The Other Michael

I've read some of the stuff on presupp in the SecWeb library and some other sites, but it still doesn't make sense to me. I keep getting bogged down in jargonesque-hairsplitting that sounds about like "where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

It seems to me like you should look at the evidence, and then draw conclusions.

But presupp appears to look at the evidence, and then say "but we know there is a God", and then draw conclusions (usually about the existance of a god) on the evidence plus the presupposed (preconceived?) presumption.

What, if anything, am I missing here? Or is presupp actually the dishonest argument that it appears (to me) to be?

thanks,
Michael

Ender

The Other Michael:

A sec webber's professor once remarked that Van Til was the ultimate sultan of sophistry. I don't understand presuppers myself, but they seem to be yet another species of theists whose arguments amount to this statement: "Since i presuppose God, by definition I'm right and the atheist, lacking the only divine sanction of his knowledge, is automatically wrong."

Of course, Jim Mitchell or Theophillus or the latest member will storm in here and try their best to obfuscate the issue. Theologians or believers are not philosophers, since they must assume the truth of their beliefs prior to any honest intellectual investigation.

~WiGGiN~

Vorkosigan

One of the more interesting criticisms of presup that I've heard is from Christians. Presuppositionalism, precisely because it presupposes god, renders the Bible superfluous (why do we need it if we already have presupposed gods?) Presuppositionalists thus seem to require two presups, one that there is a Sky Fairy, and the other that the Bible is its major message vehicle.

Vorkosigan

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, it actually is the dishonest argument that it appears to be.

It's a form of theological masturbation, which develops when fundamentalists work themselves into a frenzy of self-affirmation.

FUNDIE #1: God MUST exist!

FUNDIE #2: Right on, brother! Praise the Lord!

FUNDIE #3: Yeah! God is so essential that he must exist in ALL possible worlds!

FUNDIE #1: Halleluja!

FUNDIE #2: Yeah! Uh... he's so essential that even logic and reason wouldn't work without Him!

FUNDIE #3: In ALL possible worlds!

FUNDIE #2: Good call! Yeah! Amen!

FUNDIE #1: Hey, that means that all non-Christians are wrong-thinkers! They're wrong because they can't think properly!

FUNDIE #2: Amen!

FUNDIE #3: Good point! Without presupposing that our own beloved Gawd is ABSOLUTELY essential, right-thinking is impossible!

FUNDIE #2: Praise the Lord!

FUNDIE #1: That's why we must NEVER question the existence of God! If we admit even the POSSIBILITY of God's non-existence, we can't think properly!

FUNDIE #2: Halleluja! I'm gonna pray REALLY HARD tonight!

FUNDIE #3: Me too! Praise the LORD! Amen!

..........................

FUNDIE #1: You cannot win, poor deluded atheist! God MUST exist in all possible worlds, because He is essential to logic, and if you deny him, you're a wrong-thinker!!!

ATHEIST: ...Huh?

FUNDIE #1: The Presuppositionalist argument is unassailable! It PROVES that God exists! I win! I win!

ATHEIST: Excuse me? Are you on crack?

FUNDIE #1: You see! You cannot defeat my argument!

ATHEIST: ...what argument?

FUNDIE #1: You can't understand because you're a wrong-thinker!

ATHEIST: No, I can't understand because you're an idiot.

FUNDIE #1: Atheism is self-refuting! Because you reject Gawd, on whom everything is based, you have no foundation for your beliefs! You can't KNOW anything!

ATHEIST: My beliefs are based on the axiomatic assumption that the physical Universe exists and that my perceptions are generally accurate. Suits me fine. I can certainly see that you're an idiot, for instance.

FUNDIE #1: Ah, but because God is essential, you can't possibly have an explanation for the existence of immaterial entities, morality, and so forth. This proves that your system is inadequate.

ATHEIST: Electrochemical states in the brain. Social evolution. Wanna know more?

FUNDIE #1: Sorry, you don't understand. Because you're a wrong-thinker, your explanations cannot be adequate!

ATHEIST: So what's wrong with them, then?

FUNDIE #1: They're not based on God! Therefore they contain internal contradictions and are self-refuting!

ATHEIST: So where are these internal contradictions?

FUNDIE #1: I dunno, but they MUST exist!

ATHEIST: So find some.

FUNDIE #1: Well, if there was no God, then... AARGH! No, you won't trick me that easily!

ATHEIST: Pardon?

FUNDIE #1: If I assume the nonexistence of God, even for a moment, I become a wrong-thinker! That's why you can't see them! They're invisible to wrong-thinkers!

ATHEIST: You mean, like fairies are invisible to those who don't believe in them?

FUNDIE #1: Yes! No! Yes, but not like that!

ATHEIST: You seem somewhat confused.

FUNDIE #1: Bah! Just you wait! I'm gonna go home now and pray REALLY HARD tonight, and I'll show you tomorrow how presuppositionalism is unassailable!

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Jack the Bodiless ]</p>

Ender

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> KUDOS!

Plump-DJ

Forgive me if i'm talking out my buttocks here but doesn't the power of this sort of argument (i believe it's a TAG right?) come from the failure of the oppisite position to give a satisfactory cosmology that can offer the necessary elements to derive a consistant and viable epistemology. Or so i'm told.

There's a very interesting article called "A Brief History Of Knowledge" floating around the net somehwere which seems to show (or at least try to show) that this is true.

Ahh.. here it is.
<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/knowledge.htm" target="_blank">http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/knowledge.htm</a>

The same author has done another article called "The Other Side : Metaphysics and Meaning" which is a nice story like illistration of the same basic argument.

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/other.htm" target="_blank">http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/other.htm</a>

Vorkosigan

Hi Plump! Words like "consistent" and 'reliable' seem largely like values to me. As an atheist, and considering broadly, culture + evolution seems to give an extremely reliable account of epistemology. Have you read Giere's Explaining Science?

Vorkosigan

Jack the Bodiless

That last sentence is the key to seeing the bankruptcy of the argument. The presuppositionalist is required to believe in "the failure of the opposite position to give a satisfactory cosmology that can offer the necessary elements to derive a consistent and viable epistemology". He believes it because that's what he was told, by Cornelius Van Til or one of his acolytes: or, perhaps, because he is so sure of the "rightness" of his cause that he is convinced that no other worldview can stand. It is an article of faith.

But, when talking to unbelievers, they should be able to argue that this is so. Again, the problem they face is that the TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) is actually a Transcendental Assertion of God, developed in an environment where such assertions are sufficient. When Christian theologians gather to talk, it's OK to simply assert that God exists and has various properties. The result is something like the tale of the Emperor's New Clothes: no matter how completely the faithful agree that the clothes of TAG are magnificent, the atheist can see that the theist is naked.

For instance, from your first link:
But he does not look. He assumes that God has spoken, without seeking to test that the Bible (or whatever "holy book" he has arbitrarily grabbed hold of) is the "Word of God". Such a claim can only be tested by empiricism: by using his own faculties to check the claim against aspects of the perceived Universe. And this requires him to "have faith" in those faculties, just as the naturalist must. There is a clear double standard: the TAGian permits himself to declare baseless beliefs as axiomatically true, but seeks to deny the naturalist that right. We DO have a foundation for knowledge. Sure, we're not immune to the "brain in a jar" possibility (that we are disembodied brains being fed false data), but neither is the theist. Getting a presuppositionalist to see this, however, is very difficult: they are in a profound state of denial on this issue.

Your second link is a good example of a strawman argument. The hypothetical naturalist gives a series of justifications for why the killing of small children is evil.

For starters, there is some confusion about the roles of the two protagonists. "He" is a naturalist, asking "I" to justify my beliefs: "I" keep giving naturalistic answers, but "he" will not accept them.

The first actual reason presented is the evolution of empathy. This is dismissed because it doesn't explain why the killing is "really" evil: merely why people will generally perceive it to be evil. "I" back down: there was no reason to. The explanation is sufficient.

The second reason is the pragmatic value to society: this is dismissed by "what do you do if society is bad", followed by "how do you know that society is bad". This assumes that the first reason has been dismissed: it has not. A society is bad if it compels us to act in a manner which contradicts our evolved human empathy.
Nope. And yet "His response startled me for two reasons. First, because no one had ever accused me of being a metaphysician before. Secondly, because I realized he was right. Now that he said it, it was clear that nature can not account for ethics." This has not been established, it is merely a theistic assertion that came from nowhere.
It cannot be "rational" in an absolute sense, it simply IS. OK so far. And yet:
There is nothing remotely "non-naturalistic" about this! An emotional committment to the welfare of young children is entirely naturalistic, and it is rational to deduce this!
But "I" did not LOSE this argument! There is no reason why it should be assumed that "I" ever held contradictory and inadequate views on why certain things are "evil" in the first place!

This is followed by a discussion of the evolution of reason, in which "I" make a good case for how evolution explains our ability to reason, as a survival aid. The other guy points out that we nevertheless disagree about things. So what? Evolution isn't perfect, there is no reason to assume that our ability to think is perfect. But "I" unaccountably find myself thinking "I felt as though the last door were closing. I didn't have much confidence left but thought I better ask any questions I still had." WHAT door? What's the problem???

In the final paragraph, because "my" worldview had collapsed (simply because this "I" bozo apparently never had a coherent worldview), "I" get religion. And this is a Christian who wrote this! A believer in a God who repeatedly killed innocent children! A person who believes this is immoral only if HE does it on his own initiative, but everything is fine and dandy if GOD says so. A person with absolutely no moral basis for saying that child-killing is inherently, "really" wrong at all!

NialScorva

1. Logic and Reason must be accounted for.
2. Logic and reason cannot justify itself, something transcendent to both must be used.
3. God is sufficiently transcendant to justify them.
4. &lt;wave hands&gt; Diety X is the only transcendant diety.
5. Because no other philosophy can justify logic and reason, any philosophy based upon logic and reason without presupposing god, it must be wrong.
6. Thus presuppositionalism is right.


That seems to be the gist of most presup. Rather stupid, IMO, far too much hand waving and calling your opponent an idiot. That's fun for somethings, but not productive philosophy. From what I've read of Van Till, he seems to do a lot to justify step 4 as being a christian truine god.

Plump-DJ

Well i've never bought presupositionalism. I was prepared to give those who do, the benefit of the doubt. In otherwords They see sometihng that i do not.

I've never had a problem with the notion that morality is grounded in man or the pragmatists approach to knowledge. (It's true because it works and we can verify it over and over) I've never quite grasped (if indeed there is anything to grasp) why we needed God to justify logic, and knowledge and epistemology.

To Jack the Bodiless :

I think that this is not in fact true. I think they're required to believe it because of the impossiblity of the oppisite. In otherwords, it's not a simple case of belief but a matter of Reducing Naturalism to the absurd as it were. (Reductio Ad Absurdio or what ever it's called)

Well do we determine truth by the vote? Slavery was acceptable 2000 years ago. If you went back to the year dot, would you say that slavery was wrong. Ultimately you have to assign "value points" at some stage. Now i certainly think it's wrong (as i hope you do) but can i really say that it's plain old wrong. It seems to me, given that it was considered perfectly acceptable by the Greeks to keep slaves (where's that empathy stuff? ) that the best i can say is "Well *i think* it's wrong." rather then it's wrong. This goes against my deepest intuitions, my deepest beliefs but it seems that this is the best i can muster given this approach.

Do you deny his claim that each of us engages in metaphysics every time we open our mouths. Whatever it is? A moral judgment, a statement of knowledge. It seems to me that all things come back to metahyscics.