Abstract

This dissertation elaborates Kant's theory of self-knowledge by showing the connections among several scattered discussions in his Critique of Pure Reason. In a problem-solution approach, the dissertation sets up three problems of self-knowledge, presents the Kantian solutions and establishes related theses. ;The introduction elucidates that a self-knowledge claim inevitably involves a conception of twofold self that raises the problems concerning the intuition, identity and unity of the self. ;Chapter I investigates the problem of how the self as subject can intuit itself as object. Kant's solution is that just as we intuit external objects when our outer senses are affected, we intuit ourselves when our inner sense is affected by ourselves. Against Allison's strict parallelism between inner sense and outer sense, I argue that Kant holds a restricted parallelism claiming the collaboration of outer sense and inner sense. ;Chapter II examines the question of how the self as subject can be distinct from and yet identical with the self as object. Disagreeing with Strawson's two-being argument against Kant's self-identity claim, I contend that Kant's distinction between the transcendental apperception and inner sense can avoid the contradiction described by Strawson because Kant accepts Aristotle's notion of contradiction. Considering that the thinking self and the intuited self are in a one-to-many relation, I argue that the Kantian identity question is how the thinking self can remain identical in the manifold representations. By way of analogy, I use referential identity to show that the transcendental apperception provides the numerically identical self for all representations in the mind to form one experience. ;Chapter III discusses how the self can be the unity of the plural. I analyze the two correlated roles of the transcendental unity of apperception: The analytical unity acts as an identical self; the synthetic unity serves as a unitary self. I argue that the identical self presupposes the unitary self. Kant reconciles the two rival conceptions of self in Hume's philosophy. Finally, I formulate the synthetic unity as Kant's solution to the unity problem