Transcendental argument
from 1781 Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; anticipated in ancient arguments against the sceptic
Start from something the sceptic cannot deny, and argue that it would be impossible unless the thing they are denying were true.
- Active
- from 1781
- Where
- Konigsberg
- Status
- In use
- Tradition
- Forms of inference
What it is
A transcendental argument begins from an undeniable fact of experience and asks what must be the case for that fact to be possible at all. The answer is then established, not by observation, but as a condition of the starting point.
Its appeal is that it can reach conclusions about the world from premises the opponent has already conceded. Its difficulty is that showing something must be presupposed is not obviously the same as showing it is true.
How it works
Find a starting point the opponent cannot give up without giving up the argument — that they have experience at all, that they use language, that they can be mistaken. Identify what must hold for that to be possible. Conclude that it holds.
The strength of the argument is exactly the strength of the second step, and the second step is almost always where the trouble is.
The form of the inference
- X is the case, and cannot coherently be denied
- X would not be possible unless Y
- Therefore Y
The argument
Proposition There is a time independent of anyone's belief about it.
- You can be mistaken about what time it is, and you know this from experience of being mistaken.
- Being mistaken is not merely believing something; it is believing something that does not match how things are.
- So error requires something independent of the belief for the belief to fail to match.
- If the time were constituted by what you believe the time to be, no belief about it could fail to match, and error about the time would be impossible.
Therefore Since error about the time is possible, there is a time independent of anyone's belief about it.
The argument never observes the time. It works entirely from the possibility of getting it wrong, which is the characteristic move — the starting point is something the opponent supplies.
What it is good for
Answering scepticism, which is where it was invented and where it still does its best work. It is one of very few methods that can make progress against an opponent who refuses to grant anything about the external world.
Where it fails
Its standard objection, made most sharply by Barry Stroud, is that these arguments establish at most what we must believe or presuppose, not what is true. That we cannot think coherently without assuming an external world shows something about the limits of our thought, and the sceptic can accept it and carry on.
They are also extraordinarily hard to make valid. The second premise, that X requires Y, is usually the whole point in dispute, and asserting it in the form of a necessary condition can disguise how much is being claimed.
Common misconceptions
That transcendental means mystical or transcendent. Kant's usage is nearly the opposite — it concerns the conditions under which ordinary experience is possible, and is resolutely about this world.
Where it came from
Kant's Transcendental Deduction in the first Critique, arguing that the categories of the understanding are conditions of any possible experience. The form was recognised and named as a distinct method only in the twentieth century.
What became of it
Revived in the 1950s and 1960s by Strawson and others as a weapon against scepticism, then substantially deflated by Stroud's objection, and still in use in a more modest form.
Lasting influence
It is the shape of Wittgenstein's private language argument, of Davidson's arguments about interpretation, and of a great deal of continental philosophy that does not use the name.
Why it still matters
Alive but chastened. Few now claim these arguments reach all the way to how things are.
Put another way
Working out what must be under the floor from the fact that you are standing up.
Texts
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
The Transcendental Deduction is the hardest section of a hard book, and Kant rewrote it entirely for the second edition because the first was not clear.
Where to start
Start with Strawson's Individuals or with Stroud's essay on transcendental arguments. Both are clearer than Kant and both say what is at stake.
The surprising bit
The most ambitious anti-sceptical argument ever devised may only be able to establish what we cannot help believing, which is close to what Hume said with far less machinery.
In their own words
The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience
Who held it
Barry Stroud
Connections
- Relies on
- Modus tollens
- Influenced
- The epoche
- Parallel to
- Reductio ad absurdum
The verdict
The most interesting failure on this list, and still the best thing available against a determined sceptic.