Quick note: I've been spending an awful lot of time talking about knowledge and clarity in relation to the Gangadeanians. Part of the reason is that I think the cluster of related issues is the most fundamental of their worldview. Without it, they will have a hard time justifying why they have chosen to set themselves apart from the church at large. Without it, they will be hard pressed to explain why it is that they have pushed family members, former friends, former members (like myself) out of their fold. But it's also the case that this set of issues is among the more difficult to really understand. So I'm working on coming up with different angles in presenting the material in question. Ultimately, I hope to have a kind of master article which pulls all of this stuff which is covered in many of my articles together. I'm not only trying to be comprehensive, but I'm also figuring out how best to present the material for future projects that I have going on in the background. So bear with me and feel free to leave me feedback! Okay now for the substantive stuff...
This post has two parts. The first is my claim that the Gangadeanians have a strange fetish--a fetish for clarity of basic propositions. Not only that, but they are arguing that every human should share the same fetish. They believe that we all as rational animals, need clarity of basic things. So if you, like me, just don't see what all the fuss is about, then according to the Gangadeanians, you're being intellectually dishonest, self-referentially absurd, or denying reason in some important sense. The second is to try and introduce new terms as a way of disambiguating things. When people use the same words in importantly different ways, it helps to give the ideas behind them different labels and that's just what I think we should do with respect to 'skepticism,' 'knowledge,' 'nihilism,' and 'discussions.'
Just what is this clarity of which they speak? As I've noted before, it's not just what that word means when we (qua non-philosophers) use it. And it's not the feeling of full confidence. That's a psychological state. As best as I can tell, clarity is a property of propositions (e.g., that God exists). For some proposition to be clear is for there to be a sound argument which shows that the opposite is logically or metaphysically impossible. Now what gets tricky is that the Gangadeanians also relate clarity to knowledge and knowledge is not a property of propositions. Particular people know or don't know things. Hence according to the Gangdeanians, a particular S knows that P only if S is able to show (prove) that the opposite of P is not possible (more on this below). That should be enough defining for now--let's get back to the question, must some things be clear to reason?
How does one go about showing that one denies reason insofar as they deny the need for clarity. Note the thesis that somethings must be clear is not the same as the claim that some thing are (actually) clear. To be sure, the two are related on at least one reading of 'must'. If we think that 'must' here means 'necessarily' so that the Gangadeanians are claiming that necessarily, some things are clear, then that entails that some things are actually clear. Just like 'necessarily, water is wet' entails that 'in actuality, water is wet.' (I won't bother you with how philosophers model such things in terms of possible world semantics, but feel free to ask if you like). But the entailment doesn't go in the other direction so the two claims are not equivalent. Generally, it's harder to prove a claim about what is necessarily the case than it is to prove a claim about what is actually the case because the former is logically stronger. So when the Gangadeanians try to prove that some things must be clear, they have their work cut out for them.
I started this post with a mention of a clarity-fetish and I've gone on to talking about proofs in relation to the thesis that necessarily, some things are clear. What's the relationship? Well, the way that the Gangadeanians try to prove that some things must be clear, is to appeal to what they think will logically follow if nothing is clear. As I've noted here and here, they argue that under the assumption that nothing is clear, we wouldn't be able to (coherently) do some stuff. What kind of stuff, exactly? This matters a whole lot. If they had merely shown that without clarity at the basic level, we couldn't coherently eat moon pies, or juggle 3 balls with one hand, or get a degree in art history, then they will not have proven much. That's because it isn't obvious that we all ought to care to achieve those things to begin with.
The Gangdaeanians claim that without clarity at the basic level (including clarity over basic distinctions), meaningful thought and talk are not possible. Sometimes they exploit this principle to stop a conversation by pointing out that their interlocutor can't coherently evaluate an argument because they don't agree that there is clarity at the basic level (because presumably, being able to evaluate an argument requires clarity of basic distinctions). I've already argued that they merely assert all of this (see the two links above). We haven't yet heard a non-circular or non-flat-footed response given for the thesis that without clarity, meaningful thought and talk are not possible. The mere possibility that an argument is a non-argument doesn't preclude one from believing (even to a high degree) that an argument is an argument rather than a non-argument. And if you believe to a high degree that 'a is a', there's nothing preventing you from evaluating arguments, coherently making distinctions, forming beliefs, and even coming to know things.
Tabling those considerations for now, there's another concern here. Suppose we grant the Gangdaeanians their contentious claim that we can't have intelligible/meaningful thought or talk without clarity at the basic level. I contend that even granting them this dubious and unsupported claim, there's still a question about why we should care about intelligible/meaningful thought or talk in the sense that they are using those expressions. That is to say, maybe we can't have whatever kind of intelligible thought or talk they have in mind, but insofar as their notion of meaningful thought and talk is idiosyncratic, maybe we just need not worry ourselves about it. If it turns out to be like more like juggling, majoring in art history, or eating moon pies, then we need not be bothered even if we can't have it. Some people like them and other people don't. But it's not like we can demonstrate that all rational persons must desire or care about those very things.
To appreciate this worry I propose that we disambiguate some key expressions.
Here are some standard terms that philosophers at large frequently use and which are important for our purposes.
Skepticism: the view that knowledge is not possible.
Nihilism: the view that there is no meaning in the world.
Philosophers also engage in meaningful discussions regularly as a way of getting to some true picture of the world or at least to a close approximation. Outside of the Gangadeanians, I know of no philosopher that thinks we need certainty or clarity at the basic level or at any level in order for our discussions to have a point, or to be intelligible, or meaningful.
The thing is the Gangadeanians use these same common terms, but as recent posts and conversations have shown us, they seem to mean different things by these terms than the rest of us. That complicates matters and I suspect they do this on purpose as a way of deceiving their listeners. Think of a trojan horse from Greek mythology. During the Trojan war, legend has it that the people of Troy were presented with what looked to be a harmless wooden horse. Unfortunately, for them only after they accepted it within their walls did they learn that it hid a Trojan army. The Gangadaenians do this with words--hoping their listeners will agree to their arguments by using plain terms, without being upfront about how what they mean by those words is actually different in important ways from common parlance or even regular philosopher-speak. Then bad arguments which hinge on the Gangadeanian definitions are used to fight off objections. As such I think it's important from the start to think of the Gangdeanians as having their own lexicon. To make this explicit I want to introduce new labels which I'll try to start incorporating in my discussions.
Clarity-Skepticism: the view that knowledge which entails clarity, is not possible.
Clarity-Nihilism: the view that the sort of meaning which requires clarity is not possible.
Clarity-Requiring-Discussions: A special kind of dialogue that requires clarity at the basic level in order to be intelligible.
The three are intimately related for the Gangadeanians. Clarity-requiring-discussions seem to have a very particular point--it's dialogue aimed at getting to epistemic certainty. That's why they seem to think that if you don't have clarity at the basic level, there's no point in talking or thinking and that the very possibility of coherent discussion are impossible. And I think the picture of the relationship between the three is something like this: you start with basic claims which you know with absolute certainty, and then you proceed in having these certainty-requiring discussions in order to get more certainty--that way, you avoid clarity-skepticism and clarity-nihilism.
As you see, the two sets of terms appear to get at very different ideas. What follows from the possibility that some things are not clear is not skepticism or nihilism per se, but rather clarity-skepticism and clarity-nihilism. And it's not that no meaningful or intelligible dialogue is possible without clarity at the basic level, but rather only a special kind of discussion--the kind that requires epistemic certainty in the first place i.e., the kind that aims at clarity.
Anderson's recent remarks about "retrieving knowledge" suggests that he would disagree with what I've said. He would say that the "correct" or "true definition" of knowledge just entails certainty and so skepticism (as the view that knowledge is not possible) just is clarity-skepticism as I've labeled it. I think he'd go so far as to say that philosophers (who don't think you need clarity for knowledge) have changed the definition of knowledge in an objectionable way. But the question is, can he prove so much? Can he use rational presuppositionalism and show that his definition is correct and that the rest of us philosophers have got it wrong? I highly doubt it.
Alternatively, we have a value question before us. Should we care at all if clarity-skepticism follows from our assumptions? Or what about clarity-nihilism? Furthermore, should we care at all if we can't have the kinds of discussions that Gangadean et al. insist we can't have if we don't have clarity at the basic level (i.e., certainty-requiring-discussions)? I don't see why. If we can have intelligible discussion, avoid skepticism and nihilism all without "clarity" at the basic level, then we need not worry ourselves with avoiding clarity-skepticism, clarity-nihilism and clarity-requiring-discussions. If the Gangadeanians are insisting that we'd be missing out on something important, they should explain what that is.
Keep in mind that I was kicked out of their church not because I didn't believe that 'a is a'. I was kicked out because I wouldn't agree with the claim that it's impossible for us to be wrong about 'a is a'. In fact, I was even willing to say, we need not bother ourselves with calling into question trivialities like 'a is a'. That is to say, my view was that we should just assume it or presume it to be true and move on with our lives. But that just wasn't enough for Gangadean. This is what I mean by fetishizing clarity.
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