Modern Transcendental Arguments

Transcendental arguments (hereafter, TAs) are philosophical tools of great importance which have been widely used ever since Kant. Paradigms of modern TAs are some anti-sceptical arguments of Wittgenstein, Strawson, and Shoemaker. In this paper I first suggest a new characterization of these paradigms, and thus also of modern TAs in general. On this basis I then exhibit the significance of modern TAs in three ways: (1) by comparing the new characterization with the standard way TAs are conceived; (2) by examining whether traditional TAs fit this characterization; (3) by deriving an important implication of the new characterization for the type of modality involved in modern TAs.