[lit-ideas] Re: What is a transcendental claim?

No doubt mistakenly, I sense the approach of clarity about my differences with 
Walter on at least one point...

Walter elaborates what he is referring to with the word 'transcendental':

> [snip]...plausible T analyses/arguments posit as their object of inquiry
> (reconstruction) a competence, discourse, or some other dimension of human
> understanding (meaning, language, etc). This object of analysis is carefully
> delineated and the analysis pursues *that* comprehension of the phenomenon and
> no other. Only as such can T analyses yield univocal results. 

I think I understand the first sentence here -- plausible transcendental 
analyses (by contrast with, say, Kant's implausible ones?) are about human 
experience (like Kant's were) but are about a defined and limited range of such 
experience, specifically some identifiable competence, discourse or other 
dimension of human understanding.

Can I accurately paraphrase the second sentence thus?: A plausible 
transcendental analysis carefully delineates the topic (the identified 
competence, etc.) and focuses on it as delineated and not on some other way of 
identifying or characterizing the topic.  I mean, here, to be making sure I 
understand the antecedent to Walter's 'phenomenon'.

If so, then I think that Walter here is outlining minimum conditions for rigor 
or discipline that an analysis has to meet in order to qualify as a 
(potentially successful) transcendental analysis.  Is that right?

I skip over Walter's contrasts with Kant, other than to ask for (preferably) a 
sketch or alternatively a reference explaining why we all know Kant's 'project' 
failed.  I don't quite see that it failed, though I certainly don't think 
everything the man wrote limned the nature of reality either.

Walter walks through an example:

> -----> ...Take "argumentation" (P). A T analysis of
> argumentation has the following premises:
> 
> P1: If P is to be possible, it must satisfy conditions x, y, and z. (The 
> latter
> are the posited conditions necessary for the possibility of P. These 
> conditions
> are "internal" to P - they are not empirical conditions which, as empirical,
> would be external to, contingent to, and independent of P. Hence, we are not
> dealing with causal conditions. X, y, and z are thus hypothesized to be
> necessary conceptual presuppositions of P. Note that T claims and arguments 
> are
> fallible.)
> 
> P2: P is actual. (People actually do engage in argumentation; argumentation is
> a public, social practice.)
> 
> C: Therefore, x, y and z constitute necessary conditions for the possibility 
> of
> P. 
> 
> This is the form of a T argument. Subsequent argument attempts to provide
> warrant for the premises. Another example, this time from Heidegger (HIM 
> again):
> "Only agents are able to make causal claims, since such claims presuppose an
> understanding of counterfactual conditionals that only a being in the mode of
> human being could comprehend.)

I think I take the general point here, though I am skeptical that Walter's 
argument template is sound as it stands.  

The crux, as it seems to me, is in the premise and I'm also not sure I 
understand the premise fully, so what follows may be off base, in which case I 
would appreciate a clarification about the premise (with thanks to Donal for 
his clarification about my over-hasty modal logic).

The premise is that x, y and z are necessary conditions (and perforce (per 
Walter) therefore not empirical conditions) for the phenomenon P.  If I 
understand it, the transcendental argument is that given that P is real, x, y 
and z must really be the necessary conditions for the possibility of P (this is 
the move I don't think is quite correct or clear as Walter has laid it out), 
which then, it would seem, encourages the further exploration of x, y and z 
irrespective of what might otherwise appear as their empirical heft.

Or so, anyway, I can explain to myself why one would use the term 
'transcendental' for what seems to me a fairly straightforward matter, namely 
the exploration of whether some phenomenon has necessary conditions or 
prerequisites.

But once I put it thus plainly, it is a bit easier for me to explain my view 
that Wittgenstein was not making transcendental claims in the various passages 
Walter cites and/or paraphrases from Philosophical Investigations.  Here's how 
I would put it now:

While I can imagine one treating as transcendental an assertion such as 
"Reference to an experience of a sensation by the use of 'S' is possible only 
if I can check my use of 'S'", there are other, equally reasonable readings of 
that assertion which do not meet the conditions that define 'transcendental'.  

For example, to use Walter's terminology (perhaps ineptly), one can read this 
sentence as an empirical assertion.  Consider: "Riding a bike is possible only 
if you sit on the seat and push the pedals" spoken in response to someone who 
wants to discuss the role of the distributor cap in bicycle riding.  It's a 
clarification of terminology and a directing of attention towards the empirical 
phenomenon under discussion (which is why I called it 'empirical'), not a 
definition of necessary conditions for bicycle riding, except possibly in a 
purely formalistic sense.

I, for one, think Wittgenstein intended something more like the latter, 
non-transcendental reading, and whether he did so intend or not, I also think 
it is a reasonable sort of reading.

I therefore said that Wittgenstein did *not* make a transcendental claim, 
though those interested in transcendental claims can, without grotesque 
distortion of these individual assertions, coin transcendental claims from them 
which can then be discussed on their merits as such.

However, I also think that such handling radically misses the point 
Wittgenstein was making, as I read him.  There may well be topics in which 
something like a transcendental understanding is available -- mathematics comes 
to mind, theoretical physics, etc.  But when it comes to considering human life 
in toto, even a specific aspect of human life like language, I think that 
Wittgenstein was at pains to illustrate why it might be imprudent (i.e. 
practically not very useful in any context he could imagine and therefore also 
not intellectually compelling) to imagine that such transcendental 
understanding was to be had.  It is because I read him this way that I was so 
emphatic that he was not making transcendental claims.

Perhaps, though, I would do better sticking to my own case.  I do not believe I 
was making a transcendental claim when I asserted that to understand a moral 
judgment one had to understand how the words refer to real interactions.  I can 
understand why one who finds transcendental analysis useful might read my claim 
as such, but I deny that the claim can only be so understood or even that it 
can best be so understood.

I was, instead, trying to make a practical point about the practical experience 
of understanding moral judgments, like the one about riding a bike.  I think 
that if we're discussing 'understanding moral judgments' then we're discussing 
something that involves understanding the reference to at least potentially 
real human interactions in the terms used in such judgments, just like talking 
about riding a bike involves, at least indirectly, talking about sitting on the 
seat and pushing the pedals.  I think it is simply a mistake in usage, not a 
profound intellectual point, to think there is something called 'riding a bike' 
that doesn't involve sitting on the seat and pushing the pedals, and a similar 
mistake in usage to think there is something called 'understanding a moral 
judgment' which does not involve understanding how real human interactions work.

But perhaps the way forward is to for me to say, OK, let's assume my assertion 
was a transcendental claim, what would follow from that?

Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington DC

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