Critique of Pure Reason 21 - Transcendental Apperception
Details
We started our factory tour by looking at machinery of image and perception. Next time we'll take a look at the thinking machine.
READ FOR NEXT TIME
A DEDUCTION
Sec II: "4. Explanation of possibility of categories as a priori cognitions."
Sec III: "On the relation of the understanding to objects in general and the possibility of cognizing these a priori."
Sec III : "Summary representation on the correctness of this deduction"
B DEDUCTION
§§15 - 17
A103 - A130 of the A deduction and
B130 - B139 of the B deduction
Guyer, pages 230 - 250
02/15/26 - #21: Putting the pieces of the machine together
03/01/26 - # 22: Summing up the A deduction
03/15 - #23: Starting the B deduction
WHAT WE JUST TALKED ABOUT
We finished the third of the trifold synthesis in the A edition, the infamous transcendental deduction, the synthesis of apperception. When we next meet, Kant will talk more about how that synthesis (essentially the unity that is our consciousness) relates to the synthesis of imagination (the unity of appearance).
WHAT STUMPED US (or at least me)
While we did reach some consensus, these two sentences definitely gave us pause.
A108: For this unity of consciousness would be impossible if in the cognition of the manifold the mind could not become conscious of the identity of the function by means of which this manifold is synthetically combined into one cognition.
A109: The pure concept of this transcendental object (which in all of our cognitions is really always one and the same X) is that which in all of our empirical concepts in general can provide relation to an object, i.e., objective reality.
SUMMARY OF THE SECTIONS WE JUST COVERED
These are my interpretations of the section. Different plausible interpretations were introduced at our meeting, and I might change my mind about my own interpretation. But here's what I have so far.
3 Synthesis of Recognition through Concepts
To cognize an object is to unify representations according to a rule in one consciousness. This unity ultimately depends on transcendental apperception. Recognition is essential. If I were not conscious that what I think now is the same as what I thought before, reproduction would be useless and no whole could arise. Counting shows this. A number is nothing but the consciousness of the unity of successive synthesis. This is why every concept consists in such a consciousness.
An object is not something given beyond representations. The object is thought generally as X, the necessary unity that requires representations to agree with one another rather than be arbitrarily combined. That unity is nothing other than the formal unity of consciousness in synthesis according to a rule. To cognize an object is to effect this unity.
Because this unity is necessary, it cannot come from empirical self-awareness, which is variable. It requires a prior condition. Kant calls this condition transcendental apperception, the "I think” that must be able to accompany all representations. The transcendental object X adds no content. It names only the necessity that appearances stand under a priori rules of synthesis grounded in the unity of apperception, just as intuition stands under space and time.
RESOURCES
1. An analysis of the term "cognition" based on its usage in the Transcendental Logic..
2. Kant's argument against Newton and Transcendental Idealism