ABSTRACT
As with the First Paralogism, I will focus on the text of the A edition, using the B edition when helpful. Even so, I consider only the fi rst nine paragraphs (up to A356, ending with the sentence “We will test the supposed usefulness of the proposition by an experiment”). The reason is that the rest of the text deals with the issue of materialism which topically goes with the Fourth Paralogism. Following the lead of the First Paralogism, the major premise defi nes the simplicity of a thing or substance (the German is “Dasjenige Ding”), whereas the minor premise apparently brings the thinking ‘I’ under the defi nition. Kant doesn’t quite say in the minor premise that the thinking ‘I’ is such a thing. Somewhat less determinately he says it is such a being (ein solches). In any case, it is clear from the body of the text that for Kant the proper understanding of the minor that in fact follows from the cogito is that the thinking ‘I’ is not a simple thing (even if “its action can never be regarded as the concurrence of several things acting”). My contention is that the text supports that the simplicity of the ‘I’ is instead simplicity (in a sense to be discussed) of the action I am. Kant says at B413,
And with the objective reality of substance [vanishing], the allied concept of simplicity vanishes; it is transformed into a merely logical qualitative unity of self-consciousness.
