PARALOGISM

[A340/B390] Kant identifies the transcendental paralogism as one of three kinds of dialectical inferences through which speculative reason is mis-applied beyond the bounds of possible experience (that is, is applied transcendentally). Paralogisms involve bogus judgments about the self: in a transcendental paralogism, "I conclude from the transcendental concept of the subject [i.e., the "bare" or "formal" or "logical" `I think'], which contains nothing manifold, the absolute unity of this subject itself, of which, however, even in so doing, I possess no concept whatsoever." (For Kant, substance is only subject and never predicate and therefore can't be used in rational psychologists' inferences.)