Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:06:55.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant's“I think” and the agential approach to self-knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Houston Smit
Houston Smit*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
*
Houston Smit [email protected]Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper relates Kant'saccount of pure apperception to the agential approach to self-knowledge. It argues that his famous claim ‘The I think must be able to accompany all of my representations’ (B131) does not concern the possibility of self-ascribing beliefs. Kant does advance this claim in the service of identifying an a priori warrant we have as psychological persons, that is, subjects of acts of thinking that are imputable to us. But this warrant is not one to self-knowledge that we have as critical reasoners. It is, rather, an a priori warrant we have, as thinkers, to prescribe to given representations their conformity to principles of thinking inherent in our capacity of understanding itself.

Keywords

Self-knowledgeself-consciousnessapperceptionunderstandingpersontranscendental deduction of the categoriesprinciples of thinking
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 49 , Issue 7 , November 2019 , pp. 980 - 1011
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boyle, M. 2009. “Two Kinds of Self-Knowledge.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78: 133–164. doi:10.1111/phpr.2008.78.issue-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 1988. “Individualism and Self-Knowledge.” Journal of Philosophy 85: 649–663. doi:10.5840/jphil1988851112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 1993. “Content Preservation.” The Philosophical Review 103: 457–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 1996. “Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge.” Part 1 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96: 91–116. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/96.1.91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 2003. “Perceptual Entitlement.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67: 503–548. doi:10.1111/phpr.2003.67.issue-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 2011. “Self and Self-Understanding.” Journal of Philosophy 108 (6/7): 287–383. doi:10.5840/jphil20111086/715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edgley, R. 1969. Reason in Theory and Practice. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference, edited by McDowell, J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gertler, B. 2011. Self-Knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Henrich, D. (1976) Identaet Und Objectivitaet. Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Keller, P. 1998. Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. 2011. Kant'sThinker. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. 2017. “A Kantian Critique of Transparency.” In Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self, edited by Gomes, Anil and Stephenson, Andrew, 158–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moran, R. 2001. Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Setiya, K. 2011. “Knowledge of Intention.” In Essays on Anscombe'sIntention, edited by Ford, Anton, Hornsby, Jennifer, and Stoutland, Frederick, 170–197. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smit, H. 2009. “Kant on Apriority and the Spontaneity of Cognition.” In Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams, edited by Newlands, Samuel and Jorgensen, Larry M., 188–251. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, A. 2008. “Self-Knowledge: Rationalism Vs. Empiricism.” Philosophy Compass 3 (2): 325–352. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00125.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar