6 - The first-edition subjective deduction: the object of ‘one experience’

Summary

Having sketched the geography, both conceptual and textual, of Kant's work on the mind and marked out some of the bogs, it, is time to get down to work. In an introductory section, we begin with a brief look at what a subjective deduction is about and why Kant included one. In the remainder of Part I we will examine some aspects of Kant's views on the synthesis of objects of representation and the uniting of a multiplicity of representations into what he called ‘one experience’ (A108), that is, one global representation. Part II is concerned with a more exegetical matter: the perplexing business of how Kant connected these things to self-awareness and why. Though Kant's ideas about synthesis and unity, the heart of his theory of mind, are parts of a theory of awareness of objects, he also connected these things to awareness of self. Part II examines this perplexing connection. (We have already discussed self-awareness itself in Chapter 4.) As I said earlier, my interest is in uncovering what Kant has to tell us about the mind; thus, I am less interested in whether TD managed to do anything that might be called ‘deducing the Categories’.

As I said in Chapter 5:1, I view TD as primarily an argument from awareness of objects, Guyer's first starting point, not awareness of self, his second. This is clearer in the first edition than in the second.