Kant On The Substance-Accident Relation and The Thinking Subject

KANT ON THE SUBSTANCE–ACCIDENT
RELATION AND THE THINKING SUBJECT
DANIEL WARREN
In The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson presents an interpretation of

the “Paralogisms” section of the first Critique, which focuses on what it
takes to refer to a self, on what it takes to pick out and re-identify a
particular thinking thing.1 Strawson’s interpretation begins with a
characterization of the phenomenon of “criterion-less” self-ascription of
mental states, in which no question can arise about having picked out the
right subject. As Strawson views the matter, the only reason we can still
think of ourselves as referring to an individual in such cases is that such
ascriptions are tied somehow to ordinary criterion-guided ways of picking
out selves, which he says require outer sense. Strawson’s claim is that the
central illusion to which Kant’s opponents, the rational psychologists,
have fallen prey is that they can restrict self-ascriptions to these inner,
criterion-less cases, and yet retain the use of the pronoun “I” as a genuine
referring term. Thus, on Strawson’s reconstruction of the “Paralogisms,”
Kant is interpreted as presenting us with a transcendental argument of a
Copyright © 2015. Cambridge Scholars Publisher. All rights reserved.
sort. The rational psychologist’s project is viewed as self-undermining

because it assumes that a referring use of “I” is possible even for someone
capable of criterion-less self-ascription alone, yet the referring use of “I”
presupposes the capacity for the criterion-guided ascriptions as well.
Kant’s argument, according to Strawson, turns on the conditions for
picking out and re-identifying individual selves.
In this paper, I will suggest a very different interpretation of Kant’s
criticisms of the rational psychologists. One thing that especially strikes
me about the “Paralogisms,” and which might lead us to question
Strawson’s interpretation, is the centrality of a certain notion of substance
in Kant’s presentation of his objections. This is not only true in the first
paralogism, which is explicit in taking the substantiality of the self as its
target. It is also true of the second and third paralogisms, which concern,
1
See P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), pp. 162-174.
Muchnik, P., & Thorndike, O. (Eds.). (2015). Rethinking kant : Volume 4. Cambridge Scholars Publisher.
Created from hkuhk on 2022-08-27 03:13:21.
36 Kant on the Substance–Accident Relation and the Thinking Subject
respectively, the simplicity of the self and its identity over time. In both of
the latter cases, Kant concedes to the rational psychologist a point about
the thinking subject, or the “I”; what he rejects is a formulation of this
point in which the thinking subject is treated as a substance. That is where
Kant believes the rationalist has fallen into error.
Traditionally, the notion of substance was meant to play at least two,
somewhat distinct roles. On the one hand, there is the idea of substance as
a metaphysically fundamental particular; but on the other hand, thinking
about substances is meant to play an especially central role in making the
world intelligible by focusing us on the metaphysically basic kinds of
things there are. Now one might think that a Strawsonian interpretation of
the Paralogisms could account for the centrality of the notion of substance
there, by reference to the first of the two traditional roles that substance
has been made to play. I don’t think that the textual evidence would end
up supporting that way of interpreting the Paralogisms. I’m going to focus
on the second of these two roles, which concerns, instead, the substance-
kinds.
In this paper, I will proceed by examining Kant’s conception of
substance more generally, not just in relation to thinking substances
specifically. I will start by discussing what Kant has to say, in the Critique,
about the unschematized category of substance, in part, because it give a
sense of the limitations of treating Kant’s account as focused primarily on
the idea of metaphysically fundamental particulars. I then go on to look at
passages from Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics, in which he sets out a
variety of doctrines concerning the relation between substances and their
accidents. And I try to explain these doctrines by reference to Kant’s
views about material substance, as they are presented in the Metaphysical

Foundations of Natural Science. Finally, I return to the problems
associated with thinking substances, problems that Kant wants to call our
attention to in the “Paralogisms” section of the Critique. And my
particular focus will be on the second Paralogism, the one that concerns
the simplicity of the thinking substance.
I
I want to begin by looking at a somewhat obscure doctrine concerning
the category of substance that comes up, numerous times, in Kant’s work
of the critical period, and that is the idea that a substance is that which
must always be thought as subject and never as predicate. The doctrine
has a long lineage going back to Aristotle. In Kant, the doctrine comes up
when he is spelling out his idea that a form of judgment, here indicated by
Daniel Warren 37
the words “subject” and “predicate,” is somehow intimately tied to the

idea of a category, here the concepts of substance and accident.
To my mind, one of the chief difficulties in this doctrine lies in
understanding the idea of something that must always be thought as
subject and never as predicate. What does it mean that it “must” be
thought one way rather than another? What specifically would go wrong if
it were thought in the other way? Many commentators have answered this
question by pointing to the difference between singular terms and
predicates, in which case, what goes wrong when the subject, a singular
term, is used in the predicate position is that you end up violating the
requirements of grammar. And, the idea would then be that through this
kind of violation of grammaticality we could express no thought,
proposition, or judgment.
I think this kind of account cannot be what Kant had primarily in mind.
To see why, I want to step back for a moment to set out some preliminary
points. According to Kant, subject-predicate, or “categorical,” judgments
come in three varieties: universal, particular and singular, depending on
whether the predicate concept is being said of all F’s, some F’s or just of a
single F. However, this point, particularly the possibility of singular
judgments, must be reconciled with another part of Kant’s views about
subject-predicate judgments. For, on Kant’s view, categorical judgments
are acts of relating two concepts to one another.2 And concepts are not
singular representations, but general representations. Somehow, even in
singular judgments, there must be a concept that gives content to the
subject term. (To be sure, these concepts must in some way be capable of
being connected with intuition if they are to figure in the cognition of a
particular, but that does not cast doubt on the role of general representation
even in subject term of singular judgments.) What this suggests is that
alongside the universal and particular judgments, which have the form
“All F are G” and “Some F are G” respectively, we should view singular
judgments as having canonical forms like “The F is G” or “This F is G,”
where “F” stands for some general term. The point here is that singular
judgments like “a is G,” using a proper name “a” as the subject term, will
have to be regarded as in some way derivative in character, its true form
being one of the canonical forms like “the F is G.” I don’t think that for
Kant the subject term here will be exactly our notion of a definite
description, but it certainly has a kinship to it. The subject term of a
singular judgment, “the F,” is a singular term, to be sure, but the point is
that it will have been built out of a general term, as in the case of definite
2
See B141; also see Kant’s Jäsche Logic, section 21 (Log 9:102).
description. The significance of this point will soon be clearer. In any case,
the idea is that all categorical judgments will be acts in which two
concepts, corresponding to the letters “F” and “G,” are connected, and that
there are three ways of connecting them corresponding to the forms “All F
are G,” “Some F are G,” and something like “The F is G.” But in any of
these three forms of combination, it will be a pair of concepts that get
connected.
In the first of the passages in the Critique in which this doctrine about
substance-being-only-thinkable-as-subject comes up, Kant says:
the function of the categorical judgment is that of the relation of subject to

predicate; for example, 'All bodies are divisible'. But as regards the merely
logical employment of the understanding, it remains undetermined to
which of the two concepts the function of the subject, and to which the
function of predicate, is to be assigned. For we can also say, 'Something
divisible is a body'. (KrV B128)3
Kant then goes on to contrast this case to one in which “the concept of
body is brought under the category of substance.” In that case, we cannot
regard the two judgments—the one with the concept body in the subject
position and the other where it is in the predicate position—as equally
acceptable. Kant’s point here is to contrast “the merely logical
employment of the understanding,” on the one hand, with the employment
of the understanding in applying the categories, like the concept of
substance, on the other, which we can perhaps call the “real employment”
of the understanding. When we focus on its merely logical employment,
and abstract from any role for the category of substance, we can say “all F
are G,” where “F,” here, “body,” is used in the subject position; but we can
just as well use “F” in the predicate position, as in “something divisible is
a body,” that is, “some G are F.” Kant’s idea here is that it is only insofar
as we are considering not the merely logical, but what we can call the
“real” employment of the understanding, that the concept corresponding to
“F” is being subsumed under the concept of substance, and there is some
kind of impropriety associated with using it in the predicate position. I
should say that I’m not intending to give a substantive positive
3
Citations to Kant will be to the Akademie Ausgabe by volume and page, except
for the Critique of Pure Reason where citations will use the standard A/B edition
pagination. English quotations from the latter work will be from Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1986), and
otherwise from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, general
editors Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge, 1992-).
Daniel Warren 39
characterization of this impropriety here. My intention here is to say

something about what it isn’t.
A number of points can be made in this regard. First, it seems likely
that the problem, whatever it is precisely, in using “F” in the predicate
position is not analogous to the use of a singular term where a general term
is called for, as the interpretation I am criticizing would seem to have it.
The use of “F” in the predicate position is something allowed by the
logical employment of the understanding; “something divisible is a body,”
is according to Kant, at least a possible thought. The idea of using a
singular term where a predicate should go, by contrast, leads to a violation
of grammar and a failure to express any thought at all.
Secondly, the point Kant is making is expressed wholly in terms of
universal and particular forms of judgment; it is not presented as if it is
something which holds paradigmatically, and in the primary sense, of
singular judgments. Moreover, because Kant chooses to spell out his point
in terms of a universal judgment, it seems less natural to understand him
as concerned with the special status of thoughts about individuals.
Lastly, and most importantly, when Kant is considering a judgment
like “All bodies are divisible,” his point is not that the whole subject
phrase “all bodies” cannot be used in the predicate position. He is saying
that the term “bodies” or “body” are not to be so used. The analogous
point about the singular judgment “the body is divisible” won’t be that the
whole subject phrase, here, the singular term “the body,” can’t be used in
the predicate position; he is once again saying that the term “body” cannot.
In all three kinds of categorical judgment—universal, particular, and
singular—the issue can be expressed in terms of the role the subject
concept (viz., what corresponds to “F”) can play, rather than in terms of
roles to be played by something corresponding to the phrases “all F,”
“some F,” or “the F.” The idea of substance as something that can only be
thought in the subject position does not concern the role that a singular
term “the F” can play in judgment any more than it concerns the role that
the phrase “all F’s” or “some F’s” can play.
Now the main point that Kant will want to make about this
characterization of a substance as “that which must always be thought as
subject and never as predicate” is this: this merely formal characterization,
taken by itself, does not give us any indication of how to tell when
something has such a character (i.e., the character of being something
which was only to be thought as subject and never predicate) or whether
there could even be something which had always to be thought as subject
and never as predicate. Kant’s claim is that it is only because of a kind of
connection between the category and features presented through sensibility
that these questions could be answered. Specifically, it is because the

concept of substance is tied to the notion of permanence in time that we
are in a position to apply the concept at all. Something’s permanence in
time marks it as something which is always to be thought as subject, never
as predicate. But if what I’ve said so far is on the right track, we need to
spell this out by bringing in the concept through which that “something” is
thought. Kant’s idea, as I understand it, is that only insofar as everything
falling under the concept F (the concept “body,” for example) can be
regarded as permanent in time can we legitimately say that this concept
can “only be thought as subject and never as predicate.”
This idea that we need to give content to the categories, that we need to
“schematize” them, and that we do so by associating each category with
specific temporal determinations is familiar to readers of Kant. But the
picture it gives of Kant’s conception of substance, or of cause, say, is in
important ways inadequate. The picture does allow us to understand Kant
as making a point which is essential for his project in the Critique: namely,
that the categories have content only insofar as their application is limited
to objects given in time, and thus to objects of experience. But there is a
lot more to Kant’s conception of substance, and some understanding of
this fuller theory is needed as soon as we begin to think about the
application of the category, even at the most abstract level, to objects of
outer sense as such, that is, to matter, and to objects of inner sense, to the
extent that that is possible at all.
One quick problem about relying on the permanence property as a
criterion of substance is the following. The example Kant gives, which we
looked at earlier, was the judgment “all bodies are divisible.” Now we
would expect that once we bring in the notion of permanence, Kant’s point
will be that bodies are permanent and that that’s what gives the concept of
body a certain kind of priority vis-à-vis the predicates that are ascribed to
it. However, in this case the predicate is divisibility, and the problem is
that Kant thinks of this as a necessary property of bodies. And if we
focused on the criterion of permanence alone, this would mean that
divisibility, since it is no less permanent than body, would be equally
qualified to count as something that should always be thought as subject
and never predicate. But this would conflict with what I take to be the
clear intention of the passage. I think we can conclude from this that for
Kant, permanence in time is at most a necessary condition of substance,
but certainly not a sufficient condition. What we needed was a way of
understanding the idea that there is an asymmetrical relation between a
body and its divisibility, and the contrast between the temporal properties
of the one and those of the other didn’t give it to us.
Daniel Warren 41
It is also worth noting that when Kant talks about accidents, he appears
to think of these as a including both contingent accidents and necessary
accidents.4 Being an accident, in other words, does not entail being
contingent. I don’t want to lay too much weight on this idea of necessary
predicates or necessary accidents. Nevertheless, it does help to make
clearer what we are looking for here. The body’s divisibility in some way
depends on the body. We want to know more about this dependence
relation, which, in the philosophical tradition, was called “inherence.” It is
as relevant to the case of a necessary predicate or a necessary accident as it
is to a contingent one.
The issues surrounding this notion of inherence come up in an
occasional way in the Critique, but they are not spelled out there.
However, as I will suggest later, they are essential background to
understanding certain doctrines that are central to that work. And part of
the point is that these ideas about inherence can to some extent be
assumed as background knowledge. They are in many ways variants of
traditional views, with the qualification that Kant is particularly interested
in the way this notion of inherence is to be applied to objects of
experience. He is not interested in simply discarding the notion as a
vestige of an overthrown metaphysics any more than he is interested in
simply discarding the notion of substance, or causality, for that matter.
II
Kant discusses the idea of inherence, that is, the dependence relation
between accident and substance, at great length in several of his series of

Lectures on Metaphysics. In one such series, from 1782-3, Kant is reported
as saying:
Accidents are mere modes [modi] of the existence of substance and these
cannot be apart from the substance; for they exist as predicates and these
cannot be apart from the substance. The ancients therefore said: accidents
do not move from a substance to a substance, that would indicate that they
had their own existence. (VM 29:769 Metaphysik Mrongovius)
A bit later he goes on in the same vein:
With the expression inherence one imagines the substance carrying the
accidents, as if they were separate existences, but requiring a basis;
4
See for example, Metaphysik Mrongovius (VM 29:669).
however that is sheer misuse of speech; they are simply manners in which
things exist. (VM 29:769)
The idea is that we understand the dependence of the accident on the

substance in terms of the idea of a mode. An accident, it is said, cannot
exist independent of a given substance because the existence of an
accident, attached to a given substance, is simply a matter of that
substance existing in a certain way or manner.
If we think, like Descartes, that some substance is by its essence an
extended thing, and that shape or motion are just modes of extension, then
having a given shape (being spherical, for example) or having a given
motion, will be counted as simply ways of being a substance essentially of
that sort (i.e., an extended substance). If we know that an accident is in the
relevant sense merely a way of being extended, and we know that being
extended is the essence of a substance, we will be in a position to
understand how the existence of the accident depends on the existence of
the substance. If we recognize that a substance has extension as its
essence, and that shape is just a mode of extension, then we can see why
such a substance having a given shape cannot be a matter of that substance
bearing a relation to something that might be considered to have a separate
existence (its shape); having that accident (the shape) is just that
substance’s way of being what it essentially is (extended), say, at the time
in question. It needs to be noted that this is a context in which we allow
that we can talk of an accident, here, something’s shape or motion, as a
particular, though the point is that, even if it is spoken of as a particular, it
is not to be regarded as having an existence that is independent of or
separate from that of the substance to which it belongs. In any case, what I
most want to emphasize here is that the dependence relation between
substance and accident is understood in terms of the kind of thing the
substance is.
So, if Kant, too, thinks that we can characterize the nature of a
substance in such a way that its accidents can be seen to be no more than
determinate ways of having such a nature, we might be tempted to tell a
story about material substance that is analogous to Descartes’ account of
extended substance and its modes. And insofar as Kant thinks of
impenetrability as essential to material substance, perhaps its modes are
simply going to be different degrees of impenetrability. However, Kant’s
conception of the real essence or nature5 of a substance is in an important
5
I take it that Kant identifies nature and real essence. For example, Metaphysik
Mrongovius (VM 29:820), says “what is first synthetically [in a thing] would be
ground of all predicates of a thing, [and] is called real essence or nature.” In a
Daniel Warren 43
way more complex than this analogy with Descartes would suggest. This
is a consequence of the central role that an appeal to powers or forces
plays in characterizing substances, for Kant. The empirical criterion of
substance, Kant says in a well-known passage from the Second Analogy
(KrV A204/B249-50), is the idea of action, which Kant says, leads to the
idea of substance via the concept of a power. An action is said to be
grounded in a power.6 An action, I take it, is just the exercise of a power.
And central to characterizing the nature or real essence of a substance is an
elaboration of the powers that substance has.
However, the idea of a power not only serves to characterize the nature
of a given substance; according to Kant, it also gives us a way of
understanding the relation between the substance and its accidents. The
substance is said to be the ground of the accident. But more specifically,
Kant suggests that this grounding relation of a substance to its accidents is
to be understood in terms of the powers or forces possessed by that
substance. According to the Metaphysik Mrongovius, “it [the substance]
has power insofar as it is the ground of their [the accidents’] inherence.”
(VM 29:770) And in Metaphysik L2, “the relation of the substance to the
existence of accidents, insofar as it contains their grounds, is power.” (VM
28:564) Earlier the point was that substances are to be characterized in
terms of the powers belonging to those substances. Here, I take it, the
further idea is that the substance-accident relation itself, as a kind of
relation of dependence, is to be understood in terms of the powers
belonging to the substance. Sometimes Kant says that the accidents are in
some sense “effects” of the underlying substance.
How is this account supposed to work? If we assume that a substance
has thought as its essence, we can think of particular thoughts as its

accidents or modes. If we think of this substance in terms of the powers it
possesses, we can add—though it may seem a bit empty to do so—that it
has a power of thought. The substance is the ground of its accidents, its
thoughts, insofar as it is endowed with this characteristic power. The
accidents, i.e., the thoughts, are produced by, are the effects of, the
exercise of this power.
number of texts (e.g., at the beginning of the Preface to the Metaphysical

Foundations of Natural Science), however, Kant contrasts nature and essence. The
most plausible way to reconcile these passages is to interpret the latter texts as
referring not to real essence, but to what Kant calls logical essence.
6
In Metaphysik Mrongovius (VM 29:824), Kant is reported to say, “Power
contains the ground of the actuality of an action.” More specifically, according to
Metaphysik L2 (VM 28:564-565), “action is the determination of a power as a
cause of a certain accident.”
However, the case of thinking substances is particularly problematic

for Kant, in part, because of the merely formal and rather hollow character
of the account I’ve just given of them. I’ll return to this issue again shortly.
These doctrines about essential powers are much better worked out by
Kant in the case of material substance. So I want to spend some time just
talking about the case of matter before returning to the “Paralogisms” at
the end of the paper. On the view Kant puts forward in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, matter is to be counted as having two
essential powers: repulsive force and attractive force. What is especially
important in the present context is not so much that these two forces are
exerted by a body on other bodies outside it, causing them to undergo
certain motions (motions of withdrawal or approach). What is important in
the present context is, rather, that the attractive and repulsive forces are
operative within a body itself; they are meant to explain that body’s own
tendencies to expand or diminish in size, and to become lesser or greater in
density. For, the same repulsive and attractive forces, which a body exerts
on other bodies, are also active between the parts of a given body, causing
these parts to undergo motions of withdrawal and approach. An excess of
attractive force among the parts of a body will cause these parts to move
closer to one another and so will cause that body to contract and to
increase its degree of impenetrability. And conversely, an excess of
repulsive force among the body’s parts will cause these parts to move
away from one another, and so will cause that body to expand, thereby
decreasing its degree of impenetrability. It is in this way that the essential
powers are regarded as grounds of the particular changes in size and
density which it undergoes. And in this way, the attractive and repulsive
powers can be seen to be the grounds of the degree of impenetrability that

is produced. In this example, the accident, I take it, is the particular degree
of impenetrability we find in this body. But, again, I note that, for Kant,
the term “accident” does not so much indicate a contrast to something
necessary or permanent; more importantly it indicates its dependent status.
Here, the accident, the degree of impenetrability of the body, is seen to be
dependent on the powers belonging to its essence.7
Kant says in the Prolegomena (Prol 4:295) that the concept of
impenetrability is that concept on which the empirical concept of matter is
based. But, in his metaphysics of matter, instead of starting with the
general property of impenetrability and going straight away to consider
different ways in which matter can be impenetrable, e.g., differences in
degree, Kant proceeds by focusing on the causal powers that underlie
7
Compare MAN 4:509, 511.
Daniel Warren 45
impenetrability. This will in turn allow him to develop an account of

impenetrability that enables him to explain the differences in the degree of
impenetrability, that is, to explain something of how impenetrability is
made determinate. It is this appeal to a substantive account of the
underlying causal powers that enables Kant to say what he does about the
metaphysics of material substance.
There is a lot more that could be said about how this kind of account is
supposed to go in detail. However, one central point needs to be
emphasized about what has been said. For Kant, this way of understanding
the dependence relation between the accidents and the substance is
possible only because we can, on his view, give an account of the essence
of material substance. The relation between a substance and its accidents is
understood not in terms of the idea that the substance is a particular, but in
terms of what we know of the substance’s (real) essence or nature, which
is, in the first instance, a special case of knowing what kind of thing it is.
III
I now return to the self, regarded as a thinking substance, and in
particular to the doctrines found in the “Paralogisms,” the section of the
Critique in which Kant presents his objections to Rational Psychology.
More specifically, I want to focus on the well-known example Kant
discusses in the course of the Second Paralogism, which concerns the
simplicity of the self. In the A-edition version, Kant presents the rational
psychologist as arguing as follows. “For representations (for instance the
single words of a verse), distributed among different beings, never make

up a whole thought (a verse), and it is therefore impossible that a thought
should inhere in what is essentially composite.” (KrV A352) From this the
rational psychologist concludes that a thought can only inhere in a simple
substance, not in an aggregate of several.
So how, on Kant’s view, is the rational psychologist thinking about the
case being described? Kant makes clear that the rationalist means to
contrast the case of a thinking substance to the case of a composite
substance like matter. Kant describes the contrast case, on behalf of the
rationalist, as follows:
Every composite substance is an aggregate of several substances, and the

action of a composite, or whatever inheres in it as thus composite, is an
aggregate of several actions or accidents, distributed among the plurality of
the substances. Now an effect which arises from the concurrence of many
acting substances is indeed possible, namely, when this effect is external
only (as, for instance, the motion of a body is the combined motion of all
its parts). (KrV A351-2)
So a composite substance, for example a body, can have an action

which is itself a composite of the actions of the components of the
aggregate. The accident belonging to the composite substance, I take it, is
then the composite of the accidents belonging to the constituent
substances. In Kant’s example, the motion to be ascribed to the composite
is just the aggregate of the motions ascribed to the components.8
In the case of material substance, then, the accidents of a substance can
be aggregates or composites of the accidents of the substances out of
which it is composed. According to the rational psychologists, however,
there is an important disanalogy in the case of substances whose accidents
are thoughts. And from this they conclude that there cannot be a thought,
in particular there cannot be a single compound thought, that is not an
accident of a simple substance. A composite substance cannot have a
thought which is itself an aggregate of the thoughts of the component
substances. A composite substance C cannot have a thought which is
composed of thought #1 and thought #2, where thought #1 belongs to one
of the components of C and thought #2 belongs to the other.9 But
8
I take it that, by “motion,” Kant here probably means what was called “quantity
of motion,” i.e., the product of mass and velocity.
9
The idea behind this is perhaps as follows. With material substances, a body with
10 units of a quantity of motion can be made up of five bodies with 2 units each.
The composite accident of 10 units is ascribed to the whole. But this doesn’t entail
that the components of this accident (each with its 2 units) must be ascribed to the
whole body. These component accidents are ascribed only to the component
bodies. They are not ascribed to the whole; rather, they are parts of something that
is ascribed to the whole. But, if thoughts are ascribed to thinking substances, then
the component thoughts making up a single five-part compound thought must be
ascribed to the same substance. (This is precisely where the disanalogy with
material substances lies.) Thus, if each of the five component thoughts were
ascribed to five different thinking substances, and the whole compound thought
were ascribed to a single composite substance made up of these five component
substances, then each of the component thoughts would also have to be ascribed
not only to the component substances, but to the composite substance as well. But
that would mean that the same accident (a component thought) would be ascribed
to two different substances (the component substance and the composite substance
of which it is a proper part). I think that this is what would ultimately be
unacceptable within a traditional ontology of substances and accidents. In fact, it
seems to me that Kant would not disagree with this line of reasoning. For someone
who thinks that, properly speaking, an accident is simply a mode of the existence
of a substance, and that this is the way we should understand how the existence of
Daniel Warren 47
according to Kant, the rational psychologist’s inference that thoughts must

be ascribed to simple substances is without foundation. As Kant puts it:
For the unity of the thought, which consists of many representations, is

collective, and as far as mere concepts can show, may relate just as well to
the collective unity of many substances acting together (as the motion of a
body is the composite motion of all its parts) as to the absolute unity of the
subject. (KrV A353)10
The rational psychologist is trying to argue from the unity of a thought,

specifically, of a composite thought, to the character of the substance that
has it. Kant is insisting that if we just start from the thought itself—the
effect, so to speak—we do not have the resources that could license the
inference to the character of its metaphysical ground, i.e., to the character
of what metaphysically underpins the thought, the substance. From a
thought we can perhaps infer, in an indeterminate way, that there is a
thinking thing, something which has this thought. We can perhaps infer
that there is something with a power: a power of thought. But if what we
want is an account of the metaphysics of a substance whose accidents are
thoughts, this characterization of its essential powers is too thin to serve as
a starting point. So, in the absence of a substantive metaphysical account
of the forces or powers constituting the essence of a thinking substance,
the rational psychologist is not in a position to claim that a thought cannot
be produced unless a single simple substance produces it.
The idea that several representations, distributed among a number of
beings, do not make up a whole thought does seem intuitively very
compelling. What can certainly be granted is that if two distinct substances

A and B are such that each has a thought the other one doesn’t—call them
thought number one and thought number two respectively—that doesn’t
the accident depends on the existence of the substance, this line of thought would
come very naturally. Rather, Kant would disagree with the claim that a thought
must be ascribed to a thinking substance, i.e., that a thought must be regarded as an
accident belonging to a substance. According to Kant, a thought has to be ascribed
to a subject, i.e., a thinking being, but this subject is not necessarily a thinking
substance.
10
I am focusing on the version of the second paralogism presented in the A-
edition, in part because it is better spelled out. There are significant differences in
the B-edition version, where Kant is more precise about what can be known
analytically about a thinking being, and what would amount to a synthetic
proposition. But I believe that the interpretation I give for the second paralogism
fits the B-edition presentation equally well, and is not affected by the differences
between the two editions.
by itself entail that there exists a composite thought, of which thoughts one
and two are constituents. That seems to be all that the example of the
words in the verse requires us to concede. But that could be granted while
still leaving open as a possibility what the rational psychologist aims to
deny. For, we can grant that the fact that thought #1 is an accident that A
has and thought #2 an accident that B has—we can grant that this fact
can’t on its own be sufficient for the existence of the composite thought,
but the relevant question is whether there’s any way at all substances A
and B could be related to one another so as to be capable of producing the
composite thought, compatible with the initial assumption that thought #2
does not inhere in substance A and thought #1 does not inhere in substance
B. Clearly, just having several subjects sitting next to one another in the
same room is not such a relation. But, I think that from Kant’s perspective,
what seems not to have been properly ruled out is that there might be some
relation A and B could bear to one another, compatible with their being
distinct substances, such that they jointly produce the composite thought, a
thought with thought number one and thought number two as parts. In
such a case A and B, taken together and related in the requisite way, would
constitute a single consciousness, i.e., a single thinking subject, without
necessarily being a single thinking substance. This may in certain respects
seem a bizarre idea. But the question is: what resources does the rational
psychologist have for rejecting it? From what rational psychologists know
about thinking things, there can be no inferring what relations such
substances can enter into or cannot enter into. This is in sharp contrast to
the case of material substance. In the “Dynamics” chapter of the
Metaphysical Foundations, Explication 5 (MAN 4:502-3), Kant says a
material substance is what is moveable separately from whatever matter

exists outside of it. We understand the idea of distinctness of material
substances in terms of the idea that material substances can be said to
move independently. And we have a sense of how to think about the
independence of these motions because we have a worked-out conception
of the kinds of relations that material substances must bear to one another.
For, the repulsive and attractive powers that underlie impenetrability
naturally frame an account of the relations that hold between material
substances, and thus the tendencies that lead them to stay together or to
separate. For Kant, this is an instance in which, from the character of what
is grounded (a determinate degree of impenetrability), we can fruitfully
infer the character of the ground (the two opposed forces or causal
powers). I think that Kant’s point will be that by taking this approach to
thought, we can form no substantive conception of the powers that
underlie thinking beings. And without such a conception we will have no
Daniel Warren 49
idea of the relations that can or cannot obtain between substances of this
sort. Without such a conception we can have no idea whether such
substances can act conjointly. Can the thoughts inhering in different
substances belong to a single consciousness? Specifically, can these
substances, by “acting together” (KrV A353), produce, as an effect, a single
complex thought? We have some conception of what it is for one material
substance to move independently of another. And correspondingly, we have
some sense of what it is for two material substances to act conjointly
through their combined motion. But we don’t have any real idea of what it
means for two substances to be producing thoughts independently of one
another, or producing thoughts by acting together, if we can have no idea
of what relations they can bear to one another. Can thinking substances be
related to one another in such a way that together they constitute a single
thinking subject or consciousness? Kant will say we don’t know—in fact,
on his view, we cannot know—what we would need to know to answer
that question, namely, the character of the powers that are essential to
thinking substances, and thus the way in which their accidents inhere in
them.
The third paralogism, which concerns identity over time, presents a
line of thought that is more familiar to us because of the way it echoes
Locke’s chapter on personal identity. I discuss it (though only briefly)
because it confirms certain aspects of the characterization I’ve just given
of the second paralogism. Locke was asking why we should think that the
thoughts I am now conscious of having had in the past must be thoughts
belonging to the same substance that I now am. That is, we want to ask the
rational psychologist what rules out the possibility that I am now
conscious of having had a thought which in fact belonged to a substance

distinct from the substance I now am. In Locke’s view, thoughts that
belong to different substances (souls) can belong to one and the same
consciousness. As I mentioned earlier, Kant seems to endorse the idea that
accidents cannot migrate from one substance to another. And one might
ask whether this idea is not in conflict with the possibility just mentioned,
that I am now conscious of having had a thought that belonged to a
substance different from the one I now am. Well, assuming that thoughts
are accidents, there is a conflict only if my having a thought is a matter of
an accident (namely, the thought) inhering in a substance (namely, me).
Kant’s point can also be put as follows. We cannot rule out the possibility
that I can be conscious of thoughts that inhere in substances which are
distinct from one another. If we think of my being conscious of a thought
as a matter of its being in some sense directly present to me, the question
Kant is going to ask is: must the thoughts that are directly present to me all
inhere in the same substance. To answer this we would have to know more
about what is involved in a thought’s inherence in a thinking substance.
And to understand what kind of dependence this is, we would have to
draw on a knowledge of the nature of thinking substance, just as in the
second paralogism.
The view of the “Paralogisms” that I have been elaborating differs
markedly from the kind of interpretation seen, for example, in Strawson’s
account. It is underwritten by a different approach to the category of
substance, which places less stress on the idea that substances are basic
particulars and more on the idea that substance-kinds play a special and
central role in our understanding of things. This approach inevitably places
less weight on conditions of reference, identification, re-identification, or
singular representation. My interpretation emphasizes, instead, questions
about the essence of substances, their essential powers, and ultimately,
what the answers to these questions can tell us about how they can or
cannot interact.
IV
I have been stressing the importance for Kant of considering substances
as kinds, and with this comes an emphasis on the role of concepts in
representing “something that must always be thought as subject and never
as predicate.” However, there is also a line of thought in Kant, repeated in
a number of passages, in which his intention is to contrast the
representation of substance to conceptual representation. For example,
according to a text from Metaphysik Mrongovius, part of which was
quoted earlier,
With a substance we can have two relations <respectus>: in relation to

accidents <respectu accidentium> it has power insofar as it is the ground
of their inherence; and in relation to the first subject without any accidents,
that is the substantial [das substantiale].” (VM 29:770)
Then a bit later:
If I take substance and accident, the substance is; if I leave aside the
accidents, the substantial remains. Of that we cannot make the least
concept…(VM 29:771)
Yet what is striking in those passages is that Kant’s purpose there is to

show that such notions can never figure in any cognition a discursive
Daniel Warren 51
understanding could be capable of. The second of the passages just quoted
immediately continues,
… i.e., we cognize nothing but accidents. For our understanding cognizes

everything through predicates; we never cognize that which underlies the
predicate.
The term the substantial is consistently used to pick out the second of
the two respects in which can be considered, namely, in abstraction from
its accidents. This seems to correspond to the idea of a “bare substratum,”
though, as far as I know, Kant does not use this expression for it. The
substantial is discussed in a number of Kant’s series of Lectures on
Metaphysics.11 In these contexts, the point is made that, because we have a
discursive understanding, we can have knowledge of an object only
through the predicates that apply to them. Moreover, Kant says, the
application of predicates to objects is always a matter of ascribing
accidents to them. So all our knowledge of objects is by means of the
accidents that hold of them. The “substantial,” according to Kant, is
unknowable by us.
Now this view might seem to be at odds with the fact that, while Kant
appeals to the contrast between what can only be thought as subject
(substances) and what can be thought as predicate (accidents), he at the
same time endorses the claim that certain concepts, like that of body or
matter, are in fact suitable for the first role. Kant is committed to the
possibility of knowing things not merely through their accidents; he thinks
we can know what properties they have qua substances, at least insofar as
these substances are appearances. However, the last qualification, which

restricts the claim to appearances, is probably also the key to resolving this
apparent tension. When Kant says that all our knowledge of objects is by
means of their accidents, he is considering the intellectual faculty (the
understanding) from the most general possible standpoint, i.e., a
standpoint from which we can characterize our understanding as in some
respect limited, a standpoint from which we can characterize the
conditions that hold of us just in virtue of having a discursive, rather than
11
For example, in Metaphysik L2, (VM 28:563): “We are indeed acquainted with
the accidents <accidentia>, but not with the substantial. This is the subject which
exists after the separation of all accidents <accidentia>, and that is unknown to us,
for we know the substances only through the accidents <accidentia>.” And in
Metaphysik Vigilantius (K3), (VM 29:1004): “the substantial cannot be cognized.
Nothing can be cognized if one does not have predicates of the object whereby
something is cognized, because all cognitions happen only through judgments.”
an intuitive, intellect. But from within the narrower perspective of the

discursive intellect, that is, within knowledge, and thus within the realm of
appearance, we can make out a contrast between those properties that
belong to a thing as substance, and those that belong to it as its accidents.
In Kant’s published writing, this doctrine concerning the “substantial”
and the claim that we can only know things through their accidents
appears in the Prolegomena, specifically, in the first paragraph of section
46 (Prol 4:333). This is one of the sections on the “Psychological ideas”
(which correspond to the “Paralogisms” chapter of the first Critique).
Here, Kant is concerned to analyze the application of this doctrine to our
consciousness of ourselves. And so Kant begins the second paragraph of
section 46 as follows:
Now it does appear as if we have something substantial [Substantiale] in

the consciousness of ourselves (i.e., in the thinking subject), and indeed
have it in immediate intuition; for all the predicates of inner sense are
referred to the I as subject, and this I cannot again be thought as the
predicate of some other subject. (Prol 4:334)
But Kant’s point is that, although it might seem that we have some
kind of consciousness of ourselves as something substantial, a consciousness
that could ground the rational psychologist’s reasoning about the self, in
the end, we will have to grant that this is not the case. The reason Kant
gives for rejecting it is telling:
For the I is not a concept‫ כ‬at all, but only a designation of the object of
inner sense insofar as we do not further cognize it through any predicate;

hence although it cannot itself be the predicate of any other thing, just as
little can it be a determinate concept of an absolute subject, but as in all the
other cases it can only be the referring of inner appearances to their
unknown subject.
Here is the appended footnote:
*If the representation of apperception, the I, were a concept through which

anything might be thought, it could then be used as a predicate for other
things, or contain such predicates in itself. But it is nothing more than a
feeling of an existence without the least concept, and is only a
representation of that to which all thinking stands in relation (relatione
accidentis).
What Kant is most concerned to repudiate here, vis-à-vis the rational

psychologists, is a claim about our representation of the self. He puts his
Daniel Warren 53
point by saying that this representation is not a concept. But Kant’s

thought here is a bit below the surface and needs to be brought out. He
says that the representation of the self is a “feeling of an existence.” This
is not a formulation Kant usually employs in this context, but whatever
else it is meant to suggest, it almost certainly means that this
representation of the self should not be taken for a cognition of the self.
Kant also characterizes the representation of the self as an “idea,” the idea
of a subject which is the ultimate bearer of predicates, but which “cannot
itself be the predicate of any other thing.”12 In a broad sense, even such an
“idea of reason” can be considered a concept of sorts. (See, for example,
A320/B377.) But when Kant denies that the representation of the self is a
concept, again, his point is that it is not the kind of concept that can figure
in cognition. Moreover, in tracing out the significance of this point for the
rational psychologists, Kant gives us a helpful characterization of the aim
of their putative science. The representation of the self is merely an idea,
rather than a concept (in the narrower sense), i.e., a concept that can figure
in cognition.
“Nevertheless,” as Kant says by way of explaining the error of the
rational psychologists,
through a wholly natural misunderstanding, this idea … gives rise to a

seemingly plausible argument for inferring the nature of our thinking being
from this presumed cognition of the substantial in it, inasmuch as
knowledge of its nature falls completely outside the sum total of
experience. (Prol 4:334)
The reason the rational psychologists require a concept, specifically, a

“cognition of the substantial,” is that they want to establish “the nature of
the thinking being” on the basis of this cognition. Just as we saw earlier,
Kant’s objection to the rational psychologists is not so much that they
have no way of forming a singular representation and that they lack what
they need in order to be able to refer to particular thinking beings. It is
rather that they lack the ability to form the requisite general representation
(i.e., concept) of thinking beings and thus cannot come up with a basis for
determining their nature. To be sure, we also lack the kind of intuition of
oneself that would be required for cognition of oneself. All we have is a
“feeling of an existence.” But, again, the problem that arises as a
consequence of lacking the needed intuition is not that we cannot make
reference to a particular self. At least this is not what Kant seems to be
12
The relation between the idea of the absolute subject and the feeling of my
existence is left obscure.
emphasizing. Kant’s point is that without an intuition, we can’t have the

appropriate concept, and that therefore we can’t know the nature of the
self, that is we can’t know the kind of thing that a self essentially is.13
Works Cited
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp
Smith (London: Macmillan, 1986).
—. Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992-).
—. Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. Edited by the Preußische Akademie der
Wissenschaften. 29 vols. Berlin: Georg Reimer, later W. de Gruyter,
1900–.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966).
13
Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at a Workshop on Transcendental
Idealism (University College London, September 2008), a Symposium on Kant’s
Theoretical Philosophy (Simon Fraser University, October 2012), and the Pacific
Study Group of the North American Kant Society (Stanford University, November
2012). I am grateful to the audiences at these events for very helpful discussions.
Most of all I want to express my gratitude to Hannah Ginsborg for invaluable
discussions and for her support.

Kant On The Substance-Accident Relation and The Thinking Subject

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kant On The Substance-Accident Relation and The Thinking Subject

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

KANT ON THE SUBSTANCE–ACCIDENT

RELATION AND THE THINKING SUBJECT

In The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson presents an interpretation of

sort. The rational psychologist’s project is viewed as self-undermining

views about material substance, as they are presented in the Metaphysical

the words “subject” and “predicate,” is somehow intimately tied to the

the function of the categorical judgment is that of the relation of subject to

characterization of this impropriety here. My intention here is to say

that these questions could be answered. Specifically, it is because the

between accident and substance, at great length in several of his series of

A bit later he goes on in the same vein:

The idea is that we understand the dependence of the accident on the

has thought as its essence, we can think of particular thoughts as its

number of texts (e.g., at the beginning of the Preface to the Metaphysical

However, the case of thinking substances is particularly problematic

powers can be seen to be the grounds of the degree of impenetrability that

impenetrability. This will in turn allow him to develop an account of

single words of a verse), distributed among different beings, never make

Every composite substance is an aggregate of several substances, and the

So a composite substance, for example a body, can have an action

according to Kant, the rational psychologist’s inference that thoughts must

For the unity of the thought, which consists of many representations, is

The rational psychologist is trying to argue from the unity of a thought,

compelling. What can certainly be granted is that if two distinct substances

material substance is what is moveable separately from whatever matter

conscious of having had a thought which in fact belonged to a substance

With a substance we can have two relations <respectus>: in relation to

Then a bit later:

Yet what is striking in those passages is that Kant’s purpose there is to

… i.e., we cognize nothing but accidents. For our understanding cognizes

these substances are appearances. However, the last qualification, which

an intuitive, intellect. But from within the narrower perspective of the

Now it does appear as if we have something substantial [Substantiale] in

inner sense insofar as we do not further cognize it through any predicate;

Here is the appended footnote:

*If the representation of apperception, the I, were a concept through which

What Kant is most concerned to repudiate here, vis-à-vis the rational

point by saying that this representation is not a concept. But Kant’s

through a wholly natural misunderstanding, this idea … gives rise to a

The reason the rational psychologists require a concept, specifically, a

emphasizing. Kant’s point is that without an intuition, we can’t have the

You might also like