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On Transcendental Arguments

Transcendental arguments are demonstrations of the necessary conditions of the possibility of any act of human subjectivity-thinkingsubjectivity—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 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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Its inputs include beliefs about the existence of subjective phenomena-thinkingphenomena—thinking, understanding, believing, asserting, etc.-based —based on introspection and formalizable as the categorial premises of transcendental arguments. Its inputs also include one or more beliefs, formalizable as the conditional premises of transcendental arguments, about the essential relationship between these phenomena and various conditions, based on transcendental implication. Its outputs, then, are based on deductive inferences involving the inputs formalizable as the two types of premises required by any sound transcendental argument 

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(2) they can defeat beliefs about the coherence of any theological method that denies the relativity of type-specific epistemic principles to the meaning of the beliefs they are designed to evaluate;

(3) they can defeat the belief that there is no obligation to justify voluntary beliefs according to the relevant type-specific epistemic principles; and

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