Self-evidency and Apologetics

I asked Andrew to spell out his concerns in a single post so that I could give him a better reply since it appears that we were talking past each other. He did so here.

Steve Hays responded here.

There's not much I'd add to what Steve said, and I agree with most of his analysis.

Still, I'll offer something by way of response.

I'll first look at his argument, and then his commentary:

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I think to clarify my thinking to you I’d put it the following way:
1. There are self-evident truths (such as the fact that I exist) and there are logically necessary truths.
2. Logically necessary truths can be demonstrated by the rules of strict implication.
3. There is no logical proof for God’s existence that starts w/ premises that are indisputable (self-evident)to all.
4. If you believe in God, then either that knowledge is self-evident, or it is deduced from premises that are self-evident.
5. You can't argue for self-evident truths w/o circularity.
6. It, therefore, makes no sense to argue for self-evident truths with someone who doesn’t share them (or even someone who does, come to think of it)
7. The elect have been granted special, self-evident knowledge (Divine Revelation) by virtue of the work of the Spirit that brings them into a saving relationship with God.
8. By 6, it makes no sense for an apologist to attempt to argue for truths illumined by the Spirit.

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The points I make are not to be understood as corresponding one-to-one with his premises above. I'll therefore use Roman numerals to mark off my outline.

i) Points (1) --> (8) do not constitute a valid argument. For one, "makes no sense" is extremely vague, and it is found nowhere in the premises. What ties the premises to the conclusion(s), then? Further, in (5) it looks like he denies the first half of the disjunct in (4) but then doesn't go on to consider the other half of the disjunct. Even though I wouldn't agree with it, it would have at least added validity to the argument. Since Andrew chose to cast his "problems with my view" in terms of a formal argument, we could technically stop here, saying he's not made his case.

ii) It's not obvious that "it makes no sense to argue for self-evident beliefs" considering that a majority of the history of philosophy has done just that. The onus is on Andrew to show that men like Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, were doing something which "didn't make sense."

Furthermore, look at some of the more current debates. Plantinga would say, pace Casteneda, that it's self-evidentially true that actualism is the case (i.e., it's not possible that there are non-existent objects). On the other hand, take serious actualism (that no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist). Some philosophers (more respected and knowledgeable than you or I (or, at least I!) will ever be) take serious actualism to be self-evident, some do not. Are you saying that what they do in the scholarly journals - i.e., argue - "makes no sense?" Clearly you have a tough road to hoe here.

Therefore, even if he's right about this "self-evident" business (which I'll address below), he hasn't made his case that it would "make no sense to argue for self-evident propositions."

iii) Consider (2). (2) only takes one kind of logically necessary truths into consideration. Why?

Andrew brings up the narrow sense, i.e., those that follow from the laws of logic alone. But then this expresses a logically necessary truth: "If Scripture does not err, and if Scripture tells us that God exists, then it is true that God exists. That's a logically necessary truth because the consequent conditional was deduced from the antecedent, thus the truth follows from the laws of logic alone.

But there's a broader sense. Another way to look at logically necessary truths are to take a sentence and exchange the terms with other definitionaly equivalent terms. So, all bachelors are unmarried is replaced with all unmarried males are unmarried. And in this sense logically necessary truths are identified with analytic truths. But of course Quine has something to say about that, doesn't he (cf. Two Dogmas of Empiricism).

Then there's a still broader sense. We can speak of logically necessary truths as those truths which are true in all possible worlds. And here if the Ontological Argument is sound, then it is a logically necessary truth that God exists.

iv) (3) is interesting. For one, how does he know that "there is no logical proof for God's existence using premises all men agree upon." All he can say is that he's unaware of such a proof.

Second, I've already argued above that "self-evident" is not synonymous with "indisputable."

Third, as Steve pointed out, hardly anything can meet this criteria.

Fourth, even the use of "self-evidency" can be turned into an argument for God. Self evident truths are those truths, traditionally, which no human person with proper-functioning cognitive faculties can be said to understand, yet deny. And, "proper functionality" makes sense within a theistic framework, not a naturalistic one.

Fifth, who cares? Since what people take to be "self-evident" is largely based on their worldviews, then (3) turns out to be making the claim that there is no logical proof for God existence which persuades all men.

v) With regards to (4), I'd definitely ditto Steve's response.

I'd further add that Andrew seems to be a foundationalist and one wonders how he avoids the problems with classical foundationalism. If he's not, then why cast the debate in terms of classical foundationalism?

Lastly, one needs read very little of Plantinga to see that properly basic beliefs can be properly basic and yet not self-evident (in the traditional sense).

vi) To say that one doesn't need to prove or argue for self-evident beliefs, because they are certain seems to shirk your responsibilities.

First, most people consider the law of non-contradiction to be self-evident. But, what do you do with dialethism? Tell them you don't need to argue for the classical claim? Tell that to Graham Priest. No, tell it to Priest while he's in the pub so that he can have a good, hearty laugh.

Next,

"Suppose my cognitive faculties are redesigned by an Alpha Centaurian superscientist in an experimental mood; he modifies them in such a way that when I consider any proposition of the sort n is a prime (where n is any of the first 10,000 natural numbers), it has for me the very appearance of necessity enjoyed by even the most elementary of elementary truths of arithmetic. I form the belief that n is prime, for some fairly large number n less than 10,000; chances are I form a false belief; but even if it happens to be true, I don't know that it is." - Alvin Plantinga, WPF, 108.

"A proposition can appear to be self-evident even though it is not. For instance. the proposition that all unmarried males are bachelors will appear self-evident to many until they consider that the pope is such a male. A proposition will appear self-evident to some but not to others, even though it must either have or lack the property of being self-evident... some self-evident propositions are obvious, such as the proposition that all stags are male, but others are not, since it may take considerable reflection to achieve an adequate understanding of them... that there is no knowledge of falsehoods is one of them." -Bruce Russell, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, p.826.

"One important point about self-evidence is made clear by the case of memory, and that is, that self-evidence has degrees: it is not a quality which is simply present or absent, but a quality which may be more or less present, in gradations ranging from absolute certainty down to an almost imperceptible faintness. Truths of perception and some of the principles of logic have the very highest degree of self-evidence; truths of immediate memory have an almost equally high degree. The inductive principle has less self-evidence than some of the other principles of logic, such as 'what follows from a true premise must be true'. Memories have a diminishing self-evidence as they become remoter and fainter; the truths of logic and mathematics have (broadly speaking) less self-evidence as they become more complicated. Judgments of intrinsic ethical or aesthetic value are apt to have some self-evidence, but not much." -Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Knowledge, P.117

And so given the above, why think that what you take to be self-evident shouldn’t be argued for? And why think it "makes no sense" to argue for them, especially since, for some of them, an argument can cause one to have a greater understanding of the proposition involved and, hence, allow one to see the self-evidency of it.

vii) (5) doesn't appear obvious. It's hard to see how an argument for, say, the self-evident proposition that you can't know something that is false would be "circular."

Also, ditto Steve's response. Not all circular arguments are fallacious. "Circularity is not always fallacious..." - Douglas Walton, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 135.

And why assume that this would be a defect? An internal critique could be leveled and so progress could be made when your opponent accepts your position for arguments sake. And this nullifies his number (6). (That, and the other points I brought up which show that self-evidency can (and should be!, in some cases) argued for.)

viii) Why assume that (7) is true? I don't think that, on the traditional understanding, the vast majority of Scriptural propositions are "self-evident?" When the Spirit illumines me to understand that "Jesus forever lives to intercede for the saints," why assume that that is "self-evident?" That strikes me as odd.

ix) I think (8) "makes no sense," especially given the arguments above and in Steve's post.

Furthermore, the Bible commands us to evangelize, and to "defend the faith delivered to the saints." Since I don't draw a distinction of kind, but of degree between evangelism and apologetics, then Andrew's argument seems to imply that Christians should not evangelize. But the Bible clearly says that we should. So Andrew's position says that parts of the Bible is false. But his position would say that "it makes no sense" for me to respond to it! Thus he can offer criticisms and get away Scott free.

Indeed, why think that it "makes no sense" to point out the errors committed when people attack our faith? This strikes me as all very odd. Indeed, Andrew can argue for his worldview, other philosophers can argue for theirs, but Christians can't argue for theirs!?

I'll now address what he takes to be his cash value for all of this:

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I think apologetics (in any world view) is completely legitimate for talk within a system or even between systems if some common ground is found for those systems. But it seems pointless (and in the strictest sense, impossible) at the “foundational” level. It would be pointless, for instance, to try to prove to myself or someone else that I really exist. I’d say my existence is true but unprovable.

If you say your belief in the Bible is foundational, but then attempt to argue for it, then that belief must not be truly foundational (self-evident).
My sense is that sometimes apologists mix that which can be argued for and that which cannot and this leads to unwarranted frustration.

If someone were too dense or pig headed to grasp basic logic, I’d get frustrated too. On the other hand, if someone didn’t accept something I consider purely self-evident, or if they objected to an attempt to *argue* for it, it’d be unfair for me to express frustration, since, on my view, they’d be within their epistemic rights.

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Notice that above (8) he says that it makes no sense to "argue for truths illumined by the spirit." But then he says Christians can engage in apologetics.

Illumination is the process by which God's Holy Spirit enables us to understand His word and apply it to our lives.

J.I. Packer tells us that,

"The knowledge of divine things to which Christians are called is more than a formal acquaintance with biblical words and Christian ideas. It is a realizing of the reality and relevance of those activities of the triune God to which Scripture testifies. Such awareness is natural to none, familiar with Christian ideas though they may be (like “the man without the Spirit” in 1 Cor. 2:14 who cannot receive what Christians tell him, or the blind leaders of the blind of whom Jesus speaks so caustically in Matt. 15:14, or like Paul himself before Christ met him on the Damascus road). Only the Holy Spirit, searcher of the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10), can bring about this realization in our sin-darkened minds and hearts. That is why it is called “spiritual understanding” (spiritual means “Spirit-given,” Col. 1:9; cf. Luke 24:25; 1 John 5:20). Those who, along with sound verbal instruction, “have an anointing from the Holy One... know the truth” (1 John 2:20).

The work of the Spirit in imparting this knowledge is called “illumination,” or enlightening. It is not a giving of new revelation, but a work within us that enables us to grasp and to love the revelation that is there before us in the biblical text as heard and read, and as explained by teachers and writers. Sin in our mental and moral system clouds our minds and wills so that we miss and resist the force of Scripture. God seems to us remote to the point of unreality, and in the face of God’s truth we are dull and apathetic. The Spirit, however, opens and unveils our minds and attunes our hearts so that we understand (Eph. 1:17-18; 3:18-19; 2 Cor. 3:14-16; 4:6). As by inspiration he provided Scripture truth for us, so now by illumination he interprets it to us. Illumination is thus the applying of God’s revealed truth to our hearts, so that we grasp as reality for ourselves what the sacred text sets forth.

Illumination, which is a lifelong ministry of the Holy Spirit to Christians, starts before conversion with a growing grasp of the truth about Jesus and a growing sense of being measured and exposed by it. Jesus said that the Spirit would “convict the world” of the sin of not believing in him, of the fact that he was in the right with God the Father (as his welcome back to heaven proved), and of the reality of judgment both here and hereafter (John 16:8-11). This threefold conviction is still God’s means of making sin repulsive and Christ adorable in the eyes of persons who previously loved sin and cared nothing for the divine Savior.

The way to benefit fully from the Spirit’s ministry of illumination is by serious Bible study, serious prayer, and serious response in obedience to whatever truths one has been shown already. This corresponds to Luther’s dictum that three things make a theologian: oratio (prayer), meditatio (thinking in God’s presence about the text), and tentatio (trial, the struggle for biblical fidelity in the face of pressure to disregard what Scripture says)."SOURCE

Thus "illumination" applies to every verse in the Bible.

And since Andrew takes it that when the Spirit illumines something to use it makes the proposition "self-evident," and since Andrew simultaneously holds the belief that Christians shouldn't argue for (or, it doesn't make sense for them to argue for) their self-evident beliefs, and since Andrew says that apologetics is appropriate, and since apologetics involves defending and advancing biblical propositions and doctrines, and since these propositions and doctrines are understood by the Christian via the Spirit's illumination, then Andrew has contradicted himself; or, at best, he doesn't understand what "illumination" means.

Next, I'd like to say that there is common ground between all systems in that God owns all the ground. From our vantage point, since all men are created in the image of God, and since all the facts point to their creator, then we have common ground with every man and can use any fact. This common ground is not a neutral common ground, though.

Lastly, to say that someone is within their "epistemic rights" presupposes that there are epistemic norms. And if someone cannot account for epistemic norms, then, given their worldview, they're not within their epistemic rights since there are no such "rights."

And so I fail to see how it's "pointless" to engage in apologetics. Indeed, Andrew's argument is naive, contradictory at points, misleading at points, and far from being clear.

Therefore the Christian can defend and argue for his belief system. There's a "point" to doing this. That it may be used as a means by God to convert or shut the mouth.