Qualitative unity and the role of teleology in Kant's account of the original synthetic unity of apperception.

In this paper I will take issue with a claim that progressive readers of the Deduction have standardly assumed,¹ namely, that for Kant "one can be self-conscious only if there is an objective world of which one is aware".² While I take the converse of the claim to be one that Kant accepts, it is the combination of these two conditional claims - often referred to in the literature as the reciprocity thesis - that I want to resist.³ The reciprocity thesis is a claim about the relationship between self-consciousness and objectivity, according to which both self-consciousness and objectivity are explained by the application of the categories of the understanding. Given that for Kant objectivity consists in the application of the categories (the concepts of an object), the thesis can also be expressed as the claim that self-consciousness is necessary and sufficient for the application of the categories. Thus, the reciprocity thesis entails that the application of the categories is necessary for self-consciousness. It is this claim, call it the Objectivity Dependence Thesis (hereafter ODT), that I want to contest.

I argue against ODT on both textual and systematic grounds. First, I aim to show that the textual support for attributing ODT to Kant is inconclusive and, second, that ODT is incompatible with two crucial, closely related features of Kant's theory of transcendental self-consciousness. First, if ODT is true then self-consciousness is conceptual (it requires the application of concepts, namely, the categories). Second, if ODT is true then self-consciousness is explainable in terms of object-consciousness. On this view Kant endorses some version of the reductive view known in the literature as the Reflection Theory.

To understand the connection between the conceptual and the reductive aspects of self-consciousness more clearly, we need to consider what must be the case in order for ODT to be true. In the literature the claim that the application of the categories is necessary for self-consciousness is explained by suggesting that Kant takes self-consciousness to consist either in a consciousness of (1) the act of applying the categories (which is taken to be synthesis), (2) the product of the application of the categories (however the synthetic unity produced by the understanding is meant to be understood), or (3) both. What is important to note is that on any of these three options, Kant is committed to the view that self-consciousness consists in an intentional relation (either to an activity of the subject or the product of such an act). Such theories are reductive in the sense that the very same intentionalist model also explains our consciousness of objects. Thus, accepting ODT has the consequence of rendering Kant's theory of self-consciousness reductive.

Against this view, I will argue that Kant analyses self-consciousness as a non-conceptual consciousness that first makes thought (and concepts) possible. Moreover, I will argue that this analysis requires that Kant does not take self-consciousness to be reducible to any kind of object-consciousness. In closing, I sketch how a reading of the Deduction is possible that does without the reductive presuppositions of the reciprocity thesis.

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¹ Cf. Allison (2004, 2015); Kitcher (2010); Strawson (1966).
² Ameriks, K (2003): "Kant's Trancendental Deduction as a Regressive Argument", in Interpreting Kant's Critiques. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
³ See Allison (1984, 2004, 2015); Pereboom (2006); Schulting (2015); Waxman (2015). Although Allison does not provide that label explicitly, he aims to show that Kant's argument depends on the two conditional claims and claims on this basis that a reciprocity obtains between self-consciousness and the representation of objects. Pereboom, Schulting, and Waxman all use the label 'reciprocity thesis' in describing this aspect of Allison's view.

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