7 The "Self" & Synthetic Unity of Apperception - Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Dan Robinson)

now

last week i gave you

to supreme principles and i want to

begin today's lecture

with the supreme principle in relation

to the understanding this is a good

starting point for the issue before us

today

is the synthetic unity of our perception

it's a very difficult

part of the first critique we want to be

systematic in

exploring it the supreme principle in

relation to understanding

is to quote quant kant that

all the manifold of intuition should be

subject

to conditions of the original synthetic

unity of our perception that's one of

those

wonderful passages in the first critique

that has eyes roll up

people read it a second and third time

consulted in german

consulted in japanese

and trying to get through it but

he does lay out the argument that

clarifies what he means by this

and he attaches central importance

to what is claimed regarding the

synthetic unity of our perception

in fact he goes so far as to say that

the synthetic unity of our perception

is quote the highest point to which we

must ascribe

all employment of the understanding it's

the pinnacle

i continue with the quote even the whole

of logic

and conformably there with

transcendental philosophy itself

the quote continues indeed this faculty

of a perception

is the understanding itself

you'll find that at b 134.

so how does he wish to have this

synthetic unity understood

it's not subjective it's not some

psychological state kant says this

the synthetic unity of consciousness is

an objective condition

of all knowledge it is not merely a

condition that i

myself require in knowing an object

but as a condition under which every

intuition must stand

in order to become an object for me

now this is addressed to the question of

how various sensations become

integrated and unified in consciousness

and then

how it is that it inherits in my or your

consciousness

and how all of this should be understood

as distinct

from mere subjectivity or psychological

states

well step back for a moment and consider

what's been

what has been established so far

if there are to be concepts at all there

must be some means by which to fashion

them

out of representations thus some sort of

categorical framework is necessary

if entities are to be cognized as

objects

at all kant's table of categories

therefore

must match up with the properties that

enter into

anything standing as inter-subjective

stable identifications things that

are universally agreed to by recipients

of a certain kind

for it's only by way of these categories

that objects can be conceptualized at

all

and recall that additional resources are

required

if there is to be knowledge for

understanding is grounded

in rules in in an innate faculty

that benefits from practice but is at

base

the gift of

mother wit yes she's back

well so far so good but just when this

seems to be the last word

as progress is tracked from sensation to

objective knowledge

something new and seemingly

psychological

enters into the equation if there are to

be concepts at all

namely a perception

and its shadowy relatives which can't

identify

as the empirical ego a transcendental

ego and a self

this matter of selves has

has whiskers as

professor wiggins was among the first to

remind all of us a number of years ago

we can go back certainly to the ship

of theseus i don't know whether you

are in the mood for a legend in this

kind of weather particularly legends

drawn

from the sunny islands of the

mediterranean

and the midlane coast but theseus is the

one who was sent

to crete to liberate the athenians

from a burden that had been imposed by

king minos

and that burden was sacrifice

sacrificing

athenian youth to the king

by putting them in the pit of a

labyrinth where they would be

devoured by a minotaur so theseus had to

go off and do something about this

you know the story he gets there

monis's daughter falls in love with him

she shows him the best way to get out of

the labyrinth just in case he's

successful

in getting down to the minotaur killing

the minotaur

and then has to get out she gives him a

golden

thread that he can lay behind him as he

works his way through this

maze-like structure and then all he has

to do is follow that thread some of you

will recall in

in plato's republic

that we are as puppets on a string

we are acted upon by the gods in ways we

cannot

fathom but there is one string we can

pull back on

which is the golden thread of reason

and this of course is a gloss on that on

that myth

isn't it must be

so he does it he kills the thing

he even promises to

to to meet ariadne and take her back

to the greek mainland he says i shall

fetch you on on all this

wait for me and he abandons her

you know the opera ariadne

auf naxxos he's supposed to be picking

her up

and he abandons her there's a myth

surrounding that

too you know he's a great great hero

he's done heroic deeds and therefore the

gods need a special place for him

according to one myth he is installed

eternally

in the heavens where he sits

on the stool of oblivion

so that he has a kind of immortality but

can't quite figure out how it was he

he got it well crazy greeks um

now the debate begins because as as

theseus ship

goes from island to island and place and

port to port

celebrating his triumph year in and year

out

pretty soon the ships old boards have to

be replaced by new boards

you see where this is going at one

at what point have you so replaced the

original boards that it really isn't the

ship

of theseus any longer or if you had all

of those old boards in a pile and

constituted yet another ship

out of them would you now have the

original though the original in some

sense had disappeared and now has

reappeared and

before you know it the philosophers are

just mucking up what is otherwise a very

good story

and it's a story that we get mucked up

the minute we begin to consider

ourselves because even in your tragic

youth you have a bunch of old cells that

are being replaced even as you sit here

your taste buds are going to be all

brand new

in less than a week how on earth do you

remember what a bad hot dog tasted like

do you see that sort of thing it's all

brand new

i don't want you to smoke but when mommy

tries to frighten you by saying that

you'll lose your taste for food

tell mommy those buds are replaced all

the time

you just have to have a pause between

cigars that sort of thing

so with a body that's constantly

undergoing change the question arises

how is there a continuity

of self a continuity of the ego

now the scholastic philosophers were

more or less content following either

plato or

aristotle on this but there is

an essential self there is an essential

being that undergoes alteration but not

change

but unless there is some enduring

substance that just

is the self there really wouldn't be

anything for the engines of change to be

working

on and so an essentialism comes out of

this when aristotle says famously that

the

sense in which cariscus is musical is

different from the sense in which

cariscus is a man he's pointing to the

difference

between some accidental properties that

we

acquire in the course of a lifetime and

some essential properties in virtue of

which

we are the kinds of things that we are

the medieval part of the story well the

scholastic part of this story is itself

a very interesting part of the story but

we've got to

move on regrettably

and we move to lock now

when you read locke's essay concerning

the human understanding and are told

in 40 secondary sources

that this is his broadside against

descartes

theory of innate ideas

keep two things in mind the theory of

innate ideas

ascribed to descartes descartes

publicly denied in print

he never attached himself to any such

notion

as that and secondly descartes

isn't discussed by locke though we have

every reason to believe that during his

period

of self-exile locke surely

read what descartes had to say

i believe the right target here is

probably the cambridge platonists

surely more than more than descartes

and the cambridge platoonists cudworth

moore and company

were actually gainfully employed in

reviving

plagueness thought in philosophy in the

anglophone

very much very much in opposition to the

sorts of things that we would identify

with the baconian perspective

on reality and on knowledge so

so locke has a project when it comes to

this

and the project is going at a certain

point we'll we'll focus on this notion

of

a substantial or essential self and on

essences

more generally and that's when we find

locke declaring that you must make a

distinction

between real essences and nominal

essences

you don't know the real essence of

anything the real essence is going to be

at some

newtonian corpuscular level to which you

do not have

perceptual access and as far as nominal

essences go

these are entirely the gift of

convention

that one chooses to call this

tissue is is a is a fact that arises

in a given cultural context historical

context we can imagine

cultures and settings and people and

languages where

where whatever it is we're trying to get

out with the word tissue would not be

what they were trying to get at with an

entirely different word

as locke points out you could constitute

something physically indistinguishable

from lock but

much cleverer than lock and and you

might go about describing that entity in

terms quite different from the ones

you'd use for lock and to illustrate the

point he gives us the famous

instance of the prince and the cobbler

what after all goes into one's selfhood

personal identity

continuing ego etc

well simply all of the things present in

your consciousness

and since nothing now present in your

consciousness

is actually based on something happening

now

we can say that consciousness is just

the repository

of all the things that you remember

from milliseconds ago to hours and days

and years

and months ago well do this as a thought

experiment on a given night a prince and

a cobbler

go to sleep in the course of the night

the contents of the prince's

consciousness

are transferred to the cobbler the

contents of the

cobbler's consciousness are transferred

to the prince

andlock says quite persuasively

that on their uh on their arising

i grant you quote they are the same man

but not the same person

and you you you can here's this uh

shoe cobbler who expects you to be very

decorous in his

presence and bowing and scraping and all

that sort of thing

and that princely fellow whom you know

to be the prince

wants to know if you need a new pair of

heels you see

as far as lock's concerned that's it the

contents of consciousness

exhaust the self

now um

we are fortunate always and by the way

it's one of the great tragedies today

that we don't have

this group around you always

need acute philosophers to keep your

thinking

clear and challenged and you always need

great wits to reign in the pretensions

of philosophy unfortunately

in the late 17th early 18th century

the english-speaking world did have

great wits

and they had a lot of fun with what

science and philosophy

happened to be producing in recent years

um they actually fought the ones i'm

thinking about formed

a club they knew each other they formed

a club

named after dr scriblerus

how many of you have ever read the

memoirs of martinez

scribbleris who wrote

these memoirs oh come on

john arbuthnot do you not know that

do you know the name of the club they

formed

the scriblerians and the scriblerians

had a field day with things like

the productions of the royal society and

john locke's famous essay and so forth

well on this business of the prince and

cobbler you can get oh by the way

you know the names of some scriblerians

swift pope

ringing bells now

lila touch what are they trying to

what are they trying to do on willowpot

this is scientific community

they're trying to get sunshine from

cucumbers

they're persuaded that if the

authorities will give them just some

more funding

they might be able to produce so much of

the stuff is to sell it cheaply

you you get the picture here don't you

there's a wonderful book by by

christopher fox

which i'd recommend to you called uh

lock

and the scribblerians it's a good summer

read

you you'll if you're philosophy students

you'll like it quite a bit

they they do a lot on metaphysics and

relata

you you'd enjoy it

but for the first serious uh

philosophical critique

of the thesis we turn to

george barkley and to barclays alcifran

and barclays al safran along with thomas

reid's

inquiry puts to the test the notion

that you have exhausted

this concept of an enduring self

by consulting no more than what the

empiricists offer

by way of the contents of consciousness

the argument is fairly straightforward

it's sometimes called the brave officer

argument

and the brave officer argument is of the

following

form imagine a brave officer

call him b who recalls

vividly having been a boy once punished

for stealing fruit

from the orchard called the young boy a

now consider many years hence a

decorated general

reflecting on the day he was decorated

as a young officer

called the agent general c

who has a vivid recollection of being

the young officer b

and no recollection whatever of being

the boy

a on the lockian account it would seem

that a

equals b b equals c but a does not equal

c the principle of associativity

is not honored and the alleged identity

collapses now

just in case you think that what lot was

offering was some sort of identity

argument that would be a successful

challenge

too reed as you might guess has that

challenge and then another one

the other one is quintessentially

reading and the other one is

that someone remembers having done

something no more

makes him the one who did it you you

have lunatics seven days a week

vividly recalling having lost a battle

in belgium

they stand there with their hands inside

their west coast

they affect a french accent

they wonder why the supplies came so

late

they're from portsmouth let me see

so so reed simply he says that this is

what happens

uh there's a wonderful line of reads

that

conjectures and theories are the

creatures of men

and nature seldom mimics these things do

you see

so so when i say that my epitaph shall

read he died without a theory

i'm i'm simply showing a very strong

sympathy

for a scottish common sense philosophy

that thinks we're generally generally

safe

when we stick to systematic observation

when possible measurement and framing

very modest propositions based on

what is available to a person's ordinary

perception

and that the further we get from that

the more turbid and turbulent

waters of metaphysics as they rush over

us

it's a wonderful line of edmonton works

about her

but i will keep getting about certain

things

until the steely tomb

heaps its mold on our protocol quantity

those of us closer to that mold i think

probably find that a more chilling

statement than you do

so so now

the other thing though is that the

the other disappointment with locke

is that you still have this entity

reflecting on the contents of its

consciousness

so in addition to certain logical

problems

with the thesis and common sense or

counter-intuitive

problems with the thesis it doesn't

really do the job it's set out to do

because you still have some sort of

enduring

x that must be the

the entity reflecting on the contents of

consciousness so predictably

enter hume

quote i think this is word for word i

must own

that when i search for myself i can find

nothing but a bundle of perceptions

he can find nothing but a bundle of

perceptions

now this is a predictable empiricist

position

on on the question but but do follow

what hume is saying

try to give some thought

about anything that isn't finally

reducible

to thought about something that figures

at the level of perception even if it's

some sort of

rearrangement of former percepts

to be thinking is to be thinking about

something

now you might just be thinking about

relations of ideas you know that

that every number is equal to itself but

if you're conducting

if you're thinking about something

you're granting a physical reality to

call it yourself then you're thinking in

property

terms you're thinking that you're

sitting you're thinking that you're

tired you're thinking that

it was cold about a half hour ago till

you got in this lecture

et cetera et cetera so so what's

what you've got then is a bundle of

perceptions now you might ask the

question

well don't we need a precipient now

observing the bundle of perceptions

after all what constitutes the ground of

the continuity

of the entity in question and there

hume offers this interesting reply

he says look think of a parade formation

now everyone marching in the parade is

replaceable

and as long as when one party drops out

he is replaced by another one the

continuity of the formation

is preserved even though you have these

otherwise

incessant changes

so that it this is almost a kind of

jamesian

stream of consciousness argument this

this

this continuous flow of

of experiences what

william james referred to rather

poetically as the ever

passing present thought do you see

so the bundle of perceptions

what might reed have to say about the

bundle of perceptions

and uh hume's skeptical position on his

own self

and descartes with the cogito and so

forth you know how reed's going to

misbehave when it comes to these

philosophical productions don't you

he says it seems to be a particular

strain of humor in this man he's

referring to hume

a particular strain of humor in this man

this author of deathless

prose admired the world over

by many that he has nonetheless not only

doubtful about

his own existence but about the very

readership on whom his authority

depends do you see

as for descartes read says a man who

disbelieves his own existence is no more

fit to be reasoned with than one that

thinks he's made of glass

as for the bundle of perceptions reads

that it has always been my view

that for there to be treason there must

be a traitor

and so if in fact there is this bundle

of perceptions presumably

it's in hearing in hume

now you'll find reed so playful in these

regards that you

you you might think this is philosophy

light read the whole inquiry these are

asides

i think they're very much in the

scriblerian tradition by the way

i mean they're much later as uh um

the memoirs of uh dr scribblers i think

show up first in 1714

reads inquiry is published in 1764.

but there's already a great uh respect

for what

pope and swift and company had had

produced

now kant's position is

predictably entirely different from

either the empiricist side of the

equation

or the scottish common sense side of the

equation though

as i've said repeatedly

but the longer i stay with this

literature the more convinced i am that

reads

inquiry in redacted

translated form mightily influenced

kant's thought i'm joined in this

judgment by carl americs who in my

estimation is perhaps the best of our

contemporary

kant scholars now now it now at notre

dame

for kant it is a necessary feature of

the human mind

that experiences are unified in a single

consciousness

it's only when there is consciousness

of the result of the synthesis of the

manifold

that in a sense can rise to the level

of a comprehended state or condition

with content the transcendental unity of

our perception refers then

to what are finally the necessary

conditions

for the unification of elements of

of empirical appreception

these things that are gleaned by the

senses and give rise to sensations

and these sensations then are in the

form of perceptions becoming

subsumed under general categories all

this must

be unified you understand why it must be

unified if jack

is the one who senses the blue and jill

is the one who senses the tree

and frank is the you get the picture

there's no way any of this can be

merged into a scene it it it at

nonetheless there isn't anything in the

stimulus itself

that supplies the means of unification

this has to be an a priori power

common to minds of a certain kind namely

minds of our kind

the so the transcendental unity of our

perception refers to what are finally

necessary conditions for the unification

of the various elements of empirical

appreception

but this must operate our priori is

established by the fact that

nothing at the level of appearances

themselves

contains within it the means by which to

establish

such unification it's not in the

stimulus

what is required is what kant refers to

as an act of the imagination

this is at b154 and that section will

repay

close reading on your part

what's required is what kant refers to

as an act of the imagination which is

known

not as a representation but directly by

way of the act itself

to quote kant at b153

it is conscious to itself

even without sensibility do you say

that that you

as a conscious entity are aware

of these powers that you have is not

something

engaged by or triggered by sensibility

itself

this is something that would be there

where they're not sensibility

as this is a necessary and universal

condition

of of experience itself it is grounded

in an a priori substrate

which can't calls the transcendental ego

now um

save me from saying anything

contemporary please

because it all begins to sound like the

telegraph or something

but i i do think it would be useful

for persons uh taking on the very

difficult task

of the self writing on the self

but to make a distinction between kant's

transcendental ego

and kant's empirical ego

most of the literature i'm familiar with

has to do with what

might be called the psychological

dimensions of selfhood

the transcendental dimension is the

necessary dimension

it's it's what can be argued into place

if no one were ever aware of one

self it's not the fact that you're aware

of yourself

that these things happen in fact

where they're not the a priori the a

priori conditions

of the unification of empirical

appreceptions

there wouldn't be any awareness at all

do you know why

because there wouldn't be any thought at

all that's what he meant when he said

that the transcendental unity of our

perception finally understood

just his thought do you see

as this is a necessary and universal

condition

it's grounded in an a priori substrate

and that's the one that kant refers to

as the transcendental

ego james van cleave has summarized

kant's concept of this

transcendental ego contrasting it with

the

empirical ego i want to read you a

passage from van cleave

but i i also want you to note that i

uh not strongly disagree that almost

sounds like

dyspepsia i i'd be quite reserved about

the last

sentence in this passage quote

in the philosophy of kant the

transcendental ego

is the thinker of our thoughts the

subject of our experiences

the willer of our actions and the agent

of the various activities of synthesis

that help to constitute the world we

experience

with hesitation i i say that that's a

decent enough quick summary

now then he says it is probably to be

identified

with our real or numeral self

we know that we don't know things like

that

this is where you you you want to engage

in that

exercise of thomas reads of laying your

hands across your lips

see every time you're on the verge of

saying well you know what it is

nominally

you want to say well you know what it is

mustn't do it

um at

b490 at a492 b520

the transcendental subject is equated by

kant

with the self proper as it exists

in itself and that i think is what led

van cleave to say well you know it's

it's

this is uh this is the nominal self

kant is suggesting something that's

equated with not something that's known

as

now this is contrasted with an empirical

ego

which is reached by way of introspection

the i the self that accompanies all

experience and consciousness

as a subjective feature of perception it

distinguishes one person

from another when you say

things like let me tell you something

about myself that that's what you're

referring to you're not that's not the

transcendental ego that's the

cafe ego do you say

self-disclosure is a very effective form

of ingratiation

unfortunately we learned this at a very

early age and so we become

gabby for the next 70 years

well let me tell you about myself to

which the polite reply is oh please

don't

so against hume can't offers this

as a conclusion it is absolutely

necessary

but in my knowledge all consciousness

should belong to a single consciousness

that of myself

you see hume doesn't give us the

belonging he has a kind of mechanism

by which some what psychic

stuffs perceptual stuff

bundled stuff gets held together

but but not in a way that that that that

could be known because there isn't a

knower

hume knows there's a knower goodness

sake he's writing this

you see

when kant says this he is not offering a

factual claim based on

introspection rather it pertains to the

logical form of all knowledge

as necessarily relating to a faculty or

power by which unification becomes

possible and this just is the faculty of

a perception

so kant is here to explain how a bundle

of perceptions

might rise to the level of human

understanding and in the end how might

we best

summarize that that explanation

i should tell you that that he is

respectful of hume in these regards

not not just the fellow who awakened him

from dogmatic slumber

but he sees hume as the culmination

in in kant's day anyway the culmination

of of an empirical tradition

that in important respects includes

newton

you've got to be very careful about what

part of this project you're going to

jettison because you do not want

the scientific productions growing out

of systematic observation

measurement etc you don't want those to

be casualties

in a war of metaphysics

and in fact reed is also very respectful

of hume i

shall i just give you a a gloss on this

an aside on this because i i think these

exchanges amuse you and the weather is

cold you should be repaid for your

diligence and so forth

um when reid completed his inquiry

he he did not want to publish it until

hume

read it just in case he grossly

misrepresented hume's position

but reid didn't know hume reid was not a

party he was a presbyterian minister

actually

uh in aberdeen hume was down there in

edinburgh

bothering the bishops

but they did have a friend in common

hugh blair

and reed asked blair to intercede to

have hume

read the thing blair sends it to hume

hume returns it unwrapped

with a note saying that it has always

been my view that presbyterian divine

should spend their time troubling each

other

and should lead philosophy to

philosophers

very high handed indeed

blair persisted sent it back and said

davey boy i think you better read this

so so hume did read it and he wrote

back to read glowingly

and revealingly he said i must say if

there was one part of this quite

remarkable work

that i did not fully understand

it was a section in your chapter of

seeing

which you refer to as the geometry of

visibles

ah well that's the thing that explodes

the whole

ideal theory that that's the part you

want to understand

i don't think uh hume was big on

geometry by the way

but that that's something else again um

and then read replies and if you want

the spirit of the enlightenment i i

think you'll find it in

the manner in which weed closes the

correspondence

with hume and although we here at

aberdeen syrup

are all good christian men we would

prefer your company

to that of saint athanasius

and we fear that if he were to write no

further in metaphysics

we would have nothing to talk about at

all

so well

how does kant finally explain

how you get a bundle to rise to the

level

of understanding and thought

the explanation just is that

transcendental argument

that establishes the a priori basis on

which objective knowledge depends

and the necessary and universal apriori

basis

on which such knowledge is possessed by

a single

consciousness thank you