Thursday, July 30, 2015

Signs and seasons


I will comment on this post:


Today, I came across this article on Triablogue.com:  Is Scripturalism Unscriptural?  This is a good example of a typical first reaction to scripturalism and to the study of philosophy in general. 

Ah, yes, a "first reaction." Couldn't be that I've been studying scripturalism and philosophy in general for probably longer than Luke Miner has been alive.

One line of argument says that knowledge consists in sensation or perceiving the facts.  One of the challenges that this faces is in extracting propositions from sensation.  How can a mass of sensations:  reds, greens, softs, hards, sweets, sours, highs, and lows, be turned into propositions? 

Let's take some examples:

i) I see what appears to be a red rose. I conclude that it's a colored object. After all, every red object is a colored object. 

Incidentally, this inference would be valid even if I misperceived the true color of the rose–assuming it has a true color.

ii) On my daily walk I stroll past an ER. Sometimes when I'm walking I hear a siren approaching. I conclude that it might well be an ambulance taking a patient to the ER.

iii) On my daily walk, for 400 days straight, I see flocks of crows. All of them are black. On day 401, I see an albino crow. I conclude that not all crows are black. It only takes one counterexample to disprove a universal negative.

If this task can be so performed, how can one verify the reliability of these propositions?  The empiricists usually admit that hallucinations and dreams are unreliable. 

When Scripturalists appeal to the Bible, how can they verify that they are reading the Bible rather than hallucinating or dreaming about a "Bible" that's not the real Bible?

BTW, Miner's appeal to dreams and hallucinations is an appeal to inductive experience. How can a Scripturalist get away with that?

Of course, this assumes the point at issue.  It does nothing to explain how disjointed sensations can act as signs for seasons.  It just assumes they do.

Notice that Miner point-blank refuses to believe what Gen 1:14 says about the function God assigned to the sun, moon, and stars–because it conflicts with his armchair epistemology. How is his attitude any different than an infidel who rejects what Scripture says about homosexuality? 

No, I didn't just "assume" it does. I got that from the testimony of Scripture. Scripturalists like Minor pay lip-service to Scripture, but they don't really take Scripture as their epistemological starting-point. 

Secondly, it is hard to see why God making the stars for signs implies that man’s senses are reliable.  Could not God have made signs and also cursed man at some point so that he sometimes misinterprets them?  Indeed this is closer to the biblical teaching.  Maybe this is why the weasel word “general” is used in the quotation above.

i) How is that hard to see? For instance, the Mosaic law mandates a number of festivals (e.g. Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur, Feast of Tabernacles) that must be observed on a particular date, for a particular duration. And the celestial luminaries were given in Gen 1 in part to enable man to tell the time. How does Miner think you can be a Sabbath-keeper if you can't tell when a day begins or ends–based on sunrise and sunset? How does Miner think ancient Jews were supposed to obey these injunctions without using the sun, moon, or stars to keep track of time? 

ii) Or take the distinction between clean and unclean animals. The Mosaic law not only distinguishes them, but contains empirical descriptions which enable the observer to identify them and differentiate them. But if, according to Miner, eyesight can't be trusted, how were ancient Jews supposed to obey those injunctions? 

iii) While we're on the subject, there's an interplay between general and special revelation in Gen 1. Gen 1 contains a taxonomy. However, it doesn't contain definitions of the animals. Or illustrations. It therefore relies on extrabiblical information to connect the textual designators with corresponding categories. It doesn't define the word "bird" or "flying" or "sky." It doesn't show a picture of birds. So that needs to be supplemented by extrabiblical information. Acquaintance with what names were used to designate what animals. And that's inductive.   

iv) Although Scripturalists claim to be Calvinists, they don't operate with a Reformed doctrine of creation and providence. The reason induction can be a source of knowledge is that God created natural kinds. So a sample can be representative. 

Moreover, don’t the Scriptures provide many examples where people were deceived by their perceptions?
But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. (Matt 14:26)

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15)

i) That's confused. The observers weren't deceived by their senses. Their senses didn't malfunction. The disciples didn't hallucinate Jesus walking on water. Mary Magdalen didn't mistake a fig tree for a man.

Rather, reason deceived them. They misinterpreted what they saw. An intellectual error, not a sensory error.

But where does that leave Miner's position? It is his position that something is an unreliable source of knowledge if it ever deceives you? But by that yardstick, he can't trust his own mind or memory. Consider how much of his post depends on his ability to recall what he's read. 

Does he think something is an unreliable source of information unless it's infallible? Unless it is uniformly reliable? Unless it can never be mistaken? But his mind and memory are no less fallible than his senses. So how can he know anything at all?

ii) In addition, Miner's appeal to Jn 20 is deceptive. He only cites the first part. Although it begins with Mary disorientation, it ends with a recognition scene. When she hears him speak, she realizes who it is. But hearing is just as empirical as seeing. 

To my knowledge, the Bible nowhere affirms that things are always as we perceive them and we need not affirm such a counterintuitive conclusion. 

i) What makes him think my argument was based on that? In fact, let's take a personal example: in my mid-30s I was diagnosed with partial color-blindness. But I never suspected that because, despite my visual defect or abnormality, I function just fine in my visual environment. I recognize traffic lights. Even if I don't perceive what normal people perceive, I've make a subconscious adjustment or substitution that's functionally equivalent. 

ii) Suppose Miner lived in an area frequented by the eastern coral snake. Would he teach his sons how to distinguish between the markings of the coral snake and the scarlet king snake? Or would he throw his hands up in the air and exclaim, "the senses deceive, so don't even try to tell the difference!" 

18 comments:

  1. Not sure he's being radical or consistent enough, because he apparently expects people to be able to read and understand his words, but based on his operating assumptions why would he think something like that?

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  2. A few thoughts.

    On the first sentences:
    I did not claim that your reaction was your first reaction. I meant to identify it with the first reaction which many people have. I am aware that you have been at this a long time. No offense was meant.

    You gave 3 couterexamples to my statement: “One line of argument says that knowledge consists in sensation or perceiving the facts. One of the challenges that this faces is in extracting propositions from sensation. How can a mass of sensations: reds, greens, softs, hards, sweets, sours, highs, and lows, be turned into propositions?”

    All 3 examples fail to meet the challenge because they do not start with simple sensations (reds, greens, softs, …). What “appears to be a red rose” is not a sensation, hearing “a siren” is not a sensation, and seeing a “flock of crows” is not a sensation. I think you see this but possibly have no desire to interact on this issue.

    You gave 4 arguments against my statement: “Secondly, it is hard to see why God making the stars for signs implies that man’s senses are reliable. Could not God have made signs and also cursed man at some point so that he sometimes misinterprets them? Indeed this is closer to the biblical teaching.”

    The first example assumes that one must know when the Sabbath is in order to keep it. Why must this be so? If it is my strong opinion that today is the Sabbath and I keep it, as long as today actually is the Sabbath, then I have kept the Sabbath without knowing it was the Sabbath. The same logic applies to the other examples. But #4 seems to assert that the logical fallacy of induction can serve as a justification for true belief. I would like to ask what other fallacies you would accept.


    I presented 2 biblical examples to show that what people think they perceive isn’t always what is there. The criticism of my use misunderstood my point. I did not say that their senses deceived them. The point of the Scriptures were that, whatever they thought they saw actually wasn’t there. If Mary and the disciples can make that error, why can’t we? This is all that is needed to justify the biblical teaching that things aren’t always as people perceive them. We need something more solid to base our beliefs on. We need revelation from God.

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    1. "All 3 examples fail to meet the challenge because they do not start with simple sensations (reds, greens, softs, …)."

      We don't perceive "simple sensations." We perceive structured sensations. Sensible objects structure sensible properties in the object they embody.

      It's not as if the human mind must arbitrarily combine random discrete simple sensations. Rather, that's already given in the stimulus.

      "The first example assumes that one must know when the Sabbath is in order to keep it. Why must this be so?"

      Naturally, since you can't obey a command to cease labor on one particular day of the week, every week, unless you can identify when it begins or ends.

      "If it is my strong opinion that today is the Sabbath and I keep it, as long as today actually is the Sabbath, then I have kept the Sabbath without knowing it was the Sabbath."

      Not according to the Mosaic law. If you keep the Sabbath once every 10 days because that's your "strong opinion," you're a Sabbath-breaker.

      "The same logic applies to the other examples."

      So if an ancient Jew eats unclean animals, he obeyed the prohibition to avoid eating unclean animals so long as it was his "strong opinion" that an unclean animal is interchangeable with a clean animal?

      "But #4 seems to assert that the logical fallacy of induction can serve as a justification for true belief."

      You haven't shown how that's a fallacy given Biblical created kinds.

      "If Mary and the disciples can make that error, why can’t we?"

      That applies mutatis mutandis to reason and memory. Your fallback is not infallible either.

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    2. “All 3 examples fail to meet the challenge…”

      In the past, proponents of empiricism have tried to explain how sensations can be combined into perceptions, then how perceptions can be converted into memory images, and then how images can be abstracted into concepts or propositions. To my knowledge, nobody has yet come up with a good theory. If you’d like to give it a shot, I’ll be happy to critique what you say but my challenge remains. Such problems are not as easy as they appear.

      I think your misunderstanding of what I said about the Sabbath is pretty obvious. Give it another read and respond if you’d like.

      The example of the crows should suffice to point out how induction is a mistake in reasoning. If you admit to relying on mistakes in reasoning as a basis for knowledge, there isn’t much more I can say.

      “If Mary and the disciples can make that error, why can’t we?

      You need a theory of knowledge that can deal with that. The Scripture obviously doesn’t teach the reliability of perception (per the 2 Scriptures quoted above). If this destroys your theory of knowledge, you ought to seriously consider a fair reading of Scripturalism and stop repeating objections that Clark already responded to, as if his responses don't exist.

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    3. "In the past, proponents of empiricism have tried to explain how sensations can be combined into perceptions, then how perceptions can be converted into memory images, and then how images can be abstracted into concepts or propositions."

      i) Do you deny that many people have mental images of things they've seen? Do you think memories are innate? How could we have memories of things that happened to us before they happened? Do you currently have memories of future events? Do you have memories of next week?

      ii) Sensory perception isn't confined to images. And, in any case, I've given examples of how concepts or propositions can be formed from sensory perception.

      iii) You regurgitate Clark's false dichotomy by supposing sense-knowledge is equivalent to empiricism. You need to catch up with the actual state of the argument.

      "I think your misunderstanding of what I said about the Sabbath is pretty obvious. Give it another read and respond if you’d like."

      It's not my job to make your argument for you. If you're too lazy or inept to explain yourself, that's not my problem.

      "The example of the crows should suffice to point out how induction is a mistake in reasoning."

      i) You're failing to distinguish between a universal positive and a universal negative. Try again.

      ii) You continue to ignore the significance of created kinds. Are you simply unable to absorb the significance of that consideration?

      "If you admit to relying on mistakes in reasoning as a basis for knowledge, there isn’t much more I can say."

      Since I've given multiple examples from Scripture, are you impugning the inerrancy of Scripture?

      "You need a theory of knowledge that can deal with that."

      We don't need to begin with a theory of knowledge. We can begin with examples of knowledge. You need to learn Chisholm's distinction between epistemological methodism and epistemological particularism.

      "The Scripture obviously doesn’t teach the reliability of perception (per the 2 Scriptures quoted above)."

      I interacted with your failed examples. Repeating your initial mistake doesn't make it work any better.

      "and stop repeating objections that Clark already responded to, as if his responses don't exist."

      Your attention span is terribly limited. I've interacted with his responses.

      Your modus operandi is indistinguishable from a village atheist. You shot your wad on the first encounter. You have nothing in reserve.

      The contrast between the high level of your intellectual condescension and the low level of your intellectual performance is striking. You're deflecting my arguments and counterarguments with bluff, bluster, and a string of tendentious assertions.

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    5. You spoke of me having a “high level” of “intellectual condescension”. I’ll let the reader be the judge of who is sticking to the point and who feels the need to resort to ad hominem bullying.

      On getting from sensations of red and green to propositions:

      I still don’t see that you’ve made an attempt. Let’s stick to the issue here.

      On the Sabbath, I’d have to engage in “intellectual condescension” to show you how you missed the point. Let the reader judge.

      On induction, do you really disagree that induction is a fallacy?

      On the biblical implication that the senses are unreliable: You interacted and I pointed out that you missed the point. See my first comment above.

      You said: “Your attention span is terribly limited. I've interacted with his responses. Your modus operandi is indistinguishable from a village atheist. You shot your wad on the first encounter. You have nothing in reserve.”

      When someone has to respond like this, I assume I’ve pinned him into a corner that he doesn’t think he can escape through rational argument. That’s when I say “talk to you later Steve.”

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    6. Luke, you labor under the illusion that if you respond the first time to what I write, that's sufficient. You ignore my rejoinders.

      In your latest comment you don't offer a single counterargument. You've done nothing to advance your side of the argument. You substitute rationalistic rhetoric for rational argumentation.

      You're welcome to say "talk to you later." It's not as if you were doing me any favors by gracing me with your presence.

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  3. "If it is my strong opinion that a woman is my wife and I have sexual intercourse with her, as long as the woman actually is my wife, then I have not committed adultery without knowing it was my wife."

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    1. I assume this refers back to my first comment. If you have intercourse with your wife, you haven't committed adultery. This is irregardless of whether or not you knew it was your wife. Correct?

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    2. If I'm seeking anonymous sex, and arrange for an encounter wherein I penetrate an unseen and unknown stranger through a "glory hole", and as it turns out, unbeknownst to me, my wife was seeking the same, and I've accidentally penetrated her, in your view of Scripture have I committed adultery?

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    3. If you neglect issues of committing adultery in the heart and the unfaithfulness that is committed by arranging the encounter and so on, no. The physical act of laying with your wife is not the sin of adultery, even though you had to commit many sins, arguably adulteries, to get to that point.

      It works the other way too. Not every unbeliever knows that he is transgressing God’s commandment when he drinks too much wine on Saturday night, yet God holds him accountable. Surely he is worse off if he knows, but sin is sin whether or not it is known. Do you think I’ve missed something here?

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    4. I don't think you've missed anything, but maybe I've missed something.

      I'm wondering how, from an internalist, infallibalist Scripturalist perspective, a man can know that a particular woman is his wife in order to obey God's commandments to be fruitful and multiply, and to be joined to her in a one-flesh union, loving her as Christ loves His church, and not to commit adultery by lying with another woman.

      If our noetic equipment is as unreliable as you seem to be arguing, one wonders how a vast array of divine commands and prohibitions can be discerned, much less obeyed.

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    5. If you haven’t read the entire post that Steve is responding to above, I think you’d benefit from giving it a careful read; especially the Clark quotes. It is here: http://scripturalism.com/sensation-and-knowledge/

      I think you might be misunderstanding our purpose for pointing out examples of the untrustworthiness of perception. We Scripturalists believe that God has given us perception so that we can better glorify Him, obey him, and know him. What we won’t accept is a theory of knowledge that is based on perception. The reason is twofold. First, because the Scriptures don’t teach it, and second, because of the obvious problems with doing so (as explained in the link above). Some people would prefer to ignore the problem and mock it, but we can’t do that because we believe that God is the truth; self-consistent and unable to lie, therefore we seek a biblical solution to the problem rather than dismissing it unanswered.

      Now, to your question: “If our noetic equipment is as unreliable as you seem to be arguing, one wonders how a vast array of divine commands and prohibitions can be discerned, much less obeyed.”

      I think you are right that we must know God’s commands in order to obey them. If Peter just so happened to do no work on the Sabbath without being aware that God had commanded it, I don’t think this would be called obedience. However, one need not have infallible knowledge of what day it is in order to keep the Sabbath. If one believes it is the Sabbath, and he, knowing the command of God, keeps the Sabbath, he has obeyed the commandment if, indeed, it actually is the Sabbath. We need not have infallible knowledge of who our wife is in order to love her. We all admit that it is just barely possible that the woman we see when we come home from work is some unknown identical twin. When we offer to make dinner and clean the house this evening, we are obeying God’s command to love our wife, so long as it really is our wife. I think it is perfectly reasonable that you believe she is your wife, it just isn’t infallible knowledge. Does this distinction make sense to you?

      You seem to have understood my answer better than Steve did above. Obedience to God is not dependent upon knowledge of what day it is; we can always be wrong on that. Obedience is dependent on knowing God’s command and following it; whether or not we have infallible knowledge of the details.

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    6. Miner says God has "given us perception so that we can obey him," but he says perception is unreliable. Perception is not a source of knowledge. So in what respect does he suppose we can use perception to obey him?

      Miner pays lip-service to the authority of Scripture, but he'd rather mock what the Bible says about sensory perception.

      You can't obey commands to do things on an obligatory date, for an obligatory duration, or refrain from doing things on an obligatory date, for an obligatory duration, if you can't keep track of time. The Biblical commands I referenced are time-indexed. You must know when a day begins and ends, when a week begins and ends.

      Likewise, the distinction between clean and unclean animals. How can you follow the command if the senses are so untrustworthy that you can't tell the difference between clean and unclean animals?

      Miner defies the way in which the commands are explicitly framed because it conflicts with his armchair epistemology.

      He then denies the necessity of infallible knowledge to obey God's commands. He says it's "reasonable" to believe the woman in question is your wife. How does that differ from an evidentialist whose beliefs and actions are proportional to probabilities?

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    7. What do you think CR? In light of our conversation above about your wife and the Sabbath, it seems that we'd simply beg to differ with steve's assertion that to obey "You must know when a day begins and ends, when a week begins and ends." Infallible knowledge of these things is not required for obedience.

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    8. Since Miner is too unethical to engage the text of Scripture, notice the actual wording. Observe the temporal specifications:

      You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt (Exod 34:18).

      3 “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

      4 “These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the Lord's Passover. 6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 8 But you shall present a food offering to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.”

      15 “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. 16 You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath.

      23 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 24 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation.

      26 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 27 “Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be for you a time of holy convocation, and you shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord.

      33 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 34 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the Lord. 35 On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 36 For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work (Lev 23).

      At the beginnings of your months, you shall offer a burnt offering to the Lord…This is the burnt offering of each month throughout the months of the year (Num 28:11,14).

      On the tenth day of this seventh month you shall have a holy convocation and afflict yourselves (Num 29:7).

      Likewise, consider the instructions (i.e. visual markers) for how Jews were required to distinguish clean animals from unclean animals. For instance:

      3 Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 4 Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these: The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 5 And the rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 6 And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 7 And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. 8 You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.
      9 “These you may eat, of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. 10 But anything in the seas or the rivers that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you (Lev 11; par Deut 14).

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  4. Hi Luke, I guess I'm unclear as to how you're protecting the Bible from what is, at least to my mind, a radical form of skepticism.

    Isn't it possible, given your examples above, that what you perceive to be "the Bible" is in reality a hallucination? Couldn't you be self-deceived?

    And what if your memory of what you believe to have read "in the Bible" is mistaken? Is memory reliable?

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