Kant's Fourth Paralogism

Abstract

The Fourth Paralogism is, in a sense, something of a stepchild, either passed over in silence or given a minimal treatment in any discussion of the Paralogisms proper. Among recent commentators, Jonathan Bennett cursorily dismisses the Fourth Paralogism in two quick paragraphs,' while Patricia Kitcher, in an article entitled Paralogisms, refers to three paralogisms,' and does not mention the fourth at all. This is done, of course, not without some justice: the Fourth Paralogism in A is more or less clearly directed toward refuting the thesis that we cannot be sure of the existence of the external world, and this task is shifted in B to the Refutation of Idealism; while in B the Fourth Paralogism appears to be reduced to a few remarks on what Sellars has called Kant's ignorabimus about the mind/body problem.3 It is not unreasonable to suggest that almost all the sustained treatments of the Fourth Paralogism have been undertaken within the context of discussing Kant's position on objectivity and his (putative) phenomenalism, and that qua Paralogism the Fourth is usually taken to be merely one of the more awkward of Kant's embarrassingly contrived tetrads. Nonetheless, there is a good deal of philosophical material in this Paralogism that goes beyond that of the Refutation of Idealism and that is directly relevant to Kant's view of the self. The purpose of this paper will be (i) to examine the two versions of the Fourth Paralogism, beginning with the formal presentation of the syllogism, in order to determine what Kant takes the Fourth Paralogism to be, (z) to suggest likely sources for this Paralogism, and finally, on the basis of this reading of the Fourth Paralogism, (3) to consider in what way the discussion of the Fourth Paralogism contributes to Kant's attack on rational psychology. I hope also to establish an exegetical point, and one to which few of Kant's commentators subscribe: that, though the syllogisms