Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:11:00 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: transcendental arguments


Hi Mike, Ruth,

Mike:

>I argued in my previous post

this didn't come through to me for some reason. I agree with the thrust 
of the present one.

Ruth:

>the
>  well-established definition of "transcendental argument"

I have three general philosophy dictionaries (Routledge, Cambride, and 
A. R. Lacey ed.), each of which has an entry for TA. None defines it 
such that indubitable or unquestionable premises are required. The issue 
of certainty *is* bound up with Kant's account of TA, but that doesn't 
seem to me a proper basis for legislating for the whole of philosophy.

You say of Mike's claim that

>A transcendental
>> argument, as I understand it, does not have to rely on premises that every
>> one
>> agrees to, but those premises that are accepted in the philosophical context
>> in
>> which the argument is made.

>I just don't think that this is right.  (It's true - for what it's worth - that
>the first few lines of the Cambridge Phil Dictionary read that way, but only if
>you take them out of context.)  Really.

But the Cambridge dictionary says 'unchallenged or uncontroversial in 
the philosophical context'. What does it mean to imply that Mike's kind 
of account takes that out of context? It is not the same as your 
indubitability requirement and is at one with Bhaskar's useage.

>(And just logically, if T args were
>already widely understood to require only some premise that at least one person
>agrees with (though preferable more)

No-one is saying that TAs are understood in this way. This also is not 
the same as 'unchallenged or uncontroversial in the philosophical 
context'.

>Bhaskar's move of re-defining
>  transcendental arguments

If the dictionaries can be relied upon, it would seem to be you who are 
doing most of the redefining.

But, as I've suggested before, even if there *were* a general 
philosophical convention to require indubitability, there would seem to 
be good grounds for calling such a convention into question: the form of 
TA and immanently critical argument is identical regardless of whether 
indubitability is claimed for the premises; and on a CR account a thing 
is what it is in virtue of its form, this is the whole basis of 
taxonomy.


Mervyn




In message <12.32dc3e1a.2c30ea7a-AT-aol.com>, Mikehpaed-AT-aol.com writes
>Ruth,
>No need to apologize for the tone of your post. I'm a big fan of conceptual
>clarity, too, so I understand your frustration.  Let me try again....
>
>You are arguing that an argument is a transcendental argument if and
>only if it meets the following two conditions -
>1) Has this form:  Start with some phenomenon and then identify what
>must be true to make the phenomenon possible
>2) The phenomenon must be something that every one agrees to - it must
>be an unquestionable premise
>Since Bhaskar's premise (scientific experiment) is not an unquestionable
>premise, he is not making a transcendental argument.
>
>I argued in my previous post that if the premise was unquestionable
>within a particular philosphical context, and the argument had the form of
>a TA, it is a TA. You object to this, believing that it conflates a TA with an
>immanent critique.
>I have no problem not calling such an argument a TA if it confuses the
>issue.
>
>Aside from the matter of the definition of a TA, there is the issue of
>whether there can be unquestionable or indubitable premises that every
>one can agree to. Given the inevitably perspectival nature of knowledge, I
>don't think that there are any such  premises. Nonetheless, starting with a
>premise that at least a significant group of philosophers held and hold,
>Bhaskar deployed the form of a TA as an immanent critique in order to
>provide a strong foundation for the notion of a stratifed reality. The cash
>value of this argument is not epistemic certainty (no such thing), but
>giving us a good reason to be realists. Even though Bhaskar's argument
>isn't based on an unquestionable premise, because the premise is a
>significant "given" of social and scientific life, the argument is quite
>powerful.
>That's what I was trying to say.
>Mike
>In a message dated 6/29/2003 6:42:28 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>rgroff-AT-yorku.ca writes:
>  Hi Mike,
>  I want to apologize in advance for sounding pissy.  I'm in a crabby
>  mood, and
>  I'm sorry.  I really wanted to respond though.
>  You wrote:
>  >Both Ruth and Mervyn make good points. Both agree that Bhaskar is
>  not
>  >starting from premises that every one in the world (irrespective of
>  class,
>  >gender, race, culture, ideology, religion, etc.) agrees with.
>  This is true, but misleading.  In terms of the difference between the
>  well-established definition of "transcendental argument" and the
>  definition of
>  "immanent critique," the point is not that Bhaskar acknowledges the
>  social
>  loction of knowers as well as the social character of knowledge
>  production
>  (which he does), but rather that he starts in RTS from a particular
>  conception
>  of what an experiment is, and of how important the practice is to
>  natural
>  science.  This, as Bhaskar says in the interview, is not the sort of
>  unquestionable premise (such as, in Kant, the fact that we experience
>  things)
>  that transcendental arguments are well known to have as their starting
>  points.
>  [In fact, one could argue without too much trouble that even the
>  mainstream
>  philosophers of science that RB was criticizing in RTS didn't accept
>  his
>  implicitly realist common-sense notion of what an experiment is -- and
>  that for
>  that reason the whole thing isn't REALLY an internal critique.  But I
>  digress.
>  I'm willing to say that RTS is an internal critique of a then-orthodox
>  (and
>  presently still dominant) position in the philosophy of science
>  concerning what
>  causal laws are.]
>  Okay, so that's my first niggle.  It's not about recognizing class and
>  race,
>  etc.; it's about beginning with a patently contested conception of what
>  an
>  experiment is, versus beginning with something like the fact of
>  experience.
>  You wrote:
>  The dispute is over
>  >what
>  >Bhaskar's argument should be called (Is it a transcendental
>  argument?) and,
>  >more importantly, what is the "cash value" of the argument (What do
>  you get
>  >from
>  >the argument?).
>  This is almost right, from my perspective, but not perfectly so.  [Not
>  quite
>  one-ness yet :-)]  What I disputed is Bhaskar's move of re-defining
>  transcendental arguments such that they are the same as internal
>  critiques, but
>  still retaining the former term.  In my view, if you re-define the concept
>  of
>  "transcendental argument" so that it no longer means what we all
>  know it means
>  and instead means the same thing as "internal critique," then what you
>  are
>  really saying is that you don't believe that transcendental arguments,
>  as we all
>  understand them, actually exist.  And that's fine.  But then you shouldn't
>  use
>  the term to describe what are really internal critiques and nothing
>  more (not
>  that they aren't plenty).
>  You wrote:
>  A transcendental
>  >argument, as I understand it, does not have to rely on premises that
>  every
>  >one
>  >agrees to, but those premises that are accepted in the philosophical
>  context
>  >in
>  >which the argument is made.
>  I just don't think that this is right.  (It's true - for what it's worth - that
>  the first few lines of the Cambridge Phil Dictionary read that way, but
>  only if
>  you take them out of context.)  Really.  (And just logically, if T args
>  were
>  already widely understood to require only some premise that at least
>  one person
>  agrees with (though preferable more), then why would RB be saying
>  that it is his
>  idea that something like this is so?)
>  Now, about the "cash value."  I have never regarded the line of
>  argument in RTS
>  as constituting a transcendental argument (rather, in my view, it's an
>  internal
>  critique of a Humean position in the phil of science), so I have never
>  worried
>  about whether or not it carries the epistemic force that transcendental
>  arguments are understood, by those who believe in them, to carry.  It
>  isn't; it
>  doesn't; so what?
>  The thing that bugs me - no, makes me crazy - is saying: "A's, which
>  have a lot
>  of clout, don't really exist.  In reality they are the same thing as B's,
>  which
>  have less clout.  Nonetheless I'm going to refer to the B's that I like a
>  lot as
>  A's." 




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