The Gangadeanian Evasion

In his latest, Anderson remarks,

This is another good example of why we aren't able to assess the argument. We can't assess the argument because we don't agree on whether the laws of thought are also laws of being (ontological). You don't know if "eternal" is "non-eternal" in reality. And now you've repeated your claim that you can't know if the laws of thought apply outside of your experience ("reality beyond our experience," or your "epistemic horizons"). What is "eternal" is outside of your experience. Therefore, you won't be able to know about what is eternal due to this epistemic horizon. You won't be able to assess arguments about what is eternal. This isn't a matter of who shoulders the burden of proof. It is a matter of whether there is sufficient common ground to have mutual understanding to proceed. As I noted above, it is a loaded question to maintain these limitations and yet ask for an argument.

Spencer basically requested that Anderson show that reason (as the laws of thought) is ontological. As I stated before, "accepting that the laws of thought are ontological" is Gangadean-speak for accepting that we can know at least some very basic things about the world "out there" (mind-independent reality)--namely things like, "a thing is what it is"--in virtue of just thinking alone. Anderson here, is arguing that if Spencer doesn't "agree" that reason is ontological, then they have no basis to evaluate arguments (and thus no reason to continue talking).

It's very important at this juncture to emphasize where it seems Spencer and I part ways, as well as where Anderson/Gangadean and I both agree and disagree. I agree with Anderson/Gangadean that reason is ontological and Spencer seems to be calling this into question. Importantly, where Gangadean/Anderson and I diverge is on the matter of how it is that we know a thing like this and whether or not we can be absolutely certain of it. I know such things on the basis of an intuition (non inferentially)--it just strikes me as obviously true, which is bad according to Gangadean. I'm not sure how they get can consistently affirm such claims without the employment of intuitions at some level. I suspect they think that there's some sort of reductio--that if you assume reason is not ontological, while inquiring into reality by way of reason, then you're just obviously stuck in some sort of contradiction or absurdity. But how they know that it is in fact an absurdity without an appeal to a non-inferential judgment (aka intuition) is beyond me. Maybe team-Gangadean just doesn't know what the word 'intuition' means and that's where the worldview got off on the wrong foot.

At any rate, this is why I've never denied the claim that for example, 'a thing is what it is'. Remember, the only thing I've repeatedly called into question is how Ganagdeanians can consistently decry the use of intuitions while requiring a high standard of knowledge (via either deductive proof or "self-attesting" principles) and at the same time claim to know with certainty that reason is ontological (among other things). My claim is that if you adopt their epistemic standards consistently you will land yourself in an extreme kind of skepticism. I worry that most Gangadeanians just aren't being careful enough in understanding my views so that they conflate my asking them to show how they know something on the one hand, with my denying that thing on the other. Clearly, these two come apart. (E.g, Gangadeanians frequently ask fellow Theists to prove that God exists, but that doesn't entail that Gangadeanians deny God's existence!)

So with these considerations in mind, it should be apparent that Anderson's move above, of citing the lack of common ground to evaluate arguments, won't work in relation to any of my objections. That is to say, I believe (and even take myself to know) that reason is ontological and yet I still find Gangadean's arguments really terrible. Now the curious thing is that, Gangadean actually ended discussions with me years ago citing that we didn't have enough common ground. So what gives?

Well, Gangadean was just not thinking clearly during our interactions. Frequently, he would try to get me to "admit" that I denied the laws of thought. Just as frequently, I would point out how I didn't deny the laws of thought and that he was missing the point of my concerns. Instead I was merely calling into question whether we could (rationally) be absolutely certain that they were true as Gangadean was insisting (I also questioned whether we needed to be certain). And he really struggled to keep these two things apart (maybe he didn't want to?) as did other Gangadeanians with whom I spoke. Hence, he ultimately dismissed me from the conversation citing that we didn't have enough "common ground." Of course, that's false. As I've already pointed out on more than one occasion, even if I don't think we can have (or need) the kind of Gangadeanian certainty about basic things, I can (with consistency) believe or even know the very same things, because neither belief nor knowledge requires Gangadeanian certainty in the first place (at the very least they haven't proven otherwise). So that means I can affirm basic distinctions, have knowledge, meaning, and of course, intelligible philosophical debates about reality. In other words, we had plenty of common ground, Gangadean was just being hasty and small-minded. So, he discontinued discussions with me on the basis of a pretty glaring mistake. Gangadean had this weird hang up that we had to go further--not only must we agree that 'a is a' (and the like) if we are to have intelligible discussions, but we also had to agree that we could be absolutely certain that 'a is a' by way of reason. Did he ever argue for this further point? Of course not--it was nothing more than a strange bias.

My theory is that at some point, Gangadean and some of his followers may have begun to figure out that my position is more nuanced than they had initially appreciated. Perhaps they finally see that they can't justifiably cite the lack of common ground as a reason to avoid engaging with me, as Anderson is attempting to do with Spencer and as Gangadean once mistakenly did with me. My objections all grant the laws of thought, and that reason is ontological because I believe those things (even if I don't agree that we can have or even need Gangadeanian certainty concerning them). So what can they do? Sadly, they can't answer my objections head on (at least they've given me no reason to believe that they can). The answers are simply not there. To attempt to do so would only reveal that Gangadean's life work has been predicated on a series of rather basic mistakes. So they resort to discrediting me personally and engage with only those dissenters that they can exclude from the conversation by the standard Gangadeanian move of citing the lack of common ground.

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Postscript: I should add that I'm not suggesting that Anderson's latest "response" to Spencer is all that good either. It really is a kind of red-herring. If the question to Anderson is, how do you justify the claim that an eternal mind (in time) is necessarily omniscient? Anderson hasn't answered that.  One way to frame the question is that it's one about the internal consistency of Anderson's worldview--since he and Gangadean themselves require rational justification for all of their own beliefs (unless they count as so called "self-attesting" principles), we can read Spencer as asking whether Anderson can show that this belief (that an eternal mind in time is necessarily omnisicient) is rationally justifiable working from his own assumptions. Framed in those terms the common ground required seems very minimal and I don't see why they must agree that reason is ontological. If they grant certain basic rules of inference and the meaning of certain sentences and expressions like 'eternal' and 'omnsicient', they should be able to determine whether or not Anderson can provide a reason for his belief which coheres suitable within his own worldview. Anderson might have a point that there's something absurd about positively denying that reason gets us to mind-independent reality in the course of a philosophical debate (insofar as it's about mind-independent reality), but that's just a different discussion altogether. My point is that one can accept that reason is ontological and raise Spencer's worries ( I'm the one that originally raised the worry) because nothing about the objection hinges on the denial of reason being "ontological." We are now 25 comments in and still without an answer. Evasion indeed.

Here's a thought for Anderson: post your answer to the challenge in the comments so that other people following the conversation can benefit, even if you don't think Spencer can.