My point is, I do not think Plantinga is
consistently an externalist (not that he claimed to be an internalist). As a related aside, Aristotle is also known for his concept of
tabula rasa, and I am unclear how such a view of knowledge squares away with the doctrine of original sin... Moving on, as for Bahnsen and Van Til and externalism, first a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"
Externalism in the philosophy of mind contends that the meaning or content of a thought[1] is partly determined by the environment. The view has garnered attention since it denies the traditional assumption, associated with Descartes, that thought content is fixed independently of the external world. Apparently under this assumption, Descartes also believed that he could know the content of his thoughts while suspending all judgment about his environs. (Indeed, such knowledge was thought indubitable.) Yet if externalism is correct, this may well be a mistake. As we shall see, externalism can suggest that Descartes is unable to know that his own thought represents, say, elm trees (vs. beech trees) without knowing that it is
elms (and not beeches) that the thought is connected to in the world. But if such worldly knowledge is a prerequisite, then Descartes could not know the content of this thought just “from the armchair,” so to speak. So there seems to be a conflict between externalism and such armchair knowledge of one’s own thought contents (for short: “armchair self-knowledge”). The question whether this conflict is real is what drives the contemporary debate on externalism and self-knowledge.
Officially, we can put the issue in terms of an apparent tension between the following:
(EXT) Thought content is determined partly by the environment.[
2]
(SK) A subject can know from the armchair what content her thoughts have.[
3]
The issue is that EXT seemingly implies that knowing about content requires knowing about the environment. And since the latter is empirical, so too would be the former, contra SK.[
4] Now it is usually thought that, if EXT is incompatible with SK, this would be a serious problem for EXT (though some think internalism also conflicts with SK; see McLaughlin & Tye 1998a, Farkas 2003, Bar-On 2006, p. 434). Yet some think the incompatibility threatens SK instead of EXT (see section
2.4). Regardless, the interest in the debate goes beyond EXT, for it pertains to many central concerns of philosophers, such as the nature of knowledge and the relation between mind and world. The debate also touches on more specialized topics, including memory, concept acquisition, epistemic responsibility, and transcendental arguments.
In the standard terminology, the dispute is between incompatibilists who affirm the conflict between EXT and SK, and compatibilists who deny it."
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I think both Van Til and Bahnsen would fall into the
compatibilist category. At this point, I'd like to quote Van Til from his short work "Why I Believe in God":
"
On the other hand by my belief in God I do have unity in my experience. Not of course the sort of unity that you want. Not a unity that is the result of my own autonomous determination of what is possible. But a unity that is higher than mine and prior to mine.
On the basis of God’s counsel I can look for facts and find them without destroying them in advance. On the basis of God’s counsel I can be a good physicist, a good biologist, a good psychologist, or a good philosopher. In all these fields I use my powers of logical arrangement in order to see as much order in God’s universe as it may be given a creature to see. The unities, or systems, that I make are true because they are genuine pointers toward the basic or original unity that is found in the counsel of God.
Looking about me I see both order and disorder in every dimension of life. But I look at both of them in the light of the Great Orderer who is back of them. I need not deny either of them in the interest of optimism or in the interest of pessimism. I see the strong men of biology searching diligently through hill and dale to prove that the creation doctrine is not true with respect to the human body, only to return and admit that the missing link is missing still. I see the strong men of psychology search deep and far into the subconsciousness, child and animal consciousness, in order to prove that the creation and providence doctrines are not true with respect to the human soul, only to return and admit that the gulf between human and animal intelligence is as great as ever. I see the strong men of logic and scientific methodology search deep into the transcendental for a validity that will not be swept away by the ever-changing tide of the wholly new, only to return and say that they can find no bridge from logic to reality, or from reality to logic. And yet I find all these, though standing on their heads, reporting much that is true. I need only to turn their reports right side up, making God instead of man the center of it all, and I have a marvelous display of the facts as God has intended me to see them.
And if my unity is comprehensive enough to include the efforts of those who reject it, it is large enough even to include that which those who have been set upright by regeneration cannot see. My unity is that of a child who walks with its father through the woods. The child is not afraid because its father knows it all and is capable of handling every situation, So I readily grant that there are some “difficulties” with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me,
for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.
So you see when I was young I was conditioned on every side; I could not help believing in God. Now that I am older I still cannot help believing in God.
I believe in God now because unless I have Him as the All-Conditioner, life is chaos." Van Til,
Why I Believe God
Read the first sentence again from the Standford entry and tell me all-conditioning does not involve partial determination by environment. But just to be clear let me quote on last time from the same writing by Van Til:
"Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by his environment."
Over and over throughout this discussion you have insisted Bahnsen and Van Til were strict internalists, but the quotes speak for themselves contrary to your claims. Both were epistemological compatiblists.
