6 The Transcendental Argument for God (TAG)
6.1 Introduction
In this section, we formalize our work of the previous two chapters with transcendental reasoning and demonstrate how Van Til presented his argument designed to demonstrate the existence of God as objectively provable. We consider:
- The distinctive logical form.
- Examine the historical pedigree of the form.
- Formalize the other distinctives of the mode of reasoning.
- Consider the controversies surrounding the conceptual and ontological necessity of the argument form.
- Present Van Til’s proof and consider the criticisms of it and the possible mitigations in recent work.
6.2 Logical Form and Overview
To formalize the argument of the previous two chapters, the general logical form[1] of the transcendental argument is this:
Assume X X is accepted by all participants in the argument, even a local sceptic.
Demonstrate that X presupposes Y (often through a reductio absurdum or the impossibility of the contrary).
Y is the controversial or contested proposition.
We should immediately recognize that certain forms of global skepticism might not be prepared to accept X or later reject it if they are required to accept Y, but their skepticism is then held to be incoherent (they are rejecting a necessary precondition of formulating their skeptical argument) and there is no argument to be had. We wish to engage with those who consider it is possible to argue in a constructive and philosophical manner, to first understand and then make progress towards philosophical solutions to philosophical problems.
Transcendental argumentation stretches all the way back in Western philosophy to Aristotle where he argues transcendentally for the law of non-contradiction.[2] Aristotle’s point was simple—if you argue against logic, you are assuming logic in making an argument against logic and your challenge is incoherent. Bahnsen puts the promise of the form rather less arcanely, if you want to be in the “reason giving game,” you must play by the rules of that game—if you deny reason as reasonable, there is no need to listen to you as all your own utterances must be irrelevant in their unreasonableness by your own standards. If you believe you can demand an answer, you have entered the game, the rules apply and those rules disqualify you[3]—you are of necessity operating on my presuppositions regarding reason whether or not you accept that you are, it is a logical prerequisite of us engaging in any discussion.[4]
A similar argument may be had to those worldviews that offer a mitigated account of reason or ascribe it a subsidiary role. To the degree that the role and power of reason is mitigated in those systems is the degree to which we need not be bound by their conclusions. Whilst we are not so foolish as to claim an “absolute” power of reason in the human subject, we are claiming an absolute principle of reasonableness capable of being understood by the human subject; that is, the transcendent transcendental of God himself revealed to us within scripture. That provides us the confidence that we have access to the Truth, both in a metaphysical, experiential sense encompassing our religious experience and the epistemological sense for living in the world; recognizing these two are intimately and unavoidably involved in one another. For the latter, epistemological sense, that is reflected and made evident in our derivative reasonings which may legitimately be subject to detailed exposition, refinement, or falsification. We can be certain with regards to the metaphysical status of Truth, it exists; but fallible in our understanding and application of it.
As mentioned in our previous review, this “skepticism refuting” potential of transcendental argumentation has been what, in the modern debate,[5] has generated the most interest in them. That the sceptic somehow wins despite all our attempts at providing grounds for reason is what Kant, the most famous exponent of the argument form, finds principally objectionable as found in his famous footnote:
“[I]t 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 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.” [6] (Emphasis original).
For many philosophers who believe in discourse and discussion as a means and an end, that progress is possible with philosophical problems, skepticism is a most unsatisfactory terminus.[7] It was on this basis that we asserted a prima facie case for the value and distinctiveness of transcendental reasoning.
6.3 The Distinctiveness of Transcendental Reasoning
6.3.1 The Conclusion is a Transcendental
One of the distinctives of transcendental argumentation is that the conclusion of a transcendental argument is not a conclusion about a specific fact of reality but rather a transcendental, that which is assumed to make the argument or the interpretation and evaluation of any other fact of reality intelligible at all:
“[Transcendental argumentation] would serve…to purge…our reason [and] would guard reason against errors. I call all knowledge transcendental which deals not so much with objects as with our manner of knowing objects insofar as this manner is to be possible a priori…” [8]
The same does not apply for inductive, abductive, or deductive reasoning—the conclusions of the individual arguments do not form a category in themselves, they are just said to indicate some fact (in the case of deductive arguments), the best explanation (in the case of abductive arguments) or a generalized principle from experience (in the case of inductive arguments) about nature. It is a given of the deductive or inductive argument that the conclusions are derivative in character, whereas with a transcendental argument, premise and conclusion are involved in one another:
“[The transcendental argument] has the peculiar property that it renders its own proof namely, experience, first of all possible, and that it has always to be presupposed in experience.” [9]
6.3.2 All Reasoning Is Circular Reasoning
We can expand our previous concluding sentence into a principle—the very act of reasoning must assume that reason is itself reasonable, i.e., that there is a rational basis for reason. As we argued previously, when understood in this way, any rational argument is circular. Rather ironically, it may be precisely this implicit circularity that an informed sceptic wishes to establish in their argumentation, but transcendental reasoning renders this a non-sequitur. Transcendental reasoning alone seeks to mute the sceptic on this point by demonstrating that the attempting of a skeptical argument is incoherent because it is assuming the coherence of reason whilst arguing there can be no basis for its coherence.
6.3.3 The Scope of the Argument
The scope of the argument is another important principle in establishing the distinctive character of transcendental arguments. Some simple or trivial formulations with a limited scope might have the formal structure of a transcendental argument (we might call it a transcendentally framed statement) and be amenable to “rhetorical (re-)phrasing” as inductive or deductive constructions but these are then seen to not fulfil the full criteria of being a transcendental argument.[10] That is, the scope of the argument is determinative in whether an argument is to be considered as truly transcendental. The broader the scope of the terms and the implications of the conclusion, the more authentically transcendental it is. Only when understood in this way as arguments of broad scope yielding a conclusion which is a transcendental itself, are such arguments a distinct category from inductive, deductive, pragmatic, or abductive argument.
So, for example, P F Strawson’s famous transcendental argument in Individuals seeks to establish that conceptually we assume the persistence of objects in a spatial-temporal relation:
“There is no doubt that we have the idea of a single spatio-temporal system of material things; the idea of every material thing at any time being spatially related, in various ways at various times, to every other at every time. There is no doubt at all that this is our conceptual scheme. Now I say that a condition of our having this conceptual scheme is the unquestioning acceptance of particular-identity in at least some cases of non-continuous observation.” [11]
The argument is not that in any individual case we guarantee the persistence of the objects when they are unperceived—it is perfectly possible that someone wishing to refute the thesis arranges for the swapping of items in a room with similar ones whilst we sleep. It is rather that the general principle of the conceptual persistence of distinct objects over time whilst unperceived must be assumed by the sceptic who seeks to frame an argument that denies the persistence of unperceived objects. It is not for us to argue here whether Strawson was successful, but merely to point out this argument is designed to establish our conceptual belief that objects continue to exist over time, a non-specific, generally applicable conclusion.
This would be in contrast to the “polar case” arguments associated with Austin, Ryle, and others, in what is sometimes called the ‘Oxford School’ [12] of Ordinary Language philosophy. Butler summarizes this well:
“[Transcendental Arguments] should not be confused with paradigm-case and/or polar concept arguments…For while these types of arguments share a similar form with TAs, they differ greatly in the type of conclusion that is inferred…A brief comparison should bring out this distinction. Austin argues that the skeptic’s appeal to illusion does not work because the term ‘illusion’ makes sense only in a context of having some real things to compare with it and thus everything could not be an illusion (or better put, it makes no sense to say everything is an illusion).”
Now, we can immediately recognize the “transcendental” form, in that Austin was arguing the concept of illusion assumes the “real”; we would be tempted to say the ‘“real” is a transcendental for “illusion.” However, the conclusion is parochial, narrow, and does not significantly hinder the sceptic. Butler continues:
“Assuming this argument works, the conclusion in somewhat parochial: it defeats only one particular skeptical challenge. The skeptic, though, can simply propose to toss away both words and offer a fresh challenge. A TA aims at something more cosmopolitan…the difference between a TA and a polar concept argument is one of scope; the latter asks what are the necessary preconditions for the intelligible use of a small set of terms, the former is concerned with the use of a much larger set.” [13]
Thus, to further clarify this, if we were to be asking within what epistemological or metaphysical context does speaking about both “real” or “illusion” make sense or is intelligible, e.g., we are concluding that there is a world of external objects, identifying something about the nature of our mind and its relation to objects and identifying significant features of the mechanisms of perception; then we are arguing about fundamentals and preconditions of intelligibility that have a broad applicability. We could thus be sure we are dealing with a transcendental argument rather than just an argument of an analogous form.
Hence, in summary, we are establishing that the transcendental argument not only has a logical structure but has a specific kind of semantic content. Of course, it would not be difficult to imagine cases which fall between the polar case and the transcendental proper, but that there is a distinction is what is necessary for our purposes. When we consider Van Til’s argument specifically, we should immediately recognize them as not just logically transcendental in form but semantically sufficient in content.
6.3.4 The Kant Controversy
Considering our definitional tension above, it is mindful that we do not get distracted by further pseudo-definitional controversies. Firstly, it is correct that the “modern” transcendental argument is properly to be interpreted as broadening the Kantian designation. The broadening of the scope is most clearly seen in the light of the modern debate which was initiated by P.F Strawson’s Individuals and The Bounds of Sense. Strawson was a neo-Kantian and modified Kant’s transcendentalism to “avoid the [problematic] doctrines of transcendental psychology” [14] and to purposefully avoid the problematic category of the synthetic a priori.
However, some such as Hintikka directly challenged Strawson on this point (and the many others who were philosophically provoked by Strawson’s posit), that their approach was not transcendental in the Kantian sense for:
“The references to the “psychological apparatus” which recent writers on transcendental arguments tend to dismiss as inessential are in fact close to the very gist of the Kantian arguments.” [15]
That is, as Hintikka correctly noted, Kant reserved the term “transcendental” for the specific arguments that demonstrated how the mind imposed its categories, its sensibilities, and its understanding on the objects of experience; that is, the process of the mind ‘constructing knowledge’ from phenomenal experience and giving it order, thus making that experience possible. He thus felt Strawson, Stroud and ‘recent literature’ had misunderstood the essence of the Kantian transcendental argument. However, the attack seems muddled as Hintikka then goes on to describe a feature of the “authentic” transcendental argument:
“The conclusion (the possibility of certain conceptual practices) is arrived at by reasoning which itself relies on these practices. The conclusion makes possible the very argument by means of which it is established. [In this] we seem to have in it a much better example of what would be a transcendental argument in a genuinely Kantian sense.” [16]
This, of course, is precisely the essence of what Strawson, Stroud and the “others” assumed in their arguments. For Strawson, the sceptic is disarmed because the skeptical conclusion can only be arrived at by reasoning that relies on a non-skeptical transcendental premise. Whilst conceding to Hintikka that there is indeed a difference in the sense Kant understood the term, it is possible to put the dispute to rest, at least in the sense of anything philosophically important, by considering that the very same logical form of argument that bear the modern nomenclature of transcendental argument are Kantian arguments in the sense he employed them in the Critique (in the ‘second analogy’ in the Refutation of Idealism). The most we need concede is that Kant reserved the term transcendental argument for arguments regarding the categories, the neo-Kantian does not and need not. It should also be noted that Aristotle argued transcendentally in this broader sense for the law of excluded middle, so the form has a long pedigree independent of the modern debate.
So, in summary, although there is an important technical sense in which modern transcendental arguments are distinct from Kantian transcendental arguments, just as modern neo-Darwinian arguments are distinct from Darwin’s arguments,[17] it can be said that modern transcendental arguments, be they from Strawson, Wittgenstein,[18] Lewis[19] or Van Til,[20] are still ‘transcendental’ when understood in an analogous and widened sense in the context of Kant’s critiques as a whole.[21]
6.3.5 Option “A” and Option “B” Transcendental Arguments
The most famous response to Strawson’s seminal use of transcendental argumentation was that of Stroud.[22] In it he argued that the most transcendental arguments can do is to prove the necessity of certain concepts for our understanding of the world (option “A” arguments), it does not mean that the world is actually that way (option “B” arguments). That is, there is no ontological necessity associated with the transcendental argument that terminates at A. Stroud went on to argue that for transcendental arguments to bridge the gap to B, they would need to import in a form of verification principle which thus renders the transcendental move redundant. With verificationism dead and buried [23] fifteen years prior with Quine’s critique of it, Stroud concluded the arguments were of no value in telling us the way the world really is, and the metaphysical sceptic remains undefeated, though perhaps with a far weaker justification for their skepticism.
However, although Stroud’s arguments were insightful, he seemed to misunderstand that Strawson was not making an ontological claim. Strawson did not abandon transcendental argumentation in the wake of Stroud. In fact, he believed Stroud had radically misinterpreted what he himself was claiming for transcendental arguments. His interest was to demonstrate the interconnectedness of concepts as part of a “descriptive (as opposed to validatory or revisionary) metaphysics.” [24] He was notably unmoved by the persistence of skeptical doubt:
“[T]he point has been, not to offer a rational justification of the belief in external objects and other minds or of the practice of induction, but to represent skeptical arguments and rational counter-arguments as equally idle—not senseless, but idle—since what we have here are original, natural, inescapable commitments which we neither choose nor could give up. The further such commitment which I now suggest we should acknowledge is the commitment to belief in the reality and determinateness of the past.” [25] (Emphasis added).
Here I would assert Strawson is making a conceptual version of Moore’s appealing to what is obvious to my perception I am perfectly justified in believing in preference to your skeptical doubt, with no accommodation to the sceptic; viewing such doubt as “idle” and the evidentialist argument as equally idle.[26] Just as Wittgenstein considered the proposition “my name is Ludwig Wittgenstein” as certain but ungrounded, so Strawson (and Moore) view the skeptical question. That is, it does no useful work for us in relating to and living in the world; a view which we have seen finds resonance in Blackburn and Plantinga.
6.4 Van Til’s Transcendentalism
6.4.1 Presuppositional Apologetics
In simple terms, Van Til’s transcendentalism is captured in his famous aphorism, “atheism presupposes theism.” Now the “presupposes” here is not merely a psychological or perceptual claim (an “option ‘A’” argument) but one which deals with the way the world really is (an “option ‘B’” argument). For Van Til, the transcendental argument is elevated to the worldview level, the whole account of nature and of supernature is laid as the bounds of the argument and the transcendental principle is deduced as the transcendent Trinity. Thus, the challenges of diversity and unity, of the one and the many, the particular and the universal are reconciled:
“The presuppositional challenge to the unbeliever is guided by the premise that only the Christian worldview provides the philosophical preconditions necessary for man’s reasoning and knowledge in any field whatever. This is what is meant by a “transcendental” defense of Christianity…From beginning to end, man’s reasoning about anything whatever (even reasoning about reasoning itself) is unintelligible or incoherent unless the truth of the Christian scriptures is presupposed…” [27] (Emphasis added).
Now this means for Van Til, that Stroud’s criticism of the option “B” argument loses its teeth. The Christian worldview explicitly connects the world as perceived with the world as it really is. The scriptures provide the mandate for a regularity of nature (thus validating inductive science), the logos for deductive and logical certainty and a pragmatic imperative for the solving human problems. Plantinga expresses this elegantly:
“if we don’t know that there is such a person as God, we don’t know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other, and our world…the most important truths about us and them is that we have been created by the Lord and utterly depend on him for our continued existence…we don’t grasp the significance of…human phenomena…science, art, music, philosophy.” [28] (Emphasis added).
6.4.2 From Probability to Certainty
Van Til argued that the alternative models of reason, the inductive, deductive, abductive, pragmatic, and positivistic in all their variations and inflections, resolve to probabilities rather than certainty. He held that the challenge of Hume’s deconstruction of empiricism and his denial of causality, forever remained an asymptotic limiting concept to secular reasoning and permitted irrefutable skeptical doubt. Only with the help of the TAG can this be defeated, and the alternative modes of reasoning legitimized.
This is an important principle to understand, we are seeking to validate all forms of reason. Certain modes of reasoning are more suited to different problems than other kinds of reasoning, e.g., we can never reason deductively to answer the question whether it is raining (though we could argue inductively based on air pressure, windspeed, humidity etc.), it must be settled with an empirical operation.
6.4.3 Indirect Argumentation
When we have an argument over any feature of nature and share common presuppositions then appeal can be made to the legitimizing authority to resolve a dispute. For example, two botanists in a dispute over a particular genus can refer to their common taxonomical authority, follow an agreed procedure and settle the dispute. This is an example of a direct argument where the facts can be established because there is a common philosophy of facts between the parties. However, when common presuppositions are not shared, i.e., our accounts of nature are different, when our “conceptual schemes” or “worldviews” are in conflict, our philosophy of facts differ; when there are competing a priori conceptions or “incommensurate paradigms,” [29] then it is not possible to settle the argument directly.
Some believe that there is some kind of philosophical stand-off in this situation and that no reasoning is possible between the competing parties. We saw what Wittgenstein called a “form of life” and the language game can only be understood from within that community. Each community is self-validating, and neither can dismiss the other. Van Til was frequently accused [30] by critics of this position which might also be called fideism.[31] However, such a criticism of Van Til totally misconstrues the transcendental nature of his reasoning. Transcendental reasoning allows for the assessment of the truth claim of a worldview by subjecting the opposing positions to an internal critique on their own terms and/or demonstrating the impossibility of the contrary view to the Christian view.
As we have seen, with Van Tillian logic, there are only two worldviews—the Christian and the non-Christian. The Christian worldview starts from the presupposition of the transcendent God who reveals Himself in the scriptures with the mind of the human subject derivative in its reasoning and subject to divine authority and sanction. The non-Christian worldview asserts the autonomy of human thought. Thus, although there are apparently incommensurate non-Christian worldviews, they are variations on the same basic presupposition of the autonomous status of the human mind as ultimate authority—seen most obviously in the varieties of naturalism.
It is not possible to settle the differences between worldview directly but by arguing that denying the Christian presupposition renders any other account of reality unintelligible, it refutes the non-Christian worldview in all its inflections. We are not arguing directly over some “fact” of nature but indirectly regarding the very structure of the thought that renders it intelligible. The unique logical structure of transcendental argument is that we can start with p or ~p (where p is any fact of the universe as a premise) and demonstrate the transcendental necessity of our presupposition. This is not the case with inductive or deductive arguments, you refute a premise, it invalidates the conclusion. Kant implies this when he asserts the transcendental makes possible the ground for its own proof and is assumed as we are arguing for that very same transcendental.
What makes Van Tillian argument distinctive is that he broadens the transcendental argument to not just a conceptual scheme, but the worldview level. The argument is simple, only the Christian worldview makes human predication possible. For Van Til, human predication [32] is concrete and not abstract reasoning,[33] by which we mean the mind of God establishes the coherence between and the correspondence with the facts of the world. This sets it apart from the transcendental deductions of the categories of understanding in Kant,[34] the cogito of Descartes[35] or the modalism of Dooyeweerd.[36] Van Til maintains that their critiques fail because they seek only to establish transcendentally a principle, but a further transcendental proof would then be required to ground the transcendentals themselves.[37] In essence, Van Til starts his transcendental reasoning with God, God does not earn his place at the philosophical table after the autonomous mind of humanity has validated the legitimacy of his presence.
6.5 The Criticisms of TAG
6.5.1 Global Criticisms of Transcendentalism
It would be amiss of us to ignore the controversial history of modern transcendentalism before we consider the possible criticisms of TAG specifically, for TAG is a specialization of the category. If the category is unsafe, then TAG is moot. It is not our intention here to rehearse these arguments in their agonizing detail, but rather to offer a high-level survey that demonstrates the plausibility of the category can be maintained despite these criticisms.[38] The justification for such a brief examination is threefold in addition to the obvious one of our limited space:
- Van Tillian transcendentalism as presented above offers a very clear argument, the force of which it is not difficult to appreciate. Criticisms of TAG are often more specific to TAG rather than the general criticisms of transcendentalism.
- Much of the dispute over transcendentalism appears linguistic rather than substantive.
- Others have made it the central focus of their advanced studies[39] and we have the benefit of summarizing the main conclusions of their work.
The most trenchant criticisms were found in Gram’s paper where he denied the category in its entirety.[40] However, he received a strong response from Hintikka who was keen to clarify what precisely a transcendental argument was as some confusion[41] had arisen in the literature as reflected in Gram’s ‘paradigm case’ [42] in that paper. He then “corrected” Gram in the most explicit way by re-positing the ‘proper’ category in its pure Kantian sense, receiving equally vigorous ripostes from Gram.[43] Leaving out the details[44], it would seem Hintikka had established criteria sufficiently persuasive against the transcendental skepticism of Gram which would arguably distinguish a space for a transcendental method,[45] if not the category.
However, alongside this vexed technical dispute there were notable philosophers such as Grayling and McDowell [46] making influential and extensive use of a transcendental approach and as Butler notes, Frege, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Putnum and Searle had all employed the mode of argumentation.[47] It would thus seem the ground is firm enough beneath transcendental arguments that we can acknowledge them as valid, the specific issues of dispute are more related to the domain of their application rather than a foundational invalidation. Further, as I noted it introducing this section, it is not unclear as to what the Van Tillian transcendental argument claims, even if it is denied that it is an effective argument. It should be immediately admitted that Van Til’s argument is breathtaking in its ambition and perspicuous in its simplicity.[48] It is an eminently accessible statement of revolutionary apologetic principles, but as Butler notes, “He was content to present the argument in broad strokes and leave the details aside…he left the detailed work to his followers.” [49] Inevitably, the brevity of presentation, the revolutionary character and his lack of a defense meant the attacks levied against it were many and furious from his opponents,[50] it is to them we turn and assess whether the argument can withstand them.
6.5.2 The Nature of TAG
One criticism, particularly associated with ‘Van Tillian’ John Frame [51], is that TAG is not a unique argument form, rather it is merely a rhetorical method [52] and can be reduced to the more traditional arguments for God’s existence as found in Aquinas, particularly the cosmological and teleological arguments which argue from design and causality to God.[53] However, there is a basic misunderstanding demonstrated by Frame here. The unbeliever has no right to even formulate the concept of causality in the autonomous fashion that the traditional arguments employ. Van Til’s position is that the concept of causality would not be intelligible as a standalone concept without the ontological Trinity to provide the transcendent basis of the transcendental. As Butler notes:
“[Traditional cosmological arguments assume] that the non-believer is perfectly justified in believing in causation and/or using the concept of causation. Indeed, it assumes that human experience and understanding in general and causation in particular are perfectly intelligible outside the Christian worldview.” [54]
In contrast, a transcendental argument demonstrates the necessity of the concept by the impossibility of the opposite, not by a direct inference about cause itself, as seen in the traditional arguments. At best, the traditional argument might be seen within the believing community as concluding that God is the transcendent cause of the Universe, but equally for the unbeliever it might just demonstrate some “transcendental” that fits into a deterministic view of “nature.” Thus, this is very different from proving the existence of God is transcendentally necessary, the ground for all being and for the intelligibility of nature[55] and thus Frame’s contention is unsound.
6.5.3 The Uniqueness Proof
By this, what is meant is that Christianity might be proved by TAG as being a sufficient condition to satisfy the premise of human experience and intelligibility of that experience, but it has not been demonstrated that it is a necessary one. Most commonly, this is asserted that there may be a worldview ‘X’ that may or may not have been discovered that might also provide the conditions of intelligibility. Thus, it can never be established that Christianity is the only instantiation fulfilling the premises or that it will remain so.
This contention, however, misunderstands the nature of transcendental proof which is not localized to a particular worldview. From the point of view of TAG internally, this is not problematic as for TAG there are only two possible worldviews, the Christian, or the non-Christian. If any non-Christian view is refuted, then all are refuted, the Christian is by default correct (what is termed a disjunctive syllogism).
6.5.4 The Mere Sufficiency of the Christian Worldview
This is really a special case of the previous objection. If the critic asserts, we have a simple disjunction (A or B or …. N), it no longer holds that given ~B (or ~C…~N) we have A. Any of the alternatives will present a sufficient worldview, including the Christian one, but not a necessary one. However, as with the ‘uniqueness’ objection, this misses the crucial issue regarding transcendental argumentation. It is not arguing about refuting a specific instantiation of the class “non-Christian worldview” but rather the conceptual validity of the non-Christian worldview type that provides the template for that class.[56]
That is, there really are only two possible worldviews, to refute one variation of the non-Christian worldview is to refute them all because the presuppositions are common even if the details are different. Even the radical relativist who appeals that there could be a possible world or conceptual scheme so different from our own which will someday satisfy the criteria for intelligibility can be answered. Donald Davidson in an epoch-making paper [57] demonstrated that it makes no sense to talk about a conceptual scheme different from our own, to be recognized as a conceptual scheme is to be part of our conceptual scheme.
This we must recognize as an epistemological point though, as Christians we understand that God’s conceptual scheme is different from our own.[58] There may be other conceptual schemes, it is just we can have no knowledge regarding them unless that knowledge is provided providentially and intersects with our own conceptual scheme. This objection thus migrates into how the bridge between conceptual necessity and ontological necessity is bridged, which we will consider shortly.
6.5.5 The ‘Fristianity’ Objection
In this case, the Christian worldview is modified on one single point, or an adjunct or revision is made and a new religion, “Fristianity” we will call it, is born with its unique theology. This is another special case of the uniqueness objection that argues that the objection is not just conceivable but instantiated in the denominational variations amongst Christian believers. Now, as Butler notes, this objection is unproblematic in the case of the modification of the major doctrines of Christianity. This is because the major doctrines of Christianity are a unified whole, a transcendental unity guaranteed by a transcendent triune Being. You cannot modify one, e.g., turning the Trinity into a Quadrinity[59] or collapsing it into a unity,[60] without changing its very nature. However, what if we just change one detail, or issue some counterfactual challenge, e.g., regarding the canonicity of certain books? Now, this is easily countered because the change is not a relevant change to the worldview, some Christian communities indeed maintain a genuine Christian commitment with differences to their canons.
However, more fundamentally as a basic feature of a Christian philosophy, the Christian “conceptual scheme” is a subset of the “Christian worldview.” The Christian experience shares a phenomenology that supports a cultural diversity, for the scriptures were presented by God to Humanity as narrative (rather than as a systematic theology). There is freedom and liberty to express the creativity of God that allows for contingency, choice, and variety. The Christian community was maintained for centuries when people were unable to read or when the Papists controlled society and the church. It was not merely a conceptual scheme but a rich phenomenology of Christian life.[61] In contrast, all that the Christian worldview need posit in conceptual and theological terms, is the salvation of humanity through the substitutionary work of Christ, which is the call for all to repent and to be reconciled to God.
6.5.6 From Conceptual Necessity to Ontological Necessity
Of all the objections to TAG, this objection is the most serious and draws its strength from the very nature of transcendental arguments. As Butler notes there is a paucity of response in the positive literature regarding TAG to this objection. Stroud [62] was the most famous expositor of this criticism:
“The conditions for anything’s making sense would have to be strong enough to include not only our beliefs about what is the case, but also the possibility of our knowing whether those beliefs are true…But to prove this would be to prove some version of the verification principle, and then the skeptic will have been directly and conclusively refuted.” [63] (Emphasis added).
In other words, this is the connection of how we must conceive of the world with the way the world really is. There is a clear distinction between perceiving the world a certain way and the way the world really is.[64] Stroud asserted that the transcendental method had to import in some form of verification principle to bridge that gap, but if that were the case, the transcendental argument is redundant. This is because the verification principle immediately draws that connection. However, we have already seen that the verification principle is self-refuting, it is not established based on empirical evidence but is a rational, metaphysical premise, and following Quine, dogmatically assumed within the empiricist mode of thought.
Thus, Butler notes, “all that is proven [by TAG if the objection stands] is that in order to be rational, we must believe that God exists” which is conceptually different than proving God actually exists. Now, of course, if we were simply concerned with apologetics, the rational defense of Christianity against its detractors, we might consider the apologetic task complete and the criticism irrelevant. Butler thus continues:
“This defense carries a great deal of force. It effectively undermines the unbeliever’s ability to rationally reject the Christian faith. But notice that this defense construes TAG not so much as a proof for God’s existence but, rather, as a proof for the necessity of believing the Christian worldview.”
Butler’s next remarks are telling for they are exactly where Plantinga left off and that would imply Van Til and Plantinga have the same terminus:
“The problem with this…is that although Christianity may be the necessary precondition for experience, it does not follow from this that Christianity is true.” [65] (Emphasis added).
We remember that Plantinga believed it to it be true and maximally so but noted he was speaking personally and did not believe philosophy had the tools to establish its truth.[66] Our very justification for moving to a Van Tillian conception was to demonstrate its truth could be established transcendentally. Without this connection, the sceptic might be perfectly happy to assert that they accept an amoral and irrational world without essences or metanarratives, and our previous discussion of postmodernism demonstrated there were plenty that are now content to be paralogical and consider reality a random, disconnected multiverse. We would have then catastrophically failed in the epistemologically self-consciousness project. Now Butler can only make a theological move at this point to propose a resolution to this issue. He proposes that TAG as presented in our analysis thus far has been equated with “conceptual scheme.” This, he contends is a serious error as:
“Christianity provides us with a detailed metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical system. The foundation of this system is an absolute personal God…This God is…a speaking God who reveals truths to us about Himself and the world.” [67]
Now, we might be uncomfortable with this move as it would seem to be begging the question for the non-Christian, but it is certainly a reasonable one for the Christian. We have already established that ultimate authorities will beg the question. We understand that God has given us perception and faculties that teach us about the way the world is and how it works. We accept the testimony of scripture and its normative statements. However, I would argue that Butler’s terminus here is then effectively equivalent to Plantinga’s, we have made recourse to a Christian version of reliabilism.
However, before we cede this an issue of faith and capitulate afresh to what Kant called the scandal of philosophy, Baird offered a resolution that does not require a theological move but was based on a philosophical disarming of the Stroudian critique. Recollect that Stroud asserted the primary problem was bridging the gap between concept and reality, for a transcendental argument to do so would require the reliance on or the importing of the verificationist premise. Baird argues [68] that McDowell in his Mind and World constructed a transcendental argument that justifies the verificationist principle. McDowell was looking to complete the Kantian task and was arguing what the presuppositions of empirical experience and objectivity must be, and he is alleged to have established it transcendentally. Leaving out the details, it certainly seems a fair reading of McDowell that he has a principal aim of collapsing the distance between mind and world to justify empirical experience, and in doing so the verificationist principle is no longer seen as self-refuting.[69]
Baird also notes that a worldview is assessed not just on coherence of conceptual scheme but on pragmatic criteria as to how well our theory works in the world; or why some approaches work better than others. This bridge between pragmatic utility and truth is not dismissed as unimportant as in pragmatism but is seen to be the domain of metaphysics. Self-evidentially, for the believer, this correlates to the wider components of the Christian worldview that complete this connection. Thus, if Baird is correct, we can indeed make the connection between concept and world in a rather unexpected manner. In the strong philosophical sense, the separation between mind and world evaporates [70] and in the ‘weaker’ (but equally significant) theological sense, the Christian metaphysic is validated and indeed mandated.
6.6 Summary and Conclusion
In this chapter we were interested in a formal understanding of the transcendental mode of argumentation as it had become of central importance to the arguments we were making through this work. By improving our formal understanding of the category, we could then go onto to consider its applicability more precisely and then consider more effectively the criticisms which have been levelled against it. We understood first that it had a distinctive logical form which has a long history in Western philosophy from Aristotle and has been of particular interest to those philosophers dealing with the problem of skepticism; the transcendentalist argues that the sceptic’s challenge is incoherent because they are assuming in the logic of their skeptical challenge what they seeking to dismiss. We noted that in the modern period, Kant in the 18th century and Strawson in the 20th century, understood the category in terms of demonstrating the necessity of certain conceptual constructions that framed our understanding of the world which could not legitimately be denied.
We noted that for Kant a transcendental argument was concerned with how it was possible a priori to have a knowledge of any object and to build a synthetic a priori understanding and description of the phenomenal world, rather than with merely a purely empirical or rational account of it. The conclusion of a transcendental argument is thus not a particular fact about reality or a generalized principle from experience but a concept. We found that one of the distinguishing features is that necessarily the premise and conclusion are involved in one another; there is a conceptual difference between the fallacy of circularity and the circularity implicit when arguing transcendentally, to argue regarding ultimate authorities must necessarily imply their use for there can be no reference to an external authority as that would then be more ultimate.
In this respect, we needed to draw a distinction between transcendentally framed statements, which some have argued might be recast as either inductive or deductive arguments and might thus be conceived as of denying the legitimacy of the transcendental category more generally, and the transcendental argument. We demonstrated that the transcendental argument has a non-parochial conclusion, it is broad principle whereas a polar case argument might be mitigated in a purely linguistic manner by picking a new word; the transcendental argument would rather seek to explicate just what is required or is assumed that rends the linguistic couplet coherent and intelligible. We could thus conclude that the transcendental argument does not have a logical form alone but a particular type of semantic content; this distinction is necessary to understand Van Til’s appropriation and use of transcendental argumentation.
Further, owing to the force of the historical controversy in the post-WWII period when philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Strawson had begun making use of transcendental argumentation, we noted the dispute amongst the neo-Kantians regarding the propriety of using the designation outside the strict Kantian sense. We concluded that there was nothing of philosophical importance in the dispute, noting that the central conception of what was required to make reasoning intelligible was preserved in the modern understanding; we noted that it was commonplace for categories to expand from their original meanings even to cases where the new meaning was in near contradiction to the original meaning, citing the substantive differences between classical and Neo-Darwinism. We concluded that because Kant did indeed employ an identical argument form to the modern form in the Second Refutation of Idealism, the most that could be claimed was a degree of confusion in the modern literature as for what context Kant had reserved the term ‘transcendental’; most precisely, modern transcendental arguments were Kantian arguments but not Kantian transcendental arguments.
Accepting the broadened sense, we then examined the most important distinction in the classes of transcendental arguments, that between the Option “A” and the Option “B” designations. Option “A” arguments are said to demonstrate merely the necessity of certain concepts for our understanding of the world; Option “B” arguments were said to have had ontological force; they are not merely describing how we need to think about the world but are arguing that the world is necessarily what the argument demonstrates. We examined Stroud’s claim that transcendental arguments can never bridge the gap to ontological claims without importing in a verification principle which would then have rendered the transcendental move moot. We concluded that Stroud seemed to have misunderstood Strawson on this point for Strawson was interested in descriptive metaphysics and was not making an ontological claim; he had asserted that arguments and counterarguments regarding necessary commitments did no useful philosophical work for us; commitments can be certain but ungrounded.
We then proceeded to examine Van Til’s variation of transcendentalism known as presuppositional apologetics; Van Til avoided the Stroudian dilemma by using the concept of the Christian worldview which explicitly connected our concepts about the world with the way the world really is. He argued that reasoning necessarily assumes the truth of the Christian worldview for intelligibility and coherence and that inductive science is validated because within our worldview God’s Providence guarantees the principle, escaping the skepticism of Hume regarding reason. We fully recognized that alternative worldviews have an implicit circularity and can only be judged for transcendental coherence by undergoing an internal critique; that is, their claims are tested on their own terms. We found that this avoided the accusation of fideism for Van Til as only a single view, the Christian worldview, maintained its claims on a rational basis without incoherence; only in the Christian worldview where the transcendent Trinity provides the basis for transcendental logic, are the transcendental principles themselves grounded, otherwise the principles would be arbitrary and defeasible. We noted that Van Til asserted the unifying feature amongst disparate and incommensurable non-Christian worldviews was their assertion of their intellectual self-sufficiency, the autonomy of the human mind as the final judge and arbiter. This distinguished the transcendentalism of Van Til from that of Kant, Descartes and Dooyeweerd.
We then examined the general criticisms of transcendentalism which had come to focus in the lengthy and intense debate between Hintikka and Gram; we concluded that Hintikka had established the legitimacy of methodological transcendentalism, even if the category was vulnerable to criticisms. We noted that Grayling, McDowell, Frege, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Putnam, and Searle had all made use of transcendental argumentation despite the denial of its legitimacy; we thus concluded that it has sufficient cogency as a philosophical method. We then proceeded to examine the specific criticisms levelled against Van Tillian transcendentalism which were judged on most occasions to be erroneous because of an inadequate understanding of the nature of the transcendental claim as having a distinct, categorical nature; we made use of our previous work which demonstrated that rhetorical rephrasing in inductive or deductive terms was only possible for arguments that were not sufficiently broad to be considered transcendental arguments as opposed to transcendentally framed statements.
Other criticisms failed to appreciate the disjunctive nature of the Van Tillian claim, there are only two worldviews, the Christian and the non-Christian; in refuting any one claim within any non-Christian worldview, all are refuted. We noted that Davidson’s argument regarding the impossibility of being able to recognize a conceptual scheme different from our own was basic in this regard with the important qualification that Davidson’s point was strictly epistemological; there might indeed be different conceptual schemes, but we would not be able to recognize them. We then examined one of the more theological criticisms that attempted to assert we could keep the substance of the Christian worldview but only change it on a single point; however, we noted that the core and basic Christian beliefs were a unified whole and a transcendental unity, you could not change one without changing the essence of the position.
Lastly, we considered the most challenging objection to the transcendental thesis, that of bridging the gap between conceptual necessity and ontological necessity; there is a clear philosophical distinction between perceiving or conceptualizing the world in a particular way and the world really being that way. Unless that gap can be bridged, we noted that the most that could be claimed was that TAG established the necessity of believing the Christian worldview to make reality intelligible but not that belief in the Christian God was logically necessary for intelligibility. Stroud argued that this could only be bridged by a verification principle which would then invalidate the argument as we had previously concluded that a verificationist principle can never justify itself on its own criteria.
We noted that Butler obviated this objection by asserting that TAG had been misconstrued as a conceptual scheme, rather than as a worldview which had built-in ontological commitments, thus circumventing the abstract objection. We considered this a satisfactory terminus for the Christian but argued further that McDowell’s justification of the verification principle on a transcendental basis might also mute Stroud’s objection, lending greater force to the proof for non-believers; we also found that others argued that because some approaches to the world work better than others, this implies metaphysical analysis, and conclusions were possible. Thus, as our aim was to establish not just the probability of the Christian worldview but the necessity of it, we have arguably found a transcendental formulation which demonstrates how this gap can be plausibly bridged.
[1] Stern, Transcendental Arguments, § 2.2.
[2] Aristotle, Metaphysics 1005 b35–1006 a28. Competent editions of Aristotle’s work (e.g., as listed in the Bibliography) will have references to the positions within the original manuscripts to which these numbers refer.
[3] Wittgenstein in his Investigations has much to say regarding the role of “rules” in philosophical discussion. In the Revised Fourth Edition the index entry for “rules” is exceptional as is the indexing of the volume generally.
[4] Bahnsen, Four Types of Proof.
[5] Generally accepted to have begun with the publication of Strawson’s Individuals, from which time they became a “prominent fixture in contemporary philosophy” (Butler, “The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence,” 90).
[6] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed.), Bxl (footnote).
[7] Körner, Fundamental questions, xi.
[8] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A11–12.
[9] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A737|B765.
[10] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 500.
[11] Strawson, Individuals, 35.
[12] However, Austin undoubtedly interacted with Wittgenstein’s use of transcendental logic. For an introduction to the Oxford “ordinary language” school, see Longworth, Austin.
[13] Butler, “Transcendental Arguments.”
[14] Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, 97.
[15] Hintikka, “Transcendental Arguments,” 276.
[16] Hintikka, “Transcendental Arguments,” 278.
[17] In fact, modern “Darwinian” arguments are predicated on a different basis all together. “Natural Selection” is not the mechanism for evolutionary change and the radically different “Darwinian” models proposed to replace it proved an explosive debate between the rival evolutionist camps, see Sterelny, Dawkins vs. Gould.
[18] Wittgenstein’s “Private Language” argument in the Investigations, 243–315, is perhaps the most complex example of a transcendental argument in the modern era. Rival schools of interpretation post-Kripke’s appropriation of it developed. The basic transcendental concept is clear though, language is public by nature and exists in a communal form of life, therefore a “private” language known only to an individual is not possible.
[19] Lewis’ arguments in Miracles against naturalism are transcendental. He argues (as does Plantinga after him) that if naturalism is true, then it refutes itself.
[20] We examine Van Til’s distinctive form of transcendentalism, “Presuppositionalism,” shortly.
[21] Schaper & Vossenkuhl (eds.), “Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism,” 56.
[22] Stroud, “Transcendental Arguments,” 241–56.
[23] Some like Michael Martin attempted to resurrect the corpse as late as 1999. We will also consider an interesting variation on justifying the verification principle unrelated to this classical conception of verificationism.
[24] Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, 23.
[25] Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, 27–28.
[26] Moore would have had no such reticence in describing it as “senseless.”
[27] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 5–6.
[28] Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 217.
[29] This phrase is particularly associated with post-Kuhnian discourse. We will consider Kuhn in much more detail later.
[30] Montgomery, “Once Upon an A Priori,” 380–403.
[31] More specifically Wittgensteinian fideism, see Nielsen & Phillips, Wittgensteinian Fideism?
[32] “Predication” was a term still in common use in philosophy during the 1930s when Van Til was working out his theory. To predicate means simply to ascribe a property to an object, e.g., “redness,” “roundness,” “physical,” “mental,” etc.
[33] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 461–530.
[34] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 508. There are many places in Van Til where he deals directly with Kant. Van Til accepted that the transcendental program of Kant was appropriate but completely repudiated the autonomous presumption of Kant.
[35] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 509, 510 n. 90.
[36] Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 48 ff.
[37] This is the essence of Van Til’s treatment of Descartes. He said the cogito failed as a transcendental because it does not prove anything beyond that thinking is occurring, it assumes the further ground necessary for its own validation rather than proving an external world, as such it was like “a rock in a bottomless ocean.”
[38] Emphasis here on the agonizing. As Quine noted in his Theories and Things, it can be difficult to make sense of transcendentalism, especially when we deal with some post-Heideggerian writing.
[39] For example, Baird, Transcendental Arguments, provides the most thorough review, reassessment, and extension of transcendental arguments that I know of.
[40] Gram, “Transcendental Arguments,” 15–26.
[41] As we have noted previously, Hintikka was keen to draw a distinction between Kantian transcendental arguments and arguments like those of Strawson that were claiming to be transcendental. This might be technically correct, but it simply indicates the bounds of the definition had widened, it cannot be denied that Strawson was a neo-Kantian.
[42] Hintikka, “Transcendental Arguments,” 274–281.
[43] Gram, “Must We Revisit Transcendental Arguments?” 235–248.
[44] There was a technical and somewhat ill-tempered debate between the two men that ran for at least five years, with Gram in the final paper adopting a very different strategy, ceding a small amount of ground to Hintikka (perhaps making room for a method that might be ‘transcendental’, whilst simultaneously refusing to admit the category). Other exchanges involving Gram and Hintikka on unrelated matters seemed equally tense, both were Finnish and so there may have been a cultural angle to their exchanges that has not been sufficiently appreciated.
[45] The technical issues might be distilled thus, transcendental arguments are a priori arguments, and they are deductive arguments. We already have a priori and deductive arguments as categories, why are we positing another category?
[46] McDowell’s Mind and World and a successor volume Having The World In View are examples of modern post-Kantian transcendentalism. McDowell was noted for importing “continental” philosophy into analytic philosophy and the density (or enigma) of his prose at times is reminiscent of Continental writers though he was startingly well received in analytic circles (according to the backmatter of World in View). Speaking as one analytically minded, “Continental” transcendentalism can make one empathize quickly with Quine’s observation regarding transcendentalism, “as much as I can make sense of it”. With Quine, I find it opaque, difficult to understand and even harder to apply but that could equally be a failure on my part to give sufficient attention to understanding the Continental mode of thought. Interestingly, it seems Strawson runs against the grain of this movement despite being the best-known transcendentalist of the generation (see Han-Pile, n 17) and gains clarity and understandableness as a consequence. Ó Murchadha, Phenomenology, does a far better job of applying this mode of thought in a Christian context which makes my point—it is the Christian context that validates the transcendentals and transcendentalism generally.
[47] Butler, “The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence,” 101.
[48] The fullest statement of his argument runs to just 633 words and was originally found in ‘A Survey of Christian Epistemology’ (1969), 204–5. The brevity, of course, is not necessarily a weakness as this means the basic thrust of the argument can be understood by the young student as well as the tenured professor of fifty years but Van Til left it to his immediate disciples to develop and strengthen the argument.
[49] Butler, op cit., 76.
[50] Van Til’s most influential work, Defense of the Faith, was first published in 1955 and went through three editions to 1967. He was made emeritus in 1972 at over 70 years of age so it can be seen this work was extremely important in the latter stages of his career. Large sections of the work are responses to criticisms from both within and without the Reformed community which tends to obscure the coherence of the presentation of his views; this is why Bahnsen created his commentary, Van Til’s Apologetic, pulling together and systematizing Van Til from this and other sources. Van Til certainly considered Bahnsen as the authority on his position.
[51] Frame, Apologetics, 73–94. Some of Frame’s less sympathetic critics like to call him a “soft” Van Tillian. Butler, recognized as a “strong” Van Tillian, does argue Frame has “fundamentally departed” from Van Til in some respects whilst acknowledging Frame as one who has made use of and developed other aspects of Van Til’s thought. It should be noted that Frame personally knew Van Til and testifies that Van Til encouraged him as an advocate for his thought. It should also be noted that Frame, alongside Bahnsen, is one of the few who have attempted a systematic overview of Van Til’s thought, and his work was generally well-received in Reformed circles closest to Van Til.
Frame’s greatest difficulty was with respect to transcendental arguments as a distinct argument form. Bahnsen’s Answer To Frame was a direct challenge to Frame’s interpretation on this key point of difference, made even more notable in that Frame was in the audience for one of the four lectures and Bahnsen was presenting his lecture to Frame’s class. Butler was also in attendance. There is an interesting exchange at the end of the presentation in which Frame was present but in later work it seems Frame does acknowledge the strength of Bahnsen’s counterarguments and accepts the legitimacy of the transcendental argument.
[52] We might be tempted to argue here that this is a theological version of Gram’s assault as he too argued it was merely a “method.” However, anyone reading Gram and Frame would have to concede they are proceeding on a totally dissimilar basis. Frame, in broad outline (with the qualification in the previous note), accepts Van Til’s analysis.
[53] Frame goes as far to argue that Aquinas was formulating his arguments assuming the Christian worldview and therefore the Christian worldview was the transcendental for Aquinas. However, remarkable as Aquinas was, it was in his appropriation and application of Aristotle that provides the conceptual background to his work.
[54] Butler, “Transcendental Argument,” 80.
[55] It is also worth noting as both Butler and Plantinga do, that the traditional causal arguments are poor arguments that have been “sliced and diced” since Hume and Kant took issue with them. Russell gave a second coat of derision in the 20th century. Whereas the ontological argument has managed a better defense in Plantinga, he hardly gives it a ringing endorsement even though he presents a “triumphant” version of it (Plantinga, God, 75–111), stating it fails as a piece of natural theology even if it can be proved as sound in form. It is of note he spends only 7 pages on both the teleological and cosmological arguments before dismissing them as logically inadequate, going as far to call the cosmological argument “outrageous.”
[56] This might be more understandable to those (like me) with a background in programming in object-orientated languages such as C++ and C#. The programmer defines a “type” which will have properties and other characteristics, this defines the basic behavior and data for a “class” (a program element template). Other types can “inherit” this type and sub or superclass its data or behavior, but it will always be based on the base type and will be constrained in its operations by that type. It does not matter how many variations with dramatically different behavior there might be, there will always be some fundamental characteristic inherited from that base class.
[57] Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” 183–98.
[58] “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.,” Isaiah 55:8–9 (NAS).
[59] The founder of “analytic psychology” (in contrast with the rival psychoanalysis), and onetime collaborator with Freud, Carl Jung, did exactly that. He argued that evil must be integrated in the godhead to ensure the goodness of God was properly balanced, i.e., that God was psychologically stable and whole. His “Dream” (of God the Phallus born from below) and the mystical “Day Vision” (where God on his throne defecates on the Basel cathedral) demonstrates to Jung that God was showing him He could be both good and bad; “Jung experiences show the rebirth of a God in the underworld and the destruction of the old religious dispensations of a God above moral reproach” (from a slide by my Psychology of Religion teacher, an expert Jungian scholar, Prof. Lucy Huskinson). Of course, and this is very evident in Jung’s other work, this took inspiration from Taoism and certain forms of Buddhism (Jung used mandalas as symbols of four-dimensional wholeness).
[60] This is evident in the “biblical cults” of Jehovah’s witnesses, Mormons, Christadelphians, Christian Science etc. which inevitably evolve an entirely different system of theology that becomes antithetical to orthodox Christian thought, despite claiming allegiance and faithfulness to the same scripture.
[61] Ó Murchadha, Phenomenology, undertakes an extremely ambitious account of this within the Continental school of thought but manages to maintain a perspicuity of language which, with some work and patience on the part of the reader, makes it a rewarding and enriching read both on a spiritual and a philosophical level.
[62] See also § 6.3.5 where we discussed the context of Stroud’s criticism in more detail.
[63] Stroud, “Transcendental Arguments,” 256.
[64] The preponderance of ‘Flat Earth’ theorists armed with their empirical analysis and their 200 proofs why the Earth is flat should make this clear, lest we doubt!
[65] Butler, “The Transcendental Argument,” 88–99.
[66] He finishes both Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief and the abbreviated summary, Knowledge with this thought.
[67] Butler, “The Transcendental Argument,” 123.
[68] Baird, TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS, 126–77.
[69] He bolsters this claim by citing historical work by Genova, Transcendental Form and Good Transcendental Arguments and Stine, Metaphilosophy as a support to the transcendental derivation of the verificationist principle.
[70] We might be reminded of the conclusion of Schlick in repudiating classical Kantian dogma of the mind imposing its form on reality.