Patricia Kitcher

Kant examined the necessary conditions for the possibility of phenomena, e.g. cognition or morality. Still, his approaches to freedom differed in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the _Critique of Practical Reason._ In the former, Kant argues that the freedom required for morality is not impossible; in the latter, he argues that freedom and morality are actually possible, because their enabling conditions are actual. The crucial capacity is being determinable by the moral law. Since the only human access to theoretical or practical reasoning is through reasoning, the proof of practical freedom must be practical. Just before the “fact of reason” passage, Kant invites readers to consider adopting a maxim of false testimony; his expectation is that when they do, they are conscious of the moral law as producing a determinate willing, an intention to not to lie. As determinable by the moral law, they are free.

Kant agreed with Hume that humans have no impression of a self; the concept of the self does not enter the mind through the senses. It is, rather, an a priori representation that arises from the activities of the mind in cognizing objects. It is nonetheless a necessary representation for any creature capable of cognition. Even to be able to judge that some thing is some way, a creature must have and use the concept of a ‘self-conscious unified self.’ Kant also argued that the use of the I or self concept was possible only for creatures who were free in thought and action. In later writings, though, he seemed to differentiate the kinds of freedoms involved in thought and action.

Many contemporary philosophers have defended the ‘transparency’ thesis: How a subject answers the question of whether she believes that _p_ is not by an inner glance; rather, that question is answered in the same way as the question of the truth of _p_. Several proponents (most prominently Gareth Evans) suggest that they take some of their inspiration for the thesis from Kant. By contrast, this chapter argues that Kant would have opposed the transparency thesis. His investigations into the necessary conditions for cognition show that only a self-conscious subject could have a belief. In that case, the base step for self-ascription, belief about the world, must already involve self-consciousness. Kant does not (at least at his better moments) think that subjects understand themselves as thinkers or believers through inner glances, but through engaging in rational thought.

This chapter examines Kant’s theory of the unity of apperception and the argument he offers for it in the transcendental deduction of the _Critique of Pure Reason_. His theory is that the unity of apperception is created through the conscious synthesizing of materials in rational cognitions. Those conscious acts create and grasp the necessary connection of mental states in a single ‘I’. Because the unity of apperception is a necessary condition for rational cognition, his ‘transcendental argument’ for it is unique to that case. The special features of his argument are shown by comparing his case for mental unity with that offered recently by Quassim Cassam. Kant’s theory of necessary for cognition conscious synthesizing also suggests difficulties for current theories of consciousness.

Kant’s central question in morality parallels his central question in epistemology: ‘How is cognition possible?’ In ethical writings he asks: ‘How is morality possible?’ For both cases his answers are cast in terms of the faculties necessary for the possibility of the task. I present the basics of Kant’s moral psychology of reason, will and desire and then draw on that account to provide a more adequate understanding of his demonstration that morality is not chimerical, but real in the ‘fact of reason’ texts.

In this innovative study Patricia Kitcher argues that we can only understand the deduction of the categories in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in terms of his attempt to fathom the psychological prerequisites of thought. Thus a consideration of his conception of psychology is essential to an understanding of his philosophy. Kitcher specifically considers Kant's claims about the unity of the thinking self; the spatial forms of human perceptions; the relations among mental states necessary for them to have content; the relations between perceptions and judgment; and the limits of philosophical insight into psychological processes.

Ein zentrales Ziel von Transparency and Reflection ist es zu erklären, wie Selbstwissen möglich ist, während zugleich daran festgehalten wird, dass Wissen um Bewusstseinszustände ‚transparent‘ ist mit Blick auf unser Weltwissen. Ich möchte zeigen, dass die von Matthew Boyle bemühten Ressourcen – insbesondere „Bewusstsein als Subjekt“ und „Arten des Gegebenseins“ – nicht ausreichen, um die Einführung der Vorstellung eines Selbsts zu erklären, das vielfältige Zustände hat. Dagegen möchte ich vorschlagen, dass Boyle erfolgreicher gewesen wäre, wenn er bei seiner früheren Kantischen Annahme geblieben wäre, nach der die Beherrschung der Vorstellung der Ersten-Person ein Bewusstsein der Aktivität des Denkens benötigt, das Subjekte dazu befähigt, Warum-Fragen zu beantworten.

How does Kant understand the representation of an empirical self? For Kant, the sources of the representation must be both a priori and a posteriori. Several scholars claim that the a priori part of the ‘self’ representation is supplied by the category of ‘substance,’ either a regular substance (Andrew Chignell), a minimal substance (Karl Ameriks) or a substance analog (Katharina Kraus). However, Kant opens the Paralogisms chapter by announcing that there is a thirteenth ‘transcendental’ concept or category: “We now come to a concept that was not entered in the above general list of transcendental concepts, and that must yet be classed with them … This is the concept – or, if one prefers, the judgment – I think.” (A341/B399). I argue that it is the ‘I think’ that provides the a priori framework for the representation of the empirical self.

My comments focus on Proops’s treatment of the Paralogisms. I agree with many aspects of his discussion, including his views about the project of Rational Psychology and his analyses of how, exactly, the arguments of the Paralogisms are defective in form, but I disagree with his interpretation of the First Paralogism. I argue that the source of confusion that Kant diagnoses is not the grammatical distribution of ‘I’ as singular, but the fact that the I-representation is both empty and necessary for cognition.

Wonderfully clear, scholarly, and well argued, Kant’s Intuitionism offers a bold new interpretation of the thesis of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Falkenstein reads Kant as a “formal intuitionist.” That is, he takes Kant to have maintained that the forms of intuition, space, and time were given along with sensations. They were neither preexisting representations, nor intellectual or imaginative constructions out of sensations. In this context “given” contrasts with “constructed”; subjects’ representations of space and time derived from their sensory constitutions. When subjects’ senses were stimulated, that produced sensations with intensities varying according to the stimulus; because of the subjects’ constitutions, the intensity values were ordered after one another in time and adjacent to one another in space. Falkenstein characterizes space and time as “presentational orders” of sensations.