This paper reconsiders the relation between Kantian transcendental reflection (including transcendental idealism) and 20th century philosophy of science. As has been pointed out by Michael Friedman and others, the notion of a "relativized a priori" played a central role in Rudolf Carnap's, Hans Reichenbach's and other logical empiricists' thought. Thus, even though the logical empiricists dispensed with Kantian synthetic a priori judgments, they did maintain a crucial Kantian doctrine, viz., a distinction between the (transcendental) level of establishing (...) norms for empirical inquiry and the (empirical) level of norm-governed inquiry itself. Even though Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is often taken to be diametrically opposed to the received view of science inherited from logical empiricism, a version of this basically Kantian distinction is preserved in Kuhn's thought. In this respect, as Friedman has argued, Kuhn is closer to Carnap's theory of linguistic frameworks than, say, W.V. Quine's holistic naturalism. Kuhn, indeed, might be described as a "new Kant" in post-empiricist philosophy of science. This article examines, first, the relativization of the Kantian a priori in Reichenbach's work, arguing that while Reichenbach (after having given up his original Kantianism) criticized "transcendentalism", he nevertheless retained, in a reinterpreted form, a Kantian-like transcendental method, claiming that the task of philosophy (of science) is to discover and analyze the presuppositions underlying the applicability of conceptual systems. Then, some reflections on Kuhn's views on realism are offered, and it is suggested that Kuhn (as well as some other influential contributors to the realism debate, such as Hilary Putnam) can be reinterpreted as a (relativized, naturalized) Kantian transcendental idealist. Given the central importance of Kuhnian themes in contemporary philosophy of science, it is no exaggeration to claim that Kantian transcendental inquiry into the constitutive principles of empirical knowledge, and even transcendental idealism (as the framework for such inquiry), still have a crucial role to play in this field and deserve further scrutiny. (shrink)

Lonergan’s treatment of transcendental method in the first chapter of <Method in Theology> presents a bit of a puzzle. Something about heightening consciousness at the level of experience is different from the reflexive operations by which we objectify this heightened experience. Lonergan’s summary statement of transcendental method makes no explicit reference to what this difference is. In this paper, I work out an interpretation of transcendental method in which I relate the problem of (...) being explicit about heightening consciousness at the level of experience to the problem of objectifying the subject-as-subject: both are a matter of performance. In this regard I identify a performative mode of subjective operation – in addition to the direct and introspective modes that Lonergan identifies in <Insight> – and develop an account of this mode of operation as it is manifested experientially in feelings and existentially in action. I relate the notion of feelings as data of consciousness to Lonergan’s account of the unity-in-tension of human consciousness, various forms and degrees of tension being the primary feeling-states of conscious experience. Finally, I note the significance of transcendental method in action with regard to understanding the subtleties of subject-to-subject communication in the encounter of patient and clinician as part of a philosophy of health on which I am working. (shrink)

Transcendental theology is, as a return to the subject, an attempt to take experience seriously, because transcendental method explores the full range of the conditions of the possibility of experience. For Rahner, transcendental theology is theological anthropology. This study explores his method also in relation to transcendental experience of God.

In modern science, an important feature is a fact that interdisciplinary research is becoming more popular. This is due to the mutual interest of different areas of science to the methods and principles of other areas. The article is devoted to the study of the possibility of dialogue between physical cosmology and transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy provides an interesting look at the problem of subject-object relations in which the object depends on the observer. The possibility of science using (...) a specific transcendental method in the field of astrophysics has been studied. This possibility is due to the specifics of astronomical objects that exist for the observer as phenomena that do not correspond to reality in time and space. The article emphasizes the conventional concept of realism in modern science. The interdisciplinary dialogue of American and Ukrainian philosophical cosmology with its methods and physical cosmology with its objects promotes mutual development. (shrink)

In modern science, an important feature is a fact that interdisciplinary research is becoming more popular. This is due to the mutual interest of different areas of science to the methods and principles of other areas. The article is devoted to the study of the possibility of dialogue between physical cosmology and transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy provides an interesting look at the problem of subject-object relations in which the object depends on the observer. The possibility of science using (...) a specific transcendental method in the field of astrophysics has been studied. This possibility is due to the specifics of astronomical objects that exist for the observer as phenomena that do not correspond to reality in time and space. The article emphasizes the conventional concept of realism in modern science. The interdisciplinary dialogue of American and Ukrainian philosophical cosmology with its methods and physical cosmology with its objects promotes mutual development. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the relation between Kantian transcendental reflection and 20th century philosophy of science. As has been pointed out by Michael Friedman and others, the notion of a "relativized a priori" played a central role in Rudolf Carnap's, Hans Reichenbach's and other logical empiricists' thought. Thus, even though the logical empiricists dispensed with Kantian synthetic a priori judgments, they did maintain a crucial Kantian doctrine, viz., a distinction between the level of establishing norms for empirical inquiry and the (...) level of norm-governed inquiry itself. Even though Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is often taken to be diametrically opposed to the received view of science inherited from logical empiricism, a version of this basically Kantian distinction is preserved in Kuhn's thought. In this respect, as Friedman has argued, Kuhn is closer to Carnap's theory of linguistic frameworks than, say, W.V. Quine's holistic naturalism. Kuhn, indeed, might be described as a "new Kant" in post-empiricist philosophy of science. This article examines, first, the relativization of the Kantian a priori in Reichenbach's work, arguing that while Reichenbach criticized "transcendentalism", he nevertheless retained, in a reinterpreted form, a Kantian-like transcendental method, claiming that the task of philosophy is to discover and analyze the presuppositions underlying the applicability of conceptual systems. Then, some reflections on Kuhn's views on realism are offered, and it is suggested that Kuhn can be reinterpreted as a Kantian transcendental idealist. Given the central importance of Kuhnian themes in contemporary philosophy of science, it is no exaggeration to claim that Kantian transcendental inquiry into the constitutive principles of empirical knowledge, and even transcendental idealism, still have a crucial role to play in this field and deserve further scrutiny. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to explain Hermann Cohen´s logic of origin and the role that negativity plays in it. In the first section, we will consider Cohen´s transcendental method. This will lead us to Cohen´s early interpretation of differential calculus, that contains the presuppositions necessary to understand his logic of origin. In the second section, we will analyze Cohen´s mature doctrine of pure thinking in order to study the connections that Cohen establishes between the concepts of (...) origin, something and nothing. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate two views that have been put forth regarding the logical structure of Peirce's putative transcendental deduction of his categories. Specifically, the paper asks the question: if Peirce is indeed invoking a transcendental method, should we understand such a "deduction" as an instance of prescision, of abduction, or of some other option? Both prescision and abduction have been offered as descriptions of Peirce's transcendental method, but it is (...) not clear whether either of these structures is in fact transcendental, or whether either can be reduced to the other. It is my intention to make this debate (which has been latent... (shrink)

The viabiliry of Rahner’s “transcendental method” in the light of challenges posed by contemporary hermeneutics is explored through an analysis of what Rahner relatively early called “transcendental hermeneutics.” In tum, this is shown to be based upon Rahner’s understanding of how the trinitarian Word and Spirit interrelate.

This article argues that Husserl’s interpretation of Kant’s “regressive method” was influenced by Cohen’s account of the “transcendental method.” According to Cohen’s epistemological reading of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s transcendental method consists in explaining the “fact of science” by using a regressive procedure from this fact to its conditions of possibility. Husserl ascribes, as Cohen does, this method to Kant himself. First, he criticizes Kant for regressively deducing conditions of possibility that elude (...) any type of intuitive fulfillment. Second, he understands Kant as a rationalist who wanted to advance intellectualism and oppose empiricism. Finally, Husserl holds that Kant’s concept of experience refers to scientific experience. All these points are central aspects of Cohen’s interpretation. Moreover, from Husserl’s own copy of Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience we can observe that he had read §12 on Kant’s transcendental method. Therefore, there is a Cohenian influence on Husserl’s criticism of Kant’s method. (shrink)

The Fichte-Schelling Correspondence interweaves intriguing personal stories and philosophical combat. One of the sadder personal stories involves Schelling getting wind of Fichte’s remark to Friedrich Schlegel that he did not understand transcendental method. The letters document several clumsy attempts by Fichte to minimize the criticism only to have it surface again in a letter Fichte wrote to a former student, Jean Baptiste Schad, who showed the letter to Schelling. In it, Fichte claimed that Schelling understood Wissenschaftslehre no better (...) than Friedrich Nicolai, whom Fichte had publicly excoriated for critiquing as “I-philosophy” a superficial assemblage of random quotes from mixed sources. (shrink)

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such (...) experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions. (shrink)

The Fichte-Schelling Correspondence interweaves intriguing personal stories and philosophical combat. One of the sadder personal stories involves Schelling getting wind of Fichte’s remark to Friedrich Schlegel that he did not understand transcendental method. The letters document several clumsy attempts by Fichte to minimize the criticism only to have it surface again in a letter Fichte wrote to a former student, Jean Baptiste Schad, who showed the letter to Schelling. In it, Fichte claimed that Schelling understood Wissenschaftslehre no better (...) than Friedrich Nicolai, whom Fichte had publicly excoriated for critiquing as “I-philosophy” a superficial assemblage of random quotes from mixed sources. (shrink)

In Hegel's Faith and Knowledge he argues that Kant's critical system is unable to defend the assumptions that underlie its analysis of our cognitive faculties; Kant has begun his investigations by presupposing the distinction between our finite faculties, those “in which possibility and actuality are distinguished” , and those of a being possessing an “intuitive understanding” , for whom cognition is not limited to the sensibly given. In so defining our cognitive faculties as finite Kant is able to distinguish our (...) dependence not merely on the understanding as the locus of concepts, but so too on sensibility as the source of intuition. Cognition is thus limited to those thoughts that offer beyond their conceptual consistency the possibility of empirical givenness, and so define their actuality in terms of sensibility. And yet, it would seem, as Hegel argues, that. (shrink)

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1. Kant on the “Conditions of the Possibility” of Experience -- Claude Piché // 2. Plato and Kantian Transcendental Constructivism -- Tom Rockmore // 3. Kant and Fichte on the Notion of (Transcendental) Freedom -- Violetta L. Waibel // 4. Fichte, Transcendental Ontology, and the Ethics of Belief -- Steven Hoeltzel // 5. Transcendental Philosophy as “Therapy of the Mind”: Fichte’s “Facts of Consciousness” Lectures -- Benjamin D. Crowe // 6. From Transcendental Philosophy to Hegel’s (...) Developmental Method -- William F. Bristow // 7. How Transcendental Is Cohen’s Critical Idealism? -- Halla Kim // 8. Heidegger’s Failure to Overcome Transcendental Philosophy -- Eric S. Nelson // 9. Others as the Ground of Our Existence: Levinas, Løgstrup, and Transcendental Arguments in Ethics -- Robert Stern // 10. Raising Validity Claims for Reasons: Transcendental Reflection in Apel’s Argumentative Discourse -- Matthias Kettner // 11. Transcendental Arguments Based on Question-Answer Contradictions -- Yukio Irie // 12. Consequences of the Transcendental-Pragmatic Consensus Theory of Truth -- Michihito Yoshime // 13. On Jürgen Habermas’s Cognitive Theory of Morality -- Yasuyuki Funaba . (shrink)

In light of the central role scientific research plays in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the question has arisen whether his phenomenology involves some sort of commitment to naturalism or whether it is better understood along transcendental lines. In order to make headway on this issue, I focus specifically on Merleau-Ponty’s method and its relationship to Kant’s transcendental method. On the one hand, I argue that Merleau-Ponty rejects Kant’s method, the ‘method-without-which’, which seeks the a priori conditions (...) of the possibility of experience. On the other hand, I show that this does not amount to a methodological rejection of the transcendental altogether. To the contrary, I claim that Merleau-Ponty offers a new account of the transcendental and a priori that he takes to be the proper subject matter of his phenomenological method, the method of ‘radical reflection’. And I submit that this method has important affinities with aesthetic themes in Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Kant’s transcendental philosophy of Kant is the metaphysics of possible experience related to the solution of the [semantic] problem set in his famous letter to M. Hertz (02.21.1772): “What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call 'representation' to the object?” There are two possible ways to solve it: empiricism and apriorism, – and Kant chooses the second of them, thus making his “Copernican Revolution”. In the Preface to the 2nd ed. Critique Kant correlates (...) his Copernican turn/revolution with "altered method of our way of thinking [in metaphysics]" [BXVIII] and considers it as an analogue of the hypothetico-deductive scientific method of Copernicus – Galileo – Newton. The analysis of structure of the Copernican Revolution shows that it is possible to pick out two vectors: the empirical (from the thing-in-itself to representations) and the noumenal ones (from the transcendental unity of apperception [or transcendental object] to objects of experience). The introduction of an a priori vector (resp. a priori forms) means that Kant's conception is not empirical, but Kant’s keeping empirical vector says that it is compatible with empirical realism [A370–1]. Thus, Kantian transcendentalism is a synthesis of realism (basic level) and transcendental idealism (as a meta-level superstructure above it), whose task is to find out and analyze the transcendental conditions [possibility] of our knowledge of objects. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend an interpretation of the methodological development of transcendental philosophy from Kant's first Critique to Fichte's later Jena-period Wissenschaftslehre. Both Kant and Fichte claim that experience is founded upon certain a priori subjective structures and capacities. However, I argue that the methodology of Kant's first Critique includes a number of assumptions and explicit doctrines that limit his ability to explain experience. The chief problem of Kant's theory of method is, I claim, his distinction between (...) the methods of philosophy and mathematics, whereby the method of construction is limited to mathematics. I argue that Fichte attempts to solve Kant's problem by expanding the method of construction to philosophy itself. As a method, construction has two aspects. First, the task of the philosopher is to reconstruct discursively the spontaneous process whereby subjectivity is self-constructing. By "self-construction," I refer to a functional structure wherein subjectivity is the achievement of a range of proto-conscious, primitive mental activities. Second, the method of the philosopher is similar to the method of geometric construction, viz., the postulation of a task to be completed regarding which one---beginning from putatively self-evident resources---creatively and imaginatively seeks out a solution. Fichte turns to construction since there is no algorithm for philosophical reflection and he revises Kant's important doctrines regarding intellectual intuition and the productive imagination. However, though Fichte's solution to Kant's problem is promising, the notion of construction itself generates a number of problems. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has focused on the provocative suggestion that there is a deep unity linking the philosophical projects of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley. In addition to providing scholars with the opportunity to consider what these four shared, the unanimity story also offers an occasion to reflect on what is distinctive about each. Whereas Anscombe, Foot, and Midgley each turn to broadly Aristotelian resources for developing an alternative to the dominant non‐cognitivism of their day, Murdoch turns (...) to Platonic ones. The nature of Murdoch's Platonism, however, is not always well understood and has been identified as a “recurring question.” This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing attempt to understand Murdoch's distinctive, Platonic alternative to the ethical non‐cognitivism of her day. I contend that Murdoch's philosophical method, especially its transcendental elements, is an unexplored resource for better understanding the character of her Platonism as a modest one. (shrink)

Presented in the “Critique of Pure Reason” transcendental philosophy is the first theory of science,which seeks to identify and study the conditions of the possibility of cognition. Thus, Kant carries out a shift to the study of ‘mode of our cognition’ and TP is a method, where transcendental argumentation acts as its essential basis. The article is devoted to the analysis of the transcendental arguments. In § 2 the background of ТА — transcendental method (...) of Antiquity and Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason — are analyzed and their comparison with ТА is given. § 3 is devoted to the analysis of TA in the broad and narrow senses; a formal propositional and presupposition models are proposed. In § 4 I discuss the difference between TA and metaphysics’ modes of reasoning. It analyzes the Kant’s main limitations of the use TA shows its connection with the Modern Age and contemporary science. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSeveral factors, including but not limited to his investments in Naturphilosophie and Spinoza, make it hard to determine the extent to which Schelling remains on track with Kant’s transcendental project. My aim here is to isolate Schelling’s conception of transcendental method in the first decade of his philosophical development, a topic that has received little direct and extended discussion. Schelling’s 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism stands out as of particular importance, but no single text can be (...) regarded as Schelling’s definitive statement of his views on the question of method in his early period, necessitating a diachronic approach. I argue that, though in important respects Schelling’s concerns diverge from those of Kant and Fichte, Schelling should not be regarded as abandoning the transcendental framework, and is best understood as attempting to work out what is involved at the original point of adoption of the transcendental standpoint. This entails, I argue, exchanging transcen... (shrink)

Hans Wagner (1917–2000), using the achievements of German transcendental philosophy, gives a transcendental argument for the idea of human dignity. He claims that to ground the validity of human thinking and all its products (e.g. culture), we must accept the validity of the idea of human dignity. The structure of my paper is as follows: First, I consider what it means to give a transcendental justification of something. I reconstruct the neo-Kantian’s understanding of transcendental method. (...) Then I argue that Wagner’s idea of human dignity as a foundation of every ethics and law is nothing other than a fruitful interpretation and continuation, perhaps only making explicit Kant’s main ethical ideas. To make this more clear I present the relation between Kant’s ethics and the material ethics of values and, following Wagner, I argue that grounding ethics on the idea of self-determination of human will does not necessarily lead to formalism in the form in which it was criticised by the representatives of the material ethics of values. Finally, I reconstruct Wagner’s argument for the claim that the idea of human dignity is a transcendental condition for the possibility of ethics and law in general. (shrink)

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

Presents the transcendental interpretation approach to psychological inquiry based on the use of the Kantian transcendental argument, which relies on the criterion of consistency. Kant's purpose in employing this argument was as a means for justifying particular knowledge claims. Use of this approach is illustrated by examining the intersubjective and moral conditions necessary for the practice of selfhood. It is argued that phenomena of interest to psychological study differ fundamentally from those of natural science, rendering some of the (...) methods applied in the latter inappropriate to the study of the former. The transcendental argument can provide a direction for psychological research in 2 ways: By helping it to lend intelligibility to its subject matter, and extending ordinary practices by making explicit the goods and norms that motivate them. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The paper discusses the philosophy of language and communication based on Immanuel Kant’s transcendental method. Firstly, the basic assumptions of methodical rationalism are presented. Subsequent sections analyse Kant’s intellectual successors: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ernst Cassirer. Both the intellectuals adopted Kant’s point of views and both treated language as an active, cultural factor participating in the creation of reality. The article ends with a suggestion that the transcendental approach will be present in the 21th-century researches on language (...) and communication. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall discuss the assumption that Kant’s method in the Critique of Pure Reason is a transcendental analysis of experience. In order to do this, I will consider the conception of transcendental analysis that Marburg Neo-Kantianism powerfully introduced into Kant interpretation. I shall first develop a general model of transcendental analysis in the Marburg sense. I shall then ask whether this is a suitable model for the interpretation of the first Critique. Kant’s distinction (...) between the analytic and synthetic method in the Prolegomena seems to contradict this, given that it is a distinction between two different mathematical methods of demonstration. However, I shall argue that any such reading is incompatible with the Critique, and that transcendental analysis is indeed a legitimate interpretative model for understanding Kant. I shall finally turn to Strawson’s conception of descriptive metaphysics, which has strong affinities to Kant and the Marburg school. Most importantly, Strawson helps us to understand three significant aims at which transcendental analysis is directed. Finally, comparing transcendental analysis to dominant conceptions of analysis in philosophy, I shall argue that it constitutes a variety of philosophical analysis sui generis. (shrink)