[lit-ideas] Re: Transcendental and otherwise
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:56:10 -0330
Continuation of replies to Eric D at the point I left off yesterday -------->
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
>
> Walter O. writes:
>
> "For all [understandings of philosophy other than as a transcendental form of
> inquiry] as far as I am aware, we have other terms to describe the form of
> inquiry and practice being referred to within such conceptions.
> Understanding philosophy as a transcendental form of inquiry is intelligible
> and justifiable, in my mind, since no other form of inquiry can be said to be
> unique to the discipline of philosophy. Only philosophy can do
> transcendental analysis, and all transcendental analysis is philosophical."
>
> I read Walter, here, as giving a relatively standard explanation of the role
> of philosophy as a professional discipline. The explanation rests on a
> presumption that different disciplines -- "forms of inquiry and practice" --
> should each have their unique labels and their unique attributes.
>
> But I'm not quite sure why that's the case. It seems to me that biologists
> find themselves constantly applying results from physics, chemistry,
> mathematics, etc. Why might not philosophy be such a discipline, i.e. one in
> which the forms of inquiry and practice of other disciplines are regularly
> brought to bear and possibly critiqued?
>
> And if one might object to that by saying the biologist who's applying
> chemistry is *applying* chemistry, not *doing* chemistry, I first would ask
> why the deciphering of the structure of DNA -- something I think biologists
> could legitimately claim as their discipline's accomplishment -- isn't also
> first order chemistry, since it amounts to the analysis of a class of
> chemical compounds? and second, would assert that my point could have been
> made by saying that the biologist is doing applied chemistry, mathematics and
> physics, each of which can be considered disciplines in their own rights.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTINUATION OF REPLIES
ED:
> Why is it wrong to apply the term 'philosophy' to a discipline that applies
> the forms of inquiry and practices of other disciplines? Why, in other
> words, must there be a form of inquiry that is unique to philosophy in order
> for philosophy to be a 'justifiable' discipline?
---------------> I don't recall speaking of "a 'justifiable' discipline." I did
refer to my view of philsophy as the discipline that inquires into
transcendental questions and proceeds transcendentally to be a justifiable one.
Is that what you mean?
ED:
> Even there is a form of inquiry and practice which is unique to philosophy --
> transcendental analysis -- I think further explanation is needed for why that
> uniqueness somehow defines philosophy. One could single out lots of things
> unique to identifiable forms of activity but which do not necessarily
> represent the essence of the activity. For example, one might assert that
> only the framing
> carpenter can nail together the roof struts, and all nailing together of roof
> struts is framing carpentry. But there is much more to framing
> carpentry than nailing together roof struts.
---------> I think I answered that yesterday. But perhaps another example. When
Aristotle asks what "sensible men" deliberate about, he asks an empirical
question. His answers comprise part of his ethics as a whole. But what makes
his ethics philosophical are his questions and his answers to such questions
as: Is it possible to deliberate about just anything?, How does poesis differ
from praxis?, What is the proper function (end) of man? These are all
transcendental questions.
ED:
>
> I suppose one counter would be that my analogy is ill-formed.
> Transcendental analysis is to philosophy as
> nailing frames together is to framing carpentry, not as nailing a particular
> class of frames together is. But that's exactly
> what I for one was suggesting needs explaining. Exactly why is it that
> transcendental analysis is so essential to philosophy? It looks to me like a
> portion of a branch of the discipline, not the trunk or tap root of the whole
> thing.
-------> I don't know what more to say about this. Sorry.
> Finally, John McCreery has asked for a definition of transcendental analysis.
> Walter earlier has said that transcendental analysis is the attempt to
> identify the conditions of possibility for statements, period. But I think
> that's an impossibility,
---------------------> If you claim that this is necessarily so, then you have
just made a transcendental claim. Or you might mean that hitherto we have never
succeeded in ..... The latter is an empirical claim.
> because too many things can be the conditions of
> possibility. For example, one of the conditions of possibility for a moral
> judgment is that the judgment is not the box on the other table in this room,
> because if the judgment were the box in this room it would no longer be a
> judgment. And on and on. What, exactly, is it that makes such an assertion
> a silly or pointless condition of possibility and other things, like the
> conditions Habermas puts on moral judgments, not so silly and pointless?
--------------------> Some apriori conditions are more illuminating of the
practice or language-game that produces the judgements under consideration than
others. Statements of identity - i.e., X is what it is and not something is -
don't tell us much about the necesssary conditions for the practice. (Perhaps I
should also say that there is a great variety of empirical conditions that must
be met before one can engage in a practice and hold the competences required
for/by that practice. Such as having food to eat, a functioning cerbral cortx,
air, single malt scotch, to mention but a few. But empirical conditions are not
apriori. Or "gramatical," in Witters' sense. Perhaps somebody else, more
conversant with W than I, can explain what W means by this expression. It may
help in this context.)
ED:
> I think it can be productive to try to assert the (substantial) conditions of
> possibility for moral judgment, but not because anyone's going to resolve the
> question of whether the asserted list contains all and only the conditions of
> possibility, but because doing so may help illuminate some corner of the
> human condition in a way otherwise not readily available. I think of it as a
> highly elaborated form of the questions Socrates posed to the unwary.
-----> I don't think so. Socrates' objectives and questions were all ultimately
moral, or ethical. Transcendental questions attempt to reconstruct universal
and necessary epistemic conditions (of morality, science, etc.)
ED:
> Socrates, though, in Plato's earlier dialogs anyway, had the modesty not to
> presume to have found the answers to his own questions.
---------> Or did he only claim that he did not know anything that he could
teach to others? Perhaps one of our classicists on the list may help here.
> And The Parmenides,
> it seems to me, provides Plato's cautionary tale on taking even the more
> expository passages in his later work as too literal a rendering of Plato's
> own views about answers Socrates might have been willing to accept.
---------> I was never quite sure that Plato ever got Socrates right.
Minimally,
you need a really good memory and the temperance not to saddle others with
views
you yourself believe to be true.
ED
> Asking apposite, incisive questions seems to me a skill worth cultivating.
> Transcendental analyses can provide very useful tools for the questioner, so
> I wouldn't jettison them. But the idea that they constitute the whole or
> even the soul of philosophy seems misguided to me.
----------> We all do philosophy as we understand it, and as best we can.
Many sincere thanks to Eric D for some truly interesting and critically probing
questions. No doubt I have done a poor job answering them. I am especially
thankful for the development of arguments with which I disagree.
(Imagine discoursing only with the already converted. As if philosophy were a
form of religious liturgy.)
Walter O
MUN
>
> Regards to one and all.
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
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