2. The Nature, Character, and Purpose of Philosophy

2.1 Overview

In our introductory discussion we minimized the distance between science and philosophy and inferred that science is inherently philosophical and vice-versa.   We concluded it is more a question of language and audience than a fundamental difference in the subject matter.  We also concluded that philosophy and science are both knowledge bearing and have a referent of the entirety of human disciplines, not just the empirical sciences.  However, as confidence in the power of science was challenged by a decay in culture and world conflicts which were increasingly technologically sophisticated but no less barbaric, we recognized that the postmodern malaise had entered philosophy and science, arguing that rationality was largely arbitrary.  In response, we recognize that this makes it imperative that Christian apologetics is able to offer a coherent answer to this skepticism, cynicism, nihilism and irrationality but, and this is of critical importance in our approach, in a manner consistent with the faith it is defending, which our work will argue can only be presuppositional.

Thus, we now need to explore how philosophy has been conceived and then decide how it should be conceived in that presuppositional, robust fashion that our worldview is both warranted scientifically and philosophically.  In this chapter we deal with the former ‘has’, the next chapter deals with the latter ‘should.’  We will undertake here an historical and thematic analysis of philosophy, focusing particularly on the analytic turns of the 20^th century.  This is not because “continental” philosophical perspectives such as phenomenology, existentialism or post-modernism have nothing to teach us or were not of equal importance, but simply because it would not be possible to give an account with sufficient depth of deep and complex thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre or Lyotard.[1]  Our final conclusions are also not weakened by our failure to consider these; we could have based our analysis on the continental schools and come to very similar conclusions as to their failures to be coherent or adequate in the demands we want to make of philosophy in our work.

2.2 Origins

Philosophy is commonly conceived of in the “Western tradition” as starting with Thales of Miletus circa 626BC, the first of the pre-Socratic sages of Ancient Greece.  However, it is more accurate to state that he was the first of the proto-naturalist philosophers that attempted to explain phenomena with a reference only to what was found in nature with no recourse to supernature.  Unsurprisingly, for Thales, on an island surrounded by water, everything was posited, naturally enough, to be constituted of water.  However, among his philosophical peers in his direct succession, it was not long before the implicit monism of this position fractured to give rise to a more elemental view drawn from nature, where the basic elements became air, fire, and water.  As strange and bizarre as the formulations of these philosophers were, these thinkers are almost universally revered with unadulterated awe as captured here by an enlightened contemporary one-time physicist:

“The roots of all physics, as of all Western science, are to be found in the first period of Greek philosophy in the sixth century B.C., in a culture where science, philosophy and religion were not separated.  The sages of the Milesian school in Ionia were not concerned with such distinctions.  Their aim was to discover the essential nature, or real constitution, of things which they called ‘physis’.  The term ‘physics’…meant…originally, the endeavour of seeing the essential nature of all things.”^[2]

Effusive as this is, it might seem implausible to assert that all of Western science (which we should also note included philosophy and religion) owes so much, but Professor Jonathon Barnes, once eminent professor of Ancient Philosophy at Geneva in a standard text on Early Greek philosophy offers a scholarly corrective to such critical reticence:

“[T]he importance of the Presocratic thinkers [lies] in their astonishing ambition and imaginative reach.  Zeno’s dizzying ‘proofs’ that motion is impossible; the extraordinary atomic theories of Democritus; the haunting and enigmatic epigrams of Heraclitus; and the maxims of Alcmaeon…the thoughts of these philosophers seem strikingly modern in their concern to forge a truly scientific vocabulary and a way of reasoning.”[3] (emphasis added)

Now, leaving aside that Zeno made an elementary error in not distinguishing infinite time slices and finite distance; or that Democritus’ atomic theories bear only a pauce linguistic similarity to chemical theories[4] or that the “perpetual flux as taught by Heraclitus is [intellectually] painful , and science….can do nothing to refute it”;[5] or that the extant maxims of Alcmaeon are very few indeed; we seem to be ignoring the great philosophers of other ancient civilizations such as the Indo-Chinese empires (the advanced epistemologists Dharmottara and Gaṅgeṥa spring to mind) [6] and the Babylonian empire (known for their astronomical measurements, not just their astrology) and the broader traditions of the Eastern “wise men” and sages (the ‘wise men of the East’),[7] fragments of whose literature still survive; [8] we must ask ourselves “Why the Greeks?”  The answer is in that other element of ancient Greek philosophy that made it so paradigmatical for all that followed in its wake, it was its “discovery” of “humanism.”  The autonomous spirit which distinguishes it is seen in the famous maxim of Protagoras (485 – 415 BC) who famously asserted “Man as the measure of all things.”  This was in direct contrast to the behest of the gods, or some other supernatural composite and it is this combination which inspires such worshipful adoration from all those who crave autonomy and freedom from divine discipline or sanction.

Now, the objection might be made that the designation “proto-naturalism” for these opening eras of Greek philosophy was anachronistic.   It is certainly true that I am not implying by using this designation that is does not mean that “God” or the “gods” disappeared from the vocabulary of these thinkers though it seems clear that by the time of the post-Socratic Epicurus it had matured into a strong materialism, an important characteristic of modern naturalism.  It is correct that the pre-Socratics Thales, Heraclitus, and Democritus all employed the “gods” as an explanatory principle, but it was to give a nominal metaphysical justification for something they were positing.  Democritus, for example, wanted to explain the “swerve” in the fire atoms in terms of the activity of the gods; Thales and Heraclitus equated motion and change with divine activity evident of the immanent, animating presence of something “god” or “divine” in the matter itself.  Kenny notes that Heraclitus was famous for his Logos principle but unlike the apostle John, his logos was not personal but “divine” in some abstract fashion, categorically distinct from Zeus.[9]  That is, the “God” principle was not conceived of on the basis of a person with whom one communed or had any kind of moral obligation to, even when in the case of Heraclitus there were hints of a “divine law” that should inform political practice, the first hint of a law within nature itself.  This is certainly of interest to us within this work and it is to Heraclitus’ credit that he shares that ethical concern for some kind of firm foundation for reasoning, but his Logos, his divine principle was a logical necessity to complete the system or to provide a fix where all rational attempts had failed; or where the light of reason had not yet been able to penetrate the metaphysical or epistemological darkness.

Thus, it was only in desperation that Plato resorted to the myth of the demiurge to backfill his system of which he had been the most effective critic to prevent a total collapse and a re-surrender to the relativism and moral cynicism of the Sophists.  His project, on this level endorsed by Aristotle, was the attempt to offer a systematic and coherent philosophy of reality to arrest what they saw as the terminal decay of Greek culture in light of the disaster of the Peloponnesian war.  Yet he maintained a contempt for the mythology of Greece which he saw with ample justification merely as an amplification of human traits[10] and not as a model of ethical purity; his famous Euthyphro dilemma was a polemic directed to address the moral scandal of the behavior of the gods.  Certainty regarding the objects of knowledge and the nature of reality was a prerequisite to their program of reviving Greek culture and to counter the relativism and moral cynicism of the Sophists, but God was an addendum after the fact, an account was sought in nature and by human reason alone wherever possible.[11]  Many centuries later, Pascal was to criticize Descartes in a similar manner in the period conceived of as being reanimated with the glory of Greek philosophy:

“I cannot forgive to Descartes that in all his philosophy he would have liked to dispense with God, but he did not accomplish to contrive to forbear God’s hand in giving ever so slight a push to set the world in motion. After that, Descartes had no use for God…” [12]

So, in summary, we are using the term “proto naturalist” to characterize the mood and general drift of Greek philosophy rather than as a precise analytic term; naturalism is unequivocally a notoriously elastic term.  Even when qualified as one of many, mutually exclusive naturalisms, it evades coherence.  Thus, the noted philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen,[13] who I would argue distilled down naturalism into a single phrase like “there is no such being as God” and writing later in a Christian context, it was a specific conception of God which would consequently classify as “naturalisms” many forms of thought that would claim to have a theistic basis or would use the word “God.” [14]  That is, “God” much like Feuerbach was to assert, was a projection or an abstraction from the natural world; theology was ‘merely’ anthropology, though for Feuerbach ‘Humanity’ was a legitimate object of worship.[15]  So, religion was not supernatural, but natural.  Thus, it is not a straightforward term, even for empiricists who believed they were assuming a ‘naturalist’ context.  Our main point in using this designation is that there seems an unreasonable adoration of Greece on the part of its modern apologists who have forcefully but arguably, unsafely, equated science with naturalism and consider the classical Greek philosophy as their inspiration.[16]  We will see that Van Fraassen is joined by Van Til and Plantinga in rejecting forcefully that equation and I believe that rejection is persuasive, legitimate, and sound.

However, let us end on a more positive and appreciative note for Greece.  We must value that both Plato and Aristotle understood the need for a coherent system of philosophy that correlated metaphysics, epistemology, and a theory of values.  Plato was seeking to avoid the ethical and political scandals of the Peloponnesian era by providing a sure foundation for knowledge.  This he rightly saw would arrest the cultural and moral decay by providing an objective metaphysical and epistemological account, which in turn provides the basis for a normative ethic.  Our work will basically concur with these categories and his cultural aims but by demonstrating that the Christian theistic basis will allow us to succeed where he failed.  Thus, the point remains that these broad streams of humanism came to form what we think of as “classical” Western philosophy and the spirit of modern secular science.[17]  We will now proceed to examine in detail this conception of reason with a view to demonstrating its inadequacy and incoherence, to clear the way for our positive presentation of epistemological self-consciousness.

2.3 Can We Defend the Tripartite Division of Philosophy?

2.3.1 The Division of Reason and The Egocentric Predicament

This post-classical conception of rationality asserted the requirement for a coherent theory of knowledge (epistemology) with a basis in an established theory of what is real (metaphysics); one can then decide how one should relate to and behave in the world (ethics).  Philosophers have tended to label themselves as “ethicists,” “metaphysicians” or as “epistemologists,” but in contrast we are arguing that this is a basic error; these categories should not be thought of as hermetically sealed off from one another but are interdependent.

For example, it is straightforward to express the prima-facie interrelatedness and interdependence of the three components by considering that we cannot possibly have a theory about how we know until we can fix what we know.  Succinctly, meta-physics seems necessarily to precede the objects of physics, the raw component targets of epistemological theories.  Yet, in the reciprocal fashion, until we can understand how objects are to be constituted (a theory of objects), we will struggle to describe reality at all.  Here, epistemology seems necessarily to precede metaphysics.  Similarly, an ethical action implies that we are relating to entities outside of ourselves and so we are assuming an ontological posture that accepts the existence of an external world and an epistemological position that assumes we can possess moral knowledge.

We should not skip over the enormous philosophical import of the last paragraph—we have here captured some of the most fiercely contested ground in the history of philosophy.  There are still those who argue we can never move beyond the egocentric predicament and establish with certainty any other existence but that of our own mind.  This is known as solipsism and is not as disreputable in philosophy as one might instinctively think,[18] with Thornton arguing that solipsism is not commonly argued only because “philosophers failed to accept the logical consequences of their own most fundamental commitments and preconceptions” which he takes as “abstraction from ‘inner experience.’” [19]  If inner experience is conceived of as subjective, then moving outwards to a real, objective world presents a major problem, perhaps the problem of philosophy.[20]

2.3.2 Epistemic Rights and Epistemic Necessity

In this respect, and of particular interest to the Christian philosopher, is that Plantinga took the unusual strategy in one of his earliest full-length books[21] to argue that belief in God was on the same level of rationality (or certainty) as belief in other minds.  We do not believe it is irrational to believe in other minds though we cannot prove it in a non-circular fashion; hence, it is rational to believe in God.  This was proved not to be a transitionary doctrine on Plantinga’s part, in writing the new preface to the 1990 edition he maintained, with some qualification,[22] his conclusion was “quite correct.”

Just how distinctively “Christian” such a strategy is, is most certainly an interesting debate with some within the Reformed community such as Butler [23] criticizing him of falling short of the requirement to demonstrate the necessity of Christian belief as the presupposition for the intelligibility of philosophical and scientific thinking.[24]  This criticism is pertinent and we examine the detail of it, but I do believe Plantinga’s work should be viewed as a whole to mitigate the force of it somewhat; that is, he pushed the boundaries of Reformed thought[25] but started and finished in Calvin college which he described as his “spiritual home.” [26]  In his early period, he was known for his analytic rigor in meeting the unbeliever on their own ground and demonstrating that more was being claimed than is logically possible from their arguments.

His strategy in that early period was fundamentally that the believer was within their “epistemic rights” even on the unbelievers’ terms, i.e., rational to continue to believe as they did.  This, quite correctly, can be perceived of as a negative apologetic and is vulnerable to the charge of being a sophisticated skepticism.[27]  However, in his middle period during the early 1980s, he strengthened this position as part of the Reformed Epistemology movement and closed out that period in the next decade with a three-volume opus, the final volume of which can be viewed as the most mature and positive presentation of a sophisticated apologetic for the rationality of Christian belief.[28]  Though his account relied on a naturalistic epistemology [29] it was backed by a supernaturalistic metaphysic; thus, Plantinga certainly viewed his own work as within the Reformed Augustinian school of philosophy despite freely admitting he did not believe it was possible to demonstrate philosophically that Christian belief was necessarily true.[30]

Thus, Plantinga self-consciously limits his apologetic (and it seems the scope of any apologetic philosophy) as to demonstrating the reasonableness of Christian belief rather than its necessity.  As one of the key tasks of this work, we will be demonstrating how it is possible to move beyond this terminus using a specific version of transcendental reasoning associated with the apologetic system of Cornelius Van Til.

2.3.3 The Struggle for Metaphysics

To consider carefully the legitimacy of the classical categories of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, especially in the light of the seemingly insoluble problems of circularity and interdependence we have noted above, is an obvious prerequisite of any argument we might seek to build on them.  Some philosophers have advocated abandoning these categories in favor of alternative conceptions. Still others have abandoned reason altogether and looked to emotion, intuition or some other variation of subjectivity, fideism, or relativism.  Similarly, others have considered reason irrevocably chastened and assigned it a subsidiary role.  We will encounter some of those philosophers and their positions in later sections to analyze and evaluate their positions but it is the working hypothesis of this work that we can immediately admit the legitimacy of ethics and epistemology without too much hesitancy, there is a prima facie case that we require a theory of knowledge and a theory of how to behave towards others, even if we considered it purely a pragmatic or conventional matter, or part of our psychology.

However, of the three areas, metaphysics has had the most sustained attack on it as a legitimate branch of philosophy.  Metaphysics is concerned with the most important questions of existence and reality.  For this reason, it has often been characterized by speculative, mystical, religious, and irrational thought with the early British empiricist David Hume,[31] characterizing the metaphysical tradition thus:

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion” ^[32]

It is often argued that Hume was the father of such disdain for metaphysics in the 18^th century and that the subsequent “suspicion” amongst natural scientists regarding any philosophical position that invoked metaphysical authority originated with him.  However, this seems to be overplaying Hume’s influence, particularly during his lifetime.[33]  In essence, a desire to be free of metaphysical dogmas, particularly the religious kind, was distinctive of the period beginning with the Renaissance, through the Reformation and into the early modern period; generally accepted as constituting what is called the Enlightenment,[34] with each subsequent iteration of the Enlightenment project modifying metaphysics to a more palatable form for its own purposes.  Rather, it was only with the paleopositivism of Comte and the Darwinism that had been influenced by it, which then found mature expression in the logical positivism and the “New Physics” of the early 20^th century (which explicitly rejected Kantian and Hegelian metaphysical idealism), that metaphysics faced its largest challenge.  The metaphysical religious narratives were being fundamentally challenged and accused of being false under the weight of common-sense, empirical “science.”  It was only then that Hume became a late-canonized saint for all the positivist and post-positivist movements, with his insights providing a limiting, psychological threshold of understanding beyond which the “new” science and a “cleaned-up” philosophy could not legitimately progress.

In essence, during the early part of the 20^th century after the massive expansion of natural, empirical science following its successes during the 19th, there was a concerted attempted by the logical positivists and their fellow-travelers in the new analytic philosophy [35] to finally dispense with “metaphysics” on the basis that it was misunderstanding the structure and the function of language and was thereby logically non-sense.  Ayer, the first to popularize the position in the English language, stated this position thus:

“…our object is merely to show that philosophy, as a genuine branch of knowledge, must be distinguished from metaphysics…We…define a metaphysical sentence as a sentence which purports to express a genuine proposition, but does, in fact, express neither a tautology nor an empirical hypothesis.  And as tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions, we are justified in concluding that all metaphysical assertions are nonsensical.” [36]

2.3.4 The Principle of Verification

However, this basis of the logical positivist conception of meaning, the principle of verification, that held a proposition was only meaningful if and only if  it was, in principle,[37] empirically verifiable, was fundamentally untenable as it excluded all types of propositions which clearly had meaning but had no direct connection with the natural world or did not rely on the natural world for verification or falsification.[38]  As we noted above, it also had the radical consequence of dispensing with much of ethical theorizing as “non-sense”, a position which even Bertrand Russell, perhaps the most well-known member of the positivist movement [39] and the figure which dominated philosophy in the first half of the 20^th century, was careful to qualify:

“There remains…a vast field, traditionally included in philosophy, where scientific methods are inadequate.  This field includes ultimate questions of value; science alone, for example, cannot prove it is bad to enjoy the infliction of cruelty.” [40]

However, the most devastating critique of the verification principle was that the principle itself was not based on any process of empirical verification.  In other words, it exempted itself from its own criteria and was thus shown to be nothing more than a dogma, and, paradoxically, a metaphysical one at that.  So, in Neurath, metaphysics could indeed “disappear without a trace” [41] but he failed to perceive that the denial of metaphysics was paradoxically a metaphysical plank which he would also allow a priori as a building block for his famous raft of human knowledge.[42]  It suffices us to say at this point that when adjustments were attempted to the principle, including by Ayer himself then ten years later after his initial statement of it in response to the criticism of it, he had to concede that metaphysics could not so simply be deleted from philosophy as ‘nonsense’:

“…although I should still defend the use of the criterion of verifiability as a methodological principle, I realize that for the effective elimination of metaphysics it needs to be supported by detailed analyses of particular metaphysical arguments.” [43]  (Emphasis added).

That is, Ayer is here conceding that there is nothing fundamentally irrational or ‘non-sensical’ with metaphysically based arguments but rather, as we should all reasonably accept, it is the actual quality of the metaphysical argument made that needs to be evaluated with whatever rational criteria is required for that domain.  In effect, Ayer was attempting to respond  to the fault-lines that were beginning to appear in the positivist edifice that had near dominated post-war scholarship across a variety of disciplines.^[44]  However, within seven years of this revision of 1946, it was to suffer the devastating critique of Quine which demonstrated emphatically that logical positivism rested paradoxically on metaphysical dogma.[45]  Thus, despite this totalizing faith of the logical positivists, who had considered themselves the most rigorous and consistent of the empiricists, their presuppositions came to be seen as crudely inadequate philosophical views, being established on a principle that is asserted independently of experience and is thus self-refuting in the most basic, logical sense.[46]

As a result, metaphysics was slowly rehabilitated into philosophical discourse, with the positivist school fragmented by the end of the 1950s.[47]  However, positivism passed on much of its basic methodology onto the naturalism that was its direct successor, and the metaphysical approach of scientifically minded philosophers is significantly different than the speculative metaphysics which was so loathed by the empiricists such as Hume and rejected by the positivists.  Thus, introductory texts on metaphysics such as Mumford earnestly seek a kind of methodological respectability which owes most of its inspiration to a respect for the scientific method, even when they assert it goes beyond the capability of science.[48]

Henceforth, in conclusion, for the purposes of our study we can conclude that metaphysics is defensible as a legitimate discipline of philosophy and so we have preserved philosophy in its tripartite understanding.  This is not to deny there seems to be some circularity in our definitions and there will be some problematics to work through.  However, it is our position that the Christian scriptures provide a unique resolution of this circularity in the biblical narrative and so we will build our worldview with this understanding.

2.4 The Nature of Philosophy – Analysis and Synthesis

After the fall of logical positivism, a mature and reflective Ayer, freed from the passionate zeal of his youth some 30 years earlier that had concluded that logical positivism was the only true way of philosophizing, noted insightfully:

“It is especially characteristic of philosophers that they tend to disagree not merely about the solution of certain problems but about the very nature of their subject and the methods by which it is to be pursued.” ^[49] (Emphasis added).

Nevertheless, despite this new-found charity to his fellow-philosophers, Ayer remained committed to the same fundamental mode of philosophizing of his youth and should be credited as to never have become completely apostate from his totalizing faith in empiricism.[50]  As we have seen, empiricism holds that all knowledge derives from our senses and so is a comfortable bedfellow to naturalism which deals with nature as the measure of all things.  Ayer was adamant that philosophers should not consider themselves as doing any kind of “research” but were merely “to clarify the propositions of science by exhibiting their logical relations” [51] and, as we saw in the previous section, that the only meaningful propositions were ones which could be verified by reference to the physical universe.

The effect of this tendency was to radically rarefy philosophy (and science) to replace it with scientism, the belief that the only genuine questions (as opposed to linguistic confusions) were questions that science could answer or alternatively, the only questions worth asking were the questions that science could answer.  This is thus revealed as a normative ethical position and really approximates a religious commitment on behalf of its advocates.  Thus, as Ayer believed in nailing his colors somewhere and should be commended for doing so, I, with similar brotherly zeal in direct opposition to his rarefied view of 20^th century empiricism, believe the process of critical interpretation, evaluation, alongside the solving of human dilemmas and the presentation of solutions, is a critically important part of the business of philosophy and the philosopher.

Yet, it must be immediately admitted, perhaps because of the enormous influence of this empiricism of the positivists in the disciplines of science and with the post-Kantian and post-Kuhnian skepticism of the Humanities in 20^th century philosophical thought, it is a model of philosophy that has had few supporters in the contemporary or popular conception of philosophy.  That is, it has few supporters in either the analytic or the continental perspective after the revolutionary changes in philosophy and culture generally at the start of the century.  In the words of the most influential Anglo-American of the first half of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell, such a vision of the task and practice of philosophy is a “pretentious” and “dogmatic” conception.[52]

However, we can disarm Russell’s criticism by considering what has become of the modern analytic tradition of which Russell was a founding member.  That tradition has virtually abandoned the synthetic function for mere “clarification” of the issues we might discuss, or “therapy” rather than a “solving” of the problems we clarify.  To refute this and to defend the synthetic task as essential to the philosophic task, we need look no further than to the eminent G.E. Moore, Russell’s fellow insurrectionist in the fight against idealism and one’s who’s rigorous analytic method provided the inspiration for a generation of philosophers.[53]  Moore recognized that synthesis was a basic, necessary function of philosophy: “[one of the tasks of philosophy is to present] a general description of the Universe.” [54]  Here we understand ‘description’ was not mere enumeration of phenomena but also the wider interrelations and a reasoned account of reality.  Moore was a committed realist, and that realism was for working with the world, not to suffer in subjection to it in ignorance.  Thus, we must proceed on Moore’s basis and accept the challenge of giving a rational account of our world and our place in it.[55]

In summary, mere analytic “clarification” is most unsatisfactory for the conception of the work of a philosopher unless we can progress to offering salvation from those problems.  We can also with inquisitorial curiosity wonder how philosophy once stripped of “dogmatic pretensions” might possibly for Russell be able to “suggest and inspire a way of life.” [56]  It seems incoherent because elsewhere Russell had:

1. Insisted philosophical problems had been solved [57] and that he had further solutions (though few in the philosophical world seemed to agree with him leading to his gradual eclipse in post-War philosophy).[58]
2. That the major problem of philosophic and cultural discourse was with the timidity of the clear-minded in being confident enough to argue with the absolutist bigot or obscurantist religious fundamentalist.
3. He complained mid-century that logical positivists were too “narrow” in their outlook and that they had a “technique which conceals problems instead of helping to solve” [59] (Emphasis added).

All this shows that Russell himself believed that a worldview springing from one’s philosophy was one of the purposes and goals of philosophy; in his pre-positivist apologetic for philosophy, he explicitly said so.[60]  To believe that he lived his life apart from his philosophical beliefs is implausible at best; we might also observe that in his post-positivist work, which was from the 1950s onwards, he was much more a political and cultural intellectual activist than an academic philosopher.  Further, the sheer volume and breadth of what he called his “philosophical work” was captured in an authoritative anthology,[61] which would suggest the business of the philosopher is indeed a broad wrestling with the problems of culture, an analysis and a synthesis that moves us in the direction of solutions.

2.5 The Character—Correspondence, Coherence, Truth, and Objectivity

We are arguing that any philosophical system or account should have the following set properties to be considered comprehensive:

1. Coherence: in a philosophical system, this is the property that it is internally consistent, that the different parts are logical compatible with one another.

For example, if it is asserted that there is no resident meaning in a text, but a text is used to communicate the content of your philosophy with a view to converting the readers to your way of thinking, you are being incoherent.  Blackburn made that very clear in his critical discussion of postmodernism:

“…there are amusing episodes of radical postmodernists who suddenly forgot all about the death of the author and the indefinite plasticity of meaning when it came to fighting about copyright and the accuracy of translations of their own works.” [62]

1. Truthful: as I wrote elsewhere, “There is not a subject in philosophy that has such a noble and contentious history than that of the subject of truth and how to reconcile reality (or nature) and our perception of it.” [63]

Just what “truth” is and its relationship to reality is a function of the philosophical system itself but the challenge to be “truthful” is never far from the attention of a philosophical school, even for the philosophical iconoclasts like Rorty that would like to bury it without trace.[64]  In contrast, I take a very strong view of the possibility and the reality of truth in this work, following Plantinga in this:

“we all really know (unless thoroughly corrupted) that there really is such a thing as truth (‘objective’ truth, that being the only kind there is) and that it is of fundamental importance to us and foundational to our noetic structures.” ^[65]

1. Correspondence: the property of describing the world in some way, a discernible set of states in the world or having an analogue in the world.

This is not to deny that correspondence is a difficult concept and how problematic it might be when we admit degrees of correspondence; but there is a strong intuitive sense that there is such a concept that does useful work for us.

1. Objectivity: The idea of objectivity, that there is a subject-independent world about which things can be said and to which our philosophy represents in some concrete sense, is essential to our view.

However, objectivity can also be more abstract dealing with concepts that are subject-independent.  “Objectivity”, as noted in the quote from Plantinga above, is strongly associated with conceptions of truth; what is true independent of the subject or “true” for all of us, that is the objective.

It is important each of these properties is present.  For example, both Leibniz and Spinoza had coherence in their systems but are considered “dream philosophies” in the sense they fail the objectivity or truth test, which might be conceived of as the twin test of correspondence and coherence.  Unlike the conventional pitting of these theories as oppositional to one another,[66] we recognize with Bahnsen that the former deals with the metaphysics of truth, i.e., what truth is, how it is constituted; and the latter deals with how we know something is true, that it fits into a wider theoretical framework, i.e., the epistemology of truth.  Similarly, Blackburn is again helpful here, capturing both elements of the truth test:

“It is the things that explain my words that are their reference, and give them their truth. [Donald] Davidson went wrong by wondering what justifies a belief, in the abstract…John’s explorations and investigations, his situation, his observations, experiences, what he has seen and heard, smelled, touched and felt, are all potentially part of the answer…The cure…is to remember, and perhaps to practise, the practical techniques and skills of doing things in the real world…” [67]

However, what is being argued here is not pragmatism in disguise but rather an appeal to what might be called a “critical realism” [68] that ties what we believe to the world we live in.  Whatever our philosophy claims to be, it should be grounded, even mediated, in both our mental and physical experience of and existence in the world.  In contrast, pragmatism (see §2.6.6) formally emphasizes the usefulness of any philosophy by its instrumental or practical utility but prejudges, like the positivist’s questions relating to the real/unreal/ideal and the good/bad/moral/immoral as irrelevant ‘pseudo-problems.’ [69]  That is, they are problems too difficult to solve and therefore cannot be genuine problems, for all genuine problems admit of a solution.  They have camped by the skeptical gorge and consider it uncrossable.  Yet to consider the challenges of skepticism as simply irrelevant is to disengage from the process of philosophy.  Addressing the skeptical challenge is one, if not the key, challenge of philosophy for in answering skepticism we give reasons for what we believe, why we believe it and what we should believe.  It is to a more in-depth consideration of skepticism that we now turn.

2.6 The Purpose of Philosophy—Responding to Skepticism

2.6.1 The Problem

Modern Western philosophy might be said to have begun with Descartes who positioned epistemology, in the sense of the basic possibility of self-consciousness or self-knowledge and the relation of the self to the rest of reality (i.e., a metaphysic), at the center of the philosophical process.  Descartes was famous in his method for proposing the way of philosophizing was the method of doubt:  by considering what could be doubted one would intuit what is certain.[70]  Since then, skepticism has been reproduced repeatedly in all manner of senses such that we might conceive of philosophy as an attempt to answer the problem of skepticism or to collapse into it.  Thus, for Descartes raising the problem, we can be thankful.

However, collapsing into a general skepticism hardly commends itself to a healthy intellectual life or even a practical honesty but skepticism has proven notoriously difficult to vanquish.  For example, Russell writing his last major philosophical work was disturbed by the metaphysical skepticism of the early 20^th century and argued for a tempering of the Cartesian method of doubt rather than its implications being pushed to their logical limits:

“The fact that I cannot believe something does not prove that it is false, but it does prove that I am insincere and frivolous if I pretend to believe it.  Cartesian doubt has a value as a means of articulating our knowledge and showing what depends on what, but if carried too far it becomes a mere technical game in which philosophy loses seriousness.” [71] (Emphasis added).

However attractive Russell’s intent and temper is to us, as a logician he could not have possibly justified this statement as settling the issue.  His logician opponents certainly did not, pointedly ignoring him after the 1950s and he eventually admits elsewhere he can give no logical refutation of such skepticism, “against the thorough going sceptic I can advance no argument except that I do not believe him to be sincere.” [72]  Thus, if we are searching for strong, logical certainties we remain extremely dissatisfied with the weakness of his final position.

Additionally and most seriously, a special kind of metaphysical skepticism, particularly associated with the post-Darwinian world and the nihilism of Nietzsche, objects to any possibility of there being objective moral knowledge; that our attempts at defining normative behaviors are arbitrary social constructs and moral knowledge is an impossibility.[73]  This had devastating socio-political consequences,  in the words of Abraham Kuyper, lamenting the descent of Europe into chaos and then war, “all eyes in Germany had turned to Nietzsche.” [74]  The philosophies of Nazism and Communism that he and Hegel had inspired left an ethical void that American pragmatism and relativism needed to fill with at least some conventional or situational conception of socially constructed wisdom for the new democratic family, if all hope was not to be lost of reclaiming the Liberal consensus in the nations threatening to succumb to the rise of this totalitarianism.[75]

Similarly, Plantinga demonstrated to us the problems with the grounding of rationality on this basis means that there are those who argue that human knowledge is always tentative and truth, or a true and complete science, remains forever beyond our reach.  It should be obvious such a position is antithetical to a Christian ethic that maintains the present authority of a normative scripture.  Consequently, it is of upmost philosophical and cultural importance to us that skepticism, if not completely refuted, is reduced to an indefensible scandal:

“And this leads to the scandal of skepticism:  if I argue to skepticism, then of course I am relying on the very cognitive faculties whose unreliability is the conclusion of my skeptical argument.” [76]

Thus, as an epistemological position or a metaphysical stance, we will argue vigorously against it throughout this work.  Hence, let us consider the three figures that really set the contours of the debate over skepticism, and the track of Western philosophy ever since.

2.6.2 Descartes, Hume, and Kant

Descartes’ exercise of skepticism was suitably moderated by the conviction of his cogito, in which he had believed he had re-established the firm foundation for knowledge after dismissing Aristotelian metaphysics.  However, Descartes’ difficulties were many, even amongst those not immediately hostile to his programme for ecclesiastical reasons (both Catholics and Protestants), and the Cartesian programme, despite the efforts of his disciples and successors, was considered terminally devastated by the later Kantian critique of it.[77]  Kant’s “critical philosophy” [78] is considered as the “central text of Western philosophy” [79] and Russell grudgingly wrote that even in the late 1940s Kant was “generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers.” [80]  Interestingly, Kant in critiquing the Cartesian programme was doing so as part of the process of answering the radical skepticism of his contemporary Hume who we noted was the first to formulate a programme that desired to excise metaphysics from philosophy and to turn epistemology into mere psychological habit.[81]  We saw he had a particular dim view of the Rationalist project, considering their work only fit for the flames.[82]  In contrast, he wanted to apply the empiricism found in Locke (1632–1704) and Berkeley (1685–1753) to the problem of knowledge.  Empiricism held that all knowledge is perceptual (that is, grounded in empirical experience) and he advocated for what he called the “[Newtonian] Experimental Method of Reasoning” [83] to the problem of human psychology and the processes of reason.

However, in his rigorous analytical consistency, he was driven to a catastrophic skepticism for he concluded that causal reasoning, the basis for inductive science, was merely a “habit of the mind.”  Hume had thus concluded that there was no reasonable (rational) grounding of reason, it was a tight circle of logical fallaciousness. We really could know nothing in the sense there was no rational basis to rationality, “reason when considered an abstract view, furnishes invincible arguments against itself.” [84]  Philosophy and science were to be dispatched to the Humean Crematorium for disposal, his skepticism threatened to unravel even the possibility of knowledge which Kant appreciated would be devastating to science and he was determined to avoid. Thus, Kant was awoken from his “dogmatic slumbers” [85] whilst acknowledging the force of Hume against both the empiricist and rationalist conceptions of reason, he wanted to mitigate against Hume’s conclusions:

“…it remains a scandal to philosophy, and to human reason in general, that we should have to accept the existence of things outside us (from which after all we derive the whole material for our knowledge, even for that of our inner sense) merely on trust, and have no satisfactory proof with which to counter any opponent who chooses to doubt it.” [86] (Emphasis original).

The central feature of the Kantian “answer” to Hume was his division of reality into a noumenal realm beyond the human mind and a phenomenal realm of experience upon which the mind imposed its understanding.[87]  Science was strictly phenomenal, but at least it was salvaged as a possibility.  However, this had the consequence of forever putting the knowledge of reality as it was in itself (Ding an Sich) as beyond the reach of the human mind and Kant’s science was not discovery of natural laws but imposition by the psychological processes where the mind was the “lawgiver of nature.”  Kant’s solution to the predicament might also be conceived of as a strengthening of the ego-centric one as he internalized still further Descartes’ starting point of an awareness of his own existence.

This conception, Kant’s “Copernican revolution,” [88] evoked a long sequence of 19^th century philosophers who responded to Kant’s critique either negatively, preferring in a Schopenhauer or a Kierkegaard mysticism to rationality,[89] or positively by ‘rescuing’ and ‘improving’ rationality as in Hegel.[90]  Later, the analytic schools that came to dominate 20^th century philosophy rejected Kant’s conception of a noumena and asserted phenomena was all we have.  We will now examine these distinctive streams that flowed from the various responses to Kant, giving specific attention to that analytic tradition.

2.6.3 The Fallibilists

The central issue when dealing with the sceptic is that they can argue that the attempts to defeat skepticism always assume what they the sceptic is not prepared to grant and thus are deemed to be “circular” in some way.  As Russell freely admitted, he could see no way of escape from Hume’s skepticism and the naturalist too will always have that predicament.[91]  Thus, one “solution” to skepticism is to accept its presence but to mitigate its force in some way.  This has been the favored approach of contemporary scientifically orientated epistemology and is known as fallibilism, which can be conceived of in a number of different ways, but which we might usefully outline it in this way: [NL 1-2]

1. The principle that knowledge is not certain but is always open to revision in the light of new arguments.

This is attractive as it recasts philosophy as contiguous with science in the sense of methodological equivalence.

2. We can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification, justification that does not guarantee that our beliefs are correct.[92]

This is attractive because it wants to preserve a claim to knowledge rather than cede to skepticism. [/NL 1-2]

However, there is a catastrophic weakness admitted by the school itself:

“it is unclear how to formulate fallibilism precisely…it is surprisingly difficult to describe the level of fallible justification required for knowledge in a clear and non-arbitrary way…fallibilism does not necessarily escape skepticism. A theory might be fallibilist while still espousing standards too demanding to be regularly met.” ^[93] (Emphasis added).

This clearly pinpoints incoherence at the heart of the concept, and it is of not much use to us to dwell specifically on the specific technical debates within the various inflections of fallibilism.  It is enough for us that to a greater or lesser degree, fallibilism is assumed in most philosophical schools (which is one major factor in why we judge them inadequate) and we will often identify fallibilism implicit to a greater or less degree in the sections below.

2.6.4 Realism, and the Role of Common Sense

With the retreat of idealism at the beginning of the twentieth century there was the emergence of the analytical schools and confidence initially grew in the realistic view; that is, the world is both describable and directly knowable.  For the realist, to argue otherwise was non-sensical, as Moore famously posited as he lifted up his hands and declared the external world to exist on the basis of common sense.[94]  This was to be repeated with great sophistication by Moritz Schlick who dismissed the entire Kantian thesis at the end of a gloriously constructed critical argument in one sentence:

“Thinking does not create the relations of reality; it has no form that it might imprint upon reality.  And reality permits no forms to be imprinted upon itself, because it already possesses form”.[95]

However, all was not well in this newly rediscovered “real” world and Schlick conceded seconds after its triumph that realism is found in philosophy by degree only:

“…we are bereft of any hope of arriving at absolute certainty in the knowledge of reality.  Apodictic truths about reality go beyond the power of the human faculty of cognition and are not accessible to it.  There are no synthetic judgments a priori…”.[96]

This last proposition was to prove particularly problematic and unraveled under the weight of criticism within a few decades of its positing, being defended only by the logical positivists in their most vociferous period.  As Kenny noted, the possibility of and the “nature of synthetic judgements a priori” was a, if not the principal problem of philosophy and is implicitly assumed by most hypothesizing and patterns of reasoning.[97]

Consequently, there was something also profoundly unsatisfactory for realism to be so easily confounded by the skeptical challenge in Schlick’s formulation after he conducted such a painstakingly careful argument.^[98]  Likewise, many found Moore’s defense of common sense compelling.  However, a naïve or “common sense” realism is easily shown to be untenable, particularly for the believer despite its popularity amongst evangelical Christians.[99]  We can understand this better by considering that one reaction to Hume was in his contemporary Reid’s “common sense” realism that posited that our senses and perceptions were God-given and thus basically reliable.  For that reason, it is also known as reliabilism and led to the view that “common sense” could be a guide for science and rationality.  The early American colleges were heavily influenced by this view and there is a direct lineage to the evidential apologetic school.[100]  The main problem with it arose when “common sense” was given expression by Darwin’s hypothesis which he had allegedly formed based on his voyages and empirical studies.  The force of common sense seemed to undermine the claims of scripture with the result of a rapid secularization or liberalization of many of the protestant colleges.[101]  This was not just an American problem but was repeated in many Christian centers in Europe and missionary centers further afield.

2.6.5 The Therapeutic Conception of Philosophy

The therapeutic conception responded to the fallibilist turn of analytic philosophy during the 20^th century by redefining philosophy as simply a way of thinking about matters, rather than as a substantive research project that establishes the limits and content of human knowledge.   Schlick reading and collaborating with Wittgenstein during the period 1927-1933 had progressively developed an understanding that the purpose of philosophy was not knowledge about the world in the sense of metaphysical theories but knowledge of the world through empirical methods.

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus had famously instructed one to only speak on what could be spoken about [102] which was taken by Schlick to dismiss metaphysics or otherwise speculative thought from philosophy in favor of the “new philosophy” of clarification.[103]  Ayer labelled Wittgenstein’s middle period as “therapeutic positivism” and other scholars also interpreted Wittgenstein in this way during the 1940s.[104]  However, Wittgenstein had written to Ayer protesting this interpretation and in his later period distanced himself publicly from positivism and this early understanding of his work. Monk makes the case that this was a secular appropriation of Wittgenstein who was far more mystical in intended sense, if not in the grammar, of the conclusion of his Tractatus.[105]  That said, it was also clear he had been attracted to Schlick’s Circle and its positivism as a way of doing philosophy during his early phase, despite expressing dissatisfaction with their interpretation of the Tractatus.[106]

Whatever its origin in Wittgenstein and its relationship to the logical positivists, the therapeutic conception has had an enormous and long-lasting influence on the analytic philosophical movement.  However, in its contemporary, somewhat diluted form, it is sometimes caricatured, accurately in my view, as a “flight from certainty” or “an escape from [the necessity of] reason[ing].” [107]  It merely diagnoses and does not treat the terminal patient, considering it improper a treatment should be prescribed but holding we might learn something from observing their death.  It is considered so inappropriate within academic philosophy to suggest that philosophy and philosophers, firstly could and secondly should generate solutions to the problems they seek to clarify.  Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to discuss the philosophy of religion in some abstract sense, but it is totally inappropriate to assert that one conception deserves the attribution of truth and thus our intellectual submission to it, whereas the others do not.

Whilst this would immediately be of concern to most Christian philosophers who above all else should be seeking to establish the legitimacy of a Christian ethic based upon Christian knowledge founded on a Christian metaphysic, it is by no means a concern unrecognized outside of the Christian community.  Philosopher and educator Paul Arthur Schilpp [108] addressing the American Philosophical Society in a presidential address of 1959 had his address reported thus:

‘Schilpp’s address accused philosophy in the analytic tradition, which then (as now) dominated the philosophical profession, of a “contemptuous dismissal of ethics and of social and political philosophy,” which he saw in turn as a manifestation of a broader “reluctance… to make any contribution to man’s existing dilemmas.”  Philosophers, Schilpp argued, have a duty to help guide society by offering it the best available ethical and political wisdom. “Most of the great thinkers of mankind,” he said, “seem to have believed wisdom was a good thing not merely for living the good life, but necessary for the development and running of society and of the state. This being the case, ethics and social and political philosophy occupied a considerable portion of their interest and work” [109]

Thus, for Schlipp, the philosophical task should be conceived as of giving a general account of the interrelationship between the three traditional categories; what, in the language of this work, we have already designated as a “worldview”—a coherent account of our place in the universe and our relationship to it.

So, in summary, we can see that the therapeutic conception of philosophy does not, after all, offer us any mitigation of skepticism but seems rather to have surrendered to it.  There is a tacit, if not explicit assumption that we cannot be certain but maybe we can be clear on what we can perhaps we cannot be certain about.  Stated this way, we can see there is an incoherence running through this conception for we can never truly be clear in our understanding unless we can give an account of the objects of our perception.

2.6.6 The Pragmatic Conception of Philosophy

It is with William James and John Dewey that the pragmatic movement is most strongly associated though the pragmatic maxim had initially been posited by Pierce, a logician and an experimental scientist by training and practice.[110]  James was an accomplished anatomist who proceeded to become a professor of psychology and then progressed to a professorship in philosophy.  He was thus a formidable intellect who made major contributions to both psychology and philosophy.  However, his focus remained psychological in orientation, in the explication of belief formation which clearly intersected all kinds of philosophical issues regarding warrant and truth.  He also had a motivation to defend a certain view of moral and religious thought where he posited that we often believe and are compelled to act with insufficient theoretical grounds but that alone did not delegitimize our actions.  Central to his conception was the evaluating of the practical effects of a course of action.[111]

Thus, the fallibilism and sophistication of James is very clear, and he influenced Dewey significantly.  However, his ongoing influence was muted by Dewey’s innovations regarding the pragmatic maxims and the fact that he was also defending a Victorian pietism which was intellectually falling out of fashion.  In contrast, Dewey grew up in an evangelical environment but was apostate by the turn of the 20^th century from his early attempts at developing a Christian philosophy.[112]  That said, some view him as secularizing aspects of Christian ethics, replacing divine prerogatives and duties with human ones and he believed passionately, and some would say religiously, in the connection between philosophy and life.[113]

Building on the pragmatic maxim, he asserted that the traditional epistemological “problems” of philosophy aiming to supply a coherent account of knowledge were irrelevant.[114]  Dewey and the pragmatists who followed him considered words like “true,” “false,” “good,” and “bad,” not to be objective in reference but subjective and relativised by considering their effects and the fallibilism present is implicit in the renunciation of the traditional categories.  Dewey, indeed, went further judging the utility of philosophy as to how it enables us to reach “our goals.”  What mattered was whether we had a set of intellectual tools with which we could control our environment and solve our socio-political problems.[115]  Dewey’s ‘version’ of pragmatism he preferred to call instrumentalism; his view was a broad application of the pragmatic maxim to all the problems of society providing us with ‘instruments’ to control and shape our environment.  Dewey’s emphasis could thus be perceived as sociological, and some refer to him as a sociologist though his work was of far wider scope and depth, his influence on American and Western democratic culture generally was substantial, some would say the dominant undercurrent of modern statism.[116]

The logical problem, though, as with all American pragmatism, which is also another critical weakness for all non-Christian philosophy, was the philosophical problem of defining what should be “our goals.” [117]  This necessarily needs to be done outside of the pragmatic maxim as it deals with conceptions of necessity and value.  It is an ethical question.  Similarly, it is paradoxical that Dewey himself argued for a particular view of education, i.e., an educational theory and asserted that the proper conception of education (what should be the end) was in accordance with that theory.[118]  In arguing for a particular conception, he was asserting it in a theoretical fashion and thus outside the pragmatic maxim that judges on results.

It is on this point that pragmatism fails the coherency test for it can never on a pragmatic basis have a self-evident conception of “ends,” it is always begging the question.  Rather like Russell expressing a view that by admitting a single principle outside of empiricism we can establish empiricism (whereas we would effectively deny the ‘-ism’ of empiricism), Dewey and the pragmatists want to predefine “our goals” and then proceed but effectively bankrupt their position in doing so.

2.6.7 The Positivist Conception of Philosophy

Kant’s account of science as “imposition” rather than “discovery” was becoming progressively implausible as natural science emerged strongly and grew in confidence in the period following his death.  By the middle of the 19^th century, the influence of Comte’s paleopositivism[119] and the phenomenalistic emphasis of the early twentieth century saw Schlick’s emphatic rebuttal of Kant in asserting reality imposed its form on our mind rather the Kantian mind imposing its categories on the world.[120]  This Kantian posit was viewed as most unsatisfactory because it separated humanity from the possibility of objective knowledge and rested on the doctrines of transcendental psychology.  This reliance on transcendental psychology was judged as particularly problematic in Kant’s thinking which even modern neo-Kantians such as Strawson now deem as unsafe, his derivation of the categories and his choice of formal categories as open to debate.  There was also an awareness that there is something fundamental unintuitive in Kant’s conception of science as the imposition of modes of understanding on the world.  That is, “science,” if it is anything, is generally accepted to be a process, it was considered by its practitioners as a process of discovery rather than imposition.

Thus, it was difficult to describe the work of Faraday regarding electricity, which was to revolutionize the world, or the mathematical equations of Maxwell modelling the propagation of electromagnetic waves that provided the basis for modern communication technology, as somehow not “discoveries” about nature but rather the “imposition” of the mind of humanity on them.  Thus, as natural science developed and technology was produced by the application of such science in second order disciplines such as engineering, it became increasingly apparent that to view science as the mind imposing order on the world seemed more dogmatic than an authentic philosophical account.

Yet Schlick, even in his triumphant refutation of Kant, in a very important manner strengthened Kant’s metaphysical agnosticism to outright atheism, jettisoning apodictic truths as “beyond the power of human cognition.”  In rejecting metaphysics, he argued that the knowledge of particulars was all we had.^[121]  Subsequently, the logical positivist movement (of which Schlick was the major founder), rarefied philosophy as they sought empirical purity and threatened to cull even ethics as a philosophical category, reducing it to mere emotion without literal meaning.[122] “Positivism” seeks to bypass the need for a metaphysical basis for philosophy (in that sense they might be considered extreme global sceptics regarding metaphysics) by simply positing that the methodology of philosophy (modelled after science) seeks merely to organize the phenomena of nature on the basis of the objective evidence of the senses, and not to “explain” it in any fashion.[123]  Thus, Sir Isaac Newton, who revolutionized the scientific world of his day is sometimes considered as the protopositivist on the basis of his remark that he would not “dare to feign a hypothesis.” [124]

The idealized version of his method was allegedly to provide just a sufficient model to explain a particular “fact” of nature from the empirical evidence and to postulate no further.  The scientist merely “organizes” phenomena gathered on the basis of observation or experimentation rather than attempting to explain it beyond what the evidence permits.  Thus, an implicit assumption of this school is the supremacy of empirical methods, they are considered more reliable and safer than the deductions of the rationalists.  Positivism thus attempted to mitigate skepticism by describing the traditional “big”, conceptual problems of philosophy as “pseudo-problems” that disappear once we tidy up our language.[125]  However, as we found in §2.3.4, the glaring anomaly of this metaphysical position that rejected all other metaphysical positions, was that the postulate of verifiability was not a criterion that was itself empirically verifiable.  They had rarefied philosophy of its most important content, eventually replacing all speculative metaphysical dogma with a single metaphysical dogma of there being no metaphysics.

Additionally, the logical positivists had a similar ethical problem to Dewey and his instrumentalism.  Though they wanted logical rigor and the application of the scientific method to the problems of society, positivism could not justify as to why the scientific method applied to our social problems should be desirable.  This was even more so the case after the bloodthirstiness of the “scientific” regimes of Communism [126] and Nazism [127] which, ironically, also led to the effective disbandment of the school as many members of the school became Jewish exiles to the US.[128]  Yet, the positivists believed their manifesto, alongside the humanist manifestos of the same period, were “better” than what went before but on their own criteria, there seems no possible justification for why we should think it so.  Their ethical position is thus arbitrary and question-begging.  However, we have already indicated that the catastrophic deconstruction of logical positivism was to come from within their own ranks.  In 1953 Quine [129] (an intimate collaborator in his early period with Carnap) published an epoch-making paper in which he demonstrated that logical positivism was founded on two dogmas, analyticity and reductionism.[130]  This was to prove terminal for the movement though it heavily influenced the methodological naturalism that emerged from the philosophical naturalism of Darwinism that we will examine next.

2.6.8 The Post-Darwinian Naturalist Conception of Philosophy

For the major schools of philosophy in the first part of the 20^th century, the bottoms fall out of what we might call an ethical theory of what and why we should value as a culture or how and why we should behave in a particular way.  This is primarily because any conception of ethics seems to require a non-natural, metaphysical assumption about the character of reality, the relations within it and the flow, even the meaning or purpose of it, which had traditionally been provided by some non-scientific meta-theory, i.e., a philosophical theory of “nature” or a religious view of “creation.”  However, Darwin postulated that natural selection was the mechanism of a natural process of evolution,[131] providing prima facie, a scientific and a naturalistic meta-narrative.  With an evolutionary view of humanity, Darwin made it possible to be “an intellectually fulfilled atheist” (as reported in Professor Dawkin’s words to A.J. Ayer over a candlelight dinner at an ancient Oxford college founded to train preachers).[132]  As positivism and pragmatism waned, naturalism turned more explicitly to the Book of Darwin to be the missing intellectual piece that allowed the atheist to have a “coherent” worldview and for eminent philosophers such as Quine to “find hope in Darwin” that blind chance is hurtling us towards an inevitably better world.

Ethics is explained in terms of “evolutionary advantage” for those who are moral.  However, there lies the problem.  As G E Moore demonstrated, it is a logical fallacy in naturalism to believe we can move from what is to what ought to be the case.  The self-vitiating nature of naturalism was also demonstrated forcefully by Lewis [133] and Plantinga concurred – if all we have is naturalism, there is no reason or necessity for us to believe that what nature tells us is neither good nor bad;[134] it becomes at best an arbitrary choice or preference.  Plantinga captures the problem of naturalism and the possibility of knowledge perfectly:

“Despite the superficial concord between naturalism and science—despite all the claims to the effect that science implies, or requires, or supports, or confirms, or comports well with naturalism – the fact is that science and naturalism don’t fit together well…there is deep unease, deep discord, deep conflict.” [135] (Emphasis added).

The basic problem with any naturalistic argument is that it is self-vitiating with regards to rationality; reason gets subsumed into behavioral or cognitive science or evolutionary necessity.  There is absolutely no reason to believe in the authority of the pronouncements of reason when we drill down into its foundations and find they are naturalistic any more than we would trust the “reasoning” of a monkey.  Thus, it should be evident that the conception of truth in naturalism is problematic and for those philosophers who seriously considered it, such as Quine, a rarefied disquotational view of truth is all that remains.  As Quine puts it, “‘snow is white’ is true, if and only if, snow is white”—unquoting p is true gives us p.  Further, as he was apt to do, Quine felt this foreclosed the matter for further philosophical discussion:

“…there is surely no impugning the disquotation account…Moreover, it is a full account: it explicates clearly the truth or falsity of every sentence.”[136]

In fairness to Quine, he then proceeds to distinguish between truth and warranted belief,[137] where the latter might be seen to impugn on the traditional content of philosophical debates about truth, allowing Quine to assert that truth is simply a matter of two valued logic.[138]

As with much of Quine’s method of philosophizing, we gain clarity at the cost of rarefying the content but cannot help to feel we have just deferred the discussion to a later section or my next book on that subject.  However, Quine is refreshingly candid in places regarding the rather knotty problems of philosophy, “I have no definition of empirical content to offer for such theories, but it seems to make reasonable intuitive sense …” [139] (emphasis added).  The remarkable lack of precision and commitment to subjective idealism implicit in these remarks should be of comfort to those so burned by Quine’s projects to naturalize both epistemology and ontology.

2.7 Fallibilism and Modern Science – Universe or Multiverse?

2.7.1 The Intellectual Challenge of the Concept of Chance

We began by noting that fallibilism is an attempt to deal with skepticism by admitting that our knowledge will be incomplete or partial but still has sufficient warrant.  However, we have found that fallibilism in practice under pressure from the uncompromising sceptic capitulates to and in effect, compounds the deadly, general skepticism of the 20^th century, forming what North described as the “epistemological crisis” of the “new” university.  In its practice of denying certainty, a unity of human knowledge, a devaluing of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” and most recently in the 21^st century, profitability over academic expertise; we find fallibilism a grossly inadequate underpinning for either science generally or epistemology specifically.  On this basis, the modern university has been described as an anti-university, actively promoting chaos, contingency, and chance as the only “sure” principles of reality.[140]  We need to consider why such an unintuitive and seemingly anti-intellectual position has maintained the ideological credibility it has.  This we shall explore by considering and evaluating its most exotic form, the multiverse postulate.

2.7.2 The New Physics

Most remarkably, this disunified and unordered conception of reality was given its initial intellectual plausibility by the “new physics” of the early 20^th century which seemed to show stochastic processes,[141] indeterminacy, and subjectivity at the sub-atomic level.  This was found attractive by those who, for various ideological reasons, wanted to generalize and characterize all of reality as contingent and subjective.  Quantum processes also seemed to be affected by the process of observing, i.e., they were asserted as lacking objectivity in an absolute sense, they were by nature subjective.  In quantum speak, the act of observation seemed to “collapse the wave function” to “actualize” a ‘particle’ in a particular location.  Famous experiments such as the double slit experiment seemed to show the presence of a particle in two different places at the same time and demonstrate a wave-particle duality,[142] i.e., it had a “fuzzy” ontological status.  One interpretation of this physics asserted that it denied the Law of Excluded Middle, one of the tenets of classical logic.[143]  With logic consequently viewed as purely conventional and faulty, reality was apparently elusive, fluid, and un-fixed.  This also flowed well with the postmodern Zeitgeist of the age in which the dogmatic religious metanarratives were collapsing under the weight of various pluralist and liberal responses to Darwinism.  That is, some of the postmodern narrative tended to cast existence as “ironic”—meaning that all our conceptions of ourselves (and reality generally) are tentative, we should not take life that seriously and we should abandon the foolish project that seeks a comprehensive understanding.[144]

However, the “extended meaning” (we might say philosophical implications) of such physical theories cannot reasonably be appropriated to the deconstructionist cause in defense of chance, contingency, and chaos.  It is certainly correct that there are two basic positions regarding the ontological status of the proposed quantum states i.e., are they actualized or just a convenient model.  Penrose firmly asserts the “objectivity” of the quantum state vector [145] as telling us something about the real world whereas Hawking denied quantum physics offers us anything other than convenient models.[146]  However, both Penrose and Hawking feel able to write popular accounts of the history of the Universe; that is, Hawking clearly believed there is a meaningful story to tell about the Universe.

In contrast, for the thorough going deconstructionist, it is a staple that there can be no history for it is not possible to understand the world from the outside, there is no objective position from which to view the world.  However, the logical fallacy is plain, just because we cannot be close enough to every historical account to give a fully objective account does not mean we cannot be close enough to understand the various dynamics at play and to assert a reasonable account with the expectation of a good degree of objectivity.[147]  Historical analysis and synthesis remain a worthwhile endeavor that is ignored at the price of the future; even our folk wisdom teaches us that if we ignore the mistakes of the past, we will repeat them.

However, there is a far more substantive and robust refutation of the deconstructionist position that can be made.  Theories of the “very large”, that is the cosmological or relativistic theories, were showing a remarkable amount of “tuning” of the universe which was taken as strengthening the case for determinism in natural law, for it appeared the universe was necessarily as it was.  For example, Wilkinson describes how Martin Rees’ Just Six Numbers had indicated a remarkable tuning in the basic physical constants of the universe and that all these constants not only needed to be the values they were but needed to be that as a group.[148]  Anyone with an understanding of probability appreciates the near impossibility of such an event as the individual probabilities, themselves considered infinitesimally small, are multiplied together for the overall probability.[149]

2.7.3 Cosmological and Teleological Arguments

As Polkinghorne also noted, this was prima facie attractive to those seeking evidence for divine design and still features predominantly in evidential style apologetics.[150]  I do not intend to consider these “classical” proofs in any detail for I believe they all share a fundamental logical weakness, and this can be explicated quickly here.  Any ‘design’ arguments (also known as cosmological or teleological arguments) are logically very weak as they do not necessarily point to a single designer and even if they did, it would not necessarily be to the specific “God” the monotheist would require.  Design arguments also suffer from the problem they are attempting to postulate something about the supernatural world from the natural world which as Kant put it, is also logically fallacious—we could only move to a designer that is part of the natural world or there would be more in our premises than in our conclusion.

That said, design arguments do work for the believer in a devotional sense,[151] serving as evidence from natural revelation because we already have the correct presuppositions and can give glory to God for his creation.  That is, in my view, they work as exegesis for believers but are weak as logical proofs for unbelievers, i.e., they are not a medium for natural theology.  This is not to say that they are still very popular in apologetic settings and are capable of a sophisticated defense,[152] but I do believe they have insoluble logical problems.

2.7.4 The Fine-Tuning Problem

However, the undeniable finetuning of the universe did (and does) present an enormous logical challenge to the physicalist, the evolutionist, and the general naturalist.  As the case for finetuning got louder, the need for a response got stronger.  It came in a particular interpretation of quantum theory which posited that any possible state does exist, and each combination would be a “universe” dimensionally isolated from the other, each with their own laws of physics.

That is, the intoxicating feature of the multiverse concept for the physicalist is the proposition that all possible worlds (each resulting from a particular combination of quantum states) do exist but in a disconnected fashion.  “Reality” was conceived of as a collection of universes, i.e., a multiverse and because there was considered an infinite plurality of quantum combinations, one combination would generate a universe like our own with the conditions for life.  If “nothing” can split into “matter” and “antimatter”[153] we have an entire materialist conception of the universe that has no requirement for “God” to even “light the touchpaper of the universe.” ^[154]  Thus, the fine-tuning problem is “solved”: our universe, despite its remarkable fine “tuning” must exist if anything exists at all, even if classical probability theory had suggested the near impossibility of that state.  This is obviously supremely attractive for the atheist materialist, but Wilkinson cites the problem with it well:

“[T]he exceedingly indirect nature of the evidence probably means the multiverse will remain at the furthest border of speculative science for some time to come. As for the fine-tuning problem, the Lewis/Tegmark infinite multiverse idea seems to solve it, but anything more specific such as string theory [155] just deflects the problems up to the next level of speculation.” [156]  (Emphasis added).

This is a loaded criticism, “speculative” science is hardly the rigorous, “hard science” the physicalists want to pretend physics is.  It hardly demands epistemic submission because of its compelling evidence.  It is arguable, as Penrose asserted, that there is no evidence, just pre-theoretical “toy theory”^[157] conjecture and it is difficult to imagine any path that would turn that conjecture into a theory that would even be granted the status of reasonable verisimilitude.[158]

We should also note that there are deep philosophy of physics issues skipped over with barely a nod here in these exotic accounts. It sidesteps the definition of “matter” and “antimatter” which are extremely problematic with antimatter possibly better described as a “virtual” mathematical construct with no physical analogue.[159]  It is also worthy of note here that the matter/anti-matter/dark-matter problems were motivators that prompted Hawkins to propose a “steady state” model of the universe [160] rather than an inflationary-deflationary one that he had famously formulated with Penrose in 1970.  On the inflationary universe hypothesis, 98% of the required mass of the universe demanded by the theory appears to be “missing.”  “Dark matter” was added as a concept to provide a cosmic fix for the model—matter that has not been detected but must be there for the theory to be tenable; black holes were once thought of as favorite candidates as reservoirs.  However, as more was learnt about black holes, this has not been maintained.

The dark matter problem was a driver for new cosmological theories that dispense with it.  Hawkings was not able to de-convert many of his peers to the non-inflationary view, after the forceful elegance of his work with Penrose (most still hold an inflationary model), though he asserted that early quantum effects removed the need for the “singularity” at the start of the inflation and the end of the expansion, a phase which was still necessary to generate the multiverse with suitable characteristics for life.  Further to this case in point, we find that Hawking advertised himself in the more serious literature as a “positivist” because he did not view his work as describing reality in any sense but merely as a model and it was irrelevant as to whether there was a corresponding physical object,[161] i.e., the universe “as it is in itself ” might be completely different from that predicted by his theories.

This is illustrated with brutal clarity by the philosophical weakness of the “infinite universes” position admitted in Hawking’s final paper before his death, in which Hawking described his revised multiverse theory as still a “toy model.”  His motivation for offering a revised version was to limit the required number of universes so that the theoretical problems of the “infinite” universe requirement could be mitigated.[162]  However, by weakening the possible universes, he aided the plausibility of those who favored some kind of design hypothesis which the infinite model had initially served to counter after Rees’ probability analysis.  So, despite Hawking being famous for and advertising a “theory of everything” [163] it seems there is actually very little but speculative conjecture of a vastly simplified model of the universe which is expressed in complex mathematics that did not convince his most able peers.

Thus, Penrose after a full decade of debate with Hawkings describes the ultimate paradox of modern physics, “it is a common view among many of today’s physicists that quantum mechanics provides us with no picture of reality at all”  [164] (emphasis original), an opinion remaining confirmed 13 years later from within quantum physics in a most emphatic manner by Glatfelder.[165]  We might thus feel distinctly unimpressed and unthreatened if this is the worldview of the most creative minds in the philosophy of physics, particularly if the best explanation of “what there is” has but the status of a “toy theory.”  We must assert it is a metaphysical presupposition that motivates such a position, not a discursive scientific process.  Goff admits this bluntly:

“If, in the earliest period of our universe, our laws were shaped by the right kind of probabilistic process, the many worlds theory could furnish us with enough variety of laws across the many worlds so as to make it likely that one would be fine-tuned. We don’t yet have evidence that our laws were shaped by such a process. But if the alternative is the postulation of a supernatural creator, then this seems like the more plausible proposal.”  [166]  (Emphasis added).

Goff here is appealing to nothing other than naturalistic prejudice as the basis for his “plausibility,” which mirrors the evidentialist believer’s preference for a supernatural creator hypothesis.  Neither possesses superior logical force.

2.7.5 Certainty and Reasonable Verisimilitude

In our brief account above, it is evident that we have ample prima facie warrant to reject both skepticism and fallibilism as a normative basis for our epistemology, surprising ourselves that the latter offers an unworkable alternative to skepticism, either suffering from arbitrariness of criteria when defining its position or being vulnerable to skepticism when it makes strong knowledge claims.  This is not to deny that it might indeed be true that secular and non-presuppositional epistemologies, including those claiming to be theistic, are forced to conclude “we are all fallibilists now,” [167] as any attempt to ground epistemology on infallible criteria seems impossible on a non-circular basis and sometimes viciously so.[168]  We will seek to substantiate this prima facie warrant into the philosophical necessity for epistemological self-consciousness as we progress through this work, but our point here is that to fully grasp the significance of Schlipp’s criticism of analytic philosophy noted above is the challenge to not be philosophically timid and for us to reengage with the big problems of philosophy once again.  Concisely, it is to understand the possibility of certain knowledge and the ability to apply it.

That said, there might indeed be, and I would say there definitely are, domains of knowledge where our knowledge is always perceived of as developing or limited and might, in a sense, be argued as “uncertain.”  Yet, that admission is not an imperative for skepticism, rather our basic philosophical and psychological orientation remains epistemologically self-conscious and scientific in the sense we believe our knowledge is always progressing towards the truth; truth remains a legitimate goal of our enquiry.[169]  The important philosophical distinction here is that we can claim certain foundations for our claims to the possibility of knowledge, whilst recognizing we do indeed learn through analysis and experience such that our knowledge grows.

Thus, critical realists (CR) like to call this basic orientation “reasonable verisimilitude” (RV) and Polkinghorne makes this the centerpiece of his approach.[170]  Polkinghorne’s work demands serious engagement for as a senior scientist who then trained as a priest but who also remained scientifically and theologically engaged, he brings a refreshing perspective, and he provides a persuasive case, contra Hawking, that the “true Theory of Everything…is trinitarian theology.” [171]  He is also a committed realist in that he believes the experimentally driven physical research, does indeed ‘discover’ something that is really there.  This presents quantum physics with a far more objective sense and helps us escape from the meandering conjectures and exotic fantasies surrounding quantum physics that seem to gain intellectual respectability because the speaker once did something for science.[172]

Yet, he does believe his approach is “mediating between postmodernism and modernism” so his knowledge claims, though he considers them as having strong ontological significance and truth value, are unlikely to refute the self-conscious sceptic.  Where to draw this line between modernism and postmodernism, if it is accepted as a legitimate possibility, cannot be seen as an objective process.  Polkinghorne leaves himself open to critique on this basis and vulnerable to claims of subjectivity.  It would appear the CR/RV position gets pulled into the black hole of fallibilism if the sceptic pushes hard enough.

2.7.6 Conclusion

In our analysis above of the various recapitulations of the fallibilist positions, we find that when they are driven to epistemological self-consciousness, these ‘scientific’ formulations are seen to be woefully inadequate and unsatisfactory as to the nature of reality and a theory of knowledge.  Their associated ethical implications which became plain in the generalization of a “chance” principle and the denial that any certain moral knowledge is possible, are thus also brought into question.  Thus, our intermediate conclusion must be that the messianic promises made of empirical “science” in all these philosophical forms are ill-equipped to deal with skepticism and cannot form a firm foundation on which to build a society.  The clarity we have obtained at this juncture also demonstrates the effectiveness of our methodology of moving them to epistemological self-consciousness.  Thus, we will now consider some of the more rationalistic concepts that emerged in post-Reformational and Enlightenment modes of thought, that is, both secular and Christian innovations, and apply the same critique to them with a view to providing a bridge into our wider programme of epistemological self-consciousness.

2.8 The Imperative for Epistemological Self-Consciousness

2.8.1 The Quest for Common Ground

The Renaissance and Enlightenment mindsets drew heavily on the Greek mindset, literature, and philosophy with which we began our discussion.  The era is often popularly conceived of and taught as a “rediscovery” of this classical or “golden age” of Greek culture with its emphasis on humanism and autonomy in contrast to the Catholic hegemony.  However, it should be noted that the relationship with the Catholic church during the Period was not always adversarial, there was a large patronage of universities by the Church and some of what was considered the Christian Renaissance was acclaimed as some of the best work of the period, but it was true that the lack of progress in science was the exception to the general advancement in other parts of culture. [173]  Rather paradoxically, this was not so much to do with the catholic hegemony but rather with the dominance of Aristotelianism and its teleological accounts of science within the academy.

Yet it certainly remains defensible that it was with the work of Plato [174] (429–347 BC) and his pupil Aristotle (384-322 BC), that the Western Early Modern tradition owes so much.  It was also true that later thinkers such as Epicurus (c.300BC), in whom we see the first strong articulations of naturalism and atheological skepticism which were to feature in some Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume.  Hume found Epicurus’ atheological argument from evil compelling, “Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”  [175]  Pelagius believed he was following Augustine when he answered that question with the concept of human freedom [176] and it has had some forceful defenders in our contemporary generation of philosophers.[177]

It should be of no surprise then that we see a series of Catholic philosophers, who like some of the early church Fathers, were heavily influenced by Greek thought and imported that conception of reason.  Leaving out the long historical sequence before him, this “scholastic” tradition was seen to have its most articulate and rigorous working out in St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)  In apologetics it is asserted that it was Aquinas’ appropriation of Aristotle that sets the basic orientation of Catholic thought that continues to the present  with, it is said, its general principle of a common reason providing the grounding for apologetic argument, the outreach and appeal to the unbeliever is on the basis of discursive argument, the claims of Christianity will be demonstrated to them through direct arguments with premises that can be accepted by both sides.[178]

Thus, Aquinas’ “Five Ways” from his Summa [179] being the archetypal examples of the method, all being variations on the cosmological principle, providing the foundation to what came to be called natural theology—a proof for God’s existence derived from nature alone.  In this respect, Aquinas, in this rational innovation, precipitated a radical departure from his own position by those less cautious in their theological commitments.  For this reason, we need some important clarification and qualification to correctly understand the track from Aquinas into what might be called ‘natural theology’ and the evidential method of apologetics if we are not to misrepresent Aquinas; there is some question regarding whether natural theology is an innovation from his work rather than an expression of it.

Prima facie it is not difficult to recruit a traditional understanding of Aquinas to the evidentialist cause. For example, in his Summa contra Gentiles he argues he “must have recourse to natural reason, since the gentiles do not accept the authority of scripture.”  The first four books of the Summa make no appeal to “revelation” other than to confirm the conclusions reached by reason.  We might be tempted to argue that we had already seen a similar pattern in Anselm (b.1033, d.1109) who argued impressively on the basis of “reason alone” for “faith seeking understanding” but in an important sense, for Anselm as most certainly with Augustine, faith was seen to precede reason.  The traditional interpretation of Aquinas in many Reformed accounts of Thomism (and indeed many conservative Thomist thinkers for the best part of five centuries) was that he reversed this priority, i.e., that reason provides the grounding for faith.[180]

This traditional account of Aquinas asserts that we know by revelation through grace or by reason and that God can be known in both ways, but with God in His essence considered as incorporeal, proof of God through reason will always be indirect.  Aquinas was empirical in orientation and had no desire to appeal to intuition to substantiate the rational knowledge of God, it is through the senses that reason mediates the world.  From these principles, God consequently cannot be directly known by reason but must be known by analogy and remotion.[181]  Thus, the famous arguments early in his Summa proceed backwards through the chain of causality to God.[182]  His core argument was that if all objects were contingent, by definition there must have been a time where they did not exist; but because they do exist there must be some necessary object (which we will assign to be God) that caused them to come into existence.  These contingent objects were the objects of nature which Aquinas enveloped such that they had a functional separateness and independence from the divine nature, i.e., suggestive of a theory of natural law.  It is this conception of a realm of pura naturalis (“pure nature”) which was to precipitate what became both a theological and a scientific revolution.

Dupré describes his innovation as developing in subsequent thinkers in terms of a theory of secondary causes, “a conception of nature as fully equipped to act without divine assistance.” [183]  However, this must be considered an innovation rather than an exegesis of his account as Aquinas was always careful to avoid the separation into two independent or parallel accounts, the two constituted a single reality directed towards a supernatural end.  This elucidates the alleged tension in Aquinas that had so disturbed Russell.[184]  For Russell, Aquinas’ appeal to reason was “insincere” because the conclusion was “fixed in advance,” i.e., from revelation.  Aquinas seems to be being accused by Russell of being Augustinian.  However, equally, Aquinas in his dependence on Aristotle was vulnerable to the criticisms of Aristotle’s conception of the “universal” as embedded in the “particular,” where the active intellect extracts the universal from the particular and that “form” was held, instantiated, within the intellect.

This was philosophically problematic; it was at best paradoxical to assert the presence of a universal in a particular by definition and there was a search for how such a position could not just be mitigated but avoided altogether.  To deal more effectively with the problem of universals and particulars, there was a movement towards nominalism where the universal is merely considered a convenient linguistic label.  When combined with a voluntaristic account, first articulated by Scotus but radically in Ockham, a division between nature and grace was making a naturalistic account not just possible but the foundation upon which, according to Dupré both Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic thought was to unconsciously proceed.[185]  Thus, it was in the work of Aquinas’ interpreters Cajetan and de Suarez in the 16^th century that formalized this division between nature and grace, with a priority given to naturalism, to the near exclusion of the spiritual.  It is this naturalistic form of Thomism that characterizes evidential apologetics within a Catholic, a Reformed or an evangelical context.  This Lubac wishes to expose as a faulty exegesis of the thoughts of Aquinas whilst simultaneously acknowledging that it was a dominant conception within Thomist theologians only facing a concerted reappraisal in the first half of the 20^th century.[186]  Lubac’s thesis was that that a return to an Augustinian foundation would be compatible with a correct reading of Aquinas,[187] thus it is this ‘aberrant’ version of Thomism that lends itself to evidentialism.  Rather provocatively then we might consider the implicit reformation of Lubac as compatible with our own aim of restoring the properly Christian foundations of rationality, though this would be something that would need to be examined further in a separate work.

Thus, it becomes more interesting for us that Plantinga identifies the “germ” of what Calvin labelled the sensus divinitus in Aquinas and he described his own epistemological model [188] as the Extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model, in preference to the earlier “Reformed Epistemology” moniker.  It must be noted that though he spent a considerable period at Catholic Notre Dame after Calvin,[189] it is still implausible this change of nomenclature may have been merely a concessive political gesture.[190]  It is certainly contrary to Plantinga’s personal testimony in response to anticipated criticism when joining Notre Dame in which he endorsed Notre Dame as being home to some of the finest Protestant thinkers also.  That is, the traditional demarcation between Catholic and Reformed thought is not as clear-cut as many accounts suggest.  It should also be noted that the pre-eminence of reason is not peculiar to the neo-Thomist apologetics challenged as heterodox by Lubac, and it is readily found in Reformed thought.  They become issues of emphasis rather than substantive difference and this is one of the reasons that Van Til was so forceful in his rejection of it, or at least in the priority given to ‘evidences.’  ‘Evidences’ are not self-evidential, facts are not ‘brute’ facts, so evidences are founded on a philosophy of evidences.  These important issues we consider later in this work.

So, in summary, despite the complexity of the theological landscape we have sketched above which denies the simple separation of Catholic and Reformed thought, history still teaches us that it is on the naturalistic assumption which theologians and philosophers have proceeded and which we will demonstrate is unsupportable.  Implicit in this position is that the “principle of reason” was considered general and universal, there was a “common intellectual ground” on which an argument could be undertaken and worked through on the basis of reason alone.  However, with Lubac we can concur, “the dualism engendered by an obsessive notion of ‘pure nature’ was not without its uses” [191] if for no other reason than to confute artificial teleological accounts which had hampered the progress of natural science.  It was thus in the wake of the Reformation proceeding as Dupré hinted in a mode friendly to pura naturalis assumptions, that there was a major expansion of science as Aristotelianism lost its grip, even amongst the Catholic scientists.

It was rather the papal reaction to Galileo that caused serious complications for the Catholic scientists, the censuring of Copernicus was actually after his work had been assimilated to a large degree by the lower levels of the Church.[192]  Similarly, Lubac was first censured by Pope Pius XII in 1950 seeking to articulate what was already a nascent repositioning in Catholic thought,[193] a decision effectively reversed when Pope John Paul II appointed him a cardinal in 1983.[194]  So, much as secularists like to set in opposition science and religion, or the sectarian Reformed want to castigate the Catholic hegemony for their stifling of science, the situation was and is far more complex and nuanced.  The battle is rather at the worldview level independent of sectarian allegiance, and it is that which we are seeking to articulate ultimately in our work.

2.8.2 Beyond Common Ground

Thus, it should be apparent to us that a more sophisticated rationality was required to support orthodox Christian premises whilst maintaining the important contact with the real world. This was not to be found in the Fundamentalist movement that emerged as a reaction to the Liberalism of the academy, who chose instead to withdraw from mainstream academic life for close to half a century until the early 1970s.  Similarly, the American Reformed Christian world splintered into various denominations after the reorganization of Princeton by a denomination seeking to liberalize their theology and it was to be from Calvin college, a locus of the Dutch-Reformed tradition, that something of a renaissance in Christian scholarship emerged out of the philosophy department, particularly in the figures of Alvin Plantinga and Cornelius Van Til, who both studied under Harry Jellema, recognized by both as a highly influential teacher of Christian philosophy.

Plantinga’s work can be seen as analytic philosophical theology developing a far more robust reliabilism with a careful and sophisticated development of Reid. In Plantinga we see that alongside a metaphysical commitment to realism, there is not a denial of the interrelatedness of the subject, their world, and the world around us.  There is the ethical presupposition of standing in God’s world and being accountable.  This avoids the lapse, like the positivists and the naturalists, into skepticism, scientism, or both.  In contrast, Van Til was in the broad Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition and his philosophical theology can be seen as seeking to build upon the seminal work of the great Christian theologian and statesperson of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, Abraham Kuyper.[195]  Kuyper had recapitulated a Calvinist philosophy of life fitted for modernity whilst vigorously rejecting the various faces of modernism.  He argued with great force against the Darwinist, Liberal and the emerging socialist metanarratives, that had come to dominate the philosophical Zeitgeist and the wider cultural milieu which we have considered earlier when discussing the influences of Darwinism and modern naturalism.  However, with the backwash of Arminian revivalism, the obscurantism and cultural ghettoism of the dispensationalist premillennialism of the emerging Fundamentalist movement, it made his profound and intellectually rigorous message anachronistic and unappealing to the wider anti-intellectual Christian consciousness, even at the time he was expounding it.

In contrast to this emergent ‘New Evangelicalism,’ Van Til offered an orthodox, Reformed but sophisticated development of Kuyper whilst simultaneously arguing for the objectivity of Christianity, the latter a distinctive of the ‘rival’ Reformed Princetonian Warfieldian view, developing his position from the mid-1930s onwards.[196]  He was to lay the ground for a dramatic re-entry of conservative Christianity into the public square without ever being directly involved in the Reconstructionist movement he spawned.[197]  He had helped develop the epistemological basis for the programme to counter the inadequacy of the Christian consciousness, which had been ill equipped to counter the flow into either mysticism or liberalism, and the subsequent loss of political influence to the pragmatism of John Dewey in the US and to far worse in Europe.  As we have already seen, the old Liberalism of the European empires disintegrated as the rational nihilism of Nietzsche was given teeth in the Nazi movement.

Thus, with Plantinga and Van Til there was to be an intellectual turning point in the early 1950s.  Plantinga was just beginning his career, Van Til was maturing into popularizing his position.  Their influences were felt in very different spheres but with both being Reformed thinkers arguing for Christian philosophy from Christian premises.  We will examine in detail in future sections what they brought to the table, but we have already intimated in our preliminary discussion that we will need to follow first Plantinga and then Van Til if we hope to salvage any hope for a rational, Christian philosophy.

2.8.3 Holism

In our survey above, we have found that the basic problems with fallibilism are that of incoherence and arbitrariness, displayed both in philosophy and so-called scientific conjecture.  If you cannot mitigate skepticism at a basic logical level, the sceptic will always defeat you as the lines you need to draw for your theorizing they can legitimately reject.  Thus, it is no wonder that Schilpp, addressing the APA at the intersection of the pragmatic, positivist, and naturalist philosophies, was so scathing in his criticism of modern analytic philosophy and why this work will continue to argue antithetically to tolerating the scandal of skepticism.

Even the finest naturalist philosophers such as Quine retreat into fallibilist language at points of difficulty but then proceed past the difficulty on the basis that the difficulty is solved by “reasonable intuitions.”  [198]  If the intuition really is reasonable, it might reasonably not qualify as an intuition but as a judgment; just as Quine’s use of the term “intuition” elsewhere  has a qualified, technical meaning distinct from the somewhat irrational implication of the term.[199] However, he does seem arbitrary in sometimes using it in the sense of something beyond our conscious reasoning process as more of an “informed guess,” so much for rigor!  We are not being rude to Quine here but merely imitating the master who famously dismissed modal logic and various other important problems of philosophy with the phrase, “so much for X.” [200]  Yet, conversely, there is something very profound and important to be found in Quine.

In his emphatic repudiation of logical positivism, Quine reopened the door to metaphysical questions as legitimate questions and brought into sharp focus the richness of our cognitive picture and the elaborate taxonomy of our rationality.  One of Quine’s arguments in two dogmas that was so revolutionary was his “holism.”  It was the whole of our statements about the external world that should be confirmed or infirmed and not the individual statement “taken in isolation from its fellows.” [201]  This was a radical break with the logical atomism that had been characteristic of the empiricist movement in the 20^th century.

He proceeded to describe his philosophy concisely in a textbook for young students and it serves as a concise primer on modern rationality conceived of in terms of a scientific holism.[202]  He uses the “web” as a metaphor and it is a particularly well-chosen metaphor, the web is multifaceted but has a center that is the most important section, giving it its coherence and strength, with every part of the web is linked to it.  It provides the lens through which all else is interpreted and evaluated.[203]  The web can suffer substantial damage to the periphery but retains strength and offers coherence provided its core remains undamaged.  Thus, although a naturalist and an atheist, Quine is of great interest to us because he talks in his work about a “view of nature” which, in the semantics of our thesis, we will call a “worldview.” [204]  Thus, taken with the work of Kuhn in the following decade and perhaps foreshadowed in the work of Popper a decade before, we consolidate our conclusion reached in our discussion of fallibilism that modern “science” struggles not just to define itself, but also its fundamental arbitrary nature and its weak claims to objectivity.[205]  We confirm that an idol has been made of “modern science” as the oracle of truth when its inner circle knows its own reality is very different.

2.8.4 The Unity of Apperception

The challenge we are repeatedly seeing in our discussion above is the problem of the construction and the unity of knowledge which Kant was unable to reconcile.  When Kant’s famous aphorism gets quoted:

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” [206]

It is often with a sense that it is a profound mystical or religious insight.  Perhaps there is an element of Kant’s own religiosity there, but it is more readily understood as an admission of the total failure to reconcile the principles of the natural world with the principles of the inner, perceptual world.  This is owing in part to the equally as significant insight that percept and concept were in a circular relationship to one another.  He recognized that the unity of apperception, that process of explaining how knowledge gets structured in the mind, had been dealt with poorly by philosophers.

Nevertheless, his solution to Hume’s skepticism by simply reflecting Hume’s despairing conclusion as the answer to Hume, turned out to be no solution at all, he pours concrete around his feet and forever separates the noumenal, phenomenal and noetic realms with the implausible thesis that all minds conform to the transcendental categories.  Even for the contemporary neo-Kantians such as Strawson, this thesis was too psychological and problematic.

Thus, for the Van Tillian, Kant’s motivation of attempting to establish the transcendentals of human understanding was the correct project but ultimately succumbed to and formalized the skepticism that had awoken him from his dogmatic slumbers only to sleep twice as soundly.  In contrast, Van Tillians agree with him that the stakes are high for the possibility of knowledge; for Hume’s deconstruction of reason, captured in his conclusion “when considered as an abstract view it furnishes invincible arguments against itself,” [207] destroyed the possibility of knowledge.  There seemed to be no rational basis for rationality, and we can formally agree with Hume that considering reason as the abstract, or the autonomous human reason, will indeed destroy the possibility of a coherent theory of knowledge.  Thus, we will work through the argument that Van Tillian transcendentalism using the transcendental of the ontological Trinity as a transcendent transcendental seeks to provide the solution to this problem of knowledge where Kant’s transcendental failed.

That is, what we seek to work through is that the imperative for epistemological self-consciousness is that we can be certain that our metaphysical claims about the nature of reality, those claims being guaranteed by the inscripturated Word and the character of God.  We are not direct foundationalists in the autonomous sense of scientism but are foundationalist in the indirect, transcendental sense when ‘transcendental’ is interpreted in a specific Christian context with a specific referent.  Only then can the problem of knowledge be solved.

2.8.5 Epistemological Self-Consciousness and Uncertainty

For the Christian philosopher, and we have endeavored to show for any philosopher wishing to be critical and aware of their own presuppositions, the main divisions of philosophical enquiry are not hermetically sealed off from one another and that intellectual coherence is only obtained when one understands this interrelatedness and can articulate it.  That is, they have come to a place of epistemological self-consciousness.  This does not minimize the role or necessity of analysis as articulated so strongly by Russell, but rather presses it into the service of the synthetic function as articulated by Moore.

That is, without synthesis, analysis is rarefied and bare, the philosophy it produces is sterile or at best, shallow, reducing in Rorty’s words to “poetry” or “cultural politics” rather than a body of knowledge and understanding.[208]  By “shallow” we do not mean it is without merit or significance, but for Rorty as the “post-analytic” philosophical standard bearer of the “post-modern pragmatist” movement, philosophy is simply a matter of “speaking about” the target subject matter in a particular way, the “solution” lies elsewhere.[209]  Here we find the antithetical position to that argued in this work — much of modern philosophy seems to consider it as a “given” or of a matter of disciplinary orthodoxy that “we can be certain of nothing,” except of course that we can be certain that we can be certain of nothing.

Now, for the purposes of clarity we have stripped down the sometimes exotic and complex formulations of the fallibilism at the center of the perspectives above to get at the logical core and expose its logical frailty, whilst hopefully avoiding the construction of strawmen.  Sometimes we are constrained to deal with probabilities and reasonable verisimilitude (as maintained by some critical realists), as well as the empirical methods of the Bayesian schools for interpreting new evidence.  We can still acknowledge the value and worth of this work when working in the different spheres of life.

That is, accepting Kuyper’s principle, we understand that each sphere or modality of life has a degree of autonomy and its principles; the religious does not dictate to them, but it is legitimate to stand as the ethical guardian and to robustly engage in critical challenge when necessary.[210]  In contrast, it is the univocal naturalism of these schools that we challenge that never permits them to move beyond discussions of probabilities rather than certainties and we end up in that philosophical cul-de-sac of Neurath’s sailors.  Such methods are plainly ill-equipped to deal with ethical questions such as value and moral knowledge.

Whilst we might not be able to ascertain complete confidence in our various sciences, that then does mean that our foundations, metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical, completely collapse.  As Plantinga noted, just because classical epistemological foundationalism was found wanting that does not imply, as Rorty asserted, that all foundationalism is refuted.  In the same manner for ethics, Blackburn concurs where he argues very strongly for the moral imperative based on a robust commitment to ethical knowledge on the basis of a convictions regarding right and wrong both historically and in our shared world.[211]

2.9 Summary and Conclusion

In this chapter, we began where it all began for philosophy (in the Western tradition at least) with Greece.  We asked the simple question “Why the Greeks?”  We argued that the humanism, proto-naturalism, and autonomous or self-sufficient mindset of the Greeks was what made them the progenitors of the dominant stream of what reemerged in the Enlightenment rebellion against religious authority and has become the dominant intellectual temper of our time.  We argued that naturalism needs to be understood as an imprecise category and as an elastic term.  We stressed that a culture could still speak with language that sounded theistic but, in that context, God was a projection of human traits and could be considered naturalistic.  We argued that naturalism is best taken as describing the drift of Greek culture into what we now call scientific naturalism with its empirical assumptions; we noted Epicurus was one of the first philosophers to articulate that view.  We indicated that a strong critique has been made of this equation of naturalism with the scientific and it was our intention to explicate this.  However, we did want to acknowledge the importance of the Greek taxonomy of rationality for us and we concurred with the tripartite view of philosophy as metaphysics, epistemology, and a theory of value (that is, ethics and aesthetics).

We then considered the most serious ‘problem’ with this conception, that there was a interdependence between the terms and that this circularity had led to an intense hostility to metaphysics and its attempted eviction from philosophy first by Hume and most recently by the logical positivists; we examined in some detail the presumptions of the positivists and the eventual reason for the failure of their project, being that its central principle, the Verification principle, exempted itself from its own criteria.  We could thus assert the legitimacy of metaphysics as a branch of knowledge.  We also saw that the “problem of other minds” was one of the fundamental challenges for philosophy and this introduced us to how the issues of epistemology were central to Western thought.  We saw how Plantinga exploited the tension to argue that a Christian could not be considered “irrational” because a belief in God was on the same level as the belief in other minds.  We saw how this provided the backdrop to his overall ‘Reformed Epistemology—Extended Aquinas/Calvin’ project which terminated in a sophisticated argument for the rational acceptability of Christian belief but with no necessity.  This was also the first mention of Van Til’s project to argue for the necessity of Christian belief for rationality.

We considered how logical positivism after its fall gave way to scientism, the view that the only legitimate questions were questions that science could answer, or alternatively what we asserted was the ethical view that the only questions worth asking were the questions science could answer.  This we noted was devastating for philosophy in that it reified it of content, converted ethics into a descriptive process and denied synthesis as a legitimate function of philosophy in favor of analysis or a mere description of relations.  This helped us assert the need for a synthetic function of philosophy and our belief that one of the chief tasks of philosophy was to frame a worldview, a comprehensive account of reality and its relations.  We also equated this with our stated aim at the start of this work that philosophy should be transformative, we do not merely want to analyze and clarify problems but also to assist in solving those problems.

We then proceeded to map out what we should expect from a philosophical theory, we demonstrated a commitment to realism and an objective reality.  We considered correspondence, coherence, and truth as necessarily objective, rejecting any subjective conceptions of truth as confusing warranted belief with truth.  We understood how a commitment to realism helps distinguish philosophies between internally coherent “dream philosophies” and philosophies, using Wittgenstein’s dictum, rooted in the practice of living in the real-world.  Again, we are noting here the need for philosophy to be transformative and relevant to living in the world but not merely pragmatic; noting the fundamental weakness of pragmatism was a dogmatic commitment to a preconception of what was “useful” or “beneficial.”  Recognizing there were various problems with realism, we then took a deep dive into skepticism and argued that philosophy historically could be considered a series of responses to skepticism.

We considered that modern philosophy was founded on the methodological skepticism of Descartes but recognized that his skepticism was qualitatively different than the metaphysical skepticism that Hume was driven to in his desire to be rigorously empirical.  We considered how Kant wanted to mitigate that skepticism and how the consensus amongst Kant scholars was that he did so by separating reality into the noumenal and phenomenal.  Science was concerned with the phenomenal, the way things appear to us and that was the limit of our knowledge.  We might have useful posits such as God which belonged to the noumenal realm, but they were beyond proof or knowledge.  We considered how Kant was the turning point of the subsequent philosophy, some argued for mysticism as the route to the knowledge of the noumenal in preference to his chastening of rationality, others rejected the noumenal realm and asserted phenomena was all that we had.

We considered the preference of twentieth century philosophy for fallibilism, the view that skepticism can be accepted but mitigated in some way.  However, we noted the varieties of fallibilism, even in the sophisticated theories of modern physics that seemed to demonstrate indeterminacy and chance at a microscopic level, were not categorical or convincing arguments with the two giants of modern physics, Hawkings, and Penrose, having mutually exclusive metaphysical conclusions.  There was no “scientific” answer, but our very conceptions of reality are theory laden and have a fundamental metaphysical commitment that is pretheoretical.  We saw that the most exotic naturalism of the multiverse postulate, was exposed as a metaphysical prejudice.

We then examined how we might structure our own Christian metaphysical commitment, and whether there was a possibility of a “common ground” with the unbeliever where we can meet and resolve our differences.  We found the traditional arguments of natural theology were logically fallacious.  We saw that the principal issue was one of the relative roles of reason and faith, particularly which one was to be considered primary.  We considered the Augustinian view that faith would provide the grounding for reason and the alleged reversal within the neo-Thomist position that faith should be first demonstrated to be reasonable.  The latter was shown to be the catalyst for a view of nature as in a distinct realm subject to its own laws, which in turn would lead to the dominance of a non-spiritual view of reality and the retreat of Augustinian apologetics.  This became cemented as a “common sense” rationality and was the context for the emergence and domination of evidentialist and classical apologetics which were empirical and naturalistic in their approach.  However, the same epistemological commitment became catastrophic to Christian philosophy when Darwin published his findings which seemed to indicate that on the same commonsense basis, the metaphysical accounts of Christian scripture were at best mythical.  This led to a rapid liberalization and secularization of previously conservative colleges, unable to refute Darwinism and the consequent withdrawal of conservative and orthodox Christian influence from the public square.

We noted that both within the Catholic communion in the work of Lubac and from within the Reformed communion in Van Til and Plantinga, there was a renewal of the Augustinian view which precipitated a movement towards epistemological self-consciousness.  Lubac challenged the concept of a pure nature, that could be understood independent of God’s revelation and providence.  Plantinga demonstrated the weakness of the Darwinian position, in that its naturalism was self-vitiating; where is the rationale for believing what nature tells us?  We noted that within philosophy generally there was a rejection of positivist dogma and the acceptance of the theory-laden principle; a gradual rehabilitation of metaphysics, with philosophers like Quine arguing for a holism and an interconnected web of beliefs.  We understood that with Van Til this holism is given a scriptural and a Christian context and that he asserts that only transcendental reasoning is able to mediate the truthfulness of rival worldviews and deal with the unity of apperception problem that Kant had been unable to resolve.  In contrast, Plantinga argues that the way forward is with a radically overhauled Reidian foundationalism; a commitment that the world really is as it appears to us and that our faculties will give us knowledge of the world.  Whilst this does not provide an objective philosophical proof, it is internally coherent and rational.  Thus, we begin to see a Christian philosophy is possible and indeed desirable, the consensus amongst the fallibilist was that our rationality needs a rationale, but none could be found for it — thus, the imperative, we must offer one.

Thus, the next tasks of our work must be to demonstrate how Christian “worldview” philosophy, which is necessarily apologetic, provides that rationale.  Yet, it is important to assert immediately that we are not arguing for a static view of knowledge, to replace pragmatism with dogma or requiring that one is forced to accept from a range of competing a priori views of the world.  Rather, we shall be arguing for the objective reasonableness of the Augustinian (or Reformed) understanding of Christianity and seek to establish the view that it is the only fully coherent and thus, truly rational view to hold.  We will be arguing transcendentally that it provides the basis of all rational thought and is implicit in all rational thought whether or not the subject recognizes it.  We will be arguing that all human beings are creatures of God, made in His image and to the degree that they behave and think rationally in conformance to that image, they are able to construct a scientific view of the world reflecting the revelation of the order in the mind of the Creator.  This is the heart of an apologetic philosophy.

So, as we brought the philosophical positions considered above to a place of epistemological self-consciousness, it became evident that: [NL 1-3]

1. They are inadequate as theories of reality.
2. Any attempt to dispense with metaphysics asserts a particular metaphysical dogma and is thus incoherent.
3. We must argue that only a specialized conception of the model reflected by the classical tripartite conception of philosophy, the Christian theistic worldview (and that further refined to the Augustinian tradition), is the only position that is not rendered incoherent and has a legitimate claim to rationality. [/NL 1-3]

Regarding 1 and 2 we might find a broad, if grudging and an often hidden, implicit, acknowledgement within reflective philosophy, because we have indeed managed to generate such a diverse and wide range of philosophical perspectives to address this inadequacy and the incoherence.  That it might be solved by 3 is what we must now turn to address for many would consider any reference to theistic solutions to the problems of knowledge as either a return to the past or “theology not philosophy.”  However, it is only by establishing the theological foundation that we can rescue any conception of philosophy and to save it from the abyss of postmodern deconstructionism and paralogism.

[1] I acknowledge the critique of Professor Ó Murchadha of an earlier draft at this point, and the suggestion that my purpose could be served by considering only the analytic tradition.

[2] Capra, The Tao of Physics, 22.

[3] Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, backmatter.

[4]  Democritus actually has a completely different sense to his terms and should not be considered a precursor to modern atomic theory.

[5] Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 65.

[6] As Nagel, Knowledge—A Very Short Introduction, 58, notes, Dharmottara anticipated the Gettier problem with specific examples of his own; Gaṅgeṥa gave a detailed causal theory of knowledge.

[7] Cf. Job 1:3; Mat 2:1 (NAS).  NAS note on this verse is illuminating, “Pronounced may-ji, a caste of wise men specializing in astrology, medicine and natural science.”

[8] The book of Job is recognized as the most ancient biblical composition and may have a relationship with the “Babylonian Job,” an earlier composition meditating on the righteous and suffering.

[9] Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, 18.

[10] Bahnsen, in Practical Apologetics, notes with some humor that the problems of the gods were human problems, Zeus’ nagging wife but one.

[11] Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology, 177, 179–80.

[12] Sainte-Beuvre, Port Royal, 1052.

[13] Van Fraassen is credited with “restoring respectability to anti-realism in science.”  His influential theory of constructive empiricism presented in his 1980 book The Scientific Image.

[14] Van Fraassen, “Haldane on the Past and Future of Philosophy,” 177–81.  This is a particularly cogent and interesting response article.

[15] So, Feuerbach was perfectly willing to agree with his contemporary Schleiermacher that the experience of “total dependence” on an object outside of yourself was the essence of religion but the object of that dependence and worshipful adoration for Feuerbach was the natural potentiality of humanity itself, not a supernatural God.  Marx and Engels were greatly influenced by Feuerbach in their naturalization of religious experience.

[16] Van Fraassen, “Scientism: The New Orthodoxy,” 63–96.

[17] Again, eulogized in Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, xviii.

[18] Bertrand Russell relates some personal correspondence where the person he was writing to wrote back with surprise that there were not more solipsists like herself; empiricists have commonly had problems with justifying the external world and other minds, needing to rely on explanations from analogy—“I have a mind, you seem to be behaving like me, so you must have a mind”; they are hardly convincing and are certainly vulnerable to criticism.  Some also consider Berkeley to be arguing for a form of solipsism and Descartes starting point to be solipsistic.

[19] Thornton, Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds.

[20] Kenny, History of Western Philosophy, 616–19.

[21] Plantinga, God and Other Minds, xii.

[22] It was quite a major qualification concerning his later distinction between justification and warrant.  We consider this conception in some detail in a future section.

[23] Butler, Plantinga, MB200–MB210.

[24] We will develop this line of criticism as well as Plantinga’s positive apologetics in future sections.

[25] His formulation of a “Free Will” defense regarding the problem of evil (1974) was considered objectionable in conservative Reformed circles.  However, Plantinga was arguing as a logician and was contesting the claims of leading atheologians that the presence of evil disproved the existence of a good, omnipotent, and omniscient God.  He dismissed the argument on its own terms, he was judged to have succeeded in this regard, even amongst the serious atheists.

[26] He spent the years 1963–1982 there and from 2010 as Emeritus Professor.  Interestingly, he spent 1982–2010 at Notre Dame which, though a Catholic university, he defended as having some of the finest protestant thinkers.

[27] As a reviewer printed on the backmatter of the 1990 edition of God and Other Minds noted.

[28] At this point (2000) he preferred to describe it not as “Reformed Epistemology” (perhaps because of its sectarian ramifications as he had moved from Calvin to Notre Dame) but as the “Extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C)” model.  In fairness, it owes far more to Calvin than to Aquinas but is uniquely his as it drew criticism as to just how “Reformed” it was, e.g., Jeffreys (1997).  Others like Butler argued he had departed fundamentally from Calvin and Reformed thought.

[29] It was naturalistic in the sense he argued for it as a faculty of perception, i.e., as a part of the human person apart from any supernatural regeneration of the person.  The presence of sin affected its operation but did not prevent it.  However, the faculty was considered God-given which is a rather different context for naturalism to operate in.

[30] Plantinga, “Augustinian Christian Philosophy,” 291–320.

[31] We must immediately qualify our designation of Hume as an empiricist.  Hume was accused by Russell of a ‘destruction of empiricism’ (Russell, History, 646) in the sense that Hume’s desire to be a pure empiricist drove him to a radical skepticism and a rejection of the principle of induction upon which empiricism and much that counts as scientific reasoning rests upon.  However, as Russell rightly notes, Hume in practice wanted to maintain a reasonable approach to understanding the world rather than provide a justification for the irrationality and subjectivity of those like Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

[32] Hume & Steinberg, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, loc. 2399.

[33] Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.  Interestingly, this was published posthumously by his nephew in 1779 despite being completed by Hume as his last piece of work in 1761.  Hume had declined to publish wishing to “live quietly and keep remote from all clamour” for the closing years of his life after frequent confrontations in his career, as the contents were considered incendiary by all who knew of the work; see Aiken’s Introduction to Hume’s Dialogues.

[34] For example, Francis Bacon, a century and a half before Hume had elegantly identified many of the metaphysical “idols” of the human tribe and originated a worldview in which “science” (meaning empirical science) was idealized.  Inductive, empirical science was seen as salvation from prejudice and tyranny, as he wrote both in his philosophical treatise of 1620, the Novum Organon and in his utopian novel, The New Atlantis.  Bacon, in many ways, was far more influential than Hume, second only to Newton in developing a distinct conception of the practice and application of a ‘scientific’ philosophy; that is, a ‘scientific’ worldview.  Yet, in principle, they did not find the concept of God objectionable, even the Christian God; though both were arguably theologically heterodox and had little tolerance for clericalism or dogmatism, as was the case with most early moderns.

[35] Analytic philosophy is often conceived of emerging as a distinctive school with Moore and Russell at the turn of the century; with Frege and his revolutionary work on the logic and language as the historical precursor.  See Glock, Analytical Philosophy, ch.1.

[36] Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 41.

[37] This concession was made by the “softer” logical positivists to permit scientific theories where the verification was logically possible but practically improbable or very difficult to accomplish in practice.

[38] This was the essence of Wittgenstein’s criticism of it, which should carry particular weight as the verification principle itself was initially known as Wittgenstein’s verification principle (Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 286–87).  Wittgenstein had radically changed his conception of how language worked, remarking that in his early work he had over-emphasized the ‘language game of science.’  That is, there are other, meaningful ways of talking about the world which would not be considered ‘scientific’ but would still be considered rational.

[39] Some care does need to be exercised with too readily appropriating Russell into the movement.  It is undeniable he was a foundational member of the Vienna Circle but his later conception of philosophy as needing more than just logical analysis sets him apart in my view.  The affinities and differences are evident in the essay ‘Logical Positivism’ (1950) which in its closing pages also describe its own inconsistency and inability to justify its own presuppositions.

[40] Russell, History, 788.

[41] Neurath, “Protocol Statements,” 92.

[42] Logical positivists were universally robust in dismissing even the possibility of “synthetic a priori” knowledge, see Schlick, General Theory, 384.  All knowledge was knowledge of particulars gained through experience or analytic propositions.  That said, there were significant difference —Neurath, Carnap, and Schlick were sometimes considered as rival factions within the positivist movement because of Schlick’s commitment to realism which certainly suggests a priori commitments.  Neurath and Carnap both considered the realism–antirealism debate a ‘pseudo-problem’, i.e., a problem caused by linguistic confusion or convention, and thus without content.  The untimely death of Schlick curtailed the influence of those that favored his approach.

[43] Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, 16.

[44] In the second edition of LTL, he acknowledged in the introduction (p.5) the youthful excesses of the first edition.  Whilst in the second edition he maintained that the viewpoint was “still substantially correct,” he was later to reflect in later work that it was “predominantly incorrect” but had served a “valuable cathartic purpose.”

[45] Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” 20–46.

[46] It should be noted that its successor, methodological naturalism (MN), suffers from precisely the same problem—if all there is, is nature, why do we believe what nature tells us?  This is sometimes called “Darwin’s doubt.”  We will examine this problem in more detail.

[47] Ayer (1959) wrote his introduction to Logical Positivism as editor with the view that the post-positivist philosophy of Quine and Goodman, and the continuing work of members of the logical positivist school such as himself, Carnap, Neurath, and Hempel were a development of the position.  However, logical positivism is generally considered to have been devastatingly critiqued by Quine in his Two Dogmas (1953) and should be taken as marking the end of the movement.

[48] Mumford, Metaphysics—A Very Short Introduction, 98–108.

[49] Ayer, “Logical Positivism,” 9.

[50] Ayer edited a second edition of a compendium of logical positivist thought in 1966 (despite Quine’s dismantling of it in 1953) and clearly continued to regard that the naturalism of his contemporary philosophers had in a large measure been shaped by the logical positivist program.  Plantinga, Where The Conflict Really Lies, in discussing the tenor of naturalism in the early chapters of his book, concurs with this.  See n. 190.

[51] Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, 32, 33.

[52] Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 789.

[53] The Journal of Philosophy (Dec 22, 1960, Vol. 57, No. 26).  It contains contributions from several significant philosophers of the 20^th century who are not so much expressing agreement with Moore’s positions but championing his rigorous method and the quest for clarity in philosophical discourse.

[54] Moore, Some Main Problems of Philosophy, 1.

[55] Much more could (and should) be written to justify this conception of philosophy and subsequent sections will offer some justification for it, but not the space it would warrant in a dissertation focusing on metaphilosophy.  Wang in Beyond Analytic Philosophy, offered an insightful critique and an appeal for the broad philosophical project from within the analytic tradition whilst urging a position beyond it, perhaps captured in his words ‘From how I know to what we know’ (§ 19).  He considered modern naturalism to be answering the former question and neglecting the latter, which he viewed as the most important and the truly philosophical one.  He believed Gödel (a close friend) to have made progress with the latter.

[56] Russell, History, 789.

[57] Russell, History, 752.

[58] Russell, My Philosophical Development, 9–11.

[59] Russell, “Logical Positivism,” 380–81.

[60] Russell, Problems of Philosophy, 111 ff.

[61] Russell, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell.

[62] Blackburn, Truth—A Guide for the Perplexed, 170.

[63] Macneil, Feeling Good About Truth, 2

[64] As captured in the title “Take care of freedom and truth will take care of itself—Interviews with Richard Rorty,” a collection of interviews with Rorty spanning over two decades.  For Rorty truth was “merely a property of individual sentences” and there was “nothing of philosophical interest that could be written about it.”

[65] Plantinga, Afterword, 357.

[66] For example, idealists who held that the “real” was the “mental” or the “rational” had historically favored a coherence theory of truth—all the elements needed to cohere as an account of reality.  Similarly, realists who emphasized a physical world apart from our mental life that is mediated to us through our senses (though some naïve realists deny that experience is “mediated” through our senses as that implies a rational process) had favored a correspondence theory of truth, each propositional claim is tested against the world.

[67] Blackburn, Truth, 169–70.

[68] “Critical realism” is a philosophical school and a moderate response to skepticism.  We examine critical realism more closely in a future section.

[69] Carnap introduced the concept of the “pseudo-problem” as a sub-essay in his Aufbau (1928).  Dewey wrestled with many of the same problems and came to similar conclusions: who cares about Hume’s skepticism as a theoretical problem, what matters is that we can solve the practical problems of humanity.

[70] Descartes’ published the method informally to the general populace (in French) in his Discourse on the Method (1637) and more formally in Latin for the academy and for his ecclesiastical critics in his Meditations on First Philosophy (1642). In contrast to many of his critics, contemporary and modern, he did not in his cogito consider himself to be merely presenting a syllogistic proof; in that understanding he is plainly guilty of the logical fallacy of circular reasoning. Rather, for Descartes himself, “[one] does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind…if he were deducing existence by means of a syllogism, he would have to have had previous knowledge of the major premise,” AT 7.140.  In agreement with Butler, Transcendental Arguments, I believe it could be argued that his cogito was a conceptual transcendental argument rather than a syllogism.

[71] Russell, Human Knowledge—Its Scope and Limits, 161.

[72] Russell, “Logical Positivism,” 382.

[73] Willard, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, offered perhaps the most detailed analysis of how this view became normative in 20^th century philosophy then provided a substantive rebuttal of it.

[74] Abraham Kuyper was one of the most underappreciated intellectual pioneers of the Victorian era who founded a political party, a university and served as premier of the Netherlands whilst modernizing Calvinism for the modern world.  See Macneil, Abraham Kuyper for an examination of his cultural philosophy.  This book itself might legitimately be considered broadly “Kuyperian” in outlook.

[75] Nietzschean scholars, such as Diethe and Holub, are at great pains to distance his thought from that of the Nazis, blaming his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, for being centrally responsible for Nietzsche’s reputation as a belligerent and proto-Fascist thinker.  One of the apocryphal stories is that Hitler gave Mussolini copies of Nietzsche’s works to him as a birthday present on his 60^th birthday in 1943.  Whatever the truth of that, it is clear Hitler thought well of Nietzsche’s work and mourned his sister at the shrine she built to her brother, though we should equally recognize this is an ad hominem argument that does not logically connect Nietzsche with Nazism.

Professor Ó Murchadha indicated to me that Nietzsche had spoken against German nationalism, and it is a tendentious argument to make to link Nietzsche with Nazism.  I accept the substantial force of this but would still argue that however the relationship is conceived, Nietzsche provided a rich source for the “philosophers” of National Socialism, as Holub himself acknowledges. Similarly, Marx had appropriated Hegel’s basic metaphysical position of history as moving towards a great consummation.  There were also “right wing” Hegelians who emphasized the role of the State as the salvation of men; Hegel had asserted the State was God walking on Earth.  They secularized the concept and devolved the salvation of men to the State.

[76] Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 219 n29.

[77] The dismissal of the cogito is seen first at A348/B406 of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ‘[the cogito] with respect to its achievements we cannot entertain any favourable anticipations.’

[78] Kant’s later philosophy was called “critical” philosophy because his most famous work was a trilogy of “Critiques”:  Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790).  Further, much of his work post the publication of the first critique were clarifications and reworkings.  Of note here is the Opus postumum which Kant considered his most important work, but which remained unstudied, only reaching publication in a critical edition by the University of Cambridge in 1993.  The editorial introduction is itself an exemplary exercise in Kantian scholarship and the context of the work.

[79] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, back matter.

[80] Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 677.  My own undergraduate philosophy lecturer told our class that he had an entire examination paper just on Kant.

[81] It is of note that Quine some 300 years later also took refuge in psychology, but this time the behaviorist version, to try and deal with the knowledge and science problem.  We will consider the details of Quine’s naturalization of epistemology and ontology later.

[82] After Descartes, modern Western philosophy divided at two major views—Continental Rationalism and British Empiricism.  Rationalists reasoned from self-evident premises to the non-self-evident; empiricists held knowledge was perceptual.  Kant was motivated to mitigate the skeptical conclusions of Hume with regards to empiricism and the credibility problem of the Rationalists, see https://planetmacneil.org/blog/kant-rationalism-empiricism-and-the-god-question/ .

[83] This was the original subtitle to Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739).

[84] Hume, Dialogues…Of Miracles, 7.  Hume had this sentence in the mouth of Philo who is not generally assumed to be representative of his views, but the consensus amongst Humean scholars was that this was the inevitable terminus of the skeptical view that Hume followed to where it led.

[85] Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was intended to be his answer to Hume as noted in his Prolegomena, loc.813.

[86] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Bxln.

[87] Scruton, Kant, 57–59.

[88] Kant used this allusion in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Bxvi by which he indicated his radical reversal of the priority of the object and the understanding.  The object conformed to the understanding, rather than the understanding conforming to the object.

[89] The existentialism of Kierkegaard is sometimes considered a conscious capitulation to the subjectivism in Kant but owes more to his reaction against Hegel.  Kierkegaard was especially disgusted by Hegel, considering his work idolatrous, arrogant, and conceited.  Schopenhauer too reacted strongly to Hegel, even attempting to hold lectures at the same time in direct competition to him but is noted for failing miserably in the attempt.

[90] Hegelian philosophy is sometimes characterized as the “last word in idealism,” a new dialectical form of reason.

[91] Both Schlick and Carnap considered Hume as somehow asymptotic to a theory of knowledge.  Schlick removed most of his defense of induction from the second edition of his General Theory viewing it as inadequate in his preface to the 2^nd edition.  Carnap in his Aufbau also admitted the logical weakness of induction (§ 105) and considered Hume as correct in denying causality as anything but a functional description of the perceptual world.  It is of note that Russell did not find the account of Carnap persuasive, despite Carnap having referenced Russell’s account of Cause.

[92] See, for example, Hannon, “Skepticism, Fallibilism, and Rational Evaluation,” 172–94.

[93] Hannon, Skepticism, Fallibilism, and Rational Evaluation, 173.

[94] Moore’s famous proof of the external world is worth repeating:  MP1 If hands exist, then there is an external world.  MP2 Here are two hands. Conclusion: There is an external world.  Of course, this is a summary of a much fuller argument presented in Moore, Selected Writings, ch.9.  He was most famous for his rejection of idealism and his defense of common-sense realism.  The argument was defended as recently as Otero (2013).  Moore was also highly influential in bringing Wittgenstein in from the philosophical cold in 1929; Wittgenstein repeatedly indicated he valued Moore for his conversational power and his interrogative style.  Moore is one of the few men to have had an entire issue of the Journal of Philosophy (Dec. 22, 1960, Vol. 57, No.26) dedicated to him at his passing.

[95] Schlick, General Theory, 384.

[96] Schlick, General Theory, 384.

[97] Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, 618.

[98] Blackburn, Truth contains an excellent and accessible account of the various forms of realism as responses to skeptical criticisms.

[99] Bahnsen, History of Philosophy rather pointedly makes the point that nobody defends naïve realism today except the evangelical church and all the naïve realists are in the evangelical church.  Though overstated, the popularity of the “classical” proofs despite their serious philosophical shortcomings, demonstrates well the problems of a naïve realism.

[100] Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and most of the “Ivy League” colleges (analogous to the UK ‘Oxbridge’ status) were all founded by Protestants.  The great Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield were heavily dependent on the Reidian “common sense” view.  Hodge explicitly asserted that “Providence” (or a Christian context) was not necessary to underpin a belief in common sense; it really was “common” to all humanity.

[101] Some moved first to Unitarian positions or to liberal theology, whilst others fully secularized.  Kuyper’s Free University of Amsterdam had secularized by the 1930s barely 50 years after its founding as a Christian university.

[102] Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus, § 7.

[103] Oberdan, Moritz Schlick, § 7.

[104] It was certainly fashionable for a time to consider Wittgenstein’s ‘method’ in this way, see Farrell (1946a, b).  However, Wittgenstein himself had replied strongly to Ayer in a personal letter unfavorably regarding this assessment (Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 356–57) although Ayer does not mention it, even in his own intellectual biography of Wittgenstein (Ayer, 1985).

[105] Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 255–98.

[106] See Macneil, Wittgenstein for more consideration of his relationship to the positivist movement.

[107] These were the themes explored in an accessible manner in a series of essays by Schaeffer, compiled in He Is There.  Schaeffer was sometimes eschewed by the secular academy as a pseudo-intellectual because he refused to write for the academy, preferring a direct and popular apologetic style.  However, his insights were recognized by important figures such as Van Til, Bahnsen and Packer within the Christian academy even if they disagreed with him or criticized his lack of accuracy and rigor in places.  Bahnsen devotes substantial space (Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, 272 ff.) to critiquing Schaeffer’s version of presuppositionalism as wanting, whilst recognizing Schaeffer’s immense insight into the general drift of intellectual history.

[108] It may be unfair to judge Schilpp as outside of the Christian community.  He remained a Methodist minister until the end of his life but was also known for his radical internationalism, governing role in the ACLU (of whom John Dewey was the first patron), and his championing of world government.  As I have argued in Politics, Church and State in the Post-Trump Era, such a conception of government should surely be considered antithetical to a biblical view of government.

[109] Willard, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, xii–xiii.

[110] Pierce believed the pragmatic maxim best explicated scientific theories to the degree Pierce preferred the term “pragmaticism” to distinguish himself from James.  However, James and Peirce were good friends and Dewey had been taught by Peirce.  This was thus an amicable family squabble, all three made central to their thinking the same pragmatic maxim that it is the practical effects of an object or action that need to be considered in understanding it and evaluating it.

[111] This was seen vividly in his response (1896) to Clifford’s Ethics of Belief and applied generally to religious belief.

[112] For the decade 1884–1894 John Dewey worked with the church in Ann Arbor and the Christian Student Association at the University of Michigan.  Rockefeller, John Dewey is considered one of the best accounts of Dewey’s complex relationship to religion.  The review by Shea, On John Dewey, a Deweyan scholar, of Rockefeller is also an excellent source of information on Dewey’s basic orientation with regards to religion.  Shea makes the important point that Dewey never had much enthusiasm for orthodox Christian doctrine despite his evangelical upbringing, being a “perfect case…for [J Gresham Machen’s] thesis that theological liberalism is not Christianity but…the religion of secular uplift.”

[113] Shea, op cit. describes Dewey’s religion as replacing God with the problems of the Public and the clergy or fellow believers with the naturalists and the humanists.

[114] Dewey was probably the major influence on American culture generally, particularly in political philosophy.  Logical positivism was far more influential in the philosophy of science though there was substantial common ground between them.  Pragmatism had a revival of sorts beginning in the 1970s and still has supporters amongst the top tier of American philosophers such as Putnam and Nagel.  It is very much an American movement.

[115] Dewey, The Public and Its Problems.

[116] Rushdoony, Christianity and the State, loc. 466 ff.

[117] Russell makes a very similar point in discussing Dewey in History, 778.

[118] Dewey, Democracy and Education.

[119] “Paleopositivism” is used to distinguish it from the “logical positivism” of the 20^th century.  Logical positivism had little in common in detail with paleopositivism other than its elevation of science into scientism with their respective manifestos.  Positivism rejected any conception of the noumenal (which was Kant’s way to leave the door open to a moralistic religious faith), thus privileging phenomena and dismissing theocentric religion.  Comte was unapologetic in advocating for a new religion of humanism (acknowledging the failure of the French revolution because he viewed its brutality as inadequate in its view of the sensitivities of the human subject), there still exist positivist “churches” in some countries committed to a moral reformation.  In his naturalism, he exerted substantial influence on Darwin and many proto naturalists.

[120] It is clear at this early point in his career Schlick was a realist.  In later years his realism weakened owing to the influence of Carnap who considered the realist/anti-realist problem a “pseudo-problem” caused by the obfuscation implicit in an imperfect language.

[121] Schlick, General Theory of Knowledge, 384.

[122] Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic, 102 ff.

[123] Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 783,789.

[124] The interpretation and ambiguity surrounding this remark and the doubt that can be cast on it as a manifesto for strict positivism is discussed accessibly in Carey, Hypotheses Non Fingo.  It must be pointed out that Newton’s legacy was not in experimental science but for his grand mathematical theories and his “hypotheses” regarding light and gravity.  Even if his intention was to be experimental and positivistic, his practice stood in stark contrast to that intention, something that is frequently missed when people talk about “Newtonian science” as a model of experimental science.

[125] This is in large part inspired by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, see 6.5ff; especially note 6.521 ‘the solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.’  It was developed and expressed much more forcefully by Carnap’s Aufbau who had been “excited” after a conversation with Wittgenstein.

[126] A first order primary source for Communism and its relation to Nazism is found at the Weisbord archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/weisbord/index.htm .  Albert and Vera Weisbord were American Communist revolutionaries, noted for their education and activism.  The archive section on philosophy explicitly exegetes the ‘scientific’ vision and advocates positivism.  Albert’s discussion of the origins of National Socialism are elucidating as he was writing whilst it happened and in retrospect.

[127] Stein, Biological Science explicates in great detail how biological science was foundational to the Nazi view of humanity and their political programme.

[128] Carnap, like many members of the Vienna Circle, took refuge outside of Europe in the US as Nazism took hold in Europe.  He made a point of working on a Sunday because it was a religious day; the Nazis had at times appealed to the Christian scriptures (especially the book of John, which could be easily misinterpreted with its extended polemical tone against “The Jews”) and the use by the Nazis of theologians such as Luther, who’s polemics had been used as justifying their actions against the Jews.  Additionally, some Nazis had deep connections with sections of the catholic hierarchy, who later helped senior figures escape to South America.  It was thus not surprising that many of the Jewish members of the Vienna Circle rejected religious metaphysics and Christianity in particular, forcefully.

[129] Quine generated a large corpus over nearly fifty years and was arguably one of the most influential of the post-positivist “scientific” philosophers of the second part of the 20^th century known for his behaviorism, his rigorous logicism and his naturalism.  From Stimulus To Science was a concise distillation of his views, published just 5 years before his death; he continued being philosophically active to shortly before he died.

[130] Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”  ‘Analyticity’ was defined in this paper by Quine as “truths…grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact.”  ‘Reductionism’ was defined in this paper by Quine as “each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.”

[131] This is an important point regarding the questionable status of evolutionary theory as a scientific theory.  Evolution has a prehistory almost as ancient as philosophy itself.

[132] Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 6.  The primary purpose of most academies at the ancient universities was initially to educate preachers for the ministry, see Rivers, I., & Wykes, D. L. Dissenting Academies.

[133] Lewis, Miracles, ch.3.

[134] Lewis, Miracles, 17–36; Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 309 ff.

[135] Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 309.

[136] Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 93.

[137] We consider Plantinga’s conception of “warrant” when we consider epistemology proper, see § 4.3.7.

[138] Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 93–94.

[139] Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 95.

[140] North, “The Epistemological Crisis,” 3–4.  North’s essay is an exposition of this viewpoint, opening with quoting Snow’s blind faith in chance.

[141] A “stochastic” process is a seemingly random one but is capable of characterization.  There are also detailed mathematical description possible for such processes, see Rodrigues & O’Reilly, Statistical characterization, the latter being the lecturer for my own undergraduate course on Stochastic Processes.

[142] See Polkinghorne, Reason and Reality, 85–98 and Polkinghorne, The Quantum World for accessible accounts of these issues from a theological perspective.  His views are particularly interesting as he spent most of his life as elementary particle physicist but resigned his chair at Cambridge to train as a priest.  The Quantum World was described by Penrose, arguably considered with Hawking as the most influential of the mathematical physicists, as ‘a delightful book written at a popular level without any misleading over-simplifications.’  Part of Polkinghorne’s motivation in his early accounts was to counter the appropriation by Capra, The Tao of Physics and Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters of quantum physics as evidence for a view of the Universe more aligned with Eastern religious thought, see also Macneil, Science and Theology, esp. ch.4, for a discussion of this issue.

[143] Associated most directly with Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist and is also known as the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum theory.  Bohr was especially interested in the philosophical implications of quantum theory though his philosophy is considered of a far poorer quality than his physics.

[144] Rorty, Contingency, irony, and solidarity, 73–74.  See also § 3.3.2.

[145] Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind, 268.

[146] Hawking & Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, 1.

[147] See Blackburn, Truth, ch.8.

[148] Wilkinson, The Multiverse Conundrum.

[149] That is, if there were six events with an individual probability of occurrence of 1 in 6 (1/6), e.g., rolling a die and it turning up a “1”; the probability of rolling six dice and all of them turning up 1 at the same time is 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1 / 46,656.  One of the major problems with conventional evolutionary theory is that the probability of a functioning cell emerging by “chance” was estimated by mathematicians as 10e-300, i.e., 0 followed by 300 decimal 0s.  For all intents and purposes, this is an impossible event, even allowing for the geological timescales commonly employed in evolutionary theory.

[150] As found in “Old Princeton” apologetics associated with names such as B.B. Warfield and E.J. Young. However, they are also associated with St Thomas Aquinas and form the default mode of Romanist apologetics.

[151] It has been argued that Aquinas’s use of these arguments should be understood in his theological context.  That is, he was not arguing, as it is often understood, that by considering his arguments as an un-believer you could be converted to a believer by the force of reason alone (St. Anselm in the 1100s believed he had come up with arguments of that kind, but these did not withstand critical examination, commendable and impressive though they were.)  Rather it is a rational argument for a believer who already has the correct presuppositions.  For this reason, Plantinga, Knowledge considers that Aquinas and Calvin had much more in common epistemologically than is normally permitted in either Protestant or Roman dogmatics, such that Plantinga changed the designation for his theory from “Reformed Epistemology” to “Christian knowledge on the A/C model.”  See n. 171.

[152] For example, in Swinburne, The Existence of God.  Plantinga notes he has progressed the case for natural theology beyond its classical boundaries, but it remains a staple of Reformed thought that a natural theology is not possible.

[153] The point being that the combination of matter and antimatter results in annihilation and a null energy state.

[154] This was a phrase used by Stephen Hawking in an interview I watched which follows the contours of The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, ch.8.  Hawkings renounced any belief in an inflationary–deflationary model of the universe that he had first developed with Penrose, favoring a “steady state” model of the universe that was consistent with the non-theistic and naturalist conceptions.  It is of note few of his peers followed him in this, despite its atheological attractiveness.

[155] It should also be noted that Stephen Hawkins was less than enthusiastic about string theory at the time of his debate with Penrose, claiming it lacked predictive power.  It may well have disappeared into obscurity if it had not been for the “graviton” equation, established independently, emerging from string theory during its application to another problem.  Consequently, we might still hear of “string theory”, or perhaps more correctly a particular version of string theory (M–theory) in the philosophy of physics today.

[156] Wilkinson, The Multiverse Conundrum.

[157] “Toy theory” might seem to make it trivial but technically refers to a radically simplified cosmological model dealing with only the details the researcher is trying to explicate and ignoring all else.  Such radical simplification, even if backed by impressive mathematics, hardly seems compelling as a comprehensive account.

[158] “Reasonable verisimilitude” (or RV) is a designation favored by “critical realists” such as Polkinghorne to any theory that cannot be proved apodictically but is nevertheless considered as approximating the truth.  In Science and Theology, § 2.3.4 I offer a brief but salient account of critical realism.  Although my thought has clearly moved on, there are still plenty of similarities between the arguments made here and there.

[159] Penrose, The Road to Reality, p67.  His popular account of his revised view is given in Hawkings, The Illustrated Theory of Everything.

[160] Paradoxically, “steady state” models were common in medieval religious models that viewed the universe as created.  As I understand it, Hawkings later model is a steady-state view but with a beginning quantum era as he describes in the revised version of his A Brief History of Time.

[161] Hawking & Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, 1.

[162] Hawking & Hertog, A smooth exit from eternal inflation? 147.

[163] Hawking, The Illustrated Theory of Everything.

[164] Penrose, The Road to Reality, 782.

[165] Glattfelder, “Ontological Enigmas,” 345–94.

[166] Goff, Did the dying Stephen Hawking really mean to strengthen the case for God?

[167] Hannon, Skepticism, Fallibilism, and Rational Evaluation, 174 n3.

[168] Quine when discussing the problem of induction in the Web of Belief openly admits that “science” justifies induction but that “the sciences” themselves are founded inductively.  Many attempts to reimagine science are, in fact, motivated by the inability to justify the notion of induction.

[169] Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology, 1 ff.  This was also the title of a famous paper by Donald Davidson, contra Rorty’s attempted reading of him as sympathetic to postmodernism.  Of course, as a disciple of Quine, Davidson’s conception of truth needs careful explication.

[170] Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology, 6.

[171] Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology, 110.

[172] For example, see Goswami, The Visionary Window.  There is a significant movement that endeavors to ‘combine Western science with Eastern mysticism [to create] a new scientific paradigm’ (backmatter).  Lewis in his science fiction fantasy That Hideous Strength had the sub-text that it is only a short step from a strong commitment to “science” to a mystical view of the universe as somehow possessing a soul or to “science” taking on a God-like character.

[173] Some commentators have suggested “medical” science was the exception to this rule, with substantive progress being made during this period.

[174] A. N. Whitehead, one of the most eminent philosophers of the first half of the 20^th century wrote thus: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them,” (Process and Reality, 39).

[175] Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 63.

[176] Ó Murchadha, The Formation of the Modern Self, 30.

[177] Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil was considered a milestone in a modern defense of the argument in mitigating the criticisms of Mackie and Flew which had dominated the non-positivistic atheism–theism debate in the first two decades after WWII.  Flew caused a scandal in the atheist community when in 2004, after 50 years of atheological scholarship, he announced he had changed his mind.  I distinctly remember my first philosophy lecturer commenting that “it demonstrates that he is still thinking.”  The story is told in Flew, There Is a God.

[178] For example, Leo XIII in 1879 made it mandatory for Catholic institutions that taught philosophy that Aquinas “to be taught as the only right one” and Russell had offended many Catholics by a BBC broadcast in the 1930s when he criticized Aquinas.  Some reforms and councils since have softened the dogmatism somewhat, especially since the 1960s Second Vatican Council.  However, Pope Benedict as a philosophy professor (though he was perhaps better known as a theologian), maintained a strict division at the “modern” philosophy, which he said began with Descartes.  He was also noted for rolling back some of the reforms of the 1960s that had muddled some of the catholic dogma.

[179] Summa theologiae, his most important and well-known work, composed 1267–1273.  An authoritative, online English translation is found at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm.  His second most important work was the earlier Summa contra gentiles (1259–65), a parallel Latin–English version is found at https://isidore.co/aquinas/ContraGentiles.htm .

[180] De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 113–14.

[181] This is sometimes known as the ‘Via negativa’ (“the negative way”), proceeding to the knowledge of God by what He is not.

[182] Butler, Plantinga, Pt.3.

[183] Dupré, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, xii.

[184] Russell, History, 452–454.

[185] Dupré, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, xi.

[186] De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 112–15.

[187] De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 275–78.

[188] Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief; Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief.

[189] He returned to Calvin in 2010 after spending 1982–2010 at Catholic Notre Dame, “his intellectual and spiritual home.” He was still teaching part-time in 2012 and was awarded the Templeton prize in 2017.

[190] Plantinga, “On Christian Scholarship” does, however, demonstrate an acute sensitivity to his Catholic context.

[191] De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 275.

[192] I discussed this more fully in Descartes.

[193] De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, ch.9 is an historical justification of his position as a position more correctly orthodox than the accusation by the traditionalists of his heterodoxy.

[194] Though Lubac himself asserts there was never any formal papal sanction and goes as far to quote it positively, though rather cryptically, in Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 274.  However, his Order most certainly viewed the cyclical as a censure, and he was forbidden from publishing or teaching as a Catholic.  See Hulse Kirby, 7 Persistent Myths for a modern perspective on the specifically contentious issues in Lubac’s theology.  As noted, Lubac was rehabilitated by Pope John Paul—a Catholic theologian noted the Church never rescinds its previous papal bulls (executive decisions by the Pope) because the Pope is considered “inspired by God” and thus “cannot err”; they simply issue new ones which override them.

[195] Kuyper was a truly extraordinary reformer, serving as Primeminister for the Netherlands (1901–1905).  For a representative reader, see Bratt, A Centennial Reader and for a more general view of his cultural philosophy see Macneil, Culture and Art.

[196] Kuyper and Warfield were contemporaries and had met when Kuyper had lectured when visiting Princeton, they were good friends.  However, Warfield had written a preface to a colleague’s introduction to apologetics in which he had criticized Kuyper’s presuppositionalism.  Kuyper and Warfield were the opposite poles of the Reformed community with respect to apologetics, but both were enormous intellectual figures in neo-Calvinism.  We will repeatedly examine the differences between the two and Van Til’s novel synthesis; see also § 3.5.5 for the detailed analysis.

[197] This was the subject of my MA dissertation, Dominion Theology.

[198] Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 95.

[199] Quine & Ullian, The Web of Belief, 92.

[200] Not everyone agreed with him on those “so much for” points, especially when they had just written a whole book on modal logic.  See specifically Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, Appendix 1.

[201] Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” 43.

[202] Quine & Ullian, The Web of Belief.  This was originally written as an English course but proved so popular with philosophy courses that the authors rewrote it to align more closely with the audience.  Quine believed that philosophy and science were coterminous.  Thus any ‘non-scientific’ philosophy was not really philosophy at all as it could add nothing to human knowledge which Quine had equated with the “whole of science.”  It is of immediate note that Quine recognized the circularity of this position but considered such circularity inevitable: all genuine problems are construed in scientific terms and are soluble by scientific methods.  “Circularity” likewise plays a significant role in our future discussion.

[203] We will later refer to this as an interpretative principle or a “presupposition.”

[204] Invaluable reading in this respect is his Autobiography, a highly compressed account written for a composite work.  The full autobiography, The Time of My Life (published by MIT Press) grew to over 500 pages.  As Quine explains in a postscript to the shorter version, it took around 12 years for the Festschrift in which it was included to come to Press by which time the full autobiography was about to be published, so he did not update it.

[205] Mahner, “Demarcating Science from Non-Science,” 515–75.

[206] Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 129.

[207] Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion…Of Miracles, 7.  His conclusion has since been a thorn in the side of all empiricists and rationalists alike; his challenges cannot be met without the transcendental of God’s existence making sense of reason, the logical imperative for this book.

[208] Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics—Philosophical Papers Volume 4, ix–x.

[209] The way Rorty (and others) saw himself as the postmodern, pragmatist, post-philosophical, bourgeois liberal, is captured well in the interviews with him in Take Care of Freedom.  Rorty was described by Blackburn (a peer and one of his severest critics) as “unusually well informed.”  See https://planetmacneil.org/blog/richard-rortys-iconoclastic-deconstruction-of-philosophy/  for a comment on his iconoclastic philosophical project which began after the publication of his Mirror (1979).

[210] Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 461–90.

[211] A concise summary is found in Blackburn, Ruling Passions, 279 ff.  The position is applied to the problem of truth more generally in Blackburn, Truth and he specifically singles out Rorty’s position as ethically bankrupt.  Rorty acknowledged Blackburn’s critique in a footnote in later compilations of his papers.