Back to Basic Transcendental Principles

A transcendental principle is a law or an invariant pattern detectable in nature (including in human nature) that is ascribable to the constitution of the human will.

Example 1

A moral action, for example telling the truth about an embarrassing prior action ("I cut down the cherry tree"), can be predicted to emerge from a circumstance of the right sort (George Washington's father confronting young George with the fallen tree) because the good will (which young George possesses) requires the production of true sentences, and not false ones. In this case, the transcendental principle is George Washington's basic goodness.

Example 2

The experience of external objects as possessing some sort of substance in themselves can be predicted to be the eventual case for an infant not yet capable of mature human experience. This is because the human understanding, which is a willed phenomenon, seems to contain a priori the concept of substance, as a feature of its rationality. Examples of psychosis, where immaterial objects appear to possess substance, or where material objects appear insubstantial, are breakdowns of something that otherwise unfolds as a law of nature in human development. The transcendental principle at work here is the category of substance as it is constituted by the human understanding.

Example 3

Consider the following syllogism:

P1: All conversations begin and end.

P2: P1 is an a priori content we create or will into some form of being each time we engage conversationally.

P3: All transcendental principles have this property of being constituted by the human will.

Conclusion: P1 (and CCST1.0, its superordinate formulation) is thus a transcendental principle of conversation.

Look for this basic logic in all of the Transcendental Principles proposed for conversation (CCST, CCUniRep, CCExCR, CCJ, CCDir, CCCED,CCEng, CCSR, CCNS, CCLog, CCTr, CCFr, CCDiv, CCSIn, CCAn, CCArtSC, CCMn, CCSP, CCLov).