HQ

When two people talk about something they assume there is something to talk about and that they have the necessary means (reason, language, shared experience etc) to talk about it. It does not strike us as odd that this is possible; we take it for granted.  Friedrich Nietzsche, on the other hand, did not.  Nietzsche  famously describes a scene in which a madman proclaims the death of God. And if God is dead, says Nietzsche, we can no longer assume that what we are talking about makes any sense at all. Why? because if there is no ultimate explanation for everything, there is  no  explanation for anything. And if there is no explanation, talk cannot get anywhere. If God is dead, Nietzsche says, we are all madmen. Should we go home and forget about it? No. What we can do instead, argues Nietzsche, is construct sense, create our own world for our own purposes. It is madness, yes, but if God is dead, it is our only option.  Whatever one ...

Transcendental arguments usually seek to demonstrate that human experience (or a particular part of human experience) has, as a necessary condition, the existence of or the belief in something. The form of the argument is simply that “there must be something Y if there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition” 2 Robert Stern maintains that, strictly speaking, transcendental arguments are for a metaphysical precondition. He suggests that there are four common features in the metaphysical kind of transcendental argument. First, the claim is for a metaphysical condition usually arrived at a priori and obtains in every possible world. For example, says Stern, “existence is a condition for thought, as the former is metaphysically required in order to do or be anything at all.” 3 Second, transcendental arguments start with all or an aspect of experience. The argument proceeds from an experience (belief, laws of logic, intuition etc.) and inquires as to what the necessary con...

Just what is a transcendental argument? Well let me attempt to explain. Transcendental arguments usually seek to demonstrate that human experience (or a particular part of human experience) has, as a necessary condition, the existence of or the belief in something. The form of the argument is simply that “there must be something Y if there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition” 2 Robert Stern maintains that, strictly speaking, transcendental arguments are for a metaphysical precondition. He suggests that there are four common features in the metaphysical kind of transcendental argument. First, the claim is for a metaphysical condition usually arrived at a priori and obtains in every possible world. For example, says Stern, “existence is a condition for thought, as the former is metaphysically required in order to do or be anything at all.” 3 Second, transcendental arguments start with all or an aspect of experience. The argument proceeds from an expe...