Now since the proposition I think (taken problematically) contains the form of every judgment of understanding whatever, and accompanies all categories as their vehicle, it is clear that the inferences from this proposition can contain a merely transcendental use of the understanding, excluding every admixture of experience; and of such a procedure, after what we have shown above, we cannot at the outset form any very favorable concept. Thus we will follow it through all the predications of the pure doctrine of the soul with a critical eye, <yet for the sake of brevity we will proceed to examine them in an uninterrupted exposition.

To begin with, the following general remarks can sharpen our attentiveness to this mode of inference. I do not cognize any object merely by the fact that I think, but rather I can cognize any object only by determining a given intuition with regard to the unity of consciousness, in which all thinking consists. Thus I cognize myself not by being conscious of myself as thinking, but only if I am conscious to myself of the intuition of myself as determined in regard to the function of thought. All modi of self-consciousness in thinking are therefore not yet themselves concepts of the understanding of objects (categories), but mere functions, which provide thought with no object at all, and hence also do not present my self as an object to be cognized. It is not the consciousness of the determining self, but only that of the determinable self, i.e., of my inner intuition (insofar as its manifold can be combined in accord with the universal condition of the unity of apperception in thinking), that is the object.