[lit-ideas] Re: What is a transcendental claim?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:10:11 -0330
Some hopefully not overly-eggnoggish replies to the esteemed Eric D ------->
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 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.
ED:
> 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.
-------------------> Ganz richtig.
ED:
> 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'.
---------> We're still on the same rails, yes. Such delineation of a discourse
and its competencies clearly leaves open all sorts of questions regarding
whether we should understand the discourse in the terms delineated by the T'l
analysis. It may be argued that perhaps we should because our conceptions of
the
good/authentic life require it, or because a deliberative democracy requires
institutions predicated on such competencies in the citizenry. On the other
hand, criticisms may take the following forms: Perhaps the analysis is
ethnocentric in its conceptualization of the object of analysis (the phenomenon
being reconstructed). Perhaps we're being unfair to the understandings and
histories of certain marginalized and oppressed groups - such as women,
Hispanics, lesbians, Seventh Day Adventists, the elderly, the handicapped,
upper middle class privileged to the hilt white males (still kicking), bankers
working for Morgan Stanley, dolphins and chimps .... or some combination of
the above.
ED:
> 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?
-------> Yes. Note that the analysis intends to be "univocal" in the sense that
it is trained strictly and exclusively on the competence or discourse
delineated within that specific analysis. T analyses are of most worth when they
identify a discourse that has no reasonable alternative to it. The
identification of the presuppositions of that discourse are thus "inescapable"
in that participation in that practice necessarily presupposes the conditions
identified and that practice is an essential element of a form of life we
cannot but accept as necessary for purposes of socialization/personality
development, social order/cohesion and cultural integration. As in, for
example, Habermas's T'l-pragmatic analysis of "discourse" as a reflective form
of communicative action.)
Though I'm wary of putting it like this, T analysis is a form of
philosophical "anthropology" in that it reconstructs essential features of
practices that are constitutive, and not simply regulative, of the human mode
of being-in-the-world, to adopt Heidegger's lexicon temporarily. (He, too, was
a T'l philosopher, offering a "phenomenological ontology" of the human
condition in his writings up to about 1947. After that, he turned poetic and
unintelligible, though David R and the Skipper may beg to disagree. Heidegger
may well have fallen in love with a bright, young lady interested in Kant's
political writings. (So many fine philosophers have bitten the dust in similar
fashion ...)
ED:
> 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.
----> Eric is here being unduly coy and ironic with us since, of course, the
Master said nothing about "the nature of reality" as an object of
correspondence independent of the categories of underrtanding and the intuitions
of our faculty of sensibility. He simply claimed that there is no possibility of
any
kind of "reality" independent of, ultimately, the transcendental synthetic
unity of apperception. Part of that claim involved the view that the delineated
intuitive forms of space and time are necessary and universal for any possible
form of (objects of) human experience. That was a mistaken claim. But, hey,
part marks for enthusiasm! Needless to say, (what an odd expression!) Kant's
analyses of the possibilities and limits
of moral experience and judgement remain mostly untouched by these
epistemological flights of fancy in the CPR. Philosophers chasing after his
ruminations include Thomas Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Jurgen Habermas, John
Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Onora O'Neil, Barbara Herman and Walter Okshevsky.
(Surely a tad of self-aggrandizement is mortally permissible just before
Christams!)
> 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.)
---------> Oh dear, I see that I had committed an enthymeme above. Missing
premise: "All rational human beings are agents." Five Hail Marys. (No, no
whippings.)
ED:
>
> 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.
-----> Examples may help. I stay with the customary ones in the W history of
thediscipline. Aristotle's claim that we cannot "deliberate" about just
anything
is a conceptual claim, not an empirical claim. Its truth does not hinge upon
the existence of tribes that claim they can deliberate about anything they damn
well please. Kant's claim that moral experience, judgement and principles are
possible only under the presupposition of an autonomous will/faculty of pure
practical reason is not an empirical claim. It is not falsified by tribes who
believe that their moral claims are the direct emanations of the gods.
Habermas's T'l reconstruction of the universal and necessary conditions of
discourse is not falsified by the ethnographic discovery of a tribe in China
speaking a language which does not mark the difference between "belief" and
"knowledge".
Must run for now. You can't keep salmon in the stove too long, y'know - even
with its accompaniments of lemon, dill and ???. (That being only an empirical
claim, natuerlich. T claims regarding the preparation of salmon must await our
evolution beyond our extant carbon life form into a silicone life form.)
Walter O
MUN
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ED:
> 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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