Meaningless or incomprehensible?

It is unknowable, yes. The term is not meaningless though, because the transcendent is an area where you can make neither positive or negative claims. It represents the limits of human knowledge.

Transcendental isn't the same as transcendent.

Transcendental just means "conditions of possibility"
Transcendent is something like, "beyond our limits of understanding", or in contrast to the immanence of experience.

Or I guess he meant to say "the transcendentalists..."

Kant's position was that the empirical by itself(pure content) is blind and the transcendental(pure form) alone is empty. Thus both by themselves are inadequate and only together does consciousness attain meaning.

Lets think of a specific example, for example let's imagine a god who created the universe and who exists outside of space and time.

Now in one sense this is a meaningless and impossible thing to do, but in another sense this is perfectly possible. After all, we can imagine anything and associate it with a sentence.

Also consider the fact that religious people who purportedly make transcendent claims teach the meaning of their claims and think about them. But this would not make sense or be possible unless their claims were in fact not transcendent of experience.

So my way of thinking is this: propositions concerning the supposedly transcendent are in fact ordinary propositions concerning the world, but in disguise. The only difference between a transcendental proposition and an ordinary proposition, is that the former is irreducible to a particular public worldly referent.

The use of “consciousness” here is a misnomer; it should be “reason”.

For Kant, transcendent means beyond the possibility of any and all experience, because transcendent objects have no possible intuitions related to them, but can still exist in consciousness as an idea or a notion “....in such a supersensible sphere...”. Transcendent objects can be described and can be assigned meaning; the problem being then, reason finds itself without any means of distinguishing these from mere illusion, fancy or superstition. It is conceptually opposed by “immanent”.

Transcendental means that which has to do with a way of thinking in general, without the influence of any part of the empirical whatsoever, hence the term may apply to a variety of subjects, re: we have transcendental conceptions, transcendental knowledge, even a transcendental philosophy itself, all depending solely on the way they are thought. It is conceptually opposed by “empirical”.

Schopenhauer uses the principle of sufficient reason for what Kant uses the principle of synthetic a priori, so they really don’t compare.

Yes!!! Meaningless, incomprehensible, and indescribable!!!!

If it is described as you describe it, then it is still meaningless!

Exactly. So the "transcendent" is meaningless! The school of "Transcendentalists" have nothing to do with the issue!

What you say is accurate. But how does it refute my contention about the "transcendent?

Their claims do not transcend experience and are, therefore, meaningless!

Schopenhauer's Principle of Sufficient Reason is, for him, the apex of the transcendental, not of the transcendent (the Will).. If transcendent objects can not be verified empirically, they are meaningless fictions that exist in consciousness.

For that which does not pertain to or does not occur in human consciousness and is inherently outside of human consciousness cannot be described by human consciousness. — charles ferraro

Right, but transcendent experiences do occur in human consciousness. How could they not? Conceptualizing the transcendent also occurs in human consciousness.

A transcendent experience is simply a particular brain state, which is cognized, and perhaps later recognized.

Yes! And transcendent experiences are recognized for what they truly are; viz,. meaningless, fictional Nothings!

Meaningless??? People build entire religions around this stuff.

Fictional?? The experiences are real and the particular brain states have even been identified via FMRI.

Nothings? Neither and both nothing and not nothing, it's sometimes described. 'Nothing' is the opposite of something and a duality.

I’ll take your word for it. Obviously, they treat transcendental differently.

Yes, you're correct!. Unfortunately, certain kinds of people do, in fact, weave entire religious systems around their purported experiences of the transcendent and, to them and their followers, these purported experiences of the transcendent which ground their systems couldn't be more real. But, unfortunately, at no time, did any of them actually transcend consciousness, because there is no frame of reference we know of other than consciousness; at least, as long as we are alive. I simply cannot step outside of my consciousness to experience the transcendent; although I can sincerely convince myself that I do. Even false experiences (delusions, hallucinations, etc.) will register on an FMRI.

Yes!!! Meaningless, incomprehensible, and indescribable!!!! — charles ferraro

I mean is the transcendent meaningless (as in it's nonsense) or incomprehensible (has meaning that is beyond our comprehension)?

That which, by definition, falls outside the frame of reference of human consciousness; viz., the transcendent, is both nonsensical (because it is not at all accessible to our senses) and incomprehensible (because our minds cannot determine whether it has any meaning).

I'm of below average intelligence. I don't understand calculus or trigonometry or quantum physics. These are, you could say, transcendental to me. Yet, there are people who understand such subjects and are good at them.

So, what is transcendental to us may not be meaningless but could be something we can't understand.

Perhaps my question is silly. Asking a chimpanzee whether math/poetry/music is meaningless or incomprehensible may be the wrong question to ask

You have defined transcendent in a particular way, as "that which does not pertain to or does not occur in human consciousness and is inherently outside of human consciousness", and thus "cannot be described by human consciousness." Your conclusion is pre-supposed by your premise. I assume you aim to use your definition as a critique of positions which supposedly claim otherwise. You want to argue based on your tautology( consciousness=all possible experienced reality, therefore the transcendent is outside all possible experienced reality)
that what they identity as meaningful is actually meaningless and indescribable. But in order for their understanding of the transcendent to be falsified, you would have to demonstrate that their way of understanding the term begins from the same pre-supposition as yours(consciousness=all possible experienced reality). But transcendent is defined differently in different historical periods and within different philosophical and religious traditions. No one disagrees with a tautology, what they disagree about is a pre-supposition.

Your larger premise is that science attempts to match its theories to an independent objective reality. In this regard, science validates truth by falsifying. If a certain empirical theory of consciousness falsifies a previous, this means it is a better match for objectively observed phenomena than that older one. But a different pre-supposition, for instance one that thinks beyond a correspondence theory of scientific objectivity, would argue that attempting to falsify the claims of alternate accounts of the transcendent will miss the essence of their viewpoint.

Their claims do not transcend experience and are, therefore, meaningless! — charles ferraro

Not necessarily. For if transcendent referents are ruled out of semantics, this does not preclude the word "transcendent" being used to refer to things which are not transcendent.

Unless speech is the ultimate cause of itself, all speech must ultimately refer to an external cause, so even "transcendentally referring" speech has worldly referents, even we do not know them.

All utterances have been used at least once, and hence all utterances have meaning, even if that meaning is indecipherable.

He probably wants to argue that a 'worldly referent' is not what adherents have in mind, so your interpretation is sort of cheating, a diversion.

He probably wants to argue that a 'worldly referent' is not what adherents have in mind, so your interpretation is sort of cheating, a diversion. — Joshs

But how do we know what adherents have in mind? Isn't the only way to determine this to establish the environmental conditions under which they make their "transcendental" assertions?

Suppose that a christian evangelist insists "God isn't part of the world". If we could determine the environmental and neurological conditions under which he asserts this sentence, then shouldn't we interpret his utterance of "God isn't part of the world" as referring to these conditions?

Transcendental isn't the same as transcendent.

Transcendental just means "conditions of possibility"
Transcendent is something like, "beyond our limits of understanding", or in contrast to the immanence of experience.

Or I guess he meant to say "the transcendentalists..." — Marty

This. Transcendental arguments make sense and are a very sophisticated way to approach argumentation for something.

"Transcendent" as it's used to make excuses for the idea of a god, for example, is just nonsensical.

"Transcendent" means beyond nature, or more than the sum of its parts.

I have no idea what "beyond nature" means. Everything has a causal connection. It is all natural. All things are a sum of their causal relationships and nothing more. From where would that "something more" come from and how is it not affected by or affects our natural world? Transcendent in this sense IS meaningless.

If what happens here affects what happens somewhere else (like in heaven or hell), then they are all part of the same causal domain. There is no distinction of "natural" vs. "supernatural". There is no domain that is beyond nature. Nature includes all causal relationships. God would therefore be natural, and would be a natural cause of the universe, or better yet, "God" is the universe, or multiverse.

Well said, TS!

How interesting that, throughout history and across cultures, many mystics and thinkers who claimed to experience the TRANSCENDENT asserted that it was best characterized or described as being a divine NOTHINGNESS; thereby, unintentionally and ironically, precisely proving the point of my argument.

I argued a similar point above, that one has to understand the pre-suppositions involved in the use of 'transcendent'.

Terrapin wrote:
"Transcendent" as it's used to make excuses for the idea of a god, for example, is just nonsensical."

It is the opposite of nonsensical. It makes complete sense within the contours of the way consciousness is being understood within those traditions A divine 'nothingness"? That would be a shallow and self-serving reading. Besides , it misses all those traditions for whom consciousness does not just mean 'access to a material world'.

Wiki says "In religious experience transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence and by some definitions has also become independent of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, séance, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal "visions".

So the difference between the "Transcendent" and the transcendental for the seer of visions may be in terms of what KIND of consciousness is involved. Both are subjective experiences of an outer reality, but of two wholly different kinds.
There has been a renewal of interest among philosophers of mind in panpsychism. In some versions of it, the material world harbors within itself a non-material aspect or element, and that perhaps a special faculty of consciousness might be able to access that element. So you see here, while the experience is WITHIN consciousness, it is not transcendental in that it is not a condition of possibility for experiencing objective material reality. But it is transcendent in two ways. First, it transcends 'normal consciousness'. Second, it pertains to an aspect of the world that transcends the material dimension. In the case of the religious mystic , it transcends the geographic realm of the material world.

You could argue that mysticism is a less useful paradigm of describing experience than your preferred account, but it is neither meaningless nor nonsensical, any more than Aristotelian physics or Lamarckian biology. Science doesn't evolve by turning older notions into nonsense, it just changes its frame of interpretation.

[reply="Joshs;251630"

Fundamentally, mysticism, in all its forms, is not so much meaningless or nonsensical as it is primarily ELITIST. The Gnostics, for example, were very forthright about their inherent superiority. They promoted, among themselves, a false kind of consciousness of superiority. They claimed to be a special breed of pneumatic humans who were above the majority of merely material or psychical humanity. Only they were able to have a direct, intimate, personal encounter with the transcendent via some secret (magical) way of knowing, which the rest of us poor slobs, by our inferior natures, could never hope to be privy to. Mysticism evolves by promoting a religious frame-of-reference that would turn the rest of humanity into inferior beings. It is this dangerous elitism that I find shallow and self-serving about the paradigm of mysticism. It promotes, either explicitly or implicitly, the idea of the Transcendent Nothingness of the worth of the rest of humanity.