Abstract
This paper seeks to show how Kant’s epistemological conception of the transcendental faculties of cognition relates to his ontological conception of the transcendental distinction between mind-dependent, ideal appearances (viz., empirical objects) and mind-independent, transcendentally real things in themselves, as they relate to the self. I engage the metaphysical foundations of Kant’s account of self-consciousness and how this account relates to the self as an empirically perceivable and conceptualizable object of observation. This paper also connects Kant’s work in the Transcendental Deduction on the transcendental unity of apperception with Kant’s work on “clear” and “obscure” representations.
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Notes
I do not plan to adjudicate the “two aspects” vs. “two worlds” reading, however. I have already done this in previous publications, such as Erkan 2021. I highly recommend Jauernig (2021) for a comprehensive defence of what is a “many objects” version of the “two worlds” reading that, in my opinion, is the correct textualist reading of Kant’s transcendental distinction as an ontological distinction between appearances and things in themselves. With the exception of the first Critique, citations to Kant’s works are made by citing the volume and page numbers of Kant, I. (1902–). Kants Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vols 1–29. Berlin: De Gruyter. References to the Critique of Pure Reason use the pagination of the original first [A] and second [B] editions, with translations to the Critique of Pure Reason taken from Kant, I. (1991–). The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Ed. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Translations of Kant’s Reflexionen are my own. Translations of Kant’s Duisburg Nachlass follow those found in Laywine (2020). I follow the standard abbreviation system of Kant’s texts.
Apart from God who, if he exists, exists at a level of his own, outside of the world.
See Jauernig (2021: 38) for a further delineation of these metaphysical “levels”, where appearances are identified with the intentional objects of perceptual experience, i.e. the objects that comprise the mind-dependent “register”/”level” of reality. These appearances exist solely “in” us, meaning they exist “in our representations”, wherein their “ontological ingredients” and “modes of being” presuppose and are conditioned by the human mind. On the other hand, things in themselves are identified with mind-independent existents. Commentators like Blézy (2021) have argued that this “level”-based account eludes how Kant arrives at and justifies this tiered ontology. However, this “tiered” ontological rendering is no longer problematic if we understand that we ought to think of it instrumentally, i.e., as instrumentally positing a view from which “the human mind does not have enough creative power to bring about an entire world of objects”; as Kant notes, this “to be found in the theoretical reason of a divine cognizer, or “intellectual intuition” (B72), and is something barely conceivable or cognizable by us humans. As Hanna (2022: 152) notes, “such a being would know ‘things-in-themselves’ or objective ‘noumena,’ that is, supersensible Really Real” (cf. A42–9/B59–72, B306–7).
Outer sense is the term used to describe the manifold of “raw data” that is not yet taken up by a perceiver. This “taking up” involves inner sense. However, inner sense does not provide the distinctive manifold by its own accord. Rather, inner sense adopts the manifold of outer sense and cognizes it (B67). The “matter” [Stoff] of inner sense thus consists of representations of outer sense (BXXXIX n., B67). As Yibin Liang (2017: 247) notes, without “the reference to the self, a representation of inner sense would be indistinguishable from one of outer sense. The synthetical acts of understanding operate on the raw sense data that outer sense provides and bring them into synthetical unity in accordance with categories. Over the course of this operation, inner sense is affected by those acts (7:161; B153–4) and through this self-affection the subject becomes perceptually aware of its own various representational states (B68, 64, 153, 157; 15:85). Especially, inner sense involves a “re-appropriation” of the contents of outer representations—that is, it contains the empirical matter of the subject’s first-order object-related representations.”
As far as this paper is concerned, unless stated otherwise “appearance(s)” should be taken as referring to outer appearances. Inner appearances will be delineated as inner appearances throughout.
Kant mainly uses Vorstellung to refer to what does the representing, that is, the content-bearing vehicle. Consider, for instance, a visual episode that represents an apple or a dream that represents a dragon. The content-bearing vehicle would here be the visual episode or the dream. However, Jauernig (2021: 32) points us to an important ambiguity: the content-bearing mental vehicle could be conceived of either as some kind of mental “item” in our mind that represents a certain content, e.g., the mental image of an apple or dragon, or as an act of representing a certain content, e.g. the act of perceiving an apple or the act of dreaming a dragon. According to Jauernig (2021: 34), Kant wavers between the two. Note that the term Vortsellung can also be employed to refer to the content that is represented in a certain mental state or conception (e.g., an apple or a dragon). When Kant says “appearances are only representations” (B126), Jauernig argues that Kant is using the term in the second sense and means to be referring to the intentional objects which are immanent to our mental states and conceptions, not to these mental states or conceptions themselves. This is how I also take the term: as a representation-immanent way that appearances are disclosed to us in experience.
Illusions, hallucinations, and dreams, however, are not only transcendentally ideal but also empirically ideal: they are ideal or mind-dependent with respect to both the transcendental and the empirical level of reality. That is, they do not exist from the point of view of fundamental ontology, as they are not genuine existents but mere pseudo-existents. These intentional objects do not exist from the point of view of fundamental ontology but are still real to some degree, as they “in-exist” in representation and have some realitas or Sachegehalt (Jauernig 2021: 40); they are part of the world, understood as the sum of everything that has reality.
Consider Kant’s remarks at KpV 5:47: “The moral law is in fact a law of causality through freedom and thus of the possibility of supersensible nature, just as the metaphysical law of the events in the world of sense is a law of causality of sensible nature”. Also see B472/A44, where Kant writes that “Thesis. The causality according to laws of nature is not the only one from which the appearances of the world can be altogether derived. To explain them it is still necessary to assume a causality through freedom.” Note that the things that that are acted upon by transcendental causes must be things in themselves and cannot be appearances. As Jauernig (2021: 77) notes, “sensibility is not an appearance but a mind-independent cognitive faculty”.
Kant thus writes: “I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori“ (A11/B25). As we shall see, Kant also uses “transcendental” in ontological contexts, contrasted with “empirical,“ as in “transcendental idealism” versus “empirical idealism” (B25); Kant notes that: “here I make a remark the import of which extends to all of the following considerations, and that I must keep well in view, namely that not every a priori cognition must be called transcendental, but only that by means of which I cognize that and how certain representations (intuitions or concepts) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible (i.e., the possibility of cognition or its use a priori). Hence neither space nor any geometrical determination of it a priori is a transcendental representation, but only the cognition that these representations are not of empirical origin at all and the possibility that they can’ nevertheless be related a priori to objects of experience can be called transcendental” (B80-1/A56).
Commentators have made the case that Kant has a first-order and second-order/higher-order concept of consciousness, but have identified the second-order with transcendental apperception. For Instance, Mohr (1991) argues that apperceptive consciousness is the necessary additional condition where, in addition to the present conditions of representing (R) and state-consciousness (C), first-order consciousness (C1R) becomes second-order consciousness, a ‘consciousness that’ (C 2[C1R]). Allison (1983) argues that while first-order mental can be empirically conscious states, for mental states that to be reflectively conscious states necessarily entails a second-order state, where this condition is transcendental consciousness. Stephenson (2014) equates higher-order consciousness with consciousness of one’s consciousness of objects where “self-consciousness, as second-order consciousness … can be represented as C(C(O)), [and] thus requires not only the concept of a subject but also the concept of an object, since this is also one of the things inside the brackets” (82). These accounts fail to account for the role of the empirical ‘I think’ in licensing empirical self-consciousness qua self-reflective awareness, and fail to distinguish it from the reflexive consciousness of the transcendental, apperceptive ‘I think.’ Schulting (2013) correctly points out that the absence of second-order consciousness does not entail that first-order mental states are necessarily unconscious, as sensation is still necessarily (empirically) consciously apprehended, where first-order consciousness “is the measure of intensity” (163).
Notably, what Kant says of the problematic ‘I think’ does substantiate the claims I will be making about the transcendental ‘I think’. However, a full study of the problematic ‘I think’ necessitates a comprehensive review and undertaking of Kant’s theory of modality. It bears mentioning, however, that at A347/B405 Kant affirms that the problematic ‘I think’ is to be viewed independently of a corresponding “perception of an existence”. And insofar as the ‘I think’ is taken up as a problematic judgment, it does not assert that the predicate < think > is true of some agent or being. Indeed the aspect of the ‘I think’ that is taken up problematically is precisely that which has to do with their being a real agent/being that instantiates the judgment—that is, the problematic ‘I think’ calls into question “whether or not such a thing [as that which thinks] might now exist”, which means that it calls into question there being a real being that instantiates the judgment. Apprehended problematically, the judgment entails that one entertain only the logical possibility of thinking beings. From this mere possibility, one can therein infer specific logical determinations of such thinking beings in accordance with the “mere [logical] functions” of thinking, i.e., the pure concepts of the understanding (B407). Notably, Kant clarifies that the problematic use of the “I think” does not involve the existence or even just the real possibility of a thinking being, but merely logical possibility; for any claim to existence or real possibility would already require an “indeterminate empirical intuition,” as expressed in the “I think” taken up as an “empirical proposition” (viz. the empirical ‘I think’; B422n). Hence, insofar as the problematic ‘I think’ is concerned, the term ‘I’ should be understood to denote only an object of mere thought, i.e. a mere thought-entity, or that which Kant terms as an ens rationis—an “empty concept without [a] (real) object” (A292/B348). See: Kraus 2020: 136, 139-143.
The common mark that is represented by the transcendental ‘I think’ is identical with the “analytical unity of apperception” (B133) because analytical unity is commonly identified with the unity that is brought about through a concept that represents “[t]hat which is common to several”, i.e., a conceptus communis (B133-B134n, A79/B105).
Indeed, one can typologize the analytic unity of apperception by conceiving of it as conceptually containing the ‘I’ that accompanies a series of psychological-representational episodes, where any subject of an “I think X” is equivalent to that of an “I think Y”, which is equivalent to that of any “I think Z”. This unity requires the synthetic unity of apperception, which can be typologized as the “I think (X + Y + Z)”. It is the transcendental ability for self-awareness that presupposes that these identities—the ‘I’s’ of the “I think X” + “I think Y” + “I think Z” —are all the same. If I did not have synthetic unity, our identifying various apperceptive moments of our consciousness would not only not be illegitimate but it would also not be possible. Indeed, for Hume’s bundle theory, the one thing that stays the same is the ‘I’ that accompanies different thoughts, and the awareness of that ‘I’ is displayed through those different thoughts. Indeed, Hume (1978 [1738–40]) posed that “the only way I count as encountering a ‘self’ in inner sense is if the bundle of mental states (or some temporal part of it) is itself the self” (Chignell in Gomes and Stephenson 2017: 140). Thus, according to Hume’s bundle theory “I think p” + “I think q” + “I think r” is equivalent to “I think p = I think q = I think r.” Contra Hume, for Kant I am not entitled to identify the “I” that thinks “p” with the “I” that thinks “q” and the “I” that thinks “r” a priori just on the basis of inner empirical. What is that additional thought that gives these processual “I’s” their uniformity? Following Kant, it is not the content of inner awareness. Rather, this identity claim belongs to the analytic unity of apperception. Going beyond the Humean purview, Kant takes up how I, indeed, am the same individual having these different perceptual episode but seeks transcendental, quid juris justification, rather than the quid facti justification of inner sense. As Chignell notes, Kant is no Humean because “in his ontology of the spatial world, the ‘objects’ I cognize are constituted by states as well as the persisting underlying substance in which the states inhere (A182/B224). In other words, what we cognize through outer sense are spatial substances with various states, even if what we are ‘given’ in perception, strictly speaking, are only the states. So it is important to clarify whether inner sense allows us to cognize something over and above a series of mental states too, for Kant, even if that something isn’t ‘given’, strictly speaking, in the precise content of inner awareness” (Chignell in Gomes and Stephenson 2017: 140).
Kant takes the quid juris/quid facti distinction as an analogy for the difference between his own transcendental deductions of the categories vs. the empirical deductions that Hume and Lock espouse (see: Progress AA, 20: 275 and AA, 18: 5636).
In this sense, take a judgment with the form ‘P is Q’. The predicate term Q is subordinated to the subject term P and this judgment is true if, and only if, whatever is posited to be Q can also be posited to be P. Such a logical determination has nothing to do with whether the concepts involved have any relation to something empirically real.
“Therefore it is only because I can combine the manifold of given representations in one consciousness that it is possible for me to represent the identity of consciousness in these representations itself, i.e., the analytical unity of apperception is possible under the presupposition of some synthetic one” (B133).
See Kraus and Freitag (2020) for a delineation of this view wherein the transcendental ‘I think’ operates at the register of form in line with an expressivist reading of the transcendental ‘I think’. Also see Forgione (2017, 191), who brilliantly points out how, with:
“the notion of transcendental designation, Kant anticipates some of the features of self-reference without identification. The condition of possibility of all judgments relies on the act ‘I think’ and, at this level, the intellectual representation I designates only transcendentally, no conceptual mediation being involved. It is a simple representation bearing no content and solely referring to something in general: ‘its properties [of subject] are entirely abstracted from if it is designated merely through the expression ‘I’, wholly empty of content (which I can apply to every thinking subject)” (A 355). An empty or bare form (A443/B471), I designates, but does not represent.” Also see: Forgione (2019b) for Forgione’s semantic approach to the self-representational apparatus involved in transcendental apperception.
For further on how this relates to Kant’s work on transcendental logic and the principle of non-contradiction, see Schulting 2021.
See Liang 2020: 324-5 for a defense of this account.
Pippin similarly defends an adverbialist reading of Kant; for instance, in Pippin 1982, he notes that Kant denies “…the possibility of some immediacy and givenness in experience at all, whether of the world or of the self. The mind was, Kant argued instead, active in any determinate experience and could not be said ever to apprehend directly a given content, even an idea or impression. This meant that the reflective nature of consciousness had to be put another way. In being aware of objects, say, external objects, of ‘outer sense’” the mind could still be said to be also ‘aware of itself,’ but not because of awareness of inner content or of “a self.” We are manifestly not aware of ideas or impressions of chairs when we are aware of chairs. We are aware of chairs, but we are also taking ourselves to be perceiving chairs, not imagining or remembering them, not perceiving stools or tables, and we are ourselves “holding” the elements of such thinkings together in time, all according to various rules that could not be otherwise if such contents are to be held together in one time (or so Kant argued). We are conscious, in a way, self-consciously, are adverbially self-conscious” (88).
Kant uses “creative” to denote that something is unconditioned; for instance, in describing “creative reason,” Kant notes that it is “[…] in relation to which I direct every empirical use of our reason” (A673/B701).
Throughout the A-Deduction, Kant notes that transcendental apperception is not to be characterized as some independent act of synthesis but, instead, as the “original and transcendental condition” of the synthesis of recognition (A106). As Kraus (2020: 88) notes, this apperceptive act results in the “original-synthetic unity of apperception” (B133n, B135, B136, B150, B167; Anth, 7:134n), which is also identified as the “transcendental unity of self-consciousness” (B132) or as the “pure, original, and unchanging consciousness” of oneself (A107, A117n).
Following Ameriks, insofar as it enjoys an a priori status, the transcendental “I think” has a unique “collective function,” wherein the “same ‘I’ is distributively involved in the set:
(E) I think that x, I think that y, I think that z, etc…. ;
nevertheless, (E) is not the same as:
(T) I think that (I think that x, I think that y, I think that z, etc….). The difference here is not merely that (T) is more complex than any part of (E) or even the whole set (E). There are at least two extra features of (T) that are noteworthy. The first is that it implicitly includes the claim (which may or may not be a correct claim) that all the uses of “I” within it are coreferential; that is, I believe Kant understands (T) to include the claim that the I which thinks that x, is the same as the I which thinks that y, and so on, as well as the thought that this is the very the same I that thinks that I think that x, and so forth. A second, and ll10re controversial point is that, given the a priori status of transcendental apperception, it seems that Kant understands the possibility of (T) to be a truth condition of the components of (E).“ (Ameriks 2007, 57).
I am indebted to an anonymous referee for encouraging further engagement with Ameriks (2007) and Carl (1997) on the points rehearsed in this section of my manuscript.
Carl (1997, 158) thus notes that: “…it is the logical I which is the bearer and ground of all the judgments that deal with everything that may possibly be given to us. This I is not a particular person. Neither is it a mental entity which we could grasp through introspection. It only serves to separate those mental self-ascriptions which relate to judgments of the understanding from those which are determined by what is given to me and which refer to circumstances independent of myself. The former self-ascriptions entail a specific view of myself in my capacity as logical I. This is due to the fact that they are ascribed from a first-person perspective. They make me view myself as a referent of self-ascriptions of the former kind, as a referent who is ‘free and self-active in such a way that this process is determined by nothing but myself (R: 5441). Thus the logical I is nothing else than the referent of mental self-ascriptions, which are connected with the act of judging with regard to representations that are given. But this referent is not a special entity, it rather expresses a special way of viewing entities in the context at hand, i.e. in the context of human beings or persons, if they are understood as the referent of a particular class of mental self-ascriptions. In short: the logical I does not stand for particular entities, but for a particular class of predicates. It is this conception of the logical I that is important in the context of Kant’s notion of apperception. He explains it in this way: it is that kind of ‘self-consciousness which brings about the representation of the “I think” which must be capable of accompanying all the other representations’ (B: 132). Accordingly the apperception is the faculty to bring about the representation of the ‘I think’. And this representation refers to the logical I, i.e. the reference point of all those mental self-ascriptions, that express the act of judging one’s given representations. This ‘I’ is called emphatically the ‘subject of thinking’ (AA: 7.134). The apperception as self-consciousness thus is the consciousness of the I as the ‘subject of thinking’, it is the awareness of someone, who is the bearer and the ground of all judgments about his given representations. The apperception is consciousness of someone who displays (genuine) spontaneity in judgments.”
As Kraus (2020: 102) notes, any such account is left with two options to account for the transcendental function of the apperceptive synthesis, i.e. for the unification of representational elements into a single thought in a common consciousness, such that this thought represents an object; it can either opt for a higher-order account or a same-order account. For the higher-order account, the judgment I think that p is understood as a higher-order thought, that is, a thought about the apperceived representation with content p. According to the same-order account, through transcendental apperception “I think” is added to the content p in a same-order thought such that “I think” is part of any first-order judgment about an object. In both cases, transcendentally apperceiving requires the addition of the representational content “I think.” However, if this is correct, then transcendental apperception is unable to play its transcendental role. If transcendental apperception itself exercised its unifying function for a thought ‘p’ by adding the further content “I think “to the thought ‘p,’ then this further content would itself be in need of unification. This would mean that the augmented thought “I think that p” would itself require an additional synthetic activity that would unify the contents “I think” and ‘p’ into a single whole thought. Whether a higher-order or same-order account is proposed, an infinite regress or circularity proffers - if amplified thought I think that p is construed as higher-order thought, the logical subject account runs into infinite regress under the assumption that the higher-order thought must also be conscious. See Kraus 2020: 100–110 for a review of Kraus’ problematization of the logical-content arguments.
This view finds its support in commentators like Kraus, who argues that “the self-consciousness implied in transcendental apperception is not self-representational, but a form of consciousness” (Kraus 2020: 98, emphasis added),
Specifically, sections of the Duisburg Nachlass, such as 17.646.5–1438, for an account of exposition in the construction of a mathematical proof; also see: A99, B162 for how this connects to intuitions of experience.
There is here a deep passage with the first Critique. Insofar as the proof of the general principle of the Analogies of Experience is concerned, Kant denies in R4678 of the Duisburg Nachlass that appearances can be constructed (see: 17.660.27-29) but says in the Analogies of Experience that: “… this cannot be constructed” (A179/B2222). The demonstrative pronoun “this” here refers not to appearances as such but to their ‘existence’ (Dasein). This qualification, as Laywine (2020: 21) notes, “serves to mark a modal distinction” between the “existence of appearances and their mere possibility” for, as is evinced by the first Critique (especially the Analogies of Experience), the mere possibility of appearances can be constructed and this is what happens “when we apply mathematics to appearances,” as then we “disregard everything empirical in appearances and focus on pure intuition” (Laywine 2020: 22). When we do so, we consider nothing but their form a priori, i.e., “that which brings it about that the manifold of appearance can be ordered in certain relations” (B34 in Laywine 2020: 22). Indeed, construction is a mathematical technique for describing rigorously constrains that are imposed on appearances by their form—“necessity” is injected into the mix, with a “condition”: necessity kicks in only if a certain existence is established, e.g. “triangular appearance with three equal sides”. Hence, existence is “beyond the pay grade of construction” (Laywine 2020: 22).
Kant discerns empirical consciousness from transcendental consciousness. The latter deals with the pure form of representing something with consciousness. The former deals with representations that actually occur in an individual mind. Transcendental consciousness is an a priori condition of empirical consciousness (A115-A16, A122-123, B144, A177/B220, also Anth, 7:134n, 142). Kant associates empirical consciousness with inner sense, as inner sense is the a priori faculty for intuiting one’s inner state.
And if “I were to become conscious of all our obscure representations at once, I would be astonished at their inventory” (AM, 25:1221).
I am hoping to usher in a turn from philosophers describing pain as “c-fibers firing,” which I now know is not an accurate description of a neural pain-state.
See Prol, 4:298: “I thus must first note that, although all judgments of experience are empirical, i.e., have their ground in the immediate perception of the senses, on the other hand not all empirical judgments are therefore judgments of experience. Rather, apart from the empirical and, in general, apart from what is given in sensible intuition, special concepts still have to be added, concepts that have their origin completely a priori in the understanding and under which each perception first [must be] subsumed and by means of which it then can be transformed into experience.” See Anth, 8:144: “The perceptions of the senses (empirical representations with consciousness) can only be called inner experiences. The understanding that is added and connects them under a rule of thinking (brings order into the manifold) first makes empirical cognition, i.e., experience, out of it.” See B218: “Their principle [the principle of the analogies of experience] is: experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions.” See R5661, 18:318: “An empirical representation of which I am conscious is perception; that which I think with the representation of the imagination by means of the apprehension and comprehension (comprehensio aesthetica) of the manifold of perception is empirical cognition of the object, and the judgment that expresses an empirical cognition is experience.”
Cf. Longuenesse 1998, 85 − 6.
As Yibin Liang (2020: 325) helpfully clarifies: Attention is “the endeavor to become conscious of one’s representations” (Anth, 7:131) and the action from which representations are “immediately” made clear (Refl, 15:63; V-Anth/Mron, 25:1239). Consequently, an obscure representational state becomes a conscious one via attention. As demonstrated above, it is through inner sense that this empirical consciousness of one’s representations is provided (Anth, 7:161; Refl, 18:611, 613). Therefore, it can be inferred that the scope of attention coincides with the scope of inner sense. Since inner sense, as shown above, is essentially related to apprehension and phenomenal consciousness, a further conclusion can be drawn that the scopes of attention, apprehension, inner sense and phenomenal consciousness coincide (henceforth, ‘the scope coincidence thesis’).”
Outer sense represents an aggregate of sensible material that are merely “parts external to one another” (MFNS, 4:450); such sensible material are but obscure sensations and, consequently, are but sensory informational content belonging to outer intuition. To be understood as part of one and the same consciousness, inner sense must play a role.
Jauernig (2021: 57) draws us towards the following passages: ÜE, 8:217: “The consciousness of an empirical intuition is called perception.” See B207: “Perception is empirical consciousness, i.e., one in which there is sensation at the same time.” See B220: “The general principle of the three analogies rests on the necessary unity of apperception with respect to all possible empirical consciousness (perception) at every time.” See A119120: “The first that is given to us is appearance which, if it is connected with consciousness, is called perception.” See Prol, 4:300: “At the foundation is intuition of which I am conscious, i.e., perception (perceptio), which merely belongs to the senses.” Also see B376–377/A320; A371; FM, 20:266; FM, 20:274; R5661, 18:319; V-Lo/Dohna, 24:752.
We already saw the dangerous circular argumentation this line of thinking leads to, evinced by Longuenesse, Brook, and Kitcher.
See Liang 2020: 324-5 for a further elaboration of this dual process.
Also see: Rosefeldt 2000:128–135 and Longuenesse 2017: 146–158.
“. . the question whether bodies (as appearances of outer sense) exist outside of my thoughts as bodies, can be answered in the negative without any qualms; in this there is no difference to the question whether I myself as appearance of inner sense (soul according to empirical psychology) exist outside of my capacity of representation in time, for this question must also be answered in the negative” (Prol 4:337). My empirical self is to be distinguished from my empirical self-consciousness, just as my transcendental self is to be distinguished from my transcendental self-consciousness or the original synthetic unity of apperception. The empirical self “is best conceived of as an intentional object, which exists in virtue of the fact that there is a finite mind that represents it in experience” (Jauernig 2021: 105).
Indeed, Kant refers to this non-categorial notion of existence (Dasein), in several places (B72, B110, A92/B125, B199, B27; Refl 5755, Refl 5772, Prol 4:295). Notably, Kant also distinguishes this non-categorial notion of existence from the modal category of existence (Wirklichkeit) in A218/B265.
As Katharina Kraus helpfully notes in Chap. 3, Sect. 6, of her recent book, Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation (2020), according to Kant we do have a concept (“I think”) of which we want to know whether or not anything is “posited outside of this concept” (B422n); to find proof of the reality of the concept “I think,“ we need to seek out what is given to us sensibility, and that is the “mere occurrence of the mental episode of ‘I think’ in inner sense” (Kraus 2020: 124). This “occurrence” gives us an “indeterminate empirical intuition” or “indeterminate perception” that manifests the existence of the act of apperception and hence the existence of the individual thinker; as intuition is indeterminate in that it presents us with “something” that is not in the least determined according to some form, but in principle sensibly determinable (ibid.). The “indeterminate perception” associated with the “I think” presents to empirical consciousness “not the determining self but only … the determinable self” (as appearance of inner sense), “though still without the least determination” (ibid., cf. B407). In the Prolegomena, Kant refers to this peculiar representation as the “[f]eeling of existence” (Prol, 4:334n) because a feeling is definitionally not a determinative representation.
Also see B157–158: “On the other hand, I am conscious of myself in the transcendental synthesis of the manifold of representations in general, and, thus, in the synthetic original unity of apperception, not how I appear to myself, nor how I am in myself, but only that I am. This representation is a thinking, not an intuition. Since in order to cognize ourselves, apart from the action of thinking that brings the manifold of any possible intuition to the unity of apperception, a determinate kind of intuition is required through which this manifold is given, it follows that my own existence is not appearance (even less so mere illusion) but the determination of my existence can only happen in conformity with the form of inner sense according to the special manner in which the manifold that I combine is given in inner intuition, and I thus have no cognition of me as I am but merely as I appear to myself.” Furthermore, see FM, 20:270: “I am conscious of myself is a thought that already contains a twofold I, the I as subject and the I as object. How it is possible that I, who thinks, can be an object (of intuition) for myself and in this way distinguish me from myself is absolutely impossible to explain, although it is an undoubted fact.. .. Of the I in the first sense (the subject of apperception), the logical I, as representation a priori, it is impossible to cognize anything further at all, what kind of being it is, or of what kind of nature it is; it is, as it were, like the substantial that remains if I have left out all accidents that inhere in it, but which cannot be cognized further at all, since the accidents were exactly that based on which I could cognize its nature. But the I in the second sense (as subject of perception), the psychological I, as empirical consciousness, is capable of manifold cognition…”,
A number of scholars who espouse what is called the “disparity thesis” argue that we cannot analogize inner and outer sense, pointing out that traceable to inner sense cannot deliver inner sensations of their own and that inner sense cannot generate empirical matter while outer sense does. These scholars point out the problem of self-affection, which is tethered to the fact that, in inner sense, subjects cognize themselves only as appearances. As a very prudent referee noted, “[t]his point is related to the self-affection argument which is linked with the fact that, in the inner sense, the subject cognizes itself only as appearance. It is through the self-affection argument that the distinction between an active I (of transcendental apperception) and a passive I (of the inner sense) is singled out for the first time.” Indeed, any parallel between inner sense and outer seems to indicate two mutually exclusive faculties that operate independently from one another (cf. Bennett 1966: 16–17; Reininger 1900: 22–24; Cohen 1885/1987: 420–425; Hölder 1873: 8–10, Caihinger 1892: 124–125; Rosenberg 2005: 70–72; Ameriks 2000: 248–250; Mohr 1991: 97–105; Valaris 2008; Schmitz 2015; IIndregard 2018). A good bit of this debate centers around B156, where Kant claims we can be “internally affected by our selves”, where the subject cognizes themselves as an appearance in a way that is analogous to how the subject deals with appearances that refer to external objects. Indeed, Kant writes that “we must also concede that … as far as inner intuition is concerned we cognize our own subject only as appearance but not in accordance with what it is in itself” (B156.) In the B-Deduction, embedded in Kant’s discussion of the figurative synthesis, is the paradox of inner sense, which comes from the fact that in inner experience I must represent myself in two apparently “contradictory” (B153) modes: 1) the subject of thinking, 2) the object as intuited (also see B155-B156). In both the case of appearances and the self, the subject, as this helpful referee pointed out, does not deal with the thing in itself. Inner sense but is the means by way of which I can intuit myself, but solely on these terms, as there is no self-object or mind-independent ‘I’ that can originate or cause the sensory impression. If this is indeed the case, then solely the empirical manifold given in inner sense can produce an appearance of the self that is introspectively available, which are but representations derived from outer sense. This would mean that there are no genuine inner intuitions; indeed, this problematizes Kant’s conception of “inner appearance(s)” (A107, 386; A478/ B506; A492/520; A673/B701; A690/B718; A771/B799; Anth, 7:144, 399; Br 10:134). However, as Liang (2020: 315) points out, “then according to Kant’s dichotomy of cognitive faculties in understanding and sensibility, the empirical self-consciousness based on outer intuitions could only be empirical (self-)thoughts rather than (self-)intuitions.” I agree with Liang (2020) that these views falsely preclude inner sense from participating in generating sensory materials from outer experience; see Liang (2020) for a defense of why “outer sense delivers, in addition to the spatial form, the sensory content of outer experience, whereas inner sense provides, in addition to the temporal form, phenomenal consciousness that pertains to the sensory contents of outer sense” (317).
Kant emphasizes that the transcendental self “is independent of the transcendental conditions of (human) sensibility in general, viz., time and space” (Anth, 7:134n, 398). Kant also states that the transcendental “I think is a proposition a priori, a mere category of the Subject, intellectual representation without anywhere and anytime, thus not empirical. Whether the category of reality is in it; whether any objective conclusions can be drawn from it” (Refl CLX E 48, 23:39).
Jauernig (2021: 78) seems to agree with my construction of transcendental affections and unconscious representations. Notably, this is a different view than the doctrine of double-affection proffered by Adickes and other. As Jauernig (2021: 78, note 145) says:
… although the claim that sensations have both transcendental and empirical causes can be described as a kind of doctrine of double affection in that the production of sensations is understood to involve the affection of sensibility by both things in themselves and appearances, the claim is to be distinguished from the theory that is known, or at least traditionally used to be known, under the name ‘doctrine of double affection.’ This doctrine is the one that Hans Vaihinger and Erich Adickes ascribe to Kant. [See Vaihinger, 1884, 140–64; Adickes 1929; also see Vaihinger 1892, 52–5.] The differences between my reading and the traditional doctrine of double affection are subtle but important. According to this doctrine, transcendental affections of our transcendental self by things in themselves produce unconscious transcendental representations, which are “appearances in themselves” (Adickes 1929, 36). Empirical affections consist in affections of our empirical self by these appearances in themselves, by means of which conscious sensations and representations are produced in us, which thus represent appearances of appearances. On my reading, transcendental affections of sensibility by things in themselves produce unconscious representations that provide the ultimate basis for the construction of perceptions and, eventually, experience. But this construction (as described in the main text in the present and foregoing sections) does not involve any affection of our empirical self by unconscious representations or by the objects represented in these representations. Rather, it involves various cognitive operations, including various acts of ordering and synthesizing and, eventually, the presentation of objects as affecting our sense organs and thereby producing sensations, which are states of our empirical self.
A496/B524, A119f, B207. Cf. A120, B147, 162, 164f, 184, 203, A177/B220. There is an important parallel between Kant’s conception of obscure representations and the progression of possible perceptions. Pickering (2022) prudently analyzes the latter, highlighting what Kant has to say about “actual physical objects and possible perceptions in the sixth section of the Antinomy of Pure Reason” (10). Kant states: “Everything is actual that stands in connection [Context] with a perception according to laws of empirical progression [Fortgangs]” (A493/B52). Pickering notes that Kant “says the same thing in slightly different words when referring to hypothetical inhabitants of the moon: ‘They are therefore actual if they stand in an empirical connection [Zusammenhange] with my real consciousness’. [A493/B521] Kant says that to claim that there are inhabitants on the moon ‘means only this much: that we could meet them in the progression [Fortschritt] of possible experience’.[ A492f/B52] In other words, the existence of unperceived physical objects means nothing other than their being met with in possible experience. Thus, a physical object’s existing consists only in its perceivability.” (10).
Cf. Pickering (2022).
Pickering (2022), like Jauernig, neatly lays out this distinction from the two “views”: “Thus, in the empirical sense, a rainbow is a mere appearance and sunshine in the rain (Sonnregen) is the thing in itself that underlies the appearance. But, seen from the transcendental point of view, ‘not only are these drops mere appearances, but their round shape itself, yes, even the space in which they fall are not in themselves but rather [are] mere modifications or bases of our sensible intuition’ (A45/B63). So, from the empirical point of view, physical objects are things in themselves and, from the transcendental point of view, they are mere appearances. Kant explains the empirical and transcendental senses in which we may refer to a physical object….he describes a rainbow as an empirical appearance that is the result of an empirical thing in itself (sunshine in the rain). Kant then describes the raindrops in the transcendental sense as being within us (as well as the space in which the raindrops exist).” Cf. A29f/B45.
Several passages confirm this. See Anth, 7:144: “The perceptions of the senses (empirical representations with consciousness) can only be called inner appearances.” Prol, 4:336: “. . by means of outer experience I am equally conscious of the reality of bodies as outer appearances in space as by means of inner experience I am conscious of the existence of my soul in time, which I also can cognize only as an object of inner sense through appearances that constitute an inner state and of which the being in itself that grounds these appearances is unknown to me.” See BJ, 8:154: “The very same thing can also be shown with respect to the empirical concept of our soul, that it contains mere appearances of inner sense and not yet the determined concept of the subject itself.”
In Prol, 4:337 Kant uses “I am” but this is commutable with “I think” and “I exist”, as Kant uses the three interchangeably.
Cf. Forgione 2017, whose helpful verbiage I am utilizing here.
I owe this wording and these point of scholarly consideration to an anonymous referee.
This “independence” from being represented is related to that which I have aimed to underscore in my prior sections on the transcendental unity of apperception, and which Forgione’s scholarship on the “transcendental subject” and Kraus’ illuminate in their scholarship.
“In saying that the transcendental self must exist in its own right, I mean that it must exist independent of being represented—not necessarily that it must be ontologically basic in the manner of a substance. As far as the present argument goes, the self could exist an sich yet be ontologically derivative.” (Van Cleve 1999, 184).
“If there is such a thing as the transcendental self at all, it would be astonishing indeed if it were not the noumenal self. Recall the phenomenal/noumenal distinction: phenomenal items exist only as contents of representations, whereas noumenal objects exist in their own right. If thinkers or representers were not noumenal beings, we would have the absurdity of something that exists only as the content of representations, yet is itself the subject of representations”. (Van Cleve 1999, 184)
In Kant’s letter to Beck (December 4, 1792), Kant writes that: “Mr. Eberhard’s and Garve’s opinion of the identity of Berkley’s idealism with the critical one, which I could better call the principle of ideality of space and time, does not deserve the least attention. For I speak of ideality with respect to the form of the representation, but they turn this into ideality of it [the representation] with respect to the matter, i.e., the object and its existence itself.” (emphasis added, 11:395).
There does seem, however, to be good reason to reject a “one-to-one mapping between outer appearances and things in themselves that ground outer appearances, or appear as them,” because this “would amount to ascribing to him a belief in a rather astonishing pre-established harmony. He would have to believe that providence arranged it such that, for each appearance, all outer sensations that, due to the make-up of our cognitive faculties, feed into its constitution are due to affections of sensibility by one unique thing in itself.” (Jauernig 2020: 278).
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Erkan, E. Kant’s Metaphysics of the Self: The Self as a “Clear” Representation. Philosophia 51, 1201–1247 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00595-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00595-9