56 Self and Subject

to represent the first option (= A) while the "Fichteans" represent the second
(= B). The other pair of approaches comes from a broadly empiricist direction.
The first strand (= C) here has a special concern with the fundamental condi-
tions of empirical self-knowledge (Strawson and Powell), while the second
strand (= D) stresses the general empirical implications of Kant's notion of syn-
thesis (Brook and Kitcher).
In all these schools of interpretation the manifold ambiguity of Kant's
doctrine of the "transcendental unity of apperception" plays a central role. Some
aspects of this doctrine are clear enough. Kant speaks of this unity as "tran-
scendental" because (like everything else that he calls "transcendental") he
takes it to be a necessary condition of all our experience. He calls it a unity of
"apperception" because it is the condition that all items of that experience must
be able to be accompanied by the representation "I think." And he speaks of this
apperception as involving a "unity" in order to highlight the fact that this "I" has
a kind of simplicity or self-sameness that contrasts with the multiplicity of items
that are its possible objects. Moreover, it is called an "original synthetic" unity
because it is not derivable from anyone of the representations by themselves,
and because even as a group the representations do not "combine themselves."
This minimal gloss on Kant's terms is common ground for all inter-
preters, but the intrinsic complexity of the doctrine of apperception still allows
for several different points of departure. The doctrine can be explored for meta-
physical as well as epistemological implications, and these in turn can be
viewed in the light of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena.
While approaches (A) and (B) stress possible metaphysical aspects of apper-
ception, approaches (C) and (D) focus on epistemological features. On the one
hand, only approach (A) clearly gives a positive noumenal reading to the meta-
physical aspects, but (B) still makes strong Cartesian claims about how the
self can have a special a priori knowledge of its identity (Henrich) or structure
(Neuhouser)-a knowledge that allegedly plays a foundational role with respect
to its external knowledge. Approaches (C) and (D), on the other hand, tend to
emphasize negative aspects of Kant's theory, that is, ways in which Kant's
Paralogisms can be read as meant to reveal how the central epistemological role
of the notion of apperception can lead to inflated metaphysical claims, for
example, to the claim that a formal unity of thought brings with it a real unity of
the thinker. (My main interpretive difficulty with this approach has to do with
its suggestion that it has isolated the only relevant type of fallacy that Kant has
in Inind.) But (C) also adds, positively, an explanation of the connection
between apperception, qua empirical self-knowledge, and the possibility of
knowledge of the external world in general. Very roughly, the story is that I can
understand my own representations and know myself as a real unity with apper-
ception only by locating myself in a spatiotemporal position in a world that con-
tains other subjects who are also knowable only because of their objective
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