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. 

God's foundling

I'll comment on this post, which is a follow-up to an impromptu debate I've been having on limited atonement:

http://bnonn.com/what-justifies-us/

If it doesn’t actually effect salvation for anyone in particular in and of itself, then what’s the deciding factor, and why?

i) From a 5-point perspective, that's not the right way to frame the issue. According to limited atonement, the atonement ensures or secures the salvation of those for whom it is made. It doesn't effect salvation in isolation to other factors. But it does entail the salvation of those for whom it was made. It's not that Christ's atonement works automatically, but it renders salvation certain for those on whose behalf it was made.

ii) In addition, this goes to the elementary question of what it means to say Christ died for people. That's a shorthand expression. In what sense did Christ die for them. What's the objective? The atonement is a means to what end? 

The 5-point position seems, to me—and I may be misrepresenting it, but this is how 5-pointers themselves often seem to present it—very mechanical. The atonement is like a machine that, once it’s turned on, auto-targets the elect and runs them through a redemption mill, while God just kinda sits back. The atonement itself does all the work of salvation, such that everything that happens afterward in the ordo salutis is just a formality—there is a genuine sense in which once the atonement happens, the elect are saved regardless of what occurs afterward. Even if they never learned about God, exercised faith, or walked in good works, they would be saved because their sins are covered at the cross. They are justified in God’s eyes before they ever exercise faith because Jesus has already paid for every one of their specific sins.

There are several problems with that characterization:

i) It's eerily similar to how confused freewill theists attack Calvinism. They say predestination is fatalistic. If you're elect, it doesn't matter what you do or don't to. Once the election machine is switched on, it autotargets you for salvation and runs you through the formalities, while God just kinda sits back. Election does all the work. Everything that happens in real time makes no difference to the outcome. You are saved regardless of regeneration, justification, sanctification, and perseverance, because you were saved from eternity. You were saved in God's eyes before you exercise faith. 

ii) In 5-point Calvinism, there's a Trinitarian division of labor in the economy of salvation. Those whom the Father elects the Son redeems and the Spirit renews. 

All the elements are coordinated. For instance, justification is contingent on faith, while faith is contingent on regeneration. The Father justifies on the basis of the Son's atonement, while the Spirit produces justifying faith. 

iii) Original sin has two basic components: 

a) Guilt or culpability

b) Moral corruption and spiritual inability.

(a) is objective while (b) is subjective. (a) involves a relation between God and the sinner while (b) involves the personal character of the sinner.

The plan of salvation is an antidote for both. For instance, justification and propitiation affect the objective status of the sinner, affect the relation between God and the sinner–while regeneration and sanctification affect the sinner himself. Justification is something God does for the sinner while regeneration is something God does to the sinner. 

iv) Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the "mechanical" metaphor, why should that have pejorative connotations? Do we fault an airplane because it got us safely and swiftly to our destination? Would it humanize airplanes if they suffered random mechanical failure, causing the plane to crash? When did efficiency become a bad thing?

I reject the Owenic view of limited atonement because I take faith itself to be the effectual means of justification.

What makes Bnonn suppose that limited atonement, or John Owen's version in particular, is opposed to justification by faith?

Now, I say “faith,” but what that means to 5-pointers seems to be somewhat different to what it means to me. 5-pointers, in my experience, have an impoverished view of faith where it is simply something like willing assent to the truth of the gospel. God then treats this as a sort of “token” for declaring us righteous.

That may be an accurate description of how Gordon Clark viewed it. And I believe that Bnonn was initially influenced by Vincent Cheung, although he's outgrown that. So perhaps that's his residual frame of reference.

In 5-point Calvinism, saving faith is an expression of something more fundamental: spiritual renewal. Faith has different functions. On one function, God has keyed justification to faith. But faith has a broader function, as a general outlook on life. A sense of absolute dependence on God. A basis for prayer. A source of hope. 

Once we are family, the question becomes: how can the Father justly treat us as righteous? That is where the atonement comes in. There has to be some way to cover our sins. And that is what Jesus provided on the cross. When we become Jesus’ brother, he becomes our family head. That means the Father looks to him as the one responsible for our conduct.

Well, to play along with the familial model, in the OT you have the metaphor of divine adoption. That involves divine initiative. Divine adoption is, itself, a spiritual blessing which is, in turn, a source of other spiritual blessings. 

There's a graphic illustration of this metaphor in Ezk 16, where Israel is like a newborn baby that was abandoned to die from exposure or predation. That's not in response to faith.  The foundling was in no position to either choose or refuse to be rescued. 

That’s how corporate, familial responsibility works—strange as it seems to our highly individualistic culture…rather than chunking it down into a weird conglomeration of individualism and federal headship, glued together by purely forensic categories.

But there's a basic tension in Bnonn's model, inasmuch as justification by faith is inherently individualistic. So he himself will have to combine corporate elements (e.g. federal headship) with individualistic elements (e.g. justification by faith).

So it’s not that unbelief is damnatory while other sins are not, as 5-pointers tend to wonder. Rather, when we refuse to swear allegiance to Yahweh and be adopted into his family, we naturally remain outside his family, and thus unrepresented by Jesus. In that case, we are damned for all our sins, including our refusal to swear allegiance, because there is no one else to take our stripes for us. We take them ourselves.

But that dodges the issue. Why would the atonement render every other sin forgivable, but leave unbelief the one unforgivable sin? Unbelief becomes the gateway sin to hell. 

Now, I’m not saying that justification doesn’t involve a forensic imputation. What I am saying is that “forensic imputation” is not a familial category; it is a legal one. If we insist on framing our thinking about how God declares us righteous in legal, pecuniary categories, when Scripture treats it as being a fundamentally familial event, then we are going to get a very skewed picture of the atonement, of faith, and of justification.

It's unclear what Bnonn means. Is he affirming or denying that justification is forensic? Or is he affirming that it's forensic, but not in a pecuniary sense of legality? There's a massive exegetical literature defending the forensic nature of Pauline justification. 

The Bible uses many different theological models and metaphors for salvation. It's reductionistic to make the "family" the fundamental principle. And it's confusing to blend categories. Arguably, Pauline justification is "purely forensic". 

Doubting Thomist

I'm going to discuss growing pains in Reformed philosophy, using Ed Feser to segue into that larger issue. I'll admit at the outset that commenting on Feser poses something of a dilemma for me. As a rule, I read enough of a writer to make a preliminary judgment on whether or not I think it's worth my time to read more by him. For that reason, I'm not a regular reader of Feser's blog. He's a doctrinaire Thomist who seems to recast every issue in terms of Thomism. I quickly lose interest. I don't share his enthusiasm for Thomist epistemology or metaphysics. I guess that makes me a Doubting Thomist. 

But I admit this may mean I'm not qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser. With that disclaimer in mind:

i) Feser seems to have a following among some young, philosophically-minded Calvinists. I think one reason is that Feser goes after "New Atheists" and philosophically-clueless secular scientists whom highbrow Christian philosophers don't generally deign to comment on. He's more of a cage-fighter than, say, Alexander Pruss or Peter van Inwagen. And that's useful. 

That said, from what I can tell (based on my admittedly cursory sampling), I have considerable reservations about Feser overall. For instance:

ii) He's a vociferous critic of intelligent-design theory. Now, ID-theory is fair game. However, it's philosophically unenlightening when philosophers like Feser (and Francis Beckwith) criticize ID-theory because it isn't Thomism. Unless you grant that Thomist epistemology and metaphysics should be the standard of comparison, that objection is uninteresting. 

There are intelligent criticisms of ID-theory. Del Ratzsch is a sympathetic critic. Darwinian Elliott Sober is a thoughtful critic. Bayesians like the McGrews are critical of ID-theory because they disagree with Dembski's filter for detecting design, which is a negative criterion (ruling out chance) rather than positive evidence for design. 

One may or may not agree with this criticisms. But at least they are interesting criticisms. 

iii) Apropos (ii), the problem is compounded by the fact that Feser's understanding of Paley and ID-theory have both been challenged. Consider the running debates between his blog and Uncommon Descent. 

iv) To be fair, one of the main attractions of Thomism is that it's a pretty complete philosophical system. Thomistic ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. It's almost unrivaled among theological traditions for its philosophical breadth and depth. 

Let's take some statements by Feser:

The modern approach is represented by Leibniz-Clarke style cosmological arguments, Paley-style design arguments and “Intelligent Design” theory, Plantinga-style ontological arguments, “Reformed epistemology,” Swinburne-style inductive arguments, etc.  Contemporary philosophy of religion is dominated by these modern sorts of arguments, though there are some thinkers (John Haldane, Brian Davies, Eleonore Stump, et al.) whose sympathies are classical.  These modern arguments typically operate with very different conceptions of causation, modality, substance, essence, and other key metaphysical notions than the ones classical thinkers would accept. 

Now, my approach, being Aristotelian-Thomistic, is decidedly classical.  Like many other Thomists, I not only do not defend the sorts of arguments most other contemporary philosophers of religion do, but I am critical both of the metaphysical/epistemological assumptions underlying the arguments and of the conception of God the arguments arrive at.  For instance, I reject the possible worlds theories in terms of which modality is typically understood in the contemporary arguments; I think the “argument to the best explanation” approach gets reasoning from the world to God just fundamentally wrong 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-exchange-with-prof-keith-parsons.html

Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) and her husband Peter Geach are sometimes considered the first “analytical Thomists,” though (like most writers to whom this label has been applied) they did not describe themselves in these terms, and as Haldane’s somewhat vague expression “mutual relationship” indicates, there does not seem to be any set of doctrines held in common by all so-called analytical Thomists. What they do have in common seems to be that they are philosophers trained in the analytic tradition who happen to be interested in Aquinas in some way; and the character of their “analytical Thomism” is determined by whether it tends to stress the “analytical” side of analytical Thomism, or the “Thomism” side, or, alternatively, attempts to emphasize both sides equally. 

We might tentatively distinguish, then, between three subcategories within the group of contemporary analytic philosophers who have been described as “analytical Thomists.” The first category comprises analytic philosophers who are interested in Aquinas and would defend some of his ideas, but who would also reject certain other key Thomistic claims (perhaps precisely because of their perceived conflict with assumptions prevalent among analytic philosophers) and thus fail to count (or even to count themselves) as “Thomists” in any strict sense. This sort of “analytical Thomism” might be said to emphasize the “analytical” element at the expense of the “Thomism.” Anthony Kenny (who rejects Aquinas’s doctrine of being) and Robert Pasnau (who rejects certain aspects of his account of human nature) would seem to exemplify this first tendency. A second category within analytical Thomism would comprise thinkers who do see themselves as Thomists in some sense, and who would argue that those aspects of Aquinas’s thought which seem to conflict with assumptions common among analytical philosophers can be interpreted or reinterpreted so that there is no conflict. This approach might be said to give both the “analytical” and the “Thomistic” elements of analytical Thomism equal emphasis, and is represented by thinkers like Geach, Brian Davies, and C. F. J. Martin (all of whom would attempt to harmonize Aquinas’s doctrine of being with Frege’s understanding of existence) and Germain Grisez and John Finnis (who would reinterpret Aquinas’s ethics so as to avoid what Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy”). The work of Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump also possibly falls into this second category, though since it is often interpretative and scholarly rather than programmatic, it is harder to say. 

Thomists of other schools have been very critical of both of these strains within analytical Thomism, sometimes to the extent of dismissing the very idea of analytical Thomism as being no more coherent than (in their view) “transcendental Thomism” is. But there is a third possible category of “analytical Thomists,” namely those whose training was in the analytic tradition and whose modes of argument and choice of topics reflects this background, but whose philosophical views are in substance basically just traditional Thomistic ones, without qualification or reinterpretation. Here the “Thomism” would be in the driver’s seat and the “analytical” modifier would reflect not so much the content of the views defended but rather the style in which they are defended. 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/10/thomistic-tradition-part-ii.html

Several issues:

i) Feser seems to be a purist about Thomism, unlike modern revisionists. I find that ironic considering the fact that Aquinas was far from being a philosophical purist. He's quite eclectic. 

ii) Apropos (i), Feser seems to be very concerned with recovering the authentic interpretation of Aquinas. Who's the true Thomist?

Over the centuries, Thomism has acquired many interpretive layers. Is Cajetan's theory of analogy a legitimate or illegitimate development of Thomism? 

I think this whole approach is misguided. Ultimately, philosophy is about ideas. It doesn't matter where you get your ideas. The important distinction is between true and false ideas. Thin ideas and powerful ideas. 

From an intellectual standpoint, a misinterpretation can be more useful than a correct interpretation. Suppose you improve on Aquinas by unintentionally imputing to him a better theory than he held. That's bad exegesis, but good philosophy. 

iii) It isn't clear to me if Feser is saying philosophers like Anscombe, Geach, and Kenny misunderstand Thomism, or if they adulterate it with foreign influences. If the former, then I'd simply point out that, in my estimation, they are Feser's superiors when it comes to original research. Isn't Feser basically a popularizer? By contrast, Geach, for one, did groundbreaking work on Frege. 

If the latter, then I'd say that misses the point. The reason Geach or Anscombe feel free to modify Thomism is because they are real thinkers. They combine complementary ideas from different sources to improve on the status quo ante. They aren't concerned with simply expounding or repristinating Aquinas, but in advancing the argument. There is progress in the history of ideas.  

By the same token, both Feser and Pruss are Catholic philosophers, but Pruss doesn't hesitate to synthesize Aristotelian and Leibnizian insights. He helps himself to whatever he finds useful. And he's clearly Feser's intellectual superior.

Feser is someone who's mastered a system, then applies it to contemporary issues. Paint-by-numbers. Their Catholicism notwithstanding, Anscombe and Geach are fairly independent thinkers who–unlike Feser–both made significant, original contributions to philosophy. 

Kenny is somewhat anomalous. A priest who lost his faith. Very erudite and intellectually gifted, but agnostic. 

I don't see that Feser is a very promising role model for aspiring Reformed philosophers. Let's turn to Scripturalism. 

Gordon Clark was a bright guy, and a well-trained philosopher by the standards of the time. However, even if you're sympathetic to his approach, he can only take you so far. He's mainly a popularizer. He has a conversational style, like some other philosophers of his generation, viz. Brand Blanshard. That makes him readable. He's a way some Christians get hooked on philosophy. That's their introduction. 

But because he usually writes at a popular level, there's not a lot of depth or detail. And it lacks technical rigor. Plantinga raised the bar for how to do Christian philosopher. The same holds true, in a different way, for Swinburne. 

I expect many young Calvinists of a philosophical bent may still get their theology from Warfield and Turretin, or Schreiner and Beale, or Frame, but their philosophical role models are more in the vein of Pruss, Plantinga, the McGrews, van Inwagen, &c. 

Paul Helm has been a mediating figure. A Calvinist who defends classical Christian theism.

You also have bloggers and other Internet resources like William Vallicella, the Prosblogian crew, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which supply both substance and inspiration. The list goes on and on. 

Compared with that, the "intellectual ammunition" supplied by The Trinity Foundation or Vincent Cheung is pretty low caliber. 

Scripturalism suffers from brain drain. In the past, Michael Sudduth was the most intellectually promising Scripturalist of his generation, but he not only turned his back on Scripturalism, he turned his back on Christianity.

Among the up and coming generation, it's my impression that Ryan Hedrich and Bnonn Dominic Tennant were the most intellectually promising Christians who've been mentored by Scripturalism. However, Bnonn seems to have outgrown Cheung while Ryan appears to be means-testing Scripturalism. That doesn't mean they will make a complete break with Scripturalism. To some extent this can be a case of going behind Clark to the realist/rationalist tradition which inspired him. Going straight to the source. 

Both Ryan and Bnonn read a fair amount of contemporary philosophy and philosophical theology. As a result, their own positions become increasingly refined, with the corresponding result that the stock formulations and supporting arguments of Sean Gerety, Gary Crampton, and John Robbins look increasingly simplistic and amateurish. 

Vincent Cheung is another popularizer. Like a bartender who serves bum wine to the regulars while assuring us that he keeps the good stuff in the back room, Cheung reputedly has superior arguments at the ready. I keep waiting. 

I don't say that to wax triumphalistic about the fortunes of Van Tilian apologetics. Our own talent pool is pretty shallow at the moment. At least at the academic level. Frame is semi-retired. There's Poythress. There's James Anderson, who sometimes teams up with Greg Welty. Among academics, that's the cream of the crop. Now, there may be a lot of younger talent in the pipeline.

At one time, David Byron seemed to be the natural successor to Bahnsen, but it looks like that stalled. 

Likewise, if Gerety and Crampton are drag factors on Scripturalism, Nate Shannon is a drag on Van Tilianism. Both ships have barnacles on the hull.   

Van Tilian apologetics benefits from institutional patronage. Scripturalism has to live off the land. I think the main thing that keeps Scripturalism going is freebie material from Cheung and the Trinity Foundation. Anyone with Internet access can download lots of the material.

Mind you, institutional patronage is a mixed blessing. Seminaries, Christian colleges, and denominations keep some traditions on life support which couldn't survive on the merits. Likewise, some professors coast on ascribed status rather than achieved status.  

One issue is whether Van Tilian apologetics is an apologetic method or a Christian philosophy. Take Bahnsen's debate with Gordon Stein, where he stumped Stein's physicalism by invoking the laws of logic, as a paradigm case of abstract objects.  

That counterexample worked for a live debate with an unprepared opponent. However, the theistic foundations of logic go well beyond apologetic method. Rather, that requires a detailed metaphysical model. 

I actually think the future is promising for Reformed philosophy. As long as it remains rooted in Reformed theology, and uses Reformed theology as the benchmark, it can afford to be pretty eclectic about its philosophical influences.  

"The peril of worshiping Jesus"

According to Clarkian Scripturalist Drake Shelton,

Samuel Clarke was a semi-arian. Semi-Arians were clearly admitted into communion by Athanasius…Semi-arians are not heretics.

Drake has now added the following claim:

My friend Mark Xu and I have come to an agreement, in our readings of Clarke, that when Clarke says that the Son and Spirit are not necessities of nature, he is simply affirming that they are not auto-theos. That is his essential point, when you take his statement in context. This interpretation would then be perfectly consistent with Nicene Orthodoxy.

However, that’s not all there is to Clarke’s position. As Dale Tuggy notes, in his summary exposition of his position:

The God of Israel, the one true God, just is the Father of Jesus. Further, he is the main and the primary and ultimate object of Christian worship and prayer, and as the sole recipient of the highest kind of worship.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/unitarianism.html#17t18tCenEngSub

And that’s not an incidental or disposable feature of Clarke’s overall position. Rather, that’s a logical and practical consequence of how he understands Scriptural usage (“Certain names or titles in the Bible, including ‘God’, always or nearly always refer to the Father, giving him a kind of primacy among the three”), along with his theory of divine derivation.

Do Clarkian Scripturalists like Drake Shelton, Mark Xu, and Ryan Hedrich, agree with Clarke’s conclusion? Is the Father more worshipful than the Son and Spirit? Are there different degrees of worship we should accord the different members of the Trinity? Should we accord the Father the highest degree of adoration?

If they disagree with Clarke, how do they logically distinguish their position from his?

Put another way, was Fosdick right to say worshiping Jesus is perilous? Do Christians run the risk of idolatry if we accord the Son and the Spirit the same level of adoration we accord the Father?

If Jesus is less worshipful than the Father, should Christians practice mental reservations when worshipping Jesus? Should we reserve the highest adoration for the Father alone?

Is worshipping Jesus secondary to worshiping the Father? Is worshiping Jesus just a means to an end? Is the Father the ultimate and true object of adoration and devotion? 

Are Calvinists like B. B. Warfield, John Murray, John Frame, Paul Helm, and Calvin himself, idolaters for worshiping Jesus too much? Must we guard our hearts against the grave danger of esteeming Jesus too highly?

What do other Clarkian Scripturalists like Vincent Cheung, Daniel Chew, Gary Crampton et al. think of these developments?

White men can't jump

I’m going to briefly discuss Drake Shelton’s rationalization for white supremacy. Why should I waste my time on a fruitloop like Drake? Because he’s a noisy Clarkian Scripturalist. 

BTW, I wonder what fellow Clarkian Scripturalists like Vincent Cheung and Daniel Chew make of his position on race.

Now to the white supremacy thing. It depends what one means.

I do believe their is one human genus but three primary races: That of Shem, that of Japheth and that of Ham. God sovereignly had these three men born with their disticnt ethnic characteristics. The black Hamites with their clear physical superiority. The white Japhethites and Shemites with their clear mental superiorities. Each with their own distinct beauty, strengths and weaknesses. How these could have come about by climate change I will leave to the dark places of your mind Steve. The blacks have never built an empire or advanced civilization and if one simply looks at an anthology of black writers vs. white writers, the comparison is alarming. Clearly the white Japhethites have built the greatest civilizations and invented all of the fundamental parts of modern civilization. The blacks were selected by the early African slave traders to do be slaves specifically because they were the only group of people that could withstand all of the physical hardships of slavery and not fall into despair (See William O. Blake, Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern pages 95-96). So the idea that the differences between the races is only the color of their skin is ignorant Neoplatonic, monadic, rubbish

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/07/uncreated-white.html?showComment=1341356158179#c2172337199966675438

i) A basic internal problem with Drake’s Confederate eisegesis is that Gen 10 identifies Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Hamites. For more background:

www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jtvi/wiseman_genesis-10.pdf

faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/...Genesis/.../Ross-TableNations-BSac.pdf

If (arguendo) we combine this with Drake’s claim that blacks are Hamites, that would mean blacks founded the great urban civilizations of the ANE. Hence his argument self-destructs.

So Drake has backed himself into a dilemma. If, on the one hand, he identifies blacks with Hamites, he must admit that blacks were the founders of ancient Near Eastern civilization. If, on the other hand, he denies the identification to avoid that implication, then he can’t invoke the curse of Ham over blacks.

ii) The Table of Nations (Gen 10) doesn’t attempt to address race or ethnicity in general. Rather, the scope of the document is confined to Israel’s neighbors. To the known world, taking the ANE as the frame of reference. That’s why it doesn’t cover East Indians, Chinese, sub-Saharan Africans, &c.

iii) Drake doesn’t bother to explain why physical differences between one race and another can’t be climatic adaptations.

iv) Races don’t invent anything. Gifted individuals are inventors.

v) Likewise, some “white” nations have made far greater contributions to the arts and sciences than other “white” nations. So it’s hard to make race the differential factor.

vi) The Bible is indifferent to interracial marriage, per se. Interracial marriage is only a Biblical issue when that coincides with interfaith marriage.

I believe that the most evil men in the world are white and the most righteous men in the world are white.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/07/uncreated-white.html?showComment=1341356195748#c8165450015526933239

That’s simply heretical. One’s moral character is the result of common grace, special grace, and sin–not race or ethnicity.

Arminian sore losers

Richard Coords said...

"Life follows doctrine."

That was Dave Hunt's response to James White, in characterizing why John Calvin murdered Servetus (plus all of the others that rarely get mentioned).

If you view a person as someone that Jesus loves and died for, then you are apt to treat such a person with respect and dignity, and all of the care that God has for them.

Conversely, if you agree with Calvinist, Jay Adams, that you shouldn't go around telling people that Jesus loves them, because you may be lying to them if they are not one of the Calvinistic Upper-Caste, then you may be apt to treat people as unloved and worthless.

It's basic psychology. A tree is known by its fruit. If you have rotten Calvinists, it's because they have a rotten Calvinism. Basic deduction.

3/29/2012 8:19 PM

 steve said...

Richard Coords said...

"Life follows doctrine."

So if Billy Birch committed a sex crime, that's because life follows doctrine?

If you agree with Arminians that God knowingly made a lower-caste of human beings he was going to damn to hell, then you may be apt to treat people as unloved and worthless.

It's basic psychology. A tree is known by its fruit. If you have rotten Arminians like Billy Birch, it's because they have a rotten Arminianism. Basic deduction.

If Arminians view Calvinists as devil-worshipers who serve a monstrous God, then they are apt to demonize and dehumanize Calvinists. It's basic psychology. Basic deduction.

If you view another human being as a fellow sinner, and say to yourself, "there but for the sovereign grace of God go I," then you are apt to treat him with mercy and compassion.

If you think there’s a good possibility that another human may be elect, then would you risk murdering one of God’s elect? When in doubt, play it safe.

3/30/2012 9:46 AM

 steve said...

Well, Richard, the Eastern Orthodox have a long history of executing heretics, yet the Eastern Orthodox subscribe to libertarian freewill and universal atonement–just like Arminians. Therefore, executing heretics must be the rotten fruit of rotten Arminian assumptions.

Same thing with Roman Catholicism, which has a long history of executing heretics. Yet the Roman Church subscribes to universal atonement. Likewise, Jesuits believe in libertarian freewill. The Roman Church also condemned the Jansenist counterpart to Calvinism. Therefore, executing heretics must be the rotten fruit of rotten Arminian assumptions.

3/30/2012 9:46 AM

 Richard Coords said...

When asking whether a harsh C-God results in harsh C’s, you need to ask yourself whether role models matter, and if they make any difference? If not, then why do we complain when pro athletes act poorly? Man tends to try to emulate those whom they adore, revere and idolize. That doesn’t mean that they always will. Christians who live by a WWJD example and role model often fail to live up to it, but that doesn’t mean that role models have zero impact, and that opens up a very fair question about whether the C-God is a good or poor role model, and what resulting impact that it has upon its adherents. So first, consider what the C-God does, whom C’s adore, revere and emulate. The C-God “passes by” people. But He does more than that. He scripts all thoughts. The C-God thought up sin and called it good. The C-God dreamt up the idea of creating angels and then unilaterally giving them the thoughts which results in them becoming demons. The C-God creates people for Hell, whomever He could otherwise script to save, but instead scripts their thoughts for evil, and the C-God gets pleasure and glorification by them going to Hell, which is what He created them for. Now if you think that this will have ZERO impact upon the lives of those who emulate, adore and revere such a C-God, then I respectfully disagree. It’s going to have an impact, and it’s going to be a bad one. As examples, there are the imfamous Westboro Calvinists. There are the Anti-Missions Calvinists. There is Vincent Cheung who comments: “One who thinks that God’s glory is not worth the death and suffering of billions of people has too high an opinion of himself and humanity.” (The Problem of Evil) Even some C's have suggested that we ought to think like a C but live like an A, and some A’s have commented that some C’s are evangelists *in spite of* Calvinism, rather than *because* of Calvinism. Consider an old Particular Baptist hymn: “We are the Lord’s elected few, Let all the rest be damned; There’s room enough in Hell for you, We won’t have heaven crammed!” To what degree of blame does the C-God warrant? What role did the C-God play as a role model for these? Were these simply being inconsistent with the C-God? You tell me. Is Steve Hays the natural product of emulating the C-God as his role model? You tell me.

3/30/2012 10:50 AM

 steve said...

Let's apply Richard's argument to the case at hand:

i) God is a role-model

ii) God executed Herod Agrippa for blasphemy (Acts 12:21-23)

iii) Therefore, Calvin rightly emulated God by executing Servetus for blasphemy

Here's another variant of Richard's argument:

i) God is a role model

ii) God employed capital punishment as a form of church discipline (Acts 5:1-11)

iii) Therefore, Calvin rightly emulated God in matters of church discipline

Everything you perceive is unreliable

From Dominic Bnonn Tennant:

A brief, critical response to the Scripturalist claim that sense perception is unreliable, and/or does not produce knowledge. This article refutes Vincent Cheung’s argument that John 12:27–30 constitutes “an inspired example against empiricism.” It does not deal with the question of epistemic justification; merely with the biblical view of sense experience, and the problems inherent in Vincent’s own position.

Read the excellent article here.

I Was Wrong, nihil ad rem

Yeah, I was wrong, but so what? I figure that it is a good way to build character to admit that you were wrong. So, I’ll start out ‘08 working on the virtue of integrity and honesty.

How was I wrong?

Ron D. has offered some responses to my response to his rather poor attempt to interact with one of my critiques of V. Cheung.

I should note that my original response to him has not been interacted with.

I should also point out that the arguments in my original post (the one he responded to) have not been rebutted.

Be that as it may, we had been discussing my original response (which the essence was never rebutted) and Ron had been making the point that Vincent Cheung could be rational and justified in his beliefs.

I will divide this post into two parts. The first address this main point. The second interacts with some comments from his combox, I offer replies to either him or his commenters various critiques/questions.

PART I

Let’s offer a useful categorizing of things so to make the rest of the post flow easier. I will refer to them thorough the rest of this post:

[CSB] = Cheung’s Scriptural Beliefs

[CUB] = Cheung’s Unscriptural Beliefs

Now, my critique of Cheung’s occasionalism was a purely epistemic critique. I only had epistemic rationality and justification in mind. Thus I argued that given Cheung’s epistemological position, then epistemological problems are birthed.

I specifically argued that the point about occasionalism is that Cheung has no rational basis to believe that his caller ID is working. I take it that since God, via divine implantation, immediately gives everyone their beliefs, and since the probability that God is granting you a true belief over a false one is low or inscrutable, then it is irrational for you to believe anything. Cheung's views, if accepted, offer a defeater for all your beliefs. If the probability that your beliefs are true is low or inscrutable given Cheung's Epistemic Program CEP, and you accept CEP, then you have no rational basis to believe anything.

Furthermore, Cheung himself lets us do this. Since Cheung is an infallibilist, and since he says that sources of belief that are fallible cannot convey knowledge, and since beliefs obtained by occasionalism are more fallible than the reportings of our senses (or at least we can't determine which is more fallible), and since Cheung thinks that it is irrational to maintain beliefs given to us by these other fallible methods, then Cheung must think it is irrational to hold beliefs obtained by occasionalism.

Moreover, we should note that if Ron thinks that Cheung's (or G.H. Clark's) arguments against induction are good, and if he accepts other Cheungian propositions, then his critique suffers from the problem of appealing to propositions that your theory of knowledge doesn't allow you to justifiedly believe.

This is an epistemic argument. The terms are used in their epistemic sense. This was even noted by Aquascum in his review of my original argument:

http://www.reformed.plus.com/aquascum/manata.htm

But Ron kept on insisting that Cheung could be justified, he could be rational in his beliefs.

Now, since I know that Ron is a bright guy, I kept interpreting him in the best light. My critique had to do with the epistemic implications of Cheung’s position. So, I naturally took his critique as an attempt to be a relevant response to my arguments. I think this is a fair and plausible way to proceed. So, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t get it. I then tried to offer this argument:

[1] All propositions not in or deducible from Scripture are "unjustified opinions, at best."

[2] Vincent believes many propositions that are not in or deducible from Scripture. (Call all these beliefs, Cheung’s Unscriptural Beliefs CUB.)

[3] Therefore, all the propositions believed in the set of CUB are "unjustified opinions, at best."

[4] If one's belief is an "unjustified opinion, at best," then one is unjustified in holding it.

[5] If one is unjustified in holding an unjustified opinion, then one has no justification for that opinion.

[5] Thus, if one's belief is an "unjustified opinion, at best," then one has no justification for that opinion.

[6] All propositions believed in CUB are "unjustified opinions, at best."

[7] Therefore, Cheung has no justification for his believed propositions contained in CUB.

Ron didn’t like [P4]. He wrote,

"Paul's premise [4] false, which invalidates his argument. The reason Paul does not, or should I say will not see this is that he insists on twisting Vincent's words. Vincent clearly speaks of the opinion being unjustified. Paul chooses to twist Vincent's words to mean that the one holding to the opinion is unjustified."

But I was confused. I thought Ron was trying to be relevant to my argument. And [4] is based off Cheung's internalist constraint. Let's get a feel of what internalism entails:

"[Internalism insists] that agents have cognitive access to what justified their beliefs ... [T]he internalist requirement for all justified beliefs is that before we can hold a belief rationally, we must, in principle in any rate, have cognitive access to the grounds of our belief." - W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, 1998, pp. 155-156.

"What all forms of internalism have in common is that they require, for a belief's justification, that the person holding the belief be aware (or at least potentially aware) of something contributing to its justification." - Michael Bergmann, Justification Without Awareness, 2006, p.9.

"The internalism in question is the view that certain interesting and important epistemic evaluations depend entirely on internal factors, namely reason and evidence." - Richard Feldman, Justification is Internal, printed in Steup and Sosa ed. Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 2005, 283.

"The fundamental claim of internalism ... is that epistemological issues arise and must be dealt with from within the individual person's first-person cognitive perspective, appealing only to things that are accessible to that individual from that standpoint. The basic rationale is that what justifies a person's beliefs must be something that is available or accessible to him or her, that something to which I have no access cannot give me a reason for thinking that one of my beliefs is" [justified]." - Laurance BonJour, Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 2002, p. 222.

Therefore, if someone S believes that a proposition P is "unjustified opinion, at best" at time t, then at t S is unjustified in holding P, according to internalist constraints. We could also add we have no reason to believe that the propositions believed by Vincent in the set of CUB are justified beliefs.

And so I was going to try to re-work an argument. I came up with something like this:

[1] All propositions not in or deducible from Scripture are "unjustified opinions, at best."

[2] Vincent believes many propositions that are not in or deducible from Scripture. (Call all these beliefs, Cheung’s Unscriptural Beliefs CUB.)

[3] Therefore, all the propositions believed by Vincent in the set of CUB are "unjustified opinions, at best."

[4] If it is and always will be the case that that a proposition P in CUB is "unjustified, at best," then there is no justification for P.

[5] If there is no justification for P, then any cognitive agent that believes P has no justification for it.

[6] Therefore, if it is and always will be the case that that a proposition P in CUB is "unjustified, at best," then any cognitive agent that believes P has no justification for it.

[7] All propositions in CUB are, by definition, not in or deducible from Scripture.

[8] Only propositions contained or deducible from Scripture are justified.

[9] Therefore, it is and always will be the case that all propositions in CUB are, by definition, "unjustified opinion, at best."

[10] Therefore, any cognitive agent A that believes P, and P is in CUB, A has no justification for P.

If one knows that there is no justification for any proposition that are not in or deducible from Scripture, then one can’t say that he knows that he has a justification for any of his beliefs that are not in or deducible from Scripture. If one knows that he can’t have a justification for an unbiblical belief, because there are no justifications to be had, then one cannot say that he is justified in believing any proposition no in or deducible from Scripture. It is simply epistemologically dastardly to affirm that you are justified in believing extra-biblical propositions if no justification exists. I took my premise to be something of a tautology. If there is no justification, a person can’t be justified. Just like if all dogs were “unwhite,” you couldn’t have a white dog.

But, as I was thinking about this, a way to read Ron came to my attention. Why didn’t he like the original [P4]? And, if he didn’t like that, he wouldn’t like [P5] in the revised argument. Why not? How could I salvage Ron’s credibility?

The only way is by introducing the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic justification (and/or rationality). This is the only way to read Ron where his original response to my post, and his subsequent comments, aren’t utterly ridiculous. So, I must take him has drawing this distinction. And with that, it makes me wrong. But so what?

I didn’t read Ron that way because, as I have stated, I was trying to read him in the best light. Here’s what I mean. Since my post specifically refers to epistemic issues, and attempts to issue epistemic challenges for Cheung’s epistemology, then a non-epistemic point brought up in response to my critique is irrelevant. Pointless. A waste of time. So, I was not even looking for the distinction I just drew above. Before moving on, then, I should say something about this distinction.

This distinction is subject to heated discussion. Without getting involved with that debate, we can offer some simple definitions. An epistemic justification is a justification that provides good reasons for the idea that your belief is true. A non-epistemic justification is a justification based on pragmatic, prudential, moral, eudemonic, survival-value, or proper function reasons for belief. To offer some practicality: To say that S believes that P because he clearly remembers that P is to offer an epistemic justification (I do not intend to get into a debate about whether this is a good justification or not, I only attempt to bring out the differences and I think succeed in appealing to basic intuition people have). To say that S believes that P (say, the belief that you will get better from being sick) because people who have a positive attitude tend to get better, is a non-epistemic justification for your belief.

Now, let’s remember Cheung’s epistemological position.

"Scripture is the first principle of the Christian worldview, so that true knowledge consists of only what is directly stated in Scripture and what is validly deducible from Scripture; all other propositions amount to unjustified opinion at best. This biblical epistemology necessarily follows from biblical metaphysics. Any other epistemology is indefensible, and unavoidably collapses into self-contradictory skepticism." (p. 43; cf. “Systematic Theology,” p. 18 para. 4, p. 22 para. 5, p. 41 fn. 42, emphasis supplied)

Cheung also holds to an internalist and an infallibilist constraint on knowledge. Thus Cheung:

"However, unless he constructs his claims upon an objective and infallible foundation, then if he can claim to know..." (SOURCE)

For a analysis of how Cheung is an internalist, see here (sec. 3.2).

So, for Cheung,

(*) For one to know that P, (i) P must be Scripture, or deductively deduced from Scripture, (ii) one cannot be mistaken that P, and (iii) one must have access to how one knows that P. All else is "unjustified opinion at best."

Thus it is clear that only those beliefs in [CSB] have epistemic justification. Those beliefs in [CUB] do not.

Now, my critique was that much of Cheung’s epistemological positions fall into the ken of [CUB] and not [CSB].

If my critiques are correct, this means that there is no epistemic justification for those beliefs. Cheung has no epistemic reason to believe them. Of course I didn’t put “epistemic” before the words I used. But I thought it was fairly obvious as to what I was referring to.

But then Ron comes along and says that Cheung can be justified and rational in holding those beliefs. But we have seen that he must mean that Cheung had prudential or pragmatic or functional justifications of reasons for those beliefs. Of course he didn’t put those words before the words he used. I originally had said he was wrong. But now I admit that I was wrong. But I then add a big SO WHAT?

I don’t give a rip if believing all those propositions in [CUB] make Cheung “feel better.” I don’t really care if he finds it “useful” or “beneficial” to believe propositions in [CUB]. I don’t, and never did, care if he found that he could function better by holding to propositions in [CUB]. That was never the intent of my critique. So, Ron’s response to me, read in its only defensible light, is totally irrelevant to anything I was attempting to do in the posts he critiqued.

But, we don’t need to stop there. Ron’s defense of Cheung actually brings out more problems with Cheung’s position. Specifically, if those propositions in the ken of [CUB] are not epistemically justified, then notice what that implies. Included among propositions believed in [CUB] are a variety of meta-level statements about knowledge, justification, infallibility, and so on. Is it good enough or all these claims to be justified on purely pragmatic grounds? As has been argued, and as has not been interacted with, occasionalism, infallibilism, internalism, and even (*) itself, cannot (has not) be deduced from Scripture. We await the attempt. On top of that, even if a valid argument is given, divine occasionalism is a fallible belief producing source. The probability that one’s beliefs are true given Cheung’s occasionalism are low or inscrutable. So why believe the premises are true? Thus a valid deduction wouldn’t be enough. A reason to believe the premises, viz., an epistemic justification that fits with (*) would be required.

But, yes, I was wrong. Cheung is still rational and justified to believe those things. It is, well, useful for him to believe in occasionalism. It’s helpful for his ability to function to believe that he isn’t being deceived. But, so what? That has nothing to do with my critique.

At best Ron has simply brought out more worries with Cheung. I mean, who “justifies” their epistemological desiderata by appeals to usefullness!? I mean, I guess Cheung can “justify” his occasionalism and his beliefs about not being deceived by saying that it is/isn’t prudent to believe those things, but then of course I think it’s prudent to deny his position! Ron has saved Cheung’s rationality. The price: Who cares. No one was ever disputing those things.

Lastly, we should add that it isn’t at all clear that all the beliefs in [CUB] are justified or rational by appeal to non-epistemic standards. The belief that there are over 500 blades of grass on your neighbor’s lawn doesn’t appear to be useful, for instance. But perhaps it could be in certain contexts. But surely we hold hundreds of beliefs while not being on the context that we would find them useful. Are these all irrational to hold - both epistemically and non-epistemically?


PART II

Ron D: "When I say that one can rationally believe by way of inductive inference, I am not constituting such inferences as knowledge. As I've shown on other blog post http://reformedapologist.blogspot.com/2006/05/induction-and-knowledge.html"

The conversation isn't even over "inductive beliefs." Though, that is part of it. Let's re-familiarize ourselves with Cheung's claim:

"Scripture is the first principle of the Christian worldview, so that true knowledge consists of only what is directly stated in Scripture and what is validly deducible from Scripture; all other propositions amount to unjustified opinion at best. This biblical epistemology necessarily follows from biblical metaphysics. Any other epistemology is indefensible, and unavoidably collapses into self-contradictory skepticism." (p. 43; cf. “Systematic Theology,” p. 18 para. 4, p. 22 para. 5, p. 41 fn. 42, emphasis supplied)

Cheung also holds to an internalist and an infallibilist constraint on knowledge. Thus Cheung:

"However, unless he constructs his claims upon an objective and infallible foundation, then if he can claim to know..." (SOURCE)

For a analysis of how Cheung is an internalist, see here (sec. 3.2).

So, for Cheung,

(*) For one to know that P, (i) P must be Scripture, or deductively deduced from Scripture, (ii) one cannot be mistaken that P, and (iii) one must have access to how one knows that P. All else is "unjustified opinion at best."


Therefore, for Cheung, it is not just inductive beliefs that are "unjustified opinions, at best," it is all beliefs that are "unjustified opinions, at best." Let's see what non-inductive beliefs would be included in our Cheungian ken:

A:

[1] All intentional states are non-physical states.

[2] Beliefs about tomorrow's weather are intentional states.

[3] Therefore, Beliefs about tomorrow's weather are non-physical states.

B:

[1] All moral facts M are grounded in some moral principle P.

[2] X is a M.

[3] Therefore, X is grounded in P.

C:

[1] Non-cognitivist theories of morality cannot make sense of moral discourse.

[2] Mark Timmons' contextualist theory is a non-cognitivist theory of morality.

[3] Therefore, Mark Timmons' contextualist theory cannot make sense of moral discourse.

We could obviously multiply the above. The point: According to (*), (A), (B), and (C) are instances where the premises and conclusions are "unjustifiable opinions, at best." (A), (B), and (C) are not constituted by inductive beliefs. Therefore, it is not only "inductive beliefs" that are "unjustified opinions, at best."

So, I don't know why Ron is stuck on inductive beliefs.


Ron: "If we allow the term "knowledge" to be given to inductive inferences, then having less information can be the source of more knowledge, and having more information can cause one to rationally lose the knowledge he once had."

I don't know how there is "more knowledge" if the claim to knowledge is a probabilistic claim. Furthermore, people wouldn't necessarily lose the knowledge they had, but the knowledge they thought they had.

Ron: "What is below is pasted from a the link I provided immediately above.

1. Justification: Inductive inference that the clock is working based upon history

2. Belief: Believe as true the time the clock indicates, which is 12:00

3. Truth: It is 12:00

Someone might say that since all the criteria for knowledge have been met, one can know it is 12:00 given inductive-knowledge. However, the 3 criteria justify the belief that it is 12:00 even when relying upon a broken clock! Shouldn't this intuitively bother us?"

First, I don't take "justification" to be either necessary or sufficient for knowledge (I am obviously distinguishing 'justification' from 'warrant.') Second, the above doesn't negate inductive reasoning as a source of knowledge, but shows the importance of a congenial cognitive environment as necessary for warrant. It wasn't induction that failed, it was the epistemic environment. Induction doesn't even claim certainty for its conclusions.

Ron: "Can we "know" things based upon false information? The problem with induction is that inferences that are rational to maintain can always be false."

Well, more than that. We can't know things based on true information! Here's an example of why the cognitive environment needs to be congenial for the epistemic agent:

Say that John is passing through Iowa. He comes upon a town that loves to trick visitors into thinking they are passing through the "barn capital of the world." So, they plant thousands of red barn facades throughout the countryside. But, they through in a real red barn here and there, say 1:1,000. Now, John justifiedly believes that all the barn facades he sees are in fact real barns. But, he doesn't have knowledge. But, it so happens that when he happens to look at one of the real barns, he doesn't know that that is a barn either. He had a justified, true belief. And, to meet Ron's criteria, his belief was caused by truth - a real barn. But, do we want to say that John knew what he happened to look at right then was a real barn? No. His belief was obtained by luck. And, he wasn't in a congenial cognitive environment.

Also, is the mere possibility of an inference being false negate that an agent can have knowledge? If so, then Ron is an infallibilist. If not, then his critique doesn't get off the ground.

Ron: "The man who is most informed about the clock is not able to know the time, whereas the man with less information about the clock would be able to “know” the time if inductive inference allows for knowledge!"

No, the man wouldn't be able to "know" the time. Ron's point isn't made more substantive by the addition of an exclamation point. At best, the man with less information will be able to think he knows the time, whereas the man with more information will know that he cannot know the time based only on the information provided by the broken clock.

Ron: "I have rehearsed all of that simply to say this. If Cheung suggests that inferences reduce to opinions at best, I would not take him to mean that he believes he has no rational basis for thinking his caller ID is working on his cell phone."

No, it isn't just "inferences" it is "ALL other propositions amount to unjustified opinion at best" (emphasis supplied). Not all propositions are "inferences," Ron.

Does Cheung know that he has a "rational basis for thinking his caller ID is working on his cell phone"? if so, then let him deduce this from the Bible! If not, then on Cheungian terms, he could not say he knew that he has a rational basis to believe anything that is not deducible from Scripture. So, what epistemic support does his theory give him to make claims like that? I mean, Ron's free to shift the goal posts for Cheung, but that's not a defect in my argument. My argument was an internal critique, a reductio ad absurdem, against Cheung. So, these are just assertions, for Cheung. He may say that he believes all this stuff. He may claim that his position is such and such. But, he doesn’t really know all of that, does he? Perhaps it’s just “helpful’ for him to believe those things. Allows him to function as a Scripturalist in this world.

Ron: "Keith,

I addressed how Vincent can know things and how he can know that he is not being deceived by showing that his epistemology does not put him at a disadvantage over Paul’s epistemology."

Keith, Ron did no such thing, unless he moves the goal posts for Cheung. You see, Cheung can only know that he is not being deceived, and know "things" (whatever those are?), if he can deduce the conclusion from Scripture (or find it stated in Scripture). (Recall Cheung's strictures I cited in (*).) Cheung cannot deduce said propositions. Therefore, he cannot know them. I find it interesting that Ron didn't allow exactly what I said to Keith to be allowed to be posted on his blog. This is a tacit admission of defeat.


Brian: "Anonymous said...

There is no reason to doubt that Mr. Cheung meant what he wrote. What Mr. Cheung wrote is very cogent! Mr. Cheung embraces many propositions that are not justified - but we must - as Mr. Cheung points out. It is not incoherent that Mr. Cheung who defines knowledge as he does to be justified in believing *things* that cannot be *justified*.

Brian"

Of course I never denied that Cheung couldn’t believe things that cannot be justified.

And, if your response is taken to mean epistemic rationality or justification, then I’d disagree. Let's note that Cheung says that "all other PROPOSITIONS are unjustified." So, how is Cheung justified? Brian has Cheung as someone who is justified in believing that P, even though P cannot be justified. Note that if Cheung is justified in believing that P, and given Cheung’s internalism, then Cheung believes a proposition, namely:

(**) I am justified in believing that P due to justificatory feature(s) F.

But since (**) is a proposition, then Cheung believes that (**) is “unjustified opinion, at best.”

Shouldn’t the virtuous epistemic agent give up (**)? Since (**) is “unjustified opinion, at best,” then how could Cheung be justified in believing it? By appeal to:

(***) I am justified in believing that (**) due to justificatory feature(s) F.*

But (***) is a proposition, and so is unjustified, at best. Why believe it? I hope the reader can see where this is going.

If there is no justification for this proposition:

(****) I see a red car.

Then why is there justification for (**)? We are just as unjustified in believing (****) as we are (**).

We can also ask what would Cheung's justification be? What would fill in F above? An unjustified proposition, at best! How is Cheung justified? What confers this positive epistemic status on his beliefs? Illogical and irrational and fallible inductive inferences? Illogical and irrational and fallible memorial beliefs? Illogical and irrational and fallible sensations? What? And, on top of that, given Cheung's strictures on knowledge, how could Cheung know that "it is not incoherent that Mr. Cheung who defines knowledge as he does to be justified in believing *things* that cannot be *justified*?" Other propositions justify Cheung’s CUB beliefs. But all those propositions are “unjustified opinions, at best.” So, if they justify Cheung’s CUB’s, then we have unjustifying justifiers (I do know that non-cognitive Mark Timmons believes in unjustifying justifiers, but his view is soundly routed by Shafer-Landau in ch. 1 of his book, Moral Realism: A Defense.)

Moreover, none of this refutes my original piece, in the slightest. Cheung can't know that occasionalism is the case since he can't deduce it from the Bible (perhaps he can offer an abductive or inductive case for it, but that doesn't grant knowledge, according to Cheung). Occasionalism is a fallible belief producing mechanism which yields a probabilistic defeater for all (or, at least 99% of) for Cheung's beliefs. It therefore fails another on of Cheung's strictures. Cheung can't know that he is not being deceived since he can't deduce that from Scripture.

If Brian is taken to mean non-epistemic justification. So what. That answer has nothing to do with my original argument.

Lastly, what's most problematic, even for the non-epistemic out, Cheung can't know that he exists since he can't deduce that from the Bible. So, on Cheungian epistemology, if he can't know that he exists then surely he can't know if he is justified in believing anything since non-existent people aren't justified in their beliefs. Non-existent people aren’t even prudentially justified in their beliefs. This is the case, for many reasons, one being that non-existent people don’t exist in order to have beliefs that can be justified in any sense.