Kant on self-conscious knowledge and the idea of a capacity for judgment

Kant characterizes knowledge quite traditionally. He elucidates the idea of knowledge in his Jasche Logic as an exercise of a cognitive faculty that is, in all normative respects, perfect. When Kant speaks of a capacity for judgment, what he means is a capacity whose paradigmatic instance is an act of knowledge: It is an act of judgment that entails a consciousness of the necessary agreement of one's judgment with the object of that judgment. It is important to notice that the consciousness from which the Transcendental Deduction starts is nothing more and nothing less than the consciousness of someone who is conscious of a capacity for judgment. Kant's argument focuses on the possibility of a combination of representations in which one is conscious of one's combination being in necessary agreement with the object of experience. To be fully conscious of one's possession of this capacity means to be fully conscious of one's epistemic self.