Abstract
Assuming the correctness of B-Deduction § 17, Kant has shown that (Ti) holds and the manifold of i is united in the concept of an object through the (Ti) thought, thereby yielding H knowledge of the single object that H thinks. ((Ti), it will be recalled, is the claim that, roughly, H thinks that there is a single object that has the features presented by i’s elements.) In the brief § 18 Kant urges that this unity in i’s manifold is objective, not subjective. Then in § 19 he argues that because H’s thinking the (Ti) thought produces such an objective, knowledge-yielding unity, (A) that thought is or is part of a knowledge-yielding judgment about the object that H thinks and knows through i. This judgment has a logical form, roughly a set of relations obtaining among the concepts in the judgment, whose holding is determined by the logical functions of thought in judgment. In § 19 Kant urges also that (B), the logical form of this judgment amounts to or derives from the objective unity of apperception that belongs to the concepts (or further judgments) in the judgment. As he argues in § 20, however, (C) because the logical functions of thought in judgment, through the holding of objective unity of apperception, determine the logical-form relations together of those concepts, the logical functions determine, also, the relations together of the conceptual elements of i’s manifold in such a way that the object that H thinks and knows through i falls under the categories.
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References
also ignore other § 18 points not now relevant — for example, B140 on ‘the pure form of intuition in time, merely as intuition in general.’ (I take Kant here at B140 to continue to speak from our human point of view, regarding time as an example of an intuition in general subject to unity of apperception. As we saw in Chapter Four, and as B148 and the first sentence of § 24, at B150, show clearly, Kant’s § 20 results about category application extend beyond our human modes of intuition to the objects of any sensible intuitions in general.)
Because they are not relevant to the main argument of the Deduction, I set aside the presumed differences among the B 139 subjective unity of consciousness, the B 139–40 empirical unity of consciousness, and the B140 empirical unity of apperception. (Roughly, I take the subjective unity — as in the main text above — to be the unity that intuition-elements have in virtue of their associative organization. The empirical unity of consciousness or of apperception arises when intuition-elements, as they occur associatively organized in the mind, are grasped by thought-consciousness.)
A real proof would involve, among other things, complex issues about appearing and appearance theories that do not directly affect the Deduction. Note also that the object should be distinct from any merely associative organization of i t and i2 in H’s mind.
Observe that — to mention a point discussed briefly in Chapter Eight and again below in Section 5 — this last reasoning does not show that the object in question is distinct from all intuition-elements whatsoever of H’s, taken separately or in sequence.
I see this implication in the closing remarks on objective validity in § 18 and § 19. For the Prolegomena, see especially § 18 and § 19, where Kant asserts that ‘objective validity [of the unity of apperception, the sort of validity provided by the first sort of objective unity above] and necessary universal validity (for everyone) are… identical concepts’ (Ak. 4, 198; Lucas trans., 57). The Prolegomena § 18 and § 19 remarks (and those in B-Deduction § 19) are couched in terms of judgment, but that fact is easily accommodated to our present account. (I ignore here the notorious Prolegomena § 18 distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience, a distinction that prima facie conflicts with the B-Deduction § 19 insistence that all judgments are objective. I will note, however, that Kant’s idea of a judgment of perception — as not needing a category — seems confused and is not required by anything in the basic Transcendental Deduction argument itself.)
This last point is trivially true just because (and in the sense that) it amounts to saying that because Kant’s above position implies that H thinks the (Ti)-thought, therefore Kant’s above position implies that it and i2’s forming an objective unity of the second sort itself implies that H thinks the (Ti)-thought.
Will Kant understand the p, q (Ti)-like thought to be about numerically the same object as the m, n (TO-like thought? In Prolegomena § 18, last paragraph, Kant argues explicitly for the present implication of the second (universal-validity) objective unity by the first (relation-to-a-distinct-object) objective unity, and his argument strongly suggests that the numerically same object is at issue (‘if a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments about the same object must agree with one another’; Ak. 4, 298, Lucas trans., 56). This question raises complex points but can be ignored here, however, since the reasoning that I have just given works whether the p, q and m, n (Ti)-like thoughts concern numerically the same object or only objects of the same kind.
Of course it does not follow either that what is claimed in that judgment goes beyond what is claimed in H’s (Ti)-thought or that that judgment, if it does go beyond what is claimed in that thought, yields H knowledge. Indeed, in Chapter Eight we considered only the basic Kantian view that, given the holding of unity of apperception with respect to i, it follows that H thinks the specific (Ti)-thought and that that thought yields H knowledge. I return to such points below.
In his A132/B171 claim, Kant focuses just on categorical, affirmative, subject-predicate judgments. But the extension to other sorts of Kantian judgments, which is not difficult, is not needed for the point here.
The terms ‘simple,’ ‘basic,’ and ‘compound’ are mine, not Kant’s.
In the case of the logical function of relation (A70/B95 ff.), all basic judgments have the one categorical, subject-predicate logical function; the other two relational logical functions (hypothetical and disjunctive) belong to compound judgments. Compound judgments have, directly, none of the other, nonrelational, logical functions but are made up of basic judgments that themselves exemplify those other logical functions in various ways.
Of course, as examples below illustrate, this judgment may also be about other objects too. Furthermore, as we see in Chapter Ten, this present claim does not solve all the problems about the application of all the categories to i’s object.
For Kant’s own acceptance of the idea that (Ti)-like thoughts can be involved in further judgments, note, for example, the A68–69B93 example of how, in the judgment that all bodies are divisible, ‘the concept of the divisible applies to various other concepts, but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and that concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us.’ (My emphasis. Kant changed ‘appearances’ in his copy of the first Critique to ‘intuitions’; see Schmidt, ed., 109.) Of course in this example Kant’s acceptance is made in the context of Aristotelian logic and its assumption that the subject-terms of categorical judgments are nonempty.
The trancendental unity of apperception has been argued earlier to hold with respect toil and i 2 . But it has not been explicitly argued to hold either with respect to what i t and i 2 put before the mind or with respect to the concepts (or further judgments) that occur in the judgment associated with the (TO)-thought. (Nor has it been argued to hold with respect to any other concepts or further judgments of H’s.) This is one of the complications we bypass until Chapter Ten.
The concepts or further judgments are what Kant calls the logical matter of the judgment, and their relation together through the logical functions is the judgment’s logical form. See A266/B322, and compare Reflexionen 3046, 3039, 3042, 3044, 3045, 3050, and 3060 in Ak. 16; and Logik, § 18 ff.
There are other difficulties, which I ignore here.
Thus suppose that H judges, as in the (Ti)-thought, that there is a single object that has F and G. Then H can also judge that all FG are F, that all FG are G, that all FG and F are F, that all FG and G are F, and so on; that all FG and F and G are F, and so on; that if all FG are F, then all FG are G; that if (if all FG are F, then all FG are G), then (if all FG are G, then all FG are F); and so on (including disjunctive claims). Because such judgments involve different combinations of the relevant logical functions (and so of the concepts and further judgments involved), they are distinct judgments. There are in principle an infinite number of such judgments, most of which H cannot make, as they outrun the storage and comprehension capacities of H’s (finite) mind. But there are obviously many such judgments — like the ones just listed — that H can but need not make while making the specific (Ti) judgment. And that fact is all that is needed to create the problem that I note below for (P).
The judger makes z, with its specific logical form; and by (P) the logical form of a judgment consists in or derives from the holding of objective unity of apperception with respect to the concepts occurring in that judgment.
The judger at least contemplates the contents of these judgments, whether or not the judger actually asserts them. Given Kant’s own account of the assertoric and apodeictic logical functions, if either of those logical functions is involved the judger may well actually make the judgment.
One might read § 19, B141 in this way: ‘a judgment is nothing but the manner in which different modes of knowledge are brought to objective unity of apperception.’ Note also Prolegomena § 22 (Ak. 4, 305; Lucas trans., 64): ‘the logical moments [functions] of all judgment are so many possible ways of unifying representations in a consciousness,’ and § 39 (Ak. 4, 323; Lucas trans., 86): judging is ‘the act of the understanding which contains all the rest and is only differentiated by different modifications or moments.’ (By A70/B95, the functions of thought fall ‘under four heads, each of which contains three moments.’)
To this difficulty it might be objected that even if, say, the subject-predicate logical function is itself a priori, it is nevertheless wholly contingent that that function holds with respect to particular concepts or features presented by the manifold of intuition. So there is no necessity here to be explained through the holding of unity of apperception; and thus the present difficulty collapses. Although it may seem plausible in its own terms, this objection is not, however, one that Kant himself can easily offer. (a) In his (P) view, Kant regards the holding of unity of apperception as responsible for the holding of the individual logical functions with respect to the concepts or features presented by the manifold of intuition. And his reason for so proceeding is surely that he takes the latter holding itself to be in a certain way necessary and a priori. (b) In Chapter Ten we see that, for Kant, when individual logical functions are applied to intuition-presented concepts or features in such a way that the associated categories are then applied to the objects judged about (as happens in every judgment yielding knowledge), an element of necessity is involved in this application. (That fact is true even when the judgment is contingent.) And Kant will suppose that this element of necessity requires a source in the holding of unity of apperception.
Note also the Chapter Eight discussion of the § 17 ‘sources’ argument for (Ti).
Besides the B140 heading to § 19, which shows the depth of Kant’s adherence to the fundamental Deduction idea here noted, see B131 of the introductory § 15, where Kant clearly implies that the holding of unity of apperception is the ‘ground of the unity of diverse concepts in judgment’ and hence (it would seem) is the ground or source of all the specific, determinate sorts of logical combination and so of logical form that occur in judgments. Note “Metaphysik L2” (Ak. 28. 2, 1 at 548): a ‘logical ground is the relation of [pieces of] knowledge, how one is inferred from the other’; a ‘ground is that through which something else is posited’; a ‘ground is that upon which something follows in an entirely necessary way’; Kant to Reinhold, May 12, 1789: ‘a ground is (in general) that whereby something else (distinct from it) is made determinate’; ‘if the ground is posited, the consequent is determined’ (Ak. 11, 35; Zweig trans., 138).
Kant also has to show that the object is distinct from the relevant intuition-elements. But that point is independent of his views about the logical forms of judgment and unity of apperception.
Of course to the extent that Kant in § 19 means to claim anything about a knowledge-yielding judgment involving but going beyond the (Ti) judgment, Kant extends his explicit § 17 view that unity of apperception implies H thinks the knowledge-yielding (Ti) thought.
See B128–29, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science footnote to the Preface (Ak. 4, 474 ff.), and Reflexion XLII (Ak. 23, 25).
One can also generate related problems. For example, how exactly is the necessary holding of unity of apperception — which is expressed in what is presumably the judgment that, necessarily, the I think accompanies all my representations — itself the source (on Kant’s ‘sources’ view) of every judgment’s logical form or range of possible logical forms? I will not try here to discuss such worries (which raise further questions about the ‘sources’ view), beyond drawing attention to the general comments below.
The three quotations here (all with my emphases) are from the beginning of Reflexion XLII (Ak. 23, 25); Prolegomena § 22 (Ak. 4, 305); and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, footnote to the Preface (Ak. 4, 475). Note that it is not, implied in this last quotation that in order for concepts or properties like stone and hard to have these uses the judger must consciously think them to have such uses.
I talk here of ‘concept (or property)’ in order to bypass complications postponed until Chapter Ten.
Even though it is necessary that if (a) holds, then (b) holds, the present example shows that it does not follow that if I think that (a), then I think that (b). This fact illustrates again our Chapter Five points about intensionality and thought-consciousness.
Here note the texts cited in the third paragraph of this section; observe that even in the texts cited later, in the paragraph tagged by note 28, Kant does not suggest the specific idea just mentioned; and notice that when he argues, in Anthropology, § 5, for the existence of unconscious mental activities and representations, the activities that he holds can be unconscious are simply those of association in imagination. (Compare also the well-known A78/B103 comment on imagination.) The fact that it is just associative (or productive) activities of imagination that Kant argues may be unconscious shows that while he is an important ancestor of recent cognitive theories of the mind, he assumes nothing like the range of unconscious higher-order mental processes that many such theories routinely postulate. (Commentators like Kemp Smith who attribute to Kant an acceptance of wide-ranging unconscious mental processes to my mind simply impose on the actual theory of the first Critique their own views.)
For such views see, for example, Arnauld and Nicole (1662), Part 2, Chapter 3, first three paragraphs. Note also Locke, Essay, III. 7. 1, and Kant’s own early view of judgment as a comparison of a thing, the subject of the judgment, with a mark, the judgment’s predicate, in “False Subtlety,” § 1 (Ak. 2, 47 ).
For other first-Critique remarks on the copula, see A74/B99–100 and A598–99 = B626–27 (where Kant in effect distinguishes the copulative from the existential use of ‘is’). Note also Logik, § 24.
And in Section 2 we adopted a similar understanding of the relation-to-a-distinctobject type of objective validity.
Or taken as having any other merely associative organization in the mind. (This qualification applies throughout, below.)
Nor is it necessary here to discuss the Prolegomena § 18 distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. (For a brief comment, see note 5.)
Here recall Chapter Eight, especially Section 5.
This comment is of course made from the standpoint of what Kant himself should try to argue, given his belief (criticized in Chapter Eight) that in § 17 he proves that unity of apperception with respect to i implies that H thinks and knows an object through the (Ti)-thought.
Wolff (1963, 163–64 and ff.) emphasizes strongly a difficulty resembling the present difficulty for Kant; his discussion has influenced mine here and earlier.
Such a supposition resembles (and perhaps lies behind) the Prolegomena § 18 idea of judgments of perception. (Compare note 5.) To avoid what I think are insuperable difficulties with that idea, the present supposition would need to take the direct-inspection judgments themselves (unlike judgments of perception) to introduce the categories. Even if the categories could be introduced, for the reason given below this supposition will not work.
As we noted in Chapter Seven, Kant’s B142 points do not rule out his expressing the holding of necessary unity of apperception by an (N1)- or (N2)-style claim to the effect that if a being like us knows through (or has) a given sensible intuition, then it is necessary that that being is or can become conscious in thought that the I think accompanies the elements of the intuition taken together. Such a claim is compatible with the contingency of the judgment that is made about the object of that intuition. (For this reason, among others, I reject the claim in Guyer, 1987, 120, that the B-Deduction argument up to § 20 ‘collapses into the assertion that empirical judgments of objects are actually claims of necessity.’ Kant’s reasoning here is much subtler than that.)
B142; compare the last sentences of § 18.
See the last sentence of Prolegomena § 18 (Ak. 4, 298). (Kant’s language there admits of the ambiguity about ‘same object’ that was remarked in note 7; the criticisms below can be applied to either way of taking that ambiguity.)
That is, we cannot here plausibly infer such a fact about m and n without introducing Kant’s position that the holding of unity of apperception implies that the knower thinks, with respect to the relevant intuition-elements, a (Ti)-like thought. (Of course if we introduce that position, then we can infer that m and n are involved in a judgment about a distinct object. Recall Section 2.)
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Howell, R. (1992). Objective Unity of Apperception and the Logical Forms of Judgment: B-Deduction § 18 and § 19. In: Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. Synthese Library, vol 222. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8020-5_9
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