Commentary on Kant

“The first pure cognition of the understanding, therefore, on which the whole of the rest of its use is grounded, and that is at the same time also entirely independent from all conditions of sensible intuition is the principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception.”

Prelude and significance of Kant

For the longest time, empiricists like John Locke have proffered that all our knowledge and ideas are derived from empirical experience. Descartes in the Discourse on Method and Meditations suggests that all our knowledge are bequeathed onto our minds by our sensory organs thereby giving us knowledge of other substances or bodies apart from us. Yet in this epic revelation of the transcendental deduction (B), Kant renders all these claims nugatory and outmoded by claiming that the composite of sensible intuition presented to us in pure space and time (conditions of our sensibility) are “nothing but receptivity” [pp. 245: B129-B130] which in layman terms are just synonymous to “raw disarranged data”. He agrees that all our cognitions begin with experience as objects stimulate our senses and produce representations yet they do not all arise from experience [pp. 136: B1]. For Kant, cognition of objects or anything in the phenomenal world have to 1) be received by our faculty of sensibility as a composite of manifold intuitions and representations pre-organized. Thereafter, it has to be 2) thought through categories which exist a priori functioning to “organize and redirect” these “raw data”. These categories are the pure concepts of the understanding that exists a priori to all cognition and that enable cognition and cardinally, order and coherence in our cognitions.

Hence, also unlike Hume who claims the order and causation order we see in the world are merely association of ideas or matters of custom and association whose linkage are arbitrary, Kant intercedes at this point and argues that there is order and causality which is imposed by our minds which is entirely independent from all conditions of sensible intuition as philosophers like Locke, Descartes and Hume proffers but is entirely reliant on the principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception.

Principle of original synthetic unity of apperception

As a corollary, after refuting the various many British Empiricists, the crucial question for Kant is how is cognition even possible if it does not end at empirical experience? For Kant, all our cognition is based upon a necessary first original synthetic unity of apperception, which is in the most cursorily but concisely, termed: “I think”. It is based on this “I think” (then rightly termed as the first pure cognition of our faculty of understanding) that there is possibility for any or all of our cognitions. What the pure forms of sensibility can give us are only the manifold of intuitions. For it to be cognizable or in order for these manifold intuitions of the object to be able to become an object for me, it has to be synthetically unified with my consciousness or apperception “I think”. Only then can the object become mine and have an enduring analytic relationship with me. Hence, this synthetic unity of apperception is first and foremost, a necessary one. To have a unified consciousness of a manifold of intuitions will thus prerequisite a prior synthetic unity of apperception or the act of combination or synthesis which involves one of the logical functions of judgment i.e. the pure categories or pure concepts of the understanding.

Thus, all our manifold of intuitions stand in a necessary relation to the original synthetic unity of apperception or “I think” and all these occur spontaneously and or transcendentally or a priori (not empirical). If the “I think” does not accompany all the manifold of intuitions or representations, then nothing can be thought in us. The representations will not be called my representations. It will most likely be simply be an array of disparate perceptions. More specifically put, what happens is then that transcendentally, I synthetically combine all the manifold of a given representation in one consciousness (or to attach “I think” or my conscious identity to them) so as to be able to claim that they belong to me. More abstractly or generally put by Kant then, “only because I can comprehend their manifold in a consciousness do I call them altogether my representations”; for otherwise I would have a multicolored, diverse self.” [pp. 247: B134]. This original synthetic unity of apperception is hence a necessary synthesis for otherwise we would end up with disparate selves and blotches of incoherent perceptions and cognitions.

Yet for Kant, before we proceed, it is important to make a distinction with regards to the original synthetic unity of apperception as an objectively valid process by which all manifold intuitions stand in relation to the one “I think” – the process that occurs a priori in our understanding and that occurs spontaneously - from the subjective unity of consciousness by which the empirical consciousness of the unity of the manifold is contingent on empirical circumstances. Hence the former is a process that gives objectivity and is found in every man whereas the later is a subjective process in which we become aware of the manifold of intuitions.

What the British empiricists have achieved is thus limited in Kant’s general schema to the faculty of sensibility and its receptivity of intuitions. Kant however, goes beyond to claim that we do not derive cognition simply from sensible intuitions. Intuitions have to stand under the conditions of the original synthetic unity of apperception and thereby have to be processed by the logical functions of judgment i.e. categories to become cognition. Also, most importantly, that our first pure cognition of understanding, the “I think”, is entirely different from the faculty of sensibility thus the saying, “thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.” With this, the distinction between the relation of intuitions (content) and the faculty of sensibility and pure concepts (categories), which lie in relation only to our faculty of understanding, is drawn. In the whole transcendental deduction (B) then tries to prove that the manifold of our intuitions given by our sensibility is necessarily subject to the categories. Only with this can there be any possible cognition.

Without these pure categories in our understanding that are functions of judging or determining our manifold intuition, then there can be no order in the phenomenal world because our sensibility cannot think. It can only feed to us “raw inputs”. There would thus be no order in our world and it would just be a chaotic scenario. Thus, it can also be drawn from this that order in the world is imposed by our mind. Another important point is also that categories by themselves cannot form cognitions of things and must be applied to empirical intuition to produce any possible empirical intuition. Kant thus lays down the boundaries of the use of our understanding (categories). This is cardinal because if pure concepts are only applicable empirically, then it is as though Kant is cautioning about how haphazardly and obliquely concocting propositions from concepts alone without any possible determinate intuitions is plainly groundless and senseless prophesying. This is hence a cornerstone contribution to critical philosophy.

Further Implications of Kant on self-consciousness

The whole exposition (B) above is illustrable in relation to Descartes cogito ergo sum. As established, (if not here then from the transcendental Aesthetic) the pure forms of our sensibility space and time (inner sense) only prescribes conditions of the possibility of how objects can be given to us [pp. 255 S23: B148]. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” therefore does not hold well because our inner sense (a mere form of intuition) does not contain any determinate intuitions at all. Hence, that man as a thinking substance, that thinks (“I think”) does not mean I am thinking anything and much less my existence. The leap from “I think” to “I am” is thus bold and presumptuous. Secondly and also more importantly than the former, we cannot know our noumena selves but only as phenomenal selves in the phenomenal world or world of appearance because we cannot cognize things-in-itself but only the manifold intuitions and representations given to us by the pure forms of space and time. Therefore, we can only intuit ourselves as we are internally affected [pp. 257: B153] by our inner sense just like other phenomena. We can only cognize ourselves or our subject as appearance and not as a thing in itself – the intelligible being that we cannot be given through our inner sense. Hence against Descartes, Kant argues that “I can have no cognition of myself as I am but only as I appear to myself.” In other words, whether a thinking substance actually exists as a thing-in-itself, is a noumena occurrence beyond the established bounds of our understanding. One’s existence is thus only sensibly determinable or determinable as an appearance.

Kantian Philosophy and conclusion

If we were to look into this issue at an even deeper level then, all the above is grounded in Kant’s philosophy of the transcendental idealism which holds the view that all material objects exists in space and time and are appearances not things-in-themselves and our minds impose certain order upon them (through pure categories and the original synthetic unity of apperception). His philosophy must also be seen in contradistinction with Newtonian laws that govern our commonsensical understanding of the world by grounding all matter as “out there,” independent of our minds, something in-itself construable and open to scientific inquiry. It also resolves many philosophical quandaries from Descartes to Locke who are the “problematic idealists” questioning our very knowledge of material things because of the shaky and problematic inferences by the very fact that there really is nothing problematic about our sensibility. Descartes for instance subscribes to a brand of idealism that assumes that the only immediate experience is inner experience (of our thinking being) and everything else is only to be inferred and may even be inferred falsely. He hence claims in the Meditation VI that “I often observe that towers which viewed from far away had appeared round to me, seemed at close range to be square” [pp 130: Meditations VI] and hence concludes that he “has encountered judgments based on external senses” [pp 130: Meditations VI] Yet Kant refutes this based on the very ground that our faculty of sensibility gives us empirical intuitions especially through the pure form of inner sense which stands in immediate relation to us. Thus, there is really no problem at all since he has effaced “inference” with immediate, given intuitions by our sensibility or receptivity of the manifold intuitions. What is the problem as established by the transcendental deduction (B) is hence, when we erroneously try to theorize and postulate based on pure concepts alone that meets with no determinate intuition and is thus groundless. Kant thus really sets a whole new playing field for critical philosophy.

Based on the very fact that everything is grounded on the first principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception, Kant has elucidated and shown in his own way how our faculty of understanding proceeds and the bounds of our understanding and cognition that we should not transgress or if we should, do so at our own behest producing theoretically groundless propositions which are merely speculative.