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Transcendental arguments are demonstrations of the necessary conditions of the possibility of any act of human subjectivity-thinking, understanding, believing, asserting, and so on. As such, they are"dialectically interesting" (Mourad), because their categorical premises are self-referential and undeniable, and, if their conditional premises are sound, their conclusions are likewise selfreferential self-referential and cannot be denied without self-contradiction. Being implied by any possible act of understanding or assertion, their conclusions can only be affirmed.

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A belief b is "justified" for a subject 5 S, relative to an epistemic principle EP, if b is permitted for 5 S according to EP, and 5 S chooses b, at least in part, in order to comply with EP (Mourad). 

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Beyond this first theological task that transcendental arguments may be able to perform, depending on how the"depth structure" of religious beliefs is to be correctly analyzed, there are at least the following theological tasks that transcendental arguments can perform, whatever the analysis of religious beliefs:

(1) they can defeat the self-referentially problematic position that there are no transcendental conditions of the possibility of subjectivity and thus of being as such;

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(4) they can defeat the belief that the testimony of an authority can constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of a belief in the context of critical, properly theological reflection.

14 August 2006