Inner Sense between perspective and temporality

The doctrine of inner sense is famously a particularly obscure part of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The characterisation of its objects might appear to be inconsistent, as Kant claims that inner sense represents our soul or our inner states (B 37), and, at the same time, also that outer representations are the only material given to inner sense (Leningrad fragment).
     The aim of this piece is to provide an inclusive and coherent account of the various remarks, scattered in the Critique, through which Kant describes inner sense and its role. We submit that inner sense can only be understood on the basis of the synthesis speciosa. Hence, we defend the claim that inner sense is a "determined form" (B 37). By this, we mean that inner sense is to be understood as a mode of affection, i.e. as the affection caused by the synthesis speciosa. Extensionally, inner sense consists in the ensemble of representations which result from the affection that is caused by the synthesis speciosa. On the basis of this characterisation of inner sense, we obtain a rather rich conception of the objects of inner sense, if compared with the explicit Kantian remarks. We defend this richer conception of inner sense, and outline the consequences of our approach to the relationship between inner and outer representations.
     Following a suggestion introduced in Valaris [2008], we defend that inner sense allows the subject to become aware of her perspectival outer representation as belonging to her perspective. Hence, we propose an interpretation of what Kant might have meant by "intuition of our soul, or inner states", and we outline how, according to our interpretation, intuition of ourselves can spring from a purely outer manifold of intuitions. In this manner, we display that the contradiction between the diverse characterisations of the objects of inner sense is indeed only apparent.
     While being inspired by the novel interpretation of inner sense advanced in Valaris [2008], our approach diverges from it under two important respects.Firstly, Valaris characterises inner sense as the "specic mode in which we are aware of our outer intuitions" as belonging to a perspective that is of the subject [Valaris, 2008, p. 9]. While we agree with Valaris that the function of inner sense is to bring representations into empirical consciousness, we extensively argue for the distinction between inner sense and empirical consciousness, arguing that inner sense, as the capacity of being affected by a certain type of activity, should be considered as a different from a clear representation accompanied by consciousness. Therefore, we submit that, even if Kant himself sometimes uses the terms as synonymous, inner sense and empirical consciousness shall be considered as belonging to two distinct levels of explanation of our mental activity and experience.
     Secondly, we propose to solve the difficulty of relating the perspectival nature of inner sense with its temporality. Valaris' work gives rise to a tension betweent he thesis that outer and inner representations are joint results of the synthesis speciosa — thesis which we endorse — and Kant's insistence on the primarily inner or subjective nature of time (A 34). We outline a way out of this apparent tension by taking into account motion, as an action of the subject, — from which Kant claims the concept of succession can first derive — and its similarity to the ability to engage in mental projections and rotations. En passant, this entails that we interpret motion in B 155 differently from Valaris, who seems to understand the latter concept in terms of the "awareness of the possibility of alternative points of view" [Valaris, 2008, p. 15]. Our understanding of the concept of motion at B 155, furthermore, finds easily a counterpart in cognitive psychology, as the ability to engage in mental rotations (see for instance Shepardet al. [1971]). On these grounds, we are able to display how the perspective and temporal features of inner sense fit together.

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References:

R. N. Shepard, J. Metzler, et al. Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 171(3972):701-703, 1971.
M. Valaris. Inner sense, self-affection, and temporal consciousness in Kant's critique of pure reason. Philosophers' Imprint, 8:1-18, 2008.

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