Performative transcendental arguments |
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Authors: | Adrian Bardon |
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Institution: | (1) Wake Forest University, 27109 Winston-Salem, NC, USA |
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Abstract: | ‘Performative’ transcendental arguments exploit the status of a subcategory of self-falsifying propositions in showing that
some form of skepticism is unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between performatively inconsistent
propositions and transcendental arguments, and then to compare performative transcendental arguments to modest transcendental
arguments that seek only to establish the indispensability of some belief or conceptual framework. Reconceptualizing transcendental
arguments as performative helps focus the intended dilemma for the skeptic: performative transcendental arguments directly
confront the skeptic with the choice of abandoning either skepticism or some other deep theoretical commitment.
Many philosophers, from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to Jaakko Hintikka, C.I. Lewis, and Bernard Lonergan, have claimed
that some skeptical propositions regarding knowledge, reason, and/or morality can be shown to be self-defeating; that is to
say, they have claimed that the very upholding of some skeptical position is in some way incompatible with the position being
upheld, or with the implied, broader dialectical position of the skeptic in question. Statements or propositions alleged to
have this characteristic also sometimes are called ‘self-falsifying,’ ‘self-refuting,’ ‘self-stultifying,’ ‘self-destructive,’
or ‘pointless.’ However, proponents of the strategy of showing skepticism to be self-defeating have not in general adequately
distinguished between two types of self-defeating proposition: self-falsifying and self-stultifying. In the first part of
this paper I distinguish between self-falsifying and self-stultifying propositions, and introduce the notion of performative
self-falsification. In the second part I discuss classical transcendental arguments, ‘modest’ transcendental arguments, and
objections to each. In the third part I introduce two types of transcendental argument—each labeled “performative”—corresponding
to two types of performatively self-falsifying proposition, and I compare them to modest transcendental arguments. |
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