April 2022
German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s treatise, The Critique of Pure Reason, is primarily concerned with yoking together two distinct ways of approaching knowledge in order to achieve an objectivity or universality to knowledge claims while still allowing the empirical world to exist as the ground for knowledge. These two approaches to knowledge are distinguished by how they view reason and experience. The Cartesian view is that reason has power independent of experience––experience being only a check against the intellectual process of clear and distinct perceptions. For example, we can never perceive or experience infinity, yet it is still a widely used concept by virtue of its ability to be cognized. Thus, Cartesians begin by privileging the subject and thus can’t justify the subject’s identity. The second approach, supported by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, begins by privileging experience and argues that we’re left with nothing but belief as a result, consequently making it difficult to make any claims about the certainty or necessity of knowledge. Locke and Berkeley engage with this issue by arguing for God’s existence; while Hume accepts the contingency. On Kant’s view, representations occuring in thought are privileged, which seems to refute the validity of empirical reality; resolving the latter issue becomes a primary concert for Kant’s project.
Kant’s central aim is to discover what must necessarily be presupposed for there to be any knowledge whatsoever. This necessity, he argues, lies in the domain of the transcendental. Kant forwards a radical view that in the act of making a priori cognitions, we place ourselves squarely in the world, relating to objects as non-distinct entities made available to us by virtue of our being human. When it comes to knowledge of the self, Kant ultimately believes that you can’t come to know the self merely through thinking, for the act of thinking is not the identity of the thinker. Instead, consciousness of one’s own thinking act means there must be something that has this consciousness. The thinking alone––a transcendental act––doesn’t prove the existence of a substantial self.
I will explicate Kant’s argument that the self does not exist as a substance, paying specific attention to his refutation of rational psychology’s syllogism. I will then draw a comparison between Kant’s conception of the thinking act to Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s conception of the speech act as modes for proving that the self is not a substantial entity.
Kant begins by clarifying the boundaries of what the subject is capable of doing solely in thought. When we connect a predicate to the subject through judgment, the thinking subject I is always the determining subject. The consciousness of this determining self is not an object. However, consciousness of the determinable self given in inner intuition is an object. When I think about myself, I am a subject that isn’t attached to thought, unlike a predicate. Additionally, this thinking act doesn’t entail my identity as a self-subsistent subject, for, since thought is not “a metaphysical determination of the object”, trying to be conscious of the subject I merely in thought provides no insight into the identity of the subject (p. 845).
We can, however, make the necessary connection that the subject I is simple because this fact exists in thought; this proposition is only made in terms of the understanding’s thought. The fact that the thinking I is a simple substance, however, is not necessarily true because this is a synthetic proposition privileged because of its appeal to features of our experience. The concept of substance occurs through both experience and thought and is consequently connected to the thinking I. Since substance refers to intuitions outside the capacities of thought (i.e. possible objects of sense perception), I can’t be conscious of myself as a simple substance merely in thought. Since any possible object in thought must have both sensations and concepts, substance involves sensations. Thus, when we think about the thinking I, it only occurs as simple in thought. The thinking I isn’t a simple substance because we can’t only represent substances in thought. Substance requires intuitions, which involve the senses; whereas the thinking I doesn’t require the senses for its existence.
Consciousness of a subject’s identity is an analytic (necessary) proposition because it exists in concepts such as unity, plurality, etc. We become conscious of the subject’s identity through representations of it, which don’t involve the inner intuition (i.e. personal identity) that is only conscious of the subject as an object. The subject’s identity is not the person’s identity since the person’s identity is how we come to understand the subject as a substantial being that thinks and has many different states. Therefore, becoming conscious of the subject’s identity would require synthetic (not necessary) judgments based on the determinable self, which is given by the inner intuition. This line of reasoning largely refutes the Cartesian conception of a dualistic self and external substance.
Another crucial analytic proposition at play in Kant’s argument is that the subject is distinct from external objects, including the body. Thinking that external objects are distinct alone doesn’t prove that consciousness relies on external things––which appear as representations––for existence. What allows me to think of things as distinct from me doesn’t tell me that consciousness is completely independent and can do anything, including having self-consciousness, without the objects. But these are just representations and the question still remains of whether the thinking I could exist even if the objects weren’t there. Here, Kant is highlighting that others haven’t entertained the idea of consciousness that isn’t given by representations. If a synthetic a priori proposition that links “thinking being” with unity and adds “simplicity” to the concept of “thinking being,”1 then thinking beings would be “things-in-themselves,” independent of representations of them (i.e. noumena). This would imply that synthetic a priori propositions are valid not only in reference to external phenomena, but also to independent noumena. For Kant, this is fallacious.
The paralogism in this reasoning occurs in a widely accepted syllogism of rational psychology. The major premise of the syllogism is that the thinking I is a being with some sort of sensory element given in intuition; the syllogism’s minor premise is that the thinking I is not given by intuition, but only in thought. If a being is given by intuition, then it has substance determined with reference to sensory or logical capabilities that humans possess. These certain kinds of objects––external objects and the self––are the only kinds that are available to us human beings. Anything about which you think becomes an object of thought; thus, the subject is only an object in the sense that I’m thinking about myself. Kant wants to transform the conception of what an object is. Conventionally, we’re accustomed to thinking about objects as other than us, but once we recognize the spontaneous nature of thought itself, objects become objects available to us. The transcendental self can be equated to this spontaneous activity of thought. In sum, when considering the self, we must necessarily consider the ways we are involved in these acts of spontaneity. We can never offload the thinking I from our own selves and characterize this latter self as a simple substance that exists independently of us.
Thinking about the systematic representation of principles and noumena shows us that this paralogism is correct. A concept that can exist independently as a subject––but not as a predicate––doesn’t have any objective reality. We have no information about the possibility of a concept existing independently as a subject, so we can’t know whether any objects can belong to this concept of subjectivity. Therefore, a concept that can exist independently as a subject “yields absolutely no cognition” (p. 846). Furthermore, if such an independently existent concept which can be characterized as a substance (i.e. an object available to us) is cognized, then there must be a transcendental, underlying intuition which “is the indispensable condition of a concept’s having objective reality” (p. 846). This transcendental intuition is distinct from the inner intuition. There is nothing permanent in inner intuition because the thinking subject I is only conscious of the subject’s act of thinking, not her existence as a thinking being generally. If only considering this thinking faculty, then the necessary condition for the subject to be considered a substance (i.e. the concept of a self-subsistent subject) is the thinking subject I itself. When the concept of substance is canceled, the simplicity linked to the concept of a self-subsistent subject must also be canceled. Simplicity becomes just a “logical qualitative unity of self-consciousness in thought as such––no matter whether the subject is composite or not” (p. 846).
By recovering the synthetic a priori nature of the claim that the thinking I is a simple substance with independent existence, we come to the conclusion that insight into the existence of the self necessarily involves us. Anyone who thinks the self is an immaterial thing is wrong because they have neglected to see that the ways in which we come to say that anything is ours is already bringing into being a certain kind of existence which necessarily involves us. Thus, the self is a necessary precondition; Kant’s justification for this necessity is that there can exist no argument where this isn’t a precondition. For anything to make sense, we must engage this necessary precondition, for if there was no self, absolutely no activity––mental or otherwise––would be possible.
While Kant demonstrates that we can’t become conscious of the subject’s non-substantial identity in thought alone, another philosopher, Krishnachandra Bhatacharyya (KCB), makes the same argument using the faculty of speech where Kant uses the faculty of thinking. Comparing these two arguments elucidates the nature of Kant’s claim and reveals more concretely the mechanisms of his argument. For Kant, substance is that which constitutes “objects for us.” In KCB’s treatise The Subject as Freedom, one crucial element of his argument for how one comes to know the subject involves his engaging in a comprehensive explication of grammar and speech as modes for becoming conscious of a transcendental, non-substantial self. In particular, he looks to the referential power of pronouns to illuminate the certain kind of object that the subject truly is. I will only gloss his analysis of the demonstrative pronoun this and the first-person pronoun I for my comparison.
KCB first establishes that the pronoun this refers to an object. In a speech act, any referential expression must be understood by both speaker and hearer as referring to the same thing. The pronoun this is capable of referring to an object whose meaning is commonly understood by both speaker and hearer as in the case of a statement such as, “Look at this,” where the speaker is holding a vase of tulips in her hands. Both speaker and hearer understand that the referent of the pronoun this is the vase of tulips. KCB then moves to the pronoun I, which, unlike the pronoun this, does not refer to an object. In the act of speaking, it expresses one’s subjectivity; no one can refer to her subjectivity because this would entail a patent objectification of the self. This refutation of the subject’s ability to talk about her own subjectivity is directly parallel to Kant’s argument against the thinking I’s ability to think about herself as existing not as a substance.
The pronoun I, however, can’t be understood by both speaker and hearer to refer to the same thing. When the speaker says I, the hearer understands that the speaker is talking about herself, but not because the pronoun actually refers to the speaker. This is due to the fact that while the hearer understands I to refer to the hearer’s subjectivity, the speaker understands I to refer to her subjectivity. Thus, there exist two different referents for the pronoun I: one known to the speaker, the other to the hearer. Additionally, when the speaker uses the pronoun I to talk about an object of experience, she is not referring to her subjectivity (i.e. her act of speaking), but instead to the actual object of experience. When the speaker talks about her subjectivity, the hearer understands her subjectivity not as an independent thing-in-itself (what Kant would term noumena), but as merely expressed by the speaker’s act of speaking. Therefore, the statement, “This is I,” is false because this refers to an object, and we have established that the pronoun I is non-referential. On the other hand, the statement, “I am this,” is, when used correctly, indisputable since the pronoun I refers to an object of experience but only expresses the speaker’s subjectivity.
KCB’s conception of the speech act is parallel to Kant’s conception of the thinking act. Kant’s argument that it’s not possible in thought alone to prove that the self exists as a substance that can be referred to or detached from the act of thinking runs parallel to KCB’s argument that the subject cannot be referred to in speech and thus can’t be detached from the act of speech itself.1 For example, in the statement, “I see a book on the table,” I’m referencing a book and can detach the book’s existence from my referencing it; this detaching is not possible in the case of the self. A substance can’t be represented only in thought due to its appeal to features of experience. Since the self doesn’t require experience for its existence, it follows that the self does not exist as a substance. The self can be represented empirically and transcendentally. To be conscious of my empirical self, I state, “I’m sitting in a chair in Neilson.” To be conscious of my transcendental self, I inquire: “What allows me to recognize this sitting activity as mine?”
Kant’s goal is to reveal that what lies beneath the thinking, speaking, judging, and intuiting faculties is an act of spontaneity (i.e. a transcendental self) that allows for the recognition of objects. He doesn’t attempt to explain this act of spontaneity2 in great detail, but he doesn’t really need to for his argument to resonate with us human beings. I, Clara, nevertheless know that I am the one sitting in this chair. I must presuppose a transcendental self––a spontaneous, “organizing” I–– in order for this activity to be mine. This transcendental apperception is the self-consciousness which produces the representation of, but is not to be confused with, the thinking I that accompanies all other representations and is the same in all consciousnesses. This is the cornerstone of Kant’s concept of “inter-subjective objectivity,” which he believes successfully allows for representations to be privileged while still maintaining the validity of the empirical world. That I3am distinct from the reflection I perceive in the mirror before me is necessarily true.4 That I am identical to the being that is perceiving my reflection is not necessarily true.5 In fact, I am the consciousness that any of these experiences are even mine to begin with.
References.
Immanuel Kant, “The Critique of Pure Reason” in Modern philosophy : An anthology of primary sources., trans. Ariew, R., & Watkins, E. (Eds.). (Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated., 2019).