Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (1995)
Questions & Answers #2: "The Validity of Transcendental Arguments"

1. Why did Kant think that "we must be able to distinguish . . . an objective order . . . from a merely subjective order"?

The next sentence (20) isn't entirely convincing: "Otherwise we would have experience which was not experienced as being of anything; it would be an experience without an object" or focal point. We might have an entirely subjective order or focal point, as in dreams & abstract expressionist painting. These structures/texts are necessarily more meaningful to the dreamer/artist/subject - the one who creates the order -- than to someone for whom the structure is a message. Discourse communities (esp. science) require public, if not objective, focal points that allow members to presume that they are all talking about the same (public) thing.

2. What is entailed in Taylor's conception of human nature as "an embodied agent"? (22-3, 25). How is this different from Plato's notion of human nature? From Aristotle?

T. explains Heidegger's concept of Dasein. P. 23: we know things, not because we are uninvolved bystanders, but because we are involved - "at grips" - with problems & goals which are specified in the discourse communities of which we are members. Plato's epistemological ladder identifies an "embodied agent" as possessing only opinion, a knack or habit which (partially) works for reasons the agent cannot theoretically explain. Thus she does not really know what is going on in the event under examination. A. recognizes that people can possess real knowledge through performance (knowing what a hammer is by using it), but such knowledge is always a participation in a pre-existing transcendental. Thus, if the sun exploded & no humans remained, for A. a hammer would still exist in principle or as a form. For H. & T. it wouldn't because a hammer only makes sense as an instrument used in a human performance.

3. How do you derive the meaning of "up & down" - in Plato's outlook? -- in Taylor's pragmatic outlook? (23-4).

As with the hammer, P. would say that "up & down" have a priori Forms; they have ideal/absolute definitions. Pragmatists say that all definitions (essences) are social constructions/inventions. Thus, "What up & down are, rather, are orienting directions of [for] our actions & stance," 24. They are performative knowledge abstracted & reified into descriptions/definitions.

4. How do we (Plato) know what the world is like? "We perceive the world through our activity" in it (25).

P. says that the masses do not know what the world is like. Like rats running a maze, their behavior is caused by habit, ritual, superstition, & sloth. Everyone begins at this epistemological level, but the phil. analyzes experience to discern underlying principles (logos) at work. P. is not a sophist; the logos is unquestionably there as the cause. Once the principles/formulas are induced, they substitute for muddled experience. P. theory of truth offers a correspondence model. Our conception is true if it corresponds exactly to the Form. An insurmountable problem arises when we ask, "how can anyone check or examine such a correspondence between an idea in the mind & the object Form?" We cannot escape our own minds.

5. Explain: "Our perception of the world as that of an embodied agent is not a contingent fact we might discover empirically; rather our sense of ourselves as embodied agents is constitutive of our experience." If you accept this epistemology, what happens to Plato's view? (26).

In P.'s view order/syntax is somehow "out there," objective. Order proceeds from the top (cosmic) down - to be discerned by us. If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, for P. there is still sound. Or consider Newton's Platonic definitions of an absolute volume of space that is immeasurable or an absolute scale of time during which nothing discernible occurs (i.e., it cannot be measured). Einstein took a pragmatist view when he said that these make no sense because the notion of space means that somehow a human being/mind construes how to measure a particular space. Otherwise it is indiscernible. How could you identify or know where this putative immeasurable space is? Same deal with time: unless it is measurable/discernible, it literally does not exist for human beings. Obviously P. is out of business. His vertical hierarchy (a ladder to God) collapses into horizontal human communities where the discourse community of art measures beauty, the discourse community of science measures empirical phenomena, etc.

6. Taylor's pragmatism recognizes Kant's epistemological limits (we know how things appear to us, not what they are in-themselves). Moving from metaphysics to epistemology, Taylor suggests that our world (our knowledge) has two "indispensable, apodictic and true" (empirical) features. What? (28-9).

"An activity has a point." There must be a focal point to provide foreground/background, gestalt/order. An agent/performer "must have some grasp of what he is doing . . . [provided by the experience/performance] involved in doing it," 29.

7. Taylor seems to admit defeat: "this way of putting it [pragmatism] begs the questions that transcendental arguments are meant to resolve, such as: is there a reality of which we are aware?" What has Taylor/pragmatism accomplished? (30).

Replacing the metaphysical (Platonic) question of "What is real/true?" with the epistemological question of "What is the focal point (an ultimate concern) for this discourse community"? Morality (the values/goals we are committed to) and social phil. (what instruments do we use to realize those goals) become paramount & this are issues within our grasp.

8. Taylor does not claim to have gained metaphysical certainty, but he does claim (like Descartes) to have gained epistemological or phenomenological certitude. What? (31).

"These claims can be certain because they are grounded in our grasp of the point of our activity, that grasp we must have to carry on the activity," e.g. of how to play chess. We know "the conditions of success & failure"; the goals are not in God's mind or at the top of P.'s ladder. They are implicit/tacit in the performance itself.

9. If awareness of the activity we are engaged in (moral discussion, carpentry, feeding a child, etc.) is indispensable, what happens to Plato's metaphysical view - a view from the outside (non-subjective), also called "the view from nowhere" (meaning from no particular/subjective perspective)? How about objective/transcendental ethical principles (e.g., no abortion)? How can these be grounded?

In the pragmatist outlook, every value is a human, social judgment. Abortion, capital punishment, welfare, & every other issue does not have an a priori right answer. If they did - if such a priori Forms/absolutes existed - one is obliged to explain their level of existence. How do they exist, since they are clearly value judgments & not empirical objects? The historical answer has been that they are transcendentals (Platonic Forms) or judgments/ideas in the mind of God. The problem with this answer is that philosophically/logically it really is not an answer. When one has recourse to God, then mere human/philosophic thinking comes to an abrupt end. The pragmatic view must necessarily consider the concept of God like any other abstraction; as an idealization induced from human experience. Where else could the definition come from? Notice that this is not a skeptical answer. It does not imply that the concept of God is an illusion or meaningless; it simply insists that if it is meaningful, it must be so by referring to human experience. Let's switch to physics for another illustration. How does one know that Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein's notions are true? Strictly speaking (following Kant's notion of phenomenology) one cannot know they are true. The usual defense is to say they work, that if you do X the result is Y. However, this is a pragmatic argument (if you follow the technique or do the experiment, you will produce the results we are interested in).

On to #3: "Explanation & Practical Reason"
Oct. 96