thesis statement on sense of self

25 Thesis Statement Examples

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A thesis statement is needed in an essay or dissertation . There are multiple types of thesis statements – but generally we can divide them into expository and argumentative. An expository statement is a statement of fact (common in expository essays and process essays) while an argumentative statement is a statement of opinion (common in argumentative essays and dissertations). Below are examples of each.

Strong Thesis Statement Examples

1. School Uniforms

“Mandatory school uniforms should be implemented in educational institutions as they promote a sense of equality, reduce distractions, and foster a focused and professional learning environment.”

Best For: Argumentative Essay or Debate

Read More: School Uniforms Pros and Cons

2. Nature vs Nurture

“This essay will explore how both genetic inheritance and environmental factors equally contribute to shaping human behavior and personality.”

Best For: Compare and Contrast Essay

Read More: Nature vs Nurture Debate

3. American Dream

“The American Dream, a symbol of opportunity and success, is increasingly elusive in today’s socio-economic landscape, revealing deeper inequalities in society.”

Best For: Persuasive Essay

Read More: What is the American Dream?

4. Social Media

“Social media has revolutionized communication and societal interactions, but it also presents significant challenges related to privacy, mental health, and misinformation.”

Best For: Expository Essay

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Social Media

5. Globalization

“Globalization has created a world more interconnected than ever before, yet it also amplifies economic disparities and cultural homogenization.”

Read More: Globalization Pros and Cons

6. Urbanization

“Urbanization drives economic growth and social development, but it also poses unique challenges in sustainability and quality of life.”

Read More: Learn about Urbanization

7. Immigration

“Immigration enriches receiving countries culturally and economically, outweighing any perceived social or economic burdens.”

Read More: Immigration Pros and Cons

8. Cultural Identity

“In a globalized world, maintaining distinct cultural identities is crucial for preserving cultural diversity and fostering global understanding, despite the challenges of assimilation and homogenization.”

Best For: Argumentative Essay

Read More: Learn about Cultural Identity

9. Technology

“Medical technologies in care institutions in Toronto has increased subjcetive outcomes for patients with chronic pain.”

Best For: Research Paper

10. Capitalism vs Socialism

“The debate between capitalism and socialism centers on balancing economic freedom and inequality, each presenting distinct approaches to resource distribution and social welfare.”

11. Cultural Heritage

“The preservation of cultural heritage is essential, not only for cultural identity but also for educating future generations, outweighing the arguments for modernization and commercialization.”

12. Pseudoscience

“Pseudoscience, characterized by a lack of empirical support, continues to influence public perception and decision-making, often at the expense of scientific credibility.”

Read More: Examples of Pseudoscience

13. Free Will

“The concept of free will is largely an illusion, with human behavior and decisions predominantly determined by biological and environmental factors.”

Read More: Do we have Free Will?

14. Gender Roles

“Traditional gender roles are outdated and harmful, restricting individual freedoms and perpetuating gender inequalities in modern society.”

Read More: What are Traditional Gender Roles?

15. Work-Life Ballance

“The trend to online and distance work in the 2020s led to improved subjective feelings of work-life balance but simultaneously increased self-reported loneliness.”

Read More: Work-Life Balance Examples

16. Universal Healthcare

“Universal healthcare is a fundamental human right and the most effective system for ensuring health equity and societal well-being, outweighing concerns about government involvement and costs.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Universal Healthcare

17. Minimum Wage

“The implementation of a fair minimum wage is vital for reducing economic inequality, yet it is often contentious due to its potential impact on businesses and employment rates.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Raising the Minimum Wage

18. Homework

“The homework provided throughout this semester has enabled me to achieve greater self-reflection, identify gaps in my knowledge, and reinforce those gaps through spaced repetition.”

Best For: Reflective Essay

Read More: Reasons Homework Should be Banned

19. Charter Schools

“Charter schools offer alternatives to traditional public education, promising innovation and choice but also raising questions about accountability and educational equity.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Charter Schools

20. Effects of the Internet

“The Internet has drastically reshaped human communication, access to information, and societal dynamics, generally with a net positive effect on society.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of the Internet

21. Affirmative Action

“Affirmative action is essential for rectifying historical injustices and achieving true meritocracy in education and employment, contrary to claims of reverse discrimination.”

Best For: Essay

Read More: Affirmative Action Pros and Cons

22. Soft Skills

“Soft skills, such as communication and empathy, are increasingly recognized as essential for success in the modern workforce, and therefore should be a strong focus at school and university level.”

Read More: Soft Skills Examples

23. Moral Panic

“Moral panic, often fueled by media and cultural anxieties, can lead to exaggerated societal responses that sometimes overlook rational analysis and evidence.”

Read More: Moral Panic Examples

24. Freedom of the Press

“Freedom of the press is critical for democracy and informed citizenship, yet it faces challenges from censorship, media bias, and the proliferation of misinformation.”

Read More: Freedom of the Press Examples

25. Mass Media

“Mass media shapes public opinion and cultural norms, but its concentration of ownership and commercial interests raise concerns about bias and the quality of information.”

Best For: Critical Analysis

Read More: Mass Media Examples

Checklist: How to use your Thesis Statement

✅ Position: If your statement is for an argumentative or persuasive essay, or a dissertation, ensure it takes a clear stance on the topic. ✅ Specificity: It addresses a specific aspect of the topic, providing focus for the essay. ✅ Conciseness: Typically, a thesis statement is one to two sentences long. It should be concise, clear, and easily identifiable. ✅ Direction: The thesis statement guides the direction of the essay, providing a roadmap for the argument, narrative, or explanation. ✅ Evidence-based: While the thesis statement itself doesn’t include evidence, it sets up an argument that can be supported with evidence in the body of the essay. ✅ Placement: Generally, the thesis statement is placed at the end of the introduction of an essay.

Try These AI Prompts – Thesis Statement Generator!

One way to brainstorm thesis statements is to get AI to brainstorm some for you! Try this AI prompt:

💡 AI PROMPT FOR EXPOSITORY THESIS STATEMENT I am writing an essay on [TOPIC] and these are the instructions my teacher gave me: [INSTUCTIONS]. I want you to create an expository thesis statement that doesn’t argue a position, but demonstrates depth of knowledge about the topic.

💡 AI PROMPT FOR ARGUMENTATIVE THESIS STATEMENT I am writing an essay on [TOPIC] and these are the instructions my teacher gave me: [INSTRUCTIONS]. I want you to create an argumentative thesis statement that clearly takes a position on this issue.

💡 AI PROMPT FOR COMPARE AND CONTRAST THESIS STATEMENT I am writing a compare and contrast essay that compares [Concept 1] and [Concept2]. Give me 5 potential single-sentence thesis statements that remain objective.

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 10 Reasons you’re Perpetually Single
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 20 Montessori Toddler Bedrooms (Design Inspiration)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 21 Montessori Homeschool Setups
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples

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Kant’s View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self

Even though Kant himself held that his view of the mind and consciousness were inessential to his main purpose, some of the ideas central to his point of view came to have an enormous influence on his successors. Some of his ideas are now central to cognitive science, for example. Other ideas equally central to his point of view had little influence on subsequent work. In this article, first we survey Kant’s model as a whole and the claims in it that have been influential. Then we examine his claims about consciousness of self specifically. Many of his ideas that have not been influential are ideas about the consciousness of self. Indeed, even though he achieved remarkable insights into consciousness of self, many of these insights next appeared only about 200 years later, in the 1960s and 1970s.

1. A Sketch of Kant’s View of the Mind

2.1 transcendental aesthetic, 2.2 metaphysical deduction, 2.3 transcendental deduction, 1 st edition, 2.4 attack on the paralogisms, 1 st edition.

• 2.5 Two Discussions of the mind in the 2 nd -edition TD and Other Discussions

3.2.1 Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition

3.2.2 synthesis of reproduction in imagination, 3.2.3 synthesis of recognition in a concept, 3.3 synthesis: a 90° turn, 3.4 unity of consciousness, 4.1 thesis 1: two kinds of consciousness of self.

• 4.2 Thesis 2: Representational Base of Consciousness of Self
• 4.3 Thesis 3: Conscious Only of How One Appears to Oneself

4.4 Thesis 4: Referential Machinery of Consciousness of Self

4.5 thesis 5: no manifold in consciousness of self, 4.6 thesis 6: consciousness of self is not knowledge of self, 4.7 thesis 7: conscious of self as single, common subject of experience, 5. knowledge of the mind, 6. where kant has and has not influenced contemporary cognitive research, other internet resources, related entries.

In this article, we will focus on Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) work on the mind and consciousness of self and related issues.

Some commentators believe that Kant’s views on the mind are dependent on his idealism (he called it transcendental idealism). For the most part, that is not so. At worst, most of what he said about the mind and consciousness can be detached from his idealism. Though often viewed as a quintessentially German philosopher, Kant is said to have been one-quarter Scottish. Some philosophers (often Scottish) hold that ‘Kant’ is a Germanization of the Scottish name ‘Candt’, though many scholars now reject the idea. It is noteworthy, however, that his work on epistemology, which led him to his ideas about the mind, was a response to Hume as much as to any other philosopher.

In general structure, Kant’s model of the mind was the dominant model in the empirical psychology that flowed from his work and then again, after a hiatus during which behaviourism reigned supreme (roughly 1910 to 1965), toward the end of the 20 th century, especially in cognitive science. Central elements of the models of the mind of thinkers otherwise as different as Sigmund Freud and Jerry Fodor are broadly Kantian, for example.

Three ideas define the basic shape (‘cognitive architecture’) of Kant’s model and one its dominant method. They have all become part of the foundation of cognitive science.

• The mind is a complex set of abilities (functions). (As Meerbote 1989 and many others have observed, Kant held a functionalist view of the mind almost 200 years before functionalism was officially articulated in the 1960s by Hilary Putnam and others.)
• The functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity are spatio-temporal processing of, and application of concepts to, sensory inputs. Cognition requires concepts as well as percepts.
• These functions are forms of what Kant called synthesis. Synthesis (and the unity in consciousness required for synthesis) are central to cognition.

These three ideas are fundamental to most thinking about cognition now. Kant’s most important method, the transcendental method, is also at the heart of contemporary cognitive science.

• To study the mind, infer the conditions necessary for experience. Arguments having this structure are called transcendental arguments .

Translated into contemporary terms, the core of this method is inference to the best explanation, the method of postulating unobservable mental mechanisms in order to explain observed behaviour.

To be sure, Kant thought that he could get more out of his transcendental arguments than just ‘best explanations’. He thought that he could get a priori (experience independent) knowledge out of them. Kant had a tripartite doctrine of the a priori. He held that some features of the mind and its knowledge had a priori origins, i.e., must be in the mind prior to experience (because using them is necessary to have experience). That mind and knowledge have these features are a priori truths, i.e., necessary and universal (B3/4) [ 1 ] . And we can come to know these truths, or that they are a priori at any rate, only by using a priori methods, i.e., we cannot learn these things from experience (B3) (Brook 1993). Kant thought that transcendental arguments were a priori or yielded the a priori in all three ways. Nonetheless, at the heart of this method is inference to the best explanation. When introspection fell out of favour about 100 years ago, the alternative approach adopted was exactly this approach. Its nonempirical roots in Kant notwithstanding, it is now the major method used by experimental cognitive scientists.

Other topics equally central to Kant’s approach to the mind have hardly been discussed by cognitive science. These include, as we will see near the end, a kind of synthesis that for Kant was essential to minds like ours and what struck him as the most striking features of consciousness of self. Far from his model having been superseded by cognitive science, some things central to the model have not even been assimilated by it.

2. Kant’s Critical Project and How the Mind Fits Into It

The major works so far as Kant’s views on the mind are concerned are the monumental Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) and his little, late Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , first published in 1798 only six years before his death. Since the Anthropology was worked up from notes for popular lectures, it is often superficial compared to CPR. Kant’s view of the mind arose from his general philosophical project in CPR the following way. Kant aimed among other things to,

• Justify our conviction that physics, like mathematics, is a body of necessary and universal truth.
• Insulate religion, including belief in immortality, and free will from the corrosive effects of this very same science.

Kant accepted without reservation that “God, freedom and immortality” (1781/7, Bxxx) exist but feared that, if science were relevant to their existence at all, it would provide reasons to doubt that they exist. As he saw it and very fortunately, science cannot touch these questions. “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge , … in order to make room for faith.” (Bxxx, his italics).

Laying the foundation for pursuit of the first aim, which as he saw it was no less than the aim of showing why physics is a science, was what led Kant to his views about how the mind works. He approached the grounding of physics by asking: What are the necessary conditions of experience (A96)? Put simply, he held that for our experience, and therefore our minds, to be as they are, the way that our experience is tied together must reflect the way that, according to physics, says objects in the world must be tied together. Seeing this connection also tells us a lot about what our minds must be like.

In pursuit of the second aim, Kant criticized some arguments of his predecessors that entailed if sound that we can know more about the mind’s consciousness of itself than Kant could allow. Mounting these criticisms led him to some extraordinarily penetrating ideas about our consciousness of ourselves.

In CPR, Kant discussed the mind only in connection with his main projects, never in its own right, so his treatment is remarkably scattered and sketchy. As he put it, “Enquiry … [into] the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it rests … is of great importance for my chief purpose, … [but] does not form an essential part of it” (Axvii). Indeed, Kant offers no sustained, focussed discussion of the mind anywhere in his work except the popular Anthropology, which, as we just said, is quite superficial.

In addition, the two chapters of CPR in which most of Kant’s remarks on the mind occur, the chapter on the Transcendental Deduction (TD) and the chapter on what he called Paralogisms (faulty arguments about the mind mounted by his predecessors) were the two chapters that gave him the greatest difficulty. (They contain some of the most impenetrable prose ever written.) Kant completely rewrote the main body of both chapters for the second edition (though not the introductions, interestingly).

In the two editions of CPR, there are seven main discussions of the mind. The first is in the Transcendental Aesthetic, the second is in what is usually called the Metaphysical Deduction (for this term, see below). Then there are two discussions of it in the first-edition TD, in parts 1 to 3 of Section 2 (A98 up to A110) and in the whole of Section 3 (A115-A127) [ 2 ] and two more in the second-edition TD, from B129 to B140 and from B153 to B159, the latter seemingly added as a kind of supplement. The seventh and last is found in the first edition version of Kant’s attack on the Paralogisms, in the course of which he says things of the utmost interest about consciousness of and reference to self. (What little was retained of these remarks in the second edition was moved to the completely rewritten TD.) For understanding Kant on the mind and self-knowledge, the first edition of CPR is far more valuable than the second edition. Kant’s discussion proceeds through the following stages.

Kant calls the first stage the Transcendental Aesthetic. [ 3 ] It is about what space and time must be like, and how we must handle them, if our experience is to have the spatial and temporal properties that it has. This question about the necessary conditions of experience is for Kant a ‘transcendental’ question and the strategy of proceeding by trying to find answers to such questions is, as we said, the strategy of transcendental argument.

Here Kant advances one of his most notorious views: that whatever it is that impinges on us from the mind-independent world does not come located in a spatial nor even a temporal matrix (A37=B54fn.). Rather, it is the mind that organizes this ‘manifold of raw intuition’, as he called it, spatially and temporally. The mind has two pure forms of intuition, space and time, built into it to allow it to do so. (‘Pure’ means ‘not derived from experience’.)

These claims are very problematic. For example, they invite the question, in virtue of what is the mind constrained to locate a bit of information at one spatial or temporal location rather than another? Kant seems to have had no answer to this question (Falkenstein 1995; Brook 1998). Most commentators have found Kant’s claim that space and time are only in the mind, not at all in the mind-independent world, to be implausible.

The activity of locating items in the ‘forms of intuition’, space and time, is one of the three kinds of what Kant called synthesis and discussed in the chapter on the Transcendental Deduction. It is not entirely clear how the two discussions relate.

The Aesthetic is about the conditions of experience, Kant’s official project. The chapter leading up to the Transcendental Deduction, The Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding (but generally called the Metaphysical Deduction because of a remark that Kant once made, B159) has a very different starting point.

Starting from (and, Bvii, taking for granted the adequacy of) Aristotelian logic (the syllogisms and the formal concepts that Aristotle called categories), Kant proceeds by analysis to draw out the implications of these concepts and syllogisms for the conceptual structure (the “function of thought in judgment” (A70=B95)) within which all thought and experience must take place. The result is what Kant called the Categories . That is to say, Kant tries to deduce the conceptual structure of experience from the components of Aristotelian logic.

Thus, in Kant’s thought about the mind early in CPR , there is not one central movement but two, one in the Transcendental Aesthetic and the other in the Metaphysical Deduction. The first is a move up from experience (of objects) to the necessary conditions of such experience. The second is a move down from the Aristotelian functions of judgment to the concepts that we have to use in judging, namely, the Categories. One is inference up from experience, the other deduction down from conceptual structures of the most abstract kind.

Then we get to the second chapter of the Transcendental Logic, the brilliant and baffling Transcendental Deduction (TD). Recall the two movements just discussed, the one from experience to its conditions and the one from Aristotelian functions of judgment to the concepts that we must use in all judging (the Categories). This duality led Kant to his famous question of right ( quid juris) (A84=B116): with what right do we apply the Categories, which are not acquired from experience, to the contents of experience? (A85=B117). Kant’s problem here is not as arcane as it might seem. It reflects an important question: How is it that the world as we experience it conforms to our logic? In briefest form, Kant thought that the trick to showing how it is possible for the Categories to apply to experience is to show that it is necessary that they apply (A97). [ 4 ]

TD has two sides, though Kant never treats them separately. He once called them the objective and the subjective deductions (Axvii). The objective deduction is about the conceptual and other cognitive conditions of having representations of objects. It is Kant’s answer to the quid juris question. Exactly how the objective deduction goes is highly controversial, a controversy that we will sidestep here. The subjective deduction is about what the mind, the “subjective sources” of understanding (A97), must as a consequence be like. The subjective deduction is what mainly interests us.

Kant argues as follows. Our experiences have objects, that is, they are about something. The objects of our experiences are discrete, unified particulars. To have such particulars available to it, the mind must construct them based on sensible input. To construct them, the mind must do three kinds of synthesis. It must generate temporal and spatial structure (Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition). It must associate spatio-temporally structured items with other spatio-temporally structured items (Synthesis of Reproduction in the Imagination). And it must recognize items using concepts, the Categories in particular (Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept). This threefold doctrine of synthesis is one of the cornerstones of Kant’s model of the mind. We will consider it in more detail in the next Section.

The ‘deduction of the categories’ should now be complete. Strangely enough, the chapter has only nicely got started. In the first edition version, for example, we have only reached A106, about one-third of the way through the chapter. At this point, Kant introduces the notion of transcendental apperception for the first time and the unity of such apperception, the unity of consciousness. Evidently, something is happening (something, moreover, not at all well heralded in the text). We will see what when we discuss Kant’s doctrine of synthesis below.

We can now understand in more detail why Kant said that the subjective deduction is inessential (Axvii). Since the objective deduction is about the conditions of representations having objects, a better name for it might have been ‘deduction of the object’. Similarly, a better name for the subjective deduction might have been ‘the deduction of the subject’ or ‘the deduction of the subject’s nature’. The latter enquiry was inessential to Kant’s main critical project because the main project was to defend the synthetic a priori credentials of physics in the objective deduction. From this point of view, anything uncovered about the nature and functioning of the mind was a happy accident.

The chapter on the Paralogisms, the first of the three parts of Kant’s second project, contains Kant’s most original insights into the nature of consciousness of the self. In the first edition, he seems to have achieved a stable position on self-consciousness only as late as this chapter. Certainly his position was not stable in TD. Even his famous term for consciousness of self, ‘I think’, occurs for the first time only in the introduction to the chapter on the Paralogisms. His target is claims that we know what the mind is like. Whatever the merits of Kant’s attack on these claims, in the course of mounting it, he made some very deep-running observations about consciousness and knowledge of self.

To summarize: in the first edition, TD contains most of what Kant had to say about synthesis and unity, but little on the nature of consciousness of self. The chapter on the Paralogisms contains most of what he has to say about consciousness of self.

2.5 The Two Discussions in the 2 nd -edition TD and Other Discussions

As we said, Kant rewrote both TD and the chapter on the Paralogisms for the second edition of CPR , leaving only their introductions intact. In the course of doing so, he moved the topic of consciousness of self from the chapter on the Paralogisms to the second discussion of the mind in the new TD. The new version of the Paralogisms chapter is then built around a different and, so far as theory of mind is concerned, much less interesting strategy. The relationship of the old and new versions of the chapters is complicated (Brook 1994, Ch. 9). Here we will just note that the underlying doctrine of the mind does not seem to change very much.

CPR contains other discussions of the mind, discussions that remained the same in both editions. The appendix on what Kant called Leibniz’ Amphiboly contains the first explicit discussion of an important general metaphysical notion, numerical identity (being one object at and over time), and contains the first argument in CPR for the proposition that sensible input is needed for knowledge. (Kant asserts this many times earlier but assertion is not argument.) In the Antinomies, the discussion of the Second Antinomy contains some interesting remarks about the simplicity of the soul and there is a discussion of free will in the Solution to the Third Antinomy. The mind also appears a few times in the Doctrine of Method, particularly in a couple of glosses of the attack mounted against the Paralogisms. (A784=B812ff is perhaps the most interesting.)

In other new material prepared for the second edition, we find a first gloss on the topic of self-consciousness as early as the Aesthetic (B68). The mind also appears in a new passage called the Refutation of Idealism, where Kant attempts to tie the possibility of one sort of consciousness of self to consciousness of permanence in something other than ourselves, in a way he thought to be inconsistent with Berkeleian idealism. This new Refutation of Idealism has often been viewed as a replacement for the argument against the Fourth Paralogism of the first edition. There are problems with this view, the most important of which is that the second edition still has a separate fourth Paralogism (B409). That said, though the new passage utilizes self-consciousness in a highly original way, it says little that is new about it.

Elsewhere in his work, the only sustained discussion of the mind and consciousness is, as we said, his little, late Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View . By ‘anthropology’ Kant meant the study of human beings from the point of view of their (psychologically-controlled) behaviour, especially their behaviour toward one another, and of the things revealed in behaviour such as character. Though Kant sometimes contrasted anthropology as a legitimate study with what he understood empirical psychology to be, namely, psychology based on introspective observation, he meant by anthropology something fairly close to what we now mean by behavioural or experimental psychology.

3. Kant’s View of the Mind

Turning now to Kant’s view of the mind, we will start with a point about method: Kant held surprisingly strong and not entirely consistent views on the empirical study of the mind. The empirical method for doing psychology that Kant discussed was introspection.

Sometimes he held such study to be hopeless. The key text on psychology is in The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science . There Kant tell us that “the empirical doctrine of the soul … must remain even further removed than chemistry from the rank of what may be called a natural science proper” (Ak. IV:471). (In Kant’s defence, there was nothing resembling a single unified theory of chemical reactions in his time.) The contents of introspection, in his terms inner sense, cannot be studied scientifically for at least five reasons.

First, having only one universal dimension and one that they are only represented to have at that, namely, distribution in time, the contents of inner sense cannot be quantified; thus no mathematical model of them is possible. Second, “the manifold of internal observation is separated only by mere thought”. That is to say, only the introspective observer distinguishes the items one from another; there are no real distinctions among the items themselves. Third, these items “cannot be kept separate” in a way that would allow us to connect them again “at will”, by which Kant presumably means, according to the dictates of our developing theory. Fourth, “another thinking subject [does not] submit to our investigations in such a way as to be conformable to our purposes” – the only thinking subject whose inner sense one can investigate is oneself. Finally and most damningly, “even the observation itself alters and distorts the state of the object observed” (1786, Ak. IV:471). Indeed, introspection can be bad for the health: it is a road to “mental illness” (‘Illuminism and Terrorism’, 1798, Ak. VII:133; see 161).

In these critical passages, it is not clear why he didn’t respect what he called anthropology more highly as an empirical study of the mind, given that he himself did it. He did so elsewhere. In the Anthropology , for example, he links ‘self-observation’ and observation of others and calls them both sources of anthropology (Ak. VII:142–3).

Whatever, no kind of empirical psychology can yield necessary truths about the mind. In the light of this limitation, how should we study the mind? Kant’s answer was: transcendental method using transcendental arguments (notions introduced earlier). If we cannot observe the connections among the denizens of inner sense to any purpose, we can study what the mind must be like and what capacities and structures (in Kant’s jargon, faculties) it must have if it is to represent things as it does. With this method we can find universally true, that is to say, ‘transcendental’ psychological propositions. We have already seen what some of them are: minds must be able to synthesize and minds must have a distinctive unity, for example. Let us turn now to these substantive claims.

3.2 Synthesis and Faculties

We have already discussed Kant’s view of the mind’s handling of space and time, so we can proceed directly to his doctrine of synthesis. As Kant put it in one of his most famous passages, “Concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51=B75). Experience requires both percepts and concepts. As we might say now, to discriminate, we need information; but for information to be of any use to us, we must organize the information. This organization is provided by acts of synthesis.

By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the act of putting different representations together, and of grasping what is manifold in them in one knowledge [A77=B103]

If the doctrine of space and time is the first major part of his model of the mind, the doctrine of synthesis is the second. Kant claimed, as we saw earlier, that three kinds of synthesis are required to organize information, namely apprehending in intuition, reproducing in imagination, and recognizing in concepts (A97-A105). Each of the three kinds of synthesis relates to a different aspect of Kant’s fundamental duality of intuition and concept. Synthesis of apprehension concerns raw perceptual input, synthesis of recognition concerns concepts, and synthesis of reproduction in imagination allows the mind to go from the one to the other.

They also relate to three fundamental faculties of the mind. One is the province of Sensibility, one is the province of Understanding, and the one in the middle is the province of a faculty that has a far less settled position than the other two, namely, Imagination (see A120).

The first two, apprehension and reproduction, are inseparable; one cannot occur without the other (A102). The third, recognition, requires the other two but is not required by them. It seems that only the third requires the use of concepts; this problem of non-concept-using syntheses and their relationship to use of the categories becomes a substantial issue in the second edition (see B150ff.), where Kant tries to save the universality of the objective deduction by arguing that all three kinds of syntheses are required to represent objects.

Acts of synthesis are performed on that to which we are passive in experience, namely intuitions ( Anschauungen). Intuitions are quite different from sense-data as classically understood; we can become conscious of intuitions only after acts of synthesis and only by inference from these acts, not directly. Thus they are something more like theoretical entities (better, events) postulated to explain something in what we do recognize. What they explain is the non-conceptual element in representations, an element over which we have no control. Intuitions determine how our representations will serve to confirm or refute theories, aid or impede our efforts to reach various goals.

The synthesis of apprehension is somewhat more shadowy than the other two. In the second edition, the idea does not even appear until §26, i.e., late in TD. At A120, Kant tells us that apprehending impressions is taking them up into the activity of imagination, i.e., into the faculty of the mind that becomes conscious of images. He tells us that we can achieve the kind of differentiation we need to take them up only “in so far as the mind distinguishes the time in the sequence of one impression upon another” (A99). Kant uses the term ‘impression’ ( Eindrucke ) rarely; it seems to be in the same camp as ‘appearance’ ( Erscheinung ) and ‘intuition’ ( Anschauung ).

The idea behind the strange saying just quoted seems to be this. Kant seems to have believed that we can become conscious of only one new item at a time. Thus a group of simultaneous ‘impressions’ all arriving at the same time would be indistinguishable, “for each representation [ Vorstellung ], in so far as it is contained in a single moment , can never be anything but absolute unity” (A99). Kant’s use of Vorstellung , with its suggestion of synthesized, conceptualized organization, may have been unfortunate, but what I think he meant is this. Prior to synthesis and conceptual organization, a manifold of intuitions would be an undifferentiated unit, a seamless, buzzing confusion. Thus, to distinguish one impression from another, we must give them separate locations. Kant speaks only of temporal location but he may very well have had spatial location in mind, too.

The synthesis of apprehension is closely related to the Transcendental Aesthetic. Indeed, it is the doing of what the Aesthetic tells us that the mind has to be able to do with respect to locating items in time and space (time anyway).

The synthesis of reproduction in imagination has two elements, a synthesis proper and associations necessary for performing that synthesis. (Kant explicitly treats them as separate on A125: “recognition, reproduction, association, apprehension”.) Both start from the appearances, as Kant now calls them, which the synthesis of apprehension has located in time. At first glance, the synthesis of reproduction looks very much like memory ; however, it is actually quite different from memory. It is a matter of retaining earlier intuitions in such a way that certain other representations can “bring about a transition of the mind” to these earlier representations, even in the absence of any current representation of them (A100). Such transitions are the result of the setting up of associations (which, moreover, need not be conscious) and do not require memory. Likewise, no recognition of any sort need be involved; that the earlier representations have become associated with later ones is not something that we need recognize. Memory and recognition are the jobs of synthesis of recognition, yet to come.

To our ears now, it is a little strange to find Kant calling this activity of reproduction and the activity of apprehension acts of imagination . Kant describes the function he had in mind as “a blind but indispensable function of the soul” (A78=B103), so he meant something rather different from what we now mean by the term ‘imagination’ (A120 and fn.). For Kant, imagination is a connecting of elements by forming an image: “… imagination has to bring the manifold of intuitions into the form of an image” (A120). If ‘imagination’ is understood in its root sense of image-making and we see imagination not as opposed to but as part of perception, then Kant’s choice of term becomes less peculiar.

The third kind of synthesis is synthesis of recognition in a concept. To experience objects for Kant, first I have to relate the materials out of which they are constructed to one another temporally and spatially. They may not require use of concepts. Then I have to apply at least the following kinds of concepts: concepts of number, of quality, and of modality (I am experiencing something real or fictitious). These are three of the four kinds of concepts that Kant had identified as Categories. Note that we have so far not mentioned the fourth, relational concepts.

In Kant’s view, recognition requires memory; reproduction is not memory but memory does enter now. The argument goes as follows.

[A merely reproduced] manifold of representation would never … form a whole, since it would lack that unity which only consciousness can impart to it. If, in counting, I forget that the units, which now hover before me, have been added to one another in succession, I should never know that a total is being produced through this successive addition of unit to unit … [A103; see A78=B104].

In fact, as this passage tells us, synthesis into an object by an act of recognition requires two things. One is memory. The other is that something in the past representations must be recognized as related to present ones. And to recognize that earlier and later representations are both representing a single object, we must use a concept, a rule (A121, A126). In fact, we must use a number of concepts: number, quality, modality, and, of course, the specific empirical concept of the object we are recognizing.

Immediately after introducing recognition, Kant brings apperception and the unity of apperception into the discussion. The acts by which we achieve recognition under concepts are acts of apperception. By ‘apperception’, Kant means the faculty or capacity for judging in accord with a rule, for applying concepts. Apperceiving is an activity necessary for and parallel to perceiving (A120). This is one of the senses in which Leibniz used the term, too. To achieve recognition of a unified object, the mind must perform an act of judgment; it must find how various represented elements are connected to one another. This judgment is an act of apperception. Apperception is the faculty that performs syntheses of recognition (A115). Note that we are not yet dealing with transcendental apperception.

To sum up: For experiences to have objects, acts of recognition that apply concepts to spatio-temporally ordered material are required. Representation requires recognition. Moreover, objects of representation share a general structure. They are all some number of something, they all have qualities, and they all have an existence-status. (Put this way, Kant’s claim that the categories are required for knowledge looks quite plausible.)

With the synthesis of recognition, TD should be close to complete. Kant merely needs to argue that these concepts must include the categories, which he does at A111, and that should be that.

But that is not that. In fact, as we said earlier, we are only about one-third of the way through the chapter. The syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition of single objects march in a single temporal/object-generational line. Suddenly at A106 Kant makes a kind of 90 o turn. From the generation of a representation of individual objects of experience over time , he suddenly turns to a form of recognition that requires the unification and recognition of multiple objects existing at the same time. He moves from acts of recognition of individual objects to unified acts of recognition of multiple objects which “stand along side one another in one experience” (A108). This 90 o turn is a pivotal moment in TD and has received less attention than it deserves.

The move that Kant makes next is interesting. He argues that the mind could not use concepts so as to have unified objects of representation if its consciousness were not itself unified (A107–108). Why does consciousness and its unity appear here? We have been exploring what is necessary to have experience. Why would it matter if, in addition, unified consciousness were necessary? As Walker (1978, p. 77) and Guyer (1987, pp. 94–5) have shown, Kant did not need to start from anything about the mind to deduce the Categories. (A famous footnote in The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science [Ak. IV:474fn.] is Kant’s best-known comment on this issue.) So why does he suddenly introduce unified consciousness?

So far Kant has ‘deduced’ only three of the four kinds of categorical concepts, number, quality, and modality. He has said nothing about the relational categories. For Kant, this would have been a crucial gap. One of his keenest overall objectives in CPR is to show that physics is a real science. To do this, he thinks that he needs to show that we must use the concept of causality in experience. Thus, causality is likely the category that he cared more about than all the other categories put together. Yet up to A106, Kant has said nothing about the relational categories in general or causality in particular. By A111, however, Kant is talking about the use of the relational categories and by A112 causality is front and centre. So it is natural to suppose that, in Kant’s view at least, the material between A106 and A111 contains an argument for the necessity of applying the relational categories, even though he never says so.

Up to A106, Kant has talked about nothing but normal individual objects: a triangle and its three sides, a body and its shape and impenetrability. At A107, he suddenly begins to talk about tying together multiple represented objects, indeed “all possible appearances, which can stand alongside one another in one experience” (A108). The solution to the problem of showing that we have to use the category of causality must lie somewhere in this activity of tying multiple objects together.

The passage between A106 and A111 is blindingly difficult. It takes up transcendental apperception, the unity and identity of the mind, and the mind’s consciousness of itself as the subject of all its representations (A106–108). I think that this passage introduces either a new stage or even a new starting point for TD. Here many commentators (Strawson, Henrich, Guyer) would think immediately of self-consciousness. Kant did use consciousness of self as a starting point for deductions, at B130 in the B-edition for example. But that is not what appears here, not in the initial paragraphs anyway.

What Kant does say is this. Our experience is “one experience”; “all possible appearances … stand alongside one another in one experience” (A108). We have “one and the same general experience” of “all … the various perceptions” (A110), “a connected whole of human knowledge” (A121). Let us call this general experience a global representation .

Transcendental apperception (hereafter TA) now enters. It is the ability to tie ‘all appearances’ together into ‘one experience’.

This transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible appearances, which can stand alongside one another in one experience, a connection of all these representations according to laws. [A108]

It performs a “synthesis of all appearances according to concepts”, “whereby it subordinates all synthesis of apprehension … to a transcendental unity” (A108). This, he thought, requires unified consciousness. Unified consciousness is required for another reason, too. Representations

can [so much as] represent something to me only in so far as they belong with all others to one consciousness. Therefore, they must at least be capable of being so connected [A116].

The introduction of unified consciousness opens up an important new opportunity. Kant can now explore the necessary conditions of conscious content being unified in this way. To make a long story short, Kant now argues that conscious content could have the unity that it does only if the contents themselves are tied together causally. [ 5 ]

With this, his deduction of the relational categories is complete and his defence of the necessity of physics is under way. The notion of unified consciousness to which Kant is appealing here is interesting in its own right, so let us turn to it next. [ 6 ]

For Kant, consciousness being unified is a central feature of the mind, our kind of mind at any rate. In fact, being a single integrated group of experiences (roughly, one person’s experiences) requires two kinds of unity.

• The consciousness that this subject has of represented objects and/or representations must be unified.

The first requirement may look trivial but it is not. For Hume, for example, what makes a group of experiences one person’s experiences is that they are associated with one another in an appropriate way (the so-called bundle theory), not that they have a common subject. The need for a subject arises from two straightforward considerations: representations not only represent something, they represent it to someone; and, representations are not given to us – to become a representation, sensory inputs must be processed by an integrated cognitive system. Kant may have been conscious of both these points, but beyond identifying the need, he had little to say about what the subject of experience might be like, so we will say no more about it. (We will, however, say something about what its consciousness of itself is like later.)

Kant seems to have used the terms ‘ unity of consciousness ’ (A103) and ‘unity of apperception’ (A105, A108) interchangeably. The well-known argument at the beginning of the first edition attack on the second paralogism (A352) focuses on this unity at a given time (among other things) and what can (or rather, cannot) be inferred from this about the nature of the mind (a topic to which we will return below). The attack on the third paralogism focuses on what can be inferred from unified consciousness over time. These are all from the first edition of CPR . In the second edition, Kant makes remarks about unity unlike anything in the first edition, for example, “this unity … is not the category of unity” (B131). The unity of consciousness and Kant’s views on it are complicated issues but some of the most important points include the following.

By ‘unity of consciousness’, Kant seems to have the following in mind: I am conscious not only of single experiences but of a great many experiences at the same time. The same is true of actions; I can do and be conscious of doing a number of actions at the same time. In addition to such synchronic unity, many global representations, as we called them, display temporal unity: current representation is combined with retained earlier representation. (Temporal unity is often a feature of synthesis of recognition.) Any representation that we acquire in a series of temporal steps, such as hearing a sentence, will have unity across time (A104; A352).

Kant himself did not explicate his notion of unified consciousness but here is one plausible articulation of the notion at work in his writings.

The unity of consciousness = df. (i) a single act of consciousness, which (ii) makes one conscious of a number of representations and/or objects of representation in such a way that to be conscious by having any members of this group is also to be conscious by having others in the group and of at least some of them as a group.

As this definition makes clear, consciousness being unified is more than just being one state of consciousness. Unified consciousness is not just singular, it is unified.

Kant placed great emphasis on the unity of consciousness, both positively and negatively. Positively, he held that conceptualized representation has to be unified both at and across time. Negatively, from a mind having unified consciousness, he held that nothing follows concerning its composition, its identity, especially its identity across time , nor its materiality or immateriality. He argued these points in his attacks on the second, third and fourth Paralogisms.

4. Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self

Many commentators hold that consciousness of self is central to the Critical philosophy. There is reason to question this: unified consciousness is central, but consciousness of self? That is not so clear. Whatever, the topic is intrinsically interesting and Kant achieved some remarkable insights into it. Strangely, none of his immediate successors took them up after his death and they next appeared at the earliest in Wittgenstein (1934–5) and perhaps not until Shoemaker (1968). Kant never discussed consciousness of self in its own right, only in the context of pursuing other objectives, and his remarks on the topic are extremely scattered. When we pull his various remarks together, we can see that Kant advanced at least seven major theses about consciousness of and knowledge of self . We will consider them one-by-one.

The first thesis:

• There are two kinds of consciousness of self: consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in inner sense and consciousness of oneself and one’s states via performing acts of apperception.

Kant’s term for the former was ‘empirical self-consciousness’. A leading term for the latter was ‘transcendental apperception’ (TA). (Kant used the term ‘TA’ in two very different ways, as the name for a faculty of synthesis and as the name for what he also referred to as the ‘I think’, namely, one’s consciousness of oneself as subject.) Here is a passage from the Anthropology in which Kant distinguishes the two kinds of consciousness of self very clearly:

… the “I” of reflection contains no manifold and is always the same in every judgment … Inner experience , on the other hand, contains the matter of consciousness and a manifold of empirical inner intuition: … [1798, Ak. VII:141–2, emphases in the original].

The two kinds of consciousness of self have very different sources.

The source of empirical self-consciousness is what Kant called inner sense. He did not work out his notion of inner sense at all well. Here are just a few of the problems. Kant insists that all representational states are in inner sense, including those representing the objects of outer sense (i.e., spatially located objects):

Whatever the origins of our representations, whether they are due to the influence of outer things, or are produced through inner causes, whether they arise a priori , or being appearances have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense. [A98–9]

However, he also says that the object of inner sense is the soul, the object of outer sense the body (including one’s own). He comes close to denying that we can be conscious of the denizens of inner sense—they do not represent inner objects and have no manifold of their own. Yet he also says that we can be conscious of them — representations can themselves be objects of representations, indeed, representations can make us conscious of themselves. In its role as a form of or means to consciousness of self, apperception ought to be part of inner sense. Yet Kant regularly contrasted apperception, a means to consciousness of oneself and one’s acts of thinking, with inner sense as a means to consciousness of—what? Presumably, particular representations: perceptions, imaginings, memories, etc. Here is another passage from the Anthropology :

§24. Inner sense is not pure apperception, consciousness of what we are doing; for this belongs to the power of thinking. It is, rather, consciousness of what we undergo as we are affected by the play of our own thoughts. This consciousness rests on inner intuition, and so on the relation of ideas (as they are either simultaneous or successive). [1798, Ak. VII:161]

Kant makes the same distinction in CPR :

… the I that I think is distinct from the I that it, itself, intuits …; I am given to myself beyond that which is given in intuition, and yet know myself, like other phenomena, only as I appear to myself, not as I am … [B155].

Since most of Kant’s most interesting remarks about consciousness of and knowledge of self concern consciousness of oneself, the ‘I of reflection’ via acts of apperception, we will focus on it, though empirical consciousness of self will appear again briefly from time to time.

4.2 Thesis 2: Representational Base of Consciousness of Oneself and One’s States

How does apperception give rise to consciousness of oneself and one’s states? In the passage just quoted from the Anthropology, notice the phrase “consciousness of what we are doing” — doing. The way in which one becomes conscious of an act of representing is not by receiving intuitions but by doing it: “synthesis …, as an act, … is conscious to itself, even without sensibility” (B153); “… this representation is an act of spontaneity , that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility” (B132).

Equally, we can be conscious of ourselves as subject merely by doing acts of representing. No further representation is needed.

Man, … who knows the rest of nature solely through the senses, knows himself also through pure apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and inner determinations which he cannot regard as impressions of the senses [A546=B574].

How does one’s consciousness of oneself in one’s acts of representing work? Consider the sentence:

I am looking at the words on the screen in front of me.

Kant’s claim seems to be that the representation of the words on the screen is all the experience I need to be conscious not just of the words and the screen but also of the act of seeing them and of who is seeing them, namely, me. A single representation can do all three jobs. Let us call an act of representing that can make one conscious of its object, itself and oneself as its subject the representational base of consciousness of these three items. [ 7 ] Kant’s second major thesis is,

• Most ordinary representations generated by most ordinary acts of synthesis provide the representational base of consciousness of oneself and one’s states.

Note that this representational base is the base not only of consciousness of one’s representational states. It is also the base of consciousness of oneself as the subject of those states—as the thing that has and does them. Though it is hard to know for sure, Kant would probably have denied that consciousness of oneself in inner sense can make one conscious of oneself as subject, of oneself as oneself, in this way.

For Kant, this distinction between consciousness of oneself and one’s states by doing acts of synthesis and consciousness of oneself and one’s states as the objects of particular representations is of fundamental importance. When one is conscious of oneself and one’s states by doing cognitive and perceptual acts, one is conscious of oneself as spontaneous, rational, self-legislating, free—as the doer of deeds, not just as a passive receptacle for representations: “I exist as an intelligence which is conscious solely of its power of combination” (B158–159), of “the activity of the self” (B68) (Sellars, 1970–1; Pippin, 1987).

So far we have focussed on individual representations. For Kant, however, the representations that serve as the representational base of consciousness of oneself as subject are usually much ‘bigger’ than that, i.e., contain multiple objects and often multiple representations of them tied together into what Kant called ‘general experience’.

When we speak of different experiences, we can refer only to the various perceptions, all of which belong to one and the same general experience. This thoroughgoing synthetic unity of perceptions is the form of experience; it is nothing less than the synthetic unity of appearances in accordance with concepts [A110].

This general experience is the global representation introduced earlier. When I am conscious of many objects and/or representations of them as the single object of a single global representation, the latter representation is all the representation I need to be conscious not just of the global object but also of myself as the common subject of all the constituent representations.

The mind could never think its identity in the manifoldness of its representations… if it did not have before its eyes the identity of its act, whereby it subordinates all [the manifold] … to a transcendental unity… [A108].

I am conscious of myself as the single common subject of a certain group of experiences by being conscious of “the identity of the consciousness in … conjoined … representations” (B133).

4.3 Thesis 3: Consciousness in Inner Sense is Only of How One Appears to Oneself

Neither consciousness of self by doing apperceptive acts nor empirical consciousness of self as the object of particular representations yields knowledge of oneself as one is. On pain of putting his right to believe in immortality as an article of faith at risk, Kant absolutely had to claim this. As he put it,

it would be a great stumbling block, or rather would be the one unanswerable objection, to our whole critique if it were possible to prove a priori that all thinking beings are in themselves simple substances. [B409]

The same would hold for all other properties of thinking beings. Since Kant also sometimes viewed immortality, i.e., personal continuity beyond death, as a foundation of morality, morality could also be at risk. So Kant had powerful motives to maintain that one does not know oneself as one is. Yet, according to him, we seem to know at least some things about ourselves, namely, how we must function, and it would be implausible to maintain that one never conscious of one’s real self at all. Kant’s response to these pressures is ingenious.

First, he treats inner sense: When we know ourselves as the object of a representation in inner sense, we “know even ourselves only .. as appearance …” (A278).

Inner … sense … represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected [by ourselves] (B153).

This is the third thesis:

• In inner sense, one is conscious of oneself only as one appears to oneself, not as one is.

So when we seem to be directly conscious of features of ourselves, we in fact have the same kind of consciousness of them as we have of features of things in general—we appear to ourselves to be like this, that or the other, in just the way that we know of any object only as it appears to us.

Then he turns to consciousness of oneself and one’s states by doing apperceptive acts. This is a knottier problem. Here we will consider only consciousness of oneself as subject. Certainly by the second edition, Kant had come to see how implausible it would be to maintain that one has no consciousness of oneself, one’s real self, at all when one is conscious of oneself as the subject of one’s experience, agent of one’s acts, by having these experiences and doing those acts. In the 2 nd edition, he reflects this sensitivity as early as B68; at B153, he goes so far as to say that an apparent contradiction is involved.

Furthermore, when we are conscious of ourselves as subject and agent by doing acts of apperceiving, we do appear to ourselves to be substantial, simple and continuing. He had to explain these appearances away; doing so was one of his aims, indeed, in his attacks on the second and third Paralogisms. Thus, Kant had strong motives to give consciousness of self as subject special treatment. The view that proposes is puzzling. I am not consciousness of myself as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself but only “that I am” (B157). To understand what he might mean here, we need a couple of intermediate theses. They contain the remarkable insights into reference to and consciousness of self mentioned earlier.

Kant generated the special treatment he needed by focussing first on reference to self. Here are some of the things that he said about reference to oneself as subject. It is a consciousness of self in which “nothing manifold is given.” (B135). In the kind of reference in which we gain this consciousness of self, we “denote” but do not “represent” ourselves (A382). We designate ourselves without noting “any quality whatsoever” in ourselves (A355). This yields his fourth thesis about consciousness of and knowledge of self.

• The referential machinery used to obtain consciousness of self as subject requires no identifying (or other) ascription of properties to oneself.

This is a remarkably penetrating claim; remember, the study of reference and semantics generally is usually thought to have begun only with Frege. Kant is anticipating two important theses about reference to self that next saw the light of day only 200 years later.

• In such cases, first-person indexicals (I, me, my, mine) cannot be analysed out in favour of anything else, in particular anything descriptionlike (the essential indexical) (Perry 1979).

Was Kant actually aware of (1) and/or (2) or had he just stumbled across something that later philosophers recognized as significant?

One standard argument for (1) goes as follows:

My use of the word ‘I’ as the subject of [statements such as ‘I feel pain’ or ‘I see a canary’] is not due to my having identified as myself something [otherwise recognized] of which I know, or believe, or wish to say, that the predicate of my statement applies to it [Shoemaker 1968, pp.558].

A standard argument for (2), that certain indexicals are essential, goes as follows. To know that I wrote a certain book a few years ago, it is not enough to know that someone over six feet tall wrote that book, or that someone who teaches philosophy at a particular university wrote that book, or … or … or … , for I could know all these things without knowing that it was me who has these properties (and I could know that it was me who wrote that book and not know that any of these things are properties of me). As Shoemaker puts it,

… no matter how detailed a token-reflexive-free description of a person is, … it cannot possibly entail that I am that person [1968, pp. 560].

Kant unquestionably articulated the argument for (1):

In attaching ‘I’ to our thoughts, we designate the subject only transcendentally … without noting in it any quality whatsoever—in fact, without knowing anything of it either directly or by inference [A355].

This transcendental designation, i.e., referring to oneself using ‘I’ without ‘noting any quality’ in oneself, has some unusual features. One can refer to oneself in a variety of ways, of course: as the person in the mirror, as the person born on such and such a date in such and such a place, as the first person to do X , and so on, but one way of referring to oneself is special: it does not require identifying or indeed any ascription to oneself. So Kant tells us. [ 9 ]

The question is more complicated with respect to (2). We cannot go into the complexities here (see Brook 2001). Here we will just note three passages in which Kant may be referring to the essential indexical or something like it.

The subject of the categories cannot by thinking the categories [i.e. applying them to objects] acquire a concept of itself as an object of the categories. For in order to think them, its pure self-consciousness, which is what was to be explained, must itself be presupposed. [B422]

The phrase ‘its pure self-consciousness’ seems to refer to consciousness of oneself as subject. If so, the passage may be saying that judgments about oneself, i.e., ascriptions of properties to oneself, ‘presuppose … pure self-consciousness’, i.e., consciousness of oneself via an act of ascription-free transcendental designation.

Now compare this, “it is … very evident that I cannot know as an object that which I must presuppose to know any object … .” (A402), and this,

Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = X . It is known only through the thoughts which are its predicates, and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any concept whatsoever, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any judgment upon it has always already made use of its representation. [A346=B404]

The last clause is the key one: “any judgment upon it has always already made use of its representation”. Kant seems to be saying that to know that anything is true of me, I must first know that it is me of whom it is true. This is something very like the essential indexical claim.

If reference to self takes place without ‘noting any properties’ of oneself, the consciousness that results will also have some special features.

The most important special feature is that, in this kind of consciousness of self, one is not, or need not be, conscious of any properties of oneself, certainly not any particular properties. One has the same consciousness of self no matter what else one is conscious of — thinking, perceiving, laughing, being miserable, or whatever. Kant expressed the thought this way,

through the ‘I’, as simple representation, nothing manifold is given. [B135]

the I that I think is distinct from the I that it … intuits …; I am given to myself beyond that which is given in intuition. [B155]

We now have the fifth thesis to be found in Kant:

• When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one has a bare consciousness of self in which “nothing manifold is given.”

Since, on Kant’s view, one can refer to oneself as oneself without knowing any properties of oneself, not just identifying properties, ‘non-ascriptive reference to self’ might capture what is special about this form of consciousness of self better than Shoemaker’s ‘self-reference without identification’.

Transcendental designation immediately yields the distinction that Kant needs to allow that one is conscious of oneself as one is, not just of an appearance of self, and yet deny knowledge of oneself as one is. If consciousness of self ascribes nothing to the self, it can be a “bare … consciousness of self [as one is]” and yet yield no knowledge of self—it is “very far from being a knowledge of the self” (B158). This thesis returns us to consciousness of self as subject:

• When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one’s bare consciousness of self yields no knowledge of self.

In Kant’s own work, he then put the idea of transcendental designation to work to explain how one can appear to oneself to be substantial, simple and persisting without these appearances reflecting how one actually is. The reason that one appears in these ways is not that the self is some strange, indefinable being. It is because of the kind of referring that we do to become conscious of oneself as subject. Given how long ago he worked, Kant’s insights into this kind of referring are nothing short of amazing.

The last of Kant’s seven theses about consciousness of self is an idea that we already met when we discussed the unity of consciousness:

• When we are conscious of ourselves as subject, we are conscious of ourselves as the “single common subject” [CPR, A350] of a number of representations.

What Kant likely had in mind is nicely captured in a remark of Bennett’s (1974, p. 83): to think of myself as a plurality of things is to think of my being conscious of this plurality, “and that pre-requires an undivided me .” Unlike one of anything else, it is not optional that I think of myself as one subject across a variety of experiences (A107).

The remarks just noted about ‘bare consciousness’ and so on by no means exhaust the concerns that can be raised about Kant and what we can know about the mind. His official view has to be: nothing — about the mind’s structure and what it is composed of, at any rate, we can know nothing. As we have seen, Kant not only maintained this but did some ingenious wiggling to account for the apparent counter-evidence. But that is not the end of the story, for two reasons.

First, whatever the commitments of his philosophy, Kant the person believed that the soul is simple and persists beyond death; he found materialism utterly repugnant (1783, Ak. IV, end of §46). This is an interesting psychological fact about Kant but needs no further discussion.

Second and more importantly, Kant in fact held that we do have knowledge of the mind as it is. In particular, we know that it has forms of intuition in which it must locate things spatially and temporally, that it must synthesize the raw manifold of intuition in three ways, that its consciousness must be unified, and so on — all the aspects of the model examined above.

To square his beliefs about what we cannot know and what we do know about the mind, Kant could have made at least two moves. He could have said that we know these things only ‘transcendentally’, that is to say, by inference to the necessary conditions of experience. We do not know them directly, in some sense of ‘directly’, so we don’t have intuitive, i.e., sense-derived knowledge of them. Or he could have said that ontological neutrality about structure and composition is compatible with knowledge of function. As we saw, Kant’s conception of the mind is functionalist—to understand the mind, we must study what it does and can do, its functions—and the doctrine that function does not dictate form is at the heart of contemporary functionalism. According to functionalism, we can gain knowledge of the mind’s functions while knowing little or nothing about how the mind is built. Approached this way, Kant’s view that we know nothing of the structure and composition of the mind would just be a radical version of this functionalist idea. Either move would restore consistency among his various claims about knowledge of the mind.

We will close by returning to the question of Kant’s relationship to contemporary cognitive research. As we saw, some of Kant’s most characteristic doctrines about the mind are now built into the very foundations of cognitive science. We laid out what they were. Interestingly, some of the others have played little or no role.

Consider the two forms of Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept. In the form of binding, the phenomenon that he had in mind in the first kind of synthesis is now widely studied. Indeed, one model, Anne Treisman’s (1980) three-stage model, is very similar to all three stages of synthesis in Kant. According to Treisman and her colleagues, object recognition proceeds in three stages: first feature detection, then location of features on a map of locations, and then integration and identification of objects under concepts. This compares directly to Kant’s three-stage model of apprehension of features, association of features (reproduction), and recognition of integrated groups of under concepts (A98-A106). However, Kant’s second kind of recognition under concepts, the activity of tying multiple representations together into a global representation (A107–14), has received little attention.

The same was true until recently of the unity of consciousness and Kant’s work on it. However, this is changing. In the past twenty years, the unity of consciousness has come back onto the research agenda and there are now hundreds of papers and a number of books on the topic. However, claims such as Kant’s that a certain form of synthesis and certain links among the contents of experience are required for unity continue to be ignored in cognitive science, though a few philosophers have done some work on them (Brook 2004). The same is true of Kant’s views on consciousness of self; cognitive science has paid no attention to non-ascriptive identification of self and the idea of the essential indexical. Here, too, a few philosophers have worked on these issues, apparently without knowing of Kant’s contribution (Brook & DeVidi, 2001), but not cognitive scientists.

In short, the dominant model of the mind in contemporary cognitive science is Kantian, but some of his most distinctive contributions have not been taken into it (Brook, 2004).

Primary Literature

The Cambridge Edition of the Work of Immanuel Kant in Translation has translations into English complete with scholarly apparatus of nearly all Kant’s writings. It is probably the best single source for Kant’s works in English. Except for references to the Critique of Pure Reason , all references will include the volume number and where appropriate the page number of the Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Koniglichen Preussischen Academie der Wissenschaften, 29 Vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter et al., 1902– [in the format, Ak. XX:yy]).

• Kant, I. (1781/1787) Critique of Pure Reason , P. Guyer and A. Wood (trans.), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (The passages quoted in the article above generally follow this translation and/or the Kemp Smith translation but all translations were checked.) References to CPR are in the standard pagination of the 1 st (A) and 2 nd (B) editions. A reference to only one edition means that the passage appeared only in that edition.)
• Kant, I. (1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics , P. Carus (trans.), revised and with an Introduction by James Ellington, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishers, 1977 (Ak. IV).
• Kant, I. (1786) The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , translated and with an Introduction by James Ellington, Indianapolis, IN: Library of Liberal Arts, 1970. (Ak. IV).
• Kant, I. (1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , Mary Gregor (trans.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974 (Ak. VII).

Works on Kant on the Mind and Consciousness

Thanks to Julian Wuerth for help with this section.

In the past two decades alone, of the order of 45,000 new books and new editions by or about Kant have been published. Thus, any bibliography is bound to be incomplete. In what follows, we have focused on books of the past ten years or so in English that are having an influence, along with a few important earlier commentaries. General bibliographies are readily available on the websites listed later.

• Allais, Lucy, 2009. “Kant, Non-Conceptual Content and the Representation of Space”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 47(3): 383–413.
• –––, 2015. Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and His Realism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Allison, H., 1983 [2004]. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense , 1st edition 1983, 2nd edition 2004, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 1990. Kant’s Theory of Freedom , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2015. Kant’s Transcendental Deduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Altman, M. C., 2007. A Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , Boulder, CO: Westview Press
• Ameriks, K., 1983. “Kant and Guyer on Apperception”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie , 65: 174–86.
• –––, 1990. “Kant, Fichte, and Short Arguments to Idealism”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie , 72: 63–85.
• –––, 2000. Kant’s Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason , 2 nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006. Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy As Critical Interpretation , Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Aquila, Richard, 1989. Matter in Mind , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Banham, G., 2006. Kant’s Transcendental Imagination , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Beck, L. W., 2002. Selected Essays on Kant (North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 6), Rochester NY: North American Kant Society. [NAKS has published an excellent series of roughly annual books on Kant. Some more examples will be cited below.]
• Beiser, F. C., 2006. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
• Bennett, J., 1966. Kant’s Analytic , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1974. Kant’s Dialectic , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bird, G., 2006. The Revolutionary Kant , Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing
• –––, 2009. A Companion to Kant , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Brook, A., 1993. “Kant’s A Priori Methods for Recognizing Necessary Truths”, in Return of the A Priori , Philip Hanson and Bruce Hunter (eds.), Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplementary Volume), 18: 215–52.
• –––, 1994. Kant and the Mind , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1998. “Critical Notice of L. Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic ”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 29: 247–68.
• –––, 2001. “Kant on self-reference and self-awareness”, in A. Brook and R. DeVidi (eds.) 2001.
• –––, 2004. “Kant, cognitive science, and contemporary neo-Kantianism”, in D. Zahavi (ed.), Journal of Consciousness Studies (special issue), 11: 1–25.
• Buroker, J. V., 2006. Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’: An Introduction (Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Caranti, L., 2007. Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy: The Kantian Critique of Cartesian Scepticism (Toronto Studies in Philosophy), Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Carl, Wolfgang, 1989. Der Schweigende Kant: Die Entwürfe zu einer Deduktion der Kategorien vor 1781 , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Caygill, H., 1995. A Kant Dictionary , Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
• Chignell, Andrew, 2017. “Can’t Kant Cognize himself? Or, A Problem for (Almost) Every Interpretation of the Refutation of Idealism”, in Kant and the Philosophy of Mind , A. Gomes and A. Stephenson (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Choi, Yoon, 2019. “Spontaneity and Self-Consciousness in the Groundwork and the B-Critique ”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 49(7): 936–955.
• Cohen, A., 2009. Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History , Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers.
• –––, 2014. Kant on Emotions and Value , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers.
• –––, 2014. Critical Guide to Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Deimling, Wiebke, 2014. “Kant’s Pragmatic Concept of Emotions,” in Kant on Emotion and Value , Alix Cohen (ed.), London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• –––, 2018. “Two Different Kinds of Value? Kant on Feeling and Moral Cognition”, Kant and the Faculty of Feeling , Kelly Sorensen and Diane Williamson (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Dickerson, A.B., 2007. Kant on Representation and Objectivity , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Dyck, Corey W., 2014. Kant and Rational Psychology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Easton, P.A. (ed.), 1997. Logic and the Workings of the Mind (North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy: Volume 5), Rochester NA: North American Kant Society.
• Emundts, Dina, 2017. “Kant’s Ideal of Self-Knowledge,” in Self-Knowledge. A History , Ursula Renz (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 183–198.
• –––, 2013. “Kant über Selbstbewusstsein”, in Self, World, Art. Metaphysical Topics in Kant and Hegel , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 51–78.
• Falkenstein, L., 1995. Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic , Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Forster, M. N., 2008. Kant and Skepticism , Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press
• Friedman, M., 1992. Kant and the Exact Sciences , Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press
• Frierson, Patrick R., 2003. Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gardner, S., 2012. Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks), London: Routledge Francis Taylor.
• Ginsborg, H., 1990. The Role of Taste in Kant’s Theory of Cognition (Routledge Library Editions: Kant). London: Routledge Francis Taylor.
• Glock, H.-J., 2003. Strawson and Kant (Mind Association Occasional Series), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Goldman, A., 2012. Kant and the Subject of Critique: On the Regulative Role of the Psychological Idea , South Bend, IN: University of Indiana Press.
• Grier, M., 2007. Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Modern European Philosophy), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Guyer, P., 1980. “Kant on Apperception and A Priori Synthesis.” American Philosophical Quarterly , 17: 205–12.
• –––, 1987. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2005. Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays , Oxford: Oxford University Press
• –––, 2006. Kant (Series: Routledge Philosophers), London: Routledge Taylor
• –––, 1987. The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• –––, 2008. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume , Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press
• Guyer, P. (ed.), 1992. The Cambridge Companion to Kant , Cambridge:Cambridge University Press
• ––– (ed.), 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Hall, B., M. Black and M. Sheffield, 2010. The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Hanna, R., 2004. Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006. Kant, Science, and Human Nature , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2015. The Rational Human Condition 5—Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Heidemann, D., 2012. Kant and Non-Conceptual Content , London: Routledge Taylor Francis.
• Hems, N., D. Schulting and G. Banham (eds.), 2012. The Continuum Companion to Kant , London: Continuum Publishers.
• Henrich, D., 1976. Identität und Objektivität , Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitäts-Verlag.
• Höffe, Otfried, 1994. Immanuel Kant , Marshall Farrier (trans.), Albany: SUNY Press.
• Horstmann, Rolf-Peter, 1993. “Kants Paralogismen”, Kant-Studien , 84: 408-25.
• Hogan, Desmond, 2009. “How to Know Unknowable Things in Themselves”, Noûs , 43(1): 49–63.
• Howell, R., 1992. Kant’s Transcendental Deduction , Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers
• –––, (2001). “Kant, the ‘I Think’, and Self-Awareness”, in Kant’s Legacy. Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck , Cicovacki, Predrag (ed.), Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 117–152.
• Huneman, P., 2007. Understanding Purpose: Kant and the Philosophy of Biology (North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy: Volume 9), Rochester NA: North American Kant Society.
• Jacobs, B. and Kain, P. (eds.), 2007. Essays on Kant’s Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Jauernig, Anja, 2019. “Finite minds and their representations in Leibniz and Kant”, in Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism , Sally Sedgwick and Dina Edmundts (eds.), Berlin: de Gruyter, 47–80.
• Keller, P., 1998. Kant and the Demands of Self-consciousness , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kitcher, P., 1984. “Kant’s Real Self,” in Self and Nature in Kant’s Philosophy , Allen W. Wood (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 113–147.
• –––, 1990. Kant’s Transcendental Psychology , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011. Kant’s Thinker , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kleingeld, P., 2011. Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Klemme, Heiner, 1996. Kants Philosophie des Subjekts. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis , Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
• Kneller, J., 2007. Kant and the Power of Imagination , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Korsgaard, Christine M., 1990. The Standpoint of Practical Reason , New York: Garland.
• –––, 1989. “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit”, Philosophy and Public Affairs , 18(2): 101–132.
• –––, 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kraus, Katharina, 2019. “The Parity and Disparity between Inner and Outer Experience in Kant”, Kantian Review 24(2): 171–195.
• –––, 2020. Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kreimendahl, Lothar, 1990. Kant—Der Durchbruch von 1769 , Köln: Jürgen Dinter.
• Kuehn, M., 2001. Kant: A Biography , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Kukla, R. (ed.), 2006. Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Laywine, A., 1993. Kant’s Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy (North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy: Volume 3), Rochester NA: North American Kant Society.
• Longuenesse, Béatrice, 1998. Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason , Charles T. Wolfe (trans.), Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2005. Kant on the Human Standpoint , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2007. “Kant’s ‘I think’ versus Descartes’ ‘I am a Thing that Thinks’”, in Kant and the Early Moderns , Beatrice Longuenesse and Daniel Garber (eds.), Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 9–31.
• –––, 2017. I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Louden, R., 2011. Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Marshall, Colin, 2013. “Kant’s one self and the appearance/thing in itself distinction,” Kant-Studien , 104(4): 421–441.
• McLear, Colin, 2011. “Kant on Animal Consciousness,” Philosophers’ Imprint , 11(15): 1–16.
• Melnick, Arthur, 2009. Kant’s Theory of the Self , New York: Routledge Taylor Francis.
• Meerbote, R., 1989. “Kant’s functionalism,” in J. C.Smith (ed.), Historical Foundations of Cognitive Science , Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel.
• –––, 1982. “Wille and Willkür in Kant’s Theory of Action,” in Moltke S. Gram (ed.), Interpreting Kant , Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 69–84.
• Merritt, Melissa, 2018. Kant on Reflection and Virtue , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mohr, Georg, 1991. Das sinnliche Ich. Innerer Sinn und Bewußtsein bei Kant , Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann.
• Neiman, Susan, 1997. The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Newton, Alexandra, 2019. “Kant and the transparency of the mind,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 49(7): 890–915.
• Peters, Julia, 2018. “Kant’s Gesinnung”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 56(3): 497–518.
• Pippin, R., 1987. “Kant on the spontaneity of mind”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 17: 449–476.
• –––, 1982. Kant’s Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason , New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Powell, C. Thomas, 1990. Kant’s Theory of Self-Consciousness , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Proops, Ian, 2010. “Kant’s First Paralogism”, Philosophical Review , 11: 449–95.
• Reinhold, Carl Leonhard, 1790 [1975]. “Erörterung des Begriffs von der Freiheit des Willens”, in Materialien zu Kants “Kritik der praktischen Vernunft” , Rüdiger Bittner and Konrad Cramer (eds.), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
• Rosefeldt, Tobias, 2000. Das logische Ich: Kant über den Gehalt des Begriffes von sich selbst (Monographien zur philosophischen Forschung), Berlin: Philo.
• Rosenberg, Jay F., 1987. “‘I Think’: Some Reflections on Kant’s Paralogisms”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 10: 503–30.
• Sassen, B., 2000. Kant’s Early Critics , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Schwyzer, Hubert, 1990. The Unity of Understanding: A Study in Kantian Problems , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Scruton, R., 2011. Kant , New York: Sterling Publishers.
• Sedgwick, S., 2007. The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Senderovicz, Y.M., 2005. The Coherence of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (Studies in German Idealism), Berlin: Springer.
• Sellars, W., 1970. “…this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks…”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association , 44: 5–31.
• Serck-Hanssen, Camilla, 2009. “Kant on Consciousness”, in Psychology and Philosophy , Sara Heinämaa (ed.), Berlin: Springer, 139–157.
• Sgarbi, M., 2012. Kant on Spontaneity , London: Continuum Press.
• Shell, Susan Meld, 1996. The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Sidgwick, Henry, 1888. “The Kantian Conception of Free Will”, Mind , 13: 405–12.
• Smit, Houston, 2019. “Kant’s ‘I think’ and the agential approach to self-knowledge”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 49(7): 980–1011.
• Stapleford, S., 2008. Kant’s Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason (Continuum Studies in Philosophy), London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group
• Strawson, P. F., 1966. The Bounds of Sense , London: Methuen.
• Sturm, Thomas, 2017. “Reines und empirisches Selbstbewusstsein in Kants Anthropologie: Das ‘Ich’ und die rationale Charakterentwicklung”, Kant-Studien (Ergänzungshefte), 197: 195–220.
• Tester, Steven, 2016. “Mental Powers and the Soul in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and the Second Paralogism”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 46(3): 426–452.
• Thiel, Udo, 2011. The Early Modern Subject. Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ujvari, Marta, 1984. “Personal Identity Reconsidered,” Kant-Studien , 75: 328-39.
• van Cleve, J., 2003. Problems from Kant , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
• Walker, R. C. S., 1978. Kant , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Watkins, E., 2009. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials , Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Ward, A., 2012. Starting with Kant , London: Continuum Press.
• Waxman, W., 1991. Kant’s Model of the Mind , Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2005. Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2019. Guide to Kant’s Psychologism Via Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and Wittgenstein , Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge.
• Westphal, K. R., 2004. Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wicks, R., 2009. Kant on Judgment (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks), London: Routlege Taylor Francis.
• Wolff, Robert Paul, 1960. “Kant’s Debt to Hume via Beattie”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 21: 117–23.
• –––, 1963. Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Willaschek, Marcus, 2015. “The Sensibility of Human Intuition. Kant’s Causal Condition on Account of Representation”, in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung , Rainer Enskat (ed.), Berlin: de Gruyter, 129–149.
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Other References

• Brook, A., 2001, “The unity of consciousness”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2001 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2001/entries/consciousness-unity/ >.
• Brook, A. and DeVidi, R. (eds.), 2001. Self-Reference and Self-Awareness , Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Perry, J., 2001, “The essential indexical”, in Brook and DeVidi 2001.
• Shoemaker, S., 1968. “Self-reference and self-awareness”, in Brook and DeVidi (eds.) 2001
• –––, 1970. “Persons and their pasts”, American Philosophical Quarterly , 7: 269–285.
• Treisman, A., and Glade, G., 1980. “A feature-integration theory of attention”, Cognitive Psychology , 12: 97–136.
• Wittgenstein, L., 1934–5. Blue and Brown Books , Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Kant on the Web and the NAKS site listed below contain links to many other sites.

• Kant on the Web , maintained by Steve Palmquist, Hong Kong Baptist University. Contains a bibliography of translations of Kant up to 2011 and much else.
• North American Kant Society (NAKS) .

a priori justification and knowledge | consciousness: unity of | Descartes, René | functionalism | idealism | Kant, Immanuel | Kant, Immanuel: and Hume on causality | Kant, Immanuel: and Hume on morality | Kant, Immanuel: philosophy of science | Kant, Immanuel: transcendental arguments | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm | Reid, Thomas | self-consciousness

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Paul Guyer, Paul Raymont, Rick DeVidi, Julian Wuerth, Kirsta Anderson, and an anonymous referee for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for very helpful comments.

Copyright © 2020 by Andrew Brook Julian Wuerth < julian . wuerth @ vanderbilt . edu >

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• How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

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What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

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• What they’ll learn from your essay
• The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

• In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
• In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

• Ask a question about your topic .
• Write your initial answer.
• Develop your answer by including reasons.
• Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Consciousness and the Self: New Essays

JeeLoo Liu and John Perry (eds.),  Consciousness and the Self: New Essays , Cambridge University Press, 2012, 260pp., $90.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781107000759.

Reviewed by Joel Smith, University of Manchester

The authors in this collection pursue a number of questions concerning self-consciousness, self and consciousness. Although the essays range rather broadly, there is a good deal of unity. In her introduction Liu organises the chapters under three headings: the Humean denial of self-awareness, the issue of self-knowledge, and the nature of persons or selves. This is helpful although it is worth bearing in mind that some chapters fall under more than one heading (for example, Shoemaker) and some don't fall neatly under any (for example, O'Brien).

Another way of relating the topics takes as central the notion of a de se representation, a representation manifestly about oneself (oneself as oneself, as it's sometimes put). Concerning these we can ask what distinguishes them from representations that 'just happen to be' about oneself (Perry); whether they hold the key to understanding phenomenal consciousness (Rosenthal, Kriegel); whether they are based on, or otherwise related to, a special sort of awareness we have of ourselves (Rosenthal, Perry, Prinz, Shoemaker); whether, and how, some subset of them enjoys a privileged epistemic status (Dretske, Schwitzgebel, Byrne, Shoemaker); what role they play in our normative lives (O'Brien, Schwitzgebel); and how they relate to our nature as persons -- what it is that makes us the sorts of things we are, and the particular people we are (Shoemaker, Flanagan). Like all such principles of unity, this isn't perfect, but it seems to me not a bad way to think of the collection as a whole.

I'll lay my cards on the table right away and say that this is a good book. It's not too often that I read a collection such as this cover to cover, and I found doing so with this volume very rewarding. The book contains plenty of chewy philosophical argumentation and the, admittedly only occasional, references between papers were illuminating. There's a lot to learn, and to engage with, here.

It's a good book but I think it's fair to say that it's not an outstanding one, which is something of a disappointment given that the contents page reads like a Who's Who of self-consciousness studies. So let me begin with a criticism that, whilst perhaps a little unfair, is pertinent for the prospective reader. This is that the subtitle of the collection, "New Essays", is in some cases rather misleading. A number of the authors spend a significant amount of time summarising their own views, views with which many readers will be familiar from elsewhere. The worst offenders here are Perry and Shoemaker, but others are guilty to a lesser extent. That's not to question the quality of the arguments presented, which, in these two cases, is unimpeachable. And every chapter contains sufficient material to make it a worthwhile read in its own right. Of course a certain amount of scene setting is necessary for the discussion to follow -- hence the unfairness -- and a number of papers are 100% bona fide fresh out of the box (for example Byrne and O'Brien), but whilst all the essays are new releases, some are, to some extent, re-makes. When considering whether to fork out $90, that matters.

General griping over, in what follows I am going to focus on what is perhaps the book's central theme: the Humean denial of self-awareness. Aside from the intrinsic interest of this question, it is potentially significant for a number of areas of philosophy. To take two very different examples, Hume's denial that we are self-aware plays a crucial role in Kant's (1781, B278)Refutation of Idealism, and Kripke's (1982, Postscript)formulation of the conceptual problem of other minds. At the end I comment on another issue, that of self-knowledge.

Self-Awareness

As everyone knows, in the Treatise Hume made the following remark,

There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuous existence . . . For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself , I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. (Hume 1739, 251-2)

Notoriously, Hume does not tell us which philosophers he intends, but the finger is often pointed at Descartes. For example, in her introduction to the volume, Liu writes that, "Descartes' famous cogito, ergo sum points out the necessary presence of a self in consciousness" (p.1), and in his chapter, Prinz claims that, "In saying 'I think' in the first person, and declaring that this is indubitable, Descartes implies that there is an I, which is directly accessed in consciousness . . . we find an I in experience whenever we think" (pp.125-6). But as an interpretation of Descartes, this is highly contentious. On the face of it, the cogito relies on no such inner awareness of the self, but rather the claim that to doubt that one doubts is self-defeating and that if I am doubting then I must exist. That's not to say that Descartes' reasoning is sound (although I think it is), just that it doesn't seem to rely on the sort of self-awareness that Hume denies (for, in my view, a more plausible interpretation of the cogito , see the opening remarks of Dretske's chapter in this volume).

Whoever Hume had in mind, and Locke is the other leading candidate, a number of philosophers have subsequently unambiguously asserted that there is such a self-awareness which, following Shoemaker (Shoemaker 1987), I take to involve an inner awareness of the self as an object. Examples include Bertrand Russell (1910), Roderick Chisholm (1969)and Quassim Cassam (1995). We can insert Rosenthal's chapter into that list. Opposing him are Prinz, Shoemaker and, although he is not explicit about it, I would add Perry.

Rosenthal's distinctive take on this debate is that Hume, due to his empiricist commitments, wrongly assumes that self-awareness would have to be sensory in character. On Rosenthal's view, however, one can be aware of oneself by having an appropriate thought of oneself for, "perceiving is not the only way we are aware of things. We are also aware of something when we have a thought about that thing as being present to us" (p.23). A subset of such thoughts, those about our first-order psychological states, are, according to Rosenthal's Higher-Order Thought theory, constitutive of phenomenal consciousness. So, the plausibility of the HOT theory shows that Hume was wrong. Now, of course, anyone who accepts that there are de se thoughts is likely to accept that one can think a thought about something as present to oneself. A nice example might be O'Brien's insightful characterisation of 'ordinary self-consciousness', of feeling self-conscious, as involving a consciousness, "that it is me that is the focus of others' awareness" (p.112). Surely Shoemaker, Prinz and others that have concurred with Hume would not deny the possibility of such a thing. Yet this would seem to involve the thought that I myself am present to myself. Much rides, then, on the claim that this is, in an interesting and relevant sense, a way of being aware of something. Unfortunately, this isn't a claim that Rosenthal defends or even explains in any detail. Not here at least.

Arguably, Kriegel's Self-Representational account of phenomenal consciousness could be classed alongside Rosenthal's in this context, as disputing the Humean denial. Indeed, this seems to be how it is interpreted by Prinz (p.127), although it is not how Kriegel himself describes the view (his excellent, albeit highly concessive paper is concerned primarily with the prospects for an epistemic reduction of phenomenal consciousness). Further, it might be thought that this account is not subject to the above worry. For, since Kriegel's is a view on which conscious psychological states (some of which will be sensory) represent themselves, then it may seem that we have here a sensory representation of the self, the sort of self-awareness that Hume disputes.

It's not obvious to me, however, that this is the right way to read Kriegel's account. For he describes self-representation as that which grounds a, "direct presence, a subjective significance, of the experience to the subject" (p.53). It would take a further argument to show that this amounts to a direct presence of the subject to herself.

On the opposing side we have Prinz, who offers both a useful way of mapping the different approaches to the Humean position and a critical discussion of various empirical attempts to support self-awareness, and Shoemaker, who reminds us of his argument for the Humean denial based upon the claim that there are (and must be) some de se thoughts that are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first person pronoun. I'll focus on Shoemaker. In short, he argues that if there were an inner awareness of the self one would need to know that it was oneself of which one was aware. That is, the self would need to be identified. But since identification carries with it the possibility of misidentification, self-awareness cannot ground those de se thoughts that are immune to such errors. As Shoemaker puts it, "it cannot be the case that such judgments are grounded on observing a self, identified as oneself, having whatever state is self-ascribed by the judgement" (p.203).

Now the first thing that might be pointed out is that this line of reasoning, even if cogent, does not support the contention that there is no such thing as self-awareness, but merely the claim that if there is such a thing it does not ground those de se thoughts that are immune to error through misidentification.

Another query might be how, if we lack an awareness of the self, such thoughts are grounded? For the idea that we have thoughts that are necessarily about ourselves, but that are not grounded on an awareness of ourselves as being some way, might seem mysterious. One possibility is Perry's idea of a "necessarily self-informative method" (94-5) and the related notion of an unarticulated constituent (although Perry does not link this discussion into the more general reflections on the Humean denial, he does present it, in my opinion, as a compelling explanation of immunity to error). The idea here is that there is a way of finding out (e.g., that a person is in pain) that is necessarily limited to the states of a single thing -- oneself. This guarantees immunity to error and, since the self is the object of one's thought as a result of the, "architecture of the relational system" (p.89), the way is opened up for the self to be an unarticulated constituent in one's thought content. Pursuing this thought, perhaps something along these lines would be the best way to square the Humean denial of self-awareness with the view, attractive to a number of philosophers (for example, (Bermúdez 2000)), that some sensory states can have de se content.

Rosenthal takes a more direct line against Shoemaker, arguing, in effect, that no de se thoughts are immune in this way. Rosenthal's case is based on general theoretical grounds (explicitly challenged by Perry in his chapter), but he also provides a counterexample to the claim that "I have a pain" is so immune. The example concerns Dissociative Identity Disorder. The assumption -- controversial enough, but let us grant it -- is that this condition involves different persons ('alters') occupying a single body. The idea, then, is that, "some alters have access not only to their own memories and experiences, but to those of others as well" (p.43). Rosenthal then argues that alter A can be aware of alter B 's pain, but mistakenly think that it is her own pain. The resulting judgement, "I am in pain" would rest on an error of misidentification.

It is, however, far from clear that an alter that is not in pain could have the relevant access to the pain of another. Surely the most intuitive thing to say in such a case is that the two share a pain? In defence of his interpretation, Rosenthal points out that the pain may be "integrated into the mental life and behaviour" of B but not A . But this seems insufficient to the task. The claim must be that A is aware, from the inside, of B 's pain, but is not herself in pain. But what more is needed to be in pain than to feel, from the inside, a pain? I see no reason, at least on the face of it, to suppose that the pain must be 'integrated' any more than by being so felt.

Self-Knowledge

I turn to the idea that some de se thoughts are epistemically privileged. We typically suppose that we have a way of coming to know facts about our own conscious mental life that is very different from the ways we have of coming to know facts about that of others. We also tend to suppose that this is an especially reliable way of gaining knowledge. Finally, it is taken for granted by pretty much everybody that not only are we pretty reliable on what is going on in our conscious mental life, we are damn sure that we have one. To pick an example that brings us back to Descartes' cogito , we find no room to doubt that we are thinking.

The chapters by Dretske and Schwitzgebel challenge some central aspects of these apparent truisms. The chapter by Byrne sets out to explain some others. In his characteristically well-argued paper Dretske defends the remarkable claim that my knowledge that I am thinking is no more direct or secure than is someone else's knowledge that I am thinking. His argument is complex but involves the thought that knowing something requires a subject to be aware of something that gives her a reason to believe that thing. Further, merely thinking that P does not give a subject a reason to believe that she is thinking that P, since all she is aware of is the proposition, that P. Therefore, thinking that P is not sufficient for knowing that one is thinking. Now, Dretske makes it clear that he is assuming that, in thinking that P, we are not aware of an "internal event or condition - [our] own act of thinking" (p.163), and he identifies this with the rejection of an inner sense, or quasi-perceptual, account of how we know that we are thinking. But this seems too quick. For it may be that one's conscious act of thinking, not a quasi-perceptual awareness of it, is itself the reason to believe that one is thinking (Peacocke 1999, Ch.5). That is, on such a view, Dretske is wrong to suppose that a rejection of inner sense entails that all that one is aware of when thinking that P is the proposition that P, for one is also aware of one's consciously thinking that P. Now, Dretske may object that this is to suppose a quite implausible phenomenology of thought (p.162), but I must confess that I cannot really begin to understand the claim that there is nothing it is like to think. To steal a line from Hume, "All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular" (Hume 1739, 252).

Taken together with Dretske's, Schwitzgebel's fascinating chapter might be thought to support Nietzsche's claim that, "We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers" (Nietzsche 1887, 3). Schwitzgebel argues not that we don't know that we are thinking, but that we don't know what we are thinking. As Schwitzgebel puts it, "we do not know our stream of consciousness or our own attitudes very well at all" (p.185). His argument is based on a combination of general observations and empirical studies, and much of it is convincing. I just want to suggest two things.

First, when it comes to our attitudes, I suspect that a good many philosophers that are impressed with our capacity for self-knowledge and seek to explain it, would be entirely comfortable with many of the negative claims that Schwitzgebel makes. Our knowledge of whether we are sexists, of what our most deeply held values are, and of what character traits we possess are not typically considered good cases of privileged self-knowledge, which is usually limited to knowledge of our current conscious mental episodes. Now Schwitzgebel puts these latter aside as "fairly trivial" (p.191), allowing that our knowledge of such attitudes is safe. But this is unfair. In his influential account of how knowledge of our current beliefs is possible, one that Schwitzgebel endorses (p.191), Evans (1982, 225)employs the example of my knowledge of whether or not I believe that there will be a Third World War. How trivial is that? Admittedly, it may not be the sort of knowledge with which the Delphic Oracle is concerned, but the whole point of the Delphic injunction was that such self-knowledge is hard , and philosophers haven't typically wanted to dispute that.

Second, when it comes to our conscious sensory states -- be it visual experience, visual imagery or emotional state -- Schwitzgebel argues that our knowledge is limited to a certain level of generality, or indeterminacy. I may know that I am having a visual experience as of a red ball but the exact detail of the shade, shape and location of the appearing object escapes me. All I wish to point out is that there are two possibilities with respect to what is going on here and that Schwitzgebel, in talking of self-ignorance, presupposes one of them. This is that such experiences have a fine-grained, determinate phenomenology of which we are ignorant. But the alternative explanation is that such experiences have only a course-grained, indeterminate phenomenal character. I am not asserting that this latter possibility is the right one, although for the case of mental imagery I find it plausible, just that if the determinacy of our knowledge tracks the determinacy of our experiences, then to speak of self-ignorance is misleading.

Finally, I turn to Byrne's inventive and well-argued chapter. Even Schwitzgebel accepts that some of our, albeit trivial, de se attitudes have a special epistemic status. For example, I know that I currently believe that I am typing and, according to Byrne's Evansian approach, I come to such knowledge by following this rule,

BEL: If p , believe that you believe that p . (p.171)

BEL has the virtue that, in following it one can never be led astray. (Incidentally, this suggests another response to Dretske. Try following this rule, you'll not go far wrong, THINK: If P, then believe that you are thinking). In his chapter Byrne turns to our knowledge of our current desires, arguing for the centrality for the analogous,

DES: If ϕing is a desirable option, believe that you want to ϕ. (p.177)

Whilst following DES may lead one to false beliefs about what one desires -- for example Byrne offers a case in which one knows that ϕing is desirable but, due to apathy, one fails to desire it (one might also offer any number of cases in which one judges that ϕing is desirable, yet knows it to be impossible. Arguably, one does not desire the unattainable, one wishes for it) -- it is reliable enough for its deliverances to count as knowledge. The fact that the account is nicely unified with BEL also counts in its favour.

Byrne's leaning upon a connection between judging that something is desirable and desiring it puts him in good company. Anscombe, for example, suggested that the intelligibility of saying, "I want a saucer of mud" depended on one's being prepared to offer some desirability characteristic in response to the question, "What for?". Byrne doesn't quite say this, but he does say that typically, one's privileged knowledge of one's current desires is attained by following DES (p.177). It would be a problem for Byrne, then, if there were a significant class of desires of which one has privileged knowledge achieved in some way other than by following DES, for this would undermine the unity with BEL. Some philosophers have certainly thought that there are such desires. Lenman, whilst conceding that "I want a saucer of mud" requires further elaboration, maintains that "I desire that a saucer of mud be brought to me and placed in my hands" (Lenman 2006, 39)does not. Or consider an expressive desire, "I want to punch the wall"; or a desire to pick one of several trivial options, "Pick a number between one and ten", "I have a strong desire to say 'seven'"; or a distraught lover expressing his desire thus, "I want to be with her. I know that she is no good, and no good for me. Still I want her." In none of these cases, does it seem that the subject need view the state of affairs as desirable. If such desires are coherent, and I for one would like to be offered some reason to suppose that they are not, then we need to know how it is that their subjects know that they have them. Not, surely by following DES. And, if in some other way, then why think that this is not the way in which we come to know our more reasonable wants?

There is a great deal in the volume that I have not discussed, but I hope to have given a flavour of its contents. It's a good book, with lots of careful papers and serious arguments. Anybody with even a passing interest in self-consciousness, consciousness or the self, cannot fail to learn something from its pages.

Bermúdez, J. L. 2000.   The Paradox of Self-Consciousness . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cassam, Q. 1995. “Introspection and Bodily Self-ascription.” In The Body and the Self , ed. José Luis Bermúdez, Anthony Marcel, and Naomi Eilan, 311–36. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chisholm, R. M. 1969. “On the Observability of the Self.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30 (1): 7–21.

Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference . Ed. J. McDowell. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hume, D. 1739.   A Treatise of Human Nature . Ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Second Eidition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kant, I. 1781. Critique of Pure Reason . Ed. Paul Guyer and Alan Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kripke, S. A. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lenman, J. 2006. “The Saucer of Mud, the Kudzu Vine and the Uxorious Cheetah: Against Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism in Metaethics.” European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1: 37–50.

Nietzsche, F. W. 1887.   On the Genealogy of Morality . Ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson. Trans. Carol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Peacocke, C. 1999. Being Known . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Russell, B. 1910. “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description.”   Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society  11: 108–128.

Shoemaker, S. 1987. “Introspection and the Self.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1): 101–120.

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
• picture_as_pdf Thesis

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement: 4 Steps + Examples

What’s Covered:

What is the purpose of a thesis statement, writing a good thesis statement: 4 steps, common pitfalls to avoid, where to get your essay edited for free.

When you set out to write an essay, there has to be some kind of point to it, right? Otherwise, your essay would just be a big jumble of word salad that makes absolutely no sense. An essay needs a central point that ties into everything else. That main point is called a thesis statement, and it’s the core of any essay or research paper.

You may hear about Master degree candidates writing a thesis, and that is an entire paper–not to be confused with the thesis statement, which is typically one sentence that contains your paper’s focus. 

Read on to learn more about thesis statements and how to write them. We’ve also included some solid examples for you to reference.

Typically the last sentence of your introductory paragraph, the thesis statement serves as the roadmap for your essay. When your reader gets to the thesis statement, they should have a clear outline of your main point, as well as the information you’ll be presenting in order to either prove or support your point. 

The thesis statement should not be confused for a topic sentence , which is the first sentence of every paragraph in your essay. If you need help writing topic sentences, numerous resources are available. Topic sentences should go along with your thesis statement, though.

Since the thesis statement is the most important sentence of your entire essay or paper, it’s imperative that you get this part right. Otherwise, your paper will not have a good flow and will seem disjointed. That’s why it’s vital not to rush through developing one. It’s a methodical process with steps that you need to follow in order to create the best thesis statement possible.

Step 1: Decide what kind of paper you’re writing

When you’re assigned an essay, there are several different types you may get. Argumentative essays are designed to get the reader to agree with you on a topic. Informative or expository essays present information to the reader. Analytical essays offer up a point and then expand on it by analyzing relevant information. Thesis statements can look and sound different based on the type of paper you’re writing. For example:

• Argumentative: The United States needs a viable third political party to decrease bipartisanship, increase options, and help reduce corruption in government.
• Informative: The Libertarian party has thrown off elections before by gaining enough support in states to get on the ballot and by taking away crucial votes from candidates.
• Analytical: An analysis of past presidential elections shows that while third party votes may have been the minority, they did affect the outcome of the elections in 2020, 2016, and beyond.

Step 2: Figure out what point you want to make

Once you know what type of paper you’re writing, you then need to figure out the point you want to make with your thesis statement, and subsequently, your paper. In other words, you need to decide to answer a question about something, such as:

• What impact did reality TV have on American society?
• How has the musical Hamilton affected perception of American history?
• Why do I want to major in [chosen major here]?

If you have an argumentative essay, then you will be writing about an opinion. To make it easier, you may want to choose an opinion that you feel passionate about so that you’re writing about something that interests you. For example, if you have an interest in preserving the environment, you may want to choose a topic that relates to that. 

If you’re writing your college essay and they ask why you want to attend that school, you may want to have a main point and back it up with information, something along the lines of:

“Attending Harvard University would benefit me both academically and professionally, as it would give me a strong knowledge base upon which to build my career, develop my network, and hopefully give me an advantage in my chosen field.”

Step 3: Determine what information you’ll use to back up your point

Once you have the point you want to make, you need to figure out how you plan to back it up throughout the rest of your essay. Without this information, it will be hard to either prove or argue the main point of your thesis statement. If you decide to write about the Hamilton example, you may decide to address any falsehoods that the writer put into the musical, such as:

“The musical Hamilton, while accurate in many ways, leaves out key parts of American history, presents a nationalist view of founding fathers, and downplays the racism of the times.”

Once you’ve written your initial working thesis statement, you’ll then need to get information to back that up. For example, the musical completely leaves out Benjamin Franklin, portrays the founding fathers in a nationalist way that is too complimentary, and shows Hamilton as a staunch abolitionist despite the fact that his family likely did own slaves. 

Step 4: Revise and refine your thesis statement before you start writing

Read through your thesis statement several times before you begin to compose your full essay. You need to make sure the statement is ironclad, since it is the foundation of the entire paper. Edit it or have a peer review it for you to make sure everything makes sense and that you feel like you can truly write a paper on the topic. Once you’ve done that, you can then begin writing your paper.

When writing a thesis statement, there are some common pitfalls you should avoid so that your paper can be as solid as possible. Make sure you always edit the thesis statement before you do anything else. You also want to ensure that the thesis statement is clear and concise. Don’t make your reader hunt for your point. Finally, put your thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph and have your introduction flow toward that statement. Your reader will expect to find your statement in its traditional spot.

If you’re having trouble getting started, or need some guidance on your essay, there are tools available that can help you. CollegeVine offers a free peer essay review tool where one of your peers can read through your essay and provide you with valuable feedback. Getting essay feedback from a peer can help you wow your instructor or college admissions officer with an impactful essay that effectively illustrates your point.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Concept of the Self and Self-Esteem Essay (Critical Writing)

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Researches, studies, and even stipulations of the spiritual books have all pointed out that the human being is made up of more than the physical appearance seen from outside. It has been found out that apart from the physical body, the real human being is an inner person that is pure and free from environmental formations. The self is therefore the identity or an individual’s own being as portrayed by a conscious reflection. It is an identity that is separate from the environment. To have a clear picture of what ‘the self’ means, several ways have been designed. Among the most common and widely used ways of self, the approach is self-esteem and self-concept. self-esteem refers to how an individual views himself from an emotional or affective aspect. This refers to how an individual feels about himself and also how the individual values himself. This can also be referred to as self-worth. On the other part, self-concept refers to the way an individual views himself from a thinking or cognitive aspect. Purkey, (1988) refers to it as, “…the totality of a complex, organized and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes, and opinions that each person holds to be true about his or her personal existence.”

While self-esteem and self-concept are slightly different, they are so closely related that some authors even use them interchangeably. In addition, they work so closely that one directly affects the other. Franken (1994) clearly points out that good self-esteem directly corresponds with a favorable self-concept. He further points out that an individual can maximize outcomes if he clearly knows himself because this can assist him to know his strong points and his weaknesses. It is from the self-concept that one develops his motivated behavior. This is because behavior motivation basically depends on the possible selves which are directly dependent on the self-concept. What does this mean to an individual’s behavior and vision? From this, it is possible to rule out that the way an individual views the world and his reaction towards the view dictates the boundaries from which he can estimate his possibilities.

How is self-concept developed? As mentioned in the definition of self-concept by Purkey, it is evident that the self-concept develops from a “complex system of learned beliefs.” This means that self-concept develops through learning from self and from others. When an individual takes an action, he later looks back to reflect on what he has done. In addition, other people around him make their comments concerning the action taken by the individual. However, “self-concept” cannot be considered an innate phenomenon because it is a product of the individual’s environmental interactions and the reflections construed from the interaction. From the reflections of the interaction, one is able to ascertain the level of his capability. In addition, the individual is able to combine his own expectations and the expectations of others and the abilities and accomplishments characterized by others. Basing on this characteristic of self-concept, it is justified to purport that self-concept is changeable and modifiable (Franken, 1994, p. 443).

Franken (1994, p. 443) goes ahead to argue that self-concept, though changeable, is not changed by an individual’s will but can be changed through the individual’s self-reflection. In his view, an individual, through reflection, can acquire a new way of self-viewing that is better than the initial one and through this, he is able to discover possible selves.

Finally, the self-concept is made up of several components. There is the physical component that defines the concrete aspects like the individual’s height, sex, looks, the house that the individual lives in, the type of car he drives, etc. secondly, there is the academic component that defines the individual’s learning abilities. This is divided into overall learning abilities and the strength as portrayed by the individual’s abilities in a given area of study. For example, the individual might be good in mathematics, sciences, languages, arts, etc. thirdly, the social self-concept component is created from the individual’s ability to relate with others and finally, the fourth component is the transpersonal self component which describes the ability of the individual to relate to the unknowns and the supernatural (Marsh, 1992).

These concepts can be clearly applied to my own life. For example, I am able to enter any music concert in the world. This is because I have confidence in myself. I have learned through actions and thus I can reflect on the same actions and also from other people’s comments and their actions to know that I am good at singing. This happened after I started singing in my bathroom. I felt that I have a good voice. My brothers, sisters and friends also heard me signing from the bathroom and kept encouraging me to try going public. So, when the church announced for music competition during Christmas, I reflected on my singing abilities and the comments from friends and relatives. From the reflections, I developed expectations of excelling. My expectations were also based on my friends’ and families’ expectations and thus I gave it a try. I won! Since then, my expectations have been raised. I believe that I can even compete for the best singer in the world.

I have also developed positive self-esteem based on the physical component of self-concept. Having been born from a good family that is wealthy, the physical aspects of my life make me develop a positive emotional view of myself. Living in a good house in a posh estate in Phoenix and owning a beautiful Hyundai sports car has made me develop a good relationship with other people because I don’t view myself as a failure and a beggar who is not worthy of meeting other people. On their part, the other people readily accept to associate with me, a phenomenon that makes me feel wanted. All these contribute to my development of a favorable self-concept and self-esteem.

In conclusion, it is clear that the environment that people live in and the success or failures in an individual’s endeavors act as the basis from which the individual forms his expectations. If the individual meets success in a given field, he tends to raise his expectations. In addition, if from his success the people around discover that he is good at that thing and start praising him about it, he continues having high expectations. This was evident in my singing ability which was developed from the success in my actions and the expectations from other people.

• Franken, R. (1994). Human motivation (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.
• Marsh, H. W. (1992). “Content specificity of relations between academic achievement and academic self-concept.” Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 35-42
• Purkey, W. (1988). An overview of self-concept theory for counselors . ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Personnel Services. Michigan: Ann Arbor.
• Holland's Six Personality Types
• Socialization and Development of Life Skills
• Concept of Self, Self-Esteem, and Behavior
• Dimensions of the Self-Concept
• Self-Concept Theory and Trait Theory
• "The Courage to Create" by Rollo May
• The Reasoning Process and Details in the Everyday Life
• Discredited and Discreditable Deviants Definition
• “The Human Condition” by Hannah Arendt
• Personality and the IPIP-NEO Test
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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9.1 Developing a Strong, Clear Thesis Statement

Learning objectives.

• Develop a strong, clear thesis statement with the proper elements.
• Revise your thesis statement.

Have you ever known a person who was not very good at telling stories? You probably had trouble following his train of thought as he jumped around from point to point, either being too brief in places that needed further explanation or providing too many details on a meaningless element. Maybe he told the end of the story first, then moved to the beginning and later added details to the middle. His ideas were probably scattered, and the story did not flow very well. When the story was over, you probably had many questions.

Just as a personal anecdote can be a disorganized mess, an essay can fall into the same trap of being out of order and confusing. That is why writers need a thesis statement to provide a specific focus for their essay and to organize what they are about to discuss in the body.

Just like a topic sentence summarizes a single paragraph, the thesis statement summarizes an entire essay. It tells the reader the point you want to make in your essay, while the essay itself supports that point. It is like a signpost that signals the essay’s destination. You should form your thesis before you begin to organize an essay, but you may find that it needs revision as the essay develops.

Elements of a Thesis Statement

For every essay you write, you must focus on a central idea. This idea stems from a topic you have chosen or been assigned or from a question your teacher has asked. It is not enough merely to discuss a general topic or simply answer a question with a yes or no. You have to form a specific opinion, and then articulate that into a controlling idea —the main idea upon which you build your thesis.

Remember that a thesis is not the topic itself, but rather your interpretation of the question or subject. For whatever topic your professor gives you, you must ask yourself, “What do I want to say about it?” Asking and then answering this question is vital to forming a thesis that is precise, forceful and confident.

A thesis is one sentence long and appears toward the end of your introduction. It is specific and focuses on one to three points of a single idea—points that are able to be demonstrated in the body. It forecasts the content of the essay and suggests how you will organize your information. Remember that a thesis statement does not summarize an issue but rather dissects it.

A Strong Thesis Statement

A strong thesis statement contains the following qualities.

Specificity. A thesis statement must concentrate on a specific area of a general topic. As you may recall, the creation of a thesis statement begins when you choose a broad subject and then narrow down its parts until you pinpoint a specific aspect of that topic. For example, health care is a broad topic, but a proper thesis statement would focus on a specific area of that topic, such as options for individuals without health care coverage.

Precision. A strong thesis statement must be precise enough to allow for a coherent argument and to remain focused on the topic. If the specific topic is options for individuals without health care coverage, then your precise thesis statement must make an exact claim about it, such as that limited options exist for those who are uninsured by their employers. You must further pinpoint what you are going to discuss regarding these limited effects, such as whom they affect and what the cause is.

Ability to be argued. A thesis statement must present a relevant and specific argument. A factual statement often is not considered arguable. Be sure your thesis statement contains a point of view that can be supported with evidence.

Ability to be demonstrated. For any claim you make in your thesis, you must be able to provide reasons and examples for your opinion. You can rely on personal observations in order to do this, or you can consult outside sources to demonstrate that what you assert is valid. A worthy argument is backed by examples and details.

Forcefulness. A thesis statement that is forceful shows readers that you are, in fact, making an argument. The tone is assertive and takes a stance that others might oppose.

Confidence. In addition to using force in your thesis statement, you must also use confidence in your claim. Phrases such as I feel or I believe actually weaken the readers’ sense of your confidence because these phrases imply that you are the only person who feels the way you do. In other words, your stance has insufficient backing. Taking an authoritative stance on the matter persuades your readers to have faith in your argument and open their minds to what you have to say.

Even in a personal essay that allows the use of first person, your thesis should not contain phrases such as in my opinion or I believe . These statements reduce your credibility and weaken your argument. Your opinion is more convincing when you use a firm attitude.

On a separate sheet of paper, write a thesis statement for each of the following topics. Remember to make each statement specific, precise, demonstrable, forceful and confident.

• Texting while driving
• The legal drinking age in the United States
• Steroid use among professional athletes

Examples of Appropriate Thesis Statements

Each of the following thesis statements meets several of the following requirements:

• Specificity
• Ability to be argued
• Ability to be demonstrated
• Forcefulness
• The societal and personal struggles of Troy Maxon in the play Fences symbolize the challenge of black males who lived through segregation and integration in the United States.
• Closing all American borders for a period of five years is one solution that will tackle illegal immigration.
• Shakespeare’s use of dramatic irony in Romeo and Juliet spoils the outcome for the audience and weakens the plot.
• J. D. Salinger’s character in Catcher in the Rye , Holden Caulfield, is a confused rebel who voices his disgust with phonies, yet in an effort to protect himself, he acts like a phony on many occasions.
• Compared to an absolute divorce, no-fault divorce is less expensive, promotes fairer settlements, and reflects a more realistic view of the causes for marital breakdown.
• Exposing children from an early age to the dangers of drug abuse is a sure method of preventing future drug addicts.
• In today’s crumbling job market, a high school diploma is not significant enough education to land a stable, lucrative job.

You can find thesis statements in many places, such as in the news; in the opinions of friends, coworkers or teachers; and even in songs you hear on the radio. Become aware of thesis statements in everyday life by paying attention to people’s opinions and their reasons for those opinions. Pay attention to your own everyday thesis statements as well, as these can become material for future essays.

Now that you have read about the contents of a good thesis statement and have seen examples, take a look at the pitfalls to avoid when composing your own thesis:

A thesis is weak when it is simply a declaration of your subject or a description of what you will discuss in your essay.

Weak thesis statement: My paper will explain why imagination is more important than knowledge.

A thesis is weak when it makes an unreasonable or outrageous claim or insults the opposing side.

Weak thesis statement: Religious radicals across America are trying to legislate their Puritanical beliefs by banning required high school books.

A thesis is weak when it contains an obvious fact or something that no one can disagree with or provides a dead end.

Weak thesis statement: Advertising companies use sex to sell their products.

A thesis is weak when the statement is too broad.

Weak thesis statement: The life of Abraham Lincoln was long and challenging.

Read the following thesis statements. On a separate piece of paper, identify each as weak or strong. For those that are weak, list the reasons why. Then revise the weak statements so that they conform to the requirements of a strong thesis.

• The subject of this paper is my experience with ferrets as pets.
• The government must expand its funding for research on renewable energy resources in order to prepare for the impending end of oil.
• Edgar Allan Poe was a poet who lived in Baltimore during the nineteenth century.
• In this essay, I will give you lots of reasons why slot machines should not be legalized in Baltimore.
• Despite his promises during his campaign, President Kennedy took few executive measures to support civil rights legislation.
• Because many children’s toys have potential safety hazards that could lead to injury, it is clear that not all children’s toys are safe.
• My experience with young children has taught me that I want to be a disciplinary parent because I believe that a child without discipline can be a parent’s worst nightmare.

Writing at Work

Often in your career, you will need to ask your boss for something through an e-mail. Just as a thesis statement organizes an essay, it can also organize your e-mail request. While your e-mail will be shorter than an essay, using a thesis statement in your first paragraph quickly lets your boss know what you are asking for, why it is necessary, and what the benefits are. In short body paragraphs, you can provide the essential information needed to expand upon your request.

Thesis Statement Revision

Your thesis will probably change as you write, so you will need to modify it to reflect exactly what you have discussed in your essay. Remember from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” that your thesis statement begins as a working thesis statement , an indefinite statement that you make about your topic early in the writing process for the purpose of planning and guiding your writing.

Working thesis statements often become stronger as you gather information and form new opinions and reasons for those opinions. Revision helps you strengthen your thesis so that it matches what you have expressed in the body of the paper.

The best way to revise your thesis statement is to ask questions about it and then examine the answers to those questions. By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you grow closer to a more precise point of view, which you can then incorporate into your thesis statement.

Ways to Revise Your Thesis

You can cut down on irrelevant aspects and revise your thesis by taking the following steps:

1. Pinpoint and replace all nonspecific words, such as people , everything , society , or life , with more precise words in order to reduce any vagueness.

Working thesis: Young people have to work hard to succeed in life.

Revised thesis: Recent college graduates must have discipline and persistence in order to find and maintain a stable job in which they can use and be appreciated for their talents.

The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to work hard. The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails. By replacing those general words like people and work hard , the writer can better focus his or her research and gain more direction in his or her writing.

2. Clarify ideas that need explanation by asking yourself questions that narrow your thesis.

Working thesis: The welfare system is a joke.

Revised thesis: The welfare system keeps a socioeconomic class from gaining employment by alluring members of that class with unearned income, instead of programs to improve their education and skill sets.

A joke means many things to many people. Readers bring all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives to the reading process and would need clarification for a word so vague. This expression may also be too informal for the selected audience. By asking questions, the writer can devise a more precise and appropriate explanation for joke . The writer should ask himself or herself questions similar to the 5WH questions. (See Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” for more information on the 5WH questions.) By incorporating the answers to these questions into a thesis statement, the writer more accurately defines his or her stance, which will better guide the writing of the essay.

3. Replace any linking verbs with action verbs. Linking verbs are forms of the verb to be , a verb that simply states that a situation exists.

Working thesis: Kansas City schoolteachers are not paid enough.

Revised thesis: The Kansas City legislature cannot afford to pay its educators, resulting in job cuts and resignations in a district that sorely needs highly qualified and dedicated teachers.

The linking verb in this working thesis statement is the word are . Linking verbs often make thesis statements weak because they do not express action. Rather, they connect words and phrases to the second half of the sentence. Readers might wonder, “Why are they not paid enough?” But this statement does not compel them to ask many more questions. The writer should ask himself or herself questions in order to replace the linking verb with an action verb, thus forming a stronger thesis statement, one that takes a more definitive stance on the issue:

• Who is not paying the teachers enough?
• What is considered “enough”?
• What is the problem?
• What are the results

4. Omit any general claims that are hard to support.

Working thesis: Today’s teenage girls are too sexualized.

Revised thesis: Teenage girls who are captivated by the sexual images on MTV are conditioned to believe that a woman’s worth depends on her sensuality, a feeling that harms their self-esteem and behavior.

It is true that some young women in today’s society are more sexualized than in the past, but that is not true for all girls. Many girls have strict parents, dress appropriately, and do not engage in sexual activity while in middle school and high school. The writer of this thesis should ask the following questions:

• Which teenage girls?
• What constitutes “too” sexualized?
• Why are they behaving that way?
• Where does this behavior show up?
• What are the repercussions?

In the first section of Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , you determined your purpose for writing and your audience. You then completed a freewriting exercise about an event you recently experienced and chose a general topic to write about. Using that general topic, you then narrowed it down by answering the 5WH questions. After you answered these questions, you chose one of the three methods of prewriting and gathered possible supporting points for your working thesis statement.

Now, on a separate sheet of paper, write down your working thesis statement. Identify any weaknesses in this sentence and revise the statement to reflect the elements of a strong thesis statement. Make sure it is specific, precise, arguable, demonstrable, forceful, and confident.

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

In your career you may have to write a project proposal that focuses on a particular problem in your company, such as reinforcing the tardiness policy. The proposal would aim to fix the problem; using a thesis statement would clearly state the boundaries of the problem and tell the goals of the project. After writing the proposal, you may find that the thesis needs revision to reflect exactly what is expressed in the body. Using the techniques from this chapter would apply to revising that thesis.

Key Takeaways

• Proper essays require a thesis statement to provide a specific focus and suggest how the essay will be organized.
• A thesis statement is your interpretation of the subject, not the topic itself.
• A strong thesis is specific, precise, forceful, confident, and is able to be demonstrated.
• A strong thesis challenges readers with a point of view that can be debated and can be supported with evidence.
• A weak thesis is simply a declaration of your topic or contains an obvious fact that cannot be argued.
• Depending on your topic, it may or may not be appropriate to use first person point of view.
• Revise your thesis by ensuring all words are specific, all ideas are exact, and all verbs express action.

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Writing a Paper: Thesis Statements

Basics of thesis statements.

The thesis statement is the brief articulation of your paper's central argument and purpose. You might hear it referred to as simply a "thesis." Every scholarly paper should have a thesis statement, and strong thesis statements are concise, specific, and arguable. Concise means the thesis is short: perhaps one or two sentences for a shorter paper. Specific means the thesis deals with a narrow and focused topic, appropriate to the paper's length. Arguable means that a scholar in your field could disagree (or perhaps already has!).

Strong thesis statements address specific intellectual questions, have clear positions, and use a structure that reflects the overall structure of the paper. Read on to learn more about constructing a strong thesis statement.

Being Specific

This thesis statement has no specific argument:

Needs Improvement: In this essay, I will examine two scholarly articles to find similarities and differences.

This statement is concise, but it is neither specific nor arguable—a reader might wonder, "Which scholarly articles? What is the topic of this paper? What field is the author writing in?" Additionally, the purpose of the paper—to "examine…to find similarities and differences" is not of a scholarly level. Identifying similarities and differences is a good first step, but strong academic argument goes further, analyzing what those similarities and differences might mean or imply.

Better: In this essay, I will argue that Bowler's (2003) autocratic management style, when coupled with Smith's (2007) theory of social cognition, can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover.

The new revision here is still concise, as well as specific and arguable.  We can see that it is specific because the writer is mentioning (a) concrete ideas and (b) exact authors.  We can also gather the field (business) and the topic (management and employee turnover). The statement is arguable because the student goes beyond merely comparing; he or she draws conclusions from that comparison ("can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover").

Making a Unique Argument

This thesis draft repeats the language of the writing prompt without making a unique argument:

Needs Improvement: The purpose of this essay is to monitor, assess, and evaluate an educational program for its strengths and weaknesses. Then, I will provide suggestions for improvement.

You can see here that the student has simply stated the paper's assignment, without articulating specifically how he or she will address it. The student can correct this error simply by phrasing the thesis statement as a specific answer to the assignment prompt.

Better: Through a series of student interviews, I found that Kennedy High School's antibullying program was ineffective. In order to address issues of conflict between students, I argue that Kennedy High School should embrace policies outlined by the California Department of Education (2010).

Words like "ineffective" and "argue" show here that the student has clearly thought through the assignment and analyzed the material; he or she is putting forth a specific and debatable position. The concrete information ("student interviews," "antibullying") further prepares the reader for the body of the paper and demonstrates how the student has addressed the assignment prompt without just restating that language.

Creating a Debate

This thesis statement includes only obvious fact or plot summary instead of argument:

Needs Improvement: Leadership is an important quality in nurse educators.

A good strategy to determine if your thesis statement is too broad (and therefore, not arguable) is to ask yourself, "Would a scholar in my field disagree with this point?" Here, we can see easily that no scholar is likely to argue that leadership is an unimportant quality in nurse educators.  The student needs to come up with a more arguable claim, and probably a narrower one; remember that a short paper needs a more focused topic than a dissertation.

Better: Roderick's (2009) theory of participatory leadership  is particularly appropriate to nurse educators working within the emergency medicine field, where students benefit most from collegial and kinesthetic learning.

Here, the student has identified a particular type of leadership ("participatory leadership"), narrowing the topic, and has made an arguable claim (this type of leadership is "appropriate" to a specific type of nurse educator). Conceivably, a scholar in the nursing field might disagree with this approach. The student's paper can now proceed, providing specific pieces of evidence to support the arguable central claim.

Choosing the Right Words

This thesis statement uses large or scholarly-sounding words that have no real substance:

Needs Improvement: Scholars should work to seize metacognitive outcomes by harnessing discipline-based networks to empower collaborative infrastructures.

There are many words in this sentence that may be buzzwords in the student's field or key terms taken from other texts, but together they do not communicate a clear, specific meaning. Sometimes students think scholarly writing means constructing complex sentences using special language, but actually it's usually a stronger choice to write clear, simple sentences. When in doubt, remember that your ideas should be complex, not your sentence structure.

Better: Ecologists should work to educate the U.S. public on conservation methods by making use of local and national green organizations to create a widespread communication plan.

Notice in the revision that the field is now clear (ecology), and the language has been made much more field-specific ("conservation methods," "green organizations"), so the reader is able to see concretely the ideas the student is communicating.

Leaving Room for Discussion

This thesis statement is not capable of development or advancement in the paper:

Needs Improvement: There are always alternatives to illegal drug use.

This sample thesis statement makes a claim, but it is not a claim that will sustain extended discussion. This claim is the type of claim that might be appropriate for the conclusion of a paper, but in the beginning of the paper, the student is left with nowhere to go. What further points can be made? If there are "always alternatives" to the problem the student is identifying, then why bother developing a paper around that claim? Ideally, a thesis statement should be complex enough to explore over the length of the entire paper.

Better: The most effective treatment plan for methamphetamine addiction may be a combination of pharmacological and cognitive therapy, as argued by Baker (2008), Smith (2009), and Xavier (2011).

In the revised thesis, you can see the student make a specific, debatable claim that has the potential to generate several pages' worth of discussion. When drafting a thesis statement, think about the questions your thesis statement will generate: What follow-up inquiries might a reader have? In the first example, there are almost no additional questions implied, but the revised example allows for a good deal more exploration.

Thesis Mad Libs

If you are having trouble getting started, try using the models below to generate a rough model of a thesis statement! These models are intended for drafting purposes only and should not appear in your final work.

• In this essay, I argue ____, using ______ to assert _____.
• While scholars have often argued ______, I argue______, because_______.
• Through an analysis of ______, I argue ______, which is important because_______.

Words to Avoid and to Embrace

When drafting your thesis statement, avoid words like explore, investigate, learn, compile, summarize , and explain to describe the main purpose of your paper. These words imply a paper that summarizes or "reports," rather than synthesizing and analyzing.

Instead of the terms above, try words like argue, critique, question , and interrogate . These more analytical words may help you begin strongly, by articulating a specific, critical, scholarly position.

Read Kayla's blog post for tips on taking a stand in a well-crafted thesis statement.

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14 Crafting a Thesis Statement

Learning Objectives

• Craft a thesis statement that is clear, concise, and declarative.
• Narrow your topic based on your thesis statement and consider the ways that your main points will support the thesis.

Crafting a Thesis Statement

A  thesis statement  is a short, declarative sentence that states the purpose, intent, or main idea of a speech. A strong, clear thesis statement is very valuable within an introduction because it lays out the basic goal of the entire speech. We strongly believe that it is worthwhile to invest some time in framing and writing a good thesis statement. You may even want to write your thesis statement before you even begin conducting research for your speech. While you may end up rewriting your thesis statement later, having a clear idea of your purpose, intent, or main idea before you start searching for research will help you focus on the most appropriate material. To help us understand thesis statements, we will first explore their basic functions and then discuss how to write a thesis statement.

Basic Functions of a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement helps your audience by letting them know, clearly and concisely, what you are going to talk about. A strong thesis statement will allow your reader to understand the central message of your speech. You will want to be as specific as possible. A thesis statement for informative speaking should be a declarative statement that is clear and concise; it will tell the audience what to expect in your speech. For persuasive speaking, a thesis statement should have a narrow focus and should be arguable, there must be an argument to explore within the speech. The exploration piece will come with research, but we will discuss that in the main points. For now, you will need to consider your specific purpose and how this relates directly to what you want to tell this audience. Remember, no matter if your general purpose is to inform or persuade, your thesis will be a declarative statement that reflects your purpose.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

Now that we’ve looked at why a thesis statement is crucial in a speech, let’s switch gears and talk about how we go about writing a solid thesis statement. A thesis statement is related to the general and specific purposes of a speech.

Once you have chosen your topic and determined your purpose, you will need to make sure your topic is narrow. One of the hardest parts of writing a thesis statement is narrowing a speech from a broad topic to one that can be easily covered during a five- to seven-minute speech. While five to seven minutes may sound like a long time for new public speakers, the time flies by very quickly when you are speaking. You can easily run out of time if your topic is too broad. To ascertain if your topic is narrow enough for a specific time frame, ask yourself three questions.

Is your speech topic a broad overgeneralization of a topic?

Overgeneralization occurs when we classify everyone in a specific group as having a specific characteristic. For example, a speaker’s thesis statement that “all members of the National Council of La Raza are militant” is an overgeneralization of all members of the organization. Furthermore, a speaker would have to correctly demonstrate that all members of the organization are militant for the thesis statement to be proven, which is a very difficult task since the National Council of La Raza consists of millions of Hispanic Americans. A more appropriate thesis related to this topic could be, “Since the creation of the National Council of La Raza [NCLR] in 1968, the NCLR has become increasingly militant in addressing the causes of Hispanics in the United States.”

Is your speech’s topic one clear topic or multiple topics?

A strong thesis statement consists of only a single topic. The following is an example of a thesis statement that contains too many topics: “Medical marijuana, prostitution, and Women’s Equal Rights Amendment should all be legalized in the United States.” Not only are all three fairly broad, but you also have three completely unrelated topics thrown into a single thesis statement. Instead of a thesis statement that has multiple topics, limit yourself to only one topic. Here’s an example of a thesis statement examining only one topic: Ratifying the Women’s Equal Rights Amendment as equal citizens under the United States law would protect women by requiring state and federal law to engage in equitable freedoms among the sexes.

Does the topic have direction?

If your basic topic is too broad, you will never have a solid thesis statement or a coherent speech. For example, if you start off with the topic “Barack Obama is a role model for everyone,” what do you mean by this statement? Do you think President Obama is a role model because of his dedication to civic service? Do you think he’s a role model because he’s a good basketball player? Do you think he’s a good role model because he’s an excellent public speaker? When your topic is too broad, almost anything can become part of the topic. This ultimately leads to a lack of direction and coherence within the speech itself. To make a cleaner topic, a speaker needs to narrow her or his topic to one specific area. For example, you may want to examine why President Obama is a good public speaker.

Put Your Topic into a Declarative Sentence

You wrote your general and specific purpose. Use this information to guide your thesis statement. If you wrote a clear purpose, it will be easy to turn this into a declarative statement.

General purpose: To inform

Specific purpose: To inform my audience about the lyricism of former President Barack Obama’s presentation skills.

Your thesis statement needs to be a declarative statement. This means it needs to actually state something. If a speaker says, “I am going to talk to you about the effects of social media,” this tells you nothing about the speech content. Are the effects positive? Are they negative? Are they both? We don’t know. This sentence is an announcement, not a thesis statement. A declarative statement clearly states the message of your speech.

For example, you could turn the topic of President Obama’s public speaking skills into the following sentence: “Because of his unique sense of lyricism and his well-developed presentational skills, President Barack Obama is a modern symbol of the power of public speaking.” Or you could state, “Socal media has both positive and negative effects on users.”

Adding your Argument, Viewpoint, or Opinion

If your topic is informative, your job is to make sure that the thesis statement is nonargumentative and focuses on facts. For example, in the preceding thesis statement, we have a couple of opinion-oriented terms that should be avoided for informative speeches: “unique sense,” “well-developed,” and “power.” All three of these terms are laced with an individual’s opinion, which is fine for a persuasive speech but not for an informative speech. For informative speeches, the goal of a thesis statement is to explain what the speech will be informing the audience about, not attempting to add the speaker’s opinion about the speech’s topic. For an informative speech, you could rewrite the thesis statement to read, “Barack Obama’s use of lyricism in his speech, ‘A World That Stands as One,’ delivered July 2008 in Berlin demonstrates exceptional use of rhetorical strategies. 

On the other hand, if your topic is persuasive, you want to make sure that your argument, viewpoint, or opinion is clearly indicated within the thesis statement. If you are going to argue that Barack Obama is a great speaker, then you should set up this argument within your thesis statement.

For example, you could turn the topic of President Obama’s public speaking skills into the following sentence: “Because of his unique sense of lyricism and his well-developed presentational skills, President Barack Obama is a modern symbol of the power of public speaking.” Once you have a clear topic sentence, you can start tweaking the thesis statement to help set up the purpose of your speech.

Thesis Checklist

Once you have written a first draft of your thesis statement, you’re probably going to end up revising your thesis statement a number of times prior to delivering your actual speech. A thesis statement is something that is constantly tweaked until the speech is given. As your speech develops, often your thesis will need to be rewritten to whatever direction the speech itself has taken. We often start with a speech going in one direction, and find out through our research that we should have gone in a different direction. When you think you finally have a thesis statement that is good to go for your speech, take a second and make sure it adheres to the criteria shown below.

Preview of Speech

The preview, as stated in the introduction portion of our readings, reminds us that we will need to let the audience know what the main points in our speech will be. You will want to follow the thesis with the preview of your speech. Your preview will allow the audience to follow your main points in a sequential manner. Spoiler alert: The preview when stated out loud will remind you of main point 1, main point 2, and main point 3 (etc. if you have more or less main points). It is a built in memory card!

For Future Reference | How to organize this in an outline |

Introduction

Attention Getter: Background information: Credibility: Thesis: Preview:

Key Takeaways

Introductions are foundational to an effective public speech.

• A thesis statement is instrumental to a speech that is well-developed and supported.
• Be sure that you are spending enough time brainstorming strong attention getters and considering your audience’s goal(s) for the introduction.
• A strong thesis will allow you to follow a roadmap throughout the rest of your speech: it is worth spending the extra time to ensure you have a strong thesis statement.

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Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Four theses about self-consciousness and bodily experience: descartes, kant, locke, and merleau-ponty.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2020

This article evaluates the following four theses about bodily experience and self-consciousness: Descartes's thesis (bodily experience is a form of self-consciousness); Kant's thesis (nothing can count as a genuine form of self-consciousness unless it is consciousness of oneself as a subject); Locke's thesis (in bodily experience we are presented with ourselves as physical objects); and Merleau-Ponty's thesis (the way we encounter ourselves in bodily experience is fundamentally different from how we encounter non-bodily physical objects in outward-directed, exteroceptive perception). I argue that they are all true.

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