In §18 Kant assumes that our representations of objects manifest a certain kind of necessity and universality, which he does not purport to establish in §17 or earlier

Allison’s interpretation is attractive particularly because it promises leverage against the skeptic who denies that we represent objects, and also because this leverage is generated by premises about self-consciousness that this skeptic is likely to accept. Nevertheless, there are textual and charitable reasons to resist this reading (Ameriks 1978, Pereboom 1995; Patricia Kitcher 2011: 115–60; Vinci 2014: 193–94). First of all, in §§18–20 Kant makes significant assumptions about features of our