 The argument from above in §16 can be divided into two stages. The goal of the first is to establish the various components of the principle of the necessary unity of apperception. The second stage aims to show that synthesis is a necessary condition for the aforementioned aspect of self-consciousness, which this principle highlights. Apperception is the apprehension of a mental state – a representation, in Kant’s terminology – as one’s own; one might characterize it as the self-ascription or self-attribution of a mental state (Strawson 1966: 93–4). In Kant’s conception, my apperception has necessary unity since all of my representations must be grounded “in pure apperception, that is, in the thoroughgoing identity of the self in all possible representations” (B131–2, emphasis mine). By this he means that: