Hegel repeatedly identifies rational self-consciousness as a real example of the concept, and its tripartite constituents: universality, particularity, and individuality. In what follows I will show that the concept as such, along with its tripartite constituents, are constitutive of rational self-consciousness. On the one hand, by showing how Hegel’s concept of the concept applies to rational self-consciousness, I aim to provide a concrete example of the concept of the concept in a real being whose being is not merely logical. On (...) the other hand, I aim to show that Hegel’s application of the concept to rational self-consciousness is motivated by a problem within the philosophy of mind. For this reason, Hegel’s application of the concept of the concept to the mind is not arbitrary, but motivated by significant philosophical problems. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant famously characterizes space as a unity, understood as an essentially singular whole. He further develops his account of the unity of space in the B-Deduction, where he relates the unity of space to the original synthetic unity of apperception, and draws an infamous distinction between form of intuition and formal intuition. Kant ’s cryptic remarks in this part of the Critique have given rise to two widespread and diametrically opposed (...) readings, which I call the Synthesis and Brute Given Readings. I argue for an entirely new reading, which I call the Part-Whole Reading, in part by considering the development of Kant ’s views on the unity of space from his earliest works up through crucial reflections written during the silent decade. (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)

이 논문의 목표는 『순수이성비판』제2판 「선험적 감성론」의 공간론과 통각의 종합적 통일의 관계를 규명하는 것이다. 논문의 내용은 다음 테제들의 정당화이다. 1. 「선험적 감성론」에서 전개된 공간론은 세 단계로 이루어진 하나의 논증이다. 첫 단계는 공간의 근원적 표상은 아프리오리한 순수 직관임(1)을 증명하고, 둘째 단계는 공간은 우리의 외감 일반의 형식 혹은 외적 직관의 형식임(2)을 증명하고, 셋째 단계는 공간은 사물 자체도 사물들 자체의 관계도 아니며 오직 외적 현상의 형식일 뿐임(3)을 증명한다. 이 공간론 전체 논증은‘(1)이다, 그러므로 (2)이다, 그러므로 (3)이다’라는 추론 형식의 증명 구조를 갖는다. 2. 공간론 전체 논증의 (...) 대전제인 (1)을 증명하는 첫 단계는 다시금 네 개의 논증으로 이루어져 있다. 이 중 첫째와 둘째 논증은 공간 표상의 아프리오리함을 대상 인식에서 공간 표상이 갖는 역할을 분석하여 증명하고, 셋째와 넷째 논증은 공간 표상의 직관임을 공간 자체의 본성을 분석하여 증명한다. 3. 이 셋째와 넷째 논증의 증명은 ‘공간은 유일하고 무한히 큰 전체로 표상됨’을 전제한다. 4. 이 전제는 최종적으로 통각의 종합적 통일에 근거해서만 가능하다. 왜냐하면 공간의 통일(유일성과 무한성)은 공간의 형식적 직관의 통일과 같은 것으로서 하나의 종합적 통일이고, 이 통일은 형상적 종합에 의해 가능하고, 이 종합은 다시금 통각의 종합적 통일에 따라서만 가능하기 때문이다. 5. 그러므로 통각의 종합적 통일은 공간론 전체 논증의 최종근거이다. 왜냐하면 공간론 논증 첫 단계의 네 가지 논증은 모두 다 유일하고 무한히 큰 전체로 표상(생각)된 공간을 다루기 때문이다. (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)

This essay chiefly concerns the unity of self-consciousness expounded under the heading "the original synthetic unity of apperception" in Kant's transcendental deduction. It focuses mainly on Kant's identification of this unity with the understanding, the faculty of knowledge, with the aim of throwing light on the understanding and on knowledge as well as on synthetic unity.

This paper offers a limited defence of two seemingly disparate interpretive approaches to free thought in Hegel’s JenaPhenomenology of Spirit. On the one hand, I defend the view of so-called post-Kantian Hegelians, that Kant’s synthetic unity of apperception is central to Hegel’s account of free thinking in thePhenomenology. On the other hand, I argue that the notions ofdas Offenein Heidegger’sVom Wesen der WahrheitandAb-Lösungin his 1930/31 lectures on Hegel’sPhenomenologyare no less crucial to an understanding of free thought in (...) Hegel’s work. I show that absolution is a condition for the possibility ofdas Offene, which is a condition for the possibility of apperception in its reflexive capacity. (shrink)

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)

The article analyses the peculiarities of Kant’s interpretation of the transcendental unity of apperception as a condition for the formation of human experience in the «Critique of Pure Reason», with this condition appearing as a result in the process of analysis. It is emphasized that this concept determines the essence of Kant’s gnoseological searches and is closely intertwined with the concepts of the transcendental subject, a priori synthetic judgments, consciousness, metaphysics of time, and the essence of sensory (...) contemplation. The transcendental unity of apperception, which defines our consciousness as such, is defined as a condition for theoretical knowledge and the formation of experience given the fact that without the presence of such a transcendental basis, no person could construct objects of creative activity and concepts, as well as formulate judgments about the reality. It has been established that Kant does not equate sense and understanding at all, since understanding is not capable of creating objects based on its own ideas, on the contrary, its activity is determined by the totality of those objects that a person is able to perceive and comprehend in the process of cognition. It has been demonstrated that solving the problem of the synthesis of sensibility and understanding as heterogeneous in nature and not reducible to one another is possible due to the presence of such a mediating link as a transcendental scheme, which is determined by time as an a priori form of our perception and the basis of the schematism of our thinking. It is this form of inner sense that is homogeneous to categories and phenomena, and therefore the former can be used to characterise the latter. Imagination is considered separately as a condition of the transcendental ability to judge, which ensures the unity of understanding and sensibility and does not simply grasp data, but constructs it. The fact that the schematism of the understanding is due to the unity of apperception is emphasized, and the formulation of the general principles of experience is the final deductive link of the justification of knowledge of nature. And therefore, it is also a condition for the possibility of objects of experience, which a person perceives and is able to further systematize and thus come to understand the essence of the concepts obtained with the help of theoretical knowledge. Subsequently, Kant’s theory of experience and the idea of the transcendental unity of apperception defined the foundations of the philosophy of J. G. Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel, accordingly influencing the entire further development of both the philosophy of German idealists and Western philosophical thought. (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)

Kant’s derivation of the table of categories from logical functions of judgments in the metaphysical deduction remains one of the least convincing arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason. This article presents an alternative approach to the question of the a priori origin of the table of categories. By circumventing the metaphysical deduction, I show the possibility of demonstrating the exact functions and necessity of the twelve categorial forms as emerging from the interaction of the synthetic unity of (...) apperception with the manifold content of the a priori intuition of space and time. I argue that this a priori material of cognition imposes a constraint on the spontaneity of understanding, thus giving rise to the specific rules of synthesis that make up the table of categories. On the reading I suggest, the table of categories can be understood as expressing the a priori form of self-consciousness in the face of space and time. (shrink)

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)

In this chapter, I show that there is at least one crucial, non-short, argument, which does not involve arguments about spatiotemporality, why Kant’s subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge, argued in the Transcendental Deduction, must lead to idealism. This has to do with the fact that given the implications of the discursivity thesis, namely, that the domain of possible determination of objects is characterised by limitation, judgements of experience can never reach the completely determined individual, i.e. the thing in itself (...) or the unlimited real, but only objects as objects of possible experience. As such, it can be shown by reference to a key argument from Kant, that Hegel’s famous criticism that Kant is not licensed, on the basis of his core arguments concerning the original-synthetic unity of apperception, to restrict our knowledge to appearances, is mistaken on purely systematic grounds. More specifically, I argue that idealism follows already from the constraints that the use of the categories, in particular the categories of quality, places on the very conceivability of things in themselves. My claim is that, although it is not only possible but also necessary to think things in themselves, it does not follow that by merely thinking them we have a full grasp of the nature of things in themselves, as some important commentators claim we have. We must therefore distinguish between two kinds of conceiving of things in themselves: conceiving in the standard sense of ‘forming the notion of’, and conceiving in the narrow sense of ‘having a determinate intellectual grasp’. So although we must be able notionally to think things in themselves, as the grounds of their appearances, we cannot even conceive, through pure concepts, of how they are in themselves in any determinate, even if merely intellectual, sense. To put it differently, we cannot have a positive conception of things in themselves (this is in line with Kant’s distinction between noumena in the negative and positive senses; cf. B307–9). For support, I resort to a much overlooked chapter in the Critique, concerning the transcendental Ideal, where Kant discusses what it is for a thing to be a thing in itself proper, namely, something that is thoroughly determined. This concerns the real ontological conditions of things, which are not satisfied by the modal categories alone, namely, their existence conditions. I claim that the chief reason why, given Kant’s view of determinative judgement, we cannot determine a thing in itself is because of two connected reasons: (1) a thing in itself is already fully determined and therefore not further determinable and (2) we cannot possibly determine all of the thing’s possible determinations. In this context, I also discuss the notion of material (not: empirical) synthesis—of which Kant speaks in the chapter on the transcendental Ideal—which must be presupposed as the ground of the formal a priori synthesis that grounds possible experience. This material synthesis, which is an idea of reason that defines a thing as thoroughly determined with regard to all of its possible predicates and has mere regulative status, can by implication not be determined by the forms of the understanding, which synthesise only a limited set of predicates. As a result, given this definition of ‘thing in itself’, any object (appearance) as at best44 a limited set of determinations of the thing can never be numerically identical to the thing in itself as thoroughly determined individual. This undercuts a standard assumption about the identity relation between appearances and things in themselves in many contemporary interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

“Mathematics, synthetic unity and constitutive a priori”. Starting from the emphasis about the Kantian idea of the originary synthetic unity of apperception like the basic function on which rest the production of all synthetic judgment, in this paper I defend the idea of constitutive a priori of experience under the form of a similar synthetic principle but essentially formal, namely, the concept of transformation and group of transformations. To the same time, I try (...) to show that Kant himself inspired, for articulate his own position, on mathematics, especially on synthetic geometry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant's Transcendental Deduction by Alison LaywineKatherine DunlopAlison Laywine. Kant's Transcendental Deduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. iv + 318. Hardback, $80.00.Alison Laywine's contribution to the rich literature on Kant's "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" stands out for the novelty of its approach and conclusions. Laywine's declared "strategy" is "to compare and contrast" the Deduction with the Duisburg Nachlaß, an important set of manuscript jottings from the 1770s (...) (10). But her approach is also deeply informed by Kant's writings on metaphysics from the 1750s and 1760s; moreover, she gives attention to ancient Greek geometry and its importance for Kant's thought.I believe Laywine's most important interpretative claim is that the Transcendental Deduction's "final step" addresses "the question of how nature is possible" (210). Here, 'nature' is understood in what Kant calls the "formal sense," as "the totality of rules under which appearances must stand if they are to be thought as joined in one experience" (Prolegomena, §36; cf. B 165). This constitutes a novel answer to the problem posed in Dieter Henrich's landmark 1969 paper "The Proof Structure of the Transcendental Deduction" (Review of Metaphysics 22 [1969]: 640–59): how to understand §§21–26 of the (B-edition) Deduction as proving more than the thesis already stated in §20 (that the manifold in an intuition necessarily stands under the categories).Crucial support for Laywine's interpretation comes from §26 of the Deduction, which claims the possibility of cognizing objects "a priori through categories... as far as the laws of their combination are concerned, thus the possibility of as it were prescribing the law to nature and even making [nature] possible," is now "to be explained" (B 159). Kant does not use the term 'world' in this passage (as he does in Prolegomena §36). But Laywine contends that here the word 'nature' "has unmistakable, deliberate, cosmological connotations," and in fact "means 'world' in the sense of Kant's early cosmology": roughly, a whole unified by means of laws (12–13).The "cosmological" language of §26 does not recur in the following, officially concluding, section of the Deduction. So, we might ask whether Kant's explanation of how the understanding prescribes laws to nature is integral to the Deduction; Henry Allison, for instance, describes this explanation as an "appendix" (Kant's Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical-Historical Commentary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 9). The question of whether it belongs integrally has bite because, as Laywine makes clear in her "Conclusion," the universal laws at issue are just the Analogies of Experience. Thus, the passage could be read as the "promissory note with a forward-looking reference to the System of Principles" that she finds missing from the Deduction (289). Laywine meets such worries by arguing that "the reappropriation [from the pre-Critical period] of the general cosmology is actually [End Page 162] doing... a lot of hard work" in the Deduction (13). This sustained argument comes to a head in chapter 4, which contends that each of the two steps into which Laywine divides the first half of the (B-edition) Deduction, treated in chapters 2 and 3 (respectively), relies on cosmological presuppositions.Chapter 2 analyzes the conception of knowledge as relation to an object that is asserted (in §17) to rely on the synthetic unity of apperception. Laywine traces this conception to the Duisburg Nachlaß's account of "exposition," which relates concepts a priori to appearances, in something like the way that geometrical construction relates them to pure intuition. (Laywine further connects the Latin term expositio to the Greek ekthesis, which expositio translates in the context of geometrical proof. She thereby gives the notion of ekthesis broader importance than does Jaakko Hintikka, who noted its relevance to Kant's philosophy of mathematics in "Kant on the Mathematical Method" [Monist 51 (1967): 352–75]. Laywine claims that Borelli's edition of Euclid could have been Kant's source for the term, but I doubt it was known to Kant and his contemporaries, since it is not among the editions cited by Christian Wolff; Commandino seems likelier to me. Chapter 2 is concerned to articulate the notion of... (shrink)

This article reconstructs the development of Kurt Walter Zeidler's argument for a reformulation of Kant's transcendental dialectic as a theory of the foundation of transcendental logic. It therefore examines his doctoral dissertation "Logik des Erkenntnisprozesses. Dedukton - Induktion - Abduktion" (1979), where he discusses Norwood Russell Hansons 'logic of discovery' and finds an analogy between Charls S. Peirce's definiton of 'abduction' and Hegel's defintion of 'analogy', as well as his early papers, collected in "Grundlegungen. Zur Theorie der Vernunft und Letztbegründung" (...) (2015), and his habilitation dissertation "Vernunft und Erfahrung. Untersuchungen zum Erkenntnisproblem in Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie" (1986), where he first seeks to verify the claim of Hegel and Peirce, that the synthetical unity of apperception is to be analyzed as a unity of three forms of syllogism corresponding to Aristotle's three figures of syllogism, through a close study of Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories as well as of the transcendental ideas, before he comes to reformulate these deductions in the light of the original unity of sensuality and understanding. The development of this argument is critically examined in three respects, first, in reference to Zeidler's reading of Peirce, Hegel and Schelling, second, with respect to Zeidler's analysis of scientific rationality as well as of the architectonic of the Critique of pure reason, and third, in view of the influence of Erhard Oeser and Erich Heintel on Zeidler's thought. (shrink)

In the 3rd Analogy, Kant claims that I can perceive that things coexist by synthesizing my perceptions in an order-indifferent way. Reigning orthodoxy holds that I first successively perceive different things, and then (through some further act) determine that the things I perceive coexist. Focusing on prominent examples of this approach, I argue that these accounts fail to do justice to the order-indifferent synthesis that Kant describes: Strawson explains the synthesis in a way which renders Kant’s argument in the 3rd (...) Analogy obviously unconvincing, Watkins makes the synthesis irrelevant to Kant’s argument, while Longuenesse and Allison make the unity of the synthesis obscure. The problems with these views, I contend, show that Kant thinks the rule for synthesizing my perceptions is already operative in the successive perceptions, such that the fundamental act of perception already involves ‘objective time-determinations.’ This connects with the recent dispute about whether Kant is a conceptualist: my argument provides additional evidence that Kant is a conceptualist, while also extending the conceptualist reading to the 3rd Analogy in a novel way. For those who think conceptualism is wrong, my argument serves as a critical notice that non-conceptualists have yet to offer a satisfying interpretation of the 3rd Analogy. (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).

This paper focuses on Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s models of self-consciousness and their specific relation to time. It aims to show that genuine philosophical theories can explain the idiosyncratic relation between ourselves and the world without relying on pure metaphysical speculations or strictly empirical and phenomenally oriented conceptions, as many contemporary proponents of analytic philosophy entail. The first groundbreaking doctrine in this regard is Kant’s transcendental theory of apperception, which unfolds a new theoretical dimension of thinking, grounding the logical (...) class='Hi'>unity of thought in the pure, originally synthetic unity of the subject itself. In order to constitute a structural order within the appearing phenomenal world, Kant conceptualizes a theory of self-affection in the second edition of the Critique of pure reason, positing a dynamic relation between the spontaneously acting intellect and the purely receptive inner sense of time as a result of productive transcendental imagination. The problematic relation between self-reliance and empirical consciousness that Kant did not resolve completely led to various subsequent transformations of Kant’s transcendental principles, one of which boasts Schopenhauer as a prominent but rarely considered representative. Schopenhauer’s systematic approach consists in a modified version of Kant’s transcendental idealism, which ties the Kantian subject of logical and transcendental unity to an intuitive corporeal individual that can only conceptualize itself as an original, willing subject. The Schopenhauerian subject unfolds its empirical character in accordance with its own inner impulses and motivations, which manifest themselves in time but can only be interpreted as a phenomenal representation of a higher, metaphysical unity, which Schopenhauer calls the will as a thing in itself. Schopenhauer reaches his final metaphysical conclusion via a problematic analogy, positing another perspective on the corporeal nature of the individual which, by means of abstraction, can be extended to the whole phenomenal world. Therefore, Schopenhauer interprets the underlying character of the subject and the phenomenal world as a whole as a timeless, omnipresent will to live which can be temporally experienced within the nature of our own subjectivity. (shrink)

In the Critique of Fure Reason Kant distinguishes two sorts of conditions of knowledge. First, there are the space and time of pure intuition, introduced in the Transcendental Aesthetic. They are grounded in our dependence on a special sort of perceptual field for the location of objects. Second, there are pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, introduced in the Analytic. In one respect these are grounded in the logical function of the understanding in judgements, introduced in the first chapter (...) of the analytic of concepts: Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding; in another respect, they are grounded in transcendental unity of apperception, which is introduced in the second chapter: Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Transcendental Deduction. I shall be concerned with the latter and its contribution to the overall strategy of argument in the analytic. Within the Analytic, Kant distinguishes between an Analytic of Concepts and an Analytic of Principles. This corresponds to a traditional distinction between a doctrine of concepts and judgement. It is arguable that Kant's theory of concepts undermines this distinction. However, I shall not deal with that general issue, but with a more specific issue related to the first two chapters of the Analytic of Principles: the Schematism and the System of Principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY traversing "the great Arabian Desert," as Paten has so justly described it. Ewing's commentary is too compact to satisfy even a beginner. Paton's monumental two volumes are too de= tailed. The interest of Kemp Smith's classic work in the historical problem of the Critique prevents the student from gaining an over=all view of the long and prolix argument of the Analytic. Wolff's Commentary meets the (...) insufficiencies of these works remarkably well. The author presents a strong case for the view that the Analytic from beginning to end is one closely reasoned argument that reaches its climax only in the Second Analogy where Kant justifies the principle of causality. The lucidity with which he describes this adventure is masterful. In his introduction Wolff frames the questions which Kant undertook to answer. Beginning with Kant's pre=Critical writings, that worked within the problematic set up by Leibniz and Newton, he shows the transformation in viewpoint that Kant underwent by his exposure to Hume. In his section on Kant's method, the author dwells upon the modes of logic employed by Kant in his arguments. He contrasts the synthetic me~hod which Kant usuaIIy adopts in the Analytic with the analytic procedure of the Prolegomena. Wolff's observations here are extremely useful. They serve to explain the mysterious transitions and apparent backtracking of the Analytic, while at the same time they show the paramount importance of the transcendental unity of apperception in Kant's chain of argument. The author then proceeds to a step-by=step analysis of the two deductions. Faced with the problem of explaining the development of Kant's thought through the two editions, he provides schematic outlines of four successive versions of the argument at the end of each section in his discussion. This is certainly one of the most valuable features of Wolff's book. These schemas clearly isolate the premisses and put into logical progression material that is often misplaced in the actual text from what we would expect to be its natural sequence. After short discussions of the Schematism and the First Analogy, the author moves on the Second Analogy (causality), which he treats as the real kernel of the Analytic. Wolff shows that Kant's definition of synthesis is stated in merely general terms in the deductions and needs the Second Analogy for adequate development. Wolff then recasts the four preliminary arguments in a fifth and final schema. Beginning with the unity of apperception and the temporal character of perception as his two premisses, he deduces the existence of a mental synthesis stated in terms equivalent to the principle of causality. In interpreting the five arguments of the Analytic, Wolff employs three chief guidlines. First, Kant develops his doctrine by taking the "epistemological turn," rejecting the attempts of earlier subjectivists to pass beyond their ideas to some kind of metaphysical statement about the reality beyond. Kant seeks the characteristics and bases of the knowledge of objects, rather than the characteristics of the objects in themselves. Secondly, Kant characterizes the knowledge of objects by the modes of necessity and universality. Finally, Kant grounds these characteristics by a dynamic analysis of the cognitive act; the mind, in its functioning, must conform to innate rules that govern the association of mental images. The author's discussion of Kant's notion of "rule" is probably the most illuminatingsection of his whole commen= tary. While the author does not gloss over the difficulties of Kant's text, the reader sometimes feels that Wolff sees logic and neatness in Kant's argument where there is none. This minor defect detracts but little, however, from the immense service which the author has done for the student of the Critique. CHARLESJ. RIECK, 0.P. Aquinas Institute, River Forest, Illinois Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience. By Frederick R. Love. (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1963.Pp. xi + 103.) Professor Love's little book differs from previous studies of Nietzsche's relation to Wagner by taking into account Nietzsche's compositions, including unpublished items in the BOOK REVIEWS 285 Nietzsche archives in Weimar.1 The author visited the archives, which are now... (shrink)

We argue that a framework for comprehending the basic differences between the mental structures of humans and machines (as they currently exist) is established by Transcendental Analytics' argument in the _Critique of Pure Reason_. It will be demonstrated that Kant's theory of the synthetic unity of apperception, as established by Transcendental Analytics' argument in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, along with Dummett's theory of meaning for meaning-theoretical predictions of inferential connections, can assist in establishing this framework. When (...) combined, these form a framework for organizing a coherent differentiation between what we refer to as the conscious grasp of the unity that is present during judgment and the machine-performed manipulation of signs. In the end, we will present an appendix on the underdevelopment of the Kantian framework for distinguishing artificial intelligence from human intelligence. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate the developments of the notion of “transcendental apperception” in Fichte’s writings of the period 1811-1813. I pay particular attention at the second lessons on transcendental Logic, as well as at the lessons on the WL 1812 and 1813 and at the diarium 1813. I follow and closely examine the philosophical work Fichte does regarding the concept of apperception, which is at the core of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of pure reason. Claiming (...) that Kant’s notion of apperception was a mere factual one, Fichte aims at providing the genetic foundation of apperception, in order to avoid Kant’s shortcomings. I argue that Fichte submits therefore the concept of apperception to a double revision and that this entails the re-organization of his own transcendental-philosophical project. On the one hand, he carries out an epistemological revision of Kant’s thinking on apperception, by means of establishing the priority of the analytic unity over the synthetic unity and changing the formulation notoriously used by Kant for the explanation of apperception. On the other hand, Fichte’s work consists in grounding apperception ontologically. The issue I will focus on regarding this ontological foundation is the relation between apperception and life, which on my view proves to be key for the last exposition of Fichte’s transcendental-philosophical thought, despite the fact that Fichte could not complete and organize his reflection on this point, due to his death occurred in 1814. In the course of the paper I insist on the systematic link between Fichte’s epistemological and ontological re-elaboration of apperception and the self-reflection of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I advance a new interpretation of the argumentative structure of the third Critique, which in turn clarifies the connection between its two apparently unrelated parts. I propose to read the third Critique as a response to Kant’s question of hope, which concerns the satisfaction of reason’s practical and theoretical interests. On this proposal, while the first part on aesthetics describes what we—as possessors of theoretical reason – may hope for, the second part, on teleology, describes what (...) we – as possessors of practical reason – may hope for. The main question of the third Critique is, ‘What may we hope if we act as we should, i.e. act rationally?’ Kant’s implicit answer is, ‘to attain the ideals of reason, which leads to happiness as a consequence of it.’ This novel reconstruction of the argumentative structure of the third Critique contributes to the literature by (i) explaining how the two parts of the third Critique on aesthetics and teleology are connected, (ii) clarifying how the ideals of reason are connected to hope and happiness, and (iii) showing how the spheres of nature and freedom can be synthetically unified through the faculty of judgment. (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)

Kant does not provide clear-cut definitions of apperception, consciousness, and self-consciousness and everywhere uses these terms as synonyms, which creates the problem of the relationship between these faculties. The importance of this problem stems from the colossal significance of each of the above-mentioned faculties which are intimately connected with Kant’s formulation of the key tasks of transcendental philosophy. The prime task is to discover the categories of understanding and to prove the legitimacy of their use, a task that is (...) further complicated by the difference between the editions of the Critique of Pure Reason in terms of the argumentation in the section on the deduction of categories and Kant’s concept of apperception. Accordingly, the author seeks to clarify the purpose of each of the above-mentioned faculties and to establish their inter-relationship. To this end the author analyses the functional roles of consciousness, self-consciousness and apperception in solving the main tasks of the first Critique. It turns out that consciousness is a reflexive cognitive capacity which provides access to representations in our soul and allows us to distinguish them and to connect them. Self-consciousness is the mode of the functioning of consciousness which makes it possible to study three objects of consciousness: internal and external representations of the subject, the synthetic activity of understanding and our soul. Apperception is the Latin synonym of the concept of Selbstbewußtsein and is aimed at studying the unity of our representations. Because Kant distinguishes multiple kinds of unity, there are different names for apperception. Kant uses the concept of Apperzeption as a synonym of self-consciousness because his concept of consciousness follows the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition. (shrink)

That Wilfrid Sellars claims that the framework of persons is not a descriptive framework, but a normative one is about as well known as any claim that he makes. This claim is at the core of the famous demand for a synoptic image that closes, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” makes its appearance at key moments in the grand argument of, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” and is the capstone of Sellars’ engagement with Kant in, Science and (...) Metaphysics. Whereas mere things can be subject to ought-to-be rules—e.g. a clock ought to chime on the hour—to be a person, as Sellars understands it, is to be subject to ought-to-do rules—e.g. one ought to wind one’s clocks to chime on the hour. Prima facie, though, there is more to being a person than just being subject to ought-to-do rules. For example, on at least some common ways of using ‘person’ to be a person is to have a unified consciousness, i.e. to be a single subject of a manifold of experience persisting through time. Arguably, that is what Kant takes a person to be. What I hope to show here is that it is what Sellars takes a person to be too. I.e. the exciting twist here is that as Sellars sees it being a single subject of experience persisting through time is being subject to a particular kind of ought-to-do rules, namely, those concepts-qua-inferential-rules that are the means by which we represent the world of causally-related objects existing in space and persisting through time. I take Sellars’ reasons for holding this set of theses to be essentially Kantian, and so my procedure for explicating them will be to trace a single philosophical thread through both Kant’s and Sellars’ thinking surrounding these issues. I begin with the historical problematic to which Kant’s Transcendental Deduction is intended as an answer. By what right does one apply the pure a priori concepts of the understanding? As the necessary means for representing the analytic unity of apperception, i.e. for representing oneself as the single subject of experience persisting through time. That leads to a consideration of the question of what the temporally-discursive experiences are of which one is supposed to be the single subject, and what the nature of the relation is of these experiences to such a subject. Here Sellars provides the answer. The question is ill formed. There is no relation of experiences to a subject because experiences are not themselves things. Rather, ‘an experience’ is a nominalization of the verb ‘experiencing’, which is itself a description of the act of a person. That thesis, then, brings us squarely to the question of what the framework of persons is, and why Sellars is so confident that it is an ineliminable feature of any future iteration of the synoptic image of the world. The answer to the latter question is that descriptive images themselves (scientific or manifest) are constituted by the rules that govern them, and it is only persons that can be subject to such rules. So, in the end, we return to Kant’s claim in the Transcendental Deduction that our representation of a world of causally-related objects existing in space and persisting through time is the means by which one represents oneself as the single subject of experience persisting through time. The descriptions that the scientific image provides are only possible, and necessary, because of what Kant would call their “ultimate principle”: the framework of persons. (shrink)

The article considers reflection as a method and condition of the transcendental philosophy of Kant and Husserl. At the beginning, the author refers to Kant's predecessors who used the term reflection (Wolf, Baumgartner) and concludes that Kant, when referring to reflection, rather adheres to the tradition laid down by Leibniz. Based on the text of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, the article argues that it is with the help of reflection that the formation of a priori categories and a priori (...) synthetic principles can be explained. The author distinguishes between reflection and the transcendental unity of apperception and examines, within the framework of the phenomenological interpretation of the “Critique of Pure Reason”, the role of this unity in the predilection of sensory diversity. The article shows the continuity in the understanding of reflection between transcendental phenomenology and Kant's philosophy. In Husserl's philosophy, reflection as a method is associated with reduction and contemplation. The author dwells on the features of the use of reflection in Husserl's studies, which include, first of all, the temporal language of description and the dependence of reflection on the phenomena to which it is directed. Orlova Yulia Olegovna (1970 2011) – is a Russian philosopher, Ph.D., in 1998 - 2011 worked at the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University. (shrink)

Inspired by Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sellars, I illustrate and identify certain kinds of unity which are typical (if not universal) features of our conscious experience, and argue that Kant was right to claim that such unities are produced by unconscious processes of synthesis: A perceptual experience of succession is not reducible to a succession of perceptual experiences. The experience of perceiving one object as having several features is not reducible to a conjunction of perceptual experiences of those features. A (...) cross-modal perceptual experience is not reducible to a conjunction of single-modality perceptual experiences. Incoming perceptual information is synthesized into a single scene-a representation of the world as perceived from a spatio-temporal point of view. Any two of the simultaneous features of the experience of a subject S can be thought of together by S. Many of the experiences of a subject S can be thought of by S at a later time as part of his or her history of experience. These can be summarized in the general principle: An experience of a complex is not a complex of experiences. This is consistent with Sellars’ principle that: A sense-impression of a complex is a complex of impressions because the latter applies at the sub-personal, unconceptualized level, and the former at the conscious level of conceptualized experiences. (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)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

The outputs of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) are often called “synthetic” to imply that they are not natural but artificial. Against that use of the term, this article focuses on a different denotation of synthesis, stressing the unifying and compositional aspects of anything synthetic. The case of large language models (LLMs) is used as an example to address synthesis philosophically alongside notions of representation in contemporary computational systems. It is argued that synthesis in generative AI should be (...) understood as a search for unity that is fundamental to the making of a representational reality. This representational reality, internal to computation, is a stable (if imperfect) whole, a togetherness of distributed representations. The article thus demonstrates that developing the philosophical concept of synthesis to investigate today’s generative AI involves examining how structuring occurs in LLMs and studying the kinds of forms that structuring results in. (shrink)

In this essay, I show how the virtues, for Maximus the Confessor, contribute to the formation of a positive orientation toward (a deep and abiding desire for) the relevant epistemic goods (e.g., contemplation of God in and through nature, illumination of divine truths, wisdom, and experiential knowledge of God). The first section offers a brief overview of how three character-based virtue epistemologies envision the role of the intellectual virtues in the cognitive life. The second section draws attention to Maximus’s understanding (...) of the relationship between the virtues and the relevant epistemic goods. The third section argues that a relationship of this sort entails a seamless connection (though without confusion) between the practical and contemplative aspects of deiform existence. The fourth section clarifies how select virtues foster within the self a praiseworthy desire for the relevant epistemic goods. (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)

Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is “iconoclastic”, as Gaston Bachelard phrases it, scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstanding example of a technoscientific discourse replete with metaphors, including textual metaphors such as the “Morse code” of life, the “barcode” of life and the “book” of life. This paper focuses (...) on a different type of metaphor, however, namely on the archetypal metaphor of the mandala as a symbol of restored unity and wholeness. Notably, mandala images emerge in textual materials related to one of the new “frontiers” of contemporary technoscience, namely the building of a synthetic cell: a laboratory artefact that functions like a cell and is even able to replicate itself. The mandala symbol suggests that, after living systems have been successfully reduced to the elementary building blocks and barcodes of life, the time has now come to put these fragments together again. We can only claim to understand life, synthetic cell experts argue, if we are able to technically reproduce a fully functioning cell. This holistic turn towards the cell as a meaningful whole also requires convergence at the “subject pole”: the building of a synthetic cell as a practice of the self, representing a turn towards integration, of multiple perspectives and various forms of expertise. (shrink)

The question of whether it is possible to philosophize outside the categories of rationalist philosophy is not limited to methodology. It has ideological overtones. Namely, the rationalism that has developed in philosophy in modern times, after Descartes, is inevitably supplemented by mechanics. The world is seen as a machine, the living is reduced to mechanisms. Rationalism becomes a machine of mentality. Taking it as a model of normal thinking, giving it a universal value, we thereby impose Western way of thinking (...) on other cultures with a different mentality. The question, therefore, is not about the method of scientific knowledge but about the power realized through the transformation of mentality. Scientific knowledge conquers space. Philosophy produces a transformation of mentality. New rationalism, according to G. Bachelard, is in dialectical relation with the usual realism of the natural Sciences. In this process, there is the implementation of new schemes developed in the complex interaction of “ratio” and experiment. Modern science is the collective creation of a new reality. This is the reality of the “picture of the world.” There is another view of science, rationalism and modern philosophy. According to him, rationalism is dualism, atomism and social individualism. These features reveal the anti-traditional and anti-metaphysical spirit of modern Western civilization. The traditional approach is non-duality, unity provided by metaphysical principles. The new rationalism in science is characterized by the belief in the infinite progress of knowledge. But knowledge itself, from the point of view of tradition, is devoid of great value. Philosophy uses categories of ancient Greek philosophy or German classical philosophy, but they cannot be considered universal. They corresponded not only to the time and place, the conditions in which they arose, but also to the characteristic mentality of the peoples and individuals who created them. They are not suitable for understanding the metaphysical doctrines of traditional cultures. The language of traditional cultures is symbolic and synthetic in contrast to the analytical language of Western science and philosophy. (shrink)

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)

Excerpt from The Principle of Synthetic Unity in Berkeley and Kant This little volume was prepared as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan. By the advice of Dr. John Dewey I have undertaken to interpret the Metaphysical Notes of Berkeley's Commonplace Book, and as far as possible discover the Principle of Unity which occasionally manifests itself in Berkeley's works and which formed a basis for a Treatise on the Will (...) which Berkeley contemplated but never produced. I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Dewey for his assistance in the selection of collateral reading and for his suggestions in the development of the thesis. No literature could be secured bearing upon the interpretation of the Notes, hence the Notes have been classified and such as bear upon the theme under discussion have been used. Often the phraseology has been preserved but where that could not be done the thought has been expressed in phraseology as nearly Berkeleian as the author could select so as to preserve the unity that runs through the Notes. This principle of unity found in Berkely has been compared and contrasted with the Unity of Kant. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In the sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl thematizes the surplus (Überschuß) of the perceptual intention whereby the intending goes beyond the partial givenness of a perceptual object to the object as a whole. This surplus is an apperceptive surplus that transcends the purely perceptual substance (Gehalt) or sensed content (empfundene Inhalt) available to a perceiver at any one time. This surplus can be described on the one hand as a synthetic link to future, possible, active experience; to intend an object (...) is to intend it as it would appear if we were to have an exhaustively synthetic explication of it. This perceptual apperceptive surplus is, on the other hand, distinguished from the surplus that categorial form represents over the perceptual sense data. In this paper I show how the apperceptive surplus can also be understood as a synthetic link to past experience that is passively operative in any present perception. The synthetic link to both past and possible experience is a link to non-actual perceptions. Links to non-actual experience are despite their non-actuality nevertheless genuinely intentional in that they enter into the sense of any actively constituted object understood as a unity of sense. Key to this interpretation is an explanation of how Husserl appropriated the key concepts of attention and apperception from psychologists of his day, such as Stumpf and Wundt. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Sellars’s conceptualist reading of Kant, though less radical than more contemporary approaches (e. g., Brandom, McDowell), relies on a controversial account of the relations between the givenness of intuitions, the productive imagination and the power of judgment. I will discuss: 1) how Sellars reconsidered Kant’s account of intuition; and 2) the kind of conceptualism he argues for. I will raise two main claims. First, Sellars’s conceptualist reading of intuition overlooks the role of space and (...) time as givenness conditions. Second, Sellars’s account of the productive imagination disregards the complementary significance of the power of judgment in a priori synthesis, the role of which is to grant synthetic unity. My aim is to reconstruct a consistent dialogue between Sellars and Kant by discussing Sellars’s reading of a priori synthesis and comparing his views to Kant’s original aims. (shrink)