4 Beyond Anti-Philosophy to Transcendentalism
4.1 Transcendentalism—First Remarks
We seem to be confronted with a most basic philosophical problem that has become increasingly into focus whether we approach the problem from a naturalist direction as in Quine and Kuhn or seek an authentically Christian philosophy through Plantinga and Van Til. It appears we can only cogently argue when we posit a worldview or, following Wittgenstein, a distinct “form of life” [1] which defines our terms and gives us semantic content. However, therein lies the philosophical problems, “on its own terms” or a “form of life” have been attacked as synonyms for “circular” reasoning or “fideism” [2] when applied to religious or spiritual thought. Part of the task of this chapter is to understand this charge of circularity and to refute it. Similarly, we will assert that circularity does not imply relativism for a correctly articulated Christian philosophy.
That is, both these objections are shown to evaporate as problems when circularity is correctly understood. First, we understand that all argumentation is circular because it is assuming that rationality itself is rational (or reasonable), it cannot proceed on any other basis. That is, there is a transcendental assumption about the nature of reason which we must implicitly acknowledge to engage in debate, and we must consequently make this explicit by giving a basic articulation and defense of rationality and the necessity of the transcendental framework if we are to salvage rationality from postmodern relativism.
Our transcendental vision of reason is most immediately associated with Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason, where he posits as transcendental that which makes possible, or which must be assumed when we claim knowledge of objects. Whilst we reject the details of his solution [3] and deny that his transcendental deduction deduced sufficient transcendental principles,[4] we concur with his asking of that question. Our major task will be to map out the character of reason, the transcendental category and defend this conception to provide the groundwork for its application in our particular Christian context.
4.2 Transcendentalism and Skepticism
Transcendentalism has a most unusual and welcome side-effect for our war against skepticism. Consider one who argues as a thorough-going Humean sceptic argues that we can have no reasonable basis for reason and therefore we have no obligation to behave reasonably. By doing a transcendental critique we can dismiss this argument as incoherent because on its own basis there can be no basis for drawing that conclusion, i.e., it is assuming to be correct by the action of arguing what it is trying to show by the argument to be false. This was the radical approach of neo-Kantian Strawson in the early 1960s who revived interest in the nature of transcendental arguments and what could be proved with them. Their most attractive feature to philosophers at that time was this potential to be skepticism refuting in a post-positivistic climate that was antagonistic to the possibility of strong knowledge claims.
As an illustrative example, Wittgenstein argued and argued transcendentally against the possibility of a “Private Language” because he argued that “language” always assumes a communal context.[5] This is one of the clearest examples of the form and promise of the transcendental mode of argument where you move from a premise that is commonly accepted (even by the sceptic) to the oftentimes fiercely disputed general principle that rests behind it (or better, that is logically necessary to it) and that you want to establish (contra the sceptic). In this case, we also get a sense of the broad character and scope of the conclusion, it is a general principle rather than a logical deduction, an inductive or abductive inference of the same basic character as the premise(s). This is another distinctive of the truly transcendental argument, it is a principle with broad application to the world and its conclusion is categorically distinct from its premises.[6]
There is much more to be said regarding transcendentalism but for our purposes now it enables us to prima facie posit that reason is reasonable and we can in principle offer some basic analysis and defense of reason, rationality, and some further mitigations of the skeptical challenge. This is pertinent for us as it helps us to appreciate how it is both possible to understand alleged worldviews or “forms of life” on their own terms yet subject them to transcendental critique to evaluate them for coherence and correspondence. This is our defense against relativism, we acknowledge their “circularity” and any transcendental claims to be justifying human predication as prima facie legitimate, whilst subsequently subjecting them to an internal critique on their own terms and judging them to be illegitimate as truly transcendental.
4.3 Practical and Theoretical Reason
Most obviously, we understand that the concept of reason itself is only made cogent by having a commitment to it both in its theoretical and practical operations.[7] In broad strokes, “theoretical” reasoning is what we employ when we are dealing with reason as a tool of analysis and theorizing; “practical” reasoning is dealing with moral reasoning, i.e., deciding between right and wrong. At this point, by considering the integral role of the whole of reason with respect to life and living, we are fully confronted with its role as fundamental and basic to existing and living in the world; this surely arrests the skeptical challenge to the epistemological legitimacy and importance of a non-skeptical orientation to reason.[8]
That is, we are positing rationality (acting in accordance with reason) is an inevitable and an ethically commendable state of affairs; it is to be preferred over the irrational and the immoral. Ethical theorists such as Baier (who during the 1960s was influential in arresting the slide into relativism in moral philosophy [9] ) and Blackburn in the postmodern epoch [10] offer a vigorous account of rationality and argue passionately that there are such a thing as moral truths, which are what we ought to do as rational beings. This is often cogent writing in response to the denial of the possibility of moral knowledge and so should be welcomed. However, we have reason to be concerned. Baier and Blackburn after a lifetime of reflection give us these defenses of rationality and ethical imperatives respectively:
“‘What are the capacities, powers, and abilities involved in having reason, in being a rational being?’ The answer is that we cannot (at least, as yet) say, in any physiological, or other precise empirical terminology, wherein that capacity consists…full rationality consists in the ability to perform the various activities of reason, involving the use of the various appropriate types of reasons in accordance with the relevant procedures of reasoning.” [11]
“Systemisation should stop in theory just as it does in proper living. So what we need is not elaborate codifications and deductions…Persons on different mountains need not perturb us…unless they can show that they are where we ought to be. But to show that they must do some ethics…That is how it is, and how it must be.” [12]
Both of these passages seem to have linguistic scaffolding that is relying on what they were trying to argue that is narrow enough to make us consider whether there are logical fallacies at the center of these conceptions. The definitions are in terms of related words—rather like looking in a dictionary to find a definition of science as “that which follows the scientific method” and the next question is naturally “what is the scientific method?”; you then look at the definition of scientific method and find, “the method that is in accordance with science.” At best, we have a “miserable tautology” and at worst we are logically fallacious.
However, being charitable, we want to agree with Blackburn against the postmodern relativist, and with Baier we want to believe there is a singular moral point of view and we want to legitimately maintain with Blackburn that a concentration camp guard who tortures is culpable.[13] Both recognize there is “something” we want to recognize as reason and rationality, but their circularity still makes us instinctively uneasy, because their naturalist conceptions fail to offer an objective grounding. When pushed at this point of ambiguity they have no authority claim but convention or some other social basis as a grounding and that is precisely the point at issue for the postmodern sceptic: “morality is socially constructed, and I reject the tyranny of its totalizing metanarrative!” The sceptic can sneer thus, and the relativist retains a smug sense of satisfaction.
However, there is not necessarily a need to construe this terminus as destructively circular and then re-surrender to skeptical doubt. Rather we remind ourselves of the impossibility of a neutral vantage point to view our problem that we considered in the previous chapter, and we must recognize that there are limits to where the theorizing can take us before we are making a commitment that might fail the rigors of an alleged “neutral” standard to judge against. In fact, we can see that this claim to “neutrality” is now seen to be completely empty, at a certain level in our reasoning claims, what we might call ultimate authority, we (and our opponent) are assuming the authority of what we are arguing for as we argue for it, so there is no external, neutral ground upon which we can meet; that is, we have begun to argue by presupposition and transcendentally, whether well or poorly. This is another characteristic that Kant considered unique to the transcendental mode of argument, it makes possible its own proof.
Thus, the transcendental approach, in important aspects, is a general epistemological and methodological position, not a specifically Christian one. Both Quine and Neurath [14] wanted to appeal to the “whole of science” as the ultimate authority (or transcendental) and did not consider it destructively circular, though they openly acknowledged its circularity. Thus, we should be well within our epistemic rights to legitimately adopt a similar framework and claim equal philosophical respectability. Except, as noted in our earliest analysis, our definition of “science” is comprehensive and our belief in a natural law is not an aggregation of brute fact with the passing of time but reflects the providence of God. We posit a transcendent transcendental of the triune God that rationally justifies these transcendentals of nature. Let us examine this issue more closely and see how this analogous approach is justified in principle and practice.
4.4 Worldviews and Ultimate Authority
We have already encountered in our previous discussion at various points the philosopher Quine who was one of the most influential of the “scientific” philosophers of the second half of the 20th century, famous first for his refutation of logical positivism and then for the construction of a rigorous naturalism that favored a behavioristic interpretation of the knowledge construction process. In formulating his philosophy, Quine summarized his methodology thus, “the answer to any scientific question must come from within science itself—it is the whole of science that is constitutive of knowledge.” [15] However, imagine repositing the proposition thus, “the answer to any question regarding the status of Christian belief must be answered from within the revelation of the scriptures—it is the whole of scripture and only scripture that is constitutive of Christian knowledge.” Now, to assert the latter would immediately raise fierce accusations of “circularity” and “question begging,” not least from within the evidentialist Christian theological community and open derision from the secular “scientific” community.[16]
However, we have already seen that Quine recognized the circularity of his position but was unphased by it—it was a necessary interpretative principle of his naturalistic worldview: if his proposition regarding the whole of science was correct, the answer must, necessarily, be from within science.[17] It is functioning as a transcendental in the sense it is making possible the objects of knowledge.[18] Thus, for Quine it was appropriate to naturalize philosophy by making it contiguous with science and thus amenable to a naturalization of first ontology, then epistemology, and finally ethics.[19] The scope of his principle really was the entire account of reality interpreted within the interlocking presuppositions that formed his worldview:
“[A]ll ascription of reality must come from within one’s theory of the world; it is incoherent otherwise…Truth is immanent, and there is no higher. We must speak from within a theory, albeit any of various.” [20]
For example, Quine in response to a critical essay over normative ethical judgments asserted:
“Naturalization of epistemology does not jettison the normative and settle for the indiscriminate description of ongoing procedures…normative epistemology is a branch of engineering. It is the technology of truth-seeking…” [21] (Emphasis added).
There could be no more a consistent naturalist than Quine to ascribe moral questions as a matter of engineering,[22] yet the question remains how he decided what is “indiscriminate” in ethical reasoning. Quine’s answer was that the normative was a description of what was with respect to some “terminal condition” and offers the solution to the normative ethical problem as requiring “[viewing the terminal condition] as aimed at reward in heaven.” [23] We can hear the hallelujah chorus as all the Christians say ‘Amen’! Of course, he is stating this not by way of a newly found religious commitment because of the relentless march of apologetic logic, but as a possible solution to the normativity problem in ethics which he is effectively asserting will yield no solution by the same process we decide on “normativity” in the other parts of nature. Thus, it is difficult to see how a thoroughgoing naturalism can ever be anything more than arbitrary in any criterion it furnishes to judge an ongoing procedure of life, for that very act of judging (as Quine’s final words of response demonstrated) imports in non-natural conceptions.
Yet Quine goes even further for us in providing the criteria for validating a particular view of the world:
“…what if, happily and unbeknownst, we have achieved a theory that is conformable to every possible observation, past and future? In what sense could the world then be said to deviate from what the theory claims? Clearly in none… [our theory demands] only that it be structured [to assure us what] to expect.” [24]
This is his characteristic recourse to the legitimacy of theories on the basis of their empirical equivalence regardless of their ultimate truth value [25] (though, importantly, Quine maintained there was such a state as true), but in context Quine is concerned in making both ontological and epistemological (and by implication ethical) claims. Eyebrows might certainly be raised accusing Quine of the latter, and he indeed calls it “unaccustomed territory” [26] but it is noteworthy that like Blackburn he does not endorse a neutral pluralism in the public square:
“…the proper counsel is not one of pluralistic tolerance. One’s disapproval of gratuitous torture, for example, easily withstands one’s failure to make a causal reduction, and so be it. We can still call the good good and the bad bad, and hope…” [27] (Emphasis added).
Thus, when Van Til takes his ultimate authority as scripture, arguing that the answer to any problem must be found from within the worldview ascribed by scripture, he argues essentially in a methodologically manner analogous to Quine. Similarly, when Van Til asserts that there are no such things as brute, uninterpreted facts,[28] he is perfectly within his Quinean granted epistemic rights, he is merely articulating his theory of the world, “Factuality like gravitation and electric charge, is internal to our theory of nature.” [29] Similarly, we can with Van Til, assert our ontological, epistemological, and ethical claims and be perfectly confident that our theory of the world corresponds and coheres with reality as we perceive and conceive of it. We are merely articulating our view of the world and find that we too can call the “good good and the bad bad.”
However, where Quine stumbles over moral commitments as matters of blind hope in Darwinian chance we differ, in that because we have the transcendental of a transcendent God, we have a normative basis which we claim as objective—where objective is posited as in concordance with this mind of God. The challenge in our following sections will be to substantiate that claim and demonstrate that our transcendental is the only valid one that facilitates a coherent worldview.
4.5 All Reasoning is ‘Circular Reasoning’ but not all Reasoning is ‘Viciously Circular’.
So, in summary of the argument above, no one informed enough to understand Quine’s argument would accuse him of being logically fallacious, drawing a conclusion for a syllogistic argument whilst assuming the conclusion in a premise, i.e., viciously circular, but his reasoning is, nevertheless, clearly, and undeniably circular. Similarly, our main philosophical protagonists beyond myself in this work, Van Til and Plantinga too are “circular” in their argumentation, but they need not hang their heads in shame; we cannot escape it. Plantinga’s “circular argument” is the wide circle of the cogency and legitimate rationality of Christian belief:
“[E]ven if Christian believers are justified in their beliefs, they might still be irrational…A belief is rational if it is produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly and successfully aimed at truth…Now warrant, the property enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief, is a property or quantity had by a belief if and only if…that belief is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth….[T]he real question…is whether Christian belief does or can have warrant.” [30]
For Plantinga, the warrant accumulates on the basis of an interpretation of Calvin’s concept of the sensus divinitus, the part of the human cognitive makeup that recognizes “God” when it encounters him in the world.[31] As we worked through in a previous chapter, Plantinga has modified rationality from classical foundationalism, recasting it using a thoroughly strengthened form of Reidian foundationalism and it is this specific conception of rationality (his circle) that he seeks to validate, and which serves to authenticate the biblical Christian worldview.[32]
In contrast, Van Til’s circle used the idioms of idealism and explicitly addresses the charge of circularity, at once admitting to it and qualifying how it should be understood, i.e., not as an elementary logical fallacy. He spoke of “spiral” reasoning and “implicating” oneself deeper into a system at each iteration assuming what was posited:
“Who wishes to make such a simple blunder in elementary logic, as to say that we believe something to be true because it is in the Bible? Our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all. Or we may call it spiral reasoning. We must go round and round a thing to see more of its dimensions…Unless we are larger than God we cannot reason about him in any other way, than by a transcendental or circular argument.” [33]
Thus, “circularity” might simply be taken to mean consistency and coherence of any rational system as a whole; if our circles are “broad,” we can withstand the circularity charge without so much as a blush.
4.6 A Form of Life
Our conclusion above seems to involve a paradox. As we noted in Quine, he merely recommended “any theory from various,” which if we did not know better from our previous examination of his position, would seem to imply relativism on his part. However, something different is being argued here, relativism argues for an absolute equivalency of competing epistemologies, but Quine still believed there was immanent truth to be had, he just recognized that incommensurate theories might nevertheless be empirically equivalent in under-attested conditions. As data accumulates the efficacy of one or both rival theories could be compromised, and a new one needs to emerge.[34]
So, although we can dismiss the charge of relativism, he can never give us an objective basis for his commitment because his naturalism constrains him that one is not possible.[35] It would also seem that although he repudiates relativism, the cash value of his position becomes that of the relativist; we might say he was operationally relativist. It seems the real difference between the Quinean naturalist, and the relativist seems to be one of philosophical temper; one is a physicalist, the other is a philologist and never the twain shall meet except to throw missiles across the epistemological barricade, but they end up on the same battlefield, nevertheless. The intelligent relativist, appropriating Wittgenstein, argues that it is indeed impossible to judge a “form of life,” a composite of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions, i.e., a worldview with a specific linguistic expression that can only be understood from within that community. Although one might “speak” with the same words and signs, it is in the living of life and the use of the words in the context of that community which give it meaning.[36] This is indeed a powerful argument, but it must be recognized that Wittgenstein was also a man of principle and values,[37] he believed that one could and should be a “decent human being.” [38]
“Decent” implies a value judgment and an appropriate framework. He certainly did not advocate a life without principles though it is undeniable that his work has frequently been used by those who have favored a postmodern, relativistic, or pragmatic philosophy and who view morality as simply “socially constructed.” [39] Such a reading of Wittgenstein, though popular, is difficult to sustain on close examination as it seems to misconstrue Wittgenstein as somehow “theorizing” about “forms of life,” rather than just describing them and analyzing them to understand them. If there was anything that Wittgenstein rejected, it was “theorizing” in the traditional philosophical sense. However, what Wittgenstein might have properly asserted as a theoretical aspect of language is that it had a public context and he then proceeded to argue transcendentally to demonstrate the necessity. For example, his famous ‘Private Language’ argument from the Investigations is sometimes viewed as a highly complex transcendental argument where he seeks to establish the impossibility of a private language and in doing so refute solipsism (the denial of the existence of other minds). Such is the complexity of the argument, there are rival schools of interpretation of it.[40]
For our purposes, Plantinga, interestingly, describes this argument as “weak.” His first major book asserted that the status of the justification of other minds and of arguments for theistic belief were of equivalent logical quality.[41] So, the believer could not be considered irrational in believing if it was rational to believe in other minds, which he believed could also not be proved but was clearly considered ‘rational.’ What Plantinga was perhaps admitting here was that if Wittgenstein’s transcendental argument has succeeded, his was the argument that was weak. However, in line with Richter’s assessment that “Ordinary Language Philosophy” (inspired by this mode of interpreting Wittgenstein) had fallen “out of favor,” Plantinga downgraded the relevance and applicability of Wittgenstein’s argument for the rationality of religious belief in the new preface published 23 years later.[42]
However, Plantinga’s sophisticated skeptical approach in that work was also considered controversial by some such that in responding to the criticism of it and the developing his own thought, he progressively built on the rejection of the classical foundationalism of this early work. He refined and improved it over the succeeding decades, until the RE project [43] with Wolterstorff, Alstom and others gave the arguments a much stronger form and stronger still in his Warrant trilogy.[44] In that form there are elements of Plantinga that most certainly resonate with the epistemic rights of a community to proceed to believe without a common evidential basis with their critics.
Thus, both Wittgenstein and Plantinga are both seen to agree on the grounding of meaning as something more complex than empirical considerations and local to a community whose use of the language gave meaning to the discourse. Plantinga was even considered as offering a “transcendental defense” against naturalism by Craig, but this claim is at best an inference characterizing his philosophical project as a whole, rather than explicitly articulated in his work.[45]
4.7 The Necessity of a Transcendental Defense
Thus, as unexpected as it may be, we are seeing that a transcendental defense of Christian belief and a transcendental critique of the non-Christian worldview are the only ways of assessing the competing truth claims. Otherwise, it seems a matter of preference whether we pick Quine or Van Til. Thus, we will consider the critique in the next section and the defense in more detail here. Van Til argues for not just a transcendental justification for our reason but for worldview apologetics with a transcendent transcendental first principle. In this way he circumvents the self-vitiating naturalism of Quine and can move beyond the relativism of a neo-Wittgensteinian without the religious fideism. [46]
Van Til argues that God is the necessary, metaphysical bridge in our belief structure (Plantinga uses the term ‘noetic structure’) that allows us to move to certainty, that the thoughtful ethical naturalism of a Blackburn we noted desires but can never get us to. We might even pull in Descartes as a supporting witness who at this level, recognized absolute claims of knowledge need a transcendent basis, “[the atheist, strictly speaking] cannot have systematic knowledge unless he has been created by the true God, a God who has no intention to deceive.” [47] Similarly, in the words of Williams, “we may feel happier to live without foundations of knowledge [but Descartes did not] ” [48] and it is well to remember the first division in Descartes notebook was “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” [49] which is the very foundation of Van Til’s (and Plantinga’s) epistemological methodology.
However, we, of course, have just entered inadvertently into the controversy of Descartes religious commitment or the lack thereof and need to be careful to represent Descartes accurately. Schouls argued that the sacred-secular dichotomy in his methodology permitted an apologetic interpretation equally suited for atheism as to theism.[50] The atheist Cartesian can in thought maintain a hypothesis of a perfect deceiver but if it was a perfect deceiver then by Descartes’ rule the perfect deceiver must exist and would be God because God alone has necessary existence. However, the concept of God is then self-contradictory because Descartes himself asserted that “the will to deceive is undoubtedly evidence of malice or weakness, and so cannot apply to God” [51] and the atheist Cartesian following Descartes own rules can safely assert God cannot exist and can trust his reason with no fear of contradiction. Descartes himself seemed to hold the door open to the ultimate autonomy of the human will because of the innate freedom of it even when confronted with an all-powerful deceiver:
“But meanwhile whoever turns out to have created us, and even should he prove to be all-powerful and deceitful, we still experience a freedom through which we may abstain from accepting true and indisputable those things of which we have not certain knowledge, and thus obviate our ever being deceived.” [52]
Thus, we must acknowledge that Descartes, despite his pious language and form in the dedication to the Meditations wants to prove “philosophically rather than theologically” and to appeal to the power of “natural reason,” [53] though he would surely retort he was surely defensibly Thomistic in that assumption. Nevertheless, we might thus caution ourselves from too readily appropriating Descartes who was ever mindful of the fate of Galileo, his choice to live in Holland was in his own words an act of self-preservation; he is almost universally acknowledged to have been the beginning of modern philosophy and perhaps to have shown God the epistemological exit door, at least as far as philosophy is concerned. Even accepting his proof, he was philosophically defending a generic theism rather than a specifically Christian conception that we are seeking to develop. However, on balance, I am prepared to give Descartes the benefit of the doubt [54] and to accept that he does offer something important apologetically when he recognized a divine guarantee for knowledge was the only guarantee there could be. It certainly had a transcendental feel when he emphatically assigned necessary existence to God alone and considered the Cogito as an intuited logical unit rather than as a syllogism.[55] We might fault him in how he worked his programme out, but he had some important insights. Nevertheless, Van Til found his approach inadequate in providing a true transcendental for knowledge, arguing that even if we accept the Cogito its scope is parochial [56] and with that assessment we are obliged to concur.
More specifically, Van Til rejected the egocentricity and the anthropocentricity of the Cartesian program because it began with the self and moved out from the self to prove God. Rather, we must start with God’s self-revelation to us, specifically in the scriptures and what they speak to us metaphysically, epistemologically, and ethically. This might be “circular” reasoning, but we have already seen it is not the vicious, logically fallacious circularity when our premise includes or assumes our conclusion. It is rather a transcendental. That is, when we talk of ‘circular’ reasoning we are demonstrating that we are dealing with the ultimate or top-level authority claims for the justification of our reasoning. If a claim has ‘ultimate’ status in our noetic structures, there is no external proof available, and we cannot help but employ it whilst arguing for its legitimacy. Only transcendental forms of argument have the unique feature that they provide the very grounds for their own legitimacy and conclude with a transcendental, or precondition for their intelligibility. As Van Til put it:
“At the outset it ought to be clearly observed that every system of thought necessarily has a certain method of its own. Usually this fact is overlooked. It is taken for granted that everybody begins in the same way with an examination of the facts, and that differences between systems come only as a result…this is not actually the case. It could not actually be the case with a Christian. His fundamental and determining fact is the fact of God’s existence. That is his final conclusion. But that must also be his starting point. If the Christian is right in his final conclusion about God, then he would not even get in touch with any fact unless it were through the medium of God.” [57] (Emphasis added)
There is a remarkable amount of foundational epistemology packed into this paragraph. When it comes to our top-level or ultimate authority claims for the legitimacy of our worldview, it can only be justified in terms of itself; that is, transcendentally.
4.8 The Transcendental Mode of Criticism
How then are we to evaluate a “form of life” or a worldview? The only method available to us is to examine their content for coherence and logical consistency on their own terms by engaging in a transcendental critique. We must immediately recognize that there can only be one, true transcendental; there may be attempts at arguing that a non-Christian worldview is transcendental, but the argument always fails, sometimes without too much effort, on close examination. For example, in an impressive Tour De Force Van Tillian Bahnsen dismisses Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and naturalism on their own terms from their own writings whilst simultaneously conceding that if, for example, Islam or any other worldview claims it is the Word of God, it should have been taken on its own authority.
This is an important part of the concept of transcendental critique—just because something claims to be a transcendental, it does not mean that it succeeds in being so. An empiricist might want to claim that his empiricism is a transcendental principle of nature. However, we find that the ‘verification principle’ at its center is arbitrary and self-refuting.[58] We cannot go out into nature and observe the verification principle, it is rather a metaphysical dogma. Similarly, a rationalist might want to claim transcendentally that logic provides an a priori basis for science, but different logicians argue over what counts as logic. Quine’s critique of Carnap’s analytic-synthetic distinction was one of the most devastating attacks on the logic of empiricism. Quine also denied that modal logic (the logic of necessity) was possible because it relied on intension and essences (Quine labelled this ‘Aristotelian essentialism’). However, in response, Plantinga’s Nature of Necessity contained a technical appendix dealing specifically with Quine’s objection and concurs with it but rejects the implications Quine drew from the rejection—we thus conclude logicians argue with each other over the “nature” of logic and it certainly does not self-evidently provide its own foundation and thus demonstrate a transcendental character. Only a Christian with a transcendental basis for logic in the mind of the Christian God,[59] who’s triune nature resolves the tension between the “One and the Many,” of particular and kind, can sustain the claim to a genuine transcendental.
4.9 Summary and Conclusion
In this chapter we have introduced transcendental reasoning. We had arrived at a philosophical impasse by considering the work of Quine and Kuhn which seemed to imply a relativistic terminus and where ethical commitments were readily characterized as Wittgensteinian fideism or with a purely voluntaristic, subjective basis. That is, there was a “form of life,” and rationality might be defined and expressed within a theory, but that theory was just one of many possible, “empirically adequate” theories of the world. Transcendentalism offered us a mode of reasoning that moved beyond this terminus. We examined that it was first associated with the philosophy of Kant, who defined as transcendental those principles that must be assumed to make any knowledge of objects possible.
This immediately served to provide us with the dictum that reasoning is implicitly circular, when we reason about reason, we are assuming the rationality of reason. Thus, we were able to discern that there is a categorical difference between the fallacy of circular reasoning where the premise in a syllogistic construction assumes the conclusion and the overall circularity of a theory of nature. We understood that the nature of transcendental reasoning was categorically distinct from inductive, deductive, or abductive reasoning and deals with conclusions which are principles with broad application to the world. We understood how the skeptical terminus was then rendered incoherent; we would have needed to have employed the cognitive processes to have had arrived at the conclusion that the cognitive processes are inadequate.
Thus, by establishing a prima facie basis for reasoning we could examine something of the taxonomy of reason. We examined the main divisions of reasoning, the practical and the theoretical; the theoretical the mode of reason is that which allows us to analyze and posit about our world, and the practical dealing with our theory of value, both aesthetic and ethical. We concluded that we could not live in the world without reason and that being reasonable was ethically commendable. However, we noted that some ethical theorists, whilst passionately recognizing the value of practical reason, struggled to define it in terms that were not tightly circular. In other words, they struggled to find a basis for reason that was adequately transcendental rather than voluntaristic.
We probed that it was possible to move past this terminus by considering that an ultimate authority is what we assume transcendentally in all our reasoning. It is our transcendental that makes possible the grounds for its own proof and thus its own ethical commitments. We understood that part of the strategy of assessing the rival worldviews was to examine their internal relations on their own terms, if elements of the worldview are shown to be incoherent on analysis, their arguments are flawed, and they do not warrant the label “transcendental.” We used the terms “presuppositional” and “worldview” to describe our transcendental method, recognizing that there is never a neutral place to start our reasoning from and to build our science upon. We bolstered our account by considering our position was analogous to the holism argued by Quine where he had argued it was in assuming a theory of the world that we would always speak, and that all our reasoning about the world must assume that theory.
We also examined that Quine had recognized the place of normative ethical values and commitments, rejecting the scientistic assumptions of the positivists; there was no mere pluralistic tolerance, gratuitous torture was wrong regardless of the adequacy of the theoretical account of it. We noted Wittgenstein also argued that there was something that constituted a “decent” human being and thus the characterizations of his philosophy as relativistic were faulty in this important ethical respect; he was also seen to employ transcendental modes of argument in his account of language as requiring a public context, further buttressing our account of the legitimacy of the mode of reasoning. However, we equally recognized the weakness of these accounts, Quine’s account of moral commitments and his ethical theory was easily characterized as arbitrary, his worldview relying on a Darwinian conception of chance; Wittgenstein arguing meaning was tied with use which is problematic as a general theory for intercommunal relations, easily represented as supporting relativism.
We argued that only a transcendent transcendental would more adequately address the charge of arbitrariness. We examined that both Van Til and Plantinga had epistemologies that though radically different in detail, relied on a transcendent transcendental assumption and that established both the consistency and coherence of their Christian worldviews. We also noted that Descartes can be interpreted in a transcendental fashion when he argues that systematic knowledge was not possible for an atheist. We noted the ambiguity in Descartes and that Van Til asserted that the cogito was not an adequate transcendental principle for knowledge because it defended a generic theism. It was also noted that the cogito could be conceived of in a fashion that supported atheism and was too narrow in scope to be considered a genuine transcendental. We also noted a fundamental weakness in Descartes epistemological conception which moved outwards from the self to God and then the natural world. We argued we must begin with God’s self-revelation as a transcendental and build our metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics from the written Word of God. This established a very important principle; we can judge between rival transcendental claims by examining them on their own terms; just because we have a “form of life” that does not make it immune from critique.
Thus, our next task is the proof that only the Christian transcendental has sufficient coherence without an elaborate hermeneutic to reconcile its problems.[60] What we will see is unique about Van Til’s use of transcendental argumentation is that it is not seeking to do a piecemeal refutation of a specific fact in or about nature but rather establish a principle by which the non-Christian worldview (in all its sub-genii) as a whole and as a unit can be judged illegitimate and self-refuting. Thus, any specific fact of nature should be able to be taken and only made intelligible by assuming the Christian transcendental.
[1] This is one of the most famous of the themes that emerges in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It is often mistaken for cultural relativism in that it is taken to argue for the circumscription of a community based on shared linguistic use and convention. Similarly, it is often appropriated by postmodernists to deny the possibility of objective reference. However, in my view, these are rather appropriations of Wittgenstein’s work in support of their own programmes rather than it being something argued for by Wittgenstein himself, illustrated in that there was an enormous debate over the “meaning” of what he was in fact arguing (or describing), particularly in light of Kripke’s interpretation in Naming and Necessity. This matter arises again in our future discussion. See McGinn, Wittgenstein, for a short, accessible, and well received introduction to the Investigations. See also Macneil Wittgenstein, for a broader discussion of Wittgenstein and religious language.
[2] Fideism can be broadly conceived of in two main ways. Either that subjective experience rather than objective reason justifies religious belief (or even denies rational expression is possible in principle); or that a belief can only be understood within a believing community that uses language in a particular way and shares a form of life. The former might be considered characteristic of the Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith’ and the latter as the basis for the famous dispute in the philosophy of religion between Wittgensteinian and Christian thinker D.Z. Phillips and atheist Kai Nielsen found in Wittgensteinian Fideism. Phillips disagreed strongly with Plantinga (and Van Til) on the nature of Christian philosophy, see Phillips, Advice; arguing there was a philosophical mode of thought available to all philosophers.
[3] It is worth noting that for Kant, a transcendental argument always terminated in a category of the understanding. This is not necessarily the case with modern transcendental arguments and was the subject of an ill-tempered debate, see § 6.3.4.
[4] A humorous meme exemplifies this well. Hume: science is just a habit of the mind, there is no causal necessity. Kant: I can save science and causality, it is a habit of the mind, we necessarily think in the way we do. Much ink has been spilled over whether Kant did in fact answer Hume and besides that, what precisely Kant meant on his own terms. Plantinga, On Christian Scholarship noted that the polyvalency of Kant was “part of his charm.” Similarly, Scruton in his Very Short Introduction notes he “took sides” in his discussion in response to the opacity of Kant.
[5] It was notable, owing to Wittgenstein’s phenomenological, anti-theoretical approach to philosophy, that in this section of the Investigations that he proceeded to argue and presented a complex, transcendental argument. However, not all have been impressed by it; Plantinga describes it as “weak” and in a new preface to his God and Other Minds notes that he would now spend much less time defending himself against Wittgensteinian criticisms. In this era of artificial languages (particularly computer programming languages) we might see Plantinga’s point; though we should also recognize that these languages are very different from spoken languages which is what Wittgenstein had in mind.
[6] There are arguments which are said to take the “form” of a transcendental argument but are not full transcendental arguments, see § 7.3.3.
[7] See Baier, The Rational, ch.1 for an explanation of the terms “theoretical” and “practical” reasoning.
[8] We might still argue about its metaphysical status—there is a difference to what our theory says about the world (noting Quine’s “any of various”) and the way the world is, but we must defer that question to later sections.
[9] Baier, The Rational and The Moral are generally considered landmarks in moral philosophy.
[10] Blackburn, Ruling Passions. Blackburn was known for his direct confrontation with the postmodern pragmatism and ethical relativism argued by Richard Rorty and is considered to have made a substantial contribution to practical, i.e., ethical reasoning.
[11] Baier, The Rational, 53.
[12] Blackburn, Ruling Passions, 310.
[13] As mentioned previously, Blackburn had taken great exception to Rorty’s equivocation on this point and whilst respecting Rorty’s erudition, offers a full-bodied, meticulous critique. Apart from when Blackburn encounters religious thought, he is painfully meticulous and fair in his argument; with religious thought he inexplicably seems to jettison his careful and considered method.
[14] Neurath’s conception of knowledge was far more dynamic and fluid (as seen in his famous raft metaphor) than many of his positivist peers and is perhaps best considered as a weaker, mitigated skeptical view when compared to Schlick. In his later period especially, he did not believe in a normative conception of science based on a set of ‘true’ propositions as was favored by many positivists. He was much more akin to the pragmatist or instrumentalist, “solve our problems” approach to science. Consequently, his conception of science is rather a rarefied one which is why we have favored Quine in our discussion who though an empiricist was a sophisticated one and was not a positivist.
[15] Quine, Theories and Things, 21.
[16] As perhaps found in Richard Dawkins’ A Scientist’s Case Against God, an edited version of his speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on April 15, 1992, published in The Independent, April 20, 1992.
[17] It is also worth noting that Quine’s conception of “science” was broad, he attaches scientific status to any statement that makes a contribution, no matter how slight, to a theory that can be tested through prediction, see Quine, Pursuit of Truth, 20. This correlates well with the argument I presented earlier that the distance between science and philosophy, philosophy and theology, narrows (if it can be said to exist at all) on close inspection.
[18] It is another matter as to whether that claim could be sustained under critique; our position will be that the only transcendental claim that can be sustained will be the Christian transcendental claim.
[19] Two of the most famous essays are Ontological Relativity and Epistemology Naturalized both in Quine OR and a third, On What There Is originally published in 1948 with minor modifications to the version published in From A Logical Point of View. Quine wrote very little on ethics, following broadly the contours of Schlick, Ethics in his On the Nature of Moral Values. The latter is interesting for the interaction of White and Quine’s response in the same volume.
[20] Quine, Theories and Things, 21.
[21] In response to White, Normative Ethics/Epistemology, and Quine’s Holism, 664–65.
[22] This is reminiscent in some respects of the “moral calculus” of Jeremey Bentham (b.1748, d.1832), see https://planetmacneil.org/blog/moral-calculus/ .
[23] In response to White, Normative Ethics/Epistemology, and Quine’s Holism, 665.
[24] Quine, Theories and Things, 22.
[25] See Churchland & Hooker, Images of Science, for the substance of this debate, focused on the ‘constructive empiricism’ of Bas C van Fraassen. He authors a lengthy reply to 10 critical essays.
[26] Quine, Theories and Things, preface.
[27] Quine, “On the Nature of Moral Values,” 64–65; see also White’s review and Quine’s reply for an indication that he recognized an “ultimacy” for moral judgments that sat legitimately apart from scientific objectivity.
[28] Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 18–19, 19 n78, 160. Oliphint’s editorial note on p.19 is significant; Van Til did not mean some kind of Kuhnian or Rortian relativism where ‘everything is under a description’ but rather that without the Christian “interpretation” of a fact, it is a “mute” fact—it can say nothing. However, in light of Quine’s conception of “factuality” as worldview dependent, I do consider there is still sufficient contact with the Rortian or Kuhnian sense that the worldview gives the fact its interpretation. It is just for Rorty or Kuhn that the worldview was subjective, conventional, and arbitrary; for us, we can claim objectivity—harmony with the mind of God.
[29] Quine, Theories and Things, 23.
[30] Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 46.
[31] Plantinga argues this concept is also found in Aquinas, Augustine, and the biblical epistles of Paul. He thus refers to it as the ‘Extended A/C model.’
[32] This becomes increasingly clear as one progresses through the chapters of Knowledge and Christian Belief. Chapters 5 and 6 tie his apologetic tightly to Calvin and Edwards; so, although he is often criticized as having departed from classical or orthodox “Reformed” dogmatics, he defends himself with the primary sources of scripture, Calvin and other Reformed heroes such as Edwards. The material in these chapters I consider the most apologetic and effective of Plantinga’s work I have read. It has a nourishing spiritual richness to it as William J Abraham (Perkins School of Theology) also notes in the backmatter.
[33] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 518–19; 518 nn. 121, 122. The main text is Van Til’s, n. 121 was a footnote added by Van Til; n. 122 was an explanatory note added by Bahnsen.
[34] In this sense, he is close to the position of Neurath’s sailors, where the raft must be rebuilt at sea because there is no dry-docking capability.
[35] Quine, “Response to Morton White,” 664.
[36] Richter, Wittgenstein, § 5.
[37] See, for example, Engelmann & Wittgenstein, Memoir; Wittgenstein, Culture and Aesthetics.
[38] Ibid., 11, letter 12.
[39] The “socially constructed” thesis is associated with the ground-breaking work of Berger & Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality. However, what is notable in their account, is the complete omission of any direct discussion of ethics or morality (even the index has no entry for either). They also made it plain in their opening remarks that they were using a weakened sense of the word “knowledge” that certainly indicates an enormous ‘red flag’ for the critical reader regarding their overall thesis; it should certainly be pushed to provide an epistemological account of its presuppositions.
[40] Richter, Wittgenstein, § 6.
[41] God And Other Minds. The original edition appeared in 1967 and was reissued with a new preface in 1990.
[42] See the New Preface to the 1990 edition, where he states he was responding to the Wittgensteinian arguments at many places in the book when he originally wrote it.
[43] See https://planetmacneil.org/blog/van-til-and-plantinga-comparison-and-contrast/ for more background.
[44] Everitt, Non-Existence, 30, gives a useful summary of the RE literature and the ensuing debate which has remained robust within the philosophy of religion. However, Everitt never engages with Plantinga’s strengthening of the position after the 1980s, despite referring to the existence of that literature in the ‘Further Reading’ section with which he closed out the chapter. Plantinga himself believed he had further developed his position through the Warrant trilogy (1992–2000) and published a compressed version of the final argument in 2015 which has a significantly more ecumenical feel and less of the ‘Reformed’ moniker, though Plantinga himself asserts that the ‘Reformed’ prefix was never intended to imply criticism of RC epistemology; perhaps understandable with his joining the great Catholic institution of Notre Dame.
[45] This point is made in Collet, Van Til, n. 42. Craig made this claim in “A Classical Apologist’s Response,” 233. “Classical Apologetics” in this sense refers to the Old Princeton approach of the late 19th and Warfieldian era of Princeton (cf. Aquinas’s ‘classical arguments’; Craig was following the expansion of the term to include evidentialism, see § 1.3.2), which is continued in some of the more conservative Reformed seminaries. “New” Princeton has a far more liberal, ecumenical theology and thus its apologetics are markedly weaker.
[46] This was a debate captured in Nielsen & Phillips.
[47] Descartes, Meditations, 99–104.
[48] Bernard Williams, ‘Introductory Essay’, John Cottingham (ed), xvi.
[49] Pro 9:10, KJV.
[50] Schouls, Descartes, 60–63, n. 60.
[51] Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume II), 37.
[52] Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Volume II), 194.
[53] Descartes, Meditations, 8.
[54] See Macneil, Descartes for a fuller discussion.
[55] Cottingham, Descartes, 36.
[56] Bahnsen whilst a student of Van Til indicates he would frequently characterize Descartes’ cogito as “a rock in a bottomless ocean” emphasizing its narrow achievement, even if we accept it. We examine why such a parochial argument fails the transcendental designation in § 7.
[57] Van Til, Revelational Epistemology, 170.
[58] Baird, Transcendental Arguments has suggested that the verification principle might be understood in a transcendental fashion. This seems to me equivalent to suggesting the principle is analytic. Baird began from a Christian premise and sought to dissolve Stroud’s objections to transcendental arguments which have dominated the debate over them, see § 7.
[59] The prologue of John and John’s repeated use of the loaded term “logos” is a compelling argument regarding the foundations of logic which space does not permit us to examine further other than to note its importance as an issue of apologetic dispute here. Butler, Apologetics, addresses this contention in Clark’s Logic by noting that the Greeks had other words that they used at the time John was writing that would have been much closer to our use of the word “logic”; it was not until around the 4th century that logic would have been the preferred meaning. Clark was a competent logician though and this work is worth reading as an introductory work from a Christian perspective on that basis.
[60] This is not to deny the importance of hermeneutics to Christian thought or of philosophical hermeneutics more generally. Our consideration of the problem of circularity is also known as the “hermeneutic circle”—the problem of circularity is a problem of hermeneutics as are preunderstanding we bring to a text, presupposition, and the role of the transcendental. Thiselton’s Hermeneutics is probably the definitive graduate text on the subject. The 2012 20th anniversary edition of his New Horizons in Hermeneutics was also a substantive milestone in the subject, a masterful exposition noted for its engagement with and critique of postmodernism; postmodernism which was highly influential during the period he originally wrote it, and many Christians felt that “making room for the sacred” in postmodernism meant making room for them. However, this was a kindergarten mistake and Thiselton offers a substantial critique of the limitations of postmodernism “that most Christians do not realize.” (Hermeneutics, 327–349). It would also be amiss of me if I did not also note his Two Horizons, originally his PhD dissertation described by the eminent Professor J B Torrance as “one of the most competent dissertations I have ever read” and which established his reputation.