y indication
that a change of standpoint is involved.

"But the possibility, nay, even the necessity, of these categories
rests on the relation which the whole sensibility, and with it also
all possible phenomena, have to original apperception, a relation
which forces everything to conform to the conditions of the
thoroughgoing unity of self-consciousness, i. e. to stand under
universal functions of synthesis, i. e. of synthesis according to
conceptions, as that wherein alone apperception can prove _a priori_
its thorough-going and necessary identity."

Finally, the conclusion of the paragraph seems definitely to treat
both starting-points as really the same.[60] "Thus the conception of a
cause is nothing but a synthesis (of the consequent in the time series
with other phenomena) _according to conceptions_; and without such a
unity, which has its _a priori_ rule and subjects phenomena to itself,
thorough-going and universal and therefore necessary unity of
consciousness in the manifold of sense-perceptions would not be met
with. But then also these perceptions would belong to no experience,
consequently they would have no object, and would be nothing but a
blind play of representations, less than a dream."

[60] Cf. A. 113, Mah. 205-6 and A. 108-10, Mah. 202-3.

The fact is that since for Kant the synthesis of representations in
accordance with the categories, accompanied by the consciousness of
it, is at once the necessary and sufficient condition of the
relatedness of representations to an object and of the consciousness
of our identity with respect to them, it seems to him to be one and
the same thing whether, in vindicating the synthesis, we appeal to the
possibility of knowledge or to the possibility of self-consciousness,
and it even seems possible to argue, _via_ the synthesis, from
knowledge to self-consciousness and vice versa.

Nevertheless, it remains true that the vindication of the categories
is different, according as it is based upon the possibility of
relating representations to an object or upon the possibility of
becoming self-conscious with respect to them. It also remains true
that Kant vindicates the categories in both ways. For while, in
expounding the three so-called syntheses involved in knowledge, he is
vindicating the categories from the point of view of knowledge, when
he comes to speak of transcendental apperception, of which the central
characteristic is the consciousness of self i