John Robbins, Empiricist!

“Let me define a couple terms, and then I will turn to the body of my paper, an examination of Scripture. First, I am not using word proposition in any novel fashion, but in its standard sense.”

http://www.trinityfoundation.org/PDF/240-241-BiblicalViewofTruth.pdf

This modest sounding claim is unintentionally revealing:

1.Scripturalists don’t seem to think you can know something unless you can define your terms. So unless Robbins can define “proposition,” that failure vitiates his whole theory of truth.

2.But it’s not enough to him to define a key term. He must define a key term consistent with his Scripturalist epistemology.

3.Apropos (2), he assures the reader that he’s using the “standard” sense of “proposition.”

And how would you determine the standard sense of a word? That would involve an inductive sampling of linguistic usage. Based on the frequency with which “proposition” is used in a certain sense, that would establish the “standard” sense.

But that procedure commits Robbins to the practical validity of induction. Meaning is determined by usage, and standard usage is determined by common usage–which can only be ascertained by examining a comparative sampling of popular or technical usage.

Yet Scripturalism assures us that induction can never yield knowledge.

4.Moreover, appeal to “standard” usage involves a tacit appeal to sense knowledge. Hearing the spoken word or reading the written word.

You can either take a shortcut by looking up the word in some dictionaries, or you can do what a lexicographer does, which is to conduct your own statistical survey of comparative usage.

Either way, this involves the use of the senses. And it’s based on a partial set of instances, such as period usage or usage by certain authors. A selective sampling.

5.As a result, Robbins must rely on empirical methods to make his case against empiricism. But, in that event, he’s disproven his proof. He can’t get started unless he takes, as his point of departure, a starting point which his conclusion denies.

Like a man trapped in a maze of trick mirrors, the Scripturalist keeps bumping into his own reflection. Every “door” is just another reflective wall. Every exit is just another trick mirror.