Book Two: Easier and with More Goodies

Where are we?
Transcendental Doctrine of Elements → Part II → Division II → Book II, that’s where.
Today’s topic: The Transcendental Dialectic. In this book, Kant will revisit the topic of “the thinking self” as it relates to issues of logic, reason, nature, and awareness. He puts forth a number of theories and refutes them, mostly on the grounds that the theories confuse the self with …um … the other self. I wanted to focus on this concept because Kant is very clear that the self needs to be defined in a certain way for these statements to have any validity.
Kant goes on to describe what he calls the transcendental illusion, which takes several different forms. The first of which is the illusion of the self, which is where he begins his Paralogisms of Pure Reason. These are, essentially, syllogisms that are not acceptable as valid. Rational psychology follows the reasoning that the self is a substance, since it is the subject of one’s own thoughts (following the assumption that anything that is the subject of judgment is a substance). Kant rejects this claim, asserting that while the “I” is always the subject of one’s own thoughts, it does not make the “I” a substance in the real sense.

Wait, what?

Okay, so Kant believes that the “I” (as in “I think…”) is the subject of thoughts. However, simply being a subject of our own thoughts does not make the “I” a substance, because the logical realm and the real realm are distinct (and mutually exclusive, I assume). Basically, he’s saying that the logical subject is an intangible entity, but cannot be substantively experienced (CPR 411-2).
He goes on to address other paralogisms, including “the soul is simple.” This is the concept that the soul is simple in some fundamental way. Kant says that “…the assertion of the simple nature of the soul is of unique value only insofar as through it I distinguish this subject from all matter, and consequently except it from the perishability to which matter is always subjected.” (CPR, 420 A356). Basically, Kant’s saying that the only reason we would say the soul is simple is to distinguish it from regular matter in nature, and thus distinguish it from the rules of mortality that constrains regular matter in nature (basically, to suggest the soul is immortal).
I thought this was a good point on which to focus because this distinction between the “logical I” and the “real I” is a fundamental principle on which Kant will refute a number of paralogisms in these chapters.