Response to a Comment (edited)

There was a comment to my latest post and as I started to respond I noticed that it should merit a separate post. My thanks to the commenter. Here's what they wrote:

Gangadean cares about G-knowability because his apologetic goal is to demonstrate God's existence in a way that is consistent with Historic Christianity and Romans 1:19-20. Without "clarity" Romans 1 fails to be true, and the eternal punishment for unbelief is unjustified. The basic things being known in the E-knowable sense doesn't meet this burden of proof. 

Does it follow that if basic things are E-knowable, they are not transcendentally necessary? Why think that if reason "as the laws of thought" is E-knowable, it cannot also be G-knowable? Wouldn't everything that is G-knowable also be justified according to lower evidential standards as well?

My response:

As the other responder noted below, there's debate about just what counts as "historic Christianity" in the relevant sense--just as there is room for debate about what the text you cited says. In other words, the Gangadeanian needs to argue for, rather than presuppose, that their notion of historic Christianity and their reading of Romans 1:20 is the correct one. 

Here's another way to make the same point with a bit more detail. The word 'clarity' and its cognates (e.g., clear) are context sensitive terms. That is to say, what the term means differs depending on facts about the context of utterance. Linguistic evidence of this comes in various forms, but here's one bit. Context-sensitive adjectives admit to being modified by adding words like 'enough' which can then be followed by something of the form, 'for an X' where 'X' can denote a class, or even a purpose or function. For instance, 'tall' and 'far' are paradigmatic examples of context sensitive terms and it makes sense to say things like 'S is tall *enough to be a good center' or 'my job is far *enough to justify purchasing a bike.'  We can also say things like, 'the water is clear *enough to swim in' or 'the diamond is clear enough to impress my soon to be fiance.' In fact, by adding 'enough' all we're really doing is making explicit the modifier that is often present, tacitly. The point is, rather than there being just one meaning to such predicates like 'clear' there are many depending on the context. 

So what 'clear' or 'clarity' mean both with respect to historic Christianity and what Paul meant in Romans 1:20 needs to be understood against various contexts. Gangadean contends that it means something like "maximally provable" or "cannot be (rationally) doubted." One way to motivate such a view would be against the background of eternal punishment as you suggest: that is, when you ask about whether God's existence is clear, you're really asking whether it is clear *enough to make unbelief justifiably punishable by eternal damnation. 

Here are some reactions to this:

1) Why think this requires Gangadean's notion of clear as "can't (rationally) be doubted?" In other words, I'm asking for an argument for Anderson's line, "maximal consequences entails maximal clarity." He never gives an argument for it, but treats it like a platitude. In other words, suppose as you suggest that God is justified in damming people for all eternity for failing to be in a particular mental state regarding his nature. What about this suggest to you that his existence should be clear in just the way that Gangadean provides? If you just find it obvious, then you're banking on an intuition that I honestly don't share. In fact, it gets worse. As I've pointed out before, even if God's existence were clear in the Gangadeanian sense, this isn't sufficient to make God justified in damming the unbeliever insofar as one also accepts the Calvinist doctrine that the unbeliever simply can't believe without having God change them in some fundamental way. And Gangadeanians are Calvinists in the pertinent sense. In other words, Gangadean wants to motivate his theory of knowledge (as G-knowledge) so that it's fair that unbelievers end up in ever-increasing spiritual death. But his Calvinism commits him to the view that the unbeliever can't possibly know what is clear without God changing their hearts (giving them Grace). What the clarity thesis attempts to provide the Calvinist doctrine takes away as previously noted here. 

2) How do we know that even G-knowing something actually exemplifies achieving maximal clarity in the relevant sense anyway? For instance, Gangadean's theory of knowledge says nothing about the distinction between synchronic and diachronic belief-states. It is one thing to G-know a proposition at an instant of time, and quite another to G-know it over a span of time. Supposing that maximal consequences entails maximal clarity it's possible that maximal clarity actually demands more than Gangadean's conception does. For instance, maybe we should posit a theory of F-knowledge--where it's the sort of knowledge that stably spans over a significant period of time. Lest, you respond that it's simply not possible for humans to achieve this kind of knowledge, I would ask you for proof that isn't merely a generalization from your own experiences and observations. Interestingly, if we were to go this route I would think that there will be some subject-relativity since I would imagine different people have different abilities as it regards "hanging onto a belief" over a span of time. My point of course is not to motivate such a theory, but to suggest that by relying on the same assumptions to which Gangadean appeals in motivating G-knowability, we can proliferate at least another higher standard of knowledge. That seems like a bad result and thus a reductio against the general move Gangadean is making.  

*3) Here's what I think is a particularly devastating problem. It's actually question-begging to cite theses from a particular reading of "historic Christianity" and a "proof text from the bible" as informing one's theory of knowledge in the current dialectic. That's getting things in reverse. It certainly isn't getting to G-know basic things from reason alone because in making such a move Gangadean is already assuming that there is such a thing as special revelation.  

In other words, here are the terms of the debate as I understand them. Gangadean offers a theory of knowledge from "reason alone." I challenge the conclusion that it's the correct theory. Gangadean appeals to Christian doctrines and bible passages which he thinks his theory of knowledge makes the best sense of (purportedly adding abductive support of this theory as the correct one). That's viciously circular.  We haven't yet settled that Christian soteriology is true, or that the bible (in any part) is true or the word of God---that's further down the line! We're at the more fundamental issue of what it means to know something so it's question begging to appeal to christian doctrine or "proof texts" to motivate your theory of knowledge. I've noted this here before. 

4) If Gangadean's theory of knowledge (or even the two-kinds of knowledge view) is being motivated by the worry that it would be unjust for God to create the universe in such a way that nonbelievers are eternally damned, then that still doesn't entail he's right. As I've mentioned earlier, maybe Gangadean's proposal about the eternal damnation of nonbelievers is wrong itself. For instance, a universalist about salvation would see no tension between the lack of G-clarity regarding God's existence and the purported "maximal consequences"---because they believe that no one will actually face those maximal consequences. That is, they could agree (not that they should) with Gangadean that maximal consequences entails maximal clarity, but then deny maximal clarity (in the Gangadeanian sense) because they believe (for independent reasons) that what Jesus did on the cross was so efficacious that it will ultimately save all i.e., that no one will be left in unbelief. 

On to the second part of the commenter's response--they wrote:

Does it follow that if basic things are E-knowable, they are not transcendentally necessary? Why think that if reason "as the laws of thought" is E-knowable, it cannot also be G-knowable? Wouldn't everything that is G-knowable also be justified according to lower evidential standards as well?

I think there's some confusion in this comment. G-knowing something marks a higher epistemic standard than E-knowing that same thing. If there is an entailment at all, it's only going to be in one direction namely, "If S G-knows that p, then S E-knows that p" which is contrary to what is suggested at the beginning of this comment. 

In fact, I don't know whether all that differs between the proposed two different kinds of knowledge are epistemic standards, so the above stated entailment might not even hold. For instance, they might be significantly different states--or belief-states that arise in significantly different ways--I have no clue---that would be for the Gangadeanian who wants to make use of this move to specify. 

The last sentence seems to cut in the other direction. It's suggesting the entailment I just mentioned. Again, I don't know how the two purported kinds are supposed to relate to one another--that's for the Gangadeanian to flesh out. But it's far from obvious that the set of all G-knowable propositions contains the set of all E-knowable ones.