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Rejecting the Plea for Modesty. Kant’s Truth-Directed Transcendental Argument Based on Self-Consciousness of Our Own Existence
 
Title (other)Отвергая мольбу о скромности. Направленный на истину трансцендентальный аргумент Канта, основанный на самосознании нашего собственного существования
PIIS271326680023747-1-1
DOI10.18254/S271326680023747-1
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Roberto Horácio de Sá Pereira 
Affiliation: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Address: Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
Journal nameStudies in Transcendental Philosophy
EditionVolume 3 Issue 3
Abstract

Recent developments of transcendental arguments reflect the struggle to accommodate Stroud’s devastating objection by giving up of failed expectations in providing a proof of what the external-world skeptic calls into question: knowledge of the existence of the outside world. Since Strawson capitulation in 1984, the truth-direct transcendental arguments gave way to modest belief-direct transcendental arguments that concedes that truth-direct transcendental arguments are doomed to fail to establish ambitious conclusions about reality, but at the same time hold that they can nonetheless successfully establish modest conceptual connection between the major beliefs within our conceptual scheme. This article seeks the “reactionary” rehabilitation of the old hubris: a new defense of the truth-direct transcendental argument. I set forth a new reconstruction of Kant’s Refutation as successful truth-directed transcendental argument that meets Stroud’s objection. As several papers and books about the theme, this article is of a systematic and of a historical nature by connecting the contemporary debate about transcendental argument with Kant’ philosophy.

Abstract (other)

Последние разработки трансцендентальных аргументов отражают борьбу за принятие разрушительного возражения Строуда, отказываясь от несбыточных надежд на доказательство того, что скептик в отношении внешнего мира ставит под сомнение: знания о существовании внешнего мира. После капитуляции Стросона в 1984 году, трансцендентальные аргументы, направленные на истину, уступили место скромным трансцендентальным аргументам, направленным на веру. При этом признается, что трансцендентальные аргументы, направленные на истину, обречены на неудачу в установлении амбициозных выводов о реальности, но в то же время они, тем не менее, могут выполнять более скромные функции и успешно установить концептуальную связь между основными убеждениями в рамках нашей концептуальной схемы. Эта статья направлена на «реакционную» реабилитацию старого высокомерия: новую защиту нацеленного на истину трансцендентального аргумента. Я предлагаю новую реконструкцию «опровержения идеализма» Канта как успешного трансцендентального аргумента, направленного на истину, которая отвечает возражениям Строуда. Как и несколько статей и книг по данной теме, эта статья носит систематический и исторический характер, связывая современные дебаты о трансцендентальном аргументе с философией Канта.

KeywordsTranscendental Argument, Kant’s Refutation of Idealism, Strawson, Stroud
Keywords list (other)трансцендентальный аргумент, опровержение идеализма Канта, Стросон, Строуд
Received06.10.2022
Publication date29.12.2022
Number of characters70332
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Table of contents

General Overview
The Genealogy of Transcendental Arguments
Clarifying the Ground
Kant’s Fourth Paralogism
The Outline of Kant’s Refutation
Unpacking the key Argument
1

To my friend Guido de

Almeida, who introduced me

to this fascinating topic
2

General Overview

In the end of the fifties of the last century, Strawson (1959) introduced the suggestive expression “transcendental argument” in a somewhat unpretentious way to name some indirect anti-skeptical strategy.1He characterizes this peculiar form of transcendental reasoning with following remark:

 1. Actually, Strawson was not the first. Austin was the one who introduced the binominal in 1939.
3

The form of this argument might possibly mislead. It is not that on the one hand we have a conceptual scheme, which presents us with a certain problem of particular-identification; while on the other hand there exist material objects in sufficient richness and strength to make possible the solution of such problems. It is only because the solution is possible that the problem exists. So with all transcendental arguments (1959, p. 40).
4 A transcendental argument is an indirect argument against some unqualified skeptic (actually, a Straw figure in Strawson’s dialectic strategy) by arguing the truth of what the skeptic calls in question is a condition for his way of thinking and, therefore, for his own challenge: “the problem only exists because a solution is still available.”2 In a nutshell, the argument aims to show indirectly that the truth of what the skeptic calls in question (roughly the awareness that particulars continue to exist even when unperceived is a condition for the formulation of his questioning). 2. Strawson never revealed his motivations. Probably, as everyone at that time, he must have found Moore (1903) direct proof of the external world completely unsatisfactory. Yet, one may wonder why Strawson calls such strategy “transcendental?” My hypothesis is that Strawson has taken up the old spirit of Kant’s Refutation: turning the game against the skeptic, by showing that what he questions is a condition for the formulation of his very questioning (B276).
5 The first mistake that we must avoid at all costs is the following. At first pass, one could imagine that Strawson with his indirect transcendental argument had in mind the subsection called “On Demonstrations” (A734/B762), of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method (A705/B733), where Kant named as “transcendental” propositions that require a peculiar method of proof. The proof is peculiar insofar as it is neither based on intuitions nor directly derived from concepts, but indirect in the sense that their truths are supposed to be proven through their relation “to something entirely contingent, namely possible experience” (A737/B765, original emphasis). That said, a transcendental proposition is what Kant calls a principle instead of a theorem “because it has the special property that it first makes possible its ground of proof, namely experience, and must always be presupposed in this” (A737/B76). 3 3. Kant’s most important proofs in both editions of in the first Critique are “transcendental” in this sense precise sense, for example, the transcendental exposition of concept of space (A25/B40), the transcendental exposition of the concept of time (A32/B48); the transcendental A-deduction (A95), the transcendental B-deduction (B129), the Axioms of Intuition (A162/B202), the Anticipations of Perception (A166/B207), the Analogies of Experience (A176/B218), and The postulates of empirical thinking in general (A218/B265).
6 In this Kant’ sense, transcendental proofs are unquestionable related to different forms of skepticism, such as Hume’s skepticism concerning the uniformity of nature (that Kant obliquely addresses in the first edition of his transcendental deduction) and Hume’s skepticism concerning the objectivity of the principle of causality (that Kant obliquely addresses both in his A-Deduction and in his in the Second Analogy of Experience). Moreover, it is also plausible to extract key passages of Kant’s transcendental deductions and construct with them arguments against some sense-datum skeptic as famously Strawson has done (1966). The sense-datum skeptic questions that we experience (or have cognition) of objects in the “strong sense” of something that exists mind-independently.
7 All appearances notwithstanding though, Strawson’s transcendental arguments are definitively not related to the transcendental proofs of the Critique. For one thing, “possible experience” invariably means in Kant “something as object of possible experience” (A737/B76), that is the cognition of what appears to intuitions as objects. Kant’s transcendental proofs are not addressed to a skeptic who questions the possibility of the experience or cognition of the mind-independent existence of the outside world. Quite the opposite, Kant’s transcendental arguments invariably assume that we have experience/cognition of objects and attempt to prove that his transcendental principles as necessary conditions for such experience. In that relevant sense Kant’s proofs are “regressive” insofar that they assume the possibility or the cognition of outside things (PROL, AA, 4: 277, n.).4 4. See Ameriks 1978. Aschenberg has tried to connect Kant’s method of proof with Strawson’s transcendental argument, by arguing that “possible experience” in Kant could also means “possible perception,” that is some subjective experience. However, his attempt failed for exegetical reasons: for Kant “possible experience” always means possible experience of objects. See Aschenberg 1982.
8 Strawson’s idea has launched decades of debates, which starts in 1968 but reaches the present day.5 However, in face of his criticism, the prevailing view in the is quite pessimistic about any prospect of success of “truth-directed” transcendental argument. Interestingly, Strawson was the first to capitulate: 5. Considering only what was published in the twenty-first century, the literature is huge. See Bardon 2005, 2006; Bell 1999; Callanan 2006, 2011; Caranti 2017; Cassam 2007; Chang 2008; Dicker, 2008; D’Oro 2019; Finnis 2011; Franks 2005; Giladi 2016; Glock 2003; Grundmann, and Misselhorn 2003; Houlgate, 2015; Illies 2003; Lockie 2018; McDowell 2006; Mizrahi 2012; Rähme 2017; Rockmore and D. Breazeale (eds.) 2014; Russell and Reynolds 2011; Stapleford 2008; Stern 2016; Vahid 2011; Wang 2012; Westphal 2004.
9

For repudiation of the project of wholesale validation of types of knowledge-claim does not leave the naturalist without philosophical employment. E.M. Forster's motto— “only connect”— is as valid for the naturalist at the philosophical level as it is for Forster's characters (and us) at the moral and personal level. That is to say, having given up the unreal project of wholesale validation, the naturalist philosopher will embrace the real project of investigating the connections between the major structural elements of our conceptual scheme. If connections as tight as those which transcendental arguments, construed as above, claim to offer are really available, so much the better (1984, p. 22, emphasis added).6

 6. Peacocke was the first to introduce this expression: “For our purposes a transcendental argument will be any argument with a certain kind of premise and a certain kind of conclusion. The premise must state that experiences, perhaps of specified type, occur. The conclusion must entail some proposition whose truth does not require the existence of experiences at all. The more modest transcendental arguments have as their conclusion certain propositions about a mind-independent world. I call these ‘truth- directed’.” (1989, p. 4, emphasis added). Even Stroud shows sympathies with Strawson’s modest transcendental argument (1994, p. 242). Stern also adheres to the same idea (1999, p. 4).

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