Burton on What is Reason: On Gangadean's "First Principles"

Burton has a new article up entitled, "What is Reason?" There she makes the standard Gangadeanian claim that Reason is the laws of thought. I stress both 'claim' and 'is' here for a reason. As to the former, it's a claim in that it's truth-evaluable--meaning we can inquire into whether or not it's true and what reasons we might have for believing that it is. Secondly, there's an identity claim being made. What is being said is that Reason by its very nature is the law of identity, the law of excluded middle and the law of contradiction. So when we're inquiring into whether this Gangadanian slogan is true, we're asking whether we have sufficient reason to believe in their particular claim about the  nature of Reason. What is behind this identity claim? I'm not entirely sure. People use the word 'reason' in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it refers to a faculty, sometimes a process (as when you reason from P to Q), sometimes a justification or basis for a belief (as in, "the reason I believe P is R"). But the Gangadeanians seem to be thinking of Reason as a set of laws "governing" thought and that strikes me as peculiar. Why should anybody agree with this way of carving reality? The upshot: we shouldn't just let them take this proposal on faith. Instead we should ask them to rationally justify the proposal that Reason is the laws of thought.

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But there's more to question. What makes the "laws of thought" laws according to the Gangadeanians is that they hold without exception--which sort of follows from the identity claim. What they have in mind is that wherever there is a thought occurring, there is also the instantiation of what they call the laws of thought. You can't have thought without such an instantiation. In other words, all possible thought will by necessity instantiate or presuppose say, the law of identity (a is a). But what exactly does that mean? It's hard to say. They insist that anybody that is being intellectual honest will agree with it, but honestly, it's not very clear what it is that we are supposed to agree with. Just why a person that disagrees or fails to agree (note these are different doxastic states) is denying Reason is beyond me. I suspect that when we get to this level of abstraction, the Gangadeanians are prone to slippage. This is because presuppositions are more complicated than it would at first appear. People or epistemic subjects frequently presuppose a proposition in believing another or in arguing for another. In that sense of the word, to presuppose is to instance a kind of mental activity where you assume one thing to believe or argue for another. Let's call that the personal-sense of presupposition. Of course, two parties engaged in a debate can together presuppose a proposition too--if they take it for granted, or decide not to call it into question. And there are complexities here. To presuppose that 'a is a' in this sense need not be an "all or nothing," "one and done" affair. Two parties of a discussion might say that for the purposes of a particular discussion, they will not call into question some claim. That's a way for them to presuppose it. Thus presuppositions in this sense don't require belief or knowledge. Again if two people decide that for the purposes of a given talk, they are not going to call into question some claim, then they presuppose its truth without assenting to its truth. And what I've pointed out before is that contra what the Gangadeanians claim, meaningful discussions can occur even when two people don't come to fully endorse as true and exceptionless 'a is a'--as long as they assume it (decide not to call it into question).

On the other hand, there seems to be a more abstract, non-personal kind of presupposition which I think the Gangadeanians generally have in mind when they talk about all thought "presupposing the law of identity." I suspect they'd be inclined to say that every possible instance of thought *logically* depends on or presupposes the law of identity. That doesn't depend on any subject actually believing the law of identity or even deciding to assume it is true. But here again, it gets a bit difficult to understand what that's supposed to mean. Do you honestly have a strong grasp of what I've just said? Suppose that one thinks about this and finds not enough of a grasp of the ideas in order to honestly give assent. Does that make one intellectually dishonest? It is another Gangadeanian slogan that you can't agree/disagree (though you can be agnostic and fail to agree!) with a claim until you know what it means. Perhaps the Gangadeanians need to develop and communicate their fundamental ideas with more precision before accusing everyone else of being inconsistent or lacking integrity.

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Now even tabling these concerns, one might wonder how it is that the Gangadeanians come to "clarity" about the very nature of thought itself. Remember, by their lights, to know that something is clear to Reason, one must be able to show that it is by way of a sound proof which requires being able to show that the opposite is not possible. How can one show that the opposite is not possible when it comes to the claim that all possible thought presupposes the law of identity? Another way of making the point: if according to the Gangadeanians, Reason is the laws of thought, so that thought is not possible without say, the exceptionless truth of the law of identity, then to know what Reason is, is to know about the very nature of thought. But in all sincerity I wonder how one comes to achieve "clarity" about the nature of thought (which is to know about all possible thought--including perhaps the nature of God's thoughts, or the thoughts of angels, inasmuch as they have thoughts). What doesn't seem like a promising approach for the Gangadeanians here is to rest their case on their reflections about their own thoughts because that's a very small sample. Their claim isn't that all the thoughts that they themselves have considered presuppose the laws of identity. It's that all thoughts, period presuppose it. Can they prove it or show that the opposite is not possible? If not, what can they do while remaining true to their other committments? (Note it's not just an issue of hasty generalization, but also of why we should trust whatever reflections they have over their sample as veridical).

This brings us to Burton's latest article. In particular, she writes,

These laws are first principles and are assumed any time we think. They cannot be proven, but are the basis for any further proof. 

So her claim here is that there is no possibility of proving the law of identity as an exceptionless law of thought. That should be a red flag. I take it that she claims to know that the laws of thought are true, and so that means she's violated Gangadean's constraint that one can know a proposition only if, one is able to demonstrate or prove that it is true (which involves demonstrating that the opposite is not possible). What that means is that Gangadean allows that for at least some claims, we can know them without being able to prove them (or rule out even the possibility that they are false).

When someone starts to make exceptions to their own rules, the natural question to raise is whether the exceptions are principled or whether there's a worry of arbitrariness. If Gangadean is allowed to rest his case on what he claims are "first principles" that are unapologetically unproven, then why can't others (whom they are quick to criticize) proliferate principles that are also unproven and simply claim that no proof is required "because they make proof possible?"

The natural response from team Gangadean will be that they have a non-arbitrarily way to restrict what can rationally be taken for granted as a first principle. Namely, all and only that which makes proof (or thought) possible. But you should see why this is of no help in the current context. It only brings us back to what I've discussed above. We need only ask how it is that the Gangadeanians know (clearly) that the so called "laws of thought" make proof/thought possible. Again, employing their own theory of knowledge, to know a thing like this is to be able to demonstrate it by way of a sound argument. So, either they need to be able to prove that the law of identity makes proof or thought possible (i.e., that it is presupposed in all possible thought and proof) or else it's another first principle with no basis, taken on faith or intuition or something equally as problematic from the point of view of the Gangadeanians.

Remember that the reason Gangadean claims that we need his method (rational presuppositionalism) and clarity at the basic level is that he thinks we need to be able to rationally settle any and all disputes. (That's why he thinks it must be clear that God exists, if it isn't clear, then there's no way to objectively settle the dispute between theists and atheists and that's a serious problem). But what if someone sincerely disagrees with Gangadean about the laws of thought or Reason itself? What if they simply don't agree that all possible thought presupposes the law of identity? How can Gangadean rationally settle such a dispute? To invoke "first principles" which can't be proven at this point isn't to rationally settle any dispute. It's nothing more than saying to your opponent, "you're just wrong."

To be sure: I'm not saying I don't believe that 'a is a'. I'm not saying I don't know that 'a is a'. I'm not saying I don't think proof is possible. I'm merely pointing out that at the end of the day, the Gangadeanians rest their whole worldview on immediate judgments which aren't proven. That's what I tried to get Gangadean to see years ago to no avail. Since they like to criticize others for believing things without proof they need to figure out a way to harmonize this practice with the fact that they, too, ultimately depend on unproven (indeed, by Burton's admission, unprovable) assumptions. Otherwise they're just being hypocritical. And it seems like their approach is to invoke the claim that what they presuppose is the very laws of thought, which makes thinking possible. But again this is just another claim that might be true or false. Hence, we can ask the Gangadeanians about this further claim itself, whether it is something they know, whether it is provable, or whether it, too, makes proof or thought possible? Of course the claim that the law of identity makes thought possible, isn't a claim that itself makes thought possible--after all, it's a claim about what makes thought possible! So it must be provable then or else taken on faith or intuition or something of the sort--something problematic for the Gangadeanians.