An issue therefore arises, the importance of which can be seen by reference to the final aim of the 'deduction', viz. the vindication of the categories. The categories are 'fundamental conceptions which enable us to think objects in general[56] for phenomena'[57]; in other words, they are the principles of the synthesis by which the manifold of sense becomes related to an object. Hence, if this be granted, the proof that the categories are applicable to objects consists in showing that the manifold can be subjected to this synthesis. The question therefore arises whether Kant's real starting-point for establishing the possibility of this synthesis and therefore the applicability of the categories, is to be found in the possibility of knowledge, or in the possibility of self-consciousness, or in both. In other words, does Kant start from the position that all representations must be capable of being related to an object, or from the position that we must be capable of being conscious of our identity with respect to all of them, or from both? [56] _Objecte überhaupt_, i. e. objects of any kind in distinction not from objects of a particular kind but from no objects at all. [57] A. 111, Mah. 204 Prima facie the second position is the more plausible basis for the desired conclusion. On the one hand, it does not seem obvious that the manifold _must_ be capable of being related to an object; for even if it be urged that otherwise we should have only 'a random play of representations, less than a dream'[58], it may be replied, that this might be or might come to be the case. On the other hand, the fact that our representations are ours necessarily seems to presuppose that we are identical subjects of these representations, and recognition of this fact is the consciousness of our identity. [58] A. 112, Mah. 204. If we turn to the text for an answer to this question, we find that Kant seems not only to use both starting-points, but even to regard them as equivalents. Thus in introducing the categories[59] Kant begins by appealing to the necessity for knowledge that representations should relate to an object. [59] A. 110-12, Mah. 203-4. "Unity of synthesis according to empirical conceptions would be purely contingent, and were these not based on a transcendental ground of unity, it would be possible for a confused crowd of phenomena to fill our soul, without the possibility of experience ever arising therefrom. But then also all relation of knowledge to objects would fall away, because knowledge would lack connexion according to universal and necessary laws; it would be thoughtless perception but never knowledge, and therefore for us as good as nothing."