Using Intuitions Consistently.

Just to hedge off a mistaken kind of response to my objections, let me say a little bit about the current dialectic as I see it. I believe that Gangadean and his followers ultimately ground their positions in intuitions. At the most basic level, Gangadean and his people accept things not on the basis of arguments, but on immediate, non-inferential judgments they have (this is all I mean by intuition). I mean, even to determine something as more basic or less basic, requires an intuition. You just have to get the sense that 'a is a' is more basic then the claim that horses have four legs. You don't get an argument that proves it and you either "see" it or you don't.

I use intuitions, too. A lot. I think all philosophers do just as all non-philosophers do. We gotta start somewhere in theorizing about the world. Even when Gangadean claims to start from self-attesting principles, his way of determining something as a self-testing principle is direct and non-inferential. It isn't derived at via some noncircular argument, but rather an intuitive reaction. If you think he's given you a reductio argument for the claim that 'a is a' is self attesting for instance, then ask yourself how you know that each of premises of that argument are true, or how you know that the rules of inference that the argument employs are truth-preserving. At some point, you'll find intuitions. It's sometimes hard to get a grasp on what it means to believe something via an intuition. But I think in some ways it's a lot like coming to believe that a middle C has been played on the piano. You hear something and immediately "recognize" it as middle C. You might fuss over details here and push the representationalist line by saying that at best when such a note has been played on the piano it appears to you or sounds to you as if middle C has been played. But the same applies to Gangadean's apprehension of self-attesting principles. 'A is a' is supposed to be self-attesting, but to determine that it is self attesting Gangadean has to rely on his intuition. But one could analogously suggest that it merely appears to Gangadean as if 'a is a' is self attesting.

So I'm often trying to point out the places where Gangadean seems to rest his views on intuition because I think he and his people have failed to recognize where they do. Of course, he could surprise me with responses which demonstrate that he doesn't--I'm certainly open to that possibility, but currently we are without. Such proofs are not forthcoming in his published works and haven't been in my many exchanges with him and his followers. 

So I keep pointing out the fact that Gangadean seems to appeal to intuitions to get his theorizing off the ground, but by my own admission, it turns out that I, too, appeal to intuitions in order to do so. But I just want to be clear that there's no inconsistency, here.  This is because I'm holding Gangadean to his own professed standard--it's the standard he holds others to. He often complains that other attempts at arguing for God's existence for instance, have failed to provide a deductively sound proof. But again, I am of the view that all of us ultimately have to employ intuitions in our theory building, and not only in philosophy, but in every field of inquiry. If we are to come to know anything whatsoever, or come to form beliefs, we have to begin with things that are not proven to us nor are they the dubious "self-attesting" principles that Gangadean claims. Importantly, I don't see this as a problem. It's Gangadean that thinks opening the door to intuitions will ultimately lead to nihilism, not me. So I'm at least open to the idea that a person might  come to know that God exists on the basis of an intuition just like they might come to know that 'a is a' and that they exist, and that they have hands and the like. Sure, skeptical possibilities can be raised against any of these, but this alone isn't enough to impoverish us of all knowledge. My view then is that knowledge simply doesn't require certainty. I can know something without showing that the opposite is logically impossible. So there's no problem for me. It's Gangadean that finds intuitions troubling. So there's no inconsistency in my appealing to intuitions or using them at any rate, to raise objections against Gangadean. That plays nicely with my own fundamental commitments.

In contrast, there is an inconsistency in Gangadean using intuitions to build his theories, to raise criticisms against other theories while at the same time claiming that belief without proof is fideism, and otherwise criticizing others for believing things on the basis of intuition. If he's concerned with consistency as he often claims to be, then he ought to admit that his whole system of beliefs ultimately rests on intuitions and that he's been wrong in criticizing others for using intuitions. Of course, this has huge ramifications for the legitimacy of his life's work, his church and the like.