Transcendental Arguments (5 of 10) – Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 2

[00:00] The previous discussion about Strawson’s transcendental argument, one thing you need to know is that it’s conceptual in nature, not ontological. Strawson is saying we have the idea, or this is our view, this is our conceptual scheme, that there is a single or a unified spatial-temporal way of viewing the world. He’s not saying that the world is that way. He’s saying we, I don’t know who he means by we, I’m assuming human beings in general, human beings view the world in a certain type of way. Okay, you understand the distinction? He’s not saying that the world is this way. He’s saying that human beings view the world this way. And what he’s doing is showing that the skeptic goes against a precondition of viewing the world this way. And so the skeptic’s doubt is a pretense, it’s a false doubt, and it makes no sense.

[00:47] Has he concluded from this, this will test you to see if you’re getting all of this, has he concluded by defeating the skeptic that things continue to exist unperceived? that things continue to exist unperceived. If his argument works, does he prove that? Kamala?

[01:05] Why not? He has not proven that things continue to exist unperceived by this argument. He says there’s no basis for doubting that. It makes no sense to doubt it. There’s a big distinction. He hasn’t proven that the external world, that the objects in the external world continue to exist when we don’t see them. He’s just saying that in order to doubt it, you’re doing something that goes against a precondition to your conceptual scheme. In other words, it makes no sense to doubt it whatsoever. So the skeptic is not defeated because we know with certainty that things continue to exist unperceived. He’s defeated the skeptic because he’s saying that in order for the skeptic to generate his doubt, he has to go against a precondition of this conceptual scheme. So it’s not a coherent challenge? Not a coherent challenge.

[01:47] In order to prove it, we’d have to have an ontological argument. Right. In order to prove that our conceptual scheme marries the actual world, You’d have to have a different type of argument, right? All he’s saying is that in order for us to have the experience that we do, we have to believe it, that this is the type of experience we have and that we can re-identify certain types of objects after we have stopped perceiving them.

[02:08] Does any modern philosopher argue ontologically? Well, we’re going to come to that in a moment. The most famous criticism of this argument is by Professor Barry Stroud at Berkeley. He takes this argument, I think he misunderstands it, he takes this argument to have ontological ramifications. And so it’s a very famous article. I want to take a look at it. So, yes, some people have interpreted Strawson in that way, but I don’t think that’s the correct way to interpret them.

[02:33] Okay, so one last thing. Y here is a belief and not a fact? Why is that we must believe that objects continue to, at least some objects, like Dr. Bahnsen said, he’s not talking about particular skepticism but general skepticism. You can’t have a general skepticism about the continual existence of unperceived objects. So you have to believe Y. He’s not saying Y is a fact. It says you just have to believe it.

[02:59] Okay, we’re going to go into the reductio in just a moment. Okay, let us suppose, okay, now comes the not Y.

[03:07] Let us suppose for a moment that we were never willing to ascribe particular identity in such cases. In other words, every time we had a destruction in our observation of a certain object, that when we re-observed it, and again, I’m using it there, it’s big in the question, but when we re-observed it, we wouldn’t call it the same object that we would have before we perceived it. In other words, that we never re-identify particulars. So that when I see this chair, every time I close my eyes and see it again, I just naturally just say, well, that’s another chair. I don’t say that’s the same chair I saw a moment ago. Okay, does that make sense?

[03:44] Okay, so this is his assumption, not Y. Assume that we didn’t have this belief, that we always questioned or never believed that particular things had continual existence through times when we don’t observe them. Then we should, as it were, have the idea of a new, a different spatial system for each new, continuous stretch of observation.

[04:03] Now, what is he saying right there? What is he doing to X with that statement? He’s saying, if this were not the case, X would not be the case. And rather than reading his argument to you to prove this, So let me just lay it out for you very briefly. The details of this argument, don’t worry about if you get all the nuances of this argument. I just want you to get a general feel about what a contemporary transcendental argument looks like.

[04:26] Strawson says, let’s assume not Y. Let’s assume that we don’t ever ascribe identity to things after we stop perceiving them. He says, well, if we do that, then all of our experiences, all of our awareness of our environment around us would have to form different spatial relationships. In other words, if every time I had a new experience, I would never believe that something I’m now experiencing, I have experienced before. In other words, that this chair would never be called the same chair. This is always a new chair every time I experience it. If that were the case, then every time I had an experience, I would assume that it was in a different spatial scheme.

[05:08] Now, why is that? Does everybody understand what I’m saying by that? Every time I see something new, have new experiences, I would say it has no spatial relationship with one of my previous schemes. The reason is because I’d never be willing to identify something as something that I’d previously identified. I’d have completely different spatial schemes every time I had a new experience of the world. Okay, does that make sense? You never read and re-identify a particular thing. Right. If I never re-identify, not Y, I wouldn’t have the idea of a single spatial continuum. That’s because you wouldn’t re-identify that, too. Right, because if I never re-identified, what sense would it make for me to say that I have one idea of a single spatial continuum, and yet I’m never willing to identify something in a new experience with something in a previous experience? What sense would that make? You know, I have one unified whole, but I’m never willing to re-identify something after I stop experiencing it. The theories of 3D continuum are punctuated by your experience or dependent on your experience. Precisely. Precisely.

[06:12] Now, what he’s suddenly done now is given us not X. X was the assumption that at least we believed that we had a unified spatial experience. He says that if we deny Y, then we couldn’t possibly believe or have the idea that we have a single spatial conception of the world. Now, where do we go from there? X is not questioned by anybody. This is the reductio. Anything that proves something that’s false is itself false, right? This is false, and it was derived from not Y. And so not Y has to be false. We have to negate it. It’s not not Y, which is equivalent to Y. So, Strawson, by this subtle argument, brilliant argument, shows that if we think of the world in the way we do, then we have to believe that we sometimes do re-identify particulars after we stopped observing them.

[07:04] Now, hopefully the coin is starting to drop. If that’s the case, if we have to believe it, what sense can we make of a skeptic who comes by and says, no, you can’t believe that. You can’t believe. How do you know that’s true? What you do is show him where he’s gone wrong, according to Strawson. Strawson says, well, not only does that question not make sense, you have to presuppose Y in order to question Y. Okay, so the skeptic is refuted conceptually by this argument. What Strawson does not prove is that objects, all objects, continue to exist unperceived. He just is showing that we have to believe that objects, at least some objects, continue to exist unperceived.

[07:43] Okay, before I go on, are there any questions about this? I’m more than happy to spend some more time on it. This is the most difficult stuff that I’m going to be going through. If you understand this, everything from this point on should be downhill.

[07:53] When you question that, why does he have to presuppose why in that case? He has to presuppose Y, because if he doesn’t presuppose Y, he presupposes not Y. Then Strawson argues that if you presuppose not Y, then you have to conclude with not X. Everyone accepts X. Everyone, including the skeptic, accepts X. And so to hold to this leads to a false… With that question, he’s accepted with X. He already… He already committed that. Even the skeptic committed with X. And so he tells, look, if your challenge was really valid, you’d have to give up something that you’re already depending on. Does that make sense? It’s difficult, I know. It’s all these X’s and Y’s. Well, yeah.

[08:41] Would it be helpful if I go through it one more time, or do you want me to move on? He’s saying it’s because the activist is doing, but it’s all an after-work. Right. Right, right, right. If he wants to be… He has to do that. Right, very good. Accept that. Right, and Strawson goes on to say, I’m going to say it’s a continuum, but he can’t do that, really. It’s a format of that. Right, and that’s exactly what Strawson goes on to say.

[09:06] I wasn’t going to bring that up, but he says, now it’s possible for a skeptic to deny X, although he comes into the game accepting X. But after this argument, if he wants to be really nasty, he could say, well, I just want to accept Y. See, that’s what makes it hard, I think, Mike, when you’re looking for this the first time. It’s hard to believe anybody that would question Y, why he really accepts X. That’s, I think, what makes it a little bit difficult when they’re learning this for the first time. It makes it a little bit true. He could give that up, too. But I think the point is, no. In the context of this argument, X is really accepted by the skeptics, by everyone. You know, if that’s emphasized, then you can see how there’s a problem.

[09:43] And now, it’s really a desperate move for the skeptic to come up and say, well, we don’t even think of the world this way, or we ought not to think of the world this way. You know, it’s hard to even make, you know, well, okay, well, give me an alternative then. How else should I think of the world? I mean, that’s just a desperate ploy. And so he comes in assuming that we think of the world in this way, and the interesting thing that the skeptic brings on us is, well, is the way we think of the world the correct way? Okay, that’s where the whole interests of the skeptics lie. And then Strawson comes around and says, well, that question doesn’t even make sense, because he has to presuppose one of the conditions for this, which negates his skeptical challenge.

[10:20] Right, I mean, after the end of this argument, if it does work, and the skeptic went and said, okay, well, I’m just going to deny X then. You know, it’s kind of like, very well, have a nice day. You know, you want to believe, we don’t believe that there’s a single unified experience in time and space. You know, well, give me an alternative or, you know, so long. I mean, that skepticism just saying, well, maybe that’s not true, is so absurd or so uninteresting.

[10:44] You know, it’s just like in Monty Python where the guy pays for an argument, and the guy comes in and says, I paid for an argument. And I said, no, you didn’t. I did too pay for an argument. I did not. You know, he says, well, all you’re doing is contradicting me. He says, no, I’m not contradicting you. Because you are too, you just did. No, I’m not. You know, I mean, the skeptic has started playing that game, but, you know, how interesting is that? So if he wants to deny that, you know, fine. It’s like, good luck to you, sir.

[11:13] Okay, one more time. Not Y implies, this is Strawson’s argument. Again, I want to give you a feel for a contemporary transcendental argument, and not try to defend it or reject it. Strawson argues that the reason that not Y implies not X is that if you don’t ever ascribe continual identity to an object when you stop perceiving it, in other words, when you wake up in the morning and see the alarm clock, you never think, oh, that’s the same alarm clock that was there. You always look at it and say, oh, that’s a different alarm clock. And that goes for any object. You always see something as new. If that were the case, Strawson says, then you wouldn’t have any idea of a unity of a spatial scheme. In other words, the conception of a unified spatial scheme where everything, where every object is in the same space wouldn’t even make sense.

[12:02] If every time I looked at you in this room after I closed my eyes and completely identified you as totally different than the people in my previous experience and then I came up and said, well, yeah, I have a unified view. I have an idea of a unified spatial scheme. What would that mean? I mean, how did they relate? There’s no relationship to it. So Strawson says, if you deny this, then you have to deny this. Now, whether that’s a good argument or not is another matter, but that’s what he says. And as far as the merits of the case, we could discuss that another time. I just wanted to give you the form of it. Everybody on board with this then? Yeah. Okay. Like I said, this is the most difficult part, and it’ll be somewhat downhill from here.

[12:37] In his 1967 article, Barry Stroud wrote against Strawson’s argument here, and it’s very famous in the literature. It’s simply titled Transcendental Arguments. And what he does is show, or tries to show, that transcendental arguments are really nothing special and they ultimately are dependent upon something called the verification principle. And I’ll explain that all in a moment. But Stroud comes to Strawson and says, that argument doesn’t work, here’s why.

[13:08] Now, why are we concerned with this? Well, this may have some impact on our view of Van Tilian transcendental arguments. I’m going to come back later and say, this has no bearing on it whatsoever. But for the moment, we’ll just keep an open mind.

[13:20] Okay, so what’s Stroud’s argument against Strawson? Stroud takes Strawson’s arguments to have three premises and a conclusion. The conclusion is objects continue to exist unperceived. That’s the conclusion. Now, right off the bat, what sounds wrong about that? What was he trying to prove? Right. Right off the bat, in explaining Strawson, I’ve given you my interpretation of him.

[13:47] we can see that Stroud is going to not, I believe, give a right interpretation of Strawson that’s what he’s an ontologist right Stroud conceives of Strawson as making an ontological transcendental argument okay, but there’s still some interest in it even though he misunderstands it because he has some interesting criticisms against ontological transcendental arguments okay, this is what he takes Strawson’s argument to be number one and you don’t need to take notes if you don’t want I just want to give you a feel for it again I’m not too interested in the particulars He says, one, we think of the world as containing objective particulars in a single spatial temporal system. Basically, Rx up there. Okay, so that’s premise number one, which is right as far as that goes.

[14:29] Number two, if we think of the world as containing objective particulars in a single spatial temporal system, then we are able to identify and re-identify particulars. If we think of the world as containing objective particulars in this system, then we have the ability to identify and re-identify something. So if I had this conceptual scheme, number one, then I would have the ability to re-identify this chair every time I stopped experiencing it. In other words, if I closed my eyes or went into another room and came back, I would be able to re-identify this as the same chair that was here previously.

[14:58] Okay, and three, if we re-identify particulars, then we have a satisfiable criteria on the basis of which we can make the re-identification. Okay, if I can make this re-identification every time I stop seeing it, then I have to have some criteria by which to re-identify it.

[15:16] From this, Stroud takes Strawson to conclude objects continue to exist unperceived. Now, quite rightly, Stroud says, this does not follow whatsoever. From those three premises, you can’t get objects continue to exist unperceived. So Stroud tries to help out Strawson. He says, you need an extra additional premise, or he’s going to eventually add two premises. So Stroud thinks the argument stops here.

[15:40] Now, one thing that amazes me, it’s a good article for reasons other than interpretation of Strawson. I mean, he makes some interesting points, but for somebody to blow it this badly is incredible. I mean, that is not Strawson’s argument, but I don’t know how Stroud came to believe that. Anyways, this argument so far is a non-sequitur. It doesn’t follow. Stroud has no qualms with the truth, the premises one through three. So Stroud’s going to give Strawson these three premises. He’s going to say, okay, we’ll give those to you, Strawson. The problem is they do not get to six, so additional premises are needed.

[16:10] So he adds premise number four to help out Strawson. Four is if we have the best criteria for re-identification of particulars and this criteria has been satisfied, then we know that objects continue to exist unperceived. If we know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of particulars has been satisfied or have been satisfied, then we know that the objects continue to exist unperceived. Now, that’s not enough because it’s conditional, if we know. So his additional premise to get to the conclusion that objects continue to exist unperceived is number five. We sometimes know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of particulars has been satisfied or have been satisfied.

[16:55] Okay, now let’s just look at number five for a moment. What do you think is wrong with that? I’ll read it again. We sometimes know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of particulars have been satisfied.

[17:09] Well, what’s he trying to do here? Strawson’s trying to defeat who? The skeptic. What’s the skeptic calling into question? All from. The skeptic will not sustain himself. I’m trying to get it. Just that you can’t certify it. Right. The best criteria is the criteria. You have to have certain types of criteria in order to legitimately re-identify something. It can’t be arbitrary. He doesn’t fill it in what that criteria is. It’s just that you have to have some non-arbitrary way of re-identifying particulars. Whatever it is, assume that it’s been satisfied in this case. Right.

[17:48] Number five is a factual premise. It says we sometimes know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of particulars has been satisfied. Now, how is that going to be helpful? Is a skeptic going to ever allow this premise? No. The skeptic is going to look at that and say, that’s precisely what I’m arguing against. Pardon me? Begging the question. Right, he’s begging the question.

[18:10] Okay, now, from this, Stroud, he makes some tricky move. I don’t want to get into all of this, but Stroud says, okay, we’ll drop five and just take one to four. That if we have the best criteria for re-identification, then we know that objects continue to exist unperceived. So he says, we’ll drop five and we’ll change the conclusion of six to that if just a number four, that if we know the best criteria, then we can know that objects continue to exist unperceived. so he’ll leave it for a later time to prove that we do know the criteria, that we sometimes satisfy this criteria.

[18:41] Now, what Stroud has done in his reformulation in 1 through 4 is given us a verificationist principle. What is a verificationist principle? I’m going to go back and go through this argument once again, but first of all, we need to understand what a verification principle is. Stroud thinks that in order for Strawson’s argument to work, there has to be a verification principle incorporated.

[19:04] What is a verification principle? Anybody familiar with the verificationist principle of meaning? During the 30s and 40s, logical positivists believed that they wanted to get away from all this highfalutin metaphysical nonsense and get down into real knowledge, you know, science, logic, that type of stuff. Those were the only stuff that was true knowledge, science and logic, and everything else was just kind of, you know, cream puff stuff that doesn’t have any meaning altogether. So they had a verificationist view of meaning, which said that the only things that are meaningful, the only statements that are meaningful, are those that are analytically true. Bachelors are unmarried males. Okay, that has meaning, because bachelor has the same meaning, or to use the concept term, it’s unmarried males, the concept of that is contained within the concept of bachelors. Okay, so those are meaningful.

[19:51] And also, statements about the empirical world, statements that can be empirically tested. Statements that cannot be empirically tested are not verifiable. And so according to this principle, anything not verifiable is meaningless. And so when he says verifiable, he means the logical positivist meant empirically verifiable.

[20:12] So is the statement, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Is that statement empirically verifiable? Can you go out in the world and test that? God? I mean, aside from cosmological type arguments, can you go out and sense God directly? I mean, no, you can’t. It doesn’t say that extreme of their claim about their viability, right? Oh, you’re going to steal my thunder. No, he’s got the right, Randy has the right, anticipating it.

[20:44] They basically say that things that aren’t grounded in the empirical world, that aren’t testable empirically, have no meaning. And so the statement that God so loved the world is meaningless. So all religion, most of religion, and what they called metaphysics, the speculative knowledge, a lot of psychology, literature, poetry, that type of stuff, has no meaning. It’s meaningless. They say it has emotive meaning. It’s kind of like they throw out a stock. Well, it has emotive value, but it has no real meaning. Okay. Finally.

[21:19] Well, Dr. Bahnsen’s opponent that backed out, Tabish, not Tabish, but Michael Martin, held to some version of this type of thing. Not as crass as this, mind you, but still fairly crass.

[21:30] Now, what’s the problem with this verificationist principle? Randy? You can’t make a phone call. Right. Why not? Is it analytically true? Is it analytically true? Is it analytically true that… No, it’s not.

[21:43] Right. Can you verify it through empirical observation or testing? Has anybody gone out in the world and seen a verification principle? You know, there’s a cassette recorder. There’s some Nikes. Oh, and there’s the verification principle. No, it doesn’t live up to its own criteria. So it’s a… Only if you’re a philosopher.

[22:10] It has to be anything as meaningful that is true by definition or analytically true. And my example was, all bachelors are unmarried males, or anything green is colored. Explain analytical. Analytical, I’ll use Kant’s view. Most philosophers don’t like it, but his is the easiest way to understand it. An analytical statement is something that wherein the concept of the subject, bachelor, let me say it another way, that the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. So the concept of an unmarried male is already contained in the concept of the bachelor. Okay, and another way of saying it is not affleative. When I say bachelors are unmarried males, unless you’re a child and never heard of that before, I’m just giving you a definition. To anybody else who understands that, I wouldn’t be adding any information to them. It’s like, oh, okay. And everything green is colored? Well, thank you for telling me that. You haven’t given me anything.

[23:04] Okay, and the problem with that is the verification principle doesn’t meet its own criteria. There’s other criticisms, but I wanted to clear the boards with that.

[23:10] Now let’s go back to Stroud. Stroud claims that Strawson is committed to a verificationist principle in order to get his argument off the ground. Now, by the way, Stroud doesn’t think much of the verification principle. We’ve got to give him credit for that. He thinks that if Strawson is committed to a verification principle, then his whole argument is useless. And more than that, he says that if his argument is committed to a verification principle, then the so-called transcendental argument is unnecessary because the verificationist principle will directly refuse the skeptic.

[23:46] Okay, now I’ve read the back of the book to you. That’s the conclusion he’s trying to draw in his article. Now let’s see how he gets there. He’ll come back and explain how a verificationist principle would be a skeptic. Right, right.

[23:58] I’m going to first explain why he thinks Strawson committed to a verificationist principle. Strawson, remember, he takes to conclude that objects continue to exist unperceived. In other words, in some sense, he’s taking Strawson to make an ontological claim. For him to make that bill, in order for him to get to that conclusion, he has to somehow tie his concepts and nail them down to the world. Otherwise, he couldn’t make that claim. He could claim that we have to have these concepts to get by in the world to have our normal experience, but he couldn’t get to the ontological claim itself. In order to tie the conceptual considerations and premises one to three to the conclusion that we cannot doubt or there has to be at least some object that continues to exist unperceived. You need something to tie the concepts to the world.

[24:46] And that’s what a verification principle does. Verification principles show that if you have a meaningful statement, then it is somehow testable by the world. It somehow hooks up with the world or marries up with the world in some way. Correspondence. Of course, that’s good.

[25:09] Okay, so that’s how we claim that Stroud is committed to a verificationist principle. The only way he can get to his conclusion is if he somehow ties his concepts to the world. But if you have a verification principle, this is Stroud now speaking, then the transcendental argument is unnecessary. Why is that?

[25:28] Because if we say that our words are meaningful, if we say that Bill Collinger is sitting on the couch now, and that’s meaningful, then we have that the very meaning of it is already necessarily tied to or somehow attempts to correspond with the world. So if it’s meaningful, I could test whether it’s true or not. So in other words, the verification principle gives us a test to see whether concept or language marry up with the world. If they do that, though, what point is there to having a transcendental argument? What was the point of a transcendental argument? To try to defeat the skeptic. But now we see that through a verification principle, the skeptic is defeated directly.

[26:06] Why? Because if it is meaningful to say that Bill is sitting on the couch, then the very meaning of Bill sitting on the couch is tied up with the fact that Bill is sitting on the couch. If the statement, Bill is sitting on the couch, in quotes, the statement, is meaningful, then it has to marry up with the state of affairs in the world. If that’s the case, and you can show that it does marry up with the world, then the skeptic is defeated immediately and directly.

[26:29] Correct me if I’m wrong. This may make it real easy for you. Yesterday at the end, it took a while, but I put up on the board a scheme of modern epistemological schools. You have skepticism and three ways of answering skepticism. Foundationalism, pragmatism, and transcendental analysis. Now, one of the versions of foundationalism is perceptual foundation. Verificationism is a variation of that. That is, there are certain things we know or, from earlier putting it, things that are meaningful because of our perception. So foundationalism, one school of foundationalism, is an answer to skepticism. Everyone with me?

[27:11] So Stroud comes along and he says, here’s this transcendental argument. Well, the transcendental argument itself rests upon a foundationalist type of consideration, verificationism, is a specific version of it. But if it rests on that, and that’s already an answer to the skeptic, why do we need the transcendental approach? Let’s just stick with the verification, or in my language, the perceptual foundation. Couldn’t have said it better myself. I think we had it on the board. I thought that might at least show participants in the debate how they’re maneuvering with each other.

[27:46] I want to say you need the transcendental approach or argument to stand here. Why? Are you talking about Van Tilian transcendental arguments? Yes. Ultimately, we’re going to argue that, yes. Yes. But for now, all of us are modern.

[28:01] Stroud’s saying, in terms of the modern debate, if you want to get ontological conclusions to your transcendental argument, you’re going to have to either import factual premises, which are illegitimate. I mean, the skeptic isn’t going to allow it. I mean, it’s begging the question. Or you’re going to have to import a verificationist view or theory of meaning. And because that’s such an absurd view of meaning, you might as well, let me put it this way. There’s two problems with it. One is, if you do need a verification principle of meaning in order to get your transcendental argument off the ground, then you might as well drop the transcendental argument because the verification principle itself does all the work for you. But moreover, the verification principles, principles, there’s more than one, are absurd. They don’t work.

[28:44] And so basically what Stroud is saying is that these ontological type of transcendental arguments or for Stroud, these are just, He considers what his reconstruction of Stroud is simply a transcendental argument. He thinks that transcendental arguments, any way you look at it, are useless. Mike already pointed out the first step, though, in the mistake of Stroud’s making, he makes Stroud to be often an existential transcendental rather than a conservative. And so he, Stroud, works at Stroud and says, you’ve got to bridge the gap between the coherence and our concepts to the world. And then he says, well, the only way we do that is through a perceptual foundation with a verification approach. And so since you’ve got to rest on that anyway, it did already answer some steps. If it works, it answers some steps. And why would that come around the transcendental argument? No, he didn’t believe it. He’s just trying to show that Strawson is wasting time. Right. He’s saying transcendental arguments are just so much smoke in the air. And that’s a major claim.

[29:48] Now, I happen to think his criticisms of his version of Strawson are devastating. It’s kind of like if you were debating somebody and he made the statement and said, wow, you know, that was a devastating argument. Now can you refute my position? You know, this position, the straw man he made, is devastating. It’s just not Strawson’s argument. But it does have implications for the ontological form of transcendental arguments. If you’re going to make ontological claims in your transcendental arguments, you have to answer Stroud.

[30:16] This, again, sounds like Stein and Bonfrey. Stein did a good job reading an evangelist. Right. It is a good argument that he has. If you’re trying to argue transcendentally apart from the Van Tilian approach, transcendental arguments don’t hold water. This form, at least.

[30:36] I’m going to come back and show you the problem with this one after lunch, with Stroud’s version. Okay. I think this is a good time to break. I’ve pretty much finished with Stroud. I’m not going to take much time when we come back, but I just want to go over the article that was sent to you, now that you’re in a position to understand it all, and find out what Grayling’s position is. I’m going to show you some of what I think would be problems with Grayling’s position and ask what type of bearings does this have on Van Tilian transcendental arguments.

[31:04] Now, I think we have a few minutes. If there’s any questions. The problem I have, I mean, you’re having a limited understanding of Van Tilian transcendental arguments. where it’s all going to smoke. Not smoke in terms of being irrelevant, but in terms of these guys talking to these transcendental arguments without presupposing Van Til’s approach, their argument communities. Well, that’s ultimately going to be our claim.

[31:27] One thing, though, that’s important, though, is let’s say that some of these transcendental arguments work. What impact would that have on our Van Tilian transcendental argument? How could they work because after they have these? How could their needs be? How could you get a sexual influence? Right.

[31:42] I mean, if there’s a possibility of conceptual argument that will affect your autonomy, it must have been what if Strawson’ argument works and the skeptic of the external world is refuted? Very much. Isn’t Van Til’s argument that Christianity is the precondition for all knowledge? Now, here comes Strawson in saying, look, you have to think of the world in such a way. Skepticism doesn’t make sense. So skepticism is eliminated. So we can’t be skeptics. Now, how does that affect Van Til’s transcendental argument? He’s already, Strawson, aside from Van Til, if he’s correct, shows that we can’t be skeptics. Doesn’t that affect the Van Tilian transcendental argument? Does that negate it somehow? Why not? Why?

[32:30] Because it’s the Van Tilian argument that gives, that would even provide the reason. Yeah, right, for argument in general. Right. That’s ultimately what we’re going to conclude, but it doesn’t affect it really because, so what if we can’t be skeptics? I believe that. Van Til believes that. Dr. Bahnsen believes that. Right.

[32:49] Strawson, you’re right. We can’t be skeptics. So what should we be? I mean, it’s not enough to say, oh, we can’t be skeptics. Fine. We can’t be skeptics, ultimately. We can’t be skeptics using his single argument about the continuing existence of non-perceived objects. We can’t be general skeptics about that. We can have certain knowledge. Right. We have to think. We just can’t be skeptical about it. It’s not that we have knowledge. It’s just that we can’t be skeptical.

[33:15] What impact does that have on Van Til’s transcendental argument? Zip. In fact, it’s really helpful to it. Because not only are we going to come back and show that all worldviews are impossible without presupposing Christianity, but even this thing, and I’m going to speak real loosely, the worldview of skepticism, that doesn’t make any sense, but the worldview of skepticism is shown to be not an option. at least continual observation, questioning the continual existence of non-perceived object. You can’t be that type of skeptic. So far from hurting transcendental arguments in the Van Tilian method, it actually helps it. But there’s more to say, and I want to get to some criticisms of this form of argumentation when we get back that may have some relevance to Van Tilian transcendental argument.

[33:58] One thing I think you have to bear in mind when we talk about argument, is an empirical argument or a rational argument or a transcendental argument. In the end, when we use the expression argument, we can be speaking of it as an effort or as an accomplishment. It’s one thing to offer an empirical argument, and it’s another thing to offer a good one. Let’s say somebody tries to prove to me that quinine doesn’t believe Mary. That’s hilarious. Let’s take the standard example. He may offer empirical evidence, but falls short of making his point. But I would still call his argument an empirical argument. It’s an effort to show by empirical means a certain thing. That’s different from saying that he’s accomplished what he wants to do, that the argument, you know, hits the target or is successful. And so you understand that when it comes to empirical things.

[34:57] People argue empirically, and that’s the kind of argument that not all empirical arguments are good empirical arguments. They don’t always reach the truth. Likewise, not all transcendental arguments are good transcendental arguments. One thing to say, this isn’t the effort. It’s a transcendental effort. But another thing to say, they’ve accomplished what they’re trying to do. And many times I think people fall into the trap of thinking that, well, if you’re offering a transcendental argument, then it’s got to be true. Well, no. You could be a bad transcendental argument. And Van Til, to get to the punchline, he’s going to say, the unbeliever can try to argue transcendentally, but he can never succeed, only we can. So it’s not as if he’s blowing smoke, because he falls way short. Well, but in Stroud’s sense of blowing smoke, Stroud was simply saying, this is just a bunch of fancy discussion for a different kind of argument altogether. So let’s just get away from that and get over to verification, which Stroud would then, you know, be certain anyway.

[35:59] One o’clock, start. Okay.

[36:03] Before we go into the Grayling article, hopefully you all brought it, let’s do a quick recap of what we’ve done so far. Basically, we started off looking at some preliminary questions when we talked about the current debate among transcendental arguments. We talked about what a transcendental is and what type of form transcendental arguments take, what distinguishes transcendental arguments from deductive and inductive type of arguments, And then we had a brief look at Kant, and we didn’t get into much at all. But just to point out that there is some debate whether contemporary transcendental arguments really deserve the name transcendental arguments. And that really is not a very interesting debate. I thought I should say a few things about it, though.

[36:43] And then finally, we took a look at Strawson, his transcendental argument, and then Stroud’s criticisms of Strawson. And we noticed that Strawson’s argument was not appropriately handled by Stroud. However, there is something that we can learn from Stroud’s article. We can learn that certain types of transcendental arguments that make ontological claims face certain problems. They have to import verificationist-type principles in order to get their arguments off the ground. So that’s where we’ve been so far.

[37:12] Now I want to look at A.C. Grayling’s article found in Companion to Epistemology by Basil Blackwell Press. A.C. Grayling of the external world, the role which transcendental arguments show these concepts to play is, Kant claims, that they make experience possible and that, therefore, skeptical doubts about our possession of them are empty. It is the skepticism-refuting promise of transcendental arguments that has provoked most interest among subsequent philosophers.

[37:43] Now, one thing that I want to make clear from this is that Kant did not construe his transcendental arguments merely as skepticism-refuting arguments. He thought they did refute skepticism, but they did put something in its place. And so it’s not that Kant just thought that this takes care of the skeptics, his arguments in, for instance, the transcendental deduction, but he thought it put something in the place of skepticism. So Grayling is a bit iffy at this point, but he is right when he says that the modern debate on transcendental arguments is concerned with the skepticism-refuting aspect of them.

[38:16] Kant’s central question concerns the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. An answer to it presupposes an answer to the more general question, what are the necessarily presupposed grounds of experience in general? In arguing for the categories and for space and time as pure forms of sensibility, Kant is arguing that there can be experience only under certain conditions, and this strategy displays the characteristic form of a transcendental argument. Simply in respect to its form, the argument is that there must be something Y if there is something X, of which Y is a necessary condition. In crude outline, therefore, the transcendental strategy consists in the search for key necessary conditions of some given region, a discourse, or experience.

[39:00] Now, the way he plotted it out formally is a bit different than I did, but it’s roughly the same thing. So most of this should be familiar, and I’ll just keep going unless somebody interrupts me.

[39:10] Reasoning on this character is not unique to Kant. nor do all varieties of it found in the philosophical literature model themselves exactly on Kant’s procedure. Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty, argues transcendentally about the impossibility of private language and the possibility of knowledge, respectively.

[39:30] One of Wittgenstein’s famous arguments in the Investigations, which is his most famous book, Wittgenstein is perhaps the most influential philosopher in the 20th century. He was Austrian, but he spent a lot of his philosophical career in Cambridge. He had originally studied under Bertrand Russell, and the book that he got his degree from Cambridge for was called The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which he used as his dissertation. And that book, as dissertation goes, was probably the most influential dissertation ever published by a philosopher. It was a revolutionary type of work. But in his later work, in his philosophical investigations, he used certain types of arguments to show that the possibility of a private language is impossible.

[40:13] And the reason he did that, the importance is that Wittgenstein thought through that he was refuting solipsism, the view that I have knowledge of myself but no other thing, that I alone am the creator of all my knowledge, or at least I am isolated from the world. With the private language argument, which rightly I think Grayling construes as a version of a transcendental argument, Wittgenstein thought to have refuted the view that we could have a private language, a language that we can make up on our own. Now, if that’s the case, if we can’t have a private language, then we have to have a public language. And what does a public language presuppose? Other people.

[40:52] And so the skepticism about other minds or other people is refuted by this argument. It’s a very difficult argument. There have been articles in the journals written about this argument, and there’s about 20 different interpretations for it. but generally it takes the form of a transcendental argument.

[41:09] Okay, J.L. Austin, who I made reference to earlier, argues transcendentally for informulating a theory of truth by distinguishing between demonstrative and descriptive conventions in language, his point being that some such distinction is required for a certain other concept, that of truth as correspondence, to have application. A different example is supplied by Gilbert Ryle in his use of polar concept arguments. The skeptical suggestion that we might undetectably be in error on any given occasion is refuted, Ryle claims, by the fact that just as we cannot have counterfeit coins unless there are genuine coins, so we cannot have a concept of error unless we have the concept of being right. And therefore, we must sometimes know we are right. Once again, the strategy is to argue that X cannot be the case unless Y is the case. And since X is indeed the case, Y must also be the case.

[42:06] Okay, so what Grayling is doing is showing this form of argumentation has some historical precedent. Philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Austin use this general form. He’s going to tell us later that these aren’t quite transcendental arguments because of their scope.

[42:20] These examples show that transcendental style arguments are commonplace in philosophy. But there is a marked difference between reasonings of these familiar sorts and the weightier, more ambitious transcendental arguments found in Kant and others.

[42:35] Okay, remember in the introductory mark, there’s a difference between certain forms of transcendental reasoning and others that distinguish transcendental arguments from non-transcendental arguments and the reason, the difference being scope. Transcendental arguments have a larger scope. One way to mark the distinction is to say that the familiar kinds of argument just sketched share their methodology with transcendental arguments proper, but not their scope. For the latter are not concerned merely with local conceptual polarities, like illusory, veridical, but with the conditions under which highly general concepts, the concept of other minds, the concept of an independently existing reality, have application.

[43:13] Given that such concepts play a key role in entire discourses and are central to our experience as a whole, So put, the aim of transcendental arguments is to establish the conditions necessary for experience, or experience of a certain kind in general, and at their most controversial, to establish conclusions about the nature and existence of an external world, or other minds derived from paying attention to what has to be the case for there to be experience, or for experience to be as it is.

[43:43] No question. Okay. How would you agree with that definition? I think he’s right.

[43:49] Transcendental arguments, somebody asked me during the break, how big is the scope? How wide do they have to be? And I don’t know if you could drive a precise line between transcendental arguments and arguments that have the same form of a transcendental argument but don’t quite make it. But the rule of thumb is that if it has a major impact on our conceptual scheme and our outlook on the world, then that concept is a transcendental.

[44:12] And so any argument that tries to establish that is a transcendental argument. So it has to have a major impact on our conceptual scheme. An example I gave of Austin earlier was between real and fake, or real and imaginary, or real and phony. And the concept of real is important to our conceptual scheme, but it’s not central. Whereas the concept of the external world, to use Grayling’s illustration, or the concept of other minds, or the concept of causation, is much more central. It might be helpful to me to jump ahead, but I don’t know if it’s a man still. Transcendental arguments must be bold and wise. He looks at, like, the archipagito, the archipagito, I think, therefore I am, that’s kind of transcendental argument. Even if you accept it, it’s just like a rock in a bottom of the ocean that by itself it’s not going to do anything in order to make knowledge possible. And so in the end, he’ll say that all these individual arguments must be pushed out to a world level. So I’ll get this question.

[45:22] I should say a brief word about the problem of other minds, and some of you without a philosophical background must be wondering what is that? In the history of philosophy, philosophers are weird. A lot of people have doubted or have made skeptical arguments as to whether we can know that there are other minds. Meaning, I know that I have a mind, but how do I know that Bill over there has a mind? How do I know that he just isn’t a robot or an automaton who acts intelligently, but really nothing’s going on in his head? Now, somebody who hears that thinks, oh, these philosophers, don’t they have anything better to do than think this stuff up?

[46:00] And one thing I should say about skepticism, Skepticism, really, there isn’t many people that are diehard skeptics. Skepticism, however, is useful in pushing us to try to justify our view of the world. I don’t think many people, rightly, take the skeptical view seriously. But not enough people consider the skeptical arguments and the skeptical view. The skeptic pushes us to give an account of the knowledge that we claim to have. So the skeptic comes up and says, well, how do you know that Bill or God has a mind? Well, I just know that. Well, how do you know? He forces us to give an account of our claims to knowledge. He forces us to develop an epistemology. So they’re very useful in the history of philosophy to get us to articulate our outlook on the world. And so in a vacuum, the problem of other minds might sound funny, but there is an important point behind it. It forces us to give an account of how we know what we know.

[46:54] Now, interestingly, an empiricist has a problem justifying other minds, that there are other minds. The only evidence he has to go on is behavior. And so they use arguments from analogy. I have a body, and I behave in certain ways, and I know I have a mind. So Bill has a body, and I see him acting in analogous ways that I act, and so the inference is he has to have a mind. Okay, that’s the argument from analogy. And if we have some more time, we can discuss some of that. But there are problems with empiricism and justifying their belief that there are other minds.

[47:28] So some people have used transcendental arguments, including Strawson in another version of a transcendental argument, tried to show that it makes no sense to question the existence of other minds. Again, it’s like his previous argument. He’s not saying that there are other minds. He’s saying that you can’t even question the fact that there are other minds.

[47:45] Okay, so transcendental arguments try to put off the skeptic in a number of areas, not only in the area of causation and continuing existence of unperceived objects, but also other minds and things of that sort. When you just said, in the Peter’s argument, that he’s not computing or he’s not establishing whether the true state of affairs ontologically, they do. In this case, well, because he’s arguing conceptually, not ontologically.

[48:13] Right. I’m not giving you Strawson’s argument, for example, but Strawson’s argument for the necessity of presupposing other minds is conceptual in nature.

[48:22] Classic contemporary examples of transcendental arguments are to be found in P.F. Strawson’s individuals. One of them is aimed at establishing the vacuity of skeptical doubt about the existence of other minds and proceeds as follows. And so, we’ll go through this real quickly, but I don’t want to get bogged down in the details of this, since we already have one version of Strawson’s transcendental argument in the background.

[48:46] One can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself only if one is able to ascribe them to others. Strawson argues, because to doubt the existence of other minds, one must employ the concept of other minds itself. And this can only be done if one can distinguish between my state of consciousness and other states of consciousness. But this can only be done in turn if others exist, because the identification of conscious states can only be affected by reference to particulars of a certain kind, namely persons. the concept of which, in turn again, demands that there be criteria for distinguishing one person from another, for otherwise the identification of states of consciousness would be impossible.

[49:30] So one can talk of my experience only if one can talk of others’ experiences. This is possible only if there are criteria for distinguishing between persons, and since one can indeed talk significantly of one’s own experience, such criteria must exist. But if they exist, they constitute logically adequate grounds for ascription of states of consciousness to others. Hence, skeptical doubts about the existence of other minds are vacuous, because the skeptic cannot so much as formulate them without employing the discourse whose very conditions of employment legitimize what he wishes to question.

[50:05] Okay, hopefully from our previous discussion of Strawson’s refutation of the skeptic who wants to doubt the continual existence of non-perceived objects, that discussion will help us understand this. Basically, I don’t want to get bogged down. He’s using the same form of argumentation. He’s saying we ascribe states of affairs to ourselves, that we have certain states of affairs. He’s saying the precondition of that is that we have the ability to ascribe them to others. If we can describe them to others, we must have a criteria for ascribing them to states of affairs to others. And if you deny that, you wouldn’t be able to ascribe states of affairs to yourself. And therefore, it makes no sense to question the existence of other minds. That’s real quick and dirty, but that’s basically the point he’s driving at.

[50:47] It’s the same form as his previous argument, and like I said, I don’t want to get bogged down on this, but if you have any questions, we can stop here, but same type of thing. So that’s what Strawson’s up to, that type of argumentation, and he’s going to go through the one that we went through previously.

[51:01] Another transcendental argument in Strawson’s individuals concerns the perception-independent existence of material particulars, and it has been much discussed as a result of Barry Stroud’s criticism of it. The subsequent debate can be said to turn on the following points. One of the crucial questions about transcendental arguments concerns what they might hope to establish. These options, simply put, are that either they establish the existence of something, an external world or other minds, in other words they’re making an ontological claim, or they establish that certain concepts are necessary to our conceptual scheme. Okay, I don’t think we need to spend much time here. You understand the difference. We’ve hopefully sandbagged all these things. There’s a distinction between making a claim about existence and a claim that certain types of conceptions are necessary for certain types of experience. Clearly, these are quite different results, and the latter involves the further problem of whether our conceptual scheme is the only possible one. For if not, the terminus of a transcendental argument is strictly relative.

[52:07] Grayling is saying there’s two types of transcendental arguments. Remember, I add a third, the Kantian transcendental argument, and we have a fourth, a worldview, Van Tilian transcendental argument. He doesn’t discuss either of those. But his options are the ontological and the conceptual.

[52:21] Obviously, the ontological transcendental argument has more punch to it. At least it purports to have more punch. It’s not just saying that certain concepts are necessary. It says the world is like such and such. The other conceptual argument, though, conceptual transcendental argument, though, has a difficulty according to Grayling.

[52:39] And that is, even if we must presuppose certain types of concepts in order for us to make sense of our regular experience or ordinary experience, there’s the further question of whether this conceptual scheme that we have now is the only possible one. Now, remember, we talked about earlier the concept of the cause was necessary for our experience, for our typical experience. Without the concept of causation, much of our experience would be unintelligible. That isn’t to say, though, that it might not be possible. Let me, in fact, it’s all messed up. Just because I cannot conceive of what it would be like without certain concepts like causation doesn’t mean it’s not possible to have a conceptual scheme that does not include the concept of causation. In other words, there might be different conceptual schemes. There might be different ways of looking at the world.

[53:30] Let’s go back to our television in the case of the Aborigine. He has the same phenomena, phenomenological experience that I do, but he has a different conceptual scheme. He views the world differently. However, it would be wrong to say to a certain extent that, let me put it another way, that illustration shows that there are two different, at least two different kinds of conceptual schemes. One conceptual scheme brings in certain types of concepts, such as electricity and imaging screens and stuff like that. The other conceptual scheme doesn’t have that type of stuff. So the two of us have two separate conceptual schemes.

[54:05] Now, that’s an analogy, a rather poor analogy, but what if our general conceptual scheme, which includes causation, and we could go through categories and include all that in it, what if our conceptual scheme isn’t the only possible one? What if there is an aboriginal conceptual scheme that’s completely different from our own, but yet can perfectly make reality or its experience intelligible? In other words, that there’s another conceptual scheme that can simply conceive of the world differently. The point is, how do we know that our conceptual scheme is the only possible conceptual scheme? Grayling wants to say that just because Strawson’s argument works doesn’t mean that the skeptic can’t say, well, there’s another conceptual scheme out there. So now, where does that put the epistemologist in, or the transcendental arguer? What position does that put him in?

[54:53] well he has to if he wants to finally defeat the skeptic and just obliterate him he’s going to have to show him that this conceptual scheme that we have is the only possible one and the question is how do we do that and that’s where the difficulty is going to lie so what he says is then in strictly relative argument with that argument I mean it’d be strictly subjective and therefore and then skepticism as well. Well, he says, right. He says he’s going to call these later option B, so I’ll start calling it right now. These non-ontological but conceptual transcendental arguments, option B transcendental arguments, only lead to relativistic conclusions that in order for us to have certain experiences that we’re accustomed to, say, we have to have certain concepts. There’s possibly different types of conceptual schemes that have different types of experiences.

[55:49] So now how does that silence the skeptic? The skeptic can simply come along and say, well, let’s just reject our conceptual scheme. We’ll have another conceptual scheme. Okay, now before I said, well, that’s kind of hokey. But if we want to finally put to rest the skeptic, we’re going to have to answer that charge. We’re going to have to say, well, what is it about our conceptual scheme that makes it necessary? That’s the problem with those who want to propound an option B transcendental argument. They still leave the skeptic an out. It’s a desperate out, mind you, but it’s still an out.

[56:17] Option B arguments, as they stand now, have not defeated the skeptic. But the whole point of transcendental arguments, at least among contemporary philosophers, was to defeat the skeptic. So if they’re not doing that, then they’ve gone down the road towards it, but they haven’t accomplished the task. And these grandiose claims that contemporary transcendental arguers proclaim are false. They don’t really defeat the skeptic. So if you’re not dealing with non-projectable arguments, then what a way is your opinion getting that whole? Right.

[56:46] Well, Grayling is going to argue that you can, but he’s going to supplement it. But right now he’s saying that the ontological argument would settle the issue with the skeptic. You’ve established the existence of the, say, external world. So the skeptic is defeated.

[56:57] The option B, transcendental argument, conceptual scheme, transcendental argument, shows that the skeptic can’t question his conceptual scheme within that very conceptual scheme. And so the skeptic at that point says, fine, I’ll use a different conceptual scheme, or I’ll reject this conceptual scheme. Now, at that point, the transcendental arguer has to show him why that’s not a possibility. If he doesn’t, then he’s left the skeptic and out. And he hasn’t definitively defeated the skeptic. Well, he did, assuming the argument… Right, he did do something. He did do something, but he hadn’t definitively defeated the skeptic. He hadn’t established the existence of the external world or the continual existence of non-perceived objects.

[57:40] So this is the crossing in the road. The transcendental arguments that make ontological claims seem to rely on verificationist principles. But if that’s the case, then not only are the transcendental argument aspect of them not necessary, but that anything based on a verificationist principle is going to be in big problems. Okay, so that option seems to be closed down. Now this other option, this option B route, seems to have this problem as well, because it wants to shut down the skeptic once and for all, and at least right now it hasn’t proven its case.

[58:10] Okay, so that’s what Grayling is bringing up right here. The bottom of 507.2. Grasp the difference between these options. It is useful to consider them as responses to skeptical challenges over our belief in the existence of an external world.

[58:24] On the first option, call it option A, the aim is to establish the existence of the external world. On the second, call it option B, the aim is to show that we must believe in the existence of an external world as the condition of the coherence of experience. One establishes the existence of the external world. The other is to show that we must believe certain things to be the case. To settle the skeptic’s doubt outright under B, one might have further to show that our conceptual scheme is the only conceivable one. Later in the article, this is what Grayling is going to pick up on. He’s going to say, okay, I’m going to take Strawson’s route and show that certain things are necessary for our conceptual scheme. Oh, and by the way, our conceptual scheme is the only possible conceptual scheme. That shouldn’t bother you.

[59:16] It’s simply the independent existence of the world outside of me. The skeptical doubt is, the modern example is I’m a brain in a vat.

[59:24] So you have this mad scientist, and my brain is, I mean, it’s based on physicalism, but you take the brain, and you put it in a vat in this tank, and you hook all these electrodes up to it, and through it, this mad scientist can send in all this data, and I could perceive the world as I do now and everything, I could feel things, I could sense things, smell things, but it’s really my brain in a vat put to electrodes. Through that, I have no knowledge of the external world. Everything I see and hear is the impulses created by the scientists.

[59:53] Okay, so a skeptic comes up and says, how do you know you’re not a brain in a vat? Okay, and that’s what Strawson or that’s what the transcendental arguments are trying to show that there has to be an external world or at least we have to believe that there’s an external world. But it’s just simply that there’s a world external, a physical world external to it. Proving what? Well, they’re given more time than they will have established that.

[60:22] The chief difficulty faced by option A transcendental arguments is that even if one could show that it is a necessary condition of our having coherent experience, that we possess and apply a concept of an independently existing world, it still needs to be shown that something out there answers to that concept. In other words, that it is a necessary condition of our having the concept of an external world than that an external world exists. It is one thing to argue that we must have and employ concepts of space, time, causality, and particulars conditioned by them, and a completely another thing to show that there exists things corresponding to these concepts and existentially prior to their use.

[61:07] So it’s one thing, Grayling says, to establish that we need certain concepts for our experience. Quite another thing to say that those experiences or those concepts are hooking up to reality. The difficulty here is that it does not look possible to argue from the fact that there is experience or from some richer premise characterizing that experience to talk about the way things are independently of experience without either supplementing the argument with additional factual premises or arguing that it is somehow constitutive of the concept introducing terms employed that they have empirical conditions of application under which, and only under which, they can be known to be truly applied. That’s what I was talking about when I talked about a verificationist principle. That’s what he means. That’s a fancy way of saying.

[61:53] In order for those type of transcendental arguments to prove that there is an independently existing external world is to either import some factual premise, which the skeptic is calling into question anyways. I mean, you can’t prove, just prove skepticism by assuming that the external world exists. Or you need a verificationist principle, which we talked about before and all the problems with that. Neither move looks promising. You could say that again. Additional factual premises will be unacceptable from the skeptic’s point of view, because precisely the same doubts about entitlement to them will arise as with the belief in the existence of the external world itself. If they’re calling into question our whole notion of the external world or the existence of the external world, then to say that some portion of it exists begs the question. And a verification principle, if it were not in any way highly debatable in itself, would make the apparatus of transcendental arguments unnecessary because one could rely on the verification principle alone to overcome skepticism.

[62:55] Even if one were to weaken a verification principle to a general principle of significance, stating that there can only be, well, I’m sorry, I meant to skip this portion. This portion, one philosopher named Richard Rorty, who has somewhat of an infamous reputation, take this line in this next half of the paragraph saying that you can use a weaker form of the verification principle and get around this problem. I’m not interested in going into that. Richard Rorty was really an oddball philosopher and I don’t want to use ad hominins but this just isn’t going to be beneficial I think to our discussion.

[63:27] So skip down to the next paragraph starting with option B. Option B transcendental arguments look by comparison relatively mundane affairs. There is no special difficulty and exploring the necessary conditions of the experience we enjoy. We are at the very least entitled to claim attention for investigations into the role of our concepts of objects, space, time, and causality, given that it at least seems to us that ours is a world of causally interactive spatial-temporal things. If we have a concept of objects, we must have a concept of continued, unperceived existence of objects because this is necessary to the concept of a single spatial temporal world and it is precisely a belief in the continued unperceived existence of objects that the skeptic asks us to justify. Showing that we must have such a belief as a condition of experience is not the same as proving that such objects exist though.

[64:22] Okay, so what he’s talking about there is precisely what we were doing before. Transcendental arguments of the conceptual type show that certain types of concepts are necessary for our experience But that doesn’t mean that those concepts grasp onto or hook onto reality. One is stating what we must believe, not how things are. But since the skeptic wishes as to justify the belief, doing so, the argument goes, is enough to put an end to skepticism.

[64:48] Okay, now here comes Grayling’s response to this and the right response. The skeptic, however, can in response shift his attack to a more general level by arguing that there might be a certain parochial interest in pointing out what a given form of experience requires as its fundamental concepts, but that this does not settle doubts about the general validity of these concepts. Okay, all he’s saying there is that, yes, that might show that in order to play this certain game to talk about sense experience, you need to have certain concepts. But the skeptic can say, well, look, I grant you that, but how do we know our concepts really apply? How do we know that there’s not a noumenal world beyond this phenomenon that really does not marry up at all? How do we know that our concepts hook on to what is out in the world? What if there are forms of experience which are non-spatial or non-causal, or in which there is no need to distinguish experience from its objects?

[65:45] Okay, so now he’s putting forward some possibilities. Basically, he’s given the negation of what Strawson’s transcendental arguments tried to establish. He’s saying, well, what if there, granted our experience now needs the concept of causation, granted that it needs the concept of belief in the continued existence of unperceived objects, but does conception or does experience necessarily have those types of experience? Can’t there be non-caused events, or can’t there be certain types of things where you can’t make a distinction between you and something else? And aren’t those possibilities?

[66:16] To counter skepticism at this more general level requires supplementation by anti-relativist arguments. themselves a form of transcendental argument designed to show that the concepts required for our experience are the concepts required for any experience. And what he’s doing here, although he doesn’t say so, is he’s bringing up some observations by a famous philosopher by the name of Donald Davidson. Donald Davidson, like Barry Stroud, teaches at Berkeley, and he’s been one of the most influential philosophers of late. He uses Donald Davidson’s discussions of the nature of conceptual schemes to show that ours is the only possible conceptual scheme. If he shows that ours is the only possible conceptual scheme, then he has completely defeated skepticism.

[67:02] Okay, because transcendental arguments that are of option B purport to show that certain types of concepts are necessary for our experience. Then he goes beyond that and says, and these concepts or this type of conceptual scheme is the only possible conceptual scheme. There couldn’t possibly be another conceptual scheme. If he could show that, then skepticism is dead. He has defeated skepticism.

[67:26] And when we come back, we’re going to look at briefly Donald Davidson’s observations and see how Grayling applies them, and I’m going to try to point out what I think would be the problem with it. And then after that is concluded, we’ll finally bring this whole discussion to an end and make some general observations on the relationship between the contemporary debate and the worldview apologetic or the worldview transcendental arguments of Cornelius Van Til. Thank you.