Will and the Refutation of Idealism

Kant's 'refutation of Idealism'--a refutation of the inference from 'I think' to 'I am'--that appears in the B edition of the 1st Critique, turns on the assertion that the knowledge of any existent entails a permanent substratum. The standard interpretation of this argument is that for Kant, only some environmental entity can possess a permanent substratum. However, the A edition classification of this topic, that it is part of the problem of the Immortality of the Soul, suggests that for Kant, the permanent existence presupposed by the 'I am', is one's own body, not some other physical entity. While the effectiveness of such an internal critique of Idealism surpasses that of the mere ridicule of the thesis by Moore and Heidegger, Formaterialism, goes further by offering a genetic critique that exposes Idealist methodology at its source. That source is the original process of detachment from the physical world, e. g. Doubting, Epoche, etc. which, as has been previously discussed, requires an exercise of Will. But Will is Motility, i. e. physiological self-activation. Hence, what is dubious from the outset in Idealism, is not the world from which it presumes to detach itself, but that such methodology guarantees its purported result.