Dr Greg Bahnsen - Transcendental Arguments: Summary of Transcendental Arguments Pt 1 (Part 6)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

But he uses Donald Davison to try to show that there is only one possible conceptual scheme. And the way he shows it is by. I'm going to give you a thumbnail sketch of Donald Davidson's argument. It's going to be real simple, and Donald Davidson, who's a brilliant philosopher, is much more nuanced than this. I'm going to give you the guinea on it. Donald Davidson's article on the very idea of a conceptual scheme takes issue with the fact that a lot of philosophers discuss this idea or discuss the notion of conceptual scheme without knowing what they're really talking about. The conclusion that Davidson draws is that there is no such thing as a conceptual scheme.

Now, really, to be a little unfair.

What he means is there's really only one conceptual scheme. But he says in the process that really, to talk about conceptual schemes is unintelligible or meaningless because we have to view the world in a certain way. Now, why does he say that? Well, he's a conscious follower of Quine, who departs from Quine on several points. Quine talked about, had articles on the indeterminacy of translation. And I don't want to go into all of Quine, but Quine said that translations, or radical translations, translating a previously unknown tongue always brings about a level of indeterminacy that fundamentally the way you interpret another tongue is going to have indeterminacy embedded within it. And his famous example is for the linguist to be out in the field with these Aborigines. And the linguist has had no contact or no Westerner had any contact with these Aborigines. And so he's trying to figure out their language. And so up through the bushes comes what the linguist would call the rabbit, the bunny rabbit. And when the native sees it, he points and says, gavagai. Now, the linguist, at that point, as a hypothesis, puts in his notebook, gavagai, mean rabbit. Okay? Now, later on, it could be that it means, as Dr. Monson pointed out, fast rabbit, or there's a rabbit running, or whatever. But for the purposes, for his present purposes, that's the best hypothesis he has. And so as he goes about his work, he discovers that, yeah, that hypothesis seems to hold and that gavagai is equivalent to.

Rabbit.

But Kleinson points out this, that even though that's the best hypothesis, he's really not given at all a conclusive translation to gavagai at all because there's other possibilities that will fit within a translation manual. He could have a different manual of translation. Instead of translating Gavagai as rabid, he could translate it. And you're going to laugh, but this is an important article in philosophy for please don't laugh. You could translate it as undetached rabbit parts. Look, there goes undetached rabbit parts. He could also translate gaba guy as. There goes a facial temporal time slice of rabbit hood. Okay? And we can play this game on and on. What Klein is saying is there's not one right translation of the name Gavagai. There are other possibilities depending upon the manual of translation that you use and the theory which you bring into it. We don't know what the theory of the world or the conceptual scheme that the Aborigine has. We know ours and we're trying to marry ours up to his and try to get as close as we can in order to be able to translate back and forth. But even if the linguist, at the point where he understands the language in the sense that he could communicate with the Aborigine and he could speak about Gavagai and all stuff like that, he still doesn't know, even though there's communication, whether what he means marries up with what the speaker means. He will never be able to tell. He can never devise a test to see if he means unattached rabbit parts or a rabbit. Okay, now that's a bit tough. And the philosophical point that Quine's making is that translation between any person is indeterminate and that our theory of the world determines our manual of translation. Okay? This is Quine's radical behaviorism coming out. In other words, he's saying that meaning has no objective value. Okay? Now Davison comes along and says, yeah, there is something to this whole discussion that Quine has in his book Word and Object, where that argument is sound. However, we have to translate that person in a way that is appropriate with our way of looking at the world. In order to recognize a language at all, we have to translate it in terms that are intelligible to us. And so when we come across the Aborigine who shouts out Gavagai using the principle of charity, using the fact that we should interpret him in the best light, we have to, or we ought to interpret him as saying, there goes a rabbit, rather than these other exotic formulations, okay? So Davidson is saying that our conceptual scheme sets the limits or our way of looking at the world sets the limits for how we can interpret other people. Now, I'm leaving out a lot of detail and some of it is a bit skewed. I understand that. I'm just trying to get this out before you, Grayling, comes along. And so Davidson's argument then is that there is no such thing as a conceptual scheme. Simply because I cannot translate somebody else's language into a different conceptual scheme than my own. It makes no sense. I wouldn't be able to understand it if somebody really had a different conceptual scheme than I did. I wouldn't be able to recognize that person as a speaker of another language. If I were to ever recognize somebody as speaking a language, I have to presuppose that he's operating within the same conceptual scheme as I am myself. Otherwise I would never recognize what he was doing as speaking a language. If I didn't look at him and see that he was behaving intelligibly and speaking in a certain way and interpreted them in terms of my conceptual scheme, I couldn't recognize the behavior as intelligent or purposeful or having any type of intelligibility. Okay, now that's quick, and you might have a lot of questions with that. Bottom line is there is no such thing as a conceptual scheme because it makes no sense to talk about it. It makes no sense about talking about the Aborigines conceptual scheme and my conceptual scheme. And as far as I can translate his language into mine, we have to have the same type of concept going into it, okay? Grayling uses that type of consideration to try to prove that there is only one possible conceptual scheme. Now, it's a bit floppy. Davison remembers saying, there's really no such thing as conceptual scheme. And for our purposes it's a bit unfair, but we're going to translate that into meaning. There is only one possible conceptual scheme. Okay? Grayling picks up on that insight or that alleged insight and claims that this is just what I need for my option B argument. My option C type transcendental argument, needs supplement by anti relativistic argument. All I've shown is that certain types of concepts are necessary for my experience. Then the skeptic comes along and says, well, maybe there's other types of conspiriences. Maybe there's other types of other types of conceptual skill. To which he uses Davidson's arguments to respond. No, this is the only possible conceptual scheme. Okay, that was down and dirty. Anybody have any questions on that? Right. There's no. I couldn't. The person I translate into English, I mean, he can mean interpersonal translation between one English speaker and another as well. But let's talk about it in terms of two different languages. The only reason I could even view you as a language speaker is because I see you behave in certain ways and speak in certain ways. And the way I hear you, I interpret them in terms of my conceptual scheme. When your language comes to me, I interpret it in terms of my conceptual scheme. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't even recognize what you were doing as linguistic behavior at all. I would simply see you making noises and say, well, I don't know what that thing is, but it's certainly not speaking a language. I wouldn't be able to recognize, in other words, something that was behaving in certain ways, unless I wouldn't be able to recognize it as a language speaker, unless I viewed it as speaking a language that was translatable into mine. In other words, that shared the same conceptual schemes as my language is allegedly embedded in.

And.

Why.

Right.

That's the only way translation occurs. And the only. The precondition for that is that this is the only conceptual scheme you deny, that you wouldn't even be able to recognize another language. Okay, now we can make short work out of Davidson. I think there's a lot to say, and we don't have time to go into it. Basically, though, really, how much does this cut away the skeptic? If it is true that we can only conceive of, we can only ever say there's only one conceptual scheme in the sense that we can only recognize speakers of other languages if we assume or presume that they show our conceptual scheme. That doesn't mean that they really do. Right. And that doesn't mean that. And that also means that those that do have intelligibility or that do have a different conceptual scheme, that we would never be able to recognize them. But that has nothing to do with the fact that they actually do have another conceptual scheme. Davidson's point is strictly epistemological. It's that we could never know about another conceptual scheme. It says nothing about whether there really are other conceptual schemes. There could be other conceptual schemes. Davidson's whole point, the way Grayling uses Davidson, is simply to show that we can never epistemologically recognize a different conceptual scheme. Okay, now let's also ask this, and let's bring in some theological consideration. We view the world in such and such a way. And Davidson says, well, we have to. You can't even conceive of something that doesn't conceive of the world in the Way we do. Well, what does the Bible say about that? Are our thoughts or are God's thoughts our thoughts and vice versa? To a certain degree, our thoughts are reflections of his thoughts when we're thinking correctly to a certain degree. But are the limits of our conceptual scheme, if we want to speak that way? The limits of God's conceptual scheme? Absolutely not. Davidson. By making this argument, not only is making his epistemological point really doesn't destroy the skeptic because of the ontological considerations, but also theologically, we have a reason to debunk this whole type of thing. We know that God's outlook is different than ours. Okay, we're going to establish that by stantilian transcendental arguments. But the point now is Davison really is begging the question here, because we can recognize somebody with a different conceptual scheme with ours. God, he shares a certain conceptual outlook as we do, or we share a certain amount of his conceptual outlook. But other parts of God's conceptual outlook are unknowable to us and will be in our know principle. But that doesn't mean we can't. That doesn't mean we say, well, but God can't really have a different conceptual scheme. No, we know that God does. He told us within our own conceptual stream that he has a larger conceptual stream than we do. Okay, well, he gives us deeper insight into when we're generated. He gives us the ability to understand his revelation to us. But still, we're still operating within human faculties. I mean, there's something that revelation doesn't give us exhaustive knowledge of God. It gives us as much knowledge as God was pleased to reveal to us, but beyond that, we don't know. Pardon me. Absolutely. Okay, well, that's so much for Grayling's article. He ends it by stating that the primary importance of transcendental arguments resides in the fact that we have to reflect on our concepts and beliefs from the internal perspective of having to use them even as we investigate them. There is no external point. There is no external point from which we can view our conceptual scheme. Like Neurot's ship sailors, we have to rebuild our ship at sea. This is a famous example by a logical called Otto Neurot. Basically, analogy is we have this conceptual scheme looks like a ship that we're sailing on. If we want to change anything in it, we can't dry dock it. It's not an option. We're out in the middle of the scene, so we have to change things beam by beam and plank by plank. We couldn't do a complete overhaul of the hull, otherwise we'd sink. So we have to keep our ship, our epistemological ships afloat in order to do so. When it's damaged, we have to replace one beam with another one. We just can't replace the whole hall at one time. So that's what he means by that illustration. Transcendental arguments offer ways of reflecting on our concepts which at least promise to tell us much about their nature and interrelations and about the degree of strength possessed by skeptical challenges to our use of them. Now there's something right and something wrong with this last statement. Transcendental arguments in the sense that we've been discussing primarily option B forms, conceptual transcendental arguments do show us and can be helpful in showing us that particular type of things like causation are necessary for our experience. Okay? But then he comes and says that we are in this position like neurot sailors and that we can only piecemeal build our epistemological shit together. And this is something that is fundamentally opposed by worldview transcendental type arguments. Grayling believes that transcendental arguments are to be done the piecemeal way. You know, we set this type of thing is necessary for this type of experience. This type of thing, this type of concept is necessary for this type of experience, okay? And then we try to keep our ship afloat by proving these type of things. Van Til is going to come and as we've seen yesterday, say, no, no, that's not the way to do it at all. The way to do it is to dry dock it and to show what are the necessary preconditions for all experience. And the only way to do that is evaluating worldview. And so the modern contemporary debate on transcendental arguments and what we learn from it, we see that contemporary transcendental arguments are fundamentally different in nature from Cornelius Van Til's worldview transcendental arguments. They're two different birds altogether. Formally, they share some assets. They both try to show transcendental and even the way they go about doing that, there's some analogy reductio ad absurdum, but the scope of them is different and the manner of which they are argued are different as well. Van Til argues worldview worldviews are the only way in which transcendental arguments work. Contemporary proponents say that only particular transcendental arguments are the things that can go by that, the things that we could use. And interestingly, Grayling doesn't even conceive of that as a possibility. I mean, he Just assumes us at the end. He never even brings about this type of consideration. He just says our predicament is neurot ship. He doesn't even consider the worldview methodology.

Or the worldview approach.

And you know why that is? It's an autonomous man.

I mean, I want to say to.

Grayling, big deal, you showed that we.

Need the concept of causation.

Okay, I mean, I could agree with that. I mean, we could disagree about the particulars of Strawson's argument and say, well, you didn't really do a good job, Strawson. But even if he had a good argument, big deal. What is the worldview in which you can account for causation? Okay, we need causation. What is the worldview in which causation can be accounted for? We need a transcendental argument for these transcendental. What worldview makes all these types of particular transcendental coherent? How does our belief in the necessity of the external world or the continual existence of non observed objects, how do you tie those together? I mean, it's just like 1, 1, 1 here and there's no connection. No, he doesn't even consider the possibility that all corresponds. Absolutely. See, even these people who are considered kind of weird by a lot of philosophers who are doing these transcendental type of stuff, this stuff that most analytic philosophers think is disreputable, even these people who are kind of the wild guys who are into these transcendental arguments end up in the same type of pedantic situation that the analytical philosophers you, they don't consider what are the necessary conditions for arguing transcendentally. So they come into it with certain assumptions and never are able to justify them and are never able to tie their transcendentals together, Is that ever challenged by philosophy?

Well, Even if you have a micro one little element of our thinking that's just ripe to fall into the water who hear it, you've got to be able to tie together. You need to have logic and the external world and aligned to the external world. Basically you need a world that's transcendentally necessary. Well, that pointed too. There's nothing pointed to this element here. What Mike is telling you is that even if you have causation, if you don't have a mind to do such as reality, to think positively. And you can't give an account of how we would successfully have done so. Yeah, if you lost, set a high point. So the relevance of the contemporary debate.

And conclusions is that it's really much ado about nothing, you know, they make this big deal of these arguments. And I have a stack of articles this thick that discusses transcendental arguments and you get down to it. And that's all that they're purporting to do. Even the strongest ones that Grayling tries to put together, they don't work, I don't believe. But even if they did work, big deal, they don't tie experience together. They say, here's one experience, here's one concept that we need to have over. Here's another concept. What's the relationship between them? They can't give an account for the relationship and they can't give an account for how we can even reason transcendentally. So all this is to say is the contemporary debate, although it's interesting and it's sometimes exasperating, and I'm a philosopher, so I enjoyed reading through it. But the bottom line is it doesn't have much relevance to Cornelius Van Til's transcendental arguments. Except that these are examples of what transcendental arguments, what true transcendental arguments are not like. These are really wimpy argument and Cornelius fan Till arguments are going to show us are going to be able to account for all the type of stuff that we've been talking about and plus be able to tie it together. Okay, I think time's almost out. Time for one or two questions. I don't know any sailors that they were in the predicament.

The first alternative being rich, their boat at school.

They just looking for dry land and the person are laughing and try to fix. And it seems like philosophy is so.

Caught up in all.

That they don't even put it.

Yeah.

Philosophers today consider themselves on a vast sea with no dry docking potential. You can't ever dry dock. Well, but they're economists. They couldn't dock. They have no place to go to. Well, that's a good point. The irony of this all is that the ship on which they are sailing, the only reason it stays afloat is because of God's grace and because that God is the one who provides them the conditions for experience. And yet they suppress that.

You know, they got one argument here, one argument.

They emphasize that what binds them together is the fact that they're all necessary.

And if they tried that, what would.

You say about that? Well, I can't imagine them even trying that. I'd say, go ahead and try it. We'll see what you got. I mean, it's not going to work. You know, I'm not. I'd have to see how they did it. But once they did it, it wouldn't be difficult at all to tear it apart.

I want to thank Mike Butler for his hard work in preparing to boil all this difficult contemporary material down for you. Even though at the end Mike said it's much ado about nothing. And from our standpoint, from wanting to get some concrete, positive stuff out of the philosophers, he's right. It is much ado about nothing. It's helpful for us to have some idea of the back and forth or the rocky terrain when it comes to transcendental analysis and argumentation. Because already we see critics of Van Till beginning to reflect elements of whether they've read the critics of transcendental arguments in the philosophical journals or not. The same sorts of arguments start getting direct at Van Till's apologetic. Tomorrow when I get around to responding to the major criticisms of Van Till on this point, one of them is at best, Van Till leaves us with a hypothetical argument. If this, then you need to have the Christian worldview. But the if is already is there all the time. As you can see, that's one of the major things that comes up in the journals as well. Another criticism that has been made, whether it's right or wrong, is that transcendental arguments are no big deal. They're not unique. There's not really a separate category of transcendental argument. Well, as we were saying at the break, some of you already know this, John Frame essentially uses that as a criticism of Van Til. He's really not giving us anything unique here. And so I think, though the autonomous philosophers are much ado about nothing, and Van Til's approach to transcendental arguments is going to be somewhat different than what they are doing. I still think that it was really valuable for you to be exposed to what Mike's been working on in his master's degree and hope that will be finished this summer.

Right, link.

Before I go over the sheet that I passed out to you that summarizes transcendental interpretation and argumentation, I thought it'd be good to reflect for a few minutes in a meandering way about the skeptic, because as we said yesterday, these different kinds of epistemologies and different kinds of arguments are all aimed at in one way, eventually answering the skeptic. Yesterday I said there are foundational responses to skepticism that say there's certain unassailable foundations to our thinking. They may be conceptual or logical. They may be perceptual. They may be matters of common sense. Another approach to skepticism is the pragmatic approach. We use the model of science because it's the most fruitful, it's the most successful in accomplishing our ends. And then there's the transcendental approach to skepticism. And as Mike was going over in our seminar today, modern transcendental arguments are all directed at an attempt to answer the skeptic. I've written a sentence on the board for you to consider. It's a famous specimen in 20th century philosophy and leads to a lot of different discussions and applications. But what it says is, this sentence is false. This sentence is false. Now what do you make of it if someone were to come up to you and offer that? I mean, I can't even give you a contrived scenario where something like that would be said. But imagine somebody said to you, what I'm saying right now is false. Now how would you reply to that? You'd say, well, doesn't it have to first be true in order to be asserted as false? In which case it couldn't be false. Haven't you just refuted yourself? What if he says, no, I haven't refuted myself. This sentence is false? He said, well, I'm not so sure I can even make sense of what you're saying there because you've either refuted yourself or this is nonsense. And in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of language, this specimen is used to show that sometimes when we are engaged in self reference, we have to iterate our beliefs or we have to go to a different level of linguistic analysis so that we have an object language and the language in terms of which we evaluate the object language. So this sentence is false can only be meaningful actually in another language that is in a language reflecting on this language. We're not going to get into all that. I'm going to use this though, by way of analogy. What if the skeptic asserts my challenge to any rational justification is not rationally justified? The skeptic says, I don't think there is any rational justification. Ultimately rationality can't be justified. I say, well, is what you're saying when you claim that, when you say there is no rational justification for rationality, is that rationally justified? And the skeptic would have to say no, right? But now when he says no, it is not rationally justified. When I challenge the idea that there's rational justification, hasn't he ended up saying something like this sentence is false? I'm not now engaged in a discussion of meaning bearers and reference and language and all that. I'm asking about this whole notion of justification. When somebody says you can't justify rationality and what I'm saying is not rationally justified, then we have the right to say, oh, well, then we can ignore you. Somebody says, here's what I'm saying. And I mean, it was all my heart and it's false. They say, well, if we take you at your word, it's false. And so, you know, let's get on to the next candidate. You're wasting our time. The problem with the skeptic is he doesn't really want to be a skeptic. He wants to say what I'm saying is false. Well, really, what I'm saying isn't rationally justified either. And what I'm saying is there is no rational justification for anything you say. Okay, well then since that's not rationally justified, if we're going to have a rational debate, we can ignore you. And the problem is the skeptic says, you can't ignore me. You can't ignore me. I'm going to keep asserting this. You haven't answered me yet. We say, you don't need an answer because what you're saying is not rationally justified. The reason I'm playing this little skit out for you or writing out the scenario is that in apologetics, in essence, we're saying, if you want to play the reason giving game, you're going to have to be a Christian. But I can't force you to play that game and nor can I force you to keep coming in and out of the game. I mean, I can't force you or can't prevent you from playing your own little game of stepping into the arena, then stepping out, stepping into the arena, stepping out. Essentially the skeptic wants to say, I don't know that you can justify anything, so I can't justify what I'm saying. When I say you can't justify anything, you say, okay, fine, so you're not in the reason giving game. Now, anybody else want to play reason giving? Anybody else want to argue, you can't ignore me. I say, well, you're making yourself ignorable. You're ignorable because every time you assert your position, you have to, if you're consistent, deny your position. And so when you deny your position, then we say, get out of here. We want to talk to people who want to argue and use reasons and so forth. You follow what I'm getting at? Now, some people would say, well, if your apologetic comes down to that, you haven't answered this guy because you know what? He keeps coming in the door saying, you didn't answer me, you didn't answer me. I'll say, well, let me tell you something in apologetics, apologetics by definition is only interested to people who play the reason given game. And so if the skeptic position is, I'm not going to play that game, I say, well, then I can't do apologetic twitches. Is that any defect in my system of apologetics that I can't make everybody play? No, that'd be like saying, Michael Jordan's not a very good basketball player because there are some people who refuse to get on the court with him that shows he can't defeat them. Wouldn't that be an absurd. Now, so when somebody says to a transcendental presuppositional apologist, well, but the skeptic, you see, he can keep saying, you haven't answered me. You haven't answered me. Because maybe there's no connection between what you consider rationally necessary and the real world. I can say, well, you either have to have a rational justification for saying that, or you're not playing the game. If you want to get off the basketball court, our point is we can beat anybody who wants to get on the court. But if you don't want to get on the court, don't get on the court. It's no defect in my basketball playing that you refuse to play. Something else about skepticism in my meandering thought, I want you to imagine two different ways of picturing ourselves as knowers. One says God created us and our minds, and God also created the world that we know with our mind. So this may not be the greatest, but I'll try to diagram it for you. So what I have here is God above the mind of man and the world, and God is the creator. That's why he made these arrows. He's the cause of the human mind and the way it operates. He's also the cause of what we'll call in the broadest sense, the world. The world includes the human mind, so I want to make that clear. But we'll call that whatever the objects of knowledge are. That's a Christian view of the situation. We believe that God made the mind and the objects that the mind knows. And therefore our conceptual scheme is automatically in touch, automatically corresponds to the objects of experience, doesn't it? On this presupposition, I'm not saying it has to be that way, but I'm saying if this is your beginning outlook, if this is your perspective, then you already Begin with the idea that our conceptual scheme or the human mind and the way it works is in connection with the objects of knowledge. And what is the connecting link?

God.

Now, I realize that some philosophers will just poo poo this and say, you're doing theology, but you say, okay, fine, but if you won't do theology with.

Me, I want you to see what.

Happens to your philosophy. Another approach, unlike this one, because we can't know anything about God at the outset. All we can know is that we have a human mind and we assume it's sufficiency. That's a real blatant, arrogant assumption. But we assume the sufficiency of the mind and we're pretty sure that there are objects out here that the mind can know. And so you have everything loose and disjointed or random. The objects of knowledge are not connected to one another by God's creative and sovereign foreordaining work. Nor are the objects connected automatically to the mind of man and his conceptual scheme. In fact, all minds are loose and separate as well. And God's not brought into the picture here because after all, we wouldn't want to do theology in the place of doing philosophy. So we'll just do philosophy autonomously. We'll begin with man and then we'll work out from man. Now, the mind of man uses a certain conceptual scheme. The skeptic comes along and says, how do you know there's a connection between your conceptual scheme and the objects in the world? Well, by definition, this worldview cannot answer the skeptic because it begins with what? A separation between the mind and the objects in the world. There's no connecting link. And so any attempt to devise a connecting link is, is going to be easily criticizable by the skeptic. You follow what I'm getting at? If your beginning assumption is we don't bring God into the picture, you have minds, you have objects. You're going to have the problem the skeptics pushing you to. You don't know the connection between your mind and the objects. So we call the egocentric predicament. You have an egocentric philosophy. Don't be surprised that it ends with the egocentric predicament. Begin with man and don't bring God into the picture. And guess what? You'll end up with man separated from everything. How do you know there's any connection between your thinking and what's outside your mind? Actually, the skeptic can push you even harder and say, how can you be sure there is anything outside your Mind. It's not just the question, are there objects corresponding to our conceptual scheme? Now the problem is, are there even objects? What's the name of that school of thought that says we have no reason to say there's anything outside my own experience? Solipsism, autonomous philosophy, which says we don't want to bring God into the picture if pushed hard enough, becomes solipsistic. Now, I don't know. I haven't run into any who are willing to be solipsistic, but they don't really have an answer to the skeptic. Notice what else the skeptic can do. If you begin with your own individual mind, as Michael Butler was pointing out at another point, you have a whole question of other minds. How can you be sure there are other minds that you're connected to? You can't be sure there are objects outside your mind. You can't be sure there's other minds outside your mind. And so when the skeptic raises the question, how can you be sure your conceptual scheme corresponds to the world? Our answer as Christians is, that's our presupposition. That's the picture we begin with. We don't face the problem that you're raising, but your problem is a real good one. For these people who start with man all by himself, without God in the picture, for those people who want to do godless philosophy, they don't think they're doing anti God philosophy, but they just don't think he has to bring God into the picture, then of course, you're on very good grounds to go pushing them. But then as a skeptic, you're not on very good grounds at all. Because as we just saw, if you say there's no rational justification for what you're saying, when you say there's no rational justification, we can dismiss you too. And so what you have here are three possibilities. Well, I'm not altogether happy with this theme. But to make my point here, you can be a skeptic, in which case you can be dismissed if you want to argue rationally. The skeptic can be dismissed because he's essentially saying, I don't want to play the rationality game. They say, okay, fine, but since that's what we're doing on the court today, we're playing basketball. If you want to play basketball, but don't stand off the court saying, you can't defeat me, you can't defeat me. We said, well, of course we can't. You don't want to step on the court. What I'M saying is he's being hypocritical. And he says I want to argue with you, but basically I don't want to argue, I want to play the game. It's kind of like I want to taunt you. Yes, Michael Jordan, I could beat you at basketball, but I'm not going to get on the court. What he wants to do is he wants to in essence, I mean, I've over generalized in my metaphor. But he wants to criticize all these other attempts. And then he wants to conclude there is no justification for rationality. And we say what's your justification for saying there's no justification?

That's right.

We're saying in order to do that you're going to have to play basketball. In order to assert that you're going to have to be rational, in which case you're going to be saying this sentence is false.

Right.

Provides him a meaningful. No. To say there's a meaningful ground for meaninglessness is to say this sentence is false. That's what he's asking, that's what he's asserting. He's saying that meaning has a meaningless foundation. Yeah, well that's like saying this sentence is this sentence that I assert, thereby implying that it's true, is asserted to be false. The skeptic doesn't have to be taken seriously in terms of the game of giving reason. But he may say I don't want to play the game. If you want to play the game, stay off the court. Then the other alternative is this autonomous picture of the knower as self sufficient. He's in this world and now we have to work out from ourselves to other minds, to objects and so forth. But he has no assurance we can use the skeptics arguments better than the skeptic. He has no assurance that his conceptual scheme ever has any contact with the objects outside the mind. And then you have the option of starting with the Christian worldview. You start with the Christian worldview, somebody says, well how do you know that the mind is in contact with objects? That the conceptual scheme corresponds to objects? They say, well that by definition is my worldview. That's what I start with. Now I realize people will say, oh, you're begging the question. I'm not begging the question. That's my worldview. Now do you want to play on my court or do you want to get off the court? That was the punchline. Hopefully you understand what I'm getting at is that anybody who wants to challenge us is going to be reduced to skepticism. We've already Indicated the skeptic's got to get off the court. But I understand the problem. I understand that you can't give the mind the conceptual scheme to correspond. If somebody says, well look, this is necessary to our conceptual schemes in an autonomous framework, you'd say, well, yeah, but that doesn't show that it's true. That doesn't show that it corresponds to the objects in the world that reality really is that way. That is, as Van Till puts it, nothing more but a rock and a bottomless ocean. We haven't done anything to help us get in contact with reality. But within the Christian framework of thought, we can say that's our presupposition. Not only can we show that rationality is justified in terms of God's existence and man being made in his image, but if you take that picture, you've already overcome the egocentric predicament. Because there is no egocentric predicament if you're a creationist.

Not the one who recognizes skeptic, who is skeptic, even though he doesn't know.

It's in a sense of asking you, saying, I don't want to play basketball, I'd rather play baseball. But he doesn't realize that he's still got to play by the rules of basketball. Because really the analysis using there really.

Is only one game. Yeah.

In the reason giving. So they're going to say come over and let's play baseball. But really they have to have the same. Yeah, I mean, whenever we use these analogies, they eventually all I'm getting at is, what I'm saying is basketball is the reason given game. If somebody thinks he wants to play another game. The point is it has nothing to do with reason giving. So what is another. Yeah, what I'm saying is if you don't want to play basketball, you're right, I don't have anything else to offer you but basketball. But the problem with you, Mr. Unbeliever, is that you want to play basketball, but you're no better than the skeptic who says they don't want to play basketball. Because given your picture, you never can have any reason to think that your conceptual scheme matches the objects in the world. Well, I can't give you a reason within your framework. Your framework already assumes that separation. My framework says there is no such separation, cannot be any such separation. Say what they always say, here's no. Yeah, the self conscious skeptic. That is what skepticism is. There is no rational justification for rationality. Yeah. What they're arguing is, I assert this sentence that it's false. But the act of asserting a sentence is to assert that it's true. So there's already involved in this dialectical tension at the very outset. So you have those who are self conscious skeptics, and then you have those who think that they aren't skeptics, but because they begin with this point of view, are reduced to skepticism. And then you have those who don't begin with this point of view and they say, the skeptic can't touch me. If you want to play basketball, if you want to play the reason giving game, you've got to be a Christian. If you are a Christian, the skeptics assault are meaningless. I mean, they don't hurt us. They're not devastating. On the positive side, how specific do.

It, even me explains how it works.

We have the human mind and objects of knowledge. Yeah, because God created everything and he created man as his image. So that the fundamental biblical picture of what this world is, who we are, what our place in the cosmos is, already says we're in contact by our minds with the world that God created because God created our minds to know that world. Imaging him. A little louder in, in Acts 17 to answer the question, you actually see.

After he dismisses their unknown God, some.

Of their epistemology, they know what God don't know. Then he sketches out how we're in contact with, right? None of us are far from Him. In him we live and move and have our being. When somebody says, well now how do you know that? I say, the answer is you couldn't know anything if you didn't know that. Okay, well maybe we don't know anything. And I say, well then get out of the court. Why are you arguing me if we don't know anything? The assumption of standing on the court is you want to give reasons. If you're telling me you can't give reasons, then I say, true to loo. Okay, I know that every metaphor or every analogy does break down, but I just want to make it easy for you to see the apologetical significance of what we're talking about here. Okay, let's. Apart from Dr. Bonson's meanderings about skepticism, that's what you put in your outline. Dr. Bonson now meanders. He seems riled up about these skeptics, says very harsh things about them. We move on. The next point here is to summarize transcendental method and its usefulness. This is what we'll do till the end of today's session. And then, Lord willing, When we gather tomorrow, I'm going to begin looking at Van Til specifically to show that he was a transcendentalist in his apologetic method. And we'll see how he did that. And I want you to see we've already hinted at it, so the punch has been taken away. But I want you to see that Van Til has a unique way of doing transcendental argumentation. He says, I'm going to argue worldviews, not just little pieces of whether there's a mind in contact with objects or individuals are different from other individual minds or anything like that. So forth and so on. We'll look at that and then we'll look finally at the criticisms of transcendental apologetics that have been offered. And my intention is to end our seminar before we go out and eat together, to go all the way back and say, I can now tell this to you at a child's level. We've been sounding really philosophical, I know, but one of the things that, to me personally, and this is only a testimony, it doesn't mean it's right, but for me personally, really hit hard the power of what Dan Til was doing is that children can do this and PhDs in philosophy can do it. And so I want to end on that note to show you how children can use the transcendental argument. They probably aren't going to call it that. Okay, now then. Yeah, What I'm doing here is I'm summarizing then what we've learned about this general idea of transcendental reasoning and its value for apologetics. If I can summarize where we have been. I started with the notion of proof, claiming that there's an objective proof for God's existence. We saw there are different kinds of proofs, right? Rational, empirical, pragmatic, transcendental. Oh, what's that? And guess what? That's what Dan Till is doing. And I illustrated that simply and went back to his earliest publication to show, using the technical language, this is what he set out to do in his career, present a transcendental argument for God's existence. And then we put this in historical context. And really everything that we did from that point on through, what Mike Butler has given us, has been to introduce you historically to transcendental argument. We first look at Kant in his context, how he introduces transcendental analysis as a way of getting beyond rationalism and empiricism. And then we looked at contemporary epistemology in general. I said, there are ways of doing epistemology. You have the skeptic who is answered by the foundationalist, by the pragmatist or the transcendentalist. And then Mike came and has given us a good day's introduction to contemporary transcendental arguments. So you're now familiar with this notion of transcendental reasoning. It's been put in historical context and you'd even have me come and tell you I don't like skepticism very much, and here's why. But now I want to summarize what transcendental arguments are all about, why they're valuable, and we'll look at them specifically in the case of Van Til tomorrow. Let me begin with a quotation from David Hume. Again, we're thinking about the skeptics challenge. And Hume says, I love this sentence, one of the best ones in all of his writings. Hume says if reason be considered in an abstract view, it furnishes invincible arguments against itself. Now, what is reasoning for an empiricist? John Locke said to use the plain historical method of reasoning.

Say what?

Okay, you're answering another question. That's a good answer to that question. But what I'm getting at is how did Locke look upon the process of reasoning when he used the concept reason? He said that he was using the historical plain method, meaning you trace the history of our ideas. He does. Psychology, cognitive psychology. And for something to be true, all of its component parts must be able to be analyzed simply to some kind of observation. That's reasoning. If you're an empiricist. No innate ideas don't beg any questions. There's just particular experiences and everything that's true must be built up from particular observations of the world. Now theorem comes onceness. But now if reasoning be considered in the abstract, if you generalize this, that to know anything, to reason at all, you must trace it to its particular observational component, then reasoning furnishes invincible arguments against itself. Hume saying empiricism refutes itself because the empiricist cannot give observational components a genetic, psychological, historical tracing of observational components for the claims being made about continuing substance, causality, so forth in this world.

We.

Can'T say that there's a knower. We can't say that there are objects in the world that continue to be known, nor that there's any causal relationship between. So reason, when we generalize, when we make reason be fair, according to its own rules, live up to its own standards, fails to do so, and that ends in skepticism.

Very good.

Everything reduces the subjectivism to egocentric predicament and skepticism. And that's exactly what happened in the 19th century? Not that there weren't. I mean, you have to get my page on 19th century philosophy to get the broader picture. But a very heavy strain in philosophy in response to Team Skepticism was to move into nihilism, Romanticism, which says you can't trust reason anyway. What a fiddly thing. The hobgoblin, the little mind. We've got to let our feelings, you know, and get in touch with nature and that sort of thing. And even worse, you have those who say, well, all you do is you have the individual asserting himself, or you have no values at all. Nature, God is dead. Therefore man has to assert his own godship over his experience. So you exactly right. Reason undermined what was going to be the age of Reason. I mean, that is such a heavy apologetical commentary on philosophy in itself. Okay, Kant is scandalized by the situation, and so here's his transcendental program. To quote him, it still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. Well, Immanuel, what kind of proof could we possibly use to counter that we don't want to be tedious, where we just say it's a matter of faith. How can you prove that there's an external world that corresponds to the mind? Another quotation from Kant. I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects, insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori, so transcendental knowledge is knowledge of the mode of knowing, the mode of our knowledge of objects, insofar as this mode of knowing is a priori possible, if thinking in this way is awfully possible, how is that? And he says, as again, Mike has explained to you, it's because I come to the objects of knowledge, imposing these categories on them, I'm going to think causally. I must think causally. Anything that goes through my mind goes through the filter of causal reasoning. So that's his notion of transcendental argumentation looking up on the board. Does Kant then bridge the gap between conceptual schemes and objects outside the mind? No. In fact, he just poured cement around his feet, didn't he? He can't get out of there. His whole point is the mind is such that you can't ever know anything outside the mind. There is no ding on zik thing in itself. There is no reality outside the mind that I can rationally know, because to rationally understand anything is to have my mind form it. So Kant has a transcendental program, but it's a program that's going to be caught in that same autonomous web. His worldview, his presuppositions, will destroy him. Then another thing he said about transcendental argument, that's important. He said the conclusion of a transcendental argument should be entitled a principle, not a theorem, because it has the peculiar character that it makes possible the very experience which is its own ground of proof, and that in this experience it must always itself be presupposed. We learned a couple of things from this quotation. First of all, Kant didn't think you could use transcendental arguments to prove specific points of information about the world or experience. So if you want to know whether Aspirin or Advil works better for a particular kind of pain, transcendental argument can't tell you that. It can't tell you a point of history. It can't give you any specific scientific theorem. It's unintended to do that. Rather, the transcendental argument provides a principle in terms which any answer that's offered to those questions can make sense. And indeed, and this is important, Kant points out that. That the conclusion of a transcendental argument, or the experience itself already presupposes the transcendental. So when we're talking about transcendentals, we're assuming the transcendentals when we talk about them. And at the end of the Grayling article, he reflects on that. And I think, well, when he says that if a conceptual scheme is transcendentally necessary, then you need to use it, even when you talk about itself. Many critics of Van Till, at this point, you can appreciate the naivete and how off base they are. Many critics of Van Till have said when he calls presuppositional argument circular, that he's breaking the question. Well, now, would anybody suggest that Mr. Grayling is somehow a philosophical boob? How silly can you be? Dr. Grayling, if you say that we have to assume this conceptual scheme, when we talk about this conceptual scheme, you are reasoning in a circle that is vicious. That is a logical fallacy. We can dismiss you. Now he is saying something very profound. You might agree or disagree with it, but it is not a schoolboy mistaken lodger, nor was it for Van Til. What Van Til said is, if what I'm arguing is true about Christianity being the presupposition of all intelligibility then you've got a presuppose Christianity even when you argue about Christianity. And that, you see, is the strength of the proof. It's that I can't talk about it without assuming it, and you can't talk against it without assuming it. Let's look at the summary of transcendental method for apologetics here. In a sense, when somebody says, well, what are you getting at? When you talk about a transcendental argument, the next two lines tell you what the argument looks like in its broadest form. Take pictures, show that Q is the precondition of P. That's the argument. Now I'm going to say more about it, but just make sure you understand that that's how simple it is. Take anything P and then show that Q is the precondition of P.

I.

Am not arguing take P and then deductively conclude Q. Nor am I saying take P and a lot of things analogous to P and inductively say, very generally, Q. This is not a deductive argument. This is not an inductive argument. This is an argument that says what has to be true. What is the precondition for P. Now, in more detail, when I say take P, I'm referring to jump the word undoubted. I'll come back to you to some general principle. Take any general principle, or if you don't like that approach, take any operational feature of experience or thinking. A general principle would be every event has a cause. No proposition can be true if its opposite is true. Opposite is not the technical term. But contradictory propositions can't both be true. Now take any principle, the transcendental argument says, and then perform the next step. Show that Q is the precondition of that principle. Or maybe even easier to see. Take any operational feature of experience or thinking. What's an operational feature? Because we talk in abstract terms, people think it's real heavy duty stuff. When people argue with each other, they're going through certain acts, aren't they? They're operating in a certain way, they're using language, they're reasoning. Their minds are going from one premise to another. Take any operational feature of experience or thinking. Okay, so notice how wide, in general, the scope of a transcendental argument is. Mike Butler had suggested to you in his exposition today that a transcendental argument's got to be something that's not like pool table or the game of pool. It's got to be something that is so situated in our conceptual scheme, so central or close to the center, that it has wide ranging impact Another way of putting that in philosophical terms is that it systematically fundamental or systematically applicable because it is so close to the center of the web of beliefs, it touches just about everything else we do. So the principle of causation, the laws of logic, the notion of personal identity, those sorts of things would be principle. Or you can take the way we operate in the world, the fact that somebody says, if the milkman's going to know not to leave eggs tonight, I have to leave him a note. That doesn't seem very profound. But that operation within the realm of experience itself would make no sense. Why would you leave the milkman a note if you didn't assume that there's some causal connections within the world, that minds could communicate with each other, that the words on the page, provided he's in English speaker, could communicate to him, and so forth. So the first step in a transcendental argument is to take P, whether it's a general principle or an operational feature of your experience or your thinking, and now show that Q is the precondition of P, which is to say that Q is necessary to explain the possibility of P. Another way of putting this, I'm just giving different languages show that Q is presupposed by P, not that it's deduced from P, not that it's induced from p and analogous Ps, but that it's the presupposition of P.

And.

How would you do that? How could you show that Q is presupposed by P? Now, in our case, Q is going to be the Christian worldview. So when we do apologetics, we don't have to start with miracles or angels or fear of death or anything. We start with anything. Start with leaving a note for the milkman. Start with science trying to show what the cause of cancer is. Start with the laws of logic. Start with anything you want. And what we want to show is if you didn't have the Christian worldview, you wouldn't be able to show that P was possible. How would you demonstrate that? I'm going to give you two methods here. One, I call the indirect method, the other the dilemma method. And some of you sharper logicians will actually point out they're one and the same, it's just different versions.

But that's okay.

I think you'd like the variety approach. And so I'll give it to you two ways. One, the indirect method says not Q. Q is the Christian worldview. That's what we're going to show is presupposed by P. Here's my argument, not Q implies an absurdity or renders the operational feature impossible, not Q. If you deny the Christian worldview through a series of considerations, it doesn't have to be just two steps to the death row. But not few would imply an absurdity or alternatively would contradict would lead to a contradiction of P which is undoubted. Now having said that, I've got to go back to my take P and tell you why I put the word undoubted in there. When we argue, we start with something that is not doubted. Notice I didn't say something indubitable. I could have. I was tempted to make this a richer presentation but then it would become more complicated. The point is when I argue with somebody, I'm going to start with something that he doesn't doubt. Something about his experience, about his thinking, some general principle. See, I'm not going to, I'm not going to try to to have the foundation of my argument or my debate some kind of platform that's wobbly. I'm going to say give me something that you aren't going to have any question about. I mean you take for granted what is your given. Everybody has one except who? Maybe the skeptic. But what's the problem with the skeptic? What if he says well the only thing I can give you is there is no rational justification for rationality. I say I'll take it, thank you. That's what you know for sure right now he might say no, I didn't say I know it. And I say well but you're asserting it, right? Well asserting and affirming is the same thing. Yeah, but you see the point is he hands me something that he's not doubting. Granted in doing it he stepped on the basketball court and now I'm going to slam dunk him. Alright, the best thing for the non Christian to do, to be very honest with you, is to say I'm not going to get involved in this. I'm not going to say anything.

Just.

Turn around and walk off the court. But give me something that you don't doubt even if it is. Everything is doubtable. That sentence, when you assert that sentence, I'll take it. That's the beauty. That's how wide ranging this thing is. Any P. But the point is it's not a wobbly P, it's not an uncertain thing. It's got to be something that the person you're talking to takes for granted and everybody does. There aren't many really self conscious skeptics in this world. Okay, so you're talking to your neighbor. Your neighbor assumes that science is what, operating on a secure foundation. The person believes there is a connection between what I see and the way the world really is. Most people are naive realists, and I think that's fine. They should be, because being made in the image of God, they should assume the world they experience is very much the way they think about it, because God made us that way. But my point here is, make sure you deal with whoever it is you're dealing with. It's something they're not going to come back and say, oh, well, I doubt that. So take what is some undoubted principle or operational feature and then show that if you deny the Christian worldview, you either have an absurdity or you're led to contradict the P, which you didn't have any doubt about. Or you render the operational feature that you're talking about scientific methodology. Assuming that there are real objects out there, you render that feature impossible. The feature might have been just asserting piece or knowing P. You start with the unbeliever. Say, what do you know? What are you willing to assert? And then from that you show that the Christian worldview if denied. If you deny the Christian worldview, that operational feature is either impossible, or the principle that you've been talking, excuse me, or the P that you've taken for granted is in fact false, can't know it. That's called the indirect method. It's proving it indirectly because you take the opposite position and show that it creates this intellectual difficulty. And since none of us want that intellectual difficulty, we want to assert P, or we want to have this operation, or we want to have this principle, then we've shown that the Christian worldview is necessary to what you already know or what you're thinking. Now, the dilemma method, this is a little more sophisticated in terms of your philosophical outlook. But the dilemma method says, take P here and show that it implies Q, and show that the denial of P implies Q as well. What if somebody says that adding insulation to your attic will lower your fuel bill? I say, okay, if that's true, that implies that God exists. Now, the argument is not just the assertion that I gave you. It's going to be a long set of considerations. But basically, if we don't live in an orderly universe where what we've experienced in the past is a basis for predictions and about the future, then you couldn't make this kind of claim, predicting about the future. But now, here's the interesting thing about a transcendental argument. What did Kant say? The conclusion of a transcendental argument is not a particular theorem. It's a principle for understanding all theorems. And so now what I'll say to the unbelievers. Well, and the interesting thing about this is I can take the opposite of P and show that it proves God exists too. If it is true that adding fuel, adding insulation to your attic will not lower your fuel bill, that's because God exists. For you to know that or assert that once again, you have to have causation, you have to have induction, you have to have observation, and so forth. So I'm not trying to argue about fuel bills or insulation in your attic. I'm saying any argument, whichever way you go, is going to imply the existence of God. P implies Q and not P implies Q. But it must be true that P are not P. It's one or the other. Therefore Q must be true. Which is really a long quasi fancy way of saying you've got to believe in God in order to prove anything. It's a principle. The Christian worldview, the Christian God is a principle that makes intelligible arguments for specific conclusions or theorems. Yeah, you're demonstrating that the transcendental procedure is talking about the precondition of all intelligibility, whether it's about your fuel bill going up or down. Now, here's the interesting thing about dilemma. Let me say this real quick before I forget to put it in there. What if somebody says, well, what if P is God doesn't exist? Van Til says, okay, or let's say P is God exists and not P is God does not exist. Vanthill says, you want to show that. This is the easy part. If God exists, that implies that God exists.

No problem.

Everybody says, that's wonderful. However, and this is the fascinating thing. If you argue not P, that also implies that God exists. At one point, Van Till summarizes what he's getting at when he says anti theism presupposes theism, not P wouldn't be intelligible unless P were true. Now do you see why this is such a strong approach to apologetics? You don't have to worry about whatever a person has out there. Take any experience about fuel bills, about the cause of cancer, about a historical fact, about miracles, and take any point of view you want to argue, even the atheistic point of view, and the transcendental argument says to argue that point, you have presupposed God. That's right. Van Till many times says any statement, any fact can be used to prove the existence of God. Now, he may be wrong. I don't think he is. I think this is brilliant. But you have to understand that's what his program is. That's what he's attempting to lay out for us. It doesn't just prove the government proves.

The innate knowledge that we have within.

Us, that we make that right. Well, right. And the Christian worldview gets into that further by explaining why we're in touch with objects, because we're made by God, made to know him, and so forth. Real quickly here before time runs out on our tape for today, I'd like to finally point out that the transcendental method is useful on either interpretation of transcendental arguments, either the conceptual or the existential, what might call the ontological interpretation of the argument. On the conceptual, transcendental interpretation of the results of what you've just been doing. What we say is, if you wish to argue at all, alternatively to use predication language to reason, to make sense of experience, whatever. If you wish to argue at all, then you must presuppose the existence of the Christian worldview or God to make sense of your own argument or communicating it. And here the word must is interpreted psychologically. If you want to reason to make sense of your reasoning, you must psychologically presuppose the Christian worldview. Now, that's not the strongest form of a transcendental argument. That's not the strongest interpretation of the result, I grant you. But you know, if that's all we have with what Van Til is giving us, we've got enough, don't we? Because basically what I'm saying to the person who argues with me is, well, if you want to argue with me, you have to assume that you're wrong. I mean, not right out, but through our discussion. What I want to point out to him is that you're assuming the very thing you're arguing against, even if that's only a psychological remark, that you must do that, that our conceptual scheme requires it. Remember, what are we doing in apologetics? We're only dealing with those who want to play basketball. I mean, reason giving. So we're going to say, if you want to engage in reason giving, you're going to have to assume that I'm right. The stronger interpretation, the existential interpretation, says if you wish to give an account of our ability to know anything or argue, use predication, reason, make sense out of experience, then your explanation must presuppose the existence of the Christian worldview. Here the must is not the psychological must that you can't escape thinking about the Christian God when you argue the way that you are. Now we're saying that your explanation of our ability must include necessarily includes a reference to the Christian worldview. There's no way to explain to materially account for our ability to know things unless you make a reference to the Christian worldview. In fact, many references to the Christian worldview. So you have two interpretations. And all I'm going to get at is I think that the existential is the stronger and is legitimate. But even if somebody said, well, all you're showing is we've got to think as Christians, they'll say, I'll take it. That's pretty good to tell people if you're going to think at all, you've got to think as a Christian. See you tomorrow.

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson and Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, bonsoninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.