anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions
either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some
kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a
position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or
cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what
the opponent questions. Such arguments take as a premise some obvious
fact about our mental life—such as some aspect of our knowledge, our
experience, our beliefs, or our cognitive abilities—and add a claim
that some other state of affairs is a necessary condition of the first
one. Transcendental arguments most commonly have been deployed against
a position denying the knowability of some extra-mental proposition,
such as the existence of other minds or a material world. Thus these
arguments characteristically center on a claim that, for some
extra-mental proposition P, the indisputable truth of some general
proposition Q about our mental life requires that P. Eighteenth
Century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant is usually credited with
introducing the systematic use of the transcendental argument. His use
of it included arguments aimed at refuting epistemic skepticism, as
well as arguments with the more fundamental purpose of showing the
legitimacy of the application of certain concepts—in particular those
of substance and cause—to experience. Later scholars have developed a
variety of general objections to the transcendental argument strategy.
In response, some recent and contemporary philosophers have offered
updated strategies similar in form to transcendental arguments, but
with less controversial premises and/or more modest goals.
1. Transcendental Reasoning and Skepticism
"Transcendental" reasoning, for Kant, is reasoning pertaining to the
necessary conditions of experience. Though he did coin the term
"transcendental argument" in a different context, Kant actually did
not use it to refer to transcendental arguments as they are understood
today. He did sometimes use the term "transcendental deduction" for a
range of arguments concerning the necessary conditions of coherent
experience. Early uses of the term "transcendental argument" for
arguments of this type have been noted in Charles Peirce and J. L.
Austin. Often, the purpose of a transcendental argument is to answer a
variety of epistemic skepticism by showing that the skeptical position
itself (or its expression) implies or presupposes the possibility of
the very knowledge in question. In this way, as Kant puts it in his
Critique of Pure Reason, "the game played by idealism [is] turned
against itself." The skeptic is shown to presuppose the very facts he
or she calls into question. (Kant also had a more modest use for
transcendental arguments pertaining merely to establishing the
applicability of certain fundamental concepts; see Section 8, below.)
Kant's anti-skeptical arguments were inspired by a number of figures,
but his primary concern was with what he saw as the empiricist
skepticism of David Hume. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues
that all ideas are derived from simple sense-impressions, simple
impressions of reflection, and reflection on the mind's operations. He
goes on to argue that complex ideas of material objects are not fully
grounded in the data of the senses, but are based in part on
psychological propensities to pass from one idea to another. Our
senses do not present us with the characteristics of mind-independence
and perdurance; rather, our experience consists in sequences of
impressions, some of which exhibit a resembling constancy with each
other over time. To this picture, Hume argues, we must add an
imaginative propensity to identify, and thus attribute continued
existence to, impressions exhibiting constancy and coherency. Since
the distinctness of these impressions conflicts with our propensity to
identify them, we posit enduring and independent items that are
responsible for various subjective impressions. One natural conclusion
from this line of reasoning is that, whatever compulsion we might feel
to acknowledge external, material things, neither reason nor the
senses can be said to yield knowledge of such items.
Kant addresses skepticism about the material world most directly with
his "Refutation of Idealism" in the second edition Critique of Pure
Reason. There he argues that the possibility of recognizing the
time-order of one's own perceptions depends on the application of the
concept of alteration to one's own mental states. And in order for us
to possess and apply the concept of alteration, it must be exhibited
in the sensory experience of objective alteration. This experience
cannot be based on patterns or regularities in experience (including
its constancy and coherence), since the recognition of any such
pattern depends on the organization of one's experiences in time. The
possibility of the organization of one's own experiences in time (and
even recognizing that one's own states have a determinate time-order
at all) requires relating changes in those experiences to objective
alterations. Since we do make judgments about the time-order of our
own experiences, we must have experienced objective alteration.
Kant's answer to the skeptic thus takes roughly the following form:
(1) I make judgments about the temporal order of my own mental states.
(2) I could not make judgments about the temporal order of my own
mental states without having experienced enduring substances
independent of me undergoing alteration.
(3) Hence independent, enduring substances exist.
He thus establishes a claim to knowledge of the existence of enduring,
independent objects by showing that the skeptic is committed to
something (in this case, consciousness of one's own perceptions as
ordered in time) that is impossible without the existence of such
objects. The skeptic thus is either committed to the existence of such
things by virtue of accepting the obvious fact that we are conscious
of our own perceptions as ordered in time, or presumes the existence
of such things in the very attempt to raise doubt about it. This
result would license the conclusion that we have knowledge of material
objects, or at least that skepticism about the very existence of such
items is incoherent.
Kant's refutation of skepticism matches the template for a common
understanding of the classical form of a transcendental argument:
(1) Some proposition Q about our mental life, the truth of which
is immediately apparent or presumed by the skeptic's position.
(2) The truth of some extra-mental proposition P, our knowledge of
which is questioned by the skeptic, is a necessary condition of Q.
(3) Therefore P.
Transcendental arguments are further distinguished by the fact that
the necessity they draw on is, characteristically, neither empirical
nor analytic necessity. Rather, claims like those found in the second
premise imply some claim to synthetic a priori knowledge—knowledge of
substantive facts about the world derived by a priori metaphysical
reasoning. If such claims were based on empirical observation, they
would beg the question against most relevant forms of skepticism; if
these claims were merely analytic, then it is unlikely any substantive
conclusion could be derived from them.
Transcendental arguments can be characterized as demonstrations that
the skeptic's articulation of her own position is self-defeating in
some way. These arguments imply that the skeptic cannot even
coherently articulate a given position. Epicurus is reported to have
argued that, without free choice, one assents to propositions only
because one is determined to do so. Without free choice, then, it
would be impossible to rationally assent to any proposition—that is,
to assent to it because one has good reasons to think it is true,
rather than because one must. The proposition that one has no free
choice is thus self-stultifying, in that, if true, it cannot be
warranted. This reasoning implies the following argument:
(1) I am able to rationally assent to the proposition that there
is no free choice.
(2) I could not rationally assent to any proposition if there were
no free choice.
(3) Hence, there is free choice.
Hilary Putnam (1981), drawing on his concept of content-externalism,
holds that we cannot refer to brains and vats if we are brains in vats
who have never actually experienced such things. If we have never had
contact with external objects, our language is "Vat-English," rather
than English. Since reference, in his view, is partly determined by
its context and causal history, it would be impossible for a permanent
brain-in-a-vat to raise doubts about whether she is a brain in a vat.
Given this theory of reference, the proposition that all persons are
and have always been brains in vats is self-defeating, in that it is
either false or not affirmable by anyone. Insofar as the skeptic
supposes that the issue is a legitimate one to raise, she presupposes
that the relevant concern is moot:
(1) I am able to raise the question as to whether all persons have
always been brains in vats.
(2) I could not refer to brains in vats unless some person (that
is, myself) were acquainted with such things.
(3) Hence, it is not the case that all persons have always been
brains in vats.
Finally, it is an implication of Kant's reasoning in the Refutation of
Idealism that the proposition that no one has had any contact with
material objects would be literally unthinkable without contact with
material objects to give one a sense of an objective system of
temporal relations (in turn enabling inner time-determination). If
Kant is right, then such a proposition is performatively
self-falsifying in the strongest sense: the possibility of the skeptic
articulating her own position would prove its falsity.
2. The Modal Objection
One general objection commonly raised against transcendental arguments
concerns the very type of necessity transcendental arguments rely
upon. Transcendental arguments characteristically center on a claim to
synthetic a priori knowledge. Take, for example, Kant's claim that the
experience of enduring objects undergoing alteration is a precondition
of subjective time-consciousness. This claim is neither grounded in
experience nor follows from the meanings of the terms involved. He
does provide some (often rather obscure) reasoning to support this
claim, but that support, again, typically involves claims to synthetic
a priori knowledge. Such claims have been portrayed as ultimately
relying on a mysterious faculty of philosophical intuition, of insight
into the natures of things not grounded in observation or experiment,
the legitimacy of which is at least as doubtful as sensory perception
or empirical inference.
3. The Analytic/Criteriological Approach
Partly in response to concerns about the modality of Kantian
transcendental arguments, and in response to allied concerns about
claims to synthetic a priori knowledge, Peter Strawson, Jonathan
Bennett, and others have promoted a strategy structurally similar to
Kant's, but which is intended to avoid such problematic claims. Their
strategy is analytic, in that it concerns relationships between
beliefs or concepts and the conceptual frameworks needed to give those
beliefs or concepts their content.
In Individuals, Strawson (1959) offers a transcendental argument
purporting to demonstrate the existence of other minds. He argues
that, to employ the concept of one's own mind in the self-ascription
of mental states, one must be able to distinguish between one's own
mental states and the mental states of others. This requires the
ability to predicate mental states of both oneself and others. But, he
continues, in order to employ (or understand) any general concept one
needs criteria for its application. In order to ascribe mental states
to oneself, then, one must be in possession of logically adequate
criteria (that is to say, behavioral criteria) for ascribing mental
states to others.
Strawson's (1966) approach in The Bounds of Sense to reconstructing
Kant's Refutation of Idealism argument works similarly. His
reconstruction states that, to give content to the idea of one's being
in some particular conscious state at some particular time, one needs
"the idea of a system of temporal relations which comprehends more
than those experiences themselves." One's experiences thus must be
taken as experiences of things independent of oneself with their own
temporal order. The idea of temporal order, he argues, cannot be
gleaned from one's own case alone; the application of the concept of
temporal ordering depends on the possession and application of a
concept of objectivity. But does the requirement that one have and
apply the concept of an objective order guarantee that there really
exists such an order? Is it not sufficient that we think there is one?
Similarly, is it not sufficient for the self-ascription of mental
states that we think there are other minds? Strawson's reply rests on
his "principle of significance," which states that "there can be no
legitimate, or even meaningful, employment of ideas or concepts which
does not relate them to empirical or experiential conditions of their
application." One's assessment of the analytic/criteriological
approach depends on one's assessment of this verificationism-inspired
principle.
4. The Verificationism/Idealism Objection
In a much-cited essay, Barry Stroud (1968) argues that, to any claim
that the truth of some proposition is a necessary condition of some
fact about our mental life, the skeptic can always reply that it would
be enough for it merely to appear to be true, or for us merely to
believe that it is true. Transcendental arguments, he claims, at best
demonstrate how things must appear, or what we must believe, rather
than how things must be. Anti-skeptical transcendental arguments of
familiar sorts are thus left with a gap to fill. Stroud's
contention—which is now widely accepted—is that such arguments, when
aimed at refuting epistemic skepticism, can only close that gap by
adverting either to a sort of verificationism or to idealism. In the
case of Strawson's arguments above, even supposing that we must be in
possession of some criteria for applying concepts of other minds
and/or an objective world, this fact only has anti-skeptical
consequences if we also accept that there is no meaningful
concept-application without experiential criteria sufficient for
knowing whether the concept is instantiated. As Stroud points out,
such a principle is implausible. Further, if we accepted such a
principle, other aspects of transcendental arguments would be
superfluous. All we would have to show is that we meaningfully employ
external-world concepts; it would be impossible for any form of
skepticism to be meaningful or intelligible.
As Stroud goes on to point out, another way of closing the gap between
it being necessary that things appear a certain way and things being
that way, would be to embrace an idealism that reduces how things are
to how things appear, or must appear, to us. Kant did not rely on any
verificationist principle in making the case against skepticism, but
according to many scholars his "transcendental idealism" made possible
the jump from how things must be experienced by us to how things must
be by reducing objects of experience to mere mental representations.
But such idealism is unacceptable to most: embracing idealism to
answer the epistemic skeptic results in a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Despite Stroud's blanket assertion, it should be noted that the
verification/idealism objection only applies on a case-by-case basis.
Some arguments that take the form of transcendental arguments may have
other deficiencies, but do not rely on either verificationism or
idealism. A few scholars have observed that Descartes's "Cogito, ergo
sum" argument can be re-conceived as a transcendental argument:
(1) I think.
(2) In order to think "I think," it is necessary to exist.
(3) Hence, I exist.
This argument meets the criteria for a transcendental argument: it
takes a fact about one's mental life as a premise, adds that some
extra-mental fact is a necessary condition of the truth of that
premise, and concludes that the extra-mental fact holds. This argument
would turn on the claim that the statement, "I do not exist" (or
better, the proposition that no one exists) is performatively
self-defeating in the sense that the fact of its performance counts as
conclusive evidence against its truth. That is what connects the
mental fact (I am thinking about whether I exist) to the relevant
extra-mental fact (I exist). Regardless of how this argument might
fail in some other respect, it presupposes neither verificationism nor
idealism in closing the gap between the internal and the external.
5. The Uniqueness-of-Conceptual-Framework Objection
Another important general objection to transcendental arguments
concerns the hidden assumption requiring the uniqueness of the
conceptual scheme that is held to be a precondition of experience in
any given transcendental argument. Kant, for example, argues that
experience is only possible if certain concepts are applied a priori
in its organization, such as the concepts of substance and cause.
Strawson similarly argues that experience is only possible via the
application of the concept of an objective system of temporal
relations. Stephan Körner (1974), however, famously characterized
arguments resting on such claims as hopeless, because there is no way
to establish the uniqueness of the relevant conceptual precondition.
His concern is that other conceptual schemes and principles—perhaps
unimaginable to us—might suffice as well. But if such schemes cannot
be ruled out, then the validity of any such argument cannot be
decisively established. All transcendental arguments make some claim
about necessary enabling conditions. Given that the sense of necessity
in question is not logical, how can the uniqueness of the enabling
conditions ever be shown?
6. Modest Transcendental Arguments
In response to some of these concerns Stroud has proposed that we keep
transcendental arguments, but moderate the goal we hope to achieve
with them (Stroud 1994 and 1999). The goal of a "modest"
transcendental argument is just to show the indispensability of some
belief, concept, or conceptual framework. The conclusion such
arguments hope to draw is not a refutation of some variety of
epistemic skepticism via a demonstration of the alternative, but
rather a demonstration of the unintelligibility of the skeptical
position. The idea is that, by showing that it is impossible
consistently to maintain a given position, one also shows that it is
legitimate to ignore it. Arguments of this sort seek to show that
beliefs about, say, an external world or other minds are indispensable
to coherent experience or the use of language.
The modest strategy in replying to external-world skepticism would be
to concede that one cannot prove transcendentally that there is an
external world, but to show that one must believe in such a world, or
presuppose such a world as part of one's interpretive framework, as a
precondition of coherent experience. This, Stroud argues, would be
sufficient to entitle one to ignore external-world skepticism. We are
entitled to hold a belief, according to this line of thought, if that
belief can be shown to be incorrigible or invulnerable to correction.
One major advantage to modest transcendental arguments is that they
are not subject to the verificationism/idealism objection. All that
such arguments seek to show is that we must believe a certain way, not
that the world must be a certain way. Thus there is no gap to be
closed between showing that the world must appear a certain way and
eliminating the possibility that the world really is not that way.
7. Objections to Modest Transcendental Arguments
Arguments relying on the relative necessity of some conceptual
framework or set of beliefs, however, are subject to certain general
objections. A version of Körner's uniqueness objection still seems
applicable. To provide some response to the epistemic skeptic, an
indispensability argument would have to show that a given belief is
indispensable as such, rather than just indispensable for us. And to
do that is impossible; we can only argue for the uniqueness of a
conceptual or doxastic framework on the basis of our own concepts and
beliefs. As Stern (2000) puts it, if indispensability "is weaker than
infallibility in so far as it leaves open the possibility that our
belief that p is false, how can p be immune from doubt?; and if it is
immune from doubt though possibly false, isn't this a vice rather than
a virtue?" If the "necessity" of some set of beliefs or conceptual
framework just follows from our own inability to think outside that
framework, then the discovery of this necessity is just a discovery
about our own limitations, rather than a discovery about the world
around us. Indispensability may indeed be all a modest transcendental
argument needs to show that skepticism is inert (for us), but is this
an interesting result if it stems just from our own incapacities?
This kind of concern is reflected in a challenge to the classical
claim that radical skepticism about reason is self-defeating. How can
we know that logical inference really is truth-preserving? How can we
know that the principle of non-contradiction is true? It would seem
that such a skeptical position is unanswerable, because any answer
involves argument, which presupposes the validity of deductive
inference. But, as Aristotle first suggested in his Metaphysics, when
one makes a statement asserting the impossibility of rationally
supporting any claim one makes, one presupposes the theoretical
possibility of claims being rationally supported (c.f. Meynell 1984).
The framework under which we suppose that it is possible to rationally
support claims is, in other words, indispensable, and the belief that
it is possible to do so is invulnerable. This argument is,
effectively, a modest transcendental argument.
But why can't the skeptic make the same point while limiting herself
to asking for proof of the universal and necessary validity of
deductive inference? The skeptic need not on this approach make some
claim to the effect that statements may not be rationally supportable
(a claim, in other words, that itself calls for support). An inherent
inconsistency in the affirmation of some such claim need not, then, be
a concern (see Fowler 1987). In asking for proof, of course, the
skeptic in some way implies that there is at least some prima facie
doubt with regard to the operation of reason in finding truth. So in
that way the skeptic must be implying at least a prima facie
possibility that reason is inadequate to that task.
A modest transcendental argument establishing the indispensability of
a conceptual framework has the effect of reducing the skeptic either
to inconsistency or to raising doubts in the abstract. Since the
alternative is inconceivable, the skeptic cannot consistently commit
to the possibility of the alternative. Yet it seems too quick to go
directly from showing that some conceptual framework is necessary for
us to deny any relevance to questions about the truth of the
framework. It is not clear, then, that any modest transcendental
argument really renders its target skepticism inert. Even if the
skeptic is shown to be unable consistently to raise a certain
possibility, that possibility is not thereby taken out of contention.
However abstract (or even inexpressible) the doubt may be that
remains, the modest transcendental argument falls short of
establishing epistemic entitlement.
8. A More Modest Project for Kant
There is another kind of modest application of transcendental
arguments that is not subject to the above concerns, owing to its
pursuit of a different kind of result. Part of Kant's project is not
so much concerned with responding to the epistemic skeptic as with
responding to an opponent who questions the very conceptual legitimacy
of external-world concepts like substance and cause. Despite an
emphasis in contemporary philosophy on epistemic skepticism, for Kant
conceptual legitimacy appears to be the primary or fundamental
application of transcendental reasoning. This project is the major
concern of his "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" in the
Critique of Pure Reason. He employs a legal metaphor at the beginning
of his defense of our use of such conceptsto distinguish between "what
is lawful (quid juris) and that which concerns the fact (quid facti)."
His avowed focus, then, is on the "lawfulness" of our application of
external-world concepts. He is concerned, as a first goal at least,
with the applicability (or "objective validity") of these concepts
quite independently of their instantiation. That this should be a
primary goal for Kant makes a lot of sense in light of some of his
major precursors. Though in other respects having very different
views, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume each questioned the legitimacy of
the application of concepts like substance and cause to experience.
Leibniz denied not only the existence of material substance but its
metaphysical possibility. Because matter is infinitely divisible, he
argued, it cannot be a basic constituent of the universe. Only minds
can be substances, so the concept of substance is not even
appropriately applied to matter. Berkeley argued that all we can
describe are our ideas, and there is no sense in saying that ideas
resemble material objects or their qualities. Talk of material objects
independent of the mind is incoherent. Finally, Hume argued that it is
impossible to find a source for the concepts of substance and cause in
perception sufficient to explain either the occurrence or even the
content of such ideas.
Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume all have in common, then, the position
that external-world concepts like substance and cause are either
incoherent or inapplicable to perceptual experience. In modern terms,
they held that such application, if possible at all, is a category
mistake. It is not difficult to see how at least part of Kant's
project in his transcendental deduction of these concepts is to refute
this view, as distinguished from the project of proving that we
veridically experience a world of causally-related substances. His
strategy in doing so is notoriously hard to pin down, but the gist of
it is that he claims that the concept of an objective world (which
would include the concepts of substance and cause) is needed as an
organizing principle—a rule or set of rules—for reproducing and
synthesizing in judgment one's various and otherwise inherently
unconnected representations. For example, because all experience qua
one's subjective flow of perceptions is successive, the concept of
cause is needed to distinguish between a succession of experiences
representing the experience of an object (which could be experienced
differently and yet be thought of as the same object) and a succession
of experiences representing the experience of an event (the order of
the stages of which determines the way it can be experienced). Because
the thought of a causal relationship between event-stages is
constitutive of the thought of an event, and because distinguishing
between an accidental and externally-determined sequence of
experiences is necessary to time-determination, the a priori
possession of the concept of cause is a necessary condition of
coherent experience.
The legitimacy of the concepts of substance and cause would also be a
consequence of some of Kant's more explicitly anti-skeptical
arguments. A consequence of his reasoning in the "Refutation of
Idealism," for example, is that objective time-determination is
implicated in subjective time-determination. The application of
concepts relevant to determining an objective time-order (as the
concepts of substance and cause are, he had explained earlier) is
inseparable from subjective self-awareness. Since each of Kant's
precursors allow for an inner mental life, they cannot consistently
deny the legitimacy of applying concepts like substance and cause to
perceptual experience. This would not prove the existence of
causally-related material substances, but it would accomplish quite a
lot: it would demonstrate the inadequacy, in a certain respect, of
Leibnizian metaphysics, Berkeleyan phenomenalism, and Humean
empiricism.
9. Prospects for Strong Transcendental Arguments
Defenders of strong anti-skeptical transcendental arguments still
exist. Kenneth Westphal (2003), for example, is more confident than
most that some of Kant's core transcendental arguments can be
successful. He believes that the process by which Kant identifies our
basic cognitive capacities and their enabling conditions (Westphal
calls this "epistemic reflection") has been confused with simple
introspection, which is an empirical enterprise concerned with the
contents of one's consciousness. He argues that Kant does convincingly
show that we legitimately apply certain concepts a priori as a
necessary condition of coherent consciousness, and that there are, in
fact, "perduring, perceptible, causally interacting physical objects."
Despite Kant's remaining defenders, however, few now believe that
transcendental arguments can yield a direct refutation of epistemic
skepticism. Most now agree that more modest goals are in order if such
arguments are to remain relevant. Such modest variations on the
transcendental argument form continue to appear in a variety of
contexts.
10. References and Further Reading
* Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Γ.
* Austin, J.L. (1939). "Are There A Priori Concepts?", Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society 18.
* Bardon, Adrian (forthcoming). "The Aristotelian Prescription:
Skepticism, Retortion, and Transcendental Arguments," International
Philosophical Quarterly.
* Bardon, Adrian (2004). "Kant's Empiricism in His Refutation of
Idealism," Kantian Review 8.
* Bardon, Adrian (2005). "Performative Transcendental Arguments,"
Philosophia 33.
* Bennett, Jonathan (1966). Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
* Berkeley, George (1979). Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous, ed. by Robert Adams (Indianapolis: Hackett).
* Brueckner, Anthony (1983). "Transcendental Arguments I." Noûs
17, pp. 551-76.
* Brueckner, Anthony (1984). "Transcendental Arguments II." Noûs
18, pp. 197-225.
* Cassam, Quassim (1999). Self and World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Cassam, Quassim (1987). "Transcendental Arguments,
Transcendental Synthesis, and Transcendental Idealism," Philosophical
Quarterly 37.
* Davidson, Donald (1984). Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Fowler, Corbin (1987). "Scepticism Revisited," Philosophy 62, pp. 385-88.
* Genova, A.C. (1984). "Good Transcendental Arguments."
Kant-Studien 75, pp. 469-95.
* Gram, Moltke (1975). "Why Must We Revisit Transcendental
Arguments?" The Journal of Philosophy 72, pp. 624-6.
* Guyer, Paul (1987). Kant and the Claims of Knowledge.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
* Hintikka, Jaakko (1962). "Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or
Performance?", The Philosophical Review 71.
* Hume, David (1978). A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press).
* Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans.
by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
* Körner, Stephan (1974). Categorial Frameworks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
* Leibniz, G.W. (1998). Monadology, in G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical
Texts, trans. by Richard Franks and R.S. Woolhouse (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
* Lewis, C.I. (1946). An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. (La
Salle: Open Court).
* Lewis, C.I. (1969) Values and Imperatives, ed. by J. Lange
(Stanford: Stanford University Press).
* Lipson, Morris (1987). "Objective Experience." Noûs 21, pp. 319-43.
* Lonergan, Bernard (1970). Insight (New York: Philosophical Library).
* Meynell, Hugo (1984). "Scepticism Reconsidered," Philosophy 59,
pp. 431-42 .
* Peirce, C.S. (1931 & 1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce, 8 vols., vols. i-iv ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-5), vols. vii-viii ed. A. Burks
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).
* Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, Truth, and History (New York:
Cambridge University Press).
* Rosenberg, Jay F. (1975). "Transcendental Arguments Revisited."
The Journal of Philosophy 72, pp. 611-24.
* Schaper, Eva (1972). "Arguing Transcendentally," Kant-Studien
63, pp. 101-16.
* Stern, Robert (2000). Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Strawson, P.F. (1966). The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen & Co.).
* Strawson, P.F. (1959). Individuals (New York: Methuen & Co.).
* Strawson, P.F. (1985). Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties
(New York: Columbia University Press).
* Stroud, Barry (1999). "The Goal of Transcendental Arguments," in
Robert Stern (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
* Stroud, Barry (1994). "Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities,
and Invulnerability," in Paolo Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary
Epistemology ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers).
* Stroud, Barry (1968). "Transcendental Arguments," Journal of
Philosophy 65 (1968).
* Westphal, Kenneth (2003). "Epistemic Reflection and
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(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
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