What Is Kant's Analytic Unity Of Apperception?

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Thoughts Through Consciousness Section 16 of Critique of Pure Reason by Emmanuel Kant, argues that the analytic unity of apperception that belongs to all my representations presupposes that they have another kind of unity as well, the synthetic unity of apperception. (class notes) In this paper I will evaluate what Kant means by this in three sections. First, I explain what is meant by the terms analytic and synthetic unity and what is meant by these terms as applied to apperception in order to help better understand his argument. In the second section I will focus on how these representations unify through ourselves. In order to set the focus of this paper I will be evaluating Kant’s premise that, “I think” must be attached to

Analytic unity is believed to be a merging of representations that are consciously grouped as having a representation in common like color. This is done by understanding the manifold of representations. Here is an example of understanding the manifold of representations to form the analytic unity. When you consider the sun, a banana, and a school bus three is a common representation between them all which is the color yellow. Now, from the manifold representations we can group these representations together and form an analytic unity. There is an alternative to this view that Kant doesn’t leave out. This is for representations that aren’t currently present but for the representations that can be added. For instance rotting is an analytic unity for fruits and vegetables. This alternative is different from the original in the sense that you may not be aware of it right when you see the fruit but is still

Now to go back and briefly explain the main root of Kant’s “I think” theory. Kant believes subjects can have a multiplicity of representations where the subject relates to each representation. His main argument is that all our representations belong to the analytic unity of apperception, which presupposes that there is another form of unity, synthetic unity of apperception. Kant leads section 16 by asserting that all my representations should be able to be partnered with “I think”, because otherwise I would have something in me that I could not have possibly thought. ‘I think’ is believed to be two representations. First, it will raise self consciousness, when you correlate ‘I think’ to representations, you are conscious that you are thinking of the specific representation. Secondly, our intuition, which cannot belong to sensibility and is given prior to any thought is necessarily related to ‘I think’. This shows how after unifying all the representations ‘I’ have you can form the unity of a subject. What is important is to show that apperception is not an empirical theory and while our conscious self generates the representation ‘I think’, it can not be formed with any accompanying representation. So, subjects who apperceive, are unable to have any other representation or intuition of themselves. Through intuitions then is the only way we can form these manifold representations because they must in some way be related to self consciousness, ‘I think’. The manifold of