Transcendental Arguments

As generally understood, transcendental arguments are deductive arguments that aim to establish a certain claim A by arguing that A is a necessary condition for another claim B. Customarily, they are used to refute various forms of skepticism. Accordingly, B is usually a claim that is noncontroversial and would plausibly be accepted by a skeptic: for example, the claim that we have self-consciousness, or that we have representations of objects. Alternatively, B could also be a claim that a skeptic must assume to coherently formulate her doubt. Transcendental arguments then proceed from this noncontroversial claim to a more substantial claim that states that A is a necessary condition for the possibility of B. The skeptic who doubts that A applies but accepts B is thus refuted because, if B applies, it logically follows that A must apply as well. Debates about transcendental arguments have touched on a multiplicity of issues. One first question concerns the nature of the claims they make. In this respect, there have been different ways to account for the necessity that is attributed to the claims that are identified as conditions of other claims. While it is excluded that this necessity can be physical or causal, it is not clear what kind of necessity it is. Some have claimed that this necessity expresses analytical relationship between concepts, whereas others have understood this necessity to be of a metaphysical nature and to involve some sort of synthetic a priori judgment. Another problem concerns what kind of results transcendental arguments can achieve. Some have claimed that transcendental arguments can achieve ambitious conclusions that tell how the world must be. Others have presented a more modest interpretation of transcendental arguments, claiming that they can establish only how we must believe the world to be. A further issue regards the historical antecedents of contemporary transcendental arguments. While Kant is normally considered to be the originator of transcendental arguments, it has been questioned that central arguments of his Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) have a structure fundamentally similar to present-day transcendental arguments. On the other hand, arguments with a form comparable to transcendental arguments have been attributed to other philosophers and traditions.