Hi everyone, This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Stephen White, (Tufts)
The title of the talk is "Transcendental Arguments". Here is an abstract for the talk: Transcendental arguments purport to specify necessary conditions, either for our having conscious experience or our having a meaningful language. And they have long been thought useful in addressing the most radical skeptical doubts about our knowledge of the external world. In recent years, however, critics have questioned how any argument could take us from premises about internal mental states, appropriately conceived, to conclusions about the external world. I argue that these doubts about transcendental arguments are misplaced. Far from having to provide a bridge between the internal and the external as conceived by the skeptic, the proponent of a transcendental argument need only deny that any such bridge is necessary. In their linguistically oriented forms, transcendental arguments allow us to question the capacity of the skeptic's conception of experience to ground and explain our possession of a meaningful language. If, as I argue, a transcendental argument works, the skeptic's claim is not unanswerable but unstatable. The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday July 30 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494). Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to [email protected] Ryan Cox Associate Lecturer in Philosophy Discipline of Philosophy School of Humanities University of Sydney [email protected]
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