More TCD by Pendlebury: Sections 14-16

14: Transition to the transcendental deduction of the categories ( B124-9)

This section provides an overview of how Kant plans to tackle the challenge of given a transcendental deduction of the categories. The first twelve lines should remind you of Kant's remarks about his Copernican hypothesis in the Preface (B xvixviii). (Note that “cognize something as an object” should be understood as equivalent to thinking of it- or knowing it – as objective.) In line with this, the Transcendental Deduction must show that the categories are “a priori conditions of the possibility of experience” (B 126) (i.e., experience in the thick sense, or experience of objective objects.)1 To adapt the language of the Preface in B, this involves showing that the objects must “conform to” the categories rather than the other way round.
The Empiricists didn't appreciate the need to show this: Locke simply took it as a given that we have a right to apply categories; Hume could not give an a priori account of them and so was skeptical about their application (B 127-8).
In the last paragraph of section 14 Kant labels the categories as “concepts of an object in general” (B 128). This phrase is not entirely clear. It could be understood simply as a general way of referring to the categories collectively, but it also suggest that the categories are to be explained as concepts that objective objects must satisfy.

15: On the possibility of a combination in general (B 129-31)

In this section, Kant talks in general terms about what is involved in a combination of representations without saying why it is important. So, why is it important? Because, as we saw in connection with the Metaphysical Deduction, all judgment, all knowledge, and all experience (I the thick sense) involve combination.
In the first paragraph Kant claims that all combination is due to understanding ( B 130). However, in the middle paragraph on p.225 (which was deleted from 14 in the B edition), you'll see that in the A edition Kant attributed synthesis, which is crucially involved in all combination, to the imagination, which is treated as distinct from both sensibility and understanding.
Combination, Kant tells,u s, involves both synthesis and the unity of the synthesis (B 130). But this unity, he proceeds to say, does not arise form the combination, or from the category of unity or the categories in general, because they presupposed it (B131). I believe that it is important not to take this as a conclusion to which Kant is forever committed, because doing OS would make it more difficult to interpret what follows in later sections. It is better to understand Kant as saying that at this stage of the argument it would appear that the general unity of combination does not arise form the combination, the category of unity or the categories in general. Later on it would appear that Kant thinks t that all 9or, perhaps, most of the unities are, so to speak, secured together.
The unity of combination that Kant introduces in this section must be a kind of abstract, general unity that is (at least) present in or presupposed by all judgments, regardless of heir forms. Consider (a0 “This is a horse” and (b) “If this horse is Pete's horse, then he beats it.” Because of their forms, (a) involves a unity that goes with the category SUBSTANCE and (b) involves a unity that goes with CAUSE combinations of representations that are not further specified, have something in common, viz., that both of them involve unity, or the representation of unity. However, we understand this unity, I think we have to take Kant's view that it is presupposed by the categories as a tentative conclusion introduced for the sake of the argument.
16: The original-synthetic unity of apperception (B 131-6)

This is an important section that you should study carefully and in detail. It is supposed to identify the unity mentioned in 15 that is required or presupposed by all combination. But Kant doesn't actually say this until l 17. He just starts talking ab out a certain unity that he calls “the original synthetic unity of apperception” without reference to the preceding section. However, it seems reasonable to assume that he means to be identifying the unity he has just been talking about, and section 17 confirms this.
As previously indicated in class, the term “apperception” signifies some form of self-consciousness. But it is important to distinguish between empirical self-consciousness and original, transcendental apperception. The former is what is at play in inner sense, as discussed in the Aesthetic. It involves an intuitive awareness of one's own representations, as when I a am aware that of perceiving or thinking something. Original apperception, which we are concerned with here, is not supposed to be present in intuition or receptivity, and is supposed to be involved in all thinking.
It is important to note that Kant holds that all thought and judgment is apperceptive in the sense that it is potentially accessible to self-consciousness even if it is not actually self conscious. So a being that had no capacity for self-consciousness could not think in Kant's terms. Perhaps it would be subject to mental activity, but this would be “animal thinking” or “pronto thinking” rather than full-blooded thought.
However, Kant does not hold that whenever we think or make a judgment we must also think that we are thinking or judge that we are making that judgment. (This is a good thing, because this view would lead to an infinite regress.) All Kant holds is that the potential for explicit self-consciousness must be there. Hence, as he puts it, “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations” (B 131). Representations that cannot be accompanied by “the I think...would be nothing for me” (B 132) and therefore not mine.
However, the constituents of any of my judgments – the manifold representations that make them up – are not given as belonging to me or as present in one consciousness. There is no “I” (or representation of a self) present in each of the representations separately. (There couldn't be an “I” present in an intuition of outer sense.) Also, my “I” (my self), is not presented to me as a sort of container in which the representations show up. And an “I” cannot be attached to each of the representations in every judgment separately, because this would require judgments to the effect that each of these representations is mine. An “I” would then have to be attached in the same way to each of the representations making up each of these judgments, and so on. This would clearly lead to an unacceptable regress.
We must, therefore, simply assume that there is a background combination of all the manifold of judgment that brings about the unity of the mind and makes it possible to attach “I think” to all judgments. For the representations concerned to be mine, they must be combined into a unity. Because this combination is not given or presented, it must be the product of synthesis. This means that it is not found, but made (even thought it may not seem to be). And it involves an original synthesis; hence the name “the original synthetic unity of apperception.”
So the core of what Kant is claiming in 16 is that for every conscious human agent, there is a combination of her representations that underlies the unity of her consciousness an thus makes those representations hers. This combination is made, not found: it is produced by spontaneous synthesis (B 132) and is due to “an operation of the understanding” (B 135). The analytical truth that my representations are mine depends on this synthesis. As Kant puts it, “the analytical unity of apperception is only possible under the presumption of some synthetic one,” viz. , the transcendental unity of apperception (B 134).