On Strawson on Kantian apperception
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| Publication date | 2008 |
| Journal | South African Journal of Philosophy |
| Volume | Issue number | 27 | 3 |
| Pages (from-to) | 258-272 |
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| 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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