Kant distinguishes two kinds of knowledge of one-self: empirical self-knowledge due to inner sense and a priori self-knowledge achieved by transcendental apperception. This conception encounters a host of problems. I try to solve these problems from the perspective of today’s phenomenology and analytical philosophy. I first introduce a new conception of inner sense and time-consciousness and argue that empirical self-knowledge must be based on the category of person, a category Kant did not list in his table of categories. I explain (...) how the schematism of this category works. Then I introduce the a priori notion of the subject which corresponds to Kant’s ‘I think’. However, unlike Kant I hold that the notion of the subject is the notion of a being which has certain a priori capacities. Kant did not see that the term ‘I’ must be conceived of as an indexical. I argue that this indexical refers to both, the subject who does the thinking and the person who is thought. On this basis I give an answer to the question how genuine de-se knowledge is possible. I further defend—against Wittgenstein and others—the use of a private thought language. Finally, I show that what I have developed is—notwithstanding the refutation of important elements of Kant’s theory—still essentially a Kantian approach. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper relates Kant’s account of pure apperception to the agential approach to self-knowledge. It argues that his famous claim ‘The I think must be able to accompany all of my represent...

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)

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)

Kant calls the Principle of the Synthetic Unity of Apperception the “highest point” to which we “must affix all use of the understanding, even the whole of logic and, after it, transcendental philosophy.” In this article, I offer an original interpretation of this “supreme principle.” My argument is twofold. First, I argue that the common identification of this principle with the “I think” or even the form of the I think misses the basis on which this principle is (...) capable of grounding Kant’s transcendental deduction. It must be understood as a purely formal, transcendental principle. Second, I argue that this highest principle must be understood as a purely formal principle of pure synthesis in order for Kant’s account of the mind to lay valid claim to such spontaneity without invoking the very dogmatic idealism that he critiques. The reduction of this principle to the real I think, or even to the Transcendental Unity of Apperception, undermines the basic distinction on which Kant’s deduction depends. I pay particular attention to important, recent arguments from Longuenesse on the TUA, Williams on the Original Unity of Apperception, Allison and Pollok on the status of a priori principles, and McLear on the claim that unity necessarily presupposes synthesis. (shrink)

I situate historically, analyze, and examine some of the implications of Kant’s thesis that the analytic unity of apperception — the representation of the identity of the I think — is what transforms any representation to which it is attached into a universal (conceptus communis).

Kant's purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason was to describe the nature and set the boundaries of human knowledge. At the heart of this ambitious enterprise is his doctrine of apperceptive self-identity. He insists that in order for us to know anything, there must be a unitary self capable of being aware of its own identity over time. Unfortunately, Kant's descriptions of this unitary 'I think' are extremely obscure, and his accounts of how it functions in the first (...) Critique's overall theory of knowledge are extremely problematical. ;I believe that much of the diversity of opinion about Kant's theory of self-identity has arisen owing to a lack of consensus about what really constitutes an adequate account of self-identity in the first Critique. I contend that an adequate account must satisfy four basic requirements. First, the theory must be compatible with his solutions to certain philosophical problems that emerge in the analysis of ordinary human cognition. Second, the theory must be consistent with the principles underlying his general account of human knowledge. Third, the theory must explain the cognitive relation between the momentary phenomenal self and the transtemporal, a priori unity of apperception. And fourth, it must explain the ontological status of this unitary 'I think'. ;I contend that the key to Kant's theory of apperceptive self-identity is found in his notion of synthesis. I look closely at what synthesis means for Kant, what he does with it in his account of human knowledge, and how his detailed account of objective synthesis may be used to shed light upon his more obscure accounts of the unitary synthesizing agent. I suggest that Kant's theory of apperceptive self-identity may be understood as a more generalized version of his theory of schematism. Both involve the synthetic unification of something pure and actively formal with some empirical and passively given content; and both are intimately connected with the nature of time. I show how these two facts may be used to elucidate the nature of the apperceptive subject, and how Kant's theory is able to satisfy the four requirements. (shrink)

The text considers the possibility of studying the Freudian psychoanalysis as a certain form of transcendentalism. In particular, it analyses the relation of Freud’sproposition concerning the strangeness within the subject—a strangeness called unconsciousness—to Kant’s claim about the necessity of the synthetic unity ofapperception. The study commences with Ricoeur’s reading of Freud’s teachings in order to demonstrate how, by introducing the language of transcendental philosophy into the reading of Freud’s works, Ricoeur omits the issue of the subjective conditions for the constitution (...) of any possible meaning. Next, searching for the possibility to formulate these conditions on the grounds of Freudian psychoanalysis, the text investigates relevant Heidegger’s reading of Kant. It finds in it the model justification for such understanding of the unity of “I think” which makes it, already at its core, conditioned by diversity identified with temporality. By attempting to grasp the contradiction between such a temporal condition for subjectivity and Freud’s postulate on the timeless nature of unconsciousness, the text applies Derrida’s criticism of the metaphysical conception of time, which is directed exactly at Heidegger’s metaphysics of Dasein. In consequence, it turns out that a profound justification seems to exist for the seemingly paradoxical Freudian statement about unconsciousness as linked with, on the one hand, the most primal intuitions still grounded in animism, and on the other, with a continuation of Kant’s teachings. (shrink)

In this issue of Studies in Transcendental Philosophy five scholars enquire about the theoretical aspects of Kant’s transcendental philosophy related to the notions of subject, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge. Andrew Brook examines Kant’s views on transcendental apperception at the end of the Critical Period, focusing on Opus Postumum which contains some of Kant’s most important reflections on the subjective dimension. As is known, the self-conscious act designated by the proposition ‘I think’ is an act of spontaneity, and this spontaneity is (...) the reason that the subject calls itself an intelligence. In his article Addison Ellis examines the theoretical and practical dimension of spontaneity, calling into question the distinction between a merely ‘relative’ spontaneity and one that is ‘absolute’. Luca Forgione points to two forms of self-consciousness introduced by Kant: inner sense, based on a sensory form of self-awareness, and transcendental apperception. Through the notion of inner sense, Kant also allows for an introspective account of self-awareness; nonetheless, Kant holds an utterly sophisticated notion of basic self-consciousness provided for by the notion of transcendental apperception. Roberto Horácio de Sá Pereira’s article presents a systematic and a historical approach, linking the contemporary debate on transcendental argument to Kant’s philosophy. It addresses both Stroud’s objection and Strawson’s perspective on transcendental argument and introduces a new reconstruction of Kant’s Refutation as successful truth-directed transcendental argument. In contrast to the contemporary movement of transhumanism and its claims that creatures like us can exist independently of our bodies, Robert Hanna develops a generalist perspective on the subjective dimension, according to which all rational human creature are synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. I would like to thank the authors for participating in this issue and for helping to make it really special. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to address the semantic issue of the nature of the representation I and of the transcendental designation, i.e., the self-referential apparatus involved in transcendental apperception. The I think, the bare or empty representation I, is the representational vehicle of the concept of transcendental subject; as such, it is a simple representation. The awareness of oneself as thinking is only expressed by the I: the intellectual representation which performs a referential function of the spontaneity (...) of a thinking subject. To begin with, what exactly does Kant mean when he states that I is a simple and empty representation? Secondly, can the features of the representation I and the correlative transcendental designation explain the indexical nature of the I? Thirdly, do the Kantian considerations on indexicality anticipate any of the semantic elements or, if nothing else, the spirit of the direct reference theory? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to focus on certain characterizations of “I think” and the “transcendental subject” in an attempt to verify a connection with certain metaphysical characterizations of the thinking subject that Kant introduced in the critical period. Most importantly, two distinct meanings of “I think” need be distinguished: (1) in the Transcendental Deduction “I think” is the act of apperception; (2) in the Transcendental Deduction and in the section of Paralogisms “I think” is (...) taken in its representational nature. It proves helpful to interpret the “transcendental subject” in formal terms as a concept that, mutatis mutandis, has the same function of the concept of the “transcendental object.”. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant’s views about the logical form of “I think”-judgments. It is shown that according to Kant, in an important class of cases the prefix “I think” does not contribute to the assertoric, truth-conditional content of judgments of the form “I think that P.” Thus, judgments of this type are often merely judgments that P. The prefix “I think” does mention the subject and his thought, but it does not make the complex judgment a (...) judgment about the subject and his or her thought. Kant argues that there is a distinctive kind of self-consciousness that is adequately expressed by means of this non-assertoric “I think.” The paper explains that understanding Kant’s ideas on the logic of “I think”-judgments is fruitful both for discussions in contemporary analytic philosophy and for an adequate understanding of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) (...) a free and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uses the notion of spontaneity to characterize both the ordinary epistemic activity of the understanding and the kind of causal activity required for transcendentally free agency. In spite of the obvious differences between these two conceptions of spontaneity, at one time Kant virtually identified them, since he licensed the inference from the spontaneity of thought manifest in apperception to the transcendental freedom of the thinker. By the mid-1700s, however, he abandoned that view, affirming (...) instead a sharp distinction between “logical freedom,” which pertains to acts of thought, and “transcendental freedom,” which supposedly pertains to acts of will. This distinction, if not the precise language in which it was originally expressed, remained an integral part of the “critical” philosophy. Moreover, although the topic of freedom is not discussed in the Paralogisms, Kant there insists on the illegitimacy of the attempt to derive any synthetic knowledge regarding the nature of the “thing which thinks” from the ‘I think’. (shrink)

Contrary to the contemporary view that negation is a logical operation that modifies the mere content of a thought or judgment, but not the act of thinking or judging it, Kant maintains that negation is an act of logical apperception through which I exclude a thought or judgment from what ‘I think.’ In this paper, I argue against two interpretations of Kant’s account of logical negation. According to the first, negation is a subjective psychological act of excluding an erroneous (...) judgment. Against this, I will show that for Kant, negation is an operation of logical, not empirical apperception. The second interpretation views logical negation as an objective representation either of a relation of opposition or of non-being. I argue that, on the contrary, the logical function of negation is merely formal, not material, and therefore does not have semantic content. The paper’s final section develops a positive conception of logical negation as a formal function of judging. (shrink)

The self, the ‘I think’, my existence as an intelligence, the thinking subject, apperception, the person—all of these and the relationships between them form the subject matter of Arthur Melnick’s brilliant new book on Kant. Indeed, every one of these notions is brought into play by the end of the very first paragraph of the preface. This is a difficult book, primarily suited to the specialist, yet its difficulty only rarely lies in unclarity or confusion. The theory of the (...) self that it outlines and explores is as subtle, intricate and forcefully argued for as it is original, stimulating and highly controversial. (shrink)

Descartes maintained the doctrine attacked by hume and kant that the self is substance. Consciousness does not entail self-Consciousness for kant. The "i think" must be "capable" of accompanying my thoughts but does not constantly do so. What is necessarily true is that if I have an experience then it is mine, Not that I am conscious of it as mine. Pure apperception is a formal condition for experience, Not as a sort of introspection.

There are striking structural similarities between Freud's ego and Kant's transcendental unity of apperception, which for Kant grounds our use of ‘I’ in ‘I think’. There are also striking similarities between Freud's superego and Kant's account of the mental structure that grounds our use of ‘I’ in the moral ‘I ought to’. The paper explores these similarities on three main points: the conflict of motivations internal to the mind, the relation between discursive and pre‐discursive representation of moral motivation, and (...) the unconscious character of moral motivation. The suggestion is that Freud offers resources for a naturalized account of just those features of our moral motivation that, according to Kant, seem to make it least amenable to a naturalistic explanation. How much of a revision of Kant's analysis of moral justification is thereby entailed is beyond the purview of the paper. (shrink)

Since the classic works by Castañeda, Perry and Lewis, de se thoughts have been described as thoughts about oneself ‘as oneself’. In recent years, various theoretical perspectives have gained ground, and even if the transcendental system does not seem to contemplate an explicit articulation of de se thoughts, apparently a few features of transcendental apperception and I think do anticipate a few points in Perry and Recanati’s claims on the so-called implicit de se thoughts in the specific terms of (...) Transcendentalism. (shrink)

In this chapter, I expound Hegel’s critique of Kant, which he first and most elaborately presented in his early essay Faith and Knowledge (1802), by focusing on the criticism that Hegel levelled against Kant’s (supposedly) arbitrary subjectivism about the categories. This relates to the restriction thesis of Kant’s transcendental idealism: categorially governed empirical knowledge only applies to appearances, not to things in themselves, and so does not reach objective reality, according to Hegel. Hegel claims that this restriction of knowledge to (...) appearances is unwarranted merely on the basis of Kant’s own principle of transcendental apperception, and just stems from Kant’s empiricist bias. He argues that Kant’s principle of apperception as the foundational principle of knowledge is in fact incompatible with his empiricism. Hegel rightly appraises the centrality of transcendental apperception for the constitution of objectivity. But he is wrong about its incompatibility with Kant’s empirical realism. By virtue of a misapprehension of the formal distinction between the accompanying ‘I think’, i.e. the analytical principle of apperception, and what Hegel calls “the true ‘I’” of the original-synthetic unity of apperception, Hegel unjustifiably prises apart the productive imagination, which is supposedly this “true ‘I’”, and the understanding, which is supposedly just a derivative, subjective form of the productive imagination; the latter, according to Hegel, is Reason or Being itself, and is the truly objective. This deflationary reading of the understanding, which hypostatises the imagination as the supreme principle, rests on a distortion of key elements of Kant’s theory of apperception. In this chapter, I show that Hegel’s charge of inconsistency against Kant, namely, Hegel’s claim that the principle of apperception as the highest principle of cognition does not comport with Kant’s restriction thesis, is the direct consequence of a psychological misreading of Kant’s subjectivism. (shrink)

Ever since Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense, the transcendental apperception device has become a theoretical reference point to shed light on the criterionless selfascription form of mental states, reformulating a contemporary theoretical place tackled for the first time in explicit terms by Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. By investigating thoroughly some elements of the critical system the issue of the identification of the transcendental subject with reference to the I think will be singled out. In this respect, the debate presents at (...) least two diametrically opposed attitudes: the first – exemplified in the works by Hacker, Becker, Sturma and McDowell – considers the features of the I think according to Wittgenstein’s approach to the I as subject while the second, exemplified by Kitcher and Carl, criticizes the various commentators who turn to Wittgenstein in order to interpret Kant’s I think. The hypothesis that I will attempt at articulating in this paper starts off not only from the transcendental apperception form, but also from the characterizations of empirical apperception. It may be assumed that Kant’s reflection on the problem of self-identification lies right here, truly prefiguring some features of Wittgenstein’s uses of I, albeit from different metaphysical assumptions and philosophical horizons. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 3 Seiten: 378-400.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uses the notion of spontaneity to characterize both the ordinary epistemic activity of the understanding and the kind of causal activity required for transcendentally free agency. In spite of the obvious differences between these two conceptions of spontaneity, at one time Kant virtually identified them, since he licensed the inference from the spontaneity of thought manifest in apperception to the transcendental freedom of the thinker. By the mid-1700s, however, he abandoned that view, affirming (...) instead a sharp distinction between “logical freedom,” which pertains to acts of thought, and “transcendental freedom,” which supposedly pertains to acts of will. This distinction, if not the precise language in which it was originally expressed, remained an integral part of the “critical” philosophy. Moreover, although the topic of freedom is not discussed in the Paralogisms, Kant there insists on the illegitimacy of the attempt to derive any synthetic knowledge regarding the nature of the “thing which thinks” from the ‘I think’. (shrink)

There are striking structural similarities between Freud's ego and Kant's transcendental unity of apperception, which for Kant grounds our use of ‘I’ in ‘I think’. There are also striking similarities between Freud's superego and Kant's account of the mental structure that grounds our use of ‘I’ in the moral ‘I ought to’. The paper explores these similarities on three main points: the conflict of motivations internal to the mind, the relation between discursive and pre-discursive representation of moral motivation, and (...) the unconscious character of moral motivation. The suggestion is that Freud offers resources for a naturalized account (an account in terms of the causal development of empirical human beings) of just those features of our moral motivation that, according to Kant, seem to make it least amenable to a naturalistic explanation. How much of a revision of Kant's analysis of moral justification is thereby entailed is beyond the purview of the paper. (shrink)

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and second, (...) the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other. (shrink)

In the last few years, various Kantian commentators have drawn attention on a number of features in the self-reference device of transcendental apperception having emerged from the contemporary debate on the irreducibility of self-ascription of thoughts in the first person. Known as I-thoughts, these have suggested a connection between some aspects of Kant’s philosophy and Wittgenstein’s philosophico-linguistic analysis of the grammatical rule of the term I. This paper would like to review some of such correspondences (§§ 1-3), avoiding any mechanical (...) association between Kant and an elusive reading of the I think, e.g. as suggested mutatis mutandis by McDowell and Kitcher (§§ 4-7). (shrink)

In his critical philosophy, Kant considers the 'subject' to be the source and ground of the a priori conditions of experience, but says exasperatingly little to elucidate this crucial notion. Kant's express view in the first Critique is that the self, like other objects of experience, can be considered either through the conditions of experience as a phenomenon, or as it is independently of these conditions as a noumenon. According to this view, the 'subject' that serves as the ground of (...) the a priori conditions of experience must therefore be understood either as the phenomenal or noumenal self. Commentators such as Henry Allison reject Kant's express view as inconsistent with the awareness of oneself as 'thinking subject', however, since the latter is an awareness of the activity of thinking, while 'phenomena' and 'noumena' are concepts of things. ;The dissertation presents an interpretation and defense of Kant's express view of the self against commentators such as Allison. The defense begins by applying the dual-aspect reading of the phenomena/noumena distinction to the self, which is necessary to give the view initial plausibility. It is then argued that the activity of thinking, which is represented by the 'transcendental unity of apperception' or 'I think', is attributable to the noumenal self in the negative sense, or transcendental subject. The activity of thinking is thus conceptually distinct from, but ontologically dependent upon, the transcendental subject to which it belongs. Kant's express view therefore does not, pace Allison, require the identification of the thinking subject, with the 'phenomenal' or 'noumenal' selves. ;The final two chapters of the dissertation consist of closer studies of the concepts of the 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' selves respectively. The former examines the notions of 'inner sense' and 'self-affection' as they pertain to the phenomenal self. The latter considers the noumenal self as it functions in Kant's practical philosophy. It is seen that the results of both chapters are consistent with the previous defense of Kant's express view of the self. (shrink)

This article proposes a reading of the Kantian transcendental apperception that attempts both to reinforce the cognitive efficacy of its spontaneity and to determine the modus operandi of its unifying function . Thus, being irreducible to a pure logical form , the I think is meant to constitute the qualitative unity of all possible representational system, insofar as it performs an infinite process of semantic or narrative unification. From this standpoint, the I think denotes the key operation that (...) produces meaning, and thereby the very possibility of truth. It follows, from such a framework of a procedural and constructivist theory of truth, the absolute primacy of the establishment of a semantic community by and under the Self. This community lays the foundation of coherence or organic cohesion of contents, and coherence provides the ground where correspondence emerges, which, in the last analysis, expresses nothing but the ever unfinished agreement of donation and action, agreement of Self with Itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S BUNDLES, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND KANT Even if we are inclined to view Hume's attempt to explain ascriptions of personal identity as an abysmal failure, we might still be sympathetic toward his proposal to replace the going substance theory of the nature of mind with his bundle account. Thus we might fault Hume for erecting an unachievably high standard for personal identity, or round on him for excluding bodily criteria (...) 2... from his solution, but nonetheless applaud his spiriting away of the Cartesian soul substance leaving his "true idea of the human mind" (261) as a collection of perceptions in its stead. However, Hume's concern to give an account of the idea of the unity of a human mind in terms of related perceptions has run into notoriously rough sledding, not the least of which is the fact that Hume himself in his Appendix to "Of Personal Identity" seems to abandon his bundle theory in despair. In this paper I shall first be concerned to examine the criticism of his bundle theory which Hume brings forth in the Appendix and explain why I think the core difficulty remains insoluble for Hume. I shall then go on to suggest that the unworkability of Húmete bundle theory is directly tied to his failure to appreciate certain features of the peculiarly first person nature of his question about the make-up of minds. In thus emphasizing the place of the first person voice in my interpretation I am stealing a leaf, if not a chapter, from Kant. But this is as it should be since one of the aims of this essay is to provide an interpretation of Hume's difficulties with his account of the nature of mind which explains part of the reason why 'self-consciousness' (or 'apperception') looms so very large in the Critique of Pure Reason attack upon Hume's type of bundle theory. 60. 1. Hume's Second Thoughts In a burst of self criticism at the Appendix to the section on personal identity, Hume brings forth this objection to his own efforts:...Having thus loosen' d all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings cou'd have indue' d me to receive it (635). After additional reflections Hume encapsulates his objection thus:...All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness (6SS-6). What is the defect Hume calls to our attention? Notice first that the footnote on page 635 explicitly refers us back to that part of his account Hume considers defective; and when we look back to the text of the Treatise in question, page 260, we find it is precisely there that Hume uses the analogy of a republic to sketch his bundle theory of the unity of mind in terms of the two associative principles, resemblance and causation. So it must somehow be that this account in terms of the associative principles is mistaken. But what then is the mistake? According to Hume it is that he cannot 'explain' the principles which unite the discrete percepts. Now it seems to me there are only two possible things Hume could mean in saying this. He could mean either (1) that the principles which connect the percepts of one mind are instances of the associative principles, but he cannot explain them; or (2) there must be other, non-associative, principles which connect the percepts of a single mind and these he cannot explain. 61. I think we can safely conclude (1) cannot represent Hume's misgivings when he says he is unable to explain the uniting principles of the mental bundles. There is first the fact that he does not call into question his general programme of accounting for the nature of the unity of complex things by the principles of causation, resemblance and contiguity — for example, ships, plants, animals, houses and rivers (e.g. 257f) — but only his... (shrink)

The I in the reflectively revealed "I think" has had, as we all know, a rather checkered career. For Descartes, it was a "thinking substance". For Kant it was a "transcendental unity of apperception," an empty, formal unifying function whose occupation was a priori synthesis, and which was sharply distinguished from anything which might be called a "soul." With Husserl the pure I was again an empty, formal source of all intentionalities, a pure transparency devoid of depth; at least (...) this was Husserl at the epoch of the Ideen I, although the Cartesian Meditations altered the matter in fundamental respects. But there has always been an opposing body of philosophers, empiricists, and now existentialists, for whom there is no I at all within consciousness; the Cartesian cogito ergo sum demonstrates, they maintain, only that "there is thinking," an impersonal stream of conscious acts which need no I as their source or support. And finally, there is a third group which holds that while there is most certainly an I, it is not formal, nor empty nor even fully transparent to itself; it has certain depths which are not accessible to its own direct reflection but can be "felt" or "touched" in certain experiences which engage the ego in its totality, or which shatter its own thin picture of itself. Jaspers and Marcel belong to this group. And so, while we began with a certitude, I think, we find at last that both the existence and character of this most certain of all things are questionable, or at least have been questioned. I propose then to reexamine the question, first briefly to ascertain that there is indeed an I or thinking subject; and then more extensively to follow certain clues as to its character in depth. (shrink)

This book deals with the epicenter of modern philosophy, Kant's transcendental thinking self. It lives and breathes not only in the unity of reason in Kant himself, but also spells out how the problems that emerge in that conception were dealt with in the intellectual world of early German idealism. Bondeli shows how Kant's unity of reason is variously conceived by Kant as the "I think," the "highest point" of the "unity of apperception," as well as the more traditional (...) concept of "soul," which is freighted with heavy metaphysical baggage. According to Bondeli, Kant had the greatest difficulty providing adequate reasons for that unity of apperception. Those difficulties are laid bare in part A of the first part of the book, "Kant's Problem of an Adequate Founding of the Original-Synthetic Unity of Apperception." The problem Bondeli lays bare provided ample fodder for Kant's critics, first and foremost the very early pre-Kantian Carl Leonhard Reinhold, soon, however, to emerge as the "Kantian of the first hour" in his Kantian Letters, but then also for Maimon, Schulze, Beck, and Fichte. Bondeli deals with the criticisms of those important thinkers in part B, "Reactions to Kant's Problem.". (shrink)

Keller develops a new account of transcendental apperception. He urges, with Kant, that apperception imposes categorial constraints on our experience of the world. He also considers Kant’s arguments for substance, causality, and interaction; the Paralogisms’ discussion of the I think; and Kantian idealism.

This volume contains nine essays published between 1980 and 1997 by Klaus Düsing, the director of Cologne’s Husserl-Archiv. It is divided in four parts: theoretical philosophy in transcendental idealism; theory of subjectivity and metaphysics in speculative idealism; ethics and theory of freedom; and idealistic aesthetics. It is, however, focused in its entirety on the notion of subjectivity from Kant to Heidegger. Philosophical discussions about subjectivity or self-consciousness are enjoying a renewed success, as Düsing notes in his introductory essay on the (...) notion of subjectivity in classical and contemporary German philosophy. But this comes after a long period of dearth, during which it was mainstream to decompose the unity of the self-consciousness into a complex of conscious or preconscious lived experiences. Düsing does not question the nature of the brain; his wish is to take a stance on what separates consciousness from self-consciousness or spirit, which English speakers might want to think of also in terms of mind. Obviously, Kant and Hegel come handy for such an endeavor. In fact, the basis of all contemporary theories of self-consciousness and subjectivity is provided by Kant’s theories of apperception and imagination. Kant does not conceive of thinking as an anonymous process. He insists on the “I think,” namely, on the unity of self-consciousness. Kant did not, however, specify how is it possible for logical forms and categories to think through this “I think,” which is their constitutive center of origin. In other words, how can both pure logic and the theory of pure subjectivity claim to be founding elements, if they cannot be opened up by thought itself? The young Fichte and the young Schelling based their philosophical attempts on an interpretation of the theory of subjectivity in terms of transcendental idealism, which, however, leaves unexplained how one should provide a scientific treatment for transcendental idealism that implies those determinations and laws of pure logic that transcendental idealism cannot do without. (shrink)

Kant’s introduction in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (KrV) of a spontaneity proper to the understanding is often thought to be one of the central innovations of his Critical philosophy. As I show in this paper, however, a number of thinkers within the 18th century German tradition in the time before the KrV (including the pre-Critical Kant himself) had already developed a robust conception of the spontaneity of the mind, a conception which, in many respects lays the groundwork for Kant’s (...) later, rather more influential account. To illustrate this, I consider three accounts of the spontaneity of the mind—those of Crusius, the pre-Critical Kant, and Tetens—which, while distinct, nonetheless relate to and explicitly draw upon one another in important ways, forming as it were the interconnected and, thus far, largely overlooked pre-Critical context for Kant’s discussion of the spontaneity of the understanding in the KrV. As I conclude, while Kant’s own account of the spontaneity of the understanding, and particularly of the I think clearly departs from these accounts, it nonetheless continues to connect in significant ways with the trailblazing discussions of his immediate predecessors. (shrink)