Powell, Th. Kant´s Thepry of Self-Consciousness. Introduction

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Instituto de Investigaciones Filosoficas; date: 22 November 2013

Kant's Theory of Self-ConsciousnessC. Thomas Powell

Print publication date: 1990

Print ISBN-13: 9780198244486Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Oct-11DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198244486.001.0001

Introduction

C. Thomas Powell

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198244486.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

The self as experiencing subject has presented a recurring problem forphilosophers, from Rene Descartes to David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,and Immanuel Kant. In the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, Kant examinesthe nature of the self and the problem of apperceptive consciousness asinherited from the rational psychologists. Kant realized that the elusivenessof the I of the I think has import not only for epistemology but for ourview of persons, and thus for moral philosophy as well. The value of Kant'streatment of the self lies not only in the wealth of his philosophical insightsabout self-knowledge proper (of which the Paralogisms can claim not a few)but also in the awareness he had of the relevance of this problem for widelydisparate areas of philosophy. This book explores the consequences ofKant's view of the self and his contributions to our own understanding of thecharacter (and limits) of self-knowledge. Salient aspects of Kant's positivetheory of the self as it is presented in the Transcendental Deduction arediscussed.

Keywords: Immanuel Kant, self, philosophy, self-knowledge, Paralogisms of Pure Reason,apperceptive consciousness, positive theory, Transcendental Deduction

How are we to give a cogent account of the self? That is, what can beknown about what Kant, in a tellingly cautious phrase, calls this I orhe or it (the thing) which thinks? It is certainly true that the self asexperiencing subject1has presented a recurring problem for philosophers.Descartes's cogito, Hume's bundle theory, Kant's Paralogisms, and, forthat matter, contemporary theories of indexical self-reference all derive
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Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, excipe: nisi ipse intellectus,5

roughly, Nothing is in the understanding that was not [first] in the senses,except the understanding(or the I) itself. The I, then, is in a senseimmediately accessible to itself. None the less, the nature of this existing

self can be known only through what Leibniz calls Reflective Acts. Thesereflections correspond to Descartes's a priorireasoning, and are the sourceof our knowledge that the self is simple, substantial, etc.6To this extent,Leibniz's view of the self is clearly Cartesian. But a new note is struck aswell, for Leibniz also points out that It is not enough in order to understandwhat the me is that I am sensible of a subject which thinks, I must alsoconceive distinctly of all that which distinguishes me from other possiblespirits and of this latter I have only a confused experience.7In effect, Leibnizis recognizing that there are three kinds of self-knowledge: (1) immediateawareness of the pre-reflective I, (2) reflective knowledge of the simple

and substantial subject of thoughts, and (3) knowledge of myself gatheredfrom observing my experiential encounters. And the recognition of the lastof these leads Leibniz to make an extraordinarily significant point. He saysthat when we consider the constitution of the mind, there is nothing besidesperceptions and their changes to be found in the simple substance.8Indeed,says Leibniz, though by reflection we can posit certain (p.3) Cartesianqualities of the mind (or monad), if over a given time minds have no distinctperceptions, then they are Monads which are wholly bare.9Brevity (and,perhaps, diffidence) precludes a discussion of Leibniz's views of unconsciousprocesses, and of how this fits into the question of wholly bare monads, but

this kind of consideration of the bare mind will be used with telling effect,as we shall see, by Hume. Leibniz, then, has injected a new element intodiscussion of the self, namely, the relation of the I to the encounters ofwhich it is the encountering subject.

Actually, however, this element is not wholly novel with Leibniz. Spinozapresents a similar point in his account of the nature of the mind. For Spinoza,the mind is not created substance but is rather a mode of God's cognition.Mind and body are for Spinoza two modes of one thing, the one viewed asthinking, the other as extended (not unlike Strawson's person to whom areattributed both M-predicates and P-predicates). The mind, says Spinoza, is

actually the mental expression of the body's states, so that The object ofthe idea constituting the human mind is the body.10Knowledge is in thefirst place a matter of the mental characterization of bodily modifications(= sense perceptions), yielding confused experiences; only in terms ofreflexive knowledge (ratio) can adequate ideas be formulated whichcapture formal essences that are clearly and distinctly conceived. Yet this


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reflection is not clearly a prioribut involves the development of commonnotions out of an awareness of bodily modifications. And in both casesknowledge of the I arises out of awareness of the encounters of which theI is subject: Spinoza says that The mind does not know itself, except in

so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body.11Thusdoes Spinoza anticipate the point made by Leibniz, that in a certain sensethe I is knowable only in so far as it has perceptions and thoughtsit isencounterable only through its encounters. Like that of Leibniz, Spinoza'saccount of the self is grounded in a priorireasoning; also like Leibniz,however, he recognizes that there is a vacuity in the concept of the selfconsidered apart from its role as mere experiencing subject.

Thus the concept of the self has shifted from Descartes's purported a prioricharacterization to the views of Spinoza and Leibniz, who present an a priori

account of the self but who also underscore the self's unencounterabilityin experience except as the bare experiencing subject. It is left, then,to Berkeley and Hume to (p.4) draw out the consequences of thisunencounterability, given the rejection of the rationalist, a prioriaccount.Berkeley, in his Principles of Human Knowledge, says that since ideas areinherently passive they cannot represent (at least not adequately) the agentwhich has these ideas.12He says that

there can be no ideaformed of a soul or spirit Such is thenature of Spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itselfperceived, but only by the effects which it produceth.13

Clearly echoing the insights of Leibniz and Spinoza, Berkeley denies anyclear conception of the self apart from its experiences. He concludes, then,that we have some notionof soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind (as a) simple, undivided being,14but leaves open the question of thecharacter of this notion. In any case, it is neither a priorinor an idea derivedfrom experiential encounters, which raises the question of whether or notBerkeley can maintain it to be anything at all. And, in a sense, this questionis asked by Hume: does Berkeley's notion in fact have any ontologicalcounterpart?

Against the Cartesian tradition, Hume argues that the self is not only notencounterable in the world, it is not encounterable by introspection either.15

In effect, Hume accepts Berkeley's position that we can have no idea of theself, but he then pushes the position to its likely empiricist conclusion, andquestions whether the self exists at all. He says that


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For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I callmyself, I always stumble on some perception or other Inever catch myselfat any time without a perception, andnever can observe anything but the perception were all

my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think,nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate I should be entirelyannihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to makeme a perfect non-entity.16

Hume, then, is taking up, and in a sense approving, Spinoza's point regardingthe mind's knowing itself through its perceptionsbut at the same timehe rejects the claim that any sort of positive a prioritruths about the selfcan be deduced. And in terms of empirically discovered truths, Humeargues that experience of the self yields nothing more than a bundle

or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with aninconceivable rapidity.17The purported unity ascribed to the self byDescartes, in other words, is (p.5) for Hume merely the virtual unity ofa sequence of impressions and ideas: the self, then, is a constructionofontologically more basic entities. It is not a continuant substance but merelya sequence of impressions; it is not simple but (at any given time) a complexbundle of impressions. So there is for Hume neither a synchronically nor adiachronically unitary self: thus it is not encounterable, because it does not,properly speaking, exist at all.

Attendant on all these positions is the recognition of a most curious fact: the

I of the I think is, in Ryle's perspicuous expression, systematically elusive:the more the child [who asks Who am I?] tries to put hisfinger on what I stands for, the less does he succeed in doingso. He can catch only its coat-tails; it itself is always andobdurately a pace ahead of its coat-tails. Like the shadow ofone's own head, it will not wait to be jumped on. And yet it isnever very far ahead; indeed, sometimes it seems not to beahead of the pursuer at all. It evades capture by lodging itselfinside the very muscles of the pursuer. It is too near even to bewithin arm's reach.18

It is thereby the source of a curious tension, in that it is the objectofno perception but at the same timeand speaking carelesslyit is thesubjectof all perceptions. Given that the self is never encountered butis in some sense always present at each experiential encounter, it is notentirely surprising that the attempt to give a cogent account of the self has


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generated the range of views which, demonstrably, it has. To speak slightlyfatuously, the self can, in a way, be profitably compared to ChristopherRobin's place on the stairs: it isn't really anywhereit's somewhere elseinstead.19But where is it? To speak more philosophically, I am aware of

myself as an entity which has my thoughts, but in what way am I so aware?And what is the I of which I am so aware?

Now we can begin to see the milieu entered by Kant in the Paralogisms ofPure Reason, where he examines the nature of the self and the problem ofapperceptive consciousness as inherited from the rational psychologists.Kant's account beginsbut certainly does not endwith the clearrecognition, after Hume, of the unobservable character of the I, pointingout that the representation of the I is not an intuition (B408). Given thisrecognition, Kant develops an account of the self which confronts not merely

Descartes but Leibniz and Hume as well. And Kant is not merely engagingin local squabbles over minor points: as he realized, the (p.6) elusivenessof the I of the I think has import not only for epistemology but for ourview of persons, and thus for our moral philosophy as well. I will explorethe consequences of Kant's view of the self in some detail. But for now,the significant point to be made is that the value of Kant's treatment ofthe self lies not only in the wealth of his philosophical insights about self-knowledge proper (of which the Paralogisms can claim not a few) but also inthe awareness he had of the relevance of this problem for widely disparateareas of philosophy. One of the claims I propose to argue for here is thatKant at least implicitly recognizes the curious tension generated by theelusive character of the experiencing, or epistemic, self, and uses thisrecognition to adjudicate the claims of conflicting theories of the nature ofthe self. In doing so, he makes a number of substantive contributions to ourown understanding of the character (and limits) of self-knowledge.

Again, Kant's primary goal in the Paralogisms is the dismantling of claimsmade by the rational psychologists (Descartes and Leibniz are exemplars)about the nature of the self. Kant's motive in refuting these claims is clear:since the representation of the I is not an intuition, and since the onlysource of experience according to Kant is intuitions thought through the

understanding (A19/B33), nothing can be known about the I that is notanalyticand yet the rational psychologists purport to make substantiveclaims a prioriabout the self independent of experience. Given the CriticalPhilosophy as set out in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant obviouslycannot countenance this sort of non-empirical knowledge claim, and sohe attacks the rationalists' demonstrations as fallacious or paralogistic.


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fact, we are to be cognitive beings of the kind we are. But for Kant the actualcharacter of the I apart from its mode of representation is completelyinaccessible to us. What we find, on examining the Transcendental Deductionand the Paralogisms, is that Kant recognizes, as he often does, that his

predecessors have presented an antinomy which is itself illuminating.Given Descartes's view of the self as simple, substantial, and unitary, andHume's view that the self which experiences is no more than the set ofthose experiences, Kant argues that we cannot know the I to be substantialwhich goes a long way towards (p.8) explaining the persuasiveness ofHume's minimalist theory of the self. At the same time, the I does exist, butas a necessary form of representation, a logical operator within the domainof our cognitions, which is represented as simple and unitary substancethus the source of Descartes's introspective conclusions. Kant, then,accounts for the DescartesHume antinomy via a sophisticated analysis of

how the self is presented to us, and of what must be the case with regard tothis representation given the actual form of our experience.

In the process of explicating this antinomy of the self, Kant does a gooddeal more than merely (though certainly thatis not the right word)dismantle the science of rational psychology and partially defuse Hume'sattack against claims of the possibility of knowledge of the continuousself. He also, in the Transcendental Deduction, presents a sophisticatedphenomenology of mental states and their interrelationships, shows theepistemic connectedness of the unitary self and the objective world, andexplores the logical form of judgments. In the Paralogisms, he suggeststhoroughly obliquelya possible common foundation for the epistemic selfand the self as moral agent, considers the possibility of (and necessity forbelief in) personal immortality, and deals with the mindbody problem ina way which has suggested an incipient functionalism to more than onecommentator.20All of these developments will be touched on here, and notinappropriately: as Kant recognized, these are not unrelated aspects of theproblematic of self-awareness. In terms of formal structure, this study will bedivided into three parts. First, I will present salient aspects of Kant's positivetheory of the self as it is presented in the Transcendental Deduction. Second,I will give a detailed exegesis and discussion of each of the Paralogisms in

turn. Third, I will transpose this study into a somewhat more contemporarymode, and will suggest certain philosophical morals to be drawn from thestory which Kant has rather cryptically been telling.

One way of understanding Kant's theory is to see what positions it isintended to correct or supplant, and that is certainly part of what I will try


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to show. An extension of this approach is to see where other commentatorshave gone awry, and this is the predominant strategy used here: therehave been many plausible readings of Kant which are clearly presented,persuasively argued, and lead to intolerable muddles because they are

plausibly, clearly, and persuasively mistaken. Murder will out, and amisreading of one part of the Critiquewill often give itself away when appliedelsewhereif only (p.9) to the next paragraph. Kant is by no means perfectlyconsistent, but one claim that I hope to substantiate is that Kant is a gooddeal more consistent than many of his commentators take him to be, and ifa textual reading leads to inconsistencies or incoherence, it is a fairly safebet that the reading is, in fact, a misreading. This is an important maxim,especially given the fact that Kant's Paralogisms are often taken to be apatchwork, a misconcatenation which Kant forces on himself by his tacticallymisguided reliance on the Table of Categories and by his insistence that

the arguments of rational psychology be read as syllogisms. Certainly thecategorial assertions in the Paralogisms should be taken cum grano salis.But I intend to show that a number of confusions about the Paralogisms areexplicable only if their syllogistic form is taken seriously. If the substantivepresupposition of this study is that the Paralogisms are only understandablegiven an understanding of Kant's positive theory of the self, then the reigningmethodologicalpresupposition is that the Paralogisms themselves areconsiderably more consistent, and contain considerably less architectonicgarnish, than other commentators have faithfully assumed.

To borrow a Nietzschean metaphor from Jay Rosenberg, one way of cuttingup the pie of philosophical methodology is to say that there are two waysof doing that kind of philosophy which involves writing about philosophers.Apollonian philosophy is done with an eye towards precision of form, placingmuch emphasis on historical accuracy and valuing a certain fastidiousapproach to texts. Dionysian philosophy is more creative, speculative,and strides over textual minutiae with seven-league boots. As will becomerather quickly apparent, this study falls not quite squarely in the Apolloniantradition. Not quitesquarely, because, as the comments above about Kant'sinterlocutors should suggest, I am convinced that, in addition to lookingclosely at the text to be explicated, the philosophical scholar can best

engage his text by making itengagewith certain caveatscontemporaryphilosophical issues. Despite its Copernican revolutions and linguisticturns, philosophy does address perennial problems, and one of the tasksof philosophical scholarship is to make the relevant connections clear. Thetrick, of course, is creative anachronism combined with a sense of historicalcontexta regulative if not a constitutive idea in this study. And it should be


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obvious that both ways of doing philosophical scholarship are necessary. Tomisquote Kant: Apollonian philosophy without a (p.10) Dionysian element isempty; Dionysian philosophy without an Apollonian element is blind. I haveat least tried to avoid both vacuity and blindness.

One final note: Jay Rosenberg once said that if his work sounded a lot likethat of Wilfrid Sellars, it was primarily because he is so verygood at itand he had a head start. And there it is: if my reading of Kant at timessounds a good deal like that of Rosenberg (and Sellars), it is because I tend,with important exceptions, to agree with this reading. In a sense, then, thisinvestigation is an (Apollonian) extension of this (Dionysian) approach toKant; I have tried to document properly the more explicit points of contact.

Notes:

(1.) For reasons that will become apparent in my discussion of theParalogisms, I will use the expression experiencing subject rather than themore common subject of experience, the latter expression having a gooddeal of potential for ontological infelicity.

(2.) Ren Descartes, Discourse On Method, Part IV.

(3.) Gottfried Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 469.

(4.) Ibid. 469.

(5.) Ibid. 11.

(6.) Leibniz, Monadology, 30.

(7.) Leibniz, Correspondence With Arnauld, 126.

(8.) Leibniz, Monadology, 17.

(9.) Ibid. 24.

(10.) Benedictus Spinoza, Ethics, Proposition xiii.

(11.) Ibid. Proposition xxiii.

(12.) George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, 25.

(13.) Ibid. 27.


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Powell, Th. Kant´s Thepry of Self-Consciousness. Introduction