[lit-ideas] Re: Univocal philosophy as the value of transcendental claims?
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 12:33:29 +0900
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Moreover, the idea that transcendental analysis is valuable because it
> comprises that discipline's undertaking sort of begs the question anyway.
> Presumably the discipline of inquiry is worth pursuing because there is
> something worthwhile that results from it -- or is it worth pursuing just
> because someone might be curious about its subject matter?
>
> So I most definitely think it worth asking: what would be the value of a
> transcendental truth about, say, morality? Take, for example, the candidate
> transcendental claim Walter attributed to me: In order to understand a moral
> judgment one has to understand how the terms in which it was made applied to
> at least potentially real human situations. If that were a transcendental
> truth, as opposed, say, to a useful but not entirely reliable rule of thumb,
> what would follow from that fact that would not follow from its being a rule
> of thumb?
>
> I pursue this because I think the term 'transcendental' is unnecessary,
> i.e. because there are more perspicuous ways of pointing out the class of
> things it is supposed to refer to, and because I think that class is empty,
> i.e. that there actually are no cases of transcendental truth, in the
> relevant sense, to be had in this sublunary existence or elsewhere.
>
Since I so heartily agree with what Eric has written here, philosophical
conscience requires that I offer one possible reservation. To me, one
plausible interpretation of "transcendental" has been the result of truths
discovered by what mathematicians call indirect proof "in which a statement
to be proved is assumed false and if the assumption leads to an
impossibility, then the statement assumed false has been proved to be true."
The question, of course, is whether such proofs are possible in morals as
well as mathematics.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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