bare
consciousness of self in which “nothing manifold is given.”

Since, on Kant's view, it is not just identifying properties but any properties of
oneself whatsoever that one does not need to know in order to refer to oneself as
oneself, ‘non-ascriptive reference to self’ might capture what is special about
this form of consciousness of self better than Shoemaker's ‘self-reference
without identification’.

4.6 Thesis 6: Consciousness of Self is not Knowledge of Self

Transcendental designation immediately yields the distinction that Kant needs to

allow that one is conscious of oneself as one is, not just of an appearance of self,
and yet deny knowledge of oneself as one is. If consciousness of self ascribes
nothing to the self, it can be a “bare … consciousness of self [as one is]” and yet
yield no knowledge of self—it is “very far from being a knowledge of the self”
(B158). This thesis returns us to consciousness of self as subject:

6. When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one's bare consciousness

of self yields no knowledge of self.

In Kant's own work, he then put the idea of transcendental designation to work
to explain how one can appear to oneself to be substantial, simple and persisting
without these appearances reflecting how one actually is. The reason that one
appears in these ways is not that the self is some strange, indefinable being. It is
because of the kind of referring that we do to become conscious of onself as
subject. Given how long ago he worked, Kant's insights into this kind of
referring are nothing short of amazing.

4.7 Thesis 7: Conscious of Self as Single, Common Subject of Experience

The last of Kant's seven theses about consciousness of self is an idea that we
already met when we discussed the unity of consciousness:

7. When we are conscious of ourselves as subject, we are conscious of

ourselves as the “single common subject” [CPR, A350] of a number of
representations.

27
What Kant likely had in mind is nicely captured in a remark of Bennett's (1974,
p. 83): to think of myself as a plurality of things is to think of my being
conscious of this plurality, “and that pre-requires an undivided me.” Unlike one
anything else, it is not optional that I think of myself as one subject across a
variety of experiences (A107).

5. Knowledge of the Mind

The remarks just noted about ‘bare consciousness’ and so on by no means

exhaust the concerns that can be raised about Kant and what we can know about
the mind. His official view has to be: nothing — about the mind's structure and
what it is composed of, at any rate, we can know nothing. As we have seen,
Kant not only maintained this but did some ingenious wiggling to account for
the apparent counter-evidence. But that is not the end of the story, for two
reasons.

First, whatever the commitments of his philosophy, Kant the person believed
that the soul is simple and persists beyond death; he found materialism utterly
repugnant (1783, Ak. IV, end of §46). This is an interesting psychological fact
about Kant but needs no further discussion.

Second and more importantly, Kant in fact held that we do have knowledge of
the mind as it is. In particular, we know that it has forms of intuition in which it
must locate things spatially and temporally, that it must synthesize the raw
manifold of intuition in three ways, that its consciousness must be unified, and
so on — all the aspects of the model examined above.

To square his beliefs about what we cannot know and what we do know about
the mind, Kant could have made at least two moves. He could have said that we
know these things only ‘transcendentally’, that is to say, by inference to the
necessary conditions of experience. We do not know them directly, in some
sense of ‘directly’, so we don't have intuitive, i.e., sense-derived knowledge of
them. Or he could have said that ontological neutrality about structure and
composition is compatible with knowledge of function. As we saw, Kant's
conception of the mind is functionalist—to understand the mind, we must study
what it does and can do, its functions—and the doctrine that function does not
dictate form is at the heart of contemporary functionalism. According to
functionalism, we can gain knowledge of the mind's functions while knowing
little or nothing about how the mind is built. Approached this way, Kant's view
that we know nothing of the structure and composition of the mind would just be
28
a radical version of this functionalist idea. Either move would restore
consistency among his various claims about knowledge of the mind.

6. Where Kant Has and Has Not Influenced Contemporary Cognitive

Research

We will close by returning to the question of Kant's relationship to

contemporary cognitive research. As we saw, some of Kant's most characteristic
doctrines about the mind are now built into the very foundations of cognitive
science. We laid out what they were. Interestingly, some of the others have
played little or no role.

Consider the two forms of Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept. In the form of

binding, the phenomenon that he had in mind in the first kind of synthesis is
now widely studied. Indeed, one model, Anne Treisman's (1980) three-stage
model, is very similar to all three stages of synthesis in Kant. According to
Treisman and her colleagues, object recognition proceeds in three stages: first
feature detection, then location of features on a map of locations, and then
integration and identification of objects under concepts. This compares directly
to Kant's three-stage model of apprehension of features, association of features
(reproduction), and recognition of integrated groups of under concepts (A98-
A106). However, Kant's second kind of recognition under concepts, the activity
of tying multiple representations together into a global representation (A107–
14), has received little attention.

The same was true until recently of the unity of consciousness and Kant's work
on it. However, this is changing. In the past twenty years, the unity of
consciousness has come back onto the research agenda and there are now
hundreds of papers and a number of books on the topic. However, claims such
as Kant's that a certain form of synthesis and certain links among the contents of
experience are required for unity continue to be ignored in cognitive science,
though a few philosophers have done some work on them (Brook 2004). The
same is true of Kant's views on consciousness of self; cognitive science has paid
no attention to non-ascriptive identification of self and the idea of the essential
indexical. Here, too, a few philosophers have worked on these issues, apparently
without knowing of Kant's contribution (Brook & DeVidi, 2001), but not
cognitive scientists. In short, the dominant model of the mind in contemporary
cognitive science is Kantian, but some of his most distinctive contributions have
not been taken into it (Brook, 2004).

29
Kant: Philosophy of Mind

1. Kant’s Theory of Cognition

Kant is primarily interested in investigating the mind for epistemological

reasons. One of the goals of his mature “critical” philosophy is articulating the
conditions under which our scientific knowledge, including mathematics and
natural science, is possible. Achieving this goal requires, in Kant’s estimation, a
critique of the manner in which rational beings like ourselves gain such
knowledge, so that we might distinguish those forms of inquiry that are
legitimate, such as natural science, from those that are illegitimate, such as
rationalist metaphysics. This critique proceeds via an examination of those
features of the mind relevant to the acquisition of knowledge. This examination
amounts to a survey of the conditions for “cognition” [Erkenntnis], or the mind’s
relation to an object. Although there is some controversy about the best way to
understand Kant’s use of this term, this article will understand it as involving
relation to a possible object of experience, and as being a necessary condition
for positive substantive knowledge (Wissen). Thus to understand Kant’s critical
philosophy, we need to understand his conception of the mind.

a. Mental Faculties and Mental Representation

Kant characterizes the mind along two fundamental axes – first by the various
kinds of powers which it possesses and second by the results of exercising those
powers.

At the most basic explanatory level, Kant conceives of the mind as constituted
by two fundamental capacities [Fähigkeiten], or powers, which he labels
“receptivity” [Receptivität] and “spontaneity” [Spontaneität]. Receptivity, as the
name suggests, constitutes the mind’s capacity to be affected by something,
whether itself or something else. In other words, the mind’s receptive power
essentially requires some external prompt to engage in producing
“representations” [Vorstellungen], which are best thought of as discrete mental
events or states, of which the mind is aware, or in virtue of which the mind is
aware of something else (it is controversial whether representations are objects
of ultimate awareness or are merely a vehicle for such awareness). In contrast,
the power of spontaneity needs no such prompt. It is able to initiate its activity
from itself, without any external trigger.

30
These two capacities of the mind are the basis for all (human) mental behavior.
Kant thus construes all mental activity either in terms of its resulting from
affection (receptivity) or from the mind’s self-prompted activity (spontaneity).
From these two very general aspects of the mind Kant then derives three further
basic faculties or “powers” [Vermögen], termed by Kant “sensibility”
[Sinnlichkeit], “understanding” [Verstand], and “reason” [Vernunft]. These
faculties characterize specific cognitive powers. These powers cannot be
reduced to any of the others, and each is assigned a particular, cognitive task.

i. Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason

Kant distinguishes the three fundamental mental faculties from one another in
two ways. First, he construes sensibility as the specific manner in which human
beings, as well as other animals, are receptive. This is in contrast with the
faculties of understanding and reason, which are forms of human, or all rational
beings, spontaneity. Second, Kant distinguishes the faculties by their output. All
of the mental faculties produce representations. We can see these distinctions at
work in what is generally called the “stepladder” [Stufenleiter] passage from the
Transcendental Dialectic of Kant’s major work, the Critique of Pure Reason
(1781/7). This is one of the few places in the entire Kantian corpus where Kant
explicitly discusses the meanings of and relations between his technical terms,
and defines and classifies varieties of representation.

The genus is representation (representatio) in general. Under it stand

representations with consciousness (perceptio). A perception [Wahrnehmung],
that relates solely to a subject as a modification of its state, is sensation
(sensatio). An objective perception is cognition (cognitio). This is either
intuition or concept (intuitus vel conceptus). The first relates immediately to the
object and is singular; the second is mediate, conveyed by a mark, which can be
common to many things. A concept is either an empirical or a pure concept, and
the pure concept, insofar as it has its origin solely in the understanding (not in a
pure image of sensibility), is called notio. A concept made up of notions, which
goes beyond the possibility of experience, is an idea or a concept of reason.
(A320/B376–7).

As Kant’s discussion here indicates, the category of representation contains

sensations [Empfindungen], intuitions [Anschauungen], and concepts [Begriffe].
Sensibility is the faculty that provides sensory representations. Sensibility
generates representations based on being affected either by entities distinct from
the subject or by the subject herself. This is in contrast to the faculty of
31
understanding, which generates conceptual representations spontaneously –
i.e. without advertence to affection. Reason is that spontaneous faculty by which
special sorts of concepts, which Kant calls ‘ideas’ or ‘notions’, may be
generated, and whose objects could never be met with in “experience,” which
Kant defines as perceptions connected by fundamental concepts. Some of
reason’s ideas include those concerning God and the soul.

Kant claims that all the representations generated via sensibility are structured
by two “forms” of intuition—space and time—and that all sensory aspects of
our experience are their “matter” (A20/B34). The simplest way of understanding
what Kant means by “form” here is that anything one might experience will
have either have spatial features, such as extension, shape, and location, or
temporal features, such as being successive or simultaneous. So the formal
element of an empirical intuition, or sense perception, will always be either
spatial or temporal. Meanwhile, the material element is always sensory (in the
sense of determining the phenomenal or “what it is like” character of
experience) and tied either to one or more of the five senses or the feelings of
pleasure and displeasure.

Kant ties the two forms of intuition to two distinct spheres or domains, the
“inner” and the “outer.” The domain of outer intuition concerns the spatial world
of material objects while the domain of inner intuition concerns temporally
ordered states of mind. Space is thus the form of “outer sense” while time is the
form of “inner sense” (A22/B37; cf. An 7:154). In the Transcendental Aesthetic,
Kant is primarily concerned with “pure” [rein] intuition, or intuition absent any
sensation, and often only speaks in passing of the sense perception of physical
bodies (for example A20–1/B35). However, Kant more clearly links the five
senses with intuition in his 1798 work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View, in the section entitled “On the Five Senses.”

Sensibility in the cognitive faculty (the faculty of intuitive representations)

contains two parts: sense and the imagination…But the senses, on the other
hand, are divided into outer and inner sense (sensus internus); the first is where
the human body is affected by physical things, the second is where the human
body is affected by the mind (An 7:153).

Kant characterizes intuition generally in terms of two characteristics—namely

immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit] and particularity [Einzelheit] (cf. A19/B33,
A68/B93; JL 9:91). This is in contrast to the mediacy and generality
[Allgemeinheit] characteristic of conceptual representation (A68/B93; JL 9:91).
32
Kant contrasts the particularity of intuition with the generality of concepts in the
“stepladder” passage. Specifically, Kant says a concept is related to its object via
“a mark, which can be common to many things” (A320/B377). This suggests
that intuition, in contrast to concepts, puts a subject in cognitive contact with
features of an object that are unique to particular objects and are not had by
other objects. Some debate whether the immediacy of intuition is compatible
with an intuition’s relating to an object by means of marks, or whether relation
by means of marks entails mediacy and, thus, that only concepts relate to objects
by means of marks. See Smit (2000) for discussion. Spatio-temporal properties
seem like excellent candidates for such features, as no two objects of experience
can have the very same spatio-temporal location (B327-8). But perhaps any non-
repeatable, non-universal feature of a perceived object will do. For relevant
discussion see Smith (2000); Grüne (2009), 50, 66-70.

Though Kant’s discussion of intuition suggests that it is a form of perceptual

experience, this might seem to clash with his distinction between “experience”
[Erfahrung] and “intuition” [Anschauung]. In part, this is a terminological issue.
Kant’s notion of an “experience” is typically quite a bit narrower than our
contemporary English usage of the term. Kant actually equates, at several points,
“experience” with “empirical cognition” (B166, A176/B218, A189/B234),
which is incompatible with experience being falsidical in any way. He also gives
indications that experience, in his sense, is not something had by a single
subject. See, for example, his claim that there is only one experience
(A230/B282-3).

Kant also distinguishes intuition from “perception” [Wahrnehmung], which he

characterizes as the conscious apprehension of the content of an intuition (Pr
4:300; cf. A99, A119-20, B162, and B202-3). “Experience,” in Kant’s sense, is
then construed as a set of perceptions that are connected via fundamental
concepts that Kant entitles the “categories.” As he puts it, “Experience is
cognition through connected perceptions [durch verknüpfte Wahrnehmungen]”
(B161; cf. B218; Pr 4:300).

Empirical intuition, perception, and experience, in Kant’s usage of these terms,

all denote kinds of “experience” as we use the term in contemporary English. At
its most primitive level, empirical intuition presents some feature of the world to
the mind in a sensory manner. Empirical intuition does so in such a way that the
intuition’s subject is in a position to distinguish that feature from others. A
perception, in Kant’s sense, requires awareness of the basis by which the feature
is different from other things. Kant uses the term in a variety of ways,
33
however—JL 9:64-5, for instance—so there is some controversy surrounding
the proper understanding of this term. One has a perception, in Kant’s sense,
when one can not only discriminate one thing from another, or between the parts
of a single thing, based on a sensory apprehension of it, but also can articulate
exactly which features of the object or objects that distinguish it from others. For
instance, one can say it is green rather than red, or that it occupies this spatial
location rather than that one. Intuition thus allows for the discrimination of
distinct objects via an awareness of their features, while perception allows for an
awareness of what specifically distinguishes an object from others.
“Experience,” in Kant’s sense, is even further up the cognitive ladder (see JL
9:64-5), insofar as it indicates an awareness of features, such as the
substantiality of a thing, its causal relations with other beings, and its
mereological features, that is part-whole dependence relations.

Kant thus believes that the capacity to cognitively ascend from mere
discriminatory awareness of one’s environment (intuition), to an awareness of
those features by means of which one discriminates (perception), and finally to
an awareness of the objects which ground these features (experience), depends
on the kinds of mental processes of which the subject is capable.

Before turning to the issue of mental processing, which figures centrally in

Kant’s overall critical project, there are two further faculties of the mind that are
worth discussion— the faculties of judgment imagination. These faculties are
not obviously as fundamental as the faculties of sensibility, understanding, and
reason, but they nevertheless play a central role in Kant’s thinking about the
structure of the mind and its contributions to our experience of the world.

ii. Imagination and Judgment

Kant links the faculty of imagination closely to sensibility. For example, in his
Anthropology he says,

Sensibility in the cognitive faculty (the faculty of intuitive representations)

contains two parts: sense and the power of imagination. The first is the faculty of
intuition in the presence of an object, the second is intuition even without the
presence of an object. (An 7:153; cf. 7:167; B151; LM 29:881; LM 28:449, 673)

The contrast Kant makes here is not entirely obvious, but includes at least the
difference between cases of occurrent sensory experience of a perceived
object—seeing the brown table before you—and cases of sensory recollection of
34
a previously perceived object—visually imagining the brown table that was once
in front of you. Kant makes this clearer in the process of further distinguishing
between different kinds of imagination.

The power of imagination (facultas imaginandi), as a faculty of intuition without

the presence of the object, is either productive, that is, a faculty of the original
presentation [Darstellung] of the object (exhibitio originaria), which thus
precedes experience; or reproductive, a faculty of the derivative presentation of
the object (exhibitio derivativa), which brings back to mind an empirical
intuition that it had previously (An 7:167).

So, in the operation of productive imagination, one brings to mind a sensory

experience that is not itself based on any object previously so experienced. This
is not to say the productive imagination is totally creative. Kant explicitly denies
(An 7:167) that the productive imagination has the power to generate wholly
novel sensory experience. It could not, in a person born blind, produce the
phenomenal quality associated with the experience of seeing a red object, for
example. If the productive imagination is instrumental in producing sensory
fictions, the reproductive imagination is instrumental in producing sensory
experiences of previously perceived objects.

Imagination thus plays a central role in empirical cognition by serving as the

basis for both memory and the creative arts. In addition it also plays a kind of
mediating role between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. Kant calls
this mediating role a “transcendental function” of the imagination (A124). It
mediates and transcends by being tied in its functioning to both faculties. On one
hand, it produces sensible representations, and is thus connected to sensibility.
On the other hand, it is not a purely passive faculty but rather engages in the
activity of bringing together various representations, as does memory, for
example, .Kant explicitly connects understanding with this kind of active mental
processing.

Kant also goes so far as to claim that the activity of imagination is a necessary
part of what makes perception, in his technical sense of a string of connected,
conscious sensory experiences, possible (A120, note). Though Kant’s view
concerning the exact role of imagination in sensory experience is contested, two
points emerge as central. First, Kant belives imagination plays a crucial role in
the generation of complex sensory representations of an object (see Sellars
(1978) for an influential example of this interpretation). It is imagination that
makes it possible to have a sensory experience of a complex, three-dimensional,
35
and geometric figure whose identity remains constant even as it is subject to
translations and rotations in space. Second, Kant regards imagination’s
mediating role between sensibility and understanding as crucial for at least some
kinds of concept application (see Guyer (1987) and Pendlebury (1995) for
further discussion). This mediating role involves what Kant calls the
“schematization” of a concept and an additional mental faculty, that of
judgment.

Kant defines the faculty of judgment as “the capacity to subsume under rules,
that is, to distinguish whether something falls under a given rule” (A132/B171).
However, he spends comparatively little time discussing this faculty in the first
Critique. There, it seems to be discussed as an extension of the understanding in
that it applies concepts to empirical objects. It is not until the third Critique—
Kant’s 1790 Critique of Judgment—that Kant distinguishes judgment as an
independent faculty with a special role. There Kant specifies two different ways
it might function (CJ 5:179; cf. CJ (First Introduction) 20:211)

In one, judgment subsumes given objects under concepts, which are themselves
already given. This role appears identical to the role he assigns judgment in the
Critique of Pure Reason. The basic idea is that judgment functions to assign an
intuited object—a dog—to the correct concept—such as domestic animals. This
concept is presumed to be one already possessed by the subject. In this activity,
the faculty overlaps with the role Kant singles out for imagination in the section
of the first Critique entitled ‘On the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding.’ Both are conceived of here in terms of the ultimate functioning
of understanding, since it is understanding that generates concepts.

The second role for the faculty of judgment, and what seems to make it a
distinctive faculty in its own right, is that of finding a concept under which to
“subsume” experienced objects. This is called judgment’s “reflecting” role (CJ
5:179). Here, the subject exercises judgment in generating an appropriate
concept for what is given by intuition (CJ (First Introduction) 20:211-13; JL
9:94–95; for discussion see Longuenesse (1998), 163–166 and 195–197;
Ginsborg (2006).

In addition to the generation of empirical concepts, Kant also describes

reflective judgment as responsible for scientific inquiry. It must sort and classify
objects in nature into a hierarchical taxonomy of genus/species relationships.
Kant also utilizes the notion of reflective judgment to unify the otherwise

36
seemingly unrelated topics of the Critique of Judgment—aesthetic judgments
and teleological judgments concerning the order of nature.

Thus far, the discussion of Kant’s view of the mind has focused primarily on the
various mental faculties and their corresponding representational output. Both
the faculty of imagination and that of judgment operate on representations given
from sensibility and understanding. In general, Kant conceives of the mind’s
activity in terms of different methods of “processing” representations.

b. Mental Processing

Kant’s term for mental processing is “combination” [Verbindung], and the form
of combination with which he is primarily concerned is what he calls
“synthesis.” Kant characterizes synthesis as that activity by which understanding
“runs through” and “gathers together” representations given to it by sensibility
in order to form concepts, judgments, and ultimately, for any cognition to take
place at all (A77-8/B102-3). Synthesis is not something people are typically
aware of doing. As Kant says, it is a “a blind though indispensable function of
the soul…of which we are only seldom even conscious (A78/B103)”.

Synthesis is carried out by the unitary subject of representation upon

representations either given to the subject by sensibility or produced by the
subject through thought. Intellectual synthesis occurs when synthesis is used on
representations and forms the content of a concept or judgment. When carried
out by the imagination on material provided by sensibility, it is called
“figurative” synthesis (B150-1). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is
primarily concerned with synthesis performed on representations provided by
sensibility, and he discusses three central kinds of synthesis—apprehension,
reproduction (or imagination), and recognition (or conceptualization) (A98-
110/B159-61). Though Kant discusses these forms of synthesis as if they were
discrete types of mental acts, it seems that the first two forms must occur
together, while the third only may occur as well (compare Brook (1997); Allais
(2009).

One of the central topics of debate in the interpretation of Kant’s views on

synthesis is whether Kant endorses conceptualism. Roughly, conceptualism
claims the capacity for conscious sensory experience of the objective world
depends, at least in part, on the repertoire of concepts possessed by the
experiencing subject, insofar as those concepts are exercised in acts of synthesis
by understanding.
37
Kant typically contrasts synthesis with other ways in which representations
might be related, most importantly, by association (for example B139-40).
Association is primarily a passive process by which the mind comes to connect
representations due to repeated exposure of the subject to certain kinds of
regularities. One might, for example, associate thoughts of chicken soup with
thoughts of being ill, if one only had chicken soup when one was ill. In contrast,
synthesis is a fundamentally active process that depends upon the mind’s
spontaneity and is the means by which genuine judgment is possible.

Consider, for example, the difference between the merely associative transition
between holding a stone and feeling its weight compared to the judgment that
the stone is heavy (B142). The association of holding the stone and feeling its
weight is not yet a judgment about the stone, but a kind of involuntary
connection between two states of oneself. In contrast, thinking the stone is heavy
moves beyond associating two feelings to a thought about how things are
objectively, independent of one’s own mental states (Pereboom (1995),
Pereboom (2006)). One of Kant’s most important points concerning mental
processing is that association cannot explain the possibility of objective
judgment. What is required, he says, is a theory of mental processing by an
active subject capable of acts of synthesis.

Several of the important differences between synthesis and association can be

summarized as follows (Pereboom (1995), 4-7):

1. The source of synthesis is to be found in a subject, and the subject is

distinct from its states.
2. Synthesis can employ a priori concepts, concepts independent of
experience, as modes of processing representations, whereas
association never does.
3. Synthesis is the product of a causally active subject. It is produced by a
cause that is realized in the subject’s faculty, either the imagination or
the understanding.

Kant’s conception of synthesis and judgment is tied to his conception of

“consciousness” [Bewußtsein] and “self-consciousness” [Selbstbewußtsein].
However, both notions require some significant unpacking.

2. Consciousness

38
The notion of consciousness [Bewußtsein] plays an important role in Kant’s
philosophy. There are, however, several different senses of “consciousness” in
play in Kant’s work, not all of which line up with contemporary philosophical
usage. Below, several of Kant’s most central notions and their differences from
and relations to contemporary usage are explained.

a. Phenomenal Consciousness

Philosophical discussions of consciousness typically focus on phenomenal

consciousness, or “what it is like” to have a conscious experience of a particular
kind, such as seeing the color red or smelling a rose. Such qualitative features of
consciousness have been of major concern to philosophers of the late 20th
Century. However, the metaphysical issue of phenomenal consciousness is
almost entirely ignored by Kant, perhaps because he is unconcerned with
problems stemming from commitments to naturalism or physicalism. He seems
to attribute all qualitative characteristics of consciousness to sensation and what
he calls “feeling” [Gefühl] (CJ 5:206). Kant distinguishes between sensation and
feeling in terms of an objective/subjective distinction. Sensations indicate or
present features of objects, distinct from the subject. Feelings, by contrast,
present only states of the subject to consciousness. Kant’s typical examples of
such feelings include pain and pleasure (B66-7; CJ 5:189, 203-6).

Kant clearly assigns a cognitive role to sensation and allows that it is “through
sensation” that we cognitively relate to objects given in sensibility (A20/B34).
Despite that, he does not focus in any substantive or systematic way on the
phenomenal aspects of sensory consciousness, nor does he focus on how exactly
they aid in cognition of the empirical world.

b. Discrimination and Differentiation

The central notion of “consciousness” with which Kant is concerned is that of

discrimination or differentiation. This is the same conception of consciousness
mostly used in Kant’s time, particularly by his major predecessors Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679-1754), and Kant gives
little indication that he departs from their general practice.

According to Kant, any time a subject can discriminate one thing from another,
the subject is, or can be, conscious of that one thing. (An 7:136-8).
Representations which allow for discrimination and differentiation are “clear”
[klar]. Representations which allow not only for the differentiation of one thing
39
from others (such as differentiating one person’s face from another’s), but also
the differentiation of parts of the thing so discriminated (such as differentiating
the different parts of a person’s face) are called “distinct” [deutlich].

Kant does seem to deny the Leibniz-Wolff tradition that clarity can simply be
equated with consciousness (B414-15, note). Primarily, he seems motivated to
allow that one’s discriminatory capacities may outrun one’s capacity for
memory or even the explicit articulation of that which is discriminated. In such
cases, one does not have a fully clear representation.

Kant’s conception of “obscure” [dunkel] representation is that it allows the

subject to discriminate differentially between aspects of her environment
without any explicit awareness of how she does so. This connects him with the
Leibniz-Wolff tradition of recognizing the existence of unconscious
representations (An 7:135-7). Kant says the majority of representations that
people appeal to in order to explain the complex, discriminatory behaviors of
living organisms are “obscure” in a technical sense. Likening the mind to a map
Kant goes so far as to say,

The field of sensuous intuitions and sensations of which we are not conscious,
even though we can undoubtedly conclude that we have them; that is, obscure
representations in the human being (and thus also in animals), is immense. Clear
representations, on the other hand, contain only infinitely few points of this field
which lie open to consciousness; so that as it were only a few places on the vast
map of our mind are illuminated. (An 7:135)

Thus, obscure representations, have no direct or non-inferential awareness but

must be posited to explain our fine-grained, differential, and discriminatory
capacities. They constitute the majority of the mental representations with which
the mind busies itself.

Though Kant does not make it explicit in his discussion of discrimination and
consciousness, it is clear that he takes the capacity to discriminate between
objects and parts of objects to be ultimately based on sensory representation of
those objects. His views on consciousness as differential discrimination intersect
with his views on phenomenal consciousness. Because humans are receptive
through their sensibility, the ultimate basis on which we differentially
discriminate between objects must be sensory. Thus, though Kant seems to take
for granted the fact that conscious beings are in states with a particular
phenomenal character, it must be the clarity and distinctness of this character
40
that allows a conscious subject to differentially discriminate between the various
elements of her environment (see Kant’s discussion of aesthetic perfection in the
1801 Jäsche Logic, 9:33-9 for relevant discussion).

c. Self-Consciousness

As the discussion of unconscious representation indicates, Kant believes we are

not directly aware of most of our representations. They are nevertheless, to some
degree, conscious, because they allow differential discrimination of elements
from the subject’s environment. Kant thinks the process of making a
representation clear, or fully conscious, requires a higher-order representation of
the relevant representation. In other words, it requires that someone can have
representations based on representations. As Kant says, “consciousness is really
the representation that another representation is in me” (JL 9:33). Because this
higher-order representation is one of another representation in the subject,
Kant’s position here suggests that consciousness requires at least the capacity for
self-consciousness. This position is reinforced by Kant’s famous claim in the
Transcendental Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason:

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise

something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is
as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at
least would be nothing for me. (B131-2; emphasis in the original)

Kant might give the impression here of saying that for representation to be
possible for a subject, the subject must possess the capacity for self-ascribing her
representations. If so, then representation, and thus the capacity for conscious
representation would depend on the capacity for self-consciousness. Because
Kant ties the capacity for self-consciousness to spontaneity (B132, 137, 423) and
restricts spontaneity to the class of rational beings, the demand for self-
ascription would seem to deny that any non-rational animal (for example, dogs,
cats, and birds), could have phenomenal or discriminatory consciousness.

However, there is little evidence to show that Kant endorses the self-ascription
condition. Instead, he distinguishes between two distinct modes in which one is
aware of oneself and one’s representations—inner sense and apperception (See
Ameriks (2000) for extensive discussion). Only the latter form of awareness
seems to demand a capacity for self-ascription.

i. Inner Sense
41
Inner sense is, according to Kant, the means by which we are aware of
alterations in our own state. Hence all moods, feelings, and sensations, including
such basic alterations as pleasure and pain, are the proper subject matter of inner
sense. Ultimately, Kant argues that all sensations, feelings, and those
representations attributable to a subject must ultimately occur in inner sense and
conform to its form—time (A22-3/B37; A34/B51).

Thus, to be aware of something in inner sense is to be minimally, phenomenally

conscious, at least in the case of awareness of sensations and feelings. To say a
subject is aware of her own states via inner sense is to say that she has a
temporally ordered series of mental states, and is phenomenally conscious of
each, though she may not be conscious of the series as a whole. This could still
count as a kind of self-awareness, as when an animal is aware of being in pain.
But it is not an awareness of subject as a self. Kant himself indicates such a
position in a letter to his friend and former student Marcus Herz in 1789.

[Representations] could still (I consider myself as an animal) carry on their play

in an orderly fashion, as connected according to empirical laws of association,
and thus they could even have influence on my feeling and desire, without my
being aware of my own existence [meines Daseins unbewußt] (assuming that I
am even conscious of each individual representation, but not of their relation to
the unity of representation of their object, by means of the synthetic unity of
their apperception). This might be so without my cognizing the slightest thing
thereby, not even what my own condition is (C 11:52, May 26, 1789).

Hence, according to Kant, one may be aware of one’s representations via inner
sense, but one is not and cannot, through inner sense alone, be aware of oneself
as the subject of those representations. That requires what Kant, following
Leibniz (1996), calls “apperception”.

ii. Apperception

Kant uses the term “apperception” to denote the capacity for the awareness of
some state or modification of one’s self as a state. For one capable of
apperception, there is a difference between feeling pain, and thus having an
inner sense of it, and apperceiving that one is in pain, and thus ascribing, or
being able to ascribe, a certain property or state of mind to one’s self. For
example, while a non-apperceptive animal is aware of its own pain and its
awareness is partially explanatory of its behavior, like avoidance, Kant construes
the animal as incapable of making any self-attribution of its pain. Kant thinks of
42
such a mind as incapable of construing itself as a subject of states, and it is thus
unable to construe itself as persisting through changes of those states. This is not
necessarily to say an animal incapable of apperception lacks any subject or self.
But, at the very least, such an animal would be incapable of conceiving or
representing itself in this way (See Naragon (1990); McLear (2011).

Kant considers the capacity for apperception as importantly tied to the capacity
to represent objects as complexes of properties attributable to a single
underlying entity (for example, an apple as a subject of the complex of the
properties red and round). Kant’s argument for this connection is notorious both
for its complexity and for its obscurity. The next sub-section will give an
overview, though not an exhaustive discussion, of some of Kant’s most
important points concerning these matters, as they relate to the issue of
apperception.

d. Unity of Consciousness and the Categories

In order to better understand Kant’s views on apperception and unity of

consciousness, one must step back and look at the wider context of the argument
in which he situates these views. One of the core projects of Kant’s most famous
work, the Critique of Pure Reason, is to provide an argument for the legitimacy
of a priori knowledge of the natural world. Though Kant’s conception of the a
priori is complex, Kant shares one central aspect of his view with his German
rationalist predecessors (for example Leibniz (1996), preface), that we have
knowledge of universal and necessary truths concerning aspects of the empirical
world (B4-5). Those truths include one saying every event in the empirical
world has a cause (B231). This tradition tended to explain the possession of
knowledge of such universal and necessary truths by appeal to innate concepts
which could be analyzed to yield the relevant truths. Kant importantly departs
from the rationalist tradition, arguing that not all knowledge of universal and
necessary truths is acquired via the analysis of concepts (B14-18). Instead, he
says there are some “synthetic” a priori truths that are known on the basis of
something other than conceptual analysis. Thus, according to Kant, the activity
of pure reason achieves relatively little on its own. All of our ampliative
knowledge (knowledge that can’t be directly deduced) that is also necessary and
universal consists in what Kant calls “synthetic a priori” judgments or
propositions. He then pursues the central question: how is knowledge of such
synthetic a priori propositions possible?

43
Kant’s basic answer to the question of synthetic a priori knowledge involves
what he calls the “Copernican Turn.” According to the “Copernican Turn,” the
objects of human knowledge must “conform” to the basic faculties of human
knowledge—the forms of intuition (space and time) and the forms of thought
(the categories).

Kant thus engages in a two-part strategy for explaining the possibility of such
synthetic a priori knowledge. The first part consists of arguing that the pure
forms of intuition provide the basis for our synthetic a priori knowledge of
mathematical truths. Mathematical knowledge is synthetic because it goes
beyond mere conceptual analysis to deal with the structure of, or our
representation of, space itself. It is a priori because the structure of space is
accessible to us as it is merely the form of our intuition and not a real mind-
independent thing.

In addition to the representation of space and time, Kant also thinks that
possession of a particular, privileged set of a priori concepts is necessary for
knowledge of the empirical world. But this raises a problem. How can an a
priori concept, which is not itself derived from any particular experience, be
nevertheless legitimately applicable to objects of experience? Even more
difficult, it is not the mere possibility applying a priori concepts to objects of
experience that worries Kant, for this could just be a matter of pure luck. Kant
wants more than mere possibility; he wants to show that a privileged set of a
priori concepts apply necessarily and universally to all objects of experience and
do so in a way that people can know independently of experience.

This brings us to the second part of Kant’s argument, which is directly relevant
for understanding Kant’s views on the importance of apperception. Not only
must objects of knowledge conform to the forms of intuition, they also must
conform to the most basic concepts (or categories) governing our capacity for
thought. Kant’s strategy shows how a priori concepts legitimately apply to their
objects by being partly constitutive of the objects of representation. This
contrasts with the traditional view, according to which the objects of
representation were the source or explanatory ground of our concepts (B, xvii-
xix). Now, exactly what this means is deeply contested, in part because it is
rather unclear what Kant intends by his doctrine of Transcendental Idealism.
Does Kant intend that the objects of representation are themselves nothing other
than representations? This would be a form of phenomenalism similar to that
offered by Berkeley. Kant, however, seems to want to deny that his view is
similar to Berkeley’s, asserting instead that the objects of representation exist
44
independently of the mind, and that it is only the way that they are represented
that is mind-dependent (A92/B125; compare Pr 4:288-94).

Kant’s strategy attempts to validate the legitimacy of the a priori categories

proceeds by way of a “transcendental argument.” It takes the conditions
necessary for consciousness of the identity of oneself as the subject of different
self-attributed mental states and ties them together with those necessary for
grounding the possibility of representing an object distinct from oneself. From
those conditions, various properties may be predicated. In this sense, Kant
argues that the intellectual representation of subject and object stands and falls
together. Kant thus denies the possibility of a self-conscious subject, who could
conceptualize and self-ascribe her representations, but whose representations
could not represent law-governed objects in space, and thus the material world
or ‘nature’ as the subject conceives of it.

Though Kant’s views regarding the unity of the subject are contested, there are
several points which can be made fairly clearly. First, Kant conceives of all
specific, intellectual activity, including the most basic instances of discursive
thought, as requiring what he calls the “original unity of apperception” (B132).
This unity, as original, is not itself brought about by some mental act of
combining representations, but, as Kant says, is “what makes the concept of
combination possible” (B131). It is itself the ground of the “possibility of the
understanding” (B131).

Second, the original unity of apperception requires whatever form of self-

consciousness characteristically relates to the “I think.” As Kant famously says,
“the I think must be able to accompany all my representations” (B131).
Moreover, the “I think” essentially involves activity on the part of the subject—
it is an expression of the subject’s free activity or “spontaneity” (B132). This
means that, according to Kant, only beings capable of spontaneous activity—
self-initiated activity that is ultimately traced to causes outside the reach of
natural causal laws—are going to be capable of thought in the sense with which
Kant is concerned.

Third, and related to the previous point, Kant seems to deny that a subject could
attain the kind of representational unity characteristic of thought if her only
resources were aggregative methods. Kant makes this point later in the Critique
when he says, “representations that are distributed among different beings (for
instance, the individual words of a verse) never constitute a whole thought (a
verse)” (A 352). William James provides a vivid articulation of the idea: “Take a
45
sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then
stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as
intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence”
(James (1890), 160). Kant construes consciousness as the “holding-together” of
the various components of a thought. He does so in a manner that seems
radically opposed to any conception of unitary thought which tries to explain it
in terms of some train or succession of its components (Pr 4:304; see Kitcher
(2010); Engstrom (2013) for contrasting treatments of this issue).

The exact content of Kant’s argument for the connection between subject and
object in the Transcendental Deduction is highly disputed, and it is likely no
single reconstruction of the argument can capture all the points Kant supports in
the Deduction. At least one strand of Kant’s argument in the first half of the
Deduction focuses on Kant’s denial that the unity of the subject and its powers
of representational combination could be accounted for by a merely
associationist (or Humean) conception of mental combination, sometimes
termed his “argument from above” (see A119; Carl (1989); Pereboom (1995)).
Kant’s argues (see Pereboom (2009)):

1. I am conscious of the identity of myself as the subject of different self-

attributions of mental states.
2. I am not directly conscious of the identity of this subject of different
self-attributions of mental states.
3. If (1) and (2) are true, then this consciousness of identity is accounted
for indirectly by my consciousness of a particular kind of unity of my
mental states.
4. Therefore, this consciousness of identity is accounted for indirectly by
my consciousness of a particular kind of unity of my mental states. (1,
2, 3)
5. If (4) is true, then my mental states indeed have this particular kind of
unity.
6. This particular kind of unity of my mental states cannot be accounted
for by association. (5)
7. If (6) is true, then this particular kind of unity of my mental states is
accounted for by synthesis by a priori
8. Therefore, this particular kind of unity of my mental states is
accounted for by synthesis by a priori concepts. (6, 7)

46
Premise (1) says that I am aware of herself as the subject of different states (or
at least able to be so aware). For example, right now I might be hungry as well
as sleepy. Previously, I was sleepy and slightly bored. Premise (2) claims I have
no immediate or direct awareness of the being which has all of these states. In
Kant’s terms, I lack any intuition of the subject of such self-ascribed states,
instead having intuition only of the states themselves. Nevertheless, I am aware
of all these states as related to a subject (it is I who am bored, hungry, sleepy),
and it is in virtue of these connections that I can call one and all of these states
mine. Hence, as premise (3) argues, there must be some unity to my mental
states which accounts for my (indirect) awareness of their unity. My
representations must have some basis for which they go together, and it is the
basis for their ‘togetherness’ that explains how I can consider them, one and all,
to be mine. Premises (4) and (5) unpack this point, and premise (6) argues that
association could not account for such unity (the theory of association was
articulated in a particularly influential form by David Hume (1888, Hume
(2007)) and the reader should look to that article for relevant background
discussion).

Kant’s point, in premise (6) of the above argument, is that forces of association
acting on mental representations, whether impressions or ideas, cannot account
for either the experience of a train of representations as mine or for the
“togetherness” of those representations, both as a single thought or as a series of
inferences. Hume argues we have no impression and thus no ensuing idea of an
empirical self (Hume (1888), I.iv.6). Kant also accepts this point when he says,
“the empirical consciousness that accompanies different representations is by
itself dispersed and without relation to the identity of the subject” (B133). By
this, Kant means that when we introspect in inner sense, all we ever get are
particular mental states, such as boredom, happiness, particular thoughts. We
lack any intuition of a subject of those mental states. Hume concludes that the
idea of a persisting self which grounds all of these mental states as its subject
must be fictitious. Kant disagrees. His contrasting view takes the mineness and
togetherness of one’s introspectible mental states as data needing
explanation.Because an associative, psychological theory like that of Hume’s
cannot explain these features of first-person consciousness (see Hume (1888),
III. Appendix), we need to find another theory, such as Kant’s theory of mental
synthesis.

Recall that, prior to the argument of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant links
the operations of synthesis to possession of a set of a priori concepts, or
categories, not derived from experience. Hence, in arguing that synthesis is

47
required to explain the mineness and togetherness of one’s mental states, and by
linking synthesis to the application of the categories, Kant argues we could not
have the experience of the mineness and togetherness of our mental states
without applying the categories.

While this argument is only half of Kant’s argument in the first part of the
Deduction, it shows how tightly Kant took the connection to be between the
capacities for spontaneity, synthesis and apperception, and the legitimacy of the
categories. The other half, by the way, consists of an “argument from below,”
and discerns the conditions necessary for the representation of unitary objects,
see Pereboom (1995), (2009)According to Kant, there is only one possible
explanation of one’s apperceptive awareness of one’s psychological states as
one’s own and of all states being related to one another. As the subject of such
states, one possesses a spontaneous power for synthesizing one’s representations
according to general principles or rules, the content of which is given by pure a
priori concepts—the categories. The fact that the categories play such a
fundamental role in the generation of self-conscious psychological states is thus
a powerful argument demonstrating their legitimacy.

Given that Kant leverages certain aspects of our capacity for self-knowledge in
his argument for the legitimacy of the categories, the extent to which he argues
for radical limits on our capacity for self-knowledge may be surprising. In the
final section, Kant’s arguments concerning our capacity for a priori knowledge
of the self and its fundamental features will be made clear. However, the next
section will look at one of the central debates in Kant’s interpretation of the role
of concepts in perceptual experience.

3. Concepts and Perception

During the discussion of synthesis above, conceptualism was characterized as

claiming there is a dependent relation between a subject having conscious
sensory experience of an objective world and the repertoire of concepts
possessed by the subject and exercised by her faculty of understanding.

As a first pass at sharpening this formulation, understand conceptualism as a

thesis consisting of two claims: (i) sense experience has correctness conditions
determined by the ‘content’ of the experience, and (ii) the content of an
experience is a structured entity whose components are concepts.

a. Content and Correctness

48
An important background assumption governing the conceptualism debate
construes mental states as related to the world cognitively, as opposed to merely
causally, if and only if they possess correctness conditions. That which
determines the correctness condition for a state is that state’s content (see Siegel
(2010), (2011); Schellenberg (2011)).

Suppose, for example, that an experience E has the following content C:

C: That cup is white.

This content determines a correctness condition V:

V: S’s experience E is correct if and only if the cup visually presented to the
subject as the content of the demonstrative is white and the content C
corresponds to how things seem to the subject to be visually presented.

Here, the content of the experiential state functions much like the content of a
belief state to determine whether the experience, like the belief, is or is not
correct.

A state’s possession of content thus determines a correctness condition, through

which the state can be construed as mapping, mirroring, or otherwise tracking
aspects of the subject’s environment.

There are reasons for questioning whether Kant endorses the content assumption
articulated above. Kant seems to deny several claims integral to it. First, in
various places he explicitly denies that intuition, or the deliverances of the
senses more generally, are the kind of thing which could be correct or incorrect
(A293–4/B350; An §11 7:146; compare LL 24:83ff, 103, 720ff, 825ff). Second,
Kant’s conception of representational content requires an act of mental
unification (Pr 4:304; compare JL §17 9:101; LL 24:928), something which
Kant explicitly denies is present in an intuition (B129-30; compare B176-7).
This is not to deny that Kant uses a notion of “content,” in some other sense, but
rather only that he fails to use it in the sense required by interpretations
endorsing the content assumption (see Tolley (2014), (2013)). Finally, Kant’s
“modal” condition of cognition, that it provides a demonstration of what is really
actual rather than merely logically possible, seems to preclude an endorsement
of the content assumption (B, xxvii, note; compare Chignell (2014)). However,
for the purposes of understanding the conceptualism debate, assume Kant does

49
endorse the content assumption. The question then is how to understand the
nature of the content so understood.

b. Conceptual Content

In addition to the content assumption, conceptualism is defined as committed to

a conception of intuition’s content being completely composed of concepts.
Against this, Clinton Tolley (Tolley (2013), Tolley (2014)) has argued that the
immediacy/mediacy distinction between intuition and concept entails a
difference in the content of intuition and concept.

If we understand by ‘content’…a representation’s particular relation to an

object…then it is clear that we should conclude that Kant accepts non-
conceptual content. This is because Kant accepts that intuitions put us in a
representational relation to objects that is distinct in kind from the relation that
pertains to concepts. I argued, furthermore, that this is the meaning that Kant
himself assigns to the term ‘content’. (Tolley (2013), 128)

Insofar as Kant often speaks of the ‘content’ [Inhalt] of a representation as

consisting of a particular kind of relation to an object (Tolley (2013), 112;
compare B83, B87), Tolley’s proposal thus gives ground for a simple and
straightforward argument for a non-conceptualist reading of Kant. However, it
does not necessarily prove that the content of what Kant calls an intuition is not
something that would be construed by others as conceptual, in a wider sense of
that term. For example, both pure—that, this—and complex demonstrative
expressions—that color, this person—have conceptual form, and have been
proposed as appropriate for capturing the content of experience (McDowell
(1996), ch. 3; for discussion see Heck (2000)). Demonstratives are not, in Kant’s
terms, ‘conceptual’ since they do not exhibit the requisite generality which,
according to Kant, all conceptual representation must.

c. Conceptualism and Synthesis

If it isn’t textually plausible to understand the content of an intuition in

conceptual terms, at least as Kant understands the notion of a concept, then what
would it mean to say that Kant endorses conceptualism with regard to
experience? The most plausible interpretation, endorsed by a wide variety of
interpreters, reads Kant as arguing that the generation of an intuition, whether
pure or sensory, depends at least in part on the activity of the understanding. On
this way of carving things, conceptualism does not consist in the narrow claim
50
that intuitions have concepts as contents or components. Instead, it consists in
the broader claim that the occurrence of an intuition depends at least in part on
the discursive activity of understanding. The specific activity of understanding is
that which Kant calls ‘synthesis,’ the “running through, and gathering together”
of representations (A99).

The conceptualist further argues that taking intuitions as generated via acts of
synthesis, which are directed by or otherwise dependent upon conceptual
capacities, provides some basis for the claim that whatever correctness
conditions might be had by intuition must accord with the conceptual synthesis
which generated them. This arguably fits well with Kant’s much quoted claim,

The same function that gives unity to the different representations in a

judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in
an intuition, which, expressed generally, is called the pure concept of
understanding. (A79/B104-5)

The link between intuition, synthesis in accordance with concepts, and relation
to an object is made even clearer by Kant’s claim in §17 of the B-edition
Transcendental Deduction:

Understanding is, generally speaking, the faculty of cognitions. These consist

in the determinate relation of given representations to an object. An object,
however, is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is
united. (B137; emphasis in the original)

However else we are to understand this passage, Kant here indicates that the
unity of an intuition necessary for it to stand as a cognition of an object requires
a synthesis by the concept ”object.” In other words, cognition of an object
requires that intuition be unified by an act or acts of the understanding.

According to the conceptualist interpretation, one must understand the notion of

a representation’s content as a relation to an object, which in turn depends on a
conceptually guided synthesis. So we can revise our initial definition of
conceptualism to read it as claiming (i) the content of an intuition is a kind of
relation to an object, (ii) the relation to an object depends on a synthesis directed
in accordance with concepts, and (iii) synthesis in accordance with concepts sets
correctness conditions for the intuition’s representation of a mind-independent
object.

51
d. Objections to Conceptualism

At the heart of non-conceptualist readings of Kant stands denial that mental acts
of synthesis carried out by understanding are necessary for the occurrence of
cognitive mental states of the type which Kant designates by the term “intuition”
[Anschauung]. Though it is controversial as to what might be considered the
“natural” or “default” reading of Kant’s mature critical philosophy, there are at
least four considerations which lend strong support to a non-conceptualist
interpretation of Kant’s mature work.

First, Kant repeatedly and forcefully states that in cognition there is a strict
division of cognitive labor—objects are given by sensibility and thought via
understanding:

Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions;

they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise
concepts (A19/B33; compare A50/B74, A51/B75–6, A271/B327).

As Robert Hanna has argued, when Kant discusses the dependence of intuition
on conceptual judgment in the Analytic of Concepts, he specifically talks about
cognition rather than what others would consider to be perceptual experience
(Hanna (2005), 265-7).

Second, Kant characterizes the representational capacities characteristic of

sensibility as more primitive than those characteristic of understanding, or
reason, and he characterizes those capacities as a plausible part of what humans
share with the rest of the animal kingdom (Kant connects the possession of a
faculty of sensibility to animal nature in various places, for example A546/B574,
A802/B830; An 7:196). For example, Kant’s distinction between the faculties of
sensibility and understanding seems intended to capture the difference between
the “sub-rational” powers of the mind that is shared with non-human animals
and the “rational or higher-level cognitive powers” that are special to human
beings. (Hanna (2005), 249; compare Allais (2009); McLear (2011))

If one were to deny that, according to Kant, sensibility alone is capable of

producing mental states cognitive in character, then, it would seem that any
animal which lacks a faculty of understanding would thereby lack any capacity
for genuinely perceptual experience. The mental lives of non-rational animals
would thus, at best, consist of non-cognitive sensory states causally correlated
with changes in the animal’s environment. Aside from an unappealing and
52
implausible characterization of the animals’ cognitive capacities, this reading
also faces textual hurdles (for relevant discussion of some of the issues in
contemporary cognitive ethology see Bermúdez (2003); Lurz (2009); Andrews
(2014), as well as the papers in Lurz (2011)). Kant is on record in various
places as saying that animals have sensory representations of their environment
(CPJ 5:464; LM 28:449; compare An 7:212), that they have intuitions (LL
24:702), and that they are acquainted with objects though they do not cognize
them (JL 9:64–5) (see Naragon (1990); Allais (2009); McLear (2011)).

Hence, if Kant’s position is that synthetic acts carried out by the understanding
are necessary for the cognitive standing of a mental state, then Kant is
contradicting fundamental elements of his own position in crediting intuitions or
their possibility to non-rational animals.

Third, any position which regards perceptual experience as dependent upon acts
of synthesis carried out by the understanding would presumably also construe
the ‘pure’ intuitions of space and time as dependent upon acts of synthesis (see
Longuenesse (1998), ch. 9; Griffith (2012)). However, Kant’s discussion of
space, and, analogously, time, in the third and fourth arguments (fourth and fifth
in the case of time) of the Metaphysical Exposition of Space in the
Transcendental Aesthetic seems incompatible with such a proposed relation of
dependence.

Kant’s point in the third and fourth arguments of the Metaphysical Exposition of
space and time is that no finite intellect could grasp the extent and nature of
space as an infinite whole via a synthetic process involving movement from
representation of a part to representation of the whole. If the unity of the forms
of intuition were itself something dependent upon intellectual activity, then this
unity would necessarily involve the discursive, though not necessarily
conceptual, running through and gathering together of a given multiplicity
(presumably of different locations or moments) into a combined whole. Kant
believes this is characteristic of synthesis generally (A99).

But Kant’s arguments in the Metaphysical Expositions require the fundamental

basis of the representation of space and time does not proceed from a grasp of
the multiplicative features of an intuited particular to the whole with those
features. Instead, the form of pure intuition constitutes a representational whole
that is prior to that of its component parts (compare CJ 5:407-8, 409).

53
Hence, Kant’s position is that the pure intuitions of space and time possess a
unity wholly different from that given by the discursive unity of understanding
(whether in conceptual judgment or the intellectual with imaginative synthesis
of intuited objects). The unity of aesthetic representation—characterized by
forms of space and time—has a structure in which the representational parts
depend upon the whole. The unity of discursive representation—representation
where the activity of understanding is involved—has a structure in which the
representational whole depends upon its parts (see McLear (2015)).

Finally, there has been extensive discussion on the non-conceptuality of intuition

in the secondary literature on Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. For example,
Michael Friedman has argued that the expressive limitations of prevailing logic
in Kant’s time required the postulation of intuition as a form of singular, non-
conceptual representation (Friedman (1992), ch. 2; Anderson (2005); Sutherland
(2008)). In contrast to Friedman’s view, Charles Parsons and Emily Carson
argued that the immediacy of intuition, both pure and empirical, should be
construed in a ‘phenomenological’ manner. Space in particular is understood on
their interpretation as an original, non-conceptual representation, which Kant
takes to be necessary for the demonstration of the real possibility of constructed,
mathematical objects as required for geometric knowledge (Parsons (1964);
Parsons (1992); Carson (1997); Carson (1999); compare Hanna (2002). For a
general overview of related issues in Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, see
Shabel (2006) and the works cited therein at p. 107, note 29.)

Ultimately, however, there are difficulties assessing whether Kant’s philosophy

of mathematics can have relevance for the conceptualism debate. It is not
obvious whether intuition must be non-conceptual in accounting for
mathematical knowledge is incompatible with claiming that intuitions
themselves are dependent upon a conceptually-guided synthesis.

The non-conceptualist reading clearly commits to allowing that sensibility alone

provides, perhaps in a very primitive manner, objective representation of the
empirical world. Sensibility is construed as an independent cognitive faculty,
which humans share with other non-rational animals, and which is the jumping-
off point for more sophisticated, conceptual representation of empirical reality.

The next and final section looks at Kant’s views regarding the nature and limits
of self-knowledge and the ramifications of this for traditional rationalist views of
the self.

54
4. Rational Psychology and Self-Knowledge

Kant discusses the nature and limits of our self-knowledge most extensively in
the first Critique, in a section of the Transcendental Dialectic called the
“Paralogisms of Pure Reason.” Here, Kant is concerned to criticize the claims of
what he calls “rational psychology.” Specifically, he is concerned about the
claim that we can have substantive, metaphysical knowledge of the nature of the
subject, based purely on an analysis of the concept of the thinking self. As Kant
typically puts it:

I think is thus the sole text of rational psychology, from which it is to develop
its entire wisdom…because the least empirical predicate would corrupt the
rational purity and independence of the science from all experience.
(A343/B401)

There are four “Paralogisms.” Each argument is presented as a syllogism,

consisting of two premises and a conclusion. According to Kant, each argument
is guilty of an equivocation on a term common to the premises, such that the
argument is invalid. Kant’s aim, in his discussion of each Paralogism, is to
diagnose the equivocation, and explain why the rational psychologist’s argument
ultimately fails. In so doing, Kant provides a great deal of information about his
own views concerning the mind (See Ameriks (2000) for extensive discussion).
The argument of the first Paralogism concerns knowledge of the self as
substance; the second, the simplicity of the self; the third, the numerical identity
of the self; and the fourth, knowledge of the self versus knowledge of things in
space.

a. Substantiality (A348-51/B410-11)

Kant presents the rationalist’s argument in the First Paralogism as follows:

1. What cannot be thought otherwise than as subject does not exist

otherwise than as subject, and is therefore substance.
2. Now a thinking being, considered merely as such, cannot be thought of
as other than a subject.
3. Therefore, a thinking being also exists only as such a thing, i.e., as
substance.

55
Kant’s presentation of the argument is rather compressed. In more explicit form
we can put it as follows (see Proops (2010)):

1. All entities that cannot be thought of as other than a subjects are

entities that cannot exist otherwise than as subjects, and therefore are
substances. (All M are P)
2. All entities that are thinking beings are entities that cannot be thought
otherwise than as subjects. (All S are M)
3. Therefore, all entities that are thinking beings are entities that cannot
exist otherwise than as subjects, and therefore are substances (All S
are P)

The relevant equivocation is in the term that occupies the ‘M’ place in the
argument— “entities that cannot be thought otherwise than as subjects”. Kant
specifically locates the ambiguity in the use of the term “thought” [Das Denken],
which he claims concerns an object in general in the first premise. Thus,
“thought” could be given in a possible intuition. In the second premise, the use
of “thought” is supposed to apply only to a feature of thought and, thus, not to
an object of a possible intuition (B411-12).

While it isn’t obvious what Kant means by this claim, it could be that. Kant
takes the first premise to make a claim about the objects of thought. They exist
as an independent subject or bearer of properties and cannot be conceived of as
anything else. This is thus a metaphysical claim about what kinds of objects
could really exist, which explains Kant’s reference to an “object in general” that
could be given in intuition.

In contrast, premise (2) makes a merely logical claim concerning the role of the
representation <I> in a possible judgment. Kant says one cannot use
representation <I> in any place other than upon the subject. For example, while I
can make the claim “I am tall,” I would make no sense to claim “the tall is I.”

Against the rational psychologist, Kant argues that one cannot make any
legitimate inference from the conditions under which representation <I> may be
thought, or employed in a judgment, to the status of the ‘I’ as a metaphysical
subject of properties. Kant makes this point explicit when he says,

The first syllogism of transcendental psychology imposes on us an only

allegedly new insight when it passes off the constant logical subject of thinking
56
as the cognition of a real subject of inherence, with which we do not and cannot
have the least acquaintance, because consciousness is the one single thing that
makes all representations into thoughts, and in which, therefore, as in the
transcendental subject, our perceptions must be encountered; and apart from this
logical significance of the I, we have no acquaintance with the subject in itself
that grounds this I as a substratum, just as it grounds all thoughts. (A350)

Kant thus argues that one should differentiate between different conceptions of
“substance” and the role they play in thoughts concerning the world.

Substance0: x is a substance0 if and only if the representation of x cannot be used

as a predicate in a categorical judgment

Substance1: x is a substance1 if and only if its existence is such that it can never
inhere, or exist, in anything else (B288, 407)

The first conception of substance is merely logical or grammatical. The second

conception is explicitly metaphysical. Finally, there is an even more
metaphysically demanding usage of “substance” that Kant employs.

(Empirical) Substance2: x is a substance2 if and only if it is a substance1 that

persists at every moment (A144/B183, A182)

According to Kant, the rational psychologist attempts to move from claims

about substance0 to the more robustly metaphysical claims characteristic of
conceptions and uses of substance1 and substance2. However, without further
substantive assumptions, which go beyond anything given in an analysis of the
concept <I>, no legitimate inference can be made from our notion of a
substance0 to either of the other conceptions of substance.

Because, Kant denies that humans have any intuition, empirical or otherwise, of
themselves as subjects, they cannot come to have any knowledge concerning
what we are in terms of beings either substance1 or substance2. At least they
cannot do so by reflecting on the conditions of thinking of themselves using
first-person concepts. No amount of introspection or reflection on the content of
the first-person concept <I> will yield such knowledge.

b. Simplicity (A351-61/B407-8)

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Kant’s discussion of the proposed metaphysical simplicity of the subject largely
depends on points he made in the previous Paralogism concerning its proposed
substantiality. Kant articulates the Second Paralogism as follows:

1. The subject, whose action can never be regarded as the concurrence of

many acting things, is simple. (All A is B)
2. The self is such a subject. (C is A)
3. Therefore, the self is simple. (C is B)

Here, the equivocation concerns the notion of a “subject.” Kant’s point, as with
the previous Paralogism, is that, from the fact that one’s first-person
representation of the self is always a grammatical or logical subject, nothing
follows concerning the metaphysical status of that representation’s referent.

Of perhaps greater interest in this discussion of the Paralogism of simplicity is

Kant’s analysis of what he calls the “Achilles of all dialectical inferences”
(A351). According to the Achilles argument, the soul or mind is known to be a
simple, unitary substance, because only such a substance could think unitary
thoughts. Called the “unity claim” (see Brook (1997)), it says:

(UC): If a multiplicity of representations are to form a single representation, they

must be contained in the absolute unity of the thinking substance. (A352)

Against UC, Kant argues that there is no reason to think the structure of a
thought, as a complex of representations, isn’t mirrored in the complex structure
of an entity that thinks thoughts. UC is not analytic, which is to say that there is
no contradiction entailed by its negation. UC also fails to be a synthetic a priori
claim, in that it follows neither from the nature of intuition’s forms, nor from
categories. Hence, UC could only be shown to be true empirically, and because
people have no empirical intuition of the self, people have no basis for thinking
that UC must be true (A353).

Kant here makes a point similar to contemporary, functionalist accounts of the

mind (see Meerbote (1991); Brook (1997)). Mental functions, including the
unity of conscious thought, are consistent with a variety of different media in
which functions are realized. Kant’s says there is no contradiction in thinking
that a plurality of substances might succeed in generating a single, unified
thought. Hence, we cannot know that the mind is such that it must be simple in
nature.

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c. Numerical Identity (A361-66/B408)

Kant articulates the Third Paralogism as follows:

1. What is conscious of the numerical identity of its Self in different

times, is, to that extent, a person. (All C is P)
2. Now, the soul is conscious of the numerical identity of its Self in
different times. (S is C)
3. Therefore, the soul is a person. (S is P)

Rational psychologists’ interest in establishing the personality of the soul or

mind stems from the importance of proving that not only would the mind persist
after the destruction of its body, but also that this mind would be the same
person as before, not just some sort of bare consciousness or worse (for
example, existing only as a “bare monad”).

Kant here makes two main points. First, the rational psychologist cannot infer
from the sameness of the first-person representation (the “I think”) or across
applications of it in judgment to any conclusion concerning the sameness of the
metaphysical subject referred to by that representation. Kant thus again makes a
functionalist point. The medium in which a series of representational states
inheres may change over time, and there is no contradiction in conceiving of a
series of representations as being transferred from one substance to another
(A363-4, note).

Second, Kant argues that we can be confident of the soul’s possession of

personality by virtue of apperception’s persistence. The relevant notion of
“personality” here distinguishes between a rational being and an animal. While
the persistence of apperception (the persistence of the “I think” as being able to
attach to all of one’s representations) does not provide an apperceiving subject
with any insight into the true metaphysical nature of the mind, it does provide
evidence of the soul’s possession of an understanding. Animals, by contrast, do
not possess an understanding but, at best, according to Kant, only an analogue
thereof. As Kant says in the Anthropology,@

That man can have the I among his representations elevates him infinitely above
all other living beings on earth. He is thereby a person […] that is, by rank and
worth a completely distinct being from things that are the same as reason-less
animals with which one can do as one pleases. (An 7:127, §1)

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Hence, so long as a soul possesses the capacity for apperception, it will signal
the possession of an understanding, and thus serves to distinguish the human
soul from that of an animal (see Dyck (2010), 120).

d. Relation to Objects in Space (A366-80/B409)

Finally, the Fourth Paralogism concerns the relation between awareness of one’s
own mind and one’s awareness of other objects distinct from oneself. Thus, it
also deals with one’s mind and awareness of space. Kant describes the Fourth
Paralogism as follows:

1. What can be only causally inferred is never certain. (All I is not C)

2. The existence of outer objects can only be causally inferred, not
immediately perceived by us. (O is I)
3. Therefore, we can never be certain of the existence of outer objects.
(O is not C)

Kant locates the damaging ambiguity in the conception of “outer” objects. This
is puzzling because it doesn’t play the relevant role as middle term in the
syllogism. But Kant is quite clear that this is where the ambiguity lies and
distinguishes between two distinct senses of the “outer” or “external”:

Trancendentally Outer/External: A seperate existence, in and of itself.

Empirically Outer/External: An existence in space.

Kant’s point here is that all appearances in space are empirically external to the
subject who perceives or thinks about them, while nevertheless being
transcendentally internal. Such spatial appearances do not have an entirely
independent metaphysical nature, because their spatial features depend at least in
part on our forms of intuition.

Kant then uses this distinction not only to argue against the assumption of the
rational psychologist that the mind is better known than any object in space
(famously argued by Descartes), but also against those forms of external world
skepticism championed by Descartes and Berkeley. Kant identifies Berkeley
with what he calls “dogmatic idealism” and Descartes with what he calls
“problematic idealism” (A377). He defines them thus:

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Problematic Idealism: We cannot be certain of the existence of any material
body.

Dogmatic Idealism: We can be certain that no material body exists – the notion
of a body is self-contradictory.

Kant brings two arguments to bear against the rational psychologist’s

assumption about the immediacy of our self-knowledge, as well as these two
forms of skepticism, with mixed results. The two arguments are from
“immediacy” and “imagination.”

i. The Immediacy Argument

In an extended passage in the Fourth Paralogism (A370-1) Kant makes the

following argument:

External objects (bodies) are merely appearances, hence also nothing other than
a species of my representations, whose objects are something only through these
representations, but are nothing separated from them. Thus external things exist
as well as my self, and indeed both exist on the immediate testimony of my self-
consciousness, only with this difference: the representation of my Self, as the
thinking subject, is related merely to inner sense, but the representations that
designate extended beings are also related to outer sense. I am no more
necessitated to draw inferences in respect of the reality of external objects than I
am in regard to the reality of the objects of my inner sense (my thoughts), for in
both cases they are nothing but representations, the immediate perception
(consciousness) of which is at the same time a sufficient proof of their reality.
(A370-1)

It helps to understand the argument as follows:

1. Rational Psychology (RP) privileges awareness of the subject and its

states over awareness of non-subjective states.
2. But, transcendental idealism entails that people are aware of both
subjective and objective states, as they appear, in the same way—via a
form of intuition.
3. So, either both kinds of awareness are immediate or they are both
mediate.

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 4. Because awareness of subjective states is obviously immediate, then
awareness of objective states must also be immediate.
5. Therefore, we are immediately aware of the states or properties of
physical objects.

Here, Kant displays what he takes to be an advantage of Transcendental

Idealism. Because both inner and outer sense depend on intuition, there is
nothing special about inner intuition that privileges it over outer intuition. Both
are, as intuitions, immediate presentations of objects, at least as they appear.
Unfortunately, Kant never makes clear what he means by the term “immediate”
[unmittelbar]. This issue is much contested (see Smit (2000)). At the very least,
he means to signal that awareness in intuition is not mediated by any explicit or
conscious inference, as when he says that the transcendental idealist “grants to
matter, as appearance, a reality which need not be inferred, but is immediately
perceived” (A371).

It is not obvious that an external world skeptic would find this argument
convincing, as part of the grip of such skepticism relies on the convincing point
that things could seem to one just as they currently are, even if there really is no
external world causing one’s experiences. This may just beg the question against
Kant (particularly premise (2) of the above argument). Certainly, Kant seems to
think that his arguments for the existence of pure intuitions of space and time in
the Transcendental Aesthetic lend some weight to his position. Thus, Kant is not
so much arguing for Transcendental Idealism here as explaining some of the
further benefits that come when the position is adopted. He does, however,
present at least one further argument against the skeptical objection articulated
above—the argument from imagination.

ii. The Argument from Imagination

Kant’s attempt to respond to the skeptical worry that things might appear to be
outside us while not actually existing outside us appeals to the role imagination
would have to play to make such a possibility plausible (A373-4; compare
Anthropology, 7:167-8).

This material or real entity, however, this Something that is to be intuited in

space, necessarily presupposes perception, and it cannot be invented by any
power of imagination or produced independently of perception, which indicates
the reality of something in space. Thus sensation is that which designates a

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reality in space and time, according to whether it is related to the one or the
other mode of sensible intuition.

What follows is a reconstruction of this argument.

1. If problematic idealism is correct, then it is possible for one to have

never perceived any spatial object but only to have imagined doing so.
2. But imagination cannot fabricate—it can only re-fabricate.
3. So, if one has sensory experience of outer spatial objects, then one
must have had at least one successful perception of an external spatial
object.
4. Therefore, it is certain that an extended spatial world exists.

Kant’s idea here is that the imagination is too limited to generate the various
qualities that people experience as instantiated in external physical objects.
Hence, it would not be possible to simply imagine an external physical world
without having been originally exposed to the qualities instantiated in the
physical world. Ergo, the physical world must exist. Even Descartes seems to
agree with this, noting in Meditation I that “[certain simple kinds of qualities]
are as it were the real colours from which we form all the images of things,
whether true or false, that occur in our thought” (Descartes (1984), 13-14).
Though Descartes goes on to doubt our capacity to know even such basic
qualities given the possible existence of an evil deceiver, it is notable that the
deceiver must be something other than ourselves, in order to account for all the
richness and variety of what we experience (however, see Meditation VI
(Descartes (1984), 54), where Descartes wonders whether there could be some
hidden faculty in ourselves producing all of our ideas).

Unfortunately, it isn’t clear that the argument from imagination gets Kant the
conclusion he wants, for all that it shows is that there was at one time a physical
world, which affected one’s senses and provided the material for one’s sense
experiences. This might be enough to show that one has not always been
radically deceived, but it is not enough to show that one is not currently being
radically deceived. Even worse, it isn’t even clear that a physical world must
exist to generate the requisite material for the imagination. Perhaps all that is
needed is something distinct from the subject, something which is capable of
generating in it the requisite sensory experiences, whether or not they are
veridical. This conclusion is thus compatible with that “something” being
Descartes’s evil demon, or in contemporary epistemology, with the subject’s
being a brain in a vat. Hence, it is not obvious that Kant’s argument succeeds in
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refuting the skeptic. To the extent that he did refute the skeptic, it still does not
show that there is a physical world, as opposed merely to the existence of
something distinct from the subject.

e. Lessons of the Paralogisms

Beyond the specific arguments of the Paralogisms and their conclusions, they
present us with two central tenets of Kant’s conception of the mind. First, we
cannot move from claims concerning the character or role of the first-person
representation <I> to claims concerning the nature of the referent of that
representation. This is a key part of his criticism of rational psychology. Second,
people do not have privileged access to themselves as compared with things
outside them. Both the self (or its states) and external objects are on par with
respect to intuition. This also means that they only have access to themselves as
they appear, and not as they fundamentally, metaphysically, are
(compare B157). Hence, according to Kant, self-awareness, just as much as
awareness of anything distinct from the self, is conditioned by sensibility.
Intellectual access to selves in apperception, Kant argues, does not reveal
anything about one’s metaphysical nature, in the sense of the kind of thing that
must exist to realize the various cognitive powers that Kant describes as
characteristic of a being capable of apperception—a spontaneous understanding
or intellect.

5. Summary

Kant’s conception of the mind, his distinction between sensory and intellectual
faculties, his functionalism, his conception of mental content, and his work on
the nature of the subject/object distinction, were all hugely influential. His work
immediately inspired the German Idealist movement. He also became central to
emerging ideas concerning the epistemology of science in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, in what became known as the “Neo-Kantian” movement in
central and southern Germany. Though Anglophone interest in Kant ebbed
somewhat in the early 20th century, his conception of the mind and criticisms of
rationalist psychology were again influential mid-century via the work of
“analytic” Kantians such as P.F. Strawson, Jonathan Bennett, and Wilfrid
Sellars. In the early 21st century Kant’s work on the mind remains a touchstone
for philosophical investigation, especially in the work of those influenced by
Strawson or Sellars, such as Quassim Cassam, John McDowell, and Christopher
Peacocke.

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Kant argues that concepts help shape the meanings of the world:

When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he had himself previously
determined, to roll down an inclined plane; when Torricelli made the air carry a
weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite
volume of water; or in more recent times, when Stahl changed metals into
oxides, and oxides back into metal, by withdrawing something and then
restoring it, a light broke upon all students of nature. They learned that reason
has only insight into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it
must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature’s leading strings but must
itself show the way with principles of judgement based on fixed laws,
constraining nature to answer to questions of reason’s own determining.
Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan,
can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to
discover. Reason … must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must
not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the
teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to
answer questions which he himself has formulated …

[E]xperience is itself a species of knowledge which involves understanding; and

understanding has rules which I must presuppose as being in me prior to objects
being given to me, and therefore as being a priori [existing in the mind prior to
experience] …

[N]othing in a priori knowledge can be ascribed to objects save what the

thinking subject derives from itself … [S]pace and time are only forms of
sensible intuition, and so only conditions of the existence of things as
appearances … [W]e can therefore have no knowledge of any object as thing in
itself, but only in so far as it is an object of sensible intuition, that is an
appearance [a figment of our reasoning minds] …

It is unfortunate that only after we have spent much time in the collection of
materials in somewhat random fashion at the suggestion of an idea lying hidden
in our minds, and after we have, indeed, over a long period assembled the
materials in a merely technical manner, does it first become possible for us to
discern the idea in a clearer light, and to devise a whole architectonically in
accordance with the ends of reason. Systems seem to be formed in the manner of
lowly organisms through a generatio aequivoca from the mere confluence of
assembled concepts, at first imperfect, and only gradually attaining to
completeness …
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[S]ystematic unity is what first raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science,
that is, makes a system out of a mere aggregate of knowledge …

[T]he common root of our faculty of knowledge divides and throws out two
stems, one of which is reason. By reason I here understand the whole higher
faculty of knowledge, and am therefore contrasting the rational with the
empirical. If I abstract from all the content of knowledge, objectively regarded,
then all knowledge, subjectively regarded, is either… cognitio ex datis
[knowledge of facts] or … cognitio ex principiis [rational knowledge]. However
a mode of knowledge may originally be given, it is still, in relation to the
individual who possesses it, simply [empirical], if he knows only so much of it
as has been given to him from outside (and this in the form in which it has been
given to him), whether through immediate experience or narration, or (as in the
case of general knowledge) through instruction. Anyone, therefore, who has
learnt (in the strict sense of that term) a system of philosophy … although he
may have all its principles, explanations, and proofs, together with the formal
divisions of the whole body of doctrine, in his head, and, so to speak, at his
fingers’ ends, has no more than a complete historical knowledge of [that]
philosophy. He knows and judges only what has been given him. If we dispute a
definition, he does not know whence to obtain another. He has formed his mind
on another’s, and the imitative faculty is not itself productive. In other words,
his knowledge has not in him arisen out of reason, and although, objectively
considered, it is indeed knowledge due to reason, it is yet … merely [empirical].
He has grasped and kept; that is, he has learnt well, and is merely a plaster-cast
of a living man [the philosopher he has learnt]. Modes of rational knowledge
which are rational objectively … when they have been derived from universal
sources of reason, that is, from principles—the sources from which there can
also arise criticism, nay, even the rejection of what has been learnt. All
knowledge arising out of reason is derived either from concepts or from the
construction of concepts …

Reason must in all its undertakings subject itself to criticism; should it limit
freedom of criticism by any prohibitions, it must harm itself, drawing upon itself
a damaging suspicion. Nothing is so important through its usefulness, nothing so
sacred, that it may be exempted from this searching examination, which knows
no respect for persons. Reason depends on this freedom for its very existence.
For reason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the
agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express,
without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto.

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