Transcription
Hello and welcome to Faith Because of Reason. This video is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of interactions with Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics pertaining to some of my concerns regarding presuppositional apologetics and the transcendental argument. It is, of course, no secret that I am not overly fond of presuppositional apologetics. Eli is a good friend, and the plan is for this to be a charitable exchange of ideas which will hopefully generate some clarity for budding Christian apologists as they attempt to think through the critical issue of apologetic methodology. So, if you came here looking for a blood sports debate where Eli and I tried to destroy one another with facts and logic, you came to the wrong place.
The rules are simple. In order to keep things accessible, we will be strictly limited to 20 minutes per video. Neither of us can make a further 20-minute video until our interlocutor has responded. There is no time frame within which either of us has to respond to the other, and either of us can choose to terminate the interaction whenever we see fit without any sort of shame or admission of defeat. So, with the rules on the table, let's get into it.
The remainder of this video constitutes my opening statement. Allow me to begin with what I take to be a critical question: How is it that we know that a putative revelation, for example, the Bible, genuinely is from God or is true? Presuppositionalists, in so far as I understand them, have two basic answers to this question. The first is that we know this in a circular sort of way, namely by the Bible attesting to its own divine origin and to its own truth. The second is that we know this because of the impossibility of the contrary, which is supposedly demonstrated via the transcendental argument.
In my interaction with Eli, I want to defend two primary theses. One is that the presuppositionalist's first answer leads to global skepticism, which I will define as the thesis that we cannot be justified in believing literally any proposition to be true. The other is that the presuppositional second answer is predicated upon an argument that is unsound or, at the very least, seriously underdefended. If Eli is interested in pressing me on my own worldview and how I believe that we can know that the Bible is true, I'm certainly willing to discuss my own views here. However, for the purposes of this exchange, I am much more focused on defending these two theses, which hold independently of the adequacy of my own account of logic or induction or the various other points upon which Eli might wish to press me. Exposing holes in my own worldview, in other words, won't somehow make these two challenges go away.
So, let's focus on my first thesis. Presuppositionalists are unanimous in their endorsement of circular reasoning. There are, of course, several qualifications to be made here. For example, I don't think that Eli is going to contend that a logically circular argument can justify its conclusion. Instead, I suspect that he will be defending epistemic circularity, the idea that a basic or foundational belief source can justify belief in its own reliability or trustworthiness. This, at least, is my best attempt to understand the distinction between what Eli calls vicious and virtuous circularity. However, I don't think that this distinction will matter much to my argument, since I contend that epistemic circularity is objectionable for precisely the same reason as logical circularity.
So, what exactly is wrong with logical circularity in the first place? Well, the problem is that it's no different than simply taking a controversial proposition for granted. An argument yields no independent grounds for accepting the conclusion is true if the argument depends upon the truth of the conclusion. Notice that this exact same problem applies to epistemic circularity. If the reliability of a source is in question, then any argument that depends upon the reliability of that source will likewise fail to yield independent grounds for accepting the conclusion and, consequently, will be no better than simply taking the conclusion for granted.
So how does all of this lead to global skepticism? Well, this is due to the fact that presuppositionalists maintain that literally all reasoning is circular at the foundation. This is a consequence of a belief that they hold, and which I reject, according to which all justification has to terminate in some self-justifying authority. But I've just established that a circular foundation is no different than just taking the truth of a proposition for granted. And literally any proposition can just be taken for granted. Epistemic justification is supposed to distinguish true propositions from false propositions. Circular foundations can't accomplish this due to the fact that any proposition can be justified in a circular fashion. Therefore, if we are all slaves to circular reasoning, it follows irresistibly that we cannot be justified in believing literally anything.
The argument looks like this:
Premise one: If a putative reason can be used to support any proposition, then that reason cannot distinguish true or probably true propositions from false or probably false propositions.
Premise two: Circular reasons can be used to support any proposition.
Premise three: Therefore, circular reasons cannot distinguish true or probably true propositions from false or probably false propositions.
Premise four: But epistemic justification must be able to distinguish true or probably true propositions from false or probably false propositions.
Premise five: Therefore, circular reasons are not capable of serving as epistemic justification.
Premise six: If all reasons are incapable of serving as epistemic justification, then no beliefs can be epistemically justified.
Premise seven: All reasons are ultimately circular.
Premise eight: Therefore, all reasons are incapable of serving as epistemic justification.
Conclusion: Therefore, no beliefs can be epistemically justified.
Now, it's easy for me to escape the conclusion of this argument because I reject the seventh premise, but Eli's presuppositionalism commits him to this premise. Therefore, he will need to reject a different premise in order to reject the conclusion. It will be interesting to see which premise he chooses to target in light of what I've said. And even if he were to be right and I were to be wrong about the truth of premise 7, notice that this would not affect the argument in any way. So, this argument is completely unaffected. Even if Eli were to be correct that all reasoning is circular, if Eli were to be right about this, that would simply prove my first contention that endorsing circular reasoning leads to global skepticism.
Having argued for my first thesis, let's now turn to my second contention. You will recall that my second thesis is that the transcendental argument is unsound or, at the very least, severely underdefended. Now, just here we run into a bit of a difficulty, namely, that most presuppositionalists, at least in my experience, are allergic to formalizing the transcendental argument into a set of premises and a conclusion. Perhaps Eli will be the exception to this rule. But here is my best attempt to construct a valid transcendental argument:
Premise one: If the contrary of Christianity is impossible, then Christianity is true.
Premise two: The contrary of Christianity is impossible.
Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity is true.
So, the first premise of this argument is true by definition, as far as I'm concerned. However, the second premise is unclear, and once it is made clear, appears to be manifestly false. Our first question should regard the modal scope that is at play here. Is the second premise saying that the contrary of Christianity is logically impossible? If so, that seems obviously false. To be logically impossible, a proposition has to entail a logical contradiction. But the proposition that Christianity is false, or that Jesus did not rise from the dead, or that God is not a trinity, do not obviously yield any sort of logical contradiction. Therefore, these propositions are not logically impossible.
As best I can understand presuppositionalists, they maintain that the contrary of Christianity is impossible because non-Christian worldviews cannot account for a nebulously defined category of things called the preconditions of intelligibility. What exactly the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be considered a precondition of intelligibility might be is anyone's guess. We are never provided with a full list of what these preconditions might be, making this category seem like a moving target for whenever one or two examples are explained by a critic. Seemingly, presuppositionalists will just pivot to a new example. Regardless of the difficulties involved in getting any sort of clarity with respect to precisely how many of these things are supposed to be explained, we can at least offer non-Christian accounts of some of the presuppositionalists' favorite examples: logic, induction, and the one and the many.
I want to preemptively flag an important distinction between giving an explanation for something and giving an epistemic justification for it. Presuppositionalists, in my experience, tend to conflate these two things together when they ask non-Christians to account for things like the laws of logic. Here, I am giving an explanation for how these things might exist within a non-Christian worldview, not a justification for believing them to exist in the first place. I don't need the account that I am offering to be true; I just need it to be possible. Because as long as a non-Christian worldview is possible, even if it is false, then Christianity is not true by the impossibility of the contrary, and the transcendental argument fails.
So, how might a non-Christian account for logic? Well, one way would be Platonism. For those who are perhaps unfamiliar with this term, metaphysical Platonism is the idea that there are abstract, non-physical, and non-mental objects or forms, such as numbers, properties, and propositions, that exist necessarily and independently of space, time, and consciousness. Now, I myself am not a metaphysical Platonist; I am a nominalist. However, I don't want to turn this into a realism versus anti-realism debate. Eli, I presume, is a divine conceptualist of some sort. So, I'm deliberately choosing Platonism as a rival to his worldview because I'm trying to be as generous as possible. On Platonism, the laws of logic would be abstract objects and so would possess characteristics like being universal and immaterial. Now, Eli may want to suggest that divine conceptualism is a better explanation of logic than Platonism, but does he think that Platonism isn't possible? It would be interesting to hear why. As long as Platonism is possible, is compatible with non-Christian worldviews, and does actually account for logic, then we have a straightforward counterexample to the idea that Christianity alone can account for logic.
Platonism can similarly account for unity and diversity, the so-called problem of the one and the many. It posits a single abstract property of, say, redness, which supervenes upon all concrete red particulars, thereby explaining how there is unity among diverse particulars. Again, Eli might want to argue that Trinitarian divine conceptualism is a better explanation, but that will not be sufficient to show that the contrary is impossible.
Now, perhaps you are wondering if atheists can in fact appeal to Platonism. After all, aren't atheists materialists? Surely, they can't be appealing to immaterial abstract objects to account for logic, right? I would make two points by way of response to this idea. First, this objection confuses atheism with materialism. Properly understood, atheism is merely the thesis that no god or gods exist, but that's compatible with a wide variety of nonreductionist and non-materialist worldviews. So, we must not assume that atheism is identical to materialism. Second, recall that the transcendental argument asserts that the contrary of Christianity is impossible, which includes a whole lot of worldviews besides atheism. So, even if atheists couldn't appeal to Platonism to account for logic, other non-Christian and non-theist worldviews could. So, the proponent of the TAG still needs to show that Platonism is impossible or, at the very least, cannot possibly account for logic.
What about induction? Well, it seems to me that the non-Christian could simply say that the universe operates regularly as a brute fact, or perhaps that it emerges from a more fundamental law that prohibits non-regularity. Neither of those explanations is likely to feel very satisfying to Eli. But remember, his argument is that the contrary is impossible, not that it is merely unsatisfying. In short, it just seems trivially easy to think of logically possible ways that the world could have been which are non-Christian. Furthermore, one will search long and hard to find presuppositionalists who make any sort of sustained effort to clearly show why the contrary of Christianity is impossible. Typically, if one is going to make a very strong claim about the world only being one possible way, the defender of such a claim will analyze the other major options that have been offered and show why they are impossible. But getting presuppositionalists to do this really is like pulling teeth.
To conclude, the transcendental argument claims that the contrary of Christianity is impossible, not implausible, not unconvincing, and not unsatisfying. This certainly seems false in light of non-Christian worldviews that, although perhaps implausible, seem entirely possible. So, this presents prima facie evidence against the second premise of the transcendental argument. I leave it to Eli to explain why Platonism is not even possible.
I do have one final challenge to the transcendental argument, though I will have to be brief in my presentation of it since I am running short on time. To frame it as a question, I would like to ask Eli, what about worldviews that don't accept that these are in fact the preconditions of intelligibility at all? What about worldviews like dialetheism that reject the laws of classical logic? What about a worldview that denies that nature is regular at all? What about a nominalist worldview like mine, which denies that there is any problem of the one and the many because it only affirms particulars and denies both the existence of and the need for something to unify them? Unless there is some independent reason to think that these worldviews are impossible, then it doesn't matter that some worldviews can't account for the preconditions of intelligibility, since absent further substantial argumentation, there is no reason whatsoever to accept that these things need to be in place in order for knowledge to obtain at all.
So, to wrap up in this opening statement, I have centered the debate on a fundamental question: How is it that we know that a putative revelation, for example, the Bible, genuinely is from God or is true? I have sketched the two basic ways in which I think the presuppositionalists could answer this question, and I have defended two primary contentions. First, I have issued an argument to the effect that if all reasoning truly is circular, then global skepticism follows. Second, I have suggested that the transcendental argument is probably unsound due to the fact that there are readily conceivable states of affairs where certain facts obtain that are incompatible with Christianity. At the very least, I maintain that presuppositionalists have not done the work required to show that the contrary of Christianity is impossible. So, even if the transcendental argument is not unsound, the crucial premise is unjustified. I look forward to seeing how Eli grapples with these two challenges, as well as to exploring whatever other challenges he might wish to send my way.