Gangadean Responds to Critics?

Here is a website that the Gangadeanians have put up.  This morning I encountered this post, which is an attempt to answer critics regarding the necessity of common ground. I was excited to see this since I have been pressing Gangadean and his people to defend some of their views about common ground. Specifically, I have been interested in the following inquiries.

1) Precisely which propositions count as common ground? 

2) How do you justify your answer to 1)? (i.e., how do you know with certainty that your answer to 1) is veridical?). 

3) What is the method or process you use to determine your answer to 1) and 2). 

4) What is the propositional attitude that two persons must have with respect to a proposition in order to have that proposition as common ground? (I.e, is it belief? knowledge? knowledge in the Gangadeanian sense?). 

5) What justifies your answer to 4)?

Unfortunately, we are without with the exception of 1). I take 2) through 5) to be questions that reveal certain assumptions that Gangadean helps himself to in drafting a document of the sort featured on their blog. In other words, there are presumably more basic issues than what he addresses there.
Still, I want to make a few remarks about the document since at least some of its contents appear to be inspired either by my blog or my personal interaction with Gangadean.

The first statement in the document is the following.

Common Ground (CG) is the set of conditions necessary for thought and discourse. To engage in discourse without CG is to engage in meaningless disputes.

This is an assertion in need of rational justification. Gangadeanians often say things of this sort as if it is just obvious (perhaps they think it's self-attesting?). And it's a little bit weird that they do so given their views about what it takes to know things (provided it isn't self-attesting). One of the quirky requirements on knowledge for Gangadean is that in order to know something you have to be able to prove that thing (show that it is true via a sound deductive argument). But then again he doesn't show you everything---the above statement is a case in point. So then how are you supposed to know it if he doesn't give you the proof for it? Also shouldn't we hold him to the same standard? If he knows that "common ground is the set of conditions necessary for thought and discourse" then he had better be in a position to prove that this is so (i.e., show it). So my first move is to ask him to justify his assertion about the necessity of common ground. In fact, I've raised these challenges here and here.

Gangadean next follows this up with more assertions.

1. Reason as the laws of thought (identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle) is the test for meaning and is self-attesting.
2. Integrity is a commitment to reason as a concern for consistency.
3. Rational Presuppositionalism (RP) affirms the necessity to address the more basic before the less basic.
4. The Principle of Clarity (PC) affirms: some things are clear; the basic things are clear; the basic things concerning metaphysics (about God and man) and ethics (about good and evil) are clear to reason— epistemology

I hope it's clear by now what you ought to say in response. You should ask him to justify or show that 1 through 4 are true. As is they are no little more than assertions. To be fair, his book, Philosphical Foundation, is an attempt to argue for point 4 (and I take issue with many of those arguments in this blog), but the first 3 principles are simply asserted rather than argued for.

Gangadean then goes on to say.

For skeptics, to deny CG is to deny any possibility of knowledge, which is self-referentially absurd. For theists, to deny clarity is to deny inexcusability (of unbelief) and the need for redemptive revelation (emphasis mine). 

First, in accordance with 4. above, we should ask do some things have to be clear if we are to avoid skepticism? What Gangadean means by 'clear' is absolutely certain. And on that understanding of the word 'clear' I just don't see why denying that some things are clear should lead one to skepticism. Of course, if we assume that knowledge requires certainty of basic things, then skepticism seems to follow rather trivially from the denial of clarity. But Gangadean has not given us any reason to assume that knowledge requires certainty. So there's no threat of skepticism with the denial of number 4 above.

Secondly why should we think that skepticism is self-referentially absurd? As I've mentioned in my previous posts, one can intelligibly doubt that the kind of knowledge Gangadean is after (i.e., absolute certainty) is possible without undermining one's own view in the process. You might even say that you believe or believe strongly or know (without certainty) that absolute certainty is not possible. But there's nothing incoherent about any such position. The only way for it to be self-referentially absurd is to say that you know with absolute certainty that absolute certainty is not possible---but who is saying that?!

As to whether a theist denying clarity of the "common ground" denies inexcusability of unbelief and the need for redemption. This too needs to be argued for and I've resisted this point in this post. There, I basically point out how even if God's existence is clear, on Gangadean's own view about the desire to know being necessary for knowledge, unbelief turns out excusable (because on Gangadean's view one's desire to know or not is determined entirely by God. So if you're not regenerated by God you will not seek to know him. Which means you can't possibly know God and it's entirely out of your control. And this sounds like a pretty good excuse for unbelief or at least no worse than "it wasn't clear").

Furthermore, there's something funny going on here. The need for redemption and inexcusability can't be used in defense of the principle of clarity--there's something circular about that. Let's remember what he's trying to do here. Gangadean is attemping to support the principle of clarity (to theists) by appealing to reason alone--i.e., what can be known apart from revealed religion. He's got to make the case to both theists and non-thesists alike that "the basic things are clear." For him to say, "well, look if you don't have clarity, then unbelievers have an excuse (i.e,. that the inexcusability of unbelief thesis is false) is not going to seem like a cost to anybody if we're ignoring revealed religion in the first place. That's because it's a theological doctrine which is informed by a particular interpretation of certain passaged in the bible (e.g., Romans 1:20), that the unbelievers are without excuse for their unbelief. Without presupposing that the Romans 1:20 is true (or at least his reading of it), he can't cite it as a reason to believe that some things must be clear.

Next we turn to some of the objections/responses Gangadean considers that have in part been inspired by my criticisms. Sadly his "responses" fall short of anything resembling an answer or anything that causes any problems for my position. Further, he seems to misunderstand the objections in the first place. I take them in turn.

First is one that is inspired by my posts on the memory objection.

Objection 2: We cannot know a is a; we may have an incorrigible memory lapse (fallibilism). Yet the claim a is a is probably true. 

Response: If there is no rational basis for certainty (re: a is a), there is no rational basis for certainty about anything, including probability.

First of all, I never say that we cannot know that a is a.  He really ought to be more careful than this. Instead, I questioned how it is that we could have the kind of certainty that Gangadean associates with knowing. See for yourself. In that post, I merely call into question how it is that we can know (with certainty) any proposition which is the conclusion of an argument given the fact that assessing an argument's soundness depends on our memorial faculties faithfully reporting information. And the moral was that we must (in some suitable sense) presume that our memorial faculties (among others) are functioning faithfully albeit, defeasibly. The fact that we rest our beliefs on presumptions of this sort calls into question the kind of worldview that Gangadean promulgates--the kind that depends on a kind of rationalistic certainty.

Now I already anticipated and addressed Gangadean's "response" here. The gist: I fully agree that if there can be no certainty per se, then one cannot be certain about probabilities--this seems to be a trivial claim. But since I don't claim to be absolutely certain about the probabilities we should assign to various propositions, Gangadean's remarks just miss the target--they don't show any problem with my view. I think that Gangadean is somehow confusing my view with his own--he assumes that we need certainty, not me.

The last objection/response also misses.

Objection 4: Nothing (including reason) is self-attesting, therefore nothing is certain.  

Response: Pure skepticism is self-referentially absurd (SRA): is it certain that nothing is certain? Or, can any degree of certainty (probability) be distinguished with certainty?

First of all, before we draw sweeping conclusions about what follows if nothing is "self-attesting", we need to know precisely what Gangadean means by "self-attesting" (after all, meaning is more basic than truth says, he). Further, as I've mentioned before, we need to know the method by which one determines whether something is self-attesting or not (argument? perception? intuition?). If you're tempted to say that when a proposition makes questioning possible, then it is self-attesting, then you have just pushed the problem back a step---we now need to know how we know when something makes questioning possible! Importantly, Gangadean also owes us a justification for his method of choice being the correct one.

Again, since I'm no skeptic that claims to be certain that certainty is not possible, if this is intended as some sort of answer to my criticisms, it misses its mark. What Gangadean hasn't shown is that there is anything inconsistent about a person, like myself, that thinks, believes or perhaps entertains the possibility that certainty of the sort that Gangadean is after, is unattainable. I am in effect saying, "I have doubts that absolute certainty is possible, but I wouldn't say I am absolutely certain that absolute certainty is impossible." I've been quite explicit about this throughout my blog.

So it turns out that these objections/responses do nothing to address my main worries nor do they show that there is anything incoherent about my views. In fact, I think they only raise more problems for Gangadean or at least make the problems plaguing his worldview more pronounced. In this case, the cure is worse than the disease.