Longuenesse - Kant On The Identity of Persons

Meeting of the Aristotelian Society held at Senate House, University
of London, on 22 January 2007 at 4:15 pm.

2007 The Aristotelian Society
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. CVII, Part 2
149
VIKANT ON THE IDENTITY OF PERSONS
BATRICE LONGUENESSE
According to Kant, the rationalist notion of a person as a thinking sub-
stance, conscious of its own identity through time, trades on an ambigui-
ty concerning the meaning of 'being conscious of the numerical identity
of oneself at different times'. I argue that against the rationalist notion,
Kant endorses the notion of a person as a spatio-temporal entity endowed
with unity of apperception and capable of knowing its own identity
through time according to empirical criteria of identification and re-iden-
tification. Nevertheless, Kant maintains that the rationalist notion is both
'necessary and sufficient for practical use'. I argue that in fact, Kant's em-
pirical notion of a person was sufficient even for the purposes of his mor-
al philosophy. I conclude by comparing my analysis of the strengths and
weaknesses of Kant's view with Peter Strawson's analysis of Kant's argu-
ment in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason.
For the rationalist philosophers Kant intends to rebut, we are per-
sons only in so far as we are thinking substances, distinct from our
own bodies, and as such, conscious of our own identity through
time. Kant notoriously thinks that this notion of a person and the
belief that we are persons in just this way are the result of an implic-
it and invalid inference from features of the thought I in the propo-
sition I think to purported features of an entity: a substance,
indeed a thinking substance, distinct from the body. Kant calls the
general pattern of this invalid inference a paralogism of pure rea-
son, and he calls the particular inference that leads from the
thought I think to the assertion of my own identity through time as
a person the paralogism of personality. In this paper, I will argue
that from Kants criticism of the paralogism of personality there
emerges a positive notion of a person that is more complex and sub-
tle than is generally acknowledged.
I proceed in five stages. First, I give a quick overview of Kants
criticism of the paralogism of personality. This allows me to identify
two different meanings of being conscious of the identity of oneself
at different times according to Kant. I further explore each of these
BATRICE LONGUENESSE 150
meanings in parts two and three of the paper. In part four, I explore
the contrast between Kants criticism of the rationalist notion of a
person in the paralogism of personality and what seems to be, ulti-
mately, his endorsement of it as an idea that has its proper use in the
context of practical reason. In part five, I argue in favour of Kants
analysis of I in I think as opposed to the amendments proposed
by Peter Strawson in The Bounds of Sense.
I
Kants Criticism of the Paralogism of Personality. Kant lays out
the paralogism in the following terms:
What is conscious of the numerical identity of itself in different times,
is to that extent a person.
Now I, as thinking, am conscious of the numerical identity of myself
in different times.
So I, as thinking, am a person. (a361)
1
We know, from Kants general explanation of the paralogisms of
pure reason, that he takes both major and minor premisses to be, in
1
I have altered Kants formulation of the minor premiss. In Kants exposition, the paralo-
gism is formulated as follows (see a361):
What is conscious of the numerical identity of itself in different times is to that extent a
person.
Now the soul is etc.
Thus it is a person.
Etc. in the minor premiss clearly stands for is conscious of the numerical identity of itself
in different times. The soul stands for I, as thinking. In the Introduction to the Paralo-
gisms of Pure Reason, Kant writes, I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am
called soul (a342/b400). For Kant, using this word carries no commitment one way or
the other as to the kind of entity I, as thinking might ultimately be.
Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason are given in the usual way, by reference to
the original pagination in the first edition (1781, referred to by a, followed by page
number) and the second edition (1787, referred to by b, followed by page number). I have
used the translation by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, in which references to a and b are in-
dicated in the margins. References to other works of Kant are given in the edition of Kants
Gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
cited by volume and page (e.g. aa3, p. 38); translations are mine. Reference to the Akade-
mie Ausgabe is provided in the margins of all recent translations of Kants works.
When I mention the paralogism of personality, uncapitalized, I refer to the generic (so-
phistical) argument Kant attributes to his rationalist predecessors. When capitalized, ex-
pressions such as the Paralogisms of Pure Reason or the Paralogism of Personality refer
to the sections of the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant analyses and refutes the rele-
vant arguments.
KANT ON THE IDENTITY OF PERSONS 151
each of the paralogisms, true (at least on one interpretation of their
respective subject and predicate terms).
2
But in each case, the infer-
ence is invalid: the conclusion does not follow from the premisses.
This is because, contrary to appearances, there is no middle term, or
the apparent middle term is actually not common to the major and
the minor premisses: although there may be a word or group of
words that plays the role of a middle term, the concept expressed by
those words in the major and minor premisses is different. In the case
that interests us here, that of the paralogism of personality, the infer-
ence trades on the ambiguous meaning of being conscious of the nu-
merical identity of oneself at different times. In the major premiss,
this expression means: being a numerically identical entity through
time and being conscious of ones numerical identity, or again being
conscious of what is, in fact, ones own numerical identity through
time.
3
In contrast, in the minor premiss the same expression, being
conscious of ones own numerical identity at different times does
not presuppose any statement at all, one way or the other, concern-
ing the question, Am I, in fact, an entity that remains numerically
identical through time? In other words, consciousness of my own
identity at different times is just this: a consciousness (or we might
say a mode or form of consciousness), whether or not it is borne out
by an entity that is, itself, numerically identical.
Kant accepts the notion of a person that is defined in the major
premiss: a person is an entity that is conscious of what is, in fact, its
2
See a402, b41112. Kants explanation is actually different in a and b. I will not comment
on this difference, which would take me too far for the purposes of this paper. What is clear
is that in both editions Kant takes the flaw in the reasoning to consist, not in the fact that
either of the premisses is false, but in the fact that what seems to count as the middle term,
namely the term common to major and minor premisses, is really two different terms, which
means that there is in fact no middle term. In the case of the paralogism of personality, the
purported middle term is conscious of the numerical identity of itself. The expression does
not have the same meaning in the major and the minor premiss, and so it is not legitimate to
use it as a middle term. On this point, I differ from Karl Ameriks (1982, p. 131), who thinks
that obviously, this argument is at least valid and Kants attack is directed at the minor pre-
miss. Ameriks is correct, however, in identifying the minor premiss as the focus of Kants
attack: it is in the minor premiss that the equivocation on the purported middle term occurs.
The minor premiss is false if its predicate is interpreted as having the same meaning as the
subject in the major premiss. It is true if its predicate is given its proper meaning when
applied to I, as thinkingin which case the inference turns out to be invalid.
3
This interpretation is confirmed by the more compressed formulation of the second edi-
tion: [By identity of person would be understood] the consciousness of the identity of ones
own substance as a thinking being in all changes of states (b408). On this point I agree with
Karl Ameriks (1982, pp. 1301).
own numerical identity at different times. To this extent at least, he
accepts the rationalist notion of a person.
4
What he rejects is only
the misguided inference from the capacity to think I in I think to
the supposition that in exercising this capacity I am conscious of
what is, in fact, my own numerical identity, and thus am a person.
5
This being so, there are at least two things we need to understand.
First, what is this consciousness of the identity of oneself at differ-
ent times which is not the de re consciousness of the numerical
identity of an entity? Second, what would be needed for this con-
sciousness of the identity of myself in I think to be the conscious-
ness of the identity of an entity? In the next part, I offer an answer
to the first question. This means examining the minor premiss in the
inference I laid out above: I, as thinking, am conscious of the iden-
tity of myself at different times.
II
I, as Thinking, am Conscious of the Identity of Myself at Different
Times. The most famous sentence in the whole Critique of Pure
Reason is perhaps this one, belonging to the opening sections of the
Transcendental Deduction in the second edition: The I think must
be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise some-
thing would be represented in me that could not be thought at all,
which is as much as to say that the representation would either be
impossible or else at least would be nothing to me (b1312). Very
briefly put, Kants point here is that unless representations were
such that at some point the thought I think could accompany
them, then they would be nothing to me at all, or would not be
4
Note that this means that Kants notion of the identity of person does not remotely
amount to any version of a psychological continuity theory or memory theory of the iden-
tity of person la Locke. I shall say more about this below.
5
Again, see the crystal clear, but more compressed, expression of the point in the b edition:
The proposition of the identity of myself in everything manifold of which I am conscious is
one lying in the concepts themselves, and hence an analytic proposition; but this identity
of the subject, of which I can become conscious in every representation, does not concern
the intuition of it, through which it is given as object, and thus cannot signify the identity of
the person, by which would be understood the consciousness of the identity of its own sub-
stance as a thinking being in all changes of state; in order to prove that, what would be
needed is not a mere analysis of the proposition I think but rather various synthetic judg-
ments grounded on the given intuition (b408).
mine. And to say that the thought I think can accompany them is
to say that they are bound together in some way by my own mental
activity. This binding together is what makes it possible to think
them under concepts, combined in judgements, and so accompanied
by the thought I think.
I, in this context, expresses the fact that the representations un-
der consideration are bound and reflected from one standpoint, that
of the thinker that refers these representations to herself and com-
mits herself to the unity and consistency of the conceptual ordering
of these representations. If I see a bunch of roses that are in bloom
and then a bunch of roses that are faded, binding these contents to-
gether includes determining whether these roses are one and the
same bunch that has borne the injury of time, or whether they are
two different bunches of roses, one of which is still going strong
while the other is at the end of its time. The question can be asked at
all, let alone any answer given to it, only if I assume one activity of
binding and evaluating, mine, by means of which the numerical
identity, or lack thereof, of the bunch of roses, can be evaluated.
This activity has to be one and the same throughout my experience
of these roses, and more generally, throughout my experience of ob-
jects, for me to be able to make any sense at all of the world around
me.
This is what is meant in the minor premiss of our paralogism: I,
as thinking, am conscious of the identity of myself at different
times. No perceptual orientation in the world, no consciousness of
the temporal relations between the states of things around me, and
also no abstract reasoning, could occur unless I had an implicit or
explicit consciousness of the unity of activity in the context of which
the perceiving, the evaluating, the reasoning are performed. Suppose
even that I am subject to brain transplant or transfer of memories,
the information thus transferred could serve as the kind of input
whose processing makes possible an objective representation of the
world only if it was, itself, evaluated from an overarching stand-
point on the amount of information thus made available.
6
The iden-
tity of person, says Kant, is therefore unfailingly to be encountered
in my own consciousness (a362).
It is by no means obvious how this sentence should be read. One
6
For an excellent formulation of this point, see Cassam (1997, p. 44).
way to read it is as a statement of Cartesian or Leibnizian inspiration:
because, as a thinking substance, I am indubitably conscious of what
is, in fact, my numerical identity through time, the identity of person
is unfailingly encountered in my own consciousness. And indeed it is
quite possible that in the sentence just cited Kant is doing nothing
more than voicing the view of the rationalist metaphysician which he
is about to debunk. But there is another, more plausible way to read
the statement. What Kant is saying is that the nature of the self-ref-
erential thought I in I think is such that it inevitably leads to the
idea of myself as an entity that remains identical throughout the
thoughts I think of as mine, and whose identity through time I am
conscious of.
7
Does this suffice to warrant the belief that I am indeed,
as an entity, numerically identical at different times? Kants answer is
a resounding No. Let me now consider this answer.
III
I in I think, and (the Consciousness of) the Numerical Identity of
Myself as an Entity Persisting Through Time. What emerges from
the preceding analysis is that it is a priori true of my thoughts (be-
cause it is a necessary condition for my engaging in any activity of
thinking at all) that I attribute them to myself. This self-attribution
expresses the unity and identity of an activity of ordering these
thoughts through time, an ordering for which I hold myself, at any
given time, responsible and accountable. But this in no way guaran-
tees that these thoughts I am at any given time referring to myself
(synthesizing through time as my thoughts), have at different points
in time indeed been thought by one and the same thinking being
which I could identify as being me.
Take again the example of perceiving a bunch of flowers. I am
consciously perceiving a bunch of flowers that are faded. I am con-
sciously remembering having perceived yesterday a bunch of similar
flowers, in bloom. A familiar analysis of this kind of case is the fol-
7
Note that for the use of I in I think to actually lead to the idea of a numerically identical
entity, more is needed than its role as the expression of the transcendental unity of apper-
ception. According to Kant, what leads to the (illusory) representation of an entity is the
demand proper to reason (rather than the mere formal unity of the understanding) of find-
ing some entity that could count as an ultimate metaphysical subject, or substrate, of deter-
minations. Thanks to Colin Marshall for pressing me on this point.
lowing. I can perhaps be mistaken in believing that what I am seeing
is a bunch of flowers, or that that bunch of flowers is faded. But if
my current perceptual experience justifies me in believing that some-
one is perceiving a bunch of faded flowers, then there is no room for
this other error: I am mistaken in this way and in this way alone,
that I believe this someone to be me. Such a judgement is, in Sydney
Shoemakers terms, immune to error through misidentification rela-
tive to the first-person pronoun (Shoemaker, 1968, pp. 812).
Moreover, just as there is immunity to error through misidentifica-
tion with respect to the first person in the use of I in the present
tense, there is a cognitive dynamics (Evanss expression, borrowed
from Kaplan) of the thought I in memory, such that, if my first per-
son memory justifies me in believing that someone perceived flowers
in bloom yesterday, there is no further room for this other error: I
am mistaken in this way, and this way alone, that I believe that
someone to have been me, where me refers to an empirically given
person.
8
Now Kant, I submit, would deny both points. We have al-
ready seen that the identity of person which is unfailingly encoun-
tered in my own consciousness is not the identity of an immaterial
substance. But neither is it, according to Kant, the numerical identi-
ty of a person as an empirically given human being that at successive
times has had the thoughts I perceive a bunch of flowers in bloom,
and then I now perceive a bunch of flowers that are faded, and I re-
member perceiving yesterday a bunch of similar flowers that were in
bloom. To warrant the claim that the consciousness of identity I en-
counter in my consciousness is the consciousness of the numerical
identity of an empirically determinate human being, I need to make
use of the usual criteria for objective identification and re-identifica-
tion of an entity. Kant has said a great deal about these criteria ear-
lier in the Transcendental Analytic, as he reminds us at the very
beginning of his criticism of the paralogism of personality:
If I want to cognize through experience the numerical identity of an
external object, then I will attend to what is persisting in its appear-
ance, to which, as subject, everything else relates as a determination,
and I will notice the identity of the former in the time in which the lat-
ter changes. (a362)
8
On the cognitive dynamics of first person statements, see Evans (1982, ch. 7, pp. 23555,
Self-Identification).
This is the process of identification and re-identification of objects
that he explained in the Analogies of Experience. As we just saw,
consciousness of oneself in I think does not depend on these proce-
dures. It might seem, therefore, that here we have an immediate and
indubitable access to identity of person. This is what was expressed
by the sentence we analysed above: In our own consciousness, the
identity of person is therefore unfailingly encountered. However,
immediately after this sentence, Kant recalls again the conditions on
identifying oneself as a numerically identical entity:
But if I consider myself from the standpoint of another (as an object of
his outer intuition) then it is this external observer who originally con-
siders me as in time . Thus from the I that accompaniesand in-
deed with complete identityall representations at every time in my
consciousness, although he admits this I, he will not infer the objective
permanence of my Self. For just as the time in which the observer pos-
its me is not the time that is encountered in my sensibility but that
which is encountered in his own, so the identity that is necessarily
combined with my consciousness is not therefore combined with his
consciousness, i.e. with the outer intuition of my subject.
The identity of consciousness of myself in different times is there-
fore only a formal condition of my thoughts and their connection. But
it does not prove at all the numerical identity of my subject in
whichdespite the logical identity of the Ia change can go on that
does not allow it to keep its identity. (a3623)
This, I submit, is not just a point about the conditions under which
another can experience me as persisting through time (my identity
through time is not unfailingly encountered in his consciousness,
as it is in mine). The point is also that I, myself, need to mentally oc-
cupy the standpoint of another on myself in order to confirm that
what I take to be representational states in which one and the same
entity, myself, has been at different times, have indeed been states of
one and the same entity, rather than states I only imagine having
been mine but which really never belonged to anyone, or states that
actually belonged to numerically distinct entities and which I mis-
takenly believe belonged to the empirically determinate entity I am.
In other words, the fact that I attribute all the representations I
think of as mine to one and the same logical subject!I in no way
guarantees that this logical subject!I captures one and the same
empirically identifiable, real subject of representations: a persisting,
numerically identical entity.
Note that despite the mysterious sounding statements about time
(The time in which the observer posits me is not the time that is en-
countered in my sensibility but that which is encountered in his
own), the point Kant is making is actually fairly commonsensical. It
is analytically true that recollecting a state is recollecting it to have
been mine, a state I was in, just as currently experiencing a state is
experiencing it as being mine, a state I am in; and anticipating being
in a state is anticipating this state to be, in the future, mine (for in-
stance when I dread the moment when the dentist starts drilling into
my tooth, or when I look forward to the sun playing on my skin
when I take my vacation on St John Island). But the thought I,
here, serves as the cement of the chain of thoughts and experiences
in which past, present and future are connected, by referring them
to the current thinker, myself. Such self-reference is a necessary con-
dition for any thought at all, but in no way guarantees the actual
identity through time of the entity I reminisce having been in the
past or anticipate being in the future. For access to the latter, I need
to rely on the objective rather than subjective temporality that is
made accessible to me by my adopting a standpoint that is not just
mine, now, but that counts (ideally) at all times, and for all.
9
Now the rationalist metaphysician could say, in his own defence,
that the epistemic model of identification and re-identification in
space and time just does not apply in the case of I. For the rational-
ists point is precisely that the thought I in I think refers to a non-
spatial, spiritual substance of which we have immediate, incorrigible
awareness. This is why (what we would call today) immunity to er-
ror through misidentification relative to the first person does apply
in this case, and in this case alone. It is in order to dismiss a defence
along these lines, I believe, that Kant adds to his comments on the
paralogism of personality a footnote that has elicited a good deal of
hand-wringing on the part of commentators:
An elastic ball that strikes another one in a straight line communicates
to the latter its whole motion, hence its whole state (if one looks only
at their positions in space). Now assuming substances, on the analogy
with such bodies, in which representations, together with conscious-
ness of them, flow from one to another, a whole series of these sub-
9
Cf. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 18, aa4, p. 298.
stances may be thought, of which the first would communicate its
state, together with its consciousness, to the second, which would
communicate its own state, together with that of the previous sub-
stance, to a third substance, and this in turn would share the states of
all previous ones, together with their consciousness and its own.
(a3634n.)
The point, I submit, is this: whatever the nature of the substances
which are the bearers of representational states, we have no reason
to exclude the possibility that the latter, together with the thought I
that expresses their being consciously bound in time, are transferred
from one substance to the next in a series of substances, just like
motion can be transferred from one material substance to the next
in a series. In that case, the thought I that accompanies the repre-
sentations would be transferred too. This would mean that the
thought of the identity of this I throughout the representational
states would be transferred. But this identity of consciousness (the
mere thought I contained in all representations I am conscious of),
Kant has stated from the beginning, would not warrant, even less
constitute, the identity of person. And the rationalist would have to
agree with him. Of course, this is precisely the kind of possibility
that led Locke, in contrast, to claim that the identity of person is
constituted by the identity of consciousness, or the idea of self that I
take to have been identical in all the states I am currently aware of
or can remember having been in. Here it is clear again that Kant
does not hold any version of a Lockean position about personal
identity:
The last substance would thus be conscious of all the states of all the
previously altered substances as its own states, because these states
would have been carried over to it, together with the consciousness of
them; and in spite of this it would not have been the very same person
in all these states. (a3634n., italics mine)
Even more strikingly, in the text to which the footnote is appended:
The identity of the consciousness of myself at different times is there-
fore only a formal condition of my thoughts and their connection, but
it does not prove at all the numerical identity of my subject, in
whichdespite the logical identity of the Ia change can go on that
does not allow it to keep its identity; and this even though the identi-
cal sounding I is assigned to it, which in every other state, even in the
replacement of the subject [my emphasis], still keeps in view the
thought of the previous subject, and thus could pass it along to the fol-
lowing one. (a363)
What, then, is the identity of person, for Kant? His discussion of the
paralogism of personality is not meant to provide an answer to this
question. Its point is negative: consciousness of the self-same I is
not consciousness of what is, in fact, a numerically identical person.
But from Kants argument for this negative point we can gather the
components of a positive view. In the empirical world (the world of
spatio-temporal entities, accessible to us, directly or indirectly,
through our senses, and identifiable and re-identifiable via the judg-
ing processes expounded in the Transcendental Analytic), the identi-
ty of persons depends on two factors, equally indispensable, but
which can conceivably come apart (in which case there just is no nu-
merically identical person): (1) unity of apperception, namely unity
of consciousness of the contents of mental states, which makes it
possible to accompany them with the thought I think; and (2) nu-
merical identity through time of a spatio-temporal entity: a living
being, endowed with mental states. Correspondingly, the conscious-
ness of what is, in fact, a numerically identical person, rests on the
two factors just listed, where the first (unity of apperception) is a
condition for consciousness of the second: I could have no con-
sciousness of my own identity, as an empirically determinate entity
persisting through time, unless I had the capacity to bind the con-
tents of my own mental states in just the way that also makes it pos-
sible for me to accompany them with the thought I think.
Now one might take exception to my attributing to Kant a notion
of person as an entity belonging to the empirical world. At the end
of his discussion of the paralogism of personality, Kant grants to the
rationalist that his notion of a person can remain in so far as it is
merely transcendental, i.e., a unity of the subject which is otherwise
unknown to us, but in whose determination there is a thoroughgo-
ing connection of apperception. As long as these restrictions are ob-
served, Kant adds, not only can the notion remain, but it is
necessary and sufficient for practical use (a3656). No intimation
here that there might be an empirical sense in which a person per-
sists, as a numerically identical entity whose mental states are bound
according to what Kant calls the unity of apperception.
And yet I would like to suggest that Kant might have found, in
such an empirically determined notion of person, just what he need-
ed (a notion that was necessary and sufficient) for the purpose of
his moral philosophy. Let me now say more about this.
IV
Kants Person and the Moral Standpoint. Kants statement that the
rationalist concept of a person is necessary and sufficient for practi-
cal use finds its confirmation in Part III of Groundwork of the Met-
aphysics of Morals, where Kant maintains that only if we take
ourselves to be members of a purely intelligible world can we under-
stand the possibility of autonomy, namely the determination of ac-
tions under the moral law (aa4, p. 454). However, it seems that
Kants moral psychology includes a notion of person which is dis-
tinct from the notion of an unknown, purely intelligible entity Kant
tells us, in the Paralogism of Personality, is necessary and sufficient
for practical use. Here are two examples.
In the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, Kant writes:
That a human being can have I in its representations elevates it infi-
nitely above all other living beings on earth. It is thereby a person and,
thanks to the unity of consciousness in all alterations that may affect
it, it is one and the same person, that is to say a being that is different,
in rank and value, from things, with which one can do whatever one
wants. (aa7, p. 127)
10
In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant relates this anthropological no-
tion of a person to the moral and juridical notion: a person is a par-
ticipant in a system of human legislation, in which he has rights and
obligations.
11
It is with respect to persons so understood that the de-
gree of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of an action is evaluat-
10
The question of the validity of what Kant says of thing, especially non-human animals, is
beyond the scope of this paper.
11
This is what Kant writes in the Preliminary Concept for the Metaphysics of Morals: Per-
son is that subject who can be accountable for his actions (dessen Handlungen einer
Zurechnung fhig sind). Moral personality is thus nothing else than the freedom of a ratio-
nal being under moral laws (whereas psychological personality is only the capacity to
become conscious of the identity of ones own existence in ones different states); from
which it follows that a person is subordinated to no other laws than the laws he gives him-
self, either alone, or also with others (Metaphysics of Morals, aa6, p. 223).
ed, depending on the force of the drives that had to be overcome to
engage into a morally legitimate action on the one hand, and the
greater or lesser force of the rational demand in potential conflict
with those drives on the other hand.
12
For such an evaluation to
make sense, it has to be the case that the person whose action is thus
being evaluated is a particular living entity, which has to bear up un-
der the pressure of natural drives and keep in sight the demands of
rational self-determination.
Why, then, does Kant hold on to the idea that from the moral
standpoint, we actually do need another notion of person, one in
which the consciousness of the identity through time of ones own
existence as a persisting agent has to be of a different nature from
the consciousness of ones own identity as a spatio-temporal living,
thinking being?
13
Could it be that Kant, here, commits his own par-
alogism of pure practical reason? If so, what would be the formula-
tion of that paralogism and what would be a solution to it?
The paralogism might run something like this:
(1) A subject that is conscious of its own self-determination is
a person (in the rationalist sense: an immaterial substance,
conscious of its own numerical identity through time).
(2) I, as a moral agent, am conscious of my own self-determi-
nation (of giving the law to myself).
(3) So I, as a moral agent, am a person.
14
12
Kant writes: Subjectively the degree of accountability (imputabilitas) of the action is to be
evaluated by taking into account the magnitude of the obstacles that had to be overcome.
The bigger the natural hurdles (of sensibility) and the smaller the moral obstacle (of duty),
the more praiseworthy is the good action. For instance, if I save from a great misery a
human being who is a complete stranger to me, at the cost of a considerable sacrifice for
myself. On the contrary, the smaller the natural hurdle and the greater the obstacle on
grounds of duty, the bigger the trespass for which one is accountable (open to blame)
(Metaphysics of Morals, aa6, pp. 2278). Note that for Kant, moral demand is always a
demand in a situation of internal conflict (natural drives versus rationality).
13
This is a position he maintains in the Critique of the Power of Judgement (aa5, p. 435).
14
As Tobias Rosefeldt has pointed out, in the lectures on metaphysics he gave during the
years leading up to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had actually included in the paralo-
gisms of pure reason a paralogism of freedom (see Lectures on Metaphysics (L1 nach Pl-
itz), aa28, pp. 26770; Rosefeldt, 2000, pp. 1527). In the Critique of Pure Reason, the
issue of freedom is handled not in the Paralogisms, but in the Antinomies of Pure Reason.
The paralogism I am offering here is, in any event, not the same as the one Rosefeldt recon-
structs from the lectures on metaphysics. Thats not surprising: if Im right, had Kant been
aware of a paralogism along the lines I am suggesting, he would have had some explana-
tions to give about how he can claim to escape it.
As in all other instances of paralogism of pure reason, the apparent-
ly valid inference might in fact be sophistical in virtue of the equivo-
cation on the middle term. In the major premiss, conscious of its
own self-determination would mean: conscious of its own meta-
physical freedom, namely of its own power to unconditionally initi-
ate a series of determinations or events, a power that would be
asserted as an is: as an objective determination. In the minor prem-
iss, conscious of my own self-determination is consciousness of an
ought: of the categorical imperative as a law according to which I
ought to order all my maxims. If I did have objective knowledge
that I am self-determining in the sense of the major premiss, I would
know myself as a person in the Leibnizian sense: a self-conscious
thinking substance, numerically identical through time and con-
scious that all its determinations originate within itself. But the I
ought of the categorical imperative is nothing more than a formal
principle ordering my maxims under the moral law, giving no access
whatsoever to a numerically identical entity. In other words, one
could make the case that the I of I ought has no more legitimate
claim than did the I of I think to give a priori access to the identi-
ty of person. It is only a formal condition of the unity of my maxims
under the moral law.
Of course, Kant does not offer any reasoning remotely like the
paralogism I coined above to justify his statement that the (rational-
ist) concept of a person remains necessary and sufficient for practi-
cal use, modulo its cautious restriction to the idea of an unknown
and unknowable subject. Rather, his motivation for leaving a con-
ceptual and doctrinal space open for it is related to the solution he
will offer, in the next chapter of the Transcendental Dialectic in the
Critique of Pure Reason, to the antinomy of freedom and necessity.
According to this solution, even though, as belonging to the world of
phenomena, we are determined in our actions according to universal
causal laws, it remains open to us to think of ourselves, in a world of
noumena, as metaphysically free. And this in turn gives its grip to the
idea of moral accountability (see a547/b575a559/b557).
But this does not take care of the suspicion that Kant is guilty of
some form of paralogistic reasoning. Quite the contrary. For Kants
positive concept of freedom is that of autonomy, namely determina-
tion of the will under the moral law. And it is precisely in his use of
this concept, as we saw, that Kant opens himself to the suspicion of
paralogistic inference. For it seems possible to say that when I as-
cribe ought to I in I ought (I ought to act under the determina-
tion of the moral law), I serves to express my commitment, as the
thinker of I ought, to the unity and numerical identity of my activ-
ity of establishing a selective hierarchy among the maxims of my ac-
tions. This is quite different from the objective knowledge of myself
as metaphysically free that might ground the assertion that I am a
person in the rationalist/metaphysical sense.
I suggest it remained in fact open to Kant to say, here again, that
being a person depends on two equally indispensable components
that may or may not come apart (and if they come apart, there just
is no identity of person): (1) having the capacity to prescribe the
moral law to oneself, as the sifting principle under which ones max-
ims are evaluated and, as a result, endorsed or rejected; and (2) be-
ing an empirically determined, persisting entity, conscious of its own
numerical identity through time. Correspondingly, consciousness of
being a person, is inseparably consciousness of my own numerical
identity as a persisting, living, thinking, willing entity, and con-
sciousness of the I ought I assign myself under the discriminating
principle provided by the moral law.
15
I submit, then, that Kants empirical concept of a person was ac-
tually necessary and sufficient even for his moral philosophy, so
that there was in fact no need for him to leave open a space for the
rationalist notion of a person, as he does at the end of his criticism
of the paralogism of personality. In making such a claim, I find my-
self in some respects close to Peter Strawsons view of what should
have been, in Kants own eyes, the positive results of his criticism.
However, there are also important differences between my view and
Strawsons, both with respect to the view I attribute to Kant and
with respect to what I endorse in Kants view. By way of conclusion,
let me now try to clarify those differences.
15
I am not here taking a stand on the validity of Kants moral law as a principle of morality.
I am only suggesting a way in which it was open to Kant, given his formula of morality, to
derive a notion of person in the moral sense along lines similar to those I suggested for his
notion of a person in the metaphysical sense.
V
Kant versus Strawson. According to Peter Strawson, Kants stroke
of genius was to have seen that there are two ways in which we can
refer to ourselves. In one of its modes, self-reference depends on the
identification of oneself and thus on determinate criteria of identifi-
cation and re-identification. This mode of self-reference depends on
ones occupying an objective standpoint on oneself, the third-person
standpoint whose analysis by Kant I presented in part three of this
paper. In the other mode, self-reference does not depend on criteria
of identification and re-identification. This is the mode of self-refer-
ence we have come to describe, after Shoemaker, as being immune
to error though misidentification relative to the first person. Ac-
cording to Strawson, the error of rationalist inspiration that Kant
denounces is that of having mistaken this second, criterionless mode
of referring with the supposed referring to a different entity: a mind,
distinct from the body. In truth, says Strawson, in both modes of re-
ferring what is being referred to is one and the same entity, a living,
sensing, thinking body: a person.
Where Kant falls short, according to Strawson, is in having not
gone far enough in his diagnosis of and response to the rationalist
metaphysician. For Kant only goes so far as to maintain that the ra-
tionalist metaphysician mistakes the unity of experience for an ex-
perience of unity (Strawson, 1966, p. 162). That is to say, the
rationalist metaphysician mistakes the self-ascription of representa-
tions in which I expresses nothing more than the connectedness of
our representationswithout any determinate reference to an em-
pirically determinate subject of these representationswith the as-
cription of these representations to a mysterious entity escaping
ordinary criteria of spatio-temporal identification and re-identifica-
tion. This is quite right, says Strawson. But what Kant should also
have said is that even in this indeterminate, and thus criterionless,
use of I, the link with empirical self-identification is not in practice
severed: what is being referred to, even in this case, is an empirical-
ly determined, spatio-temporal, living, sensing, thinking body: a
person. Instead, Kant maintains that in the use of I that is (in our
terms) immune to error through misidentification, no entity is re-
ferred to at all. The only referring use is supposed to be the objective
use, in which I put myself in the place of another.
16
This, says
Strawson (1966, p. 174), is a mistake, related to the disastrous
model of transcendental idealism. The result of Kants not recogniz-
ing that the I of apperception is a mere abstraction from the empir-
ically determinate subject of experience is that instead, he ends up
claiming that it refers to an unknown and unknowable transcenden-
tal subject.
Like Strawsons reconstruction of what he took to be the reasona-
ble core of Kants Transcendental Deduction of the Categories,
Strawsons reconstruction of the reasonable core of Kants criticism
of the paralogisms of pure reason has been widely influential. One
can find versions of his endorsement and criticism of Kants view in
argumentative contexts otherwise as different as those of Evans
(1982, ch. 7, Self-Identification), McDowell (1996), and Cassam
(1997). But I think it is mistaken. It is mistaken in its reading of
Kants view, and it is mistaken about the possibilities open to us in
explaining the use of I in I think.
Strawson correctly identifies the nature of the I of apperception
when he says that it captures, according to Kant, nothing over and
above the connectedness of our representations. Perhaps one could
even say that this use (expressing the connectedness of our represen-
tations) is inseparable from some minimal referring use, where no
further rule is in play than the elementary rule that I refers, in each
instance of its being thought, to whoever thinks or says I.
17
But
even if one accepted this claim, it would not justify Strawsons fur-
ther point, that the referent of I in Kants I think is a mere ab-
straction from the whole empirically determined, living, sensing,
thinking body (the person). It is as misguided to say this as it would
be to say that the triangle constructed by the geometrician is a mere
abstraction from empirical triangular things. Indeed, it is even more
misguided. For at least the triangle shares with the empirical trian-
gular thing the form of spatiality. I in I think shares with the em-
pirical subject no feature at all. It is a concept referring a priori to
whoever thinks I think whatever the empirical or ontological iden-
tity criteria of that thinker might be. That the referent remains inde-
terminate does not make it a mere abstraction from the empirical
subject. On the contrary, it designates the use of I in this case as a
16
See above, p. 156, citation from a3623.
17
I am indebted to Christopher Peacocke for pointing this out to me.
condition for its fully determinate, referring role, rather than an ab-
straction from it.
Taking seriously the idea that the I of transcendental appercep-
tion is a condition for, rather than an abstraction from, the determi-
nately referring I means taking seriously Kants project of
identifying some fundamental structures of the activity of thinking
as conditions of any objective representation. And this is of course
what Strawson refuses to do. Kants claims in this regard are again,
according to Strawson (1996, p. 174), part of the disastrous model
of transcendental idealism. Even worse, they signal the inconsisten-
cy of the model. We are supposed not to know anything about the
transcendental subject. And yet we know that it intuits according to
the forms of space and time, thinks according to the categories, and
refers indeterminately to itself as a condition for any objective repre-
sentation of the phenomenal world. Of course, Strawson acknowl-
edges, all of this might amount to nothing more than a way of
delineating the structural characteristics of phenomenal facts,
without any objective claim concerning the ultimate nature or sub-
strate of those facts. Still, such talk is stained with the original sin of
concerning the imaginary subject of transcendental psychology
(Strawson 1966, p. 32). One may wonder, however, in what way the
armchair character of Kants transcendental psychology is any more
objectionable than the armchair character of Strawsons descriptive
metaphysics of nature, offering a priori arguments to the effect that
some form of rule-governedness of nature is a necessary condition
for the self-ascription of representations.
I would addnot to conclude, but rather as a commitment to
continue this investigationthat the difference and connection
Kant draws between thinking I in I think on the one hand, and
being conscious of the numerical identity of oneself as a person on
the other, might help us resolve some of the paradoxes of current
discussions of personal identity. This hope is in itself a reason for
further inquiry.
18
18
Work on this paper was made possible by a leave from New York University which I spent
at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. I want to express my gratitude to the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences of NYU for granting me this leave, and to the Wissenschaftskolleg for provid-
ing a wonderful environment in terms of staff, collegiality, library support, and all aspects
of intellectual and cultural life.
Department of Philosophy
New York University
5 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
beatrice.longuenesse@nyu.edu
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
19 Wallotstrae
14193 Berlin
Germany
beatrice.longuenesse@wiko-berlin.de
REFERENCES
Ameriks, K. 1982: Kants Theory of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Cassam, Q. 1997: Self and World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Evans, G. 1982: The Varieties of Reference, ed. J. McDowell (Oxford:
Clarendon Press).
Kant, I. 1902: Gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Deutschen
Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: De Gruyter).
1997 [1781/1787]: Critique of Pure Reason, ed. P. Guyer and A. Wood
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
McDowell, J. 1996: Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
press).
Rosefeldt, T. 2000: Das logische Ich. Kant ber den Gehalt des Begriffes
von sich selbst (Berlin: PHILO, Verlagsgesellschaft mbH).
Shoemaker, S. 1968: Self-Reference and Self-Awareness, Journal of Philos-
ophy, 65, pp. 55567; reprinted in Q. Cassam (ed.), Self-Knowledge
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 8093.
Strawson, P. F. 1966: The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen).

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