On Strawson on Kantian apperception

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.

South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (3) 2008: pp. 258-272