[lit-ideas] What is a transcendental claim?
- From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:15:16 +0000
I've been going back and forth with Walter and, to some extent, others about
whether various assertions are or are not transcendental claims. I thought I
understood what that term meant, but perhaps I don't.
As I understand it, a transcendental claim is a claim that asserts conditions
for the possibility of experience in general. If a successful claim, it
'transcends' experience in the sense that its assertion is independent of all
experience because it establishes conditions for all experience.
As I have been reading Walter, however, he seems to view a transcendental claim
as one that asserts conditions for possibility, period. For example, he writes
"The (second order) claim that the claim 'An inner state stands in need of
outward criteria' is a T claim simply means that the availability of the
relevant public criteria is claimed to constitute a necessary condition for the
possibility of identifying inner states."
This seems to make the term "transcendental" otiose. All conditionals assert
conditions for the possibility of something. If A --> B, then B is a condition
for the possibility of A. Surely this isn't quite what's intended. Perhaps
the crucial point is necessity, but I'm at a loss as to what a necessary
condition for the possibility of something would be, other than simply
something of the sort "If A then necessarily B".
Either way, there seem to be perfectly mundane, well-established terms that do
the work 'transcendental' would be doing, which is why I think construing the
term this way renders it otiose.
To restate: in my understanding of the term, 'transcendental' refers to a
particular class of general statements, namely those which attempt to describe
conditions of all possible experience per se. Most general statements, though,
are not transcendental in this sense -- they merely attempt give conditions of
the possibility of particular things or experiences. To illustrate the usage
according to my lexicon:
1. All possible experiences are located in space and time -- this is a
transcendental claim.
2. All possible expressions in a natural language are moves in some language
game or other -- this is not a transcendental claim, just a general statement.
I dwell on this because if, in Walter's usage, sentence 2 qualifies as a
transcendental claim, then I can understand why he would assert that
Wittgenstein made such claims. But then this just seems to be saying that
Wittgenstein made general statements, something I think most readers would
readily assent to.
It seems to me that all general claims can be restated as conditions for the
possibility of experiences, so for the term 'transcendental' to distinguish
some general claims from others it must be distinguishing them either in terms
of the types of condition, types of experience, the scope of 'conditions' or
the scope of 'experiences, or in some other way.
To illustrate the assertion that all general claims can be restated as
conditions for the possibility of experiences consider:
a. This stove never works right.
b. It is a condition of the possibility of using this stove that the attempt
will be frustrated.
In any case, Walter, or anyone else, can you clarify for me? Can you explain
what
the difference is between transcendental claims and general claims?
Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington DC
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