Of the Possibility of a Conjunction of the Manifold Representations given by Sense

Kant begins Section II of the Transcendental Deduction with an overview of the faculty of representation, as constituted by the information and activity given by (or contributed by) intuition and understanding. I may have this wrong, but it’s the most I can understanding at the present.

First, we have the concept of conjunction, which is the process of synthesizing the manifold in intuition. By this, Kant appears to say that we conjoin, which is an interesting choice of word, the undetermined datum given to us by our senses. But this conjunction isn’t an activity of sensibility, nor is it an activity, spontaneously occurring, in intuition. No: it is an activity of the faculty of representation, an activity which precedes the occurence of representations in the mind, which occurs by the understanding. In essence, Kant is arguing that the datum of our sensibility are not, in any way, synthesized as given. They are disparate, like Locke’s simple ideas, and as such are merely successions, series, and repetitions, of particular types of affections. To form a concept, or a representation, of a singular object, of the form of an object, or of a unity of data, is an activity contributed by the mind, not by intuition, which merely provides the manifold content for our representations.

Kant calls this action synthesis, and it should be noted that it, as an activity, is never passive. This is an important aspect of the transcendental conditions for cognition for Kant, because the concept of synthesizing the manifold in intuition must be attributed to an active, thinking, conceptualizing, subject. This is why he writes that “we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves.” So of all the concepts we have of our cognition, conjunction is the only one which cannot arise from affection, from sensibility, but on the contrary must be that spontaneous act which the subject does. We are not talking here of a cognition, you or I, breaking apart an already-formed concept into its component parts; we are talking about the subject’s activity of forming a unity of data into a representation which can then be analyzed. Hence this conjunction is synthesis, not analysis.

We are able to form from this two different concepts of conjunction, one of which is the above:

1. The concept of the manifold and its synthesis

2. The concept of the representation of the synthetical unity of the manifold.

The second concept, of the synthesizing of unity of the manifold in intuition, isn’t something which, as Kant points out, arises from the application of a judgment to these different concepts. The unity “a priori precedes all conceptions of conjunction, [and] is not the category of unity.” This is because Kant is looking for the synthetical unity of the manifold in someplace other than the concepts of the pure understanding, which are based on the logical forms of judgment, or those forms of the activity of the mind; and so “the category of unity pressuposed conjunction,” and cannot be used as a foundation for the concept of the pure understanding. He says: “we must therefore look still higher for this unity, in that, namely, which contains the ground of the unity of diverse concepts in judgments, the ground, consequently, of the possibility of the existence of the understanding, even in regard its logical use.” This ground of the understanding’s existence is the transcendental unity of apperception.

Of the Originally Synthetical Unity of Apperception

This section of the Deduction is the crux of Kant’s argument, and consequently the fulcrum of his entire system’s success or failure. It is here that Kant attempts to prove that the concepts of the pure understanding (the categories) apply a priori to the entirety of experience. He begins by writing:

The I think must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing. That representation which can be given previously to all thought, is called intuition. All the diversity or manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think, in the subject in which this diversity is found.”

There are several important points to note here. The first is that the I think is the concept of the action which the I think does; that is, when Kant is discussing the spontaneous act of the understanding’s unifying the content of intuition, he is discussing the transcendental conditions, but discussing them in a way in which they are represented to us. Therefore, the I think is both the transcendental condition of the possibility of all acts of thought, and the representation to me of this process. This is why, later, he will say that the statement “These representations given in intuition, belong all of them to me,” is the same as “I unite all these representations in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unity them.” The second important point is that the I think accompanies all representations, while at the same time being the condition of the subject’s possession of these same representation (the possibility of thought). That is, it supplies the missing component of the intuition as sense – that which makes the sense cogitable and, moreover, mine. The third point is that, while intuitions are prior to thought, the constitution of a thought, or cognition, is also dependent upon an original intuition; and the having of an intuition is always accompanied by the I think, or the representation to myself of my possession, or reception, of these intuitions.

The I think, like many of the terms Kant uses in this section, is a rather vague concept. Likewise with the concepts of conjunction, synthesis, and several others. He appears to use the terms more loosely than previously, and gives several complimentary definitions of the same thing. But in a general sense, it would appear that we can say the I think is merely the consciousness of a representation, or the determination of an affection. It would also appear to be transcendental, or a priori, that is, prior to all experience, and the conditions of it (as stated). So when we say, along with Descartes’ cogito, that I know I exist because I think, Kant would reply that I think, because, and as the possibility, of conscious existence. Existence is given. How is another question. This is why his deduction is transcendental.

So, it is important to remember that this act is spontaneous. By spontaneity, Kant means that it is an impulse, that it proceeds naturally, that it is directed towards action internally, but most of all that it is an activity. While its etymology implies freedom of will (from the Latin sponte), this isn’t explicitly the case in Kant. On the contrary, it is an act characteristic of the will, but moreover a mechanical type of process, a mechanism latent within the brain, which is awoken and accompanies all experience: “That it to say,” Kant writes, “it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility. I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from empirical; or primitive apperception, because it is a self-consciousness which, while it gives birth to the representation I think, must necessarily be capable of accompanying all our representations.” To accompany our representations implies that it coordinates and corresponds to them in time. It is logically connected, temporally connected, and therefore joined with them. This primitive, pure act of the understanding is the basis of all thought, and by conjoining representations together, submitting them to the categories, and rendering them cogitable, is the most important aspect of the entire philosophy.

Suppose, however, that the I think is less than a unity. Suppose it is a series in repetition over time. In a sense it is – always and continually reaffirming itself. So one I think could be thought to be different from another. But Kant repeatedly stresses that all thinking is mine. That is, we all have possession of our representations, and thus the transcendental unity of apperception (of the I think) is found, since transcendentally, at the foundations of all our affirmations of empirical thought. That is, we cannot think our thoughts if they were not ours, but we do think thoughts, and we have the concept of their being-ours. The manifold is always determined as mine. This is why Kant says that the I think is a unity and always the same. It is always the same affirmation of self. So, therefore, the unity of all acts of this apperception is found transcendentally in a “primitive,” or a priori, apperception – in its capacity and action. For, “the manifold representations which are given in an intuition would not all of them be my representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness, that is, as my representations, they must conform to the condition under which alone they can exist altogether in a common self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me.”

Synthetical Unity: Why?

This is why the unity of apperception is synthetical. Like above, we could suppose that all the subject’s representations, accompanied by the thought of myself thinking them, are merely disparate. But that is not enough to constitute the unity of the subject, as Kant perceives it. In order to have a unified subjectivity, we must identity a conjunction of the different affirmations of the I think. Not thinking of an object, and then another, and then another, can produce the unity of the subject. So “only in so far as I conjoin” representations together, that is, I synthesize different affirmations of thinking objects together, can my subjectivity affirm itself as wholly unified in myself. Where is the epistemic status of some disparate, disjointed, affirmation of a representation, if it is not unified in my consciousness with another representation? Nowhere. So where do the pure concepts of the understanding fit in, at this point? They are those concepts which, not being derived from experience, are allow representations to be combined in consciousness by virtue of themselves. They are original and a priori – hence pure concepts. They are those concepts which constitute all primitive acts of conjunction in apperception, therefore producing unity.

Hopefully I’m at least partially right on some of these things. This is a challenging section of the text.

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