SRB

Although the author’s essay is less than completely clear in what his argument is supposed to be, it is possible to dissect the following chain of reasoning:

(1) Only if God exists can we justify the following beliefs:

(i) that logical reasoning is reliable.
(ii) that our senses are reliable,
(iii) that induction is reliable,
(iv) that we exist.

(2) We can justify all those beliefs.

(3) Therefore, God exists. [from (1) and (2)]


REFUTATION

I consider this argument to be unsound and have four different objections to premise (1). These are objections (a)-(d), below.

(a) What is meant by the term "God"? No definition is provided. The author mentions theism and even Christianity, but it is not obvious why the entity the author has in mind would need to have the properties of those deities. Why would the being mentioned in the conclusion need to be omnipotent, omniscient, disembodied, personal and omnibenevolent, and the creator and sustainer of the universe? Much more needs to be said about just what are the definitional properties of the being the author calls "God." Could "God" be some sort of abstract principle, an impersonal mechanism, or aliens from another dimension? It’s hard to see why not. Clarification is needed here to make sense of premise (1). Without this the argument is incomplete and hopelessly vague.

(b) Even if "God" is supposed to be the deity of classical theism, or even Christianity, it is not obvious why belief in that deity helps to refute a skeptical view of (i)-(iv). According to many theists, we are unjustified in believing that the theistic deity would not permit the Holocaust for good reasons beyond our understanding. Why could such a deity not have similar good reasons, ones beyond our ken, entailing more wide-ranging skepticism? There is no good argument supplied to the effect that God would not lead us to false beliefs for good reasons of which we are unaware, so there is no reason at all to accept premise (1).

(c) One might wonder how the author knows that God exists. Presumably whatever reason he has for thinking God exists is subject to some sort of skeptical argument. So he is reasonably accused of appealing to a double standard. He thinks that skeptical problems can be bypassed by appeal to the hypothesis that God exists. But before it is established that God exists, to be consistent the author would need to be skeptical of the premises of his own argument. For example, how can the author know that premise (1) is true, if he initially (prior to acquiring knowledge that God exists) does not have a justified belief that his own senses are reliable?

(d) Do we nontheists really have to be skeptical of (i)-(iv)? I don't think so. One could fills shelves with attempts to justify human knowledge, and the author would need to refute them all. He does not attempt this, let alone manage it.

Concerning (i)
To even raise the question of whether we are justified in believing logical reasoning is valid, it would have to make sense to speak of a hypothetical state of affairs where logical reasoning is not valid. But there is no way to make any sense of that. So there is no way to coherently formulate the skeptical thesis in question. Maybe the author is confused and means that we cannot know that our own thought processes are logical and reliable. If so, I would deal with that in the same way as the next item…

Concerning (ii)
The hypothesis that our senses are unreliable is clearly a coherent one, but it can be dealt with in a variety of ways. I personally think that my belief in the reliability of my senses is a properly basic belief. That is, it is a justified belief that is not justified by any other belief. It is justified, instead, by the fact that it is self-evident (among other things). I am not impressed by attempts to show that I should be skeptical of things that are self-evident to me. The premises of any such argument would be far less plausible than the view they are arguing against. This is a common flaw of all skeptical arguments, and provides one route to reasonably resist their conclusions.

Concerning (iii)
There are plenty of attempts to justify inductive reasoning in the literature. The author would need to refute them all; but he doesn't even seem to be aware of them. If they all fail, then I would take inductive reasoning to be properly basic, just as I take belief in the reliability of my senses. It is far more plausible to me that the Sun will rise tomorrow than it is that a premise of some questionable skeptical argument is true.

Concerning (iv)
I know I exist, at least in part, by reference to my own senses, which I have discussed above. So why the repetition on the part of the author? The author makes the same point in different ways and this serves to make his essay unnecessarily longwinded and repetitive. For example, he later mentions belief in the uniformity of nature as an additional thing we would need to be skeptical of. But if inductive reasoning is justified then that justifies our belief in the uniformity of nature! So it is silly for him to mention both of those.

In conclusion, the author's overall argument can be refuted in several ways. His skeptical arguments can be overcome, and even if they could not be overcome it is far from obvious how the existence of the god of theism would make any skeptical problems better rather than worse! In any case, the author is exceedingly vague about what sort of entity he is arguing for, first calling such an undefined entity “God,” and then groundlessly supposing he has established theistic and Christian themes. He is also inconsistent in his reasoning, claiming we must reject every claim to knowledge if we don't believe God exists, and then attempting to offer an argument to people in just such a position.

SRB

Tercel

Good point, he has almost completely omitted that one, apparently he assumes it is self-evident. It probably is to him, as I found it fairly self-evident. -While reading it, I was thinking to myself "yup, okay he's made a compelling case for the inevitable failure of nontheistic theories and I am reasonably convinced that my conception of God if brought to bear would avoid these difficulties"
But I can certainly see why you might be unconvinced.

Tercel

I disagree, 2 & 3 should read something like:
(2) These are all standard beliefs which we all have, which are used all the time, and which are absolutely essential to our lives.
(3) Therefore it is good to assume that God exists.

No. You could hold them as properly basic. Or you could believe you'd justified them. Or you could just be inconsistent.
The argument being presented here is that the cannot be justified. Attempting to hold them as properly basic is open to death-by-Occam's-razor. (Not only are you assuming the truth of multiple beliefs, you are also ending up with a belief system containing multiple unjustified beliefs) And, well... you can take the inconsistency option if you so wish...

Of course he doesn't need to! All he needs to do is prove it can't be done or convince the reader that there is good reason why such a proof is unlikely to ever be given.

Goliath

The Transcendental argument has always failed and will always fail because the argument involves assuming the existence of the xian god (which, of course, is what is to be proven!).

Sincerely,

Goliath

SRB

One drawback of that approach is that now (3) doesn't follow from (1) and (2) by any deductively valid rule of inference. Another problem is that all my (as yet unchallenged) objections were directed against premise (1), which remains unchanged.

You will have to clarify here. Properly basic beliefs are justified beliefs, just beliefs that are non-inferential (i.e. they are not inferred from other beliefs). What is the argument to the effect that "you are also ending up with a belief system containing multiple unjustified beliefs"? We will need to see it spelled out.

How might the author prove that no such justification (for human knowledge) will ever be forthcoming? He never provides any argument for that! If you think otherwise, again we will need to see it spelled out. My best stab at making sense of the author's argument is (1)-(3), as proposed by me. You would like to change steps (2) and (3). That's OK by me, since my objections were all directed at premise (1), which you want to leave unchanged. If my construction of the author's argument is weak and easily refuted by my objections, then it follows that yours is too.

SRB

Tercel

Of course, I had the hidden premise that it is good for such foundational beliefs to be justified.

~shrugs~ The objections you made which I didn't challenge I considered irrelevant. You can believe they are sucessful objections if you like.
This is not my argument and I don't propose to defend it, I'm simply intrigued to see that a pressupositionalist argument could actually work.

I think the confusion here is caused by the ambiguity of "justified". By "justified" you mean "it is rational to hold this belief", whereas I meant "the belief can be infered". As I understand it, Properly basic beliefs can be justified in the first instance but not in the second.

According to TAG, belief in the existence of God provides a sufficient reason for inferring the beliefs in question.
If you reject the existence of God, then according to TAG, you must hold the beliefs in question as non-inferred.
To hold multiple beliefs as non-inferred, when you could infer them from just one non-inferred belief is not very rational.

SRB

You say that my four objections (a)-(d) are "irrelevant," even though they serve to attack your preferred formulation of the author's argument. Objections (a) and (b) also serve to refute what you say here!

(a) It is most unclear what you mean by "God."
(b) It is not clear how belief in God might give us reason to be less skeptical about human claims to knowledge. On the usual theistic conception of God, for example, God has reasons beyond our ken to make suffering appear apparently pointless to us. Why think he does not have good reasons beyond our ken to mislead us more generally? According to many theists, God sometimes has good reasons to allow Satan to deceive people. Why think this is not happening right now?

Your implication that nontheists must be foundationalists is also erroneous. A nontheist could instead be a coherentist, and believe that all beliefs are justified by other beliefs. If you are right in claiming that "according to TAG, you must hold the beliefs in question as non-inferred" then TAG presupposes the falsity of coherentism which is by itself extremely controversial.

Your implication that a foundationalist view is automatically to be rationally preferred if it minimises the number of non-inferred beliefs is bogus! I can easily conceive of all manner of implausible and outrageous worldviews that have a bare minimum of non-inferred beliefs (e.g. "Everything I believe is justified because I say so!" or "Everything I believe is justified because I have blue eyes!"). A decent foundationist view will pay attention to how people actually form their beliefs. Quite plainly, almost nobody supposes that the reliability of his senses depends on the truth of certain controversial religious claims, such that if he should doubt God exists he would come to doubt that there is an external world!

SRB

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Tercel :

It seems to me that you're holding more than one belief as non-inferred. When you non-infer God's existence, you're non-inferring a lot of characteristics of God: God is good, God is powerful, God provides objective foundations for logic, God provides objective foundations for knowledge, God provides objective foundations for rationality, etc.

Or if you just infer them from the existence of God, allow me to suggest an alternative. I believe in Object X. Object X is the sort of thing that causes objective epistemic foundations to exist. But Object X isn't a god. I infer that objective epistemic foundations exist from the non-inferred belief that Object X exists.

Goliath

Tercel,

Come now, Tercel! You claim to have an interest in Mathematics, yet you cannot see why the Transcendental argument fails? The argument is circular, since it involves assuming that the xian god exists (when that is what is to be shown!).


Sincerely,

Goliath

luvluv

Isn't that kind of the point? The point is that unless we posit the existence of the Christian God it is impossible for us to justify our ability to know anything. It seems like he's going for a reductio ad absurdium here. Your view of knowledge is absurd unless you posit a God. It is possible for you to just be comfortable with the fact that your view of knowledge is absurd, so in that sense it doesn't prove that God exists. It simply argues for the rationality of believing that He does.

What I want to know is why does this not equally apply to Islam or any other monotheistic religion?