On Strawson on Kantian apperception

Authors
Publication date 2008
Journal South African Journal of Philosophy
Volume | Issue number 27 | 3
Pages (from-to) 258-272
Organisations
  • Faculty of Humanities (FGw) - Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) - Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
Abstract
Strawson famously argues that Kant's argument for the necessary conditions
of experience can only be retained once freed from a priori synthesis. Strawson claims that a purely ‘analytical connexion' between experience and the object of experience is conceptually inferable from a thoroughly analytic premise concerning the capacity for self-ascription of representations. In this paper, I take issue with the way in which Strawson construes the analyticity of the principle of self-ascription or what Kant calls the principle of transcendental apperception. More particularly, I shall argue that Strawson's unity argument, viz. his construal of the unity of consciousness, on which the principle
of self-ascription depends, suffers from a modal fallacy. Whilst arguing this, I shall suggest that a priori synthesis is required even for analytic unity of consciousness to be possible.
Document type Article
Note special Strawson issue
Published at http://ajol.info/index.php/sajpem/article/view/31516
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