 Kant’s confidence that no empiricist account could possibly explain self-consciousness may be based on his assumption that the sense of self each of us has, the thought of oneself as identical throughout all of one’s changing experiences, involves necessity and universality, which on his view are the hallmarks of the a priori. This assumption is reflected in what we may call Kant’s principle of apperception: “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me”  (B131–132).[15]   Notice the claims about necessity and universality embodied in the words “must” and “all” here. Kant is saying that for a representation to count as mine, it must necessarily be accessible to conscious awareness in some (perhaps indirect) way: I must be able to accompany it with “I think….” All of my representations must be accessible to consciousness in this way (but they need not actually be conscious), because again that is simply what makes a representation count as mine. Self-consciousness for Kant therefore involves a priori knowledge about the necessary and universal truth expressed in this principle of apperception, and a priori knowledge cannot be based on experience.