[lit-ideas] Re: What is a transcendental claim?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:43:14 -0330
There are still a few posts in the queue before Eric's but Eric asks
questions and makes comments below that may be worthwhile addressing
immediately given their fundamental and pervasive nature and their relevance to
other people's reflections on T claims and arguments. So here's the best I can
do on these matters at present (maybe ever). Thank goodness I'm not as confused
as RP. -------->
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 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.
----> No, this would be to assimilate T arguments/analyses to Kant's highly
peculiar conception in the First Critique. As I have laboured to make clear,
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. Kant believed he
could identify "apriori" conditions for the possibility of experience itself
(ueberhaupt!)- which is to say that it is the entire
possible network of *objects* of experience that is being delineated for T
inquiry. As we all know, Kant's project failed. I don't use the term "apriori"
for that reason. ()At this juncture, it may be said that Robin George
Collingwoood had something important to say on this topic. As did the
philosopher of education Richard S. Peters. I'll postpone commentary on these
authors until requested.)
ED:
> 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".
-----> Let's work 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.)
ED:
> 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.
-------> I don't think there is any other word in English with the same
meaning. It is a philosophical construct. As such, no other natural language
would have equivocal expressions for it either. (Philosophy is not semantics;
we're not playing word games. Philosophy is concerned with concepts - usually
with concepts that construct the phenomenon of investigation. Then the
empirical sciences take over and all our philosophical work goes under like
water under the bridge. But that's OK, nobody goes into philosophy in order to
feel the heat of the limelight.
ED:
> 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.
--> I've responded to this point above. Right? One can pursue a T analysis of,
say, moral experience, a form of experience which is narrower in denotative
reference than "all possible experience." One can pursue a T analysis of the
limits of doubt - limits beyond which the possibility of knowledge is negated
(W's *On certainty*)
ED:
> Most general
> statements, though, are not transcendental in this sense -- they merely
> attempt [to] 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.
----------> In light of what I say above, perhaps we can recognize the above
claims as garden variety T claims. (Note: We don't want to tie "T" claims to
notions of "general" claims. T claims regarding a circumscribed realm of
competence or understanding does not need to be very general. And in empirical
terms, no generality is required at all: Even if no human action were free -
which means that the class of "free human actions" is very small indeed) - the
T claim that freedom is a necessary condition for the possibility of moral
judgment, action, willing, disposition, etc., would not be invalidated on those
grounds. (This is why I say that "morality" as philosophically reconstructed
has no necessary relevance to "actual human interaction" but only to
"possibilities of human agency." Applications of these analyses are of course
possible. A univocal conception of philosophy comprehends it to comprise a T
form of inquiry.)
ED:
> 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.
------> Already dealt with above.
ED:
> 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?
--> I'm doing my best, but I'm no Barry Stroud or Richard S Peters. The stove
example seems straightforwardly empirical to me. It fails as a T claim because
the claimed "condition of possibility" refers to a result of using the stove. a
"result" is an "effect" understood in causal terms. Hence, the putatively
"necessary" condition is not internal to the phenomenon being T'lly
reconstructed.
Thanks to the admirable Ertic D for bringing me back to the fundamentals ....
Walter O
MUN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Regards to one and all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
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