Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism: Answering the Question of Justification

262 Pages·2004·32.96 MB·English

by  Robert Stern

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Transcendentalargumentsandscepticism:answeringthequestion ofjustification!
RobertStern.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Skepticism. 2. Transcendentallogic. 3. Justification(Theoryofknowledge). 1. Title.
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The sceptical idealist . . . who . . . challenges the ground of
our assertion and denounces as insufficiently justified our
convictionoftheexistenceofmatter,whichwethoughttobase
on immediate perception, is a benefactor ofhuman reason in
so far as he compels us, even in the sn1allest advances of
ordinary experience, to keep on the watch, lest we consider
as a well-earned possession what we perhaps obtain only
illegitimately.
(Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, A377-8)
Is our confidence justified?-What people accept as a
justification-is shewn by how they think and live.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, PhilosophicalInvestigations, §325)
Introduction
'ALL the advantages oftheft over honest toil'. That is how, several
years ago, someoneoncecharacterizedtranscendentalarguments to
me, reflecting a widespread conviction that there is something
vaguely disreputable or even dishonest about them. This suspicion
is fuelled by many sources: difficulties in giving a full definition of
whatatranscendentalargumentisandhowitdiffersfrom otherargu
ments; disappointed hopes regarding what they can really achieve;
doubts about their respectability from a naturalistic perspective; a
convictionthattheirapparentgoalofrefutingscepticismis onethat
they seem to achieve too easily; or a feeling that, when looked atin
any detail, they often rest on dognlatic and unsubstantiated claims
thatbegtoomanyquesti~nstoreallysatisfyanyonewhoisnotalready
conlmitted to them.
ItisnlY hope that many ofthese understandableconcerns will be
addressed in what follows. But it is inlportant to see that it would
be wrong to exaggerate them. It may be hard to give a brief and
satisfactory definition ofa transcendental argument: but examples
ofthem are easy to recognize and are generally agreed upon with
out any difficulty. It may be that transcendental arguments should
be viewed less optimistically than in the 1960s and 1970s, when
P. F. Strawson'spowerfulreadingandreconstruction ofKantmade
them suddenly in vogue; but whilst much of the theorizing about
transcendental arguments has come to anend, theystillcontinue to
be used, most recently and prominently by Hilary Putnam, Donald
Davidson, and John Searle. It may be that someone committed to
a strongly naturalistic programme in philosophy will be suspicious
oftranscendentalarguments; butsuchsuspicionsarenotworthmuch
if they are merely programmatic and hardly cast doubt on tran
scendentalargumentsalone. Itmaybethattheclaimtohaverefuted
scepticism using transcendental argunlents is premature and too
easy; but it could also be saidthat the proponellt oftranscendental
2 Introduction
argumentstakestheproblemmoreseriouslyanddeeplythandomany
ofthose who have offered otherresponses to thisissue. Andfinally,
itmay be that transcendental arguments are oftenjustsketchedbut
hard to spell outin detail; but the same might be remarked ofmost
philosophical claims and positions. What is more, we should per
hapsbecautiousinthinkingwecanjustdismisstranscendentalargu
ments on these grounds without further ado, for it is possible (as
someone else once observed to me) that, without arguments ofthis
form, philosophy can be nothing more than a meta-discipline, as
its distinctive conclusions and methodology would be lost.1 In this
way, I believe, those of us who have what Strawson has called
'a tenderness for transcendental arguments' have nothing in par
ticular to apologize for.2
As far as I know, this is the only monograph in English to have
beenpublished on the topic oftranscendentalarguments (although,
ofcourse, they have been widely discussed in papers and articles).3
Ihave triedto bearthisfact inmindwhenwritingthe book, assum
ingthat as a result some may come to it in order to find a wayinto
the issues and to understand the central uses of these arguments
in Kant, Strawson, Davidson, Putnam, andothers. Ihave therefore
attempted to put points as clearly as possible; to signpost debates
and different approaches; and to avoid presuming too much back
ground knowledge on the part of the reader. This book is not,
1 Cf. the remark by Hector-Neri Castaneda, that 'every philosophical claim is
totheeffectthatsomethingorotherisnecessaryorimpossible,oraprioriorempir
ical,andoften thenecessityinquestionisnotformallogicalnecessity'(Hector-Neri
Castaneda,'ConsciousnessandBehaviour:TheirBasicConnections',inHector-Neri
Castaneda(ed.),Intentionality, MindsandPerception(Detroit: WayneStateUniver
sityPress, 1967), 121-58,p. 122).
2 P. F. Strawson, SkepticismandNaturalism: Some Varieties(London: Methuen,
1985), 21.
3 TheonlyworksinEnglishIknowofwhichconlecloseareR. J. Benton,Kant's
SecondCritiqueandthe ProblemofTranscendentalArguments(Dordrecht: Nijhoff,
1977),andI-IumphreyPalmer,PresuppositionandTranscendentalInference(London
andSydney:CroomHelm, 1985),thoughtheformerislargelyinterpretativeinfocus,
andthelatterismoreconcernedwith'presumptivecircularity'ingeneral,wheretran
scendental arguments are taken to involve such circularity. The only non-English
monograph I have come across is Marcel Piquet's Transzendentale Argumente:
Kant, StrawsonunddiesinnkritischeAporetikderDetranszendentalisierung(Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991); there is also an extensive discussion in Reinhold
Aschenberg'sSprachanalyseundTranszendentalphilosophie(Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta,1982).
A full bibliography ofwritings on transcendental arguments (compiled by Isabel
Cabrera) can be found in Robert Stern (ed.), TranscendentalArguments: Problems
andProspects(Oxford: OxfordUniversityPress, 1999), 307-21.
Introduction 3
however, an 'objective' overview of the literature or an introduc
tion to it: rather, it offers a partisan contribution to the debate, in
tryingto showwhereothershavegonewrongandtopointtoa solu
tion to the difficulties surrounding transcendental arguments in
their relation to scepticism.
The aim ofthis book is therefore to provide an account ofwhat
transcendentalargumentsare, to exan1inewhatepistemologicaland
metaphysical commitments they involve, and to critically assess
their philosophical value. The aim of this introduction is to char
acterize in general terms the approach that will be adopted in what
follows.
0.1 TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS AND
SCEPTICISM
As the title of this book suggests, I will be focusing exclusively
on ways in which transcendental arguments are used in the context
of scepticism, and as a result I will be dealing solely with their
epistemological applications. I do not dispute that a broader use
of transcendental arguments is possible, in metaphysics, political
philosophy, or ethics, for example; but for both historical and
philosophicalreasons Ithinkwehavemosttolearnfrom suchargu
ments in epistemology.
The historical case is straightforward. While examples of tran
scendental arguments can perhaps be found in the philosophical
literature prior to Kant, it is clearly Kant who made such argu
ments into a primary methodological device in constructing his
philosophical system, for which episten1010gicalissues were central.
And since Kant, those who have used and revived such arguments
in modern philosophy have also been concerned to do so in a way
that addresses largely epistenl010gical questions. It is only more
recently, perhaps since the difficulties ofusing transcendental argu
mentsinthiswayhaveemerged, thatthe assumptionhasbeenques
tioned that 'the point of transcendental argument in general is an
anti-skeptical point';4 but, itis onlyonce the relation between tran
scendental arguments and epistemology has been thought through
that the rationale for this apostasy can be grasped.
4 Strawson, SkepticismandNaturalism, 10;cf. alsop. 21.
4 Introduction
The philosophical case for focusing on transcendental argu
mentsinrelation to scepticismmayappearequally straightforward.
Transcendentalarguments, afterall, arewidelysupposedtooffersome
sort of refutation of scepticism, making the connection obvious.
However, while this promise will immediately attract some, it will
also repel many, either because they are philosophically knowing
enough to realize in advance that any such refutation is unlikely to
succeed, or because they are philosophically sophisticated enough
to think that no such refutation iseverreally required, for this is to
take scepticismmore seriouslythan itdeserves. Now, insubsequent
chapters, my aim in part will be to show that such misgivings are
misplaced, first because the sceptical position which transcendental
argumentscan beused to address does nothaveto be the seemingly
impregnablefortress ofCartesiandoubt, andsecondlybecausesuch
non-Cartesian varieties of scepticism have implications that make
them harder to ignore and dismiss out ofhand.5 In presenting the
sceptical target in this way, therefore, it will perhaps be less easy to
claimthat transcendentalargumentsmerelyencourageus to engage
further in a hopeless and philosophically empty quest.
None the less, where I am happy to concede something to these
concerns is in allowing that, where sceptical worries exist, we have
more to learn by trying to understand where they come from, and
whatappearsto givethemlife, thanbysimplytryingto addressthem
head on, and overturn them. I therefore accept that (in Thompson
Clarke's words) the sceptic's target is 'the product ofa large piece
ofphilosophizingabout empiricalknowledge done before hecomes
on stage',6 and that therefore the most fruitful way ofdealing with
him may not be to set out to refute him, by answering him in his
ownterms, butrathertoquestionthosetermsthemselves. Inthelight
5 Inusingthe label 'Cartesian' here, Ido notmean tobetalkingabout theposi
tionofDescarteshimself,butaboutaparticularconceptionofscepticisn1(asrequir
ingcertaintyortheimpossibilityofdoubt)thathascometobelabelledinthisway,
even though Descartes's own handling of sceptical issues is considerably more
nuancedthanthisimplies. BecauseI donotthinkDescartes'sactualpositioncorre
spondstothe'textbook'position,I willswitchfromtalkingof'Cartesianscepticism'
totalkingof'epistemicscepticisn1',oncethelatterterminologyisproperlyintroduced
(in Ch. I).
6 ThompsonClarke,'TheLegacyofSkepticism',JournalofPhilosophy,69(1972),
754-69, p. 754. Cf. also John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.:
HarvardUniversityPress, 1994), 113: 'Theaimhereisnottoanswerscepticalques
tions, butto begin to seehowitmight beintellectuallyrespectable toignore them,
to treatthemasunreal, in theway thatcommonsensehas alwayswantedto.'
Introduction 5
ofthisviewoftheanti-scepticalproject, however,cantranscendental
arguments be given a role, if the aim now is not to answer scepti
cisnl, butto showhowandwhyitshould be setaside, togetherwith
the philosophical outlook that has nurtured it?
Ibelievetheycan, andthatinfact transcendentalargumentshave
always had this diagnostic element as part oftheir response to the
sceptical challenge: namely, ofdemonstrating the artificiality ofthe
constraints within which the sceptic is working, and which he has
inherited from the epistemological tradition ofwhich he is part. In
overturningscepticism, therefore, a transcendental argument prop
erly conceived is not meant to establish some truth that otherwise
wewouldnotbesureof, but(morenegatively)toundercutthe 'large
piece ofphilosophizing' onwhich the sceptical positionis built, but
which the sceptic leaves unquestioned. It is in thereby turning the
game played by scepticism against itself(to paraphrase Kant?) that
transcendentalargumentsmaketheirrealcontributionto ourunder
standing ofscepticism, by showing that the sceptic relies on certain
philosophicalassumptionstogethisdoubtgoing; theseassumptions
are then shown to involve a conception thatis too impoverished to
makeacoherentbeginning, butwhich,whenenriched,leadsthescep
tical problem to disappear. Although they do indeed engage with
scepticism, andalthoughtheydo indeedtakescepticalproblemsser
iously, proponents oftranscendental arguments may none the less
allow that this project is valueless, unless it scrutinizes and rejects
the philosophical picture that made such engagement seem neces
sary at all.
Taken in this way, it can then be seen why it is no mere histor
ical accident that Kant was the first to employ transcendental
argunlents against scepticisnl. For, in his crucial encounter with
Hume, Kant (rightly or wrongly) took himselfto be dealingwith a
sceptic, and one whom he took (again, rightly or wrongly) to have
arrived at that scepticism as the logical conclusion of the theories
of his empiricist predecessors. Kant therefore saw that to refute
7 ImmanuelKant,CritiqueojPureReason,trans.NormanKempSmith(London:
Macmillan,1933),B276.ReferencestotheCritiquewillbegiveninthestandardform,
relatingtothepaginationoftheA(first)andB(second)editions.Referencestoworks
ofKantotherthanthe CritiqueojPureReasonwillbeto volumeandpagenumber
of the Akademie edition (Kant's gesammelte Schriften, ed. Deutsche [formerly
Konigliche Preussische] Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols. (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1902- )), together with a reference to a standard English translation
(whereavailable).
6 Introduction
Humean scepticisnl it was more effective to undermine the empiri
cist presuppositions on which this scepticism relied, than simply
to show that Hume's sceptical conclusions were false. Faced by a
kind of 'living' scepticism in this way, Kant's arguments therefore
take on a kind of diagnostic and dialectically sophisticated char
acter that is missing in many 'textbook' refutations of scepticism,
and even in many 'textbook' presentations oftranscendental argu
ments themselves.
0.2 THE NATURE OF TRANSCENDENTAL
ARGUMENTS
As standardly presented, transcendental arguments are usually said
to bedistinctiveininvolvingacertainsortofclaim, namelythat 'For
Yto be possible, X must be the case', where Yis some indisputable
fact aboutus and ourmentallife (e.g. thatwehave experiences, use
language, make certainjudgenlents, have certainconcepts, perform
certain actions, etc.), but where it is left open at this stage exactly
what is substituted for X. Thus, whether and how far a transcend
ental claim is to be used to address sceptical issues, and what sorts
ofsceptical issues these are, is not determined by the nature ofthe
claim as such, but by what one substitutes for X. What conclusions
one can get to in making a claim ofthis form, and what one needs
to do to substantiate it, are therefore closely related: the stronger
the former, the more demanding the latter. The question as regards
scepticismthereforebecomes:canonefindadequategroundsonwhich
to substantiate a transcendental claim that is itself strong enough
to do any real anti-sceptical work? As we shall see in what fol
lows, this is not so easy to determine as is sometimes assumed, as
there are different kinds ofsceptical target, and different strategies
againstthemmayrequiredistinctkinds oftranscendentalclaim. On
this general definition ofa transcendental claim, therefore, it is not
intrinsically anti-sceptical, as one could use it to show that there is
something that is a necessary condition for experience etc. without
thereby establishing anything that can really be used against the.
sceptic; on the other hand, nothing in the definition rules out the
possibility that such a claim can be defended in such a way as to
show that scepticism (ofsome sort) is mistaken.
Introduction 7
Inmakingthenotionofatranscendentalclaimcentralinthisway,
it becomes clear that there is something ambiguous in the term
'transcendental argument': it can be applied either to an argument
with a transcendental claim as a premise, or to the argument used
to establish the transcendental claim as a conclusion. Generally
speaking, those who have understood transcendental arguments to
bedirectlyanti-sceptical haveusedthe termin thefirst way, as hav
ingatranscendentalclaimasapremiseandaconclusionwhichrefutes
thesceptic'sposition. Ontheotherhand, thosewhohavetakenthem
to be (at best) only indirectly anti-sceptical have used transcend
ental arguments to establish a transcendental claim, which they
thenexploitas partofa more generalepistemologicalstrategy. Ido
notwishto prejudgeherewhatis the bestwayofusinga transcend
ental claim, as this will be at issue in what follows.
Manyofthesedifficultiesandambiguitiesindefiningwhatismeant
bya transcendental argument ofcoursego backto Kant: for, while
hehimselfrarelyemployedthe term'transcendentalargument',8 and
mostly spokeinstead of'transcendentaldeduction', 'transcendental
exposition', and 'transcendental proof', he both formulated the
central examples ofsuch arguments, and used them within a more
general philosophical framework to which their exact relation is
unclear, andwhichitselfis hermeneuticallyunstable, particularlyin
relationto theveryquestiontranscendentalargumentsaresupposed
to address, namely scepticism. As a result, whilstsomehave argued
that we can only get at the real nature oftranscendental arguments
by going through Kant and understanding his own epistemological
outlook, others have sought to go round him, arguing that there is
nothing particularly Kantian about transcendental arguments as
such, and that they can be happily adopted within different (and
8 Cf. Kant, CritiqueofPureReason, A627/B655.Itshouldbenotedthat, though
Kantdoesusetheterm'transcendentalargument'here,itreferstoanargumentthat
goesbeyondthelimitofthelegitimateemploymentoftheunderstanding,andhence
is not properly an instance ofwhat is now meant by the term. One ofthe earliest
uses ofthe term in its current sense is in J. L. Austin's paper 'AreThere A Priori
Concepts?',whichappearedintheProceedingsoftheAristotelianSociety, 18(1939),
82-105. As Christopher Hookway has pointed out, an even earlier use can be
found in C. S. Peirce's Minute Logic of 1902: see Christopher Hookway, 'Modest
TranscendentalArgumentsandScepticalDoubts:AReplytoStroud',inRobertStern
(ed.), TranscendentalArguments: ProblemsandProspects (Oxford: Oxford Univer
sityPress, 1999), 173-88, p. 180n. 8.
8 Introduction
allegedlymorecoherent) kinds ofepistemologicalandmetaphysical
framework (from Humean naturalism to a priori rationalism).
Again, Ihopeto remainneutralaboutthisissueatthisstage.Thus,
the only way in which my characterization of a transcendental
argument so far is particularly indebted to Kant is in saying that
the necessaryconditionsshould relate to howexperience (whichfor
Kant includes our beliefs, judgements, and systems of concepts)
is possible. Kant also makes this definitive: 'In transcendental
knowledge, so long as we are concerned only with concepts ofthe
understanding, our guide is the possibility of experience.'9 There
is nothing about this that commits one to anything particularly
Kantian, however: it isjust that, by determining the necessary con
ditions for the possibility ofexperience in this way, we are starting
with something which the sceptic cannot deny is actual, and there
fore possible, so that our starting-point does not require any fur
therjustification.
We nlay also perhaps handle a further defining feature of a
transcendental argument in a sinlilar spirit: namely, that in claim
ing that X is a necessarycondition for the possibility ofexperience,
we are not taking this to be a matter ofcausal or natural necessity.
Ifwe take as our target the Cartesian sceptic, there are clearly two
good reasons for this. First, although our observation ofthe world
mightsuggestthatexperiencehascertainnecessarycausalconditions
(e.g. light and sound must be transmitted between particular wave
lengths), we can hardly use such considerations against a sceptic of
this sort, for whomallsuchenlpiricalknowledgeisinquestion, and
against whom we are therefore required to adopt a position that
is less open to doubt in this way. Secondly, ifwe permit the tran
scendental claim to be made on the basis ofnatural necessity, then
this allows that there are possible worlds (for example, where the
laws ofphysicsdo nothold)inwhichthisclaimisfalse, again open
ing us up to the sceptical challenge of showing that we are not in
sucha world. However,evenleavingthe Cartesianscepticaside, we
maystillwanttomakeitdefinitiveoftranscendentalargumentsthat
their modal commitment is stronger than merely natural necessity.
For, first, ifwe are to take it that there is something distinctively
philosophicalinmakingatranscendentalclaim,whichmovesusout-
side the realm of science into a form ofnon-empirical inquiry (as
9 Kant, CritiqueofPureReason, A783/B8II.