A map is not enough

Been a while since I discussed Scripturalism. According to standard Scripturalist epistemology, the Bible is the only source of knowledge. All other sources of information are consigned to opinion.

Scripturalism is like giving someone a map. The Bible is the roadmap. That's all you need–or is it? 

Problem is, a map in itself, however accurate and detailed, is useless unless you know where you are in relation to the map. To be able locate your destination, and the route to take, you must be able to locate yourself on the map. But that information is not on the map. The map doesn't show you. So you must be able to compare the map to recognizable street signs or landmarkks to get your bearings. To use the map, you need information outside the map. 

Ryan Hedrich may be able to make the necessary modifications to Scripturalism. We'll see how that goes. 

Revelatory regress

Once again, I'm going to comment on a post by Alex Malpass, an atheist with a doctorate in philosophy. 

https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/the-infinite-regress-for-revelational-epistemology/

Traditionally, it is held that there are two ways of gaining knowledge; either through the senses, or through the use of pure reason...Some presuppositional apologists try to have the best of both worlds, with a third type of epistemological category; revelation. 

False dichotomy. Revelation is a very traditional epistemological category. And not just biblical revelation. The heathen believe in various forms of revelation or divination: dreams from gods, apparitions of dead ancestors, &c. 

Sye-Clones

I was asked to comment on a video by YouTube atheist "Ozymandias Ramses II" (or "Ozy" for short). I'm not going to watch hours of his videos. I think the popularity of podcasts and YouTube videos is intellectually lazy. A cumbersome way to expound and analyze complex issues. 

However, in response to commenters, Ozy sometimes provides lengthy explanations in writing. I will therefore assess some of his written statements. 

From what I can tell, his primary target is Sye Ten Bruggencate and his minions. Another target is Bible Thumping Wingnut (which I never view).  Secondary targets may include objectivism (Ayn Rand) and Scripturalism (Gordon Clark and his would-be disciples). Let's begin with some background information:

I live in Canada.  I studied psychology, Western intellectual history, and then  philosophy in Montreal (McGill and Concordia), and pursued (never completing) a doctorate in philosophy at UWO in London, Ontario. 

With respect to your question about foundationalism and Quine/Neurath, I'm in the latter camp.  In fact in some of the shows/hangouts I've challenged the foundationalist/edifice metaphor that informs presuppositionalism in favour of Quine's web of belief and Neurath's raft metaphors with respect to knowledge.  In fact, the approach to epistemology I find most promising is Quine's project of naturalized epistemology.  I did grad work in that area, specifically on the psychology of belief-acquisition and the enabling assumptions (aka properly basic beliefs) that constitute the main timbers within one's raft of belief (or the most well-integrated strands within one's web of beliefs).

I reject the Justified, true belief (JTB) definition of knowledge for a variety of reasons, but my principle objection is that I don't think justification is properly part of the definition of knowledge.

Justification is necessary in life and serves pragmatic purposes, being important for persuasion and for satisfying the conditions of public assertability, but it's not an ingredient in what makes a belief into knowledge. I embrace an externalist account of epistemic justification and repudiate the internalist account of justification as being a pre-theoretical intuition that doesn't stand up to scrutiny and which leads unavoidably to the problem of justificatory regress.   Instead of JTB, I define knowledge as 'reliably-produced true belief' which is how some philosophers define it who are working towards Quine's project of naturalized epistemology.  

So that's where he's coming from. He's an atheist. I've been told he's an ex-Jehoveh's Witness. Unfortunately, many former cult members are suspicious of religion generally. 

It is condition of reasonableness and rationality that one's confidence in one's belief in any proposition should scale with or be commensurate with the quantity and quality of evidence in support of that proposition.  Belief isn't all or none; it admits of degrees of confidence. 

True, although we frequently have more evidence for a given belief than we are conscious of. 

Certainty may be a psychological desideratum, but it's not a necessitatum.  Some  presuppositionalists (of the Sye-Clone variety) seem to make a fetish of the idea of certainty, but contra their intuitions and desires on the matter, certainty is not a requirement for knowledge. And if they think certainty is a requirement on knowledge, well....that needs to be argued for.  It's a tough argument to make.

Depends on what we mean by certainty:

i) Certainty in the psychological sense of certitude isn't equivalent to knowledge

ii) Knowledge isn't equivalent to proof. 

So, can we be certain of anything? In my view, yes, but that's a heavily qualified 'yes'.  To say that some proposition is a certitude is merely to say that within the scope of a set of  assumptions, some claims can be put forth as certainties.  But that's not the absolute, unconditional certainty that a presuppositionalist lusts after.  That kind of certainty is  what I call 'hysterical certainty'. It's illusory.

Apparently, that makes Ozy is a global skeptic. But global skepticism is self-refuting (see below). 

Regarding Bahnsen, I'm not sure what point you were making by mentioning his saying that his opponents lose just by showing up. Of course he thinks that. He's a presuppositionalist: He thinks that anyone who uses reason at all is borrowing from his worldview and so has tacitly admitted defeat by showing up for a debate.  That's part of their apologetic.  Did you think that the more sophisticated presuppers didn't apply presuppositionalism?  Did you think they were going to provide evidence to support their belief in god? That'd make them evidentialists, not presuppers.  Their proof (so-called) proceeds by transcendental argument - an alleged demonstration of the impossibilty (due to incoherence) of all other worldviews.

The problem with this entire argument is that you utilized your reasoning in the very act of defending the reliability of your reasoning. This is a manifestly circular argument.  If your brain wasn't functioning properly, if your memory was compromised in the very act of evaluating the premises in your argument, if logic was not valid, then you'd have no reason to trust your conclusions.  So, you're exactly where you started; you're assuming the very thing you were asked to defend and prove to be the case - namely that your cognitive capacities and the inferential processes you relied upon are reliable.   There is no way out of this problem.

The presuppositionalist is simply requiring the impossible: He or she is demanding that you defend rationality, but will only accept a rational argument.  Well, one can't have one's reason and eat it too.  That's what needs to be pointed out - that one is being asked to do the impossible. The mistake people are making here is to set out on the fool's errand of trying to use one's cognitive capacities and inferential practices (eg: deductive reasoning)  to show that those cognitive capacities and inferential practices are reliable.  One is simply being challenged to do the impossible.  One should never waste one's time trying to do the impossible. One should instead point out that the challenge betrays a confusion on the part of the challenger.  Tell them to show you how they do it. Ask them to put up or shut up. And the moment the presuppositionalist starts with his presuppositional argument and invokes his god as the guarantor of his own inferential practices and cognitive capacities, just point out that he seems to have used his cognitive capacities and inferential processes to reach his conclusion that he can trust his inferential capacities and inferential processes and thus, has argued in a circle and thus has assumed their reliability in the very act of trying to establish their reliability...and so has failed at the challenge they have set out for us.

And the same problem holds for inferential reasoning and for the reliability of our perceptual capacities.  These properly basic beliefs are the enabling assumptions that make possible the testing of all our other beliefs about reality, but their reliability cannot be confirmed because we have to utilize them in the very act of evaluating the outcomes which result from acting upon them.  They are, in that sense, pre-rational beliefs we are all naturally disposed to believe and by means of which we can formulate and develop ever-improving models of reality. 

1) When using the primacy or existence argument - or any argument at all - one is implicitly assuming that inferential process one is using is reliable and can be trusted to yield true conclusions when the very conclusion one is supposed to be demonstrating is that one's inferential processes being used are reliable and can be trusted to yield true conclusions.  Why, after all, would you use an inferential process to prove anything unless you assumed its proper application yields true conclusions?

2) When using the primacy or existence argument - or any argument at all - one is implicitly assuming that one's own cognitive capacities, in that very act of cognition, are reliable and not malfunctioninng and so can be trusted to yield true conclusions when the very conclusion one is supposed to be demonstrating is that one's cognitive capacities are reliable and properly functioning. Why, after all, would you employ or rely upon a cognitive faculty process to prove anything unless you assumed it was reliable and properly functioning when you were relying it?

Hence that argument, and any such argument, is circular.  The reason it feels like a trick is because we don't have any other way of arriving at reasonable conclusions and we're so accustomed to the use of inferential processes and our cognitive faculties that we assume that any conclusion can be supported by such means - but the rationality and reliability of reason and our cognitive faculties is one conclusion which we cannot support in this way, except on pain of circular argumentation.

All circular arguments are junk. There are no virtuous circular arguments. 

There are two basic problems with Ozy's objection:

1. He fails to distinguish between a circular argument/syllogism and circular reasoning. 

i) In a circular argument, as I understand it, the conclusion repeats the major premise without the minor premise(s) contributing any additional reasons. Put another way, the difference between an assertion and an argument is that an argument provides reasons in support of a truth-claim. 

A circular argument is a technical fallacy of a logical syllogism. It renders the syllogism invalid. 

In a valid argument, the major and minor premises combine to yield the conclusion. There's a logical interrelationship between the premises which yield a conclusion over and above the force of each individual premise, separately considered. In that event, the conclusion isn't reducible to the major premise. Rather, the combination of premises mark an advance over the major premise, or any single premise, considered in isolation to the whole. 

ii) By contrast, circular reasoning is broader than formal syllogistic argumentation. Every argument takes some things for granted. There's a distinction between presuppositions and premises. Presuppositions are not a part of the argument proper, but underlie the argument. It's not fallacious in the formal logical sense to engage in circular reasoning, where you take certain things for granted, that fall outside the scope of the syllogism (e.g. the external world). 

If the presuppositions are in dispute, then it begs the question to take them for granted, but if they're reasonable, inevitable, or shared by both sides, it's not question-begging to take them for granted.

2. His objection is self-refuting. He contends that demonstrating rationality is impossible because the proponent must assume and utilize inferential reasoning in the very act of defending the reliability of his cognitive abilities and inferential processes. But notice that Ozy must rely on his own cognitive abilities and inferential processes to argue that you can't rely on your cognitive abilities and inferential processes to justify human reason! So he himself simultaneously depends on what he denies. He can't rely on reason show that the reliability of reason is indemonstrable, for that shoots a hole in his boat. If true, it's false; therefore it's false. 

We do not have any way - no test - by means of which we can rule out the possibility of solipsism. Think about that fact you were not taught or told there was a mind-independent reality. It's not a conclusion you reached. Rather, you have never doubted it, just as our pets assume, pre-theoretically and without any process of inference, that the world exists outside of them.  We learn what was IN the world, not that there IS a world.  Any putative test or evidence you could put forward as a potential demonstration of the veracity of this assumption is perfectly compatible with it all happening in your mind without an external reality.  So, you  have not reasoned your way to the conclusion that there's a mind-independent reality, you've just always assumed it.  And it's not an intuition either.  It's a pre-rational assumption that we make by virtue of the sorts of organism that we are.

i) One of the problems with Quine's naturalized epistemology is the status of logic. If logic is reducible to human psychology, to how humans think, then logic is descriptive rather than normative. What makes anything illogical? What makes your inference fallacious rather than mine if there's no intersubjectival standard of comparison, if there's nothing over and above how humans reason? On that view, logic is just an inductive generalization of human psychology. What makes one sample superior to another? Indeed, Quine denied logical necessity. 

According to solipsism, my disembodied mind is the only thing that exists. The "physical world" is a hallucination, a mental projection of my consciousness. 

But that means logic is just a product of my contingent mental states. In that event, we can rule out the possibility of solipsism because it nullifies logical necessity. On that view, you can't even affirm or deny solipsism because the law of identity requires logical necessity. 

ii) If the physical, empirical world is an illusion, why do I imagine a physical empirical world? Consider dreams. Dreams simulate a physical empirical world because our dream state is parasitic on our waking state. But if there was no physical world to experience, why would that be the content of our imagination? 

iii) If I'm the only mind, a disembodied mind, why don't I have a memory of an infinite past? Didn't I always exist? 

iv) Do I cease to exist when I'm unconscious (e.g. a dreamless sleep)?

As Ozy concedes:

With respect to "solipsistic dreamscapes", no one is actually a solipsist. These nightmare scenarios are thought-experiments which serve to shed light on certain concepts by presenting idealized or limiting cases. They help us map out the landscape of possibilities. They are not offered up as plausible outlooks to be embraced.

Yet he seems to deploy that thought-experiment to warrant universal fallibilism. But I think we can rule out solipsism (see above). 

You also invoke transitivity of definition at point 5, but it's worth noting that the logical property of transivitity is a basic principle in logic and can't be derived without assuming transivitity itself. Logic can't be defended using logic without arguing in a circle.

It's true that logic isn't directly justifiable. Yet he himself relies on logic to deride the possibility of absolute certainty about anything. So he keeps shooting a hole in his boat. 

So, the moral of the story here is not that we can't trust our memories and other cognitive capacities or that properly basic beliefs are "arbitrary", "intuitions", or "mystical".  Rather, it's that, at bottom, rationality is the tool we use, the ladder we climb, to reach conclusions and justify them, but rationality is composed, constituted, out of universally-shared assumptions which are indispensible and which, unfortunately, can't be used to justify themselves.  This shouldn't surprise us.  Evolution by natural selection furnished us with the sorts of minds we need to survive in the world, but it wasn't trying to make us into epistemic angels who can guarantee that our assumptive dispositions are correct.  Mother Nature gave us what will work.  She didn't supply us with any guarantees.  And that's another reason why the quest for certainty is a fool's errand.  

Notice how his argument is only as good as the truth of naturalistic evolution and evolutionary psychology. He temporarily abandons his radical skepticism to affirm naturalistic evolution, but then uses that to sabotage human reason. Once again, he shoots a hole in the bottom of his boat. 

Doubt (to crib a line from Wittgenstein) comes after certainty (the feeling of deep conviction). We presuppose a lot - a whole lot - before we can ever muster a doubt about anything. This is because we do not enter the world as blank slates who are disposed to doubt and don't adopt beliefs until we have reasons and evidence. Rather, we enter the world like other mammals, filled with behavioral and doxastic dispositions, that is, pre-rational assumptions, which are sometimes described as 'properly basic beliefs' by philosophers and cognitive scientists. Among those dispositions are ones to trust our memories, senses, inferential practices and whatever we're told by our epistemic and linguistic communities as we are growing up.

Thus, we are not born as skeptics who learn to believe. We are born credulists who learn to doubt. Doubt happens within the scope of pre-rational properly basic beliefs. And so it is only within the scope of what we already believe and take for granted that specific doubts can arise, be expressed, and explored in the hopes of confirming them or assuaging them. So, could I be wrong about any particular belief within my belief set? Yes. There is no particular belief within my belief set that's immune to the possibility of error.

To be mistaken demands a standard of comparison. False beliefs can't be the criteria for other false beliefs. So either some human beliefs are immune to the possibility of error or all of God's beliefs are immune to the possibility of error, which is what makes the contrast between truth and error coherent in the first place.  

Your objection is a highly intuitive one, but here's why it's question-begging.  When you begin with axioms and then set out to evaluate the feasibility of those axioms by means of an evaluation of the desirability or undesirability of the outcomes resulting from your actions, your evaluation of the desirability or undesirability of the outcomes will rest on a host of properly basic beliefs.  Your very ability to recognize an outcome as desirable or undesirability at all requires that you assume, in the very act of evaluating what it happening around you, that:

1) there's a a world around you in which things are actually happening.

2) You will be assuming that you exist, as an agent in that world, and you will only be able to notice what consequences arise from your decisions on the assumption that

3) your perceptual capacities are properly functioning and tracking reality. Further, your ability to reach any conclusions based upon these perceptual experiences of what's resulted from your decisions and actions will rest upon the presumed

4) reliability of your memory.  

Just ask yourself, how could you get as far as testing some hypothesis or some axiom's veracity if you couldn't even trust that you were remembering which axiom you were testing or which axiom you'd begun with when you made your decision.  Further, if you didn't trust in your

5) inferential practices such as induction and deduction,

you would have no reason at all to trust your own conclusions.  

Pragmatism is a marvelous and indispensable thing, as is hypothesis-testing of axioms, but it's only possible within the scope of certain assumption that certain facts are already in place and certain capacities we have are reliable.  Without assuming those first, we can't evaluate the efficacy of any axioms.  So, yes, one can start posit axioms and we can evaluate them, but the evaluation of the feasibility of those axioms presupposes a host of beliefs about us, the world, and the reliability of our cognitive capacities.  In short, axiomatic reasoning and evaluation rests upon properly basic beliefs.

i) That may be a legitimate objection against the backwoods Scripturalism of John Robbins and his minions. 

ii) However, the fact that certain assumptions are unavoidable in human reasoning is not an argument for skepticism. Rather, that's a launchpad for transcendental reasoning:

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. Transcendental arguments most commonly have been deployed against a position denying the knowability of some extra-mental proposition, such as the existence of other minds or a material world. Thus these arguments characteristically center on a claim that, for some extra-mental proposition P, the indisputable truth of some general proposition Q about our mental life requires that P.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/trans-ar/

Induction and universal generalizations

According to Gordon Clark, induction is a fallacy. To take a stock example, if I see a 1000 black crows, that fails to justify the inference that all crows are black, because the 1001st crow might be white.

But there are some problems with that objection:

i) To begin with, is a white crow a crow, or is it a related species? Two different, closely related species. 

ii) Let's take a different comparison. Suppose I've only seen white rabbits. But that's because I've only seen rabbits in winter. If I saw rabbits in summer, I'd see brown rabbits.

So it would be invalid to infer that all rabbits are white. That's an unrepresentative sample, based on seasonal variations.

Yet once we take seasonal variations into account, then the reason to believe rabbits must either be white or brown is deeper than observing a sample of rabbits. Rather, that involves the principle of camouflage. 

In that event, I wouldn't believe that rabbits are white in winter just because every rabbit I've seen in winter is white. Rather, their pigmentation would be grounded in a principle that's not dependent on counting instances of rabbits.

iii) Take another example: Suppose a 15C American Indian has noticed that solar eclipses only happen at a new moon whereas lunar eclipses only happen at a full moon. What is more, everyone in his tribe has made the same observation. His parents and grandparents have made the same observation. And according to Indian lore, handed down from one generation to the next, that's always been the case. Of course, that, in itself, is insufficient to justify a universal generalization. 

Suppose, by contrast, you ask an astronomer. His reason wouldn't be based on repeated observations. Rather, he'd provide an underlying explanation for that observation, based on the relative position of the sun, moon, and earth during solar and lunar eclipses. 

A similar example would be the observation that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. If all you have to go by is observation, then, in principle, the sun could reverse course. But an astronomer has a differ explanation, based on the earth's counterclockwise rotation. 

Scientists observe regularities in nature. But that's just a starting-point. Their belief in the "uniformity of nature" isn't merely based on sampling natural phenomena. Rather, they attempt to go behind the phenomena to discover a mechanism that causes that effect. Therefore, it's simplistic to say inductive logic is fallacious, as if "natural laws" are merely based on repeated observations. 

iv) In addition, exceptions wouldn't invalidate the principle, because natural laws have ceteris paribus clauses. An exception is due to the introduction or interference of an overriding cause. 

Normally, water can't travel uphill. That generalization isn't simply based on the common observation that water normally travels downhill. Rather, it's grounded in the absence of some additional factor to counteract the force of gravity. But sometimes there are natural factors (e.g. storm surge) or technological factors (e.g. water pumps) that exert a countervailing influence. 

In that respect, a white crow is not a real exception to the principle, inasmuch as the generalization is implicitly qualified. All things being equal, all panthers are black, all ravens are black, &c.

Albinism is a genetic condition that produces a different pigmentation. But the generalization allows for differential factors. 

In sum, if a Scripturalist is going to attack the principle of induction, he will need to attack the principle of causation that underlies many scientific explanations. 

Can we know the Bible?

Typically, Scripturalists take the position that the Bible is the only source of knowledge. All other sources of information are relegated to opinion. But there's a basic problem with that: knowledge of the Bible depends on memory, and memory is fallible. So the logic of Scripturalism commits the typical Scripturalist to the position that Christians can't know anything at all. They can't know what they Bible says because their knowledge of infallible Scripture is only as good as their fallible recollection of Scripture. But in that event, their knowledge of Scripture falls short of true knowledge, as conventionally defined by Scripturalism. 

Breaking into the circle

Recently, a Scripturalist cited this old post by Vincent Cheung:

http://www.vincentcheung.com/2007/01/23/blinded-by-atheism/

This is supposedly a refutation of my critique. But Cheung misses the point. Given his setup, Cheung is not entitled to invoke God. How does Cheung know anything about God. How does Cheung know that God even exists?

Here's the dilemma: 

i) On the one hand, Scripturalists say the Bible is the only source of knowledge.

ii) On the other hand, Scripturalists deny sense knowledge.

iii) Yet the Bible is a physical object. So the object of knowledge exists outside the subject of knowledge. 

How, then, does a Scripturalist internalize the external message of Scripture? Where does he break into the circle? What's the port of entry?  

Appealing to "God's constant and active power" fails to appreciate the dilemma. Cheung can only invoke God if he is able to explain how God can be an object of knowledge in the first place. But that's the nub of the problem, because his epistemological dichotomy places an impenetrable barrier between us and the source of knowledge. 

I didn't block God from Cheung's epistemology. Rather, it's his own epistemology that puts God behind a wall. 

Keep in mind that in my experience, Scripturalists make a big deal about how you can't know anything unless you show how you know it. But Cheung hasn't shown that. 

Cheung also says:

This relates to another problem with the analogy that I will not discuss in detail — it represents my entire position in physical terms, even though my occasionalism is such that it can work in a dream, in a purely spiritual world, or in heaven, and the Bible is the physical representation of that portion of God’s mind that he has revealed to us. That is, if you destroy all physical copies of the Bible, you have not destroyed the “word of God” that is in my epistemology. 

His hypothetical scenario is a diversionary tactic. The reality of human existence on earth is that we're embodied souls, while the Bible is a physical object. So given the restrictions which Scripturalism places on knowledge, how do we access the word of God?

Occasionalism might do the trick if you knew ahead of time that occasionalism is true, but even if Scripture taught occasionalism (which it doesn't), Cheung can't know what Scripture teaches unless Scripture is an object of knowledge. So his appeal is backwards. At best, his occasionalism is a working hypothesis. If true, that might bridge the gap. But unless he can know the hypothesis is true independent of Scripture, he can't use it both to show Scripture is an object of knowledge and show that Scripture teaches occasionalism–for by his own account, Scripture is inaccessible to the human mind unless occasionalism is true. 

Because his conundrum has no exit, he deflects attention away from his conundrum by feigning pious disapproval. But that's only persuasive to undiscerning readers, who can't grasp the dilemma. 

Look ma, no hands!

This is a sequel to my prior post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/08/scripturalists-in-matrix.html

Sean Gerety8/21/2016 9:23 AM

How does Sean know he has hands?

I don’t. I opine it…

i) So, according to Scripturalist epistemology, we can't even know that we have hands. That's just an "opinion". Even though I can see my hands and feel my hands; even though I can touch one hand with another hand, even though I experience what it's like to use my hands, my belief that I have hands is just an "opinion". I don't know that I have hands. I can't know that.

ii) Given his denial of sense knowledge, how does Sean know (or does he?) what "hands" even mean?  How does he know what the word even means or refers to? 

and unlike Hays, I draw a distinction between knowledge and opinion.

i) And what is Sean's justification for claiming that I deny a distinction between knowledge and opinion? Can he quote me on that? If not, what is his evidence that I deny that distinction? Or is this just another case in which Sean makes uninformed imputations about people who disagree with him?

ii) The question at issue isn't whether there's a distinction between knowledge and opinion, but where to drawn the line. Specifically, are all beliefs based on sensory input nothing more than opinion? 

Does Sean believe we have sensory organs? If so, what's their purpose? What function did God design eyes and ears to perform?

I do believe we have sensory organs…

But since Sean rejects sense knowledge, why does he believe that we even have sensory organs? Isn't belief that we have sensory organs itself the result of sensory perception? We can sense our own senses. 

and it would seem God designed eyes and ears in order for men to better function in the world God created. 

And what function would that be if not, in part, to give us information about the physical world we inhabit? 

Then again, unlike Hays I don’t believe that beliefs alone qualify as knowledge. 

Once again, what is Sean's justification for claiming that I think beliefs alone qualify as knowledge? Can he quote me on that? If not, what is his evidence that I think beliefs alone qualify as knowledge? Or is this yet another case of Sean making uniformed imputations about people who disagree with him? 

Also, unlike Hays, I prefer not to beg the question and conclude that because God designed eyes and ears that they are therefore a means of cognition. 

i) Sean is fond of asserting that it "begs the question" to say sensory perception is a source of knowledge. But what does he mean by that? For instance, if I come home, and the furniture has been rearranged, I infer that someone rearranged the furniture in my absence. The furniture didn't rearrange itself (barring an earthquake).

But in the case of sensory perception, I don't infer that I have hands. I don't infer that there's a physical world. Rather, my senses constantly show me a physical world. That's not something I infer from experience; rather, that's something sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch present to my mind. Isn't that prima facie evidence for the existence of an external world? 

ii) If I have evidence that something is the case, and no evidence to the contrary, how is it begging the question to believe what I have evidence for? 

iii) Since Sean defines opinion as belief that falls short of knowledge, does Sean think some opinions are more reasonable than others? If so, what counts as differential evidence? Does Sean think some opinions are more likely to be true? Of does he think all opinions are equiprobable? 

iv) For instance, it's hypothetically possible that the woman Sean takes to be his wife is really an android. Maybe he married a human woman, but then the government, in a covert experiment, swapped his real wife for an android. The android appears to be his wife. The android's behavior is indistinguishable from his wife. 

Is it begging the question for Sean to believe the woman he lives with is his actual wife, and not an android? Or is Sean warranted in believing that Mrs. Gerety is his wife, absent evidence to the contrary? Likewise, unless I have reason to believe things are not as they seem to be, why is my belief that I typed this sentence using my hands mere opinion rather than knowledge? 

God made stomachs too in order to function in God’s world, but I don’t think stomachs are means to knowledge or that eating is cognitive. 

i) Surely that comparison is counterproductive to Sean's position. Our stomach doesn't show us the world in the way that our eyes and ears show us the world. 

For instance, the five senses bombard me with evidence that I'm not the only person in existence. There are other embodied persons. I can see them, hear them, touch them. 

That's not a function I assign to my sensory organs. Rather, that's feedback which my senses present to my mind. I don't infer that the purpose of my sensory organs is collect information about the physical world. Rather, that's something I directly experience. That's something my senses show me. That's an involuntary, irrepressible deliverance. 

The only alternative explanation is if this is simulated sensory input. That what I take to be the physical world is an illusion–a la idealism or virtual reality. But is it "begging the question" to think that's not the case? Or is there a presumption that what my senses present to me is real absent counterevidence? 

ii) Moreover, Sean missed the point of the analogy. Does Sean believe the function of the heart is to pump blood? Or is that "begging the question"? Does Sean believe the purpose of lungs is to oxygenate blood? Or is that "begging the question"? 

If he admits the vital function of organs like the heart and lungs, then what's the difference between that and the informative function of sensory organs? If he admits that the function of the heart is to pump blood, why does he refuse to believe the function of eyes and ears is to collect information about the physical world? 

iii) As a boy, I had a dog. Sometimes I played a game: as an experiment, I'd hide from my dog. I'd be out of sight. My dog couldn't see me. But my dog always found me. She found me by scent. It's demonstrable that different animals have different sensory acuities. How does Sean account for that if he imagines that there's no more reason to think we acquire knowledge about the world through the senses than the stomach? 

Instead, I believe “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Of course, that's metaphorical. And the meaning of figurative language is parasitic on literal language. 

What does Sean believe about the world? Does he think our organs and body parts actually exist? Or does he think God feeds delusive input into our minds to simulate the illusion of a physical world with bodies, eyes, ears, &c.?

I believe a lot of things about the world including the reality of hallucinations.

i) Since Sean denies sense knowledge, how does he detect hallucinations? What's his standard of comparison to distinguish veridical sensory perceptions from hallucinations?

ii) Is Sean insinuating that because the senses sometimes deceive us, therefore sensory perception never yields knowledge? If so, then by parity of argument, because reason sometimes deceives us, we can't ever trust our minds. So we can't know anything at all. 

I also believe that God indeed feeds delusive input into the minds of men to simulate all sorts of illusions, including the illusion that there is no God and no judgment. For a list of other delusive input God feeds into the minds of men, I think Hays can find a partial list starting in Romans 1:22ff.

That's equivocal. The question at issue isn't false beliefs about certain ideas, but whether our perception of a physical world is a global illusion. And this isn't about unbelievers in particular, but humans in general, including Christians. 

I would go a bit further and say that God’s word consists of all the propositions God has revealed to include all the necessary inferences as well. This is an important point because propositions are the meanings of a declarative sentences, the message, and while seemingly obvious, only propositions can be true or false. Sensations, whatever they may be, cannot be true or false, so it would seem that “sense knowledge” – a phrase Hays frequently uses – is either begging the question or just nonsense. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

i) Sean's objection is confused. To begin with, the question at issue is not whether sensations are true or false, but whether sensations can form the basis of true or false beliefs about the world we perceive. Is Sean unable to grasp that rudimentary distinction? If, say, I see a waitress pour a glass of milk, I believe the glass has milk because I saw her fill the glass. I don't think milk magically appeared in an empty glass. Does Sean think that's "begging the question" or "nonsense" If so, why so? 

ii) Can sensations never be true or false? Take signage. Suppose I see a male or female symbol on a public restroom. Even though that's not a verbal proposition ("declarative sentence"), it has semantic content. 

Take traffic signs. Suppose I see a sign of a deer. The sign is wordless. But it's a warning. It indicates a deer crossing. So even though it's just a "sensation" (rather than a "declarative sentence"), it's a meaningful symbol.

Take a traffic sign that says "one way" inside an arrow, pointing right or left (as the case may be). By itself, that's not true or false. If, however, it's positioned at an intersection, then it is true or false. Suppose the sign is misplaced. It indicates that's a one-way street, but it's actually a two-way street. Then the sign is false. The "sensation" is false. That's because, in this instance, the "sensation" has a semantic context. A semantic frame of reference. 

iii) What about sensations of sentences. That's symbolic discourse. Sensations organized into letters, organized into sentences, are true or false. Sensations can be structured to communicate assertions. Sensations of that kind have true value. So Sean needs to bone up on semiotics. 

Since, however, Sean denies sense knowledge, doesn't that mean he thinks colors are essentially ideas? The color red is just a concept of red?

Not sure what else colors might be other than ideas? I had a friend who couldn’t see any colors at all. Maybe he is the one seeing the world as it really is? How do I know? Unlike Hays, I try not to be so presumptuous concerning things I don’t know.

i) Sean confuses objectivity with relativity. For instance, some people suffer from food allergies. When some people eat certain foods, they have an allergic or anaphylactic reaction. Other people can consume the same food without any allergic or anaphylactic reaction. So that's person-variable. But the fact that it's relative to the person doesn't mean the food in question lacks objective properties which trigger allergic or anaphylactic reactions in some consumers. Likewise, some consumers don't have that reaction because their bodies have objective properties, like a particular enzyme. 

ii) By the same token, some physical things have a particular colorful appearance because the thing has certain objective properties, light has certain objective properties, and the visual processing system has certain objective properties. And that combination generates color. 

iii) A color can be an idea, or at least it can simulate an idea. For instance, I can imagine a red car. I can form the mental image of a red car. Likewise, if I used to own a red car, I can remember what it looked like. I can "see" the red car in my mind. In that respect, a color can be merely mental. Color can be conceptual rather than perceptual in that respect.

However, that's different than actually perceiving a red car in my field of vision. A car that's objective to me. A car that I physically observe. Color perception in that respect isn't merely mental. 

iv) If Sean thinks color is just an idea, does that mean he thinks we project the idea of color onto colorless objects? The difference between a red rose and a white rose is what color I project onto the rose?  

What does Sean make of all those Biblical commands to "write" down God's revelations, viz., Exod 17:14, 34:1,27; Deut 17:18, 27:3,8; 31:19, Isa 30:8; Jer 30:2; 36:2,28; Ezk 24:2; 43:11; Lk 1:3; Rev 1:11,19, 21:5. ? That means committing the word of God to writing. Paper and ink (or papyrus or velum or stone).

I would refer Hays to what he wrote above and that God’s word “isn’t paper and ink, but the message.” 

i) That misses the point. Why does God command prophets to commit his revelations to writing unless written words constitute a source of knowledge regarding what God revealed? If you want to know what God revealed, you need to read (or hear) the sentences. The sentences are physical objects. Perceptual objects. But they convey information to the mind.

Prophets are commanded to write, while their audience is commanded to read, or listen to what's read aloud. That's how people learn what God has said. That's how people know the word of God. By seeing sentences or hearing sentences.  

ii) That's the irony of Scripturalism. Scripturalists don't take Scripture as their point of departure. Their epistemology isn't based on Scripture. No one who began with statements like Lev 24:7; Deut 17:19; Josh 8:34-35; Neh 8:1,3; Mt 12:3,5; Mt 19:4; 21:6,42; 22:31; 24:15; 2 Cor 1:13; Col 4:16; 1 Tim 4:13, and Rev 1:3 would deny the possibility of sense knowledge. 

Parenting tips for Scripturalists

Scripturalists (i.e. disciples of Gordon Clark) reject sense knowledge. This raises some intriguing questions about child-rearing.

Suppose you live in snake country. Timberback rattlesnakes are prevalent in your location. Their skin has patchwork patterns and colorations that blend into the background. That's advantageous for an ambush predator. It also affords them some protection against predators. 

If a Scripturalist was raising curious young boys in snake country, would he warn them about rattlesnakes? Would he show them the different markings that distinguish a King snake from a rattlesnake? 

Scripturalists regard vision as an unreliable source of information. And in the case of camouflage, that's designed to deceive the senses.

Does the fact that camouflage is designed to deceive the senses mean vision is useless is that situation? Or does it mean we need to take special precautions to avoid stepping on a rattlesnake? Is the fact that vision is even less reliable under these conditions than normal conditions reason to be more alert? 

Would you warn your kids not to play in piles of fallen leaves where rattlesnakes might be hiding? Would you warn your kids to be careful about walking over logs, where a rattlesnake might be lurking on the other side? Likewise, would you warn them to be careful about rattlesnakes under the car or under the porch?

If you can't tell the difference between a coiled rope and a coiled snake, would you instruct them to first touch it with a long stick–to stay out of striking range in case it's a rattlesnake? 

Or would you say such precautions are irrational given the "fallacy of induction"? 

Scripturalists in the Matrix

I ran across a clueless comment by Scripturalist Sean Gerety

Sean Gerety It's funny, Hays doesn't explain how he knows he has a bible in his hands? He just assumes the very thing he needs to prove. Further, he thinks the Scriptures are ink marks on a page in a black book. So, how much does justification weigh? What color is propitiation? He tips his hand when he says the Word of God is "embodied in Scripture."
August 3, 2015 at 1:32pm · Like · 4 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ghc.discussions/permalink/10153518417089570/?comment_id=10153522586644570&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R2%22%7D

Let's review his comment:

It's funny, Hays doesn't explain how he knows he has a bible in his hands? 

How does Sean know he has hands? 

He just assumes the very thing he needs to prove. 

Does Sean believe we have sensory organs? If so, what's their purpose? What function did God design eyes and ears to perform? 

The question isn't confined to sensory organs. Does Sean think lungs were designed to oxygenate blood? Does he think the heart was designed to pump blood? If Sean was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism or coronary artery disease, would he consider surgery, or does that "assume the very thing we need to prove"?

What does Sean believe about the world? Does he think our organs and body parts actually exist? Or does he think God feeds delusive input into our minds to simulate the illusion of a physical world with bodies, eyes, ears, &c.? 

Further, he thinks the Scriptures are ink marks on a page in a black book. 

i) Well, by definition, Scriptures are writings. So Sean's statement is confused. 

ii) However, he attributes to me a position I explicitly deny. I've done so on many occasions. Let's take a recent example:

Here and elsewhere, Ehrman keeps insisting that unless we have the autographa, we no longer have the words of God. But that confuses the medium with the message. That confounds God's word with a record of God's word. The word of God isn't the paper and ink, but the message. A MSS is just a storage and retrieval mechanism–like a CD. The same information, the same word of God, can be instantiated in various media. It can be written. Or spoken. Or digitized. Or memorized. In the latter case, the word of God is mentally rather than materially exemplified. God's word isn't lost whenever a physical record of God's word is lost. 

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/03/copies-of-copies.html

Back to Sean:

So, how much does justification weigh? What color is propitiation? 

It's a mistake when people like Sean try to be more clever than they are. 

i) To begin with, his statement piggybacks on imputing to me a position I deny. But that's typical of Sean's uninformed comments about his opponents.

ii) Since, however, Sean denies sense knowledge, doesn't that mean he thinks colors are essentially ideas? The color red is just a concept of red? 

He tips his hand when he says the Word of God is "embodied in Scripture."

What does Sean make of all those Biblical commands to "write" down God's revelations, viz., Exod 17:14, 34:1,27; Deut 17:18, 27:3,8; 31:19, Isa 30:8; Jer 30:2; 36:2,28; Ezk 24:2; 43:11; Lk 1:3; Rev 1:11,19, 21:5. ? That means committing the word of God to writing. Paper and ink (or papyrus or velum or stone). 

The Word of Life

In Greek the first word of 1 John designates the Word of Life, who in verse 4 is identified as Jesus Christ. Since the Epistle and the Gospel have the same author, it is permissible to connect this Word of Life with the Word of John 1:1. And no one should object if we equate this Word with him whom Paul calls “the Power of God” and “the Wisdom of God.” This second person of the Trinity is the subject of John’s declaration. Can this eternal Wisdom be heard with the ears, seen with the eyes, and handled with the hands? Is the second person of the Trinity an object of sense? The word hearing comes first; seeing comes second. This discussion will take them in turn. 

– Gordon Clark

i) I've discussed this before, but now I'd like to make an addition observation. Where could the "Word of Life" destination come from? Here's a clue:

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life (Jn 6:63) 

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68).

Jesus told the disciples that his spoken words are life. And Peter echoed that statement when he said Jesus had the words of eternal life.

Therefore, it's easy to see why John would use "the Word of Life" as a title for Jesus. And note that this goes back to the Incarnate Son. So, yes, the Incarnate Son could be heard with ears, seen with eyes, and handled with hands. He was visible, audible, and tangible. Indeed, during the course of his ministry, he touched, or was touched by, many people. 

ii) In addition, Clark denies what the text explicitly affirms. The text (1 Jn 1:1-3) explicitly asserts the visible, audible, tangible nature of the subject, which Clark proceeds to flatly deny. The text uses the same type of terminology John's Gospel uses in reference to the Incarnate Son (1:14) and the Risen Son (20:24-29). Clark's anti-Incarnational interpretation is heretical. He dehistoricizes John's forceful affirmation, with its allusions to the Incarnation and Resurrection. Clark reduces this to an idea. 

iii) Clark doesn't begin with Scripture. Rather, he begins with philosophy. He begins with his rationalistic epistemology. No one who took a passage like 1 Jn 1:1-3 as his starting-point would deny the possibility of sense knowledge. Rather, Clark must deny that in spite of the passage.