The possibility of a

transcendental subject

Zosimo E. Lee
Department of Philosophy
UP Diliman

Outline
 Science in public places
 Knowledge as open-ended
 Transcendental subject
 Epistemic violence
 Interrogations

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 Science in public places
 Social beliefs and practices versus veritistic
properties
 Ideals versus ideal practices
 Versus myths, ignorance, tradition
 Culture (contrasts with, not opposition to)
the acquisition of new knowledge
 Fusing science with social spaces to fill the
epistemic gap

Science in public places

 Science and mind-body connection
(cyborgs and us extending our reach
through computers and machines)

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 Science in public places
 What the advancements in science and
technology have done to our efficacy on
the objective world?

Science in public places

Creating a world out of our categories and
knowledge and that world confronting us as
a creation of the human mind. e.g. We
construct a building and the building
conditions our behavior, our feelings, our
frame of mind, how we think.

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 Knowledge as open-ended
 What certainty consists in. How do we
assure ourselves that what we have
discovered or created to be true is
trustworthy, and indeed the case.

Knowledge as open-ended
 From the social context to the primary locus
of such a transformative
process—consciousness and thinking.
 Role of categories and labels and our
perception of objects, and our mental and
emotional responses.

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 Knowledge as open-ended
 Using reason and our criteria for what is
logically valid, or reasonable, and
evaluating ideas on epistemic grounds for
what we will then find acceptable or not, or
invalid and incomplete.

Knowledge as open-ended
 Having a schema in one's mind to what
would constitute a good answer, or a
complete answers, or a better answer,
because there are elements that one could
aim for, consequently “constructing” what
would be the most truthful or veritistic
response, conforming to criteria that we
stipulate and impose on ourselves.
 Awareness of 'schema'

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 The transcendental subject
 Being aware of how categories and mental
schema condition thinking and behavior.
 Pure consciousness, degrees of
attainment?

The transcendental subject

 “Transcendental' because of reflexive
capacity, need not be determined by past
thinking and behaviour, or memory of past
but rather forward-looking and capable of
autonomy and re-creation.

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 The transcendental subject
 'Subject' because of living consciousness
and awareness which is intimately
subjective, “inhabits” the world, “is” the
world.
 Categories and concepts are human
creations and their development also
becomes the basis of our constructing the
world we do.

The transcendental subject

 Human world and imagination
 Human self-creation, how we create
ourselves.

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 The transcendental subject
 Perceptive syntheses are products of a
historical and operational heritage.
 The possibility of a historicization of the
transcendental.

The transcendental subject

 Categories capable of universalizing single
pragmatic experiences (How these
experiences would even be identified?)‫‏‬

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 The transcendental subject
 'Transcendental subject' as a shared
heritage, cognitive or epistemic trust
needed to establish the social bond.

The transcendental subject

 Understanding what it means to be a
'transcendental subject' (that I am this
particular existence but open to universal
meanings) means to be open to new
constructions depending on the exchange
and viabilities that arise in the encounter
and engagement.

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 The transcendental subject
 What would be conditions for trust, that will
enable the transcendental subject to
challenge its concrete form, its
configuration and its concept of self?

The transcendental subject

 To change our 'ego' in the chance to
interact and communicate, in the name of a
universality of meaning, of a reciprocal
understanding which is the fundamental
element of mutual trust and human
sociability.
 'Transcendental subject' as a repository of
ascribable meanings.

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 The transcendental subject
 Mutual human understanding presumes
the universality of categories that apply to
different human experiences.

The transcendental subject

 These human categories give names to
particular experiences but are then
rendered comprehensible because of the
universality of human meanings.
 “When we disagree, we agree that we are
disagreeing.” Meaningful disagreement
made possible by shared language.

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 The transcendental subject
 A joint project of mutual construction the
essential task of which is intervening on
our common heritage, molding basic
structures through which we constitute our
reality.

The transcendental subject

 Charity as an openness to the reality of the
Other and to engage in a mutual
processing of meaning-making that
stipulates or assumes parity.

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 Epistemic violence
 Epistemic violence means reducing the
person, groups, a set of attitudes and
behaviors, to the conceptual schemes and
categories of the group of origin.
 It does not have the purpose of starting an
interaction, an exchange between two
groups on a basis of parity.

Epistemic violence
 The transcendental process of meaning
constitution of group B is reduced,
obliterated, annihilated, according to the
exigencies of process of meaning formation
of group A.
 'Orientalism' is one example. The concept
of 'modesty' and 'humility' can be another.

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 Epistemic violence
 There is also the 'violence' of forced
consensus when only a few voices
dominate because there is refusal to fully
respect the voice of the Other, using
democratic dialogue to compel the other to
submission.

Interrogations
 What does interaction and communication
on a basis of parity mean?
 What kinds of exchanges allow for mutual
re-creation?

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 Interrogations
 How does authentic communication allow
for objective knowledge construction?

Interrogations
 Does science in public places then mean
objective and certain knowledge?

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