Strawson's Transcendental Deduction

Abstract

In Individuals P. F. Strawson presents an argument which, in his view, is sufficient to show that the No-Ownership (henceforth, NO) Theory of mental states is incoherent. In a later book, The Bounds of Sense, several complex variants of this argument are used to explicate and defend Kant's notion of the transcendental unity of the apperception. Although in Strawson's own view this transcendental unity is only the first level in the much richer notion of the person, it is a fundamental and essential constituent of the latter. Thus Strawson agrees with Kant that experiences are necessarily owned. An adequate theory of mind should therefore establish the existence of the subject of experiences, as a necessary condition for the possibility of experience. This is what the argument against the NO theory, which denies the claim that experience is inconceivable without the experiencing subject, is designed to achieve. In the present article I would like to argue that Strawson's argument against the NO theory is unsuccessful in all its versions (in Individuals and in The Bounds of Sense). As a corollary I shall claim that since the NO theory is more parsimonious it should be preferred to the traditional view defended by Strawson.