Commonsense, Intuition, Rational Presuppositionalism.

I know that I exist. I think you know you exist, too. I know that I just typed a series of words. I know that the sentence, "A horse is not a horse" if taken literally, expresses a contradiction. As alluded to in my previous post, Gangadean also takes himself to know these things (even though he has a much more stringent conception of what counts as knowing). The question is, how do we know them?

Again as I mentioned in my last post, Gangadean must navigate a fine line between accepting things on intuitions, and not. The tension arises because he thinks one can't know that God exists on the basis of intuition. Just like one can't know that the external world exists on the basis of intuition. You need deductively sound arguments which have as their conclusion those propositions, in order to know them. There are plenty of other things that, for Gangadean, fall into the category of things you can't know immediately, but a curious number of things that don't.

The issue is, what is the basis of the distinction? Why does he think that you can know (for instance) that you exist in an immediate and non-inferential way, but you can't know that God exists in this way? The necessary vs. contingent truth distinction is of no help, here. That is, just in case you were tempted to think that we can know things on the basis of intuition just in case, it couldn't have been otherwise. That won't help for at least two reasons. 1) Water = H20 is a necessary truth, but I can't know it immediately--in fact, nobody knew that claim until it was discovered. 2) That I exist, is a contingent truth (I may not have existed). Perhaps by a stretch you can insist that it's necessary in a hypothetical way---insofar as I exist, I must necessarily exist. But that goes for anything---insofar as a unicorn exists, it exists necessarily. That would make any claim necessarily true (albeit in this hypothetical way). That can't be right. Another way you might try to go is to suggest that insofar as I question my existence, I exist (Descartes). But that assumes that you know that you are questioning, which presupposes you exist and so it's question begging (I think Russell pointed this out).

So I wonder why Gangadean thinks that you can know with certainty that you exist by way of intuition, but not know other things by way of intuition. So here are two questions that you might raise for the Gangadeanian: 1) What is the basis of the distinction between things you can know (with certainty) via intuition and those that you cannot? 2) What legitimizes whatever theory you have about the basis of the distinction.