the kantian sine qua non

8/7/2019 The Kantian Sine Qua Non

1/23

1

The KantianSine Qua Non:Experience, Modality, and the Structure of Transcendental Thinking

C.J. Sentell

Fall 2007

Experience may well teach us what is, but not that it could not be otherwise - Kant

One of the central problems of the Critique of Pure Reason concerns the nature and

possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. In this work, Kant wants to show how judgments,

the truth of which are not dependent upon experience but which yet pertain to and amplify

knowledge of experience, are possible. To solve this and other problems, Kant introduces

what is arguably his most significant and innovative contribution to the Western

philosophical tradition, namely, the critical or transcendental method. This method, Kant

claims, not only yields an answer to that crucial yet perplexing question of the synthetic a

priori, but it also reformulates the way in which the traditionally interminable problems of

metaphysics are understood. And since the most interesting answers almost always involve a

certain destruction of the questions, or at least how the questions are understood, the answers

Kant provides too do not do so much as answer the traditional metaphysical questions as

provide a new framework through which to conceive them.

This is in fact Kants explicit aim in the first Critique, and the transcendental method

he deploys therein is intended to inaugurate and ground what would amount to a Copernican

Revolution in philosophy. In this way, the concept of the transcendental is perhaps the

central feature of Kants self-styled philosophical revolution. But in the first Critique, as

well as throughout his other critical works, Kant deploys the concept in a variety of ways.

For example, there are transcendental arguments (e.g., the Second Analogy), transcendental

deductions (e.g., the Deduction of the Categories), transcendental ideas, expositions, a

transcendental logic, and a transcendental aesthetic. The complete system of these

transcendental concepts and expositions would, according to Kant, comprise an organon

whose utility would really be only negative, serving not for the amplification but only for

the purification of our reason (A11/B25). In this way, Kants transcendental philosophy

does not seek to produce a positive doctrine about knowledge, reason, or experience, but

rather only a critique ofthese that delineates their limits and conditions of possibility.

For Kant, our knowledge of the world is always already mediated by the specific way

in which we experience the world. But thatwe experience and thatwe know Kant takes as a

fundamental fact, the explanation of which is the task of transcendental philosophy. To

explain this fact, Kant asks the transcendental question namely, what are the conditions

necessary for experience and knowledge to be possible? so as to explain the fact that


2/23

2

knowledge is actual and to account for synthetic, a priori judgments in and about the world.

For Kant, moreover, the explanations that the transcendental method provides constitute the

paradigm ofphilosophical explanation. And in pursuing the conditions without which

knowledge and experience would not be possible, Kants creates a space behind knowledge

that gives a certain depth an epistemic depth to our experience of the world. This depth,

this space wherein reason seeks its own conditions, is precisely the space of Kants

transcendental, which is at once ambitious in its claims and modest in its aims. That is,

within the epistemic re-presentation of objects and their relations, the transcendental is

ambitious in its search for the substantive, necessary conditions for the possibility of

experience. But if this experience is epistemically bounded if it is, in the end, experience

considered only in its discursive, epistemological aspects then its limits are relatively

modest. By rigorously circumscribing what can be said of the knowable, Kant restrains

reasons reach for knowledge within experience.

In this essay, I will inquire into the nature, structure, and function of the

transcendental. To this end I will consider the concept in two ways, the first of which is more

specific and is the one Kant is inquiring into in the first Critique, namely, about the necessary

conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience. The second sense, however, is more

general and is perhaps best characterized in terms of the structure of the question. With

respect to these different senses, I will inquire into two different modal frameworks at work

within Kants transcendental. On the one hand there is the modality of empirical thinking,

which consists of cognitive judgments expressive of the relation between the objects of

experience to the subject of experience; on the other hand there is the modality of

transcendental thinking, which is different in scope, sense, and aim insofar as it takes the

actuality of experience as its starting point and subsequently seeks its constituent conditions

of possibility. Thus, the operative modality of the transcendental is one based in actuality,

and takes as its starting point the fact of experience. This experience is material, empirical,

and is thesine qua non of the transcendental itself; in this way, there is a necessary condition

for the possibility of the transcendental itself, a condition of material actuality that,

importantly, is notat issue within the epistemic frame of transcendental philosophy. Without

this experience of the world, a world that appears stable, solid, and wholly material from an

empirical point of view, the transcendental question could not even be asked. At least that is

my specific suggestion. My aim more generally, however, is to interrogate these differences

so as to better understand what is at stake in using the concept, both for Kant and those in his

wake, and, only indirectly, how it might be employed in possible critical futures.


3/23

3

To begin to understand Kants conception of the transcendental, it is important to

distinguish it from what it is not, namely, neither the empirical nor the transcendent.

Empirical cognition, for Kant, concerns the objects and the relation between objects as they

appear in the representative faculty of the mind, i.e., the understanding. Transcendental

cognition, on the other hand, does not concern the objects of representation nor their relation

within the faculty of understanding, but rather pertain only to the necessary conditions under

which those objects and their relations can appear at all. I call all cognition transcendental,

Kant says, that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our a priori concepts of

objects in general (A11/B25). So, importantly, the transcendental is neither a unique thing

(or set of things), nor a rarefied space in which true or real thought occurs; rather, the

transcendental is a certain type of cognition that is both behindand aboutcontingent,

empirical knowledge. Certain cognitions are transcendental or empirical, then, and a thought

of the former category is produced when it concerns the a priori conceptual grounds of any

and all objects in general.

Compared to the subject matter of empirical thinking, then, the subject matter of

transcendental thinking is not the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but the

understanding, which judges about the nature of things (A13/B26). Kant says that the

difference between the transcendental and the empirical therefore belongs only to the

critique of cognitions and does not concern the relation to their object (A57). Thus,

transcendental thought concerns the understanding itself and not what the understanding

understands, namely, the empirical relation between objects. In this way, the distinction

between the empirical and the transcendental is not one of strict, mutually exclusivity.

Indeed, as Kant says, it is a distinction only to those interested in undertaking a critique of

cognition, and is not intended to hypostasize or reify these types of cognition as being

actually separate or mutually exclusive. On the contrary, for the crux of the critical project is

precisely to elaborate the thoroughgoing reciprocity and mutually dependency of these two

types of cognition by way of establishing their relationship through necessary conditions.

This way of understanding the difference between the transcendental and the

empirical is structurally analogous to the distinction Kant draws between form and content.

While transcendental cognition concerns the form of the understanding itself, empirical

cognition concerns the content or matter, and the relations between these that the

understanding organizes according to its forms. But like the distinction between the

transcendental and the empirical, the distinction between the form and content of thought

should not be overdrawn and hypostasized into mutually exclusive, independently existing


4/23

4

entities. This is because each distinction is only separable analytically and always actually

occurs in conjunction with one another. For Kant, there is no such thing as bare content

without form, or empty form without content; each of these necessarily depends upon the

other in actual fact. So even though the distinction between form and content is fundamental

to Kants project of articulating the necessary conditions for any possible experience, the two

are inextricably linked and are, therefore, insufficient independent of one another.

In Kants account of cognition, for example, he distinguishes between intuitions,

which are given through the faculty of sensibility and supply the content of every cognition,

and concepts, which are given through the faculty of the understanding and supply the form

for every cognition (A50/B74). For cognition to occur both intuitions and concepts are

required; each is a necessary condition for the possibility of cognition, and neither is

sufficient unto itself. Neither is to be privileged, because, as Kant says, [w]ithout sensibility

no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts

without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75). Only through

the union of sensibility and understanding can cognition arise, and these functions are neither

exchangeable nor mixable. As part of the faculty of the understanding, concepts provide the

discursive rule by which sensible content is thought, thus making concepts more like an

activity than a thing. The activity of concepts, moreover, is spontaneous and is occasioned

by the sensible material of intuition. But, as McDowell says of Kant, in every experience

conceptual capacities are not exercised on non-conceptual deliverances of sensibility.

Conceptual capacities are already operative in the deliverances of sensibility themselves

(1999: 39). In this way, sensibility provides the content or matter of cognition, while the

understanding conceptualizes that content in such a way that makes it intelligible to

discursive knowers, and in each case both form and content are inextricably bound together.

So like the distinctions between form and content and concept and intuition, the

distinction between the empirical and the transcendental is not accurately characterized as a

rigid, hierarchical, mutually exclusive dichotomy. Rather, they are relational distinctions that

each presuppose and entail the other. Because the transcendental concerns the necessary, a

priori conditions for the thinking of any object in general, it depends upon the actual thinking

of objects a thinking that is by definition empirical so as to even formulate its question

about what those conditions might be. Given the fact of thought concerning empirical

objects and their relations, in other words, the transcendental is entailed insofar as there must

be conditions that enable such thought to occur. In this way, empirical cognition is itself a

necessary condition for any transcendental cognition whatsoever; if there were no such thing


5/23

5

as empirical cognition, transcendental cognition would make no sense at all precisely because

the latter is looking into the conditions of the former.

In this way, the possibility of transcendental cognition is situated within the matrix of

actual experience that is empirical thought. Put differently, given that there is empirical

thought, there must be some conditions that necessarily obtain so as to make that thought

possible, and these conditions are, ipso facto, transcendental conditions. So while Kant

indeed says that the empirical is a consequence of the transcendental (A114), there is an

important sense in which the transcendental is also a consequence of the empirical. To put

this point more strongly, empirical cognition is a necessary condition for the possibility of

transcendental cognition. This reciprocal dependency of the transcendental and the empirical

is often lost in the emphasis Kant places on the transcendental method providing the

necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. But if experience itself were not

possible indeed, if it were not actual then the transcendental method would have no place

to begin. This is because, whether it is empirical or transcendental, cognition always begins

from with experience.

Of course, for Kant this does not mean that all knowledge is necessarily grounded

upon or arises from experience. Kant draws this distinction from the very beginning, for in

the Introduction to the A edition experience is the first product of the understanding as it

works on the raw material of sensible sensations (A1). And in the Introduction to the B

edition, Kant claims that all our cognition begins with experience, because experience is

what awakens and puts into motion the cognitive faculty by working up the raw material

of sensation into representations and their concomitant relations (B1). And so, temporally,

no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins (B1).

In this way, though it is not dependent upon it, transcendental cognition itself always begins

within experience but is at the same time an establishment of the bounds and limits of any

possible experience.

It is important to note, however, that for Kant experience and the empirical are not

exactly identical. Experience, for Kant, is the productof the receptive and the spontaneous

faculties of the mind namely, sensibility and understanding, respectively which, when

joined in a certain manner,produce experience. The empirical, on the other hand, is but one

of type of cognition found within experience, which pertains to objects and their relations as

they are represented when the faculties of sensibility and understanding join to produce

experience. As McDowell puts it, experience is always receptivity in operation such that,

in experience, spontaneity is inextricably implicated in deliverances of receptivity (1996:


6/23

6

24, 41). Experience is always already a passive reception of the world and a spontaneous

contribution by the subject for whom the world is represented. In short, experience is the

product of an active receptivity, while the empirical is specific instance of that active

receptivity. In a very literal sense, then, experience is an artifactproduced by the ongoing

and ever-present union of sensibility and understanding within discursive human beings.

Only from within this productive framework can cognition then be differentiated into its

various components (i.e., the empirical and transcendental) and its various grounds (i.e., the a

priori and a posteriori). Such differentiations are accomplished only after experience is

underway and are always distinctions as they are found within experience in general.

So for Kant experience cannot be transcended; one cannot go beyond the limits of

experience or, better yet, suspend experience, so as to examine the nature of experience. For

to do so would be to transcend experience, to go beyond the limits of experience, and the

transcendental is emphatically not transcendent in that it aims to establish the limits, scope,

and possibility of experience from within experience itself. This is why Kant introduces the

transcendental in the first place, namely, to establish the boundaries of experience through an

examination of the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. And even though

the conclusions of transcendental inquiry do not depend upon experience, the inquiry itself

always occurs from within experience. In this way, the concept of the transcendental is not

divorced from experience or the empirical per se, but rather only separable from these as a

way ofgroundingknowledge and explaining its possibility. The transcendental project, in

other words, always occurs in the middle of experience, and is operative only within and after

experience has begun. The transcendental question is not one opposed to experience, but is a

question one asks from within experience and is a question one asks of experience, if only

indirectly.

Having now drawn some of the basic distinctions central to the concept of the

transcendental, I would like to turn to the concept in action, so to speak, by means of

examining how it functions within the structure of arguments more generally.1

One place to begin characterizing the general form of a transcendental argument is to

note its basic structurally similarity to traditional conditional or stipulative arguments. Like

traditional conditional arguments, transcendental arguments posit an initial premise and

proceed in a conditional manner to the conclusion. The general form of such an argument

1 This is important because a variety of philosophers after Kant have employed this form of argument in the

service of ends that, though they may be formally similar to, are by no means identical with Kants own

ends. I am thinking about philosophers as diverse as Marx, Pierce, Royce, Wittgenstein, Strawson,

Davidson, Habermas, and Foucault, to name but a few of the widely acknowledged instances.


7/23

7

can be rendered: A; if A then B; ergo, B. But, unlike conditional arguments, transcendental

arguments expand upon the initial premise in ways that a traditional conditional syllogism

does not. Because they begin with a premise that most, if not all, interlocutors accept or must

accept, and expand upon that premise by outlining the necessary conditional connections for

that premise to obtain, transcendental arguments conclude with the conditions necessary for

that premise to be true. In this way, the general form of a transcendental argument can be

rendered: A; A only if B, B only if C, C only if D; ergo, B, C, D, which characterizes the

transcendental argument as a regress back up a series of necessary conditions (Harrison

1989: 43).2

In transcendental arguments, this series of conditional connections is meant to be

strictly necessary, and hence a priori, which, when the argument is run forward, amounts to a

deduction and the strict certainty that accompanies all such arguments. In this way,

transcendental arguments can be characterized as two-way arguments: on the one hand, the

conditions can be seen as regressively formulated so as to explain the initial premise, while,

on the other hand, the conditions can be progressively formulated so as to deduce necessary

conclusions from the initial premise. In both aspects, however, the initial premise is

expanded through the minor premises that establish the necessary conditional connections,

and the nature of this expansion is precisely what constitutes the philosophically interesting

character of transcendental arguments.3

With this in mind, I would now like to distinguish transcendental arguments from

conditional arguments in more detail by noting two fundamental differences between them,

namely, 1) the status and use of the primary premise, and 2) the nature, scope, and function

of its conclusion. I will take each of these in turn.

The status and use of the primary premise in a transcendental argument not only

firmly differentiates it from traditional conditional arguments, but it also has much to do with

whether or not the argument is, in the end, successful in its aims.4 And while Stroud points

out that such aims are central to distinguishing an argument as a transcendental one, I want to

2 This regressive characterization of transcendental arguments is not entirely unproblematic, however,

because while it indeed finds clear expression in KantsProlegomena , in the first Critique the

transcendental is taken to have a progressive function as well, that is, to advance substantive, syntheticapriori claims.

3To oversimplify Kants classic example: there is experience; the condition for the possibility of

experience is the necessary truth of, among other things, the categories of the pure understanding; ergo, the

categories must be true given that they are necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, which has

already been granted in the initial premise. In this example, the expansion of the major premise in the

conclusion of the conditional includes the necessary entailment of the pure categories of the understanding.

It is, in other words, precisely the categories that are philosophically interesting, and not the fact that

experience is possible.4 Historically, transcendental arguments are typically understood to have, among other things, a general

anti-skeptical thrust, while more recently they have been used to establish the necessary conceptual features

for the possibility of such things as belief, language, and communication.


8/23

8

suggest that the overall aim of the argument determines the sense in which the initial premise

is to be understood (1999:157). Thus, if the specific goal of an argument determines its

status with respect to a transcendental project, and if that goal also determines the status of

the initial premise, then there seems to be a genuine possibility for transcendental arguments

(and thinking more generally) to have varying degrees of modesty based on varying aims.5

To capture this continuum of modesty, consider the various characterizations that can be

accorded to the status of the initial premise as ranging from being a) simply generally

accepted, to b) being uninferred and advanced without further grounding, or to c) being

necessary insofar as the denial of the premise would involve a contradiction or absurdity.

This continuum ranges from the most to the least modest status accorded to the initial

premise, which then carries over to the strength of the argument more generally; naturally,

the stronger the sense in which the initial premise is understood, the stronger the conclusion.

The important point to note, however, is the use derived from thestatus of the initial premise.

The use of the initial premise in a transcendental argument aims, above all, to engage

as many interlocutors as possible by putting forward a claim that most, if not all, interlocutors

will accept. (After all, getting someone to agree to the first premise is thesine qua non of an

argument actually being an argument, let alone a successful one.) By positing its initial

premise in this way, a transcendental argument begins by making a claim of what is actual;

the premise, in other words, is a statement of fact, a statement about what is the case that

many or most interlocutors can accept. But once the argument begins, and if it proceeds

along strictly necessary conditional minor premises, the conclusion is meant to be undeniable

it has the force of a deduction and this is precisely the unique characteristic of such

arguments. Thus, the denial of the initial premise is one of the only ways to fundamentally

object to a transcendental argument.

So from the initial premise of the actual, transcendental arguments draw out

connections to show that the premise can be true if and only if some other necessarily

connected claim is true as well. In this way, transcendental arguments thus generate

conclusions which are strictly conditional...but where the consequent inherits (if the argument

is successful) the incontrovertibility of the arguments premise (Gardner 1999: 188). The

general structure of a transcendental argument, then, is that of a stipulative argument that

inquires into the conditions that are necessary given the initial premise, which is always a

claim of actuality or an accepted factual claim. In this way, the conclusions of transcendental

arguments can be distinguished from the conclusions of other conditional arguments in that

5 For more on the possible modesty of transcendental arguments, cf. Hookway (1999).


9/23

9

they are conclusions of conditions rather than conclusions of consequents. A normal

conditional argument describes the conditions under which a certain consequent obtains. For

example, if the clouds are sufficiently saturated with moisture, then it will rain; the clouds are

sufficiently saturated; ergo, it will rain. The conclusion in this type of conditional argument

is about what will happen if the premise conditions are fulfilled; it is a conclusion about the

consequences of conditions satisfied. To put it another way, the conclusion of a normal

conditional argument is about the conclusion of the consequent insofar as its conclusion

concerns consequences. But this formulation is needed only because of the unique structure

of a transcendental argument and the nature of its conclusions, which concern the very

conditions under which it is possible for the initial premise to obtain. So from the initial

premise of the actual, transcendental arguments proceed by outlining what must be the case

given the actuality of the premise. This articulation of what must be the case constitutes the

conclusion of a transcendental argument; the conditions for the possibility of the premise, in

other words, just are the conclusions of a transcendental argument. And the conclusion of

such an argument actually amounts to an explanation of the premises; that is, by

extrapolating the necessary conditions for the possibility of the premise, the conclusion of a

transcendental argument explains how the premise is possible.

Having now outlined the structure of transcendental arguments in particular, and the

concept of the transcendental more generally, I would now like to return specifically to the

way in which Kant uses the transcendental method to establish the conditions necessary for

the possibility of experience. According to Kant, for transcendental cognition to establish

such conditions requires that its guide always be the possibility of experience in general

(A783/B811). In other words, for Kant it is the possibility of experience that guides all

transcendental inquiry; this signpost, simply put, declares that experience is possible. And

not only is experience possible, but Kant takes the actuality of experience as a fact so

indisputable that his various interlocutors must agree to this initial premise. Once the initial

premise of the actuality of experience is granted, Kants transcendental arguments aim to

show that experience itself, [and] hence the objects of experience, would be impossible

without such a connection as he lays out in the first Critique (A783/B811). For Kant, such

connections must be derived a priori, since to do otherwise would involve a reference to the

very premise for which one is seeking the necessary conditional connections. But, crucially,

these conditions are not merely conceptual conditions; transcendental proofs do not show that

a certain concept leads directly to a certain other concept, e.g., that the concept of event leads

directly to the concept that the event has a cause. Rather, according to Kant, transcendental


10/23

10

proofs establish the objective validity of certain concepts by determining the possibility of

their cognition a priori.

Since Kant, however, the nature of the conditions that comprise transcendental

arguments has been widely disputed. This dispute within the post-Kantian tradition has led to

widely different interpretations of Kant and, therefore, to different appropriations of the

nature, scope, and efficacy of transcendental thinking.6

In the course of these interpretations,

two general alternatives to construing transcendental conditions have arisen, and because these

alternatives affect the way in which transcendental thought is understood, I will briefly

consider their merits.

The first of these alternatives is to construe the conditions as merely conceptual

conditions. On this account, the conditions that transcendental thinking uncovers are solely

conceptual in nature and explain the initial premise according to the concepts that are

necessary to make sense of the premise. This alternative is acceptable insofar as it goes, but,

as Gardner points out, this construal of the conditions as solely conceptual is in direct tension

with Kants own conception of them (1999: 189). If such conditions were merely conceptual,

their conclusions would be purely analytic and fall short of synthetic a priori status. In

Kants terminology, this conceptual construal would conflate such conditions with subjective

conditions of thought rather than demonstrate their objective validity, which is Kants stated

aim. That is to say, construing the conditions as solely conceptual ignores the special status

Kant allocates to them within transcendental philosophy by way of their providing the a

priori and yet synthetic conditions for the possibility of experience.

The second alternative to understanding the nature of the conditions is to construe

them as being of a phenomenal nature, or conditions that ultimately rely upon empirical or

phenomenal verification. In different ways, skeptics and conventionalists, respectively,

attempt to construe transcendental conditions such that their justification would stem from

the continued collection of direct empirical evidence or from the practical necessity such

conditions provide for the account at hand. And despite such construals being in direct

tension with Kants definition of the transcendental, Stroud argues further that inquiring into

the necessary conditions for the possibility of a given phenomena does not in any way settle

the question as to whether, in fact, that phenomenon actually obtains (1968: 254). Strouds

point rests on the simple logical observation that somethings being so does not follow from

its being thought or believed to be so (1994: 241). So when construed phenomenally, such

6 That is, for example, certain interpreters would like to retain transcendental arguments while dispensing

with Kants idealism. For more on the various interpretations, cf. Allison (2004: 3-19) and Gardner (1999:

30).


11/23

11

conditions fail to address the issue as to whether the connections drawn from the initial

premise are, in fact, valid beyond the contingency of experience. By pushing the issue of

validity back to some further criterion, namely, a phenomenal one, any such construal of the

conditions of transcendental thought would eventually invoke some version of the

verification principle (Stroud 1968: 255-6). Thus, when transcendental conditions are taken

to require a phenomenal confirmation of their validity, those conditions inherit the recursive

problems of justification that all forms of verificationism eventually encounter.

Both Gardner and Stroud point out, then, that the conditions that transcendental

arguments seek to establish, if they are to be successful in the way Kant takes them to be, can

neither be merely conceptual nor in any way phenomenal. This is because Kant intends for

transcendental arguments to answer the quid juris, or question of justification, and in doing

so provide the necessary grounds for objective validity (A84). In the Transcendental

Deduction, for example, Kant argues that the categories, as pure concepts of the

understanding, contain a priori the pure thought involved in every experience (A96). The

objective validity of such concepts would be sufficiently justified by proving that by means

of them alone an object can be thought (A97). To establish a particular condition or set of

conditions as necessary, Kants transcendental strategy considers the alternatives through a

negation of the condition(s) at issue so as to demonstrate the internal incoherence or

impossibility of the initial premise without such a condition, and insofar as such a negation

exhausts the field of possible alternatives, such conditions are necessary (Frster 1989: 15).

In other words, the objective validity of transcendental conditions is achieved by showing

them to be absolutely necessary for the possibility of any object appearing at all.

But the understanding, as the faculty that relates objects as they are represented, itself

requires an explanation as to how it is possible for it to achieve this relation, i.e., it requires a

transcendental explanation. The justification for the objective validity of the categories,

therefore, first requires a transcendental explanation of the understanding itself, which begins

not [with] the empirical but the transcendental constitution of the subjective sources that

comprise the a priori foundations for the possibility of experience (A97). Because

cognition for Kant is a whole of compared and connected representations, if each

representation were disconnected and isolated from one another, cognition or knowledge

would not be possible (A97). For cognition to be possible, the understanding must be

possible. Because cognition is the strict and inseparable union of the understanding and

sensibility even though they are, again, analytically isolable the understanding is

necessary though not sufficient for cognition to be possible. That is, because cognition is


12/23

12

possible only when receptivity is combined with spontaneity indeed, because experience is

always already an active, conceptualized receptivity the manifold of sense in intuition

corresponds to a synthesis in the understanding, the spontaneity of which goes through, takes

up, and combines the sensible manifold into a unified content so as to be experienced.

Kant terms this process synthesis, which is the action of putting different

representations together with each other and comprehending their manifoldness in one

cognition (A77/B103). As such, synthesis is an activity of the imagination that is always

both an apprehension and a reproduction (A120). Such synthesis, or unity, involves a three-

fold activity that constitutes the subjective sources of all cognition, which includes: 1) the

apprehension of representations as modifications of mind in intuition; 2) the reproduction of

the representations in the imagination; and 3) the re-cognition of the representations in the

concept (A97). These are the three subjective sources that comprise the a priori foundations

for the possibility of experience, and thus are necessary for cognition in particular, and the

understanding in general, to be possible. These conditions, in other words, are the grounds

upon which the understanding itself is made possible, and, through the understanding, also

make possible all experience as an empirical product of the understanding (A98). Qua

empirical product, then, experience itself must be capable of being experienced, or at least

recognized as experience, for without this there would be no starting point whatsoever for the

transcendental project.

Behind the three-fold synthesis that serves as the transcendental ground for the

understanding is Kants transcendental subject. This subject is not the subject encountered in

experience, nor is it the self as we experience it. Rather, for Kant, the transcendental subject

is the a priori ground for any experience at all; it is the bare I think that necessarily

accompanies any and al l thought (B132). Kant terms this originary synthesis the

transcendental unity of apperception, which is the unity through which all of the manifold

given in an intuition is united in a concept of the object (B139). This transcendental

function of the subject is contrasted to the subjective unity of consciousness, which is just the

unity of the empirically given manifold of intuition, i.e., it concerns only appearances and is

thus entirely contingent (B140). Precisely because the transcendental unity of apperception

constitutes the conditions without which objects could not be possible objects of experience

at all, it is through the former unity alone that objective validity is established. Objective

validity, then, is not a matter of the categories corresponding or matching up to the objects as

they are in themselves; it does not involve bridging a gap between two types of objects,

namely, phenomenal and noumenal ones, which Kant clearly considered unbridgeable


13/23

13

(A255/B311). Rather, objective validity is an achievement of transcendental philosophy

precisely because it demonstrates the necessity of the categories by means of showing that

through them alone any object whatsoevermustbe thought.

Thus, by answering question of justification, or quid juris, Kant intends for the

transcendental method to prove the objective validity of the categories. Kant draws this

question, along with its counterpart the quid facti, or question of fact, from Roman

jurisprudential thought, which is also an important historical and theoretical source for the

concept of the transcendental itself. Given that the quid juris is so closely connected in

Kants mind to the function of transcendental explanation or justification, in other words, it is

not coincidental that the Roman legal concept of the condicio sine qua non, or the conditions

without which a certain fact could not be, is strikingly similar to Kants later development of

the transcendental. For, as I have shown above, such conditions are precisely the ones Kants

transcendental method means to establish.

So, given that Kants original formulation of the transcendental always concerns the

necessary conditions for the possibility of some one thing, namely, experience, modality is

central to the entire concept of the transcendental. More specifically, the transcendental

always occasions a certain thinking through of possibility and, in so doing, also occasions a

certain inquiry into necessity. Necessity and possibility, in this way, are inextricable from

the transcendental point of view: for if some one thing is necessary for some other thing to be

possible, necessity and possibility are two requisite aspects of any actual state of affairs. This

necessity at the heart of possibility is grounded upon actuality, which, in turn, is the key to

the modal structure of the transcendental. From within the transcendental perspective,

however, empirical modality is differently defined precisely because the transcendental is

seeking the necessary conditions for the possibility of objectively valid empirical judgments,

including judgments of modal relation, and it is to these that I will now turn.

In The Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General (A218/B265), Kant defines the

possible as that which agrees with the formal conditions of experience. These formal

conditions are just those forms of intuitions and concepts that concern the Transcendental

Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic, respectively. Whatever agrees with these formal

conditions of experience is, in other words, possible it is a possible object of experience.

But, as I have mentioned, while for Kant such formal conditions are necessary for

experience, they are by no means sufficient and always require a set of corresponding

material conditions. Such conditions are met through the contribution sensibility makes to

experience, as that faculty which supplies the matter or material that the understanding


14/23

14

works up into a cognition that is constitutive of experience. Kant defines the actual, on the

other hand, as that which is connected [Zusammenhngt] to the material conditions of

experience. Moreover, that whose connection [Zusammenhangt] with the actual is

determined in accordance with general conditions of experience is (exists) necessarily so.

It is crucial to note that, strictly speaking, the material provided by sensibility is not

itself what is actual; rather, the actual is a determination or judgment connected to the

material conditions of experience. That Kant uses various forms ofZusammenhngthere is

insightful, for the connection that the material conditions satisfy so as to be actual is a certain

hanging together of sensation. This hanging together is the accomplishment of the three-

fold synthesis mentioned above, which, again, constitutes the transcendental condition of the

understanding by synthesizing the sensible manifold into perceptual unity. The important

point, however, is the way in which this hanging together is affected, namely, through the

spontaneous activity of the experiencing subject. This synthetic activity of the understanding

joins with the receptivity of sensation to produce the experience that is empirical cognition.

Thus, when the material of sensation connects or hangs together according to the general

conditions of experience, i.e., when the material and formal conditions of experience are

met, what results is a determination of the actual as necessary. Put another way, when the

material of experience hangs together with the form of experience accordingly, what is

experienced is, ipso facto, necessary. In this way, for Kant, what is necessarily is. The

necessary and the actual coincide precisely because the formal and material conditions of

experience each require the other and always occur simultaneously.

At this point, recall the distinctions mentioned at the beginning of this essay, namely,

those between the transcendental and the empirical, on the one hand, and between the formal

and the material on the other. While the faculty of sensibility supplies the matter that hangs

together so as to satisfy the material conditions of experience, recall that the correlative

distinction to the material is the formal. And, like the other distinctions, while it is very

tempting to take this distinction as being one of mutually exclusivity, I argued above that

they are strictly correlative and thus inextricably linked. But when this distinction is taken in

the former manner, i.e., as a mutually exclusive dichotomy, the result is that the formal is

taken to be non-material. Once this step is taken, however, the traditional metaphysical

problem of how the material and the non-material can interact is raised anew. This

interaction problem, or the problem of affection, is avoided altogether when the formal and

the material are seen as two aspects of an interdependent and coextensive whole. In this

sense, the formal is as dependent upon the material as the material is upon the formal. In a


15/23

15

certain sense, then, the formal is itself a type of materiality at least insofar as it is not non-

material; rather, the formal conditions that constitute the transcendental merely stipulate how

the material must be conceived so as to produce cognition, and not that the formal and the

material are in some radical way separate. This is because Kants transcendental distinction

is not between the material and the non-material, but between the material and the formal.

And as conditions they are separable, not separate.

A similar point can be made, moreover, for the distinction between the transcendental

and the empirical. The transcendental is not somehow beyond or outside of the empirical;

rather, the transcendental point of view is immanent from within, though not epistemically

dependent upon, empirical cognition. Put another way, because the actuality of the empirical

qua objects and their relations as they are represented is the necessary point of departure

for any and all cognition, it follows that if the transcendental is a type of cognition, then it too

takes as its starting point empirical cognition and, mutatis mutandis, the empirical point of

view. Importantly, then, while the transcendental seeks the formal conditions for the

possibility of the empirical, the conditions of materiality it takes as necessary are themselves

one aspect of those formal conditions. Materiality, in short, is a transcendental necessity for

any and all cognition. So whether the cognition is empirical or transcendental is irrelevant

here; the relevant point, rather, is that the transcendental itself establishes as necessary certain

conditions of materiality, which are neither equivalent to nor analogous with the more

specific material conditions of empirical cognition.

To better understand this point, it is important to note the way in which the concept of

the transcendental is tightly bound up with Kants larger philosophical framework of

transcendental idealism. Above all, this framework is epistemological, and thus the

conditions for the possibility of experience are epistemic conditions; that is, they are not

psychological (i.e.,merely conceptual) or ontological or phenomenal conditions. When Kant

identifies a condition as a necessary one, he means that it is necessary for the representation

of objects or, alternatively, a condition without which our representations could not relate to

objects and therefore lack all claims to objective validity. In this way, things as they appear

are always taken as they are presented to knowers such as we are. Alternatively, things as

they are in themselves are those things considered apart from their epistemic relation, which,

obviously, cannot be known but only thought. As Allison points out, this means that the

way in which sensibility presents its data to the understanding for its conceptualization

already reflects a particular manner of receiving itwhich is determined by the nature of

human sensibility rather than by the affecting objects (2004: 14-15). There are, then, not


16/23

16

two worlds one of which we have access to through the appearance of things and one of

which we do not have access to through the noumenal nature of things but rather these are

two aspects of the one world, the knowable features of which are appearances in accordance

with the possible objects of experience in general.

The crux of Kants idealism, then, is that the only world to which we have access is

always already mediated by our experience of it. There is nothing we can know outside of

our representations of the world. Everything knowable, indeed, everything experienceable, is

inextricably situated within the context of the active contributions that the understanding

makes to human sensibility. In this way, Kants transcendental idealism is not a substantive

philosophical or otherwise metaphysical doctrine; it is concerned, for example, neither with

the psychological status of objects as they appear nor with the ontological status of objects as

they are in themselves. Rather, Kants idealism is a metaphilophical position or method that

seeks to establish both the a priori conditions for the possibility of experience and the

necessary limits to cognition. This method is both formal and critical: it is formal in that it is

a position concerning the nature and scope of the conditions under which objects can be

cognized by the human mind, and it is critical in that it is grounded in a reflection on the

conditions and limits of discursive cognition, not on the contents of consciousness or the

nature of an sich reality (Allison 2004: 35-6). Kants transcendental idealism, then, is

proto-philosophical insofar as it provides the foundation for future philosophy by delimiting

the scope of its legitimate activity. And so any statement about things as they are in

themselves or noumenal, transcendental objects must be taken as necessary, technical terms

as place holders, if you will within Kants framework of transcendental idealism, and notas

making substantive claims about transcendentally real entities (Allison 2004: 73).

Thus it is clear why Kant situates his discussion of modality in terms of empirical and

nottranscendental thought, to wit, because all cognition begins with experience and there is

nothing knowable or experienceable outside of experience. As Kant says:

There is only one experience, in which all perceptions are represented as in

thoroughgoing and lawlike connection.If one speaks of different experiences, they

are only so many perceptions insofar as they belong to one and the same universal

experience. The thoroughgoing and synthetic unity of perceptions is precisely what

constitutes the form of experience, and it is nothing other than the synthetic unity of

the appearances in accordance with concepts. (A110)

There are two important points I would like to draw from this. First, in this passage it is quite

clear that theform of experience is constituted by the synthetic unity ofperceptions. Through


17/23

17

synthesis, the material of perception and the form of experience are united in a mutual

affinity whose structured, substantive product is experience in general. Because the form of

experience, as that which makes possible conceptual understanding, is constituted by

perceptual appearances, the formal features of experience are not non-material, but are

material precisely in that they are constituted by the synthesis of material perceptions. So, in

short, the form of experience is as mediately comprised by the content of perception as the

content of perception is mediately comprised by the form of experience. The mediation of

form by content and content by form runs both ways, thus making each a strict correlate of

the other. They are, in short, co-constitutive of one another. Second, and more briefly, there

is only one experience and it is from within this experience alone that real determinations,

including determinations of modality, are possible. In this way, the modal categories of

possibility, actuality, and necessity are always categories connected to an empirical, and not a

transcendental, use.

In elucidating the Postulates, Kant emphasizes that the categories of modality are

peculiar among the categories in that they merely express a relation between the represented

object and the faculty of cognition (A219/B266). Thus, the relation expressed in the

categories of modality is an inter-systematic, epistemic relation that expresses how the object,

together with all its other determinations, is related to the understanding and its empirical

use, to the empirical power of judgment, and to reason in its application to experience

(A219/B266). As such, the modal categories are categories of empirical cognition, and thus

apply only to the objects and their relations as they appear in representation. For, as Kant

says, the categories do not afford us cognition of things by means of intuition except

through their possible application to empirical intuition, i.e., they serve only for the

possibility of empirical cognition. (B148). And from this, Kant says, it

follows irrefutably that the pure concepts of the understanding can never be of

transcendental, but always only of empirical use, and that the principles of pure

understanding can be related to objects of the senses only in relation to the general

conditions of a possible experience, but never to things in general. (B303)

As such, any possible experience must be related (or capable of being so related) to an

empirical cognition in which an object is determined through the material given by

perception (A176/B218). That is, because experience just is a cognition whose matter is

given through sensibility according to the formal conditions of the understanding i.e., it is

empirical it is not possible to have an a priori cognition of an object that is not a possible

object of experience (B166). And so without the contribution of sensible intuition, the


18/23

18

categories have no relation at all to any determinate object[and thus do] not have in

themselves any validity of concepts (A246). But the categories, including the categories of

modality, are intended to have more than a merely logical significance, which would simply

express analytically the form of thinking, and are meant to concern things and their

possibility, actuality, and necessity (A219/B267). So while from the transcendental

perspective the categories do indeed function in a purely logical manner, from the empirical

perspective they function precisely as that which makes possible both experience and the

objective validity of judgments within experience. Here the importance of the status of the

transcendental premises returns, which highlights again the mistake made by those who

understand the conditions of transcendental arguments as merely conceptual conditions, to

wit, they would thus fall short of objective validity and thereby express the mere subjective

form of thought.

For Kant, transcendental concepts, and transcendental predicates more specifically,

always provide the rule for their own application. Empirical concepts and predicates, on the

other hand, always require a rule to be given from without, i.e., from the transcendental point

of view, so as to be applied to particular instances. So Kant intends the transcendental to

provide the necessary, a priori rules for the application of thought to reality, and thus mutatis

mutandis the standard by which cognitions can attain objective validity. In this way, the

transcendental functions so as to give empirical concepts their real, objectifying use; the

transcendental supplies the necessary framework in which empirical concepts have real, as

opposed to merely logical, application. So the opposite of objective, for Kant, is not

subjective; Kants objectivity is not a matter of inner ideas connecting up with outer objects

in the right sort of way. Rather, Kants is epistemological precisely because objectivity is a

matter of cognitions being susceptible to truth-values within this framework of criteria. Thus,

the opposite of objectivity is simply incapability of being judged true or false. Objectivity, in

short, is a standard of veridicality between subjects of equal cognitive constitution.

As predicates of any possible judgment, transcendental concepts function to provide

the necessary form through which any content whatsoever can be judged. And insofar as

they establish the general descriptive parameters under which an object can be a possible

object of experience, transcendental predicates are real, rather than merely logical,

determinations of objects (Allison 1994: 86). Thus, as concepts, transcendental predicates

are nothing other than the logical requisites and criteria of all cognition of things in general

and do not, as the transcendental philosophy of the ancients mistook them to be, belong to

the possibility of things in themselves (B113). Put another way, transcendental predicates are


19/23

19

not predicates of things per se, but are rather the formal, purely logical predicates necessary

for the possibility of things being represented as objects at all. So, crucially, transcendental

predicates should be used in a merely formal sense, as belonging to the logical requirements

for every cognition, and neither in a substantive, empirical sense, nor as belonging to things

as they are in themselves (B114).

As cognitions, modal determinations always involve the union of the faculties that is

necessary for experience in general, and thus are always and only expressions of a relation

within the understanding; they are not cognitions of the modality of things as they are in

themselves cognitions are by definition unable to do any such a thing but rather express

the modal relations obtaining between cognitions, from appearance to appearance. To

cognize the actuality of a thing, then, requires perception, [and] thus sensation of which one

is conscious not immediate perception of the object itself the existence of which is to be

cognized, but still its connection with some actual perception in accordance with the

analogies of experience, which exhibit all real connection in an experience in general

(A225/B272).7

In this way, actuality is always an empirical cognition of actuality; actuality

is not a static thing, but always an activity of cognizing actuality. And the same goes for the

other modal categories as well, that is, they are always cognitions. Even the possible, which

must only agree with the formal conditions of experience, is a cognition if only because its

corresponding material is provided by the pure, a priori intuition of an object of possible

experience. So, because Kant defines possibility with respect to a certain conformity to rules,

that is, to the a priori principles of pure understanding, to determine the possibility of a thing

does not require an infinite regress through a series of empirical conditions, but only the

progress from appearances to appearances, even if they should not yield any actual

perceptionbecause despite this they would still belong to possible experience

(A522/B550). In this way, the potential phenomenalistic construal of conditions I discussed

above is obviated by Kants transcendentally idealistic position precisely because the a

priori conditions of a possible experience in general are at the same time conditions of the

possibility of the objects of experience (A111).

Thus, from the transcendental point of view, modality is not in the world precisely

because the world is in us, insofar as it can be cognized. Rationality, in other words, is

always already implied through the form of sensible receptivity. There is no reality beyond

7 As part of the Principles of Pure Understanding, the Analogies of Experience provide the set of a priori

principles that determine the laws of the unity of experience, i.e., the rules of all temporal relations of

appearances [that] precede all experience and first make it possible (A494/B522 and A180/B222,

respectively).


20/23

20

experience because, for Kant, experience is coextensive with the real. Again, because Kants

metaphilosophical framework is epistemological and not metaphysical or ontological

objective validity is grounded in the possibility of veridical judgments between subjects that

cognize in the same way. And because within the framework of transcendental idealism

cognition is always a cognizing of appearances, modal predicates always function in terms of

their empirical use. As such, the modal predicates of active judgments are always

determinations of an empirical cognition. All this is to say, again, for experience to occur it

must begin with perception or sensation; without this material point of departure there would

neither be sensible content nor conceptual form, since the two are inextricably linked and co-

constitutive. If this is so, and if the postulates of modality are nothing more than definitions

of the concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity in terms of theirempirical use, then the

operative modal notions in transcendental cognition must be something different altogether.

Given that the modal notions at work in the transcendental itself are not the

modalities Kant defines in the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, it is possible to begin

framing the different modalities operative within transcendental and empirical thinking. That

is, in asking about the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, neither necessity

nor possibility is understood in the way Kant describes them in the Postulates, wherein

modality pertains to empirical thinking only, to objects and the relations between objects, and

to the whole of these representations as they are related within the active receptivity of

experience. This active receptivity is an undergoing, it is the experience of a particular

bipedal organism in time of time, and in the form of time that is itself a necessary condition

for the possibility of experience. In this undergoing, the forms of understanding and the

content of sensibility correlatively constitute the conditions for the possibility of experience.

This mutual conditioning of form and content is captured succinctly when Kant says, again,

that the a priori conditions of a possible experience in general are at the same time

conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience (A111). So within the architectonic

of Kants transcendental, objects and their relations are represented in experience only by

taking the necessary unity of their representation as the representations of objects. This field

of representation constitutes the scope of empirical thinking in which modality expresses the

relations between objects and the understanding.

As I argued above, the transcendental is entirely dependent upon the empirical insofar

as without the latter the former would have nothing into which to inquire. In this way, the

modality at work in asking about the necessary conditions for the possibility of objectively

valid empirical cognition is the ordinary, everyday sense of necessity and possibility, which


21/23

21

is a modality based within a framework of actuality. For Kant, this actuality is the actuality

of experience whose conditio sine qua non is the totality of material existence. From the

empirical to the transcendental point of view, the activity of transcendental cognition

involves thought moving back in upon itself, where reasons confronts itself at its limits,

moving from the actual to the preceding actual, or from what is to what must be, which is the

modal structure of the transcendental. Importantly, this does not involve a movement from

actuality to possibility in the sense of moving between two distinct modal categories; the

transcendental is not asking about what could be, but about what must be given what is.

Both, crucially, are species of actuality, and the given that joins these different forms of

actuality is not the raw given that so vexes epistemology, but is already a complex,

conceptualized experience of a certain state of the material world.

This division of the actual into the conditioned and the conditioning, moreover,

explains the possibility of the former through the latter. Thus, to pose the transcendental

question is to anticipate a certain type of explanation, the central feature of which does not so

much as require a past as it does a moment in which actuality is seized, a fact ascertained,

and an inquiry begun into its necessary conditional constituents. This moment, this place,

this experience is the necessary starting point of transcendental inquiry, and only from here

can one ask the transcendental question. So Kants transcendental conditions are, in one

sense, enabling and account for some fact positively insofar as they explain its conditioned

nature, while, in another sense, are limiting insofar as they critically circumscribe the bounds

beyond which knowledge cannot legitimately reach. But Kants critical limit is not a

boundary in the sense that some thing is beyond experience; there is, again, no given in the

sense of the Myth of the Given, precisely because such unconceptualized data for Kant is

always already conceptualized in experience, and is only analyzable into its constituent

aspects afterexperience is underway.

In this way, the operative modality of transcendental thinking is one wherein

possibility is determinable only with respect to actuality. More specifically, the

characterizations of the modes of being i.e., possibility, impossibility, necessity, and

contingency are all predicated upon material actuality. Kant intimates the structure of this

modality early on when he says of the synthetic a priori natural sciences that, since they are

actually given, I can appropriately be asked how they are possible; for that they must be

possible is proved through their actuality (B20). The specific content of this actual does not

concern me here e.g., it does not matter whether it is a claim about sense data or the

meaning of a proposition, nor does it matter whether it concerns the possibility of


22/23

22

communication, belief, language, or even the possibility of present experience because I

merely wish to indicate the way in which the modal notions guiding transcendental inquiry

are grounded within a framework of actuality. This actuality is, in the end and above all, a

material actuality, the experience of a subject in a world limited by the forms of possible

experience.

Through the structure of transcendentalism, Kant gives depth to experience, but this

depth is epistemic only; behind the fact of cognition and experience are conditions that create

the possibility for cognition and experience, and these conditions are epistemic, not

ontological or material or conceptual, conditions. Through his thoroughgoing idealism, Kant

establishes that there is but one knowable world, namely, the world of appearances, beyond

which the understanding cannot legitimately reach. This world of appearances, as Deleuze

notes, is more aptly characterized as a world of appearing, which is not to say that it is a

world where objects are mere semblances, or seemings (1984: 8). In the Aesthetic, Kant

explicitly rejects the thought that bodies merely seem [scheinen] to exist outside me[For]

it would be my own fault if I made that which I should count as appearance into mere

illusion (B69). Rather, these appearances are real, objectively valid, and, when taken

together, constitute nature itself. Thus, for Kant, nature is nothing itself but a sum

appearances, the combined totality of possible representations and their relations, and the

unity of this totality can only be cognized by that radical faculty of all our cognition,

namely, the transcendental (A114).

In the end, however, the transcendental cognition of the unity of all appearances

that is, the cognition of all of nature serves only as a limit to experience in general and does

not offer a positive, substantive possibility for a complete knowledge of the world.

Appearances, for Kant, are in the world only conditionally, and the world itself is neither

conditioned nor bounded in an unconditional way (A522/B550). Thus the world, from the

transcendental point of view, has both conditional boundaries and unconditioned grounds,

both of which are epistemically determined within an actual, material world. It is in this

sense, then, that there is a material condition to the transcendental question. The

transcendental is not a denial of materiality, but is precisely a recognition of the material as a

necessary condition for the possibility of experience. And so, because empirical cognition in

the form of experience is a necessary condition for the possibility of the transcendental, and

because the actual, material contribution of sensibility is itself a necessary condition for the

possibility of the empirical, it follows, in turn and in due course, that the material is the

condition without which the transcendental could not be.


23/23

Works Cited

Allison, Henry. (2004). Kants Transcendental Idealism: An interpretation and defense.

New Haven: Yale University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. (1983). Kants Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties.

Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.

Frster, Eckart. (1989). How are Transcendental Arguments Possible?, inReading Kant:

New Perspectives on Transcendental Arguments and Critical Philosophy, editors.,

Eva Schaper and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Gardner, Sebastian. (1999). Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. London: Routledge.

Harrison, Ross. (1989). Atemporal Necessities of Thought: or, How Not to Bury

Philosophy by History, inReading Kant: New Perspectives on TranscendentalArguments and Critical Philosophy. Eva Schaper and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (eds.).

Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Hookway, Christopher. (1999). Modest Transcendental Arguments and Sceptical Doubts:

A Reply to Stroud, in Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects. Robert

Stern (ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kant, Immanuel. (1781, 1787). Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and

Allen Wood for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998

McDowell, John. (1996). Mind and World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Stroud, Barry. (1968). Transcendental Arguments, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 65, No. 9,

pgs 241-56.

-----------. (1994). Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invunerability, inKant

and Contemporary Epistemology. Paolo Parrini (ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Press.

-----------. (1999). The Goal of Transcendental Arguments, in Transcendental

Arguments: Problems and Prospects. Robert Stern (ed). Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

the kantian sine qua non

Documents