God's Existence & Transcendental Arguments Debate: Jay Dyer Vs Dr. Alex Malpass

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Hello everyone, happy Wednesday! It is Wednesday, right? I got that right? Yeah, all day long. And well, here, I don't know about other places. Good. I hope you guys are doing well today. We're gonna be having a discussion on the TAG argument. And in just a second, I'm gonna let Steve introduce our guests and tell you a little bit more about what that is, if you don't know.

I'm just going to run through what we've got coming for the next three days. Tomorrow, Shannon and I will be here taking your calls. We open it up to anyone who wants to call. We especially like people who disagree with us. So if you have a gripe with Shannon or I, or you'd like to talk to us about anything like that, you can give us a call. The number for that is gonna be three one three non sec one. That's three one three six two six seven three seven one. And that will start at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

On Friday, Adam Cookish will be back with us. We're gonna be talking about his, he's going on a three-city tour and he's raising some funds for that to spread libertarianism. So we're gonna be talking to him about what's going on with that and why a third party is a better choice this election. And it's coming up election.

And then on Saturday, Schrodinger's Cat will be taking on Mock Earth. Muck Earth, as you know, from last Saturday was in the chat, really raising hell. So he's gonna get his shot on Saturday. And that's all that I have.

Steve? Well, first, uh, by the way, I wanted to do like, broadcast in my study. So I'm not using green screen now. So this is actually my reading list that I've done. If anybody believes that. So only because I didn't want to be outmatched by Dr. Malpass here. So anyways, yeah, we're gonna be talking about that. I guess that you guys want me to session on the TAG argument. We had Dr. Alex Malpass with us, who was a contemporary philosopher, logistician. I, I know what you're, I know what school you're from, but I don't know if you want me to say to you. Do you want to like introduce yourself or what school you're at or you were?

Um, I don't think that's necessary, really. I mean, okay. Just way, anything that you want to tell them about yourself then, 'cause I don't wanna like give too much away about you.

Um, I don't know. I, I have a PhD in philosophy. I've been interested in transcendental arguments and TAG, I guess. I don't know. Don't really think anything else is that necessary to be honest.

Okay. Oh, you want you want from all your blog, I guess. I don't care about any much. Okay. Okay. I mean, fine. Kidding me. And we got Jay Dyer back with us. He was actually with us before you were having conversation. I, he was on, like I say, I don't say Satanism, but I guess numerology. It was my, it was my book. So there was a, we had a debate about the content of my book. So it was great. Jet, had a good time with Mr. Atheist Esoteric Hollywood. Is that what it was? Yeah, that was awesome.

So, I'm, we're gonna kind of turn over to you guys because I don't know where in the direction you want to go for the TAG. So we're gonna let you guys just do a free-form.

Yeah, yeah. So basically, I do Esoteric Hollywood book-wise. My TV shows, Hollywood Decoded, which you can watch on Guy TV Network. It's also on Amazon Prime. And I do a lot of philosophy and film. My graduate work was in analytical philosophy. So I do have some familiarity with the topics that I think Dr. Malpass is going to want to discuss. And I've been a proponent of transcendental arguments for about 20 years. Was something I've put a lot of time into in my grad work. So my website's Jay's Analysis. And it kind of covers everything from geopolitics to conspiracy to Hollywood's to philosophy and theology.

Awesome. Well, this is gonna be like, really interesting. I know a lot of people have been kinda like wanting this kind of discussion. I know a lot of people in live chat, I can see their names now, they're gonna be listening with great intent. So I hope this actually goes very well. I'm not, like I said, I'm not Pacific sure what your, your, your argument's gonna be, but it's gonna be kind of a free-form. We just asked you don't talk over each other. 'Cause if you do, it's gonna be bad for the outside chat. Plus, I've noticed with Dr. Malpass, he's had a little bit of a lag. So just bear with it because you may not have actually stopped his argument. And I don't want there to be any overlap. Okay? So, but J, do you want to like, start us off and then we can, we kind of go from there?

Yeah, that's fine. I'll try to keep it as concise and clear as possible. So what I believe is that philosophy essentially is a paradigm system. And everybody has a philosophy. We'll all have a paradigm of beliefs. And I agree with kind of the traditional classification that a worldview is ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. And when we look at each of those branches of philosophy, we all, I believe, have presuppositions or assumptions. And so if we look back to Aristotle era, Aristotle was one of the first people to propose a transcendental argument in his metaphysics. And he gave this as a, a form of argument that's kind of a meta-argument for justifying the law of logic, laws of logic themselves.

Now, this has a long history in philosophy, different types of usages and transcendental arguments. And it's really from the time of say, eighth-century Church Fathers like John Damascus, that we have really precise attempts to use it for the existence of God. So that has a unknown history in Western theology where you get more of the two mystic school. So I don't, I'm not a proponent of any of the two mystic arguments for that school of philosophy or theology. I'm an Orthodox Christian. So Orthodox theology is very distinct from Tomanism.

So if you fast forward up into the modern era, the usage of Toma, Thomas, or excuse me, transcendental arguments for God is more clear in the modern period because of the trek that philosophy took in the West, where you have a lot of questioning of paradigms, questioning of language after Fritz, say, for existence, for example. Giambattista Vico, you get the questioning of linguistic philosophy. And then by the time of the Enlightenment with Hume, you get a radical skepticism. So the reason that Kant and Hume are important for the transitional argument is not so much their philosophy as a whole, but rather the questions that they raise. So you'll hear a lot of times people who promote the transient argument where school in this, they'll talk a lot about Hume. And that's not because we're human, but rather because we see Hume taking the kind of atheistic skeptical route to its more logical conclusions. And ultimately saying that there's not really a justification, logically speaking, for induction. And if you follow the history of logical positivism, of naive empiricism, psychologism, through the history of Western philosophy up to the modern times, you get basically, we invent Horman Quine and two dogmas of empiricism, reaffirming and restating the central arguments of Hume that induction still doesn't have a rational justification.

So that's just kind of a brief history of transcendental arguments. And they've entered into a more precise Christian apologetic, obviously, in the last century. But we see that as a reaction to the fact that philosophy became after the Enlightenment much more focused on postmodernism. It became much more radical and it started questioning presuppositions. And so transcendental arguments are essentially a response to those questionings of presuppositions, giving a different form of argument than a classical non-parent pneumatic type of argument, you might say.

So when questions get down to the level of basic paradigms, we believe this is one distinctive that we want to come, we want to be clear about that arguments are ultimately circular. And so we, I wouldn't say that they're a fallacy. I do believe obviously circular arguments are a fallacy, but at the level of kind of paradigm questions, we would say we would argue this circularity is unavoidable. So the, the crux of it then is how the way that we get to God from all this is that basically what I would say the argument that I would make, and I can't speak for, I'm not here to speak for Matt Slick or Dark Dawkins or any of those other people. I'm here to make the argument that I'm making, which is specifically that there's a whole host of transcendental types of things, preconditions for knowledge, preconditions for the possibility of metaphysics, preconditions for the possibility of ethics. And if we look at a lot of these different transcendentals, what we are left with is kind of a placeholder. And it's fine to talk about a placeholder, given the type of being that we describe God has, namely that he's omniscient, omnipotent, he's invisible, right? He's not visibly seen, etc., etc. It seems to follow, I would argue, that the way that we would argue for that kind of a being is not the same way that we argue for typical kinds of things. Like, does water boil at 100 degrees? Does, you know, does gravity function in this way? So because God is a unique kind of being, the type of argument that we're gonna make for that kind of a God is more akin to something like how we would justify the laws of logic themselves, or mathematical objects or entities, things that are more abstract or conceptual in nature. And since God is more like that, I'm not saying he is equated to laws of logic, or that he is equated to numbers or number theory, but I'm saying, but because he is more like that kind of a thing than just a phenomenal sense experience object, the kind of argument that would be due would be more of a transcendental type of argument.

So basically, the argument just simply that when we look at the fact that the way that we justify the existence of the self is as a transcendental category, I believe the way that we justify the existence of the laws of logic, mathematical objects and entities, meaningful statements and sentences is through transcendental presuppositions. The way that we justify the existence of time and spatial relations is through transcendental presuppositions. The way that we justify the existence of the external world and philosophy would be through a transcendent presupposition. All of those things are transcendent tolls. And I always say that when we add all these up, we have, we have this ball of transcendental categories. The way that we would justify this big ball would be the fact that the Christian God actually does provide an excellent basis for that. And so we see then coherence from our perspective, right? Not saying that every single question is answered. I don't think any worldview can do that. But what we at least see is coherence in this system. And I would argue that the other systems that say presuppose materialism or presuppose radical empiricism, psychologism, naive empiricism, positivism, those systems at a very fundamental level completely contradict and don't even allow the possibility of logic, ethics, etc. So when we compare the two paradigms, that's how the argument is actually made. Is that it's a paradigm attak level comparison of systems.

Okay, thanks for that. So, I, there was a lot that you said there. So I'm just trying to pick what the right place to start this is. Given the way I've read it, it sounds to me like an inference to the best explanation argument. So you're saying, take the explanation that my, let's say, worldview provides for various things like laws of logic, morality, I don't know, knowledge, induction, whatever. Pick a bunch of things that need explaining. And what you're saying is that you've got a candidate explanation for all of those things. And that if we compare that to other candidate explanations, you think you're, your vision has, I'm not quite sure how we'd make the determine what, what you think that mechanics are of the determination. I mean, is it that yours has a better overall balance between ontological commitments on one hand, you know, costs of the theory, weighing up against theoretical virtues like explanatory power, simplicity, lack of ad hoc mass, that type of thing? So it sounds to me like it's an argument explanation you're offering. Does that seem right to you?

Well, typically, again, the, like, for example, maybe the best way to answer this question would be, I did listen to the debate that you, or the discussion that you have, what's, I think his name was Dark Dawkins. And I'm not advocating Dark Dawkins, but what I'm saying is that the, what, what I noticed from your response is in that our to our discussion was that I think that you were thinking about things at the level of say, just normative logical discourse. But what I'm saying is that I think that the, the arguments I'm making are much broader, they're much bigger, because I'm making an argument from a, a more extreme paradigm attic level. So rather than it just being a debate about a specific say, law of logic, like, oh, well, how do we know if modus ponens is true? How do we know if the law of identity is true? It's actually a more broad, broad speaking, mega argument. And it's, it's going even further and it's saying, not only does Christianity provide an explanation, but that it actually does provide coherence. And so in terms of specific truth theories, I'm not advocating everything in terms of modern coherence theory, but it's more like that kind of a worldview coherence theory of truth for epistemic justification, etc., then it is the classical foundationalist model of justifying claims on the basis of say, self-evident maxims. Like we would not say there's any self-evident maxims. So if, if you adopt the position, and I think you have to ultimately, that worldviews at the fundamental level are circular, then even if you, if we were to take your, where I think you're going with your objection, which is that, well, just because a position has explanatory power or because it can be inferred, it doesn't prove that it's true. That's correct when it's, when it's a situation of normative discourse or a simple law of logic. But the claim here is different because it's about paradigms as a whole, not just logic, which is, I would say, it's just a branch or one aspect of reality in philosophy.

I'm still, sorry, I'm still trying to get a grip on what the form of the argument actually is, though. And maybe it would be helpful if you could state it as premises and a conclusion.

Well, the argument again is that if one accepts that there are transcendental preconditions, which some philosophers dispute that notion, I'm well aware of that. For example, a lot of say, modern transcendental arguments are like linguistic categories that Karl Karl Otto Appel does work in, other people at Cambridge do work in transcendental arguments related to logic and, and some do ethics and in linguistics. So, but I'm just trying to be clear that I'm not making that argument. There's the same, it's similar forms of argumentation. For example, if you look at Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that's a mathematical version of a transcendental argument where it's appealing outside of itself to justify the system, right? He's pointing out it's all sets appeal outside of themselves. So I'm not saying that the argument I'm making is exactly the same in terms of content as what Gödel's argument is. I'm making that type of an argument in a much more powerful way. So simply put, the argument is that if you don't presuppose the the God of Orthodox Christianity, what you end up with is the impossibility of having any preconditions or any coherence or any possibility of logic, metaphysics, and ethics.

Okay, good. That's helpful. So, um, let's say, would it be fair to put it like this then? So if you don't use that, if you don't presuppose God of Orthodox Christianity, then then well, so what's the consequence of that then? Logic and these are the precondition, these other elements of our experience would be what sort of unintelligible? Would that be the way to put it?

They'd be intelligent. Correct. Ultimately, they would lead to unintelligible conclusions. So that's not to say that a person who does not believe in Orthodox Christianity can't be a logician. It's not to say that a person who doesn't accept the totality position outlining can't do science or can't do logic or math. That's, that's not what we're saying. But we're saying that in terms of overall consistency, that if, let's say, if I had a materialistic paradigm and I said, well, I don't accept your, your, your Christian theism, you know, I believe in say, just rank materialism. And I still do logic. My response to that person would be, well, yeah, you can do it in your daily life, but actually, the justification for doing logic is itself actually impossible in incoherent if you were to be consistent with conflicting presuppositions.

Okay. Okay. So, um, I mean, I take it that, well, okay. Dude, so it, I think you think this argument has being similar in heritage to Kantian arguments, such as we find in the critique, for instance, where it's only sit, right? So it's only similar to Kant in the fact that the, the form of the argument is the same, just like the form of the argument is the same with your Gödel and incompleteness set theory arguments. But what's different with Kant is that we don't psychologize. That we're not saying that the structures or the category, basically, if you want to make it simple, what Kant is saying about how the mind has transcendental preconditions that structure reality, we think that that is a mistake of Kant in terms of humanizing it and psychologizing it. And it really, really would make more sense if he attributed that to the mind of God, basically.

Okay. So, so just to be clear, and so what Kant is saying, I mean, because I'm presumably not, not everybody's read Kant, so, right? I imagine not even right now. Well, so, um, what Kant's doing in the critique, I mean, it's one of the most complicated and sort of pivotal books of, um, philosophy in general, I guess, Western philosophy in general, and probably the piece of philosophy in the Enlightenment. But what Kant is doing, to something, so I'm going to not do justice to it in this brief summary, I'm just won't translate. But what Kant's up to, to some extent, is saying he, he's responding to two skeptics who are making the claim that you couldn't know any synthetic truths a priori. Right? Basically, I don't know anything about the way that things are. Not analytic truths, you can know to just simply the meanings of words. How you know bachelors are all unmarried men, that's fair enough. You don't need any experience as such to tell that that's true. But whether there are any truths that are a priori, that means before experience, that are also synthetic, which is, which is to say, not true simply in virtue of the meanings of their words. Did have any truths like that? And Kant says that they could be. And one of the examples that he gives is the choice. So he thinks that you can tell that we have to think of the world in terms of space and time and causality, right? How those that, what those really, those two arguments, and effectively, they're the way that he gets there is by saying that with careful kind of examined phenomenological examination, really is to say that you can just tell when you evaluate how consciousness is unified together, that if you didn't organize things in a space, your temporal way, that have causal relations built into it, that taking those elements out and seeing what's left of conscious experience leaves you with a kind of a mess. It leaves you with a booming buzzing confusion that doesn't have any order or coherence to it, right? So he thinks that we have to think of as if space and time were real and causation was. And so in that sense, it's, it's a truth about the way that things are. It's a synthetic truth. It's not just about the meanings of terms. And it's known a priori because you can just tell using your own reason and examining the makeup of your, the way that your mind works. So that's a transcendental argument. But what that does is it says, unless we thought like this, unless consciousness was structured in this way, then the intelligibility of experience would become impossible.

Now, I see some similarities. Is you're linking it to the intelligibility of experience. And specifically intelligibility of things like logic and causation and blah, blah, blah, blah. You're saying there are those things intelligibly impossible if we didn't have this precondition. But instead of the, so I think what I'm lacking that I can see with Kant is I can, we start off with a claim about the way that we have to see the world. And then there's the phenomenological and like inspection. That's the really hard stuff in picking apart those bits and seeing why causation is required in order to see the work of hearing Lee. I'm still lacking clarity on his why is it that seeing the world with the belief that God exists, he had placed that role structuring my experience in way feels to me like I don't have that belief. And but my experience is not a booming bass passing confusion, right? See, I have perfectly coherent thoughts. And you even said, you know, you can be a logician and not have this belief. That makes it different, right? A Kantian is, if you didn't have, for Kant, anyway, I'm saying he's right about this, but his is, if you didn't structure things spatially, temporally, and causally, you couldn't have any experience at all. So that makes your argument slightly different. So there's two things that, one is, I don't see the connection between belief in the Orthodox God and coherence in the same way that we get from a Kantian argument. And what was the second one? Just popped out my, just said it, but I've already forgotten it. So, um, maybe you could just reply as you can.

Well, yeah. So actually, that's a really great question. I'm glad you asked that question. So, and that helps to clarify how, what, well, I'm arguing for is strictly speaking not Kantianism. So I'm glad you went that direction. So the first thing I was saying in response is that if you read Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, it's the, it's the work where he realizes the problem that humans raised. And basically, he says that Hume has shown us that if we begin with sense experience, that we cannot any, any more do metaphysics. So when he moves to the critique that you're talking about, he wants to give a justification for metaphysics. But what I do is I do, I would respond by from my specific theological worldview, I'm gonna do a presuppositional critique of Kant. And this is the same way that I would approach any of the philosophers. And the problem of Kant's presupposition is that it ends in psychologism. So Kant's divorce between the noumena and the phenomena means that he can never get to the external world. So for Kant, for example, to say that that minds are structured in the way that he thinks they are, he needs to be able to have access, experiment empirically, to other minds. But he's obviously not able to do that. Nobody is. We don't have empirical access to other people's experiences. So what I'm saying is that the, the traditional critique of Kant, I would actually agree with. We, we believe that Kantianism is flawed, your slice ly, because of the divide between the phenomenon and the noumenon, because of the fact, by the way, I should add that if you read Husserl in Logical Investigations, he actually did respond to Kant's challenge of the fact that we can't have a synthetic a priori anymore. And Husserl gives multiple examples in his writings of things that actually are just logically speak, I'm not, this doesn't really apply to God, but I'm just saying it technically speaking, Kant has been replied to by Husserl. And Husserl gives the example of redness. You will never experience redness apart from some object having redness, which he argues, and I think it's about argument, he argues that that actually does satisfy Kant's challenge for the lack of a synthetic a priori. But that's not really germane to my overall argument. My overall argument is that I would actually agree with you that Kantianism itself does not prove God's existence in the way that I'm arguing for it. It's just that Kant did have insights when it came to usages of various transcendental categories. And I would simply say that for Kant's position, if I was talking to Kant, it's a, "Hey bro, you've got some good points there, but if we're your position to really work the way you're wanting it to work, you've got to have other things that you're missing, namely our, our deity would actually solve things." Because for example, in the Christian worldview, there is a distinction between the external world and the individual and his his consciousness. Which this is again, no historic problem in philosophy, is how do we know there's an external world? Kind of stuff. If God created the world and if we are made in His image and we're distinct from animals and from the external world, and we avoid a lot of, it's a far eastern positions of Maya and that everything's illusory and everything's a projection of my mind, right? A lot of philosophies believe this. So again, what I would say is that there's actually a precept, precept additional core team that we would do if Kantianism to show that just because Kant's transcendental arguments, that doesn't mean that he's doing the kind of argumentation that we're doing. Just like with with Gödel, even though Gödel's using it transcendental argument, it's not the kind of argument that's, it's not the content of the argument is not the same as what I'm due to eat. Even though the form of the argument is the same. And so when you were talking about a person doing logic who doesn't have my worldview, what, what I'm saying is that if you think back to your discussion that you had, for example, in Dark Dawkins, if we talk about induction in nature, right? Regularity in nature, which is actually absolutely necessary for the scientific method itself. The scientific method presupposes things like logic, like regularity in nature. And as we said, from Hume all the way up to William Van Orman Quine, there's not a logical justification for induction itself. And so that the, the solution I would say isn't, well, if the world is created in a, in a way in which there's a God who providentially, God's nature, who has set up nature to operate in a providential way, that does explain how there could be induction, right? That doesn't mean that when you don't believe that, that you don't still on a day-to-day basis operate on the basis of induction. You do. But the question is rather a meta-level question of, well, how could you, if there is a way, could it possibly be justified to believe in induction? Could there, is there a way to justify meta-logic? Is there, what a justified meta-ethics? So it's, that's distinct. It's like another level of looking at the question rather than just kind of the ground level of, you know, this versus that, your claim versus my claim, etc.

Okay. So, um, again, I'm trying to pick between two different ways. Let's see, which way do I want to go? All right. So I think, well, let's look at the problem of induction for a moment. Um, I guess obviously, if you can say so, if your solution to the problem of induction is to say, well, I mean, if there was a God that providentially decreed certain regularities would obtain, there, you know, whether or not they would be regularities wouldn't be so difficult to to deal with. I think that's fair enough. On the other hand, it feels like if you're allowed to do that, then I could just say, well, if there just are regularities in nature, I mean, if you're allowed to make a kind of gross metaphysical assumption, right? Remember, induction is not going to be a problem anymore. Because, well, right, make these types of assumptions about the way the world works is what induction is saying you can't do. So if you're allowed to do that, that's short circuits the problem of induction. But it seems kind of trivial. If there are regularities in nature, then the most, then the problem of induction that goes away. So that doesn't feel very satisfying as a response to me.

See, the problem of induction, well, the problem of induction is a problem for anybody's world. Okay? So it's not something like unique to an empiricist or, I mean, it's an issue that could be raised in anybody's belief system. And the specific philosophical debate is untrue, you're aware, was over the possibility of justifying it, right? So if you read Hume's writings, he kind of goes through all these possibilities and he said, essentially, comes to the conclusion that he doesn't believe there can be a logical epistemic justification for the belief in the regularity of nature. And then so there's debates obviously throughout the next several centuries, but most people tend to accept William Bentinck Quine's famous essay that the two dogmas of empiricism are still dogmas. So he was making the point in that essay, and he's an empiricist, he's just saying, look, it still doesn't look like there's any way from basic sense experience to justify a claim about regularity in the future. It's not possible. So typically speaking, philosophers don't believe that there is an empirical, strictly logical justification for induction. And I would just say that for us, in our worldview, it makes sense because there is regularity in nature because of divine providence. And I understand your objection, you're saying, well, yeah, but, but if that's the way you're gonna operate, you can basically just kind of bring in anything at any point where there's a problem. And that's not what we're saying. Because maybe I should have mentioned this kind of when I was opening up the discussion, but in our, in my view, when we talk about things that are say, logical claims, or when we talk about a metaphysical claim, or even a claim about sense experience, I don't believe that claims operate outside of a paradigm of beliefs. So there's no such thing in my view as brute neutrality or brute factuality, or that claims aren't theory-laden. I believe all claims, even a simple claim like something about a law of logic, or something about the cat is on the mat in front of you in here, sense experience, all claims of any nature, I believe are theory-laden. And they kind of necessarily do presuppose and entail a lot of other beliefs, even if the claim itself doesn't specify those beliefs. So real quickly, to maybe answer your question, is I would say, look, there's no such thing as making a claim that say, only about logic, or only about ethics. If you make an ethical claim, I literally believe that you're also presupposing things about metaphysics and epistemology, even if you're not interested in dealing with them. I'm not saying you personally, but people theoretically, even if you don't want to talk about metaphysics or epistemology, if you make an ethical claim, there is still implicit in that all kinds of presuppositions about metaphysics and epistemology, even though the specific domain under which we're under, put on the other, they need a purview is ethics. So in response, I'm saying that, in response, I'm saying that that it's not like it's only a question about the regularity of nature, because the possibility of doing science isn't just about the regularity of nature. It also presupposes that a scientist has the self and a consciousness and able to interact with an external world that's meaningful, that's separate from him, whereby he can do logical experiments that are based on, excuse me, he can do the scientific process based on logic. And I think Husserl has shown definitively in Logical Investigations that that the scientific method absolutely presupposes abstract logic. Then then we start to see that none of these things actually operates independently and on their own. They actually kind of necessitate all these other categories and transcendentals that I'm trying to say are all necessary.

Okay, good. So, um, I mean, I agree with, with plenty of what you're saying about the interrelatedness of our concepts, right? And I don't think most people don't. But, um, I don't think that it, it's easy to draw those lines between the areas. But it seems weird to imagine that there are no lines between them. Under Senator Hannon or what? No, but so I agree with you in the sense that I think that there are lines between those areas. I'm just not sure that I know, anyway, yeah, an even claim there's a clear distinction at times between when something might be strictly epistemic or when, yeah, there's fuzzy areas on that. I agree.

Okay. So, but to go back to induction, it feels that I'm not quite sure if you got what I was saying. Because I think that, I mean, maybe this is just my fault. So the, the problem of induction, right? Is that, let's say you're a scientist encountering some regularity, right? Like you're doing an experiment and you're, you're repeatedly getting the same results from your experiment in similar conditions, right? And you might, after a while, start to say to yourself, well, here's a hypothesis, right? There's a law of nature, which I've stumbled over, right? Which is that every time this happens, that thing happens, right? And that's the law. And that's what's going on. It's the explanation of the regularity that I seem to be observing here. Now, here's where the skeptic pops up, right? Because the skeptic can say, well, maybe not, right? Not so fast. Well, you might have stumbled across, it's just a coincidence, right? So like the turkey thinks that it gets fed every day up until Christmas, right? And thinks it's gonna get fed tomorrow. So he hasn't stumbled across a law of nature, which is every day the farmer gives me. It's just, I'm sorry, I'm good. See the turkey fat hike conditions following stances, but he wasn't, he wasn't a bad nature with no causal structure that he was connected to. It was just a bunch of coincidences because he was wrong. And every time he made that inference to being fed on Christmas Day, he's that you've got like, you kind of cut out. Could you repeat the example you just, bless you, know, real quick, Dr. Malpass? When your dog barks, your mic drops down below the threshold. And so that's my level. It's, it's beer. So I'm gonna start more. It's, it's mine. Okay, whatever dog it. Okay, I'll mute it when I'm not talking. Once it's not my dog. Okay. So what I'm saying is, um, let me sort of again. And so you could be a scientist sitting in a lab doing some experiment and you're in like conditions, you're finding like consequences. I see you do the measurement the same way every time. Feels like you, the same result coming out the other end. And you start to think to yourself, hey, maybe there's my hypothesis is that what's going on? There's a law of nature, right? It's a causal connection between the circumstances of the set of the experiment and the outcome. My ones causing the other and a causal relation there. And then the skeptic pops references, hold on a minute, not so fast, right? This might just be a coincidence. And the analogy is like, so the turkey who's getting fed every day throughout December up until Christmas Day, you assumed, hey, every day I got fed up till now, it's a kind of causal relationship between, you know, the farmer coming out and pouring grain down in my food bowl, whatever it is. So he thinks that's stumbled across a causal relation too. But obviously, that's, he's wrong, right? Because there is no causal relation there. Because on Christmas Day, farmer comes out and rings his neck, right? So the idea is that the, well, the scientist could always be in that situation, no matter how many observations he does, he can't really tell that he hasn't, that what looks like a regularity to him isn't just a coincidence, right? He can't really tell whether he's stumbled across a law of nature or not. That's the problem of induction. And the Christian answer that I'm hearing is that, well, God can, you know, maintain nature in such a way that there are regularities. Understand that as an answer. But what I'm satisfied with about it, after the fact, that I could just make a similar metaphysical assumption, which is, or maybe there are just regularities in nature. Is a kind of equivalent metaphysical assumption. With the since, it seems to me, we're still in the same boat, in exactly the same epistemic boat, that we were in prior to making that assumption. And here's the problem, right? Let's imagine, let me grant you all of the premises of that argument. So your Christian worldview is true. God exists. God maintains regularities in nature. All of the revelation that comes through, let's say, to Bible, the teachings of the church, blah, blah, blah, any, any revelation you like. I'm assuming you don't believe God reveals personally by speaking in your head to you or whatever, right? Most Christians don't have that view of revelation. But assuming you've, you know, more or less standard view of revelation, it seems to me that God doesn't tell you through revelation whether or not your experiment that you're doing is a regularity or if it's just incidents, right? So if you, I don't know, if you go outside your house and step into the road without asking, maybe then you never get run over. Maybe you don't know whether that regularity is going to be continued in the future or whether it's going to be interrupted. So that's a problem of induction. Still faces you, even if I grant you all of the bits of your argument, you are still in exactly the same place when you're faced with a, something that looks like a regularity, of not knowing whether it's a coincidence or an in fact a causal law. I don't see that it actually helps you with the Peruvian token. It's all even everything.

But so the first thing I would say in response is that just because we believe in theism, you are correct that it does not mean that you're going to automatically have a better result in your scientific experimentation. I fully grant that. And that wasn't the argument that I was trying to get across. We all still, if we're doing experimentations based in the natural world, it's always going to be fallible. But what I'm, what I'm trying to stress, I think, is that the problem of induction is not just a question about how do we know about when our scientific experiments are just coincidence and when they're not. It's much more than that. If you read Hume, and again, the hundreds of years of actually debate on this question, all the way up to Quine, the debate is actually about the logical justification, the epistemic justification of believing in the principle of regularity in nature. That's, that's specific. And that's different from that just the question of reliability in scientific experimentation and how do you know you're discovering a law or not. So it's a specific question about logic and justification. And what I'm saying is that one thing I would say to you that might, that might help distinguish the argument I'm making from what you're saying is that I would say that different things are proven in different ways. So not everything is going to be proven in an empirical way. So for example, the scientific method itself, if we were to ask the question of how do we know that the scientific method is actually a theme or or a car, a conceptual model or system or tool that we can rely on and use? How do we, uh, clearly justify believing in that itself? Now, you can't just say, well, because we do experiments and it works, because assuming it out, that's kind of just sort of assuming the thing that that's being asked, right? So what happens is that the debate on this, this question becomes more fundamental. It becomes a question of a fundamental, fundamental paradigm attic level question where we ask, how can we justify something that goes out of sense experience if we only limit our beliefs to what are confined to sense experience, right? So the empiricist tradition has this problem within it. And anybody who adopts naive empiricism as a philosophy or a worldview and approach to the external world ends up with a logical problem and an epistemic problem. Now, it may not affect their day-to-day scientific activities in terms of how successful their their theories are, because theories are very, very precise, they're very niche, scientists specialize in very compartmentalized areas. But the philosophy of science is asking different questions. It's asking, again, meta-level questions, not questions of basic logic, not questions of basic empiricism, basic sense experience. It's asking meta-level questions about the justification of the possibilities of those things, right? So again, got the kind of questions that Kant was raising appropriately, but, and in my view, not answering appropriately. And so again, in the same way, I would say that if we look at something like a question of how do, at what temperature does water boil, right? This is a basic kind of scientific experiment where we would engage in empirical results, right? To determine, well, we have a lot of reliability that, you know, 99.9% of the time everywhere, water seems to boil, you know, this, this temperature, right? But if we're asking a question about not specific sense experiences and the phenomena of experience, we're asking a more fundamental question of, well, how do we justify? Can we justify? Right? Some people don't think we can't. Can we ask the question of how do we justify relying on the scientific method itself? It's a more fundamental meta-level question that Hume is asking, right? And it is a debate from Hume all the way up to Quine in the present day. And that the consensus of most empiricist philosophers, unless they become an idealist, which is what Kant did, Kant was a form of German idealism, Hegel goes into that German idealist tradition. So they go a route of idealism. I'm not an idealist, but I'm just saying that some philosophers have attempted to kind of grapple with these issues by going into the idealist/pluralist school of thought. We don't believe that we're not pluralists, but we're also not anti-science. We're not, I don't believe that you, you can get away from doing science and experimentation. I believe science is fully reconcilable to the Orthodox Christian worldview, personally. So what I'm saying is that different things have proven different ways. And so the kind of argument that I'm making, or the way that we would go about justifying, and again, if, if we were to say, well, how could you justify something that's not empirical? I would say that the kind of argument that's going to be necessitated for the possibility of justifying that would be something more abstract. It's not going to be an argument that's the same type of argument of how we would prove things in the physical world, right? And you can't just respond by saying, well, yeah, but, but until we see physical evidence of those things, we have no reason to believe that that they exist. That's actually another empiricist fallacy, because the empiricist himself typically has to believe in things that he can't empirically justify. Again, this problem of regularity, the scientific method itself, conceptual realities, meanings behind words, these are all non-physical, non-empirical things that cannot be justified in the typical way of justification. So in the history of logic, all the way back to Aristotle, of transcendental arguments, the only type of argument that you could give to justify something that fundamental, right? Like the laws of logic. So when Aristotle is arguing with the sophist, the sope, so the classic skeptics, the classic sophists, the classic relativists, they say, Aristotle, this is all well and good, but, but how, what would you say to me? So if I come to you and I deny the possibility of the law of non-contradiction, and Aristotle responds by saying, when you engage in argument, you're assuming the laws of logic to begin with. And if you deny the law of non-contradiction, you're assuming the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction in its denial. So Aristotle gives that transcendental argument, which because it's at that level, if something is at that level and it's so fundamentally self-refuting at that circularity level, we would say that is a valid argument. I would say it's about. Now, some philosophers will dispute that. If they do, I would go down a different route of saying that I think you would be forced to adopt in that position if you looked at the fact that you cannot justify. That's why we always go back to Hume, transcendental argument proponents, we always go back to Hume, because we have to go back to pointing out that if you start with say, that the basic assumptions of all knowledge come through sense experience, as a lot of people do, for example, there's no way to justify that belief itself in a strictly logical formal way. It has to be assumed. And again, to my knowledge, every empiricist from Hume up to Quine has agreed with that on a strictly logical formal basis.

Okay, so let's talk about Aristotle for a second then. So you made the claim there that Aristotle provides a transcendental justification for the law of

Non-contradiction, which is a view I guess, but I would say that was a minority view. For short, I think I have pretty good reasons for that. That's a minority view. And so, I take it we were referring to metaphysics. Look, for, I mean, I don't have it in front of me, but off the top of my head, I have read the entire metaphysics either four or seven, going from memory. But it's specifically in the, it's a well-known passage where he's arguing with the sophist, and the sophist asks him to justify the law of non-contradiction. And he makes an argument from the possibility of the contrary, which is, which is a transitory. And I am so convinced that that's what's happening there. So, uh, metaphysics four is one of the bits I know quite well. And I haven't read metaphysics from cover to cover. I was just saying to Steve.

Okay, so, so many books. Well, let me add. So, let me ask you a question before we go in that realm. Do you understand that in our position, we believe that as a reductio at that level, it is a transcendental argument? It is a, what he does is a reductio to the sophist, right? And he says that that the assumption of logic, excuse me, to deny the laws of logic would still assume them, and you'd be led to a denial of their very fundamental. And by the way, this is, it's as far as you're the first person I've heard that doesn't believe this. As far as I know, any standard treatment of the history of transcendental arguments will go back to Aristotle's metaphysics. But if I, even if even if I'm wrong, which I don't think I am, I'm 95% sure going from memory because I took a lot of grad classes, one or so, and so we actually dealt with this, this whole question. But I'd be interested to hear where you were you, how you, you don't think that it is the transcendental. I mean, to be fair, scholars disagree, right? It's an area where scholars disagree, just like lots of Aristotle, right? I mean, and there are three bits around it. It's three bits around stuff. Like I have good, good knowledge on this bit, the higher honor in general, categorical syllogism, and the sea battle argument in on interpretation. Those, those, I mean, I have a passing acquaintance with most of it. But I mean, those are the three bits that I have a good, go-to academic level knowledge on. Anyway, so this particular bit, right? So we're talking about a book of Aristotle's called the metaphysics, which is where he's talking about kind of first principles and fundamental questions of that nature, the things that are studied by no science in particular, no special science in particular, right? Common to all special sciences. And in book four, there's this section that was really, like, I guess chapters three to six or something, three to eight maybe, where, as you say, he is talking about the law of non-contradiction, which he described as the firmest of all principles. And he introduces the idea of various opponents, among them Pythagoras, who's a sophist, and Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras, and a couple of, but there's Democritus, whatever, a bunch of other people. And Aristotle is famously uncharitable to his opponents. So he gives us really terrible renditions of what they say. So he says that Protagoras, for instance, with accuracy, was a kind of relativist who's famous for saying things like, "Man is the measure." So Aristotle takes that to mean something like, "Well, he's saying if the truth is completely relative, right? So something might be true for me, but it's not true for you." And in Protagoras, he's committed to the idea that it's both true and not true, right? Because it's true for me and not true for you. Now, Protagoras is a relativist, right? That's true. But whether he's committed to the law of non-contradiction or being true for that reason is very debatable. Anyway, so Heraclitus says everything is in flux, right? So, you know, in, Socrates is both youth and age, right? Because he changes. And Aristotle thinks that that means he's saying it's true that Socrates is young and it's not true that Socrates is young. It's a very uncharitable reading of what Heraclitus is saying. Anyway, so he sets up his opponents like that and then gives a series of, well, quite complicated arguments, seven arguments, right? But this is the one long, famous one that starts in chapter four, which I think is what you're referring to. So what, most, most of the discussion about whether that's a transcendental argument, I'll be very surprised if it was one of the others. But to begin with, he sets it up by saying there's no direct demonstration, right? To ask for a demonstration of the firmest of all principles is to show want of education, because not everything can be demonstrated.

That's absolutely a great check. That's what I've been arguing. Well, so, but that's to say that there's no direct way of proving that the law of non-contradiction is true. What he says then is that, well, we can still give it by the impossible, the contrary. Yes, that's an indirect argument. Just so that before you serve. So, well, so he says, you give an indirect proof. He says, indirectly, if only you can get your opponent to say something, right? And then correct the preceding copters or whatnot. That's our one long argument. And your claim is that what happens in that next preceding set of arguments is that he, and I think these are two different things, right? The first being proves it by reductio or impossibility of the contrary, and then the other one is set is making the claim to even voice the question is to presuppose that it's true. I mean, those are two different types of. And so they don't sing, though they're very, they're, they're variations on the same point.

Well, you're correct. You're, you're correct that that technically speaking, to critique the opponent's attempt to say something, and also pointing out in a separate section that an indirect argument is different from, I mean, technically they're literally two different things. But it's a variation on the same form of argument. That's why I was talking about how Gödel's incompleteness theorems are the same form of argument, but they're not the same content of the argument that I'm making.

Okay, in this taken one at a time. So to take first, the idea of showing that the law of non-contradiction is true through a reductio seems to me to be question-begging, right? And the reason is that, well, a reductio or impossible contrary argument. So let me set out my stool and then you can see. I can see. Wait, wait. So a reductio argument is has the following form, right? So it's to say, let's imagine we want to prove P is true. What we would do is assume not P is true for the sake of the argument, and then derive from not P some pair of contradictory propositions, say Q and not Q. And then by deriving the contradiction, we can then infer back that not P must be false, and then we can infer back from that to show that P must be true. And so that's the method of reductio. You assumed the contrary and you show that it leads to a contradiction, and then you work backwards to the thing you were trying to prove. But the point, and the reason that it's question-begging in this context is if your opponent is, if your opponent is actually making the claim, unlike Protagoras or Heraclitus, that there is a contradiction, which is what it would mean to say that the law of non-contradiction is false. If your opponent is making the claim that there is a contradiction, to then use a reductio method by showing that his view leads to a contradiction, he's kind of pointless, right? Because he's admitting that that's his claim. It doesn't follow from his claim that it is his thing. So he obviously doesn't, he wouldn't see that as any reason to reject the view, because that is his view. So you're begging the question if you think that showing someone is committing a contradiction is a reason for them to give up the view, if and who thinks that it's true that there's a contradiction. So you can't, I mean, right.

Well, maybe I said. Well, you're not good. Sorry, that's it. Sorry, there's a lag. I'm not, I'm not trying to cut you off. There's a little bit of lag. So when when I think you're done, I start talking and I don't realize you're not done. So go ahead.

No, I am in fact done.

Okay, yeah. What I would say is that what I think you're missing is that in normative discourse and a normative argument, you're correct. And as I said, kind of early on, circular arguments are fallacies. But what's unique here is that at this level of discourse, when we're actually questioning something that's a precondition for language and communication and meaningful discourse itself, like the law of non-contradiction, that's so fundamental that it's a unique situation. At this point, this level, the reductio here is not a typical reductio. It's actually a, it's so fundamental of a reductio that it reduces his position to the impossibility of even talking or arguing at all. So it's not, excuse me, it's not like the, if you and I were debating and debating the existence of no cheese on on the moon, right? We would maybe send a craft to them and investigate and we would have these debates about the evidence and this and that, right? That's not the same thing as when you're at the level of questioning logic itself. That's so fundamental and so paradigm attic that at that level, I believe questions take on a circularity that's unavoidable. And that's why I was talking early on about coherence theory. So what Aristotle is pointing out here is that even though he's making a variation on one point here and then attacking from a different angle over here, it's still the same point. And at this level, I believe reductio is, they actually move out of the normal. I mean, they're typically fallacies anyway, but this is at the level of paradigms and preconditions of speaking or thinking at all. So you can't, I mean, it is a transcendental argument because it's a reductio against a position that destroys the possibility of logic at all.

Okay, so I'm not, I'm not following why though. So, so this is what I noticed in your discussion with Darth Dawkins, where I think what I think you're misunderstanding about my position. I'm not defending him, but my position is that you seem to think that logical arguments always operate in the exact same way, or no matter what question you're talking about, anything is proven in the exact same way. And I don't think that they are. For example, the way that we would go about proving a really complex math problem is very different, although not totally unrelated, but very different from the way that we would go about proving something that relates to empirical science, right? So there's different ways to prove different things. And what I think the miscommunication we're having is that we believe that at the level of paradigmatic questions, the kinds of questions that Thomas Kuhn raised about science operating on the basis of paradigms, I'm not saying, by the way, that Kuhn is right about everything, but he's right about pointing out that ultimately science rests on different paradigms. When you, when you're at that level, things don't operate the same way, right? And that's why Gödel is useful in this regard, because Bertrand Russell kind of had the view that, well, we can just logically show maybe that any anything in a set is logically axiomatic and follows from from the first steps. And Gödel shows that no, ultimately the set has to appeal outside of itself, it becomes circular at a certain point. And we're saying the same thing about logical claims that this, when you question the law of non-contradiction or the laws of logic themselves, this is not just any normal kind of norm of discourse. This is a meta-logical question. So it enters into another sphere of when you doubt or go against those things, it's totally destructive to the possibility of knowledge at all. So it's not a typical reduction.

So, so first of all, I'm not sure why I mean, I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it's a reductio argument, because that's a reductio argument. Um, so if it's got a different floor, but it's a reductio at the level of paradigms, which is stronger than and much more devastating than a reductio at the level of debating, you know, whether there's cheese on the moon or debating whether, you know, I have a better internet connection to you or the debating the kind of normative day-to-day empirical stuff is not of the same level as when you're debating the possibility of logic itself, right? Don't you think that that something like that is different? Then, even though that could be related, they're different questions. Like if I say, I don't believe in, I don't know, let me, let's take something that's kind of like a scientific thing that most, like, I don't believe that there's extraterrestrial life, okay? In my world, you don't believe that. And now I actually don't believe in aliens, right? That's a different kind of claim than if I were to say, there are no laws of logic and they can't be justified. Now, I believe that we could argue, prove perhaps either of these questions, but they're two different types of questions. And so I think again, the mistake here is is trying to think that everything is proved in the same way. It's not. The way that we go about doing daily discourse or science is not going to be proven in the same way that we would prove or justify meta-level questions. And the reason for that is because at the meta level, things operate in a different way, and they're much more devastating if we deny them or if we doubt them. If I doubt the existence of the external world, and I really don't believe that there's an external world, if I, if I follow through with that, it's going to be heavy consequences for my life, right? Like I might think that everything is a mental projection in my life, and so I can go around and I can loot and burn and I can become the god emperor. But I'm probably going to have some severe consequences when I find out that the rest of the world doesn't share that view, right? That's actually the mental kind of.

Right. That's different than if I were to ask the question of, do I actually live next door to Lil Wayne? Like the dude over there kind of looks like Lil Wayne, but I don't think that it is. I live next to a Lil Wayne. See how they're, they're questions that could be resolved through logic and debate, but they're going to be proven in different ways because the nature of what's under discussion itself is different. And this is the key point I want to make. When you're talking about abstract entities, logical entities, number theory, any of that kind of stuff, philosophical concepts, preconditions, the way that they're going to be discussed and justified and proven, if one accepts that they can be proven, and I do, then the, the way they're justified and proven is going to be different than the types of things that are not abstract, conceptual, invariant, and immaterial.

Okay, so let me try and. Okay, I've got three things on my mind I want to say. So remember them. Um, so the first one, I think is that I agree that not everything is proven in the same way. I'm not, yeah, I was, for this, even like an epistemological monist or something, right? I don't think that there's only one way to find out how things look, how things are. I think that the way you go about proving a mathematical theorem is different to the way that you go about justifying a historical claim or something, right? You know, it's two different. Right. And there are other ones as well. The word, the way I know that I'm in pain is different from the way I prove a mathematical theorem, as well. So that I'm not at all wedded to the idea that everything, all knowledge is obtained in the same way. Just to clear that up. Um, I think that I'm curious is the idea that Aristotle could have followed what could have said the same thing that you're saying. Partly because, so you were saying that if you were calling into question anything so fundamental, there's a lot of logic, then what happens when you entertain the idea that it might not be true is that you're plunged into some kind of situation, and something a bit like what Kant was saying would happen if you didn't think of the world space-temporally or something. I've just taught break down. But right on tree to that in on interpretation. But Aristotle ends up saying that he thinks that the law of excluded middle is false for future contingents. So we, one of the three paradigmatic classical laws, you think they were associated with Aristotle, he argued against one of them, and we didn't think that his world would fall to pieces as a result of that. So it seems curious to me why he would think that questioning the norm of non-contradiction would have that consequence if questioning the law of excluded middle, pecked, and he didn't.

Right. Okay, so and the final thing about, by the way, I'm going to add real quick about Aristotle. I have a severe critique of Aristotle. So I don't want to give the impression that I'm an Aristotelian. All the only reason I brought in what I think is a transcendental argument for metaphysics is just to talk about the history of it. I'm not trying to defend Aristotle, and I have plenty of critiques of Aristotle. Go ahead.

Sorry, I don't, I don't think you are an Aristotelian, or you would be Thomas instead of it. Water dogs, ah, telogen. Um, but look, I think that that's, think about this a little bit more, right? So on your view, for Aristotle saying, so let's just pretend that he didn't say that in on interpretation, because that's a massive exegetical issue for your view, it seems to me. But let's say his argument, and let's say somehow did actually, why would that be? Why would that be a problem for my view? Well, because if a view calling into laws leads your worldview to some crumble and becoming incoherent, then it wouldn't make sense with him calling into question the law of excluded middle, which is just as much of a logical law. That's the law of reaction.

Yeah, but if I think, but the fact that Aristotle was inconsistent really doesn't have anything to do with whether the true, the positions are truth or false, or true or false, or not. Okay. And in, so in the posterior analytics, which is not actually about logic as such, but it's about scientific method for Aristotle, and I don't have the reference off the top of my head, but there's a bit where, and I can happily produce this at some point if needs be, but he points out there. So there's this interesting passage where he says that the, the principle of non-contradiction is not presupposed by the, can't the theory of the categorical syllogism. Finally, gives an example. It says, for if it were, effectively, and paraphrasing, but let's imagine that always A is B, and some A's are not B, then it would still follow that from all B's, A is C, the some A's to C, right? So he's essentially saying that the form Barbara, which is the main one in the categorical syllogism, the one onto which all of the others can be reduced, would still be valid even if there were a contradiction. So what that shows you is not that he thinks that there are contradictions, he thinks there couldn't be contradictions, right? But he doesn't think that the system of the categorical syllogism requires there to be no contradictions. The inferences would still be valid even if there were contradictions. So he's explicitly saying that logic doesn't presuppose the law of non-contradiction there. And I find that that is again, another exegetical question for you. If you are saying are that he's logic pre law of non-contradiction, how do you reconcile him explicitly saying that it doesn't?

Right. So this is the reason why I don't. Because because ultimately, like if you listen to my critiques of Aristotle, I would be glad to point out to you that, you know, for example, he's extremely inconsistent when he talks about the fact that there's one unmoved mover and then he talks about all the, the sphere, the celestial spheres of the heavens, each having their own unmoved mover. So, I mean, Aristotle contradicts himself all the time, actually, in my view. I was just pointing out that he's the first person that we can see that makes this form of an argument. And it doesn't matter if it doesn't make that form of argument. Also, our contradictions. Oh, well. Okay, so fair enough. I'm pointing out other areas where he seems to be saying stuff that's difficult too. Okay. I mean, I think, and I wouldn't have, I wouldn't even have a problem granting you that you're probably more of an Aristotle scholar than I am. I mean, I had maybe two or three grad classes on it, and I'm not, I'm not an Aristotle expert. And I'm sure that you would have more contradictions that you could point out. But I just think in that section, and I think it is section four, that's typically pointed to or people think that he does make, if you look at just the form of the argument, it seems to be a reduction that is a transcendental argument because of it's a question of the law of non-contradiction. If he's inconsistent with that, else, I don't have any problem admitting, oh yeah, okay.

So, but then, you know, and I didn't expect us to talk about Aristotle this much. So, and maybe we can pause this after the last thing I want to say about this. I think what's going on in Section four is that he ends up saying, if only I could get my opponent to say something, I could trap him. Right? And then he says, he's sometimes saying, well, as long as he doesn't, you know, do some crafty tricks like saying something but not really meaning anything by it. And obviously, you can also say, I mean, two things by it at the same time, right? You know, if you say, this is a bank, the money bank, and it's not a bank as in a river bank, that doesn't, yeah, you can't say something unequivocally, right? Like, I am a man, right? And not mean any other things by it. He thinks, well, as soon as I can get someone to make that type of claim, right? They're making a stand on it. They're saying this is true and not red, so false. Right? When you do that, that you're then therefore, then the idea is that that type of opponent can't think that the law of non-contradiction is false, right? But the thing is, it's a bad argument because you could believe that, say, the liar sentence is both true and false, but think that the sentence "I am a man" is true and not false. So simply getting me to say one sentence doesn't get me to commit to the contradiction, non-contradiction being true. I could still think there is no action.

I would disagree. I disagree with that. But even if I grant you this, ultimately, it's not germane to my overall argument. But I actually don't, I don't think that's true. I think that again, it's like, if, first of all, I believe that there's a distinction between a contradiction and a paradox, and this is debated in logic, so it's not always clear when that is the case. I don't think that every, because the liar's paradox is often compared to Gödel's incompleteness theorems for the circularity, and there's debate over whether that is a contradiction or not. But I personally do think that there, and even Bertrand Russell agrees that a paradox is not equivalent to a contradiction. That's just a famous logician. I'm not saying it's true because Bertrand Russell said it. I'm not making an appeal to authority. I mean, as you know, these are kind of debated issues. But I do think that in the case again, of, because of the, that even if you were to make a sentence that was a liar paradox, I believe you absolutely still would be assuming logical regularity in relationship to language. So in this regard, I would say if you look at people like Karl Otto Apel, he's one of the key figures who actually does apply transcendental argumentation to to show how sentences, singulars and plurals, and sentence structure, grammar itself, actually presupposes quite a bit of logic. I think those arguments are convincing. So that's why I wouldn't buy what you're saying.

Yeah, okay. So, I mean, um, now Aristotle wasn't aware of that. I'll grant you that Aristotle probably wasn't thinking about what's presupposed. And I mean, he might have, because he does discuss like what's what's categories that are necessary for language and these kinds of things. But, you know, again, I, you know, I don't even, again, even if Aristotle has no transcendental argument, like how does this, what does this have, what is this, what does this prove? Is it just a conversation or argument? I think the type of argument that you're saying is a transcendental argument doesn't really, I think when you look at, well, I think when you look at Aristotle, what you find when you're looking at the detail of it is that there isn't a transcendental argument. That's actually not a very good argument.

I am not. And do you think that does it make you think that it's possible to make a sentence, even if it's, even if your sentence is the liar's paradox, and not assume all of the logical laws that are involved in grammar and sentence structure?

Yeah, I don't think that they, I don't think that English language necessarily presupposes classical logic. No.

So you don't think so? I think I sent you. You don't think that predicating in a sentence, for example, deals with the one and the many, which is a basic philosophical question about singulars and particulars versus categories and classes of things? Even if you don't believe in metaphysics, obviously sentences are based on some form of logical structure, or else they're known as, right? But I'm just, I'm saying I don't think that classical logic is presupposed by just English language.

You think you'd have to do. Well, doesn't matter what you can pick. Okay. Well, you can make it Greek. I'm not disputing English. The point is the language, any language that has structure, and all known languages have some basic transitional categories of structures of nouns and pronouns, and particulars and subjects and objects, and so forth. I mean, that's that's common to all language that's meaningful. I'm quite playful about that and say that, you know, there, when one grasps abstract truths that are expressed through propositions, and you know, we use sentences of language to convey these to one another, that what's going on there is that we're connecting to abstract structures. Like are not it is it I happy with that? And it doesn't seem like I need to believe in Orthodox Christianity. Don't get there. And well, there's and sillier arguments to get to that point. But I'm just making the point that it doesn't matter what language you choose, if the language is meaningful, if it's coherent, and if it conveys meaning, and if you're admitting that there are conceptual realities, whatever you can see them to be, that are tapped into when we make linguistic expressions that are meaningful, then I think you would have to grant that those sentence structures, all languages have these basic fundamental patterns. It's all based on pattern recognition, semiotics, that's coherent. And that absolutely presupposes logic. And I would say, if you doubt that, I think that the easiest thing to show that is Koster's logical investigations, where he shows that the scientific method itself can't be done without presupposing abstract logical categories.

Okay, so, and I think we could keep talking about the law of non-contradiction, I could anyway. And maybe we should move back towards the idea that you're advancing an argument that the conclusion of which is that God exists, and specifically your version of God. Now, let's say, let me play along for a bit. So I agree that, let's say I agree that materialism doesn't cut it, right? It and naive empiricism doesn't cut it. But I don't believe in God, though, right? I can believe that I have some rational faculty that engages with abstract objects, as a Platonist. This, I feel like I can use more or less the same thing to talk about moral realism. So I don't need God for that. As I explained, I think that we're in the same boat when it comes to the problem of induction. So I'm really wondering why I should be persuaded to move over to your camp. Sell it to me, right? What?

Okay, so, so I'll say right now, so I have a lot of critiques of Plato as well. And so I'm very prepared. I was even for a while back in my twenties, kind of tempted with Platonism and Neo-Platonism. So I understand the draw to that. But I think that if you look at the ways that Platonism attempts to jump, and I'm not saying Platonism, I'm just saying the way I would critique that kind of a response is that the metaphysics of Platonism doesn't work. You have a lot of these problems of like the external world and the internal world of the mind, and the mind somehow tapping into an external immaterial realm of forms. The problem there, of course, is the duality. How does, how do we get this invariant, unchanging abstract realm to relate to a world of flux and change? So that is a fundamental problem to Plato. I'm not making the third man argument. I'm making a different argument. Platonism ultimately is monistic in the sense that the, the one that Plato attributes all reality ultimately to, the monad, it's, it's kind of a big black hole that subsumes all distinctions. So basically, I think if you're pretty consistent with Platonism, it would kind of lead you down the path of far Eastern philosophy, or Eastern thought, where where this realm kind of ultimately would have to be a loosey or a dream state. And that's why Plato kind of had to fall back on stupid things like reincarnation to justify how we have knowledge of the forms of things. So ultimately, I would say the impersonal absolute that Plato has is problematic because when we think about numbers, and we think about abstract categories, and all these things that the Platonist is correct to want to see is not just material, the problem in Platonism then becomes that the way they conceive of those things is just kind of arbitrary things that just in some other realm that has no connection to this realm. So I don't think Platonism is actually a better answer. And actually, in Orthodox theology, we have very precise explanations from St. Maximus the Confessor on how mathematical qualities, quantities, mathematical categories, essences, these kinds of things that Platonism has. We don't identify them with the one, as Plato does. We actually believe that they're kind of mental in the mind of God, you could say. So it's, you could say maybe it's a modified form of Neoplatonism in Orthodox Christianity with what we call the Logoi, or the principles, or the archetypes of the essences of things. We think that that's a better way to ground metaphysics, how to explain that logical categories and meaningful statements apply to objects in the world. It's because ultimately they're grounded in the eternal mind of God. So that's a very, it's like a radical paradigm shift of how you view metaphysics, if you accept the Orthodox metaphysic. And I think it provides a better justification for the things that you're correct to point to as things that we would need if we don't want materialism, right? So materialism is problematic, and we step in that direction of wanting to have archetypes, or wanting to have essences for things, or wanting to have these kind of categories for math objects that don't seem to just be identifiable with the material world, Mandelbrot sets, these kind of very deep things, right? Platonism is a window into how there might be other possibilities, but Platonism itself still has some very basic fundamental problems in both its ethics, its metaphysics, and its epistemology. Ultimately, I'll just sum it up by simply saying, I think it reduces to monism, so it doesn't end solipsism, get kind of the same way, contentism does. So I don't think if it really provides a basis for objects to have real distinctions. And so ultimately, that's why Plato kind of assigns this world to like a dream state.

Yeah, okay. So, just to clarify, when I say I'm sympathetic towards Platonism, I'm not saying Platonism with a big P, and use of Plato himself, right? Not particularly keep those views. What I'm saying is, I'm talking about Platonism with a small P, right? Which goes back to the work of Frege in his paper called "Thought," which maybe you're aware of. So there, the idea is, look, propositions, right? They, they can't be either thoughts in our minds, or or can they be physical things, right? And so there has to be a third category of thing. And some people say that's a transcendental argument. Interestingly, I'm not so sure, but I think it's a good argument one way or the other. So the idea is something like, let's say we both think about the same thing, right? Pythagoras's theorem. What does it mean to say that we've got the same thing in mind? Well, it doesn't mean that you and I literally, part of each of our minds is kind of overlapping, that we literally have one thought, which minds, right? And in such an idea, since all metaphysically impossible, my thoughts, the actual inner life that I have, is metaphysically private. There's nothing you can do, you could sort of understand what I'm saying, whatever, but my inner mental life is my own, as everyone discovers one day when they realize as a small child that they can swear at people in their heads and other people can't hear it. I went from that point, almost the metaphysical privacy of your own mind is a sort of evident to you. But obviously, it's not that we share physical matter when we think of the same thing either. It's not that I rip out a bit of my brain and squish it through your ear so that we literally shared the same thing. So what's going on there, right? The answer has to be that it's something, the content of our thought is not itself mental or physical. But I'm, the argument or the position that you sketched there is a version of divine conceptualism, which says that abstract objects, such as propositions, or numbers, or logical laws, or whatever, are ideas in the mind of God. Now, for that to work, right? If God thinks about the, if what the Pythagorean is, is a thought of God, and for me and God, you know, for me and you to both think the same thing would actually just forget that, just for me to think it. Um, I after, what am I doing? Share is my mind Mel thing with God? I don't think that's what you're saying, right? So it's literally the two thoughts co-go mix together. That's not what's going on, right? What's happening is that I've got a thought which is the same content as God's thought. I mean, the only way to make sense of this, it seems to me, is for the thought, for God's thought to be distinguished from the content of God's thought, right? What God is doing is thinking about the Pythagorean theorem, maybe right now. Thank you. And then we both have that coming. But that just means that the Pythagorean theorem, you're on to some really great questions. And in fact, I would say that the German idealists and people in that school, they were kind of stepping in the right direction for responding to questions that, you know, human and Kant were dealing with. But I would say that, and it's a very, it's kind of complex at this point, but this is why I wrote an essay called "Numbers Prove God," where I try to flesh that out more, which it's kind of, I'm not bragging, but I'm saying it's kind of a famous essay that I did, and it's responding to the questions that you're asking. And without getting too difficult into Orthodox theology, one of the things that makes us distinct from Thomism is that we believe in the essence-energy distinction. And as I said earlier, we believe in the conception of the Logoi, which are the principles or essences or archetypes behind things. And that would also collect in numbers too. Numbers are not identified to the mind of God, but they are, when we have a thought or something like that, we believe in analogy, right? There is, in our view, an analogy between the conceptions in our mind and what we're calling the divine concepts or the divine thoughts. But we don't think that they're identical to the divine essence. And that's how it's distinct from Platonism, because in Platonism, all the forms, and even in the Western acceptance of what are called divine exemplars, the exemplarism of Augustan all the way up to Aquinas, they actually identify all the essences or these exemplars of things with the essence of God, which we think is absurd. That's one of the main reasons that we're not Thomists, and why we think that so mystic epistemology doesn't work, and why I think that somebody like Maximus the Confessor is a much better theologian for this issue than Thomas Aquinas. And so, simply put, he answers your question. I have essays on that. But I would say that you're absolutely right, you're on the right path for what I would, the way I would respond to that. And I would say that we are not having literally the same melded concept as God has, but we do say with the Logoi, or the essences of things, that there are there, they have a created aspect to them, and they have an uncreated aspect to them. And one, one of the things that is unique to Orthodox Christology and anthropology is that we actually do believe that the individual can eventually have a real union with God that does not destroy his particularity or his creaturehood. So we don't, it's not like a mystical, like we're absorbed into the divine or something like that. We always retain our creaturehood, but we do believe in a real participation in divinity, which ultimately is the grounding, we would say, for the conceptual things that you're talking about. So I don't know, it's kind of a long-winded explanation, but basically, St. Maximus is who I would say answered your question, because he goes into depth about the essence-energy distinction. And David Bradshaw is a famous philosopher at UK. He has a book called "Aristotle East and West" that you would really like, that specifically deals with what we're talking about here.

Okay, so, I mean, let me try a different, different angle on this, because I mean, I'm not seeing really, there's a clear, there's anything clear going on there. Well, I mean, I can, I could launch into an explanation of the Logoi and how, you know, we see exemplars, you know, as uncreated energies or something like that. But I mean, I'm just worried that the nature of the audience that we have, it might be a little out of step of what people expected. I don't mind doing it, but I mean, I have just saying that, yeah, it's like, I think Alex, you know, it's saying how long do we want to go? I mean, I'm fine to keep. Right now, you're about 83 minutes. I think we had planned for about 90. I don't know if we have time to do Q&A or if you, you know, want to, or if I want to. You know, why don't we do a separate, we can do a separate episode maybe where we. Yeah, I I was thinking, you know, I'm probably going to do some kind of story later, not today, or if it is much later tonight, I have something to do right after this. I'm to go to atheist edge and do a presentation. And I know that obviously, Dr. Malpass, with him living far, far, you know, he's not going to be able to probably do that. We're going to have to schedule things around him. If there's ever going to be a part two on this, however, I do, there's so many things that I want to address in your, in your, in your discussion. Is there this probably isn't the time to do that. I want to do that later. Join us for that. I know there's people in the live chat there more than want to as well. Maybe I can just ask one question or two, if that's okay. You have time for that? Okay. You're discussing a transcendental argument. So is there possibly a way you can put it in a more structured syllogistic form? Just go from the premises to the conclusion real quick. Is there some form of that that we can analyze that way? Is that okay?

Yeah, let me say it like this. All, all philosophical systems or worldviews have fundamental assumptions that relate to metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, right? I would say that when we, so that's my first premise. When we examine those presuppositions or categories or possibilities of experience, etc., that make up those, those three branches of philosophy, we encounter a host of things that are assumed. Things like the existence of the self, Kant's categories, that like he was mentioning earlier, abstract conceptual entities, meaning behind sentences, the existence of the external world, the existence of the past. This is another one that people forget. Transcendental unity of apperception is one you could use that Kant talked about. Objects have identity over time is another one. So, you know, you can start listing these types of really kind of big-level questions that seem to be necessary for the possibility of knowledge or discourse or ethics or whatever. And I'm, so the final conclusion after we look at those is that the way to give a meta-level justification and explanation for the coherence of those things is the existence of the Orthodox view, the existence of God.

Nor those being actually want to respond to that if you can? By the way, before he goes, before he goes, before he goes, I will say we were getting to the meat of, I mean, I do want to go into the, if we ground as the essence of set of things and divine conceptualism or the mind of God, that's kind of where the argument hinges. He's absolutely right. And I do want to go into that. It's just, I think that'll require. No, I would love to talk about, you know, monistic idealism and conceptualism and things existing in the mind of God, because I thought, and I, and I'd mentioned this to Dr. Malpass prior to coming on, so I might as I mentioned to you, because I thought you were running in this argument way back when, and maybe I got you confused with somebody else. But was it you that was arguing something along the lines, and I'm trying to butcher this, please forgive me, but if something along the lines that the laws of logic only exist in in minds, it doesn't have any abstract, just abstract, doesn't have any real concrete formulas, I guess, if you're a Platonist. But since they only exist in minds, if people didn't exist, then they still must exist in some form of a mind, which would be the mind of God. Was that you reading that kind of argument? Was that somebody else?

I wouldn't make that. I think when I was debating Jay, when I was debating Jeff, he kind of thought that's what I was saying. But I wouldn't say, I wouldn't frame it that way. No.

Okay, okay. Yeah. And well, the only last question would be, very Aristotle from artery called argued against the law of excluded middle. I don't remember what metaphysics, what book it was, or but he's somewhere along the lines, four, seven, whatever. When you say that the laws of logic are somehow fundamental, aren't you kind of discounting like all paraconsistent logic and other forms where you have true caps and drouth glutes and things of different types of logic that just don't use those types of laws of logic? And I really just for, I refer called principles of logic, but do you not treat them so absolute that they must exist at all time?

No, actually, at this point, and I will agree to throw, there are other formal conceptual systems that you could come up with. Like, for example, if we look at it in the mathematics category, you know, if you look at the fact that there are multiple infinities, different types of infinities, I think Cantor shows that mathematically. So I will agree with you on that point. But, but in my view, like mathematics or logic, it's really just one angle on God. So I don't hinge everything on like, everything has to conform to Aristotelian logic, or has to conform to like the Pythagorean notion in the mind of God. I mean, I do think those things are telling us truth, but I don't think any of them are reductionist or all-encompassing, or even necessarily that this discounts the possibilities of other types of systems being being possible. I just think that.

If you look at there's a modern philosopher who wrote a famous book a few years ago called Alvin No way. And I did one of my grad essays on him. The reason he's relevant is because he wrote a book called Action and Perception. And what he tries to demonstrate in that short book is that, and it was like, philosophy book of the year, so it's not a nobody. What he tried to demonstrate in that is that for us in this world, at least, we know that there are certain things that are paradigmatic or absolutely necessary for us as humans, as insofar as we are constituted in this world, that we, for example, learn things from beginning, middle, to end, typically, right? Doesn't mean you can't watch a Tarantino movie where it skips around. It's just that typically speaking, our lives, sentence structures, conversations, everything seems to have a beginning, middle, end structure. And No way looks at a lot of actually scientific experiments that demonstrate that humans don't just receive things as sense impressions, but that there's also an active kind of symbiotic relationship between even empirical sense data. Sweaty, I think he demonstrates in that book.

So the point of all that was just said, I can admit to you that there are, there might be abstract systems that function in other ways, maybe another possible world or something like that. But insofar as we know in this world, I think that the normative transcendental argument, I'm not saying the normative, that it's big, it's the same as day-to-day logical arguments. I think it's paradigmatic. But the argument I'm making is true in a paradigmatic sense for our experience in this world.

Okay, well, yeah, I agree with you there. But Dr. Mao was just gonna tell, by the way, do you have a video? I think what did you talk about infinities? Whether actual infinities? Is that something you did? Me? Yeah, I believe no. Wow. No, I think if it's out. Dr. Malpass, I've had, I know what I'll call you. Didn't give you on on if actual affinity focused, right? Somebody here did, yeah. No, somebody did. But anyways, you want to touch on that, Alex? I mean, do you agree that there? And but wait, before I ask, house, maybe do a followed for you don't mind me because that's the Alec can touch on this. You said something that intrigued me. You said something on the lines that they may not be the same in other possible worlds. But isn't metaphysical necessity something that must exist in all possible worlds? So if the lodge of logics are something that our metaphysical necessities, as I thought, what your original argument was, would that not be the case in all possible worlds? So why am I messing up modal logic? Are you asking me either of you? Any either or either work? Alex? Well, um, it's, I mean, it depends what the metaphysical modality means in that context. I mean, you know, there are going to be, you might say that there are logically possible worlds where some metaphysical impossibilities exist. Right? So maybe it's metaphysically impossible for you and I to be the same person or something, right? But doesn't necessarily seem that there's a contradiction involved in saying to be the same person. Right now, it's straightforward. Yeah, a lot. If that's okay. I mean, if that's the case, I'm just an illustrator. That wouldn't be in a possible world then. Well, an impossible world would be one where there is a contradiction. So then I was referred the question of whether there, in addition to possible worlds. So if you're a paracrine system magician with your models, with quantify over both possible and impossible worlds, and if you're a daily theist, you would think that the actual world is one of those impossible worlds. Yep. So there's a rich landscape of philosophical chance. I displace to come back to the point. So there's something reminds me a bit. So Kant thought that we are forced to presuppose the world is basely or temporal, right? Is one of the preconditions of intelligibility of experience. But he also thought that we were forced to presuppose that space was Newtonian, right? Did it before them? Euclidean? Nothing about I didn't show much. It hadn't even been invented yet. And then it was invented. And for a while, it was a conceptual possibility that people had that, you know, you can imagine that what the world would be like if it was non-Euclidean. And then we accumulated quite a good body of evidence to suggest that the actual world we live in isn't Euclidean, right? It's curved. It has some curvature to it, specifically around massive bodies. And you can actually see the curvature if you do various types of experiment. So it's plainly not the case that we have to structure our experience such that it's Euclidean spacetime because we don't. It's not right. The empirical refutation of Kant's transcendental proof. And something about Jay's insistence that we must presuppose or seems to meet a psychological principles strikes me as something similar. I'm not saying we've got empirical refutation of any principles of classical logic, but these days, a development of non-classical logics in the twentieth centuries is like makes. And the idea that the world might obey non-classical logical laws, similarly, you know, after we'd have meant it non-Euclidean geometry, right? It's a conceptual possibility now. It just doesn't seem right. End of idea. Yes.

So, so maybe at the quantum level, right? Whole like it does typically. And maybe at the quantum level, Kant's argument that relies on Newtonian space being a certain way is not true. I don't have a problem with that because on in the day-to-day, in most of our lives, we still use this, the kinds of equations, and the kinds of logic, the kinds of math that's that build bridges, that build those skyscrapers, that build rockets, and all that. It's like, so, so the math that we do that does that stuff, the Mandelbrot sets that actually do map up to nature, the the math that we see in nature, that's that's not done away just because there are, you know, theoretical systems that don't utilize those same types of structures. So my argument is hinging on the known experience that we do. And actually, in many ways, my argument is actually empirical. And it is based on a lot of sense experience. So it's, I want to be clear that the argument I'm making is not purely an abstract a priori mathematic based argument. I'm making more of a broad scope kind of analysis of different angles and aspects of life. And also, I don't, I think that one of the problems when we talk about like the possibilities of other worlds and this kind of stuff, and does, does the mode of existence or does the the mode of ontology in this world or abstractly have to be consistent across all the other worlds? I think that that assumes that the metaphysics or ontology operates in a in a singular way. I mean, there could be, there could be situations where metaphysics is different. Right? I mean, we don't really conceptually understand how there might be different types of infinities if in fact there are, but perhaps they can be shown mathematically. We don't necessarily know how there might be higher dimensions, but geometry tests are acts these kinds of mathematical objects seem to suggest that they do exist. Quasi crystals suggest that there are higher and lower dimensions. So we don't know exactly how it is. I can have an idea of those things. I'm after. Like, I cut you off. We're going way over here. I have to get this one last question. Arizona is this from my all-time favorite people that I'd or if I don't, she's never gonna talk to me again, and I don't want that. But our dear friend Helen a handbasket. She says she asked, she wants me to ask J, what do you think can't be true if we don't just, she says, what do you think can't be true if we don't presuppose God? Is your question, what can't be true if we don't God be true? And well, again, I think that's so the inverse that we will beat, what would be true if God does exist? What can't be true if God doesn't exist? I don't really understand a question. But I guess I would just say, I do think the argument is logically necessary that I'm making now. Doesn't mean that you're convinced of it, but I think that it is logically consider. You're positing God isn't metaphysical necessity. Yeah. Okay. What would be the case? You aren't. Oh, I'm just gonna read these uh these super chats real quick. Um, unless you were add more. No good. No good. Okay. Matthew Walker says, this is a gift for me. And then ours or ours and Tony just with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That is Artisan Tony for you. And as always, Steve, thank you a lot. Oh, am I muted? No. Are we serious? Lapchance says, how does God justify his beliefs? Um, we'll have to say that for part two, because I know it's getting late for a pass. Steve, you in a plug where you don't? You're going real quick. Yeah, I'm gonna be going over the Atheist Ed channel. That's gonna be over with TJ Tuttle. And I don't know if Jim's gonna be there. Jim Hall, he might. We had some technical difficulties because GJ, I guess it turned out to be a lot ID and couldn't figure out mana technology. But we think we solved the problem. So I'll be on there and I'll be doing a PPT presentation on our favorite subject of all time, atheism, agnosticism, you know, you love it, you know, you want to check it out. I think we're doing it. I think we're doing it for Pacific, but like, it could be wrong. It could be sooner. So stay tuned. Okay. And I want to thank J and Dr. Ralphus for joining us. We will definitely set a part two. You can check out their links for their various things that they got going on. I know Dr. Mel Pass's blog and J Dyer's book and his website, J's analysis is linked below. So make sure you check that out. And thanks again, gentlemen. This was a great conversation and we'll be back tomorrow at 9 p.m. Eastern. Thank you. The self and Shannon. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] [Music]