The Journal of Value Inquiry (2005) 39:353381

DOI 10.1007/s10790-007-9009-4

Springer 2007

Kants Theory of Mind in the Critique of Pure Reasons Subjective

Deduction*
MATT MCCORMICK
Department of Philosophy, California State University, Sacramento,
CA, 95819-6033, USA; e-mail: mccormick@csus.edu

1. Introduction
In a brief and obscure remark, Kant says that there are both Objective
and Subjective Deductions contained in the Transcendental Deduction,
the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason.1 Commentators have disagreed
about what the Subjective Deduction is. They have taken it to be a wide
variety of things, most of them negative. They have also disagreed about
which part of the Critique of Pure Reason it occupies. The commentators
fall roughly into two categories with regard to it: commentators who are
unsympathetic with its heavily psychological language and agenda, and
commentators who believe that while it is psychological, it contains
important, defensible arguments in Kants philosophy of mind. In an
eort to salvage something of value from it, some commentators in the
rst group like Henry Allison have said that the Subjective Deduction is
an aborted argument for the categories.2 Peter Strawson, also in the rst
group, makes no attempt to repair what he believes is a hopelessly mistaken argument because it contains illegitimate speculations about mental
functions that are beyond the proper reach of our knowledge.3 H. W.
Cassirer also atly rejects it because psychological claims like the claims
contained in the Subjective Deduction stem from the fact that Kant
himself is somewhat confused, and that whenever such language
[psychological] occurs, one must rst of all, substitute epistemological
terms for psychological ones, and it is only after this has been done that
one can raise the question whether Kants reasoning may be allowed to
stand.4
The second group of commentators have embraced the Subjective
Deduction and argued that it presents the transcendental requirements
placed on the mind of a subject who is capable of cognition. Kants
*This article is one of two winners of the 2002 Rockefeller Prize awarded by the
American Philosophical Association.

354

MATT MCCORMICK

arguments in the Objective Deduction for the necessary structure of

objects are well-known. Andrew Brook, Patricia Kitcher, Ralf Meerbote,
and even Norman Kemp Smith say that the Subjective Deduction is no
less important for describing the necessary features of the subject.5 Brook
portrays it as a preliminary argument to Kants attack on rational
psychology in the Paralogisms, and he argues that the Subjective
Deduction is actually an indispensable part of the Objective Deduction.6
Kitcher portrays it as an argument concerning the phenomenal or
empirical self, and she also argues that The objective and subjective
Deductions are inseparable and can be distinguished only in terms of
focus.7 One way we can describe the rift between these two sets of
commentators is over whether the Subjective Deduction is a dispensable
or indispensable part of Kants critical philosophy.
The challenge for any sympathetic reading of the Subjective Deduction, however, is that Kant himself seems to hold that it is dispensable. In
the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, he downplays its signicance, saying that the Objective Deduction will stand without it, and in
the B edition he appears to have removed much of what was the Subjective Deduction altogether.8 Commentators in the rst group have
taken these indicators from Kant to mean that the Subjective Deduction
and other psychological discussions in the Critique of Pure Reason should
be removed and that Kant recognized this in the B edition, making it the
authoritative statement of Kants position. A central task for anyone who
wishes to defend the Subjective Deduction is to explain why it appears
that Kant did not.
We will consider an explanation for Kants comments about the
Subjective Deduction that makes it clear that he did not lose condence in
the argument, or think that it played no role in his critical philosophy.
Kant did not view it as indispensable to his larger goals of the Critique of
Pure Reason as the commentators in the second group have maintained.
The purpose served by the Subjective Deduction does not address his
most central goal of dening the limits of knowledge with regard to
metaphysics. Nevertheless, Kant consistently maintained that the arguments of the Subjective Deduction do a great service and are meritorious.9 His reasons for reducing or changing it in the B edition were
primarily to clarify another argument, but not because he rejected or
doubted its arguments.
The position between the two positions that we will consider will make
it possible to present a sympathetic reconstruction of the Subjective
Deduction that sheds light on Kants goals in the Critique of Pure Reason,
particularly the most enigmatic chapter, the Transcendental Deduction.
The central purpose behind the Subjective Deduction is to enumerate

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

355

a number of theses about the necessary character of a mind that is capable

of making judgments about objects. Kant calls this ability cognition
which, involves two components: rst, the concept (the category),
through which an object as such is thought; and second, the intuition,
through which the object is given.10 Inasmuch as Kant also equates
having cognitions of objects with having experience of objects, he means
the same thing by the categories apply to cognition, and the categories
apply to objects of experience.11 Kant identies thinking as a larger class
of mental activity. Thinking employs concepts, but it need not have
intuitions of an object. We can think about God, for example, but he is
not a proper object of cognition, or knowledge. While many of the claims
of the Subjective Deduction apply to thinking, the argument is best
construed as being conned to cognition, which is a necessary but not
sucient condition for knowledge of the objects of experience. Kant
presents us with a list of required faculties for the mind and arguments
that show their necessary, hence transcendental, role in the performance
of the mental act of applying concepts to representations in judgment.

2. The Two Deductions of the Transcendental Deduction

The dierence between the Objective and Subjective Deductions, Kant
says, is a dierence in content in the arguments. The Objective Deduction,
Kant says, refers to the objects of pure understanding, and is intended to
expound and render intelligible the objective validity of its a priori concepts.12 He says that the Transcendental Deduction fullls this purpose
by determining the rules and limits of the employment of the understanding.13 The central question of the Objective Deduction is always,
What and how much can the understanding and reason know apart
from all experience?14
Classically, Kants characterization of the Objective Deduction has
been taken to mean that it is about the logical and semantic requirements
of having cognition of objects. Norman Kemp Smith says that the
Objective Deduction enquires how concepts which are a priori, and which
as a priori must be taken to originate in pure reason, can yet be valid of
objects.15 There are numerous interpretations concerning this portion of
the Critique of Pure Reason. The most common view, however, is that the
purpose behind the Objective Deduction, and the Transcendental
Deduction chapter that contains it, is to show that the pure, a priori
concepts, the categories, are objectively valid. The categories apply
universally and necessarily to all objects that can be cognized or
experienced.

356

MATT MCCORMICK

By contrast, the Subjective Deduction, Kant says, allows us to

investigate the pure understanding itself, its possibility and cognitive
faculties upon which it rests; and so deals with it in its subjective
aspect.16 Given the characterization of the Objective Deduction that
Kant oers, we can see that he intends for the Subjective Deduction to be
concerned with the faculties that are needed for a mind to have experience
of objects. The Subjective Deduction is typically taken to be psychological
in nature because it examines the generative processes to whose agency
human knowledge is due.17 One confusion concerning the claims about
cognitive faculties is whether they are to serve as premises in an argument
for some other conclusion, such as the objective validity of the categories,
or whether the claims Kant makes in the Subjective Deduction are
themselves the conclusions of arguments. We will reconstruct the Subjective Deduction as an argument that cognition about the objects of
experience necessarily presupposes a number of faculties or features in the
mind of the subject who makes the judgments.

3. Two Obstacles to a Sympathetic Interpretation of the Subjective

Deduction
In the introduction to the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant
seems to discredit the Subjective Deduction. Objective Deduction,
Kant says:

refers to the objects of pure understanding and is intended to establish and make comprehensible the objective validity of understandings
a priori concepts, and precisely because of this pertains to my purposes essentially. The other side [the Subjective Deduction] seeks to
examine pure understanding itself as regards its possibility and the
cognitive powers underlying it in turn, and hence seeks to examine
it in a subjective respect. And although this latter exposition is of
great importance for my main purpose, it does not pertain to it
essentially. For the main question is always this: what, and how
much, can understanding and reason cognize independently of all
experience? rather than: how is our power of thought itself possible?
This latter question is, as it were, a search for the cause of a given
eect, and to that extent there is something about it resembling a
hypothesis (even though in fact, as I shall show on another occasion, it is not so). Thus it seems as if in this case I have permitted
myself to hold an opinion, and that the reader must hence be free
to hold a dierent opinion. On this point I must ask the reader in

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

357

advance to remember this: should my subjective deduction have

failed to produce in him the full conviction that I expect it to
produce, yet the objective deduction, with which I am concerned
above all, will still acquire its full force; perhaps what I say on
pages [A] 92 to 93 is even sucient for this all by itself.18
Kant makes several claims regarding the Subjective Deduction here. The
examination of the possibility of the pure understanding and its cognitive
powers in the subject is inessential to some purpose Kant has. Kants main
question concerns what can be known independently of all experience, not
how our power of thought is possible. His analysis of the power of thought
resembles a hypothesis, but it is not one. Kant believes it will appear that
his Subjective Deduction is merely an opinion about which the reader may
dier. Even if his Subjective Deduction fails to convince, the Objective
Deduction, which is his central concern, will retain its full force and succeed in convincing where the Subjective Deduction might fail. At rst
glance, it would appear that Kant does not think much of the plausibility
or usefulness of the Subjective Deduction, so defending it without his
support would be odd. The Subjective Deduction is inessential to some
purpose that Kant has in mind for the Transcendental Deduction chapter,
and the purpose, Kant maintains, is not to analyze how thought is possible. There are at least two possibilities. It might be inessential to Kants
overall aim in the Critique of Pure Reason of providing a complete account
of the nature of knowledge so that the possibility, character, and boundaries of metaphysics can be determined, or the Subjective Deduction may
be inessential to one of Kants other goals within his larger plan.19 In fact,
the Subjective Deduction is inessential to the goals set out for the Objective
Deduction. Immediately following the passage in the preface, Kant directs
us to A 9293 to settle the issue concerning the function and importance of
the Subjective and Objective Deductions. There it becomes clear which
goal the Subjective Deduction is inessential to. The overall aim of the
Transcendental Deduction is to prove that the objective validity of the
categories as a priori concepts rests, therefore, on the fact that, so far as
the form of thought is concerned, through them alone does experience
become possible.20 It is only by demonstration of the a priori validity of
the categories in respect of all objects of our senses, [that] the purpose of
the deduction [will] be fully attained.21 At the outset and in the conclusions of the arguments in both editions, Kant makes it clear that his central
purpose is to show that our cognitive access to objects is limited by the
categories to the spatio-temporal, empirical world.22 Arguing for this
limitation in turn, allows Kant to answer his larger question of the Critique

358

MATT MCCORMICK

of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics whether

such a thing as metaphysics is even possible. He concludes, as is well
known, that knowledge of the non-empirical world is impossible, which we
may call his limitation thesis.
Kants larger goal in the Critique of Pure Reason is to prove the limitation thesis. His goal in the Transcendental Deduction is to show by way
of the Objective Deduction that the categories necessarily and universally
apply to all objects of experience. After that Kant can argue that no other
knowledge producing application of the categories is possible. Therefore,
knowledge beyond that of the objects of experience is impossible. The
limitation thesis is proven, and it is served directly only by the Objective
Deduction of the Transcendental Deduction. Strictly speaking, the
Subjective Deduction is tangential to the proof of the limitation thesis
because it explains how judgments are produced by cognitive and precognitive processes, but the Subjective Deduction does not allow us to
make claims on its basis alone about what the domain of knowledge or
metaphysics is. Thus Kant says that the Objective Deduction will succeed
even if the Subjective Deduction fails. Only the Objective Deduction,
according to which the possibility of cognition of objects necessarily
presupposes the categories, is crucial to limiting the range of knowledge.
The Subjective Deduction is inessential to that purpose since its sole
interest is determining what cognitive powers or faculties are possessed by
the pure understanding and how they function in cognition. Kants
comment in the preface, therefore, should not lead us to belittle the
importance of the Subjective Deduction as a whole, or as an important
theory of mind in its own right.
One of the other goals behind the Critique of Pure Reason is to
determine all of the conditions that make empirical cognition possible.
The Subjective Deduction plays a crucial role in achieving the goal, and
that is why Kant repeatedly speaks positively of it: Such an investigation
of the rst strivings of our faculty of knowledge, whereby it advances
from particular perceptions to universal concepts, is undoubtedly of great
service, and, the question how [the categories] make such a form of
thought possible is indeed important enough for completing this deduction, where possible; but with reference to the main purpose of the system,
namely, the determination of the boundary of pure reason, the answer to
how is in no way necessary but is merely meritorious.23 We shall see that
the Subjective Deduction contains a number of transcendental claims
about the nature of a judging subject which will be crucial to understanding Kants aim of explaining how it is that empirical cognition of
objects is possible for a discursive consciousness. While the Subjective
Deduction is inessential to the argument for the objective validity of the

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

359

categories, and hence the limitation thesis, it is a necessary part of Kants

full account of empirical cognition.24
Kant is also concerned that the reader may dismiss the Subjective
Deduction as merely hypothetical or just an opinion. Kant does not
believe that his Subjective Deduction is a mere hypothesis or opinion; he
is addressing the possibility that a reader may be dismissive because of the
misunderstanding. We may ask why he is concerned about these misunderstandings. Within the context of the work of many of his contemporaries and predecessors, Kant sees many psychological arguments as
philosophically suspect. The success of the argument for the limitation
thesis severely curtails what sort of knowledge is possible. Several classes
of psychological claims, some of which closely resemble Kants own, fall
outside the boundaries.
Kant does not want his work to be mistaken for empirical psychology,
for instance, which he denes as the study of inner sense.25 He explicitly
denies that what he is doing is in any regard a physiology of the human
understanding-like that of the celebrated Locke.26 In the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, he denies that a science of the soul is
even possible, because mental states, the subject matter of empirical
psychology, are not in space, hence they are not quantiable mathematically.27 Furthermore, the method of empirical psychology is a posteriori.
While claims like Anne Treismans that, the perception of meaningful
wholes in the visual world apparently depends on complex operations to
which a person has no conscious access, operations that can only be
inferred on the basis of indirect evidence, sound Kantian, the type of
analysis of object judgments that Kant and Treisman are engaged in are
fundamentally dierent.28 Kant characterizes a cognitive act, such as
judging objects on the basis of sensory input, and deduces the universal
and necessary requirements placed on any mind that is capable of
performing the act, whereas Treisman and empirical psychologists conduct an a posteriori study of the human cognitive system, whatever the
contingent structures or capacities it may turn out to have.
Kant does not want his arguments to be mistaken for rational
psychology which takes the judgment, I think, as its subject matter and
to support the existence of an immaterial, simple, substantial soul. Kants
chapter on paralogisms is devoted to explaining the failure of proponents
of rational psychology to properly grasp the boundaries of what can be
known about a self. Kant is well aware that his argument in the Subjective
Deduction, a work in transcendental psychology, is easily misunderstood,
particularly in light of his argument for the limitation thesis. While he is
philosophically committed to the arguments given in the Subjective
Deduction, they are prone to be misconstrued as mere hypotheses like the

360

MATT MCCORMICK

claims of rational and empirical psychology. He is understandably

reluctant to advance his own psychological theses given the carefully
demarcated and somewhat narrow position his transcendental
psychology occupies between empirical and rational psychologies.
The best way to understand the crucial passages where Kant seems
dismissive of the Subjective Deduction is that while it is not central to the
primary goal of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant does not reduce or
reject the Subjective Deduction on philosophical grounds. What remains
then is to determine what sort of argument it is. We have started to
characterize it as an exercise in transcendental psychology. Transcendental means many things for Kant, but in this context he intends a
transcendental investigation into the sources of knowledge to be an inquiry that discloses the universal and necessary features of empirical
cognition. The arguments are psychological because they oer an explanation of how cognition is generated in terms of the faculties and abilities
of the mind of the subject who thinks. The full defense for this robust
interpretation of the Subjective Deduction is not yet in place. We can see,
however, that not only is there room for this kind of characterization of
the Subjective Deduction, but that it is compatible with all of Kants
remarks in the A edition preface. It makes sense of Kants various tiered
goals and their relationship in the Critique of Pure Reason, it allows us to
attribute consistency to Kant in applying the critical or transcendental
method to the subject who judges as well as the object that is judged, and
it allows us to understand the revisions between the two editions.
The prospects for a sympathetic reading of the Subjective Deduction
might look dim when we consider the revisions that Kant makes to the
second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. The threefold synthesis
discussion that leads the discussion in the A edition appears to be missing or
has been changed. Kant seems to have de-psychologized the discussion,
changing much of the synthesis of the imagination language to general talk
about combination. Whereas Kant devotes the majority of the space to the
theory of synthesis in the A edition with the categories only getting mentioned at the end of the section, in the second edition, Kant takes up the role
of the categories in cognition earlier and makes them central with the
discussion of mind and mental faculties shortened and primarily at the end.
Kant makes a decisive and illuminating comment about the rather
dramatic revisions in the B edition Transcendental Deduction in a footnote in The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, which was
published between the A and B editions. In the footnote, Kant expresses
his resolve to revise the Transcendental Deduction argument because
some of his critics had stated doubts about his attempts to restrict
knowledge to the empirical realm. Kant concedes that the manner of

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

361

presentation of the argument in the A edition is obscure. But he remains

committed to the ground of explanation, which is already given correctly
there.29 He makes it clear that the dierence between his two ways of
presenting the argument is methodological. The A edition, where the
Subjective Deduction dominates, does not directly show that cognition is
conned to the empirical realm because it focuses rst on the solution of
the problem as to how experience is possible by means of these categories,
and only by means of them.30 The inquiry into how the categories make
experience possible is an inquiry into how they get applied by the mind
and make experience possible for it. That inquiry is concerned with the
faculties and features that the mind possesses in virtue of being able to
have experience of objects. Kant resolves that he will give a more direct
argument in the new edition that will show that no employment of pure
reason can ever concern anything but objects of experience; and inasmuch
as nothing empirical can be the condition in a priori principles, these
cannot be anything more than principles of the possibility of experience
generally. This alone is the true and adequate foundation of the determination of the boundary of pure reason.31 Kant recognizes that an
analysis of the necessary presuppositions of certain cognitive tasks, such
as forming judgments of objects of experience, is not the most direct or
obvious way to argue for the limitation thesis. Proving that experience of
empirical objects requires certain intellectual faculties does not show that
no other cognition, or knowledge is possible. It only shows that that kind
of experience has those requirements. As a result, that the categories,
which reason must make use of in all its cognition, can have no other
employment whatever than that merely with reference to objects of
experience (in such a way that in this experience the categories make
possible merely the form of thought), then the answer to the question how
they make such a form of thought possible is indeed important enough
for completing this deduction, where possible; but with reference to the
main purpose of the system, namely, the determination of the boundary
of pure reason, the answer to how is in no way necessary but is merely
meritorious.32
Again we have conrmation that Kant sees his goal in both editions of
the Critique of Pure Reason as determining the limits of the employment
of reason, and in both cases he does so by showing that the categories are
necessarily presupposed by experience of objects, and that any other
application of the categories or other concepts outside the realm of space
and time will be empty and will fail to produce knowledge. But in the A
edition, Kant concedes that he has been diverted from his central task. He
rst devotes space to explaining how it is that the understanding applies
its a priori concepts. Merely showing how they are employed in terms of

362

MATT MCCORMICK

our faculties is distinct from showing that they are necessarily presupposed by experience of objects and that any other application is
illegitimate. Kant believes that he has shown both in the A edition, but
the explanation of the pre-cognitive processes that utilize a priori concepts
has proven to be a distraction or stumbling block for his audience. He
resolves in the B edition to shorten the treatment and focus on showing
rst and foremost that the categories cannot be employed legitimately to
anything that cannot be an object of experience. Metaphysical knowledge
of the non-empirical world is impossible.
We can see, then, that Kants motive for altering the B edition is not
that he changed his position with regard to the transcendental psychology
of the Subjective Deduction. He wants to clarify the argument that
knowledge is limited to the world of experience. He does not alter the
Subjective Deduction because he has lost condence in it, or because he
does not think it is a worthy topic. He reduces its size and shifts its
location in order to focus attention on the limitation thesis.

4. The Argument of the Subjective Deduction

In a theory of mental processing where the purpose is to determine only
what is necessary to perform certain cognitive acts, Kants aim is to keep
the account as simple as possible, introducing only the faculties or functions that are required by the task without unnecessarily complicating the
psychological scheme. Thus he avoids merely speculative descriptions of
the mind that would be hypothetical, but not certain given the cognitive
acts in question. Kant oers only the faculty distinctions which are warranted by the task at hand. Given that we have a multitude of disparate
intuitions that will provide the basis on which the mind forms judgments
of objects that persist over time, a faculty of combining, synthesizing, or
binding will be necessary. In the A edition, Kant suggests that the imagination does the work in conjunction with the understanding. In the B
edition, the understanding seems to be the primary faculty. We may ask
why in both cases Kant separates the combining faculty from the already
established faculty of intuition.
In the Transcendental Aesthetic, he claims that faculty of intuition is
an essentially receptive and passive faculty whereby we are able to cognize
objects. He argues that a necessary but not sucient condition of the
possibility of cognizing objects is a faculty of intuition which is sensible in
human beings, and that gives content or matter to the form of concepts.33
Kant distinguishes the faculty of intuition from the understanding and
imagination in terms of their roles in judgment. He sees judgment or

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

363

cognition as an essentially active encounter with objects where the mind

conforms elements produced by its encounters with objects to the dictates
of a conceptual scheme. He appreciates Humes argument that the raw
data of sensibility and reection underdetermine our judgments of
objects. We can nd neither identity, continuity, nor causation in sensations alone. Therefore some form of mental activity to produce judgments
is essential. Since the faculty whereby we acquire the data of thought
passively receives, it is not suited to the task of actively combining intuitions. Kant believes that he is warranted in introducing another mental
faculty, but the characterization of it will remain highly abstract.
Since the cognitive task we are analyzing, the ability to judge objects
on the basis of sensible intuitions, is complicated, there is a great deal of
cognitive labor that needs to be explained. Positing a few faculties and
characterizing their functions only in the most general terms provides us
with few insights into the so-called black box. In part, that is Kants
intention. He is not concerned with the contingent details of how a
particular species of cognitive system such as the one found in human
beings operates. Through a transcendental analysis, Kant can determine
the framework requirements in terms of faculties and functions for any
mind that makes judgments of objects. In this regard, functionalist
readings of Kants philosophy of mind as advanced by Kitcher, Brook,
and Meerbote are on the right track.34
The rst premises in the A edition draw on the arguments from the
Transcendental Aesthetic. Intuitions are temporal, and in virtue of being
temporal, they are manifold: Kant writes, No matter from where our
presentations arise, as modications of the mind they belong to inner
sense: they belong to inner sense whether they are produced through the
inuence of external things or through inner causes; and whether they
have come about a priori, or empirically as appearances. . . . In time they
must one and all be ordered, connected, and brought into relations. This
is a general comment that must be presupposed throughout what follows.
Every intuition contains a manifold. Yet this manifold would not be
presented as such if the mind did not in the sequence of impressions
following another distinguish time. For any presentation as contained in
one instant can never be anything but absolute unity.35
Kant makes several important claims in this passage. He has argued in
the Transcendental Aesthetic that when we introspect, inner sense reveals
mental contents that are temporal but not spatial. Only the formal condition of time applies to both inner and outer sense. Introspection is the
determination of the self and its states. When we ascertain, for instance,
that we are sad, the sadness does not occupy a spatial location the way a
sensation of brownness must be spatial. But sadness as well as outer

364

MATT MCCORMICK

sensations must have some temporal location and duration. His rst
concern in the Subjective Deduction argument is to begin building upon
only that which can be said of all sensations so that conclusions about the
subjects abilities based upon them have a comparable universality. The
spatiality of intuitions gets little mention in the argument that follows.
But the temporality of intuitions plays a prominent role.
Another implication of the temporality of all intuitions, Kant says, is
that we must order, connect, and relate our appearances in time. The fact
that our intuitions occur serially imposes a special kind of cognitive labor
on the mind. Forming judgments about them requires that they be
organized temporally. Kant believes that he has shown in the Transcendental Aesthetic that the only sort of experience of objects that we can
have is experience in which we judge objects to occupy some determinate
region or duration of time. We grasp, locate, and judge them to be in
temporal relation to each other and to ourselves.
The temporality of all intuitions is closely tied to their diversity or
manifoldedness, Kant says. Since our intuitions are had over time, a
theory of cognition would be insucient if it only addressed what occurs
in a single instant. Our sensory systems are subjected to a multitude of
serial inputs. It is the manifold of presentations that the mind must
incorporate into its judgments. In the most general terms, Kant is concerned to address how it is that a being can have experience that is unique
and diverse from moment to moment and form judgments about that
experience that casts it into a stable world lled with recurring, homogenous, and predictable objects.
The B edition contains more evidence of Kants striving to build his
analysis of mind on only the highest level of abstraction justied by his
transcendental method. He manages to separate the temporality of
intuitions from their manifoldedness and the need for combination,
making it possible to widen the domain of his theory of mind to those
cognitive systems that judge objects on the basis of non-temporal
intuitions. The question of what can and cannot come to us through
intuition plays a more basic role in the argument. Combination of the
relevant sort, we learn, can only be produced by an act of the mind: A
manifolds combination (conjunctio) as such can never come to us
through the senses; nor, therefore, can it already be part of what is
contained in the pure form of sensible intuition. For this combination is
an act of spontaneity by the power of presentation; and this power must
be called understanding, in order to be distinguished from sensibility.
Hence all combination is an act of understandingwhether or not we
become conscious of such combination.36

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

365

We can interpret this as an attempt to recast the argument without the

dependence upon the temporality thesis and to give an argument for
categoriality that is not dependent upon that particular character of
human constitution. The temporality and spatiality of intuitions creates a
disarray among appearances that must be rectied or ordered by the
activity of the understanding. But the temporality and spatiality of
intuitions is contingent. Kant makes this surprising comment about space
and time as a priori forms of intuition, All we know is the way in which
we perceive them [objects]. That way is peculiar to us and does not necessarily have to apply to all beings, even though it applies necessarily to
all human beings.37 If Kants theory of mind and subsequently his
argument for the categories are based upon the temporality and spatiality
of intuitions, then it would appear that the deep transcendental structure
of the mind, the theory of synthesis, and the categories are also contingently dependent upon human constitution. Kant does not want to accept
such a subjectivized or relativized analysis of reason. There is a need for a
more general claim about combination in judgment that does not focus
on their spatial and temporal diversity.
Kant addresses that need with an argument that is not incompatible
with the earlier edition, but which shifts and broadens the emphasis. Even
though the spatiality and temporality of intuitions may be contingent,
Kants argument is that the unconnectedness of intuitions and the
constructivist character of applying concepts in judgment are not.38
Kants claim is not that it is not possible for combination to come
through the senses. His point is that the manifolds combination, the
combining of the dierent intuitions that goes into judgment, cannot
come to the mind through sensibility. It does not matter what comes to
the mind in intuition, if the mind is not capable in some fashion of taking
that content and conforming it, or determining it according to its own
conceptual structure by its own intellectual act, then that data can never
be anything at the level of judgment to that mind. Sensations alone are
inadequate, particularly when they are conned to a single moment or
region of space. Sensation does not constitute experience of objects.
Kant stresses a more fundamental point in the B edition than in the
A edition. At the heart of the theory of synthesis, there are several
claims about the process by which a mind that accesses objects through
intuition and comes to have mental states that represent such objects
by means of those aections. Sensations are inadequate for object
awareness by themselves, the mind must match or align the content it
nds in its sensory encounters with the cognitive tools it possesses, and
unless there can be this conformity between the two, cognition will not be
possible.

366

MATT MCCORMICK

The characterization of combination in the B edition can be employed

to answer a standard objection to Kants view of geometry. After the
discovery of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth century, Kant
was widely criticized for arguing that space and time, which he conceived
of in Euclidean terms, necessarily congure our knowledge. If we can
have mathematical knowledge of non-Euclidean geometries, it would
seem that Kant must be mistaken about the forms of our intuition being
Euclidean. Kants view would conne our knowledge of geometry to
Euclidean geometry. The revised version of the argument for combination
in the B edition establishes the need for combination of intuitions without
a reference to their spatiality and temporality. In this more abstract
version of his argument, Kant is not committed to the view that a subject
must possess Euclidean forms of intuition. Kant argues that for any mind
that accesses objects by way of a receptive faculty of intuition, the mind
must perform combinatory work to recast those presentations according
to its conceptual scheme. What is crucial to Kants argument is that the
mind in question must be aected by objects by way of intuition. The
presentations stand in need of combination, but the mode of aection is
not necessarily Euclidean.
Kant believes that there are a number of more specic tasks and
faculties within the framework of intuition, imagination, and understanding that can be successfully demarcated by a transcendental analysis
of the mind. To bridge the gap from intuition to judgment, Kant argues
that three essentially dierent kinds of combination or synthesis must
occur for cognition of objects to be possible. Since, for Kant, a distinction
in the sort of mental task that is being performed warrants drawing a
distinction between faculties, he argues that the pre-cognitive labor must
be divided among faculties of synthesis for apprehension, reproduction,
and recognition. We will deal with each in turn.
The discussion of space and time in the A edition and combination in
the B edition has shown that we have presentations that are manifold. We
experience objects that have diverse spatial and temporal features. We
cannot apprehend all spaces and all times at once. We have to combine
presentations from dierent spaces and times. Kant claims that in intuition the presentations are each absolute unities, and are disconnected
from each other. Insofar as it is considered solely in an instant, a
presentation is an undierentiated whole to the mind. Distinguishing
parts or discriminating features takes cognitive work, and Kant wishes to
emphasize that the mind cannot grasp or recognize those features solely
by its receptivity, or insofar as it is aected. An awareness of the object as
an object of judgment cannot migrate in through the senses. It must be
the product of the minds construction. Connecting sensations into a

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

367

presentation of a unied object requires that they be gone through and

gathered together by the faculty of imagination or understanding.
Kant calls this act the synthesis of apprehension. The challenge is to
understand why and how Kant dierentiates between the reception of
sensations by intuition and the apprehension of them in synthesis. By
saying that the intuitions constitutive of judgment must be apprehended,
how is Kant making a claim that is substantially dierent than what he
says about sensibility? In Kants division of pre-cognitive labor, the
dierence in function warrants a dierence in the faculty. To Kant,
the receptivity of intuition warrants drawing a distinction between it and
the active, or spontaneous faculty of the understanding. Furthermore,
intuition only provides the matter of thought; the understanding will
impose the organization. For the task of judgment to be accomplished,
the faculty possessing concepts that will give them form must apprehend
the data provided it by intuition. The understanding, not just sensibility,
must take those intuitions as its own.
Since apprehension is serial and unied and judgment ranges over
more presentations than what is contained in a single moment, Kants
next step is to postulate a capacity for reproduction of non-occurrent
presentations for synthesis with other occurrent and non-occurrent
presentations. But Kants rst step in this sub-argument takes an odd
turn that muddles the line of the Subjective Deduction argument. He
recalls a psychological phenomenon discovered by Hume, There is a
[natural] law whereby presentations that have often followed or accompanied one another will nally associate, and thereby enter into connection, with one another.39 Hume argues that, In all reasonings from
experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by
any argument or process of the understanding.40 To the extent that
Hume means that there are aspects of our judgments of objects that
cannot be traced to any inferential, reasoned, or sensory source, Kant
agrees. In his solution to the judgment gap, Hume strives to be as parsimonious as possible in his postulation of psychological principles.
Hume argues that the principle of association provides a full explanation.
With causes and eects, when a person nds similar objects or events to
be constantly conjoined together. . . he immediately infers the existence of
one object from the appearance of the other.41 And after the constant
conjunction of two objectsheat and ame, for instance, weight and
soliditywe are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the
appearance of the other.42
Kants rejection of Humes theory of association forms the foundation
of the rest of Kants theory of mind. Association cannot do the job
assigned to it, says Kant, because at best it only allows us to draw

368

MATT MCCORMICK

contingent, a posteriori connections. A theory of association does not

allow us to explain how it is possible to form judgments that are about
objective rather than merely subjective states. Unfortunately, Kants
critique of association is brief and obscure. He says that association,
presupposes, however, that appearances themselves are actually subject
to such a rule, and that such accompanying or following actually takes
place, in conformity with certain rules, in the manifold of the presentations of these appearances. For otherwise our empirical imagination
would never get to do anything conforming to its ability, and hence
would, like a defunct ability unknown even to ourselves, remain hidden in
the minds interior.43 The argument can be claried with some points
from the B edition. Kant agrees with Hume that we associate presentations that are constantly conjoined. After constant conjunction in experience, when one presentation occurs, it brings the other presentation to
mind, whether the object is present or not. The operation of this law,
however, presupposes the operation of another more fundamental nonempirical law that makes the association possible. At best, association
would make it possible to make a claim about our subjective states,
When I support a body, then I feel a pressure of heaviness. I could not
say: It, the body, is heavywhich amounts to saying that these two
presentations are not merely together in perception (no matter how often
repeated), but are combined in the object, i.e., combined independently of
what the subjects state is.44 What is missing from the associationist
account is how the mind was able to come to form thoughts of objects
that could be associated. No matter how often they are felt, sensory
stimuli themselves are merely subjective feels. They cannot inform the
mind a posteriori about the distinction between the minds subjective
apprehension of objects and the independent, objective state of the things
it experiences. That would require an awareness of the representation not
merely as it is experienced but as a representation of some object that has
its own states. No experience can inform the mind of this distinction
because it is this distinction that makes experience of objects, conceived of
as objects, possible. At most, association would connects sensory states in
the order and arrangement that they are experienced. Kant concludes that
judging objects necessarily presupposes that there must be some rule or
rules that do more than merely associate.
The failure of the theory of association reveals two tasks which will
require two faculties: the synthetic faculty of reproduction recalls or
reproduces presentations that are no longer occurrent, making them
representations, and the synthetic faculty of recognition in concepts will
govern the reproduction in a fashion that enables us to make the subject and
object distinction in judgment that mere empirical association does not.

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

369

Before turning to recognition and concepts, let us complete Kants

account of reproduction which contains an important insight about the
role of memory in judgment. Kant says: If I want to draw a line in
thought, or to think the time from one noon to the next, or even just to
present a certain number, then I must, rst of all, necessarily apprehend in
thought one of these manifold presentations after the other. But if I always
lost from my thoughts the preceding presentations (the rst parts of the
line, the preceding parts of the time, or the sequentially presented units)
and did not reproduce them as I proceeded to the following ones, then
there could never arise a whole presentation; nor could there arise any of
the mentioned thoughtsindeed, not even the purest and most basic
presentations of space and time.45 Kant argues that memory plays a role
in the precognitive work that makes consciousness of objects possible.
Memory does not merely make it possible to remember objects previously
experienced. It is a necessary for judging that there are objects. From
moment to moment, sensations ee through consciousness with nothing
intrinsic to connect them. First there is one feel, then another, and then yet
another. If each one was examined only for what it is without drawing any
broader connections, there would be no thread that ties them together. If
one sensation sprung up in consciousness and then vanished as the next
one took its place, with consciousness unable to retain, or represent that
which has past, no synthesis of the disparate intuition states would be
possible. If no synthesis of the disconnected temporal states were possible,
then the mind could not become aware of objects as objects.
Hume had begun to see the same problem in his discussion of the
identity and continuity of objects that are neither identical nor continuous
in our sense impressions. According to Hume, with the imagination we
feign an identity that is not there, smoothing over the transitions, interruptions, and discontinuities. But Kants point is much stronger. If the
mind is to grasp and judge that there are objects as unied, synthesized
collections of its disparate intuitions, it must be able to bind the succession of intuitions together. In particular, it must be able to regenerate
intuitions that are no longer occurrent in experience and bind them all
together. Non-occurrent presentations cannot be regenerated unless the
mind possesses some faculty of reproduction to represent that which has
already transpired in receptivity. But like many of Kants labels for
mental faculties, the role of memory that we are most familiar with in our
own lives is not the same as the role it plays in judgment. What must be
remembered are not judgments or objects, they are the presentations from
intuition that are constitutive of judgments of objects. The sort of
memory that operates in reproduction is below the level of object
awareness.

370

MATT MCCORMICK

Some contemporary studies on brain dysfunction illustrate Kants

prescient point about the role of memory in experience of objects. Oliver
Sacks, for instance, tells the stories of patients with a neurological
disorder, severe cases of Korsakovs syndrome, that have retroactively
destroyed their long term memory as well as their short term memory
capacity.46 Many of the patients can recall in surprising detail what
happened to them before a certain date. But for all the time since, they
have possessed only a small window of recollection, in some cases as
small as a few seconds. Jimmie, one of Sackss patients, can remember
quite clearly before 1945, but he cannot remember a conversation he had
2 minutes ago. In the patients that can still function at all, they have
learned strategies for dealing with the disability. They rely upon habits
formed before the memory loss to perform common daily functions. But
new situations, new environments, and new challenges ll the short-term
memory person with anxiety and confusion. The more severe their loss
of short and long-term memory functions, the less conscious of the
world around them they are and the less able they are to function in it.
Interestingly, Sacks notes that one of the tragic things about the
Korsakovs patients is that they seem to be largely unaware of what they
have lost. They nd it dicult to understand explanations of the
problem they suer from, and they do not seem to be deeply disheartened by it. Their response ts well with Kants claim that memory is one
of the necessary threshold faculties for experience of objects. Not only
are they close to slipping beneath the threshold, but they are lacking
some of the cognitive abilities to grasp what the dierence between the
levels of awareness are.
Let us imagine the extreme case of a no-memory person, a person who
does not have intact memories of a distant past, and who cannot remember
anything beyond the momentary sensation currently being felt. For such a
person, every moment is new, lled with surprise, and utterly without
connection to the past. Kants point is that such a person could not become aware of objects as objects. She could no sooner begin to form a
thought about an occurrent sensation than it would vanish, being replaced
by another sensation that is similar or dierent. Grasping that the occurrent sensation contains something that is similar, or dierent from the
previous sensation would require that the person reach back into the past
and recall the experience that was had, but no longer is occurrent, which ex
hypothesi is impossible. The no-memory person would not be able to
thread together a world of objects with any temporal duration from the
ephemeral and unmemorable sensations of her experience. Her awareness
would be conned to the present moment without any expectation about
the future or memory of the past. Her world would have no objects.

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

371

Being able to draw on the past is necessary for judgment, but it is not
sucient, Kant argues. We must be able to recall non-occurrent intuitions
in order to form thoughts about the objects they represent. But how they
are reproduced, in what order, and how they are connected to other mental
states is vitally important if judgment is to be possible. In his explanation of
the Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept, we get the more complete
account of what is required from the subject to forge intuitions into object
awareness. Kant has established that multiple presentations need to be
combined, and in his rejection of associationism he makes it clear that
judgments of objects cannot be achieved by merely connecting the
presentations in the order they occur. At best, associating our intuitions
informs us of only our subjective states: we feel redness and heaviness, but
it would not allow us to assert that there is a red, heavy body. Sensations
alone cannot inform us that there is such a thing as a body with its own
properties independent of the sensations. Strictly speaking, we would not
even be able to attribute sensory experiences to ourselves such as that we
are having a red, heavy sensation, because that too presupposes the ability
to recognize objects and attribute properties to them. Associationism
underdetermines the distinction between subjects and objects in judgment.
Nevertheless, in order to have cognition of objects, the mind must reproduce its non-occurrent presentations. If the presentations are reproduced
haphazardly, or without any determinate order or arrangement, the mind
will not be able to grasp any unied object. There will be nothing but a
random play of representations, associated only in the order in which they
were experienced. Kant says, But if presentations reproduced one another
indiscriminately, just as they happen to come together, then there would
again arise no determinate coherence of presentations and hence no cognition whatever, but merely an accumulation of them devoid of any
rule.47 Let us suppose that a mind reproduces and combines red and
heavy presentations in one moment, then red and lightweight, and then
lightweight and painful presentations without any regularity or structure.
We would not say that such experience was experience of objects at all, but
just a booming, buzzing confusion, as William James put it.
The combination of presentations involved in judgment must occur
according to some non-associative and non-random scheme. It is not
possible to form judgments of objects that have no determinate, regular,
or predictable behavior. Unless it is equipped with rules or laws for
organizing the reproduction of its intuitions, a mind will not be able to
conceive of objects at all. To connect presentations in some order that is
not just their order of occurrence, a rule is needed to indicate which
presentations out of the manifold should be connected and which should
be ignored.

372

MATT MCCORMICK

Some guidance for parsing presentations is needed to distinguish

subject from object, and one object from another. Occurrent and
non-occurrent presentations, including those that will be attributed to the
subject, can be connected in an innite variety of ways. Which nonoccurrent presentations, or which parts of occurrent and non-occurrent
presentations get selected or reproduced by the imagination must depend
upon the mind. Nothing in the presentations considered by themselves
makes reference to any other presentations, or indicates which presentations should be combined or how they are combined. In what has come
to be known as the binding problem, the heavy sensation, for example,
considered by itself does not inform the mind whether it is the red thing
that is heavy or the green thing, or even that there is an object distinct
from the sensation. The rules that make the distinction between subjects
and objects possible cannot come from the presentations themselves.
They are rules for how the presentations are to be connected to be seen as
subjects and objects. If the rules cannot be found in the a posteriori
presentations, then those rules that make the combination of presentation
possible must be a priori. Somehow the mind needs to be able to move
beyond what is oered by the senses only, presentations in themselves
must not in the same way be regarded as objects (outside our power of
presentation.)48 In order to form cognitions about objects, not only do
we have to organize them according to conceptual rules, but the mind
must come to conceive of the representation of the object as a representation of an object that itself is distinct from the object. To cognitively
grasp that there is an object, is to grasp that there is something it is to be
that object, that it has a nature or character of its own. To grasp that it
has its own nature or character is to assert that something is the case
about it and, by implication, other things are not the case about that
object.
Forming a judgment about the object requires that the mind conceive
of its representation of the object as being of or about the object, and that
our conception of it may or may not capture what is the case in the object.
The argument for the need for concepts has been based upon the fact that
intuitions themselves, singly or jointly, do not intrinsically represent or
succeed in referring. To order presentations according to the rule of a
concept is in eect to grasp that something is the case, that some
presentations should be bound together and some should not. But such
rule governed binding cannot occur without a conception of some
objective state of aairs that makes the distinction between what is and
what is not the case possible. To judge by means of concepts, according to
Kant, is to make a claim about an objective state of aairs, rightly or
wrongly, Thus to say The body is heavy is not merely to state that the

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

373

two representations have always been conjoined in my perception. . . what

we are asserting is that they are combined in the object, no matter what
the state of the subject may be.49 A concept cannot be successfully and
meaningfully applied unless it is possible for there to be some conditions
under which the concept does not apply. A judgment cannot consistently
or coherently be used to assert both that something is and is not the case,
otherwise there is no rule like structure and the concept conveys nothing.
It ceases to even be recognizable as a concept. To use a simple empirical
example, the concept of being brown is without meaning or use unless it
makes possible the separation of brown things from non-brown things.
On Kants view of concepts as rules, concepts cannot have meaning unless
they make it possible to assert that something is the case. Asserting that
something is the case is to conceive of an objective state of aairs that
may or may not conform to that which the concept in a judgment is used
to assert. The application of concepts in judgment presupposes a conception of objects that are distinct from the judgments that are made
about them.
The fact that we are capable of judgments of objects demonstrates that
we do conceive of objects as being independent of our sensations. The
mystery is how we are able to do that, particularly since our sensations are
inadequate to the task of allowing us to conceive of something separate
from them. Kant acknowledges the inexplicability of this ability: this
object must be thought only as something as such = x.50 The x is a
sort of place holder in cognition. It is the template of a thing in general that
allows the mind to move from merely having sensible intuitions to taking
those intuitions as referring to, or indicating the state of something beyond
the presentation itself. Since the template is necessary and a priori, Kant
calls it a transcendental object. What we know about it is purely formal
and based on the most abstract requirements of judging objects.
But Kant believes that more can be said about the transcendental
template. The categories are the a priori concepts that constitute the
object of experience. They enumerate the various lawlike features that an
object must have to be experienced as an object. They enable a shift from
a merely aected, feeling consciousness to an active consciousness that is
capable of grasping that there are objects that are dierent from itself, the
objects have their own states, and they are separate from its presentations.
Since the categorial concepts, unlike any of the other concepts a mind
possesses, make it possible for its presentations to refer to the objects, we
can say from our sensing red that the object is red. As a rule, the concept
of being red enables the mind to separate the red objects from the objects
that are not red, but the categories make it possible that the mind can
even grasp that there are such things as objects.

374

MATT MCCORMICK

To the consternation of his commentators, Kant does not present an

argument for the uniqueness of the categories, or say that the list is
complete in this discussion. To the contrary, just as he said that the forms
of intuition are arbitrarily space and time for us, he says, But why our
understanding has this peculiarity, that it a priori brings about unity of
apperception only by means of the categories, and only by just this kind
and number of themfor this no further reason can be given.51 But the
need for some transcendental template for object recognition is not
contingent. Even if someone were to reject the uniqueness or completeness of Kants table, the implication for Kants list of transcendental
faculties is that the mind must possess some a priori concepts that enable
it to distinguish between subjects and objects that cannot be facilitated by
ordinary, empirically derived concepts.
There is a parallel between Kants view of the categories and categoriality in general and a point we made earlier concerning the spatial and
temporality of intuition. In the light of the development of non-Euclidean
geometries, it is a virtue of Kants account that the need for combination is
not dependent upon the Euclidean spatiality and temporality of intuitions.
The completeness and uniqueness of Kants Table of Categories has long
been debated. With 19th and 20th century developments in logic, Kants
essentially Aristotelian logical scheme has become even more doubtful. The
portion of the Subjective Deduction that we are now reconstructing resists
these criticisms of the Table of Categories because Kant argues that categoriality, or the possession of some a priori concepts that form a transcendental object template, are necessary for judgment. The direct
implication on the subjective side is that the mind of the subject must be in
possession of this object template and have a faculty that is capable of
applying it to intuitions. But Kant does not insist in the Subjective
Deduction argument that only his list of categories will serve the function.
He merely asserts that the Table of Categories is the set of concepts that we
nd ourselves employing. As he did with space and time, he seems to have
left the possibility open that other beings might employ dierent categories.
But the Subjective Deduction shows that an a priori conception of the
object as a place holder in cognition cannot be dispensed with in the
judgment of objects of experience, and neither can the faculty that applies it.
In the portion of the argument concerning the categories, Kant does
not address the aim of the Subjective Deduction directly. He has been
diverted to the Objective Deduction with an argument that the formal
conditions for object representation must include the application of
concepts, at least some of which are a priori. But the argument has
implications on the subjective side of Kants goals. There are several
implications for the transcendental character of the judging mind. First,

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

375

Kants argument so far has shown that there must be a faculty of

concepts that provides the lawlike structure needed to cast sensations into
object form. Following tradition, Kant calls this faculty the understanding: We have earlier explicated the understanding in various ways:
as a spontaneity of cognition (in contrast to the receptivity of sensibility);
as a power to think; or as a power of concepts, or again of judgments.
These explications, when inspected closely, all come to the same. We may
now characterize the understanding as our power of rules.52 That our
experience is spatial and temporal and subject to Kants particular table
of categories may be a contingent facts about human beings, but the
necessity of a faculty of concepts for a mind that has sensible intuitions is
not. Even though the particulars of object representations appear to be
relativized to human beings for Kant, the more abstract requirements of
threefold synthesis are not. Even though the reason we have just the
categories that we do is a mystery to us, the Subjective Deduction shows
that the faculties of the mind, not experience, must be the source of the
object template that makes judgments of objects possible.
The Subjective Deduction is not an argument for the categories. Nor is
it an argument for the limitation thesis. What Kant establishes objectively
is that since experience of objects requires some non-associative concepts,
and some of the concepts are necessarily presupposed in object representation, they are a priori. Kant shows categoriality without an argument for his table of categories. On the subjective side, he shows that a
subject must do more than merely associate temporally and spatially
contiguous presentations. A subject must combine according to rules and
therefore must possess a faculty of concepts that is closely integrated with
the other pre-cognitive faculties. Furthermore, since some of the concepts
are categorial, the mental faculties of a subject must also be the source of
the concepts that are constitutive of object experience. Kant says that the
understanding provides both kinds of concepts. But the argument for the
limitation thesis and the argument for categoriality in the Objective
Deduction can be separated from Kants theory of mind.
Kant does not give a separate designation to the faculty of pure,
a priori concepts, but given their substantial dierences from other
a posteriori concepts, he may have been justied in doing so. The dierence between receptivity and activity are adequate in Kants mind to
warrant a distinction between the faculties of intuition and understanding
respectively. Why is it that Kant does not argue that the a priori concepts,
which make it possible to cognize objects and have experience that results
in empirical concepts, are dierent enough in function from empirical
concepts to justify introducing a new object-making faculty of mind? The
answer can be found in Kants stressing of the fundamental similarity of

376

MATT MCCORMICK

a priori and a posteriori concepts. The ordering and combining of

representations is the essential purpose of both kinds of concepts.
Dividing our experience according to the distinction between the subject
and the object is a matter of ordering and combining the representations
that the mind attributes to an object, and distinguishing them from the
representations that it attributes to itself. In the case of empirical concepts
we divide our experience into those representations that belong to the
subject and those that belong to the object. A priori concepts make
judgments of objects possible, empirical concepts capture the properties
that objects possess. Kant would have been justied in calling a priori
concepts something other than concepts, just as he insists that space and
time are not concepts but forms of intuition. Perhaps the transcendental
object = x description in the A edition reects his awareness of this
issue.
The Subjective Deduction also contains a refutation of Humes
notorious denial of proof for an identical, unied self.53 There can be no
unied representation of the object unless all of the faculties and the
mental contents on which the faculties operate are possessed by the same
subject. Let us imagine that the faculties of intuition, apprehension,
reproduction, recognition, imagination, understanding, and reason were
each possessed by dierent beings. It would be impossible for them singly
to form a unied representation of an object. Kant says: All possible
appearances belong, as presentations, to the entire possible self-consciousness. But from this self-consciousness, taken as a transcendental
presentation, numerical identity is inseparable and is a priori certain. For
nothing can enter cognition without doing so by means of this original
apperception.54 The transcendental ground of unity is necessarily presupposed in all judgments of empirical objects. Kant says that empirical
consciousness [of objects] is based a priori on pure apperception, i.e., on
the thoroughgoing identity of oneself in all possible presentations.55
However, Kant does not claim to have empirical knowledge or cognition
of the unied, identical self, or claim that it is a substance. That there is a
unied ground of the faculties that contributes to judgment is necessarily
presupposed by our judgments. But the faculties or the self cannot be
subjected to the very cognitive processes that they make possible.
Recognizing spatial and temporal matter is the end product of the
processes.
Experience of objects as Kant construes it entails that a subject who
has a representation of a unied, whole object must be identical with the
being who possesses: the original intuitions that are taken up and unied
in the presentation of the object, the faculty of apprehension that acquires
the intuitions for synthesis in judgment, the faculty of reproduction that

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

377

represents the intuitions for synthesis in judgment, the faculty of recognition that guides the reproduction of non-occurrent intuitions, and the
faculty of concepts that governs the synthesis of reproduction and
recognition.
One of the sources of confusion about the chapter on the transcendental deduction has been the various unities that play a role in cognition.
The confusion is compounded by Kants insistence on mingling the discussion of the various unities involved in ordinary experience with a
discussion of what kind of cognitive access we can have to the transcendental unity of the self. Let us call the unied cognition of intuitions
in an object judgment the synthetic unity of representation. This is the
unity that Kant has in mind when he says, When we have brought about
synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitionthis is when we say that we
cognize the object.56 Transcendental apperception or sometimes the
transcendental unity of apperception is the unied self that must necessarily possess the faculties and intuitions for cognition, as we saw above.
As Kant puts it, Now there can take place in us no cognitions, and no
connection and unity of cognitions among one another, without that
unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions, and by
reference to which all presentation of objects is alone possible. Now this
pure, original, and immutable consciousness I shall call transcendental
apperception.57
We can see the extent of the agreement and the disagreement between
Hume and Kant with regard to the self. Kant refutes Humes argument that
we cannot give a philosophical defense of the existence of a self. Kant
agrees with Hume, however, that we cannot introspect a persisting,
autonomous substance. The only sorts of objects with a determinable
existence for us are the objects that can aect our faculty of sensibility and
be subjected to the conditions of judgment in the understanding. The
transcendental unity of apperception is not that sort of object. As Kant
says, I have no cognition of myself as I am but merely cognition of how I
appear to myself. Hence consciousness of oneself is far from being a cognition of oneself.58 Introspection cannot reveal the transcendental ground
of unity that makes experience of objects possible. Nevertheless, we have
deduced the existence of this highest formal ground of the self in the
arguments of the Subjective Deduction with a transcendental argument. It
is necessarily presupposed by ordinary empirical cognition of objects.
The existence of the transcendental self is unique among the things we
can direct our thoughts toward. The transcendental self cannot become
an object of experience for us because it is a thing that makes objects of
experience possible for us. The paradox is that to cognize it would be to
subject it to its own pre-cognitive processes, or in eect make its existence

378

MATT MCCORMICK

dependent upon its own existence. The impossibility of experiencing it as

an ordinary object is not a contingent matter.

5. Conclusion
Kants comments regarding the Subjective Deduction and his revisions
in the B edition are not indicators that Kant lost condence in the
argument or that he changed his view about it on any philosophical
grounds. His reasons involve clarifying and focusing on the larger aims
of the Critique of Pure Reason and the limitation thesis. The arguments
in the B edition also appear to be dierent because Kant broadens the
range of cognitive systems that his analysis includes. The combination
argument in the B edition is more general in that it addresses nontemporal intuitions, but it is no less psychological in its implications. As
opposed to commentators such as Brook, Kitcher, and Meerbote, Kant
did not see the Subjective Deduction as a crucial part of the central aim
of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kants principle task in the Critique of
Pure Reason is to present an argument that constrains metaphysics by
limiting the possibility of knowledge to the empirical realm. The notoriously dicult Transcendental Deduction, and more specically the
Objective Deduction, are essential to Kants task of arguing for the
objective validity or universal and necessary application of the categories
to all objects of experience. In addition to the argument for the limitation thesis, but not essential to it, Kant oers a theory of mind that is
built upon the requirements of making judgments of objects from
experience in the Subjective Deduction. This argument can stand largely
on its own and hence can be reduced in the B edition, not because Kant
disavows it, but because it does not contribute directly to showing why it
is that knowledge of the realm beyond empirical experience is impossible. Since Kant is concerned to reduce potential confusion for his
readers, focus directly on the argument for the limitation thesis, and to
streamline his argument for it, he chooses to reduce the presence of the
Subjective Deduction in the B edition. But his condence and interest in
a transcendental account of the mind of a knowing subject never waned.
We have seen that there is a great deal in the argument that deserves
attention. It has been suggested, especially by Brook, that contemporary cognitive science research might be able to take something from
Kant. Separating the Subjective Deduction and reconstructing it as we
have done here makes that possibility even more plausible. Echoing
Kants well-known plea about metaphysics, articial intelligence
researchers like Jon Doyle have complained, Is it not a scandal that

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

379

such common notions as mind and thought enter so prominently in our

understanding of the world, yet nd so little deniteness in the sciences
they underlie? Doyle advances the need for a general study of all
possible minds. It may not be possible, he says, to set out in
advance a denite class containing all possible minds, just as biologists
have had to abandon all denitions of living things and adopt an
accommodating approach to newly discovered life forms.59 But Kant
seeks to do just that with regard to minds that judge. His analysis of
the cognitive labor that produces experience of objects has resulted in a
set of highly abstract conclusions about the faculties and abilities that a
mind that is capable of judging objects must have. It must have access
to the objects through some receptive faculty of intuition. It must have
faculties that apprehend the manifold of presentations acquired in
intuition. For the purpose of forming judgments out of the presentations, it must be able to reproduce the presentations that are no longer
occurrent. Memory of non-occurrent presentations play an essential
role. Some faculty of concepts or rules must provide guidance for the
structured combination of the presentations. The mind must be in
possession of and capable of applying an object template that enables it
to grasp the distinction between subjects and objects. The template, the
categories in human beings, must be a priori. The various faculties and
functions that are necessary for cognition must all be integrated into
the same subject. The transcendental unity of apperception is Kants
label for this unied self.
We have also seen that the Subjective Deduction possesses a level of
abstraction and generality that makes it immune to some of the standard
objections to Kants Euclidean presuppositions and his Table of Categories. The Subjective Deduction draws conclusions about a mind that
accesses objects by way of a receptive faculty of intuition, whether its
forms are Euclidean space and time or not, and it establishes the need for
categoriality in judgment, whether it employs Kants Table of Categories
or not.
The failure of many interpreters of the Transcendental Deduction to
appreciate its subjective side have arisen in part from a failure to
properly locate the place and role of the Subjective Deduction within
Kants larger goals. The group of commentators who have been
inspired to eradicate or condemn the Subjective Deduction by Kants
comments about it and his revisions in the B edition have been too
hasty. Kant consistently praised and defended the Subjective Deduction. Understood in the proper light, the Subjective Deduction has a
place in Kants critical system that is narrowly circumscribed by his
argument for the limitation thesis in the Critique of Pure Reason and

380

MATT MCCORMICK

his critical analyses of Hume, as well as rational and empirical

psychology.60

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996), A xvi.
2. See Henry Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1983), p. 133.
3. See Peter Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 12.
4. H.W. Cassirer, Kants First Critique (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.,
1954), p. 64.
5. See Andrew Brook, Kant and the Mind (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See Patricia Kitcher, Kants Transcendental Psychology (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See Ralf Meerbote, A Sometimes Neglected
Aspect of Kants Subjective Deduction, Proceedings: Sixth International Kant
Congress, (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1989), pp. 259270.
Also see Norman Kemp Smith, Commentary to Kants Critique of Pure Reason
(Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1992).
6. See Brook, op. cit., p.159
7. Kitcher, op. cit., p. 90.
8. See Kant, op. cit., A xvi.
9. Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. in Philosophy of
Material Nature, trans. James Ellington, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), Ak. 475,
n. 8. See also Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 119.
10. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 146.
11. Kant, op. cit., B 147148. See also Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,
trans. James Ellington. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), Ak. 297.
12. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A xvi.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Kemp Smith, op. cit., p. 236.
16. Kant, op. cit., A xvivii.
17. Kemp Smith, op. cit., p. 48.
18. Kant, op. cit., A xvivii.
19. See ibid., A xvii.
20. Ibid., A 93, B 126.
21. Ibid., B 145.
22. See ibid., A 93, A 129130, B 166.
23. Kant, op. cit., B 119. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. in Philosophy of
Material Nature, trans. James Ellington. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), Ak. 475, n 8.
24. See Ralf Meerbote, A Sometimes Neglected Aspect of Kants Subjective Deduction, Proceedings: Sixth International Kant Congress. (Washington, D.C.:
University Press of America, 1985), p. 267.
25. See Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Ak. 265.
26. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A ix.

KANTS THEORY OF MIND

381

27. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Ak. 471.

28. See Anne Treisman, Features and Objects in Visual Processing, Scientic
American 255 (1986): 114125.
29. Kant, op. cit., Ak 475, n 8.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 19.
34. See Kitcher, op. cit. See Brook, op cit. See Meerbote, op cit. See also Matt
McCormick, Questions about Functionalism in Kants Philosophy of Mind:
Lessons for Cognitive Science, Journal of Experimental and Theoretic Articial
Intelligence 15 (2003).
35. Kant, op. cit., A 99.
36. Ibid., B 130.
37. Ibid., A 42.
38. See ibid., B 130.
39. Ibid., A 100. See also B 140, B 142, & B 152.
40. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. 41.
41. Ibid., p. 42.
42. Ibid., p. 43.
43. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 100.
44. Ibid., B 142.
45. Ibid., A 102.
46. See Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (New York: Touchstone, 1998), ch. 2.
47. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 121.
48. Ibid., A 104.
49. Ibid., B 142.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., B 145146.
52. Ibid., A 126.
53. See Kitcher, op. cit., pp. 91116.
54. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 113.
55. Ibid., A 116.
56. Ibid., A 105.
57. Ibid., A 107.
58. Ibid., B 158.
59. Jon Doyle, The Foundations of Psychology: A Logico-Computational Inquiry
into the Concept of Mind, in Philosophy and AI, eds. Robert Cummins and John
Pollock, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 3941.
60. I owe several people gratitude for their input on this article, including Ralf
Meerbote, Lewis White Beck, and Rebekah Donaldson in particular.