BOOK II. The Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason[1410]

THE DIALECTICAL INFERENCES OF PURE REASON

CHAPTER I

THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON

As rational psychology fails to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves, it identifies mere apperception with inner sense; the self in experiencing the succession of its inner states is supposed to acquire knowledge of its own essential nature. “I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am entitled soul,” in contrast to the body which is an object of outer sense. Empirical psychology deals with the concrete detail of inner experience; rational psychology abstracts from all such special experiences, indeed from everything empirical, professing to establish its doctrine upon the single judgment, “I think.” That judgment has already been investigated in its connection with the problem of the possibility, within the field of experience, of synthetic a priori judgments. It has now to be considered as a possible basis for knowledge of the self as a thinking being (ein denkend Wesen) or soul (Seele).

Following the guiding thread of the table of categories, but placing them in what he regards as being, in this connection, the most convenient order, Kant obtains a “topic” or classification of the possible rubrics for the doctrines of a rational psychology: (1) the soul is substance; (2) is simple; (3) is numerically identical; (4) stands in relation to possible objects in space. Now all those four doctrines are, Kant holds, incapable of demonstration. The proofs propounded by rational psychology are logically imperfect, committing the logical fallacy which is technically named paralogism. The fallacy is not, however, of merely logical character. Had that been the case, it could never have gained such general currency. Certainly no metaphysical science, widely accepted by profound thinkers, could ever have come to be based upon it. The paralogism is transcendental in character, resting upon a transcendental ground. It represents an illusion which from any non-Critical standpoint is altogether unavoidable. Its dialectic is a natural dialectic, wrongly interpreted by the Schools, but not capriciously invented by them. The key to its proper treatment is first supplied by the results of the transcendental deduction. We are now called upon to apply these results in explanation of the occurrence of the paralogisms, and in judgment upon their false claims. Little that is really new is to be found in this chapter; but many of the established results of the Analytic receive interesting illustration, and are thereby set in a clearer light.

In rational psychology the “I think” is taken in its universal, or to use Kant’s somewhat misleading term, problematic aspect, that is to say, not as a judgment expressive of the self’s own existence but “in its mere possibility,” as representing the self-consciousness of all possible thinking beings. As we cannot gain a representation of thinking beings through outer experience, we are constrained to think them in terms of our own self-consciousness. The “I think” is thus taken as a universal judgment, expressing what belongs to the conception of thinking being in general. The judgment is so interpreted by rational psychology, “in order to see what predicates applicable to its subject (be that subject actually existent or not) may flow from so simple a judgment.”

In summarising what is directly relevant in the argument of the transcendental deduction, Kant emphasises that the I, as representation, is altogether empty of content.

“We cannot even say that it is a conception, but only that it is a bare (blosses) consciousness which accompanies all conceptions. 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 apprehended only in its relation to the thoughts which are its predicates; apart from them we cannot form any conception whatever of it, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any judgment upon it has already made use of its representation.

The patchwork character of the Critique, the artificial nature of the connections between its various parts, is nowhere more evident than in this section on the Paralogisms. According to the definition given of transcendental illusion, we naturally expect Kant’s argument to show that the Paralogisms rest upon a failure to distinguish between appearance and reality. As a matter of fact, the cause of their fallacy is traced in the first three Paralogisms solely to a failure to distinguish between the logical and the real application of the categories. The argument can indeed be restated so as to agree with the introductory sections of the Dialectic. But Kant’s manner of expounding the Paralogisms shows that this chapter must originally have been written independently of any intention to develop such teaching as that of the sections which in the ultimate arrangement of the Critique are made to lead up to it.

=First Paralogism: of Substantiality.=--Save for the phrase ‘subject in itself,’ there is, in Kant’s comment upon this Paralogism, not a word regarding the necessity of a distinction between appearance and reality, but only an insistence that the “I think” yields no knowledge of the thinking self. Consciousness of the self and knowledge of its underlying substance are by no means identical. The self, so far as it enters into consciousness, is a merely logical subject; the underlying substrate is that to which this self-consciousness and all other thoughts are due. It is in the light of this distinction that Kant discusses the substantiality of the subject. As expressive of the “I think,” the category of substance and attribute can be employed only to define the relation in which consciousness stands to its thoughts; it expresses the merely logical relation of a subject to its predicates. It tells us nothing regarding the nature of the “I,” save only that it is the invariable centre of reference for all thoughts. In order to know the self as substance, and so as capable of persisting throughout all change, and as surviving even the death of the body, we should require to have an intuition of it, and of such intuition there is not the slightest trace in the “I think.” It “signifies a substance only in Idea, not in reality.” As Kant adds later, the permanence and self-identity of the representation of the self justifies no argument to the permanence and self-identity of its underlying conditions. Inference from the nature of representation to the nature of the object represented is entirely illegitimate. In the equating of the two, and not, as the introduction to the Dialectic would lead us to expect, in a failure to distinguish appearance from reality, consists the paralogistic fallacy of this first syllogism.

=Second Paralogism: of Simplicity.=--We may follow Adickes in his analysis of A 351-62. (a) The original criticism, parallel to that of the first Paralogism, would seem to be contained in paragraphs five to nine. (b) The opening paragraphs, and (c) the concluding paragraphs, would seem, for reasons stated below, to be independent and later additions.

(a) The argument of the central paragraphs runs almost exactly parallel with the criticism of the first Paralogism, applying the same line of thought, in disproof of the assumed argument for the simplicity of the soul. It may be noted, in passing, that Kant here departs from his table of categories. There is no category of simplicity. The connection which he seeks to establish between the concept of simplicity and the categories of quality is arbitrary. It more naturally connects with the category of unity; but the category of unity is required for the third Paralogism. For explanation of the way in which he equates the concept of simplicity with the category of reality Kant is satisfied to refer the reader to the section on the second antinomy in which this same identification occurs. Indeed the simplicity here dwelt upon seems hardly distinguishable from substantiality, and therefore it is not surprising that Kant’s criticism of the second Paralogism should be practically identical with that of the first. Since the “I,” as logical subject of thought, signifies only a something in general, and embodies no insight into the constitution of this something, it is for that reason empty of all content, and consequently simple. “The simplicity of the representation of a subject is not eo ipso a knowledge of the simplicity of the subject itself....” The second Paralogism thus, in Kant’s view, falsely argues from the merely logical unity of the subject in representation to the actual simplicity of the subject in itself.

(b) One reason for regarding the first four paragraphs as a later addition is their opening reference to the introductory sections of the Dialectic, of which this chapter otherwise takes little or no account. This Paralogism is, Kant declares, “the Achilles of all the dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul,” meaning that it may well seem a quite invulnerable argument.

“It is no mere sophistical play contrived by a dogmatist in order to impart to his assertions a superficial plausibility (Schein), but an inference which appears to withstand even the keenest scrutiny and the most scrupulously exact investigation.”

The second paragraph is a very pointed restatement of a main supporting argument of this second Paralogism. This argument well deserves the eulogy with which Kant has ushered it in. It is as follows. The unity of consciousness can not be explained as due to the co-operative action of independent substances. Such a merely external effect as that of motion in a material body may be the resultant of the united motions of its parts. But it is otherwise with thought. For should that which thinks be viewed as composite, and the different representations, as, for instance, of the single words of a verse, be conceived as distributed among the several parts, a multiplicity of separate consciousnesses would result, and the single complex consciousness, that of the verse as a whole, would be rendered impossible. Consciousness cannot therefore--such is the argument--inhere in the composite. The soul must be a simple substance.

As there is no reference in this argument to the “I think,” the criticism cannot be that of the first Paralogism, nor that of the central paragraphs of this second Paralogism. Kant’s reply--as given in the third and fourth paragraphs--is in effect to refer the reader to the results of the Analytic, and is formulated in the manner of his Introduction to the Critique. The principle that multiplicity of representation presupposes absolute unity in the thinking subject can neither be demonstrated analytically from mere concepts, nor derived from experience. Being a synthetic a priori judgment, it can be established only by means of a transcendental deduction. But in that form it will define only a condition required for the possibility of consciousness; it can tell us nothing in regard to the noumenal nature of the thinking being. And, as Kant argues in the third Paralogism, there may be a possible analogy between thought and motion, though of a different kind from that above suggested.

The entire absence of all connection between the argument of these paragraphs and the argument of those which immediately follow upon them, at least suffices to show that this second Paralogism has not been written as a continuous whole; and taken together with the fact that the problem is here formulated in terms of the Introduction to the Critique, would seem to show that this part of the section is of comparatively late origin.

(c) The concluding paragraphs, which are of considerable intrinsic interest, also reflect an independent line of criticism. As the phrase “the above proposition” seems to indicate, they were not originally composed in this present connection. They give expression to Kant’s partial agreement with the line of argument followed by the rationalists, but also seek to show that, despite such partial validity, the argument does not lend support to any metaphysical extension of our empirical knowledge. In A 358 we have what may be a reference to the argument of the introductory sections of the Dialectic. The argument under criticism is praised as being “natural and popular,” “occurring even to the least sophisticated understanding,” and as leading it to view the soul as an altogether different existence from the body. The argument is as follows. None of the qualities proper to material existence, such as impenetrability or motion, are to be discovered in our inner experience. Nor can feelings, desires, thoughts, etc., be externally intuited. In view of these differences, we seem justified in asserting that the soul cannot be an appearance in space, and cannot therefore be corporeal. Kant replies by drawing attention to the fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves. If material bodies, as apprehended, were things in themselves, the argument would certainly justify us in refusing to regard the soul and its states as of similar nature. But since, as the Aesthetic has shown, bodies, as known, are mere appearances of outer sense, the real question at issue is not that of the distinction between the soul and bodies in space, but of the distinction between the soul and that something which conditions all outer appearances.

“...this something which underlies the outer appearances and which so affects our sense that it obtains the representations of space, matter, shape, etc., this something, viewed as noumenon (or better, as transcendental object), might yet also at the same time serve as the subject of our thoughts....”

Thus the argument criticised serves only to enforce the very genuine distinction between inner and outer appearances; it justifies no assertion, either positive or negative, as to the nature of the soul or as to its relation to body in its noumenal aspect. The monadistic, spiritualist theory of material existence remains an open possibility, though only as an hypothesis incapable either of proof or of disproof. We cannot obtain, by way of inference from the character of our apperceptive consciousness, any genuine addition to our speculative insight.

=Third Paralogism: of Personality.=--Kant’s criticism again runs parallel with that of the preceding Paralogisms. The fallacy involved is traced to a confusion between the numerical identity of the self in representation and the numerical identity of the subject in itself. The logical subject of knowledge must, as the transcendental deduction has proved, think itself as self-identical throughout all its experiences. This is indeed all that the judgment “I think” expresses. It is mere identity, “I am I.” But from the identity of representation we must not argue to identity of the underlying self. So far as the unity of self-consciousness is concerned, there is nothing to prevent the noumenal conditions of the self from undergoing transformation so complete as to involve the loss of identity, while yet supporting the representation of an identical self.

“Although the dictum of certain ancient Schools, that everything in the world is in a flux and nothing permanent and abiding, cannot be reconciled with the admission of substances, it is not refuted by the unity of self-consciousness. For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious. We cannot, however, claim that such a judgment would be valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. As the only permanent appearance which we meet with in the soul is the representation ‘I’ that accompanies and connects them all, we are unable to prove that this ‘I,’ a mere thought, may not be in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which are connected together by its means.”

And Kant adds an interesting illustration.

“An elastic ball which impinges on another similar ball in a straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, and therefore its whole state (i.e. if we take account only of the positions in space). If, then, in analogy with such bodies, we postulate substances such that the one communicates to the other representations together with the consciousness of them, we can conceive a whole series of substances of which the first transmits its state together with its consciousness to the second, the second its own state with that of the preceding substance to the third, and this in turn the states of all the preceding substances together with its own consciousness and with their consciousness to another. The last substance would then be conscious of all the states of the substances, which had undergone change before its own change, as being its own states, because they would have been transferred to it together with the consciousness of them. And yet it would not have been one and the same person in all these states.”

The perversely Hegelian character of Caird’s and Watson’s manner of interpreting the Critique is especially evident in their treatment of the Paralogisms. They make not the least mention of this part of Kant’s teaching.

Kant employs a further argument which would seem to show that at the time when these paragraphs were written the general tendency of his thought was predominantly subjectivist in character. There are, he implies, as many different times as there are selves that represent time. The argument is as follows. As the “I think” is equivalent to “I am I,” we may say either that all time of which I am conscious is in me, or that I am conscious of myself as numerically identical in each and every part of it. In my individual consciousness, therefore, identity of my person is unfailingly present. But an observer, viewing me from the outside, represents me in the time of his own consciousness; and as the time in which he thus sets me is not that of my own thinking, the self-identity of my consciousness, even if he recognises its existence, does not justify him in inferring the objective permanence of my self.

The two concluding paragraphs seem to have been independently composed. They contribute nothing of importance.

=Fourth Paralogism: of Ideality.=--The main argument of this Paralogism, which contains the first edition refutation of idealism, has already been considered above. We require, therefore, only to treat of it in its connection with the other Paralogisms, and to note some few minor points that remain for consideration. Its argument differs from that of the other Paralogisms in that the fallacy involved is traced, in agreement with the requirements of the introductory sections of the Dialectic, to a failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Its connection with the table of categories is extremely artificial. In A 344 = B 402 the category employed is that of possibility, in A 404 and A 344 n. that of existence. Kant’s attempt to combine the problem here treated with that of the other Paralogisms can only be explained as due to the requirements of his architectonic. This Paralogism does not concern itself with the nature of the soul. It refers exclusively to the mode of existence to be ascribed to objective appearances. None the less, Kant contrives to bring it within the range of rational psychology in the following manner. He argues that rational psychologists are one and all adherents of empirical idealism. They confound appearances in space with things in themselves, and therefore assert that our knowledge of their existence is inferential and consequently uncertain. The errors of empirical idealism are thus bound up with the dogmatic assumptions of the rationalist position. They are traceable to its failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Such dogmatism may take the form of materialism or of ontological dualism, as well as of spiritualism. All three, in professing to possess knowledge of things in themselves, violate Critical principles. If the chief function of rational psychology consists in securing the conception of the soul against the onslaughts of materialism, that can be much more effectively attained through transcendental idealism.

“For, on [Critical] teaching, so completely are we freed from the fear that on the removal of matter all thought, and even the very existence of thinking beings, would be destroyed, that on the contrary it is clearly shown that if I remove the thinking subject the whole corporeal world must at once vanish, since it is nothing save appearance in the sensibility of our subject and a species of its representations.”

We do not, indeed, succeed in proving that the thinking self is in its existence independent of the “transcendental substrate” of outer appearances. But as both possibilities remain open, the admission of our ignorance leaves us free to look to other than speculative sources for proof of the independent and abiding existence of the self.

=Reflection on the Whole of Pure Psychology.=--This section affords Kant the opportunity of discussing certain problems which he desires to deal with, but is unable to introduce under the recognised rubrics of his logical architectonic. There are, Kant says, three other dialectical questions, essential to the purposes of rational psychology, grounded upon the same transcendental illusion (confusion of appearances with things in themselves), and soluble in similar fashion: (1) as to the possibility of the communion of soul and body, i.e. of the state of the soul during the life of the body; (2) as to the beginning of this association, i.e. of the soul in and before birth; (3) as to the termination of this association, i.e. of the soul in and after the death of the body. Kant treats these three problems from the extreme subjectivist standpoint, inner and outer sense being distinguished and related in the manner peculiar to the first edition. The contrast between mind and body is a difference solely between the appearances of inner and those of outer sense. Both alike exist only in and through the thinking subject, though the latter

“...have this deceptive property that, representing objects in space, they as it were detach themselves from the soul and appear to hover outside it.”

The problem, therefore, of the association of soul and body, properly understood, is not that of the interaction of the soul with other known substances of an opposite nature, but only

“...how in a thinking subject outer intuition, namely, that of space, with its filling in of figure and motion, is possible. And that is a question which no human being can possibly answer. The gap in our knowledge ... can only be indicated through the ascription of outer appearances to that transcendental object which is the cause of this species of representations, but of which we can have no knowledge whatsoever and of which we shall never acquire any conception.”

The familiar problem of the association of mind and body is thus due to a transcendental illusion which leads the mind to hypostatise representations, viewing them as independent existences that act upon the senses and generate our subjective states. The motions in space, which are merely the expression in terms of appearance of the influence of the transcendental object upon “our senses,” are thus wrongly regarded as the causes of our sensations. They themselves are mere representations, and, as Kant implies, are for that reason incapable of acting as causes. In this section, it may be noted in passing, there is not the least trace of the phenomenalist teaching, according to which spatial objects are viewed as acting upon the bodily sense-organs. Kant here denies all interaction of mind and body, and recognises only the interaction of their noumenal conditions. Appearances as such can never have causal efficacy. The position represented is pure subjectivism, and very significantly goes along with Kant’s earlier doctrine of the transcendental object.

The dogmatic character of the interaction theory appears very clearly, as Kant proceeds to point out, in the objections which have been made to it, whether by those who substitute for it the theories of pre-established harmony and occasionalism, or by those who adopt a sceptical non-committal attitude. Their objections rest upon exactly the same presupposition as the theory which they are attacking. To demonstrate the impossibility of interaction, they must be able to show that the transcendental object is not the cause of outer appearances; and owing to the limitations of our knowledge that is entirely beyond our powers. Failing, however, to draw a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, they have not realised the actual nature of the situation, and accordingly have directed their objections merely to showing that mind and body, taken as independent existences, must not be viewed as capable of interaction.

The Critical standpoint also supplies the proper formulation for the other two problems--a formulation which in itself decides the degree and manner of our possible insight in regard to them. The view that the thinking subject may be capable of thought prior to all association with the body should be stated as asserting

“...that prior to the beginning of that species of sensibility in virtue of which something appears to us in space, those transcendental objects, which in our present state appear to us as bodies, could have been intuited in an entirely different manner.”

The view that the soul, upon the cessation of all association with the corporeal world, may still continue to think, will similarly consist in the contention

“...that if that species of sensibility, in virtue of which transcendental objects (which in our present state are entirely unknown) appear to us as a material world, should cease, all intuition of them would not for that reason be removed; but that it would still be possible that those same unknown objects should continue to be known by the thinking subject, though no longer, indeed, in the quality of bodies.”

Not the least ground, Kant claims, can be discovered by means of speculation in support of such assertions. Even their bare possibility cannot be demonstrated. But it is equally impossible to establish any valid objection to them. Since we cannot pretend to knowledge of things in themselves, a modest acquiescence in the limitations of experience alone becomes us.

The remaining paragraphs (A 396-405) contain nothing that is new. They merely repeat points already more adequately stated. A 401-2, which deals with the nature of apperception and its relation to the categories, has been considered above. The argument that, as the self must presuppose the thought of itself in knowing anything, it cannot know itself as object, is also commented upon above.

The statement that the determining self (the thinking, das Denken) is to be distinguished from the determinable self (the thinking subject) as knowledge from its object, should be interpreted in the light of Kant’s argument in the second and third Paralogisms, that the simplicity and self-identity of the representation of an object must not be taken as knowledge of simplicity or numerical identity in the object represented.

The analysis given in A 402-3 of the fallacy involved in the Paralogisms is, as Adickes has pointed out, confused and misleading. Kant here declares that in the major premiss of each syllogism the assertion is intended in the merely logical sense, and therefore as applicable only to the subject in representation, but in the minor premiss and conclusion is asserted of the subject as bearer of consciousness, i.e. in itself. But were that so, the minor premiss would be a false assertion, and the false conclusion would not be traceable to logical fallacy. Kant gives the correct statement of his position in B 410-11. The attempted justification of the fourfold arrangement of the Paralogisms with which the section concludes suffers from the artificiality of Kant’s logical architectonic.

SECOND EDITION STATEMENT OF THE PARALOGISMS

Except for the introductory paragraphs, which remain unaltered, the chapter is completely recast in the second edition. The treatment of the four Paralogisms which in the first edition occupied thirty-three pages is reduced to five. The problems of the mutual interaction of mind and body, of its prenatal character and of its immortality, the discussion of which in the first edition required some ten pages, are now disposed of in a single paragraph (B 426-7). The remaining twenty-two pages of the new chapter are almost entirely devoted to more or less polemical discussion of criticisms which had been passed upon the first edition. These had been in great part directed against Kant’s doctrine of apperception and of inner sense, and so could fittingly be dealt with in connection with the problems of rational psychology. As Benno Erdmann has suggested, B 409-14 and 419-21 would seem to be directed against Ulrichs’ Leibnizian position and especially against his metaphysical interpretation of apperception. B 428-30 treats of the difficulties raised by Pistorius in regard to the existence of the self. B 414-15 is similarly polemical, but in this case Kant cites his opponent, Mendelssohn, by name. Throughout, as in the alterations made in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, Kant insists more strongly than in the first edition upon the unknowableness of the self, and on the difference between thought and knowledge. The pure forms of thought are not, Kant now declares, concepts of objects, that is, are not categories, but “merely logical functions.” Though this involves no essential doctrinal change, it indicates the altered standpoint from which Kant now regards his problem. Its significance has already been dwelt upon.

In formulating the several arguments of the four Paralogisms, Kant develops and places in the forefront a statement which receives only passing mention in A 352-3, 362, 366-7, 381-2, namely, that the truths contained in the judgments of rational psychology find expression in merely identical (i.e. analytic) propositions. This enables Kant to formulate both the Paralogisms and his criticisms thereof in much briefer and more pointed fashion. In each case the Paralogism, as he shows, substitutes a synthetic a priori judgment, involving an extension of our knowledge and a reference to the noumenal self, for the given judgment which, in so far as it is valid, is always a merely analytic restatement of the purely formal “I think.” From the very start also, Kant introduces the distinctions of his own Critical teaching, especially that between thinking and intuiting, and that between the determining and the determinable self.

=First Paralogism.=--That the I which thinks must always in thought be viewed as subject and not as mere predicate, is an identical proposition. It must not be taken as meaning that the subject which underlies thought is an abiding substance. This latter proposition is of much wider scope, and would involve such data (in this case entirely lacking) as are required for the establishment of a synthetic a priori judgment.

=Second Paralogism.=--That the I of apperception and so of all thought is single and cannot be resolved into a multiplicity of subjects, is involved in the very conception of thought, and is therefore an analytic proposition. It must not be interpreted as signifying that the self is a simple substance. For the latter assertion is again a synthetic proposition, and presupposes for its possibility an intuition by the self of its own essential nature. As all our intuitions are merely sensuous, that cannot be looked for in the “I think.”

“It would, indeed, be surprising if what in other cases requires so much labour to discover--namely, what it is, of all that is presented by intuition, that is substance, and further, whether this substance is simple (e.g. in the parts of matter)--should be thus directly given me, as if by revelation, in the poorest of all representations.”

We may here observe how the practice, adopted by Caird, of translating Anschauung by ‘perception’ has misled him into serious misunderstanding of Kant’s teaching. It has caused him to interpret Kant as arguing that we have no knowledge of the self because we can have no sensuous perception of it. Kant’s argument rather is that as all human “intuition” is sensuous, we are cut off from all possibility of determining our noumenal nature. We are thrown back upon mere concepts which, as yielding only analytic propositions, cannot extend our insight beyond the limits of sense-experience. The term ‘intuition’ is much broader in meaning than the term ‘perception’; it can also be employed as equivalent to the phrase ‘immediate apprehension.’ The grounds for Kant’s contention that we have no intuition or immediate knowledge of the self are embodied in, and inspire, his doctrine of inner sense. It may also be noted that in B 412 Kant, speaking of the necessity of intuition for knowledge of the self, uses the unusual phrase ‘a permanent intuition’--a phrase which, so far as I have observed, he nowhere employs in dealing with the intuition that conditions the sense perception of material bodies. Its employment here may perhaps be due to the fact that its implied reference is not to a given sensuous manifold but to some form of immediate apprehension, capable of revealing the permanent nature of the noumenal self.

=Third Paralogism.=--That I am identical with myself throughout the consciousness of my manifold experiences, is likewise an analytic proposition obtainable by mere analysis of the “I think.” And since that form of consciousness, as stated in the criticism of the preceding Paralogism, is purely conceptual, containing no element of intuition, no judgment based solely upon it can ever be taken as equivalent to the synthetic proposition that the self, as thinking being, is an identical substance.

=Fourth Paralogism.=--This Paralogism is somewhat altered. As noted above, the problem dealt with in the first edition concerns the outer world, and only quite indirectly the nature of the self. In the second edition that argument is restated, and is more properly located within the Analytic. The argument which now takes its place runs parallel with that of the three preceding Paralogisms. The assertion that I distinguish my own existence as a thinking being from other things outside me, including thereunder my own body, is an analytic proposition, since by other things is meant things which I think as different from myself.

“But I do not thereby learn whether this consciousness of myself would be at all possible apart from things outside me through which representations are given to me, and whether, therefore, I can exist merely as thinking being (i.e. without existing in human form).”

In =B 417-18= Kant points out that rational psychology, in asserting that the self can be conscious apart from all consciousness of outer things, commits itself to the acceptance of problematic idealism. If consciousness of outer objects is not necessary to consciousness of self, there can be no valid method of proving their existence. In the fourth Paralogism of the first edition, the inter-dependence of rational psychology and empirical idealism is also dwelt upon, but is there traced to a confusion of appearances with things in themselves.

=B 410-11.=--The correct formulation is here given of what in the first edition is quite incorrectly stated. A paralogism is a syllogism which errs in logical form (as contrasted with a syllogism erring in matter, i.e. the premisses of which are false). In the paralogisms of Rational Psychology, the logical fallacy committed is that of ambiguous middle, or as Kant names it, the sophisma figurae dictionis. In the major premiss the middle term is used as referring to real existence, in the minor only as expressive of the unity of consciousness.

=Refutation of Mendelssohn’s Proof of the Permanence of the Soul.=--Mendelssohn’s argument is that the soul, as it does not consist of parts, cannot disappear gradually by disintegration into its constituent elements. If, therefore, it perishes, it must pass out of existence suddenly; at one moment it will exist, at the next moment it will be non-existent. But, Mendelssohn maintains, for three closely connected reasons this would seem to be impossible. In the first place, the immediate juxtaposition of directly opposed states is never to be met with in the material world. Complete opposites, such as day and night, waking and sleeping, never follow upon one another abruptly, but only through a series of intermediate states. Secondly, among the opposites which material processes thus bridge over, the opposition of being and not-being is never to be found. Only by a miracle can a material existence be annihilated. If, therefore, empirical evidence is to be allowed as relevant, we must not assert of the invisible soul what is never known to befall the material existences of the visible world. Thirdly--the only part of Mendelssohn’s argument which Kant mentions--the sudden cessation of the soul’s existence would also violate the law of the continuity of time. Between any two moments there is always an intermediate time in which the one moment passes continuously into the other.

Kant’s reply to this third part of Mendelssohn’s argument is that though the soul must not be conceived as perishing suddenly, it may pass out of existence by a continuous diminution through an infinite number of smaller degrees of intensive reality; and in support of this view he maintains the very doubtful position that clearness and obscurity of representation are not features of the contents apprehended, but only of the intensity of the consciousness directed upon them.

=B 417-22.=--Kant here points out that rational psychology, as above expounded, proceeds synthetically, starting from the assertion of the substantiality of the soul and proceeding to the proof that its existence is independent of outer things. But it may proceed in the reverse fashion, analytically developing the implications supposed to be involved in the “I think,” viewed as an existential judgment, i.e. as signifying “I exist thinking.” Kant restates the argument in this analytic form in order, as it would seem, to secure the opportunity of replying to those criticisms of his teaching in the first edition which concern his doctrine of apperception and his employment of the categories, especially of the category of existence, in relation to the self. What is new and important in these pages, and also in the connected passages in B 428-30, has been discussed above.

=B 419-20.=--After remarking that simplicity or unity is involved in the very possibility of apperception, Kant proceeds to argue that it can never be explained from a strictly materialist standpoint, since nothing that is real in space is ever simple. Points are merely limits, and are not therefore themselves anything that can form part of space. The passage as a whole would seem to be directed against the Leibnizian teaching of Ulrichs.

=B 426-7.=--Kant makes a remark to which nothing in his argument yields any real support, namely, that the dialectical illusion in rational psychology is due to the substitution of an Idea of reason for the quite indeterminate concept of a thinking being in general. As is argued below, the assumption which he is here making that the concept of the self is an a priori and ultimate Idea of pure Reason, cannot be regarded as a genuine part of his Critical teaching.

=B 427-8= touches quite briefly upon questions more fully and adequately treated in the first edition. The scanty treatment here accorded to them would seem to indicate, as Benno Erdmann remarks, that the problem of the interaction of mind and body which so occupied Kant’s mind from 1747 to 1770 has meantime almost entirely lost interest for him. The problem of immortality remains central, but it is now approached from the ethical side.

In =B 421= and =B 423-6= Kant draws from his criticism of the Paralogisms the final conclusion that the metaphysical problems as to the nature and destiny of the self are essentially practical problems. When approached from a theoretical standpoint, as curious questions to be settled by logical dialectic, their speculative proof

“...so stands upon the point of a hair, that even the schools preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it unceasingly spinning round like a top; even in their own eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything could be built.” “Rational psychology exists not as doctrine, ... but only as discipline. It sets impassable limits to speculative reason in this field, and thus keeps us, on the one hand, from throwing ourselves into the arms of soulless materialism, or, on the other hand, from losing ourselves in an unsubstantial spiritualism which can have no real meaning for us in this present life. But though it furnishes no positive doctrine, it reminds us that we should regard this refusal of Reason to give satisfying response to our inquisitive probings into what is beyond the limits of this present life as a hint from Reason to divert our self-knowledge from fruitless and extravagant speculation to its fruitful practical employment.” “The proofs which are serviceable for the world at large preserve their entire value undiminished, and indeed, upon the surrender of these dogmatic pretensions, gain in clearness and in natural force. For Reason is then located in its own peculiar sphere, namely the order of ends, which is also at the same time an order of nature; and since it is in itself a practical faculty which is not bound down to natural conditions, it is justified in extending the order of ends, and therewith our own existence, beyond the limits of experience and of life.”

Then follows brief indication of the central teaching of the Metaphysics of Ethics and of the two later Critiques. Through moral values that outweigh all considerations of utility and happiness, we become conscious of an inner vocation which inspires feelings of sublimity similar to those which are aroused by contemplation of the starry firmament; and to the verities thus disclosed we can add the less certain but none the less valuable confirmation yielded by natural beauty and design, and by the conformity of nature to our intellectual demands.

“Man’s natural endowments--not merely his talents and the impulses to employ them, but above all else the Moral Law within him--go so far beyond all utility and advantage which he may derive from them in this present life, that he learns thereby to prize the mere consciousness of a righteous will as being, apart from all advantageous consequences, apart even from the shadowy reward of posthumous fame, supreme over all other values; and so feels an inner call to fit himself, by his conduct in this world, and by the sacrifice of many of its advantages, for being a citizen of a better world upon which he lays hold in Idea. This powerful and incontrovertible proof is reinforced by our ever-increasing knowledge of purposiveness in all that we see around us, and by a glimpse of the immensity of creation, and therefore also by the consciousness of a certain illimitableness in the possible extension of our knowledge and of a striving commensurate therewith. All this still remains to us, though we must renounce the hope of ever comprehending, from the mere theoretical knowledge of ourselves, the necessary continuance of our existence.”

IS THE NOTION OF THE SELF A NECESSARY IDEA OF REASON?

One point of great importance must be dwelt upon before we pass from the Paralogisms. Though the negative consequences which follow from the teaching of the objective deduction are here developed in the most explicit manner, Kant does not within the limits of this chapter, in either edition, make any further reference to the doctrine expounded in the introductory sections of the Dialectic, viz. that the notion of the self as an immortal being is a necessary Idea of human Reason. The reader is therefore left under the impression that that doctrine is unaffected by the destructive criticism passed upon rational psychology, and that it still survives as an essential tenet of the Critical philosophy. And he is confirmed in this view when he finds the doctrine reappearing in the Appendix to the Dialectic and in the Methodology. The Idea of the self is there represented as performing a quite indispensable, regulative function in the development of the empirical science of psychology. Now it is one thing to maintain the existence of Ideal demands of Reason for unity, system and unconditionedness, and to assert that it is in virtue of these demands that we are led, in the face of immense discouragement and seeming contradictions, to reduce the chance collocations and bewildering complexities of ordinary experience to something more nearly approximating to what Reason prescribes. But it is a very different matter when Kant claims that in any one sphere, such as that of psychology, the unity and the unconditionedness must necessarily be of one predetermined type. He is then injecting into the Ideals that specific guidance which only the detail of experience is really capable of supplying. He is proving false to his own Critical empiricism, in which no function is ascribed to Reason that need in any way conflict with the autonomy of specialist research; and he is also violating his fundamental principle that the a priori can never be other than purely formal. Indeed, when Kant discloses somewhat more in detail what he means by the regulative function of the Idea of the self, the ambiguity of his statements reveals the unconsidered character of this part of his teaching. It is the expression only of a preconception, and has eluded the scrutiny of his Critical method largely because of the protective colouring which its admirable adaptation to the needs of his architectonic confers upon it. If, for instance, we compare the three passages in which it is expounded in the Appendix to the Dialectic, we find that Kant himself alternates between the authoritative prescription to psychology of a spiritualist hypothesis and what in ultimate analysis, when ambiguities of language are discounted, amounts simply to the demand for the greatest possible simplification of its complex phenomena. The passages are as follows.

“In conformity with these Ideas as principles we shall first, in psychology, connect in inner experience all appearances, all actions and receptivity of our mind, as if (als ob) the mind were a simple substance which persists with personal identity (in this life at least), while its states, to which those of the body belong only as outer conditions, are in continual change.”

“...in the human mind we have sensation, consciousness, imagination, memory, wit, power of discrimination, pleasure, desire, etc. Now, to begin with, a logical maxim requires that we should reduce, so far as may be possible, this seeming diversity, by comparing these with one another and detecting their hidden identity. We have to enquire whether imagination combined with consciousness may not be the same thing as memory, wit, power of discrimination, and perhaps even identical with understanding and Reason. Though logic is not capable of deciding whether a fundamental power actually exists, the Idea of such a power is the problem involved in a systematic representation of the multiplicity of powers. The logical principle of Reason calls upon us to bring about such unity as completely as possible; and the more appearances of this or that power are found to be identical with one another, the more probable it becomes that they are simply different manifestations of one and the same power, which may be entitled, relatively speaking, their fundamental power. The same is done with the other powers. The relatively fundamental powers must in turn be compared with one another, with a view to discovering their harmony, and so bringing them nearer to a single radical, i.e. absolutely fundamental, power. But this unity of Reason is purely hypothetical. We do not assert that such a power must necessarily be met with, but that we must seek it in the interest of Reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the manifold rules which experience may supply to us. We must endeavour, wherever possible, to bring in this way systematic unity into our knowledge.”

In the third of the Appendix passages these two views are confusedly combined. Kant is insisting that an Idea never asserts, even as an hypothesis, the existence of a real thing.

”[An Idea] is only the schema of the regulative principle by which Reason, so far as lies in its power, extends systematic unity over the whole field of experience. The first object of such an Idea is the ‘I’ itself, viewed simply as thinking nature or soul. If I am to investigate the properties with which a thinking being exists in itself, I must interrogate experience. I cannot even apply any one of the categories to this object, except in so far as its schema is given in sense intuition. But I never thereby attain to a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense. Instead, then, of the empirical concept (of that which the soul actually is), which cannot carry us far, Reason takes the concept of the empirical unity of all thought; and by thinking this unity as unconditioned and original, it forms from it a concept of Reason, i.e. the Idea of a simple substance, which, unchangeable in itself (personally identical), stands in association with other real things outside it; in a word, the Idea of a simple self-subsisting intelligence. Yet in so doing it has nothing in view save principles of systematic unity in the explanation of the appearances of the soul. It is endeavouring to represent all determinations as existing in a single subject, all powers, so far as possible, as derived from a single fundamental power, all change as belonging to the states of one and the same permanent being, and all appearances in space as completely different from the actions of thought. The simplicity and other properties of substance are intended to be only the schema of this regulative principle, and are not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing. The soul in itself could not be known through these assumed predicates, not even if we regarded them as absolutely valid in regard to it. For they constitute a mere Idea which cannot be represented in concreto. Nothing but advantage can result from the psychological Idea thus conceived, if only we take heed that it is not viewed as more than a mere Idea, and that it is therefore taken as valid only in its bearing on the systematic employment of Reason in determining the appearances of our soul. For no empirical laws of bodily appearances, which are of a totally different kind, will then intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense. No windy hypotheses of generation, extinction, and palingenesis of souls will be permitted. The consideration of this object of inner sense will thus be kept completely pure and unmixed, without employing heterogeneous properties. Also, Reason’s investigations will be directed to reducing the grounds of explanation in this field, so far as may be possible, to a single principle. All this will be best obtained (indeed is obtainable in no other way) through such a schema, viewed as if (als ob) it were a real being. The psychological Idea, moreover, can signify nothing but the schema of a regulative principle. For were I to enquire whether the soul in itself is of spiritual nature, the question would have no meaning. In employing such a concept I not only abstract from corporeal nature, but from nature in general, i.e. from all predicates of a possible experience, and therefore from all conditions for thinking an object for such a concept: yet only as related to an object can it be said to have a meaning.”

The last passage would seem to indicate that Kant has still another and only partially avowed reason for insisting upon a special and spiritualist Idea, as regulative of empirical psychology. It is necessary, he would seem to argue, in order to mark off the peculiar nature of its subject matter, and to warn us against attempting to explain its phenomena in the mechanistic manner of physical science. But if that is Kant’s intention, he has failed to formulate the position in any really tenable way. It is impossible to maintain, as he here does, that “no empirical laws of bodily appearances intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense.” Indeed, in the immediately following sentences, he very clearly indicates how completely such a position conflicts with his own real teaching. To think away the corporeal is to think away all experience. Experience is not dualistically divided into separate worlds. It is one and single, and the principle of causality rules universally throughout, connecting inner experiences of sense, feeling, and desire, with their outer conditions, organic and physical. Thus Kant’s retention of the Idea of the self is chiefly of interest as revealing the strength and tenacity of his spiritualist leanings. We may judge of the disinterestedness and courage of his thinking by the contrary character of his pre-conceptions. For even when they have been shown to be theoretically indemonstrable, they continue to retain by honorific title the dignity from which they have been deposed. The full force of the objections is none the less recognised.

“The simplicity of substance ... is not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing.”

That, however, is only Kant’s unbiassed estimate of the theoretical evidence; it is not an expression of his own personal belief.