A review of my understanding on the Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason: Paralogisms

Transcendental Dialectic (1)

Today I concerned myself with whether we can possibly have an objective knowledge of us as a “thinking being?” an “I think” in-itself, a priori, devoid of all thoughts. Kant himself is adamant that modi of self-consciousness, the ‘I think’ is not findable in empirical intuitions. To have Knowledge Erkenntnis, with objective validity is to have empirical intuitions that correspond with the imperative categories of understanding. But ‘I think,’ only has a transcendental determining function that “contains nothing in manifold…” (CPR pp. 328). That ‘I think’ does not immediately yield us the conclusion that ‘I am’ a substance, simple… etc. Such a proposition is synthetic and we can find nothing in our empirical experience to yield us such an intuition and hence we cannot know of an ‘I think’ a priori independent from representations. ‘Knowledge of myself as object’ in general is thus impossible. Kant thus makes a critical distinction between consciousness of the determining self and that of the determinable self (CPR pp. 368). What we can know is of our insofar as the ‘I think’ or unity of apperception in thought is combined with the manifold of intuition of our inner intuition. Insofar as we want to have knowledge of the determining subject in-itself, we cannot for there is no empirical basis to give it its necessary validity.

My understanding above can be attributed to this paragraph in the prelude to the paralogisms of pure reason (A) was very instructive to me.

“We can assign no other basis for this teaching than the simple, and in itself completely empty representation ‘I’ and we cannot even say that this is a concept but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = X. It is known only through the thoughts which are its predicates and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any concept whatsoever, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle… (CPR pp. 332)”

[…]

Kant’s Second Paralogism: Of simplicity

I think the above can be quite well illustrated by this Second paralogism of Transcendental Psychology. It is not rare to find ourselves hastily asserting that: “Our Soul is Simple.” Here, the self is taken as an object in itself with a simple nature. Yet, as Kant says,

“…the fundamental concept of a simple nature is such that it can never be met with in any experience, and such, therefore, there is no way of attaining to it as an objectively valid concept. (CPR: pp. 341)”

When one makes the claim of a simple soul, one is usually insinuating that the soul is not corporeal like matter, which is as the subject, intuit it, possibly composite. In concreto, we can experience the breaking of my pencil into two parts. But the proposition ‘I am substance’ or ‘I am simple’ or ‘The Soul is simple’ is problematic because:

Based on the transcendental aesthetic, we know that we have representations of things only through our inner and outer sense i.e. our faculty of sensibility. Hence, when an object = Y strikes our outer sense, we immediately know of its extension, impenetrability, and cohesion. It strikes our senses therefore we have a representational image of it. Y becomes a subject of our thought. The predicates of Y concern only our sensibility and its intuition insofar as we are affected by it (CPR pp. 339). But in-itself, without us empirically intuiting Y, or in other words, if we want to know what kind of object Y is, i.e. independent from us, apart from any relation to our outer senses, we cannot because the predicates we synthetically give to Y to describe Y, comes from us and if one wants to abstract Y and understand it as a thing in itself, then the predicates of outer appearances cannot be assigned to it (CPR pp. 339).

I think this is significant in understanding Kant’s point because then we cannot say that: Our soul is simple because it is not like matter i.e. ‘the soul is not corporeal’ like matter composite and divisible because we cannot even know what matter is in itself and by itself independent of our outer senses. Thus, as Kant says, the comparison of the thinking ‘I’ to the intelligible matter fails because we have no knowledge of the intelligible noumena matter in itself. So, the claim that the soul is simple because it is not matter that is corporeal and hence composite and divisible fails (CPR pp. 340). Kant wants to render such a common way of arguing for the simplicity of the soul void of any legitimacy by showing that the specific nature of matter in-itself as a transcendental object, we really do not know and if so, same applies to the nature of the ‘soul’ as an transcendental object. We do not know. We cannot then claim simplicity of the soul by juxtaposing it to its difference from the nature of matter.

People like to draw the erroneous inference of the necessary absolute unity (and hence simplicity of the subject) for otherwise, how can we have a unity a unity of thought from a disparate multiplicity of representations? There must then they claim, be a simple, indivisible soul like a control tower i.e. the necessary unity of the subject cardinal and sine qua non for the possibility of unity and coherence of our manifold representations. But this is problematic because from empirical experience, we cannot intuit a simple ‘I think.’ This is a very serious misconstruing and confusion because the ‘I think’ “…is not itself an experience but a form of apperception (pp. which belongs to and precedes experience… (CPR pp. 336)” It is a formal element that has the role of combination and synthesis of the manifold thereby giving us the possibility of thought and or a priori knowledge. Kant calls this the Pure Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception in the transcendental deductions and it is as he emphasized, transcendental and hence, cannot be intuited or given in experience. “…it must always be taken only in relation to some knowledge as a merely subjective condition of that knowledge (CPR pp. 337). Therefore, we do not know of what the I think is like in its nature apart from experience and knowledge. The leap, towards claims of the nature of the I think (as simple) is hence a leap into the noumena in which we cannot know and cannot make such a presumptuous inference.

Kant however salvages all these errors from the caprices of the subject and places the many pseudo-rational conclusions that exists in the nature of pure reason itself in its unrelenting pursuit of the “absolute totality of the synthesis on the side of the conditions… to present it a priori to the understanding… [i.e.] to the unconditioned (CPR pp. 324).”