For Kant, “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all,” and, therefore, if the I think didn’t accompany all of one’s representations, one could not think of anything (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B132). The representation that precedes thinking is, for Kant, intuition. “Thus all manifold of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which this manifold to be encountered,” or, in other words, these pre-thoughtful representations, intuitions, have a necessary relation to the I think in that it is the same I in the I think that encounters the manifold in the first place (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B132). But, let us not forget, the I think is itself a representation, and it is “an act of spontaneity, i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B132). Thus, while the I think and the manifold have a necessary relation, it seems that neither occurs due to one another. The I think, for Kant, then, is “the pure apperception … since it is that self-consciousness which, because it produces the representation I think, which must be able to accompany all others and which in all consciousness is one and the same, cannot be accompanied by any further representation” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B132). In other words, the I think is pure apperception, for it is not empirical apperception, but rather it is that self-consciousness that, in producing the I think, cannot produce anything “further back” or “before the I think,” so to speak. Further designating the purity (its independence from the manifold) of this apperception, Kant says, “I also call [pure apperception’s] unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B132). But let us not say that analyticity comes first here, rather than the analytical unity of apperception, it is the synthetic unity of apperception that is “the highest point to which one must affix all use of the understanding, even the whole of logic and, after it, transcendental philosophy; indeed this faculty is the understanding itself” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134). It is “only because I can combine a manifold of given representations in one consciousness that it is possible for me to represent the identity of the consciousness in these representations itself, i.e., the analytical unity of apperception is only possible under the presupposition of some synthetic one” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B133–134). In other words, it is only because I can commit the act of a synthesis of representations, that I can have analytical unity of apperception. It is in having the I think as that representation that accompanies all other representations, that I am able to “call them [the manifold of all intuitions] all together my representations; for otherwise I would have as multicolored, diverse a self as I have presentations of which I am conscious” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134). This is exactly why the transcendental unity of self-consciousness that is the unity of pure apperception allows for the possibility of a priori cognition. If it isn’t clear why it allows for this possibility, then let me further explain. Self-consciousness, through pure apperception and then the unity of pure apperception, wherein the I think accompanies the manifold, is able to organize itself, and not itself be a flurry of representations. Or, in other words, before I determinately think in relation to an object, the I think, the act of pure apperception, must occur, for if it does not then self-consciousness would have no unity (and would not be?). In this sense, Kant concludes, “Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as given a priori, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes a priori all my determinate thinking” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134). This synthesis “does not lie in the objects” and “cannot as it were be borrowed from them through perception and by that means first taken up into the understanding,” rather, this synthesis is “only an operation of the understanding, which is itself nothing further than the faculty of combining a priori and bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception, which principle is the supreme one in the whole of human cognition” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134–135). The understanding itself, as the faculty of synthesizing the synthetic unity of apperception, as an act, could be said to be the synthetic unity of apperception itself, in that, and we have already stated this, “the synthetic unity of apperception is the highest point to which one must affix all use of the understanding, even the whole of logic and, after it, transcendental philosophy; indeed this faculty is the understanding itself” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B134). Now, why do I bring this all up? Simple: Kant is putting forward the notion that the understanding itself, and more specifically the synthetic unity of apperception, is the point in which logic is grounded. Thus, Kant’s words have great bearing upon our minds, for another attempt at solving the logocentric predicament is getting more and more insight, the fog is finally clearing away. Let us note that both transcendental logic and pure general logic suppose the synthetic unity of apperception, contra Hanna as he would argue that pure general logic does not suppose the synthetic unity of apperception, for pure general logic is of the understanding, which, if the synthetic unity of apperception is the highest point of, and it is, then pure general logic must also be of the synthetic unity of apperception.
Following Dennis Schulting’s review of Robert Hanna’s Cognition, Content, and the A Priori (a book that I have extricated much from when we first started going through the literature relating to the logocentric predicament), we say,
When the principle of apperception governing our thoughts is concerned, we are operating at the transcendental level of the analysis of the faculty of the understanding, of thought itself. Logic strictly speaking, “sheer logic”, does not operate on that level. … Thought itself is a transcendental condition of having a logical idea (or any idea, any semantic content), uttering a sheerly logical proposition expressing (the violation of) a logical principle such as PNC [the principle of non-contradiction], as much as it is a necessary condition of any objectively valid contentual idea, proposition, judgment or statement. (Schulting 10)
Both logic and illogic suppose the synthetic unity of apperception, there is no alternative to it. For example,
p is the case because q is the case and q is the case because p is the case
So, here we have an infinitely regressive (in that it will be infinitely alternating between p and q as the “ground”) and viciously circular statement. Without taking note of the necessary accompanying that the I think must do with all thoughts, let us reframe this:
(I think) p is the case because q is the case and q is the case because p is the case
So, here we have something different in that the I think is itself the ground of the proposition, whether or not it is true or false. Let us have another example:
This proposition is false
Obviously, this is problematic in that in saying the proposition is false, for it to truly be false it would have to be true, but then it wouldn’t be false; the issue is apparent. Let us reframe this using the knowledge we have gained through our investigation thus far:
(I think) this proposition is false
This is completely different, again, because, while still contradictory, we have found land! (By land, I obviously mean ground, and that we have found is the I think)
The I think is the transcendental (that is, necessary) condition of the possibility of possibility (for possibility is a logical category). That is the level we have reached, the highest point of the understanding. Now, why the principle of non-contradiction and identity? Where do they come from? I think we can again head toward Fichte in the sense that the I think is in a certain sense the statement “I am I,” thereby grounding the principle of identity in its act, for this act of pure apperception (or in the case of Fichte, the I as absolute subject positing the I) is the first instantiation of the principle of identity, and it is from this first instantiation that the principle of identity itself becomes a precedent of thought. Though, I do think that the notion that Kant’s “I think” and Fichte’s “I am I” are the “same” is absolutely up for debate and I hope to come back to this debate (though, I may forget). As for the principle of non-contradiction, Schulting says,
The principle of transcendental apperception, the ‘I think’ proposition, states that I must be able to accompany all my representations, which implies — and I must pass over here many details that explain why this is so — that representations that are not my representations strictly speaking are not accompanied by my ‘I think’, for any instantiation of the ‘I think’. In other words, representations can only be called my representations if I so accompany them, by thinking them, for any instantiation of the ‘I think’. All other representations, which are not accompanied by my ‘I think’, if the ‘I think’ is instantiated, are eo ipso not my representations sensu stricto. That means that a representation cannot be mine if it does not belong to the set of “all my representations”, which a representation is only when it is accompanied by my ‘I think’ jointly with all my other occurrent representations (representations that I take together as one in whatever complex thought I entertain). It is intrinsically contradictory to have a representation which is claimed to be mine, while not thinkingly accompanying that representation, jointly with all my other occurrent representations, thus claiming it to belong to me. This by no means reductively explains what the principle of non-contradiction is, nor, as I made it clear above, are contradictory statements ipso facto impossible thoughts, but at least it shows that thought itself fundamentally expresses the bindingness of the principle of non-contradiction, and in the sense that the transcendental logic of our discursive thought is a necessary condition of all thought, transcendental logic grounds even the principles of “sheer logic”, such as the principle of non-contradiciton. (Schulting 12)
Let us finish with a final quote from Schulting:
One might want to argue that here in the Leitfaden Kant says nothing about analytic truths, and technically speaking that’s right. But recall Kant’s remark in that earlier quoted footnote to the B-Deduction, in which Kant makes the sideways observation that original apperception is a condition even on the whole of logic. As I have said above, this could be interpreted in such a way that analytic statements, which are prima facie governed merely by the rules of what Kant calls general or formal logic (B79; B170), are also constrained by the necessary rules of transcendental logic, in that they are as much thoughts with semantic content as judgements about objects are, even though the analysis of their purely conceptual content does not require reference to the functions of thought as metaphysical categories, let alone to actual objects. To put this differently, analytic truths are not in any way reducible to synthetic a priori truths (which would result in an inverse kind of ‘schmanalyticity’), but clearly the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic cannot be a “categorically sharp” one, as Hanna believes, lest one dismiss this idea of transcendental logic being a condition on logic itself — but then, if he were to do so, Hanna would contradict his own attempts to reintroduce or reappraise the analytic-synthetic distinction, and a fortiori, the synthetic a priori, as a means of explaining the very possibility of analyticity or the principles of sheer logic, and its distinction from syntheticity. (Schulting 15–16)
