University of Illinois Press North American Philosophical Publications

North American Philosophical Publications
Skepticism and Kant's B Deduction

Author(s): Edwin McCann
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 71-89
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27743711 .
Accessed: 01/04/2014 15:42
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
University of Illinois Press and North American Philosophical Publications are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to History of Philosophy Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 132.248.184.4 on Tue, 1 Apr 2014 15:42:18 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
History of Philosophy
Quarterly
Volume
2,
Number
1, January
1985
SKEPTICISM AND KANT'S B DEDUCTION
Edwin McCann
KANT
took
skepticism very seriously.
It
was,
he
said,
"a scandal to
philosophy
and to human reason in
general"1
that
skeptical
doubt
about the existence of external
objects
had not been overcome on
satisfying
philosophical grounds,
and it
was,
accordingly,
one of the main aims of
the
Critique
to
provide
a refutation of
skepticism.
The
variety
of
skepti
cism with which Kant was most concerned is Cartesian
skepticism,
which
he calls
problematic
or
psychological
idealism. Its two main elements are
these:
(i)
we know that we exist as
thinking
substances in virtue of our
awareness of our own
perceptions
or conscious states as states of such a
substance,
such awareness
being
a
necessary
condition of
consciousness;
and
(ii)
our
perceptions
or
sensory experiences
do not
by
themselves
provide
a basis for the belief that there are external
objects.2
Kant's refutation of this doctrine seeks to show that it is
internally
incoherent,
i.e. that
anyone
who
buys
(i)
must
reject (ii),
or in other
words,
that if the Cartesian
skeptic
is to hold that we have
self-knowledge
of
the sort described in
(i)
he must also hold that some at least of our
perceptions
are
perceptions
of external
objects.
The Deduction
plays
an
important
role in this internal refutation of Cartesian
skepticism,
together
with such other
important
sections as the
Analogies
of
Experi
ence,
the Refutation of Idealism
(in B)
and the
Paralogisms.
In this
paper
I will make use of this fact to
organize
an
interpretation
of the B Deduc
tion. We will be able to make
philosophical
sense of the
argument
of the
Deduction,
it seems to
me,
if we look to its
part
in the overall attack on
skepticism
mounted in the
Critique.
The
interpretation
I will
give
here follows the basic outlines of Henrich's
1969
paper.31
see the B Deduction as a
single
extended
argument
carried
out in two
stages.
In
my interpretation, however,
the
hoary
transcendental
psychology
in terms of which Kant tended to
put
his
points is,
as far as
is
possible, dispensed with;
the
argument
is no
longer
seen to
rely
on
such claims as that we have
representations
which contain an infinite
given
manifold of
particular representations
(the pure
intuitions of
space
and
time),
that faculties of mind such as
understanding
and
sensibility
operate upon
one
another,
that there are
atemporal
acts of transcendental
synthesis
that
(in
some
sense)
take
place through
the
agency
of the
pure
productive imagination,
and so on. These claims would
perhaps
have
been no more
plausible
or
readily intelligible
to Kant's
philosophical
71
72 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
QUARTERLY
targets (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Hume, Berkeley)
than
they
are to us
today,
so I take it to be
a virtue of
my
interpretation
that in
exhibiting
the
recognizable philosophical strategy
behind the
argument
it also shows
how the
argument
can work
against
Kant's
philosophical antagonists.
I
distinguish
the two
stages
of the
Deduction, then,
in terms of the two
different notions of self-consciousness that
figure
in them. In the first
stage,
Kant introduces the
principle
of
apperception,
which
specifies
a
highly
formal and abstract notion of self-consciousness. This self-con
sciousness, however,
does not amount to the determinate
knowledge
of
oneself as an individual
subject
of conscious states that the Cartesian
skeptic requires
for
self-knowledge,
a fact that Kant
exploits
in the second
stage
of the Deduction and which turns out to be
pivotal
in the Refutation
of Idealism. Before
setting
out
my interpretation
I should stress that
although
I
organize
it
by considering
the role the Deduction
plays
in an
overall refutation of Cartesian
skepticism
I am not
taking
it that it is
the central concern of the Deduction to refute
skepticism,
or that there
is a full-dress refutation of
skepticism
contained in the
Deduction,
or
again
that the
argument
of the Deduction
requires completion by
the
arguments
of the
Analogies
and/or the Refutation of
Idealism;
such claims
have been made
by
various of Kant's commentators. The aim of the
Deduction is the more
general
one of
establishing
the
objective validity
of the
categories,
that
is,
to show that the basic
concepts
of the understand
ing,
the
possession
and use of which are
necessary
conditions of a
being's
having
the
ability
to make
judgments,
are in fact
applicable
to the
objects
of our
sensory experience,
viz.
objects
in
space
and time.4 This will secure
our
right
to claim
knowledge
of such
objects through empirical judgments,
which
employ
or
presuppose
such
concepts?the quid juris
of which Kant
speaks
in the
introductory
material to the Deduction.5
I
If the Deduction
as a whole has a central role to
play
in the overall
refutation of Cartesian
skepticism,
the first half of the Deduction can be
read as if it were concerned to refute a
quite
different sort of
skepticism:
a
skepticism
with
regard
to the
intellect,
as it
were,
of the sort that Hume
developed.6
Here the
skeptic's proposal
would be that such notions as
those of
cause, substance, identity, object,
and so
forth,
are mere actions'
concocted
by
the mind to
paper
over contradictions in our beliefs about
the
things
which we take our
perceptions
to
represent.
The difficulties
arise, according
to
Hume,
from our
attempt
to make these
concepts,
which
like all
concepts
can be derived
only
from our
sensory experience, apply
to
objects
which are
supposed by
us to be
'specifically
distinct' from
our
perceptions.
Descartes and Leibniz had derived such
a
priori concepts
from
self-consciousness,
construed
as reflective awareness of a substantial
self. As
they
told
it,
one
got
the
concept
of
substance,
for
example,
from
one's
immediate,
intuitive awareness of the inner substance which is the
subject
of one's conscious
states,
i.e. the self.7 Hume's destructive
argu
SKEPTICISM AND KANT'S B DEDUCTION 73
ments
against
the account of self-consciousness as awareness of a substan
tial self thus also undercut this derivation of
a
priori concepts, leaving
them mere fictions
resulting
from the
workings
of custom on the
imagi
nation.
We can see the first half of the Deduction as an
attempt
to reconstruct
the connections between
self-consciousness,
the
ability
to make
judg
ments,
and the
possession
and use of
categorial concepts
that Descartes
and Leibniz
developed, only
now without the
questionable
account of
self-consciousness which
they
used. In
effect,
the
principle
of
apperception
stands in for Descartes's attribute of
thought;
where it was the main
function of the attribute of
thought
to
capture
all that is common or
essential to
thoughts
or conscious
states,
the 1 think' of
apperception
"...serves
only
to introduce all our
thought,
as
belonging
to consciousness"
(A341/B399-400).
Like the attribute of
thought,
the
principle
of
appercep
tion
lays
down the
general
conditions of
identity
for
thinking things
in
complete
abstraction from
any
empirical
facts about the constitution
or
history
of
any
individual
thinking things;
most
important,
like the attri
bute of
thought,
the
principle
of
apperception
does these
things
in terms
of the
ability
to
judge
of
any
of one's conscious states that it is in fact a
conscious state of one's own.8
Kant introduces the
principle
of
apperception
in connection with the
problem
of
accounting
for the
peculiar unity
of a
judgment,
which
although
it contains a
single thought
has a number of discrete elements.
(Kant,
like his
predecessors,
thinks of a
judgment
as a mental
proposition
of
sorts,
that
is,
a unified
complex
of mental
representations.9)
His
prop
osal is that this
unity
is
just
the
unity
embodied in
concepts,10
which at
bottom is the
unity
of the
understanding
itself. This sets the
stage
for
the
introduction,
in Section
16,
of the
unity
of
apperception,
"the
highest
principle
in the whole
sphere
of human
knowledge"
(B135).
Here is how
he formulates the
principle:
It must be
possible
for the T think' to
accompany
all
my representations;
for otherwise
something
would be
represented
in me which could not be
thought
at
all,
and that is
equivalent
to
saying
that the
representation
would be
impossible,
or at least would be
nothing
to me.
(B131.)
This
principle clearly
embodies the Cartesian/Leibnizean notion that self
consciousness is a
necessary
condition of
having
conscious
experience
at
all,
and that self-consciousness is a matter of
having
the
ability
to
judge
of one's conscious states that
they
are one's
own;
it
lays
it down that
nothing
can be a conscious
experience
of mine which I cannot
judge
to
be
my perception
or
representation.
The crucial
point
about this
principle,
which
distinguishes
its construal
of self-consciousness from Descartes's and
Leibniz's,
is that it is
analytic.
Kant stresses this in sections 16 and
17;
he
notes,
for
example,
that "This
principle
of the
necessary unity
of
apperception
is
itself, indeed,
an iden
tical,
and therefore
analytic, proposition..."
(B135.)
There has been a fair
QUARTERLY
amount of confusion
among
commentators over this
claim,
some of them
holding
that Kant is somehow mistaken or confused or inconsistent in
asserting
it.11 One source of these commentator's confusions seems to be
the mistaken notion that the
principle
is
analytic
of the notion of a
representation.12
It is
not; plainly,
it is
analytic
of the notion of a
represen
tation's
being my representation.
(That's
why
it makes sense for Kant to
add the
phrase
'or at least would be
nothing
to me' in the statement of
the
principle quoted
above.) Consider,
for
example,
this
passage
from
Section 17:
Although
this
proposition
makes
synthetic unity
a condition of all
thought,
it
is,
as
already stated,
itself
analytic.
For it
says only
that all
my represen
tations in
any given
intuition must be
subject
to that condition under which
alone I can ascribe them to the identical self as
my representations,
and so
can
comprehend
them as
synthetically
combined in one
apperception
through
the
general expression
7 think.'
(B138;
see also
B132-3, B134, B135.)
In the
special
sense of 'mine'
explicated here,
it does not follow that
any
representation
that is in some sense a state of mine must be
mine,
Leibniz's
petites perceptions,
for
example,
would be both
representations
and states
of
mine,
but would not be liable to
self-ascription
and so would not be
conscious
states,
i.e. states of mine.13
The
principle
of
apperception,
useful
analytic
truth that it
is,
serves
to
explicate
the notion of a self or
subject
of conscious states?Descartes's
thinking thing.
What it does not
do,
and is not meant to
do,
is to answer
such
questions
as: what is the
justification
for
my
claim that
my
current
conscious state is indeed
my
state? What confirms
any
claims I
might
make about the relative
temporal positions
of
my
states?14 What is the
criterion
by
which I
judge
that a certain conscious state is mine? The
last of these
questions
Kant would
rightly reject
as
senseless;
there is no
such criterion
precisely
because there is no
question
of
my having
a
conscious state that is not
mine,
and hence no
question
of
my telling
which states are mine.15 In the same
way,
there is no
question
about the
justification
of such a
claim;
we could
say
either that the notion of
justifi
cation doesn't
apply here,
or else that is is a
necessary
truth that to make
such a claim
sincerely
is to be
justified
in
believing
it. And as
regards
the confirmation of claims about the
temporal positions
or
temporal
ordering
of one's
experiences,
it is clear that on those
very
rare occasions
in which such confirmation would be
required
what would serve to confirm
such claims would be
your memory
of the
experiences
and their
sequence
together
with
yours
and others' memories of the
sequence
of events in
the external
order, together
with whatever
independent
evidence is avail
able?last
year's
concert
schedule,
for
instance,
or the
family photo
album.
The
principle
of
apperception
is
certainly
much too abstract to do
any
such
thing
as
this, particularly
in
light
of the
fact,
which Kant
stresses,
that the
categories,
which are the most determinate immediate
expres
sions of the
unity
of
apperception,
have no
temporal
content whatsoever.16
As we'll
shortly
be in a
position
to
see,
the
suggestion
that the
pure unity
of
apperception by
itself could have
any consequences
as
regards
the
temporal position
of oneself and one's states involves a confusion of the
two notions of self-consciousness
figuring
in the two halves of the Deduc
tion.
In
analytically elucidating
the notion of the self in terms of the
ability
to
judge
of one's conscious states that
they
are one's
own,
Kant's
principle
of
apperception
does not involve the notion of self-consciousness as intui
tive awareness of an inner substance which Hume scouted. The further
explication
which Kant
gives
of the
identity
of the self is also
Humean,
in the sense that it renders the
identity
of the self in terms of relations
between its
representations:
...the
empirical consciousness,
which
accompanies
different
representations,
is in itself diverse and without relation to the
identity
of the
subject.
That
relation comes
about,
not
simply through my accompanying
each
represen
tation with
consciousness,
but
only
in so far as I
conjoin
one
representation
with
another,
and am conscious of the
synthesis
of them.
Only
in so
far,
therefore,
as I can unite a manifold of
given representations
in one conscious
ness,
is it
possible
for me to
represent
to
myself
the
identity of
the conscious
ness of these
representations.
(Section 16, B133.)
To think of a
particular representation
as
mine, then,
is to think of it as
able to
go together
with others of
my
representations,
actual and
possible,
thus
constituting
a coherent stretch of
experience.
This does not
very
much constrain the
possible representations
which
might go together
with one of
mine;
such
representations
would
merely
have to fit
together
with it in a
sequence
of
experience
which has the
continuity
and
regularity
characteristic of
experience
of an order of substances whose
qualities
can
be characterized either
mathematically
or
dynamically
and which stand
in causal relations to one another?a
world,
that
is,
whose basic features
are in accordance with the
concepts
of the
understanding,
or the
categories.
The
sequence
of one's actual
experiences
will of course be
only
one of these
possible sequences; accordingly,
the
principle
of
apperception
does not have to do with one's memories of
previous
actual
experiences
or one's
predictions
about future actual
experiences.
It is in this sense
that the
principle
is
abstract,
or
formal,
and it is this that allows it to
capture
the
general
notion of a
thinking thing
or
subject
of consciousness.
If it does not have much
content,
that is
just
what we should
expect
from
a
principle
that is
merely analytic.17
Like
Hume, then,
Kant makes the
identity
of the self to be a matter
of relations
among
its conscious states or
perceptions;
unlike
him,
he
makes it a matter of relations of
representational
content
among possible
experiences,
and not causal or associational ones
among
actual
experi
ences. This fact is used
by
Kant as the basis for his
argument
in Sections
17-19
(of
which an overview and
recapitulation
is
given
in Section
20)
that the
unity
of
apperception provides
for the
objectivity
of
judgment.
As we have
seen,
it is the
unity
of
apperception
which underlies the
unity
of
concepts;
and the
pure concepts,
taken
together, specify
a
general
QUARTERLY
concept
of an
object.
As Kant writes in Section 17:
Understanding is,
to
speak generally,
the
faculty
of
knowledge.
This consists
in the determinate relation of
given representations
to an
object.
An
object
is that in the
concept
of which the manifold of a
given
intuition is united.
Now all unification of
representations
demands
unity
of consciousness in
the
synthesis
of them.
Consequently
it is the
unity
of consciousness that
alone constitutes the relation of
representations
to an
object,
and therefore
their
objective validity
and the fact that
they
are modes of
knowledge.
(B137, slightly
altered)
The
unity
of
apperception
must be counted
objective, then,
and contrasted
with the
subjective
or
empirical unity
of consciousness which is a matter
of the association of ideas in actual
experience?so
Kant
argues
in Section
18,
and in Section 19 he uses this to
explain
the
possibility
of our
making
judgments
that can so much as
purport
to
represent
states of the
world,
i.e.
judgments
the truth or
falsity
of which
depend
on
something
outside
the
subjective
order.18
On Kant's
reconstruction, then,
the
concept
of an
object
in
general
and
the
categorial concepts
that
partially specify
it are a
priori concepts
which
derive from
self-consciousness,
not in the
way suggested by
Descartes
and Leibniz but instead as
expressions
of the
unity
of
apperception.
There
is
then, pace Hume,
a
genuine
notion of an
object
which is not founded
on the deliverances of sense and
imagination,
and which
provides
for the
making
of
objective judgments;
and there
is,
as
well,
a
genuine
notion of
the self as
something
which is more than a bundle of associated
percep
tions,
a
thing
the
identity
of which is a function of relations of content
among possible experiences.
These are the main results of the first half
of the
Deduction,
and
they
are
important
results.
They
are
limited,
how
ever,
as Kant is
quick
to stress. The notions of self and of
object
in
general
that are
developed
in the first half of the Deduction are so
abstract,
amounting
as
they
do
only
to
highly
formal
notions,
that
they
cannot
by
themselves
give
rise to
knowledge
of
anything.19
Even
so,
the
availability
of this account of
self-consciousness,
linked
as it is with the
ability
to make
objective judgments, might
hold itself
out to the Cartesian
skeptic
as a
possible
line of defense
against
the
argument
of the Refutation of Idealism. For it
might
seem that self-con
sciousness,
as
captured
in the
principle
of
apperception,
would be
enough
for the
self-knowledge
to which the Cartesian
skeptic
is
committed,
but
yet
that it falls short of the
fully
determinate
empirical
consciousness
that fuels the Refutation. I consider this in the next
section,
and in the
final section will show how the second half of the Deduction undercuts
this line of defense.
II
The
argument
of the Refutation takes off from "the
mere,
but
empiri
cally determined,
consciousness of
my
own existence"
(B275),
where this
is
glossed
as consciousness of
my
own existence as determined in time.
What Kant means
by
these
phrases
is
evidently
this: to have such con
sciousness of
myself,
I must think of
myself
as this
particular individual,
whose states
(conscious
states,
that
is,
as I am
representing myself solely
as a self or
subject
of conscious
states)
each have a
determinate location
in the
unique
actual
temporal
order in which
everything
which ever
actually
exists must be
determinately
located and thus
determinately
temporally
related to
every
other actual
object
or state. I think of
myself
in this
way,
for
example,
as the one who is now
seeing
words
appear
on
a
screen,
who
yesterday
saw
Super
Bowl XVIII on
television,
and who
twenty years ago
saw
Maury
Wills steal three bases in one
ballgame.
Again,
it is not
my
justification
for these beliefs that is in
question,
but
instead the
possibility
of
my
so much as
thinking
of
myself
in this
way.
The
argument
of the Refutation is hard to take in and harder to
assess,
given
that it
depends
so
heavily
on the
complicated arguments
of the
First
Analogy.
With the
help
of the remarks
following
the
proof,
and
particularly
the
long
footnote added to the Preface of the B
edition,
how
ever,
we can see
enough
of the outlines of the
argument
to serve our
present purpose.
In
particular,
we will be able to see
why
it is crucial to
the
argument
that it
begins
with the
fully determinate, empirical
self-con
sciousness of the sort
just
described.
Kant had
argued
in the First
Analogy
that we cannot
represent
time
as a
single
actual order
embracing everything
that exists or occurs unless
we can
represent something abiding through,
and thus distinct
from,
time
itself, something
that retains its
identity through
alterations in its
state;
Kant calls this a beharrliches
(Kemp
Smith: a
"permanent").
In
the case of
time,
this
abiding thing
can be
nothing
other than
space,
or
more
exactly
matter in
space.20
In the Refutation the
key
issue is the
representation
of the self as
existing
in
time,
and this turns on the
pos
sibility
of
representing
one's conscious states as
being determinately
located in time. These
states,
like the moments of time
themselves,
con
tinually
succeed one another and so need to be related to an
abiding thing
if their succession is to be seen as
changes
of state of an
enduring
self.
Agreeing
with Hume that we have no awareness of an inner
object
which
could fill the
bill,
Kant
argues
that the
only
candidate is
objects
in
space,
i.e. actual material
things
external to oneself. These are the
only things
which are at the same time
(i)
available to
my
perception
or awareness
(indeed,
Kant
points out, immediately perceived)
and
(ii)
able to be seen
as
existing
as the same
thing through changes
of
state,
or from time to
time,
and
particularly through changes
in our
perceptions
of them. In
order for me to
represent my
conscious states as related to these outer
objects
in the
appropriate way,
and so to see both
my
perceptions
or
conscious states and the outer
objects together
with their
changes
of state
(events)
as
contained in a
single all-embracing order,
the
unique
actual
temporal order,
I have to take it that some of
my perceptions
are
genuinely
of
external
objects.
Thus "consciousness of
my
existence is at the same
QUARTERLY
time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other
things
outside
me."21
This
perhaps hardly
even
qualifies
as a
rough
sketch of the
Refutation,
and so of course I won't be able to
inquire
here into the
question
of its
plausibility
or
convincing
force. What I
hope
my
description
to have
shown is that it is essential to the
argument
of the Refutation that it
start from the
"mere,
but
empirically
determined consciousness of
my
own existence." Now there
might
seem to be an out here for the Cartesian
skeptic.
Kant himself in the first note to the Refutation remarks the
difference between the consciousness of oneself as
determinately existing
in time and the self-consciousness
captured by
the
principle
of
appercep
tion; by way
of
contrast,
he remarks
concerning
the latter:
Certainly,
the
representation
T
am,'
which
expresses
the consciousness that
can
accompany
all
thought, immediately
includes in itself the existence of
a
subject;
but it does not so include
any knowledge
of that
subject,
and
therefore also no
empirical knowledge,
that
is,
no
experience
of it.
(B277.)
Now it seems that the Cartesian
skeptic
could
grant
the whole
argument
of the Refutation and still maintain his
position,
for it is
open
to him to
say
that the self-consciousness involved in the T think' that functions as
the
premiss
in the
cogito argument
is
only
the formal self-consciousness
of the
principle
of
apperception.
Commitment to this sort of self-conscious
ness need not commit one to the claim that some of one's
perceptions
must
actually
be of external
objects,
whereas commitment to the determi
nate
self-knowledge
of the Refutation
does,
it is
being granted,
so commit
one. This move would be all the more forceful if the results of the Deduction
are obtained
solely
on the basis of the formal self-consciousness
powering
its first half.
Ill
Our consideration of the first half of the Deduction and of the Refutation
has turned
up
two distinct notions of
self-consciousness,
with an attendant
possibility
for the Cartesian
skeptic
of
sidestepping
the
argument
of the
Refutation. We shall see in this section that the results of the second half
of the Deduction foreclose this
possibility,
for there Kant will
argue
that
one cannot so much as think of oneself as a
subject
of conscious
states,
a
thinking thing,
without
having
the determinate
self-knowledge
which
bases the
argument
of the Refutation. In this
way, thought
of oneself as
a conscious
being presupposes,
or has as a
necessary condition,
such
self-knowledge.
A
consequence
of this will be
that,
on the
supposition
that we have self-consciousness of the sort
recognized
in the Cartesian/
Leibnizean
tradition,
we must hold that the
pure concepts
do
actually
apply
to the
objects
of
sensory experience.
To show this is
just
to establish
the
objective validity
of the
categories,
which is the main aim of the
Deduction.
The
argument
of the second half is set
up
in the latter
part
of Section
24
(after
the
stars),
where Kant raises a
"paradox"
about inner
sense;
it is
...namely
that this 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,
and this would seem to be
contradictory,
since we should then have to be in a
passive
relation to
ourselves. It is to avoid this contradiction that in
systems
of
psychology
inner
sense,
which we have
carefully distinguished
from the
faculty
o?
apper
ception,
is
commonly regarded
as
being
identical with it.
(B153.)
From what he
says
here and from his
subsequent
discussion of this
paradox
it seems that it
might
be
either,
or
both,
of the
following:
(a)
in
self-knowledge
the self must at one and the same time be the
subject
and
the
object
of its
knowledge;
and/or
(b)
in
self-knowledge
the self must be
both active and
passive
in
respect
of the same act of
knowledge,
in that
as it determines or affects the
subject
it is active and as it is the
subject
affected it is
passive.22
Systems
of
psychology,
Kant
says, try
to avoid this contradiction
by
identifying
inner sense with
apperception.23
How is this
supposed
to
help?
Assume that
subjective feeling accompanies
each state of
mind,
even
those which
purport
to
represent
outer
objects,
so that there's
something
that it's like for me to be in that state. We needn't think that there is
one characteristic
feeling
(one
either in number or in
kind)
accompanying
all our
states,
nor need we think of these
feelings
as
representations
(having cognitive content,
as it
were)
of the states as
belonging
to me or
of
myself
as the
subject
of them. Now if we
say
that
feeling accompanying
a
representation
makes it to be
my
state of mind and so is what I
go
on
in
representing
this state as
mine,
we avoid the need to
recognize
the self
as either
producing
or
being represented
in the contents of inner
sense,
and so we skirt the
paradox.
This
proposed
way
out doesn't
work, according
to
Kant,
because it
overlooks the distinction between inner sense and
apperception.
One cru
cial
aspect
of this distinction is that whereas
apperception
is able to
supply only
the
entirely
formal
concept
of a
thinking being
a
general,
which
applies indifferently
to all
thinking things
and thus even to those
(if
any)
with sensibilities which are
quite
different from our
own,
inner
sense affords the
representation
of oneself as an individual
subject
of
conscious states
existing determinately
in time.
Kant aims in Section 24 to
provide
a resolution of the
paradox
which
respects
the difference between inner sense and
apperception.
It
is,
unfor
tunately, particularly cryptic,
even
by
Kantian standards. What he
says
in
response
to the
paradox
is this:
What determines inner sense is the
understanding
and its
original power
of
combining
the manifold of
intuition,
that
is,
of
bringing
it under one
apperception (upon
which rests the
possibility
of the
understanding
itself).
(B153.)
And a little further on in that
paragraph:
QUARTERLY
...the
understanding...in respect
of the manifold which
may
be
given
to it
in accordance with the form of sensible
intuition,
is able to determine sen
sibility inwardly.
(B153.)
What is
being
said here?
What,
in
particular,
is it to "determine" sensi
bility,
and what could it be to do so
"inwardly"?
(A
phrase
much like it
occurs in the last sentence of Section
24.)
If we overlook the talk of the
understanding
as a
faculty
of mind
(but
under the title of
imagination) acting upon
the
passive subject
considered
as the
object
of inner
sense,
or rather render this in a more
acceptable
way,
we
get
the
following.
Outer
objects
can be said to determine sensi
bility by causing
us to have
sensory experiences
with
particular
content?
we sense these
objects
not
merely
as
objects
in
space
but as this
object
in that
particular place, having
these or those determinate sensible
qual
ities. Kant's
suggestion
is that while the
self,
or
understanding,
can be
said to determine
sensibility,
it does not do it as an
object does,
but instead
as a sort of
necessary
condition of there
being
inner intuitions at all.
Rather than
making
an inner intuition into a
representation
of a
particu
lar,
individual
self,
what the
"principle
of the
understanding,"
i.e. the
unity
of
apperception,
does is
provide
for a
given representation's being
used as a
representation
of a
self,
that
is, being
taken as a state of a
conscious
subject.
Kant has a
very important point here;
what he is
doing
is
challenging
the
assumption
that we are
immediately
aware of our
inner states as inner
states,
that
is,
that these states
simply present
themselves to our awareness as inner
states,
or
modes of
thought.
His
claim is that to see them as such we have to
represent
them as states of
a conscious
subject,
or
self,
and for this we need to invoke the
general
concept
of a self as this is set out
by
the
principle
of
apperception.
This
helps
us to understand the
general
statement of the resolution of
the
paradox
towards the end of Section 24:
How the T that I think can be distinct from the T that intuits itself
(for
I
can
represent
other modes of intuition as at least
possible),
and
yet,
as
being
the same
subject,
can be identical with the
latter;
and
how, therefore,
I can
say: "I,
as
intelligence
and
thinking subject,
know
myself
as an
object
that is
thought,
insofar as I am
given
to
myself beyond
what is in
intuition,
and
yet
know
myself,
like other
phenomena, only
as I
appear
to
myself,
not
as I am to the
understanding"?these
are
questions
that raise no
greater
or less
difficulty
than how I can be an
object
to
myself
at
all,
and more
particularly,
an
object
of intuition and of inner
perceptions. (B155,
altered
in accordance with the Akademie
edition.)
The T that I
think,
the T as
intelligence
and
thinking subject,
is of course
the T of
apperception,
which as the
pure concept
of a
thinking thing
in
general
is over and above what is
given
in
intuition;
it is nevertheless
represented
in inner intuition
precisely
because it is the
general
condition
of
any
intuition's
being inner,
i.e.
any
perception
or state of
mind,
what
ever its
content,
being
taken as a conscious state or
experience.
We have
in this not
only
a resolution of the
paradox
of
self-knowledge
but an
answer to the
problem
raised
by
Pistorius
(which
it was
perhaps
the main
aim of Section 24?after the stars?to
provide):
that Kant makes the self
to be
nothing
but
appearance,
and in so
doing
leaves
nothing
to which
appearances may appear.
For insofar as the self cannot be
given
in intui
tion but is instead
captured by
the
principle
of
apperception,
it exists as
more than
appearance;
but it is nevertheless that which
appears
in inner
intuition,
in the sense that the
principle
of
apperception provides
the
condition of
seeing
a
representation
as an inner state.
If Section 24 stressed that
apperception
as well as inner intuition is
necessary
for
self-knowledge,
Section 25 stresses the reverse. "On the
other
hand,"
Kant
begins
Section 25
by saying,
in the transcendental
synthesis
of the manifold of
representations
in
gen
eral,
and therefore in the
synthetic original unity
of
apperception,
I am
conscious of
myself,
not as I
appear
to
myself,
nor as I am in
myself,
but
only
that I am. This
representation
is a
thought,
not an intuition...the
consciousness of self is thus
very
far from
being
a
knowledge
of the
self,
notwithstanding
all the
categories
which constitute the
thought
of an
object
in
general through
combination of the manifold in one
apperception.
(B157
8.)
This distinction is the one drawn in the First Note to the
Refutation,
quoted
above on
p. 14;
it
plays
an
especially important
role in the
Paralogisms.
Let me
quote
the
opening "general
remark" in the B edition
Paralogisms, just
for an
example:
I do not know an
object through my merely thinking,
but
only through my
determining
a
given
intuition with
respect
to the
unity
of
consciousness,
in which all
thinking consists,
can I ever know an
object. Consequently,
I
do not know
myself through being
conscious of
myself
as
thinking,
but
only
when I am conscious of the intuition of
myself
as determined with
respect
to the function of
thought. (B406, slightly
altered.)
And towards the end of the B
Paralogisms
he has this to
say:
Thought,
taken
by itself,
is
merely
the
logical function,
and so
pure spon
taneity,
of combination of the manifold of a
merely possible intuition;
it
does not exhibit the
subject
of consciousness as
appearance,
and this because
it takes no account whatsoever of the mode
[Art]
of
intuition,
whether it
be sensible or intellectual.... For the
categories
are those functions of
thought
(of
judgment)
as
already applied
to our sensible
intuition,
such intuition
being required
if I wish to know
myself.
Now if I would be conscious of
myself merely
as
thinking,
and I set aside how it is that
my
own self
[mein
eigenes
Selbst]
is
given
in
intuition,
the T think'
(but
not insofar as I
think)
will be mere
appearance
to
me;
in the consciousness of
myself
in mere
thought
I am the
being itself, although through
this
nothing
of
myself
is
thereby given
for
thought. (B428-9, slightly
altered.)
This distinction is invoked at
many
places
in the
Paralogisms,
and is
indeed connected with what Kant identifies as the
principal
mistake of
the "Rational
Psychologist"
(the quarry
of the
Paralogisms); seeking
to
QUARTERLY
derive the
substantiality, simplicity,
and so
forth,
of the self from the
mere
concept
of a
thinking thing,
and
yet dimly
aware that intuition is
required
for
genuine knowledge
of
anything,
as
opposed
to mere
thought
of
it,
the Rational
Psychologist goes wrong:
From all this it is evident that rational
psychology
owes its
origin simply
to
misunderstanding.
The
unity
of
consciousness,
which underlies the
categories,
is here mistaken for an intuition of the
subject
as
object,
and
the
category
of substance is then
applied
to it. But this
unity
is
only unity
in
thought, by
which alone no
object
is
given,
and to
which, therefore,
the
category
of
substance,
which
always presupposes
a
given intuition,
cannot
be
applied. Consequently,
this
subject
cannot be known.
(B421-2.)
This
point,
that for
genuine self-knowledge
I need to have
intuitions,
is
absolutely
crucial for the
argument
of Section
25, although
it is discussed
most
fully
in the
Paralogisms.
As Kant
says
at the outset of Section
25,
in the
part quoted above,
and
as he also notes in the
Paralogisms,24
the
only
sense in which I
get
knowl
edge
of
my
own existence from
pure apperception
is that I know that
something
exists which is the
subject
of
my
conscious states. I don't know
the first
thing
about its
nature;
I don't
know,
for
example,
whether
thought
or consciousness are essential to
it,
or whether it is
by
its nature
material,
or
immaterial,
or some third kind of
thing.
Most
important,
I can't see
what it would be for it to exist as an individual
thing,
with a determinate
spatiotemporal
location and
history.
But if
apperception
does not
yield
an intuition of the
self,
and if inner intuitions do not
give
the self as an
object?Kant being
in full
agreement
with Hume on this score?then
what are the intuitions to which the
concept
of the self must be
applied
if
genuine self-knowledge
is to be
possible?
Or to
put
it another
way?how
does the formal
conception
of the
self,
which in itself has no connection
with
anything
in
space
and
time,
come to
represent
an
empirical
self
with a determinate
position
in
space
and time?
The
answer,
although
very
much
compressed,
is found in the remainder
of Section
25;
it is
here,
I
maintain,
that we find the actual
argument
of
the second
step
of the Deduction.25 It runs:
Just as for
knowledge
of an
object
distinct from me I
require,
besides the
thought
of an
object
in
general
(in
the
category),
an intuition
by
which I
determine that
general concept,
so for
knowledge
of
myself
I
require,
besides
the
consciousness,
that
is,
besides the
thought
of
myself,
an intuition of the
manifold in
me,
by
which I determine this
thought.
I exist as an
intelligence
which is conscious
solely
of its
power
of
combination;
but in
respect
of the
manifold which it has to combine I am
subjected
to a
limiting
condition
(entitled
inner
sense), namely,
that this combination can be made intuitable
only according
to relations of
time,
which lie
entirely
outside the
concepts
of
understanding, strictly regarded.
Such an
intelligence, therefore,
can
know itself
only
as it
appears
to itself in
respect
of an intuition which is
not intellectual and cannot be
given by
the
understanding itself,
not as it
would know itself if its intuition were
intellectual.
(B158-9.)
Here
'determining
the
thought'
of
myself
is
analogous
to what it was in
the case of
objects:
it involves
tying
the
general concept
of the self down
to a
particular individual?myself. And,
Kant is
saying,
to
represent
myself
as this individual
thinking thing,
as
opposed
to
conceiving
of
a
thinking thing generally,
I
represent myself
as the
thinking thing having
this
particular
manifold of
intuition,
that
is,
as the
subject
of this
(or
these)
individual conscious
state(s).
The
suggestion
that it is
by
a sort of inner ostensi?n of
representational
states that we
pin
down the individual
identity
of the self can seem
suspiciously
close to the idea that the
identity
of the self is
simply given
in inner
intuition,
the view of
self-knowledge
which Kant
rejects
in Sec
tion 24. There is an
important
difference between
them, however,
one
which can be summed
up by
notion that for Kant the intuitions concerned
need not
be,
and in
general
will not
be,
inner intuitions. On the view
Kant
rejects,
the
requisite
intuitions must be
essentially
inner
intuitions,
in the sense that
they
must
simply present
themselves as
thoughts
or
inner
states,
and that
they
have their
own,
primitive
identities which
we
immediately grasp
and from which we can derive the
identity
of the
self that has them. Just as Kant
rejects
the notion that our inner states
are
simply immediately recognized
as
such,
so too he
rejects
the notion
that the individual
identity
of these states is a brute datum somehow
given
to us. This is a shrewd
insight,
for it is no less
easy
to think that
we can individuate mental states
sheerly by
our awareness of them than
it is to think that some
immediately
discernible
(indeed, impossible
to
overlook)
feature of them
gives
them out as
thoughts
or conscious
states,
and these natural
misapprehensions conspire
to hide the
problems
involved in
coming up
with a
fully developed
account of
self-knowledge
which
respects
the strictures Hume
rightly placed
on such an account.
The
key phrase
in the
quotation above,
which hints at the account
Kant will
provide,
is the one in which Kant talks of
"making
this combi
nation intuitable."
By
"this combination" he means the unification of
diverse
representations
(intuitions)
into a
single complex
one,
as in an
empirical judgment.
The
categories
are,
of
course,
the most
general
means
of such
unification,
and the
principle
of
apperception
itself is the most
fundamental
expression
of this
unity.
(The
allusion to "an
intelligence
which is conscious
solely
of its
power
of combination" is thus a reference
to the formal notion of a conscious
subject
as defined
by
the
principle
of
apperception.)
Now what can Kant have in mind when he talks of
making
such combination intuitable?
Evidently,
he means that we can be aware of the combination of the
manifold of
representations by being
aware of its
outcome,
i.e. the
empir
ical
judgments
which are the
products
of the combination. These would
involve the
application
of the
categories
to
objects
of sensible
experience,
i.e.
objects
in
space
and
time,
which are the
objects given
to us in intuition.
This
reading
is confirmed
by
the footnote to this
passage (B158-9n.),
where Kant
argues
that while I cannot
represent
the
activity
or
spon
taneity
of the
understanding,
in virtue of which "I entitle
myself
an
QUARTERLY
intelligence," simply
as
such,
I can
represent
it
indirectly,
as it is reflected
in the determinate
products
of this
activity,
viz. the
particular empirical
judgments
I make. The
categories,
as the
pure concepts
of the understand
ing,
in their turn
express
the
unity
of the
understanding itself,
as this
is
captured by
the
principle
of
apperception.
In this
way,
I can link
up
the
principle
of
apperception
with a
given
manifold of intuition
by
applying concepts
to that
manifold,
that
is, by making judgments
about
objects
in
space
and time on the basis of
my sensory experiences.
This
being
so,
those
experiences
can now be
represented
as
mine,
i.e. as states
of a conscious
subject, irrespective
of their
particular content?they
can,
in
short,
serve as inner intuitions.
I want to
highlight
two
points
about this account of
self-knowledge.
The first is that the manifold of intuition that is
said,
both here and in
the
Paralogisms,
to be
required
for
self-knowledge
is not
necessarily
a
manifold of inner intuitions from the outset. This
might
best be
put by
saying
that inner intuitions are not a
separate species
of intuition from
outer
ones;
outer
intuitions,
which
purport
to
represent objects
outside
us in
space,
can serve as inner intuitions when this
representative purport
is overlooked for the moment and the intuitions are considered
simply
as
representations,
states of mind. When Kant
says
in the First Note to
the Refutation that "...inner
experience
is itself
possible only mediately,
and
only through
outer
experience." (B277),26
it is this
point
he is
getting
at,
this and the related one that we are able to think of ourselves as
having
a determinate existence in time
only through
our
representing
our inner states as
being
so
located,
which in turn
requires
that we
place
them in the
single objective spatiotemporal
order. To
represent
the indi
vidual
identity
of our inner
states, then,
we need to take at least some
of them to be
genuinely
of outer
objects,
as was
argued
in the
Refutation;
to see them as inner
states,
we need to connect them
up
with the
principle
of
apperception,
and it is a condition of
doing
this that the
categories
applied
to the
representational
content of these states.
The
second,
and for the
purposes
of the overall
argument
of the Deduc
tion more
important point
is that it is a result of this account that one
cannot so much as think of oneself as
(let
alone know oneself to
be)
a
thinking thing
or self without
having
the determinate
self-knowledge
which
provides
the basis for the
argument
of the Refutation of Idealism.
Whereas the
general concept
of a
thinking thing
itself does not
presuppose
such
self-knowledge,
and
perhaps
even the
possession
ofthat
concept
does
not,
the
application
of the
concept
to one's individual self?the
thought
of oneself as a
thinking thing?does.
We thus have our answer to the Cartesian
skeptic's proposed
way
around the Refutation. And we also
have,
what is no less
important,
the
conclusion of the Deduction?the
objective validity
of the
categories.
Anyone
committed to the claim that we have
knowledge
of ourselves
as
individual
subjects
of conscious states?and all
parties
to the
dispute
are
committed to this?is
thereby
committed to the claim that the
concepts
of the
understanding actually
have
application
to the
objects
of
sensory
experience,
for
only
on such a
supposition
is
self-knowledge possible.
IV
My
aim in this
paper
was to
lay
out the
argument
of the Deduction in
B so as to make
apparent
the basic
philosophical strategy
behind the
details of the text. This I
hope
I have done. It is not
part
of
my present
purpose
to evaluate the
argument
from
any
of the several
points
of view
from which it
might
be
judged.
I do
want, however,
to make a
couple
of
observations about the
argument, mainly
in
partial support
of
my
interpretation
but also
perhaps
as an aid in
starting
to think about the
cogency
of the
argument
itself.
As I've
presented it,
the
argument
of the Deduction works as
part
of
an internal refutation of Cartesian
skepticism.
(Recall
that we have
understood Cartesian
skepticism broadly,
so that it
might
be taken to
provide
the core of the
position
Kant calls "transcendental
realism,"
which
he takes to be the main
antagonist
to his own transcendental idealism
and which he associates with the names of such diverse
figures
as
Leibniz,
Wolff, Descartes, Berkeley,
and
Newton.)27
This has its
advantages
and
its
disadvantages.
On the
plus side,
the fact that Kant can
help
himself
to
premisses supplied by
his
opponents
obviates the need for him to
argue
for them. Kant has been
criticized,
for
example,
for not
seeing
the need
to establish that self-consciousness is a
necessary
condition of conscious
ness;28
this criticism is based on a
misunderstanding,
as we are now in
a
position
to see. His
targets
are all committed to this
claim,
and their
several treatments of
self-knowledge
are based on
it;
it would have been
otiose of Kant to
argue
for it in this context. Kant does
not, therefore,
need to defend the
conception
of self-consciousness and its relation to
conscious
experience
on which his
anti-skeptical argument
is
based,
nor
need he back
up any speculations
about
psychological
mechanisms
involved in
cognition;
these latter
speculations
do not
play
a real role in
his
argument,
as we have
seen,
but to the extent that Kant
appeals
to
them he has the sanction of the
practice
of his
targets,
most
notably
Wolff, Crusius,
and
Tetens,
if not as to details then at least as to
general
strategy.
It seems to me that a number of the other
gaps
which critics
have found in his
arguments
can be
explained
in the same
way.
On the minus
side,
the
argument gains convincing
force at the
expense
of full
generality.
It is
keyed directly
to certain features
peculiar
to Carte
sian
skepticism, particularly
the
strong
claim about
self-knowledge
which
is one of the view's main commitments. There is thus no
hope,
if we follow
my
interpretation
of the
argument,
of
finding
in Kant the resources for
once-and-for-all, starting-from-scratch
refutation of
skepticism
in
gen
eral. This is not too bad a
result,
since as far as I know there is no
interpretation
of Kant's
arguments
on which he
might
have the reason
able
hope
of
proving,
on the basis of
entirely
uncontroversial
premisses,
QUARTERLY
that there are external
objects.
I don't think Kant would be fazed
by this,
since I don't think he tried to
show,
and he
certainly
didn't succeed in
showing,
that there is some
general requirement
that we believe that
there are external
objects, say
as a condition of our
having experience.
It is common in the literature to take so-called 'transcendental
arguments'
to have
something
like this as their
aim,
and it is almost
equally commonly
shown that such
arguments
cannot deliver even this result.
What we have in
Kant, then,
is
nothing
more,
but also
nothing less,
than a reasonable claim to have
provided
an
internal refutation of the
most well-worked out version of
skepticism
available at the
time,
as this
figured
in a set of
positive philosophical
views which constituted the
going
alternatives in the
eighteenth century.
Insofar as the views of
Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley
and Hume retain their interest
today,
so
far will Kant's
arguments
maintain their claim on our attention.29
University of
Southern
California
Received
February 24,1984
NOTES
1. Kant's
Critique of
Pure
Reason,
tr. N.
Kemp
Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1929),
Bxxxix
n. All
quotations
are taken from this
edition,
in some cases with
slight
alterations.
2. See B274. In
calling
this view Cartesian
skepticism
I do not mean to
imply
that
Descartes
is,
in the
end,
a
skeptic,
or that this view is
unique
to Descartes. It was also
accepted by Leibniz,
and
following him,
Wolff. For
Leibniz,
see M.
Furth, "Monadology,"
in Leibniz: A Collection
of
Critical
Essays,
ed. H. Frankfurt
(Garden
City,
NY:
Doubleday,
1972), especially
sections
1-3;
for Wolffs "consistent
dream-theory"
see L. W.
Beck, Early
German
Philosophy (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press, 1969), pp.
266-71.
3. See D.
Henrich,
"The Proof-Structure of Kant's B
Deduction,"
Review
of Metaphysics
22
(1969):
640-59. For
leading
earlier
interpretations
see N.
Kemp Smith,
A
Commentary
to Kant's
Critique of
Pure Reason
(London:
Macmillan, 1918), pp. 284-91;
H. J.
Paton,
Kant's
Metaphysic of Experience
(London:
Allen &
Unwin, 1936),
Vol.
I, pp.
498-546
(esp.
p. 501);
H. de
Vleeschauwer,
La d?duction transcendentale dans l'oeuvre de Kant (Paris:
Librairie Ernest
Leroux, 1937),
Vol.
3, pp. 1-41,
85-274
(esp. pp. 24-8, 150-56, 231-5);
E.
Adickes,
ed. Kant's Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (Berlin:
Mayer
&
Muller, 1889), pp.
139n.
140n., p.
149n. Most recent commentaries don't make
any explicit
textual claims about
the structure of
argument
in the
Deduction;
an
exception
is R.
Wolff,
Kant's
Theory of
Mental
Activity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press, 1963), pp.
183-202. Wolff
seems to
suggest
that the B Deduction is a
single argument (p. 183),
but his account
slides over the difficult textual
problems
which
give
rise to the standard two-or-more
deductions view of the B Deduction. See
pp.
641-5 of Henrich's
paper
for his criticism of
such views.
4. In Leibniz's and Wolffs
terminology,
this is to
give
a real definition of the
categories,
i.e. one that shows that a
concept
has actual instances. See Bxxvi
n.,
A242-3 and
A242n.,
A243-4/B301-2 and B302n. For a
helpful
discussion see L. W.
Beck, "Analytic
and
Synthetic
Judgments
before Kant" in his
Essays
on Kant and Hume (New Haven: Yale
University
Press, 1978).
5. See Sections 13 and 14 of the Deduction
(as numbered in
B): A84-94/B116-29,
and
especially
A89-91/B122-3.
6. For the differences between the two sorts of
skepticism
see
Margaret Wilson,
"On
Kant and the Refutation of
Subjectivism,"
in L. W.
Beck,
ed.
Proceedings of
the Third
International Kant
Congress
(Dordrecht:
D.
Reidel, 1972), pp.
597-606. See Kant's remark
on Hume's views at
B127,
and
compare
A764-6/B792-4.
7.
See, e.g.,
Leibniz's New
Essays concerning
Human
Understanding,
tr. P. Remnant
and J. Bennett
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Preface, p.
51 and
II.2,
pp.
110-11. For a similar claim in Descartes see the Third
Meditation,
Haldane and
Ross,
trs. and eds. The
Philosophical
Works
of
Descartes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1911),
Vol.
I, p.
165
[Adam
&
Tannery,
Vol.
IX, p. 35].
For more references and
for discussion see Robert
McRae,
"Innate Ideas" in R. J.
Butler,
ed. Cartesian Studies
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), esp. pp. 33-42,
and R.
McRae,
Leibniz:
Perception, Apperception,
and
Thought
(Toronto: University
of Toronto
Press, 1976), pp.
93-7. Note that this material
tends to undercut Bennett's claim that Descartes and Leibniz do not make 'intellectual
capacity'
a
requirement
for self-consciousness.
(Bennett,
Kant's Dialectic
(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 32-4.)
8. See in
particular
Descartes's
reply
to
Hobbes,
HR
II, 64;
AT
VII,
175-6.
(Note
that in
this
passage
Haldane and Ross
misleadingly
translate the same
phrase
("ratio communis")
using
two different ones
("common
nature" and "common
term")).
For Kant's claim that
the
principle
of
apperception's
T think' is the Cartesian
one,
see
B422n., A347/B405,
A354-5;
and also
A342-3/B400-1, A346/B404, A370, B418-19, B428-30,
B157n.
9. See
A67-9/B92-4, A77-9/B102-5,
B133 and B133n.
10. See B131 in addition to the references in note 9 above.
11. A number of commentators have made this
claim;
two
among them, widely separated
in
time,
are Edward
Caird,
The Critical
Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant
(Glasgow:
James
Maclehose &
Sons, 1889),
Vol.
I, p. 427,
and Paul
Guyer,
"Kant on
Apperception
and A
Priori
Synthesis,"
American
Philosophical Quarterly,
vol. 17
(1980), pp.
208-9.
12.
See, e.g.,
J.
Bennett,
Kant's
Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966),
p. 103,
and J.
Hartnack,
"B132 Revisited" in
Beck, Proceedings of
the Third International
Kant
Congress, pp.
288-94. In "Kant on
Apperception
and A Priori
Synthesis" (p.
209)
Guyer
makes the same
mistake, saying
that the
principle
amounts to the claim that "...I
cannot have a
representation
which I cannot
recognize
as
my own,"
or "...whatever is to
count as a
representation
at all must be fit for
self-ascription." Curiously,
he
goes
on to
say
that the
principle,
read this
way,
is
synthetic;
but he
gives
no reason for
thinking
it
anything
other than an
analytic (partial) specification
of the notion of a
representation.
Much of the criticism
Guyer gives
of Kant's views on
apperception
is vitiated
by
the
recognition
that
they
are based
on this mistaken
interpretation.
13. What Kant calls intuitions thus have some of the features of Leibniz's
petites percep
tions;
recall Leibniz's claim that the
only
conscious
perceptions
are the ones that can be
self-ascribed. See
Leibniz,
New
Essays, Preface, pp. 55-8;
II.1.14 and
15, pp. 115-17;
II.9.1
and
4, pp. 134,
161-2.
Compare
Kant's letter to Herz of 26
May 1789,
in S.
Zweig,
tr. and
ed. Kant:
Philosophical Correspondence
1759-99
(Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press,
1967), pp.
153-4
[Akademie
edition vol.
11, pp. 51-2].
14. Paul
Guyer,
in his review of Dieter Henrich's Identit?t und
Objektivit?t,
Journal
of
Philosophy
76
(1979), p. 164,
takes this to be the
question
which the
principle
of
appercep
tion is formulated to answer. In addition to what I
say
about this
suggestion
in the text
QUARTERLY
of
my paper,
consider how odd the
suggestion
is that this is a
problem
which is
weighty
enough (supposing
that there is a
problem
here at
all)
to motivate the
very strong
conclu
sions of the Deduction.
15. P. F. Strawson makes this
point
in The Bounds
of
Sense
(London: Methuen, 1966),
pp.
164-5.
16.
They hold,
he
points out,
for
any judging beings
who have sensible
intuitions,
whether
like or unlike ours. See
B148, B150-1, B153-5,
and B 163.
17. Hence I
disagree
with
Bennett,
Kant's
Analytic, pp.
117-25. Kant does not talk at all
about
memory,
or the
ability
to make
judgments
about
past experience,
in the
Deduction;
and more
important,
he
explicitly denies,
as we have
just
seen,
that the
principle
of
apperception
has
any temporal
content whatsoever.
18. The A Deduction contains a fuller discussion of this
point
than does the
B;
see A104-10.
19. Kant makes this
point
in connection with our
knowledge
of
objects
in Sections
21, 22,
and 23 of the
Deduction,
and in connection with
self-knowledge
in the
Paralogisms.
20.
Cp.
Note 2 to the
Refutation,
B277-8.
21.
B276;
see also Bxl n.
22. Kant's discussions of the
paradox
here is no doubt connected with a
(perhaps
the)
broader concern of Section 24: the
response
to a
problem
raised
by
Pistorius in his 1784
review of the
Prolegomena.
Erdmann
quotes
Pistorius as
writing
that if our inner
represen
tations {innere
Vorstellungen) give
us not
things
in themselves but
only appearances,
then "there will be
nothing
but illusion
(Schein),
and
nothing
remains to which
anything
appears."
(B. Erdmann,
Kant's Kriticismus in der ersten und in der zweiten
Auflage
der
Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (Leipzig: Leopold Voss, 1878), p.
107.
Kemp
Smith discusses
the matter
briefly
in his
Commentary, p.
323.
23. Kant no doubt has in mind Tetens's
Philosophische
Versuch ?ber die menschliche
Natur und ihre
Entwicklung (1777-8);
see
Beck, Early
German
Philosophy, pp. 412-25,
esp.
419-20.
24. See
A346/B404, A400-1, B412-1, B412-13,
and
especially
B420 and B422n.
25.1 am aware that Kant
presents
the second
step
of the Deduction in Section
26;
see
Henrich's account in "The Proof-Structure of Kant's Transcendental
Deduction," pp.
645-6.
His
presentation
of the
argument
there
is, however,
shot
through
with the bad
psychology
we've been
trying
to see
beyond.
Whatever force there is in that
argument, therefore,
derives from the
arguments
of Sections 24 and 25 as I've
presented them,
Section 26
being
an
abstract, psychologized compendium
of them.
26. See also the last sentence of the introduction to the
Refutation, B275;
the last sentence
of the
Proof, B276;
the footnote to the First
Note, B276-7n.;
and the footnote to the Preface
in
B,
Bxxxix-xli n.
27.
See, e.g., A26-9/B42-4, B69-71, A368-78,
and A491-2/B519-21 on transcendental
realism,
and A388-9 and A739-69/B767-97
(esp.
from A758/B786 on)
on the value of
skepticism
in
curbing
the claims of rationalism. A
very helpful
discussion of these matters
is L. W.
Beck,
"Kant's
Strategy,"
in T. Penelhum and J.
Macintosh,
eds. The First
Critique
(Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth
Publishing Co., 1969), pp.
4-17.
28.
See, e.g. Guyer,
"Kant on
Apperception
and A Priori
Synthesis," pp.
209-211.
29. A number of different versions of this
paper
were read to
colloquia
at the
University
of California at
Berkeley,
UC Santa
Barbara,
UC San
Diego,
the
University
of
Michigan,
Northwestern
University,
Cornell
University,
the
University
of Massachusetts at
Amherst,
Princeton
University
and Columbia
University.
I received
many helpful
criti
cisms from these
sessions;
I have
especially
to thank
Henry Allison,
Isaac
Levi,
Charles
Parsons,
Sam
Scheffler,
Hubert
Schwyzer,
and Allen Wood.
Colleagues
and friends read
various versions and offered valuable
comments;
I am most
grateful
to
Tyler B?rge,
Joshua
Cohen,
Burton
Dreben,
Michael
Friedman,
Dieter
Henrich,
David
Hills,
Peter
Hylton, Hilary Putnam,
John
Rawls, Barry Stroud,
and
Margaret
Wilson.

University of Illinois Press North American Philosophical Publications

Diunggah oleh

Informasi Dokumen

Deskripsi Asli:

Judul Asli

Hak Cipta

Format Tersedia

Bagikan dokumen Ini

Bagikan atau Tanam Dokumen

Opsi Berbagi

Apakah menurut Anda dokumen ini bermanfaat?

Apakah konten ini tidak pantas?

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

University of Illinois Press North American Philosophical Publications

Diunggah oleh

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

North American Philosophical Publications

Skepticism and Kant's B Deduction

Anda mungkin juga menyukai