Does Presuppositionalism Confuse Ontology and Epistemology?

"Does Presuppositionalism Confuse Ontology and Epistemology?" (James Anderson)

Has presuppositionalism evolved?

Has presuppositionalism evolved? By presuppositionalism I mean the Van Tilian tradition, not the Clarkian tradition–which is a different animal.

Van Til championed the transcendental argument. And think that's due in large part do his eccentric view of divine incomprehensibility (which builds paradox into his definition of divine incomprehensibility). If God is incomprehensible in Van Til's sense, then you can't argue directly for his existence. Rather, you argue that God's existence is a necessary condition for everything else. Van Til's view is similar in that respect to transcendental Thomism. 

So Van Til's argument was essentially an epistemological argument for God's existence. Transcendental arguments are epistemological arguments, to refute skepticism.

However, in the hands of Greg Welty and James Anderson, the argument has shifted to modal metaphysics. So there's been some evolution and reorientation in the argument. 

It may be the case that Kant's argument is more epistemological, in part because he doesn't have a robust theology to ground it. Kant might even be a closet atheist. And he's skeptical regarding our knowledge of the external world. So he can't say much of anything to back it up in terms of bedrock ontology. 

Although Van Til's version is partly epistemological, he tries to ground it in the metaphysics of Reformed theism. Greg Welty and James Anderson develop that neglected potential in more detail. This is also because there's been a lot of work done on modal metaphysics which wasn't on the horizon in Van Til's time. In addition, Welty was never a champion of theological paradox. And that's conspicuously missing from Bahnsen as well. 

Sorting out presuppositionalism

The silly contest between Josh Rasmussen and SyeTenB demonstrates, once again, the need to do some sorting:

Regarding the YouTube interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkcs-31PqFg&feature=youtu.be

There are at least three different things flying under the banner of "presuppositionalism"

1. There's the position of SyeTenB. He's a hack with a rabid internet following among a clique of pop Calvinist groupies.

2. That's not to be confused with academic versions of presuppositionalism. For instance:

Greg Welty, “The Conceptualist Argument,” in Colin Ruloff (ed.), Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming).

https://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf

https://blog.epsociety.org/2013/09/responses-to-argument-for-god-from-logic.html

3. From another angle is the presuppositionalism of Vern Poythress. For instance:

https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ChancePoythress.pdf

4. There are roughly two competing schools of thought that call themselves presuppositionalists:

i) One derives from Cornelius Van Til. Second-generation Van Tilians include John Frame, the late Greg Bahnsen, and Vern Poythress. We might classify James Anderson as a third-generation Van Tilian. 

However, he's been exposed to some other influences, like Plantinga and modal metaphysics.

Theistic conceptual realism belongs to a family of transcendental arguments. It's interesting how that's evolved. Kant's argument is more epistemological, in part because he doesn't have a robust theology to ground it. Kant might even be a closet atheist. And he's skeptical regarding our knowledge of the external world. So he can't say much of anything to back it up in terms of bedrock ontology. 

Although Van Til's version is partly epistemological, he tries to ground it in the metaphysics of Reformed theism.

Greg Welty and James Anderson have done a lot to embed the epistemological side of the argument in modal metaphysics. I think it's a transcendental argument with an epistemological side, but they've done more to model and detail the necessary metaphysical conditions that make it possible. 

ii) The other derives from the late Gordon Clark. Clark as an anti-empiricist. 

Clark's followers make second-order knowledge necessary for first-order knowledge. You don't know anything unless you know how you know it. They make the justification of knowledge a necessary ingredient in knowledge itself. Here are two examples:

http://unapologetica.blogspot.com/2019/11/gordon-clark-and-necessity-of.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/03/more-scripturalist-mumbo-jumbo.html

It's important to keep these two schools of thought separate, even though they both use the same designation. When you're accused of not understanding presuppositionalism, part of the problem is that there are competing schools of thought as well as different exponents with varying views.

I don't think Josh is under any obligation to understand SyeTenB's positionbecause  there's not much there there. 

Fisking Fesko (Transcendental Arguments)

https://www.proginosko.com/2020/01/reforming-apologetics-transcendental-arguments/

Fisking Fesko (worldview)

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/09/reforming-apologetics-worldview/

Fisking Fesko (Aquinas)

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/08/reforming-apologetics-thomas-aquinas/

Fisking Fesko redux

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/reforming-apologetics-calvin/

Van Til on common ground

In this post I'm going to outline my understanding of Van Til on common ground. This is occasioned by Fesko's new book, which I haven't read. I have been reading Dr. Anderson's serial review. I won't document my interpretation by quoting Van Til. I'm not that invested. I'm going to rely on memory. I will also be adding some of my own refinements. 

1. Antithesis/common ground

In Van Til's analysis, there's a tension between antithesis and common ground. The tension isn't internal to Van Til's analysis. Rather, it reflects the instability of non-Christian thought. 

2. Metaphysical common ground

If Christianity is true, then reality is Christian. The non-Christian exists in a Christian reality. Not a Christian culture, but reality in toto. His physical environment as well as his mind. 

At the metaphysical level, the degree of common ground between Christian and non-Christian is total. The non-Christian cannot escape reality. He can deny elements of reality, but since there's no alternative to reality, his flight from reality will always be parasitic on the very reality he labors to overthrow. There is no metaphysical antithesis whatsoever.  

3. Hypothetical antithesis

i) To the extent that the non-Christian is epistemologically self-conscious, his goal will be to provide a systematic alternative to the Christian worldview. The aim will be zero common ground between Christianity and the non-Christian alternative. His position will be developed in conscious opposition to Christian theism. However, that's subject to various caveats. 

ii) Because there's only one reality, if that reality is Christian, then it's impossible for the non-Christian, however ingenious and indefatigable, to develop a thoroughgoing alternative to reality. So the effort to devise a consistent alternative to Christian theism is doomed to fail. It will always fall short of the goal. 

To cast it this in Calvinistic terms, the non-Christian lives in a divinely-defined reality. There are no random events. By virtue of predestination and providence, everything has a purpose. Everything happens for a reason. Moreover, God is the source of possibilities and necessities as well as actualities. There can be no wholesale point of contrast. 

So there's a certain paradox or dilemma in the antithetical relationship between Christian theism and non-Christian alternatives. The non-Christian program cannot succeed. There is no other reality to fall back on. The construction materials derive from Christian reality. All the resources at the disposal of the non-Christian are ultimately Christian in origin. I don't mean historically, but metaphysically. 

iii) We need to distinguish between non-Christian views that originated independently of Christianity (e.g. ancient Greco-Roman atheism, Buddhist atheism) and non-Christian views that evolved in reaction to Christianity (e.g. Renaissance/Enlightenment atheism). 

On the one hand, the antithesis between Christianity and modern Western atheism may be more extreme because Christian theism is the default foil. 

On the other hand, the antithesis between Christianity and modern Western atheism may be less pronounced in some respects than pre-Christian atheism because modern Western atheism is ironically influenced by Christianity in a way that pre-Christian atheism wasn't. For instance, Buddhism didn't target Christianity but Hinduism. 

In a sense, the outlook of Buddhist atheism is more foreign to Christianity than modern Western atheism inasmuch as Buddhist atheism originated without any reference to Christianity. 

iv) It's my impression that Roman Catholicism is the default foil for Renaissance/Enlightenment atheism. That's the primary target. But if, like Van Til, you regard Roman Catholicism as a highly defective representative of Christianity, then that adulterates the antithesis. In a sense, atheists were right to oppose Catholicism, although they opposed the good as well as the bad in Roman Catholicism. And their alternative was bad.

By the same token, the foil for Buddhism and Greco-Roman atheism is pagan polytheism. Once again, that adulterates the antithesis. They were right to oppose pagan polytheism. The problem lies with their alternative. 

4. Practical epistemological antithesis

i) Most non-Christians are pretty thoughtless. They're not attempting to construct a wholesale alternative to Christianity. 

ii) Due to common grace, non-Christians often retain some common ground with Christians. That varies from one individual to the next as well as from one society to the next. 

Fisking Fesko

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/reforming-apologetics-common-notions/

Reforming Apologetics (Introduction)

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/06/reforming-apologetics-introduction/

The problem with TAG

I was asked to comment on this post:

https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/the-problem-with-tag/

I believe Alex Malpass is an atheist with a doctorate in philosophy. He's critiquing a version of presuppositionalism represented by Bahnsen and Butler. Certainly Michael Butler is several notches above the Syeclones. However, I think that's a fairly retro version of presuppositionalism. There are more promising versions. So that's not the version I'd defend. 

Talk of ‘the Christian worldview’ and ‘the non-Christian worldview’ is to be taken with a pinch of salt (although this will prove controversial later). Obviously, there are lots of different denominations of Christianity, including reformed Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, etc. Equally, there are many distinct non-Christian positions, including every denomination of every other religious worldview, plus every variation of atheist worldview, etc. 

In context, "the Christian worldview" is shorthand for Calvinism. Van Til was a Calvinist and his successors are Calvinists. And his Calvinism is not incidental to his position. In virtue of predestination and meticulous providence, everything happens for a reason. That's an essential component of presuppostionalism, in contrast to freewill theism or non-Christian worldviews where many events are pointless. This doesn't mean presuppositionalism requires Calvinism, per se, but it does require predestination and meticulous providence. In addition to Calvinism, other examples include the Augustinian tradition, classical Thomism, and Jansenism. Anything along those lines could lay a foundation for presuppositionalism. 

Presuppositional v. "classic Reformed" apologetics

There's a new controversy brewing between Van Tilian apologetics and "classic Reformed" apologetics, prompted by Fesko's new book. This is a new permutation of an old ongoing debate:

https://reformedforum.org/ctc596/

Vos and Van Til: How Wide the Divide?

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/04/vos-and-van-til-how-wide-the-divide/

Van Til and Vallicella

The proof presupposes the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), and I am willing to grant that LNC and the other laws of logic can be argued to presuppose in their turn the existence of an omniscient necessary being. One argument to this conclusion is the Anderson-Welty argument which I critically examine here. I conclude that, while the argument is not rationally compelling, it does contribute to the rationality of belief in God.  In other words, the Anderson-Welty argument is a good reason to believe in the existence of God. It does not, however, establish the existence of God in a definitive manner. It does not show that the existence of God is absolutely certain.

At the very most, then, one can plausibly argue to, but not prove, the existence of an omniscient necessary being whose existence is a presupposition of our rational operations in accordance with the laws of logic.  But this is a far cry from what Van Til asserts above, namely, that the truth of Christianity with all its very specific claims is a condition of the possibility of proving anything. Trinity and Incarnation are among these specific claims. How are these doctrines supposed to bear upon the laws of logic? [emphasis mine]

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/01/van-til-on-an-absolutely-certain-proof-of-christianity.html

i) Is a philosophical argument a failure unless it can establish a claim with absolute certainty? Isn't that a retrograde definition of a successful philosophical argument? Aren't nearly all philosophical arguments failures by that austere standard? Is that a deficiency of the argument, or an artificial standard of success? 

ii) What if your aim was never to prove the truth of Christianity by one particular argument? Is your argument a failure if it misses a target it was never aiming for?

What if your particular argument is part of a cumulative case strategy? No one argument gets you to the finish line, but each argument combines with other arguments towards that objective? 

Is Paul begging the question?

I'll make a few comments about this post:

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/01/reading-now-cornelius-van-til-the-defense-of-the-faith.html

1. It's anachronistic to read Paul through the prism of Hume. Viewed from a post-Enlightenment context, it may seem like Paul is begging the question, but the thought-world of the 1C Roman Empire was generally very different from the Enlightenment and its secular progeny. (There was, to be sure, the occasional skeptic or atheist.)

2. In addition, Paul is writing to and for Christians. Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. The argument from authority is not fallacious if your target audience shares the same paradigm. The implied reader of Paul's letter acknowledged the dim view of pagan idolatry and immorality in OT Judaism. 

3. There's a circular quality to Vallicella's complaint. He doesn't identify as a Christian. He's merely a theist who's "sympathetic" to Christianity. Given his outlook, he naturally rejects Paul's classically Jewish characterization of pagan infidelity. In part, Vallicella is giving us his autobiographical reaction. He doesn't see it the same way as Paul because he's on the other side of the issue. But that carries no presumption that Paul is wrong. Whatever your position, by definition you will disagree with the opposing position. 

Needless to say, Paul's indictment will be unconvincing to someone who doesn't share that outlook. It wasn't meant to be independently persuasive. Rather, it plays an explanatory role in Paul's overall presentation. There's an inner logic to the argument in Romans. So the hermeneutical issue is the role that Rom 1 plays in the larger flow of argument. If God is just but humans are unjust, then that has implications for the nature of salvation. The hermeneutical question is the logical relationship between Rom 1 and the remainder of Romans. How Rom 1 functions in Paul's argumentative strategy, given the task he set for himself. Given the target audience.

Autonomous reason

William Vallicella has been commenting on Van Til's The Defense of the Faith. It's nice to have a philosopher of Vallicella's stature interact with Van Til: 

Why am I bothering to read Van Til?

I have been told that I am wasting my time with Van Til.  One, but not the only, reason I am ploughing through The Defense of the Faith (4th ed.) is because his striking formulations help me focus certain questions that concern me deeply.   One of these questions concerns the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. (Leo Strauss is very good on the is tension.) Here is a Van Til passage that turns my crank:

So we cannot subject the authoritative pronouncements of Scripture about reality to the scrutiny of reason because it is reason itself that learns of its proper function from Scripture." (130) 

The Bible, then, is an absolutely infallible and finally authoritative source of truth which man cannot question and to which he must submit.  But what exactly does the Bible say? Does it say that God is triune? Yes, says Van Till. But now it should be clear that it is his Bible that he speaks of, the Bible as interpreted by him, using his finite, fallible, and indeed totally depraved reason, which somehow is not so totally depraved as to prevent him from discerning the truths that God reveals to us.

Van Til was “Prophetically True” on Roman Catholicism

Daniel the Prophet Accurately Describes Roman Catholicism

Leonardo De Chirico explicates Van Til’s view of
the syncretism of Roman Catholicism

In his latest issue of Vatican Files, Leonard De Chirico has published an excerpt of a paper given at a September 2014 conference in Rome entitled “Rerum Novarum: Neo-Calvinism and Roman Catholicism”. Google translates “Rerum Novarum” as “of the new things”. That is also the title of a papal encyclical, Rerum Novarum, by “Pope Leo XIII”, and the title indicates “the spirit of revolutionary change” – beginning with the “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”.

This theme was an appropriate point of contact between neo-Calvinists of the late 19th century, and it was deemed to be the theme of a program in 2014 as well. Here is the theme of the program from the organizers:

Roman Catholicism was a world player when neo-Calvinism began to develop from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. At that time, both Catholicism and Protestantism went through substantial changes. For the neo-Calvinists, Catholicism functioned as both an antagonist and an ally in their struggle to uphold religion in the modern age of ‘rerum Novarum’. The neo-Calvinists were the first Protestants to cooperate openly with Roman Catholics in politics and on social issues. Theologically they were particularly interested in neo-Thomism, but remained critical of Roman Catholicism until after the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council.

The conference will focus on the theological, ecclesial, philosophical, political, social and cultural interactions between the two traditions: in what ways did they influence and approach each other, on which aspects did they continue to differ and why, and how could their relationship over a century and a half best be described?

This, it seems to me, is a useful approach that Reformed scholars and believers can take in addressing Roman Catholicism. Especially useful, it seems, is the paper given by De Chirico (excerpted here, and to be given in a fuller form in a book-length project soon to be released from this conference): “The clay of Paganism with the iron of Christianity: Cornelius Van Til’s Critique of Roman Catholicism”.

What's presuppositionalism?

For years there's been controversy over the correct interpretation of Van Tilian apologetics. I don't comment on this very often because I think it's usually a blind alley. 

What accounts for persistent disagreement regarding the interpretation of Van Tilian apologetics? I'm reminded of what the SEP entry on the double effect principle says: "It is not at all clear that all of the examples that double effect has been invoked to justify can be explained by a single principle."

And that may be a large part of the difficulty in pinning down Van Tilian apologetics. Perhaps it's not the outgrowth of a single overarching principle, but a family of related positions. Or maybe they're not all closely related. Maybe some elements are adventitious.

1. TAG

Considered in isolation, even though it's associated with Van Tilian apologetics, and sponsored by Van Tilian apologetics, as if that's a distinctive of Van Tilian apologetics, there's no reason why TAG couldn't be just one among a range of a priori and a posteriori theistic proofs. No reason, at this discrete level, that it couldn't be incorporated into classical  apologetics or figure in a cumulative case approach. 

2. The necessity of TAG

If, however, we take a step back and ask why TAG is said to be necessary, or why transcendental arguments generally are important or indispensable, then at that underlying level it's not just one of many theistic proofs. Rather, Van Til's contention is that we naturally take many fundamental truths for granted that are groundless unless God exists. And not mere theism, but Reformed theism. 

On that broader and deeper level, the claim is that TAG reflects a distinctive, all-embracing, and unifying orientation regarding the justification of knowledge. Without that theistic grounding, global skepticism looms large.  Even if TAG is compatible with classical theism, or a commutative case metrology, the rationale for TAG is more foundational. As the IEP entry puts it, "Transcendental arguments are partly non-empirical, often anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what the opponent questions. Such arguments take as a premise some obvious fact about our mental life—such as some aspect of our knowledge, our experience, our beliefs, or our cognitive abilities—and add a claim that some other state of affairs is a necessary condition of the first one."

On this view, even if there's nothing distinctively presuppositional about TAG, there is something distinctive about transcendental theism.

3. Reductio ad absurdum 

In addition, Van Til had a two-prong strategy for apologetic dialogue or analysis: assume their viewpoint for the sake of argument and take it to a logical extreme; have them assume the Christian (i.e. Reformed) viewpoint for the sake of argument and take it to a logical extreme. Compare and contrast their respective explanatory power or reductionism. A reductio ad absurdum or argument ad impossibile. 

(3) is related to (2). As a Calvinist, Van Til thought that for experience to be coherent, everything must happen for a reason. Every event must be coordinated in a part/whole, means/ends relation, according to a wise and benevolent master plan for the world (predestination, meticulous providence). By contrast, theological indeterminism leads to loss of ultimate coherence. Uncontrolled, uncoordinated events that are individually pointless, going nowhere. 

4. Divine incomprehensibility 

Due to his interpretation of divine incomprehensibility, Van Til didn't think it was possible to prove God directly. His intuition seems to be that if God is paradoxical, then he defies straightforward proof. 

There are other components to his overall thinking, but those are crucial features, I'd say. Is this a tight package? If you accept (2), then that commits you to (1). On the other hand, you could see the value of (1) without strong commitment to (2). 

Likewise, belief in (4) commits you to (1), and perhaps to (2), but you can see the value of (1) and or (2) without a strong commitment to (4). 

(3) is a practical strategy rather than a principle, although (3) may be a way of illustrating the contrasting alternatives implicit in (2). 

Another issue is whether transcendental arguments are, in fact, a unique kind of argument. According to the SEP entry, 

As standardly conceived, transcendental arguments are taken to be distinctive in involving a certain sort of claim, namely that X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y—where then, given that Y is the case, it logically follows that X must be the case too. Moreover, because these arguments are generally used to respond to skeptics who take our knowledge claims to be problematic, the Y in question is then normally taken to be some fact about us or our mental life which the skeptic can be expected to accept without question (e.g., that we have experiences, or make certain judgements, or perform certain actions, or have certain capacities, and so on), where X is then something the skeptic doubts or denies (e.g., the existence of the external world, or of the necessary causal relation between events, or of other minds, or the force of moral reasons).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendental-arguments/

But couldn't some other theistic proofs be framed in similar terms? They take some generally uncontested fact like the existence of the physical world, or thinking beings, then give reasons for supposing that God supplies a necessary condition for their existence. Cosmological arguments give reasons for why God supplies a necessary condition for the possible and actual existence of the universe. Teleological arguments give reasons for why God supplies a necessary condition for certain types of natural organization. The moral argument gives reasons for why God supplies a necessary condition for moral realism. The argument from reason and argument from consciousness give reasons for why God supplies a necessary condition for consciousness and the reliability of reason.

To be sure, some people deny moral realism, &c., but then you just recast it in hypothetical terms: If moral realism is true, then that it must be grounded in God. If mathematical realism is true, then it must be grounded in God. If modal realism is true, then it must be grounded in God. The existence of something necessary is a prerequisite for the existence of something contingent. And so on and so forth. 

Perhaps they are treated as distinctive because, as originally conceived, they are epistemological theistic arguments. But is the epistemological application an exclusive kind of argument or a specific application of a more general principle? 

Van Til's enduring value

Cornelius Van Til was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and he remains controversial. Much of the controversy swirls around the correct interpretation of his views. What, if anything, is the enduring value of his work?

i) Both believers and unbelievers take many truths for granted. It's useful, especially in apologetics, to consider all the other things that must be true for any particular thing to be true. What must reality be like for your fundamental beliefs about the possibility of morality, modality, knowledge, induction, human significance, &c., to be warranted?  

For instance, apostates commonly lose their Christian faith, but retain many residual beliefs that are inconsistent with atheism. They didn't stop to consider how many of their fundamental beliefs were implicitly grounded in God's existence. They fail to ask what's a necessary condition for their belief to be possible. 

Or they do it backwards. They begin by rejecting God. Then cast about for some alternative to ground their fundamental beliefs. But if they don't have the answers in advance, then their apostasy was intellectually premature. 

ii) It's possible not only to argue for Christian theology, but to argue from Christian theology. That's not viciously circular, because some Christian doctrines have independent explanatory value. It's not necessarily an argument from biblical authority to appeal to Christian doctrine. Rather, you can show how some Christian doctrines make better sense of what we must believe than secular alternatives. 

iii) Apropos (ii), philosophy and theology overlap. It's a mistake to separate the two.

iv) In apologetics we attempt to find common ground with the unbeliever. But sometimes it's necessary to challenge their tendentious or arbitrary rules of evidence (e.g. methodological atheism).

v) If Christian theism is true, then mind is prior to matter. Reality is ultimately personal rather than impersonal. And that has greater explanatory value than physicalism. 

vi) Van Til's rationalist/irrationalist square of opposition is useful. 

Van Til vs Barth

Highly recommended: Van Til’s Critique of Barth’s Christology:

If what we have said above about Barth's thought is correct, then we must stand with Van Til in his fundamental contention: Barthianism is not simply a different expression of Christianity, but a different religion altogether. Or, to put the matter in the form of a question: is there any way to conceive of Barthianism and (Reformed) Christianity as friends? The answer must be Nein!

For this reason, we find the recent dismissals of Van Til's critique by current evangelical theologians somewhat troubling. What is perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that Barth's theology is being readily received today as being friendly toward Reformed orthodoxy. Whatever the reasons for this, it is time to once again exercise discernment, as Van Til did. In addition, we would do well to read Barth, carefully and closely as Van Til did, seeking to understand truly the deep structures of his thought and their implications for Christian doctrine and life. And when we have done that, we must stand in witness and testimony to the self-attesting Christ of Scripture.