This is a description and investigation of the pre-conditions and assumptions of philosophy, which are shown to be relative, not essential, as traditionally believed.

Kant was the first great anti-Cartesian in epistemology and philosophy of mind. He criticised five central tenets of Cartesianism and developed sophisticated alternatives to them. His transcendental analysis of the necessary a priori conditions for the very possibility of self-conscious human experience invokes externalism about justification and proves externalism about mental content. Semantic concern with the unity of the proposition—required for propositionally structured awareness and self-awareness—is central to Kant’s account of the unity of any cognitive judgment. The perceptual ‘binding (...) problem’ is central to Kant’s account of the unity of the object in perception. This paper outlines Kant’s development and justification of his a rationalist account of our active intellect and its roles in perceptual consciousness and in rational judgment, including our consciousness of our rational freedom, all through a radically innovative transcendental inquiry into the necessary a priori conditions for us to be conscious at all. Kant’s anti-Cartesianism is a major philosophical breakthrough far surpassing contemporary anti-Cartesian efforts. It behoves us to give Kant his due and avail ourselves of his profound insights into the nature of human mindedness. (shrink)

Three genuinely transcendental conditions for the possibility of self-conscious experience are and can only be material (§§2–4). Identifying these conditions shows that the link between transcendental proof and transcendental idealism is not direct, but must be justified by substantive argument (§§ 4, 5). This illuminates the prospect of separating transcendental proofs from transcendental idealism. Indeed, examining these conditions reveals a powerful strategy for using transcendental proof to defend realism sans phrase. Strikingly, this prospect illuminates (...) some otherwise occluded aspects of post-Kantian German Idealism (§6), and sets an important contemporary philosophical agenda (§7). (shrink)

The distinction between activity and passivity has a deep and fundamental role in scientific and philosophical conceptual frameworks, going back to ancient Greek thinking about society and nature. I briefly indicate the importance of the activity-passivity distinction in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, in relation to Husserl. I then advance a transcendental phenomenological argument that the distinction is, however, not as simple or obvious as it might appear, specifically that it cannot be wholly and determinately defined via a purely abstract, (...) conceptual-discursive procedure, since specifying which of two interacting terms is the active one entails (I argue) an implicit reference to pre scientific, affective experience. But, as I argue, specifying this distinction is nonetheless conceptually fundamental for scientific thinking about nature, especially in biology, despite scientific efforts to abstract from it. Together these arguments amplify, within science itself, Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s point that life, as intrinsically involving affect, is a transcendental condition of science. (shrink)

Analyses Deleuze's notion of transcendental and genetic Ideas as conditions of creative thought. From his early work in 'Nietzsche and Philosophy' to 'Difference and Repetition', Deleuze develops a unique notion of transcendental philosophy. It comprises a radical critique of the illusions of representation and a genetic model of thought.Engaging with questions of representation, Ideas and the transcendental, Daniela Voss offers a sophisticated treatment of the Kantian aspects of Deleuze's thought, taking account of Leibniz, Maimon, Lautman and Nietzsche (...) along the way. (shrink)

This article considers a central ethically relevant interpersonal emotion, guilt. It is argued that guilt, as an irreducible moral category, has a constitutive role to play in our ways of conceptualizing our relations to other people. Without experiencing guilt, or being able to do so, we would not be capable of employing the moral concepts and judgments we do employ. Elaborating on this argument, the paper deals with what may be described as the "metaphysics of guilt." More generally, it is (...) suggested, through a case study on the concept of guilt, that a moral theory avoiding naïve emotivism yet emphasizing the role of emotions in morality can and should pay attention to the transcendental status of emotions such as guilt--emotions constitutive of our concept of moral seriousness. Instead of psychologizing moral emotions, the paper employs Raimond Gaita's Wittgenstein-inspired way of examining the place of the concepts of guilt and remorse in our ethical language-use. Finally, some methodological remarks on the possibility of transcendental reflection in moral philosophy are presented. While it is not necessary to commit oneself to any specific religious tradition in order to emphasize the constitutive role of guilt in the way suggested in the paper, it turns out that the moral depth of this concept requires that one is least open to religiously relevant ways of using moral language. In the fundamental metaphysical sense examined in the paper, guilt is a concept whose home language-game is religious rather than secular ethics. (shrink)

In the opening sections of his Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte argues that mutual recognition is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness. However, the argument turns on the apparently unconvincing claim that, in the context of transcendental philosophy, conceptions of the subject as an isolated individual give rise to a vicious circle the resolution of which requires the introduction of a second rational being to ‘summon’ the first. In this essay, my aim is to present a revised (...) account of the opening arguments on which they are more convincing. In particular, I argue that the problem of a circle is genuine and may be seen to result from a relation of mutual dependence between agency and cognition which ensures that for an exercise of either capacity to take place, an exercise of the other would have already had to have taken place with the result that neither can occur. Moreover, the solution is successful. The summons prevents us from being driven around the circle once more because it is a ‘synthesis’ that reconciles the constraint to which I am subject as a cognizer of independently given objects and my freedom as a self-determining subject. (shrink)

In this critical review of Robert Hanna's ingenious book (2006), I aim to support Hanna‟s main insightful reading of Kant, namely what he calls “a priori truth with a human face," without appealing to Kant's divide between a priori and a posteriori and analytic and synthetic truths. My suggestion is that transcendental propositions are necessary neither in the usual epistemological sense that analytic propositions are, let alone in the metaphysical sense that some empirical propositions are. Instead, they are necessary (...) in the theoretical domain in the weak alternative sense that they make possible the empirical recognition of appearances as an object as an indispensable condition of our self-consciousness experience, and they are a priori in the practical domain in the sense that their truth is vital for our self-comprehension as human beings. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel is aware of a crucial problem in Kant’s transcendental account of the conditions of human knowledge. Unless the matter of sensation is sufficiently ordered (and sufficiently varied) we could not make any cognitive judgments. In that case we could not distinguish ourselves from objects we know, and so could not be self-conscious. This is a necessary, formal and transcendental condition of possible human experience. However, it is also (as Kant acknowledged) a material – (...) not a conceptual or an intutive – condition. Consequently, Kant’s idealism cannot account for it. This provides one key to Hegel’s internal critique of Kant’s idealism. (shrink)

This paper presents a reading of the Tractatus’ remarks on ethics. Drawing on work by Anselm Müller, subsequently developed by Anthony Price, the reading makes of some of Wittgenstein’s most striking and most puzzling early remarks a recognizable and insightful account of ethical experience, while also accommodating the equally striking formal quality of those remarks. The account identifies a distinctive ethical achievement that requires a distance from particular concrete goods that one might pursue and a responsiveness to those goods as (...) a whole—to one’s world as a whole; only through such openness is one open to the abstract objective that is doing what is best; and only through openness to that does one express oneself in, and assume responsibility for, one’s actions. This account allows us to understand why, for example, Wittgenstein connects “absolute or ethical value” with “wonder at the existence of the world” and with “understand[ing] the question about the meaning of life”. But it also makes sense of why that is precisely a question, and why those to whom “the meaning of life … become[s] clear” cannot “say in what this meaning consist[s]”. The responsiveness to a good which ethical subjects distinctively manifest is a responsiveness not to some distinctive and describable state of affairs but to the question of what is best—willing determination of what here and now that is. This account yields a vision of self-expression not as hearkening to some inner voice but as an openness to one’s life as a whole; and this, in turn, opens up a way of approaching the puzzle of Wittgenstein’s insistence that “of [the willing subject] we cannot speak”. I also suggest that we find here one possible sense for Wittgenstein’s famous remark to Ludwig von Ficker that “the point of [the Tractatus] is ethical”, in that openness to the world as a whole—openness to how things are as such and as a whole—emerges as fundamentally a practical, rather than theoretical achievement. (shrink)

This dissertation engages critically with the metaphysical implications of the respective transcendentalisms of Husserl, Deleuze, and Kant in an attempt to disclose their largely untapped resources for a renewed consideration of the ability of science to grasp reality as it is in-itself. Chapter 1 examines the metaphysical implications of Husserl’s critique of natural scientific objectivity in his later transcendental philosophy in connection to his early formulations of phenomenological objectivity around the axis of the distinction between metaphysics as the science (...) of real Being and formal ontology as the science of Being in the most universal sense. I argue that Husserl’s phenomenological metaphysics constitutes a framework in which the ideal Being of the transcendental dimension of experience operates as the condition for the possibility of natural scientific objectivity. Chapter 2 scrutinizes Deleuze’s characterization of intensity as a transcendental concept rather than a scientific one against the background of his metaphysics of difference and his critique of the shortcomings of Kant’s transcendental idealism for addressing the transcendental conditions for the genesis of real experience. Through a reading of Deleuze’s metaphysics of difference and intensity in connection to his confinement of the creative productivity of scientific thought to a plane of reference, I argue that the creativity apropos to the scientific engagement with material reality necessitates that such creativity is conditioned by the same transcendental considerations operative in a metaphysics of difference at a broad scale. Against the backdrop of Husserl’s and Deleuze’s respective criticisms of the inadequacy of Kant’s transcendental idealism for articulating the material component of experience, Chapter 3 studies Kant’s later iv conception of ether as the simultaneously empirical and transcendental condition for the possibility and unity of experience. Through an examination of Kant’s renewed understanding of materiality as the necessary and sufficient condition for scientific objectivity in connection with the problematic objectivity of the transcendental ideas created by pure reason in Kant’s Critical philosophy, I suggest that Kant’s later articulation of materiality on transcendental grounds simultaneously addresses the objectivity and the creativity pertinent to the encounter of scientific Thought with material/physical reality. (shrink)

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

This chapter aims to establish a philosophical discussion about the epistemological conditions of “observation”, from the cybersemiotic transdisciplinary view of knowing. For this purpose, the discussion will be divided into three parts, each one of them with the intention of outlining a conceptual critique that later allows a pertinent justification of the observation from a transcendental semiotics. This work is based on a problem: it seeks to show that a the cybersemiotic point of view, to consider on a foundationalist (...) stance, fails to overcome the epistemological contradictions involved in the contemporary critique of modern philosophy. Hence, the objective on this work is to propose as an alternative the teleological and nominalist attitude of transcendental semiotics, and also as an epistemological principle that allows overcoming problems of the foundationalist. Then, in a first moment, we will seek to establish a critique of the phenomenology of observation from the pragmatic point of view, developed by N. R. Hanson and Richard Rorty. In this direction, the contradictions involved in the definition of knowledge will be shown from the phenomenological (perception without representation) and phenomenological (states of inner consciousness) positions. In general terms, the epistemological problems found in the foundations of knowledge based on observation will be exposed: specifically, the problem of the empirical basis and perception and the question of the mind as an inner space. Then, in a second moment, a characterization of the "observation" and the "observable fact" will be made from the cybersemiotic point of view. In this sense, these concepts will be described from the peircean semiosis, starting from the theoretical link proposed by Soren Brier. Hence, when considering the observation within the sphere of significance, the approaches will show a non-phenomenological characterization of knowledge and, from there, the overcoming of pragmatic critiques towards phenomenology. The closing will allow circumscribing knowledge from a communicative, semiotic and autopoietic approach. Finally, and as a contribution to the state of the discussion, the present chapter will make a defense of the cybersemiotic phenomenology of observation but considering the pragmatic conditions of knowledge from a transcendental semiotics perspective. In this sense, the transcendental concepts of truth-consensus and fin-ideal will be used to develop a relevant theoretical field that allows a transcendental justification of the communicative-intersubjective nature of knowledge postulated by cybersemiotics. (shrink)

Traditionally transcendental logic has been set apart from formal logic. Transcendental logic had to deal with the conditions of possibility of judgements, which were presupposed by formal logic. Defined as a purely philosophical enterprise transcendental logic was considered as being a priori delivering either analytic or even synthetic a priori results. In this paper it is argued that this separation from the (empirical) cognitive sciences should be given up. Transcendental logic should be understood as focusing on (...) specific questions. These do not, as some recent analytic philosophy has it, include a refutation of scepticism. And they are not to be separated from meta-logical investigations. Transcendental logic properly understood, and redefined along these theses, should concern itself with the (formal) re-construction of the presupposed necessary conditions and rules of linguistic communication in general. It aims at universality and reflexive closure. (shrink)

This chapter aims to establish a philosophical discussion about the epistemological conditions of “observation”, from the cybersemiotic transdisciplinary view of knowing. For this purpose, the discussion will be divided into three parts, each one of them with the intention of outlining a conceptual critique that later allows a pertinent justification of the observation from a transcendental semiotics. This work is based on a problem: it seeks to show that a the cybersemiotic point of view, to consider on a foundationalist (...) stance, fails to overcome the epistemological contradictions involved in the contemporary critique of modern philosophy. Hence, the objective on this work is to propose as an alternative the teleological and nominalist attitude of transcendental semiotics, and also as an epistemological principle that allows overcoming problems of the foundationalist. Then, in a first moment, we will seek to establish a critique of the phenomenology of observation from the pragmatic point of view, developed by N. R. Hanson and Richard Rorty. In this direction, the contradictions involved in the definition of knowledge will be shown from the phenomenological and phenomenological positions. In general terms, the epistemological problems found in the foundations of knowledge based on observation will be exposed: specifically, the problem of the empirical basis and perception and the question of the mind as an inner space. Then, in a second moment, a characterization of the “observation” and the “observable fact” will be made from the cybersemiotic point of view. In this sense, these concepts will be described from the peircean semiosis, starting from the theoretical link proposed by Søren Brier. Hence, when considering the observation within the sphere of significance, the approaches will show a non-phenomenological characterization of knowledge and, from there, the overcoming of pragmatic critiques towards phenomenology. The closing will allow circumscribing knowledge from a communicative, semiotic and autopoietic approach. Finally, and as a contribution to the state of the discussion, the present chapter will make a defense of the cybersemiotic phenomenology of observation but considering the pragmatic conditions of knowledge from a transcendental semiotics perspective. In this sense, the transcendental concepts of truth-consensus and fin-ideal will be used to develop a relevant theoretical field that allows a transcendental justification of the communicative-intersubjective nature of knowledge postulated by cybersemiotics. (shrink)

Merab Mamardashvili’s philosophy can be defined as the philosophy of the transcendent event. An event is at once extremely concrete and extremely abstract. It occurs in an act of a special kind: an autonomous act which is not the realization of any pattern of transcendental historicity, is not attached to any teleology, that is, its meaning does not consist in the realization of a goal. It is, plainly speaking, purposeless and therefore indeterminate. However, this is not a variety of (...) actionism, not an outburst of absurdity subverting all order. An act turns out to be the realization of the “ontological abstraction of order” by means of a symbol actualized by the very event of the act. The article examines various aspects of the event from the aesthetic to the meta-historical. (shrink)

This essay shows how Conrad Hal Waddington is at the very center of divergent genealogies of theoretical biology: he is at once remembered for his contribution to epigenetics and complex systems biology (in its current formation) and largely forgotten for the debt that he owes to Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. The essay traces Waddington's debt to Whitehead and demonstrates the way in which this conceptual lineage challenges the transcendental conditions of biological knowledge presupposed by the reigning paradigm (...) of complex systems biology. (shrink)

Kantian transcendental arguments are aimed at uncovering the necessary conditions for the possibility of thought and experience. If such arguments are to have any force against Cartesian skepticism about knowledge of the external world, then it would seem that the conditions the transcendental argument uncovers must be non-psychological in nature, and their special status must be knowable a priori. In "Transcendental Arguments", Barry Stroud raised the question whether there are any such conditions., He answered that it was (...) very doubtful that one could argue deductively from the premise that there is thought and experience to the conclusion that certain conditions concerning non-psychological, external reality are satisfied. In the intervening 27 years, no one has decisively answered those doubts. No one has succeeded in constructing a convincing Kantian anti- skeptical transcendental argument of the desired kind. In a recent paper, however, Stroud has suggested that things might well be looking up a bit for the transcendental arguer. Stroud now holds that there is a modest variant of the ambitious Kantian anti-skeptical strategy that offers the promise of an answer of sorts to the skeptic that is free of various objectionable Kantian excesses. In this paper, I will describe the more modest sort of transcendental argument that Stroud finds promising, and I will then raise some doubts about the prospects of this modest approach. (shrink)

SummarySubjecting to a detailed analysis Kant's diagnosis of dialectical error in the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, the author posits that Kant's understanding of such error is, to the extent that it conflates the subjective‐objective, phenomenal‐noumenal, and regulative‐constitutive distinctions, fundamentally incoherent. The author argues not only that these three distinctions cannot on Kant's own terms be conflated, but also that Kant's treatment of dialectical error is further vitiated by circularity of argument: Kant proposes to explain the three distinctions (...) by means of the notion of transcendental error, which however the distinctions themselves were supposed to explain in the first place. After showing that Kant's diagnosis of dialectical error cannot be salvaged even by resorting to the Kantian concept of “transcendental subreption”, the author concludes that unless Kant could in some other way spell out the minimal conditions for dialectical error, Kant's very distinction between understanding and reason becomes difficult to justify. (shrink)

Fourteen new essays by a distinguished team of authors offer a broad and stimulating re-examination of transcendental arguments. This is the philosophical method of arguing that what is doubted or denied by the opponent must be the case, as a condition for the possibility of experience, language, or thought.The line-up of contributors features leading figures in the field from both sides of the Atlantic; they discuss the nature of transcendental arguments, and consider their role and value. In (...) particular, they consider how successful such arguments are as a response to sceptical problems. The editor's introduction provides historical context and philosophical orientation for the discussions. This is the first major appraisal of transcendental arguments since the 1970s; they have continued to play a significant role in philosophy, and recent developments in epistemology and metaphysics have raised new questions and challenges for them. Transcendental Arguments will be essential reading for anyone interested in this area of philosophy, and the starting-point for future work. (shrink)

Susan Hurley (1998a, 2003a, 2008) argues that our capacities for perception, agency and thought are essentially interdependent and co-emerge from a tangle of sensorimotor processes that are both cause and effect of the web of interactive and communicative practices they weave us into. In this paper, I reconstruct this view and its main motivations, with a particular focus on three important aspects. First, Hurley argues that an essential aspect of conscious perception – its perspectival unity – constitutively depends on agency. (...) That is, agency is a transcendental condition on the possibility of perception (§3). Second, understanding why this dependence obtains involves understanding why perception and agency emerge together, and how they do so on the basis of a web of interrelated capacities for sensorimotor control (§2, §4). Third, understanding these first two aspects of Hurley’s view is the key to understanding the sophisticated interplay between i) her arguments for the causal interdependence of sensory input and motor output, and ii) her arguments for the essential interdependence of perception and agency. (shrink)

Transcendental epistemology is an inquiry into conditions of human knowledge which reflect the structure of the human cognitive apparatus. The dependence thesis is the thesis that a proper investigation of such conditions must lean in important respects on the deliverances of science. I argue that Kant is right to object to the dependence thesis, but that the best objections to this thesis lead to the conclusion that the conditions of knowledge which Kant identifies are not, in any interesting sense, (...) a relection of the structure of the human cognitive apparatus. (shrink)

The thirteen essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought and the tradition of transcendental philosophy inaugurated by Kant. This collection examines Heidegger's stand on central themes of transcendental philosophy: subjectivity, judgment, intentionality, truth, practice, and idealism. Several essays in the volume also explore hitherto hidden connections between Heidegger's later "post-metaphysical" thinking—where he develops a "topological" approach that draws as much upon poetry as upon the philosophical tradition—and the (...) transcendental project of grasping the conditions that make experience of a meaningful world possible. This volume will interest philosophers in the continental tradition, where Heidegger's thought has long had a central role, as well as those many philosophers in the analytic tradition whose own approach to knowledge, semantics, and philosophy of mind traces its roots to Kant. (shrink)

Transcendental epistemology is an inquiry into conditions of human knowledge which reflect the structure of the human cognitive apparatus. The dependence thesis is the thesis that a proper investigation of such conditions must lean in important respects on the deliverances of science. I argue that Kant is right to object to the dependence thesis, but that the best objections to this thesis lead to the conclusion that the conditions of knowledge which Kant identifies are not, in any interesting sense, (...) a relection of the structure of the human cognitive apparatus. (shrink)

Most twentieth‐century European philosophers have attempted to think anew the Kantian question about the necessary conditions of experience. A rapid survey of last century's European philosophy would easily show that in spite of the various criticisms formulated against the very project of transcendental foundationalism, the vast majority of the philosophers in the so‐called Continental tradition have not abandoned the project of formulating transcendental arguments altogether. These transcendental inquiries into the conditions of possibility of all these phenomena are (...) certainly more immediately visible in the early works, especially those on Husserl, but a patient reading would show that they are still very much present in the later writings as well. The overcoming of classical transcendentalism at work in deconstruction is indeed the outcome of an ultra‐transcendental strategy. In Of Grammatology, Derrida exposes this ultra‐transcendental logic for the first time when he famously claims that a “pathway” through the transcendental is necessary. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of Y,” must be grounded in considerations of conceivability and possibility. More explicitly, the Transcendental Premise is based on what Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne call the “conceivability-possibility move.” This “inconceivability-impossibility” move, however, is a problematic argumentative move when advancing transcendental arguments (...) for the following reasons. First, from “S cannot conceive of P” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is inconceivable. Second, from “P is inconceivable” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is metaphysically impossible. Third, rather than block skeptical doubts, the conceivability-possibility move introduces skeptical doubts. For these reasons, transcendental arguments fail to deliver on their promise to overcome skeptical doubts. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant argues that the empirical knowledge of the world depends on a priori conditions of human sensibility and understanding, i. e., our capacities of sense experience and concept formation. The objective knowledge presupposes, on one hand, space and time as a priori conditions of sensibility and, on another hand, a priori judgments, like the principle of causality, as constitutive conditions of understanding. The problem is that in the XX century the physical science completely changed (...) how we conceive our knowledge of the world. Face to this new situation, what was changed in our classical reason? However, if the transcendental point of view is adopted, in the specific case of quantum mechanics, we have to wonder about the general conditions of this theory that make possible such knowledge, which predictive value is much more accurate than the classical physics. The aim of this work is firstly to show the Kantian implications on Bohr’s interpretation of quantum phenomena and secondly to provide an overview of the key elements for understanding the transcendental locus of ordinary language in the quantum mechanics context, in order to give support to a transcendental pragmatic position in the analysis of science. (shrink)

Our study aims to deal with different and similar conditions between Ghazzali and Kant, as characters at whom can show two different thinking form and two different cultural structure in their thoughts, in the context of the same subject. The article investigates the stages of these two thinkers approaches to the topic of transcendental dialectic and tries to display that why and how two different cultural worlds incline to this subject.

1. Kant on the “Conditions of the Possibility” of Experience -- Claude Piché // 2. Plato and Kantian Transcendental Constructivism -- Tom Rockmore // 3. Kant and Fichte on the Notion of (Transcendental) Freedom -- Violetta L. Waibel // 4. Fichte, Transcendental Ontology, and the Ethics of Belief -- Steven Hoeltzel // 5. Transcendental Philosophy as “Therapy of the Mind”: Fichte’s “Facts of Consciousness” Lectures -- Benjamin D. Crowe // 6. From Transcendental Philosophy to Hegel’s (...) Developmental Method -- William F. Bristow // 7. How Transcendental Is Cohen’s Critical Idealism? -- Halla Kim // 8. Heidegger’s Failure to Overcome Transcendental Philosophy -- Eric S. Nelson // 9. Others as the Ground of Our Existence: Levinas, Løgstrup, and Transcendental Arguments in Ethics -- Robert Stern // 10. Raising Validity Claims for Reasons: Transcendental Reflection in Apel’s Argumentative Discourse -- Matthias Kettner // 11. Transcendental Arguments Based on Question-Answer Contradictions -- Yukio Irie // 12. Consequences of the Transcendental-Pragmatic Consensus Theory of Truth -- Michihito Yoshime // 13. On Jürgen Habermas’s Cognitive Theory of Morality -- Yasuyuki Funaba . (shrink)

Broadly construed, moral sentimentalism is the position that human emotions or sentiments play a crucial role in our best normative or descriptive accounts of moral value or judgments thereof. In this paper, I introduce and sketch a defense of a new form of moral sentimentalism I call “Transcendental Sentimentalism”. According to transcendental sentimentalism, having a sentimental response to an object is a necessary condition of the possibility of a subject counting as having non-inferential evaluative knowledge about that (...) object. In unpacking each component of this position, I argue that it is both distinct from and more explanatorily attractive than the other approaches to explaining the relationship between emotion and moral thought, including what Kauppinen (2014, forthcoming) calls epistemological sentimentalism and explanatory sentimentalism. I conclude by offering a sketch of what I take to be the most promising strategy for demonstrating the truth of transcendental sentimentalism, suggesting an original form of transcendental argument. If successful, this form of argument would establish transcendental sentimentalism by demonstrating that not having a sentimental response to x disqualifies (in the normative sense) a person from counting as having non-inferential evaluative knowledge of x. (shrink)

A Kantian transcendental argument is an argument which purports to show that the existence of physical objects of a certain general character is a condition for the possibility of self-conscious experience. Both the Transcendental Deduction and the Refutation of Idealism satisfy this characterization. But we have seen that even a successful Kantian transcendental argument would be somewhat disappointing. Even though such an argument would refute the extreme Cartesian skepticism about the very existence of physical objects, it (...) would not certify any of one's claims to know facts about particular physical objects: it would not refute the weaker skeptical position I have sketched.5 How- ever, it would clearly be of great interest if one could show that the existence of physical objects is a condition for the possibility of self- conscious experience. Accordingly, I would like to investigate some problems surrounding the construction of Kantian transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Much of Ludwik Fleck’s work on the social constitution of knowledge, scientific facts, and objects of inquiry is informed by a specific use of transcendental arguments. This paper analyzes the ways in which Fleck looks for “conditions of possibilities” for the stylization and circulation of cognition. Following a brief discussion of his political agenda regarding science’s “cultural mission,” the paper offers a reconstruction of Fleck’s implicit concept of the transcendental. It is argued that Fleck addresses scientific truth as (...) an ongoing revealing and concealing of possibilities for doing research. By implication, the truth about a scientific fact is at once situated in scientific practices and transcended by a horizon of possibilities. The transcendental takes shape in Fleck’s social epistemology as a result of the reflection upon knowledge production’s “situated transcendence.”. (shrink)

One of the principle aims of the B version of Kant’s transcendental deduction is to show how it is possible that the same “I think” can accompany all of my representations, which is a transcendental condition of the possibility of judgment. Contra interpreters such as A. Brook, I show that this “I think” is an a priori (reflected) self-consciousness; contra P. Keller, I show that this a priori self-consciousness is first and foremost a consciousness of one’s personal (...) identity from a first person point of view. (shrink)

SummaryThe paper is concerned with the connection between Kant's conception of transcendental schematism and his analysis of the conditions of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. After dealing with some of the standard objections to Kant's theory, I argue that transcendental schemata must be construed as pure intuitions. I then point out that the Principles of Pure Understanding are a set of synthetic a priori judgments which assert the function of the various schemata as necessary conditions of (...) the possibility of experience, and that each of these judgments involves the relation of a pure concept to pure intuition . Finally, I argue that the connection between a category and its schema must itself be both synthetic and a priori. It therefore requires a “deduction”, which Kant himself does not provide, but which I endeavor, in part, to provide for him. (shrink)

Presents the transcendental interpretation approach to psychological inquiry based on the use of the Kantian transcendental argument, which relies on the criterion of consistency. Kant's purpose in employing this argument was as a means for justifying particular knowledge claims. Use of this approach is illustrated by examining the intersubjective and moral conditions necessary for the practice of selfhood. It is argued that phenomena of interest to psychological study differ fundamentally from those of natural science, rendering some of the (...) methods applied in the latter inappropriate to the study of the former. The transcendental argument can provide a direction for psychological research in 2 ways: By helping it to lend intelligibility to its subject matter, and extending ordinary practices by making explicit the goods and norms that motivate them. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

An anti-skeptical transcendental argument can be loosely defined as an argument that purports to show that some experience or knowledge of an external world is a necessary condition of our possession of some knowledge, concept, or cognitive ability that we know we have. In this dissertation I examine transcendental arguments by focusing on one such argument given by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, along with some attempts to interpret that argument by contemporary commentators. ;I (...) proceed by dividing anti-skeptical transcendental arguments into three types: epistemological, verificationist, and psychological. I examine arguments of the first two types and show why they cannot succeed against the skeptic. I then argue that Kant's Refutation of Idealism is of a different type: it is psychological in that it concerns the necessary conditions of our forming beliefs of certain kinds. Many contemporary Kant scholars have claimed that his anti-skeptical strategy relies on phenomenalism or verificationism; I argue, however, that Kant in the Refutation employs a clever and hitherto unappreciated strategy which involves an empiricist principle concerning the origin of simple ideas, and which does not require either phenomenalism or verificationism. I conclude with an analysis and assessment of Kant's argument. (shrink)

This paper examines some Indian philosophical arguments that are understandable as transcendental arguments—i.e., arguments whose conclusions cannot be denied without self-contradiction, insofar as the truth of the claim in question is a condition of the possibility even of any such denial. This raises the question of what kind of self-contradiction is involved—e.g., pragmatic self-contradiction, or the kind that goes with logical necessity. It is suggested that these arguments involve something like practical reason—indeed, that they just are arguments against (...) the primacy of “theoretical reason.” This characterization illuminates a characteristically Indic appeal to ordinary language. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem, it addresses a new problem, and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views presented (...) here, two distinctive features of Allison's reading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre is often thought to occupy a standpoint from which claims about what there really is, as opposed to claims about how we necessarily represent things to be, are metaphilosophically prohibited or methodologically precluded. This essay argues that for Fichte a transcendental account of the necessary conditions for knowing supports an accordant understanding of the basic nature of being. These are linked by a reconception of the nature of rationality, and thus of rational justification, that Fichte’s (...) class='Hi'>transcendental epistemology secures and which his ontology draws on and develops. In particular, his account of the nature of rationality issues in a distinctive form of nonevidentialism, according to which we possess unimpeachable rational grounds, albeit not narrowly evidential ones, for assent to certain metaphysical claims. (shrink)