Week V: Transcendental Deduction (B)
General Secondary Reading (optional): Allison pp. 159-201; Heidegger pp. 40-62, 89-142; Strawson pp. 85-117.
Question 1) What does the word "experience" mean for Kant? What do you think it ought to mean ? (This question should look familiar. It was asked in the first week, and you might want to refer to the references there.) In particular, what kind of "experience" is presupposed in Kant's transcendental deduction?

Secondary literature: van Cleve 73-6; Guyer 73-87; Paton 329-44 or Korner 56-9; Ameriks 2003: 5-16; Strawson 1966: 72-4; Heidegger 1967: 4-14; 1997: 3-12; Wolff, 98, 159; Bennett 33-4.
Question 2) Assess two or three accounts of the relationship between "subjective" and "objective" transcendental deductions. Do you think such a distinction makes sense?

Secondary literature: van Cleve 76-97; Henrich; and any two or three of the following (but at least one from A and one from B): A: Wolff, 78-182; Smith, 234-70, 284-91; Bennett, 100-40; B: in Walker 1982: 67-8; Henrich, "The Proof-Structure of Kant's Transcendental Deduction" in Review of Metaphysics 22: 640-59 (available in the stacks); Allison, 159-201; Longuenesse 2000: 56-8. Also helpful: Walker, 74-86

Question 3) Kant says that the synthetic unity of consciousness "is a condition under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me" (B138). He also says that an object is "that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united" (B137). What does "object" mean here? Has it changed its meaning from Transcendental Deduction A (consider especially A108-9)? Is Kant backing away from a correspondence account of knowledge (if he ever held one)?

Secondary literature: Guyer in CCK (Guyer 1992): 123-160; Wolff, pp.95-9, 174-202, 186-7; Smith, 79-81, 167-8, 203-19; Allison, 35-8, 159-63, 173-78; [Pippin, 151-87]

Question 4) Why does Kant equate "a judgment" with "a relation that is objectively valid"? (§19) Consider this question in the light of Kant's account of judgment in the metaphysical deduction.

Secondary literature: Smith, 180-3, 286-9; Pippin, 97-100, 174-82; Allison, 173-8; Gram (II), 3-14, 56-80; Melnick, 30-37

Question 5) Can I know myself? Explicate with reference to B155 ("How the 'I' that thinks can be distinct from the 'I' that intuits itself...") and §§16-7, 25.

Secondary literature: Smith, 291-8, 321-31; Wolff, 142-4, 186-7, 191-204; [optional: Pippin, 151-82;] Patricia Kitcher, "Kant's Real Self" in Wood 1984: 113-47, copy on reserve, and/or Kitcher 1996: 91-141; and Sydney Shoemaker, "Commentary: Self-consciousness and Synthesis" (copy on reserve)

Question 6) Is the transcendental deduction a "psychological" argument? What would/does this mean?

Secondary literature: Strawson 31-2, 88, 97; Allison 1996: 53-66; Kitcher 61-90, skim 91-180, read "Kant on Self-Identity" (in JSTOR, Philosophical Review 90: 41-72 (1982).

Question 7) At B138-9, Kant suggests that the conditions he has given for experience would not hold for an understanding "through whose representations the objects of the representation should at the same time exist" - i.e., a divine understanding. Heidegger has argued that the central insight brought out by Kant's Critique, as much despite as because of Kant's own intentions, is the difference between a human and a divine intellect: the fact of human finitude. But he insists, for this interpretation, on the centrality of the imagination to knowledge, not the understanding. Is Heidegger perhaps overemphasizing Transcendental Deduction A (where the imagination is more important)? Or is he simply missing some crucial distinction? Or perhaps this passage shows that he is right - but that Kant, far from "recoiling" from his own insights, recognized Heidegger's point quite explicitly... Defend or criticize Heidegger's interpretation.

Secondary literature: Wolff, 188-90; Heidegger 14-26, 97-137, 150-59; Allison, 158-67