Notes for “Transcendental Aribtration” #2
John’s essential critique is that epistemological Darwinism as a meta-method to reach transcendental arbiters is “perspective[ly] and conceptually bound [to the individual subject].” By this he means they are bound “in respect to mind dependency and the faculties cognitive ability to form concepts etc.” In response to this I argued that the very point of transcendental arbiters is that it isn’t our arbitration. To this he succinctly responded, “there’s no real way to posit that outside of one’s own arbitration/imposition.” Essentially, John’s notion is “we are the ones who determine what we are determined by” because it is through our inference that epistemological Darwinian processes play out toward transcendental arbiters. In other words, “the subject is the one who determines [its] determination” and “imposes [a] belief set unto [itself].”
For any of John’s critical propositions to be justified they would therefore require non-circular justification, as Haseeb has shown us in conversation that circular notions are untenable not because of wrongness, illogicality, or anything of the like, but rather because of infinite regression, never giving the notion stable ground to be. John’s propositions are not justified then as any theory of justification would then beg the question of its justification to be asked. The only reason any of our propositions which run contrary to John’s are justified is because of our fundamental appeal to transcendental arbiters. But this obviously begs the question of why are they justified. Our appeal then would be to epistemological Darwinism. This movement of appealing would itself beg a question of its own justification. It would also spur another question of transcendence and determination: can a transcendental arbiter be transcendental if its justification is determined by a process external to it? Would that process not be transcendental then? The answer: no. The reason the answer is no is simply because epistemological Darwinism is an abstract name for a process and not a determining entity. Before logic there was still theoretics. Thales of Miletus, for example, was a theorist before logic was lined out. Then there was logic. A completely new framework thinking had been born out of seemingly nothing but maybe a spark, a eureka.
Eureka! Maybe the human mind and then maybe future minds such as those from artificial intelligence are those sparks for the process of epistemological Darwinism. Maybe John is right that it is the mind that infers the process of epistemological Darwinism, but maybe that is exactly the point! What even sparked the epistemic evolutionary process to head toward transcendental arbiters, well it was my mind.
Thought itself is immanently involved in the process of thinking. Analytically inextricable from the notion of thinking, thought is what lights the sparks which give off the gas, the steam, or whatever you would like to call it which causes the machinic process of epistemic evolution to hurry forth towards its end, transcendental arbiters.
John is arguing that we determine that which we believe, or that our minds do. He says, “there isn’t an other who imposes this belief set unto us.” Rather, for John, we impose it upon ourselves. This is surely true, but also not a point! Belief is not what we are worried about. Again, one can believe whatever they like. In fact, one will believe whatever they like. But, that transcendental arbiters will be the fundamental end points of philosophy is also true whether we believe it or not because they are the only stable criterion of truth or rather the only one that is without an alternative, the only one that cannot be opposed.
John also makes an argument that there exists between the subject and the object some fundamental disconnect “because of the subject[’]s existence.” Ultimately though conceptual analysis and analysis of things we experience are not the same in that I have never knowingly experienced a transcendental arbiter. Again, the whole idea of the transcendental arbiter was originally an a priori deduction within the epistemological evolutionary movement found within epistemological Darwinism. There is no distortion between the idea of a transcendental arbiter and the mind because the whole idea came from my mind. But that inference muddles things is then John’s argument. It is 3:12 AM, I have homework and thus, I will stop messing around and entertaining John’s unjustifiable arguments.
Again, none of John’s arguments can be justified, but neither can any of our’s be justified either. The only thing that could allow for justification is a meta-justifier who is immanently self-justifying. It is this movement of immanent self-justification that cannot be circular. And that is exactly the problem. How do we have immanent self-justification that isn’t circular and neither transcended by something else. The epistemological Darwinian process would not transcend the transcendental arbiter’s arbitration once it spontaneously emerges out of the process as once it is there, it is there and it can easily end the process, and in fact does end the process. In this sense, due to the very nature of the transcendental arbiter, it in turn, once it emerges out of the process, determines and transcends the very process it is born out of. That it comes into being is analogous to its justification, and the continuance of its being is too analogous to justification, which is exactly why the process is not the jusitifer after it is transcended by the transcendental arbiter. Thus, a transcendental arbiter can become non-circularly justified as its source was different than it, but it eliminates its source and becomes a meta-justifying arbiter that determines all things through its sovereignty.
