The aim of this paper is to develop a new reconstruction of Sartre’s arguments against Kant’s account of the unity of experience in the transcendental deduction. In the Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre presents several arguments to show that Kant is unwarranted in moving from the claim that we can attach an ‘I think’ to our representations to the claim that this is made possible by a synthetic unity of apperception. While Sartre’s criticism of Kant’s conception of the ego is (...) central to Sartre’s existential philosophy, there is still little agreement on what Sartre’s criticisms actually amount to, let alone whether these criticisms are successful. I argue that to make sense of Sartre’s argument here, we must see it as relying on a distinction between two different models of what it is for something to be organized or determined. By doing so, we can see why Sartre believes consciousness does not need the ‘I think’ in order to be unified, but also why Sartre believes we are nonetheless led to posit this moment of unification. (shrink)

Scotus’ theory of identity and distinction is a unique and central aspect of his thought, as he applies it throughout his metaphysics. On Scotus’s account of identity, the indiscernibility of identicals fails—i.e., A and B can be identical but not share all the same properties. As Ockham objected, Scotus is now in the difficult position of needing to provide alternative necessary and sufficient conditions for being identical, rather than simply invoking indiscernibility. The secondary literature has argued that the lack of (...) actual or potential separation is both necessary and sufficient for identity. I argue that is incorrect and provide alternative necessary and sufficient conditions for identity and real distinction, along with an analysis of Scotus’s theory of identity and distinction more broadly. Scotus thinks instead that the lack of actual, potential, and proportional separation are necessary and sufficient conditions for identity. The deeper root of this view is that identity corresponds to a certain degree of unity, and is accompanied by a sharing of esse. (shrink)