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 involved, there is a shifting of the centre of gravity. Instead of treating representations as something which can become related to an object, he now treats them as something of which, as belonging to a self, the self must be capable of being conscious as its own, and argues that a synthesis in accordance with the categories is required for this self-consciousness. It must be admitted then--and the admission is only to be made with reluctance--that when Kant reaches transcendental apperception, he really adopts a new starting-point,[61] and that the passage which introduces transcendental apperception by showing it to be implied in knowledge[62] only serves to conceal from Kant the fact that, from the point of view of the deduction of the categories, he is really assuming without proof the possibility of self-consciousness with respect to all our representations, as a new basis for argument. [61] The existence of this new starting-point is more explicit, A. 116-7 (and note), Mah. 208 (and note), and A. 122, Mah. 212. [62] A. 107, Mah. 200. The approach to the categories from the side of self-consciousness is, however, more prominent in the second edition, and consequently we naturally turn to it for more light on this side of Kant's position. There Kant vindicates the necessity of the synthesis from the side of self-consciousness as follows:[63] [63] The main clauses have been numbered for convenience of reference.