Notes for “Transcendental Arbitration” #5
Firstly, what is the status of proposition-making in general? Simple: it is done through language. So, what is the status of language? Simple: seemingly circular. How does one assert language’s validity without the usage of language? How does one justify language without using language? It seems it cannot be done.
Of course, secondly, various transcendental arguments such as the necessary conditions for the denial of language is an affirmation of language itself will be employed to counter this. The ultimate issue with this is that it is a strawman. The problem being identified is that those very transcendental conditions, the affirmation of language, lead to its denial. The transcendental response, in the sense of transcendental arguments, is one that misunderstands that the problem is that an immanent contradiction is contained within all systems that are discursively and/or conceptually analyzed, or analyzed in other manners, and so on… Our problem is the very fact that these systems are immanently and thus inherently self-undermining. That one’s basis can defeat itself only leads to a response of laughter. Yet there are no jokers.
Thirdly, the consequence of the typical transcendental argument as “the transcendental fallacy,” as we will call it, is not nihilism. The association of nihilism with the state we are in(?) is the failure of all past philosophy. Not even nothing is adequate to describe what belief is a vector heading toward.
Fourthly, the book will probably not be written unless some form of demon seizes one of us revealing the secrets of everything and nothing to one of us, or if divine intervention from God takes place, or maybe if (Plato’s) the Good, which, remember, is beyond Being itself, becomes intelligible to our blind eyes. This is all to say, it isn’t looking likely. Hopefully, Erik and I can find a way out of this, or find someone who can. It seems that hope is all we have left… but it’s fading fast (though it will always be there).
