The argument for God from logic

https://www.proginosko.com/tag/argument-for-god-from-logic/

Is TAG viable?

I was asked to comment on this article:

https://philarchive.org/archive/BKEVTV

I just skimmed his article, so maybe my cursory impressions fail to do it justice. That said:

1. Seems to me that Békefi fails to adequately interact with critics of Stroud, or with Stroud's own reformulations, viz.

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-possibility-of-philosophical-understanding-reflections-on-the-thought-of-barry-stroud/

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

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

https://www.iep.utm.edu/trans-ar/#H4

https://www.iep.utm.edu/trans-ar/#H6

2. I find Békefi's treatment too scattershot, abstract, and generic. He tries to cover too much ground. 

Transcendental arguments are a family of arguments. I doubt it's meaningful to try to evaluate them in general. Rather, I think they must be assessed on a case-by-case basis depending on the particular X they claim to be a necessary condition for the possibility of Y. 

3. Since there's nothing in philosophy that goes unchallenged, I think it's unnecessary that a transcendent argument should have a major premise that no philosopher questions or denies. That's just not how philosophy works. And it makes the success of transcendent arguments hostage to opponents who are, by definition, the most unreasonable. Why should that be the standard of comparison?

I think it would be wiser to recast transcendental arguments as dilemmas. They demonstrate the ethical, epistemological, or metaphysical cost of denying certain things. They needn't be rationally coercive in the sense of compelling the opponent to say uncle. If an opponent responds to a dilemma by accepting one horn of the dilemma, and if that commits him to radical skepticism or nihilism, that's a successful dilemma because it's exposed how extreme, irrational and/or nihilistic the non-Christian opponent is. That in itself is a very useful exercise. It demonstrates the starkness of the alternatives. 

4. Although orthodox Christianity requires the existence of a physical universe, some theistic proofs can be adapted to a Matrix-type scenario. 

5. I think it's probably best to use transcendental arguments as part of a cumulative case strategy for proving the Christian faith, rather than a silver bullet. Reality is complex. 

6. The Christian faith is a combination of necessary truths and contingent truths. I don't think historical events can be proven a priori. 

7. What kinds of things should furnish a major premise for TAG? Candidates include:

i) Abstract objects like possible worlds, laws of logic, and mathematical truths. James Anderson and Greg Welty have been doing yeoman work in that field.

ii) The Trinity

It may not be possible to construct a philosophical argument that specifically demonstrates the Trinity. There are, however, general aspects of the Trinity that may be more amendable to philosophical demonstration:

a) The ontological priority of mind over matter and energy. 

b) Reality as ultimately complex rather than simple

c) Interpersonality

iii) Predestination

It's not coincidental that Van Til was a Calvinist. If everything happens according to the master plan of a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent agent, then everything happens for a reason. The alternative is to interject a destabilizing and decoherent principle of cosmic surdity. We have that in freewill theism and secular alternatives. Where events happen either by blind chance or blind necessity.

iv) Divine revelation

Quine has discussed how our scientific description of the world greatly outstrips the meager input from our five senses. Is it enough to have raw input? Or do we require an authoritative interpretation from a source outside ourselves? To take a comparison, it's like the difference between seeing a strange light in the night sky crash, and hearing (or watching) a TV newscast announce that an Air Force jet crashed. If all you had to go by was what you saw (heard, and felt), that would be open to multiple interpretations. Having an authoritative explanation outside the purview of the observer is necessary to arrive at the right interpretation. 

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? 

Retooling TAG

i) I'm going to take another stab at TAG. It's not my objective in this post to expound Van Til or be faithful to Van Til. If what I say is consistent with his original vision, fine. But this shouldn't be a personality cult. 

Likewise, I don't care whether I ended up defending what is technically a transcendental argument, or merely something like a transcendental argument. All I care about is whether there's a good argument to be had–and not the pedigree of the argument.

ii) One preliminary issue is whether TAG is worth salvaging. This has been kicking around for decades. It was controversial at the time. It's still controversial. Not much progress has been made in turning Van Til's programatic claims into a full-blown apologetic. 

So we should be open to the possibility that this is a failed idea. It seemed to be promising, but the more it's scrutinized, the less is has going for it. Frankly, there's a certain amount of Reformed chauvinism that's responsible for clinging to this argument no matter what.

That said, I will, in fact, be defending TAG, or a variation thereon.

iii) One difficulty is the interpretation of TAG. In this respect, TAG is like the ontological argument. One of the things that makes the ontological argument difficult to evaluate is attempting to understand what Anselm's claim amounts to. Did he offer one or two different versions of his own argument? What do they mean? You can't even assess the argument unless and until you interpret the argument, although it's possible to give alternative interpretations, then handicap each one.

Of course, Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Gödel, Plantinga, and Lowe have all offered their own versions of the ontological argument, so it's possible to bypass Anselm. 

iv) A limitation of transcendental argumentation is that this is essentially concerned with epistemology rather than ontology. Here's one definition:

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. 

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

I don't think that definition is necessarily a problem for TAG. However, if the pretension of TAG is to present the only adequate argument for God's existence, then this limitation is a serious problem. Surely arguments for God's existence should include metaphysical evidence, and not merely what is needed to ground our mental life. Epistemological arguments shouldn't be the only arguments for God's existence. 

v) What is TAG trying to get at? In my view, TAG is not so much a direct or positive argument for God's existence as it is an explication of the consequences which follow from denying God's existence. Depending on the consequences, that, in turn, becomes an indirect argument for God's existence.

Technically, this may not be a transcendental argument, but I'm not a purist. 

What have you got to lose by denying God? What's at stake? What's the cost? Once you deny God, what else must you deny? What does that commit you to? After the dust settles, what's left?

The force of TAG depends on how damaging the repercussions are of denying God's existence. After making some minor adjustments, can we leave everything important still intact? Or is the denial of God's existence a universal acid that dissolves everything of consequence? 

vi) In that respect, TAG is not one argument, but a family of arguments. Arguments of a kind.

Put another way, TAG is not in itself an argument, but an argumentative strategy. It selects for or develops arguments that share that particular orientation. In that respect, we could regard TAG as a research program. 

By the same token, this means there may be some good theistic arguments that don't pertain to that strategy or family of arguments. 

vii) If successful, this approach has number of advantages:

a) There are preexisting arguments that dovetail with TAG. Take the "argument from reason" (Lewis/Reppert) or Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. Take the moral argument for God's existence. And so on and so forth. 

Even if these aren't specifically "transcendental," the approach I'm suggesting can point them in that direction. What's there to lose by denying God? 

b) Conversely, consistent secular philosophers make damaging concessions. 

c) It puts the unbeliever on the defensive. 

d) It supplies a unifying principle for a number of otherwise disparate theistic arguments. 

viii) But to succeed, it is necessary to develop detailed arguments. For instance, what's the status of abstract objects in a Godless universe?

An unbeliever may say abstract objects are explanatorily necessary, but offer a secular alternative for grounding them. Platonic realism. If so, a Christian philosopher or apologist must show the inadequacy of that alternative.

Or an unbeliever may say abstract objects are explanatorily unnecessary. He may propose secular alternatives which do the same work at a lower metaphysical cost. Fictionalism or structural realism. If so, a Christian philosopher or apologist must show the inadequacy of those alternatives. 

And, of course, a Christian must propose a positive model for how God grounds abstract objects. 

ix) A casualty of this approach is that TAG ceases to be a silver bullet. It's no longer a snappy comeback to stop the mouth of the unbeliever. For the real work has just begun. Formulating the arguments is painstaking work.

However, the silver bullet was always a blank. The simplicity was illusory. To seriously engage secularism, TAG has to become very sophisticated, to operate at the same level as the best of the secular competition. 

x) Finally, whether someone is an evidential or presuppositional apologist can often have less to do with the merits of the respective positions than the aptitude of the apologist. Some people have a knack for sifting historical evidence, but no great philosophical aptitude. Take Kenneth Kitchen or Richard Bauckham. They operate at a very concrete level. Historical particulars. 

Others have greater aptitude for abstract reasoning. Take Alvin Plantinga.

Plantinga and Kitchen simply have different skill sets. They couldn't do what they other does even if they tried. 

So a certain degree of pluralism in apologetic methodology is to be commended. We need people who excel in different things.

In defense of the argument for God from logic

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

Are the Laws of Logic Propositions?

http://www.proginosko.com/2012/02/are-the-laws-of-logic-propositions/

Overly Dependent On TAG

I recently pulled up an old article I wrote back in 2008 called On the "Appropriate" Apologetic Method and noticed that there was a comment from Truth Unites…and Divides from 2009 that I wish I had seen back then! But, this being the Internet where old threads are resurrected for no apparent reason all the time, I figured I might as well bring up a two-year-old comment and examine it here.

My original article dealt with a troubling trend I see in many presuppositionalists. Mostly it’s the Clarkian Scripturalists, but VanTillians fall into it too. Namely, many presuppositionalists treat presuppositionalism as an immunization to debate such that the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) substitutes for actually thinking about things. The result is a knee-jerk reaction that “if it ain’t TAG, it’s of the devil.” My point in the previous article was to demonstrate that it was not sinful to use evidential arguments at all, and in fact it was much more useful to use those types of arguments when dealing with the average man-on-the-street than the philosophically intense TAG is.

One particularly important quote (as it relates to my current post) was:

I would point out, however, that the Bible does use evidential arguments from time to time too. For instance, when Scripture says in Psalm 19:1 that the heavens declare the glory of God, David is referring to how God’s glory is manifested in nature. It is evidenced by nature itself. And Paul echoes that in Romans 1 as well, saying that God’s attributes are seen in what has been made.

TUAD quoted from my article in a discussion thread he was on, and then posted the response he received from Ronald Di Giacomo, which began:

How do you know that the Heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture?

This is precisely the attitude that the cage-stage presuppositionalists fall into that I was critiquing in my original post. Consider for a moment what the question entails. If it is impossible to know that the heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture, then in what way can you say the heavens declare anything? How is it a “declaration” if one needs Scripture in order to know something’s being declared? Or is the assumption that the heavens didn’t declare the glory of God until the Psalmist penned his words? Such a concept seems absurd.

Furthermore, when looked at how Paul uses the concept in Romans 1 we’d see that this question would turn Paul’s argument on its head. Paul argues in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed against unbelievers, and gives the reason in verse 19-20: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” If nature was insufficient to demonstrate “what can be known about God” including his invisible attributes like his eternal power and divine nature, then unbelievers would have an excuse not to believe. We do not need Romans 1 or Psalm 19 to be convicted for not believing in God, for creation itself testifies to the existence of God. So how do we know the heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture? Because the heavens actually DO declare the glory of God.

Di Giacomo continued:

Accordingly, to defend that premise with any absolute authority other than Scripture is sin. To do anything less is to make something other than God's word your ultimate authority, which is again sin.

First of all, I don’t understand what “authority” has to do with anything here. We’re talking about objective truth, and the only authority objective truth needs is its own truth-value. But this falls prey to a logical problem even if we accept the authority issue. Di Giacomo believes Scripture is authoritative, and Scripture itself declares that creation even apart from Scripture manifests the nature and attributes of God such that men who suppress the truth of God are without excuse. That means that if Di Giacomo is to respect the authority of Scripture, he ought to acknowledge that nature does what Scripture claims nature does. To do otherwise is to deny what Scripture says, which hardly makes God’s word “your ultimate authority” and which, following his logic above, makes it sin.

Di Giacomo then has a couple of statements which do not seem to apply to what I wrote. I could not tell whether he was questioning TUAD or something else entirely. But let me address them anyway. He said:

Philosophically, you have yet to show how it is possible to justify the truth of the premises used in an evidentialist or Thomistic approach.

Of course, I was not defending Thomism in my original article (this is partly why I assume this question is not directed toward me), and as I pointed out even evidential arguments must, if one meets a philosophically savvy opponent, reach the presuppositional level. But Scripture itself allows us to justify evidentalist arguments regarding the invisible attributes of God listed in Romans 1, since Scripture maintains both that these are objective truths and that these truths are knowable even independent of Scripture. This can even be expanded by including the aspects of the law that are written even on the hearts of Gentiles that Paul mentions in Romans 2:15.

Di Giacomo continued:

Moreover, how does one get from an assertion that is not justified from Scripture (such as that the Heavens declare God's glory) to the conclusion of the Ontological Trinity of Scripture?

I assume that he meant that the statement “the Heavens declare God’s glory” is justified from Scripture, since it is Psalm 19:1. But this argument about the Ontological Trinity does not help Di Giacomo either. To use an example I got from Paul Manata (see here), suppose that I held to every Christian presupposition except that I believe God is four persons instead of three. Is TAG sufficient to refute that view? No, because it is hard to see how there would be a logical inconsistency within the worldview that stipulated there was an unstated (by Scripture) fourth person in the Trinity. At best, one could conclude that it’s unfounded to assert there’s a fourth person, but since neither Father, Son, nor Spirit are denied, a “quadune” God is just as logically consistent under TAG as a triune God is.

The reality is that Di Giacomo does not believe in the Trinity because of his presuppositional arguments; rather, he believes Scripture and Scripture says the Trinity exists. Yet the evidentialist also believes in the Trinity because he believes Scripture and Scripture says the Trinity exists! Di Giacomo may argue that he has a better justification to believe the validity of Scripture due to his presuppositional arguments, but even if the evidentialist has erroneous reasons to trust in the validity of Scripture, once he does trust the validity of Scripture he comes to the same beliefs about the Trinity that the presuppositionalist does. So to argue the logical chain used to get to the Trinity is a red herring. One need only be able to argue to the validity of Scripture, something that evidentialists are actually quite good at accomplishing despite handicapping themselves by allowing atheists to dictate the terms of the debate.

Either way, it seems to me that he does not reach Paul’s attitude:

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. (Philippians 1:15-18)

Di Giacomo concluded his comment thus:

What you're not grasping is that although men know God by nature, any appeal to that truth is not an apologetic nor justifiable apart from Scripture. That premise must be justified somehow, mustn't it?

I have to admit that I’m hard-pressed to understand how an appeal to truth is not an apologetic, especially when it’s a truth the apostle Paul used in his own defense of the Gospel. Furthermore, I would like to see Di Giacomo demonstrate from Scripture his claim that all premises must be justified from Scripture.