Chapter XXI: Section II: The categories are “the a priori conditions on which the (2)

Each reproduced image would in its present state be a new experience, and would not help in the least towards gaining consciousness of order or number in the succession of our experiences. Recognition is, therefore, a third form of synthesis, indispensably necessary to consciousness of time. But further, the recognition is recognition of a succession as forming a unity or whole, and that unity is always conceptual.

“The word concept (_Begriff_) might of itself have suggested this
remark. For it is this unitary consciousness which unites into a
single representation a manifold that has been successively
intuited and then subsequently reproduced.”[883] “If in counting I
forgot that the units ... have been added to one another in
succession, I should never recognise what the sum-total is that is
being produced through the successive addition of unit to unit; and
so would remain ignorant of the number. For the concept of this
number is nothing but the consciousness of this unity of
synthesis.”[884]

The synthesis of recognition is thus a synthesis which takes place in and through empirical concepts. In the instance which we have chosen, the empirical concept is that of the number six.

The analysis, however, is not yet complete. Just as reproduction conditions apprehension and both rest on recognition, so in turn recognition presupposes a still further condition, namely, self-consciousness. For it is obvious, once the fact is pointed out, that the recognition of reproduced images as standing for past experiences can only be possible in so far as there is an abiding self which is conscious of its identity throughout the succession. Such an act of recognition is, indeed, merely one particular form or concrete instance of self-consciousness. The unity of the empirical concept in and through which recognition takes place finds its indispensable correlate in the unity of an empirical self. Thus an analysis of our consciousness, even though conducted wholly on the empirical level, that is, without the least reference to the _a priori_, leads by simple and cogent argument to the conclusion that it is conditioned by complex synthetic processes, and that these syntheses in turn presuppose a unity which finds twofold expression for itself, objectively through a concept and subjectively in self-consciousness.

So far I have stated the argument solely in reference to serial consciousness. Kant renders his argument needlessly complex and diminishes its force by at once extending it so as to cover the connected problem, how we become aware of objects. This occurs in the section on the synthesis of reproduction. An analysis of our consciousness of objects, as distinct from consciousness of the immediately successive, forces us to postulate further empirical conditions. Since the reproductive imagination, to whose agency the apprehension of complex unitary existences is psychologically due, acts through the machinery of association, it presupposes constancy in the apprehended manifold.

“If cinnabar were sometimes red, sometimes black, sometimes light,
sometimes heavy, if a man changed sometimes into this and sometimes
into that animal form, if the country on the longest day were
sometimes covered with fruits, sometimes with ice and snow, my
empirical imagination would never even have occasion when
representing red colour to bring to mind heavy cinnabar....”[885]

This passage may be compared with the one which occurs in the section on the synthesis of recognition. Our representations, in order to constitute knowledge, must have the unity of some concept; the manifold cannot be apprehended save in so far as this is possible.

“All knowledge demands a concept, though that concept may be quite
imperfect or obscure. But a concept is always, as regards its form,
something general which serves as a rule. The concept of body, for
instance, as the unity of the manifold which is thought through it,
serves as a rule to our knowledge of outer appearances.... It
necessitates in the perception of something outside us the
representation of extension, and therewith the representations of
impenetrability, form, etc.”[886]

So far the deduction still moves on the empirical level. When Kant, however, proceeds to insist[887] that this empirical postulate itself rests upon a transcendental condition, the argument is thrown into complete confusion, and the reader is bewildered by the sudden anticipation of one of the most difficult and subtle conclusions of the objective deduction. The same confusion is also caused throughout these sections as a whole by Kant’s description of the various syntheses as being transcendental.[888] They cannot properly be so described. The concepts referred to as unifying the syntheses, and the self-consciousness which is proved to condition the syntheses, are all empirical. They present themselves in concrete form, and presuppose characteristics due to the special contingent nature of the given manifold; as Kant states in so many words in the second edition.

“Whether I can become _empirically_ conscious of the manifold as
simultaneous or as successive depends on circumstances or empirical
conditions. The empirical unity of consciousness, through
association of representations, therefore itself relates to an
appearance, and is wholly contingent.”[889]

The argument in these preliminary stages of the subjective deduction, in so far as it is employed to yield proof that all consciousness involves the unity of concepts and the unity of self-consciousness, is independent of any reference to the categories, and consequently to transcendental conditions. In accordance with the plan of exposition above stated, we may now pass to the objective deduction.

OBJECTIVE DEDUCTION AS GIVEN IN THE FIRST EDITION

The transition from the preliminary stages of the subjective deduction to the objective deduction may be made by further analysis either of the objective unity of empirical concepts or of the subjective unity of empirical self-consciousness. It is the former line which the argument of the first edition follows. Kant is asking what is meant by an object corresponding to our representations,[890] and answers by his objective deduction. He substitutes the empirical for the transcendental object,[891] and in so doing propounds one of the central and most revolutionary tenets of the Critical philosophy. Existence takes a threefold, not a merely dual form. Besides representations and things in themselves, there exist the objects of our representations--the extended world of ordinary experience and of science. Such a threefold distinction is prefigured in the Leibnizian metaphysics, and is more or less native to every philosophy that is genuinely speculative. Kant himself claims Plato as his philosophical progenitor. The originality is not in the bare thesis, but in the fruitful, tenacious, and consistent manner in which it is developed through detailed analysis of our actual experience.

In its first stages the argument largely coincides with the argument of the paragraphs which deal with the transcendental object. When we examine the objective, we find that the primary characteristic distinguishing it from the subjective is that it lays a compulsion upon our minds, constraining us to think about it in a certain way. By an object is meant something which will not allow us to think at haphazard. Cinnabar is an object which constrains us to think it as heavy and red. An object is thus the external source of a necessity to which our thinking has to conform. The two arguments first begin to diverge when Kant sets himself to demonstrate that our consciousness of this external necessity is made possible by categories which originate from within.

For this conclusion Kant prepares the way by an analysis of the second main characteristic constitutive of an object, viz. its unity. This unity is of a twofold nature, involving either the category of substance and attribute or the category of cause and effect. The two categories are ultimately inseparable, but lead us to conceive the object in two distinct modes. When we interpret an object through the _a priori_ concept of substance and attribute, we assert that all the contents of our perceptions of it are capable of being regarded as qualities of one and the same identical substance. No one of its qualities can be incongruent with any other, and all of them together, in their unity, must be expressive of its substantial nature.

The causal interpretation of the object is, however, the more important, and is that which is chiefly emphasised by Kant. It is, indeed, simply a further and more adequate mode of expressing the substantial unity of the object. All the qualities must be causally bound up with one another in such a way that the nature of each is determined by the nature of all the others, and that if any one quality be changed all the others must undergo corresponding alterations. Viewed in this manner, in terms of the category of causality, an object signifies a necessitated combination of interconnected qualities or effects. But since no such form of _necessitation_ can be revealed in the manifold of sense, our _consciousness_ of compulsion cannot originate from without, and must be due to those _a priori_ forms which, though having their source within, control and direct our interpretation of the given. Though the objective compulsion is not itself due to the mind, our _consciousness_ of it has this mental _a priori_ source. The concept of an object consists in the thought of a manifold so determined in its specific order and groupings as to be interpretable in terms of the categories of substance and causality.

But the problem of the deduction proper is not yet raised. On the one hand, Kant has defined what the concept of the objective must be taken as involving, and on the other, has pointed out that since the given as given is an unconnected manifold, any categories through which it may be interpreted must be of independent origin; but it still remains to be proved that the above is a valid as well as a possible mode of construing the given appearances. The categories, as _a priori_ concepts, originate from within. By what right may we assert that they not only relate to an object, but even constitute the very concept of it? Are appearances legitimately interpretable in any such manner? It was, we may believe, in the process of answering this question that Kant came to realise that the objects of our representations must no longer be regarded as things in themselves. For, as he finds, a solution is possible only on the further assumption that the mind is legislating merely for the world of sense-experience, and is making no assertion in regard to the absolutely and independently real. Kant’s method of proof is the transcendental, _i.e._ he seeks to demonstrate that this interpretation of the given is indispensably necessary as being a _sine qua non_ of its possible apprehension. This is achieved by means of the conclusion already established through the preliminary steps of the subjective deduction, namely, that all consciousness involves self-consciousness. Kant’s proof of the objective validity of the categories consists in showing that only by means of the interpretation of appearances as _empirically_ objective is self-consciousness possible at all.

The self-consciousness of the subjective deduction, in the preliminary form above stated, is, however, itself empirical. Kant, developing on more strictly Critical lines the argument which had accompanied his earlier doctrine of the transcendental object, now proceeds to maintain in what is at once the most fruitful and the most misleading of his tenets, that the ultimate ground of the possibility of consciousness and therefore also of empirical self-consciousness is the transcendental unity of apperception. Such apperception, to use Kant’s ambiguous phraseology, precedes experience as its _a priori_ condition. The interpretation of given appearances through _a priori_ categories is a necessity of consciousness because it is a condition of self-consciousness; and it is a condition of self-consciousness because it alone will account for the transcendental apperception upon which all empirical self-consciousness ultimately depends.

One chief reason why Kant’s deduction is found so baffling and illusive is that it rests upon an interpretation of the unity of apperception which is very definitely drawn, but to which Kant himself gives only the briefest and most condensed expression. I shall therefore take the liberty of restating it in more explicit terms. The true or transcendental self has no content of its own through which it can gain knowledge of itself. It is mere identity, I am I. In other words, self-consciousness is a mere _form_ through which contents that never themselves constitute the self are yet apprehended as being objects to the self. Thus though the self in being conscious of time or duration must be conscious of itself as _identical_ throughout the succession of its experiences, that identity can never be discovered in those experiences; it can only be thought as a condition of them. The continuity of memory, for instance, is not a possible substitute for transcendental apperception. As the subjective deduction demonstrates, self-consciousness conditions memory, and cannot therefore be reduced to or be generated by it.[892] When, however, such considerations are allowed their due weight, the necessity of postulating a transcendental unity becomes only the more evident. Though it can never itself be found among appearances, it is an interpretation which we are none the less compelled to give to appearances.

To summarise before proceeding. We have obtained two important conclusions: first, that all consciousness involves self-consciousness; and secondly, that self-consciousness is a mere form, in terms of which contents that do not constitute the self are apprehended as existing for the self. The first leads up to the second, and the second is equivalent to the assertion that there can be no such thing as a pure self-consciousness, _i.e._ a consciousness in which the self is aware of itself and of nothing but itself. Self-consciousness, to be possible at all, must at the same time be a consciousness of something that is not-self. Only one further step is now required for the completion of the deduction, namely, proof that this not-self, consciousness of which is necessary to the possibility of self-consciousness, must consist in empirical objects apprehended in terms of the categories. For proof Kant again appeals to the indispensableness of apperception. As no intuitions can enter consciousness which are not capable of being related to the self, they must be so related to one another that, notwithstanding their variety and diversity, the self can still be conscious of itself as identical throughout them all. In other words, no intuition can be related to the self that is incapable of being combined together with all the other intuitions to form a unitary consciousness. I may here quote from the text of the second edition:[893]

“...only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the
representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and all
mine. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and diverse a
self as I have representations of which I am conscious to myself.”

Or as it is stated in the first edition:[894]

“We are _a priori_ aware of the complete identity of the self in
respect of all representations which belong to our knowledge ... as
a necessary condition of the possibility of all representations.”

These are the considerations which lead Kant to entitle the unity of apperception _transcendental_. He so names it for the reason that, though it is not itself _a priori_ in the manner of the categories, we are yet enabled by its means to demonstrate that the unity which is necessary for possible experience can be securely counted upon in the manifold of all possible representations, and because (as he believed) it also enables us to prove that the forms of such unity are the categories of the understanding.

To the argument supporting this last conclusion Kant does not give the attention which its importance would seem to deserve. He points out that as the given is an unconnected manifold, its unity can be obtained only by synthesis, and that such synthesis must conform to the conditions prescribed by the unity of apperception. That these conditions coincide with the categories he does not, however, attempt to prove. He apparently believes that this has been already established in the metaphysical deduction.[895] The forms of unity demanded by apperception, he feels justified in assuming, are the categories. They may be regarded as expressing the minimum of unity necessary to the possibility of self-consciousness. If sensations cannot be interpreted as the diverse attributes of unitary substances, if events cannot be viewed as arising out of one another, if the entire world in space cannot be conceived as a system of existences reciprocally interdependent, all unity must vanish from experience, and apperception will be utterly impossible.[896]

The successive steps of the total argument of the deduction, as given in the first edition, are therefore as follows: Consciousness of time involves empirical self-consciousness; empirical self-consciousness is conditioned by a transcendental self-consciousness; and such transcendental self-consciousness is itself, in turn, conditioned by consciousness of objects. The argument thus completed becomes the proof of mutual interdependence. Self-consciousness and consciousness of objects, as polar opposites, mutually condition one another. Only through consciousness of both simultaneously can consciousness of either be attained. Only in and through reference to an object can an idea be related to a self, and so be accompanied by that self-consciousness which conditions recognition, and through recognition all the varying forms in which our consciousness can occur. From the point of view, however, of a Critical enquiry apperception is the more important of the two forms of consciousness. For though each is the _causa existendi_ of the other, self-consciousness has the unique distinction of being the _causa cognoscendi_ of the objective and _a priori_ validity of the forms of understanding.

“The synthetic proposition, that all the variety of empirical
consciousness must be combined in a single self-consciousness, is
the absolutely first and synthetic principle of our thought in
general.”[897]

We may at this point consider Kant’s doctrine of “objective affinity.” It excellently enforces the main thesis which he is professing to establish, namely, that the conditions of _unitary_ consciousness are the conditions of _all_ consciousness. The language, however, in which the doctrine is expounded is extremely obscure and difficult; and before commenting upon Kant’s own methods of statement, it seems advisable to paraphrase the argument in a somewhat free manner, and also to defer consideration of the transcendental psychology which Kant has employed in its exposition.[898] Association can subsist only between ideas, both of which have occurred within the same conscious field. Now the fundamental characteristic of consciousness, the very condition of its existing at all, is its unity; and until this has been recognised, there can be no understanding of the associative connection which arises under the conditions which consciousness supplies. To attempt to explain the unity of consciousness through the mechanism of association is to explain an agency in terms of certain of its own effects. It is to explain the fundamental in terms of the derivative, the conditions in terms of what they have themselves made possible. Kant’s argument is therefore as follows. Ideas do not become associated merely by co-existing. They must occur together in a unitary consciousness; and among the conditions necessary to the possibility of association are therefore the conditions of the possibility of experience. Association is transcendentally grounded. So far from accounting for the unity of consciousness, it presupposes the latter as determining the conditions under which alone it can come into play.

“...how, I ask, is association itself possible?... On my principles
the thorough-going affinity of appearances is easily explicable.
All possible appearances belong as representations to the totality
of a possible self-consciousness. But as this self-consciousness is
a transcendental representation, numerical identity is inseparable
from it and is _a priori_ certain. For nothing can come to our
knowledge save in terms of this original apperception. Now, since
this identity must necessarily enter into the synthesis of all the
manifold of appearances, so far as the synthesis is to yield
empirical knowledge, the appearances are subject to _a priori_
conditions, with which the synthesis of their apprehension must be
in complete accordance.... Thus all appearances stand in a
thorough-going connection according to necessary laws, and
therefore in a transcendental affinity of which the empirical is a
mere consequence.”[899]

In other words, representations must exist in consciousness before they can become associated; and they can exist in consciousness only if they are consciously apprehended. But in order to be consciously apprehended, they must conform to the transcendental conditions upon which all consciousness rests; and in being thus apprehended they are set in thoroughgoing unity to one another and to the self. They are apprehended as belonging to an objective order or unity which is the correlate of the unity of self-consciousness. This is what Kant entitles their objective affinity; it is what conditions and makes possible their associative or empirical connection.

This main point is very definitely stated in A 101.

“If we can show that even our purest _a priori_ intuitions yield no
knowledge, save in so far as they contain such a connection of the
manifold as will make possible a thoroughgoing synthesis of
reproduction, this synthesis of the imagination” [which acts
through the machinery of association] “must be grounded, prior to
all experience, on _a priori_ principles, and since experience
necessarily presupposes that appearances can be reproduced, we
shall have to assume a pure transcendental synthesis of the
imagination” [_i.e._ such synthesis as is involved in the unity of
consciousness] “as conditioning even the possibility of all
experience.”[900]

In A 121-2 Kant expresses his position in a more ambiguous manner. He may seem to the reader merely to be arguing that a certain minimum of regularity is necessary in order that representations may be associated, and experience may be possible.[901] But the general tenor of the passage as a whole, and especially its concluding sentences, enforce the stronger, more consistent, thesis.

”[The] subjective and empirical ground of reproduction according to
rules is named the association of representations. If this unity of
association did not also have an objective ground, which makes it
impossible that appearances should be apprehended by the
imagination except under the condition of a possible synthetic
unity of this apprehension, it would be entirely accidental that
appearances should fit into a connected whole of human knowledge.
For even though we had the power of associating perceptions, it
would remain entirely undetermined and accidental whether they
would themselves be associable; and should they not be associable,
there might exist a multitude of perceptions, and indeed an entire
sensibility, in which much empirical consciousness would arise in
my mind, but in a state of separation, and without belonging to one
consciousness of myself. That, however, is impossible. For only in
so far as I ascribe all perceptions to one consciousness (original
apperception), can I say in all perceptions that I am conscious of
them. There must therefore be an objective ground (that is, one
that can be recognised _a priori_, antecedently to all empirical
laws of the imagination) upon which may rest the possibility, nay
the necessity, of a law that extends to all appearances....”

Kant is not merely asserting that the associableness of ideas, and the regularity of connection which that implies, must be postulated as a condition of experience. That would be a mere begging of the issue; the correctness of the postulate would not be independently proved. Kant is really maintaining the much more important thesis, that the unity of experience, _i.e._ of consciousness, is what makes association possible at all. And since consciousness must be unitary in order to exist, there cannot be any empirical consciousness in which the conditions of association, and therefore of reproduction, are not to be found.

A further misunderstanding is apt to be caused by Kant’s statement that associative affinity rests upon objective affinity. This seems to imply, in the same manner as the passage which we have just considered, that instead of proving that appearances are subject to law and order, he is merely postulating that an abiding ground of such regularity must exist in the noumenal conditions of the sense manifold. But he himself again supplies the needful correction.

“This [objective ground of all association of appearances] can
nowhere be found, except in the principle of the unity of
apperception in respect of all forms of knowledge which can belong
to me. In accordance with this principle all appearances must so
enter the mind, or be so apprehended, that they fit together to
constitute the unity of apperception. This would be impossible
without synthetic unity in their connection, and that unity is
therefore also objectively necessary. The objective unity of all
empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that of original
apperception, is therefore the necessary condition of all (even of
all _possible_) perception; and the affinity of all appearances,
near or remote, is a necessary consequence of a synthesis in
imagination which is grounded _a priori_ on rules.”[902]

The fundamental characteristic of consciousness is the unified form in which alone it can exist; only when this unity is recognised as indispensably necessary, and therefore as invariably present whenever consciousness exists at all, can the inter-relations of the contents of consciousness be properly defined.

If this main contention of the Critical teaching be accepted, Hume’s associationist standpoint is no longer tenable. Association cannot be taken to be an ultimate and inexplicable property of our mental states. Nor is it a property which can be regarded as belonging to presentations viewed as so many independent existences. It is conditioned by the unity of consciousness, and therefore rests upon the “transcendental” conditions which Critical analysis reveals. Since the unity of consciousness conditions association, it cannot be explained as the outcome and product of the mechanism of association.

In restating the objective deduction in the second edition, Kant has omitted all reference to this doctrine of objective affinity. His reasons for this omission were probably twofold. In the first place, it has been expounded in terms of a transcendental psychology, which, as we shall find, is conjectural in character. And secondly, the phrase “objective affinity” is, as I have already pointed out, decidedly misleading. It seems to imply that Kant is postulating, without independent proof, that noumenal conditions must be such as to supply an orderly manifold of sense data. But though the doctrine of objective affinity is eliminated, its place is to some extent taken[903] by the proof that all apprehension is an act of judgment and therefore involves factors which cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, association.

There are a number of points in the deduction of the first edition which call for further explanatory and critical comment. The first of these concerns the somewhat misleading character of the term _a priori_ as applied to the categories. It carries with it rationalistic associations to which the Critical standpoint, properly understood, yields no support. The categories are for Kant of merely _de facto_ nature. They have no intrinsic validity. They are proved only as being the indispensable conditions of what is before the mind as brute fact, namely, conscious experience. By the _a priori_ is meant merely those _relational_ factors which are required to supplement the given manifold in order to constitute our actual consciousness. And, as Kant is careful to point out, the experience, as conditions of which their validity is thus established, is of a highly specific character, resting upon synthesis of a manifold given in space and time. That is to say, their indispensableness is proved only for a consciousness which in these fundamental respects is constituted like our own.[904] And secondly, the validity of the _a priori_ categories, even in our human thinking, is established only in reference to that empirical world which is constructed out of the given manifold in terms of the intuitive forms, space and time. Their validity is a merely phenomenal validity. They are valid of appearances, but not of things in themselves. The _a priori_ is thus doubly _de facto_: first as a condition of brute fact, namely, the actuality of our human consciousness; and secondly, as conditioning a consciousness whose knowledge is limited to appearances. It is a relative, not an absolute _a priori_. Acceptance of it does not, therefore, commit us to rationalism in the ordinary meaning of that term. Its credentials are conferred upon it by what is mere fact; it does not represent an order superior to the actual and legislative for it. In other words, it is Critical, not Leibnizian in character. No transcendent metaphysics can be based upon it. In formulating this doctrine of the _a priori_ as yielding objective insight and yet as limited in the sphere of its application, the _Critique of Pure Reason_ marks an epoch in the history of scepticism, no less than in the development of Idealist teaching.

There is one important link in the deduction, as above given, which is hardly calculated to support the conclusions that depend upon it. Kant, as we have already noted,[905] asserts that the categories express the minimum of unity necessary for the possibility of apperception. A contention so essential to the argument calls for the most careful scrutiny and a meticulous exactitude of proof. As a matter of fact, such proof is not to be found in any part of the deductions, whether of the first or of the second editions. It is attempted only in the later sections on the _Principles of Understanding_, and even there it is developed, in any really satisfactory fashion, only in regard to the categories of causality and reciprocity.[906] This proof, however, as there given, is an argument which in originality, subtlety and force goes far to atone for all shortcomings. It completes the objective deduction by developing in masterly fashion (in spite of the diffuse and ill-arranged character of the text) the central contention for which the deduction stands. But in the transcendental deduction itself, we find only such an argument--if it may be called an argument--as follows from the identification of apperception with understanding.

“The unity of apperception, in relation to the synthesis of
imagination, is the understanding.... In understanding there are
pure _a priori_ forms of knowledge which contain the necessary
unity of pure synthesis of imagination in respect of all possible
appearances. But these are the categories, _i.e._ pure concepts of
understanding.”[907]

The point is again merely assumed in A 125-6. So also in A 126:

“Although through experience we learn many laws, these are only
special determinations of still higher laws, of which the highest,
under which all others stand, originate _a priori_ in the
understanding itself....”[908]

Again in A 129 it is argued that as we prescribe _a priori_ rules to which all experience must conform, those rules cannot be derived from experience, but must precede and condition it, and can do so only as originating from ourselves (_aus uns selbst_).

”[They] precede all knowledge of the object as [their] intellectual
form, and constitute a formal _a priori_ knowledge of all objects
in so far as they are thought (categories).”

But this is only to repeat that such forms of unity as are necessary to self-consciousness must be realised in all synthesis. It is no sufficient proof that those forms of relation coincide with the categories. As we shall find in considering the deduction of the second edition, Kant to some extent came to recognise the existence of this gap in his argument and sought to supply the missing steps. But his method of so doing still ultimately consists in an appeal to the results of the metaphysical deduction, and therefore rests upon his untenable belief in the adequacy of formal logic. It fails to obviate the objection in any satisfactory manner.

As regards the negative aspect of the conclusion reached--that the validity of the categories is established only for appearances--Kant maintains that this is a necessary corollary of their validity being _a priori_. That things in themselves must conform to the conditions demanded by the nature of our self-consciousness is altogether impossible of proof. Even granting, what is indeed quite possible, that things in themselves embody the pure forms of understanding, we still cannot have any ground for maintaining that they must do so of necessity and will be found to do so universally. For even if we could directly experience things in themselves, and apprehend them as conforming to the categories, such conformity would still be known only as contingent. But when it is recognised that nature consists for us of nothing but appearances, existing only in the mode in which they are experienced, and therefore as necessarily conforming to the conditions under which experience is alone possible, the paradoxical aspect of the apriority ascribed to the categories at once vanishes. Proof of their _a priori_ validity presupposes the phenomenal character of the objects to which they apply. They can be proved to be universal and necessarily valid of objects only in so far as it can be shown that they have antecedently conditioned and constituted them. The sole sufficient reason for asserting them to be universally valid throughout experience is that they are indispensably necessary for rendering it possible.[909] The transcendental method of proof, _i.e._ proof by reference to the very possibility of experience, is for this reason, as Kant so justly emphasises, the sole type of argument capable of fulfilling the demands which have to be met. It presupposes, and itself enforces, the truth of the fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves.

Kant entitles the unity of apperception _original_ (_ursprünglich_);[910] and we may now consider how far and in what sense this title is applicable.[911] _From the point of view of method_ there is the same justification for employing the term ‘original’ as for entitling the unity of apperception transcendental.[912] Self-consciousness is more fundamental or original than consciousness of objects, in so far as[913] it is only from the subjective standpoint which it represents that the objective deduction can demonstrate the necessity of synthesis, and the empirical validity of the pure forms of understanding. It is as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness that the objective employment of the categories is proved to be legitimate. _In the development of the deduction_ self-consciousness is, therefore, more original than consciousness of objects. Kant’s employment of the term is, however, extremely misleading. For it would seem to imply that the self has been proved to be original or ultimate in an ontological sense, as if it preceded experience, and through its antecedent reality rendered objective experience possible of achievement. Such a view is undoubtedly reinforced by Kant’s transformation of apperception into a faculty--_das Radicalvermögen aller unsrer Erkenntniss_[914]--and his consequent identification of it with the understanding.[915] It then seems as if he were maintaining that the transcendental ego is ultimate and is independent of all conditions, and that to its synthetic activities the various forms of objective consciousness are due.[916]

This unfortunate phraseology is directly traceable to the spiritualistic or Leibnizian character of Kant’s earlier standpoint. In the _Dissertation_ the self is viewed as an ultimate and unconditioned existence, antecedent to experience and creatively generative of it. We have already noted that a somewhat similar view is presented in the _Critique_ in those paragraphs which Vaihinger identifies as embodying the earliest stage in the development of the argument of the deduction. The self is there described as coming to consciousness of its permanence through reflection upon the constancy of its own synthetic activities. Our consciousness of a transcendental object, and even the possibility of the empirical concepts through which such consciousness is, in these paragraphs, supposed to be mediated, are traced to this same source. To the last this initial excess of emphasis upon the unity of apperception remained characteristic of Kant’s Critical teaching; and though in the later statements of his theory, its powers and prerogatives were very greatly diminished, it still continued to play a somewhat exaggerated rôle. The early spiritualistic views were embodied in a terminology which he continued to employ; and unless the altered meaning of his terms is recognised and allowed for, misunderstanding is bound to result. The terms, having been forged under the influence of the older views, are but ill adapted to the newer teaching which they are employed to formulate.

There was also a second influence at work. When Kant was constrained in the light of his new and unexpected results to recognise his older views as lacking in theoretical justification, he still held to them in his own personal thinking. For there is ample evidence that they continued to represent his _Privatmeinungen_.[917]

Only, therefore, when these misleading influences, verbal, expository, and personal, are discounted, do the results of the deduction appear in their true proportions. Kant’s Critical philosophy does not profess to prove that it is self-consciousness, or apperception, or a transcendental ego, or anything describable in kindred terms, which ultimately renders experience possible. The most that we can legitimately postulate, as noumenally conditioning experience, are “syntheses” (themselves, in their generative character, not definable)[918] in accordance with the categories. For only upon the completion of such syntheses do consciousness of self and consciousness of objects come to exist. Consciousness of objects does, indeed, according to the argument of the deduction, involve consciousness of self; self-consciousness is the form of all consciousness. But, by the same argument, it is equally true that only in and through consciousness of objects is any self-consciousness possible at all. Consciousness of self and consciousness of objects _mutually_ condition one another. Only through consciousness of both simultaneously can consciousness of either be attained. Self-consciousness is not demonstrably in itself any more ultimate or original than is consciousness of objects. Both alike are forms of experience which are conditioned in complex ways. Upon the question as to whether or not there is any such thing as abiding personality, the transcendental deduction casts no direct light. Indeed consciousness of self, as the more inclusive and complex form of awareness, may perhaps be regarded as pointing to a greater variety of contributory and generative conditions.

Unfortunately Kant, for the reasons just stated, has not sufficiently emphasised this more negative, or rather noncommittal, aspect of the results of the deduction. But when later in the chapter on the _Paralogisms_ he is brought face to face with the issue, and has occasion to pronounce upon the question, he speaks with no uncertain voice. In the theoretical sphere there is, he declares, no sufficient proof of the spirituality, or unitary and ultimate character, of the self. Like everything else the unity of apperception must be noumenally conditioned, but it cannot be shown that in itself, _as self-consciousness or apperception_, it represents any noumenal reality. It may be a resultant, resting upon, and due to, a complexity of generative conditions; and these conditions may be fundamentally different in character from itself. They may, for all that we can prove to the contrary, be of a non-conscious and non-personal nature. There is nothing in our cognitive experience, and no result of the Critical analysis of it, which is inconsistent with such a possibility.[919] Those commentators, such as Cohen, Caird, and Watson, who more or less follow Hegel in his criticism of Kant’s procedure, give an interpretation of the transcendental deduction which makes it inconsistent with the sceptical conclusions which the _Critique_ as a whole is made by its author to support. Unbiassed study of the _Analytic_, even if taken by itself in independence of the _Dialectic_, does not favour such a view. The argument of the transcendental deduction itself justifies no more than Kant is willing to allow in his discussion of the nature of the self in the section on the _Paralogisms_. It may, indeed, as Caird has so forcibly shown in his massive work upon the Critical philosophy, be developed upon Hegelian lines, but only through a process of essential reconstruction which departs very far from many of Kant’s most cherished tenets, and which does so in a spirit that radically conflicts with that which dominates the _Critique_ as a whole.

THE LATER STAGES OF THE SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION

The reader will have noted that several of the factors in Kant’s exposition have so far been entirely ignored. The time has now come for reckoning with them. They constitute, in my view, the later stages of the subjective deduction. That is to say, they refer to the transcendental generative powers which Kant, _on the strength of the results obtained in the more objective enquiry_, feels justified in postulating. Separate consideration of them tends to clearness of statement. Kant’s constant alternation between the logical and the dynamical standpoints is one of the many causes of the obscurity in his argument. In this connection we shall also find opportunity to discuss the fundamental conflict, to which I have already had occasion to refer, between the subjectivist and the phenomenalist modes of developing the Critical standpoint.

The conclusions arrived at in the objective deduction compelled Kant to revise his previous psychological views. Hitherto he had held to the Leibnizian theory that _a priori_ concepts are obtained by reflection upon the mind’s native and fundamental modes of action. In the _Dissertation_ he carefully distinguishes between the _logical_ and the _real_ employment of the understanding. Through the former empirical concepts are derived from concrete experience. Through the latter pure concepts are creatively generated. Logical and real thinking agree, however, Kant there argues, in being activities of the _conscious_ mind. Both can be apprehended and adequately determined through the revealing power of reflective consciousness. Such a standpoint is no longer tenable for Kant. Now that he has shown that the consciousness of self and the consciousness of objects mutually condition one another, and that until both are attained neither is possible, he can no longer regard the mind as even possibly conscious of the activities whereby experience is brought about. The activities generative of consciousness have to be recognised as themselves falling outside it. Not even in its penumbra, through some vague form of apprehension, can they be detected. Only the finished products of such activities, not the activities themselves, can be presented to consciousness; and only by general reasoning, inferential of agencies that lie outside the conscious field, can we hope to determine them.

Now Kant appears to have been unwilling to regard the ‘understanding’ as ever unconscious of its activities. Why he was unwilling, it does not seem possible to explain; at most his rationalist leanings and Wolffian training may be cited as contributing causes. To the end he continued to speak of the understanding as the faculty whereby the _a priori_ is brought to consciousness. In order to develop the distinctions demanded by the new Critical attitude, he had therefore to introduce a new faculty, capable of taking over the activities which have to be recognised as non-conscious. For this purpose he selected the imagination, giving to it the special title, _productive_ imagination. The empirical reproductive processes hitherto alone recognised by psychologists are not, he declares, exhaustive of the nature of the imagination. It is also capable of _transcendental_ activity, and upon this the “objective affinity” of appearances and the resulting possibility of their empirical apprehension is made to rest. The productive imagination is also viewed as rendering possible the understanding, that is, the conscious apprehension of the _a priori_ as an element embedded in objective experience. Such apprehension is possible because in the pre-conscious elaboration of the given manifold the productive imagination has conformed to those _a priori_ principles which the understanding demands for the possibility of its own exercise in conscious apprehension. Productive imagination acts in the manner required to yield experiences which are capable of relation to the unity of self-consciousness, _i.e._ of being found to conform to the unity of the categories. Why it should act in this manner cannot be explained; but it is none the less, on Critical principles, a legitimate assumption, since only in so far as it does so can experience, which _de facto_ exists, be possible in any form. As a condition _sine qua non_ of actual and possible experience, the existence of such a faculty is, Kant argues, a legitimate inference from the results of the transcendental deduction.

Though Kant’s insistence upon the conscious character of understanding compels him to distinguish between it and the imagination, he has also to recognise their kinship. If imagination can never act save in conformity with the _a priori_ forms of understanding, some reason must exist for their harmony. This twofold necessity of at once distinguishing and connecting them is the cause of the hesitating and extremely variable account which in both editions of the _Critique_ is given of their relation. In several passages the understanding is spoken of as simply imagination which has attained to consciousness of its activities.[920] Elsewhere he explicitly states that they are distinct and separate. From this second point of view Kant regards imagination as mediating between sense and understanding, and, though reducible to neither, akin to both.

Only on one point is Kant clear and definite, namely, that it is to productive imagination that the _generation_ of unified experience is primarily due. In it something of the fruitful and inexhaustible character of noumenal reality is traceable. Doubtless one chief reason for his choice of the title imagination is the creative character which in popular thought has always been regarded as its essential feature. As Kant, speaking of schematism, which is a process executed by the imagination, states in A 141: “This schematism ... is an _art_ (_Kunst_) concealed in the depths of the human soul.”[921] This description may perhaps be interpreted in the light of Kant’s account of the creative character of artistic genius in the _Critique of Judgment_, for there also imagination figures as the truly originative or creative faculty of the human spirit. To its noumenal character we may also trace its capacity of combining those factors of sense and understanding which in the realm of appearance remain persistently opposed.[922] Imagination differs from the understanding chiefly in that it is at once more comprehensive and also more truly creative. It supplements the functional forms with a sensuous content, and applies them dynamically in the generation of experience.

The schemata, which the productive imagination is supposed to construct, are those generalised forms of temporal and spatial existence in which alone the unity of experience necessary to apperception can be realised. They are

“pure (without admixture of anything empirical), and yet are in one
aspect intellectual and in another sensuous.”[923]

Or as Kant describes the process in the chapter before us:[924]

“We name the synthesis of the manifold in imagination
transcendental, if without distinction of intuitions it is directed
exclusively to the _a priori_ combination of the manifold; and the
unity of this synthesis is entitled transcendental, if it is
represented as _a priori_ necessary in relation to the original
unity of apperception. As this unity of apperception conditions
the possibility of all knowledge, the transcendental unity of the
synthesis of imagination is the pure form of all possible
knowledge. Hence, through it all objects of possible experience
must be represented _a priori_.”

The schemata, thus transcendentally generated, are represented by Kant as limiting and controlling the empirical processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. As no experience is attainable save in terms of the schemata, they enable us to determine, on _a priori_ grounds, the degree of constancy and regularity that can be securely counted upon in all experience. This is Kant’s psychological explanation of what he has entitled “objective affinity.”[925] The empirical ground of reproduction is the association of ideas; its transcendental ground is an objective affinity which is “a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination, grounded _a priori_ on rules.”[926]

”[The] subjective and empirical ground of reproduction according to
rules is named the association of representations. If this unity of
association did not also have an objective ground, which makes it
impossible that appearances should be apprehended by the
imagination except under the condition of a possible synthetic
unity of this apprehension, it would be entirely accidental that
appearances should fit into a connected whole of human
knowledge.... There might exist a multitude of perceptions, and
indeed an entire sensibility, in which much empirical consciousness
would arise in my mind, but in a state of separation, and without
belonging to one consciousness of myself. That, however, is
impossible.” [As the subjective and objective deductions have
demonstrated, where there is no self-consciousness there is no
consciousness of any kind.] “There must therefore be an objective
ground (that is, one that can be determined _a priori_,
antecedently to all empirical laws of the imagination) upon which
may rest the possibility, nay, the necessity of a law that extends
to all appearances--the law, namely, that all appearances must be
regarded as data of the senses which are associable in themselves
and subject to general rules of universal connection in their
reproduction. This objective ground of all association of
appearances I entitle their _affinity_.... The objective unity of
all empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that of original
apperception, is the necessary condition of all possible
perception; and the affinity of all appearances, near or remote, is
a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination which is
grounded _a priori_ on rules.”[927]

This part of Kant’s teaching is apt to seem more obscure than it is. For the reader is not unnaturally disinclined to accept it in the very literal sense in which it is stated. That Kant means, however, exactly what he says, appears from the further consequence which he himself not only recognises as necessary, but insists upon as valid. The doctrine of objective affinity culminates in the conclusion[928] that it is “we ourselves who introduce into the appearances that order and regularity which we name nature.” The “we ourselves” refers to the mind in the transcendental activities of the productive imagination. The conscious processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition necessarily conform to schemata, non-consciously generated, which express the combined _a priori_ conditions of intuition and understanding required for unitary consciousness.

Many points in this strange doctrine call for consideration. It rests, in the first place, upon the assumption of a hard and fast distinction, very difficult of acceptance, between transcendental and empirical activities of the mind. Secondly, Kant’s assertion, that the empirical manifolds can be relied upon to supply a satisfactory content for the schemata, calls for more adequate justification than he himself adduces. It is upon independent reality that the fixity of empirical co-existences and sequences depends. Is not Kant practically assuming a pre-established harmony in asserting that as the mind creates the _form_ of nature it can legislate _a priori_ for all possible experience?

As regards the first assumption Kant would seem to have been influenced by the ambiguities of the term transcendental. It means, as we have already noted,[929] either the science of the _a priori_, or the _a priori_ itself, or the conditions which render experience possible. Even the two latter meanings by no means coincide. The conditions of the possibility of experience are not in all cases _a priori_. The manifold of outer sense is as indispensable a precondition of experience as are the forms of understanding, and yet is not _a priori_ in any valid sense of that term. It does not, therefore, follow that because the activities of productive imagination “transcendentally” condition experience, they must themselves be _a priori_, and must, as Kant also maintains,[930] deal with a pure _a priori_ manifold. Further, the separation between transcendental and empirical activities of the mind must defeat the very purpose for which the productive imagination is postulated, namely, in order to account for the generation of a complex consciousness in which no one element can temporally precede any of the others. If the productive imagination generates only schemata, it will not account for that complex experience in which consciousness of self and consciousness of objects are indissolubly united. The introduction of the productive imagination seems at first sight to promise recognition of the dynamical aspect of our temporally sequent experience, and of that aspect in which as appearance it refers us beyond itself to non-experienced conditions. As employed, however, in the doctrines of schematism and of objective affinity, the imagination exhibits a formalism hardly less extreme than that of the understanding whose shortcomings it is supposed to make good.

In his second assumption Kant, as so often in the _Critique_, is allowing his old-time rationalistic leanings to influence him in underestimating the large part which the purely empirical must always occupy in human experience, and in exaggerating the scope of the inferences which can be drawn from the presence of the formal, relational factors. But this is a point which we are not yet in a position to discuss.[931]