James Hilston's Presuppositional Argument

[♦ ficino ♦]

 

 

I am curious why you're not convinced they need to posit that Y is omniscient. Their "in" is usually the canard that without access to omniscience one cannot claim to have knowledge at all.

 

Just tossing this out for starters:  say there's some event that is not known by any creature - maybe a singularity on the quantum level.  Since no creature knows it, TAGs don't need to posit that God knows it.  A principle of economy might say that they only need to posit that God knows every piece of data that at least one creature knows at any given time. For the purposes of the TAG argument, they only need to posit that the furniture of God's mind is sufficient to account for the collective furniture of all creaturely minds.

 

???   

[HymenaeusAlexander]

Just tossing this out for starters:  say there's some event that is not known by any creature - maybe a singularity on the quantum level.  Since no creature knows it, TAGs don't need to posit that God knows it.  A principle of economy might say that they only need to posit that God knows every piece of data that at least one creature knows at any given time. For the purposes of the TAG argument, they only need to posit that the furniture of God's mind is sufficient to account for the collective furniture of all creaturely minds.

 

What does this do if instead of a singularity on the quantum level, it's actually a super-god who knows everything God does, but has not revealed himself to God. In this case when God says, "I am God and there is no other" and a creature believes it, it is not knowledge even though they are thinking God's thoughts after him, right? What am I missing?

[♦ ficino ♦]

I was trying to think of the most minimal claims the TAG person needs to make.  I don't think any TAGer could posit a God who is in error about anything on which a creature could be in error, since that scenario destroys the whole point of TAG.  I'm not convinced that I'm correct that TAG can do without an omniscient God and merely content itself with an infallible god.  But just for the purposes of the TAG argument, what work in the argument does the an omniscient God do, which is not done by an infallible God who merely knows all that all creatures will ever know?

[HymenaeusAlexander]

While I agree that it makes sense that an infallible being could still fail to believe all truths, I don't see how an infallible being who fails to believe all truths could have justification for their own belief that they are infallible unless they get knowledge of their infallibility from another being who can somehow confirm it, which would seem to lead to infinite regress until we posit an omniscient being.

 

Without all knowledge, that being could not be sure that they won't make a claim that is false even though they would not make a claim that is false. That seems like it's a problem for TAG because they would be grounding knowledge in a being that lacks justification for a belief that TAG rests on. I guess at that point it comes back to ontology and defining God as infallible even though he himself seems to have no conceivable way of obtaining justification for that knowledge without omniscience.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi Spectrox, I read a good deal of the threads you linked.  I think your #415 was quite well put.

 

A few further thoughts about TAG:

 

1. a lot of weight is put on locutions like "account for".  I think they need to be unpacked.  To say that the proposition "God created the laws of logic" accounts for those laws is vague.  The laws of logic are not substances, so when Hilston calls them "entities," it's not clear what they are.  Therefore it's not clear what is meant by saying God "accounts for" them.  If this resolves into "God created the human brain so that it would generate language, and the laws of logic are necessary components of language," the TAGist hasn't solved any problem that would not also be solved by a substitution of "the human brain evolved" for "God created the human brain."  

   It won't help the TAGist to say that non-human creatures somewhere, if they can reason, must also use the laws of logic, so the latter are not grounded in our DNA but are transcendental and must be created by God.  The laws of logic are transcendental in a sense used by philosophers (i.e. preconditional).  Hilston understands this.  For consciousness to have certain properties just means it has those properties.  Adding another entity (God) simply bumps the problem of consciousness up another level.

 

2.  I wonder whether TAGists equivocate on "know/knowledge."

 

3. Spectrox, you get at this:  maybe the TAGist is mistaken to say that anyone has knowledge in the strong sense in which they seem to want to say this.  The ancient skeptics held that the best we have is opinion that goes unfalsified.  

 

4.  Hymenaeus, you do a good job of pointing out how the TAGist covers up the glaring holes, e.g. which text of the Bible? which books belong to the Bible?  then, how do you interpret it?  

[Spectrox]

Hi Spectrox, I read a good deal of the threads you linked.  I think your #415 was quite well put.

 

A few further thoughts about TAG:

 

1. a lot of weight is put on locutions like "account for".  I think they need to be unpacked.  To say that the proposition "God created the laws of logic" accounts for those laws is vague.  The laws of logic are not substances, so when Hilston calls them "entities," it's not clear what they are.  Therefore it's not clear what is meant by saying God "accounts for" them.  If this resolves into "God created the human brain so that it would generate language, and the laws of logic are necessary components of language," the TAGist hasn't solved any problem that would not also be solved by a substitution of "the human brain evolved" for "God created the human brain."  

   It won't help the TAGist to say that non-human creatures somewhere, if they can reason, must also use the laws of logic, so the latter are not grounded in our DNA but are transcendental and must be created by God.  The laws of logic are transcendental in a sense used by philosophers (i.e. preconditional).  Hilston understands this.  For consciousness to have certain properties just means it has those properties.  Adding another entity (God) simply bumps the problem of consciousness up another level.

 

2.  I wonder whether TAGists equivocate on "know/knowledge."

 

3. Spectrox, you get at this:  maybe the TAGist is mistaken to say that anyone has knowledge in the strong sense in which they seem to want to say this.  The ancient skeptics held that the best we have is opinion that goes unfalsified.  

 

4.  Hymenaeus, you do a good job of pointing out how the TAGist covers up the glaring holes, e.g. which text of the Bible? which books belong to the Bible?  then, how do you interpret it?  

 

Thanks Ficino for all your comments. They are very useful. The post I was most pleased with was No 444 on the following link:

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92629&page=30

 

I felt it had some substance and some amusing put downs!

 

I think the best response is Youtube user knownomore 's response to Sye Ten Brudencate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDebJuWcww

 

Very briefly, the argument is that the reason the laws of logic may be taken as axiomatic, is that they are self-proving. In other words, you need the law of identity to be true to argue that the law of identity is false. This is the justification for accepting them without justification. They therefore need no cause.

 

Also see Venaloid on this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VFwFDUNf9M

 

The presupp proponent feels that god is foundational and cannot be explained and is blatantly obvious, and he finds the laws of logic share some characteristics. He sees atheists treat the laws of logic in a similar way and tries to get you to think that logic IS god and at that moment you get there the holy spirit will touch you and do the rest.

 

What a bag o' shite!

 

All the best

 

Spectrox