{"id":1152,"date":"2025-07-24T18:31:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T17:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?page_id=1152"},"modified":"2025-07-27T20:24:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T19:24:37","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/the-foundations-of-philosophy-epistemological-self-consciousness\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>1. Introduction<\/h1>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.1 The Foundations of Philosophy\u2014and the Epistemologically Self-Conscious Project<\/h2>\n

This book argues for the necessity<\/em> of Christian belief as the presupposition for the intelligibility<\/em> of philosophical and scientific thinking:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We give a description<\/em> of reality and its constitution, our metaphysics<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  2. We give an account<\/em> of reality and the processes of nature, that is our theory of knowledge or our epistemology<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  3. We then establish what is argued as the only appropriate basis of conduct within our worldview, our Christian ethics<\/em> and how this understanding can then be applied to the political arena.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Agreeing formally with Mahon we assert, \u201cphilosophy [is] properly philosophical only when edifying and\u00a0<\/em>transformative\u201d<\/em>[1]<\/a> (emphasis original). \u00a0The transformative process we label \u201cepistemological self-consciousness.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 The following are our areas of exploration:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Philosophy is conceived of as the entire<\/em> system of human knowledge rather than a specialized addendum to the normal curriculum undertaken only by those with a penchant for abstract intellectual activity.<\/li>\n
    2. Christian theology is argued to be the only<\/em> system that will lend philosophy so-conceived an intellectual coherence.<\/li>\n
    3. The parameters for this are both pluralistic in scope and particular in application without contradiction. That is, it corresponds with the world and is internally coherent.<\/li>\n
    4. The defense of the existence of the Christian God as not only justified or warranted but as objectively<\/em> defensible, rational, and<\/em><\/li>\n
    5. Competing worldviews or \u201cforms of life\u201d can only be judged as incoherent when subjected to transcendental analysis<\/em>.<\/li>\n
    6. A worldview is not just a \u201cconceptual scheme\u201d but a much stronger articulation with ontological significance. This helps us overcome some of the traditional problems with transcendental arguments.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      In summary, we posit a metaphysic from scripture, we posit a transcendental foundation for knowledge in the transcendent Trinity, and we posit an ethic which we can then apply to the exegetical and practical problems of philosophy. \u00a0In other words, we then have a philosophical toolbox which will then inform our political practice.[2]<\/a> \u00a0This work aims to articulate the orthodox, biblical Christian worldview as the only system of thought capable of providing the foundations of intelligibility of reasoning and rationality, in both the private and public spheres of life.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.2 The Skeptical Challenge<\/h2>\n

      This book stands intelligently but strongly opposed to the skeptical view, except in a strictly qualified sense as an issue of methodological research and believes that we can live our lives certain of the most important truths regarding the universe.\u00a0 That is, that there are values immanent within all creation that allow us to live in complete harmony within it and with one another.\u00a0 To that end we argue that there are no \u201cbrute\u201d uninterpreted facts of the universe (or nature),[3]<\/a> but all our conceptions and perceptions about the world, how we interpret and evaluate the actions of other external entities alike and unlike ourselves, will be theory-laden and, most importantly, value<\/em> laden.\u00a0 This might seem initially implausible until we consider how naturalism excludes as a matter of theoretical principle that \u2018nature\u2019 is the work of a personal God and makes the ethical observations that deny this God cares<\/em> about this \u2018nature\u2019 and that the relations of this \u2018nature\u2019 reflect God\u2019s own character.<\/p>\n

      In contrast, one of our basic positions is that how we relate to the world around us is at base an ethical<\/em> question, and we are arguing that only<\/em> a Christian ethic ever allows us to properly understand the world around us. \u00a0We recognize that there is a fundamental difference between employing skepticism as a methodological<\/em> tool of analysis where we systematically evaluate our assumptions with a view to improving our understanding and technological applications of our knowledge, and a skepticism that is a basic metaphysical<\/em> orientation that reality is contingent, disordered, chaotic, and our reasonings are arbitrary, physiologically, or psychologically conditioned responses of our evolutionary history. \u00a0Indeed, we argue in this work that one of the central purposes of philosophy is really to address this challenge of skepticism in the latter sense, and we devote substantial space to the various responses to this challenge whilst presenting our own vision.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a>1.3 Apologetics<\/h2>\n

      <\/a><\/a>1.3.1 Apologetics as the Rational Defense of Christianity<\/h3>\n

      Apologetic philosophy or more simply \u201cApologetics\u201d\u200a\u200a[4]<\/a> is normally conceived of as being concerned with the rational<\/em> defense of the Christian faith against those who oppose it. \u00a0It was \u201cthe defense of <\/em>the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life.\u201d<\/em>\u200a\u200a[5]<\/a>\u00a0 The definite article emphasizes the fact that there are non-negotiable foundations to any worldview that claims to be Christian.\u00a0 Part of the argument of this work will be that there may be a great diversity of kind but there remains an objective<\/em> basis for any category claiming to be of that kind.\u00a0 As J Gresham Machen argued in his Christianity and Liberalism <\/em>(1923), \u201cLiberalism,\u201d despite its reuse of the scriptures, was fundamentally a different religion distinct from Christianity because it did not accept biblical doctrines on their own terms but reinterpreted them to fit the post-Darwinian zeitgeist. \u00a0In that respect, we will explicate and explore the Kuyperian conception of the fundamental antithesis between the Christian and non-Christian worldviews, Van Til\u2019s development of it and our own specific instantiation.<\/p>\n

      Thus, this work is essentially an apologetic work.\u00a0 It is, depending on your presuppositions regarding the subject, a particular branch of either philosophy, philosophical theology, or theology proper.\u00a0 For example, Richard Rorty, the self-identifying \u201csecular humanist\u201d stated that apologetics \u201cfell off\u201d philosophy in the early years of the 20th<\/sup> century with \u201cno consequence,\u201d i.e., it was completely irrelevant,<\/em>[6]<\/a> though Rorty was being slightly disingenuous as he elsewhere acknowledged the seminal importance of Christian thought to the West.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 In contrast, we will be arguing that without apologetics, there can be no possibility of the intelligibility<\/em> of any<\/em> human predication, so it is completely relevant<\/em>;<\/em> indeed, logically necessary<\/em> and lays the foundation for philosophy.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a>1.3.2 Classical and Evidential Apologetics<\/h3>\n

      There have been many iterations of apologetics using very different presuppositions.\u00a0 The old Princeton tradition called for a rational defense of the faith against<\/em> the claims of unbelief.\u00a0 Thus, this was principally a negative or reactive apologetic that wants to duel with the unbeliever using their own terms and presuppositions.\u00a0 The Princeton founders themselves put it this way:<\/p>\n

      \u201c<\/strong>[T]o fit clergymen to meet the cultural crisis, to roll back what they perceived as tides of irreligion sweeping the country, and to provide a learned defense of Christianity generally and the Bible specifically.\u201d\u200a[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

      This tradition is also sometimes called \u201cclassical apologetics\u201d or \u201cevidential apologetics\u201d though there is an important distinction between these terms.\u00a0 Technically, \u201cclassical apologetics\u201d is more correctly thought of as the apologetic tradition originating from the work of St Thomas Aquinas, specifically his cosmological arguments.\u00a0 \u201cEvidential apologetics\u201d deals with evidential issues such as evidence for the resurrection and the accuracy of the biblical manuscripts.\u00a0 However, the two have become somewhat conflated as they are both variations on the theme that reasons<\/em> are required for the justification of belief and that justification comes from evidence (which is primarily empirical).\u00a0 Thus, some within the Reformed community have grouped them together.[9]<\/a> \u00a0Similarly, Warfield in his apologetics asserted that the non-believer must have the scriptures demonstrated and validated as the Word of God by the appeal to \u201cright <\/em>reason.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Once this had been demonstrated, then the scriptures themselves could be believed, the autonomous person relinquishes their autonomy, and they accept the absolute authority of scripture and its claim as the authoritative Word of God.\u00a0 The negative nature and defensive posture of this apologetic model should be clear.<\/p>\n

      <\/a><\/a>1.3.3 Presuppositional Apologetics<\/h3>\n

      The classical and evidential methods have historically been the most influential schools of apologetics until Van Til was credited with a \u201creformation\u201d of apologetics during his time as professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til\u2019s critique argued that the evidential methods have some basic flaws: [NL 1-3]<\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. It assumes the unbeliever is capable of \u201cright reason,\u201d i.e., that the noetic consequences of sin do not substantially interfere with the ability to reason.[11]<\/a><\/li>\n
      2. It assumes there is common, neutral epistemological ground between believer and non-believer upon which each can meet and \u201cfollow the argument\u201d<\/em>\u200a[12]<\/a> where it leads.<\/li>\n
      3. It makes the Christ of scripture and any of His claims always subject to a standard external to scripture itself. Scripture is no longer the final<\/em> authority but is subject<\/em> to the judgment of human reason.\u00a0 This external substantiation always needs to be satisfied before the claim can be accepted as authoritative and binding on the believer. [\/NL 1-3]<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        We note further:<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. The assumption of (1) cannot be sustained by reference to the text of scripture it is trying to justify. Scripture, particularly the discussion in Romans 8, presents the human person who has not been regenerated by God\u2019s grace as incapable<\/em> of right reason.[13]<\/a><\/li>\n
        2. The possibility of (2) is thus negated by the failure of (1)\u2014the believer and non-believer construct antithetical sciences and as Kuyper explained, \u201crefuse to grant to one another the noble name of \u2018science\u2019…\u201d<\/em>\u200a[14]<\/a> Neutrality is a myth as it begs the question by assuming the unaided and an unregenerate human reason is capable<\/em> of judging the claims of scripture.<\/li>\n
        3. The logical defect of (3) is similarly conspicuous. By implication, if<\/em> what scripture asserts is<\/em> correct, the authority of God is absolute, primary, and self-validating.\u00a0 If<\/em> scripture really is<\/em> God speaking as it claims to be (2Tim 3:16) then it must<\/em> logically be the absolute and final authority; it is self-validating<\/em> as all ultimate authorities are, there can be no appeal to a higher authority.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Hence, in contrast to the classical or evidential mode of thought, Van Til from the late 1920s onward argued that Christian philosophy (and thus apologetics) can and should be articulated on a Christian<\/em> basis, intellectually consistent<\/em> with the faith it is defending.\u00a0 He was joined three decades later in this by Alvin Plantinga who was credited \u00a0as restoring an academic credibility to Christian philosophy that had been lost in the post-Darwinian era of liberal Christianity.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Since the late 1950s, Plantinga dealt in a rigorously analytic method and progressively focused from the mid-1960s on the concept of evidence and its relation to belief, arguing that evidentialism rests on a classical foundationalism, which had been categorically demonstrated in the 20th<\/sup> century, both from within and without the Christian community, as a na\u00efve and an arbitrary position.\u00a0 Whilst historically there have been some attempts to draw from both philosophers, the perceived tensions between their positions and the dismissive attitude of many analytical philosophers, including those identifying as Christian and \u2018Reformed,\u2019 towards Van Til has meant not enough attention has been given to the important links that can be drawn between them.[16]<\/a>\u00a0 This work attempts to draw out the complementary nature of their work.<\/p>\n

          Thus, in lieu of the criticisms of these men, we too must advocate for an alternative model of apologetics, the presuppositional<\/em> model.\u00a0 In other words, this is a positive<\/em> apologetic concerned with presenting Christianity on its own terms, using its native assumptions and presuppositions.\u00a0 However, it immediately needs qualification as to what we mean.\u00a0 Often \u201cpresuppositional apologetics\u201d is set against a grouping of all the non-presuppositionalist views,[17]<\/a> but that is a basic error\u2014\u201cevidentialists\u201d still have presuppositions (often a na\u00efve empiricism) and \u201cpresuppositionalists\u201d still use evidence and historical-critical arguments.\u00a0 Van Til was explicit on this last point, recognized also in the philosophy of science, maintaining one must consider the philosophy<\/em> of facts in the apologetic system, facts are \u201ctheory laden.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[18]<\/a><\/p>\n

          It should also be noted that other positions commonly labelled \u201cpresuppositionalist\u201d are very different to Van Til\u2019s position, and sometimes stand in opposition to it or have far more in common with the classical and evidentialist positions than with Van Til.[19]<\/a> \u00a0Van Til\u2019s presuppositionalism was founded on his philosophical transcendentalism,[20]<\/a> and thus he was often characterized as offering a transcendental<\/em> apologetic.\u00a0 This transcendental approach makes it possible to argue for an objective proof even when \u201cforms of life\u201d attempt to isolate themselves within an internal language game.\u00a0 We will be arguing in a similar, transcendental fashion which is characterized as analyzing what must be true for there to be knowledge of objects at all, or as arguing indirectly through the impossibility of the contrary; as opposed to direct, discursive arguments.<\/p>\n

          Thus, this is a strong, positive apologetic approach seeking to argue for Christian philosophy on its own terms and we will clarify and develop our understanding of presuppositional apologetics as we move through this work.\u00a0 We will seek to demonstrate that it is theologically illegitimate and unfaithful to the testimony of scripture to attempt to use the methodologies, metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of unbelieving humanity to present a rational defense of Christian faith.\u00a0 In summary, the defense must be presuppositional<\/em> and the proof of Christianity transcendental<\/em>.<\/p>\n

          <\/a><\/a>1.3.4 Subjective Apologetics and Religious Experience<\/h3>\n

          Before we move on to unpacking the concept of epistemological self-consciousness, we should make mention of the importance of the subjective schools of apologetics and the role of religious experience.\u00a0 \u00a0This is perhaps expedient because of the revival of its influence in the wake of the Pentecostal revival in the first two decades of the 20th<\/sup> century, the charismatic revivals after WWII, the Christian appropriation of postmodernism in the 1980s, and the \u201cprophetic\u201d mysticism of our contemporary period.[21]<\/a>\u00a0 In some quarters, this irrational or \u201ctransrational\u201d mode of apologetics is considered the defense of Christianity to which has the greatest claim to authenticity. \u00a0That is, these \u201csubjective\u201d or \u201cirrational\u201d schools of apologetics defend the idea that \u2018religious experience\u2019 rather than reasoned argument should<\/em> be, i.e., to be ethically faithful (or authentic), the basis of the defense of the faith.\u00a0 This is technically known as \u201cfideism\u201d\u200a[22]<\/a> (though we do want to qualify that designation somewhat below); fideism generally denies an abstract or common rationality (known to all humanity) can express spiritual truth; we must instead receive it irrationally or intuitively \u201cby faith\u201d<\/em> or \u201cwith a leap of faith.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 We find Plantinga and Van Til in broad agreement with each other in asserting that the fideist position has little to commend it apologetically:<\/p>\n

          \u201cFaith is not blind faith\u2026Christianity can be shown to be, not \u2018just as good\u2019 or even \u2018better than\u2019 the non-Christian position, but the only<\/em> position that does not make nonsense of human experience.\u201d\u200a[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

          \u201c[The] main competence [of philosophy] \u2026 is to clear away certain objections, impedances, and obstacles to Christian belief.\u201d\u200a[24]<\/a><\/p>\n

          Notwithstanding, fideism has had some highly skilled and passionate defenders throughout Christian history. \u00a0For example, the ancient apologist Tertullian was famous for this declaration:<\/p>\n

          \u201cWhat indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?… Our instructions come from \u201cthe porch of Solomon\u201d \u2026Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus…!\u201d\u200a[25]<\/a><\/p>\n

          For Tertullian, the \u201cpossessing of Christ Jesus\u201d was not something that could be even a possibility<\/em> that could be reached in the reasonings of the Academy.\u00a0 Similarly, Kierkegaard is the most famous example in the 19th<\/sup> century where the labels \u2018subjective individualism\u2019 and \u2018protoexistentialism\u2019 have been applied equally to him; central to his thought was the utter inadequacy of \u201cReason\u201d in dealing with religious experience:<\/p>\n

          \u201cBut what is this unknown something with which the Reason collides when inspired by its paradoxical passion, with the result of unsettling even man\u2019s knowledge of himself? It is the Unknown. It is not a human being, in so far as we know what man is; nor is it any other known thing. So let us call this unknown something: the God. \u00a0It is nothing more than a name we assign to it. The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something (the God) exists, could scarcely suggest itself to the Reason. For if the God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.\u201d\u200a[26]<\/a><\/p>\n

          So, in such cases, it is arguably a legitimate expression of genuine faith, rational within the language game of a community, rather than an irrational intellectual impulse in the face of intellectual challenges.[27]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, there is arguably a distinction between fideism and some forms of subjective apologetics. \u00a0That is, the Christian apologetic system needs to address \u201cthe claim Jesus seems to be making is not that he holds a worldview which is true and corresponds to reality, but rather that he himself is the truth.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[28]<\/a>\u00a0 This would seem to make our knowledge of the truth intimately bound up with our knowledge of the Truth himself, and thus, our religious experience<\/em>.<\/p>\n

          In response, firstly, the question is certainly a pertinent one for the broad Christian tradition where the roles of faith and reason have periodically dominated attempts to articulate a coherent Christian philosophy.\u00a0 For example, Roman Catholicism has remained in some respects more open to the supernatural intrusions as a mode of knowing and the Catholic tradition has produced some of the most profound mystics.[29]<\/a>\u00a0 It should also be recognized that primitive Celtic Christianity with its links to the ancient Nestorian church and thus Eastern Orthodoxy, had a strong mystical heritage. \u00a0In contrast, the Reformed tradition has tended to denigrate the miraculous, particularly in the sense of continuing mystical experience in the wake of Calvin\u2019s cessation-ism\u200a[30]<\/a> and the Reformed tradition was frequently excoriated for its inability to celebrate the Arts and Creativity in contrast to the rich heritage and patronage of the Catholic church.<\/p>\n

          However, it should be noted that this is an inaccurate and uninformed generalization\u200a[31]<\/a> and I would argue it was more a symptom of the degeneration of the Reformed position rather than implicit in it, being corrected to a large degree in the recapitulation of Calvinism in the work of Kuyper during the second half of the 19th<\/sup> century up to his death in 1920.[32]<\/a>\u00a0 Kuyper, in every sense a religious, political and social reformer,[33]<\/a> wrote extensively on the Art and Sciences as possessing a modality of their own,[34]<\/a> being a celebration of the character and nature of God, positioning the person and their relations at the center of philosophical theology to the degree that a recent biographer described his position as anticipating the postmodern a century before Lyotard.[35]<\/a><\/p>\n

          Thus, when during this work I emphasize the \u201cReformed\u201d interpretation of the Augustinian position, it is not at the expense of these alternative conceptions of Christian thought which have given (and continue to give) us much, though I will argue that I believe the Reformed conception of Augustine, understood best and perhaps, provocatively, distinct from many of those denominations claiming that label, lends itself to the most apologetically satisfying model when developed along the lines we shall be arguing.<\/p>\n

          Secondly, it is also a pertinent question for me personally as I did not come to faith purely on the basis of being persuaded by rational argument of the legitimacy of the Christian worldview.\u00a0 It was very much an encounter with the \u201cTruth\u201d himself in a mystical vision of the journey to the mount of crucifixion.[36]<\/a>\u00a0 As a convert to Christianity at 22, I attended a Pentecostal church which was \u201ccharismatic\u201d in the literal sense, practicing spiritual gifts such as spiritual deliverance, healing, and prophesy; all of which remains part of my praxis and experience.\u00a0 For over 20 years I attended a fellowship which was predominantly irrational in its approach to the relation of faith and reason, denigrating the latter in deference to the former.\u00a0 Thus, nothing I say in this work should be construed as me being apostate from believing in a living and vibrant faith; it is rather an appeal to an intelligent,<\/em> living, and vibrant faith.<\/p>\n

          That is, what I came to value and understand, was that the minister of the first church though Pentecostal and charismatic, believed in apologetics proper and dealt seriously with church history, addressing the theory and practice of apologetics; she also suffered the distinction of being labelled a \u201cPelagian\u201d by critics.\u00a0 Faith needed an intellectual articulation, and it was perhaps inevitable, given my philosophical convictions, that my continued participation in the latter fellowship became impossible regardless of the authentic spiritual experience I enjoyed there and my enormous respect for and appreciation of the leaders.\u00a0 That is, I fully acknowledge the importance of a continuing encounter with the Truth rather than arguing I have perfected my dogma at your expense, as symptomatic of the most distasteful fragmentation of the Reformed community in 1930 Presbyterian America.\u00a0 Indeed, this work would most certainly be characterized as \u201cpost-Reformed\u201d because of the recognition above of spiritual gifts as intended and necessary for the church today.<\/p>\n

          Thirdly, it is indeed somewhat paradoxical that objective clarity is mediated through the deepest subjective experience of the Truth himself.\u00a0 However, this paradox I believe can be resolved to a degree by considering that the greatest mystical experience (and indeed the experience of my own conversion) came to me during a contemplation of the scriptures, rather than practicing a set of disciplines apart<\/em> from the scriptures (valuable though such ascetic practices are with<\/em> the scriptures).\u00a0 It should also be remembered that the goal of apologetics is not to bring about a spiritual reformation (which is in the purview of God alone) though it can certainly be a part of that process and Van Til\u2019s transcendental terminus might indeed be considered a call to conversion, it is rather to provide a rational defense of our belief.<\/p>\n

          So, in summary, this work needs a focus, and that focus is on the area of strengthening a rational defense of the faith rather than an exploration of what might be called the phenomenology or spirituality of Christian life, equally important but not the central part of this study. \u00a0However, in a sense, this categorical division is for analytical purposes only, we should<\/em> never<\/em> separate our doctrine from our praxis.\u00a0 This might well provoke many questions as to how our final conclusion is mediated with regards to religious experience, and it will be necessary to reflect on this when we draw the final conclusion of the study and to what degree this weakens our final position. \u00a0However, we are proceeding on an apologetic basis that assumes a rational defense is warranted and mandated by scripture.<\/p>\n

          <\/a><\/a>1.4 The Status and Role of Scripture<\/h2>\n

          One of the arguments made in this work will be for the ultimate and self-attesting authority of scripture in the matters of spirituality, doctrine, and ethics.\u00a0 However, it is one thing to state<\/em> this, for such a statement is likely to be considered one of the cornerstones of a generic \u201cevangelical\u201d view of the Bible as succinctly summarized by McGrath.[37]<\/a> It is quite another to express the implications<\/em> of this in practice for our project here.\u00a0 For example, McGrath\u2019s analysis focuses precisely on this issue, and he develops a distinctive moderate, evangelical programme through that work, critiquing previous systems (particularly the fundamentalist model and the analytic model associated with theologian Carl Henry) but his programme is very different to what we develop here.<\/p>\n

          This is not necessarily a threat to either of us, as scripture itself states, \u201cthere are different ministries, but the same Lord\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[38]<\/a> and people will come to different conclusions as to the meaning of scripture passages, with both claiming the same inspirational authority from \u201cthe Spirit.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 That is, we must recognize that scripture itself did not come to us as systematic theology and it is capable of a diversity of interpretations even amongst those who have an equal commitment to its truth and authority, whether that commitment is conceived objectively, subjectively, or both.\u00a0 We must recognize that even some cornerstone doctrines such as the Trinity were inferences and emergent theological principles after some centuries of reflection.[39]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, whatever system we might derive from scripture has a degree of fallibility even if we believe it is incorrigible to us.<\/p>\n

          However, I maintain the position that though there might be many possible meanings of scripture, the authors had the intention of communicating something<\/em> specific to us in their narrative (especially when it is written in a pastoral or exegetical genre); even if, with the benefit of hindsight, we might see the Lord communicating something to us quite apart from the intentions of the authors themselves.\u00a0 \u00a0We see this in the polemical dispute between Paul and James which contrast the very different conceptions of \u201cfaith\u201d and \u201cworks\u201d with each author using the same scriptures but rendering the sense of them in a seemingly antithetical fashion.[40]<\/a>\u00a0 Our resolution of the dispute with distance will appropriate the insights of both and conceptually distinguish \u201csaving faith\u201d as understood by say, Luther and faith demonstrating itself in our ethics as articulated by a John Wesley.[41]<\/a><\/p>\n

          So, a polyvalent scripture can still anchor our praxis, and the relevance of scripture is seen concretely later in our work in our section on Ethics where the theonomical position seeks to demonstrate how the principles embedded in culturally conditioned narratives remain relevant for us.\u00a0 We can further acknowledge the roles of different genres in communicating not just propositional knowledge but emotive content and poetic allusions; Proverbs is rich with aphoristic couplets and idiomatic constructions which make no sense or are contradictory when considered atomistically.[42]<\/a>\u00a0 It might have even been the case the author layered the meanings within the text,[43]<\/a> inviting us to discover those meanings but that is still distinct from denying the possibility of any<\/em> objective meaning intended by the text.\u00a0 The apostle Paul clearly asserted that language\u2019s principal power was the ability to carry meaning:<\/p>\n

          \u201cThere are probably many kinds of languages in the world, and none is without meaning [incapable of carrying meaning].\u00a0 If then I do not know the meaning [power] of a language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.\u201d\u200a[44]<\/a><\/p>\n

          Thus, taking the Reformers as an example and the great modern Puritan expositors such as Lloyd-Jones,[45]<\/a> it is possible to get to a place of strong confidence and certainty over the objective meaning of the narrative whilst permitting subjective \u201cmeanings,\u201d senses or interpretations which might valuably be extrapolated from the text.\u00a0 A strong commitment to the propositional mode of knowing provided the strength to the Reformation and the subsequent scientific revolution that dovetailed with it after the stagnation in the physical sciences during the scholastic period.[46]<\/a> \u00a0If the Holy Spirit is to \u201clead us into all truth\u201d<\/em> and we \u201c[are to] abide in My word\u2026then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free\u201d<\/em>\u200a[47]<\/a> (and the abiding here is in the \u201clogos\u201d rather than the \u201crhema\u201d), the signification of scripture here would seem to indicate an objective sense and a normative function is implicit in<\/em> the scripture.\u00a0 This would also be supported by the climax of the \u2018Sermon on the Mount\u2019 teaching:<\/p>\n

          \u201cTherefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. 25<\/sup> “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. 26<\/sup> “And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. 27<\/sup> “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.\u201d [48]<\/a><\/p>\n

          The \u201cwords\u201d of Jesus again here are \u201clogos.\u201d \u00a0What I mean here is that much is made in, say the Word of Faith movement\u200a[49]<\/a> of the distinction between the \u201clogos\u201d (conceived of as the written Word of God) and the \u201crhema\u201d (conceived of as the spoken Word of God); with the rhema conceived of as the Holy Spirit bringing specific words to the believer or the church through subjective, religious experience.\u00a0 This is conceived of as the individual or corporate \u201cleading\u201d of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer or church.\u00a0 This distinction was employed in this fashion by Jesus in his discussion with Satan, \u201che answered, \u2018It is written, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.\u2019\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[50]<\/a> where the \u201cword\u201d here is<\/em> rhema. \u00a0Satan had misquoted and misinterpreted Ps.91 to Jesus, and Jesus corrected the misinterpretation by appealing both to the objective \u201cwhat is written\u201d and the subjective \u201cwhat is said.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Thus, by preferring logos to rhema, I would argue John is talking about something objective here (what I will call \u201cworldview\u201d in this work, originating from the logos upon which we are to build our foundation) rather than religious experience.[51]<\/a> \u00a0Spiritual experience is not discounted but is tested by scriptural foundations for authenticity; if we accept the biblical narrative, we accept we can be deceived by counterfeit spiritual experience and we need normative criteria to distinguish the two, as well as our inner light. \u00a0It is on this basis this work proceeds, seeking a solid, objective, scriptural foundation whilst acknowledging the importance of religious experience in receiving the immediate knowledge of God\u2019s will and direction in specific situations where we might have many options or we do not know how to proceed; celebrating the subjectivity and creativity that can flow from scripture that comes to us as narrative whilst maintaining that same narrative had an objective, intended sense.<\/p>\n

          <\/a><\/a>1.5 Epistemological Un-<\/em>consciousness and its Transcendental Critique<\/h2>\n

          One of the aims of this work is not just to establish the validity of \u201cepistemological self-consciousness\u201d<\/em> as a concept but also as a methodology to bring others to self-consciousness about their own epistemologies that they may judge their \u201cworldview\u201d against the standard of rationality and coherence argued herein.\u00a0 As intimated previously, this can only be conducted via a transcendental critique of the opposing worldviews for reasons which we will work out during this work.\u00a0 However, to clarify our aims with a negative example, we should immediately see that one possible logical implication of our posited category is that we are asserting that the opposing worldviews can be (and normally are) epistemologically un-<\/em>conscious.[52]<\/a>\u00a0 When we state that an individual is epistemologically un-<\/em>conscious, it means philosophically, or at a basic cognitive level, that they are either:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Not aware of the full implications of their theory of knowledge.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            For example, a consistent<\/em> materialist would not be able to persuade us of the legitimacy of their worldview because the laws of logic, a prerequisite of argument, do not fit into the materialist view of the universe.\u00a0 This is because the laws of logic are non-material, universal and abstract.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Borrowing intellectual capital from those they mean to oppose.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              We do not argue that an unbeliever does not know how<\/em> to count, but rather they can only give a viciously circular account<\/em> of their counting.[53]<\/a>\u00a0 The fullest sense of knowledge is not just the how<\/em> of an activity but the why<\/em> of the activity.\u00a0 Our claim to \u2018science\u2019 fails I assert if we cannot justify why<\/em> the process of science is successful.<\/p>\n

              <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.6 Transcendentalist but not Kantian Creative Antirealism<\/h2>\n

              The astute reader at this point might understand that \u201ctranscendental critique<\/em>\u201d suggests a broad Kantian approach is adopted as the philosophical basis of this work and would thus dismiss it as \u2018unsafe\u2019 on that basis, best left in its grave (for we are all analytic philosophers now.)\u00a0 However, this is only true in the most abstract sense and should be of no hindrance to the reader who is a realist or finds the Continental schools compelling.\u00a0 With respect to this important assertion, it is of note that Van Til, to whom this work owes its first intellectual debt, taught that our framework might be broadly considered as \u2018idealist\u2019 and our method as \u2018transcendental\u2019 but only when those words are understood with their Reformed or Augustinian Christian<\/em> sense.[54]<\/a><\/p>\n

              That is, for Van Til, Kantian thought and idealism in the general sense found their final authority not<\/em> in God\u2019s Word but in the idol<\/em> of human autonomy.[55]<\/a>\u00a0 Van Til agreed with the general transcendental programme <\/em>of Kant\u200a[56]<\/a> which was concerned to discover what general conditions must be fulfilled for any particular instance of knowledge to be possible, but the Van Tillian a priori<\/em> finds its ultimate referent in transcendent revelation, not in autonomous deduction of the categories of the understanding.\u00a0 Thus, Van Til considered Kant to have intensified the autonomous attitude of Descartes, who is said to have proceeded from the indubitable of his own existence and proceeded then to God and the world.[57]<\/a>\u00a0 The mind of humanity even became the lawgiver for Kant, not the mind of God, and thus the procedure of Kant stands in direct opposition to that which is presented in this work, which is broadly Van Tillian.\u00a0 Similarly, Plantinga, to whom this work owes its second intellectual debt, also gives us compelling reason to reject any temptation to follow Kant:<\/p>\n

              \u201cDid we structure or create the heavens and the earth?\u00a0 Some of us think there were animals-dinosaurs, let\u2019s say-roaming the earth before human beings had so much as put in an appearance; how could it be that those dinosaurs owed their structure to our noetic activity\u2026And what about all those stars and planets we have never so much as heard of:\u00a0 how have we managed to structure them?\u00a0 When did we do all this?\u201d\u200a[58]<\/a><\/p>\n

              Indeed, in my basic orientation, I consider myself a realist as Christian philosophy (in which we include theology) is, or at least should be, concerned with the reality which is God\u2019s world and in which we live and breathe as concrete persons.\u00a0 Plantinga\u2019s epistemology might be considered an elaboration and an expert exegesis of that principle, and I draw heavily from his work in my own position. Fundamental to both our views is that our mind is connected to the world and tells us real information about the world because that is the way God created our minds to behave.\u00a0 This last sentence alone has \u201cnuclear strength\u201d in an apologetic contest, the fundamental philosophical problem of how to connect our concepts with the world is one of the chief problems of philosophy.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we must acknowledge the critiques of Hume and Kant and one task of this work must be to demonstrate how we unify concept and percept without succumbing to a na\u00efve<\/em> realism or a catastrophic skepticism.\u00a0 For Christians who are not primarily mystics, phenomena and noumena, mind and object, subjective and objective, should be categories resolved and unified in God, and we will be demonstrating a reconciliation of these basic philosophical tensions.<\/p>\n

              <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.7 Epistemological Self-Consciousness as Augustinian Apologetics<\/h2>\n

              By presenting the Christian worldview as the only possible one that maintains theoretical coherence and metaphysical correspondence,[59]<\/a> this work is essentially an \u201capologetic\u201d work in the Augustinian tradition where \u201cfaith\u201d is considered as the grounding to right reason, rather than reason validating what of faith might be considered \u201creasonable.\u201d\u200a[60]<\/a>\u00a0 Both Van Til and Plantinga self-identified as being within the \u201cbroad tradition\u201d of Augustinian philosophy, thus being those who have worked not just as<\/em> Christians who happened to do philosophy but as those who desired to do<\/em> philosophy in an authentically Christian<\/em> way.[61]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

              Whilst both men have specialized in epistemology, the term \u201cepistemological self-consciousness\u201d<\/em> is owed most immediately to the work of Cornelius Van Til and to his major interpreter, Dr Greg Bahnsen (d. 1995).[62]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 I am employing the term distinct from its strict Van Tillian sense as I also draw on the realism of Plantinga, but it is the position of this work that the solution to the problem of human knowledge and the resulting imperatives are argued to only be provided by the metaphysical foundation of an orthodox, Augustinian\u200a[63]<\/sup><\/a> Christian understanding and the ethical consequences for a political philosophy are then worked out.\u00a0 It mandates that one fully understands<\/em> their theory of knowledge, its justification<\/em> in metaphysical terms which then mandates<\/em> its ethical consequences.<\/p>\n

              <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8 Epistemological Self-Consciousness as a Scientific Project<\/h2>\n

              <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.1 The Challenge of Perennial Naturalism in the Academy<\/h3>\n

              In the interests of due diligence and with proper respect to the merits of the case, it must immediately be admitted that epistemological un-<\/em>consciousness, as seen in the varieties of perennial naturalism, dominates the academy as a normal state of affairs, particularly within the sciences.[64]<\/a>\u00a0 This immediate challenge requires addressing before we proceed but we can posit that it poses no threat to our thesis.\u00a0 We will demonstrate that its adoption and maintenance within most of the sciences is a result of the post-positivistic naturalism of the academy since the late 1950s which incorporated elements of the otherwise intellectually discredited earlier naturalisms of pragmatism, logical positivism and logical analysis that dominated Anglo-American philosophy in the second half of the 19th<\/sup> and first half of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Thus, we will seek to show, that this incorporation, despite the sometimes-fundamental weaknesses repeatedly exposed in the critical literature (which we examine in detail when we consider the fallibilist perspective on epistemology in \u00a72.6), is an example of prejudice and dogmatism, an attempt to preclude critical examination of the illegitimate philosophical assumptions implicit in the worldview that would otherwise render it obviously incoherent.[65]<\/a><\/p>\n

              Thus, in this work, I contend the exact opposite, that science, to be legitimately categorized as science, must necessarily<\/em> ascend to the level of epistemological self-consciousness built on a robust metaphysics.\u00a0 Whether this should be considered as psychological necessity or logical necessity, with the latter obviously the stronger proposition, is a legitimate matter for debate.\u00a0 That is, we are not arguing that all science must be determined certainly to be considered as science, but I argue in this work that if we were<\/em> to accept the philosophical implications of epistemological unconsciousness where the possibility<\/em> of epistemic certainty is not considered necessary to science, using say the atheist worldview, our attempts at science and philosophy would be, on analysis, rendered incoherent and self-refuting.<\/p>\n

              <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.2 The Status of Science\u2014Preliminary Remarks<\/h3>\n

              The discussion above regarding naturalism would immediately suggest that we have a profound definitional and methodological problem regarding what constitutes \u2018science,\u2019 which is of major importance to our discussion. We can mitigate this though by considering that the linguistic use of \u201cscience\u201d was only altered primarily during the post-Darwinian period of the 19th<\/sup> century and the opening decades of the 20th<\/sup> century, when it became intellectually fashionable amongst the irreligious and anti-religious to cast \u201cscience\u201d and \u201creligion\u201d as adversarial and opposing views of reality.<\/p>\n

              In contrast, when Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch statesman, educator, cultural critic, reformer, and theologian[66]<\/a> was writing at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, he employed the term \u201cscience\u201d to include theology, philosophy, literature, and political economy, in a usage much closer to the modern usage of the term \u201cepistemology.\u201d\u200a[67]<\/a>\u00a0 Similarly, he described what we would call \u201cevolutionary theory\u201d (which is generally conceived as \u201cscientific theory\u201d) as \u201cthe deleterious philosophy<\/em> and consequences of evolutionary naturalism\u201d\u200a[68]<\/a> (emphasis added).\u00a0 Likewise, Michael Faraday when he published his revolutionary theories of electricity published them in a journal of natural philosophy.<\/em>[69]<\/a>\u00a0 The attempt by naturalistic science to define science as that which is naturalistic in its assumptions and methods, demonstrates a principial prejudice.<\/p>\n

              Thus, I argue that epistemological unconsciousness is to be considered un<\/em>-scientific because it fails as a rational<\/em> explanation of reality which would then imply that naturalism and science are incompatible.[70]<\/a>\u00a0 However, we have just admitted that the scientific academy views naturalism as normative and we all still stand in awe of the achievements of modern \u2018science\u2019 and furthermore, and rather more subtly, if I have a headache and take an aspirin, who cares<\/em> what the aspirin is doing to my biochemistry if it removes my headache?\u00a0\u00a0 Or if I merely drive my car, why should I be concerned with how<\/em> the engine works?\u00a0 There seems a prima facie<\/em> justification for epistemological un-<\/em>consciousness both by the weight of the academy and a pragmatic justification by the means of any number of these unsophisticated constructions from everyday life.<\/p>\n

              We examine that this apparent paradox is resolvable because the naturalist is not, in practice, acting consistently<\/em> with their naturalist principles. They borrow intellectual capital from the Christian worldview and deceive themselves that they need not acknowledge that.\u00a0 The emotive analogies too fare little better, being populist parodies of American Pragmatism (see \u00a72.6.6), and are of course unsatisfactory or inadequate simply because:<\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Medical side effects are sometimes fatal even when the compound offers immediate relief (that is why vaccines historically have needed close to a decade to have been proven safe).[71]<\/a><\/li>\n
              2. Abuse of say combustion engines in service beyond their design tolerances can (and do) have catastrophic consequences.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                Philosophically, or we might as easily say, \u201cscientifically\u201d (we shall justify further this collapse or merging of categories below), someone<\/em> needs to understand the biochemical effects of drugs to ensure safe use of pharmaceuticals and the mechanical laws applicable under different conditions to design a safe machine.[72]<\/a>\u00a0 Similarly, we argue that a science which proceeds on a purely pragmatic basis because it just \u201cworks\u201d would quickly be unworkable for it begs the question as to why<\/em> it should be useful to us, which must then be decided on a non<\/em>-pragmatic basis.\u00a0 In other words, we most certainly need to be clear of what is meant by our critics when their \u201cscience\u201d is showcased as the pinnacle of rationality.<\/p>\n

                <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.3 The Problem of Induction<\/h3>\n

                This brings us nicely to the self-contradiction in Hume, one of the fiercest critics.\u00a0 Hume had wanted to apply the empirical methods of Newton beyond physics to provide a basis for all<\/em> of natural science but wrestled with what he saw as an insurmountable obstacle to the justification of inductive thinking, which he rightly saw was providing the basis for a comprehensive natural science in contrast to the metaphysical dogmas that he had counselled in his most famous passage, \u201cshould be cast to the flames.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[73]<\/a>\u00a0 The force of his criticism was such that it has never been satisfactorily answered by secular<\/em> naturalist thought but Hume also, importantly, realized he<\/em> could not live consistently<\/em> with his own skepticism.\u00a0 In the second of his famous passages, he announces that when the skeptical challenges threatened to overwhelm him, he hit the bar to play backgammon with his friends.[74]<\/a><\/p>\n

                Hume\u2019s deconstruction of empiricism was lamented several centuries later by Russell and indeed it was a long, despairing, and sad lament, for Russell could offer no empirical<\/em> argument that would refute Hume.\u00a0 Russell had encapsulated the rationality problem that Hume had identified as the \u201cChristmas Turkey\u201d problem of which I shall give a version of for I believe it is an excellent illustration of the forcefulness of Hume\u2019s criticism of the rationality of induction:<\/p>\n

                \u00a0<\/strong>Imagine you were a turkey in January, every day you hear a bell and you come to realize that is the dinner bell.\u00a0 You hear that bell and because you have discovered that your universe runs by the law of the bell, you receive food every day at the set time.\u00a0 However, on the 1st<\/sup> of December, you hear the bell but instead of being greeted with food at the feeding station, the laborers cut your throat with a hatchet.<\/p>\n

                Your perception of your turkey universe as a uniform spatial-temporal continuum governed by certain scientific regularities came to an abrupt halt.\u00a0 It was merely a habit of the mind<\/em> to see regularity and uniformity based on the empirical evidence of your senses, there was nothing of logical necessity in the experience.<\/p>\n

                However, the enormous progress of science in the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century, provides the backdrop as to why Russell temperamentally considered those that took refuge in Hume\u2019s skepticism as \u201cdishonest\u201d because they would eat when they got hungry.\u00a0 Russell\u2019s point was in essence a pragmatic one rather than a logical or philosophical refutation of Hume – if we took Hume seriously, we would reject that being hungry necessarily<\/em> means that we should eat.\u00a0 That is, unless we are deliberately abstaining from food or have no food, everyone eats when they are hungry.\u00a0 In a similar vein, Ayer in his seminal work[75]<\/a> introducing logical positivism to the English-speaking world (see \u00a72.6.7), accused those who used Hume to question the logical status, or more exactly, the rational respectability<\/em> of inductive thinking as guilty of \u201csuperstition.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Inductive thinking was clearly the basis of science and clearly getting results and that was all there was to it, \u201cnothing else was necessary,\u201d<\/em> i.e., the success of the wider programme of \u201cscience\u201d was a sufficient justification for Ayer.[76]<\/a><\/p>\n

                This too sounded a lot like the pragmatists with whom the positivists had competed with for the heart and soul of 20th<\/sup> century philosophy.\u00a0 Dewey had concluded that no answer to Hume was possible, but it was not important<\/em> to find that answer, it was merely a theoretical<\/em> problem, a linguistic or psychological confusion that had no practical significance for our ability to solve our problems of everyday life and so should be ignored.\u00a0 Similarly, when the positivists sidestepped the issue by calling it a \u201cpseudo-problem,\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[77]<\/a> a designation they began to employ for any problem within philosophy or science that seemed insoluble, it was methodologically analogous to the pragmatist dismissal of it as irrelevant.\u00a0 In effect, we will understand that neither could offer anything that would answer Hume.\u00a0 Thus, as we move into the post-positivist period precipitated by Quine\u2019s devastating critique[78]<\/a> of positivism, we will see that Quine himself could offer nothing better than an evolutionary justification of induction the inadequacy of which we will consider in detail later when we articulate his conception of a naturalized epistemology (see \u00a73.3.5).<\/p>\n

                Thus, in summary, we will find that there remains no empirical<\/em> or scientific <\/em>justification of induction, but we witness a begging of the question as there was no non-circular explanation as to why<\/em> induction has helped us to survive. Most notably, we will see that the philosophers of science have remained engaged with the problem of induction, even the briefest introduction to a philosophy of science will describe it as an issue \u201cwhich keeps us awake at night.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[79]<\/a>\u00a0 Both Schlick and Carnap had extensive treatments of it in their original editions of their theories of knowledge; neither of which survived into later editions as a compelling solution.\u00a0 A substantively different approach to the problem was seen in Popper\u2019s attempt to interpret science as a discipline of falsification<\/em>, i.e., to recast science in essence as logically deductive.\u00a0 It was an attempt to get around both the positivist problems of verificationism and to \u2018solve\u2019 the problem of induction.\u00a0 For Popper, we are to view science as something other than empirical and inductive, reducing the importance of induction, and thus to be more comfortable with the insoluble problem of induction.[80]<\/a><\/p>\n

                However, Popperism had many logical problems of its own and once this particular Genie was let out of the bottle it was a short jump to the position of his one-time student, Richard Feyerabend, to deny there was anything<\/em> that qualified as a \u201cscientific\u201d method.\u00a0 For Feyerabend, falsification compounded the difficulties for complex webs of propositions[81]<\/a> and Feyerabend actively endorsed what he called \u201cepistemological anarchy\u201d<\/em> such that he was designated by some as the \u201cgreatest enemy of science.\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[82]<\/a>\u00a0 This was not as iconoclastic as it sounds as Feyerabend later clarified to those who thought they saw a rejection of science in his work (and they were many.)\u00a0 His appeal was rather to a kind of strengthened pragmatism\u2014let us not be overly concerned with how we arrived at knowledge, just be glad we got there.\u00a0 Thus, the conception of science as somehow implicitly inductive has remained and this reliance on induction we will see undermines its claims to be the required standard of rationality.<\/p>\n

                <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.4\u00a0 Political Ethics and Science<\/h3>\n

                However, and in my view far more importantly, Feyerabend made a supremely important observation about science:<\/p>\n

                \u201cScience must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science<\/em>\u2026science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.\u201d\u200a[83]<\/a>\u00a0 (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

                Here he is denying any privileged position for science just because it is \u201cscience\u201d or to the scientists because they are \u201cscientists,\u201d arguing that democracies for their own strength and longevity, should be protected from the excesses of ideologized science.\u00a0 The latter might seem unintuitive until we consider that \u201cscientific materialism\u201d provided the backbone for what became Stalinist tyranny, and the Nazi experimentation in the prison camps was considered by the historic cultural leaders of Europe as genuine science; indeed, it was picked up and given respectability throughout the 1960s within the international eugenics movement.[84]<\/a>\u00a0 It is also worth remembering that the logical positivist and humanist manifestos of the 1930s had science at the heart of a new paradigm for the progression of human civilization freed from any metaphysical moorings.\u00a0 Similarly, we will see that the behaviorist utopia of Harvard Professor B F Skinner, which emerged first with his novels in the late 1940s and which he unflinchingly maintained up to his death in 1990, designated concepts such as \u201cfreedom,\u201d \u201cdignity\u201d and \u201cmorality\u201d as relics of a post-Christian era that needed to be purged that a truly scientific \u201cplanning\u201d of society might be accomplished.<\/p>\n

                Now, it is this ethical dimension to science that makes it necessary for us to reflect on; it will occupy us at various points in this work and plays a significant role for us.\u00a0 Russell wanted to believe that \u201cphilosophy could inspire a way of life\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[85]<\/a> but owing to his engagement with the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and its project to \u201cclean up\u201d philosophy from its muddled metaphysical speculations, struggled to make up his mind as to what there was left in life to be the targets of our inspirations.\u00a0 Russell\u2019s changes in philosophical views were frequent, many and most basic to the degree he changed his mind frequently as to just what objects constituted reality.[86]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet he was to be commended in that he was bold enough to argue that there was such a thing as the \u201creal.\u201d\u00a0 In a lecture attended by Carnap in which they argued whether the concept of reality was a \u201cpseudo-problem\u201d<\/em>\u200a[87]<\/a> of philosophy, Russell asked Carnap as to whether his wife really did exist or whether she was to be considered a pseudo-construction of Carnap\u2019s consciousness.[88]<\/a><\/p>\n

                Thus, we argue that we must be prepared to stand on the ground initially carved out by Moore and Russell that we are free to believe in a world in which the grass was really<\/em> there, it was green, and the sky was really <\/em>above us, and it was blue.\u00a0 We are free to escape from the idealist\u2019s prison of the real as the perceived, where we are forever separated in the Kantian hinterland from the Ding an Sich<\/em> (the thing in itself), but also from the arbitrariness and skepticism of the positivist and pragmatist alternatives.\u00a0 So, we will see that whilst the logical positivist and pragmatic view was to elevate a \u2018scientific view of the world\u2019 to ideological status, it was a narrow phenomenological perspective that Quine later exposed as resting on a supremely dogmatic metaphysic.\u00a0 The \u2018scientific view\u2019 <\/em>was indeed a particular view of the world, but it was a barren one, and a tentative and uncertain one at that.<\/p>\n

                To emphasize this, the logical positivist Neurath had fully appreciated the epistemological frailty of the position and his famous analogy of rebuilding a ship whilst at sea, reflected the tentativeness and the weak view of certainty at its heart.\u00a0 This analytic turn, though welcome for its rigor, tended to make smaller and smaller units for philosophical reflection and abandoned the traditional synthetic task of philosophy.\u00a0 Similarly, Russell\u2019s description of oppositional worldview philosophy as \u201cpretentious,\u201d<\/em>\u200a[89]<\/a> accepts this rarefied role for philosophy as the only possible one.\u00a0 However, our argument is that it can hardly be thought impressive that the modern philosopher is seldom interested beyond the narrow circumspection of their specialism, and we proceed to that basis.<\/p>\n

                <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.5 Science is more than Propositional Statements<\/h3>\n

                Most importantly, by \u201cscience\u201d<\/em> we argue that we are not speaking of just the \u201cnatural sciences\u201d<\/em> such as Physics or Chemistry where it might be argued that the aggregate of a series of propositions are said to constitute the body of the discipline.\u00a0 In such a view, \u2018scientific\u2019 questions could be answered simply using the predicates \u2018true\u2019 or \u2018false\u2019 with the implication that the wider \u2018truth\u2019 (or Truth, with the capital \u2018T\u2019) was the aggregate of all the \u2018true\u2019 propositions.\u00a0 This was then said to constitute the \u201cscience\u201d of the subject.<\/p>\n

                This was the influential and novel definition of \u2018science\u2019 as offered by Schlick,[90]<\/sup><\/a> the putative father of 20th<\/sup> century positivism and is essentially phenomenalistic.[91]<\/a>\u00a0 This reflected the enormous influence of the \u201cnew Physics\u201d of Einstein (see \u00a72.6.9) and the working out of its philosophical implications in the Germanophone world, which with the scattering of its predominantly Jewish intellectuals from Europe during the Nazi era, came to dominate the wider Anglo-American empiricist and analytically orientated philosophies. <\/em>\u00a0Schlick himself was one of the first expositors of Einstein\u2019s General Relativity<\/em> in 1917 just two years after Einstein published, being commended by Einstein himself for the clarity of his explanation.[92]<\/a>\u00a0 Schlick was very much the heir of the \u201cphilosophical physicists\u201d personified in the work of Helmholtz and Planck, being a PhD student whilst working with Planck.\u00a0 Consequently, it is perhaps the working definition still assumed, consciously or unconsciously by most of modern naturalism and hence our need to give it attention here.\u00a0 The philosophical elegance and clarity obtained in his definition of science, was his response\u200a[93]<\/a> to the ambiguity, irrationalism and subjectivity of the post-Kantian philosophy that had dominated German philosophy.[94]<\/a>\u00a0 It was in the service of contrasting \u2018science\u2019 with philosophy; he still considered the latter legitimate but not<\/em> scientific by nature because of the questions it asked.\u00a0 The questions of philosophy, which Schlick described as a sequence of physical or psychic \u2018acts,\u2019 were concerned with clarifying what was meant,<\/em> they were not knowledge bearing, they were not instruments to recommend one answer over another.[95]<\/a><\/p>\n

                However, such a definition excises huge swathes of the conjectural and imaginative cognitive processes, rarefying what might be considered science, which was precisely what later philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, despite his having attended meetings of the Vienna Circle and possessing a common antipathy with them to metaphysics, would consider fundamental to science.[96]<\/a>\u00a0 Popper\u2019s counterview was substantially obsolescent before it was even published in English by Quine\u2019s critique of both the verificationism of positivism and the Popperian alternative falsification.<\/em> [97]<\/a>\u00a0 For Quine, philosophy was contiguous with science and authentic philosophy was a part of science and what constituted science was itself a \u2018scientific\u2019 problem.[98]<\/a>\u00a0 Quine was relaxed by the implicit circularity that this assumed, which will be important for us when we consider worldview apologetics, where we understand there is a difference between logical circularity and the logical fallacy of vicious circularity.\u00a0 Quine for very different reasons than the Van Tillians, views circularity in reasoning as inevitable, the issue is rather how tight that circle is before it becomes fallacious.<\/p>\n

                As radical as Quine was, a more substantive and influential challenge was to come via the work of the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn.\u00a0 He challenged fundamentally the view of science as somehow a rational, linear process in perhaps the most influential work on the philosophy of science in the 20th<\/sup> century, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.\u00a0 <\/em>Although first published in 1962, it is still a standard work today\u200a[99]<\/a> and has an almost normative status, particularly amongst those disciplines that are vulnerable to charges of being unscientific and by association, irrational.\u00a0 Indeed, although not welcomed by Kuhn himself, Kuhn\u2019s legacy was to relativize just what might be considered science as a function of historical expediency for a culture and brought the \u2018social\u2019 or \u2018soft\u2019 sciences such as sociology and psychology much more into the mainstream as legitimate \u2018science.\u2019<\/p>\n

                It also served to demythologize science as the<\/em> rational method of human thought.\u00a0 As noted, for this reason, Kuhn\u2019s legacy was maintained much more within the Arts generally and their fight with \u201cscience\u201d rather than the philosophy of science.[100]<\/a>\u00a0 Those like Rorty who progressively distanced themselves from professional philosophy and wanted to categorize science in a quasi-Wittgensteinian fashion as akin to poetry, strongly endorsed Kuhn.[101]<\/a>\u00a0 \u2018Science\u2019 is simply a manner of speaking about reality with no special privileges accorded to it as specifically or especially rational.<\/p>\n

                That said, undoubtedly one of the most important insights emerging from Kuhn and developed in the postmodernism of Rorty was that any description of reality was always made \u201cunder a description,\u201d<\/em> it is always a matter of interpretation<\/em> rather than just the \u201cbrute facts.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, Schlick\u2019s formulation \u201call synthetic judgments are a posteriori,<\/em>\u201d\u200a[102]<\/a> i.e., judgments are based in and confirmed by a neutral \u2018experience,\u2019 is seen to be too na\u00efve; we are already begging the question because the \u201ctruth\u201d predicate is defined within a system (that defines for us the bounds of \u2018experience\u2019) rather than in an abstract and objective fashion.<\/p>\n

                Whilst we will concur to a degree with this position, we will also qualify it importantly, but we can conclude with many philosophers of science that Schlick\u2019s conception was<\/em> too narrow and excludes much of what is now accepted as legitimately scientific.\u00a0 Notwithstanding and of equal importance, the outstanding success of \u201cscience\u201d in the last two centuries means we must also be careful before denuding it of too much authority in human discourse as the postmodern critique has encouraged some to do.\u00a0 We will thus proceed to carefully contextualize science for our discussion.<\/p>\n

                <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.6 Science as Correlated with Epistemology and Philosophy<\/h3>\n

                Now, regardless of the particulars of this debate over science which we shall revisit as necessary, we will in lieu of our discussion above assert with prima facie<\/em> justification, that \u2018science\u2019 in a more inclusive sense is an aggregate term for the theoretical and empirical data of the \u201chard\u201d (physical) and \u201csoft\u201d (social) sciences.\u00a0 However, we can push further, we might also correlate \u201cscience\u201d much more closely with the term \u2018philosophy\u2019; that is, as a synonym for all <\/em>the spheres of human knowledge.\u00a0 This is not just because of the historical equivalence of the usage of \u201cnatural philosophy\u201d<\/em> which was still the common sense of the term even during the early work of Einstein[103]<\/a> but also because of the philosophical engagement of Germanophone physicists Helmholz, Mach and Planck who were all engaged philosophically in a non-trivial manner.\u00a0 It seems little more than prejudice, linguistic convenience, or sociological convention to chop up their work into the \u2018scientific\u2019 and the \u2018philosophical.\u2019<\/p>\n

                We can strengthen our assertion by considering that modern compendiums of the philosophy of science demonstrate that science evades a clear definition in terms of either a particular metaphysical approach, a coherent theory of knowledge, even a specific methodology[104]<\/a> or a rational process.\u00a0 Psillos, after explaining in excess of 45000 words that the scientific concept of explanation is unexplainable, offers us this despairing conclusion:<\/p>\n

                \u201cIn light of the preceding discussion\u2026it should be obvious that there is no consensus of what explanation is\u2026[A] single and unified account of what explanation is, is futile and ill-conceived.\u201d\u200a[105]<\/a><\/p>\n

                Whilst this conclusion has a peculiar incongruity in that we are receiving an explanation written by a philosopher of science into why we can never receive a coherent scientific explanation, his subsequent words should provide us<\/em> with hope, even if it failed to do so for Psillos himself:<\/p>\n

                \u201cPerhaps the only way to understand explanation is to embed it in a framework of kindred concepts and try to unravel their interconnections.\u00a0 Indeed, the concepts of causation<\/em>, laws of nature <\/em>and explanation<\/em> (emphasis original) form a very tight web\u2026hardly any progress can be made in any of those, without relying on, and offering accounts of, some of the others <\/em>(emphasis added).\u201d\u200a[106]<\/a><\/p>\n

                The implications of what Psillos is stating here as the finishing paragraph to what only can be described as his epic paper in his part of constructing \u201cthe<\/em> most definitive\u2026ever provided\u201d edifice to (dare I say, \u2018explanation of\u2019) \u201cthe philosophy of science ever provided<\/em>,\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[107]<\/a> are worthy of another epic paper and certainly reinforce the philosophical presuppositions of this work:<\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. We need to understand our beliefs and commitments form an interconnected web.<\/li>\n
                2. Our explanations will be circular<\/em> in terms of our most basic controlling assumptions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                  Taken together, (a) and (b) are the major constituent parts of our worldview<\/em>, though more commonly, the term conceptual scheme<\/em> might be used.[108]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  So, we want to assert that science and epistemology, when considered generally, much like theology and philosophy, have the same<\/em> referent (a general account of the universe) as their target material but choose a specific vocabulary and mode of argument when discussing with a particular target audience.\u00a0 Thus, it is sometimes argued that the distinction is, on a technical level, one more of the level of abstraction, when we ask a \u201cphilosophical\u201d question we are not looking to the empirical work of a particular science, indeed we cannot, but we are establishing principles applicable to all<\/em> sciences.[109]<\/a>\u00a0 This is certainly a useful, working definition but on analysis it begs the question as it already assumes<\/em> a difference; but we have already seen Quine sees no substantive difference between science and philosophy, whereas the positivists denied philosophy any knowledge bearing status (so there would be no metaphysical principles to be had) and yet many physical scientists were historically happy to be known as practicing \u201cnatural philosophy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

                  It is sometimes also said that philosophical knowledge \u201ctransitions\u201d to scientific knowledge as the understanding and application of the principles increases within each discipline.[110]<\/a>\u00a0 This also has a prima facie<\/em> plausibility but lurking behind it is an odor of a pragmatic or an instrumentalist view of knowledge generally.\u00a0 Some \u201csciences\u201d working through pages of mathematical or statistical analysis will never progress beyond those methods into more \u201cconcrete\u201d expressions, but it would seem sectarian and unreasonable to label them \u2018un-scientific.\u2019\u00a0 Thus, in summary, it is perhaps far more convincing that certain groups like to call themselves \u201cscientists\u201d for sociological reasons to distinguish themselves from those they consider \u201cun-scientific.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  The designation of being the latter, like that of being a \u201cfundamentalist,\u201d is an emotive pejorative with little content because the term is so imprecise.\u00a0 That is, the designation is often merely one of preference or prejudice and is arbitrary in nature.\u00a0 As both Psillos and Mahner discovered, attempting to analyze science in pursuit of clarity in the definition pushes you in a worldview direction.\u00a0 This is precisely the position we will be arguing for, science is defined only<\/em> within the wider context of the entire map of our knowledge, much as Quine described it as a \u201cweb\u201d of belief.[111]<\/a>\u00a0 Some beliefs, near the center of the web are held tenaciously and require overwhelming evidence to be displaced, others at the edge of the web might be lost without affecting those close to the center.<\/p>\n

                  In Wittgensteinian terms, we have several \u201cforms of life,\u201d each with their own language games at work here and we are in danger of being \u201cseduced\u201d by one or the other to the detriment of our cultures.\u00a0 Wittgenstein himself had reflected that in his early years he had attached improper importance to the language game of science but came to understand it was possible to be knowledge bearing in language with no reference to the physical world.[112]<\/a>\u00a0 As Plantinga too argued, we cannot accuse every community outside of our 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century Western view of science as being \u201cirrational,\u201d their science is conceived and construed in a different way.[113]<\/a>\u00a0 Any other conception of science has historically gravitated towards tyranny, both intellectual and political.<\/p>\n

                  <\/a><\/a><\/a>1.8.7 Avoiding The \u201cTyranny of Science\u201d<\/h3>\n

                  As we have already noted, one of the modern philosophers of science to deny most forcibly that naturalistic conceptions of \u201cscience\u201d should be intellectually privileged before other knowledge gaining activities of humanity was Paul Feyerabend.\u00a0 Indeed, Feyerabend asserted that this privileging of naturalistic science was \u201ctyrannical\u201d<\/em> [114]<\/a> which was perhaps well illustrated during the COVID-19 pandemic when \u201cfollowing the science\u201d<\/em> was equated with unjustified lockdowns and the removal of basic freedoms, Dodsworth illustrating this vividly:<\/p>\n

                  \u201c[It\u2019s about] how the government weaponised our fear against us\u2014supposedly in our best interests\u2014until we were one of the most frightened countries in the world\u2026the behavioural scientists advising the UK government recommended that we needed to be frightened. The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) said in their report Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures,1 dated 22 March 2020, that \u2018a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising\u2019. As a result they recommended that \u2018the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging\u2019. In essence, the government was advised to frighten the British public to encourage adherence to the emergency lockdown regulations.\u201d\u200a[115]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  Feyerabend was likewise concerned with the social boundaries of science and the dangers of the cultural deference to it.[116]<\/a>\u00a0 This is well reflected in that the head of the pharmaceutical Pfizer \u2018joked\u2019 that \u201cthe whole of Israel was a petri-dish\u201d<\/em>\u200a[117]<\/a> after the Israeli government decided to \u2018vaccinate\u2019 its way out of the COVID pandemic; it was a strategy that failed\u200a[118]<\/a> but remarkably, was unnecessarily repeated in many nations around the world despite of that failure, with similar results of failure.\u00a0\u00a0 Epidemiologists in nations that argued for a different approach because they believed lockdowns and vaccinations would never deliver what was being promised for them, were subject to international vilification with even ceremonial monarchs joining in the criticism and condemnation of any approach that did not endorse the WHO\u2019s \u2018official\u2019 guidance.[119]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  Other dissenting scientists were ostracized, imprisoned, referred to professional bodies and forced from their employment.\u00a0 Media and social media were mandated to \u201cfollow the science\u201d and platforms which marketed themselves as refuges of \u201cfree speech\u201d became \u201cscientifically controlled\u201d centers of speech.\u00a0 It was rather like a dystopian, Orwellian novel, \u201cfollowing the science\u201d was clearly subject to a political agenda and it was a tiny subset of science which was followed to the detriment of life and liberty.\u00a0 I explored this abuse of science during the \u2018pandemic\u2019 in an extended study[120]<\/a> and it certainly seems that Feyerabend\u2019s vision that a science out of control would inevitably become tyrannical, was almost prophetic, with a privileged subsection of \u201csenior scientists\u201d<\/em> providing \u2018science\u2019 on-demand to allow politicians to pursue immoral actions against their citizens.<\/p>\n

                  This, we argue, reflects the enormous, ongoing cultural confidence in the power of science and the secular state to solve the problems of humanity through this thing called \u201cscience\u201d which emerged into the mainstream popular consciousness in the latter half of the 19th<\/sup> century\u200a[121]<\/a> and it was a centerpiece of the liberalism of the West in the early 20th.\u00a0 In early Liberalism, particularly in the British version which was permeated by the messianic pretensions of the Empire before God bringing civilization to the heathen, organized religion provided the moral authority for the State and its justification to the wider polity.\u00a0 However, the heavy reliance of the totalitarian regimes of Nazism and Communism on \u201cscience\u201d meant that there grew a reaction to its totalizing naturalism to favor more recognition of the individual and the subjective, sometimes a violent retreat into subjectivity as in the existentialist movement of Continental philosophy.[122]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  This also came into sharp focus during the Vietnam War in the US where the \u2018indiscriminate\u2019 use of technology as weapons during the 1960s until the end of the war in 1975 fanned cultural suspicion of science as illegitimate in contrast to recognizing the humanity and dignity of all people.\u00a0 It seemed that cultures were technologically advantaged but no less barbaric.\u00a0 The 1970s were characterized by what seemed like a moral and social decay in the fabric of the West, ethnic conflict within society, and a loss of confidence in \u201cscience\u201d and indeed, religion or any other \u201cmetanarrative\u201d of an \u201cestablishment\u201d to solve these problems of society.<\/p>\n

                  As we also noted previously, it is worth remembering that the ideologies of Marxism and Nazism both privileged naturalistic, value-free \u201cscience\u201d in this way as central to their praxis which led to the systematic death of over 120 million in the 20th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Having begun his career as part of the Third Reich, Feyerabend can thus be permitted this indulgence for his unique perspective and as one of the most colorful and iconoclastic but original philosophers of science who could simultaneously earn the title the \u201cworst enemy of science.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 His defense against this accusation is pointed and simple, science must be \u201csubject to public control\u201d<\/em> (we might say \u2018democratic\u2019 control) as it was in previous eras and scientists should not be privileged as a new medieval Catholic clergy, beyond the law and beyond censure.[123]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, the importance of the political ethics that emerge from our project, particularly when faced by this type of political challenge.<\/p>\n

                  <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>1.9 Philosophy as Transformative<\/h2>\n

                  An interesting contrast can be made between the biblical Hebrew culture and the contemporary Greek culture of the same time with regards to the nature of knowledge.\u00a0 As our work is concerning knowledge it is useful to pause and reflect on why we should, or should not, pause and reflect.\u00a0 For the Hebrew, a father was to train his son in a trade and that trade would allow the son to be considered an adult member of society.\u00a0 In that sense, the education of a child was measured by the mastery of a set of skills that allowed the child to be a self-enabling and contributing member of society.\u00a0 Knowledge was expressed in the context of living<\/em> in the world, it was not an abstract or contemplative model of knowledge.<\/p>\n

                  However, a Greek conception might be that a ruler was trained by his \u201ctutor\u201d by exposure to a body of \u201cknowledge\u201d and could learn by rote a set of tenets.\u00a0 On successful recitation they would be considered \u201ceducated,\u201d but there was no requirement for that knowledge to be grounded or applicable to living in the world.\u00a0 We, to a large degree, have inherited the Greek presumption, we can all remember staying up all night to \u201crevise\u201d for an exam, do the exam and then forget all what had been \u201clearnt\u201d a couple of days later.\u00a0 One argument that we will consider is that it is questionable whether we ever ascended to the status of knowledge, and we shall investigate the requirements for \u201cknowledge\u201d within this work. \u00a0In a similar manner, in the dying days of the British Empire, it was traditional that British Army Officers had no requirement to be trained as regular soldiers with the result that they were spectacularly inept until the radical reforms of Montgomery during WWII that saved the nation from utter humiliation in Africa against Hitler\u2019s Rommel.\u00a0 The philosophical contrast was the training of the mind apart from the living of life, some things are only learnt through \u201cdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

                  This was also the philosophical backdrop to a great dispute in the 20th<\/sup> century amongst the educational reformers who argued for comprehensive education against the backdrop of the selective schools; even now, the most radical Left of British politicians will still be seduced into sending their children to \u2018public\u2019 schools that are anything but public in the common sense of the word,[124]<\/a> so that they might receive their training to rule us all as is their birthright.\u00a0 As a child in the 1970s, this was a live issue for me, and I failed my 11+ for Colchester grammar despite my father\u2019s endless drilling me with practice exercises.\u00a0 As Professor Simon put it, I was to be doomed to the \u201csink comprehensive\u201d\u200a[125]<\/a> only encountering the grammarians as they beat us at rugby as well as any other sport,[126]<\/a> we knew our place.\u00a0 Such also was the debate between the polytechnics and the universities, with the polytechnics converting themselves to universities during the 1980s for the purpose of instantly gaining kudos in the marketplace even if nothing else but their name had changed.\u00a0 The most supreme irony being that the polytechnics often became \u201cbetter\u201d universities because of their practical orientation and links with industry. \u00a0One of my brothers who took the vocational route picking \u201cvocational\u201d qualifications over the Liberal Arts degree, is now enjoying the good life down-under.\u00a0 Despite many (and probably myself) telling him otherwise, he has not shed any tears missing out on a \u201cbroad,\u201d Liberal Arts education.\u00a0 Of course, we might want to defend ourselves that it might just mean he has been desensitized to the important issues of intellectual life as he enjoys the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n

                  Educational theorists often blame Plato at this point\u2014there is gold in some of us, silver in others, the rest are common base metal and some of us are just plain wood.\u00a0 With the 19th<\/sup> century social-Darwinist twist, each of us should<\/em> know our place, such is the natural<\/em> evolutionary order of things.\u00a0 This is the issue of the mode of philosophizing which has shaped our culture.\u00a0 In testament to our societal failures, my confirmation bias would be to favor the practical over the contemplative conception of philosophy.\u00a0 I intentionally<\/em> chose an old \u201cpolytechnic\u201d over the competing university when I trained as a teacher.\u00a0 As a practicing teacher I would often find that the toughest schools in the most \u201cdeprived\u201d areas frequently had far better praxis in terms of innovation, curriculum diversity, and care for the individual pupil in contrast to the \u201cposh\u201d schools where the teacher could throw a textbook into the midst of the elite, and everyone would pass with an \u2018A\u2019 whilst the teacher read their newspaper with merely a \u201cpeep hole\u201d that they might maintain order (my mentor during training related such a story to me of his training days).\u00a0 A colleague of mine recounted how her philosophy class spent many hours considering the conundrum, \u201cif a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it, does it make a sound?\u201d<\/em> Now being an engineer and a physicist by training, my instinct was to say, \u201cbe analytical, objective, and clear about your definitions and the problem resolves,\u201d<\/em> I felt the Vienna Circle anointing to clean-up philosophy come upon me:<\/p>\n

                  P1: \u201cSound\u201d is a compression wave itself caused by the disturbance of the uniformity of a medium.<\/p>\n

                  P2: The tree falling disturbs the uniformity of the medium.<\/p>\n

                  Conclusion:\u00a0 a tree falling in a forest makes a sound.<\/p>\n

                  Now please spend all that \u201csaved time\u201d discussing this question to consider rather philosophy that might arrest the catastrophic decline of the West.\u00a0 In similar fashion, when I was training in 1994, I took a psychology of education class where the question, \u201cwhat is normal?\u201d<\/em> was posed.\u00a0 I was expecting an intense duel of competing socially defined epithets being offered by us postgraduates militating against the tyranny of the majority, it was all cut short by the lecturer giving the statistical definition \u201cthe highest frequency in a population.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 This was perhaps in enormous contrast to my psychology of religion teacher many years later who framed \u201cmadness\u201d as merely \u201csocially defined,\u201d the implication then being we could all be \u201cmad\u201d and not be concerned about it.\u00a0 Perhaps this should be borne in mind with our contemporary discussions of gender and sexuality which increasingly eat up letters of the alphabet.<\/p>\n

                  That is, for myself in my philosophical naivety, such a \u201cridiculous\u201d contrast regarding the normal would have settled those matters in favor of the practical.\u00a0 With my head still full of formulae from a life as an engineer, there is still something about the clarity and simplicity of a philosophy rooted and grounded in life and living which to me guards against those excesses of academic life.[127]<\/a> \u00a0The wider philosophical point then becomes the brutal reductionism of my legacy position, we realize how unfulfilling and perhaps uninspiring such a model of philosophy would be, as Russell mused \u201cin praise of idleness,\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[128]<\/a> reflection has its place for a person to consider the \u201cwhy\u201d as well as the \u201chow\u201d of existence.\u00a0 Social psychologists too can get far more elaborate than that clean definition of \u201cnormalcy\u201d above with Bell curves and distributions reducing the \u201cintelligence\u201d of a human population to a single quotient; the \u201cmis-<\/em>measure of man\u201d that rather paradoxically the evolutionist Gould found so objectionable.[129]<\/a>\u00a0 There is clearly the need for contemplative philosophical reflection here that the philosophy itself might be transformational.\u00a0 Thus, that does not mean I advocate a complete rejection of the contemplative in favor of the pragmatic; as we shall see, pragmatism begs the most important philosophical questions and I reject it as a model of philosophy.<\/p>\n

                  Rather, there is a mediation within the epistemologically self-conscious perspective of what is asserted in the name of philosophy as to its relevance for solving the problems of society and culture more generally.\u00a0 In this sense, we would be wise to argue for a transformative model of philosophy, both as a matter of education of the mind and how to live in the world.\u00a0 By turning our pure mathematics into applied mathematics, we appreciate the beauty and value of the pure, so also with philosophy.\u00a0 Blackburn makes this critical judgment that expresses a similar imperative:<\/p>\n

                  \u201cwe are not going to agree with the great postmodernist slogan made famous by Jacques Derrida: \u2018Il n\u2019y a pas de hors-texte\u2019<\/em> (\u2018There is nothing outside the text\u2019) [It appeals only to those] sufficiently divorced from the activities of life (at least at the times when they are writing about life) to really begin to imagine themselves in a virtual reality, the sealed world of their own beliefs and sayings\u2026The cure, as Wittgenstein saw very clearly, is to remember, and perhaps to practise, the practical techniques and skills of doing things in the real world…\u201d\u200a[130]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

                  However, what we are considering so far above is philosophically agnostic.\u00a0 From a Christian perspective, Christian philosophy is transformative not just in a definitional fashion but in a phenomenological one also.\u00a0 If, as Descartes also wrote in his notebook, \u201cthe fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge\u201d<\/em>\u200a<\/em>[131]<\/a> this refers not just to intellectual or cognitive knowledge but the practical skills of life.\u00a0 The Hebrew language has a set of words which reflect these different senses of knowledge:<\/p>\n

                  \u201cThe noun {\u2026} (da’at, “knowledge”) refers to experiential knowledge, not just cognitive knowledge, including the intellectual assimilation and practical application\u2026It is used in parallelism to {\u2026} (musar, “instruction, discipline”) and {\u2026} (khokhmah, “wisdom, moral skill”).\u201d [132]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  In his rationalism, it might be questionable that Descartes took these different senses of knowledge to heart, but he certainly argued that the atheist was unable to argue for a systematic theory of knowledge,[133]<\/a> though equally others felt able to invert Descartes arguments and present an atheistic version.\u00a0 The most profound claim of biblical knowledge is the knowledge of salvation, the spiritual and intellectual response to the simple argument of Paul:<\/p>\n

                  \u201cBut what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.\u201d\u200a[134]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  Here the Greek verb sw,|zw (so[set macron over o]<\/strong>zo[set macron over o]<\/strong>) translated \u201csaved\u201d has wide philosophical application with a field of meanings such as rescue, liberate, keep from harm, heal and preserve.\u00a0 In this conceptual sense, it is almost an exact equivalent to the Hebrew word Shalom<\/em> (\u05d1\u05b0\u05bc\u05e9\u05b8\u05c1\u05dc\u0591\u05d5\u05b9\u05dd) emphasizing the phenomenology of the concept for the believer.\u00a0 The regeneration and the renewal of the individual is then the transformative force within a culture, the restoration of the dominion mandate given to humanity in the Genesis narrative.[135]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  However, even with the regeneration of the individual that remains outside of a political organization, you will never transform or even reform a society, a far broader theonomical understanding is needed and we will examine this in more detail in later sections.\u00a0 As Cope (2015) argues, political naivety is endemic in the wider evangelical consciousness.\u00a0 Societal \u201cTransformation\u201d has a magical ring about it, all the problems of culture and society will be solved with everyone getting \u201csaved.\u201d\u00a0 In contrast, the Reformers, in opposition to modern revivalism, had a multigenerational perspective.\u00a0 It is of note that most twentieth century revivals throughout the world, especially in the West, impacted wider culture very little in marked contrast to previous centuries.\u00a0 Indeed, within a few years of the \u201crevival\u201d there was virtually no trace of its impact to be found in metrics even as basic as church attendance.[136]<\/a>\u00a0 So our designation of philosophy as \u201ctransformative\u201d is not at the expense of contemplation or rational reflection, but rather the litmus test of what our philosophy brings to living in the world.\u00a0 We prefer something that is at least relevant to the solving of human problems.<\/p>\n

                  <\/a><\/a>1.10 Summary and Conclusion<\/h2>\n

                  In this chapter we have introduced some of the definitions, themes, and the methodological assumptions we are going to be following in this book.\u00a0 First, we indicated our rejection of metaphysical skepticism, we take the position that the world as God\u2019s world is knowable to us, God provides us with senses that allow us to live in the world by coming to a knowledge of the world.\u00a0 We also introduced the important concept that all our reasonings about the world are \u201ctheory laden\u201d and that those theories will be derivative from the values, those values in turn are implicitly assuming a particular metaphysic.\u00a0 For our work, this assumption is of a personal God that cares about the universe, our world, and each individual person.<\/p>\n

                  We then offered this work as an apologetic work and examined the definition of apologetics and considered that apologetics can be conceived of as consisting of both objective and subjective aspects.\u00a0 We asserted our position as arguing for what has become known as the \u201cpresuppositional\u201d apologetic method, which has the central methodological principle that the faith must be defended in a positive manner consistent with the faith, rather than relying on a negative, defensive method dependent on a foreign epistemology drawn from evidentialism or classical apologetics. \u00a0We then examined the role of scripture and religious experience within the apologetic framework and argued that an apologetic model consistent with scripture should assume scripture as the foundation for all reasoning.\u00a0 We concluded that a post-Reformational model was necessary to properly incorporate the role of religious experience, particularly with regards to spiritual gifts, but argued that scripture mandated an apologetic that rationally defended the faith.\u00a0 We distinguished between the biblical usage of \u201clogos\u201d and \u201crhema,\u201d concluding that although there was implicit plasticity in a narrative, the biblical narrative clearly intended itself to be understood in an objective sense as well as us responding subjectively to it and for us to build our foundations upon what we understand. \u00a0Thus, our basic orientation within this work was to argue that the Christian worldview was objectively defensible, whilst also noting that the aim of an apologetic discourse was not necessarily the conversion of the opponents, but that the account offered was intellectually sufficient to refute the charge of irrationality.<\/p>\n

                  In order to posit how we might seek to offer an objective proof of the Christian worldview as the only coherent worldview, we introduced Kant and the transcendental mode of reasoning.\u00a0 We immediately asserted that whilst agreeing with the basic programme of Kant to discover what general conditions must be fulfilled for any particular instance of knowledge to be possible, we do not agree that he was successful.\u00a0 We examined how Kant and Hume are asymptotic for the limitations of understanding in modern philosophy and particularly the significance of the problem of induction.\u00a0 We argued that induction was the foundation of natural science but would only be justified by a Christian metaphysic. \u00a0We then examined in detail the paradigm of naturalistic science, the dominant paradigm of our time asserting that its naturalism offered no basis for a true science which has historically encompassed all the domains of human knowledge.\u00a0 This again we connected with the necessity for a worldview founded on a Christian metaphysic because there are implicit ethical assumptions within our science that cannot be avoided.\u00a0 Naturalistic science was exposed as tyrannical both in its excesses of the totalitarianisms of the 20th<\/sup> century and our contemporary context of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

                  We thus assert that one of the principal benefits of epistemological self-consciousness is that it recognizes the autonomy of every sphere of human knowledge but does not permit the autonomy of any sphere to operate in a moral vacuum.\u00a0 We understand this as one of the seminal insights of Kuyper and in lieu of our collapsing of the rigid boundaries between science, epistemology, theology and philosophy, we can justifiably concur with him that the designation \u2018science\u2019 must be taken to include the hard and soft-sciences, theology, \u2018philosophy\u2019, literature, and political economy in order that we do justice to what<\/em> we know as well as how<\/em> we know\u2014in other words, a holistic and a non-naturalistic account of science.[137]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Hao Wang, most definitely a philosopher that remained within the wider analytic tradition but viewed the analytic school as inadequate to the task of philosophy in his later period,[138]<\/a> expressed the imperative for this distinction and the correlative need for a wide cognitive field for our scientific vision concisely:<\/p>\n

                  \u201cQuine\u2019s emphasis on empirical psychology is related to his idea of a \u2018liberated epistemology\u2019, which proposes to make the study of language learning a successor subject to epistemology.\u00a0 But I take his proposal to be in the tradition of asking \u2018how I know\u2019<\/em>, rather than \u2018what we know\u2019.<\/em>\u201d [139]<\/a> (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n

                  We noted that if there is admitted a functional difference in preference to a theoretical one for these categories, then it would seem to be that many philosophers believe that the level of abstraction in which they operate is a higher than that of the scientist who is dealing with phenomena<\/em>.\u00a0 However, we understood that this immediately begged the question as to why dealing with \u201cphenomena\u201d might be considered a definitive attribute of the scientist; there are many \u201ctheoretical\u201d scientists who seldom deal with phenomena.\u00a0 Thus, on the basis of a similar assessment, we concur with Quine who considered the distinction between philosophy and science much as he considered the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, merely one of convenience.\u00a0 Thus, we assert that the dispute of a difference between science, the humanities and philosophy is in the final analysis a linguistic one, not a theoretical one; we can take \u2018science\u2019 in its broadest sense as encompassing human knowledge in its entirety.<\/p>\n

                  This is not to deny the legitimacy or value of the individual subjects or their autonomy as spheres of knowledge over which they are sovereign but recognizes that there is a unifying ethical principle that coheres the spheres and provides an interpretative framework of reality.[140]<\/a>\u00a0 \u2018Science\u2019 is thus a close synonym of \u201cphilosophy\u201d which we now take to define and articulate more closely that we can see what to demand from Epistemological Self-Consciousness.\u00a0 We can freely claim to be advocating a scientific thesis and a thesis concerned with the concrete, real world of experience, as well as with the world of ideas and concepts.\u00a0 We can thus express formal agreement with Kant in his conclusion regarding practical\u200a[141]<\/a> reason:<\/p>\n

                  \u201cIn a word, science (critically sought and methodically directed) is the narrow gate that leads to the doctrine of wisdom, if by this is understood not merely what one ought to do but what ought to serve teachers as a guide to prepare well and clearly the path to wisdom which everyone should travel, and to secure others against taking the wrong way; philosophy must always remain the guardian of this science, and though the public need take no interest in its subtle investigations it has to take an interest in the doctrines which, after being worked up in this way, can first be quite clear to it.\u201d\u200a[142]<\/a><\/p>\n

                  In summary, and of great methodological importance for us, we see that Kant attempted to tie his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics together.\u00a0 Whilst we noted that both Van Til and Plantinga defer to agree that he achieved this coherently, consistently, or convincingly, we can certainly agree with Van Til that Kant\u2019s transcendental programme seeking the preconditions of understanding on this tripartite basis should remain appealing to us, even if we disagree with his autonomous method\u200a[143]<\/a> and final conclusions.\u00a0 We can also discern from this passage that Kant believed there was a moral responsibility of philosophers to have worked through the problematics that confront humanity and to have offered ethical solutions.\u00a0 For this reason, also, we undertook a consideration of the transformative role of philosophy and its contemplative role, emphasizing the importance of keeping the practical dimension in mind.\u00a0 It is the challenge of working through this process that will be undertaken in this work.<\/p>\n

                  <\/a><\/a>1.11 Chapter Outlines<\/h2>\n

                  [BL 1-7]<\/p>\n