Conceptual Frameworks without Validatory Metaphysics:

A Critique of Strawson and Stroud on the Prospects of Connective Analysis

Jason Gabriel Rheins
Philosophy 564
Professor Paul Guyer
May 31, 2005
Abstract: Here I diagnose the modest 'connective analysis' advocated by Strawson and
Stroud in the wake of the latter's proof that transcendental arguments can only generate
metaphysical conclusions on the assumption of strong, anti-realist metaphysical
assumptions. I go further and claim that even a merely descriptive analysis of the
connections between our concepts and cognitive faculties will yield only historically
contingent results, unless validatory metaphysics (realist or idealist) is used to bulwark
claims to the stability of our conceptual schemes.
1
A Critique of Strawson and Stroud on the Prospects of Connective Analysis

0. Abstract
In this paper I describe and critique the philosophical project of connective analysis
advanced by Peter Strawson and Barry Stroud. I discuss the emergence of their views from the
collapse of Strawsons earlier intentions for the use of transcendental arguments in Individuals
and The Bounds of Sense, and I consider the similarities and differences of their present
conceptions of connective analysis (I). I then argue that if the underlying conceptual
frameworks which connective analysis analyzes are unstable (i.e. historically contingent or open
to revision), then both the Strawsonian and Stroudian projects will be undermined (II). While
Strawson and Stroud can meet one type of objection presented by historicism, a deeper worry
persists that their ontologically agnostic positions underdetermine the stability of connections
which are synthetic (III). Transcendental subjectivism or some form of idealism could
underwrite the stability of such frameworks, but Strawson and Stroud would be unwilling to
engage in validatory and revisionary metaphysics of that nature (IV). If, putting aside Quinian
worries, we imagine that such conceptual connections can be presented as analytic judgments,
then we will still need to accept the truth of the Principle of Non-Contradiction to infer that no
change in the analytic truths of our framework could take place. This means that connective
analysis will have to rely on the literal truth of certain metaphysical/logical propositions or the
objective validity of the concepts composing them (V). I conclude that if connective analysis
must rely on either idealism or realism to ensure the requisite stability of the frameworks it
uncovers, then its hopes for ignoring or disarming skepticism without recourse to validatory
metaphysics will have been undercut (VI).

2
I. The Historical Development of Descriptive Metaphysics and Connective Analysis
Peter Strawson played a critical role in reinvigorating metaphysical inquiry at a time
when it was deeply out of favor in analytic philosophy.
1
Perhaps the most promising idea
Strawson advanced in his Analytic-Kantian program of descriptive metaphysics was a strategy
for refuting several forms of skepticism through the use of transcendental arguments. In
Individuals (1959) he presented a method of proving the existence of the external world and
other minds from premises about the possibility of experiencing particular objects and persons.
These premises that we have certain sorts of experience- were such that even a determined
skeptic would have to concede them in order for his doubts about the external world or other
minds to be meaningful. The power of transcendental arguments was thought to be their ability
to prove that key metaphysical facts were the preconditions of experiences which even the
skeptic would admit to having.
Then, reflecting more directly on The Critique of Pure Reason, in The Bounds of Sense
(1966) Strawson argued that Kants own successful work of descriptive metaphysics could and
should be extricated from the blunder of transcendental idealism. He suggested that the
transcendental method could yield major philosophical results without having its findings
restricted merely to appearances. Without appealing to controversial metaphysical commitments
such as idealism, facts about the world could be proven from the conditions of experience.
Soon after, the transcendental method endured intense scrutiny and criticism, most
notably in Barry Strouds Transcendental Arguments (1968). Stroud argued that there is a key
assumption in all transcendental arguments that is needed to bridge the gap between
psychological premises about experience and non-psychological or metaphysical conclusions
about the world. He characterized this premise as a crude form of verificationism. For example,

1
Cf. Hacker: 2003, 43-52.
3
it might be a presupposition of identifying particulars (or thinking that we can do so) that we
think or believe that we can identify and reidentify them in an external, spatiotemporal world.
However, this would imply the actual existence of such a world and the (re)identification of
objects in it if and only if this thought would be incoherent or meaningless unless it could refer
truly to such actual facts. Alternatively, one could suppose that what we must believe to explain
experience must be true of the world, but this wildly anti-realist premise seems even more
objectionable than the crude verificationist one. By anti-realism, I mean here the rejection of
the view that the [external] world is mind-independent. If we do not accept such a premise we
can at most show that connections exists between certain cognitive capacities and beliefs.
2

Rejecting such wanton verificationism, Strawson was forced to concede that
transcendental arguments could neither be used to refute skepticism successfully nor to prove
metaphysical conclusions about the world from the possibility of conceivable experience. In
Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (1985) Strawson gave a more humble description of
the possible uses of transcendental arguments.
3
He claimed that transcendental arguments are
capable of representing the relations between our fundamental concepts and cognitive capacities.
Transcendental arguments cannot be successfully used to prove the objective validity of the
concepts which skeptics call into question, but our naturalist commitments are such that we
cannot sincerely doubt the fundamental elements of our conceptual schemes. Strawson thinks
that we simply cannot believe that induction is invalid or that there is no external world, and so
we cannot and should not try to argue with the skeptic that induction is valid or that there is an

2
Stroud: 1968, 20-24; 1994, 161-163; 1999a, 160ff. Strawson: 1985, 9-10, 21ff.
3
Strawson: 1985, 21-23. How, in this [naturalist] perspective, should we view arguments of the kind which Stroud
calls transcendental? Evidently not as supplying the reasoned rebuttal which the skeptic perversely invites. Our
naturalism is precisely the rejection of that invitation. So, even if we have a tenderness for transcendental arguments,
we shall be happy to accept the criticism of Stroud and others that either such arguments rely on an unacceptably
simple verificationism or the most they can establish is a certain sort of interdependence of conceptual capacities
and beliefs: e.g., as I put it earlier, that in order for the intelligible formulation of skeptical doubts to be
possiblewe must take it, or believe, that we have knowledge of external physical objects or other minds. (21).
4
external world, for these beliefs are the framework within which we argue and reason but for
which we do not reason.
4
Transcendental arguments, therefore, will be used in connective
analysis to analyze the fundamental aspects of our conceptual schemes, but the
naturalist/descriptive metaphysician will not try to use them to rebut skepticism as in validatory
metaphysics.
A further limitation of connective analysis that Strawson concedes is the looseness of
the connections it draws. An opponent of transcendental arguments can pose to the
transcendental arguer the objection that what he takes to be necessary conditions of experience
are at best sufficient conditions, and his inability to imagine other conditions yielding experience
is merely his own lack of imagination.
5
While Strawson believes that some transcendental
arguments really do uncover necessary relationships, he is content to engage in an inquiry that
cannot guarantee connections as rigid as necessity or, perhaps, even sufficiency.
6

However, Strawsons position remains immodest in at least one respect. Just as he
maintained in Individuals and The Bounds of Sense,
7
Strawson continues to think that there are
fundamental elements of our conceptual framework which are universal and incorrigible.
Positioning himself against what he dubs historicism, Strawson claims that not all of our
conceptual framework is relative to our present culture, language, or science. It is doubtless that
some and even some central elements of our worldview may change, e.g. the Copernican

4
Strawson: 1985, 19-20.
5
Ibid., 22-23.
6
Ibid., 23.
7
Strawson: 1966, 120-121, 271; 1959, 10. there are categories and concepts whichchange not at all. Cf. p. 29
our concept of reality mighthave been different, had the nature of our experience been fundamentally
different. However, I presume that Strawson thinks that since the nature of our experience will not fundamentally
change, e.g. we will not begin to see or rather hear the world like bats, neither will our concept of reality. For an
analysis of Strawson as holding a conceptual invariance thesis (but with some internal tensions) cf. Haack: 1979,
364-366.
5
revolutions shift from geocentric to heliocentric cosmology,
8
but certain parts may never
change. Strawson writes,
The human world-picture is of course subject to change. But it remains a human world-picture: a picture of a world
of physical objects (bodies) in space and time including human observers capable of action and of acquiring and
imparting knowledge (and error) both of themselves and each other and of whatever else is to be found in nature. So
much of a constant conception, of what, in Wittgensteins phrase, is not subject to alteration or only to an
imperceptible one, is given along with the very idea of historical alteration in the human world-view.
9


The very notion of historical change, Strawson is arguing, occurs within an underlying
framework whose most fundamental aspects are unchanging. These aspects, e.g. experiencing
some sort of spatiotemporal world of physical objects and persons, are inherent to any human
world-view. Given Strawsons naturalistic aversion to validatory metaphysics, this notion of
inherence should not have to appeal to the imposition of a priori forms of cognition, and so I will
return to this point in my discussion of his rejection of transcendental subjectivism. For now it
will suffice to merely note that the invariance of our fundamental framework is an important but
potentially problematic part of Strawsons newer views.
Strawsons chief critic also endorses a form of connective analysis, but Barry Stroud is
dissatisfied with Strawsons new approach to skepticism.
10
He worries that the naturalistic stance
which Strawson adopts does not take the threat of skepticism seriously enough. At the same time
he is hopeful that transcendental arguments, despite their limitations, will be capable of
disarming philosophical skepticism by showing it to be inconsistent within the conceptual
frameworks from which it can be generated.
Stroud agrees with Strawson that transcendental arguments can be used in connective
analysis to reveal the basic presuppositions and connections between our most fundamental

8
Strawson: 1985, 26.
9
Ibid., 27.
10
Stroud: 1985, 664. This [new, naturalist position] will come as something of a disappointment to those who
aspire to descriptive metaphysics of a special Kantian kind without the excesses of transcendental idealism. Loose
connections between cognitive capacities are a far cry from the logically adequate criteria for ascribing
psychological states to others promised by Individuals, or the knowledge of a unified objective world promised by
The Bounds of Sense.
6
beliefs and our cognitive capacities.
11
But once revealed, Stroud thinks that our fundamental
conceptual structure may prove capable of precluding the possibility of a self-consistent belief in
skepticism, for the presuppositions of the premises which ground skepticism about X may, in our
framework, include the belief in X. For instance, to be skeptical about the external world we
must think that there are believers who believe that there is an external world but that they are or
may be mistaken in that belief; yet if in our conceptual scheme the concept of a believer is that of
a physical entity possessing conscious, doxastic states, then we can never hold the skeptical
position consistently.
12
Such arguments do not prove that Cartesian skepticism is false or that
there truly is an external world, but rather that such skepticism could never be consistently held
in a conceptual scheme such as ours wherein the fact of doubt presupposes a belief in physical
entities and, therefore, an external world.
13

Stroud accepts the connective or purely descriptive use of transcendental arguments, and
he continues to deny that they can be used for the purpose of validatory metaphysics in the sense
of proving skepticism to be literally false. Nonetheless, he still believes that they can be used for
the epistemological purpose of disarming skepticism.
The differences between the two philosophers views are less pronounced than either
Strawsons or Strouds own comments suggest.
14
Both deny the possibility of a successful,
validatory metaphysics based on transcendental arguments, and both accept their use for the
descriptive metaphysical project of connective analysis. Finally, both think that within our
conceptual framework skepticism need not worry us, though admittedly for different reasons.
Stroud holds the more robust epistemic view, claiming that transcendental arguments can prove

11
Stroud: 1994, 163ff.; 1999a, 163-6.
12
Stroud: 1994,168-169;
13
Strawson: 1999a, 168.
14
Strawson: 1985, 21-22. Stroud: 1985, 664; 1994, 163-165.
7
skepticisms incoherence within our framework, whereas Strawson thinks that such skepticism
can be safely ignored.
For simplicitys sake I will henceforth refer to the common elements of their views as the
project of connective analysis (CA), and where they differ I will specify either the Strawsonian
naturalist variety (NCA) or the Stroudian epistemological variety (ECA). For the remainder
of my paper I will explore what I take to be a critical objection to CA. Neither Strawson nor
Stroud wishes to appeal to basic ontological beliefs of either a realist or anti-realist/idealist
variety in order to ground the connective analyses of transcendental arguments. NCA and ECA
both analyze conceptual frameworks without recourse to validatory metaphysics, i.e. without
proving that skepticism is literally false or that our fundamental concepts such as physical
entities or (other) minds have objective validity. I will argue presently that CA, considered as
a means of conducting descriptive metaphysics and disarming skepticism, is no more reliable
than the frameworks that it analyzes are stable. Yet the best and perhaps only explanation or
grounds for such stability would be either transcendental subjectivism
15
or realism. Therefore,
strict metaphysical ambivalence or agnosticism will underdetermine the validity and value that
Strawson and Stroud esteem NCA and ECA to have.
II. Historicism and the Threat of an Unstable A Priori
The project of CA will be undermined if the fundamental concepts and conceptual
relations it uncovers are mutable or revisable, where revisable here means capable of being
altered in light of contrary observations. If we are cautious in our usage, it will be helpful to
discuss these conceptual frameworks and the threat of historicism in terms of the a priori,
though I do not mean to imply that either Strawson or Stroud would ascribe to these frameworks
those specific attributes that Kant or any of his subsequent critics and followers held to be marks

15
For an explanation of this term see 4 below.
8
of a priority or a posteriority. Both seem willing enough to understand the subject of Strawsons
descriptive metaphysics, the essential framework of experience, to be the analog of Kants
synthetic a priori,
16
even if Strawson claimed to reject the coherence of this notion as Kant
developed it.
17
If we may speak of the fundamental concepts and propositions of our conceptual
framework as the a priori - not in all of Kants senses, but at least in the general sense of being
more schematic and constitutive of the rest of experience than various empirical and revisable
parts within the framework - then CA is the investigation of the synthetic a priori by
transcendental arguments, but not the attempt to prove its objective validity.
Historicism, as it concerns us here as a threat to CA, is the denial of the universality
and/or immutability of the allegedly a priori components of our framework. The position derives
its name from the fact that it claims that concepts, beliefs, or elements of experience that we take
to be universal, i.e. ubiquitous and inherent in all human cognition, are actually idiosyncratic to
particular languages; cultures; or stages in scientific, social, and even political/economic
development.
18

Strawson directly states the problem this position raises for descriptive metaphysics:
it might be suggested thatadmission of a dynamic element in the collective belief-system puts the whole
approach in question.If our frame of reference,can undergo such radical revolutions as the Copernican (the
real, not the Kantian, Copernican revolution), why should we assume that anything in it is fixed and unalterable?
And if we drop that assumption, must we not be content to cast our metaphysics for a more modest a historical or
historicist-role.Metaphysical truth would be relativized to historical periods.
19



16
Strawson: 1966, 44. The programme [of the Critique] was that of determining the fundamental general structure
of any conception of experience such as we can make intelligible to ourselves. Whether or not we choose to entitle
the propositions descriptive of that structure synthetic a priori, it is clear at least that they have a distinctive
character or status. Cf. Strawson 1987 and 1994 wherein Strawson explains the sense in which many
contemporary philosophers have essentially accepted the Copernican revolution. Cf. Stroud [1999b], especially pp.
229-230.
17
Strawson: 1966, 43. Stroud argues persuasively that what is incomprehensible to Strawson is not the status of the
synthetic a priori or the use to which Kant puts it. Rather, Strawson is saying that the incoherent doctrine of
transcendental idealism can do nothing to help explain the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. Stroud:
1999b, 229.
18
Haack: 1979, 366-7; Hacker: 2003, 54-57; Stroud: 1999b, 233-4.
19
Strawson: 1985, 26.
9
Historicism poses a threat to Strawsons NCA in at least two respects. First, if our fundamental
conceptual schemes are revisable and historically contingent, then we have little reason to
believe that transcendental arguments will reveal to us any lasting truths about the human
condition or our ways of conceiving of it. Thus the connections NCA will be transient as well as
loose. They will appear ephemeral against the march of the centuries,
20
and while it may still
be valuable to investigate the structure of historically contingent worldviews, this transience will
be able to cast doubt on every element of our world-view which we had navely assumed to be
necessary.
This doubt raises a second problem for NCA. Strawson claims that we can safely ignore
those forms of skepticism which simply cannot become live options for us. Yet if we suppose
our basic frameworks to be open to potentially radical changes, then such skepticism may not
always be completely unmoving. Strawson could respond to this problem by saying that a
potential threat is not an actual one, and he would be right up to a point; but a potential threat
may be sufficient to shake us from the comfort of our naturalistic position. If, for good reasons, I
am worried that something currently harmless could become a danger to me, then it does not
make much sense for me to call it unthreatening. For instance, someone in a high risk group for
developing skin cancer has less to fear for his health than a patient currently suffering from
melanoma, but he has much more to fear than another healthy person who is not at any risk for
the disease. Conceptual instability itself may not make skepticism an imminent threat for the
naturalist, but it may make it threatening enough to be impossible to ignore.

20
It is difficult to imagine how any culture could undergo massive conceptual revisions on the order of the
Copernican revolution at a rate faster than once a century. Individual pillars of our world view may fall one by one
every few years, (e.g. consider the myriad radical developments in logic, mathematics, and the physical sciences
between 1900 and 1940), but it seems preposterous to imagine that a culture could transition from Ptolemaic
medieval scholasticism, to Copernican-Newtonian mechanism, to post-Darwinian and Einsteinian modernism in a
matter of a few years.
10
Stroud seems less committed than Strawson to the thesis that our basic framework is
invariant
21
, yet the stability of our conceptual framework is even more vital for ECA than for
NCA, and Stroud does note the importance of stability for defending connective analysis against
historicism.
22
Recall that in ECA skepticism is to be disarmed by showing that within our
conceptual framework it is impossible to consistently endorse; the facts themselves which
motivate or lead to skeptical doubts presuppose that which the skeptic questions. For instance,
imagine construing an extreme form of materialism, e.g. property-physicalism, to be skepticism
about the existence of minds as irreducible properties or substances. If the concept of belief is
itself a concept of consciousness in our framework, then it will be inconsistent to think that the
belief that there are minds could be wrong. Indeed, the belief that there are no minds would be
inconsistent with the fact of believing it, just as the speech-act of saying, I am silent, is
inconsistent with the meaning of that very statement.
23
But now suppose that our conceptual
framework changes, and our basic concept of belief becomes one that does not prejudge the truth
or falsehood of radical materialism. Belief is otherwise construed and defined, say as
disposition to act, so as not to presuppose consciousness. This would mean that believing in
extreme materialism is no longer inherently inconsistent in our conceptual framework, and so the
disarmament of skepticism about minds will fail.

21
Stroud: 1999b, 238-9. To the historical metaphysicians caution that there could be forms of thought and
experience of which we so far have been unable to form any coherent conception, it is best to concede that, yes,
perhaps there could be.
22
Stroud: 1999b, 237ff. Establishing that some elements of our conception of the world have the kind of standing
that guarantees invulnerability to unmasking requires absolute or non-conditional understanding of the necessities
discovered by metaphysical reflection. The indispensability of certain ways of thinking must be indispensability for
any possible thought or experience at all, not merely for this or that conception of the world which we, or some other
culture or epoch, happen to have. The historical view challenges the assumption of this conception of the
metaphysical task.
23
I use this analogy here because Stroud presents it as a model for what a self-justifying belief might be, i.e. one that
would imply facts about the world from the psychological fact of believing or asserting it without relying on the
crude form of verificationism he singled out in Transcendental Arguments. Stroud: 1968, 22.
11
The defender of ECA might at this point insist that, as there has been no such change (the
opinions of many philosophers of mind notwithstanding!), skepticism about the mind can still be
claimed to be inconsistent. But as with NCA, no actual conceptual change is necessary to
undermine the treatment of skepticism here. If we know our concepts or the relations between
them to be revisable, then we will know that there is a possibility that skepticism about the mind
will one day be consistent and that its present inconsistency is contingent, lasting only as long as
the relevant parts of our conceptual framework remain unmodified. Indeed it is to just such a
possible, future re-conceiving that Paul Churchland appeals when defending his eliminative
materialism against the argument above.
24

What is more, if any concept is in principle revisable, then logical relations will be
mutable. If the very ideas of identity, affirmation, negation, and contradiction are open to
change, then inconsistency of the sort which ECA demonstrates may cease to be significant. In a
radically different logical system skepticism might be konsistent even if is not consistent in ours.
This final, Quinian point is not necessary to undermine ECAs anti-skeptical strategy. To
jeopardize ECA it is enough to show that our fundamental concepts for framing experience could
change. However, if our basic logical concepts can change, then ECA will be in an even more
threatened position.
III. Two Sources of Instability for the Synthetic A Priori
To defend their respective forms of connective analysis, Strawson and Stroud ought to
deny historicism and hold some version of what Susan Haack calls a conceptual invariance
thesis.
25
Strawson continues to do so in his present view, saying that, In fact, there is no reason

24
***
25
Haack: 1979, 365. The bridge from the modest to the ambitious enterprise [of describing and proving invariant
conceptual schemes] is the conceptual invariance thesis, a thesis introduced when Strawson replies to the anticipated
objection that metaphysics should resist, or promote, conceptual change, that there is a massive central core of
12
why metaphysics should tamely submit to historicist pressure.
26
As in the quote I presented
on p. 5, Strawsons defense of conceptual invariance seems to rest on his distinction between
what is a fundamental part of any human point of view and what is a contingent way of
conceptually representing particular content within that human experience. The question I now
wish to consider is whether Strawson can hold onto this position consistently while abandoning
validatory metaphysics. Does he have the metaphysical resources necessary to meet historicist
objections? Does one need validatory metaphysics to respond to such relativism?
To answer that question we need to say something about the historicist objections that
have been leveled at his program of descriptive metaphysics. There are essentially two kinds of
objections. The first is a local skepticism about the particular methods CA uses to identify a
priori structures. It suggests that the frameworks CA describes are or might be historically
contingent because CAs methods of analysis focus on the conditions of contingent elements of
experience as against experience as such. I call this the methodological argument for conceptual
instability. The second objection is a global worry about conceptual instability that demands an
explanation for the immutability or necessity of synthetic conceptual connections since they are
not logical necessities. This I will refer to as the metaphysical argument for conceptual
instability.
The methodological objection begins from a distinction between what is constitutive of
any experience and what is constituted within that framework, which mirrors certain aspects of
Kants a priori / a posteriori distinction. Strawson himself claims that descriptive metaphysics
studies universal elements that underlie all experience, but it is asserted by the methodological
objector that Strawson and others like him confuse particularly important contingent elements of

concepts which have no history.So, our conceptual scheme is common to different times and different
languages.
26
Strawson: 1985, 26-7.
13
experience with a universal structure. For instance, Susan Haack raises the worry that Strawsons
treatment of predication in Individuals, on which he bases his account of particulars and
universals, might not be an ubiquitous part of all human experience, but merely an idiosyncrasy
of Indo-European languages and the subject-predicate structure of their grammars.
27
A
descriptive metaphysician might claim that a precondition of experiencing particular physical
objects is, say, the ability to distinguish their properties from their substantive being, and he
might be identifying this from the deep conceptual and grammatical structures of our language.
The historicist will respond to him that it is possible that such distinctions are to be found only in
certain languages. Hence, important elements of our language that are not universal but appear so
lead us to mistakenly posit correlative metaphysical points as universal conditions of human
experience.
28

Is this methodological objection sound? I believe that Strawson can defend himself
against this charge. First, we may wish to reject the alleged counter-examples of alternate
structures of thought. For well known Davidsonian reasons, any analysis of another cultures

27
Haack: 1979, 368-9. Haack does not explicitly endorse this objection. She merely uses it to stress troubling issues
that she thinks descriptive metaphysics must address.
28
An alternative form of this objection is to claim that Strawson picks out elements of experience which, while
common to all people, are not common in all experiences. For instance, all human beings make use of predication,
but not every experience or even every discernible sequence of experiences makes use of this cognitive ability.
Graham Bird suggests that in this way Strawsons method of identifying a priori elements is more empiricist than
Kants. Where Kant identifies truly schematic features, ones that are common to all experiences but not readily
pointed out as discernible items within experience, Strawson refers to fundamental but not formally constitutive
elements of experience. Bird: 2003, 77-8. Strawsons project has no such model [as Kants schematic one]; it
identifies fundamental aspects of experience just as they empirically occur in that experience. The fundamental roles
outlined for external objects and persons are fundamental roles for our conception of those items just as they figure
in ordinary experience. This is why, for example, Strawsons account of persons places such weight on embodiment,
and, by the same token, why Kants does not. Kants abstract appeal to personal identity in transcendental
apperception has no more need to acknowledge our embodiment than Euclids abstract appeal to points and lines in
plane geometry needs to acknowledge the thickness of their empirical realizations in experience..Strawsons
project is an empiricist project, rather like Lockes, which Kant thought inappropriate for his purposes; Kants is
explicitly anti-empiricist.Whichever of these procedures, Strawsons empiricist or Kants anti-empiricist, is
acceptable or preferable, at least Kant offers such an explanation of his method and of the relation between our
contingent experience and its necessary structure. p.78 [Emphasis mine]. Strawson can respond that if a particular
feature of experience is used to explain the possibility of a general one, then the particular feature can only be called
into question if the critic is able to explain the possibility of some alternative. Strawson: 1966, 272.
14
language or conceptual framework which reports them to have a radically different logical
structure in their thinking will raise serious questions about translatability. We have no better
reason to think that the culture in question has a fundamentally different approach to the world
than that the Whorfian historicist has misinterpreted their discourse, perhaps confusing surface
level properties of their grammar for deep, structural elements of their thought.
Secondly, we may recognize that while certain parts of our framework are variable, the
most general features of it are less likely to be so. The more general the feature is, the less likely
it will be that the historicist will be able to present us with an alternative form of understanding
the world.
29
The ability to reidentify a particular is one such cognitive capacity that we simply
cannot imagine any person or group of people not to rely on, howsoever it should be
recapitulated in their speech. Does anyone seriously believe that there has ever been or could
ever be a human culture which made no use of the idea that the thing one is currently identifying
is the exact same thing that one identified earlier?
30

To this the historicist will respond that he is not persuaded by the fact that we cannot
conceive of alternative experiences. This, he claims, is indicative of the entrenchment and
fundamentality of certain core concepts and capacities that we have in our framework, but it does
not rule out the possibilities of alternative frameworks. Strawson and Stroud can try to shift the
burden of the argument at this point back onto the historicist by claiming that his arguments do

29
Strawson: 1966, 271-2.
30
This is a place where Strawson might fruitfully return to his naturalistic stance. The so-called Problem of
Change raised by the Heracliteans was a philosophical problem precisely because what it called into question, the
endurance and reidentifiability of particulars, is something that everyone relies on everyday of their lives. No one
can literally take himself to be experiencing the world as a flux anymore than he can cease to make inferences about
the future no matter how persuasively Heracliteanism or Humean skepticism undercut their reasonableness.
15
not rule out the possibility that there is no alternative framework and that he should therefore
give us reason to think an alternative really is possible.
31
The historicist has the onus of proof.
That is a reasonable response on their part, but perhaps it does not go far enough, for at
this point the historicist may introduce a deeper type of skepticism about stability: the
metaphysical argument. The connections that CA establishes are not merely analytic. They are
synthetic, and consequently their certainty cannot be established merely through the analysis of
their terms in a strictly formal way. Therefore, their denial does not constitute a contradiction in
the purely logical sense. This leaves CA with two possible defenses. The first is to claim that
there is some other type of necessity which synthetic a priori claims can have than logical
necessity. The second defense is to argue that connective analysis reveals analytic truths which
do have logical necessity. I consider the first defense in IV and the second in V.
IV. Transcendental Subjectivism and the Synthetic A Priori
What other kind of necessity might be found for the synthetic a priori? A defense of
synthetic a priori cognitions as following from, for instance, the forms of our faculties would
defend these claims in terms of a different type of necessity than purely formal, logical necessity.
In one sense Strawson is in agreement with Kant about the nature of non-analytic
necessity. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kants central goal is to show how synthetic a priori
judgments are possible; i.e. he wishes to explain how there can be certain, non-empirical
cognitions which are not simply analytic, but ampliative.
32
According to Kant a synthetic a priori
judgment is one which is necessary for the possibility of any object of experience and thus the
possibility of experience as such. Since experience presupposes a synthetic unity of appearances,

31
Strawson: 1966, 272. Strawsons argument, however, is only that if a particular feature of experience is used to
explain the possibility of a general one, then that particular should not be ruled out as contingent unless another can
be supplied.
32
A9-10/B13-14, B19ff., 4:276ff.
16
it therefore has principles of its form which ground it a priori, namely general rules of unity in
the synthesis of appearances.
33
In other words, the rules by which appearance are synthesized
are a priori principles of experience because it is only through them that experience in its full,
unified sense is possible.
34
Thus, Kant formulates the supreme principle of synthetic principles
as: Every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the manifold of
intuition in a possible experience.
35

Strawson agrees to this sense of necessity for the truths of descriptive metaphysics. They
are the conditions necessary for experience. He writes, How is it, after all, possible to establish
that experience must exhibit such-and-such general features? We may reply that this is just an
abbreviated way of saying that we can form no coherent or intelligible conception of a type of
experience which does not exhibit those features.
36
So Strawson agrees with Kant about what
the synthetic a priori is necessary for. It is what is necessary for intelligible experience.
However, this is not the sense of the necessity of the synthetic a priori cognitions that is needed
to respond to historicism. We want to know why they are necessary, in addition to what they are
necessary for.
Kants explanation of the fact of their necessity is transcendental idealism. The necessity
of synthetic, mathematical truths in guaranteed by the pure forms of our intuition
37
, and the laws
of nature are guaranteed by the a priori constitution of the understanding that is necessary for the
unity of experience.
38
Formulated in terms of stability, Kant thinks that our fundamental
framework is assured to hold universally in all experience by the basic constitution of our

33
Without a synthetic unity of appearances we would have merely a rhapsody of perceptions, not cognition.
A156-157 /B195-196.
34
as a priori cognition it [experience] also possesses truth (agreement with its object) only insofar as it contains
nothing more than what is necessary for the synthetic unity of experience in general. A157/B197.
35
A158/B197.
36
Strawson: 1966, 271. cf. pp. 15, 43-4.
37
A26/B42, A39/B56ff cf. 4:283-284, 318
38
4:296-7, 318-9.
17
faculties of awareness. Of course, as Kant frequently reminds us, the necessity of the synthetic a
priori is guaranteed only for appearances, not for the things in themselves which affect our
faculty of sensibility. Nevertheless the synthetic a priori is universal and unrevisable. No
experience could force the revision of the synthetic a priori because there can be nothing in
experience which does not comply with the a priori forms of sensibility and the understanding.
Nor will those forms change so long as the constitutions of our faculties remain what they are.
39

Transcendental idealism seems well defended against historicisms metaphysical objection.
But it is precisely in these aspects that Strawson thinks Kants philosophy becomes
incoherent. Strawson draws attention to the inveterate problems and contradictions that seem to
plague the theory. What could the affecting relationship of things in themselves be on our
sensibility prior to causality or time? How can space be known to not be the form of things in
themselves even if it is a form of intuition, and how can we even be sure that there is a thing in
itself? How can there be identity between the self both prior to experience and in inner sense?
40

Transcendental idealism, Strawson concludes, is incoherent.
Is there a weaker and more reasonable form of the theory that Strawson could adopt to
secure the synthetic a priori? We can distinguish the part of transcendental idealism which holds
that our faculties have a constitution which sets limits on possible experience from the
commitments to the pure ideality of space and time or the existence of things in themselves. This
view - following Strawson let us call it Transcendental Subjectivism
41
- would suffice to
ensure the stability of our framework if transcendental idealism does, but Strawson refuses to

39
Wont the constitutions of these faculties slowly change as a result of evolution? If these faculties of the agent
have their constitutions prior to experience, then they should be logically prior to time and causality as well nature
and its biological laws. Would it then make sense to speak of the evolution of human beings with respect to the
constitution of their faculties? This is perhaps one more problem with the relationship between the transcendental
and empirical self.
40
Strawson: 1966, 247ff.
41
Strawson: 1966, e.g. 22.
18
accept even this more limited doctrine, which he regards as mysterious and unexplanatory.
42

Stroud is ultimately no more sympathetic to doctrine than Strawson.
43

Idealism is ruled out by Strawson and Stroud, but would realism suffice? If synthetic a
priori judgments hold good of experience because they are necessary truths about the world if
they are true qua realism then these judgments will not be revisable because any object in the
world which could be experienced would be subject to these principles as natural laws. This
would give them at least physical necessity. The challenge for this type of realism is to explain
how we could confidently know that these truths hold necessarily in the world. We know from
Strouds criticisms that transcendental arguments will not suffice for this. But should there be
some other method of their demonstration, then there would be no need for connective analysis.
If Strawson or Stroud had this kind of knowledge, then surely they would tell us instead of
restricting themselves to the more modest project of CA. They would be telling us what
metaphysical truths hold true in the world and what methods establish such truths.
It seemed that transcendental idealism or subjectivism offered a basis of stability for the
synthetic a priori, but a defense from a theory that is contradictory is not a defense, and an
explanation by a theory that is incoherent is not an explanation. Realism might suffice to explain
and defend the stability of certain fundamental aspects of our framework, but Strawson and
Stroud do not feign to be able to validate such a position. CA avoids either option, as both are
forms of validatory metaphysics.
Dispensing with Kants explanation, Strawson claims that no validation is necessary for
the fact that we cannot conceive of intelligible experience without certain elements. He writes:
And if we nevertheless discard, as incoherent in itself and failing in its purpose, the Kantian explanation of the
feasibility of the programme [of descriptive metaphysics], what other are we prepared to offer? To this I can only

42
Strawson: 1966, 247-249.
43
Stroud: 1994, 159-160.
19
reply that I see no reason why any high doctrine at all should be necessary here.it is no matter for wonder if
conceivable variations [in our conceptual framework] are intelligible only as variations within a certain fundamental
general framework of ideas, if further developments are conceivable only as developments of, or from, a certain
general basis. There is nothing here to demand, or permit, an explanation such as Kants. In order to set limits to
coherent thinking, it is not necessary, as Kant, in spite of his disclaimers, attempted to do, to think both sides of
those limits. It is enough to think up to them.
44


It is true that an historical account of our present limits of thought would not require such an
explanation, but CA aspires to more than this. To be universal and to be able to respond to
skepticism, CA needs some high doctrine to secure the stability of our fundamental
frameworks.
V. Logical Ontologism and the Analytic A Priori
We can see why Strawson and Stroud will have difficulties in answering the
metaphysical objection to conceptual stability. CA rules out the reliance on transcendental
subjectivism or some other form of validatory metaphysics, idealist or realist, to guarantee the
stability of synthetic truths. So suppose, ignoring Quines arguments for the moment, that we
grant Strawson and Stroud the use of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, and, for the sake of
argument, we accept the possibility that the complex network of connections between concepts,
cognitive capacities, and beliefs which CA is purported to reveal can somehow be represented
analytically without sacrificing its richness. If our fundamental conceptual framework is analytic,
then the metaphysical objection need no longer concern us; our basic conceptual relationships
are logically necessary, so we need not search for some other metaphysical explanation of their
invariance.
However, we must ask why analyticity implies any kind of truth or necessity for claims
which possess it. Kants answer, and the answer that Strawson and Stroud must presumably give
as well, is that analytic judgments, whose predicate concepts contain nothing that was not

44
Strawson: 1996, 44.
20
already contained in the concept of the subject, are true according to the principle of non-
contradiction. In the second chapter of the Analytic of Principles Kant writes:
For, if the judgment is analytic, whether it be negative or affirmative, its truth must always be able to be cognized
sufficiently in accordance with the principle of contradiction. For the contrary of that which as a concept already lies
and is thought in the cognition of the object is always correctly denied, while the concept itself must necessarily be
affirmed of it, since its opposite would contradict the object. Hence we must also allow the principle of
contradiction to count as the universal and completely sufficient principle of all analytic cognition.
45


So long as we accept the principle of non-contradiction and the analytic/synthetic dichotomy we
can accept the truth or at least the immutability of our analytic conceptual frameworks.
A determined historicist will now object that we must give some account of our
acceptance of the Principle of Non-Contradiction. We need not prove its truth, but we must at
least account for why we take it to be stable. One answer might be that it is an inherent condition
of all cognition because it is imposed by the mind on experience. This position let us call it
logical transcendentalism - gives a transcendental subjectivist justification for the Principle as a
law governing experience. But if CAs rejection of validatory metaphysics proscribed Strawson
or Stroud from claiming that the stability of synthetic a priori relationships was guaranteed by
imposition, then mutatis mutandis it will ban explaining the stability of the analytic a priori as
the imposition of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC).
If logical transcendentalism has been ruled out, and logical constructivism too clearly
concedes victory to historicism
46
, then we might try turning to logical ontologism, i.e. the belief
that the PNC is a metaphysical truth or that its truth as a logical law governing predication
depends on the truth of a correlative metaphysical fact that there are no contradictions in the
world. So described, logical ontologism is a form of realism, namely realism about PNC. It avers

45
A151/B190-1. What Kant calls the Principle of Contradiction I am referring to as the Principle of Non-
Contradiction. These two names, as well as the Law of (Non)-Contradiction, are all variant titles for the same
principle, though Kant distinguishes his formulation of it from the traditional Aristotelian form which includes time
conditions. (A152-3/B191-3)
46
Logical constructivism is here understood to be the view that the rules of logic are conventions.
21
the literal truth of a non-psychological, ontological claim about the world. But once again this is
incompatible with a basic tenet of CA. CA was meant to deal with skepticism and describe the
basic structure of our experience without having to commit itself to the literal truth or objective
validity of the framework it reveals.
The reliance on PNC by CA is problematic even if we do not interpret our basic
conceptual framework as an analytic a priori. If CAs transcendental arguments reveal allegedly
stable, synthetic cognitions, these will do nothing to quiet skepticism unless contrary statements
are ruled out, too. This is normally guaranteed by PNC. For instance, if in our framework the
concept of belief is a mental concept, then skepticism about the mind is inconsistent if and only
if in that same framework it cannot also be true that belief is not a mental concept. The belief
in PNC is at least one belief in our framework which must be assumed to be literally true and
stable if CA is to be conducted. If logical ontologism and logical transcendentalism are the basic
candidates for explaining why PNC as a logical rule must hold universally, then CA will have to
rely on at least that much validatory metaphysics.
47

VI. Conclusion: Can Connective Analysis Dispense Avoid Validatory Metaphysics?
Connective Analysis requires some metaphysical commitment to PNC for either the
naturalistic or the epistemological response to skepticism to be feasible. Perhaps this is not very
troubling for Strawson or Stroud since very few opponents would seriously challenge them on
the legitimacy of assuming PNC. However, many of the rich connections between our beliefs
and our conceptual capacities which CA hopes to describe are clearly not analytic truths, even

47
I might be taken to be assuming here that realism (in a very broad sense) and idealism (also in a very broad sense)
exhaust the positions that can explain the stability of our basic categories of experience. E.g. all experience must be
causal because either the universe simply is a place full of entities that follow causal laws, or because the human
mind (or Gods mind) by its nature imposes such structure on experience. I am willing to entertain alternatives, e.g.
that experience has certain necessary features due both to realitys intrinsic nature and the nature of our faculties, but
what I am assuming is that any such alternative will itself be an ontological position of revisionary or validatory
metaphysics. The onus of proof is on the advocate of CA to adduce a counter-example which both explains and
underwrites conceptual stability and is non-metaphysical in the relevant sense.
22
assuming that the analytic/synthetic dichotomy is at all a valid distinction. That a world of sound
would or would not be sufficient for the identification and reidentification of particulars is not
something one can determine by consulting the intensions of the terms hearing, identification,
and particular.
48
Even if it were, these concepts would still have to be relatively stable for the
connections between them to be stable.
It is perfectly useful to describe components of the conceptual framework of our
experience which are open to change. The worthy field of intellectual history might be
characterizable as the study of the development of our world view. But if connective analysis
aims to be more than history if it is to be universal and capable of dealing with skepticism-
then it must have some reason for believing in the stability of our concepts and their
relationships, be they analytic or synthetic. To do this validatory metaphysics must be exercised.
We cannot blithely assume that even our most fundamental categories are fixed unless that is in
the nature of reality or the forms of our experience. The latter Strawson and Stroud reject
because of its incoherence, while the former is more than transcendental arguments can give us.
That suggests that transcendental arguments on their own are insufficient both to reveal the
fundamental connections between our cognitive capacities and basic concepts and to tell us why
such structures are stable and undisrupted by skepticism.
My argument has not proven that there is no significant use for transcendental arguments
to serve. Coupled with certain prior ontological assumptions that we may well wish to avoid, e.g.
transcendental idealism, they potentially could be very powerful. However, stripped of the realist
or idealist ontological premises given by validatory metaphysics, transcendental arguments are
insufficient for the tasks to which NCA and ECA put them. If Strawson or Stroud wish to
continue their projects of descriptive metaphysics by transcendental argument, then they will

48
Cf. Strawson: 1959, Chapter 2.
23
either need to supplement their systems with methods for validatory metaphysics or to reconcile
themselves to merely historical metaphysics.
24
VII. Bibliography of Works Cited and Consulted
Bird, Graham. [1999] Kant and the Problem of Induction: A Reply to Walker, in Stern [1999], pp. 31-45.
. [2003] Kants and Strawsons Descriptive Metaphysics, in Glock [2003b], pp. 67-85.
Glock, Hans-Johann. [2003a] Strawson and Analytic Kantianism, in Glock [2003b], pp. 15-42.
. [2003b] ed. Strawson and Kant. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
Grice, H.P. and P.F. Strawson. [1956] In Defense of Dogma, Philosophical Review, LXV, 2, April 1956, pp.
141-158.
Guyer, Paul. [1987] Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Haack, Susan. [1979 ] Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics, Philosophical Studies, XXXV, 4, May 1979,
pp. 361-371.
Hacker, P.M.S. [2003] On Strawsons Rehabilitation of Metaphysics, in Glock [2003b], pp. 43-66.
Hookway, Christopher. [1999] Modest Transcendental Arguments and Sceptical Doubts: A Reply to Stroud, in
Stern [1999], pp. 173-187.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trr. and Edd. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
. Prolegomenon to Any Future Metaphysics. Tr. and Ed. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
Stern, Robert [1999] ed. Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
Strawson, P.F. [1959] Individuals. London: Routledge, 1959.
. [1966] The Bounds of Sense. London: Routledge, 1966.
. [1985] Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
. [1987] Kants New Foundations of Metaphysics, reprinted in Strawson [1997], pp. 232-243.
. [1994] The Problem of Realism and the A Priori, reprinted in Strawson [1997], pp. 244-251.
. [1997] Entity and Identity and Other Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
. [2003] A Bit of Intellectual Autobiography, in Glock [2003b], pp.7-14.
Stroud, Barry. [1968] Transcendental Arguments, reprinted in Stroud [2000], pp. 9-25.
. [1984] Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge, reprinted in Stroud [2000], pp. 1-8.
. [1985] Metaphysical Meditations,: Review of P.F. Strawsons, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some
Varieties, The Times Literary Supplement, 14 June 1985, p.664.
. [1994] Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invulnerability, reprinted in Stroud [2000],
pp. 155-176.
. [1999a] The Goal of Transcendental Arguments, in Stern [1999], pp. 155-172.
. [1999b] The Synthetic A Priori in Strawsons Kantianism, in Stroud [2000], pp. 224-243.
. [2000] Understanding Human Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Walker, Ralph C.S. [1999] Induction and Transcendental Arguments, in Stern [1999], pp. 13-29.