IMMANUEL KANT: CONCEPT OF SELF

4. Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self

Many commentators hold that consciousness of self is central to the Critical philosophy.
There is reason to question this: unified consciousness is central, but consciousness of self? That
is not so clear. Whatever, the topic is intrinsically interesting and Kant achieved some
remarkable insights into it. Strangely, none of his immediate successors took them up after his
death and they next appeared at the earliest in Wittgenstein (1934–5) and perhaps not until
Shoemaker (1968). Kant never discussed consciousness of self in its own right, only in the
context of pursuing other objectives, and his remarks on the topic are extremely scattered. When
we pull his various remarks together, we can see that Kant advanced at least seven major theses
about consciousness of and knowledge of self. We will consider them one-by-one.
4.1 Thesis 1: Two Kinds of Consciousness of Self
The first thesis:

1. There are two kinds of consciousness of self: consciousness of oneself and one’s
psychological states in inner sense and consciousness of oneself and one’s states via
performing acts of apperception.
Kant’s term for the former was ‘empirical self-consciousness’. A leading term for the latter was
‘transcendental apperception’ (TA). (Kant used the term ‘TA’ in two very different ways, as the
name for a faculty of synthesis and as the name for what he also referred to as the ‘I think’,
namely, one’s consciousness of oneself as subject.) Here is a passage from the Anthropology in
which Kant distinguishes the two kinds of consciousness of self very clearly:
… the “I” of reflection contains no manifold and is always the same in every judgment … Inner
experience, on the other hand, contains the matter of consciousness and a manifold of empirical
inner intuition: … [1798, Ak. VII:141–2, emphases in the original].
The two kinds of consciousness of self have very different sources.
The source of empirical self-consciousness is what Kant called inner sense. He did not work out
his notion of inner sense at all well. Here are just a few of the problems. Kant insists that all
representational states are in inner sense, including those representing the objects of outer sense
(i.e., spatially located objects):
Whatever the origins of our representations, whether they are due to the influence of
outer things, or are produced through inner causes, whether they arise a priori, or being
appearances have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to
inner sense. [A98–9]
However, he also says that the object of inner sense is the soul, the object of outer sense
the body (including one’s own). He comes close to denying that we can be conscious of the
denizens of inner sense—they do not represent inner objects and have no manifold of their own.
Yet he also says that we can be conscious of them — representations can themselves be objects
of representations, indeed, representations can make us conscious of themselves. In its role as a
form of or means to consciousness of self, apperception ought to be part of inner sense. Yet Kant
regularly contrasted apperception, a means to consciousness of oneself and one’s acts of
thinking, with inner sense as a means to consciousness of—what? Presumably, particular
representations: perceptions, imaginings, memories, etc. Here is another passage from
the Anthropology:
§24. Inner sense is not pure apperception, consciousness of what we are doing; for this belongs
to the power of thinking. It is, rather, consciousness of what we undergo as we are affected by
the play of our own thoughts. This consciousness rests on inner intuition, and so on the relation
of ideas (as they are either simultaneous or successive). [1798, Ak. VII:161]
Kant
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City the same distinction in CPR:
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 … the I that I think is distinct from the I that it, itself, intuits …; I am given to myself beyond
that which is given in intuition, and yet know myself, like other phenomena, only as I appear to
myself, not as I am … [B155].
Since most of Kant’s most interesting remarks about consciousness of and knowledge of self
concern consciousness of oneself, the ‘I of reflection’ via acts of apperception, we will focus on
it, though empirical consciousness of self will appear again briefly from time to time.
4.2 Thesis 2: Representational Base of Consciousness of Oneself and One’s States
How does apperception give rise to consciousness of oneself and one’s states? In the
passage just quoted from the Anthropology, notice the phrase “consciousness of what we are
doing” — doing. The way in which one becomes conscious of an act of representing is not by
receiving intuitions but by doing it: “synthesis …, as an act, … is conscious to itself, even
without sensibility” (B153); “… this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be
regarded as belonging to sensibility” (B132).
Equally, we can be conscious of ourselves as subject merely by doing acts of
representing. No further representation is needed.
Man, … who knows the rest of nature solely through the senses, knows himself also
through pure apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and inner determinations which he cannot
regard as impressions of the senses [A546=B574].
How does one’s consciousness of oneself in one’s acts of representing work? Consider the
sentence:
I am looking at the words on the screen in front of me.
Kant’s claim seems to be that the representation of the words on the screen is all the experience I
need to be conscious not just of the words and the screen but also of the act of seeing them and
of who is seeing them, namely, me. A single representation can do all three jobs. Let us call an
act of representing that can make one conscious of its object, itself and oneself as its subject
the representational base of consciousness of these three items.[7] Kant’s second major thesis is,

2. Most ordinary representations generated by most ordinary acts of synthesis provide the
representational base of consciousness of oneself and one’s states.
Note that this representational base is the base not only of consciousness of one’s
representational states. It is also the base of consciousness of oneself as the subject of those
states—as the thing that has and does them. Though it is hard to know for sure, Kant would
probably have denied that consciousness of oneself in inner sense can make one conscious of
oneself as subject, of oneself as oneself, in this way.
For Kant, this distinction between consciousness of oneself and one’s states by doing acts
of synthesis and consciousness of oneself and one’s states as the objects of particular
representations is of fundamental importance. When one is conscious of oneself and one’s states
by doing cognitive and perceptual acts, one is conscious of oneself as spontaneous, rational, self-
legislating, free—as the doer of deeds, not just as a passive receptacle for representations: “I
exist as an intelligence which is conscious solely of its power of combination” (B158–159), of
“the activity of the self” (B68) (Sellars, 1970–1; Pippin, 1987).
So far we have focused on individual representations. For Kant, however, the
representations that serve as the representational base of consciousness of oneself as subject are
usually much ‘bigger’ than that, i.e., contain multiple objects and often multiple representations
of them tied together into what Kant called ‘general experience’.
When we speak of different experiences, we can refer only to the various perceptions, all
of which belong to one and the same general experience. This thoroughgoing synthetic unity of
perceptions is the form of experience; it is nothing less than the synthetic unity of appearances in
accordance with concepts [A110].
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 This general experience is the global representation introduced earlier. When I am
conscious of many objects and/or representations of them as the single object of a single global
representation, the latter representation is all the representation I need to be conscious not just of
the global object but also of myself as the common subject of all the constituent representations.
The mind could never think its identity in the manifoldness of its representations… if it
did not have before its eyes the identity of its act, whereby it subordinates all [the manifold] …
to a transcendental unity… [A108].
I am conscious of myself as the single common subject of a certain group of experiences by
being conscious of “the identity of the consciousness in … conjoined … representations” (B133).
4.3 Thesis 3: Consciousness in Inner Sense is Only of How One Appears to Oneself
Neither consciousness of self by doing apperceptive acts nor empirical consciousness of
self as the object of particular representations yields knowledge of oneself as one is. On pain of
putting his right to believe in immortality as an article of faith at risk, Kant absolutely had to
claim this. As he put it,
it would be a great stumbling block, or rather would be the one unanswerable objection, to our
whole critique if it were possible to prove a priori that all thinking beings are in themselves
simple substances. [B409]

The same would hold for all other properties of thinking beings. Since Kant also
sometimes viewed immortality, i.e., personal continuity beyond death, as a foundation of
morality, morality could also be at risk. So Kant had powerful motives to maintain that one does
not know oneself as one is. Yet, according to him, we seem to know at least some things about
ourselves, namely, how we must function, and it would be implausible to maintain that one never
conscious of one’s real self at all. Kant’s response to these pressures is ingenious.
First, he treats inner sense: When we know ourselves as the object of a representation in inner
sense, we “know even ourselves only .. as appearance …” (A278).
Inner … sense … represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we appear to
ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as we are
inwardly affected [by ourselves] (B153).
This is the third thesis:

3. In inner sense, one is conscious of oneself only as one appears to oneself, not as one is.
So when we seem to be directly conscious of features of ourselves, we in fact have the same kind
of consciousness of them as we have of features of things in general—we appear to ourselves to
be like this, that or the other, in just the way that we know of any object only as it appears to us.
Then he turns to consciousness of oneself and one’s states by doing apperceptive acts. This is a
knottier problem. Here we will consider only consciousness of oneself as subject. Certainly by
the second edition, Kant had come to see how implausible it would be to maintain that one has
no consciousness of oneself, one’s real self, at all when one is conscious of oneself as the subject
of one’s experience, agent of one’s acts, by having these experiences and doing those acts. In the
2nd edition, he reflects this sensitivity as early as B68; at B153, he goes so far as to say that an
apparent contradiction is involved.
Furthermore, when we are conscious of ourselves as subject and agent by doing acts of
apperceiving, we do appear to ourselves to be substantial, simple and continuing. He had to
explain these appearances away; doing so was one of his aims, indeed, in his attacks on the
second and third Paralogisms. Thus, Kant had strong motives to give consciousness of self as
subject special treatment. The view that proposes is puzzling. I am not consciousness of myself
as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself but only “that I am” (B157). To understand what he
might
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into reference to and consciousness of self mentioned earlier.
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 4.4 Thesis 4: Referential Machinery of Consciousness of Self
Kant generated the special treatment he needed by focussing first on reference to self. Here
are some of the things that he said about reference to oneself as subject. It is a consciousness of
self in which “nothing manifold is given.” (B135). In the kind of reference in which we gain this
consciousness of self, we “denote” but do not “represent” ourselves (A382). We designate
ourselves without noting “any quality whatsoever” in ourselves (A355). This yields his fourth
thesis about consciousness of and knowledge of self.

4. The referential machinery used to obtain consciousness of self as subject requires no

identifying (or other) ascription of properties to oneself.
This is a remarkably penetrating claim; remember, the study of reference and semantics
generally is usually thought to have begun only with Frege. Kant is anticipating two important
theses about reference to self that next saw the light of day only 200 years later.

1. In certain kinds of consciousness of self, one can be conscious of something as oneself

without identifying it (or anything) as oneself via properties that one has ascribed to the
thing (self-reference without identification) (Shoemaker 1968),[8]

and,

2. In such cases, first-person indexicals (I, me, my, mine) cannot be analysed out in favour
of anything else, in particular anything descriptionlike (the essential indexical) (Perry
1979).
Was Kant actually aware of (1) and/or (2) or had he just stumbled across something that later
philosophers recognized as significant?
One standard argument for (1) goes as follows:
My use of the word ‘I’ as the subject of [statements such as ‘I feel pain’ or ‘I see a canary’] is not
due to my having identified as myself something [otherwise recognized] of which I know, or
believe, or wish to say, that the predicate of my statement applies to it [Shoemaker 1968,
pp.558].
A standard argument for (2), that certain indexicals are essential, goes as follows. To know
that I wrote a certain book a few years ago, it is not enough to know that someone over six feet
tall wrote that book, or that someone who teaches philosophy at a particular university wrote that
book, or … or … or … , for I could know all these things without knowing that it was me who
has these properties (and I could know that it was me who wrote that book and not know that any
of these things are properties of me). As Shoemaker puts it,
… no matter how detailed a token-reflexive-free description of a person is, … it cannot possibly
entail that I am that person [1968, pp. 560].
Kant unquestionably articulated the argument for (1):
In attaching ‘I’ to our thoughts, we designate the subject only transcendentally … without
noting in it any quality whatsoever—in fact, without knowing anything of it either directly or by
inference [A355].
This transcendental designation, i.e., referring to oneself using ‘I’ without ‘noting any quality’ in
oneself, has some unusual features. One can refer to oneself in a variety of ways, of course: as
the person in the mirror, as the person born on such and such a date in such and such a place, as
the first person to do X, and so on, but one way of referring to oneself is special: it does not
require identifying or indeed any ascription to oneself. So Kant tells us.[9]
The question is more complicated with respect to (2). We cannot go into the complexities here
(see Brook 2001). 063
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essential indexical or something like it.
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 The subject of the categories cannot by thinking the categories [i.e. applying them to objects]
acquire a concept of itself as an object of the categories. For in order to think them, its pure self-
consciousness, which is what was to be explained, must itself be presupposed. [B422]
The phrase ‘its pure self-consciousness’ seems to refer to consciousness of oneself as subject. If
so, the passage may be saying that judgments about oneself, i.e., ascriptions of properties to
oneself, ‘presuppose … pure self-consciousness’, i.e., consciousness of oneself via an act of
ascription-free transcendental designation.
Now compare this, “it is … very evident that I cannot know as an object that which I
must presuppose to know any object … .” (A402), and this,
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, since any judgment upon it has always already made use of its
representation. [A346=B404]
The last clause is the key one: “any judgment upon it has always already made use of its
representation”. Kant seems to be saying that to know that anything is true of me, I must first
know that it is me of whom it is true. This is something very like the essential indexical claim.
If reference to self takes place without ‘noting any properties’ of oneself, the consciousness that
results will also have some special features.
4.5 Thesis 5: No Manifold in Consciousness of Self
The most important special feature is that, in this kind of consciousness of self, one is
not, or need not be, conscious of any properties of oneself, certainly not any particular properties.
One has the same consciousness of self no matter what else one is conscious of — thinking,
perceiving, laughing, being miserable, or whatever. Kant expressed the thought this way,
through the ‘I’, as simple representation, nothing manifold is given. [B135]
And this,
the I that I think is distinct from the I that it … intuits …; I am given to myself beyond that
which is given in intuition. [B155]
We now have the fifth thesis to be found in Kant:

5. When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one has a bare consciousness of self in
which “nothing manifold is given.”
Since, on Kant’s view, one can refer to oneself as oneself without knowing any properties of
oneself, not just identifying properties, ‘non-ascriptive reference to self’ might capture what is
special about this form of consciousness of self better than Shoemaker’s ‘self-reference without
identification’.
4.6 Thesis 6: Consciousness of Self is not Knowledge of Self
Transcendental designation immediately yields the distinction that Kant needs to allow that
one is conscious of oneself as one is, not just of an appearance of self, and yet deny knowledge
of oneself as one is. If consciousness of self ascribes nothing to the self, it can be a “bare …
consciousness of self [as one is]” and yet yield no knowledge of self—it is “very far from being a
knowledge of the self” (B158). This thesis returns us to consciousness of self as subject:

6. When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one’s bare consciousness of self yields no
knowledge of self.
In Kant’s own work, he then put the idea of transcendental designation to work to explain
how one can appear to oneself to be substantial, simple and persisting without these appearances
reflecting how one actually is. The reason that one appears in these ways is not that the self is
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 conscious of oneself as subject. Given how long ago he worked, Kant’s insights into this kind of
referring are nothing short of amazing.
4.7 Thesis 7: Conscious of Self as Single, Common Subject of Experience
The last of Kant’s seven theses about consciousness of self is an idea that we already met when
we discussed the unity of consciousness:

7. When we are conscious of ourselves as subject, we are conscious of ourselves as the

“single common subject” [CPR, A350] of a number of representations.
What Kant likely had in mind is nicely captured in a remark of Bennett’s (1974, p. 83): to think
of myself as a plurality of things is to think of my being conscious of this plurality, “and that pre-
requires an undivided me.” Unlike one of anything else, it is not optional that I think of myself as
one subject across a variety of experiences (A107).
5. Knowledge of the Mind
The remarks just noted about ‘bare consciousness’ and so on by no means exhaust the
concerns that can be raised about Kant and what we can know about the mind. His official view
has to be: nothing — about the mind’s structure and what it is composed of, at any rate, we can
know nothing. As we have seen, Kant not only maintained this but did some ingenious wiggling
to account for the apparent counter-evidence. But that is not the end of the story, for two reasons.
First, whatever the commitments of his philosophy, Kant the person believed that the soul
is simple and persists beyond death; he found materialism utterly repugnant (1783, Ak. IV, end
of §46). This is an interesting psychological fact about Kant but needs no further discussion.
Second and more importantly, Kant in fact held that we do have knowledge of the mind
as it is. In particular, we know that it has forms of intuition in which it must locate things
spatially and temporally, that it must synthesize the raw manifold of intuition in three ways, that
its consciousness must be unified, and so on — all the aspects of the model examined above.
To square his beliefs about what we cannot know and what we do know about the mind,
Kant could have made at least two moves. He could have said that we know these things only
‘transcendentally’, that is to say, by inference to the necessary conditions of experience. We do
not know them directly, in some sense of ‘directly’, so we don’t have intuitive, i.e., sense-
derived knowledge of them. Or he could have said that ontological neutrality about structure and
composition is compatible with knowledge of function. As we saw, Kant’s conception of the
mind is functionalist—to understand the mind, we must study what it does and can do, its
functions—and the doctrine that function does not dictate form is at the heart of contemporary
functionalism. According to functionalism, we can gain knowledge of the mind’s functions while
knowing little or nothing about how the mind is built. Approached this way, Kant’s view that we
know nothing of the structure and composition of the mind would just be a radical version of this
functionalist idea. Either move would restore consistency among his various claims about
knowledge of the mind.
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Prepared by:
Esteban Sabar
UTS Instructor

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