External World Skepticism And Transcendental Argument

In the first meditation, Descartes put forward a skeptical hypothesis about the external world. Over the centuries, discussions of and solutions to this problem were numerous. Contemporary transcendental arguments are considered to be a special arguing method. Because of its non-empirical, it is often adopted as a strategy against Cartesian skepticism. However, in what degree could a transcendental argument dealing with external world skepticism was widely in dispute of Chinese and Western scholars. So we need to study some representative transcendental arguments against external world skepticism, in order to confirm the effect of transcendental arguments. This paper uses method of interpreting and literature, conceptual analysis and deductive reasoning, and the later two ones as main methods. The paper involves not only an accurate understanding of the literature, but also the connotation of the core concepts needed to analyze, locate and deduction. Firstly, the paper goes back to Cartesian thought experiment, which revealed two aspects of a situation of us, as the case of awarer (one who has awareness), are in, which leads to the skeptical challenge of the reality about the external world. Then the paper examines several solutions to this problem. Through this discussion of several options, the paper proposed demands of responding to external world skepticism, and revealed the transcendental argument strategy. After a detailed analysis of ambitious transcendental argument given by Kant and P. F. Strawson, the paper proves that the goal of a strong strategy ultimately failed. In the face the difficulties of ambitious transcendental argument, the discussion leads to Barry Stroud's modest transcendental argument, and investigated the effectiveness of modest strategy and the sense in which the former questions are dealt with, and based on which a new location of reality of the external world is given. Finally, accuse to modest targets, that the argument can not achieve a necessary truth result, which are being questioned its effectiveness of anti-skepticism has been responded. The paper attempts to re-target the goal of transcendental argument that is to reveal the third aspect of our awareness situation. Based on the interpretation of this situation, the paper attempts to external world skepticism and the goal of transcendental argument and responses accuse to modest strategies for its non-necessary truth conclusion from a new perspective. The paper rebuilds and analyzes the detailed steps of several transcendental arguments, which is the first time to represent the Verification Principle in Strawson's argument and the analysis plays an important role in fully understanding the deficiency of ambitious transcendental arguments. Finally the paper makes a new understanding of the effects of transcendental argument, based on which, the effect of transcendental arguments are made a new location, and thus the accuse of non-necessary truth to modest transcendental argument were responded.