Editing Soul (section)

===Immanuel Kant===
[[File:Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) engraving.jpg|thumb|[[Immanuel Kant]] has criticized the [[Rationalism|rationalist]] project of understanding the soul’s nature by analyzing the proposition "I think".]]
In his discussions of rational psychology, [[Immanuel Kant]] identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and argued that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved. He said, "We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be recognized from materiality." It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes [[Transcendence (philosophy)|transcendental]] rationalization but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.{{efn|
Immanuel Kant proposed the existence of certain mathematical truths {{nobr|(e.g. {{math|2 + 2 {{=}} 4 }})}} that are not tied to matter, nor soul.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last = Bishop | first = Paul
 | year = 2000
 | title = Synchronicity and Intellectual Intuition in Kant, Swedenborg, and Jung
 | place = Lewiston, NY
 | publisher = [[Edwin Mellen Press]]
 | isbn = 978-0-7734-7593-9
 | pages = 262–267
}}
</ref>
}}

Kant critiques the [[metaphysics]] of the soul—an investigation he calls "rational psychology"—in the ''Paralogisms of Pure Reason''. Rational psychology, as he defines it, seeks to establish metaphysical claims about the soul’s nature by analyzing the proposition "I think". Many of Kant’s [[Rationalism|rationalist]] predecessors and contemporaries believed that reflecting on the "I" in "I think" could demonstrate that the self is necessarily a substance (implying the soul’s existence), indivisible (to argue for the soul’s immortality), self-identical (pertaining to personal identity), and separate from the [[Reality|external world]] (leading to skepticism about external reality). Kant, however, asserts that such conclusions stem from an error of reasoning.<ref name=":6">{{Cite web |title=Immanuel Kant |url=https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/#SSH2gi |access-date=2025-04-11 |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |language=en-US}}</ref>

Kant believes this error arises when the conceptual thought of the "I" in "I think" is conflated with genuine cognition of the "I" as an object. [[Cognition]], for Kant, requires both [[intuition]] (sensory experience) and [[Concept|concepts]], whereas the "I" here involves only abstract conceptual thought. For example, consider whether the self can be known as a substance. While the "I" is always the subject of thoughts (never a predicate of something else), recognizing something as a substance also requires intuiting it as a persistent object. Since a person lacks any intuition of the "I" itself, they cannot cognize it as a substance. Thus, in Kant's view, although a person will inevitably conceive of the "I" as a soul-like substance, true knowledge of the soul’s existence or nature remains out of their reach.<ref name=":6" />