New posts up!

I've been slacking the last week or so but am making up for lost time. I just put up 3 new articles today.

Clarity, Inexcusability and Knowledge.

I have challenged the idea that we can have absolute certainty of the things Gangadean claims to have. More precisely, I have tried to show that whatever system or method that Gangadean appeals to in trying to attain certainty turns out to be inconsistent. Notice my claim needn't be that we can't have certainty. It's simply that Gangadean hasn't shown us a way to certainty. This is so, even if the kind of certainty he is after is logically possible--he hasn't shown us the way to it. His account ultimately fails its own test. This is because his most basic beliefs end up being grounded in intuitions or otherwise groundless. Unfortunately, I've heard no direct answer to any of my objections. Often I have asked for supporting arguments for a number of the central claims that Gangadean rests his worldview on, but have heard nothing. For instance, I have asked Gangadean to rationally support his theory of knowledge. He tells us what his theory is (though he doesn't recognize it as just one of many theories), but he doesn't tell us why we should think his theory is correct. He still hasn't answered this.

Instead, one psuedo-response has been to shift the direction of the discussion in the following way. He says that the kind of knowledge he is interested in, is the kind that makes sense of the inexcusability of unbelief according to Christian Theism or the bible. In other words, he's sort of conceding in a roundabout way that there are many different conceptions of knowledge out there. But rather than prove that his theory is the correct one, he's saying that his theory plays a particular role in his theorizing about a particular Christian doctrine. Furthermore, he's claiming that it's the only kind of conception of knowledge that will do this job and it's the kind of knowledge that we should have regarding our most basic beliefs, according to Christianity.

So let me put a little pressure on this line of "response."

1) Just because a particular conception or theory fits one's philosophical/theological project, it doesn't mean it's true. These are just two entirely different things.

2) Gangadean hasn't proven from reason alone that we should care about explaining the inexcusability of unbelief. In fact, he derives the notion from the bible (Romans 1:20). But the issue of whether he's got the right kind of theory of knowledge, and whether it must be clearly knowable by reason alone that God exists, are supposed to be known via reason alone. So it achieves nothing on that front to merely appeal to scripture as if they support his claims-- that's putting the cart in front of the horse. He's got to prove these claims via reason. How does Gangadean know by reason alone that i) unbelief in God leads to maximal consequences, ii) unbelief in God is inexcusable and iii) that maximal consequences implies maximal clarity? That is, he can't just insist these things are true, he ought to prove them and should not appeal to the bible to do so. I have raised these and related concerns before.

3) As I've written about in this post, his Calvinism implies that, even if it were clear that God exists, unbelief is still excusable because the unregenerate can't possibly desire to seek God. This desire to know what is clear is requisite (and sufficient) according to Gangadean to know what is clear, but it's also entirely out of the unbelievers hands whether they have this desire to know/seek or not to begin with. Pair these considerations with the fact that Gangadean maintains the ought-implies-can principle, and you have the following result. If I ought to desire to seek God, then I can desire to see, which is false given his commitment to soft determinism/Calvinism (the unregenerate cannot desire to seek, because they are dead in their trespasses). And so if it isn't the case that they can seek, it follows that they are not required to seek, which means they shouldn't be held responsible for not seeking. So the unbeliever is with excuse or rather, they need no excuse because they haven't done anything wrong.

4) Now even supposing that it were legitimate for Gangadean to reach into the bible for a proof text (which it certainly isn't), we still have the problem of interpretation. I've written about this issue before as well. Briefly, the problem is that Gangadean has a particular conception of "without excuse" and "clear" when he reads Romans 1:20 which states that "being clear from what is made so that man is without excuse." And he's got a particular doctrine of the consequences of unbelief in mind which inform what he draws from this text. But there is controversy all along the way. Why should we think that Paul was thinking of "clear" and "without excuse" in the way that Gangadean has in mind? Can Gangadean prove that he was? Again take a look at this post where I discuss these matters in more detail.

5) The reason that Gangadean thinks inexcusability of unbelief implies clarity is because he thinks that there are maximal consequences (spiritual death) that is part and parcel of unbelief in what is clear. So we can derive from that that any belief which failure to have results in maximal consequences/spiritual death are going to be absolutely clear or can be known with certainty.

However, according to the most common forumlations of Christianity including Gangadean's, spiritual life (avoiding spiritual death/maximal consequences) requires more than belief or knowledge that God exists. It requires, among other things, belief in Christ's redemptive work, which requires that one believes that Christ actually existed, took on the sins of the world and the like. And I take it that Gangadean is committed to the further view that belief in these claims is not enough, but one must have knowledge, his kind of knowledge. But one can't possibly know that Jesus existed, was the incarnation of God and died for our sins just by thinking about it. We need the divine revelation of God, the message of the gospel via the bible. So now it seems like according to Gangadean's standards one must also know (with certainty) that the bible (at least with respect to what it says about Christ's redemptive work) is true. So there is a lot to know here, and to know with absolute certainty according to Gangadean. Since failure to know any of these things leads to maximal consequences, it follows from Gangadean's position that each and every one of these propositions must be provable via a deductively sound argument. In other words, Gangadean must be able to prove how he can know that Jesus existed, was the incarnation of God, and took on the sins of the world and that the bible is true (at least insofar as it speaks of Christ). Can he prove each of these via reason? Here again is the post where I explain this objection and here is another that shows how Gangadean's can't prove that the bible is special revelation (i.e., actually the word of God).

6) Since Gangadean is so keen on citing Romans 1:20 as a proof text and appealing to particular words (in English translations) such as "without excuse" and "clearly" to make substantive philosophical claims, I wonder why he ignores the fact that Paul is speaking about unbelief with respect to God, rather than knowledge.  Knowledge according to Gangadean requires certainty, but belief does not. We have all sorts of beliefs and not all of what we believe counts as knowledge. So perhaps all Paul is saying in that passage is that one ought to believe that God exists, because there are compelling reasons to believe even if these reasons don't provide knowledge or Gangadeanian knowledge (certainty).

More on "response to critics": Is Gangadean a Fideist or Skeptic?

About a month ago, I found a new Gangadeanian website featuring articles, one of which was a "response to critics." Here is the article and here was my initial reaction to it. Gangadean featured some of my objections, but did a poor job at addressing them. Partly due to ignorance. It's hard to respond properly to a challenge when you don't understand it very well. Anyway, below is another excerpt from Gangadean's article. I've suggested before that Gangadean's theory of knowledge actually leads to a form of skepticism. If you maintain that knowledge requires absolute certainty like Gangadean does, then much of what you think you know turns out to be instances of ignorance. If you consider a great many of my articles you will see that I've been pushing this line. I've attempted to show how Gangadean's worldview is internally inconsistent. He disavows skepticism about basic things, but his theory of knowledge if held consistently, actually leads to skepticism about these very things. He disavows fideism ("belief without proof" as he defines it) but he rests his most foundational views on immediate, non inferential beliefs. Sometimes he refers to these beliefs as "self-attesting" but what about the belief that a is a is self-attesting? Is it self-attesting that it is self-attesting? How does he know when something is self-attesting? Isn't this belief without proof since proof requires argument and there is no argument given for when something is self-attesting rather than not? Again, that is the way to inconsistency. As I see it Gangadean sort of endorses fideism about the most basic things under the guise of "self-attesting" principles though he won't admit it. But what I want to focus on here, is how his views lead to skepticism. Below we have one of the "objections" and "responses" that Gangadean presents on his website. 

Objection 13: Reason cannot get you very far beyond a is a. 

Response:

1. Reason is first the test for meaning. What violates a law of thought lacks meaning; a meaningless statement cannot be true, but is necessarily false (by reductio ad absurdum).

1. The contradiction of what is necessarily false must be true.

1. We can know by reason that there must be something eternal and that only some is eternal; we can know by reason that the good for a being is according to the nature of that being.

1. Therefore, the basic things about God and man and good and evil are clear to reason (PC).

1. The Principle of Clarity has substantial content that can be extended by the Principle of Rational Presuppositionalism, both of which are affirmed in Common Ground.

Ignoring for now how he has just dished out more mere assertions (i.e., he never argues for the claim that reason is first a test for meaning**), the main issue with this representation of the dialectic is that it doesn't do justice to the objection. Basically the objection is given as if it is merely an assertion and then the response is essentially "nope." It's puzzling to me how this would be helpful for anybody. But it seems consistent with the way that Gangadean and his people approach these matters at least in my experience so far. Unfortunately, it's makes for poor philosophy. So let me see if I can fill this stuff out so it's actually of some use. 

First what is the objection? Well it isn't that reason doesn't get us very far in terms of knowledge (again a misconstrual on Gangadean's part). Instead the objection is that Gangadean's requirement that one must always avoid fideism (belief without proof) in order to come to know things that severely limits what we can know. Proof that God exists is not attained by having excellent reasons or evidence that God exists.  Having proof that God exists according to Gangadean means having a deductively sound argument where the conclusion "God exists" necessarily follows from indubitably true premises (although as I mentioned in this post, even this account of proof faces serious worries).  So any belief you have on the basis of anything falling short of a sound, impervious, deductive argument, is a belief that fails to be knowledge. You are being fideistic according to Gangadean should you believe something without such proof and also if you're unable to recite that proof. Of course he'll cite "self-evident" or "self-attesting" principles, but as I've already pointed out, these are dubious notions. He needs to tell us why we should think there are such things in the first place and also give us a method of determining when something is genuinely self-attesting/self-evident (is something self attesting because it seems to him to be?). Now he grants that there are a great many things, "less basic" things that you can't know on his theory of knowledge. You can't know ahead of time who will win the next world series. You can't know how the stock market will do tomorrow and the like. But what he fails to realize (though I've presented my case to him on more than one occasion) is that his theory of knowledge actually takes away much much more than what he professes it does. He may not want admit it, but that's precisely what follows form his own views!

For instance, Gangadean criticizes empiricism for relying on sense impression as an infallible source of knowledge. He argues that our perceptual faculties (e.g., vision) can fail us as in cases of optical illusion. That is, at any given moment, we can't be sure what our sense report to us is truly representative of the world out there. This means that any time we have a sense impression, the veracity of the impression is called into question. So Gangadean uses this line of thinking to call empiricism into question. The problem is, he never gets around to explaining how it is that reason helps solve the problems he has exploited. We can't depend on our senses alone to know things (with certainty), and so we should depend on reason, so he claims. And then he goes on to present arguments that purport to prove that God exists entirely apart from our unreliable senses, (recall that he actually appeals to the senses in arguing this. See this post). Though I think and have argued that he fails in this "proof", let's just suppose that he has succeeded. So you know with certainty that some spirit must be eternal (see this post to see that he actually fails to do this as well). But what about other things? If knowledge of some proposition requires that you have (in some suitable way) proof of that proposition (and presumably believe the proposition on the basis of that proof), then you don't know anything that doesn't meet these criteria. If you don't have a sound proof of any proposition or you don't believe some proposition on the basis of a sound proof, then you don't know the proposition, period. That is Gangadean's view. But since he's just called into question the trustworthiness of our senses, that means anything you believe, even partially on the basis of your senses, is something you can't possibly know with certainty. You can see how this leads to skepticism. And it gets worse. Induction (the crown jewel of any hard science) falls short of proof. So to believe something on the basis of induction, is fideistic, it leads to ignorance rather than knowledge. 

Again, I had more than one conversation about this with Gangadean. I noted that I couldn't possibly know that I exist on this standard. I don't have a proof that I exist, nor do I believe on the basis of any proof that I exist. I just believe it immediately. So that means I can't know that I exist by Gangadean's lights. I can't know that I am a man (since this belief depends on my senses). I can't know that I was born at such and such date, or that I am married (these depend on the senses and testimony). I can't know that I wake up next to my wife each morning --I just don't have a deductive proof, bur rather depend on my senses and induction! What is more, much of these beliefs involve moral matters (by his lights). Think about any decision you make, maybe it's having a sexual relationship with the person you take to be your spouse, or maybe it's being a witness in a criminal jury, or maybe it's investing money to a good cause. Or maybe it's disciplining your children for something that you strongly suspect and have every reason to believe they did wrong. The examples are plentiful. In fact, Gangadean at some point concluded that I was a reason-denier and thus shouldn't be at his church. This, too, was based on his sense impressions of me (or my express behaviors) as well as his interpretations of those sense impressions. Bottom line, we don't have anything like a deductive proof about propositions that are relevant to important decisions and actions we take. If I am about to have sex with the person I take to be my marital partner, but I can't trust my senses and so can't know that this person is actually my partner, then I had better opt out. 

This way leads to skepticism. That is my objection. It's isn't that reason doesn't get us very far. It's that Gangadean's requirements on knowledge, his views about fideism (and how it's somehow wrong to believe things without proof) actually leads to a form of skepticism. Gangadean ought to be a skeptic if he's being consistent. 

In a personal conversation, Gangadean simply insisted that on his view you could be absolutely certain of all the things that I've called into question.  He essentially gave a Cartesian response. You see, the French philosopher Descartes once tried to argue for a similar view as Gangadean. He thought you could be sure of something just in case you had a clear and distinct idea of that thing. The problem of course is that he hasn't really told us what counts as "clear and distinct" and more importantly, how we can be sure when we have a clear and distinct idea vs. falsely thinking we do. Gangadean has essentially replaced "clear and distinct" with "self-attesting" "self-evident" or "makes questioning possible." But again, same problem. He hasn't told us how we know when something fits any of these and how we can determine for ourselves when we falsely believe something to be for example, self-attesting rather than not. Anyway, Descartes ran into this problem when it came to propositions that we believed on the basis (at least partial basis) of our senses. Given that our senses sometimes fool us, even when we don't see any reason to doubt them, he had to explain how we could trust our senses at all. This is just the problem that plagues Gangadean and he seems to have followed Descartes down a dubious path. It is the blind leading the blind. So Gangadean's response was something like, "well, we already have proven that God exists via reason and we know that God is perfectly good, so we can trust that God would not fool us when it comes to propositions that are relevant to moral matters." 

I was actually quite shocked that this was his response and I hope he has since changed that view or that I have grossly misunderstood him. The problem of course is that you need to be able to know that your senses are faithfully reporting reality in order to even determine whether some belief is going to be morally relevant in the first place. Presumably, my stealing something in a dream is not an iniquity. I just don't have any sort of control over my dreams and more importantly, no actual harm has been done as a result of my imagined action. Now suppose you just saw someone leave an expensive cellphone at a restaurant. You ask yourself, did I just imagine this, am I dreaming, or did someone in fact, leave a cellphone in the restaurant?  That is, you ask yourself whether you can trust your senses on this occasion. Gangadean's response is that if it is a morally relevant belief, then you can rest assured that God would not let you be fooled about your senses. The problem is, you need to first determine whether this is going to be a morally relevant belief and it's only morally relevant if it's real and your senses didn't play a trick on you and you're not dreaming! So you are again faced with the problem. How do I know when I can trust my senses and when I can't? So this "response" is actually of no use. It's a case of what I call the philosophical runaround. 

Once we understand the real objection we can see that the "response" featured above on behalf of the Gangadeanians, is nothing of a response. 

**Note Gangadean does say that "meaning is more basic than truth" in Philosophical Foundation. But this is not an argument for the claim that reason is first a test for meaning. It's just another assertion. He then follows this with an example. "All glics are grue" and notes that you cannot know whether it is true or false until you first know what it means. Neither is this a sound argument unless arguments don't have premises and deductive relations. Instead it's an example that is supposed to elicit an intuitive reaction from the hearer.