Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism
The aim of this paper is to shake up the consensus view on transcendental arguments (TAs) that the ambitious “world-directed” kind fails and that only moderate, “belief-directed” transcendental arguments have a claim to validity. This consensus is based on Barry Stroud’s famous substitution objectio...
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Michigan Publishing
2023-11-01
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| Series: | Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| Online Access: | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4652/ |
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| author | Simon Schüz |
| author_facet | Simon Schüz |
| author_sort | Simon Schüz |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The aim of this paper is to shake up the consensus view on transcendental arguments (TAs) that the ambitious “world-directed” kind fails and that only moderate, “belief-directed” transcendental arguments have a claim to validity. This consensus is based on Barry Stroud’s famous substitution objection: For any transcendental claim ‘p is an enabling condition for X’ we can readily substitute ‘the belief that p’ for ‘p’. I depart from the observation that the force of Stroud’s objection depends on it being applicable to any world-directed TA whatsoever. This requires a much more substantive justification than is commonly supposed. I rehabilitate world-directed TAs by posing a dialectical dilemma for the Stroudian skeptic: a certain moderate TA is required to uphold the skeptical challenge, but this TA brings with it the commitment to a distinction which restricts the scope of the challenge, namely to ‘empirical’ instead of ‘transcendental’ beliefs about the world. The positive result is a new way of understanding what world-directed transcendental arguments are: a way of showing us which of our beliefs about the world are true because they are, in the sense of Wittgenstein’s meter-measure analogy, constitutive of our very standard for objectivity. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-2491d5b02a114eebbceeb18d1bc16b63 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2330-4014 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-11-01 |
| publisher | Michigan Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| spelling | doaj-art-2491d5b02a114eebbceeb18d1bc16b632025-08-20T02:43:43ZengMichigan PublishingErgo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy2330-40142023-11-0110010.3998/ergo.4652Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological SkepticismSimon Schüz0RPTU in LandauThe aim of this paper is to shake up the consensus view on transcendental arguments (TAs) that the ambitious “world-directed” kind fails and that only moderate, “belief-directed” transcendental arguments have a claim to validity. This consensus is based on Barry Stroud’s famous substitution objection: For any transcendental claim ‘p is an enabling condition for X’ we can readily substitute ‘the belief that p’ for ‘p’. I depart from the observation that the force of Stroud’s objection depends on it being applicable to any world-directed TA whatsoever. This requires a much more substantive justification than is commonly supposed. I rehabilitate world-directed TAs by posing a dialectical dilemma for the Stroudian skeptic: a certain moderate TA is required to uphold the skeptical challenge, but this TA brings with it the commitment to a distinction which restricts the scope of the challenge, namely to ‘empirical’ instead of ‘transcendental’ beliefs about the world. The positive result is a new way of understanding what world-directed transcendental arguments are: a way of showing us which of our beliefs about the world are true because they are, in the sense of Wittgenstein’s meter-measure analogy, constitutive of our very standard for objectivity.https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4652/ |
| spellingShingle | Simon Schüz Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy |
| title | Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism |
| title_full | Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism |
| title_fullStr | Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism |
| title_full_unstemmed | Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism |
| title_short | Rehabilitating Transcendental Arguments: A Dialectical Dilemma for Stroud’s Meta-Epistemological Skepticism |
| title_sort | rehabilitating transcendental arguments a dialectical dilemma for stroud s meta epistemological skepticism |
| url | https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/4652/ |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT simonschuz rehabilitatingtranscendentalargumentsadialecticaldilemmaforstroudsmetaepistemologicalskepticism |