Kant: First Essay
Wylie Breckenridge
In the "Refutation of Idealism", as well as in parts of the B Transcendental
Deduction (especially §§ 24 and 25), Kant sketches an account of selfawareness which is meant to be radically at odds with the type of account
found in Descartes and other early modern philosophers. Reconstruct and
evaluate Kant's criticism of the Cartesian understanding of the self as
indubitably and immediately aware of itself as a "thinking thing".
"I think" is a claim that plays at least two roles in the philosophy of Descartes. Firstly, it
is the one and only belief whose truth he claims he can know immediately and
indubitably, and so the one and only belief upon which he can found all others.
Secondly, its truth is the premise from which he claims establishes his own existence,
arguing that if he didn't exist then he couldn't think. There are two points to note about
Descartes' view. Firstly, that he thinks it is possible to hold the belief "I think" without
also holding the belief "there is a world of physical objects" (the former he takes to be
certain, and the latter he takes to be dubitable). Secondly, that he takes awareness of
mental states, like beliefs and doubts, to be sufficient evidence for the existence of the
self. Kant offers an account of the self from which he believes it follows that Descartes
is wrong on both points. He claims: (i) that it is impossible to believe "I think" without
simultaneously believing "there is a world of physical objects", and in fact without there
actually being a world of physical objects; and (ii) that awareness of mental states is not
enough for awareness of the self, but rather what is needed is awareness of the way that
we process those mental states. In this essay I will describe and assess Kant's account.
Kant's analysis of "I think" is more sophisticated than Descartes'. He sees it as an
announcement of two different kinds of consciousness. Firstly, it is an announcement of
what he calls empirical consciousness - an awareness that something is being thought,
or that a representation is being made. Secondly, it is an announcement of what he calls
self-consciousness - an awareness that there is an "I" which is the subject of this and of
all other representations. Descartes fails to make this distinction, and thereby lays open
to criticism his argument "I think, therefore I am". Descartes argues for the truth of "I
think" by appealing to an immediate awareness of mental states. But by expressing this
awareness as "I think" he assumes the very thing he wants to prove - the existence of an
"I" that is being aware. All that Descartes can really conclude from the awareness of
mental states is that "there is thinking". Kant might say that Descartes' mistake is to
identify empirical consciousness with self-consciousness.
There is an important difference for Kant between the two types of consciousness. The
first, empirical consciousness, seems to be the operation of what he elsewhere calls
"inner sense" - the way in which our mental states are given to us in intuition. Thus, it
belongs to the faculty of intuition as a part of the passive receptivity of the mind. Selfconsciousness, however, is different. He says, "[self-consciousness] comes about, not
simply through my accompanying each representation with consciousness, but only in
so far as I conjoin one representation with another, and am conscious of the synthesis of
them" (B 133). Kant is claiming here, contrary to Descartes, that empirical
consciousness of representations, in itself, is not sufficient for self-consciousness. The
latter can only come about through a consciousness of the act of combining
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representations into a single unity, or at least through a consciousness of the possibility
of such combination.
This combination, which he calls synthesis, is not given in intuition. Rather, he says it is
an act of "spontaneity" of the faculty of understanding. Being an act of the
understanding, synthesis must consist in the application of a concept to intuition. So, we
must have a concept of combination. But, Kant argues, this concept depends not only on
the concept of a manifold of representation to be combined, but also on a concept of the
unity of this manifold. This concept of unity is a necessary precondition for the concept
of combination. And thus we can see, by retracing the steps of this argument, that
having this concept of unity is a necessary precondition for having self-consciousness.
This is an important point. If I understand him correctly, Kant is saying that the self is
this concept - the concept of the unity of the manifold of representation - and that selfconsciousness is consciousness of this concept. His analysis of "I think", then, seems to
be this: We have representations (intuitions and concepts), and a faculty for being aware
of them (inner sense, empirical consciousness). Consciousness of individual
representations is not enough for self-consciousness - it is enough to give us the "think"
but not the "I". "I", the self, is a concept that exists, a priori, in the understanding. Selfconsciousness is consciousness of the determination of this concept. That is, it is
consciousness of the application of the concept of self to the manifold of representations
in the understanding - consciousness of the synthesis of representations. With this
comes consciousness of the "I", and the declaration "I think".
It is not clear to me whether Kant thinks that awareness of the concept of self as an
undetermined thought is sufficient for self-consciousness, or whether it must first be
determined in intuition. His claim, "thoughts without content are empty", suggests that
determination is required. Furthermore, he says, "For through the 'I', as simple
representation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from the 'I',
can a manifold be given; and only through combination in one consciousness can it be
thought" (B 135). But elsewhere he says, "I am conscious of myself, not as I appear to
myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am. This representation is a thought, not an
intuition" (B 157). He goes on to say that for knowledge of the self we need, in addition
to its concept, a determinate mode of intuition whereby a manifold is given and
concludes, "The consciousness of self is thus very far from being a knowledge of the
self" (B 158). Later he says, "I exist as an intelligence which is conscious solely of its
power of combination" (B 158). Can we be conscious of that power without it actually
at work within us, or can we only be conscious of it through consciousness of its action?
I don't know.
What is clear is that if we want more than just consciousness of the self - if we want
knowledge of the self - then it must be determined. That is, the self must be given in
intuition. Kant says:
Just as for knowledge of an object distinct from me I require, besides the
thought of an object in general (in the category), an intuition by which I
determine that general concept, so for knowledge of myself I require,
besides the consciousness, that is, besides the thought of myself, an intuition
of the manifold in me, by which I determine this thought. (B 158)
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It is through inner sense - awareness of our mental states - that the self is given. But
anything that is given through inner sense must conform to the pure intuition of time,
and for anything to be thought about what is thus given it must conform to the pure
concepts of the categories. Thus, we can only experience ourselves as we appear in
conformity to the forms of intuition and understanding. Kant says:
Now in order to know ourselves, there is required in addition to the act of
thought, which brings the manifold of every possible intuition to the unity of
apperception, a determinate mode of intuition, whereby this manifold is
given; it therefore follows that although my existence is not indeed
appearance, the determination of my existence can take place only in
conformity with the form of inner sense, according to the special mode in
which the manifold, which I combine, is given in inner intuition.
Accordingly I have no knowledge of myself as I am but merely as I appear
to myself. (B 157-158)
Also:
The 'I think' expresses the act of determining my existence. Existence is
already given thereby, but the mode in which I am to determine this
existence, that is, the manifold belonging to it, is not thereby given. In order
that it be given, self-intuition is required; and such intuition is conditioned
by a given a priori form, namely, time, which is sensible and belongs to the
receptivity of the determinable in me. (footnote to B 158)
(Note the first sentence here: "The 'I think' expresses the act of determining my
existence". At the end of the footnote he says, "my existence is only determinable
sensibly, that is, as the existence of appearance". Putting these together he is saying that
'I think' expresses the existence of appearance - the appearance of the self.)
An important distinction follows from this - a distinction between the "I" that does the
intuiting and thinking and the "I" that is intuited and thought. The former can know the
latter not as it is in itself, but only as it appears. The self cannot know itself as it is in
itself but only as it appears to itself. This seems very strange, and that's probably why
Descartes did not make this distinction. He took the self to have immediate access to
itself - when we are conscious of our thoughts we are directly conscious of the self. For
Kant this access is not direct, but only comes mediately via inner sense. Kant likens our
ability to know ourselves only as we appear to our ability to know time only as we can
make it appear. Time exists a priori within us, but we cannot experience it directly. It is
only by representing it to ourselves as, for example, a line in outer intuition, that we can
come to know it. He says, "we cannot obtain for ourselves a representation of time,
which is not an object of outer intuition, except under the image of a line, which we
draw, and that by this mode of depicting it alone could we know the singleness of its
dimension" (B 156).
Kant seems to think that it is not the understanding that limits knowledge of the self to
knowledge of its mere appearance. Rather, it is a limitation imposed upon us by our
peculiar faculty of sensibility - that objects can only be given to us in intuition under the
conditions of space and time. But, he says, "the pure concepts of the understanding are
free from this limitation, and extend to objects of intuition in general, be the intuition
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like or unlike ours, if only it be sensible and not intellectual" (B 148). The reason why
we cannot know ourselves directly is that by merely having the thought "I am", nothing
is given to us in intuition and so the thought remains empty. Kant says, "existence is
already given thereby, but the mode in which I am to determine this existence, that is,
the manifold belonging to it, is not thereby given. In order that it be given, self-intuition
is required" (footnote to B 158 again). The idea is that merely having the thought "I am"
is not enough to establish that I actually am - for this, "I" needs to be given as an object
in intuition. It's the same as for the thought of any other object - merely having the
thought "there is a rock", for example, is not enough to establish that there is a rock. To
establish its existence, we need to sense the rock - that is, it must be given to us through
the senses as an object in intuition. Descartes would say that having the thought "I am"
is enough to establish that I am. Kant disagrees.
There is an illuminating discussion of the possibility of an "intelligence" that can know
itself directly. Kant compares, at various places throughout the Critique, the human
sensible intuition with a non-human, non-sensible intuition. He calls such an intuition
"intellectual". An intelligence with such an intuition would not need, in addition to
thought, anything further to be given in intuition - the thought itself is its own intuition.
By merely having the thought "I am", such an intelligence would thereby know that it is.
We are not like that. Kant says:
If, with the intellectual consciousness of my existence, in the representation
'I am', which accompanies all my judgments and acts of understanding, I
could at the same time connect a determination of my existence through
intellectual intuition, the consciousness of a relation to something outside
me would not be required. But though that intellectual consciousness does
indeed come first, the inner intuition, in which my existence can alone be
determined, is sensible and is bound up with the condition of time. (footnote
B xl)
Kant might say that Descartes mistakes the human intuition for a non-sensible one.
This is a difficult concept to understand, and I'm not sure that I do. It seems to me that
when I think "I am" it does indeed generate something that is given to me in inner sense
- it generates a thought that I can be conscious of occurring within me. Maybe Kant
would reply that this thought by itself is insufficient for the act of synthesis, or for its
possibility, and therefore insufficient to determine the self. I'm not sure. Kant seems to
be suggesting that for knowledge of the self we need more than just the (inner)
sensation that thoughts are occurring. For in that case, merely by having thoughts, such
as "I am", we can know that we exist. This is Descartes' view. Kant seems to require
that those thoughts, or at least some of them, must be about things given to us in outer
sense, or must be thoughts about such thoughts. That is, Kant seems to be suggesting
that inner experience, including awareness of the thought "I am", is insufficient to
establish existence of the self. For that we need, in addition, outer experience of some
kind. That is directly contrary to Descartes.
In the "Refutation of Idealism", Kant argues this very thing. There he presents what he
describes as "a new refutation of psychological idealism, and a strict (also, as I believe,
the only possible) proof of the objective reality of outer intuition" (footnote B xl). He
says, "it remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the
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existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith" (same footnote). Kant
believes he has laid this scandal to rest.
The question he deals with is that of the relationship between three things: (a) the claim
"I think" (that is, the determination of self consciousness), (b) belief in an external
world, and (c) the existence of an external world. Descartes held that the claim "I think"
can be made independently of (b) and (c). It is not clear to me exactly what Kant holds.
In places he makes it sound like he is arguing that the claim "I think" entails (c), the
existence of an external world. The thesis he claims to prove is that "The mere, but
empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of
objects in space outside me" (B 275). And in the first note following the Refutation he
says:
But in order so to determine [the thought of something existing], outer
objects are quite indispensable; and it therefore follows that inner
experience is itself possible only mediately, and only through outer
experience.
(Here he seems to be arguing that not only is an external world necessary for the
determination of self-consciousness, but for all inner experience.) Elsewhere, he seems
to be arguing that the claim "I think" merely entails (b), belief in an external world. In
the final line of the Refutation, for example, he concludes:
In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an
immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.
To conclude that we must be conscious of things outside us is weaker than to conclude
that there actually must be things outside us. As another example, in B 275, just before
he gives his 'proof', he describes it as a "proof that even our inner experience, which for
Descartes is indubitable, is possible only on the assumption of outer experience" (my
emphasis).
I quoted Kant above as claiming to have proved the "objective reality" of outer
experience. Maybe this is the clue to what he means. Maybe he is simply claiming to
have proved that an object cannot be given to us in inner sense unless it conforms to an
a priori concept of its external existence, much in the same way that it cannot be given
unless it conforms to the pure intuitions of space and time and to the concept of an
object in general. In that case, then, he would be arguing the weaker claim that "I think"
cannot be pronounced except on the presumption of an object existing in an external
world.
In any case, the core of his argument is this: When a representation is determined in
time, it is like forming the belief that A (the representation) is occurring at time t (the
time at which it occurs). But this only makes sense if it is possible for A to have
occurred at some other time. So there must be some aspect of A that exists outside of
time, or that endures through time. If there wasn't, then we wouldn't have a notion of
there being an A at all. Since a determined representation is essentially a unified
manifold of spatial and temporal intuitions, this amounts to saying that any
representation that is determined in time must contain some spatial intuition. But selfconsciousness, the claim "I think", is just the determination in time of the self, and so
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can only arise if its object, the self, is given in intuition in some way spatially - that is,
through outer sense. Thus self-consciousness can only arise if there is some outer
experience of the self.
Kant extends the argument to inner sense in general. Since inner experience is just the
determination of representations in time, the representations so sensed must be given in
intuition in some way spatially, that is via outer experience. Thus, inner experience is
only made possible by outer experience.
This leaves unanswered the question of whether outer experience is experience of
anything actually outside of us, rather than something that is generated from within. In
the footnote B xl Kant anticipates this question and offers an answer. But I do not find it
satisfying. He seems to be repeating that inner experience relies on outer experience,
and since we have inner experience then we must have outer experience. So far nothing
new. If he does argue anything further it's that outer experience is the experience of
things outside of us, so if there must be outer experience then there must be things
outside of us. As he says, "outer sense is already in itself a relation of intuition to
something actually outside me". But this is something that Kant has just deemed to be
true, not a fact that he has anywhere established.
If Kant is just claiming that we can't help believing in the existence of an external world
- that without such a belief no understanding at all is possible - then I think his
arguments are adequate and I agree with him. If he is claiming that there really is an
external world, then I just don’t understand his arguments. That is frustrating, because I
can feel in his writing the strength of belief in what he is saying. It's like finding
scribbled in the margin of a book Fermat's claim to have proved his famous conjecture,
and not knowing what it was, or even if he had one, but knowing that it would at least
have been a good idea. In any case, it clearly follows from Kant's account of the self
that Descartes was wrong to think he could coherently believe in his own existence and
yet doubt the existence of the world.
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