Anderson on Intuitions vs. Immediately Known Truths (edited)

(I made some substantial edits particularly in the latter half of this article, so I'm reposting this).

Anderson has recently written about what he perceives to be the problem of depending on intuitions here. I have mentioned on many occasions that we all depend on intuitions including Gangadean. But Gangadean also speaks out against the use of intuitions and so finds himself in a pickle of inconsistency. The reason that the hypocrisy isn't immediately apparent is because he throws around expressions like "reason is authoritative" and "the laws of thought are self-evident".  This is nothing more than a smokescreen. Anderson's recent post illustrates this nicely. He writes:

Not all that is immediate is an intuition. The important piece is to determine what is the highest authority and can be used to critically examine intuitions. For instance, the law of non-contradiction is not an intuition. Intuitions, and any thought at all, presuppose it. Something might seem to be true but not actually be true. The skeptic says we cannot know because all we have are intuitions. The fideist agrees we cannot know but says we must choose to believe something. 

I appreciate this comment because it does a great job of showing how the rational presuppositionalism that Gangadean develops is about critically examining assumptions only to an arbitrary set point. Here are the main points from Anderson's post.

1) There is immediate knowledge that is not intuition.  

2) The laws of thought are not (known via) intuitions, but are immediately known.  

3) Intuitions presuppose the laws of thought.  

We should treat each of these claims like any other claims. We should ask whether they are true and what reasons we have for accepting them. So is it true that there is immediate knowledge that is not intuition? Are the laws of thought instances of such? Now, as I understand intuitions, they are by definition those things that are known immediately or non-inferentially. So definitionally, 1) and 2) are false by my lights. Anderson seems to have a different and more narrow definition associated with 'intuition' (although he doesn't say what that is) and I've already talked about the dispute over definitions at length here. Suffice it to say, since Anderson views the inability of a worldview to rationally settle any and all disputes as a serious weakness for that worldview, he had better show us how rational presuppositionalism can settle our lexical dispute at this point or else his system is bust and this from his own perspective.

And it seems to me that 1) simply presupposes his unspecified theory or definition of 'intuition' (or else how could he make a distinction?). So in addition to wondering how Anderson knows that his account of 'intuition' is correct, we need also ask, how does Anderson know with certainty that 1) is true? What reasons can he give us to think there's a difference? We shouldn't agree with every proposal for a distinction--some purported distinctions are unmotivated. In fact, I suspect Anderson is going to have to say that he just knows 1) immediately. But again, why think that this is anything other than an intuition? Because he says so? Hardly.

Similarly, how does one know 2)? How does he know that the laws of thought are not known via intuitions? Likewise, with 3). How does he know that all intuitions presuppose the laws of thought? Indeed, there's a more general question in relation to 3): how does anybody know when one proposition presupposes another? Again, no reason is given for such substantive and foundational claims. All Anderson has done is asserted them.

This is what I think is going on. Anderson realizes that he's got to start with claims that aren't proven (Gangadean speaks of "the first act of reason" as that of "grasping" concepts). You can't have deductive arguments for everything because deductive arguments need premises. You've got to start somewhere. But he also criticizes appeals to intuitions as unreliable. So he can't say that we know the laws of thought, our own existence, or anything for that matter, on the basis of intuition. His solution is to invent fancy labels that have the appearance of intellectual rigor. He tries to force a new distinction between "immediately known" claims on the one hand and intuitions on the other. It's his way of having his cake and eating it too. But that only brings us back to one of my questions about 1). Why should we accept such a distinction as reflective of reality?

As far as I can tell it's entirely unmotivated excepting for the fact that it helps the Gangadeanian worldview avoid certain criticisms. Philosophers refer to such illegitimate moves as ad hoccery. In fact, this is not a new move. Gangadean once tried to make the distinction between "rational intuitions" and "non-rational intuitions" with me before. Anderson is essentially trying to do the same but with different words. Both Anderson's and Gangadean's attempts rise and fall together. Just as both are unmotivated distinctions, they also face a problem of criteria. That is, even if we assume that there is a real distinction here, the problem then becomes how it is that Anderson (or anybody for that matter) can determine when a proposition is "immediately known" or the result of a "rational intuition" on the one hand, and "mere-intuition" on the other.  Surely, we don't want to say that everything that anybody ever refers to as "immediately-known" is thereby immediately known. That would make such knowledge too cheap. At this point it's quite easy to give unhelpful and question-begging responses, and that's all I've heard from the Gangadeanian camp. But I would hope that they could provide responses that don't already assume certain things as "rational intuitions" or "immediately known".

I've had a number of conversations with Gangdeanians about many of these points and it's as if they can't even begin appreciating the questions or perhaps they are to some extent unwilling. They just don't ask about the truth of 1), 2) and 3). They don't ask how they know such things. It's as if it just doesn't occur to them. Hence, they take Gangadean or Anderson's assertions on these matters as articles of faith. This is perhaps why I get some version of 1), 2), and 3) simply reiterated to me in response to my questions about how we can know 1), 2) and 3).

In fact, there's another way we can approach the matter as it concerns Anderson's three claims. For instance, suppose we want to evaluate Anderson's claim that knowing something via an intuition presupposes the law of non-contradiction (i.e., his claim 3). The question on hand is how he knows with certainty that intuitions depend on the law of non-contradiction. I suspect he will claim that such things are known 'immediately, but not via intuition' and it's just the sort of thing I want to say is known via intuition. But we can adopt a neutral vocabulary at this point so as not to prejudge the issue. Let's call whatever process or means by which he knows the likes of 3), 'X'.

We can then raise the question in the following manner. How does Anderson know that X is a perfectly reliable means of knowing 3)? He might try to say something like, "well X is that which makes thinking possible and so it must be reliable." But that only introduces another proposition which he presumes to know and so pushes the question back a level. This new proposition, we'll call it '4)', is the following (I'll omit the second conjunct for the sake of simplicity).

4) X makes thinking possible.  

But how does Anderson know 4)? That is, how does he know that X is that which makes thinking possible? Well, either this involves another process call it Y, or else it depends on the very process by which he knows 3) namely, X. If the former, then we can generate a new question about how he knows that Y is a reliable means of knowing and we approach an infinite regress. If the latter, then his account is circular--it presupposes that X is reliable in order to argue that X is reliable. Alternatively, we can just take the reliability of X on faith. To be clear, my point is not to say that these latter two options are bad in fact, many philosophers (myself included) take certain claims as basic--namely, those which are known via intuitions. Instead what I'm saying is that Anderson's distinction does no better. It too must take certain claims on faith. And then the question is how this is really different from trusting one's intuition. 

Anderson and Gangadean have a rather Cartesian approach. They want to find that which can't possibly be questioned as the foundation for all knowledge. In these terms I can drive my point of criticism home. In effect, what I am asking is how one can know when something can't be questioned. That is, what is the process by which you determine that some proposition can't be doubted or questioned? Gangadeanians say if something makes questioning possible, it can't be questioned. But that only pushes the line of inquiry back a step. How does one know that? Or how does one know when something makes questioning possible? At some point, the Gangadeanian will say that somethings are immediately known, and I will say that it's via an intuition. What I'm proposing now is that we call this process 'X'. Doing so not only keeps both sides honest, it starts to reveal how useless the distinction that Anderson introduced actually is. Even if it's motivated (which it isn't), it just doesn't do the work that Anderson or any Gangdaeanian needs for their worldview. This is because however X differs from intuition, it has this in common by Anderson's own admission: it's an immediate process. And what 'immediate' means in the current context is that it isn't mediated via anything like logical inferences or arguments. You either come to accept immediately apprehended claims or you don't. If one does and another doesn't, there's no public or "objective" process to evaluate. You haven't got anything like a deductive argument with logical inferences to consider. So Anderson can call the process by which he knows the most basic of his beliefs whatever he likes. It's of no consequence. It simply doesn't help insulate him against my criticisms of inconsistency because all the purported problems he raises against intuitions apply to his favored "immediately known truths" solely in virtue of them being immediate. We can't independently determine either as reliable (we take their reliability on faith) and we have no "objective measure" by which to settle disputes should they arise.

The upshot is this: Anderson wants to crap on intuitions (qua the starting points of philosophy). He tries to offer an alternative by distinguishing between intuitions and "immediately known truths". But we have no good reason to accept this distinction as reflective of reality or even if we did, it utterly fails to guard the Gangadeanian worldview from charges of inconsistency anyway.

A Maverick on the proof of God's Existence.

On occasion, I visit Maverick Philosopher a blog by a philosopher named Bill Vallicella. Though I've never met him or interacted with him personally, we have a mutual friend and as a result I've known about his blog for a number of years. While I don't agree with everything he says, in particular, as it concerns politics, he always gets me thinking and his philosophical posts are legit.

Anyway, he has a few recent articles about why he thinks God's existence can't be proven (just as God's existence can't be disproven). Here is the latest. We seem to share some of the same convictions in that neither of us find this problematic for the Theist in terms of the rationality of being a Theist (and the same goes for a nontheist in their nontheism). Now when Vallicella speaks of 'demonstrative knowledge' to say that we can't have that kind of knowledge as it pertains to God's existence, he seems to mean what Gangadean means by 'knowledge' and 'clear to reason'. His posts might be a bit less accessible to those that aren't used to reading academic philosophy. But if you're up for the challenge, I think it might be worth a look.

Interestingly, it seems he's engaged with a Gangadeanian on the matter of the proof of God's existence here and in the comments section of this one. As one would expect, it didn't take long for the Gangadeanian to pull the standard, "can we prove that something must be eternal?" card. To which Vallicella responded, "What you are saying is too vague to evaluate."

Finally, I like what he adds towards the end of this one.

"those who hanker after proofs of God...or the opposite are insufficiently mature to live with doxastic insecurity."

('doxastic' = pertaining to beliefs). 

From GR to SR: A Conversation with Anderson

A number of years ago, while I was still a member of Westminster Fellowship, I had written a paper which I sent to Gangadean, Anderson and a few others in the congregation which challenged the idea that we could use reason alone to determine that the bible was special revelation (with anything like certainty). You can find the essence of that paper summed up in this post. It was this paper that essentially got the ball rolling for my eventual dismissal from the congregation.

To this day, I have yet to hear Gangadean's response to it because he refused to engage with me about it until I had come to affirm what he deemed to be "more basic things". Mind you, I soon learned that harboring any amount of sincere doubt with respect to these "basic things" was incompatible with "affirming" them in Gangadean's mind. That was grounds for dismissal from his congregation as well ending our conversations. Though this is speculative, I suspect that this move might be a strategy that Gangadean employs when he encounters questions for which he's got no answers. That is, by finding a way (in my eyes, illegitimately) to peg his interlocutor as a "reason-denier" or as denying the "more basic" he can forever avoid addressing trenchant objections. Of course, he presupposes that any amount of doubt in relation to what he thinks are the "most basic" things, makes conversation useless, which is a presupposition he never bothers to defend. So while he would say that he had sufficient answers to my objections about how we could know with deductive certainty that the bible was special revelation, he managed never to tell me what those were.

Additionally, I discussed my paper with a few others at the church during that time and they for the most part had no clue how to address it. There was one long-time member (who I took to be very knowledgeable of the church's positions) who, in response to my worries, stated that certainty wasn't possible or necessary when it came to determining the bible as special revelation, which was essentially to concede my point. What this person failed to see was that such a concession raised serious issues for the need for clarity as it concerns "more basic" things. I've discussed this before. The basic idea is that according to most formulations of Christianity, belief in God is necessary, but insufficient for avoiding spiritual death (after all the bible claims that even the demons in hell believe that God exists; see James 2:19). The non believer isn't merely held responsible for unbelief in God, but also must accept the work that Christ has done on the cross for the atonement of their sins. Further, Gangadean accepts that maximal consequences (spiritual death) requires maximal clarity. That means that everything that is required for spiritual life should be maximally clear. And it's hard for me to think that on Gangadeanianism, the belief that a person named Jesus lived without sin, was crucified for our sins, before rising again is unnecessary for spiritual life. But you don't get to such claims from reason alone (else, the bible or special revelation would be unnecessary for salvation).

Anderson on the other hand attempted to engage with the issue more directly and seems to have a different view than the previously mentioned Gangadeanian. I mention these differences because I think his people are pretty unsure of what the official view of the church is (i.e., what Gangadean's view is) or at least this was the case at the time. Given how cagey Gangadean was with me regarding the issue, this is what you might expect. At any rate, I've included my conversation with Anderson below in its entirety. As you'll see, Anderson admits that perhaps much of the contents of the bible cannot be deduced from general revelation. His claim though is that this isn't actually a problem for coming to know (with certainty) that the bible, in its entirety, is special revelation (i.e., the word of God). What he seems to be doing is taking the canon as a whole--which is to presuppose that it's a singular book to begin with. But that won't do because he doesn't deny the canonization process. Indeed he believes that the canonizers used at least something like the test of consistency in order to do so. We don't get into this in the featured conversation, but Anderson includes it in his book, The Clarity of God's Existence. He writes,

A book that claims divine origin, or a prophet who claims to have special revelation, and yet communicates a message that contradicts what is known of God from general revelation, cannot actually be special revelation from God (6).  

Note that logical consistency with general revelation provides us only with a necessary condition for a claim or text counting as genuine special revelation. But we don't yet have the sufficient conditions. In other words, consistency with known truths, is a minimal kind of test for veracity. At best, when something is consistent with what we already know, we can only determine that it's possibly true (or not necessarily false), but we don't know yet whether it's actually true. I've noted all of this before in this post. So there must be additional criteria (i.e., the jointly sufficient conditions for something to be special revelation), but Anderson seemed to have trouble articulating what that is in our conversation. I certainly could have done a better job and pressing this point more precisely, but Anderson is a smart guy, and I suspect he knew exactly what was at issue. At the very end, Anderson seems to get defensive and then merely reassert the very thing in question, so I didn't pursue it any further. In my paper that Anderson and I are discussing, I talked about Abraham and how he could ascertain (via reason alone and with certainty) that God was truly speaking to him when he commanded him to leave Ur, and to take Isaac to the mountain to sacrifice him, and then again not sacrifice him and to sacrifice the ram instead. I then suggested that we are in no better epistemic position than he is as it concerns many of the claims in the bible.

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OA: I think a lot of the issue about GR to SR will be in the meaning of words like "consistent with" and "follows from" and "inferred from". Could it have been inferred ahead of time that God would call Abraham to go West and not East? I don't think the requirement is that each such fact or command is to be determined to be consistent and derived somehow from Gen 1-3. The claim is that humans, in sin, could not originate a theistic document at all, nor one that gets it right about God's justice and mercy. So the important things to test, for Abraham, are the recognition of Ur as in sin and idolatry, that the call is from God the Creator, and that redemption comes through sacrifice. The same is true of the comments you made about David. The origin of scripture is divine due to the total depravity of humans in sin, so that the content of scripture cannot be mimicked by the idolaters in Ur. Nor is the content of scripture completely derivable from GR in that Abraham could not derive that he would be called to go West and not East, North, or South.

J: I appreciate your thoughts and for your taking the time to read my paper. It seems to me that determining the bible as SR requires much more than it being a theistic document since it includes all sorts of claims about the world (and beyond) including but not limited to purportedly historical facts. As I address in my paper, we could presuppose the bible as a single unit and so conclude the entire thing to be genuine SR on the basis of it getting some things right, but that would be an unwarranted presupposition. Further, I raise the issue that there is something like the problem of criteria regarding how it is that we would recognize a genuine case of divine justice and mercy being reconciled. Could we know it when we saw it without having previous knowledge of what it must be like? Further, even if the bible has the "right" account of how God's justice is satisfied by his mercy, again we cannot simply affirm all of the bible as SR this is because the bible contains more claims than simply that God the creator exists and that he provides the sacrifice (his incarnated son) to atone for our sins. And even if the rest of the bible is consistent with the two above themes, it need not necessarily follow, (i.e., the details aren't the only possible ones consistent with these themes) which means we fall short of certainty.

Interestingly, you said that what was important for Abraham "is to recognize that the call was from God" but this is a point that I take issue with in the paper. I am arguing that I don't see how Abraham or anyone for that matter could ever recognize that God is speaking or giving SR to them. That the contents are "consistent with" what is known in GR is not a strong enough relation to provide epistemic certainty.

OA: I did see those claims in your paper but I didn't think you'd established anything with them. Theism is enough. That's the point of 'origin'. In the unregenerate state humans could not produce a theistic text. There are no theistic texts besides sr and those influenced by it. Abraham would have the account coming down to him of creation, fall, redemption, the flood, and babel. He could rely on these because of their affirmation of God, and the relation of moral and natural evil, his own call fits into that context. The details are reliable in that the message is from God and could not be otherwise given the fallen condition. So we put together what is known from gr, plus origin, content, and context and there isn't a problem. There is no problem of the criterion because we know what justice and mercy are so we know if each is satisfied.

J: You seem to presuppose or rather assume that the text (the bible) should be taken as a whole in all of its details. If so, then what grounds have you for that? If not, then the fact that it contains theistic details (that may be in line with what is known in GR) would not be enough. You wrote, "The details are reliable in that the message is from God..." But again we can't simply assume all of the bible is God's message in the first place.

Secondly, if we know apart from SR, how justice and mercy can be reconciled in virtue of knowing the nature of each, then what need have we for SR? Aren't we in a position to deduce it ourselves based on our understanding of each?

OA: I'm speaking of Abraham not our situation since you focus on him in your paper. When you shift to us your basically asking about how we can know the original text compared to existent texts. But the point I made still holds in that unregenerate man cannot produce a book like exodus or Isaiah. The details are given and preserved by God, unless you want to say given but not preserved.

We can know what both j and m are, but not that God would offer his only son.

J: I use Abraham as one particular instance of the more general problem of knowing with certainty, what is genuine SR (provided it isn't entailed by GR). Abraham is granted with what is purportedly SR, and so are we. In both cases a test is required to determine whether the message is really SR. I am not sensing the shift that you refer to or at least the weight of it.

Abraham knows some things from GR, but then is given commands that go beyond GR (I take this 'going beyond GR' to be entailed by the very notion of SR). But then how does he know he can trust what he hears or is "commanded" especially given the very particular nature of the purported revelation? You seem to think that a "generally theistic document" is enough, but this doesn't address non theistic parts of the text as a whole. I take this to be an issue for Abraham, any prophet of old, and us so long as the SR goes beyond claims that are clearly known or entailed by GR.

Also I don't really understand your point about what it would take to produce a book like Exodus or Isaiah. In the first place, what does regenerated or unregenerated have to do with it since if SR is "given by God" even the regenerate couldn't produce it. More importantly, again from where I stand those books cannot simply be presupposed to be SR and any part that is not merely Theistic or entailed by what is known from GR cannot be. If so, then I do not feel the weight of your point of the origin of them as a whole.

Per your note about j and m: how do we know that God's providing his only son is a sufficient means for justice satisfying mercy?

OA: There's a number of directions developing so I'm going to focus on one. What goes beyond gr is the redemptive content. He knows this is divinely inspired in that no human could give the theistic content. Maybe we don't agree on total depravity? The author is and must be God in that humans in sin couldn't get gr right in order to then add false additional content. The only examples are people who were influenced by sr like joseph smith.

J: What reasons do you have to believe that persons in total depravity "couldn't get gr right in order to then add false additional content" ? If you think it follows trivially from the very notion of "total depravity" that one cannot come to at least believe what is clear GR, then perhaps we do disagree about total depravity, at least as to what it means.

On that note, my first question is this: why can't a person be totally depraved and still come to at least believe true things, even a great many true things as a matter of epistemic luck? Secondly, it seems to me that one doesn't even need to believe (let a lone know in the strong sense) what is clear GR in order to be the explanation of a theistic document. Both may be remote possibilities (per our common sensibilities), but I see nothing incoherent about them.

OA: This reminds me of intelligent design. There is an irreducible complexity to information such that one does not get it right by luck. To believe many less basic things and in some sense be correct is not the same as understanding basic things. In total depravity a person starts out with the belief that all is eternal, the rest of ones beliefs follow from this. So such a person will not be able to write a redemptive theistic text.

J: Hmmm... Well, such a person need not 'understand' basic things in order to write a redemptive text. Also how can we be sure the analogy works? I don't see anything incoherent with the idea that a person gets lucky forming n true beliefs and then n+1, n+2...

OA: Interestingly, there is a sense in which the human author may not understand fully, but the actual author is God. That God will give redemptive revelation is seen in natural evil as a call back. So it does exist. What you'd need to show is that there are other competitors, and there aren't.

J: I'm not sure I agree that I would need to show actual competitors, since to demonstrably know per your view requires that it isn't even possible that there are other options out there.

OA: Your message reads antagonistic in that I thought we were sharing the burden of proof. I don't think its possible that there are other texts given the condition of man and the purpose of God.

JA: I'm sorry that you feel my message is antagonistic. We are in opposition with one another about some of these important views so perhaps it necessarily seems that way. I don't know how to share the burden of proof, perhaps you can suggest for me how. The thing is, you seem to be arguing for a position which involves categorical claims about the origin, and nature of SR. You said that you think it not "possible that there are other texts given the condition of man and the purpose of God" but I feel like I've presented coherent counter possibilities to your view that keep these presuppositions in mind. Taking for granted that man is totally depraved, and God has a particular nature such that he is both divinely just and merciful and even that he wants to redeem man, it still remains a possibility (despite how remote) that persons happen on true beliefs and pen a theistic document which may be right about some things, but not about others. When you asked me to provide you a viable alternative to the bible, I responded in the way that I did because even if I (or anyone else for that matter) cannot come up with one, it doesn't prove your position. All we may conclude is that I (and anyone else looking for an alternative and coming up short) lack awareness of such a text. Your view has an implicit modal component which consist of denying the very possibility of another theistic text existing. I am simply asking you to show me how you or anyone can know this?

OA: We know this BC humans cannot provide one even on accident, and God will provide one. So what we have isn't from humans and in error and is from God. Humans cannot accidently write one any more than one can form in the sand due to the wind. This is due to the human condition, the nature of meaningful texts, and the purpose of God.

Anderson and the "need" for Clarity.

I have at least one more post pertaining to Gangadean's purported theodicy, but I wanted to say some relevant stuff regarding Anderson's book on clarity since Gangadean's "ironic solution" depends crucially on the idea that God's existence is clear to reason. And some of what I pressed in this post regarding Gangadean's theodicy might have left some questions to my readers, which I hope will be addressed here today. If you haven't done so, I'd encourage you to look at my last post as a frame of reference for some of the more technical stuff I'll get into here. I'll be relying on some talk about possible-worlds because I think the formalism helps make things a bit clearer.

Owen Anderson's book, The Clarity of God's Existence, is meant to be a precursor to Gangadean's work. The former doesn't aim to prove that God exists, it merely purports to show us why we need clarity in some sense or why it must/should be clear. Gangadean and I disagree vehemently on this very issue and I've yet to hear a cogent, non-question begging response from that camp.

Anderson explicitly states that for humans to be held responsible for unbelief in God, it must be clear that God exists. That is to say, inexcusability implies clarity i.e., the clarity of God's existence is a necessary condition for unbelief to be inexcusable. However, curiously he says nothing explicitly about whether he thinks clarity is also a sufficient condition for inexcusability. Gangadean certainly thinks that clarity is both necessary and sufficient for the inexcusability of unbelief. I'm not trying to be pedantic. What's at issue is this: if clarity is necessary but not sufficient for holding nonbelievers guilty, then that would mean that there are other conditions, in addition to clarity, needing to be satisfied for persons to be culpable for unbelief. In other words, even assuming it was clear that God exists, unbelief in God could still be excusable. So while Anderson explicitly states a more modest thesis (i.e., he's just trying to establish the necessity condition), Gangadean ultimately needs to show that the following biconditional to be true: unbelief in God is inexcusable if and only if, it is clear. In fact, Anderson waffles a lot between the two throughout his book. I think he loses sight of the fact that he's set out initially to show the necessity condition, and so for much of the book goes into trying to establish the sufficiency claim (see pg. 2 of his book for an explicit statement of his thesis). Indeed, he criticizes alternative views for failing to provide sufficient conditions and to my mind it doesn't make any sense to offer an alternative that fails to do the same! I'm flagging this now because my criticisms centrally attack the sufficiency claim (i.e., that clarity is sufficient for inexcusability)--but I assure you they aren't misplaced.

As Anderson sees it, according to "historic Christianity (i.e., what he deems as the right sect of Christianity)" unbelief in God leads to maximal consequences. That is to say, all humans are held responsible or guilty for failing to believe in God. And he wants to make sense of what this entails about how knowable God's existence is. To this, Anderson claims that God's existence must be clear to reason i.e., knowable to all persons at all times, in some sense.  But what does it mean for God's existence or anything for that matter to be clear or knowable? He contends that insofar as the proposition, "God exists" is clear in the pertinent sense, it must be demonstrated, that the opposite is not possible (165). Now I take it that for Anderson, a proposition can be clear in the relevant sense without actually having been demonstrated. So it's probably more precise to say that clarity implies demonstrability. We can imagine worlds pretty different from ours, where Gangadean and his people are very different so that no "proof" of God's existence is ever put forward or considered (I'm assuming for the sake of discussion that such a proof "exists" whatever that means). In such worlds, provided they are still inhabited by rational persons (or potential believers), I take it that Anderson will want to say that God's existence is still clear to reason. This would be so even if nobody in such a world actually believed that God exists on the basis of such a proof. This is the only way I can make sense of the principle of clarity as it concerns God's existence applying to all persons and at all times. The clarity is in some sense objective and the associated norm applies to every person--so that for all humans, unbelief is always to be inexcusable. Thus one can be held responsible for failing to believe despite never having heard or considered such a proof and indeed even if no one in the world has ever considered or heard such a proof. What matters is that God's existence is merely such that it can be known or can be proved in some suitable sense.

So when we say that a person has no excuse for unbelief, this is meant to cover even the nonbeliever that has never encountered such a proof of God's existence. Gangadean's favorite imagined example of this is the child in Ubangi. He could have known that God exists because he could have reasoned to a demonstration (even if he actually doesn't). But what exactly does it mean that he could have reasoned to such a proof? We're getting into modals again. Well, on standard ways of thinking about the matter, to assert, 'The child can/could know', one expresses something with the following truth conditions: had the world been different in certain ways, that very child would have reasoned to a proof (though as the world actually is, he doesn't). Or in possible-worlds-speak, there's at least one possible world where that child knows that God exists. That's at least the standard picture of the truth conditions of counterfactuals.

[Technical note, (meaning ignore this unless you're strangely curious about possible-worlds-semantics): in this case, it's may initially seem a bit tricky because the very scenario of the child in Ubangi is hypothetical rather than actual. Hence we're dealing with a counterfactual relative to another counterfactual i.e., we're asking what is possibly-possible. But rest assured, the semantics for counterfactuals are designed to deal with such things. To model it, we begin with the actual world, and then imagine altering it so that it includes our ignorant child in Ubangi; this gives us a possible world, call it w1. Next, we further change w1 some more (so that the child in Ubangi does actually come up with a proof of God's existence, to make the possibly-possible world, which we'll call w2. All of this gives us the truth conditions for the statement 'the possibly existent child in Ubangi could show that God exists'. If there is at least one such coherently constructed world like w2, then the statement is true and if not it's false].

My point is that when we assess what it means that God's existence is clear to reason or knowable, we don't mean anything like 'everybody believes that God exists.' Nor do we mean that everybody actually uses reason (to the fullest) and thus knows that God exists. We mean something like, if everyone were to use reason to the fullest (which is counterfactual), then everyone would believe that God exists on the basis of proof. This is a counterfactual conditional and its truth conditions can be represented using possible-worlds. To say something like, "if all people were to use reason to the fullest, then all would know that God exists" is to assert something with the following truth conditions: "in all the worlds within a particular domain, where people use reason to the fullest, everyone knows that God exists". Notice that what we're in effect doing is considering worlds where the antecedent of our original statement is true. But that doesn't restrict our domain very much because there are an infinite number of such worlds. As I noted in my primer on modals, a single change to any one of the countless facts that describe the actual world yields a unique possible world. Some of these will be very different from the actual world ("further away") and some of these will be relatively more similar (or "closer"). So how do we determine our domain (which worlds to keep in and which ones to ignore) when we assess the truth of the counterfactual? That's a question to keep in mind.

In his book the issue comes up about free will and compatibilism and this is where a lot of trouble enters in for Anderson. Though he doesn't speak about his commitment to the doctrine of total depravity in so many words, he does speak about his compatibilist notion of freedom, moral responsibility and the fall of man. In a few lines he says that even if people are born into sin so that it's impossible (in some sense) for them to seek to know what is clear, this doesn't threaten the connection between clarity and inexcusability because there's another sense in which it is possible for them to seek (more on that below). What he's admitting is that according to his worldview, a person will only know what is clear if they seek to know what is clear. But the reason humans don't seek to know what is clear is not ultimately due to their own choices, it's due to the fact that God has created them a certain way (else, they would be self-caused beings). It would appear then that there some tension between inexcusability and what the nonbeliver could do given determinism.

So why isn't this an excuse for unbelief? Anderson has two responses (note we're getting into the sufficiency claim as I flagged earlier).

First, he asserts that compatibilism about determinism and culpability is true. He notes that what causes a fallen person to not seek is not something "outside" of them, but something intrinsic to them or what he calls their "true character" (42). I'm not sure what he hopes to have achieved here. Does he think he's shown that it is clear to reason that compatibilism is true? I think there is a lot of room to press him for more on this point alone, but I'll save that for another post. More significantly, why should we think that the very fact that unbelief is the result of a persons "true character" entails that a person can be (justly) held responsible for unbelief? He doesn't justify that crucial point.

My own reaction to Anderson's approach here is to say that I can't imagine a better or stronger excuse that the non-believer might give than this: "it was impossible for me to believe in God, because God created me in such a way where I didn't have the true character to seek to know. And without seeking to know what is clear, it's metaphysically impossible for me to know what is clear." But that's basically what Anderson thinks would not be an excuse and so consonant with his theory that unbelief is inexcusable due to clarity. I think this just makes epistemic clarity utterly irrelevant to the culpability of unbelief.

Now the idea that basic things are clear was introduced so as to make sense of the way that unbelievers of all stripes and times could be (justly) held morally responsible for their lack of belief in God (and other basic things). Anderson's "answer" is that there is some sense in which such persons could have known. Tacit in all of this is also the ought-implies-can principle: a person ought to believe that God exists only if they can do so. In possible-worlds talk, what it means that an unbeliever can believe or know (even if they don't actually believe) is to say that there is at least one possible world where they do believe or know. But as I've already pointed out, there's always this question about which possibilities we should consider when evaluating a statement about what could be or is possibly the case. In other words, how restrictive or laxed should our domain be? The truth value of 'S could have known basic things even if he doesn't' will change depending on which possibilities we consider and which ones we don't or in other words, which possible worlds we "look at" when we consider the claim. The point I'm driving is the semantics of 'could' or 'can' or 'possibly' is not univocal. There are different kinds of possibility. And the problem is that we haven't got a principled a priori means of choosing which possible worlds (which sense of 'can' or 'could' or 'possibility) to include and which ones to ignore.

So take Bob, who is an atheist in our world and doesn't believe that God exists. The statement we want to evaluate for truth is the following. 'Bob can know that God exists.' To determine its truth we might consider every single possible world, at least in theory. Such a list will include countless worlds or variations of our reality. At first glance it seems reasonable to think that at least one of these worlds are different enough from our world so that Bob (or his counterpart) is not an atheist in such a world. This is one way to understand what is being expressed with 'Bob can know that God exists' namely, that there is at least one possible world among the set of all possible worlds, where Bob knows that God exists. But that won't help us with Anderson's claims about clarity. After all, if we consider every last possible world, we're going to get worlds that are radically different than ours. We're going to get worlds with much more empirical evidence of God's existence, or perhaps when miracles like God writing on the wall is much more common, and where Gangadeanian philosophy reigns the day, or whatever. But so what if in one of these radically different worlds, Bob (or his counterpart) believes that God exists? It just wouldn't matter to the claim about clarity (in our world), that Bob believes or knows basic things in those radically different (or "distant") worlds. So right off the bat we're going to need to restrict our domain to consider only those worlds with the exact same amount of evidence, arguments, and the like as our world rather than all possible worlds. Indeed the only changes to our reality we should consider are those concerning Bob, so we need to restrict our domain even further. Remember the responsibility for unbelief is supposed to reside on the unbeliever's shoulders, so it wouldn't matter a lick for our purposes, if Bob believes or knows basic things in worlds that are very different from ours in terms of facts external to Bob.

Furthermore, as we noted earlier, for Gangadean and Anderson, a necessary condition for S knowing what is clear, is that S seeks to know what is clear. But then whether or not a person seeks to know or not, is ultimately beyond their control. Sure it's part of their "true character" but their true-character is designed by God. So if we imagine all the possible worlds where God has designed Bob's true character to not seek (to be fallen and unregenerate as in the actual world), then not one of these worlds is going to be a world where Bob knows what's clear. That's just what it means that seeking to know is (metaphysically?) necessary for knowing what is clear. There is no possible world where a person knows what is clear without seeking.

Things get worse when you consider whether God's designing of persons like Bob is itself contingent or necessary. Is there any contingency in God or his will? If God designs Bob with the "true character" of not seeking, and God does so out of a necessarily immutable will, then there is no other way Bob could have been. That means in whatever possible world we can imagine wherein Bob exists he's going to exist with the exact same "true-character" that he's got in the actual world. Since according to Anderson, seeking is necessary for knowing basic things, in every single possible world that Bob exists, he doesn't know that God exists. On the current analysis, our statement of interest, 'Bob can know what is clear', is simply false in which case Bob has a very good excuse for unbelief---namely, that he can't know.

So when we consider a statement like, "Bob can know what is clear" we consider possible worlds, we've got to make some decisions about which set of possible worlds we should care about in determining the truth-value of our original statement (i.e., what sense of 'can' is of interest). We can consider all of those possible worlds which are identical to ours with respect to Bob's desires in the actual world. That's one way of restricting our domain in evaluating the truth of the statement. In all of those worlds, Bob doesn't know what's clear because according to Gangadean, seeking is necessary to know what is clear. So then the statement, 'Bob can know what is clear' is false relative to this semantics of 'can'.

Anderson is aware that there are different senses of 'can' and he must be aware of the fact that on certain readings of 'can' the nonbeliever simply can't know that God exists which threatens the sufficiency of clarity for inexcusability. Hence on pg. 39. Anderson introduces what he calls different "levels" of freedom e.g., the practical level, the political level, psychological level, worldview level, presuppositional level, and rational level. But his discussion to me is not that helpful because he doesn't really tell us what it means for a person to be psychologically able or free to perform some action while unable to in a practical sense. We can model these more precisely though in terms of possible-worlds. Each "level" corresponds to a different set of worlds so that for instance when we ask whether Bob is psychologically able to perform some action A, we are asking only about worlds where Bob's psychology (and everything else that it entails) is the same as it is in the actual world, while varying other relevant details. If at least one of these worlds is a world where Bob performs A, then it's true that Bob is psychologically-able to perform A (in the actual world) even if he doesn't. Importantly, Anderson would like to say that these "levels" are to be arranged in some hierarchy so that certain freedoms (like what one is psychologically free to do) amounts to a less significant freedom than the "presuppositional level." Unfortunately, he merely asserts this and gives us nothing resembling justification for the claim. At this point we should treat it as nothing but mere speculation. And the same can be said about a number of other claims, not the least of which is that humans have voluntary control over whether or not they use reason (I have no idea how he knows a thing like that because again he doesn't give us any justification for the claim), but I digress. Ultimately, what Anderson is trying to accomplish is that there is a substantial sense in which the unregenerate nonbeliever like Bob can (or is free to) know what is clear despite the fact that God has created him in such a way that it's impossible for him to (in another sense). Anderson thus exploits the ambiguity of 'can' though he refers to it as 'freedom'.

So according to Anderson, Bob, can know what is clear in the following sense: If Bob seeks, then he can know what is clear.' To evaluate the truth of such a claim we restrict the worlds we're interested in to include only and all those worlds where the antecedent is true. That is, we narrow our conceptual search of imagined variants of our world to not all possible worlds, but just those worlds where Bob seeks. Again we're going to ignore worlds with radically different evidence, or evidential standards than ours, and worlds that involve changes extrinsic to Bob otherwise it won't make much sense for our purposes. Now if in at least one of those worlds, Bob does know what is clear to reason, then the statement, 'If Bob seeks, then he knows what is clear' is true. This is what Anderson thinks is the relevant understanding of 'can' in the original statement, 'Bob can know what is clear'.

[In fact, he and Gangdean would go further because they think that seeking is also sufficient for knowing what is clear, so it turns out that every one of the worlds where the antecedent is true, are worlds where Bob knows what's clear. So the counterfactual should really be stated as, "If Bob seeks, then he must know'.]

So we've just seen two ways of understanding the modal 'can' in 'Bob can know what is clear' which actually yields two different truth values. Since 'Bob' is just a stand in for any arbitrary nonbeliever, the point generalizes to claims like, 'any and all nonbelievers can know that God exists'. When we consider only those possible worlds where Bob is created by God in the same exact way as he is in the actual world, the statement is false because in all of those worlds, Bob fails to know. On the other hand, if we think of the statement in the way that Anderson would like us to, so that there's a hidden antecedent condition, then our original statement turns out true. There are of course far more than the two senses of 'can' or 'able' that we've just considered, but this suffices to make my point that the notion is ambiguous in significant ways. So let me state two problems with Anderson's approach which I think is essentially to suggest an entirely unmotivated reading of 'Bob can know what is clear, even if he doesn't'.

1) If we think that God creates the world out of the necessity of his being and that his being (including his will) couldn't have been different, we think that such worlds are not even possible worlds. They are logically impossible because they would require God to design different people than he actually has created, which depends on God being different in some way. So on this line, the worlds that Anderson wants us to consider in evaluating the truth of his claim that 'if the unbeliever seeks to know, they can know' aren't possible and so are utterly irrelevant rendering the statement simply false. [Actually as a matter of the logic of material implications, one might point out that statement turns out vacuously true because the antecedent is necessarily false and any material conditional with a false antecedent is true. But I can't see how vacuous truths would help in the current context.]

2) Supposing that he can overcome 1) another problem persists. We have no principled reason to think that all that matters to the culpability of unbelief (inexcusability) is the sense of 'can' that Anderson has in mind. As it's presented in his book, it's entirely arbitrary. Anderson wants to say that what it means that a nonbeliever can know that God exists is just that were they created by God to have a fundamentally different character, then they would seek and thus know that God exists. But that's is not only incredibly unnatural, one wonders why we should care what happens in possible worlds where a non believer like Bob is so fundamentally different. Why should that bear on Bob's culpability in the actual world? It certainly serves to patch a serious problem in Anderson's book, but it's not a reason to think it's true or the correct way to think of things.

I said that Anderson has got two responses in his book as it concerns total depravity/the fall + determinism in relation to clarity and inexcusability. One was to simply affirm compatibilism about responsibility and to privilege a strange sense in which even a non-believer can know what is clear. Here's his second response:

To use the Fall, or predestination, as an excuse becomes absurd: "I want to believe in God but cannot because my fallen nature keeps me from doing so," or "I want to believe in God but I cannot because God predestined me to unbelief." Both assume the truth of what they claim not to be able to believe in: "I believe that unbelief is a sin, and it is therefore false that God does not exist, and I believe that it is true that God does not exist," or "I believe that God exists and he is keeping me from believing that God exists" (43). 

He finds it logically inconsistent to imagine a non believer using the fact that they were created without the necessary (and sufficient) conditions for knowing what is clear, as an excuse for not believing or knowing what is clear. They would have to believe or know what is clear in order to do so, but by stipulation they don't so we've got a contradiction. Sometimes Gangdeans puts it in these terms, "you're never gonna find a nonbeliever saying to God that if only I was made differently I would believe in you." But this is no good. In fact, it boggles my mind that Gangdeanians accept this as a sufficient answer.

Importantly, the issue at hand is how we should understand what it means for someone to "have an excuse" and hence what it means that some state or action is "inexcusable for an agent". But we must not lose sight of the context within which we are addressing these. To me, Anderson takes "giving an excuse" in a very narrow and unmotivated way. For him, for Bob to have an excuse  = Bob must, by his own lights, be able to coherently articulate an excuse. That works fine to patch up a problem in his book, but it simply misses the larger point. Remember, the inexcusability of unbelief in relation to clarity was proposed by Anderson to make the maximal consequences of unbelief and the need for redemption (per Christianity) accord well with God's divine attributes like his goodness or justice. This is why I suspect that he's got the intuition that maximal consequences imply maximal clarity. And I say this because otherwise, there's simply no project for Gangadean and his camp to start. If they thought that it was entirely consistent with God's attributes for God to hold people responsible for unbelief, even if His existence isn't epistemically clear, then there would be no need for anything the like the clarity thesis to begin with. There just wouldn't be a problem to solve or a tension to resolve.

So what we really want to know when we ask, "is unbelief excusable?" is not whether a non believer can, herself, from her own perspective, intelligibly articulate an excuse to God for unbelief. Again there's just no reason to accept such a restricted reading of "having an excuse" and this misses the forest for the trees. Instead what we want to know is whether it is ultimately fair or just of God to hold persons morally responsible or guilty for unbelief when their unbelief is ultimately a result of His design or up to Him. We should, as third parties, evaluate whether God's divine attributes, His justice and perfect goodness are ultimately compatible with His creation of non-believers who He has "fearfully and wonderfully made" to never seek, and live in spiritual death forevermore. Note that appealing to our current practices of holding people responsible for actions won't do. Assuming that our world is a deterministic one like Gangdean and Anderson do, they might be tempted to point out that we in fact hold people morally responsible for actions even though we recognize that ultimately people act out of their "true characters" which in turn is beyond their doing (again because non of us are self-determined creatures). Now stated in this way we've got a descriptive fact about how we as humans, living in a societies act. But it could be that we're thinking about moral responsibility all wrong, if determinism is true (i.e., the normative question remains open). Furthermore, none of us had anything to do with determining the "true characters" of one another. But God has played this role as the author of life according to Anderson. So perhaps people have excuses before God, for what they do because God is the ultimate determiner, it is His will which is realized by even the nonbeliever, which is crucially why I think the nonbeliever has got about as strong an excuse for unbelief as is possible. But the same cannot be said as it concerns two or more determined beings who aren't responsible for determining the "truth characters" of one another.

Secondly, Anderson and Gangadean have this view that the unregenerated nonbeliever in "this life", will never recognize basic things such as God's existence, not during the judgment nor in the "afterlife". I take it that perhaps this has something to do with their view that spiritual death is not something that is future and imposed, but that it is current and inherent in not seeking or using reason to the fullest. However, I have no idea how the two are related--there doesn't seem any sort of necessary connection. Importantly, it's only when we buy into such a picture that it seems absurd for a nonbeliever (who always remains a nonbeliever) to say anything to God whatsoever. Again I think this is ultimately a red herring, but still for good measure here's my response. Notice we can put pressure on the very presupposition which generates the contradiction. Anderson and Gangadean must demonstrate that the unregenerated nonbeliver must always and forever be a nonbeliever, even at the judgment or the afterlife or whatever. But this is a contentious claim. I don't know how they would come to prove a thing like that (recall, that according to the bible the demons in hell know that God exists and shudder at his name). If they appeal to scripture, then they've got to prove their interpretation of it against more standard interpretations (and of course, I don't think anything like this can be proven even in principle). I think that scripture isn't going to give us anything like a deductive proof for such details. Now many Christians think that all humans, both believing and non-believing in this life will one day come before the judgment seat of God and all will recognize that He is. And on such a picture there simply is no contradiction or absurdity in thinking that a person who lived through and through as a non-believer now sees that God is. Thus there's nothing logically incoherent about such a person making an excuse for their life as a non-believer in the past (or pre-judgment). Here, the fact that God has determined them to not seek, and then chosen not to give them Grace and regenerate them so that it's impossible for them to seek, seems like a pretty good excuse to me. My point is, Anderson seems to have slipped in his own disputable presupposition in order to generate the contradiction of the nonbeliever giving an excuse. But he hasn't given us anything like a proof to accept it and he ought to.

Finally, I suspect Anderson and company will want to challenge possible-worlds semantics or at least my articulation of it. But then they owe us specifics. Where does my fairly minimal reliance on such semantics go wrong? And if they want to throw out the entire system, then they had better offer a replacement. At least insofar as we think statements, even counterfactuals and expressions with modals, have truth-conditions, we want a coherent theory.

The notion that basic things must be clear is pervasive in Gangadeanian philosophy. It is one of the core disagreements between Gangadean and me. I've challenged the notion that clarity is necessary since he's never given any demonstrative (non question begging) reason to believe his claim that thought, talk, knowledge, meaning, etc are impossible without clarity.  I've also challenged the idea that such clarity is possible or actual.  In this post I hope to have shown that clarity in the sense that Gangadean (and Anderson) presents is not even sufficient for the inexcusability of unbelief. It can be clear and yet the unbeliever can have a legitimate excuse (even if he himself isn't in a position to articulate it) for failing to believe.

Another reason Gangadean should be a skeptic

We generally believes things for reasons. Sometimes we believe things for good or appropriate reasons. In such circumstances it is thought by philosophers that we form beliefs on the basis of justifying reasons. As a first pass, justifying reasons are the sorts of reasons that make a belief rational to have. What makes them justifying reasons? Or what makes a belief rational to have? Well it's hard to say with very much precision, but many philosophers think it has to do with the fact that such reasons make the belief in question more likely to be true. It's not obvious though what exactly it means for a reason to make a belief more likely to be true. The nature of the relationship between reasons and beliefs is anything but precise. I'll ignore such difficulties although the Gangadeanian who is after certainty of basic things, shouldn't.  Even if a reason is justifying only if it guarantees the truth of a belief, it isn't entirely clear what it means for a reason or bit of evidence to guarantee the truth of something. At any rate, if you believe that it is snowing outside because you look outside and see that it is snowing, then (part) of your reasons for believing it is snowing outside is that you see that it is so. In such a case, it's generally thought that you have a justifying reason for your belief i.e., you are justified in having your belief.

Other times we believe things for poor reasons or the wrong kind of reasons or perhaps even for no reason at all.  In such situations a person believes things for reasons that are not justifying. We are prey to a long list of cognitive biases. We are strapped for time and mental resources and form beliefs through heuristics, as a result of habit, and any number of automatic responses that aren't within our "direct" control. Further, our cognitive processes are the product of our upbringing, the social groups we belong to, the ideas we encounter regularly, and the like. To add insult to injury, sometimes we take something to be evidence or a good reason for believing something, but we are mistaken. Just because a reason appears to you to be a good reason to believe a proposition, doesn't ensure that this is so.

When we form beliefs on the basis of bad reasons, we do so on the basis of reasons that are not justifying reasons. They don't result in a justified belief. If I believe that God exists solely on the basis of the fact that I was raised to believe it, according to philosophical orthodoxy, I'm not justified in believing it. That is to say, my belief is not justified. It's hard to say precisely why it's epistemically bad for me to form beliefs on the basis of cognitive biases, or on the basis of what seems most familiar to me, but roughly, in such situations my reasons for believing P doesn't seem to make P more likely to be true. Of course, my belief might turn out true, but it wouldn't be knowledge, because believing something just because it's familiar or because you've been told it, is at least sometimes irrational. Again figuring out just why it is irrational and unjustified is no simple task. Suppose I go to a palm reader who tells me that I will get a flat tire today. I believe that I will get a flat tire today as a result. Suppose further that it turns out that I get a flat tire. My belief is thus true. But it doesn't seem rational--it doesn't seem like I should believe that I will get a flat tire on the basis of the palm reader's saying so. But my belief is true which means forming a belief on the basis of what the palm reader said is reliable on this given occasion. It got to me a true belief!

Having beliefs formed on the basis of good reasons, that is, having justified beliefs has primarily been framed in terms of the kinds of reasons which produce knowledge or at least put one in a position to know. We want knowledge and we can't have knowledge without justified beliefs. I'm not saying that that's the only reason philosophers care to theorize about epistemic justification, for there might be value in figuring out what it takes to have a reasonable/justified belief in and of itself, but the apparent connection to knowledge is certainly one of the main motivations behind the historical pursuits of the nature of epistemic justification. We want to know what knowledge is, and we think it has something to do with justification, that's a reason to think and talk about the nature of epistemic justification.

All of what I've said so far seems compatible with Gangadean's views. He cares to talk about knowledge and he thinks it has much to do with the nature of justification. And he thinks people sometimes have justified beliefs and sometimes don't---and that this amounts to believing things for the right vs. the wrong kinds of reasons. It's just that when it comes to whether a person knows something or not, he adds a more stringent criteria-- to have a justifying reason in believing P is to believe P for reasons that guarantee the truth of P. This is why for Gangadean I can't know that it's snowing outside, because my reasons for believing that it is snowing outside are not perfect--it's at least possible that my perceptual faculties are failing me.

Finally, accepting or believing or even knowing certain reasons is not the same as believing another proposition P  for those very reasons. I can believe that it is snowing outside and I can believe that it is no more than 32 degrees (at least up in the clouds--I'll drop this qualification, but nothing significant hinges on it). The former is evidence of the latter. That is to say, if I were to believe that it was no more than 32 degrees outside on the basis of my belief that it is snowing outside, then I would have a justifying reason (except of course for the Gangadeanian) for believing that it was no more than 32 degrees outside. But suppose I don't make the connection because I'm simply ignorant about the relationship between freezing temperatures and snow (indeed there are such persons!). Instead, suppose that I come to believe that it is no more than 32 degrees outside for the following reason. I looked online, but due to being distracted and tired, I accidentally typed in the wrong zip code into the weather channel website. As a result, I pulled up the weather report for a place very far from my current location. But I'm totally unaware of this because I'm not paying very close attention. But suppose it just so happens that it is 28 degrees in this other town according to the weather report. Suppose then that my reason for believing it is no more than 32 degrees outside at my location is that I looked at the wrong weather forecast (though again, I'm unaware that it's the wrong forecast). Now, I also believe it's snowing outside based on what I plainly see, but I haven't made the connection that snow and below freezing temperatures are intimately associated. To be sure, my belief about the temperature outside is not the result of my believing that it is snowing outside, even though I believe both propositions. In this case, I have a belief that could serve as a justifying reason for my belief concerning the current temperature at my location. But I don't believe the latter for that reason. Instead I believe it for a bad reason i.e., the wrong weather report. So having a justifying reason for believing P is not the same as believing P for that justifying reason. I can believe P, believe a reason that could be a justifying reason for P, and yet not believe P for that justifying reason. The thing to say then is that I believe P, have a justifying reason for believing P, but my belief in P is not justified.

Now here's an interesting question. How does one know that one believes something for the right kinds of reasons? For instance, if you take a certain belief I have, I can probably give you justifying reasons for it. That is to say, I can list off a number of reasons why I think the belief is rational to have. But that is not necessarily the same as giving you the reasons for which I have the belief. As I've mentioned, these come apart. So it's one thing to know a set of reasons which make a belief justified/rational/reasonable and it's quite another to have the belief in question in virtue of or on the basis of those reasons.

The more general question is this: how do I ever know the very reasons which lead me to believe something? Or how do I know the very reasons, on the basis of which, I come to believe some proposition? And the answer seems to be that I know such things at some level, immediately.  I introspect about why I believe something, and I find myself thinking about certain reasons which give me the feel that the belief in question is true. Of course, the fact that in thinking about why I believe that P, some reasons come to mind isn't proof that I believe P for those very reasons. But I take it that additionally there is a kind of feel or sense of being convinced or compelled to believe P on the basis of those reasons. Thus I infer that I believe P for those same reasons. Moreover, what is absent is anything like a deductive argument which has as its conclusion, "I believe P on the basis of reason R".  The inference I might make from the "feel" just mentioned and the association of the reasons that come to mind when I ask myself why I believe something is not one of entailment.  Maybe I could look at my behaviors--i.e., what I am inclined to cite as my reasons for believing something when asked--but this too depends on my introspection and what I am immediately aware as a result. Moreover, behaviors are at best an inductive and fallible means of getting at what is going on in the "head".

The moral: insofar as I can know why I believe something, (i.e, the reasons in virtue of which I believe something), I do so via introspection, induction, and ultimately intuition. I think about why I believe that this summer will be a warmer one, and what comes to mind are other beliefs that seem to bear a certain evidential relationship to the former and which have the immediate feel of making the former compelling. For instance, I think about the article I just read about the weather patterns which indicate a warmer than usual summer in my town and these considerations come with a sort of tug towards believing that it will be warmer this summer. The point is, it's possible that I am wrong when I try and determine what my reasons are for believing something--indeed it's not only possible, it's actual.

The problem, for Gangadean, begins to take form when we consider that none of the above provides an infalllible means by which we can know (with certainty) why we believe something. It's at least possible that I believe something for one set of reasons, but my introspection, induction and the like are misleading me into thinking that I believe them for another. The skeptic that Gangadean demands that we always answer will press this point. Based on my conversations with Gangadean and Anderson I suspect they will "answer" the skeptic by contending that we can know (with certainty) everything that is going on in our minds. That is, whenever we deliberate about what is going on in our "heads", Gangadean has the view that we can never be wrong. That is to say, he believes that we have infallible and comprehensive access to what goes on in our minds. Actually I'm not entirely sure about the comprehensive part, but I'm adding it because if we didn't also have exhaustive knowledge concerning our mental lives, then that could generate another skeptical problem for the Gangadean camp. If there is stuff happening in our minds which we can't be aware of, then it's possible that I merely think that I believe that P for one set of reasons, and there are another set of reasons which override those reasons and take their place, but of which I'm entirely unaware. That would be incompatible with the thesis that I can know, with certainty, such things like, "I believe P for reasons R" and so ultimately incompatible with the thesis that I have infallible access to the stuff going on in my mind. Anyway, even if he denies that we have comprehensive knowledge of our mental states, there's just no way for him to prove that we have even infallible access to our mental states (he'll likely try a transcendental argument which I'll get to in a second).

Now remember, that Gangadean thinks knowledge of P requires certainty regarding P. Further he thinks that being certain of P is to be able to show that the opposite of P is not possible. This is why deduction plays such a central role in his theories. It's the only way to show that the opposite of some proposition is logically impossible. But again, what deductive argument can Gangadean offer which concludes with, "I believe P for reasons R" (note this is a schema which means you can substitute in any proposition for 'P' and and reason in for 'R')?

So what's the upshot here? If all I have said is right, then according to Gangadean's committments (including his definition of knowledge), we can't ever know the reasons why we believe something. And if we can't know that, then we can't know whether or not we are justified in believing something. I might be able to recite certain reasons for why belief in God is rational, but I can't rule out the possibility that I might not believe that God exists for those reasons. That means I can't know whether or not I'm justified in believing that God exists, which means I can't know that I know that God exists. But this is a problem for the internalist like Gangadean who thinks he's got a better theory of knowledge than an externalist because he thinks we ought to be able to know that we know something. This is one of the main appeals to internalist theories of knowledge/justification. But it turns out there's no way for Gangadean to know that he knows that God exists because he can't know what his reasons are for believing that God exist---at least he can't be sure. This means it's possible from Gangadean's own point of view, that he doesn't know that God exists and any number of other "basic things."

Now if Gangadean wants to contend that we can just know (with certainty) everything that goes on in the mind, so that we can, by introspection, know the very reasons why we believe something, then he needs to argue for this. I suspect he will try to use a transcendental argument here. But it will fail. It will fail for the very reasons that all of his other transcendental arguments fail.

Each of Gangadean's transcendental arguments have the same flaws. He essentially begs the question against his interlocutors. He smuggles in some dubious unproven principle about how we need clarity at the basic level to argue, think, speak, and have meaning. And then such a principle is used to argue that we must have clarity at the basic level. But he never gives anybody a single reason to think that we need certainty/clarity of basic things in order for there to be meaning, or for the possibility of intelligible thought, talk and discourse. That is, he's out of arguments for proving the smuggled in principles. He just says it is so and his people just accept it. So I suspect that a transcendental argument concerning knowledge of the reasons why we believe things would go the same way. And it would faulter the same way. He will posit a principle like, "if we can't know the very reasons why we believe things, then arguing to convince people by giving them reasons to believe things is pointless." Perhaps he will suggest that arguing in the manner that I have instanced presupposes that my audience will consider the reasons I present and then be able to change their views based on those reasons. But if they can't even know the reasons why they believe things, then they could not know that they have been convinced by my reasons to adopt a different position. So what's the point of arguing?

But as I've said, the same issues arise. I highlight two.

1) Presupposing P for some undertaking like arguing, doesn't prove that Not-P is impossible and so doesn't prove P is true. So even if Gangadean is right that the arguer presupposes that a person can know with certainty, why they believe things, it doesn't follow that it's necessarily true that we can know with certainty why we believe things.

2) More importantly, the argument equivocates on the word 'know'. It's Gangadean's bizarre position that knowledge requires certainty, not mine. But we can simply reject his definition of knowledge and there is no threat of skepticism and no threat of self-referential absurdity. I know why I believe something--I know the reasons I believe something via intuition and fallible introspection and induction. I don't need certainty because knowledge of P doesn't require clarity or certainty regarding P. It's a fantasy that Gangadean is peddling. So it makes perfect sense why I argue to convince people. I believe that they too can know why they believe things. But if we take Gangadean at his word that knowledge requires certainty, then it's true, we can't even know why we believe things. If we can't know why we believe things, then for all we know, we might believe things for bad reasons, reasons which can't justify our beliefs. This shows that Gangadean's internalism leads to skepticism. What it doesn't show is that one ought to (by way of consistency) be a skeptic if one rejects Gangadean's definition/analysis of knowledge.

3) Lastly, one can simply reject the smuggled in principle. Again this generalizes because Gangadean's transcendental arguments follow a pattern. There's always an unproven principle or rule that clarity or certainty is necessary for something or other. Just like you can outright reject the idea that without clarity at the basic level, thought and talk are meaningless, you can reject the idea that clarity (concerning the reasons why we believe things) is required in order to make sense of the practice of presenting reasons to change someone's mind. You don't have to know (with certainty) the reasons why you believe something in order for me to consistently present you with reasons to believe something else for instance. At the very least we can demand that Gangadean offer proof of such a rule or principle.

Does Gangadean even know what he means?

According to Ganagdean, "must something be eternal?" is the most basic question a person can ask. Or he means that it's the most basic question, period. Do questions exist without their relation to questioners? I'm not really sure which he intends. But for my purposes either one will suffice. At any rate, so much of Gangadean's worldview is built on this question about eternality. What I want to briefly explore is how someone could come up with an answer to this question. If we follow Gangadean, meaning is more basic than truth. That means before we can even begin addressing the question of whether something must be eternal, we must figure out what we mean by 'eternal' (at least given a plausible assumption called the compositionality of meaning). Ask yourself, how would one come up with an answer to the question, what is the meaning of the word 'eternal'?

When we get into the meaning of words, things get complicated. It seems like language is conventional. Had the history of the world gone a little differently, my label for a table might have been 'chair' or any number of other words that are not in fact associated with tables. It is likely the case that someone, somewhere introduced the word 'table' to denote tables and then it got accepted (tacitly) by other language users and stayed that way. But suppose a person had tried to introduce the word 'table' to denote tables, and nobody accepted it for whatever reason. Then we'd be hard pressed to think that the word 'table' denoted or perhaps meant tables. Maybe you're thinking that it could very well have denoted or even meant table for that person, but it is far from obvious that meaning is so subjective. I might proclaim that from here on out, I will refer to dogs whenever I use the word 'table', but it isn't clear I would succeed. At least it's far from obvious what I will have meant in the given scenario in saying the following: "I want a table for a pet." Did I mean that I want a dog for a pet? If so, what makes that true? Is it because I had in mind, a dog when I was using the word 'table'? If so, then meaning seems to be subjective and sort of "in the head." Most philosopher reject this subjectivist kind of theory. Meaning is thought to be more objective in some sense, but it isn't as if anybody has got knock down arguments for it. Instead, philosophers working on these issues depend on certain intuitive reactions to scenarios like the the one I just presented. Theories are meant to accommodate such intuitions and are accepted on such grounds. 

The point is, when we ask ourselves what the meaning of a word is, it's a bit tricky to figure out how we go about answering it. What methods do we employ and how do we know that those methods are veridical? It's not like we have a perceptual faculty dedicated to figuring out the meanings of words. This relates to my analysis of Gangadean's views because the word 'eternal' is of no exception. Indeed all of the many key words and expressions that Gangadean uses to make his arguments are no exception. Presumably, the word 'eternal' entered into our vocabulary at some point in history. It was in some way associated with some state of affairs that persons at least thought to reflect reality.

A side note: there's just no guarantee that the words in our language actually refer to anything that exists. 'Phlogiston' for example is a word that was thought at one time to refer to something that all combustible bodies had and which got released when burned, but we no longer believe that such a things exists (or ever existed for that matter). True, the meaning of a word is thought not to be exhausted by the thing it refers to (see Frege on Sense and Reference). But there's at least some intimate connection between meaning and reference/denotation/extension. It's standard to think that the sense or intension of a word is something like a condition which fixes the referent/extension of the word.

Now the word 'eternal' presumably gained tacit acceptance and was passed down from generation to generation like the word 'chair', 'horse' and the like. Of course, there's no way for us to know for sure that the meaning was stable with every generation nor can we know for sure that it was passed down faithfully. Relatedly, there isn't anyway for us to be sure that when I say 'eternal' I have in mind exactly what you do when you use the same word. I can't get inside your head as it were. Of course, you can start to spell off other words to try and see if we are thinking the same thing when we use the word, but that leads to a regress: if I use other words to try and tell you what I am thinking when I use the word 'eternal', then one will wonder whether we are in the same kind of mental state when we use those other words. In the case of a word like 'chair' you might think that I could via enumeration or ostention help you get to what I mean (or at least intend on meaning) when I use it. I could for instance point to a particular object (hopefully a chair) and say, 'chair!'. But notice that my pointing is anything but an infallible means of getting you to adopt or realize what I intend on meaning. After all, pointing is far from precise. In all likelihood, I can at best, point to a particular space-time chunk of the chair or perhaps in some general vicinity. Even physical contact faces this issue. You as the observer can of course make your best estimation as to what object in the world I might be referring to, but it will be anything but clear or certain (in the Gangadeanian sense). So there's a separate though related question emerging about how we determine what a person at least thinks they mean, when they use a word.

Now the main issue with what I'm calling subjectivist views of meaning, where the meaning of a word is just what the speaker intends in using the word, is that it's hard to say that anybody ever uses a word incorrectly. And again, philosophers depend on intuitive reactions to thought experiments, here. They think of cases where it just seems intuitively like a person is using a word incorrectly and take this as a datum for their theorizing. As it concerns Gangadean, I can't see how this subjectivist view would serve his purposes. If the meaning of 'eternal' is whatever each of us attaches to that word (in our heads) whenever we use it, then we could have radically different meanings, from one another and even from ourselves on any given occasion and skepticism looms. We couldn't be sure that we are following any of his arguments which depend crucially on the meaning of such words.

Maybe meaning is not subjective anyway, as most philosophers would have it. It's a public affair arising out of a language community. On such a view, a person can simply be wrong about their usage of a term insofar as it deviates sufficiently from the way other competent language users in their community use the word. This means that in order to figure out the meaning of a word, one must do a lot of surveying of how competent language users actually use the words in question. Of course, you've got to figure out what counts as a competent language user, first which is no simple task. But if this were Gangadean's view, then this seems contrary to his way of doing philosophy. As I've complained, repeatedly, Gangadean often just stipulates the meanings of words. He asserts the definitions of all sorts of things as if he's got the final say in the matter. The word 'eternal' is a prime example. Strangely he doesn't do what linguists do---searching through databases for natural occurrences of a word in published works, or by conducting sociological experiments to see how people in fact use the word. He doesn't present empirical research to support his views about what he thinks words mean--i.e., to show that the meaning he attaches to particular words is actually shared among the relevant population of interest. Moreover, even if he did, it wouldn't give him certainty---this is because such empirical work is going to be inductive at best. You've got to make lots of inferences and estimations to go from observable behavior to the meaning of an expression.

A third option is that there's something like objective meaning that is neither subjective nor determined by the practices of a language community. I'm not sure what a view like this would amount to. Maybe it's the idea that there is a dictionary according to God or something at least functionally equivalent. This flies in the face of observation (note words in a given language get introduced and removed and even seem to change meaning over time--and so such a view would have to deny that this is possible). Moreover, it suggests that words mean what they do by necessity which is to say language is not a matter of convention. That's a big bullet to bite. The most serious worry here is how one could access "God's lexicon" and furthermore, how one would ever know that one has in fact done so. I kind of think Gangadean actually acts as if this picture of language/meaning is true; whether he believes it or not is another question. He seems to think that he can just sit in his arm-chair and think about the meanings of words and then arrive at the "true definitions" as it were. This is rife with problems as it concerns certainty. The thing is, he never bothers to tell you how he knows with certainty that he's got it right. Even if there was such a mysterious lexicon of the universe, it doesn't follow that one has infallible access to it, or any access to it for that matter. 

The complexities that we introduce when we get into talk about meaning are numerous. There's a vast sea of dense literature. Contrary to appearances, it's not that easy to say what the meaning of ordinary terms like 'chair' and 'table' are.  To add insult to injury, it's not even clear how we go about determining the meaning of such words, at least if we're after certainty. How much more for a word like 'eternal' which presumably isn't something directly associated with observable phenomena (i.e., you can't point at something as say, 'eternal'). What's surprising is that Gangadean never seems to even question this stuff and you'll likely not meet a Gangadeanian who is concerned with it. Gangadean just sort of lays down the law in Aristotelian style. He tells you what a word means never once asking how he could determine a thing like that in the first place. Maybe he thinks that he speaks for everyone (at least all competent language users)---that somehow he represents all of us. But that's extremely contentious.

Now you might be wondering why am I pressing this really abstract stuff about meaning. The thing is Gangadean tries to argue for things based on the meaning of terms. For instance, there are some inferences he draws which he thinks are sure-proof because they are the sorts of things that are analytically true (or true by definition). For example, he argues that if nothing is eternal, then all is temporal. And if all is temporal, then all came into being. What might justify such inferences? Well, Gangadean thinks that they are just true by definition. It is just part of the meaning of the expression 'nothing is eternal' that all began to exist. Moreover, the very meaning of 'eternal' for Gangadean is somehow connected to the word, 'infinite'. These sorts of "true by definition" inferences that Gangadean often employs depend on him having the meanings of his terms correct. So we should care a lot about his theory of meaning and his theory about how he comes to know the meaning of his terms. Note, he might be correct concerning his meaning of 'eternal'--that's just not the point. The point is whether he would (by his own lights) count as knowing (with certainty) that it's the correct meaning of the word. After all, he doesn't think one can merely have a true belief in what is clear, but rather must know it (and knowledge is more than mere true belief) if it is to serve as the basis of other knowledge. 

So according to Gangadean, a thing is eternal only if it has no beginning and no end. That is to say, the meaning of 'eternal' is 'having no beginning and no end'. And as I've said, he will use such a definition as part of his premise in arguing against the view that nothing is eternal. Again it isn't clear how we determine that Gangadean is right about the meaning of the word 'eternal' at least if we're after certainty. That a bunch of people agree with Gangadean is at best defeasible evidence that it's the right definition. But only if we help ourselves to a lot of presuppositions. We have to presuppose that meaning is determined by consensus of a language community and that the people Gangadean has spoken to about the matter are all competent language users and are telling the truth or otherwise sincere when they speak on the matter. True, common sense would deem these reasonable assumptions. It fits nicely with my way of doing philosophy which is to allow for all kinds of assumptions via common sense and intuition. But my point is, none of this should work for a person so bent on certainty that he can't stand the sight of intuitions or common sense. That's Gangadean. 

In sum, I'll leave you with some pressing questions for Gangadean and his followers. 

1) How does Gangadean know (with certainty) what meaning (in itself) is? 

2) How does Gangadean know (with certainty) that any of his words have meaning? 

3) How does Gangadean know (with certainty) that the meaning he assigns to particular words are correct (i.e., are their actual meanings)? For instance, when he says that 'eternal' = without beginning and end, how does he know with certainty that he isn't mistaken? 

Now you might be tempted to think that he's not talking about the meaning of words or otherwise is simply not interested in semantics. He's doing metaphysics! But that won't do. According to Gangadean you can't say whether a statement is true, unless you know what it first means. Statements are linguistic entities: they are the stuff of semantics and linguistic study. And to give an argument, you've got to depend on statements. You've got to depend on the meanings of words. So you can't talk about the truth of statements (strings of expressions) without getting into issues of meaning or more generally semantics.

Moreover, if you think that concepts are in some way helpful to posit, we can, with little modification, run the same kind of arguments I've presented above for concepts. After all, concepts are things in our minds which purport to connect to things in reality in much the same way that words do. 

The philosophical payoff: If you think meaning is more basic than truth, and we need absolute certainty (clarity) for knowledge, then you need to explain how you know with certainty the very meaning of any of the words you use. After all, the legitimacy of every one of your arguments and inferences will depend crucially on the meaning of the words featured in them. And it's possible that you are mistaken. Note: if you think there's some transcendental argument to exploit, then you're mistaken. The Gangadeanian might be tempted to think in the following manner: we have to assume clarity concerning the meaning of at least some of our words in order to intelligibly raise questions concerning the meaning of ours expressions. This line falters on at least two grounds. 1) To argue in general that we must have clarity concerning the meaning of at least some of our words is not to have shown which one of those words must have clear, transparent meanings. Nor is it to show any method by which we can determine which meanings are clear. So this is of little help by itself. 2) More importantly though, there's no reason for anybody to accept the claim that in order to raise intelligible questions about meaning, there must be clarity of meaning of some of our words. What non circular, non-intuition based argument could justify such an inference?

Anyway, my point is not to drive one to skepticism about meaning and thus of determining the validity/soundness of any and all arguments. Instead, I think it's just Gangadean's commitment to clarity/certainty as it pertains to knowledge which when combined with the considerations above should lead one to a skeptical stance.  Alternatively one can abandon that sinking ship and adopt the view that Gangadean was utterly mistaken that we need certainty for knowledge to begin with. After all, intuitively, we know the meanings of the words we use, we know the meanings of the words that Gangadean uses. We know these things despite not having any way of determining conclusively (by way of deductive arguments) what they are.