# Bahnsen and TAG



## Josiah.W

So I've been studying Presupp. apologetics recently and only just beginning to understand how transcendental arguments work. Bahnsen challenges the unbeliever to provide the preconditions necessary for things such as the uniformity of nature. An inability to provide this indicates that upholding the uniformity of nature is merely arbitrary since there is no valid reason to suppose that the future is like the past etc. 

In Bahnsen's debates, I've not seen any good responses to this from the non-believer. The only way I can think of is that they must necessarily appeal to an absolute, but would attempt to ensure that what they are describing is not God...

Besides this, I would guess that the other alternative for the unbeliever is to simply state that preconditions are unnecessary and from there their worldview is shown to be relativistic (but inconsistent with how they think and behave). 

Are these two directions generally the outcomes of such questions?

How might an unbeliever try to justify their assumptions about uniformity, logic and morality? 

This is certainly in-depth stuff for me but I see its usefulness in practise. There are so many who simply "trust in science" and it's useful to be able to challenge their own presuppositions. I look forward to your responses!


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## Hilasmos

As far as logic, I heard an atheist affirm that there were transcendent logical absolutes, but these logical absolutes are non-conceptual. His point was that TAGers equivocate on the term Logic, as conceptual reasoning processes of the mind, with logical absolutes, the non-conceptual absolutes that the conceptual logic points to. In other words, in this world we make logical statements that are conceptual (the rock exists and does not not exist at the same time); but, just because this logical statement is conceptual, it is a fallacy to say that the absolute that this conceptual statement references is also conceptual. By analogy, this is like having a conception of an apple and then affirming that the nature of the apple is conceptual.

When pressed on the question of the nature of the logical absolutes, however, no answer could be given. By affirming that logical absolutes were non-conceptual he affirmed that this didn't mean that they were material in nature (because they are transcendent). He held that there is a 3rd option, apparently, but said that he didn't know what it was other than to define it by its negation: "transcendentally non-conceptual." Of course, we can critizce this position by pointing out that if you don't know what something is how can you say what its not? Although true, it seems this could be countered by the fact that this is ultimately how we define the trinity, or the immateriality of God -- by negative statements (eg. we generally define immaterial as something not extendend in space).

So, in the end, I think to handle this objection you have to clearly define the nature of logical absolutes and why they must be this way.


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## Philip

Josiah.W said:


> How might an unbeliever try to justify their assumptions about uniformity, logic and morality?



By questioning the need for justification.


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## ChristianTrader

Philip said:


> Josiah.W said:
> 
> 
> 
> How might an unbeliever try to justify their assumptions about uniformity, logic and morality?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By questioning the need for justification.
Click to expand...


If one goes that direction, then at what point does one have to justify something? Is there anything that actually needs justification?

CT


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## Hilasmos

Or, isn't the questioning itself justification, and therefore it is self refuting from the start?


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## Loopie

I think there is some ambiguity when we say that a person "needs to justify something". It is not like they are going to spontaneously combust if they don't 'justify' their actions, their conclusions, etc. In that sense, 'justifying' one's beliefs are not mandatory.

BUT, justification IS a requirement IF you wish to avoid being arbitrary. For those of us who believe in cause and effect (and I think all of us do), if a person 'believes' something, then it is very likely that they have a reason for believing it. I honestly do not think that there is any belief or action by man that is wholly 'uncaused', 'arbitrary', or 'without reason'. Keep in mind that when I say that a person has a 'reason' for doing something, it means that there was a cause (or multiplicity of causes) that led that person to do (or believe) something.

For example, if a person honestly believes that I should be executed for being a Christian, there IS a 'reason' why they believe this. Even if my executioner does not tell me his reason for killing me, he does indeed have a reason. As for the purpose behind humans 'justifying' their beliefs and their actions, it seems that this is done to avoid utter chaos. 

Let us again consider the example of the man who wants to murder me. You see, I don't wish to be murdered, and so I would really like to try and persuade him NOT to kill me. For this reason I would try to figure out the cause, purpose, or 'reason' behind the actions of my murderer (I am seeking a motive). He might do the same for me, trying to figure out why I want to preserve my life, and why I don't just let him kill me. Then again, he might not care, and simply kill me without even bothering to allow me to speak a word. Yet in the end the question is: is the man justified or not in killing me? Should he be stopped? Should he be punished? Should someone seek to protect me?

Here is where justification is important. If humans are not held to some sort of standard, then utter chaos is the only result. This applies BOTH to morality and to the realm of logic. To justify something is to provide a foundation for something to be true (in the case of logic) or something to be morally right (in the case of ethics). If there is no need to justify ANYTHING, then there is no way to discern truth from falsehood, right from wrong.

So for the philosopher who believes that abortion is immoral, we ask him to 'justify' his reasoning. We ask him to tell us WHY it is wrong, and WHY he believes it is wrong. If he says that he does not need to justify anything, then we can very simply say that according to that statement he has no place to ever question someone else's beliefs or actions. If a person truly believes that their own actions or beliefs do not need to be justified, then they act inconsistently if they then declare the actions or beliefs of others as wrong or false. They cannot ask for others to justify their own actions or beliefs if they do not seek to justify their own (if they wish to avoid inconsistency). As soon as they declare that something is wrong or false, they have immediately implied that there is no justification for that belief or action. 

For this reason I think it is very easy to deal with someone who questions the need for justification. If they wish not to justify any action or belief, then all actions and all beliefs become equally valid. Everything results in arbitrariness and chaos. If the philanthropist does not need to justify his actions, than neither does the mass-murderer (unless of course we wish to hold to double-standards).


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## Philip

ChristianTrader said:


> If one goes that direction, then at what point does one have to justify something?



Depends on who's judging and what the standard of judgment is supposed to be.



Hilasmos said:


> Or, isn't the questioning itself justification, and therefore it is self refuting from the start?



What?



Loopie said:


> BUT, justification IS a requirement IF you wish to avoid being arbitrary.



Not necessarily, at least not in the sense that you are talking about. Certain propositions may simply be self-evidently true and in need of no further justification. Cause and effect, for instance, are intrinsically related.



Loopie said:


> if a person 'believes' something, then it is very likely that they have a reason for believing it.



Ok---reasons aren't justifications. For example, the law of cause and effect is believed as the result of practices which entail it as a piece of tacit knowledge. That's not justification in your sense, though (that is, a metaphysical story that purports to explain why it happens to be this way in this particular world).



Loopie said:


> Keep in mind that when I say that a person has a 'reason' for doing something, it means that there was a cause (or multiplicity of causes) that led that person to do (or believe) something.



Ah, so spasms and epileptic seizures are now examples of 'reasons'? Those are caused.



Loopie said:


> To justify something is to provide a foundation for something to be true (in the case of logic) or something to be morally right (in the case of ethics).



What counts as a foundation? And what do we do when two people with similar foundations have moral disagreements?



Loopie said:


> If the philanthropist does not need to justify his actions, than neither does the mass-murderer (unless of course we wish to hold to double-standards).



So all beliefs stand in need of justification? What of foundational beliefs? We're approaching a kind of positivism of justification.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> What?




The "questioning of a need for justification" is a means of justifying having assumptions without justification. Therefore, the assumptions are not without justification.


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## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> The "questioning of a need for justification" is a means of justifying having assumptions without justification. Therefore, the assumptions are not without justification.



How so? Asking a question is not (to my knowledge) used as a means of justifying anything---it's asking the original questioner to first give a reason why his rationalist methodology is to be accepted and why the subject ought to submit to his judgment.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> How so? Asking a question is not (to my knowledge) used as a means of justifying anything---it's asking the original questioner to first give a reason why his rationalist methodology is to be accepted and why the subject ought to submit to his judgment.



Your statement was in repsonse to "how might an unbeliever justify their assumptions...," so I did not interpret "questioning" as asking a question, but "expressing disagreement" that they need to justify belief X. Presumably this disagreement would be for various good reasons, which loosely defined is how I am using the word justification.


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## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Presumably this disagreement would be for various good reasons, which loosely defined is how I am using the word justification.



Ok, but it's generally possible that these reasons are implicit. For example, we all know how to tie a shoelace, but have you ever tried to describe the way the knot works? You have the information, but it's so internalized that you have to meditate deeply in order to express it.


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## Apologist4Him

Josiah.W said:


> So I've been studying Presupp. apologetics recently and only just beginning to understand how transcendental arguments work. Bahnsen challenges the unbeliever to provide the preconditions necessary for things such as the uniformity of nature. An inability to provide this indicates that upholding the uniformity of nature is merely arbitrary since there is no valid reason to suppose that the future is like the past etc.
> 
> In Bahnsen's debates, I've not seen any good responses to this from the non-believer. The only way I can think of is that they must necessarily appeal to an absolute, but would attempt to ensure that what they are describing is not God...
> 
> Besides this, I would guess that the other alternative for the unbeliever is to simply state that preconditions are unnecessary and from there their worldview is shown to be relativistic (but inconsistent with how they think and behave).
> 
> Are these two directions generally the outcomes of such questions?
> 
> How might an unbeliever try to justify their assumptions about uniformity, logic and morality?
> 
> This is certainly in-depth stuff for me but I see its usefulness in practise. There are so many who simply "trust in science" and it's useful to be able to challenge their own presuppositions. I look forward to your responses!



TAG smokes materialists because logic, morality, etc. are immaterial. TAG smokes non-believing rationalists, because they cannot give an account for rationality, and personal relativism can only fail to account for logical absolutes (like the law of non-contradiction). TAG smokes non-believing empiricists, because they cannot give an account for the predication of the universe (not to mention the universality of commonly shared experiences), because it presupposes an order (design, purpose) to the universe. The non-believer is likened to the metaphor Van Til once used, like a child sitting on their daddy's knee and slapping him in the face...or even worse pretending they're not sitting on their parents knee, while refusing to acknowledge they even have a daddy! Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world? I believe so, TAG exposes the foolishness.


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## Philip

Apologist4Him said:


> TAG smokes non-believing rationalists, because they cannot give an account for rationality, and personal relativism can only fail to account for logical absolutes (like the law of non-contradiction).



I'm curious as to why things that are necessarily the case would be in need of accounting.


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## ChristianTrader

Philip said:


> Hilasmos said:
> 
> 
> 
> Presumably this disagreement would be for various good reasons, which loosely defined is how I am using the word justification.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, but it's generally possible that these reasons are implicit. For example, we all know how to tie a shoelace, but have you ever tried to describe the way the knot works? You have the information, but it's so internalized that you have to meditate deeply in order to express it.
Click to expand...


Is there a problem with saying, "I know how to tie my shoe laces (by demonstration) but I don't know the process well enough to explain it.?"

CT


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Ok, but it's generally possible that these reasons are implicit.



Are they then necessary, contingent, or brute?


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## Philip

ChristianTrader said:


> Is there a problem with saying, "I know how to tie my shoe laces (by demonstration) but I don't know the process well enough to explain it.?"



Yes---because you're conceding that this knowledge might need to be explained in order to be complete. The way to demonstrate that you can tie your shoelaces is to tie them. Propositional knowledge is not required for knowledge here, but is merely second-order and derivative.



Hilasmos said:


> Are they then necessary, contingent, or brute?



How can you have a necessary, contingent, or brute reason for believing something? I'm not sure this question makes a whole lot of sense.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> How can you have a necessary, contingent, or brute reason for believing something? I'm not sure this question makes a whole lot of sense.



I am not asking if the belief is necessary, contingent, or brute, but the reasons implicit to the thing itself; are they necessary, contingent, or brute.

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 PM ----------

For example, I say one cannot account for the uniformity of a proton's positive charge; the response is, why do I need to account for this? the reason for its positive charge is implicit in the thing itself. Well and fine, but do those implicit reasons exist in a necessary, contingent, or brute way.


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## Apologist4Him

Philip said:


> Apologist4Him said:
> 
> 
> 
> TAG smokes non-believing rationalists, because they cannot give an account for rationality, and personal relativism can only fail to account for logical absolutes (like the law of non-contradiction).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm curious as to why things that are necessarily the case would be in need of accounting.
Click to expand...


Brother Philip, could you please explain what you mean by "necessarily the case"? Non-believers necessarily live on "borrowed capital". They cannot consistently live as though rationality were merely personal relative or "that's just the way it is" which isn't saying much or explain anything. Here is the problem of rationality for non-believers stated differently, if all humans ceased to exist, would logic cease to exist? If logic then is just a part of how we think, then it is personal relative, but if that is the case, it makes no logical sense to claim or live or believe in logical absolutes like the law of non-contradiction. I'm not sure if I've addresses your curiosity or not, but hopefully I have.


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## Loopie

Philip said:


> Not necessarily, at least not in the sense that you are talking about. Certain propositions may simply be self-evidently true and in need of no further justification. Cause and effect, for instance, are intrinsically related.



Self evident to whom? They do indeed need to be justified. Because something that is self-evident (in your opinion) might not be very self-evident in my opinion. How comes you have the 'correct' understanding/interpretation of the universe and I have the 'incorrect' understanding/interpretation of the universe? Do you believe that cause and effect are self-evident? What if a person did not think there was sufficient evidence to warrant such a conclusion. Perhaps it is all just extreme coincidence. From a non-Christian perspective (such as Hume's) there is no reason to believe that in the future, similar causes will produce similar effects as has been seen in the past. 



Philip said:


> Ok---reasons aren't justifications. For example, the law of cause and effect is believed as the result of practices which entail it as a piece of tacit knowledge. That's not justification in your sense, though (that is, a metaphysical story that purports to explain why it happens to be this way in this particular world).



And the reason why cause and effect exists is because of God. Our foundation is God. The unbeliever cannot provide us an answer why cause and effect exist as they do. To them it 'just is'. But even so, if someone were to come along that did not believe cause and effect existed, why would they be wrong? They simply could say that cause and effect 'just aren't'. So a reason for something is very much related to justification. If you have a justification for a particular believe, you ALSO have a reason why you believe what you believe. If you have no justification for what you believe, you also have no reason for believing what you believe. The two concepts are inseparable.



Philip said:


> Ah, so spasms and epileptic seizures are now examples of 'reasons'? Those are caused.



They are caused, and they themselves are also causes (they are causes of other effects). You can't break the chain of causality within the universe. By the way, 'reasons' are simply a subset of 'causes' (it can also be simply another word for 'causes'). Everything has a cause, but whenever we speak of actions involving agents that have a will, we usually use the term 'reasons'. Both 'reasons' and 'causes' are related to the question: 'Why?'. Why did this person start foaming at the mouth? The reason they foamed at the mouth was because they were having an epileptic seizure. Now obviously the term 'reason' can refer to different types of events, such as those events caused by willful agents, or those events that are caused by natural forces (non-willful agents). I recognize the different ways that the word 'reason' can be used. This does not change the fact that a person's belief needs to be justified. I mean, even in the case of someone having a spasm, you are basing your conclusion (you conclude that a person is having a spasm) off of the information that is being presented to you from your different senses. Why do you believe that what you see, hear, and feel, is true? Are these things always true? How comes your senses are correct at this moment and not others?



Philip said:


> What counts as a foundation? And what do we do when two people with similar foundations have moral disagreements?



Moral disagreements? Well, we talk about WHY a person has a particular moral view as opposed to a different moral view. We try and figure out the basis for their moral foundation. We show them that (if they are unbelievers) they are basing their moral foundation in man, which can only result in chaos and arbitrariness (relativism). The only solid ground is in scripture as the revealed Word of God. The only moral system that is both absolute and consistent is the Christian system. As for your suggestion that two people have similar foundations but also have moral disagreements I am not sure you are using the term 'foundation' properly? Do they both have a foundation in Christ? Do they both consider scripture to be the word of God? How similar are their foundations? Better yet, how different are their foundations?



Philip said:


> So all beliefs stand in need of justification? What of foundational beliefs? We're approaching a kind of positivism of justification.



That is the whole point Philip. All beliefs require a foundation, just like all effects require a cause. Yet when you continually proceed backwards on the chain of cause and effect, you either believe in infinite causes, or you believe that there is an uncaused first cause of the universe (God). In the same way, all beliefs stand in need of justification, and when we proceed backwards on the chain of justification and belief, we either end up believing in infinite justification, or we believe in the self-justified (and self-revelatory) God of the universe.

---------- Post added at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:07 PM ----------




Philip said:


> I'm curious as to why things that are necessarily the case would be in need of accounting.



Because we could all simply sit here and come up with whatever belief we want and say 'this is just necessarily the case'. Again, what makes your belief correct and someone else's belief incorrect? If I don't have to account for my beliefs, then how could you possibly show me that I believe wrongly or falsely? And if you declare that your beliefs do not need to be accounted for, then there is certainly no room for you to discern between truth and falsehood. If your beliefs don't need to be accounted for, then no one else's beliefs need to be accounted for either. The beliefs of others are just as valid and correct as yours.


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## Semper Fidelis

I just finished listening to a set of lectures by Bahnsen about Van Tillian apologetics from WTS on iTunes. I've heard them before but it's worth listening to again.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that one can never fully persuade a person who is objecting to being a creature dependent upon the Creator for life, being, and knowledge. By saying this, I believe a person can be shown to be inconsistent but, as pointed out, someone may simply assert "...that's just the way it is..." and have cognitive rest for something that is cosmically foolish.

I've seen attempts at TAG that make the claim that a person has no other option but to accede to the logic of the case but the problem is one of ethical hostility to what we believe is plain. Van Til speak of epistemological self consciousness by which he means that we need to listen to what the person believes is the foundation to knowledge and then challenging him to see that he is ultimately not arguing consistently according to his foundation. I've witnessed more than a few debates where this is done well and one never witnesses the person abandoning his foundation but simply clinging to it in spite of it.

I see in Van Til (and I also believe Bahnsen held to this) a desire to maintain in Apologetics what we have been born again into by way of Special Revelation. We were God haters and made to believe in Christ by the power of the Word. We understand, now, that the heavens declare our dependence as creatures upon the Creator for knowledge and Apologetics performs its service to remind the creature that he is, in the end, still a creature who suppresses knowledge of the Creator. This is why Bahnsen would never abandon the Gospel call as part of Apologetics or leave the idea of the true Trinitarian God for a theoretical God as First Mover or First Cause because he denied the idea that God was a brute fact that men were in a position or ability to reason toward. The point of contact was not unaided reason and the rules of logic but the Divine image that we share and the confidence that men were what the Scriptures say about them. Training in philosophy helped Van Til and Bahnsen to see clearly the various ways that men were applying their autonomous reason to the world around them and put their finger on the pits men fell into but the solution is always found in Christ.

Check out some of the free iTunes lectures at WTS.edu. Scott Oliphant has a great critique of the pitfalls Christians can get into as we place philosophy before theology. He argues that some of the notable Christian philosophers today would have benefited greatly from being good Theologians first and being properly trained in it. He doesn't despise the knowledge of philosophy but points out how we can unwittingly start from the wrong foundation and make our theology fit rather than beginning with a theology based on the Word of God and then using philosophy as a sharpening tool or even protecting us from some of the allures that these systems offer.


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## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> I am not asking if the belief is necessary, contingent, or brute, but the reasons implicit to the thing itself; are they necessary, contingent, or brute.



I don't think that you can have necessary, contingent, or brute reasons.



Hilasmos said:


> For example, I say one cannot account for the uniformity of a proton's positive charge; the response is, why do I need to account for this? the reason for its positive charge is implicit in the thing itself. Well and fine, but do those implicit reasons exist in a necessary, contingent, or brute way.



You're conflating things. You're arguing that fact A must have a fact B to account for it---that's fine. When we talk about why I believe what I believe, however, we're not talking about this at all, because we're talking about belief-formation. Why do I believe that protons have an electric charge? Easy---the instruments give this reading every time, so given my methodology for scientific investigation, I end up believing this and will continue to do so whether or not I can come up with a good explanation for why this is the case.



Apologist4Him said:


> Brother Philip, could you please explain what you mean by "necessarily the case"?



Take the law of contradiction: this is necessarily true, therefore one is inherently warranted in believing it---no further explanation is needed. If someone starts to question it, you simply restate it, after which you begin doubting their sanity.



Apologist4Him said:


> Here is the problem of rationality for non-believers stated differently, if all humans ceased to exist, would logic cease to exist?



There's all kinds of speculation out there on this. How do we go about speculating regarding a world with no minds in it?

I will make an attempt to answer other posts later.


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## Philip

Loopie said:


> They do indeed need to be justified. Because something that is self-evident (in your opinion) might not be very self-evident in my opinion. How comes you have the 'correct' understanding/interpretation of the universe and I have the 'incorrect' understanding/interpretation of the universe?



Ok, but here you're dealing with incorrigible beliefs. What evidence, for example, would you give for your belief that a certain single-celled organism is a human being? To give a foundation for a belief is to give the conditions that would lead you to reject it.



Loopie said:


> Do you believe that cause and effect are self-evident? What if a person did not think there was sufficient evidence to warrant such a conclusion. Perhaps it is all just extreme coincidence. From a non-Christian perspective (such as Hume's) there is no reason to believe that in the future, similar causes will produce similar effects as has been seen in the past.



Sure there is: Hume himself admitted it---you can't live like that. The burden of proof is on the skeptic---it is always on the skeptic.



Loopie said:


> And the reason why cause and effect exists is because of God.



But is that the reason that you believe in cause and effect? Did you form a syllogism with a first premise that "God exists" and concluding with "therefore cause and effect exists" (whatever that means)? If you didn't then God is not the foundation of your belief in cause and effect in terms of your epistemic system.



Loopie said:


> The unbeliever cannot provide us an answer why cause and effect exist as they do. To them it 'just is'.



Yes, but this is a fairly warranted belief, given that the proposition is tautological.



Loopie said:


> If you have no justification for what you believe, you also have no reason for believing what you believe.



Not necessarily. A justification is a logical argument intended to satisfy some particular skeptic---a reason doesn't have to satisfy skeptics.



Loopie said:


> You can't break the chain of causality within the universe. By the way, 'reasons' are simply a subset of 'causes' (it can also be simply another word for 'causes'). Everything has a cause, but whenever we speak of actions involving agents that have a will, we usually use the term 'reasons'.



Oh dear, we seem to be heading toward hard determinism.



Loopie said:


> This does not change the fact that a person's belief needs to be justified.



Here's where I'm going to call you out: who is judging you for having unjustified beliefs? Who has to be satisfied by your reason for your belief to be properly justified? Whose standard are we using and can you justify its use?



Loopie said:


> Why do you believe that what you see, hear, and feel, is true? Are these things always true? How comes your senses are correct at this moment and not others?



Why shouldn't I think so? If you can give me a reason why my senses are (in fact) failing me in this particular circumstance, then and only then am I in need of justification for belief. And even then, that would require you verifying the fact by means of appeal to the senses.



Loopie said:


> As for your suggestion that two people have similar foundations but also have moral disagreements I am not sure you are using the term 'foundation' properly? Do they both have a foundation in Christ? Do they both consider scripture to be the word of God? How similar are their foundations? Better yet, how different are their foundations?



Both consider Scripture to be the authority and both are regenerate. I know brothers in Christ who see particular moral issues differently, and oddly enough, we point to the exact same passages to warrant our beliefs. We're talking good reformed folks disagreeing on particular issues.



Loopie said:


> All beliefs require a foundation



What about belief in God?



Loopie said:


> Yet when you continually proceed backwards on the chain of cause and effect, you either believe in infinite causes, or you believe that there is an uncaused first cause of the universe (God).



This is a foundation in terms of metaphysical systems, but not in terms of systems of belief (ie: how you get to know stuff, or the basis for belief X). You're confusing the order of being with the order of knowing.



Loopie said:


> Because we could all simply sit here and come up with whatever belief we want and say 'this is just necessarily the case'.



Not at all. Necessary truths are obvious: "all bachelors are unmarried," "all effects have causes," "a self-contradictory position is necessarily false." These are terribly obvious beliefs that need no further justification.



Loopie said:


> If I don't have to account for my beliefs, then how could you possibly show me that I believe wrongly or falsely?



By demonstrating it. Your argument has been that the only way to argue is _de jure_, whereas I would argue that _de facto_ arguments are much stronger. _De jure_ argumentation is useful when the goal is to help someone to strengthen or reinforce their existing beliefs by questioning them---it is not helpful (generally) for showing them to be false.


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## BarryR

Phillip,

It is my pleasure to interact with you on this topic. You seem well read regarding this subject, however I feel you are allowing the autonomous man too much ground regarding his justification (or lack thereof) of something like logical absolutes. Why would you find it appropriate to allow this individual to _not_ have to justify something like logical absolutes? I submit to you that all facts do indeed need some foundational form of justification regardless of the necessary nature of the fact. 

Allow me to use your example of "all bachelors are unmarried" as a necessary truth that needs no further justification. I would argue that there are so many levels of "justification" that would need to be explored before you even were able to get to the truth of that statement. 

For it to be true one would have to assume things like the definition of the word bachelors that is being used:
1. An unmarried man.
2. A person who has completed the undergraduate curriculum of a college or university and holds a bachelor's degree.
3. A male animal that does not mate during the breeding season, especially a young male fur seal kept from the breeding territory by older males.
4. A young knight in the service of another knight in feudal times.

You would also have to assume that there are such things as "universals". Can I see bachelorness? What is the justification for something such as universals?
You would have to assume things like language - what is the justification that your words would be understood by others?
Uniformity - why would a "universal" like bachelor exist two seconds from now? 

I could continue down this road for quite sometime, but I trust you see my point. Just because something is necessarily true doesn't mean that it can escape justification. Will the autonomous man still use the hammer that was left for him without needing to give a reason as to why or where it came from? Of course he will. The fact of the matter is that the Bible makes it clear that he actually does know where the hammer came from and who left it - he just suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. So to allow the unbeliever to say certain things are just "necessary" without needing to give further justification is really allowing them a "pass" on something very, very critical.

Take care,
Barry


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## Loopie

Philip said:


> Ok, but here you're dealing with incorrigible beliefs. What evidence, for example, would you give for your belief that a certain single-celled organism is a human being? To give a foundation for a belief is to give the conditions that would lead you to reject it.



I don't quite see how giving a foundation for a belief is to give the conditions what would lead you to reject it. A foundation for belief is exactly that, a foundation. As for your single-celled organism scenario, a human being by definition is not a single-celled organism. It would be contradictory for me to state that a single-celled organism is a multi-celled organism. I am reasoning per the assumption of a law of logic. Of course, if I were asked where this supposed law of logic comes from, I would indeed point to God. For the unbeliever, he simply believes that the law of logic exists. In his mind "it just is". He assumes that a law exists without a law-giver. By the way, I consider evolution to be a rather silly theory, but then again, many a smart minds consider it to be truth. They believe they have a strong foundation to assume that single-celled organisms eventually evolved into human beings.



Philip said:


> Sure there is: Hume himself admitted it---you can't live like that. The burden of proof is on the skeptic---it is always on the skeptic.



What Hume ends up showing is that he cannot exist outside of a universe created by God. No matter how hard he tries to interpret the universe apart from his Creator, he cannot. He lives the way he does because he is a creature of God. He cannot avoid using borrowed capitol. He will never naturally admit that God is required to make sense of the universe, to understand the laws of nature for what they are, and where they come from. He cannot avoid assuming a uniformity of nature. He tries as hard as he can to find an answer to the question that is not God, and fails. He shows how much he depends upon God, although he will never admit it. That is why people can continue to live the way they do. In one sense they live irrationally (not allowing that God is the creator of the universe and the laws of nature). In another sense they live rationally (they borrow from a Christian worldview because they cannot avoid being made in the image of God, and living in a universe that he created). This is exactly why atheists can be 'relatively good', and act morally. They don't follow through with their beliefs that there is no afterlife, no God, and no divine justice. They often live more moral lives than many Christians. But such actions and behaviors are inconsistent with their supposed 'atheistic' worldview. 



Philip said:


> But is that the reason that you believe in cause and effect? Did you form a syllogism with a first premise that "God exists" and concluding with "therefore cause and effect exists" (whatever that means)? If you didn't then God is not the foundation of your belief in cause and effect in terms of your epistemic system.



I have always believed in cause and effect and have assumed it to exist. Not until I became a Christian did I realize that all of this time I was living on borrowed capital. Both believers and unbelievers alike cannot help but live in a universe that has cause and effect. Both believers and unbelievers alike cannot help but believe in cause and effect. This does not mean that they can justify or account for their beliefs. Have you never come across a person who believes something without fully understanding why? There is always a reason why someone believes something. Sometimes a person believes things without really thinking deeply about them. I mean, unbelievers often commit sin without consciously thinking of themselves as rebelling against God. Certainly there are a few God-haters out there who are very outspoken, but I would say that this is not the majority. There are even some people who honestly don't think of God in any hateful or despicable way. Does this mean that they are not actually rebels against God? No, they are still under his wrath. So we see that a person can act and believe in certain ways without always being fully conscious of it. This does not mean that there is no reason for their actions. There is still a reason, even though it might be very difficult to see it immediately.

So in the case of cause and effect, God is the only foundation for my belief that makes any sense and is consistent. As a child I believed in cause and effect because when I stuck my hand in the fire, it burned. As I did this enough times, I came to assume that all fires burn. I based my beliefs upon my senses. I was a natural empiricist. Of course, I came to eventually realize that my sense are not always correct, so I cannot consistently rely upon my senses as providing me with true information. They should not be the ultimate foundation for my beliefs. As an unbeliever, the best that I could do is say that I simply have to accept that cause and effect exist. They 'just are'. It is much easier just to assume them to be true in order to get on with my life. Have I accounted for my belief? No. Have I justified it? No. I have simply thrown up my hands in despair to trying to find an explanation, ANY explanation that WAS NOT God. What a wonderful rebel that I was.



Philip said:


> Yes, but this is a fairly warranted belief, given that the proposition is tautological.



Warranted based on what? How is it warranted? Because he believes his five senses? Because the majority of humans have said so? I don't doubt that he can believe in cause and effect for a variety of reasons, but are any of those foundations consistent? Are any of those foundations a true rock on which to build a worldview?



Philip said:


> Not necessarily. A justification is a logical argument intended to satisfy some particular skeptic---a reason doesn't have to satisfy skeptics.



I don't care about 'satisfying' a skeptic. They will never be satisfied. A justification is a logical argument intended to provide the foundation for a particular belief. I do not agree that a justification is a logical argument intended to satisfy a skeptic. Even if no skeptics existed in the entire world, I would still have to justify my beliefs in order to avoid simple arbitrariness and chaos. I mean, every time I say that 'this is false', 'this is true', 'this is right', or 'this is wrong' I am essentially looking at whether a belief or action is justified. If I avoided looking at the foundation for anything, then I would never be able to discern between truth or falsehood. Often times this is subconscious. Consider the case of pilots. Often times when they are flying they actually feel like they are turning, climbing, or descending. They believe it so strongly at times that they will sometimes crash the plane into the ground thinking that they are climbing. In order to discern between truth and falsehood they must essentially seek to justify their beliefs. If I believe that I was turning left, I need to ask myself why I would feel this way. Was I recently turning left? Was the airplane losing control? In the end we are instructed to look at our instruments (because instruments are more likely to tell the truth than our own senses). I wasn't really turning left, even though I felt that I was. Usually I believe my senses, but this time they were wrong. I essentially compare the foundation for my belief. Do I belief my own senses, which I know can be deceived? Or do I believe my instruments, which I know are almost always correct? These thoughts are nearly subconscious, because they happen in a split-second. Yet no matter how fast these thoughts proceed, or how subconscious they are, they do happen. 



Philip said:


> Oh dear, we seem to be heading toward hard determinism.



You assume incorrectly. Just because I believe in cause and effect does not mean that I have exhaustive knowledge of all causes. I believe in secondary causes as well, and I believe that man does have a will. There are an innumerable amount of causes that lead me to do the things that I do. With this in mind I do not believe that a person has to be a hard-determinist to believe that cause and effect exist, and that causality is indeed a chain (albeit a VERY long, wide, and complicated chain that cannot be grasped except by the mind of God).



Philip said:


> Here's where I'm going to call you out: who is judging you for having unjustified beliefs? Who has to be satisfied by your reason for your belief to be properly justified? Whose standard are we using and can you justify its use?



God is certainly judging me for having unjustified beliefs (if I was an unbeliever). If I were an unbeliever, and God asks me why I did not repent of my sins and worship him (and why I thought that he did not exist), any excuse I give would not be justified. God would not be satisfied with my excuses. His wrath would not be satisfied, no matter how much I believed myself to be right. God would show me his standard, and would show me how I failed to live up to his standards. He can justify the use of such standards because He is God, and there are none like him. 

The point here is that even if I was the ONLY human being alive, I would still subconsciously seek to justify my beliefs. It is how we operate as humans. This does not mean that all of my reasons for doing something are right, or that my conclusions are correct. In a sense, the unbeliever (who has a sense of the divine, and knows that God is his creator), is always seeking to justify his rebellion. It is the only way to avoid the hard truth. He seeks to build his beliefs upon a false foundation, anything to avoid giving credit to God.



Philip said:


> Why shouldn't I think so? If you can give me a reason why my senses are (in fact) failing me in this particular circumstance, then and only then am I in need of justification for belief. And even then, that would require you verifying the fact by means of appeal to the senses.



Reference the pilot scenario above. I don't doubt that even when I look at the instruments I still am 'believing what my eyes see'. But I still have yet to show WHY I should believe my senses. Is it because they have been correct so far? There is no guarantee that this will continue to be true. Also keep in mind that Adam, when he sinned, was not being deceived by his five senses. He was still wrong, and not justified in believing the serpent to be correct. Did God have to appeal to the senses in order to show that Adam was wrong?



Philip said:


> Both consider Scripture to be the authority and both are regenerate. I know brothers in Christ who see particular moral issues differently, and oddly enough, we point to the exact same passages to warrant our beliefs. We're talking good reformed folks disagreeing on particular issues.



Ahh, but is this because scripture is unclear or inconsistent, or because not all Christians have a full understanding of the word of God? Right here we see the limitations and weaknesses of man, but not the weaknesses of scripture. Or do you believe that scripture is at fault, and not humans?



Philip said:


> What about belief in God?



The foundation is in God. No one believes in the God of scripture unless by the power of the Holy Spirit. Just like God is the uncaused first cause. This question of yours is very similar to the "who created God?" question.



Philip said:


> This is a foundation in terms of metaphysical systems, but not in terms of systems of belief (ie: how you get to know stuff, or the basis for belief X). You're confusing the order of being with the order of knowing.



You can't know it unless it exists. For humans, being exists before knowing. You still have a reason for believing something to be true, or for believing something to exist. Knowledge is very much tied to and connected with metaphysics. There are causes for our beliefs just like there are causes for things that exist.



Philip said:


> Not at all. Necessary truths are obvious: "all bachelors are unmarried," "all effects have causes," "a self-contradictory position is necessarily false." These are terribly obvious beliefs that need no further justification.



Obvious to who? To the majority of people? To you? They certainly do need justification. People believe that bachelors are unmarried because they cannot conceive of a married bachelor. Their minds exist in a universe created by God, a universe that is not contradictory. They believe in the law of non-contradiction, yet they really don't know why. Why is it a law? They live by borrowing from a theistic worldview, albeit unknowingly. Believing in a uniformity of nature seems to make sense, but in the end instead of recognizing it as part of God's creative decree, they simply say 'it just is'. 



Philip said:


> By demonstrating it. Your argument has been that the only way to argue is _de jure_, whereas I would argue that _de facto_ arguments are much stronger. _De jure_ argumentation is useful when the goal is to help someone to strengthen or reinforce their existing beliefs by questioning them---it is not helpful (generally) for showing them to be false.



How would you demonstrate it? By demonstrating it you would unknowingly be showing that my justification for my belief is wrong, whereas yours is right. Your belief would align better with the 'facts' and with 'reasoning'. Your belief would be consistent with itself, and not contradictory. You would be unable to avoid comparing foundations in your 'demonstration'. So again, you cannot discern truth from falsehood without looking at the justification for a particular belief or action.


----------



## Peairtach

*Barry*


> It is my pleasure to interact with you on this topic. You seem well read regarding this subject, however I feel you are allowing the autonomous man too much ground regarding his justification (or lack thereof) of something like logical absolutes. Why would you find it appropriate to allow this individual to not have to justify something like logical absolutes? I submit to you that all facts do indeed need some foundational form of justification regardless of the necessary nature of the fact.



Philip is the Puritanboard's resident sceptic regarding Van Til's apologetic. It's a good thing, as Vantillian argumentation can be tested to the limit.


----------



## Josiah.W

Semper Fidelis said:


> Check out some of the free iTunes lectures at WTS.edu. Scott Oliphant has a great critique of the pitfalls Christians can get into as we place philosophy before theology. He argues that some of the notable Christian philosophers today would have benefited greatly from being good Theologians first and being properly trained in it. He doesn't despise the knowledge of philosophy but points out how we can unwittingly start from the wrong foundation and make our theology fit rather than beginning with a theology based on the Word of God and then using philosophy as a sharpening tool or even protecting us from some of the allures that these systems offer.



That's a great site, cheers for the info. 

Appreciate all the responses so far, thanks


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> I don't think that you can have necessary, contingent, or brute reasons.



Do reasons exist? Secondly, if they do, don’t all existing things exist either necessarily, contingently, or as a brute fact? I am a sucker for the principle of sufficient reason, so I don’t really believe in brute facts; but, nonetheless, it is a conceptual answer that some may give. This was the sense and nature of my question, but perhaps I have been expressing it wrongly or we are talking about different things. 

Q: What is the reason an atom holds together? (the holding together over time would represent a uniformity) 
A: Electromagnetic force

Q: What is the reason for the electromagnetic force? 
A: The interaction between negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. 

Q: This reason (electromagnetic force) is contingent upon the interaction of positive and negative particles? 
A: Yes

Therefore, an Atom holds together for the reason of electromagnetic force; but this reason exists contingently (i.e., it is a contingent reason).


----------



## Josiah.W

Philip said:


> Josiah.W said:
> 
> 
> 
> How might an unbeliever try to justify their assumptions about uniformity, logic and morality?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By questioning the need for justification.
Click to expand...


Philip you've offered a great degree of critical thinking in this thread. Forgive me if this is too simple a reduction but is this the thrust of your challenge to transcendental arguments, that an unbeliever doesn't have to provide a basis for their presuppositions? Surely if certain presuppositions render other aspects of their world-view contradictory and inconsistent, then they would have to give an account for these presupps?


----------



## Philip

BarryR said:


> Why would you find it appropriate to allow this individual to not have to justify something like logical absolutes?



The burden of proof is on the skeptic.



BarryR said:


> For it to be true one would have to assume things like the definition of the word bachelors that is being used:



But it's perfectly obvious which sense is meant. Further, how would you go about justifying a definition?



BarryR said:


> You would also have to assume that there are such things as "universals".



Why? I'm an Occamite, I don't think I have to assume this at all.



BarryR said:


> You would have to assume things like language - what is the justification that your words would be understood by others?



The fact that they are?



BarryR said:


> I could continue down this road for quite sometime, but I trust you see my point.



Sorry, I don't. These aren't justifications---the only way that I need to justify the statement is if you assert the contrary, and even then, there has to be a mutually-agreed-upon methodology.



Loopie said:


> a human being by definition is not a single-celled organism.



Life begins at conception. You missed the point of my example entirely.



Loopie said:


> I am reasoning per the assumption of a law of logic. Of course, if I were asked where this supposed law of logic comes from, I would indeed point to God.



But Eric, this is where you are confused: to give a justification is not to give an explanation, but to give the reason why _you_ believe X to be the case. Your foundation for belief in X has nothing to do with your metaphysical system---or even with whether you have one.



Loopie said:


> Have you never come across a person who believes something without fully understanding why?



Sure: plenty of people know stuff without understanding how they came to believe it.



Loopie said:


> As an unbeliever, the best that I could do is say that I simply have to accept that cause and effect exist. They 'just are'. It is much easier just to assume them to be true in order to get on with my life. Have I accounted for my belief? No. Have I justified it? No. I have simply thrown up my hands in despair to trying to find an explanation



Eric, you've just confused the issue by conflating things again. Accounting for your beliefs has nothing to do with whether you can explain why X is X---only with how you are warranted in believing X to be true. In this case, practical necessity dictates that you believe in cause and effect.



Loopie said:


> Warranted based on what?



The fact that to be an effect is to be caused.



Loopie said:


> I don't care about 'satisfying' a skeptic. They will never be satisfied. A justification is a logical argument intended to provide the foundation for a particular belief.



In the first sentence you decry skepticism, while in the second you play the skeptic. And even then, you're confused for the simple reason that you're still confusing epistemology and metaphysics.



Loopie said:


> If I avoided looking at the foundation for anything, then I would never be able to discern between truth or falsehood.



So Eric, are people with Down Syndrome incapable of telling whether something is true or false?



Loopie said:


> If I believe that I was turning left, I need to ask myself why I would feel this way. Was I recently turning left? Was the airplane losing control? In the end we are instructed to look at our instruments (because instruments are more likely to tell the truth than our own senses). I wasn't really turning left, even though I felt that I was. Usually I believe my senses, but this time they were wrong. I essentially compare the foundation for my belief.



Ok, but here's what you are doing: you are applying a certain methodology---you're not questioning empirical sense, but using it in a different way. This isn't a metaphysical foundation at all.



Loopie said:


> Do I belief my own senses, which I know can be deceived? Or do I believe my instruments, which I know are almost always correct?



You can't very well believe your instruments unless you believe your senses to a certain degree.



Loopie said:


> God is certainly judging me for having unjustified beliefs (if I was an unbeliever).



That's not what I meant at all. What standard has to be satisfied for a belief to be considered justified? What are the conditions that must apply for this to happen, and how are you going to convince the unbeliever to accept this standard (you can't have a meaningful argument without an agreed-upon standard of evaluation). You seem here to be conflating justification with truth-value here.

God doesn't judge unbelieving man for having epistemically unjustified beliefs: he judges man for unbelief.



Loopie said:


> But I still have yet to show WHY I should believe my senses. Is it because they have been correct so far? There is no guarantee that this will continue to be true. Also keep in mind that Adam, when he sinned, was not being deceived by his five senses. He was still wrong, and not justified in believing the serpent to be correct. Did God have to appeal to the senses in order to show that Adam was wrong?



The reason why you should continue to believe them is that you still have no good reason not to. As for Adam, of course you can't show him that he was wrong empirically because his mistake wasn't an empirical one. Again, you're confusing your methodologies.



Loopie said:


> Ahh, but is this because scripture is unclear or inconsistent, or because not all Christians have a full understanding of the word of God? Right here we see the limitations and weaknesses of man, but not the weaknesses of scripture. Or do you believe that scripture is at fault, and not humans?



Eric, you miss the point entirely---one can have all the right methodological foundations and still come to the wrong conclusions. Reason is fallen too.



Loopie said:


> For humans, being exists before knowing. You still have a reason for believing something to be true, or for believing something to exist. Knowledge is very much tied to and connected with metaphysics. There are causes for our beliefs just like there are causes for things that exist.



Eric, again, you're conflating things and confusing the issue. When you were born, how did you learn? What methodologies did you adopt in order to get to know the world around you. If your epistemology cannot account for the knowledge of the world had by a newborn, then it's false. Newborns don't have a metaphysic.

Having causes and reasons for belief is not the same as having metaphysical explanations. I don't give a metaphysical account in order to warrant my saying "there is a desk in front of me." Now it may well be that this belief _entails_ certain metaphysical beliefs, but those are second-order beliefs that are not justificatory in nature.



Loopie said:


> Believing in a uniformity of nature seems to make sense, but in the end instead of recognizing it as part of God's creative decree, they simply say 'it just is'.



Ok, but what's wrong with saying that something "just is"? I say that God "just is." It doesn't seem clear to me why necessary truths need further justification for me to believe them any more than a necessary being needs any more justification for me to believe in His existence. Unless you can show that there are possible worlds that contain things like spherical cubes or rocks too big for God to lift, then you're going to have to come up with much better proof that these things are contingent.



Loopie said:


> How would you demonstrate it? By demonstrating it you would unknowingly be showing that my justification for my belief is wrong, whereas yours is right.



Not necessarily---justification depends on information that you have. You can't be held responsible for stuff that you couldn't have known. If we're disputing a point of scientific theory and we design a new experiment, it may well turn out that one of us was right and one of us was wrong, but it says nothing about the justificatory status of our previously held beliefs because justification has nothing to do with truth-value. Knowledge isn't justified belief---it's justified _true_ belief. Justification is simply warrant sufficient for a knowledge-_claim_.



Loopie said:


> You would be unable to avoid comparing foundations in your 'demonstration'.



I don't see how doing an experiment would constitute a comparison of foundations at all. 



Loopie said:


> So again, you cannot discern truth from falsehood without looking at the justification for a particular belief or action.



Sure you can: you can look at the world outside your epistemic structure. Your epistemic structure colours the way you view reality, but reality is external to it---justification is internal to it.

Here's a good justificatory question for you Eric: how do you know that in your belief system you haven't committed a logical fallacy somewhere?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Originally Posted by *BarryR *Why would you find it appropriate to allow this individual to not have to justify something like logical absolutes?
> 
> 
> 
> The burden of proof is on the skeptic.
Click to expand...


I am not convinced that you have established why the Christian in this scenario is the ultimate skeptic. Both agree that the laws of logic exist; both agree that one can pragmatically function without justifying them; a proof of their existence is not being requested because they are not being denied; therefore, what exactly is the Christian being skeptical of. The Christian should affirm that even if the non-Christian cannot account for them it doesn’t mean he or she should actually question their existence, because that has already been assumed as true. The non-Christian is ultimately the skeptic because he is denying a central tenet to the laws of logic that he already presupposes; perhaps we could say he is denying a version of the principle of sufficient reason, and therefore is under the burden of proof of why the PSR doesn’t apply to his assumptions. To me PSR is self-evident and fundamental to all rationality, to presuppose the laws of logic is to presuppose PSR, therefore the one that denies it carries the burden for their skepticism.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> The non-Christian is ultimately the skeptic because he is denying a central tenet to the laws of logic that he already presupposes; perhaps we could say he is denying a version of the principle of sufficient reason, and therefore is under the burden of proof of why the PSR doesn’t apply to his assumptions.



But let's be clear here: PSR is not germaine to the question of whether or not the unbeliever is warranted in using reason or whether the reasoning process is _de facto_ borrowed from the Christian worldview. The use of reason is self-evidently warranted.

As for PSR, there has to be a point where the chain ends---our disagreement is over where. The unbeliever is simply arguing for a multiplicity of places---it's a messy position, but not (from my understanding) self-contradictory.



Hilasmos said:


> Do reasons exist?



Ok, here's where you and I are talking past each other: when I talk about a reason for a belief I am simply speaking of the reason why I believe X. You, however, are speaking of the reason why X is the case.



Hilasmos said:


> Therefore, an Atom holds together for the reason of electromagnetic force; but this reason exists contingently (i.e., it is a contingent reason).



The term doesn't make sense---that's my argument. The reason for X is Y and Y is a contingent fact. But that doesn't mean that it's relation to X is contingent---its relation to X may be necessary. It may be the _de facto_ reason for the truth of X, but its relation to X is an open question apart from that.



Hilasmos said:


> but this reason exists contingently (i.e., it is a contingent reason).



No, I don't believe that reasons exist---I'm not a Platonist or a Scotist.



Josiah.W said:


> Forgive me if this is too simple a reduction but is this the thrust of your challenge to transcendental arguments, that an unbeliever doesn't have to provide a basis for their presuppositions? Surely if certain presuppositions render other aspects of their world-view contradictory and inconsistent, then they would have to give an account for these presupps?



Part of the issue is this:

a) Presuppositions _are_ the foundation in the sense that they are informing principles that shape the way we think. The very term _Pre_supposition implies that it is a basic component of one's epistemic structure.
b) They aren't propositional at all, or rather their propositional forms are merely manifestations of underlying attitudes and precommitments, methodologies, and predispositions. How would one give an account of a predisposition?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> But let's be clear here: PSR is not germaine to the question of whether or not the unbeliever is warranted in using reason or whether the reasoning process is de facto borrowed from the Christian worldview. The use of reason is self-evidently warranted.



Agreed, but that is not the question being asked, at least in my opinion. All intelligibility would be impossible if one argued that a person is not warranted to use reason without justification. Yet, I think it is perfectly within the realms of espousing a rational worldview to confirm your presuppositions after they are presupposed. In fact, it is biblically commanded. So, to ask for an account of logic is not to question one's warrant in using logic presuppositionally, but to question whether they are actually using what they presuppose in accordance with its own rules. We went around on this thing in things past, but if one just wants to rest in their warrant to believe and act as they do, since it is self-evidently true, that is fine. Monkeys do it too.



Philip said:


> As for PSR, there has to be a point where the chain ends---our disagreement is over where. The unbeliever is simply arguing for a multiplicity of places---it's a messy position, but not (from my understanding) self-contradictory.



I agree it must end somewhere, and that is the very reason I like to use PSR. I don’t think the non-Christian can rationally end the chain, therefore it shows that all the train cars are moving up the tracks with no engine. 



Philip said:


> The term doesn't make sense---that's my argument. The reason for X is Y and Y is a contingent fact. But that doesn't mean that it's relation to X is contingent---its relation to X may be necessary. It may be the de facto reason for the truth of X, but its relation to X is an open question apart from that.





Philip said:


> No, I don't believe that reasons exist---I'm not a Platonist or a Scotist.



Not sure this is worth perusing, but the way I am using reason is that it implies the thing itself (in my case, the fact of positive and negative charged subatomic particles). Reasons are the sets of conditions that precede some state of affairs, so the question of existence to me is simple: is condition X true or false. It may not be philosophically nuanced enough, but that is my meaning. Perhaps I need a better word. 

So, if X is contingent on Y, and Y is contingent on Z, then X is contingent on Y (a thing that itself is contingent on something else). Wasn’t trying to say anything more than articulate the causal/reason chain that PSR creates.


----------



## Apologist4Him

Semper Fidelis said:


> I just finished listening to a set of lectures by Bahnsen about Van Tillian apologetics from WTS on iTunes. I've heard them before but it's worth listening to again.
> 
> I think the thing to keep in mind is that one can never fully persuade a person who is objecting to being a creature dependent upon the Creator for life, being, and knowledge. By saying this, I believe a person can be shown to be inconsistent but, as pointed out, someone may simply assert "...that's just the way it is..." and have cognitive rest for something that is cosmically foolish.
> 
> I've seen attempts at TAG that make the claim that a person has no other option but to accede to the logic of the case but the problem is one of ethical hostility to what we believe is plain. Van Til speak of epistemological self consciousness by which he means that we need to listen to what the person believes is the foundation to knowledge and then challenging him to see that he is ultimately not arguing consistently according to his foundation. I've witnessed more than a few debates where this is done well and one never witnesses the person abandoning his foundation but simply clinging to it in spite of it.
> 
> I see in Van Til (and I also believe Bahnsen held to this) a desire to maintain in Apologetics what we have been born again into by way of Special Revelation. We were God haters and made to believe in Christ by the power of the Word. We understand, now, that the heavens declare our dependence as creatures upon the Creator for knowledge and Apologetics performs its service to remind the creature that he is, in the end, still a creature who suppresses knowledge of the Creator. This is why Bahnsen would never abandon the Gospel call as part of Apologetics or leave the idea of the true Trinitarian God for a theoretical God as First Mover or First Cause because he denied the idea that God was a brute fact that men were in a position or ability to reason toward. The point of contact was not unaided reason and the rules of logic but the Divine image that we share and the confidence that men were what the Scriptures say about them. Training in philosophy helped Van Til and Bahnsen to see clearly the various ways that men were applying their autonomous reason to the world around them and put their finger on the pits men fell into but the solution is always found in Christ.
> 
> Check out some of the free iTunes lectures at WTS.edu. Scott Oliphant has a great critique of the pitfalls Christians can get into as we place philosophy before theology. He argues that some of the notable Christian philosophers today would have benefited greatly from being good Theologians first and being properly trained in it. He doesn't despise the knowledge of philosophy but points out how we can unwittingly start from the wrong foundation and make our theology fit rather than beginning with a theology based on the Word of God and then using philosophy as a sharpening tool or even protecting us from some of the allures that these systems offer.



Brother Rich, what an excellent response, especially the part about creature dependence...as non-Christians would have us to believe immaterial conceptual realities such as logic, morality, predication, etc. ere independent of the Creator. This is really the whole heart of the matter! And I think it sufficiently answers Philip's curiosity "why things that are necessarily the case would be in need of accounting". To suppose they are not accounted for or do not need to be accounted for is to suppose they are independent of God! Further it is to suppose no need for warrant or justification, and double-minded. If they are not accounted for, and do not need to be accounted for, then why would God's existence need to be debated or accounted for? This turns the table upside down, showing the arbitrary nature of such a debate!


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> So, to ask for an account of logic is not to question one's warrant in using logic presuppositionally, but to question whether they are actually using what they presuppose in accordance with its own rules.



Ok, so what does logic presuppose? Logic therefore necessarily X. Solve for X.



Hilasmos said:


> if one just wants to rest in their warrant to believe and act as they do, since it is self-evidently true, that is fine. Monkeys do it too.



What's the problem with trusting your faculties to deliver accurate information? Monkeys do all kinds of things that humans do---what objection are you actually presenting here?



Hilasmos said:


> I don’t think the non-Christian can rationally end the chain, therefore it shows that all the train cars are moving up the tracks with no engine.



Yes, but can you demonstrate this logically? Why can't the non-Christian end the chain with logic?



Hilasmos said:


> So, if X is contingent on Y, and Y is contingent on Z, then X is contingent on Y (a thing that itself is contingent on something else).



Ok, but in order to make Y a presupposition of X, you have to prove that X is necessarily contingent on Y, which is to say that in no possible world could X be true without Y being true. PSR is not enough for a TAG to be logically valid: you must prove that God's existence is not merely a sufficient presupposition, but a necessary one.

---------- Post added at 01:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------




Apologist4Him said:


> To suppose they are not accounted for or do not need to be accounted for is to suppose they are independent of God!



Andrew, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't try to explain them---I'm pointing out that in terms of warrant for their use, all you need is necessity. I don't know of anyone who believes in logic as a consequence of belief in God.


----------



## Apologist4Him

Philip said:


> Apologist4Him said:
> 
> 
> 
> Here is the problem of rationality for non-believers stated differently, if all humans ceased to exist, would logic cease to exist?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There's all kinds of speculation out there on this. How do we go about speculating regarding a world with no minds in it?
Click to expand...


It's only speculation if humans have always existed...which I suspect neither of us believe, so the next related question then is this: at some point in time did logic begin to "exist", when God created humans with a mind capable of rationality? It's really a trick question because it required a rational mind, to create human minds capable of reasoning to begin with!

---------- Post added at 01:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:52 PM ----------




Philip said:


> Apologist4Him said:
> 
> 
> 
> To suppose they are not accounted for or do not need to be accounted for is to suppose they are independent of God!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Andrew, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't try to explain them---I'm pointing out that in terms of warrant for their use, all you need is necessity. I don't know of anyone who believes in logic as a consequence of belief in God.
Click to expand...


Logic is a consequence of being created in the image of God, which all humans have in common, but because of original sin and total depravity the natural inclination is to supress the knowledge of God's existence. As it turns out, the very source of logic, is supressed at the same time, hence the non-Christian answers and lives on "borrowed capital".


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Ok, so what does logic presuppose? Logic therefore necessarily X. Solve for X.




Arbitrariness is an anti-logic; PSR, even for logic itself; the circle of truth. 




Philip said:


> What's the problem with trusting your faculties to deliver accurate information? Monkeys do all kinds of things that humans do---what objection are you actually presenting here?




Nothing, it just stops short of being a rational worldview – especially when you are given defeaters.




Philip said:


> Yes, but can you demonstrate this logically?




Yes. 




Philip said:


> Why can't the non-Christian end the chain with logic?




Because the laws of logic preclude it, at least in my analysis of the options available within these laws. Secondly, because all justified knowledge ends in Christ; if this were possible God would be a liar; I would have to presuppose the non-existence of God to concur with you; am I supposed to do that?




Philip said:


> Ok, but in order to make Y a presupposition of X, you have to prove that X is necessarily contingent on Y, which is to say that in no possible world could X be true without Y being true. PSR is not enough for a TAG to be logically valid: you must prove that God's existence is not merely a sufficient presupposition, but a necessary one.




Whether it is X and Y, or X and Z, or X and ZZ; it doesn’t matter. All the possible worlds in the world cannot escape the contingent/necessary/brute fact dilemma. I was merely using the X and Y as a model; generally, as far as I understand, the atom cannot be further described beyond the subatomic particles. But if it could, it wouldn’t make a difference, you would just shift your PSR to that “new discovery.” Conceptually though, subatomic particles represent an ending point where someone has to say a proton is positively charged for no reason, or it exists as a positively charged entity necessarily. The latter is precluded logically and the former is, naturally, the reductio you are looking for to begin showing the absurdities that flow from it.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Arbitrariness is an anti-logic; PSR, even for logic itself; the circle of truth.



Will, I'm asking that you present the argument so that we can analyze the logical form.



Hilasmos said:


> Nothing, it just stops short of being a rational worldview – especially when you are given defeaters.



Rational just means non-arbitrary---it has nothing to do with justification. It's only when presented with a defeater that is logically compelling that justification is even needed. What evidence do I need apart from that of my senses for my belief that there is a desk in front of me to be rational and warranted? Why do I need to construct a metaphysical system?



Hilasmos said:


> Because the laws of logic preclude it, at least in my analysis of the options available within these laws.



Ana analysis that I would dispute, given that the laws of logic are self-justifying.



Hilasmos said:


> Secondly, because all justified knowledge ends in Christ; if this were possible God would be a liar; I would have to presuppose the non-existence of God to concur with you; am I supposed to do that?



See, I don't buy this argument. I'm not interested in making Christianity into yet another metaphysical system---I'm interested in truth, not man-made metaphysical systems. 



Hilasmos said:


> Conceptually though, subatomic particles represent an ending point where someone has to say a proton is positively charged for no reason, or it exists as a positively charged entity necessarily. The latter is precluded logically and the former is, naturally, the reductio you are looking for to begin showing the absurdities that flow from it.



So? All of this is beside the epistemic point---none of it affects whether I have knowledge of the electric charge of a proton. Having an explanation for _why_ X is the way it is has nothing to do with my knowledge _that_ X is the way it is. Else we would argue that Isaac Newton didn't know about gravity, given that he didn't know about quantum.

---------- Post added at 03:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:20 PM ----------




Apologist4Him said:


> Logic is a consequence of being created in the image of God, which all humans have in common, but because of original sin and total depravity the natural inclination is to supress the knowledge of God's existence. As it turns out, the very source of logic, is supressed at the same time, hence the non-Christian answers and lives on "borrowed capital".



Andrew, this isn't what I'm asking at all. I'm asking how you came to believe in logic---things like training in reasoning. Your warrant for the use of logic is not in the metaphysical system that you've come up with to explain it---it's in the way that you actually came to use it. If you want to understand epistemology, try teaching someone to read.


----------



## Loopie

Philip said:


> But Eric, this is where you are confused: to give a justification is not to give an explanation, but to give the reason why _you_ believe X to be the case. Your foundation for belief in X has nothing to do with your metaphysical system---or even with whether you have one.



I already made it clear that the term 'justification' can be used in different ways. If I ask you to explain how the earth revolves around the sun, you would present me with an explanation based on scientific principles. If I asked you to give me the reason why you believe that the earth revolves around the sun, you might present me with those same scientific principles that you consider to be very conclusive. Now I don't disagree that a person can often explain something without believing. I can explain the 'swoon theory' with regard to the crucifixion of Jesus, but I don't believe it to be true. 

In the case of logic though, a person still needs to justify their beliefs. If a person believes in Santa Clause, and provides us with many different reasons why Santa Clause exists, we would likely say that they have concluded wrongly. In order to show them the error of their conclusions, we first need to know what they consider to be 'evidence' or 'good reason'. We need to look at WHY they believe that Santa Clause exists. We ask them to justify their belief (just like they would ask us to justify our non-belief). Keep in mind that both sides are viewed as 'skeptical'. The person who believes that Santa, not their parents, brings them their presents is a skeptic from our point of view. They are not satisfied with the evidence that their parents were the ones who brought the gifts. The person who does not believe in Santa is a skeptic from the Santa-believer's point of view. In their mind the evidence points to Santa as bringing presents, while we as skeptics continually deny his existence.




Philip said:


> Sure: plenty of people know stuff without understanding how they came to believe it.



Yes, but do people actually 'know' something, or do they just 'believe' it? The answer is, it depends. Furthermore, do people ever believe something without having a single reason for doing so? Is there truly arbitrary belief? Do people actually believe things without a single, solitary, reason for doing so? No.



Philip said:


> Eric, you've just confused the issue by conflating things again. Accounting for your beliefs has nothing to do with whether you can explain why X is X---only with how you are warranted in believing X to be true. In this case, practical necessity dictates that you believe in cause and effect.



Only because I am generally lazy. Often times people do what is practical without thinking about it because it is the easiest thing to do. They would rather take the path of least resistance. By saying that practical necessity dictates that I believe in cause and effect, you are offering a justification for why I believe something. I believe it because it is practical. It is the only way to make sense of the world without going mad. Well, we should simply go a step further and declare that belief in God is the only way to make sense of the world, which is a statement I think that you would agree with.



Philip said:


> The fact that to be an effect is to be caused.



That is an assumption. You assume that to be an effect is to be caused. You believe in this so-called law of nature, and uniformity of nature, but you only believe in it because it is convenient. Well, there are plenty of other people who believe in wrong things simply because it is convenient for them. How comes they are wrong in those cases, but you are right in this case?



Philip said:


> In the first sentence you decry skepticism, while in the second you play the skeptic. And even then, you're confused for the simple reason that you're still confusing epistemology and metaphysics.



But you try to separate them in a way that is impossible. They are interconnected. I play the skeptic to show you that unless you presuppose God, you will only ever be led logically to chaos, relativism, and arbitrariness. 



Philip said:


> So Eric, are people with Down Syndrome incapable of telling whether something is true or false?



I have never experienced what it feels like to have Down Syndrome. Have you? Do you know exactly what thoughts go through the minds of those with Down Syndrome? They might indeed have the capability of doing so. Simply because they can't express it to you does not mean that they can't. By the way, people look at the foundation for things all the time subconsciously. In fact, we often get to the point where we take things for granted because it is expedient to do so. I don't have to keep sticking my hand in the fire to realize that fire burns. Every time I see a fire I assume that it is hot. If someone told me that a particular fire does not burn, I would have to compare their justification for their belief with my justification for my belief, and see which one holds water.



Philip said:


> You can't very well believe your instruments unless you believe your senses to a certain degree.



But what about in spiritual matters? Do you consider us humans as having a 'sixth sense'? When the Holy Spirit convicts you, you know that you are wrong without having any of your physical senses stimulated.



Philip said:


> That's not what I meant at all. What standard has to be satisfied for a belief to be considered justified? What are the conditions that must apply for this to happen, and how are you going to convince the unbeliever to accept this standard (you can't have a meaningful argument without an agreed-upon standard of evaluation). You seem here to be conflating justification with truth-value here.



God's standard. I told you. I myself am not going to convince the unbeliever of anything that he does not wish to be convinced about. That is in God's hands, because the unbeliever requires spiritual surgery. That is the whole point I am trying to show you. The standard of evaluation for the unbelieve is different than that for the believer. His standard (or rock) is not like our standard (our rock). The question then becomes: which standard is consistent with itself and with the universe around us? Which one borrows from a different standard, and which one is self-defeating? 



Philip said:


> God doesn't judge unbelieving man for having epistemically unjustified beliefs: he judges man for unbelief.



And any attempt by the unbeliever to justify his unbelief is a failure. He does indeed judge man for unbelief, yet this does not ignore the fact that man's unbelief is still unjustified. You would agree with me that an unbeliever is NOT justified in his unbelief, correct?



Philip said:


> The reason why you should continue to believe them is that you still have no good reason not to. As for Adam, of course you can't show him that he was wrong empirically because his mistake wasn't an empirical one. Again, you're confusing your methodologies.



Why do we start with the assumption that our senses are to be believed until further notice? Simply because it is convenient? Is convenience always a good reason to do something? I could just as easily say that we should NOT believe our sense until we have good reason to do so. Even then, we need to define what we mean by 'good reason'. Such an ambiguous term, don't you think? What is 'good reason' to you might not be 'good reason' to someone else. Why are you correct and they are not? By the way, Adam's mistake was empirical in the sense that he actually did eat an actual fruit that was forbidden. He was told not to do so, and he did. I have not at all confused methodologies, but simply shown why empiricism, as you seem to be defending, is built upon a weak foundation.



Philip said:


> Eric, you miss the point entirely---one can have all the right methodological foundations and still come to the wrong conclusions. Reason is fallen too.



Oh I completely agree. The natural man does not reason rightly. That is why no mere logical argument will lead him to repentance. That is only by the work of the Holy Spirit. But as Christians we believe that there is a right way to reason. There is a worldview that is correct. There is an interpretation of the universe that is the only one that works. Unbelievers refuse to see it, and the only way they can avoid it is to be inconsistent and self-defeating. 



Philip said:


> Eric, again, you're conflating things and confusing the issue. When you were born, how did you learn? What methodologies did you adopt in order to get to know the world around you. If your epistemology cannot account for the knowledge of the world had by a newborn, then it's false. Newborns don't have a metaphysic.



Sure they do, but it is wholly subconscious. My baby daughter loves to pick up things. She is curious about all kinds of objects, whether dangerous or not. She learns that wooden tables are hard when she bumps her head on them. Her knowledge is primarily based upon her senses (aside from the spiritual knowledge of God, the sense of the divine, that she has). As she gets older she will grasp a deeper understanding of things. She will come to learn that when she puts her hands over her eyes in the game of peek-a-boo, the world is still there. She will learn that objects don't cease to exist once they disappear from her sight. Our understanding of why we believe the things we do develops over time. It ought to always point back to God, the creator of all things, but the natural person refuses to recognize this. Instead of pointing back to God, it always points to something else (in their eyes).



Philip said:


> Having causes and reasons for belief is not the same as having metaphysical explanations. I don't give a metaphysical account in order to warrant my saying "there is a desk in front of me." Now it may well be that this belief _entails_ certain metaphysical beliefs, but those are second-order beliefs that are not justificatory in nature.



It doesn't matter. Either the desk actually existed prior to you having knowledge of it, or the concept of the desk existed in your mind prior to you having knowledge of it. Either way, your knowledge of the desk is tied to its existence, whether real or imaginative. Metaphysics is undeniably tied to epistemology.



Philip said:


> Ok, but what's wrong with saying that something "just is"? I say that God "just is." It doesn't seem clear to me why necessary truths need further justification for me to believe them any more than a necessary being needs any more justification for me to believe in His existence. Unless you can show that there are possible worlds that contain things like spherical cubes or rocks too big for God to lift, then you're going to have to come up with much better proof that these things are contingent.



Because when you say that something 'just is', you have no reason to criticize the unbeliever when he says that something 'just is'. Why can't their be infinite universes? Why can't the universe be eternal? It 'just is'. Those are necessary truths in the mind of the unbelieving scientist. The belief in the uniformity of nature is a necessary truth, and the unbeliever can simply say 'it just is'. You say that God 'just is', but then again, the Muslims say that Allah 'just is'. What makes your belief correct, and theirs incorrect? This brings you to comparing religions, scriptures, while looking for consistency. I agree with you that there are necessary truths, but what is necessary behind ALL of them is God. This is what Van Til's presuppositional apologetics leads to. You seem to go all the way back to 'necessary truths', but you never take the required next step, that they are only necessary truths because God is necessary.



Philip said:


> Not necessarily---justification depends on information that you have. You can't be held responsible for stuff that you couldn't have known. If we're disputing a point of scientific theory and we design a new experiment, it may well turn out that one of us was right and one of us was wrong, but it says nothing about the justificatory status of our previously held beliefs because justification has nothing to do with truth-value. Knowledge isn't justified belief---it's justified _true_ belief. Justification is simply warrant sufficient for a knowledge-_claim_.



If an experiment proves me wrong, then I no longer (based on my current gain in knowledge) am justified in holding to my previous beliefs. I agree that we can't be held responsible for stuff that we do not know. Yet being ignorant does not mean that I am correct. If you believe that justification is simply warrant sufficient for a knowledge claim, then there are a few questions that need to be asked. Sufficient for who? Who decides what is sufficient? That is the foundation that we need to look at. If you believe that knowledge is justified true belief, then the only way to discern between actual knowledge and false knowledge is to look at what justification exists for each one. If you sit here and say that there is no need for the unbeliever to justify his beliefs, then the unbeliever can in now way discern between opinion and knowledge (if knowledge indeed is justified true belief).



Philip said:


> I don't see how doing an experiment would constitute a comparison of foundations at all.



It absolutely would. If I believe that the moon is made of swiss cheese, and you don't, then an experiment would shake the very foundations of one of our beliefs. I believe the moon is made of swiss cheese because my father taught me this. You believe the moon is made of rock because you claim that someone actually went there and collected a piece of it. Our beliefs are built upon different foundations. By showing me a piece of moon rock you are attempting to lead me to abandon my previous position that my father was correct regarding the moon. That was the foundation of my belief (my trust in him). 



Philip said:


> Sure you can: you can look at the world outside your epistemic structure. Your epistemic structure colours the way you view reality, but reality is external to it---justification is internal to it.



You assume reality is external to it. Why do you assume this? What if we all lived in the matrix? In truth, our sinful nature colours the way we view reality (at least in the case of the unbeliever). I was blind but now I see. Of course, our sinful nature has effected every part of us, including our reasoning and emotions.



Philip said:


> Here's a good justificatory question for you Eric: how do you know that in your belief system you haven't committed a logical fallacy somewhere?



Because my belief system is founded upon the rock of Christ. He is the God of all creation, the creator of both logic and reason. You assume that to have any true knowledge of something requires that you have exhaustive knowledge of something. You seem to suggest that to believe my system to be consistent means that I must look at and personally address any and all logical arguments that are put forth against Christianity. Let me ask you this: do you believe that scripture is the word of God? How do you know that EVERY SINGLE WORD is God-breathed? Because the Bible told you so (and because the Holy Spirit led you to believe this), right? Did you analyze every single manuscript, every single word, every single verse, to determine if it was 'probably' God-breathed? Have you studied EVERY single 'alleged' contradiction in scripture? If not, then how can you say that you 'know' that scripture is the word of God?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> See, I don't buy this argument. I'm not interested in making Christianity into yet another metaphysical system---I'm interested in truth, not man-made metaphysical systems.



Seems like a false distinction to me. Secondly, your assertion that my scriptural definition of knowledge is man-made seems quite arbitrary. 



Philip said:


> So? All of this is beside the epistemic point---none of it affects whether I have knowledge of the electric charge of a proton. Having an explanation for why X is the way it is has nothing to do with my knowledge that X is the way it is. Else we would argue that Isaac Newton didn't know about gravity, given that he didn't know about quantum.



I never contested that you believe X, and that your belief is warranted (as warrant is defined), so this seems irrelevant. In the end, I don't accept your standard of what accounts for knowledge vs. simple warranted belief, and you end up equivicating your definition of knowledge into mine in order to argue against it. To use my analysis, I fully agree that monkey knowledge exists; but, so what? All monkey knowledge does is believe what it believes because it does. Secondly, I never said you had to know all the reasons, or even any reason, but the simple fact that there must be a reason. Imagine how much science would be done if we believed there were no reasons. 

Secondly, your view that "why" has nothing to do with knowing that something is, seems to be quite off base. My daughter knows that there is just empty space under her bed only because she knows why it is the case. 




Philip said:


> Will, I'm asking that you present the argument so that we can analyze the logical form.



For starters, logic presupppose an absolute logic and entails PSR, whereby it can be deduced that logic itself is also contingent.


----------



## Philip

Loopie said:


> If I asked you to give me the reason why you believe that the earth revolves around the sun, you might present me with those same scientific principles that you consider to be very conclusive.



No I wouldn't. I would explain that this is the commonly-held scientific view and that better minds than I have demonstrated it through experimentation.



Loopie said:


> Furthermore, do people ever believe something without having a single reason for doing so? Is there truly arbitrary belief? Do people actually believe things without a single, solitary, reason for doing so? No.



I haven't claimed this. I have merely claimed that reasons are not arguments nor are they justifications in the classical sense. The whole idea of justification is that it is not enough to have reasons---those reasons must satisfy some court of inquiry.



Loopie said:


> Well, we should simply go a step further and declare that belief in God is the only way to make sense of the world, which is a statement I think that you would agree with.



No I don't---making sense of things is subjective. What makes sense to me may not make sense to you.



Loopie said:


> That is an assumption. You assume that to be an effect is to be caused.



Eric, this isn't a disputable point: it's a tautology (meaning the statement is circular and therefore necessarily the case). Hume's denial of it is lunacy.



Loopie said:


> By the way, people look at the foundation for things all the time subconsciously.



Appeal to the subconscious is dubious at best.



Loopie said:


> Do you know exactly what thoughts go through the minds of those with Down Syndrome? They might indeed have the capability of doing so.



This is my point exactly, though. The linguistic centers in the brain of a Down Syndrome person are often such that the logical functions necessary for logical foundations do not appear---or at least are not expressible. Yet they seem to be capable of telling between truth and falsehood, and even of coming to faith in Christ. 



Loopie said:


> Which one borrows from a different standard, and which one is self-defeating?



What if the unbeliever points out that this is a false dichotomy?



Loopie said:


> But as Christians we believe that there is a right way to reason. There is a worldview that is correct. There is an interpretation of the universe that is the only one that works.



Ok---so why is it that those who adhere to all of these things still disagree? Eric, in any debate of any kind, you have to be humble enough to admit that you're going to be wrong about some things.



Loopie said:


> Why do we start with the assumption that our senses are to be believed until further notice?



Because it's the only way to proceed. You're not going to get anywhere through denying this.



Loopie said:


> I have not at all confused methodologies, but simply shown why empiricism, as you seem to be defending, is built upon a weak foundation.



How does defending empirical sense equate to empiricism? Where have I argued for reductionism of this or any kind?



Loopie said:


> Either way, your knowledge of the desk is tied to its existence, whether real or imaginative. Metaphysics is undeniably tied to epistemology.



I said belief, not knowledge. Knowledge does entail ontological commitment, but my belief does not---I'm talking about warrant sufficient for a rational knowledge-claim.



Loopie said:


> Why can't their be infinite universes?



Because the term "universe" precludes it. He has transgressed the bounds of sense.



Loopie said:


> Because when you say that something 'just is', you have no reason to criticize the unbeliever when he says that something 'just is'.



Not at all. The only things that "just are" are necessary kinds of things---things that must be the case in all possible worlds.



Loopie said:


> You say that God 'just is', but then again, the Muslims say that Allah 'just is'. What makes your belief correct, and theirs incorrect?



The facts of the matter.



Loopie said:


> You seem to go all the way back to 'necessary truths', but you never take the required next step, that they are only necessary truths because God is necessary.



Eric, you can't have necessity beyond necessity. If something is necessary, then it demands no further explanation. You're making the wrong move here. If a necessary truth is dependent, then it isn't necessary.



Loopie said:


> If you believe that justification is simply warrant sufficient for a knowledge claim, then there are a few questions that need to be asked. Sufficient for who? Who decides what is sufficient?



Complicated, ain't it?



Loopie said:


> If I believe that the moon is made of swiss cheese, and you don't, then an experiment would shake the very foundations of one of our beliefs.



No it wouldn't. Because we have just agreed on a methodology for confirmation.



Loopie said:


> What if we all lived in the matrix?



Is there any reason for me to think this? Neo is not justified in believing such until he is shown such. You can have a justified belief that turns out to be false.



Loopie said:


> Because my belief system is founded upon the rock of Christ. He is the God of all creation, the creator of both logic and reason. You assume that to have any true knowledge of something requires that you have exhaustive knowledge of something.



Eric, I have been arguing precisely the opposite. I have been attempting to show that your skeptical method leads to this conclusion. You are arguing for a kind of positivism about revelation. The fact is that just because you're a Christian and God has revealed Himself to you doesn't mean you're always right, neither does it mean that your reasoning process is infallible. If you understand anything at all about the truth of Christ, it is by the Holy Spirit's work alone.



Loopie said:


> Let me ask you this: do you believe that scripture is the word of God? How do you know that EVERY SINGLE WORD is God-breathed?



Because it has been revealed by the Spirit, who has regenerated me and given me a new heart, new eyes to see, and new ears to hear. Because through Scripture, the Spirit reveals Jesus Christ, the image of the Father, who then points back to Scripture and says "believe this: it's true." Any account of the words of God in Scripture must make reference to the Word of God, Jesus Christ.



Hilasmos said:


> In the end, I don't accept your standard of what accounts for knowledge vs. simple warranted belief



Warrant is all that is necessary for a knowledge-claim. I'm not sure where you get this notion that something in addition to warrant is needed for one to claim knowledge. Of course not all knowledge-claims are true---everyone claims to know things that aren't true, but that's in part because we're finite.



Hilasmos said:


> I never said you had to know all the reasons, or even any reason, but the simple fact that there must be a reason. Imagine how much science would be done if we believed there were no reasons.



Ok, but we're not talking about this: we're talking about warrant for our claims---why I believe X.



Hilasmos said:


> econdly, your view that "why" has nothing to do with knowing that something is, seems to be quite off base. My daughter knows that there is just empty space under her bed only because she knows why it is the case.



No, she looked under her bed, said "it's empty, this must be because there's nothing under it." The "why" is only ever established in light of the "what."



Hilasmos said:


> For starters, logic presupppose an absolute logic and entails PSR



Ok, so:
L -> L2
And
L -> PSR

First, we need to establish that both of these claims are true, which would mean showing that L2 is a necessary and sufficient condition for L and that L is a necessary and sufficient condition for PSR.



Hilasmos said:


> it can be deduced that logic itself is also contingent.



Actually, not necessarily. If L2 is a necessary and sufficient condition for L and (further) is itself necessary, then L will be necessary.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Ok, but we're not talking about this: we're talking about warrant for our claims---why I believe X.



Maybe we're not, but apparently I am. 




Philip said:


> No, she looked under her bed, said "it's empty, this must be because there's nothing under it." The "why" is only ever established in light of the "what."



Haven't you heard of invisible monsters? Empiricism isn't enough. I took her out to breakfast the other day and held up a wrapper and asked, "How come this wrapper can't just turn into a bird?" She said, "because God made it a wrapper;" and I am pretty sure she hasn't read Van Til yet. (She then continued to expound how all things consist in Christ and that only he could provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility by which she could truly know this). 




Philip said:


> First, we need to establish that both of these claims are true, which would mean showing that L2 is a necessary and sufficient condition for L and that L is a necessary and sufficient condition for PSR.



We have already agreed that these laws are self-evident; and, since they are transcendentals they must prove themselves after being presupposed, which is my proof and cannot be refuted unless my proof is true causing the refutation to be necesarily false. 



Philip said:


> If L2 is a necessary and sufficient condition for L and (further) is itself necessary



Why would L2 be a necessary and sufficient condition for L? Secondly, do you grant that logic is conceptual in nature?


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Why would L2 be a necessary and sufficient condition for L?



That's what I'm asking you. You're the one who said that Logic presupposes absolute logic.



Hilasmos said:


> Secondly, do you grant that logic is conceptual in nature?



Sure.



Hilasmos said:


> We have already agreed that these laws are self-evident; and, since they are transcendentals they must prove themselves after being presupposed, which is my proof and cannot be refuted unless my proof is true causing the refutation to be necesarily false.



But what you haven't yet shown is the nature of the link between them, which is what we were discussing.



Hilasmos said:


> Empiricism isn't enough.



I would agree---where have I advocated pure empiricism?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Neo is not justified in believing such until he is shown such. You can have a justified belief that turns out to be false.



If Neo is logical, he would also realize that the non-matrix world feels just as real as the matrix. Thus, he has a very good reason to doubt his senses in any apparent world. But then again, he could just ignore this under cutter and continue to follow what appears to be self-evident; which, given the evidence, would a good definition of being irrational.

---------- Post added at 08:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:52 PM ----------




Philip said:


> You're the one who said that Logic presupposes absolute logic.



Its denial results in a logical contradiction. 



Philip said:


> I would agree---where have I advocated pure empiricism?



I really didn't mean it in a pure since, was just playing off the empirical methodology you advocated. But then again, your arguments have not really given me a clear picture of what you really do believe. 



Philip said:


> Sure.



What are the preconditions for a concept to be?

---------- Post added at 08:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:03 PM ----------

Also, just curious, do you reject Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism?


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> If Neo is logical, he would also realize that the non-matrix world feels just as real as the matrix. Thus, he has a very good reason to doubt his senses in any apparent world. But then again, he could just ignore this under cutter and continue to follow what appears to be self-evident; which, given the evidence, would a good definition of being irrational.



No it's not and here's why: in these scenarios, Neo is operating under the assumption that certain faculties are _de facto_ defective. What warrants him in thinking that his senses are deceiving him in a particular instance. He hasn't been given reason to doubt his senses in all contexts, just in a certain set of contexts. Similarly, I can distinguish between dreaming and waking. No, I can't give a clear set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but that may be because we're speaking about things that turn out to be family resemblances.

The trouble with Cartesianism is that it privileges one faculty (deductive reason) above the others and claims that anything that doesn't appeal to it alone is irrational. The trouble is that rationality covers a wider range of categories than the Cartesian will admit.



Hilasmos said:


> What are the preconditions for a concept to be?



That it have a use in language.



Hilasmos said:


> Its denial results in a logical contradiction.



Depending one what you mean by absolute logic, maybe. Remember that you also have to show it to be a sufficient condition.



Hilasmos said:


> your arguments have not really given me a clear picture of what you really do believe.



I would say that beliefs are warranted in a variety of messy and complicated ways that defy human systematizing. Any general theory of knowledge has to be extendable and willing to constantly revise itself in order to account for things. Further, this theory must also recognize that as a general theory, it is not necessary to believe it in order to have knowledge. That is to say, people don't have to agree with you in order to know stuff.



Hilasmos said:


> do you reject Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism?



No---it's a brilliant example of _reductio ad absurdum_ where Plantinga shows that the theory of evolution proceeds on a necessarily non-naturalist basis.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Neo is operating under the assumption that certain faculties are de facto defective. What warrants him in thinking that his senses are deceiving him in a particular instance. He hasn't been given reason to doubt his senses in all contexts, just in a certain set of contexts.



In qualification, he doesn’t believe that any of his senses are actually defective. They are functioning normally and are accurately perceiving the things presented. Thus, what he learns is that properly functioning cognitive faculties are not a sufficient for knowledge. He then becomes a revelational epistemologist and goes to see the Oracle. He then learns, of course, that the Oracle is not the transcendent omniscient being he was hoping for, and the trilogy ends in extreme confusion and irrationality where there is no reality and nothing can be known. 



Philip said:


> No---it's a brilliant example of reductio ad absurdum where Plantinga shows that the theory of evolution proceeds on a necessarily non-naturalist basis.



Thanks, I like it too. I know there are some basic differences (I think I read an article comparing/contrasting a long while ago), but I don't see how this is a fundamentally different approach then TAG like arguments. EAAN provides a reductio defeater for rationality; TAG provides a reductio defeater for rationality; rationality exists, therefore one's underlying worldview is wrong. At least that's how I understand it. if I am correct, it seems you wouldn't think this is a good argument since the crux of it depends on showing that we have good reason to doubt our cognitive faculties.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Thus, what he learns is that properly functioning cognitive faculties are not a sufficient for knowledge.



Sure they are---he just has to distinguish between two different contexts.



Hilasmos said:


> if I am correct, it seems you wouldn't think this is a good argument since the crux of it depends on showing that we have good reason to doubt our cognitive faculties.



Well not exactly: what Plantinga is showing is that naturalism, rationality, and evolution are mutually exclusive---you cannot have a view that includes all three consistently. Specifically, the nature of naturalism as a control belief with evolution as a mechanistic belief would end in the conclusion that it is unlikely that both would be rational. It's basically the argument that evolutionary theory is not rationally compatible with naturalism.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Sure they are---he just has to distinguish between two different contexts.



Begging the question. 



Philip said:


> Well not exactly: what Plantinga is showing is that naturalism, rationality, and evolution are mutually exclusive---you cannot have a view that includes all three consistently. Specifically, the nature of naturalism as a control belief with evolution as a mechanistic belief would end in the conclusion that it is unlikely that both would be rational. It's basically the argument that evolutionary theory is not rationally compatible with naturalism.



Again though, I can't see why TAG isn't doing the exact same thing from a slightly different angle, if not with just different words. Asking for an accout for the laws of logic is asking the same question EAAN does: how can X and Y exist consistently together? If they can't, you have a defeater for X or for Y, not Y, therefore X (at least if you are talking to a traditional naturalistic atheist).


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Philip said:
> 
> 
> 
> Sure they are---he just has to distinguish between two different contexts.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Begging the question.
Click to expand...


Both positions beg the question. You're either going to beg the question in favour of skepticism or in favour of common sense.



Hilasmos said:


> Asking for an accout for the laws of logic is asking the same question EAAN does: how can X and Y exist consistently together?



Well no---not quite. The argument is that if X and Y are the case, then our belief in X and Y is most likely not Z.

It's not asking for an account---it points out that there are two conflicting accounts within the narrative itself. It's not asking for anything that hasn't already been given.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> You're either going to beg the question in favour of skepticism or in favour of common sense.



Common sense is holding to that which has the best reasons, so unless you provide a reason why non-skepticism is common sense in this scenario, I am unconvinced; Neo is justified in questioning whether he is actually in Matrix-b. Nonetheless, if I grant that you are right, it still demonstrates the point: without revelation knowledge claims become arbitary, either way; they are just descriptions of what you believe. Knowledge comes from the mouth of God (Prov. 2:6), i will stick with that. Thanks for the diologue.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Common sense is holding to that which has the best reasons, so unless you provide a reason why non-skepticism is common sense in this scenario, I am unconvinced



Can you provide a reason why skepticism is common sense in this scenario? There seem to be clear criteria for distinguishing here.



Hilasmos said:


> Knowledge comes from the mouth of God (Prov. 2:6)



What kind of knowledge, though?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Can you provide a reason why skepticism is common sense in this scenario? There seem to be clear criteria for distinguishing here.



I have, but we disagree, so it doesn't seem worth pursuing further.



Philip said:


> What kind of knowledge, though?



The kind that rightly interprets the world, life, experiences, and thought in light of reality. Monkey knowledge known. True truth. Knowing, not just believing, that the world will exist tomorrow (Gen. 8:22); that the atoms in my coffee cup will continue to hold together preventing the contents from spilling on my lap (Col. 1:17); that my thought is rational since it reflects the image of god; and that all this remains true because God cannot lie or deny himself (Titus 2:3). Of course, much more could be said about the trueness of love, compassion, and morality etc., none of which could be truly known apart from the mouth of God. 



Philip said:


> It's not asking for an account---it points out that there are two conflicting accounts within the narrative itself. It's not asking for anything that hasn't already been given.



This seems to dodge the issue. The inability to "give an account" is implicit in the argument itself, as the only rebuttal to EAAN is if one could actually give an account. Therefore, to be a meaningful argument, it just goes without saying that "you cannot give an account, go ahead and try." Further, who's to say that TAG arguments follow one strict structural form, that you apparently take umbrage with? The potentially different modes of delivery seem inconsequential to me. I may not see your point (likely), but as a far as a "big picture" approach, I am still finding this to be quite an inconsistent concession on your part.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Knowing, not just believing, that the world will exist tomorrow (Gen. 8:22); that the atoms in my coffee cup will continue to hold together preventing the contents from spilling on my lap (Col. 1:17); that my thought is rational



Will, unbelievers know this too. The warrant for your belief is in the facts that make it true, not in whether your understand how they work. The unbeliever does know that the world will exist tomorrow, that the coffee cup will hold together, and that his thought is rational. He is warranted in this belief by the proper function of his faculties working together---regardless of whether he can give a coherent metaphysic of why this is the case. 



Hilasmos said:


> The inability to "give an account" is implicit in the argument itself, as the only rebuttal to EAAN is if one could actually give an account.



Yes--but this is only because the theory in question is, in fact, an attempt to give an account. Most worldviews are not this systematic and don't pretend to be.



Hilasmos said:


> Therefore, to be a meaningful argument, it just goes without saying that "you cannot give an account, go ahead and try."



No: the point of the argument is that the account already given fails.

The problem with TAG as you're using it is first that you're claiming to be a foundationalist, in which case a TAG can't work because it's an inherently coherentist argument. Second, you're claiming rationalist standards of proof which do not apply to ordinary rationally-held beliefs.

Let's suppose that we are having a discussion about quantum where you propose string theory to explain it. Now, I may not have an alternative to string theory, but does that mean that I must therefore accept string theory? No, given that the theory is untestable even in principle. Part of what you are failing to recognize here is the role of faith in knowledge. All knowledge includes some element of faith such that very little is absolutely proveable. I can't demonstrate the veracity of empirical sense to a skeptic---but I don't have to in order to be rational in believing my senses. I also don't have to have any sort of logical argument for the existence of God---because I have the Holy Spirit who guides me back to Scripture to point me to Christ who points me to the Father. The assurance of faith is not in any argument I could come up with nor from my deductions from Scripture, but in the work of Christ revealing the Father by the Spirit. That's my assurance; that's how I know that God is God, Jesus Christ is His Son, and that His inspired word is true.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Will, unbelievers know this too. The warrant for your belief is in the facts that make it true, not in whether your understand how they work. The unbeliever does know that the world will exist tomorrow, that the coffee cup will hold together, and that his thought is rational. He is warranted in this belief by the proper function of his faculties working together---regardless of whether he can give a coherent metaphysic of why this is the case.



As I duly noted, they do believe this, but asserting that they believe it doesn't mean they know it in an ultimately rational way. And again, you are importing your definition of knowledge into mine to argue against it, which is what your entire last paragraph is also contingent on. I have already granted that monkey knowledge is warranted, but that it is not sufficient to represent what biblical knowledge is. 



Philip said:


> not in whether your understand how they work



It is not my position that one has to know _how_, or provide all the reasons, to know something. I use divergence from PSR, in light of a defeater, to govern whether one embraces irrationality. Diverging from PSR does not occur due to inductive ignorance, it happens when you abandon the principle contained within PSR - that there must be a reason, even if you don't know what it is. As rational beings in the image of God, it is also my position they we walk around with a constant defeater while rejecting God. The defeater is suppressed, allowing us to function "rationally," but still ultimately irrationally - which is necessarily the case when you hold a belief that is contrary to a known defeater.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> I have already granted that monkey knowledge is warranted



Ok, so what's the problem? What is irrational about believing the input of the senses?



Hilasmos said:


> And again, you are importing your definition of knowledge into mine to argue against it



I'm pointing out that when we define knowledge, the term has to be able to account for all of the ways in which we use the word in ordinary language. Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive.

In fact, let's make a distinction: are we talking knowledge-that, knowledge-how, or knowledge-who (that is, knowledge of persons).



Hilasmos said:


> Diverging from PSR does not occur due to inductive ignorance, it happens when you abandon the principle contained within PSR - that there must be a reason, even if you don't know what it is.



Ok---where has to unbeliever done this? All I've argued is that he is not bound to provide one in order to have warranted true belief (knowledge).



Hilasmos said:


> The defeater is suppressed, allowing us to function "rationally," but still ultimately irrationally - which is necessarily the case when you hold a belief that is contrary to a known defeater.



And here's my contention: that the decision to suppress this knowledge is rational---that is, that it is made in full knowledge of the consequences. The rebellion of man is rational---man knows what he's doing and does it anyway.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> What is irrational about believing the input of the senses?



Nothing, in itself. My contention is that this notion is incomplete on its own. Beliefs have consequences, the laws of logic have consequences, and knowledge requires more than just developing beliefs via a properly rational mode. Similar to what Plantinga argues:



> If I reject theism in favor of ordinary naturalism, and also see that [the
> probability that my cognitive faculties are reliable given that naturalism is
> true] is low or inscrutable, then I will have a defeater for any belief I hold. If
> so, I will not, if forming beliefs rationally, hold any belief firmly enough to
> constitute knowledge. The same goes if I am merely agnostic as between
> theism and ordinary naturalism.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> My contention is that this notion is incomplete on its own.



Incompleteness is not irrationality, though. Further, we haven't discussed non-reductionist views.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Incompleteness is not irrationality, though. Further, we haven't discussed non-reductionist views.



I meant that it is not accounting for all the facts that are actually there. As Plantinga also argues, for our cognitive faculties to be functioning properly it has to also include all the relevant defeater systems and "propositional inputs" that go with it. I am suggesting that engaging in rationality necessarily imports these defeaters, so knowledge cannot be established until they are dealt with.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> As Plantinga also argues, for our cognitive faculties to be functioning properly it has to also include all the relevant defeater systems and "propositional inputs" that go with it. I am suggesting that engaging in rationality necessarily imports these defeaters, so knowledge cannot be established until they are dealt with.



So if I haven't thought of all the possible arguments against my position, I don't have knowledge? This seems like a rather odd definition of proper function and I'll have to go back and reread Plantinga's account of such. 



Hilasmos said:


> I meant that it is not accounting for all the facts that are actually there.



None of us are capable of this because none of us know all of the facts that need accounting. Again, was Newton's theory of gravity wrong because he didn't have the instrumentation to figure out quantum? Do we not know about quantum because the conditions for it are not capable of being investigated, even in principle?


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> So if I haven't thought of all the possible arguments against my position, I don't have knowledge? This seems like a rather odd definition of proper function and I'll have to go back and reread Plantinga's account of such.



I don't think that is what's been stated; if you don't know an argument against your position than it would not be a relevant defeater as far as your rational thought processes go. I don't have the book on hand, but here is the relevant quote from an article, which is taken from _Warrant and Proper Function_, 194:



> According to the central and paradigmatic core of our notion of warrant (so I
> say) a belief B has warrant for you if and only if (1) the cognitive faculties
> involved in the production of B are functioning properly (and this is to include
> the relevant defeater systems as well as those systems, if any, that provide
> propositional inputs to the system in question); (2) your cognitive
> environment is sufficiently similar to the one for which your cognitive
> faculties are designed; (3) the triple of the design plan governing the
> production of the belief in question involves, as purpose or function, the
> production of true beliefs (and the same goes for elements of the design plan
> governing the production of input beliefs to the system in question); and (4)
> the design plan is a good one: that is, there is a high statistical or objective
> probability that the belief produced in accordance with the relevant segment of
> the design plan in that sort of environment is true.



Points 3 and 4 also seem to contravene with how you are using the notion of warrant. The notions of "design plan" and "proper function" doesn't allow a non-Christian to appeal to simple warranted belief since that results in appealing to the very thing that is a defeater. 



Philip said:


> None of us are capable of this because none of us know all of the facts that need accounting. Again, was Newton's theory of gravity wrong because he didn't have the instrumentation to figure out quantum? Do we not know about quantum because the conditions for it are not capable of being investigated, even in principle?



Again, this is missing the point being made; I am not talking about all of the possible facts, but the facts that are relevant and known; those that prove to be defeaters.


----------



## arapahoepark

Hilasmos said:


> As far as logic, I heard an atheist affirm that there were transcendent logical absolutes, but these logical absolutes are non-conceptual. His point was that TAGers equivocate on the term Logic, as conceptual reasoning processes of the mind, with logical absolutes, the non-conceptual absolutes that the conceptual logic points to. In other words, in this world we make logical statements that are conceptual (the rock exists and does not not exist at the same time); but, just because this logical statement is conceptual, it is a fallacy to say that the absolute that this conceptual statement references is also conceptual. By analogy, this is like having a conception of an apple and then affirming that the nature of the apple is conceptual.
> 
> When pressed on the question of the nature of the logical absolutes, however, no answer could be given. By affirming that logical absolutes were non-conceptual he affirmed that this didn't mean that they were material in nature (because they are transcendent). He held that there is a 3rd option, apparently, but said that he didn't know what it was other than to define it by its negation: "transcendentally non-conceptual." Of course, we can critizce this position by pointing out that if you don't know what something is how can you say what its not? Although true, it seems this could be countered by the fact that this is ultimately how we define the trinity, or the immateriality of God -- by negative statements (eg. we generally define immaterial as something not extendend in space).
> 
> So, in the end, I think to handle this objection you have to clearly define the nature of logical absolutes and why they must be this way.


This went completely over my head.....


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Points 3 and 4 also seem to contravene with how you are using the notion of warrant. The notions of "design plan" and "proper function" doesn't allow a non-Christian to appeal to simple warranted belief since that results in appealing to the very thing that is a defeater.



Will, here's the deal. Plantinga has laid out the conditions for warrant---what is conspicuously absent from them (notice) is that the subject be conscious of operating under the proper-function model. All that there has to be is a _de facto_ design plan.


----------



## Loopie

Philip said:


> No I wouldn't. I would explain that this is the commonly-held scientific view and that better minds than I have demonstrated it through experimentation.



So this is an argument from authority? Or is this an argument from majority? Both are examples of fallacious argumentation. By the way, this wasn't a commonly held view several thousand years ago, so you would in fact be in the minority if you had lived back then. You only can assume that better minds than you have demonstrated it, but you just take their word for it.



Philip said:


> I haven't claimed this. I have merely claimed that reasons are not arguments nor are they justifications in the classical sense. The whole idea of justification is that it is not enough to have reasons---those reasons must satisfy some court of inquiry.



Why can't God be the court of inquiry? He knows what is true (for he has decreed all things). He knows the arguments that unbelieving men make, and he knows those arguments to be wrong. If God exists, has created all things, and has decreed all things, then the only interpretation of the world that can make sense of the world without being inconsistent or resulting in chaos is an interpretation of the universe that is based upon God.



Philip said:


> No I don't---making sense of things is subjective. What makes sense to me may not make sense to you.



But one of us is right. For instance, you believe that there is a true and correct interpretation of scripture, right? You don't believe that each person can interpret scripture differently based upon what makes sense to them, right? So even though scripture makes 'sense' to Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, etc., wouldn't you say that they are still wrong, and that they have still wrongly interpreted? So just because YOU declare that things make sense to you does not mean that you have interpreted them correctly. It just means that you are satisfied with your own interpretation, and are unwilling to revise it at this time.



Philip said:


> Eric, this isn't a disputable point: it's a tautology (meaning the statement is circular and therefore necessarily the case). Hume's denial of it is lunacy.



Lunacy from your opinion, but you can't show why it is in fact lunacy. Simply because it is 'convenient' to go against Hume's denial doesn't mean that this was the correct way to go.



Philip said:


> Appeal to the subconscious is dubious at best.



Yet do you doubt that this exists? Do you do EVERYTHING consciously? Or are there some things that you simply do without thinking about them (muscle memory). I am not saying that we should base all argumentation on the subconscious, but we should recognize its purpose and effect in human activity. When I use the term subconscious I generally refer to doing things 'without thinking about them'. 



Philip said:


> This is my point exactly, though. The linguistic centers in the brain of a Down Syndrome person are often such that the logical functions necessary for logical foundations do not appear---or at least are not expressible. Yet they seem to be capable of telling between truth and falsehood, and even of coming to faith in Christ.



All you have shown is that they are generally unable to communicate to others what they are thinking. This does not mean at all that they are not able to think about things as deeply as you do.



Philip said:


> What if the unbeliever points out that this is a false dichotomy?



I would ask him why he believes it is false? If he is just making an assertion, then we all might as well make as many assertions as we want. You yourself don't believe that beliefs need to be justified (at least this is what you have said before), and based on that reasoning there is really no place for us to question the beliefs of the unbeliever, even if they are false. Unless you look at the justification behind every assertion, you will never be able to discern between which ones are correct and which ones are wrong. Perhaps you might try to just follow your intuition, or what 'feels right', but even then you are inadvertently looking at (and rejecting) the justification of what you consider to be wrong beliefs.



Philip said:


> Ok---so why is it that those who adhere to all of these things still disagree? Eric, in any debate of any kind, you have to be humble enough to admit that you're going to be wrong about some things.



Yeah, but I don't know what those things are. It is not like we go into a debate already knowing which statements that we make are going to be wrong, lol. I don't doubt that people 'adhere' in their hearts to what scripture teaches. But that is different from being able to correctly interpret ALL of scripture. Remember, Arminians and some Roman Catholics would argue that their worldview is founded upon Christ and scripture, but that doesn't mean that they interpret things correctly. The weakness and limitation is with them (and their assumptions), not with scripture.



Philip said:


> Because it's the only way to proceed. You're not going to get anywhere through denying this.



Oh I don't doubt that it is very convenient. What I would do though is simply take you a step further. It's the only way to proceed because it is how God decreed things to be. The law itself was never a necessary thing. What WAS necessary was the law-maker.



Philip said:


> How does defending empirical sense equate to empiricism? Where have I argued for reductionism of this or any kind?



It simply seems that you have been arguing for empiricism. It simply seems that you believe that all knowledge is derived from sense experience. I myself don't doubt the usefulness of empirical sense, but it itself is merely a tool that God has provided. It exists only as part of God's decree. Only by presupposing God can you account for the purpose and origin of what we call empirical sense.



Philip said:


> I said belief, not knowledge. Knowledge does entail ontological commitment, but my belief does not---I'm talking about warrant sufficient for a rational knowledge-claim.



Sufficient according to whom? Who decides what is sufficient warrant?



Philip said:


> Because the term "universe" precludes it. He has transgressed the bounds of sense.



How has he transgressed the bounds of sense? Why have you bounded sense in this way? 



Philip said:


> Not at all. The only things that "just are" are necessary kinds of things---things that must be the case in all possible worlds.



But only God is the necessary being that must be the case in all possible worlds. The things that you believe 'just are', I believe 'are because of God'.



Philip said:


> Eric, you can't have necessity beyond necessity. If something is necessary, then it demands no further explanation. You're making the wrong move here. If a necessary truth is dependent, then it isn't necessary.



You have proven my point perfectly. Those 'necessary' truths that you defend are dependent upon God. Only He is necessary.



Philip said:


> No it wouldn't. Because we have just agreed on a methodology for confirmation.



Not necessarily, because you would still have to show me that your method (presenting moon rocks to me) was a more consistent and accurate method than me relying on my father's teachings. 



Philip said:


> Is there any reason for me to think this? Neo is not justified in believing such until he is shown such. You can have a justified belief that turns out to be false.



It is only justified in your mind, but it was never really justified. In YOUR opinion you are justified, but in someone else's opinion you are not justified. Who is right, and why do you believe them to be right? You see, you are unwilling to accept the fact that you live in the matrix, just like an unbeliever is unwilling to accept the fact that they live in sin. You just keep denying a simple truth. You don't think that there is any reason to believe that you are in the matrix. In your mind your belief is justified, yet you are still wrong. 



Philip said:


> Eric, I have been arguing precisely the opposite. I have been attempting to show that your skeptical method leads to this conclusion. You are arguing for a kind of positivism about revelation. The fact is that just because you're a Christian and God has revealed Himself to you doesn't mean you're always right, neither does it mean that your reasoning process is infallible. If you understand anything at all about the truth of Christ, it is by the Holy Spirit's work alone.



And I never once said that I am always right. Where did you get that idea? I also never said my reasoning process is infallible. Again, where did you get this idea? I completely agree it is all by the work of Christ. Have I declared anything other than this? I fear that you simply have misunderstood and misrepresented my position.



Philip said:


> Because it has been revealed by the Spirit, who has regenerated me and given me a new heart, new eyes to see, and new ears to hear. Because through Scripture, the Spirit reveals Jesus Christ, the image of the Father, who then points back to Scripture and says "believe this: it's true." Any account of the words of God in Scripture must make reference to the Word of God, Jesus Christ.



I wholeheartedly would agree with you in this. And so you can have true knowledge without having exhaustive knowledge. I truly applaud your confession of faith (which I share with you word for word). Furthermore, only by recognizing God, and interpreting His universe as He has made it can we make sense of the world. With our new eyes we see the error of our old ways, and we recognize the truth that was always in front of us, always known by us in a spiritual sense, but against which we used to resist. Our resistance has always led us away from God, which can only lead to death, destruction, and chaos. Only in Christ can we have a proper, correct, and consistent worldview.

---------- Post added at 09:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:18 PM ----------




Philip said:


> And here's my contention: that the decision to suppress this knowledge is rational---that is, that it is made in full knowledge of the consequences. The rebellion of man is rational---man knows what he's doing and does it anyway.



I would slightly disagree with this terminology. I agree that man suppresses the sense of the divine within him, and this does indeed often play out in the rational mind of man. But the way you worded your statement is to suggest that every time a person sins, he is consciously thinking about how he enjoys rebelling against God, and how much he hates God. I would have to argue against this conception of the sinful nature. Remember, man from the moment he was conceived was sinful. It is in a spiritual sense 'muscle memory' to rebel against God. Many people sin against God without rationally (in their conscious mind) knowing that they are doing anything wrong. Keep in mind though that I am NOT suggesting that they are not held accountable. I believe there are different ways that a man can 'know' things, such as a spiritual knowledge and an earthly knowledge. And even amongst earthly/physical knowledge we do indeed have conscious and subconscious (muscle memory) knowledge. 

In other words, the rebellion of man is ultimately SPIRITUAL, with rational (and physical) ramifications.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Will, here's the deal. Plantinga has laid out the conditions for warrant---what is conspicuously absent from them (notice) is that the subject be conscious of operating under the proper-function model. All that there has to be is a de facto design plan.



I agree in light of James Anderson's comments below. Yet, the person in question, is the philosopher that responds: "I don't need to give an account for the laws of logic." Keep in perspective what this entire discussion is about - Q: How would the unbeliever justify the laws of logic? A: by questioning the need to provide a justification. The only way one can respond this way is if they are presupposing the existentence of warranted beliefs. This belief is either arbitrary, or it is because he has warrant for properly basic beliefs. In this defense, then, he is conscously affirming a position of proper function as his grounds for not giving justification. 

Either this proper function has a workable definition for trusting your cognitive faculties, or it does't; if it doesn't, then it becomes irrational or at least meaningless; if it does, he would have to affirm a definition that defeats his worldview. 



> The charge of epistemic level confusion can be avoided if [the] premises...are understood to
> refer to an inability in _principle_ rather than one indexed to a particular reasoner. If Susan cannot
> account for the uniformity of nature, it does not follow that her inductively-inferred conclusions are
> unwarranted; but if the uniformity of nature cannot be accounted for in principle, by any human
> reasoner, then the warrant of all inductively-inferred conclusions is cast into doubt.



Yet, in follow up, the point of epistemological arguments is to make one conscious, and once they are conscious, there is no turning back. Secondly, as Plantinga points out, you only need to be agnostic towards theism for this defeater to be present, let alone postivively affirming non-theism. Thirdly, it is my contention that being a rational being causes at least _some_ conscious defeaters necessarily, which are then suppressed. You cannot live in God's world without defeaters. I grant that there is a tension between a person knowing and yet not knowing at the same time, and it is hard to express. 

Plantinga's Argument from Proper Function is also clearly transcendental (as formulated by Anderson):



> (1) For any (human) person S to have knowledge, S must have beliefs produced
> by cognitive faculties functioning properly according to a good design plan
> aimed at true-belief production.
> (2) If metaphysical naturalism is the case, then no (human) person has cognitive
> faculties that (in any literal sense) function properly according to a good
> design plan aimed at true-belief production.
> (3) Therefore, if metaphysical naturalism is the case, then no (human) person
> has knowledge.
> (4) But some (human) persons do have knowledge; therefore, metaphysical
> naturalism is not the case.
> (5) Therefore, given the implausibility of other alternatives, theism is the case.



So, in conclusion, my position is that TAG arguments, similar to Plantinga's above, are used to cause epistemological self-consciousness. An appeal to epistemic level confusion (as Anderson discusses), isn't necessarily relevant. Secondly, Plantinga's transcendental type argument from proper function does show that knowledge is impossible without given preconditions. Third, since all know God, they have at least one defeater at all times in one fashion or another -- and if Plantinga is right, you cannot have knowledge given the presence of a defeater: 1) by the definition of proper function, you would not be functioning properly; 2) you could not believe any belief "enough" in light of a defeater to constitute knowledge.


----------



## Philip

Loopie said:


> So this is an argument from authority? Or is this an argument from majority? Both are examples of fallacious argumentation.



So appealing to the Bible is now fallacious? After all, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to authority.



Loopie said:


> this wasn't a commonly held view several thousand years ago, so you would in fact be in the minority if you had lived back then.



And if I lived back then I would have to prove it. The things that you have to prove differ from generation to generation---is that so terrible or unreasonable?



Loopie said:


> Why can't God be the court of inquiry?



Because that's the point in question.



Loopie said:


> Lunacy from your opinion, but you can't show why it is in fact lunacy.



Sure I can: I point out that "uncaused effect" is a contradiction in terms. The other reason why it is lunacy is that fact that I take cause and effect as givens and have no reason to think that drawing this connection is not a dictate of reason. The trouble with Hume is that he has elevated certain faculties above others for no compelling reason. 



Loopie said:


> When I use the term subconscious I generally refer to doing things 'without thinking about them'.



I think it's hard to talk about the subconscious without falling into bare assertion.



Loopie said:


> I would ask him why he believes it is false?



Because there may be more than the two options you listed available.



Loopie said:


> Yeah, but I don't know what those things are.



Eric, you and I agree on the authority of Scripture, yet somehow we've come to differing conclusions regarding basic belief-formation and whether coherence is an indicator of truth.



Loopie said:


> It simply seems that you have been arguing for empiricism. It simply seems that you believe that all knowledge is derived from sense experience.



Where have I said this? When did I make this categorical statement? I oppose reductionism of all kinds, whether it's Hume, Locke, Descartes, Marx, or Freud. 



Loopie said:


> Sufficient according to whom? Who decides what is sufficient warrant?



In this case, we look at the kinds of claims that in ordinary parlance would be considered rational knowledge-claims and proceed from there. If we want to answer this question, we have to proceed descriptively by looking at ordinary usage, not a top-down approach.



Loopie said:


> How has he transgressed the bounds of sense?



The term "universe" implies that this is only one.



Loopie said:


> But only God is the necessary being that must be the case in all possible worlds. The things that you believe 'just are', I believe 'are because of God'.



First, the laws of logic et al don't exist. They must be true, but they don't exist---we're not Platonists here. However, Platonism is a live option for the unbeliever.

However, you seem to be missing the move I'm making: can God create a spherical cube in three dimensions? Why not?



Loopie said:


> Only He is necessary.



Which would mean that the laws of logic aren't just dependent on Him: they are part of His nature.



Loopie said:


> Not necessarily, because you would still have to show me that your method (presenting moon rocks to me) was a more consistent and accurate method than me relying on my father's teachings.



That wouldn't be my method for proof though. Of course you'd say those weren't real moon rocks. So we would get out a large telescope and look to see if the moon looks as if it's made of cheese. Or we'll go talk to someone who walked on the moon. Or we may even (if we have gobs of money) go up in a spaceship to see for ourselves.



Loopie said:


> You just keep denying a simple truth. You don't think that there is any reason to believe that you are in the matrix.



Please, then, show me a good reason to believe such. If you can get me outside of the matrix, then I have good reason. Remember how Morpheus proves to Neo that he's in the matrix: he shows him. Please, show me.



Loopie said:


> Furthermore, only by recognizing God, and interpreting His universe as He has made it can we make sense of the world.



Here again, Eric, you're using a term that is purely subjective. To make sense of something is not to rightly interpret something. Unbelievers do make sense of the world---they just do it wrongly.

Let's take an example: let's say that language A and language B have the exact same words such that all nouns in A are nouns in B, verbs in A are verbs in B, etc. However, no word in A means the same thing as in B. So "rabbit" means one thing in A while it means something entirely different in B. Now, an A-speaker and a B-speaker read the same passage and each makes sense of it differently. Further, the passage was written by an A-speaker. Now how is the A-speaker supposed to convince the B-speaker that he is right (assuming that they are communicating in language B)?



Hilasmos said:


> Q: How would the unbeliever justify the laws of logic? A: by questioning the need to provide a justification.



Not exactly. The answer here is, "why does he have to?" The answer is, in fact, a higher-order question.



Hilasmos said:


> This belief is either arbitrary, or it is because he has warrant for properly basic beliefs. In this defense, then, he is conscously affirming a position of proper function as his grounds for not giving justification.



Not necessarily. Again, his belief may be non-arbitrary under this model regardless of whether he is even aware of the model. The model works independently of one's belief in it. He's not necessarily going to be appealing to a proper-functionalist model.



Hilasmos said:


> if Plantinga is right, you cannot have knowledge given the presence of a defeater



Depends on whether the defeater in fact defeats anything. The matrix example, for instance, is not a defeater because it presupposes that the burden of proof is not on the skeptic. In order for it to be a defeater, I would have to have a good reason to think a) that I am actually in the matrix b) that there are no criteria by which I can judge between matrix and non-matrix.

A similar example is that of Cobb's top in _Inception_. If the top continually spins, he knows he's in a lucid dream. If it wobbles and falls over, he's in the real world. 

When Plantinga thinks of a defeater, he's thinking of things like Gettier cases where one has gone through a proper reasoning process and the belief is, in fact, true, but something was the case (unknown to the believer) that caused the process to be suspect. For instance: say I see Smith driving a blue station wagon and so I form the belief "Smith owns a blue station wagon." However, while Smith does, in fact, own a blue station wagon, that morning, the blue station wagon he was driving was, in fact, borrowed from someone else. So here I've formed a belief on a rational basis, and this belief is true.

The question here, though, is about knowledge-_claims_. In this case, I could rationally claim to know that Smith owns a blue station wagon.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> The matrix example, for instance, is not a defeater because it presupposes that the burden of proof is not on the skeptic.



I am skeptical that pink unicorns exist, the burden of proof is not on me just because I am skeptical of something. The bruden of proof lies on the one that does not have good reason for what appears to be common sense, and common sense could be an act of skepticism. The burden of proof is on you to show why rejecting the existence of God doesn't result in a defeater for knowledge. Plantinga's arguments show that it does. 



Philip said:


> The model works independently of one's belief in it.



Only because your worldview is true, and from your perspective. You can say X is warranted in believing Y because "you" have a viable definition of proper function (regardless if they understand the model). That is irrelevant to the question being asked though, which asks, based on thier worldview do they have a viable reason to believe in knowledge? They don't. And, as I mentioned, I am talking about apologetics -- the act of causing epistemological self-consciousness in a rational discourse. If they didn't have a defeater before, which I deny, they have it now (or you would have to show that Plantinga's argument from proper function is not valid or sound). 

You are denying the necessity of "If Knowledge, then God." If someone doesn't draw this necessary connection it means their cognitive faculties are not properly functioning. Doesn't the bible support this premise? Do unregenerate persons have properly functioning faculties (keeping in mind that this involves the propositional inputs that defeat one's system). 



Philip said:


> Not exactly. The answer here is, "why does he have to?" The answer is, in fact, a higher-order question.



That was a quote from how you answered. Nonetheless, the answer to why is because he has a defeater.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> I am skeptical that pink unicorns don't exist



But you have a good reason: pink unicorns are a highly implausible entity.



Hilasmos said:


> The burden of proof is on you to show why rejecting the existence of God doesn't result in a defeater for knowledge. Plantinga's arguments show that it does.



The fact that you had to have an argument for the premise that it would shows that you do have a burden of proof. Plantinga's argument merely shows that naturalism is false. Not all atheists are naturalists and not all theists are believers.



Hilasmos said:


> Do unregenerate persons have properly functioning faculties (keeping in mind that this involves the propositional inputs that defeat one's system).



If you frame the debate this way, then no one can be sure of having properly-functioning faculties. I would say that the unregenerate have most of their faculties functioning properly---just not the _sensus Divinitatus_. 



Hilasmos said:


> You are denying the necessity of "If Knowledge, then God."



Correct. There are several inductive steps involved in the argument that have to be established. Therefore it's not a logically necessary connection. It is the case that God is the _de facto_ precondition for knowledge, but that's independent of the argument being made here.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Not all atheists are naturalists and not all theists are believers.



Plantinga defines the term naturalism generically in the lectures where I have heard him explain it; I think it would include all atheists and agnostics. Someone that doesn't believe in the supernatural. 



Philip said:


> There are several inductive steps involved in the argument that have to be established.



What are the inductive steps to presupposing God?



Philip said:


> The fact that you had to have an argument for the premise that it would shows that you do have a burden of proof.



What do I have the burden of proof to show? 



Philip said:


> It is the case that God is the de facto precondition for knowledge, but that's independent of the argument being made here.



In what way is this independent? What is the argument being made?


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Plantinga defines the term naturalism generically in the lectures where I have heard him explain it; I think it would include all atheists and agnostics. Someone that doesn't believe in the supernatural.



Some atheists and agnostics are not naturalists by this definition. There are atheistic Buddhists.



Hilasmos said:


> What are the inductive steps to presupposing God?



I meant in the argument you just gave. Presuppositions are assumed, not argued.

For example: "some humans have knowledge" is inductive. You cannot deduce this from indisputable premises.



Hilasmos said:


> What do I have the burden of proof to show?



That the non-existence of God presents a defeater for knowledge.



Hilasmos said:


> What is the argument being made?



That God is a _de jure_ precondition for knowledge.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> That the non-existence of God presents a defeater for knowledge.



If God did not exist, would we have knowledge?


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Philip said:
> 
> 
> 
> That the non-existence of God presents a defeater for knowledge.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If God did not exist, would we have knowledge?
Click to expand...


No---I accept this by special revelation.


----------



## Hilasmos

Can one consistently, or logically, affirm metaphysical naturalism and also claim to have epistemic warrant.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Can one consistently, or logically, affirm metaphysical naturalism and also claim to have epistemic warrant.



Do they logically contradict one another?

a) Nature is the cause of everything (blind watchmaker)
b) Warranted beliefs are possible


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> No---I accept this by special revelation.



If I told a non-Christian that God's word teaches this, would his rejection of this truth result in a reductio defeater for knoweldge?


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> If I told a non-Christian that God's word teaches this, would his rejection of this truth result in a reductio defeater for knoweldge?



No. He doesn't accept God's Word as authoritative.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Do they logically contradict one another?
> 
> a) Nature is the cause of everything (blind watchmaker)
> b) Warranted beliefs are possible



I think they do, but I guess I was just asking why you would disagree. Warrant presupposes telelogical normativity and design; the blind watchmaker excludes it.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> No. He doesn't accept God's Word as authoritative.



Why does acceptance matter? There are lots of things that people may not accept that are equally rationally justifiable defeaters.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Why does acceptance matter?



Because you're appealing to _his_ reason. You never do apologetics in a vacuum. You've put all of your rhetorical force into _logos_ to the exclusion of _ethos_ and _pathos_, which are equally important.



Hilasmos said:


> the blind watchmaker excludes it.



No it doesn't. It just provides an inadequate account of it. There's a difference between failure to account and contradiction. 



Hilasmos said:


> There are lots of things that people may not accept that are equally rationally justifiable defeaters.



But in the case of the unbeliever, he has no warrant for believing in God---he's in rebellion against God, which has damaged his _sensus Divinitatus_ such that appeal to it no longer produces proper function.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Because you're appealing to his reason. You never do apologetics in a vacuum. You've put all of your rhetorical force into logos to the exclusion of ethos and pathos, which are equally important.



This is an irrelevant thesis to the fact of the question. 



Philip said:


> There's a difference between failure to account and contradiction.



The blind watchmaking is the account and it cannot be true at the same time as the telelogical account. They are contradictory accounts for knowledge. You would need to provide an actual reason for what you are claiming.

1. Cognitive faculties were developed by blind watchmaking (as required by metaphysical naturalism)
2. Cognitive faculties were _not_ developed by blind watchmaking (as required by warrant)



Philip said:


> But in the case of the unbeliever, he has no warrant for believing in God---he's in rebellion against God, which has damaged his sensus Divinitatus such that appeal to it no longer produces proper function.



The unbeliever is without excuse.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> The blind watchmaking is the account and it cannot be true at the same time as the telelogical account.



Where does the contradiction lie, exactly?



Hilasmos said:


> The unbeliever is without excuse.



Have I disputed this? He is both unwarranted and without excuse---he needs the grace of God. It's back to inability and responsibility, yet again.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Where does the contradiction lie, exactly?



Affirming that both A an not-A are true.

---------- Post added at 04:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:33 PM ----------




Philip said:


> Have I disputed this? He is both unwarranted and without excuse---he needs the grace of God. It's back to inability and responsibility, yet again.



If he is without excuse, and knows God, then his "lack of acceptance" of God's word as an authority does not negate that he creates a reductio defeater for knowledge. 

Cain did not accept the word of God as authoritative in regards to proper sacrifice. Because he was unregenerate, and didn't accept it, did that mean he was warranted in believing that his sacrifice "would be accepted" according to his own standards? No it doesn't. He had a proper defeater for his false belief and was irrational to ignore it. And, likewise, the word of God today is just as self-evidently true and authoritative.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Affirming that both A an not-A are true.



Can you spell it out for me, then? I must be missing where logic and blind watchmaking come into conflict.



Hilasmos said:


> If he is without excuse, and knows God, then his "lack of acceptance" of God's word as an authority does not negate that he creates a reductio defeater for knowledge.



The point is that he doesn't know God---not as Christians know God, certainly. He used to know God, but no longer because of the fall. He is culpable for this lack of knowledge, but it is still a lack of knowledge.



Hilasmos said:


> Because he was unregenerate, and didn't accept it, did that mean he was warranted in believing that his sacrifice "would be accepted" according to his own standards?



No---his faculties were not functioning properly. However, he was rational in claiming warrant given that he did not know that his faculties were not functioning properly.



Hilasmos said:


> And, likewise, the word of God today is just as self-evidently true and authoritative.



To the one who is regenerate. Not to the unregenerate.


----------



## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Can you spell it out for me, then? I must be missing where logic and blind watchmaking come into conflict.



Can't really make it any more clear, and you seemed to already affirm this in our prior discussion about plantinga's argument. But, that's okay. 



Philip said:


> To the one who is regenerate. Not to the unregenerate.



Sorry, the nature of the word of God is not contingent upon man.


----------



## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Sorry, the nature of the word of God is not contingent upon man.



But the perception of it is. And one cannot be warranted in that which one does not perceive.

If someone presents me with an argument and I just don't find it compelling, am I being unreasonable in rejecting it, even if I don't bother to come up with a counter-argument?

---------- Post added at 09:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:03 PM ----------




Hilasmos said:


> Can't really make it any more clear, and you seemed to already affirm this in our prior discussion about plantinga's argument.



I affirmed it with regard to evolutionary processes of a darwinian nature when combined with naturalism.


----------



## Loopie

Philip said:


> So appealing to the Bible is now fallacious? After all, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to authority.



In the context of our discussion you were referring to scientists. Appealing to authority is fallacious ONLY if the authority is not infallible. The word of God is perfect and infallible, and for that reason is a proper authority. I never said that appeal to authority is ALWAYS fallacious, but in the context of what you were saying, it was (because you were certainly not referring to scripture).



Philip said:


> And if I lived back then I would have to prove it. The things that you have to prove differ from generation to generation---is that so terrible or unreasonable?



Not at all. But it just goes to show that common-sense isn't really so common, and it certainly doesn't always fit with reality. Perhaps your necessary principles are common and fit with reality, but they only do so on account of God. He is their foundation, and in fact HE is the necessary one, for the principles would not be what they are without him.



Philip said:


> Because that's the point in question.



It just proves my point. The unbeliever also believes in a court of inquiry, which is generally a conglomeration of society and himself. Ultimately though he makes himself out to be judge of what is true or false, right or wrong. Yet we can see that this worldview logically degenerates into inconsistency, chaos, and arbitrariness. God, as a necessary being, is the only true court of inquiry, and he must necessarily exist.



Philip said:


> Sure I can: I point out that "uncaused effect" is a contradiction in terms. The other reason why it is lunacy is that fact that I take cause and effect as givens and have no reason to think that drawing this connection is not a dictate of reason. The trouble with Hume is that he has elevated certain faculties above others for no compelling reason.



That's fine, I will just use the term 'event' rather than 'effect'. Perhaps there was an uncaused event such as the big bang. You take cause and effect as givens only because it is convenient to do so, and because God has designed the universe to work that way. Of course, you don't recognize that God is necessary behind all of it, and to argue otherwise is to degenerate into chaos, and arbitrariness. By the way, from studying Hume it does not seem that he has elevated certain faculties above others. I could be wrong, but he certainly allowed for the importance of feeling and emotion. Obviously since he wasn't a Christian he would not truly allow for spiritual faculties (at least not as the Bible describes them). All of these faculties have been affected by sin, there is no doubt. And each of these faculties rebels against God. It is certainly true that presuppositional apologetics primarily focuses on sin's affects on the mind and rationality. This does not mean it is useless in the realm of dealing with sin's affect on the emotions and affections. A person, in exercising their will, is always using a combination of reasoning and affection. No one is PURELY logical, and no one is PURELY emotional. 



Philip said:


> I think it's hard to talk about the subconscious without falling into bare assertion.



Seems to be common sense to me. Everyone does things by muscle memory, and it seems the vast majority of mankind assert in some time of learned habit that could be viewed as subconscious. Seems like there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the subconscious 'just is'. You yourself cannot deny that you have often done things without really thinking about them. Or do you consciously make an effort with every thought and action that you take every second of your life?



Philip said:


> Because there may be more than the two options you listed available.



Such as? And one what basis can he say that there may be more than two options? Is this a bare assertion that he is making? 



Philip said:


> Eric, you and I agree on the authority of Scripture, yet somehow we've come to differing conclusions regarding basic belief-formation and whether coherence is an indicator of truth.



Well I do not doubt that a person might BELIEVE that something is coherent. Yet the sinner looks at the universe and makes it fit his own assumtions about himself and his relationship to God. I do not think that simply because something is coherent means that it is true. Nor do I think that truth is always coherence. Man's coherance of the universe is very much fixed upon his will and his status before God. As a rebel he will continually try to make the universe coherent to him based upon what he assumes is his standing/relationship to the universe (he refuses to admit that he is God's creature, made in His image). He attempts to avoid inconsistency and contradiction in his understanding and interpretation of the universe, but he cannot because he has separated himself from God. Though believers constantly point out the inconsistencies of his worldview, and the error of his ways, he refuses to see them, and will only see the truth after God removes his heart of stone and gives him a heart of flesh. I hope perhaps now you better understand my position.



Philip said:


> Where have I said this? When did I make this categorical statement? I oppose reductionism of all kinds, whether it's Hume, Locke, Descartes, Marx, or Freud.



That is good.



Philip said:


> In this case, we look at the kinds of claims that in ordinary parlance would be considered rational knowledge-claims and proceed from there. If we want to answer this question, we have to proceed descriptively by looking at ordinary usage, not a top-down approach.



Ordinary parlance? So you mean what the majority decides/how the majority functions? That is to be considered 'ordinary', right? Seems to be an Ad Populum argument.


Philip said:


> The term "universe" implies that this is only one.



Well, simply call it something else. You certainly can't deny that there are very well-learned men who advocated the existence of either an infinite/eternal universe or multiple-universes. 



Philip said:


> First, the laws of logic et al don't exist. They must be true, but they don't exist---we're not Platonists here. However, Platonism is a live option for the unbeliever.



And you know as well as I do that in our discussions we always used the term 'existence' with regard to laws in a sense different from material things. Obviously I know that they don't exist in the sense that this table exists. You are trying to bring up issues between the words that you and I have used that have not been issues in all of our previous discussions. Why the change now? As for the laws of logic, they are still only true because God decreed them to be true, and formed the universe in that way. He is still necessary, and they are not.



Philip said:


> However, you seem to be missing the move I'm making: can God create a spherical cube in three dimensions? Why not?



Because you have misunderstood omnipotence (I am assuming that you are referring to this characteristic of God). Omnipotence is defined as 'all-powerful'. The problem is that people try to separate this from God's will. Jonathan Edwards speaks on this in his book Freedom of the Will. To be all powerful means that you are always able to accomplish your will. Nothing hinders God's will. What he wills, he accomplishes. In this sense he is all-powerful. So when you ask a silly question such as: "can God create a spherical cube in three dimensions?", this ignores the question of God's will. When we ask if a person 'can' do something, we assume already that they would be willing to do. In other words, we are saying: "given that this person was willing to do X, could they do it?". If we ignore God's will, we can ask other silly questions such as: "can God destroy himself?", "can God lie?", "can God sin?". So we see, one cannot separate a person's 'ability' to do something from their 'will' to either do it or not do it. God is not 'all-willing'. He has a specific will, and his will is ALWAYS accomplished. In that sense he is all-powerful.



Philip said:


> Which would mean that the laws of logic aren't just dependent on Him: they are part of His nature.



In a sense, but then again we cannot speculate on how God 'thinks'. Is his thinking linear in the way that we think? Our logic is linear. I cannot imagine how an eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient being 'reasons' or 'thinks', and how that would relate to the 'laws of logic'. And for that reason I will not speculate. I wholeheartedly agree that God is logical, and the source of logic, but I do not think a person can simply assert that the laws of logic are necessary truths while refusing to assert that God is necessary. You yourself have just said that the 'laws of logic are part of his nature'. So to talk of the laws of logic without reference to God is to separate his nature from himself. For that reason, any discussion of the necessity of the laws of logic must include the necessity of God at the back of everything, which is what I have been trying to do.



Philip said:


> Please, then, show me a good reason to believe such. If you can get me outside of the matrix, then I have good reason. Remember how Morpheus proves to Neo that he's in the matrix: he shows him. Please, show me.



Please show me good reason NOT to believe such? Can you truly SHOW a non-believer that they are in sin? Or does it not require a divine act by God to cause that unbeliever to see the truth? What I am trying to show here is that all assertions must be justified, or everything becomes arbitrary. If you refuse to justify your belief that we live in the real world, while I refuse to justify the belief that we live in the matrix, then we will just sit and stare at each other all day.



Philip said:


> Here again, Eric, you're using a term that is purely subjective. To make sense of something is not to rightly interpret something. Unbelievers do make sense of the world---they just do it wrongly.



I completely agree with you. To them it 'makes sense'. But even so, since their interpretation does not line up with God's (and God is logical), then therefore they (in some way) have deviated from logic. Their interpretation results in contradiction, inconsistency, chaose, and arbitrariness. This is not always easy to show, but it is demonstrable. Please keep in mind that even though I say the word 'demonstrable', I do not mean it to say that it is guaranteed to change their mind. Their mind is a tool of their will, and their will is enslaved to sin. Nothing, no matter how 'demonstrable', will ever change a person's mind so long as they are unwilling to change it.



Philip said:


> Let's take an example: let's say that language A and language B have the exact same words such that all nouns in A are nouns in B, verbs in A are verbs in B, etc. However, no word in A means the same thing as in B. So "rabbit" means one thing in A while it means something entirely different in B. Now, an A-speaker and a B-speaker read the same passage and each makes sense of it differently. Further, the passage was written by an A-speaker. Now how is the A-speaker supposed to convince the B-speaker that he is right (assuming that they are communicating in language B)?



By appealing to what the words refer to, creation. It is true that the A-speaker knows how the passage relates to the world, and the B-speaker thinks that it refers to something else. Of course, as soon as a 'noun' (such as an animal) comes into view, the stalemate is broken, and a bridge is made. A-speaker sees an object (whether an animal or not), points to it, and speaks a word. This word means something completely different to B-speaker, but he then comes to realize that they use different nouns to refer to the same thing. And from there they translate. In fact, they don't even need an external object. They can point to their own body parts if they wish, and begin from there.

I am not sure what exactly you are trying to get at here. If you are suggesting that unbelievers are A-speakers and believers are B-speakers, I would raise contention against that. Both unbelievers and believers speak the same language because they are all made in the image of God, live in God's universe, and act under God's laws. They see the same words, and each knows what they mean (deep down, in a spiritual sense), but the unbeliever refuses to acknowledge the author. To him those words are not God's language, nor did they originate with him. They are products of chance, in a universe that runs on chance and randomness. The believer knows otherwise.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Originally Posted by *Hilasmos* Sorry, the nature of the word of God is not contingent upon man.
> 
> 
> 
> But the perception of it is. And one cannot be warranted in that which one does not perceive.
Click to expand...


What can be known about God is _plain_ to them. God's invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, _have been clearly perceived_....so they are without excuse. For although they _knew_ God...

They _became_ futile and they _became_ fools. 

There is a transition in the "becoming" that can only be the case if one perceived what was the case and chooses to ignor what they "know."

Your analogy appears to be that a blind person does not have a defeater for his lack of belief that tree X exists, because he doesn't have proper function in the area of sight. True enough, but this analogy is inconsistent with scripture in relation to man's perception of revelation from God. Man is without excuse, according to scripture, because he perceives it and knows it, and yet still rejects it. If he could not perceive it, as you say, then why is he without excuse scripturally.

---------- Post added at 07:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 AM ----------




Philip said:


> I affirmed it with regard to evolutionary processes of a darwinian nature when combined with naturalism.



Right.


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## Philip

Loopie said:


> A person, in exercising their will, is always using a combination of reasoning and affection. No one is PURELY logical, and no one is PURELY emotional.



Eric, is emotion unreasonable, necessarily? It seems to me that Hume is arguing that emotion is inherently irrational, whereas I don't think it is. One cannot reason unless one is affected in such a way as to do so. Reason is not the slave of the passions, as Hume claims, but neither are passions supposed to be the slave of reason.



Loopie said:


> And one what basis can he say that there may be more than two options? Is this a bare assertion that he is making?



On the basis that there may well be. Just because one cannot think of a third option does not mean there isn't one. The burden would lie on you to show that these are the only two possible options.



Loopie said:


> Ordinary parlance? So you mean what the majority decides/how the majority functions? That is to be considered 'ordinary', right? Seems to be an Ad Populum argument.



Not really. When examining terms like "knowledge" we have to account for its ordinary usage as valid. Philosophy is not supposed to improve ordinary language. This is another problem I have with Hume: he's an elitist. Think of it this way: would your use of the word make sense to one of your relatives who hasn't studied philosophy.

As an example, I recently came across a thinker who claimed that there can't be philosophical theories because theories have to be testable. My critique is that this just doesn't reflect the way we use the word: for example, how would you test music theory? Political theory? Even in science, multiverse and string theories are untestable in principle.



Loopie said:


> You certainly can't deny that there are very well-learned men who advocated the existence of either an infinite/eternal universe or multiple-universes.



Ok---they are in violation of Occam's Razor and there's no evidence for it, therefore I have no reason to accept their hypothesis.



Loopie said:


> As for the laws of logic, they are still only true because God decreed them to be true, and formed the universe in that way.



Could God have created spherical cubes in three dimensions, then? Your explanation only sidesteps the question. Could God will the creation of spherical cubes? Can God contradict Himself or His will? If the answer to this last question is "no" then it seems that at least the law of non-contradiction is contained in the Divine Nature.



Loopie said:


> Please show me good reason NOT to believe such?



That would be an exercise in futility since such a position is an example of Russell's teapot. Let's say that I claim that I've seen a teapot in the asteroid belt through my telescope. And so you point the telescope toward the spot and see nothing. Then I claim "it must have moved." Basically I have a position that can account for everything despite the fact that it is wildly implausible. What you haven't done in the case of the Matrix is to get past my initial plausibility threshold.



Loopie said:


> A-speaker sees an object (whether an animal or not), points to it, and speaks a word. This word means something completely different to B-speaker, but he then comes to realize that they use different nouns to refer to the same thing.



No he doesn't because he doesn't know the context. W.V.O. Quine has called this the "indeterminacy of translation." Say I'm trying to learn a tribal language and am with a tribesman and we see a rabbit cross the path and he says "Gavagai." Now he might very well mean "rabbit," but he might just as well have meant "food," "animal crossing the path," "sacrifice," or even "thing that we worship."



Loopie said:


> Both unbelievers and believers speak the same language because they are all made in the image of God, live in God's universe, and act under God's laws.



Except that the unbeliever has, in essence, created his own language.



Hilasmos said:


> Your analogy appears to be that a blind person does not have a defeater for his lack of belief that tree X exists, because he doesn't have proper function in the area of sight. True enough, but this analogy is inconsistent with scripture in relation to man's perception of revelation from God.



What if the man blinded himself?



Hilasmos said:


> If he could not perceive it, as you say, then why is he without excuse scripturally.



Because his lack of ability to perceive is his own fault. As C.S. Lewis said, "the trouble with trying to make yourself sillier is that you generally succeed."


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Because his lack of ability to perceive is his own fault. As C.S. Lewis said, "the trouble with trying to make yourself sillier is that you generally succeed."



I was looking for a scriptural answer. Asserting the opposite of what scripture says doesn't seem to work in my opinion.

---------- Post added at 11:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 AM ----------




Philip said:


> What if the man blinded himself?



You're equivicating on the notions of perception and suppression. He hasn't blinded himself as you are implying.


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## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> Your equivicating on the notions of perception and suppression. He hasn't blinded himself as you are implying.



Sure he has, otherwise he wouldn't be able to deny the existence of God. His ignorance of God is culpable. Paul even calls this state ignorance in Acts 17 _The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent_. What is stated in Romans 1 is that this ignorance is willful and the result of man's rebellion.

I'm not trying to assert the opposite of Scriptural teaching, but to understand Scripture in light of Scripture.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> Sure he has, otherwise he wouldn't be able to deny the existence of God.



What I am saying is that you are not differentiating, within this text itself, its notions of suppression and perception. The suppression is the act of "blinding," which is how they can deny God's existence; but, you are using the notion of blinding to say that they do not also perceive...the text explicitly says that they do.

Secondly, suppression is not a one-time act. God's wrath _is_ (presently and continually) being revealed against ungodliness...the ungodliness of continual suppression of truth. To continually suppress the truth you must continually perceive the truth, otherwise there would be no need to engage in the act of suppression. A blind person cannot suppress a belief in a given tree if he doesn’t first perceive it and have reason to believe its there. 

Thirdly, take a man that starts out life unregenerate. For Romans 1 to make any sense, you would have to agree that an unregenerate man can perceive and know God, and then suppress it. However, the correlation you are making is that fallen man, as unregenerate, cannot perceive the truth because he is already broken, unregenerate, which makes the passage senseless. 

Which is it? Does unregenerate man start out blind, or does unregenerate man start out seeing and cause his blindness? If the former, then “blind” men still have perception of god’s revelation (per Romans 1); if the latter, then you would have to say unregenerate men go through stages of degeneracy (but, the right answer is that they go through stages of suppression, in my opinion).


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## Philip

Hilasmos said:


> that they do not also perceive...the text explicitly says that they do.



It says that they _did_.



Hilasmos said:


> Which is it? Does unregenerate man start out blind, or does unregenerate man start out seeing and cause his blindness?



Yes.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> It says that they did.



Actually, the word for perception, _kathoratai_, functions as the main verb of Romans 1:20, and it is in the present tense. Literally, it is "are being perceived," or "are discerned clearly." The english perfect tense rendering of the ESV is still consistent with this, and you cannot get "did" out of it (also see the AV).

In the translation below, "being understood" is also in the present tense. 

"Because that which is known of God is plainly evident in them, for God made it clear to them; for the things which are invisible of Him since the creation of the universe are clearly seen [perceived], being understood by means of the things that are made, namely, His eternal power and divinity, resulting in their being without a defense."


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## Philip

_For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened._

or

_Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened._

This darkening of the heart I take to mean a deadening of the faculties to the things of God. The present tense in the previous verse refers to what is capable of being known through general revelation given proper function. The problem is that man has darkened his own heart and therefore proper function is no longer present.


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## Hilasmos

Philip said:


> This darkening of the heart I take to mean a deadening of the faculties to the things of God. The present tense in the previous verse refers to what is capable of being known through general revelation given proper function. The problem is that man has darkened his own heart and therefore proper function is no longer present.



This is an impossible insertion into the passage if you read carefully starting in v.18, in my opinion; it makes unregenerate man the definition of proper spiritual function. Or, you would have to suggest that the only persons this passage has in view are Adam and Eve. 

1. Unregenerate man has properly functioning spiritual faculties and therefore can perceive God’s plain revelation so that he can then suppress it
2. After suppression, unregenerate man no longer has properly functioning spiritual faculties (like he did before) and can no longer perceive

Further, after they become futile, their sin continues and gets worse. While in this state they do not “see fit to acknowledge God” v.28. Not “seeing fit to acknowledge” presupposes a choice to continue to suppress that which they “know” (this would make no sense otherwise) 

That just doesn’t work. You have to realize that the “it is plain to them” (v.19) is talking about spiritually dead sinners, or posit why it is referencing Adam before the fall. 

Secondly, Romans 2:15 speaks to the same issue. Unregenerate man has “conflicting thoughts” because he both perceives and knows the revelatory moral will of God, and yet wants to follow his own will. There would be no “conflicting thoughts” if fallen man did not perceive the moral law God has revealed. 

But, I will say no more and just leave it to your own reflection.


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## Loopie

Philip said:


> Eric, is emotion unreasonable, necessarily? It seems to me that Hume is arguing that emotion is inherently irrational, whereas I don't think it is. One cannot reason unless one is affected in such a way as to do so. Reason is not the slave of the passions, as Hume claims, but neither are passions supposed to be the slave of reason.



I very much agree with you. And in fact, it is impossible to make reason the slave of passions, or passions the slave of reason. Man's will always includes both passions and reason. To put it all in simpler terms, a man is said to act solely upon his 'passions' when he acts in order to satisfy the 'now' or the 'immediate'. He 'feels' a certain way, and acts immediately in order to satisfy that feeling as soon as possible, regardless of the consequences. On the other hand, a person is said to act 'reasonably' or 'logically' when they patiently refrain from satisfying immediate cravings in order to ensure that they do things 'properly', or rather, they focus on the long term rather than the short term. Passions are not in themselves evil, and neither is reason. Both are enslaved to sin, and are tools of a sinful nature. 



Philip said:


> On the basis that there may well be. Just because one cannot think of a third option does not mean there isn't one. The burden would lie on you to show that these are the only two possible options.



Why is there a burden? Could I not simply say that 'it just is'? This burden placed upon me is artificial, and not something I recognize. 



Philip said:


> Not really. When examining terms like "knowledge" we have to account for its ordinary usage as valid. Philosophy is not supposed to improve ordinary language. This is another problem I have with Hume: he's an elitist. Think of it this way: would your use of the word make sense to one of your relatives who hasn't studied philosophy.



Ok, but the very term 'ordinary use' suggests that it is based on how humans, in general, use it. This is a very subtle Ad Populum argument. For if a particular use of a term was rare, it would not longer be considered 'ordinary'. I agree that Hume is an elitist. I don't like the man, and I don't think he is right. The only thing that I think he is useful for is showing how the unbeliever cannot account for anything. The unbeliever must simply assume that things 'just are', and call it a day. God is staring him right in the face, but he would rather throw up his hands and say 'it just is' rather than acknowledge God as he ought.

As for my relatives, are you talking about the word 'knowledge'? Well, if I suspected that a word would not make sense to my relatives, I would clarify it with them so that we are on the same page. To talk about a sensitive/deep/difficult subject while assuming that everyone uses the same meaning of a word that you do is plainly silly and arrogant. One must make it very clear what one is talking about, even to one's relatives. 

As for Philosophy 'improving' ordinary language, I think it should rather seek to clarify it rather than improve it. Common street jargon is often very fluid, has multiple meanings, and usually has a different meaning every year. Words are created that used to never be words. Other words mean completely different things. Sometimes this is the result of simple laziness or lack of education, other times it is a cultural thing. We should ALWAYS seeks to be clear and precise in how we use terms. For this reason Philosophy, rather than improving ordinary language, should seek to encourage people to be more clear about what they are saying. We should become aware that certain words have a wide range of meanings, and so we must be clear when we enter into a serious discussion with another person.



Philip said:


> As an example, I recently came across a thinker who claimed that there can't be philosophical theories because theories have to be testable. My critique is that this just doesn't reflect the way we use the word: for example, how would you test music theory? Political theory? Even in science, multiverse and string theories are untestable in principle.



I agree. We can't test historical theory either. What happened in the past cannot be reproduced. I completely agree with your critique of this thinker you came across. One could even say that our 'theory of creation' or 'theory of God' is untestable. To demand that everything be testable is to demand utter silliness.



Philip said:


> Ok---they are in violation of Occam's Razor and there's no evidence for it, therefore I have no reason to accept their hypothesis.



Ok, but a person might ask you to justify your belief in Occam's Razor. Why is Occam's Razor correct? Don't you see how important it is to justify your position? You first justified your position by appealing to Occam's Razor. Now you need to justify your appeal to Occam's Razor.



Philip said:


> Could God have created spherical cubes in three dimensions, then? Your explanation only sidesteps the question. Could God will the creation of spherical cubes? Can God contradict Himself or His will? If the answer to this last question is "no" then it seems that at least the law of non-contradiction is contained in the Divine Nature.



I have already covered this in my section on omnipotence and God's will. I ask that you read it again. Any discussion of God's 'ability' to do something must include his 'will' to do it or not. I believe that God is good, has a perfect will, and is perfectly consistent and logical. I agree with you that the law of non-contradiction is a way to describe a part of God's nature, and how God has reflected or revealed that nature in the universe. But this just proves my point. One cannot speak of this 'law of non-contradiction' as a necessary truth without simultaneously declaring that it is God who is necessary. To speak of 'necessary' truths without reference to God is to attempt to separate a part of God's nature from himself.



Philip said:


> That would be an exercise in futility since such a position is an example of Russell's teapot. Let's say that I claim that I've seen a teapot in the asteroid belt through my telescope. And so you point the telescope toward the spot and see nothing. Then I claim "it must have moved." Basically I have a position that can account for everything despite the fact that it is wildly implausible. What you haven't done in the case of the Matrix is to get past my initial plausibility threshold.



But how do you define plausibility? Wildly implausible according to who?



Philip said:


> No he doesn't because he doesn't know the context. W.V.O. Quine has called this the "indeterminacy of translation." Say I'm trying to learn a tribal language and am with a tribesman and we see a rabbit cross the path and he says "Gavagai." Now he might very well mean "rabbit," but he might just as well have meant "food," "animal crossing the path," "sacrifice," or even "thing that we worship."



Well, it seems then that you didn't offer a very good scenario. You never said that the persons cannot read each other's body language, or point to external objects. You yourself should know that only about 10% of communication is the words themselves, while the rest is body language and tone (and perhaps some other things). You failed to address my answer to your scenario. Why can't a person point to his thumb and speak one word? Then the other person, seeing the reference to the thumb, speaks a different word. Now they realize that they are talking about the same thing but using different words. As an example I would refer to the movie Dances With Wolves, where the union soldier is able to bridge the gap between him and the Indian by comparing each other's word for 'buffalo'. 



Philip said:


> Except that the unbeliever has, in essence, created his own language.



I disagree. The language is the same, but the unbeliever refuses to acknowledge what it is saying (or even who the author is). It is exactly like when both a believer and unbeliever read the Bible. The believer reads God's judgments in the Old Testament and sees a demonstration of God's justice and wrath, for his glorification. An unbeliever sees God as a mass-murderer and wicked being that finds pleasure in committing atrocity. Both have read the same words, and know what events/actions they describe. Yet one of them recognizes God as the final authority on what is right and wrong, true or false. The other takes this authority upon himself and then turns and judges God.


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## Philip

I can't address everything here, but here's a couple of things.



Loopie said:


> Ok, but a person might ask you to justify your belief in Occam's Razor. Why is Occam's Razor correct? Don't you see how important it is to justify your position? You first justified your position by appealing to Occam's Razor. Now you need to justify your appeal to Occam's Razor.



Actually, I don't. I don't, as you say, "believe" in Occam's razor. Instead I use it as a methodological tool. Methodological principles are not the kind of things, it seems to me, that could be justified in the way that beliefs could.



Loopie said:


> But how do you define plausibility? Wildly implausible according to who?



Sane people?



Loopie said:


> I agree. We can't test historical theory either. What happened in the past cannot be reproduced. I completely agree with your critique of this thinker you came across. One could even say that our 'theory of creation' or 'theory of God' is untestable. To demand that everything be testable is to demand utter silliness.



Corrrect, but to make this move is to appeal to the ordinary uses of the word. To a large degree, meaning is determined by use: this is why we update our dictionaries every so often.



Loopie said:


> Ok, but the very term 'ordinary use' suggests that it is based on how humans, in general, use it. This is a very subtle Ad Populum argument.



But in this case it's valid because we're talking about something that is created through use.


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## Loopie

Philip said:


> I can't address everything here, but here's a couple of things.
> 
> Actually, I don't. I don't, as you say, "believe" in Occam's razor. Instead I use it as a methodological tool. Methodological principles are not the kind of things, it seems to me, that could be justified in the way that beliefs could.



Certainly they could be justified. Why do you use that particular methodological principle? Why not a different principle?



Philip said:


> Sane people?



Definition of 'sane' please. Is sane determined by the vast majority of how people think and function? Is it Ad Populum?



Philip said:


> Corrrect, but to make this move is to appeal to the ordinary uses of the word. To a large degree, meaning is determined by use: this is why we update our dictionaries every so often.



Well, you certainly can appeal to ordinary uses of the word, but you need to clarify yourself if you are speaking to someone that doesn't use the word in the way that you do. I agree that meaning is determine by use, but this doesn't mean that you can simply use a word however way you want without clarifying it (and expect the other person to know what you are talking about).



Philip said:


> But in this case it's valid because we're talking about something that is created through use.



Only through use of SOME people. Again, if you go to England and use some 'American' words, you will get some confused look on the people's faces. You are now no longer using a word per its 'ordinary' use in England, though this may be its 'ordinary' use in America. So again, ordinary depends upon a majority use of the term in a particular area. Ordinary is purely subjective, so the best thing to do is to 'be clear' about what you are saying.


----------

