If "it is trifling with philosophical problems to accept as valid questions and answers that have no conceivable bearing on how we propose to live" (IO:373 f.), then how can any "speculative philosophy," or "categorial metaphysics," escape the charge of "trifling" in this sense?
So, too, if "the pragmatic principle [holds] that a metaphysics must be livable, must have a reasonable relation to how one lives" (PCH: 687), how can any "categorial metaphysics" as such, i.e., as distinct from the transcendental metaphysics it necessarily implies, possibly pass muster as a valid metaphysics?
February 1998
