My first email:
James Anderson,
You are perhaps busy, but could you help answer a question
concerning Presuppositional Epistemology. I have been debating some
local Atheists in my area. I presented a formulation of
the transcendental argument in regards to induction. This led to a
discussion on epistemic justification. One of the atheists claimed that
knowledge is circular and thus it is perfectly justified to make inductive
inferences from experience. He continued to argue that in the case of the reliability
of the five senses, they are established as such based on
experience. Eventually the discussion centered on the
five senses and Christian epistemology. I think this atheist must of read
Vincent Cheung's article "The Fatal Maneuver" because his
argumentation made me feel like I had to choose between Revelation or
sensation. The atheist argued that Christians must presuppose the
reliability of their five senses in order to read the Bible, and then they
are able to argue from the scriptures that God is the precondition for
the reliability of the senses, induction, knowledge or human experience in
general. The atheist claimed that this leaves Christians in two circles
of justification. The Christian presupposes the reliability of the 5
senses and justifies this fact by Scripture, but the reading of
Scripture is justified by the reliability of the 5 senses. The
atheist claimed that Christians are guilty of circular reasoning
just as much as atheists are, the difference is that atheists just stick with
one circle for justification, i.e. atheists just assume that the
reliability of the senses or induction is justified by
experience. The atheist concluded by saying that both atheists
and Christians are no better off for accounting for the reliability of the
senses or induction. So my question is as a Presuppositionalist
how should I respond to this claim that Christian's must establish the
reliability of the senses before one can appeal to the scriptures, which is
only accessible by the senses?
Dr. Anderson's reply:
What exactly does he [the atheist] mean by "knowledge is
circular"? If he means
something like the following...
1. We can justify P on the basis of Q .
2. We can justify Q on the basis of P.
...then I honestly don't know of any contemporary
epistemologist who would support that idea. For that's almost a textbook case of a vicious epistemic circularity. Hume famously observed that justifying induction on the basis of experience is question-begging
and I'm not aware of any epistemologist today who would try to justify
induction empirically.
Does your atheist friend know of one? And he can't see that this is viciously circular? One can establish X empirically only if one's senses are reliable; hence it
begs the very point in question to try to establish empirically the
reliability of one's senses. There's no vicious circularity here, for two
reasons: (1) Christian theology holds that the existence of God can be known *a
priori* via natural revelation (Calvin's "sensus
divinitatis"); (2) the Christian isn't claiming that we can justify belief in the
reliability of the senses by appealing to belief in God or to belief in the
Bible.
The atheist completely misses the point here. Everyone in the debate takes for granted that our senses are reliable and that
we're justified in believing them to be reliable. The real question is: Which worldview, theism or naturalism, can *account* for
the reliability of our sense (and also our *a priori*
knowledge that they are reliable)?
The same goes for induction. Everyone (or nearly everyone!) in the debate takes for granted that inductive reasoning is
generally reliable. The
real question is: Which worldview, theism or naturalism, can *account* for the general reliability of
inductive reasoning? In
particular, which worldview can account for the inductive principle, i.e., the uniformity of nature in
time and space? Theism can readily account for (a) the uniformity of
nature and (b) our justified *a priori* belief in the uniformity of
nature. Naturalism, not so much! No, this is confused. The Christian doesn't justify the
reliability of the senses by appealing to Scripture. Rather, the Christian argues that the *biblical worldview* (i.e., the worldview
reflected in Scripture) can account for the reliability of the sense
whereas the *naturalist worldview* cannot. That is to say, the Christian can offer a ready explanation for the reliability of his
senses in terms of his worldview, whereas the atheist cannot do so. To put the point another way: if the biblical worldview is true then the
assumption that our senses are reliable is most likely justified,
whereas if the naturalist worldview is true then that assumption is most
likely not justified.
Again, the relevant question isn't "How do we prove
that our sense are reliable?" but rather "Given that our senses are
reliable, which worldview can best account for that fact?"You respond by pointing out that this is a red herring:
neither the Christian nor the atheist needs to establish the
reliability of the senses. That
is a given in the debate. What's
at issue is which worldview (i.e., which view about the basic nature of
reality, the origin of the universe, the origin and nature of human
beings, the origin and nature of the human mind, etc.) can best
*account* for the reliability of the senses?
4 comments:
I would add two more points:
1.) Presupposing the reliability of their five senses is not the same as justifying them as a basis for knowledge.
2.) Presupposing the reliability of their five senses cannot justify induction.
So, which way does this atheist wish to go? Does he want to presuppose the reliability of their five senses, or does he want to appeal to induction? (or does he want to refute Hume?) How does he justify either?
Great points!
The atheist ends up in the irrational position of either skepticism and/or fideism. And this was the case with the atheist I was debating named James Stillwell (who goes by the name Open air atheist). In our discussion he ended up merely asserting both the reliability of sense perception and induction without justification; and he then deemed his position necessarily rational and worthy of appraisal.
But to answer your question, he tried to fallaciously ground each by the other. That is to say sense perception is shown to be reliable by induction, and the latter is grounded by the former. He tried to make, what John Frame calls, a broad circle of justification but in the end, he was left in a fallaciously narrow circle.
We KNOW our senses can be fooled. That's why we use logic, skepticism, experamentation and The Scientific Method to compensate for that. We have a lot of technology SPECIFICALLY designed to fool our senses. By saying "our god tells me that our senses are 100% relyable" you're basically denying the existance of TVs.
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