Transcendental arguments, self-reference, and pragmatism

Richard Rorty

pp. 77-103

in: Peter Bieri, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Lorenz Krüger (eds), Transcendental arguments and science, Berlin, Springer, 1979

Abstract

Most transcendental arguments are anti-sceptical and anti-reductionist, claiming that the reduced world the skeptic holds out as the only legitimate option is not a genuine alternative. They have as their paradigm Kant's arguments against Hume. Such arguments fortify those philosophers who want to insist, with Kant, that there is such a thing as philosophical criticism of the rest of culture — that the philosopher can say something which science cannot about the claims to objectivity and rationality to which various parts of culture are entitled. Thought of in this way, transcendental arguments seem the only hope for philosophy as an autonomous critical discipline, the only way to say something about human knowledge which is clearly distinguishable from psychophysics on the one hand and from history and sociology of knowledge on the other.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel