“But if the preceding representations (the first parts of [a] line, the earlier moments of time or the units represented in sequent order) were always to drop out of my thought, and were not reproduced when I advance to those that follow, no complete representation, and none of all the aforementioned thoughts, not even the purest and first basal representations of space and time, could ever arise.”[881]
In order, however, that the reproduced images may fulfil their function, they must be recognised as standing for or representing contents which the self has just experienced.
“Without the consciousness that what we are thinking is the same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of representations would be in vain.”[882]
Each reproduced image would in its present state be a new experience, and would not help in the least towards gaining consciousness of order or number in the succession of our experiences. Recognition is, therefore, a third form of synthesis, indispensably necessary to consciousness of time. But further, the recognition is recognition of a succession as forming a unity or whole, and that unity is always conceptual.
“The word concept (Begriff) might of itself have suggested this remark. For it is this unitary consciousness which unites into a single representation a manifold that has been successively intuited and then subsequently reproduced.”[883] “If in counting I forgot that the units ... have been added to one another in succession, I should never recognise what the sum-total is that is being produced through the successive addition of unit to unit; and so would remain ignorant of the number. For the concept of this number is nothing but the consciousness of this unity of synthesis.”[884]
The synthesis of recognition is thus a synthesis which takes place in and through empirical concepts. In the instance which we have chosen, the empirical concept is that of the number six.
The analysis, however, is not yet complete. Just as reproduction conditions apprehension and both rest on recognition, so in turn recognition presupposes a still further condition, namely, self-consciousness. For it is obvious, once the fact is pointed out, that the recognition of reproduced images as standing for past experiences can only be possible in so far as there is an abiding self which is conscious of its identity throughout the succession. Such an act of recognition is, indeed, merely one particular form or concrete instance of self-consciousness. The unity of the empirical concept in and through which recognition takes place finds its indispensable correlate in the unity of an empirical self. Thus an analysis of our consciousness, even though conducted wholly on the empirical level, that is, without the least reference to the a priori, leads by simple and cogent argument to the conclusion that it is conditioned by complex synthetic processes, and that these syntheses in turn presuppose a unity which finds twofold expression for itself, objectively through a concept and subjectively in self-consciousness.
So far I have stated the argument solely in reference to serial consciousness. Kant renders his argument needlessly complex and diminishes its force by at once extending it so as to cover the connected problem, how we become aware of objects. This occurs in the section on the synthesis of reproduction. An analysis of our consciousness of objects, as distinct from consciousness of the immediately successive, forces us to postulate further empirical conditions. Since the reproductive imagination, to whose agency the apprehension of complex unitary existences is psychologically due, acts through the machinery of association, it presupposes constancy in the apprehended manifold.
“If cinnabar were sometimes red, sometimes black, sometimes light, sometimes heavy, if a man changed sometimes into this and sometimes into that animal form, if the country on the longest day were sometimes covered with fruits, sometimes with ice and snow, my empirical imagination would never even have occasion when representing red colour to bring to mind heavy cinnabar....”[885]