transcendental argument

transcendental argument

In philosophy, a form of argument that is supposed to proceed from a fact to the necessary conditions of its possibility. A transcendental argument is simply a form of deduction, with the typical pattern: Only if p then q; q is true; therefore, p is true. As this form of argument appears in philosophy, the interest, and the difficulty, reside not in the movement from premises to conclusions, which is routine, but in the setting up of the major premises—that is, in the kinds of things that are taken as starting points. For example, Immanuel Kant tried to prove the principle of causality by showing that it is a necessary condition of the possibility of making empirically verifiable statements in natural science.