Kant and the paradox of self-knowledge.

Abstract

In this dissertation I attempt to show that Immanuel Kant's allegedly unified theory of knowledge faces the possibility of being undermined due to certain fatal problems with his theory of self-knowledge. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents a theory of knowledge according to which self-knowledge is subject to the same transcendental conditions (pure or a priori concepts and principles) as knowledge of objects other than the self. Kant's unified perspective on knowledge depends upon a strict parallelism between outer sense and inner sense as set forth in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' section of the Critique of Pure Reason. As I try to show in the dissertation, however, Kant's unified theory of knowledge is seriously damaged by certain critical problems with his doctrine of self-knowledge in general, and his account of inner sense in particular. Kant fails to provide a satisfactory explanation of the manifold of inner intuition as a source of the sensible material for the thought of inner objects. Although his strict parallelism thesis between outer sense and inner sense requires inner intuition to have a distinct manifold of its own (different from the manifold of outer intuition) Kant's theory of self-knowledge does not provide a distinctively inner manifold. Hence I conclude that Kant's supposedly unified perspective on knowledge is undermined because of his inability to meet his parallelism requirements between outer sense and inner sense.