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Kant, according to Cassam, had a greater role than any other philosopher in bringing how-possible questions to the foreground of philosophical investigation. Moreover, in addressing the how-possible question
he most prominently asked (How are synthetic a priori judgments
possible?), Kant had the merit of developing the kind of three level
answer Cassam himself recommends. However, Cassam contends,
Kants version of this answer is inadequate, especially with respect to
its third level, the level at which what is under investigation are
background enabling conditions for knowledge.
In this essay I shall rst discuss Cassams claim to the superiority of
the three level response, both in his own and in Kants version, over
responses relying on so-called transcendental arguments. I shall then
discuss the second of the two main background enabling conditions
for perceptual knowledge Cassam identies, avowing his debt to Kant:
categorial thinking.
1. How Possible Questions and Transcendental Arguments
According to Cassam, so-called transcendental arguments cannot yield
adequate answers to how-possible questions concerning knowledge.
For the ambition of such arguments is to identify necessary conditions
for knowledge, and such conditions can at most be identied with what
Cassam calls background enabling conditions. But the latter, he
claims, on their own are far from adequate answers to the question:
how is knowledge possible? or to the more specic question: how is
empirical knowledge possible? or again to the question: how is perceptual knowledge possible? A complete answer to such questions,
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says Cassam, calls for (i) identifying means to achieve the knowledge
under consideration, (ii) acknowledging possible obstacles to implementing those means and explaining how these obstacles might be
overcome; and (iii) only as a third step, identifying background enabling
conditions for the kind of knowledge under investigation.
Here one might object that there are different ways, or different
tones of voice, in which one may ask: how is X possible? Its one
thing to go to the teller in the train station and ask: how can I get
from London to Paris in less than three hours? Its quite another
thing, if told: well actually, theres a ying saucer taking off in two
minutes and that will get you there in less than three hours, to ask:
how is that possible? (which is as good as to say: thats impossible!) Now the kind of how-possible question in which Kant is interested is more of the second than of the rst kind. It presupposes that
some means have been identied to obtain a given result, and proceeds
directly to put into question the very possibility of such means. Ive just
been told that the best way to get from London to Paris in less than
three hours, is the ying saucer taking o in two minutes. But how is
that possible? (= Thats impossible!) Similarly for Kant: Ive just
shown that the kind of knowledge by means of which mathematical
truths or natural causal laws can be discovered is synthetic a priori
knowledge. But how is that possible? Meaning: thats impossible! Its
contrary to everything we know about available justications for
knowledge! Either knowledge is synthetic and then its justication is
experience. Or it is a priori and then its justication is the analysis of
concepts. Its just impossible that a ying saucer be a currently available means of transportation between London and Paris. Its just
impossible that there be knowledge falling outside the scope of the only
two available kinds of justication: experience, and conceptual analysis.
Of course, Cassam is the rst to point out that the very motivation
for Kants how-possible questions is that there are seemingly insuperable obstacles to some particular knowledge supposedly on oer. But
what I am claiming is that Kants how-possible question is addressed
directly at the obstacle, or at what, in the knowledge under consideration, makes it seem impossible. Thats precisely why the generic question of the Critique is: how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?
The very formulation of the question is the formulation of an obstacle:
synthetic a priori knowledge is supposed to be impossible. When Kant
goes on to examine the nature of empirical knowledge (e.g., in the
exposition of the threefold synthesis, in the Transcendental Deduction
of the Categories), its not so much to answer the question: how is
empirical knowledge possible? (this is a question which, on its own,
he wouldnt nd reason to ask, its not, for him, a problem at all) as to
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One might, however, argue that the premise of the Deduction is actually weaker
than the one just stated for regressive transcendental arguments. The premise
might be read as: we have experience we take to be of independently existing
objects. This is perhaps still not a premise every skeptic would accept, but closer
to it. What interests me in what follows, however, is not how close to an anti-skeptical argument the Deduction turns out to be, but Cassams discussion of the motivation for the Deduction and the relation between the three aspects of the purported
regressive argument.
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