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Kant's Argument for the Apperception Principle EJOP 364 Dispatch: 6.5.09 Journal: EJOP CE: Latha Journal Name Manuscript No. B Author Received: No. of pages: 26 PE: Bindu KV/Bhuvi DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2009.00364.x 1 2 3 Kant’s Argument for the Apperception 4 Principle 5 6 Melissa McBay Merritt 7 8 9 Abstract: My aim is to reconstruct Kant’s argument for the principle 10 of the synthetic unity of apperception. I reconstruct Kant’s 11 argument in stages, first showing why thinking should be 12 conceived as an activity of synthesis (as opposed to attention), 13 and then showing why the unity or coherence of a subject’s 14 representations should depend upon an a priori synthesis. The 15 guiding thread of my account is Kant’s conception of enlight- 16 enment: as I suggest, the philosophy of mind advanced in the 17 Deduction belongs to an enlightenment epistemology. Kant’s 18 conception of enlightenment turns on the requirement that a 19 subject be able to recognize herself as the source of her cognitions. 20 The argument for the apperception principle is reconstructed under 21 the guidance of this conception of the ideal of enlightenment. 22 23 24 25 If by the word ‘understanding’ is meant the faculty of cognition by 26 means of rules [. .] then these rules are not to be understood as those 27 according to which nature guides the human being in his conduct, as 28 occurs with animals which are driven by natural instinct, but only those 29 that he himself makes. (Kant, Anth §42 (7:197)) 30 31 32 33 1. Introduction 34 35 The fundamental principle of Kant’s epistemology is called the ‘principle of the 36 original synthetic unity of apperception’ (§17, B137). I shall simply refer to it as the 37 ‘apperception principle’.1 Kant maintains that it is the ‘highest’ and ‘first 38 principle’ of human cognition (§16, B135; §17, B139). Although Kant does not 39 offer a concise statement of this principle, let me begin with what I take to be an 40 to be an uncontroversial report of its content: the apperception principle says that 41 a cognitive subject’s representations belong to it in virtue of an a priori synthesis.2 42 What is crucial here, as some commentators have noted, is that the 43 apperception principle makes a claim about ‘a priori synthesis’. One reason 44 why this is puzzling is that we generally speak of propositions or modes of 45 knowledge as being a priori—independent of experience—so it is unclear what it European Journal of Philosophy ]]]:]] ISSN 0966-8373 pp. 1–26 r 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. EJOP(BWUK EJOP 364.PDF 06-May-09 21:19 188139 Bytes 26 PAGES n operator=gs.ravishnkar) 364 2 Melissa McBay Merritt 1 could mean for synthesis to be a priori. At the end of the paper I will address 2 Kant’s claims about a priori synthesis in particular. The bulk of the paper, 3 however, will be devoted to considering the significance of Kant’s appeal to 4 synthesis as such—an issue that is not often directly addressed by commentators, 5 and which we need to come to terms with before considering the significance of 6 calling the synthesis in question ‘a priori’. One of the major moves Kant makes in 7 the Transcendental Deduction is to suggest that thinking must be conceived as an 8 activity of synthesis—a point which is encapsulated in the apperception principle. 9 As I will argue, this conception of the activity of thinking is advanced in 10 opposition to a conception of thinking as attention. The attention model of 11 thinking, I will suggest, is rejected on the grounds that it is not compatible with 12 the enlightenment aspirations of a properly ‘critical’ philosophy. Much of what I 13 shall say about Kant’s apperception principle will stem from this point. 14 Let me say outright that I do not find an explicitly delineated argument for the 15 apperception principle in the pages of the Critique—though my aim here is to 16 reconstruct one from materials that Kant provides.3 Commentaries often present 17 the apperception principle as an unargued, or self-evident, presupposition of 18 Kant’s Transcendental Deduction.4 We should be wary of this suggestion: it 19 should hardly be appropriate for Kant to present the fundamental principle of his 20 epistemology (and, by extension, theoretical metaphysics) as an unargued 21 presupposition—the principle simply does too much work in Kant’s system to be 22 granted such easy passage. That being said, it is the case that the Deduction kicks 23 off with a putatively self-evident claim about self-consciousness; and since Kant 24 takes apperception to be a mode of self-consciousness, it is true that the argument 25 of the Deduction proceeds from a claim about apperception.5 Yet that initial claim 26 is not identical with the apperception principle, as we shall see: the starting point 27 of the Deduction contains no claim about a priori synthesis. Taking the 28 apperception principle to be an unargued presupposition confuses claims that 29 Kant keeps distinct. Part of what I shall be doing in this paper is to pry apart and 30 explore the argumentative distance between that starting point and the 31 apperception principle itself. 32 My reconstruction of Kant’s argument for the apperception principle rests on 33 two related presuppositions about the ‘critical philosophy’ to which it belongs. 34 First, the Critique of Pure Reason is billed as human reason’s assessment of its own 35 cognitive capacity. The genitive construction in the title (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) 36 is ambiguous, suggesting that reason may be both the subject and object of the 37 inquiry. This point will inform my interpretation of Kant’s use of the first-person 38 in the argument for the apperception principle.6 The second point can also be 39 drawn out of the title, now focusing on the term ‘critique’: at issue is Kant’s 40 conception of a properly critical philosophy. By a critical philosophy in this 41 generic sense, I mean a philosophical project that properly acknowledges the 42 demands of enlightenment. For Kant, as for many others, the motto of 43 enlightenment is to ‘think for oneself’—and not accept claims passively on the 44 basis of external authority. This ideal is invoked in various ways throughout the 45 Critique: in its initial portrayal of the scientist as a judge putting nature to the r 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. EJOP(BWUK EJOP 364.PDF 06-May-09 21:19 188139 Bytes 26 PAGES n operator=gs.ravishnkar) 364 Kant’s Argument for the Apperception Principle 3 1 question, rather than as a pupil passively registering information from without 2 (Bxiii); in its suggestion that an individual cannot be said to possess rules or 3 principles for knowledge unless she is able to recognize, independently, their 4 applicability in various contexts (A134/B172-5); and in its spoof of the student of 5 dogmatic metaphysics, who is able to make sanctioned moves within a given 6 system but is dumbstruck should someone ‘dispute a definition with him’ 7 (A836/B864). Yet the ideal of enlightenment is writ most large in Kant’s 8 conception of critical philosophy as an exercise of corrective self-knowledge—an 9 exercise carried out under the motto that only human reason can adjudicate the 10 claims of human reason (A752/B780; A849/B877; P 4:263). Now, if Kant takes the 11 apperception principle to be the fundamental principle of human knowledge, 12 then presumably the account of our cognitive capacity that arises from this 13 principle should be appropriate to the enlightenment ideal. In other words: the 14 apperception principle belongs to an enlightenment epistemology. 15 As I will suggest, Kant’s conception of enlightenment provides the general 16 framework within which he argues for a particular view of the nature of 17 thinking—the view, indeed, that is expressed in the apperception principle. I begin 18 by sketching that framework, focusing on a set of three maxims that specify 19 fundamental normative requirements of our cognitive practices (§2). An enlight- 20 enment epistemology, as Kant understands it, gives special emphasis to the notion 21 of cognitive agency—a point that shall prove important in the argument for the 22 apperception principle. I then turn to the text of the Deduction: at first my aim is 23 simply to draw attention to the argumentative distance between the starting point 24 of the Deduction and the apperception principle itself (§3). Then I prepare to 25 reconstruct the argument for the apperception principle, first by considering the 26 two models of thinking that I take to be at issue for Kant: thinking as a certain 27 mode of attention, and thinking as an activity of synthesis. After providing an 28 initial account of why the attention model of thinking should be rejected (§4), and 29 clarifying crucial terminology (§5), I reconstruct Kant’s argument for the 30 apperception principle. This reconstruction is broken down into two main parts: 31 first I explain why Kant supposes that thinking must be conceived as an activity of 32 synthesis (§6), and then I address the crucial claim about apriorisynthesis (§§7–8). 33 34 35 2. The Prospect of an Enlightenment Epistemology 36 37 Kant’s conception of enlightenment is best known through his popular essay, 38 ‘What is Enlightenment?’.
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