Transcendental Arguments and External Explanations

In this chapter I aim to highlight a potential instability in some of our assumptions about explanation, in particular, the assumption that explanations must be external to their explananda, via an objection to Kant’s transcendental philosophy, and a response to an objection to transcendental arguments. The objection to Kant, in my view, serves as an instructive example of where the relevant instability shows its face. And the discussion of transcendental arguments – taken from Mark Sacks – provides an elegant demonstration of the broader issue and how, in general, we might approach a resolution. Sacks argues that, often, our normative frameworks point outwards to an explanation of the framework that comes from outside that framework. I connect this to some discussion of so-called “externality assumptions” in recent work on the metaphysics of explanation.