\'Subjectivity\' in Kierkegaard\'s Philosophy

Critique of Rational Kant’s Psychology: Unity of Apperception and Paralogisms

Submitted by: Suyash Saxena M.A. Philosophy, Centre for Philosophy, SSS

I Kant’s Critique of Pure reason sets out with the agenda of offering that critical mediation between Rationalism and Empiricism. The basic argumentative architecture of Critique of Pure Reason can be classified into- Transcendental Aesthetics and Transcendental Logic. The former deals with the forms of intuition viz. space-time and the latter one is dealt with in a chapter called The Refutation of idealism wherein Kant investigates the limits of rational thoughts. Transcendental Logic can again be subdivided into Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic. The discussion of ‘categories of mind’ is included in the former. Transcendental Dialectics seeks to reject the application of rational faculties in the nonempirical realm. It is Transcendental Dialectics that shall be the focus of this paper. This paper is divided into three segments. The first segment shall attempt to offer to give an insight into transcendental psychology by discussing Kant’s notion of ‘unity of apperception’. The second segment shall deal with the limits of reason that are imposed by transcendental psychology. These ‘limits’ in general include Paralogisms of Pure Reasons as well as Antinomies; however, this paper shall focus only on paralogisms. Finally this paper shall close with a few concluding remarks in the final segment of the paper.

II Before we begin investigating Kant’s notion of unity of apperception’ we need to elucidate its background. Kant has several times talked about ‘synthesis’ as an act performed on the cognitive states. Kant defines synthesis as “By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the act of adding different cognitive states [or their contents] to each other and of comprehending their diverse [elements] in a single representation.” Synthesis is an act or a process that leads to diverse elements of cognitive state being comprehended in a single representation. To put the idea in a clearer perspective it must be stated that Hume had maintained that mental states were nothing more than bundles of perception and perceptions were distinct and unconnected. However, Kant disagrees with Hume and argues that synthesis of cognitions and various mental acts (involving sensation, memory, imposition of forms of intuitions and categories) is required to have experience. Although Kant discusses empirical synthesis, his focus is on transcendental synthesis. Simply put, transcendental is something that is a prerequisite for cognitive experience and involve a priori elements. Thus transcendental synthesis shall refer to the syntheses that are prerequisite for the cognitive experience. Kant assumes the existence of transcendental syntheses. He begins by equating doctrine of transcendental synthesis with that of apperception. Apperception, broadly speaking, refers to the awareness of one’s mental representation. Kant seeking equivalence between transcendental synthesis and apperception writes, “Synthetic unity of diverse elements of cognition, as produced a priori, is the ground of the identity of ap perception which precedes all my determinate thoughts.” He further elaborates, “this amounts

to saying, that I am conscious a priori of a necessary synthesis of cognitive states, which is called the synthetic unity of apperception, under which all my cognitive states must stand, but under which they must be brought through a synthesis.” At this juncture, having arrived at the idea of ‘synthetic unity of apperception’ let us ponder over it and attempt to understand its various aspects. Patricia Kitcher, in her book on Kant’s Transcendental Psychology writes, “the ‘unity of apperception” refers to the fact that cognitive states are connected to each other through a syntheses required for cognition. ‘Apperception does not indicate any awareness of a separate thing, a ‘self’, or even that different cognitive states belong to a separate things- a ‘self.’” Thus Kant denies an existing ‘self’ which the Cartesian philosophers and his contemporary- Christian Wolff had argued for. Unity of apperception can be said to be somewhat associated with ‘self-consciousness’ but the two terms are not synonymous. Kant had invested a special and specific meaning to the term ‘unity of apperception.’ A sharp distinction can be seen between Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception and idea of self and consciousness as conceived by Wolff. Christian Wolff had argued that human consciousness is inherently reflexive and he had attempted to br ing that out in his doctrine of “apperception.” According to Wolff all cognition would be reflexive because it involves our ability to perceive our own perceptions, and so ourselves. Despite the common use of the term ‘apperception’, Kant rejects Wolff’s view completely and asserts that Wolff’s system of psychology confuses ‘inner sense’ with ‘apperception.’ Through the notion of unity of apperception, Kant claim is not that we are always conscious of the cognitive states as our own but that the possibility of this awareness is an ‘inseparable component of what it is consciously to perceive, imagine and remember and such other cognitive tasks.’ All these cognitive tasks require a possibility of conscious attention which is supplied by unity of apperception. To clarify further, we must address the question that ‘how is this unity of apperception brought about?’ Kant had argued that unity of apperception is brought about by syntheses which is directed and guided by rules associated with the categories. Kant made it plain that unity of apperception cannot be brought about by empirical consciousness. This is evident in one of the passages from Critique of Pure Reason where Kant writes, “For the empirical consciousness, which accompanies different cognitive states, is in itself diverse and without relation to the identity of the subject. That relation comes about, not simply by my accompanying each cognitive state with consciousness, but only in so far as I conjoin the contents of one cognitive state with those of another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Only in so far, therefore, as I can unify a diversity of elements of given cognitive states in one consciousness, is it possible for me represent to myself the identity of consciousness across these cognitive states.” Thus in a nutshell, one can say that no single cognitive act can reveal the unity of apperception. This unity comes about through syntheses that must be performed on cognitive states for cognition to be possible and that creates a synthetic unity across the states. We can only recognise unity of apperception by recognising these syntheses.

II

Our discussion on unity of apperception gives us some insight into transcendental psychology. The discussion thus far can be said to elucidate the positive doctrines of transcendental psychology i.e. regarding what philosophy could tell us about mind and psychology. However, there are negative doctrines about transcendental psychology that describe the limits on what we can know about the mind. These limits are dealt with under ‘Paralogisms of Pure Reason’ in Kant’s book. Though alongside “paralogism”, antimonies also play a role in limiting reason to its proper place but in this paper we shall focus only on paralogisms. Paralogisms, simply put, are formally invalid arguments. Kant’s arguments regarding paralogism are directed against rational psychology with an aim to expose the ‘paralogisms’ or invalidity in its arguments. This is very well expressed in a passage by Robert J. Richard: “[Kant’s] incisive exposition of the paralogisms of rational psychology- the uncritical, a priori deductions asserting the ego to be a substance, a simple entity, an enduring personality and relating in specific ways to the external world- slashed the roots of Wolff’s rational psychology and withered its derivative claims of soul’s immateriality, spirituality and immortality.” Thus Kant’s critique of rational psychology is essentially directed at Wolff’s arguments in Psychologia Rationalis but in its sway it has taken major arguments of Descartes and Leibniz as well. Rational Psychology is grounded in propositions from empirical psychology. Through analysis and demonstration it moves beyond the fundamental empirical propositions to deduce the properties of the soul like its indivisibility, permanence etc. A constant theme of Kant’ critique and exposition of paralogisms is that no amount of analysis or demonstration can establish the type of synthetic doctrine that Rational Psychology propose to put forth (like about the simplicity and permanence of soul and its nature as a substance.) Through this exposition of paralogisms, Kant tries to show that rational philosophers have erred in trying to extract substantive conclusions from analytic premises. Let us consider these paralogisms exposed by Kant one by one. What has come to be known as the First Paralogism in a certain way exemplifies the fallacy found in the rest of the paralogisms i.e. ambiguous middle. Thus this paper shall consider the first paralogism in detail and then extrapolate the model to other paralogisms. In the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant formulates the argument of rational psychology in the following way: “That the representation of which is the absolute subject of our judgments and cannot be employed as determination of any other thing, is substance. I, as thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my possible judgments and this representation of myself cannot be employed as determination of any other thing. Therefore, I, as thinking being (soul), am substance.”

In the first edition Kant argues that in such a formulation the term ‘substance’ is used “transcendentally” in the major premise whereas in the minor premise as well as in the conclusion the term has been used empirically. Earlier in this paper we had discussed the meaning of ‘transcendental’ as something concerning our manner of knowing and which has non-empirical origins. However, Kant gives a slightly different version of the meaning of the term ‘transcendental’ in the beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic which would seem more appropriate in this context. A category is transcendentally employed if it is employed beyond the limits of experience or without showing concerns about the limits of experience. On the other hand it is “empirically” employed if it is used in conjunction with a “schema” which enables us to tell which object should be labelled as a substance. But the object to which the term is being empirically employed (i.e. the so-called “soul”) is not an object all for Kant. Hence in Kantian lingo one can say, “the category only yields knowledge of objects if it is “schematized,” applied to given objects under the conditions of time.” Kant has meted out a similar treatment to other paralogistic syllogisms of rational psychology. He argued against the simplicity of soul by stating that the proponents of this arg ument are erroneously deducing the simplicity of a metaphysical entity from the features of subjectivity (i.e. “I” as a unitary self.) The basic aim of arguing for the indivisibility of soul was to distinguish it from matter. But we shall not know if the basic substratum of matter itself be simple or indivisible because it is again lies in the realm of metaphysics. In the similar way Kant critiques other paralogistic syllogisms of rational psychology pertaining to permanence of soul and strict dichotomy between soul and substance. Kant’s criticism of rational psychology is actually a certain number of distinct charges which can be summarised as follows. (a) The idea of the soul does not correspond to the idea of an object. (b) Since the idea of soul does not lead to any knowable object, the idea of soul involve dialectical application of concepts which leads to fallacies and paralogisms. (c) The idea of soul must be used only regulatively and not constituvely which may erroneously yield a priori knowledge of metaphysical self.

III (Concluding Remarks) With this we conclude our discussion on Kant’s critique of rational psychology. In this paper we have thus given an insight into transcendental psychology by discussing the notion of transcendental unity of apperception. Therefrom we opened the discussion on the negative doctrines of transcendental psychology by discussing the limits analyses and reason and paralogistic employment of syllogism and categories leading to the characterising results of rational psychology.