The interest contemporary philosophy takes in Kant's notion of apperception is restricted to his criticism of the Cartesian Ego and to his refutation of scepticism, but there is a profound lack of concern for the notion itself and for the act of spontaneity in particular which is connected with the use of the word T. Starting from a comparison of Wittgenstein's account of this use with Kant's considerations it is argued that the latter aims at a theory of formal (...) conditions of knowledge which includes the availability of the notion of the I. It is clarified what the determination of apperception as an 'act of spontaniety' amounts to (B: 132). Kant's scattered remarks on the ability of having the representation of the I, of using the word 'I', are considered in order to show that what he called 'the logical I' has something to do with the capacity of performing an act of judgment. It is argued that such an account is not to be found in contemporary discussions of 'essential indexicals', 'first-person view' and mental self-ascriptions. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/7), Kant laid out a deep-running and largely original picture of the apperceptive mind, including a claim that in consciousness of self, one does not appear to oneself as an object and that consciousness of self is presupposed by consciousness of other things. As a result, consciousness of oneself does not provide knowledge of oneself and the referential apparatus of consciousness of self is radically different from other kinds of referential apparatus. The main purpose (...) of this paper is to summarize this picture and then explore how much of it is still to be found in his late, unfinished Opus Postumum (1800/04). (shrink)

A core thesis of Kitcher's is that thinking about objects requires awareness of necessary connections between one's object-directed representations ‘as such’ and that this is what Kant means by the transcendental unity of apperception. I argue that Kant's main point is the spontaneity or ‘self-made-ness’ of combination rather than the requirement of reflexive awareness of combination, that Kitcher provides no plausible account of how recognition of representations ‘as such’ should be constituted and that in fact Kant himself appears to (...) lack the theoretical resources to clearly distinguish between consciousness and self-consciousness or apperception properly so-called. (shrink)

blurb from publisher: "In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting’s argument is the claim that all of human experience is inherently self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity of thought, or what is called transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff (...) and came to inform all of German Idealism. In a rigorous text suitable for students of German philosophy and upper-level students of metaphysics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics courses, the author establishes the historical roots of Kant’s thought and traces it through to his immediate successors Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of self-consciousness and its relation to idealism and places it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy." . (shrink)

In several places of his work, Kant distinguishes between two senses of self-consciousness: a pure one and an empirical one. The aim of this work is to analyze these two senses of consciousness and show that, for Kant, self-consciousness does not occur unrestrictedly: a relation with something other than consciousness is needed for it to become conscious of itself. I carry out these objectives throughout six sections. In the first one I lay out the Kantian principle of pure apperception. (...) In the second one, I present the limits of pure apperception through Kant’s critique of rational psychology. Then, in the third section, I set the basis to understand the relationship that Kant establishes between the I think and the I exist. In the fourth one I show that pure apperception, despite being pure, is not possible without the opportunity of perception. Next, in the fifth one, I introduce the notion of empirical apperception, establish its relationship with pure apperception, and elucidate its meaning. Finally, in the last section, I explain the way in which empirical self-consciousness is determined, in relation to the knowledge of objects of the external sense. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis of the analyticity of the principle of apperception, as developed in the first part of the B-Deduction, against recent criticisms by Paul Guyer and Patricia Kitchen The first part presents these criticisms, the most important of which being that the analyticity thesis is incompatible with both the avowed goal of which being that the Deduction of establishing the validity of the categories and Üie account of apperception in the A-Deduction. The second part argues (...) that Kant's procedure in the B-Deduction of beginning with an abstract analysis of a discursive understanding, independentiy of its relation to the specifically human forms of sensibility, requires him to regard the principle as analytic and that this explains the difference from the A-Deduction. By appealing to the model of a deduction in Kant's moral theory and the two step in one proof structure of the B-Deduction, the third part argues that the analyticity thesis is in fact compatible with the goal of the Deduction. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal de este artículo es analizar la distinción leibniziana entre apercepción sensible y consáentia a la luz de su ontología monadológica, con la intención de esclarecer las diferencias constitutivas entre los tres tipos de mónadas que Leibniz postula, esto es, entre las mónadas simples, las meras almas y los espíritus. Con esto, además de argumentar en contra de la concepción estándar de la apercepción, la cual termina por confinarla al caso específico de los espíritus, sitúo la propuesta (...) del hannoveriano entre dos lecturas contemporáneas: por un lado, aquella que comprende la apercepción como un acto de orden superior reflexivo, esto es, una percepción de la percepción; y, por otro lado, aquella que, al distinguir entre apercepción sensible y consáentia, privilegia una teoría de primer orden para hablar de la primera, reservando los actos reflexivos para la segunda. Aunque la evidencia textual es más afín con la segunda, hay elementos de la primera que permiten matizarla.The main aim of this article is to analyze Leibniz’s distinction between sensitive apperception and ‘conscientia’ through his monadological ontology, with the intention of lighten the constitutive differences between the three types of monads that Leibniz state, that is, between bare monads, souls and spirits. By proving this, my approach not only argues against the standard conceptions of Leibniz's notion of apperception, which ends attributing apperception only to the specify case of spirits, but it abo places the Hanoverian proposal between two contemporary lectures: on one side, an approach that understand apperception as a high order reflexive act, that is, a perception of a perception; on the other side, an approach that distinguishes sensible apperception from ‘conscientia’ in order to privilege a first order theory for the first one, reserving the reflective acts only for the second. Even when the textual evidence is closer to the last one, there are some elements of the first approach that allow us to improve it. (shrink)

This paper describes an attempt to repurpose Kant’s a priori psychology as the architectural blueprint for a machine learning system. First, it describes the conditions that must be satisfied for the agent to achieve unity of experience: the intuitions must be connected, via binary relations, so as to satisfy various unity conditions. Second, it shows how the categories are derived within this model: the categories are pure unary predicates that are derived from the pure binary relations. Third, I describe how (...) Kant’s cognitive architecture has been implemented in a computer system (the Apperception Engine) and show in detail what it is like for the system to construct a unified experience from a sequence of raw sensory input. (shrink)

“Source monitoring” theory is applied to the turn-of-the-century argument that, whenever binocularly fused patterns are self-consciously apperceived, both eyes' monocular sensations are consciously perceived. According to monitoring theory's refinement of the argument, binocularly apperceived patterns are accompanied by selfconsciousness that one is perceiving patterns , whereas monocular sensations are accompanied by no self-consciousness of their source. In the current test of this refined argument, 32 subjects were monocularly presented with 6 letters of the alphabet, while binocularly fusing 6 different letters, (...) and were subsequently required to discriminate these 12 letters from 6 other letters that they had visually imaged. Consistent with monitoring theory, the results of experimental testing suggest that binocularly fused letters are neurally monitored as “peripheral,” self-consciously experienced as “perceived,” and subsequently remembered as not “imaged.” The results further suggest that, during such binocular apperception, monocular data are not totally unconscious-like computer data-but are consciously experienced as “sourceless” sensations that are memorially confused with visually imaged sensations. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to characterize the issue whether tense is real. Roughly, this is the issue whether, given any tensed representation, its tense corresponds in some suitably direct way to some feature of reality. The task is to make this less rough. Eight characterizations of the issue are considered and rejected, before one is endorsed. On this characterization, the unreality of tense is equivalent to the unity of temporal reality. The issue whether tense is real, so characterized, (...) is then related to Kant’s deduction of the categories in his Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that Kant’s deduction does not provide the argument for the unreality of tense that it may appear to. The conclusion drawn at the end of the essay is that the unreality of tense cannot be argued for—not because tense is real, but because, even if it is unreal, its unreality is basic. (shrink)

Kant points to two forms of self-consciousness: the inner sense (empirical apperception) grounded in a sensory form of self-awareness and transcendental apperception. The aim of this paper is to show that a sophisticated notion of basic self-consciousness, which contains a pre-reflective self-consciousness as its first level, is provided by the notion of transcendental apperception. The necessity for a pre-reflective self-consciousness has been pointed out in phenomenological literature. According to this account, every self-ascription of any property implies a (...) more fundamental form of self-consciousness, i.e., a kind of immediate familiarity with oneself. This pre-reflective self-consciousness is a non-relational and non-identificational form of self-consciousness and concerns an immediate acquaintance of the subject with itself. In the specific terms of transcendentalism every thought contains an implicit reference to a first-personal “givenness” or a sense of “mineness” that articulates a non-relational and non-identificational form of a pre-reflective model of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This work represents an investigation of the most important properties of the human mind consciousness, apperception and reflection - and of their significance for Leibnizian philosophy. The development of Leibniz's thinking in the course of his treatment of these themes receives especially detailed treatment, and is thoroughly documented on the basis of the original texts. The concepts of consciousness and reflection were the object of intensive discussion in the l7th century. Starting out from the problem of the distinction between (...) humans and brutes - Descartes' view of animals as mere machines was always decisively rejected by Leibniz-Kulstad shows the significance of these concepts in the early writings of Leibniz. He shows how Leibniz was then stimulated by Locke to add the word "apperception" into his philosophy. The author sets out the influence of Locke on Leibniz and demonstrates how Leibniz adopted a firmer and more constant position as to the relation between consciousness and reflection than one finds in Locke's own writings. From the beginning to the end of his life Leibniz defends the thesis that both consciousness and reflection consist in the memory of one mental act via another. The author shows how Leibniz hereby aligns himself with an European philosophihical tradition which can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Of course, a clarification of the meanings of words such as "consciousness", "reflection" and "apperception" is important not only for an understanding of Leibniz's philosophy but also for contemporary metaphysics and theory of knowledge. Leibniz certainly recognized and thought through the problems associated with these words, but he never developed a final, coherent theory, a fact which certainly reflects in part the complexity of the underlying problems. By exploiting not only all the relevant Leibnizian writings but also the results of more receent philosophy in this field, Kulstad is able to draw a reliable picture both of Leibniz's treatment of these problems and of the influence of his views on his contemporaries and successors. (shrink)

Bossart (philosophy, U. of CA-Davis) discusses the alleged losses of faith and self in postmodernist thought in the light of the "triumph" and subsequent decline of the transcendental turn in philosophy initiated by Kant. He attacks the transcendental grounding of human experience at its source, showing why it is impossible to derive any categories a priori, and exposes the weaknesses of attempts by Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger to close the gap between transcendental subjectivity and the world. Annotation copyright by Book (...) News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A precursor to the hard problem of consciousness confronts nihilism. Like physicalism, nihilism collides with the first-personal fact of what perception and action are like. Unless this problem is solved, nature’s inclusion of conscious experience will remain, as Chalmers warns the physicalist, an “unanswered question” and, as Jacobi chides the nihilist, “completely inexplicable". One advantage of Kant’s Copernican turn is to dismiss the question that imposes this hard problem. We need not ask how nature is accompanied by the first-person standpoint (...) because “I think” is an apperceptive form of thinking that must be able to accompany any cognition of nature. Kant’s formal conception of apperception worries Fichte in his Nova Methodo lectures. This conception arguably cannot exhaust the ground of experience, for it does not show why we posit objects “at all". For Fichte, it is our agency that first opens a world of objects, viz., as subjects, means, ends, and obstacles. In what follows, I argue that, for Fichte, the I poses no hard problem because it collides exclusively with nihilistic views like Spinozism, which are refuted by a properly transcendental idealist conception of apperception, according to which the first-person standpoint is the absolute ground of our experience of nature. If transcendental idealism refutes nihilism, nature is no more explicable than that there is something it is like for me to perceive and act. In Section 1, I show why Kantian apperception is necessary for possible experience. In Section 2, I reconstruct Fichte’s argument that a modified conception of apperception refutes guises of nihilism, thereby solving the hard problem of consciousness. In Section 3, I suggest that transcendental idealism undermines Chalmers’ proposed solution to and Dennett’s dismissal of this problem. (shrink)

Whilst agreeing with Robert Pippin that Hegel undertakes his philosophical enterprise in light of Kant's insights into the failings of pre-critical metaphysics, this paper outlines the shortcomings of Pippin's Hegel interpretation by contrasting what I call 'apperceptive idealism' on the one hand with 'transcendental ontology' on the other. By privileging subject over substance, Pippin commits Hegel to an ontologically modest form of Kantianism that, in missing how reality as a whole is the main topic of Hegel’s philosophy, leaves no room (...) for a crucial Hegelian task, namely accounting for the presence of self-conscious thinking in nature. Appreciating the nature of Hegel's true ambitions whilst remaining aware of how his Logic maps a 'realm of shadows', opens up the possibility of understanding his philosophy as forging a middle path: Hegel is neither the subjective idealist of Pippin's interpretation nor the advocate of a revival of first-order metaphysical theorising depicted by so many of Pippin's critics. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant distinguishes between two kinds of self-consciousness: transcendental apperception and empirical apperception (or, approximately, inner sense). However, Kant sometimes claims that “I think,” the general expression of transcendental apperception, expresses an indeterminate empirical inner intuition (IEI), which differs in crucial ways from the empirical inner intuition produced by inner sense. Such claims undermine Kant’s conceptual framework and constitute a recalcitrant obstacle to understanding his theory of self-consciousness. This paper analyzes the relevant passages, (...) evaluates the major interpretations of IEI, revisits the notion of pure apperception, and proposes an alternative reading: IEI is a ubiquitous, nonfocal, “obscure,” and empirical inner intuition that is built into all nonintrospective conscious states. This reading can successfully account for the peculiarities of IEI, resolving a major mystery in Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis of the analyticity of the principle of apperception, as developed in the first part of the B-Deduction, against recent criticisms by Paul Guyer and Patricia Kitchen The first part presents these criticisms, the most important of which being that the analyticity thesis is incompatible with both the avowed goal of which being that the Deduction of establishing the vahdity of the categories and Üie account of apperception in the A-Deduction. The second part argues (...) that Kant's procedure in the B-Deduction of beginning with an abstract analysis of a discursive understanding, independentiy of its relation to the specifically human forms of sensibility, requires him to regard the principle as analytic and that this explains the difference from the A-Deduction. By appealing to the model of a deduction in Kant's moral theory and the two step in one proof structure of the B-Deduction, the third part argues that the analyticity thesis is in fact compatible with the goal of the Deduction. (shrink)

The question of this work is the relationship between cognition and self-knowledge. That question is approached both by way of Kant on apperception and from the perspective of contemporary theories of mind which locate the origin of our cognitive life in interpersonal, interpretive practices, e.g., Sellars, Davidson, Dennett and Brandom. Kant does not integrate the social dimension into his account of cognition. In fact, many of his arguments for the apperception principle are beholden to a picture of mind (...) which precludes his recognizing the social dimension of cognition. Nonetheless, one can reconstruct a Kantian argument for the apperception principle within the framework of a theory which recognizes the constitutive role of interpretation in cognition. ;Chapter One explores the various ways that the priority of interpersonal interpretation has been claimed. These range from analyses of our talk of the mind as descriptive-predictive strategies to functionalist theories of mind to theories which emphasize the connection between interpreting language and attributing propositional attitudes and the normative dimension of interpretation . Chapter Two outlines seven interpretive questions that any reading of Kant on apperception must address, questions about what Kant means by 'apperception' and the character of the apperception principle. Chapter Three is an analysis of those Kantian arguments for the apperception principle which picture the mind as a private arena, arguments which are untenable from the perspective established in Chapter One. Chapter Four explores Sydney Shoemaker's argument for a functionalist version of Kant's apperception principle and argues that his approach is unsatisfactory. Chapter Five introduces Robert Brandom's theory of propositional attitudes with a discussion of Sellars' theory of sentence meaning and Davidson on the relationship between belief and meaning. Chapter Six then looks at what difference the ability to attribute oneself a propositional attitude might make on Brandom's theory. I argue against Brandom that having a belief or an intention presupposes the ability to explicitly say that one has that belief or intention. Chapter Seven returns to Kant and argues that the analysis and conclusion of Chapter Six are broadly Kantian. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are multiple principles of apperception which jointly constitute the foundation of Kant's argument in the transcendental deduction.

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically. -/- Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to (...) derive the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception. -/- Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant's derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood. -/- New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan). (shrink)

I critically examine one central line of reasoning in Mario Caimi's book »Kant's B Deduction« (Cambridge Publishing, 2014).

This paper 1) examines Husserl’s critique of presuppositions, a critique that realizes a desideratum of the Western philosophical tradition precisely by clarifying and grounding the latter’s own tacit presuppositions; 2) surveys Husserl’s descriptions of the apperceptions whose operative efficacy make tradition itself effective, holding good at both the individual and the generative levels; 3) identifies the need for a further critique of the psychophysical apperception in particular; and 4) offers a phenomenologically grounded alternative to the latter way of understanding (...) and experiencing embodiment. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain why for Kant self-consciousness is intimately related to objectivity, how this intimacy translates to real objects, what it means to make judgements about objects, and what idealism has got to do with all of this.

Recent writing on consciousness has increasingly stressed ways in which the terms.

talk Oslo-Kant congress. In this paper, I explain why for Kant self-consciousness is intimately related to objectivity, how this intimacy translates to real objects, what it means to make judgements about objects, and what idealism has got to do with all of this.

Abstract: My aim is to reconstruct Kant's argument for the principle of the synthetic unity of apperception. I reconstruct Kant's argument in stages, first showing why thinking should be conceived as an activity of synthesis (as opposed to attention), and then showing why the unity or coherence of a subject's representations should depend upon an a priori synthesis. The guiding thread of my account is Kant's conception of enlightenment: as I suggest, the philosophy of mind advanced in the Deduction (...) belongs to an enlightenment epistemology. Kant's conception of enlightenment turns on the requirement that a subject be able to recognize herself as the source of her cognitions. The argument for the apperception principle is reconstructed under the guidance of this conception of the ideal of enlightenment. (shrink)

I discuss three elements of Dennis Schulting’s new book on the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories. First, that Schulting gives a detailed account of the role of each individual category. Second, Schulting’s insistence that the categories nevertheless apply ‘en bloc’. Third, Schulting’s defence of Kant’s so-called reciprocity thesis that subjective unity of consciousness and objectivity in the sense of cognition’s objective purport are necessary conditions for the possibility of one another. I endorse these fascinating (...) but unfashionable claims and sketch my own version of what they amount to, which is quite different to Schulting’s own construal. I point to some fundamental limitations and problems for Schulting’s position and argue that his project needs to be reshaped or at least reconceived in the face of them. Even if Schulting’s argument is sound, it does not provide a deduction, properly speaking, of the categories. (shrink)

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This (...) paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog). (shrink)