The
Transcendental Argument for God's Existence
Michael R. Butler
See also our blog.
If, therefore, we observe the dogmatist coming forward with ten proofs, we can be quite sure that he really has none. For had he one that yielded . . . apodeictic proof, what need would he have of the others?
–Immanuel Kant
Cornelius Van Til revolutionized Christian apologetics in the twentieth century. His system of the defense of the faith rejected the common practice among Christian apologists of assuming a neutral, autonomous point of view when confronting unbelief. In its place he urged a presuppositional, theonomic approach of establishing the truth of Christian theism. He maintained that because God, speaking in his word, is the ultimate epistemological starting point, there is no way of arguing for the faith on the basis of something other than the faith itself. God's authority is ultimate and thus self-attesting. To argue for the faith on any other authority is to assume there is a higher authority than God himself to which he must give account. But the very attempt to do this is self-defeating. Consequently, the Christian apologist must stand upon God's authoritative word and presuppose its truth when contending for the faith. This stand does not relegate the apologist to fideism. Indeed, the very opposite is the case. Upon the rock foundation of God's word the Christian is able to demonstrate the foolishness of unbelieving thought while at the same time vindicate the greatness of divine wisdom.
Put in historical context, we see in Van Til
the confluence of two great streams of Christian thought: the apologetic
tradition that seeks to establish as beyond question the truth of Christianity
and the epistemological tradition that subjugates man's intellect to God's
revelation. Secularists and even many
Christians have rejected this synthesis as impossible. Such critics maintain that either
Christianity must be based on faith to the exclusion of reason or Christianity
must be tested by the deliverances of reasons in order to establish its
truth. Van Til
showed that only on the basis of faith can there be reason (credo ut intelligentum). In thus combining a biblical, Reformed
epistemology together with a non-compromising apologetic argument, Van Til brought about a "Copernican Revolution" in
Christian thought.
Over the years, however, Van Til's revolutionary thought has been subjected to criticism from many quarters. As a seminal thinker Van Til concentrated on the major components of apologetic system, but neglected to develop and elucidate a number of its more intricate features. Consequently, Van Til bequeathed the task of tying together the loose ends of his system to his followers.
It, thus, fell to Van Til's
successors to fill the gaps in his seminal and programmatic apologetic
system. Unfortunately, while Van Til's followers have been numerous, most have either been
uncritical and have contented themselves with merely regurgitating Van Til's slogans or, at the other extreme, have so
fundamentally departed from their mentor that their apologetic methodology only
bears superficial resemblances to Van Til's approach.[1]
Of Van Til's disciples that
remained in basic agreement with him, only two can rightly be considered to
have further refined and elaborated his apologetic outlook: Greg L. Bahnsen and John M. Frame.
Since this article is written in honor of the former, it is his
contribution to Van Til's apologetic methodology that
I will be concerned with.[2]
As a student of Van Til, Bahnsen understood from Van Til himself what the fundamental difficulties or gaps were with his apologetic system.[3] Much of Bahnsen's career was devoted to firming up the foundation that Van Til had so carefully laid. Bahnsen's defense and elaboration Van Til's apologetic methodology can be seen in five main areas: the practice of the presuppositional method; the biblical defense of presuppositional apologetics; organizing and explaining Van Til's system; analysis of the phenomenon of self-deception; and the elaboration of the Transcendental Argument for God's Existence.
While Van Til wrote extensively
about apologetic methodology, he seldom engaged in the actual practice of
apologetics. Only in his short track,
"Why I Believe in God" does he set forth a defense of the faith
directed against the unbeliever.[4] Aside from this work, Van Til
confined himself to the more theoretical aspects of apologetics. This relative neglect of the practice of the
defense of the faith and concentration on abstract and meta-apologetic issues
is perhaps one of the main reasons why Van Til's
methodology is so neglected and misunderstood in the church today.
Bahnsen realized this lack of
practical apologetics was a deficiency in Van Til. "¼ I ¼ wish that Van Til had given more attention to making practical
applications of his presuppositional method – to
actually defending the faith against the enemy, rather than debating
methodology so much within the family of faith."[5] To rectify this, Bahnsen
dedicated much of his career to the practice of apologetics. He did this by conducting many classes,
seminars and conferences instructing Christians how to defend the faith (as he
liked to say, "taking it to the street"). He was also involved in numerous debates with
such well-known atheists as Gordon Stein, George H. Smith and Edward Tabash.[6] Bahnsen's clear and
powerful defense of Christianity on these occasions serve as a model of the
practice of presuppositionalism. Apart from the pedagogical value of these
debates, Bahnsen's performances established his
reputation as one of the foremost Christian apologists of his day. Frame's tribute is fitting, "¼Bahnsen is one of the sharpest apologists working
today. In my view, he is the best
debater among Christian apologists of all apologetic persuasions."[7]
The one criticism that perhaps disturbed Van Til the most was that of G. C. Berkouwer.[8] Berkouwer notes,
with a good deal of irony, that although Van Til
claims to have arrived at his apologetic system from the Bible itself, there is
a conspicuous absence of biblical exegesis in his writings. To this charge Van Til
readily confessed: "This is a defect.
The lack of detailed scriptural exegesis is a lack in all of my
writings. I have no excuse for
this."[9] He later added, "¼ I would like to be more
exegetical than I have been. Dr. G. C. Berkouwer was right in pointing out my weakness on this
point."[10]
Bahnsen helped fill in this lacuna with the publication of a syllabus on biblical apologetics.[11] In the syllabus he demonstrates not only must our apologetic methodology come from Scripture, but that Scripture teaches the necessity of defending the faith in a presuppositional manner. Bahnsen furthers this case in his comparison of the Socratic method of philosophy with the presuppositional method practiced by Paul and other biblical writers.[12] Socrates' autonomous search for truth is shown to be completely out of accord with biblical principles of epistemology. For Paul, Christ is the foundation of all truth and knowledge and apart from him there is only ignorance and darkness. Beyond these biblical studies of the proper theory of apologetics, Bahnsen's looks at the actual practice of apologetics in in the New Testament in his important exegetical study of Acts 17.[13] This article shows in painstaking detail that Paul's defense of the faith before the Areopagus, far from being a display of the evidential or "classical" method of apologetics, is thoroughly presuppositional in nature. Through these studies Bahnsen demonstrates explicitly what Van Til took for granted: that presuppositional apologetics, when properly understood, is synonymous with biblical apologetics.
One of the major obstacles in the way of promoting presuppositionalism has been Van Til's
own writing style. Friends and critics
alike have expressed chagrin at his "tortuous English," his redundant
and unclear style, his penchant for sloganizing and
his disorganized presentation of themes.[14] Though he considered these criticism
overstated, Bahnsen likewise recognized these shortcomings
in Van Til.
"'[I]ssues of communication' did
sometimes become a problem for Van Til."[15] Bahnsen's publication
of Van Til's
Apologetic: Readings and Analysis goes a long way in correcting these
deficiencies. In the book, Van Til's apologetic writings are logically organized and given
extensive introductions that both explain and defend Van Til's
views. Bahnsen
also provides a running commentary in footnotes so that the reader is guided
through even the most difficult of Van Til's
passages.
One of the central features of Van Til's apologetic system is that it declares the unbeliever to both believe in God and not believe in God. That is, natural man believes that God exists, that he the Creator, is eternal, all-powerful and just and yet he does not, in another sense, believe these things. At first glance, it appears that these two claims contradict each other. How can somebody believe something and at the same time disbelieve the same thing? This problem has not only been seen as a great difficulty by sympathetic followers of Van Til,[16] but Van Til himself recognized the paradoxical nature of this claim posed a problem for his apologetic system. He says of this issue that it "has always been a difficult point"[17] and he recognizes the challenge that opponents of his view put forth:
It is ambiguous or meaningless, says the Arminian, to talk about the natural man as knowing God and yet not truly knowing God. Knowing is knowing. A man either knows or he does not know. He may know less or more, but if he does not "truly" know, he knows not at all.[18]
The difficulty that the Arminian points out is how can the natural man both believe in God and yet not believe in God? It is apparent that the natural man is engaged in some form of self-deception. He believes in God, but then suppresses this belief (in unrighteousness) in order to allow himself to not believe in God. The difficulty is that he is not merely pretending to not believe in God, but that he actually deceives himself into not believing in God. In other words, the unbeliever lies to himself and believes the lie he tells. Thus two difficult problems emerge. It appears that the natural man both believes p and believes -p. But this is implausible. Except for madmen, nobody consciously believes such contradictory propositions. Furthermore, how is it possible for the natural man to lie to himself and believe the lie that he is telling? After all, if he knows he is telling a lie, why would he believe it? It would seem that such a psychological condition is hardly possible.
Bahnsen tackles these difficult
problems in his doctoral dissertation, "A Conditional Resolution of the
Apparent Paradox of Self-Deception."[19] A more accessible treatment is found in his
article, "The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presuppositional
Apologetics."[20] In these works, Bahnsen
shows how natural man can believe that God exists (a first-order belief) and
yet can deceive himself into believing that he does not have such a belief (a
second-order belief). Thus the natural
man does not believe both p and -p, but rather he believes p and also believes
(falsely) that he does not believe p.
Moreover, self-deception, like falling asleep, is a self-covering
intention. When self-deception is
successful, the original intention is covered in the process.
The above criticisms and difficulties are all given satisfactory answers and resolutions by Bahnsen. Where Van Til was hard to understand or disorganized or where he was too abstract and theoretical, Bahnsen brings clarity and practical illustrations. Where there were objections to the biblical warrant of Van Til's system or concerns about the apparent paradoxical corollaries that emerge from it, Bahnsen provides a clear defense and analysis.
There is one objection to Van Til's system that has yet to be addressed. And this is perhaps the most serious. This has to do with the nature of the presuppositional or transcendental argument for God's existence (TAG hereafter). It is to this objection that I shall now turn.
Despite his many assertions that there is an absolute proof
for Christianity, many critics of Van Til have
accused him of never actually stating it.
Gordon Clark, for example, asserts that if Van Til
has a certain argument for Christianity, he ought to state its premises and
give the argument step by step.[21]
Apologists from different camps have offered similar criticisms. "Evangelical Thomist" Norman Geisler alleges, "¼Van Til never really spelled out how his transcendental argument actually works."[23] Reformed epistemologist Kelly James Clark remarks in a similar vein:
Whenever I read presuppositionalists
I almost always think, "Saying it's so doesn't make it so." Saying that Christianity is the criterion of
truth (whatever that could mean), that Christian belief is the most certain
thing we know, that Christian faith is not defeasible,
and that Scripture supports these views, does not make it so. There are few apologetic approaches that are
so long on assured proclamations and so short on argument.[24]
Proponents of the "Classical" method such as R. C. Sproul and John Gerstner simply refer to Van Til's approach as fideism.[25] The misguided nature of these criticisms is amply attested to in the writings of Van Til himself. There he clearly sets forth not only the nature of his argument, but how the argument actually proceeds. The lengthy quote that follows is perhaps his best summation:
Since the
non-theist is so heartily convinced that univocal reasoning is the only
possible kind of reasoning, we must ask him to reason univocally for us in
order that we may see the consequences. In other words, we believe it to be in
harmony with and a part of the process of reasoning analogically with a
non-theist that we ask him to show us first what he can do. We may, to be sure,
offer to him at once a positive statement of our position. But this he will at
once reject as quite out of the question. So we may ask him to give us
something better. The reason he gives for rejecting our position is, in the
last analysis, that it involves self-contradiction. We see again as an
illustration of this charge the rejection of the theistic conception that God
is absolute and that he has nevertheless created this world for his glory.
This, the non-theist says, is self-contradictory. And it no doubt is, from a
non-theistic point of view. But the final question is not whether a statement
appears to be contradictory. The final question is in which framework or on
which view of reality—the Christian or the nonChristian—the law of
contradiction can have application to any fact. The non-Christian rejects the
Christian view out of hand as being contradictory. Then when he is asked to
furnish a foundation for the law of contradiction, he can offer nothing but the
idea of contingency.
What we shall have
to do then is to try to reduce our opponent's position to an absurdity. Nothing
less will do. Without God, man is completely lost in every respect,
epistemologically as well as morally and religiously. But exactly what do we
mean by reducing our opponent's position to an absurdity? He thinks he has
already reduced our position to an absurdity by the simple expedient just
spoken of. But we must point out to him that upon a theistic basis our position
is not reduced to an absurdity by indicating the "logical
difficulties" involved in the conception of creation. Upon the theistic
basis it must be contended that the human categories are but analogical of
God's categories, so that it is to be expected that human thought will not be
able to comprehend how God shall be absolute and at the same time create the
universe for his glory. If taken on the same level of existence, it is no doubt
a self-contradiction to say that a thing is full and at the same time is being
filled. But it is exactly this point that is in question—whether God is to be
thought of as on the same level with man. What the antitheist should have done
is to show that even upon a theistic basis our conception of creation involves
self-contradiction.
We must therefore give our opponents better treatment than
they give us. We must point out to them that univocal reasoning itself leads to
self-contradiction, not only from a theistic point of view, but from a
non-theistic point of view as well. It is this that we ought to mean when we
say that we must meet our enemy on their own ground. It is this that we ought
to mean when we say that we reason from the impossibility of the contrary. The
contrary is impossible only if it is self-contradictory when operating on the
basis of its own assumptions. It is this too that we should mean when we say
that we are arguing ad hominem. We do not really argue ad hominem
unless we show that someone's position involves self-contradiction, and there
is no self-contradiction unless one's reasoning is shown to be directly
contradictory of or to lead to conclusions which are contradictory of one's own
assumptions.[26]
Here we find the basic contours of TAG. It starts with human experience; such things as science, love, rationality and moral duties. It then asserts that the existence of the Christian God is the necessary precondition of such experiences. Finally, it proves this indirectly by demonstrating the impossibility of the contrary.
The criticism that Van Til has not produced an argument is, thus, without foundation. Saying, this, however, is not saying much. That Van Til offers an argument is beyond debate. That he offers a good argument is an altogether different matter. And the question of whether TAG is a good argument is perhaps behind much of the above criticism. Unfortunately, Van Til does not offer much in the way of detailed analysis of TAG. He was content to present the argument in broad strokes and leave the details aside. More problematic was his failure to address some of the common criticisms of TAG. Like much of his other work in apologetics, he left the detailed work to his followers.
In his writings and lectures, Bahnsen addressed a number of the stock criticisms of TAG. These objections fall into four broad categories: (1) the nature of TAG; (2) the uniqueness proof for the conclusion of TAG; (3) the mere sufficiency of the Christian worldview; (4) the move from the conceptual necessity God's existence to the actual existence of the Christian God. I will address these in order.[27]
Objection 1. The Nature of TAG
The first criticism has to do with the nature of TAG. Specifically, some have argued that TAG is not a unique argument form, but is reducible to the more traditional arguments for God's existence. Frame especially has advanced this criticism in his recent writings on apologetics.[28]
Van Til claims that only transcendental or indirect arguments bring us to the conclusion that the God of the Bible exists. Van Til states, "The method of reasoning by presupposition may be said to be indirect rather than direct." He explains what he means by this as follows:
The issue between believers and non-believers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to "facts" or "laws" whose nature and significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate. The question is rather as to what is the final reference-point required to make the "facts" and "laws" intelligible.
How is this to be done?
The Christian apologist must place himself upon the position of his opponent, assuming the correctness of his method merely for argument's sake, in order to show him that on such a position the "facts" are not facts and the "laws" are not laws. He must also ask the non-Christian to place himself upon the Christian position for argument's sake in order that he may be shown that only upon such a basis do "facts" and "laws" appear intelligible.[29]
Against Van Til, Frame argues that transcendental arguments may be either direct (positive) or indirect (negative). For example, in Apologetics to the Glory of God, Frame asks:
Are indirect arguments really distinct from direct arguments? In the final analysis, it doesn't make much difference whether you say "Causality, therefore God" or "Without God, no causality, therefore God."[30]
How are we to understand this? Interpreted one way these two arguments are really the same. The first is an enthymeme which when spelled-out reads: "There is causality and therefore God exists [for without God there could be no causality]. The second is also enthymematic which when spelled-out reads: "Without God there is no causality [but there is causality] therefore God exists." Understood this way, Van Til would have no disagreement.
This interpretation is not what Frame means by a direct or positive argument though. In his book on Van Til he writes:
We can certainly conceive of a positive argument that would lead to a transcendental conclusion. We might, for example, develop a causal argument for God's existence, prove that the ultimate cause of the world must have the attributes of the biblical God, and thus establish that all intelligibility in the universe derives from God.[31]
Notice that he is speaking here of a causal argument. Specifically, he is speaking of the traditional cosmological argument (an argument that concludes there must have been an Ultimate Cause, and this Ultimate Cause is God). And this is certainly something Van Til would take issue with.
The question before us then is, is the traditional cosmological argument (or other traditional arguments for God's existence) a version of the transcendental argument stated in a direct or positive way? Put differently, was Van Til right about the distinctiveness of his argument for the existence of God? or is Frame right in saying that the transcendental argument is just a restatement of traditional arguments? To answer this a few words about transcendental arguments are in order.
Transcendental arguments attempt to discover the preconditions of human experience. They do so by taking some aspect of human experience and investigating what must be true in order for that experience to be possible. Transcendental arguments typically have the following form. For x [some aspect of human experience] to be the case, y must also be the case since y is the precondition of x. Since x is the case, y is the case. The argument mentioned above serves as a clear example of a transcendental argument. For causality to be possible, God has to exist since the existence of God is the precondition of causality. Since there is causality, God exists. A corollary of this is that whenever non-believers employ the concept of causation, they are borrowing from the Christian worldview since only on a Christian worldview does causation make sense.
Does the traditional cosmological argument take this form? A brief sketch of it will prove that it does not. Essentially the argument is outlined as follows. There are causes in the world and these causes are contingent. There is either an infinite number of contingent causes or there is a finite number. Since there could not be an infinite number (an infinite chain of contingent causes is impossible) there must be a finite number. Since there is a finite number, there must be a first cause. The argument concludes by identifying this first cause as God.
Notice that this argument does not show that the precondition of causality is God. Rather, it assumes that the non-believer is perfectly justified in believing in causation and/or using the concept of causation. The non-believer may not have thought through the implications of the world being causally ordered – i.e. there must be a First Cause – but this does not mean he cannot make sense of causation. It is not arguing that the precondition of causation is God. Indeed, it assumes that human experience and understanding in general and causation in particular are perfectly intelligible outside the Christian worldview. Thus, even if the cosmological arguments were sound, the unbeliever is perfectly justified in believing in and/or using the concept of causation.
This leads to a further point. None of the traditional arguments for the existence of God (cosmological as well as others) are in fact sound. All have been repeatedly refuted (see the writings of Hume, Kant, Russell and many contemporary philosophers). And the reason for this failure is precisely because they do not presuppose the Christian worldview. Rather, the traditional arguments give the concepts of being, causation, purpose, etc. to the non-Christian; they assume that all of these are intelligible on the unbeliever's worldview. This being the case, the apologist has already conceded to the non-Christian that the world is intelligible without reference to God.
According to Frame, the traditional arguments are better than this, however. He contends that the traditional argument from motion, for example, "does not necessarily begin with the assumption that motion is intelligible apart from God."[32] Moreover, he seems to say that the traditional arguments are best understood as making this assumption. Indeed, Frame asserts that Aquinas himself believed that the world is unintelligible apart from God.[33] If this were the case, Frame's assertion that Aquinas and Van Til are not as far apart as Van Til thought would be legitimate.
Is this really the case though? Are the traditional arguments presuppositional after all? While it is certainly true that the cosmological argument (or any other traditional argument) can be presented so as to presuppose the Christian worldview, this is not how it has been historically formulated. There is not one remark in Aquinas or Bishop Butler (Frame's major examples of traditional apologists) that even hints of the idea that the God of the Bible is the necessary precondition of intelligible experience. Why, then, does Frame make this error?
As I alluded to earlier, Frame thinks that because Aquinas's
cosmological argument attempts to prove the existence of God on the basis of
causation in the world, that this may be construed as the claim that the world
is unintelligible apart from God. But
this is to equivocate on the word unintelligible. Let me explain.
The traditional cosmological argument, for example, tries to show that we could not explain the existence of the world without God. Stated another way, without positing the existence of God we would be ignorant of the origin of the universe. We would not know how it came into existence and so the universe would be, in this sense, unintelligible. The transcendental argument, however, attempts to demonstrate that we could not account for the world, causation or whatever human experience we wish to speak about without presupposing the existence of God. Without this presupposition, the world would be, in this other sense, unintelligible.
This is a difficult point and so an analogy may be helpful. I do not know how jet engines work. In my current state of ignorance, jet engines are, in one sense, unintelligible to me. Does my ignorance preclude me from believing in jet engines and intelligently using the concept in communication? Of course not. I am justified in believing in them and am quite capable of speaking about them even though I do not know the mechanics of jet engines. And so in another sense, they are perfectly intelligible to me. In the same way, the traditional arguments at best show that non-Christians are ignorant of how the universe came about. It is in this sense that it is unintelligible to them. These arguments do not show, however, that their belief in the universe, causation and so on, are unjustified. In this sense, these things are granted to be perfectly intelligible to them.
Contrary to Frame, then, the traditional arguments do not have transcendental conclusions. They may conclude that God is the transcendent cause of the universe, but this is very different from concluding that his existence is transcendentally necessary. Though subtle, this distinction stands at the very center of Van Til's methodology.
Objection 2. The Uniqueness Proof for the Conclusion of TAG
Another criticism that has arisen against TAG is that the conclusion, God exists, does not necessarily follow from the premises. This criticism has taken many forms. Perhaps the most famous is John W. Montgomery's "Once upon an A Priori...."[34] In this article, Montgomery contends that there is no way to establish that the Christian God is the necessary precondition of human experience since there is no way to eliminate all of the possible alternatives.
Even Van Til's trenchant decimations of non-Christian positions are rendered ineffective by his ultimate presuppositionalism, since ¼ all the non-Christians whom Van Til chooses to criticize could employ his own two-edged sword against him, crying ¼: "Such criticisms are irrelevant, for right reason – true interpretation of fact and genuine application of the standards of consistency – begins with commitment to my presuppositional starting point!" And even if it were possible in some fashion to destroy all existent alternative world-views but that of orthodox Christianity, the end result would still not be the necessary truth of Christianity; for in a contingent universe, there are an infinite number of possible philosophical positions, and even the fallaciousness of infinity-minus-one positions would not establish the validity of the one that remained (unless we were to introduce the gratuitous assumption that at least one had to be right!).[35]
This criticism can be construed in two ways. First, it can be seen as the last resort of a non-Christian who has just been shown the impossibility of his own worldview and also shown that the Christian worldview is able to account for human experience. At this point of desperation he says, "yes, Christianity is able to account for human experience, but there may be another worldview out there that can also provide the preconditions of human experience." This move, however, is of little or no practical value for the non-Christian. In a debate, people argue about actual worldviews not what may possibly be the case. If Christianity is shown to account for human experience and, say, naturalism, Buddhism or Islam is shown to be unable to give such an account, it is of no aid to the naturalist or Buddhist or Muslim to make recourse to some unknown worldview that may, like Christianity, provide the preconditions of intelligibility.
Bahnsen rhetorical comeback hits
the mark. Suppose a basketball player,
say Michael Jordan, beats every worthy opponent in one-on-one basketball
games. He can justifiably claim to be the
best individual basketball player in the world.
Suppose further that another jealous (and peevish) basketball player who
was previously trounced by
Second, while this criticism is of no practical value to the non-Christian, it would be, nevertheless a serious criticism of TAG if correct. The reason is easy to see. If there are an infinite number of worldviews and TAG only refutes a small slice of them, if one may speak this way, then it has not established that Christianity is the necessary precondition of human intelligibility. That is, even granting that TAG demonstrates the absurdity of all actual worldviews, it does not follow that all possible worldviews are likewise absurd.
Bahnsen's comeback is to place the one who makes this move on the horns of a dilemma (actually a "trilemma"). The "unbeliever either (1) implicitly assumes the Christian's presuppositions, (2) considers it a mystery that not everything is mysterious or nonsensical, or (3) offers a worldview in which words and reasoning are meaningful."[36] On (1) the imaginary opponent loses the debate. On (3) the Christian proceeds to refute the proffered worldview. As for (2), Bahnsen contends that this is tantamount to acknowledging defeat. He then considers the possibility of one making a blind leap of faith; one who "hold[s] out the hope that someday, somewhere, someone will furnish an adequate autonomous worldview to protect unbelievers against the compelling rationality of Christianity."[37] This, he says, is identical with (2) and since this is acknowledgment of defeat, the opponent loses the debate.
There is a problem with this defense, however. The notions of "losing the debate" and "conceding defeat" trade on an ambiguity. In this context these notions can mean one of two things. First, they can mean that since the opponent resorts to a mere theoretical possibility that there is a worldview somewhere out there that can rescue him, this is a concession that he cannot produce a worldview to compete with Christianity. He is thus defeated in the sense that can offer no account of human experience. Taken this way, Bahnsen is correct. Second, these notions can mean that this move is philosophically illegitimate because appeals to mere theoretical possibilities are of no significance when establishing the claim that something is a necessary precondition of something else. Taken this way, Bahnsen is not correct. Winning the debate and proving that Christianity is the necessary precondition of human experience are two different things.
But Bahnsen makes the further point is that this criticism misses the thrust of TAG altogether. TAG argues for the impossibility of the contrary (the non-Christian worldview) and not the impossibility of an infinite number of possible worldviews. TAG does not establish the necessity of Christianity by inductively refuting each and every possible non-Christian worldview (as finite proponents of TAG, this is an impossible task), but rather contends that the contrary of Christianity (any view that denies the Christian view of God) is shown to be impossible. And if the negation of Christianity is false, Christianity is proved true. In other words, the structure of the argument is a disjunctive syllogism. Either A or -A, -- A, therefore, A.
At this point the clever opponent will simply deny the first premise. He will contend that it should not be construed as a disjunction of a contradiction, but a simple disjunction. The argument should thus be restated along the following lines: A or B, -B, therefore, A. And once this move is made he will then contend that while the argument is valid, the first premise involves a false dilemma. That is, he will grant that given A or B and the negation of B, A does indeed follow, but nevertheless maintain that the argument is unsound because the first premise (A or B) is not true. The reason being that there are more possibilities than just A and B. Given a true first premise, A or B or C or D ... n, the negation of B merely entails that A along with the disjunction of other propositions besides B (C, D,...n) follows.
In order for this to be successful, it is incumbent upon the opponent of TAG to defend two claims. First, he must defend the contention that the original first premise is not the disjunction of a contradiction and, second, he must show that there are other possible disjuncts besides B (what we can call the view that is opposed to the Christian worldview).
Since, as far as I am aware, there is nothing in the literature on TAG that defends either of these claims I will leave them aside for the present. However, this objection will reappear in a more sophisticated form when we survey the recent philosophical literature on transcendental arguments.
Objection 3. The Mere Sufficiency of the Christian Worldview
Another criticism TAG that has been around for some time is that while it (TAG) demonstrates the sufficiency of the Christian worldview to account for human experience, it does not demonstrate the necessity of the Christian worldview. Before moving to the objection itself, it is important to first understand the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions. A necessary condition is a condition that must be met in order to explain whatever it is that one wishes to explain. This explanation can take either a causal or logical form. In terms of causality, a necessary condition for fire is oxygen. However, the presence of oxygen alone is not sufficient to cause a fire; fuel and a struck match are also needed. Taken together, these three things, oxygen, fuel and a struck match are sufficient conditions for fire. In terms of logic, the necessary condition of a categorical syllogism leading to a conclusion is a major premise. A sufficient condition is that such an argument has both a major and minor premise.
Turning back to the objection, the opponent contends that even when it is granted that the existence of God is a sufficient condition for human experience, this does not prove that this is a necessary condition for human experience. Thus far, this objections is the same as (2). The difference, however, is that where (2) merely asserted the possibility of a worldview other than Christianity that could provide the preconditions of human experience, proponents of this objections claim that while there is no actual worldview (such as naturalism or Islam) that accounts for human experience they claim to have invented a one that can, like Christianity, account for human experience. What then, is this worldview?
The invented worldview is said to be identical to Christianity except for the fact that it differs from it at one (or more) particular points of doctrine. This made up worldview may, for example, hold all things in common with Christianity except that where Christianity teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, this other worldview, call it Fristianity, asserts a quadrinity – one God in four persons. Everything else, the doctrine of revelation, salvation, and so on are all the same as the Christian worldview. Another version of this objection maintains that only the "fundamental" elements of Christianity are needed to provide the preconditions of human experience (the Trinity, the doctrine of creation, etc.), but not the "non-fundamental" elements (the fall, the atonement, the second coming, etc.)
Bahnsen's response to this objection is helpful, but not completely adequate. He contends that this type of worldview merely apes the Christian worldview and, as such, is completely dependent upon it. That is, because this worldview has its intellectual origination in Christianity, it is not a legitimate competitor of the Christian worldview. Moreover, he maintains that it is the entire Christian worldview that provides the necessary conditions of human experience, not just a portion of it. The Christian worldview as a complete and organic system is necessary.
Proponents of this criticism retort that while it may true that Fristianity is a knock-off of Christianity, the origin of the position is not relevant. Just because Fristianity is an invention that just so happens to be intellectually dependent upon Christianity, does not mean it does not pose a serious challenge to TAG. TAG, after all, claims to establish that Christianity is the necessary precondition of human experience. The Fristian worldview hypothesis is only an attempt to show that while Christianity may indeed be a sufficient precondition it is not necessary. Fristianity, so it is maintained, is also a sufficient condition. Fristianity, thus, supposedly exposes the spurious nature of TAG's conclusion.
As for Bahnsen's other claim that
it is the entire Christian worldview that is necessary, proponents of the Fristianity objection reply that this is a claim not a
proof. It is not enough to assert that
the complete Christian worldview and only the complete Christian worldview is
the necessary precondition for experience.
Objection 4. The Move from Conceptual Necessity to Necessary Existence
The final objection to TAG is perhaps the most uncommon.[38] But the infrequent use of this objection should not mislead the proponent of TAG into thinking that it is not of serious consequence. Far from it. I consider this stricture to be the most powerful argument against TAG and the most difficult to answer.
This objection revolves around the consideration that proving the conceptual necessity a worldview does not establish its ontological reality.[39] Kant, for example, argued that the notion of causation is transcendentally necessary for thought (or at least human thought). Without the concept of causality there could be no thought. But just because causality is necessary for thought does not mean, so Kant argued, that the things in themselves (ding an sich) which exist independently of our conception of them, undergo causal relations. Conceptual necessity does not guarantee ontological necessity. In the same way, assuming that TAG is sound, all that is proved, so this objection goes, is that we must, in order to be rational, believe that God exists.
Bahnsen's response to this criticism is, like (3) above not totally adequate. He contends:
...because this is an apologetical dialogue (giving reasons, expecting argument, etc.), both parties have assumed that the true viewpoint must affirm rationality. Van Til argues that if the unbeliever's worldview were true, rationality would be repudiated, whereas if Christianity were true, rationality would be affirmed and required. So while the whole argument may be stated in hypothetical terms, the conclusion is actually established as true, since the hypothetical conditions was granted from the outset by both parties. (If the unbeliever realizes this and now refuses to grant the legitimacy, demand, or necessity of rationality, he has stepped outside the boundaries of apologetics. Furthermore, he forfeits the right to assert or believe that he has repudiated rationality, since without rationality assertion and belief and unintelligible.)[40]
Bahnsen's answer is that the issue is one of rationality. If TAG establishes that Christianity is the necessary conceptual precondition of human experience (including rationality) it follows that we must hold to the Christian worldview in order to be rational. And if somebody refuses to accept the Christian worldview or God's existence, he has no foundation for rationality and, without such a foundation, has no rational basis to object that the conclusion of TAG.
This defense carries a great deal of force. It effectively undermines the unbelievers ability to rationally reject the Christian faith. But notice that this defense construes TAG not so much as a proof for God's existence, but rather as a proof for the necessity of believing the Christian worldview. The problem with this, of course, is that although Christianity may be the necessary precondition for experience, it does not follow from this that Christianity is true.
From this survey of the critical literature of TAG four major criticisms have emerged. Objection (1) is, in its present form, relatively weak. It is easily shown that TAG differs fundamentally from the traditional arguments for God's existence. Objects (1), (2) and (3), however, are more difficult to answer and Bahnsen's responses to them are not, as they presently stand, entirely satisfactory.
Thus, despite the fact that Bahnsen both clarified TAG and defended it from common criticisms, his defense is programmatic rather than exhaustive. He offers a basic outline of how it works and how it is to be defended against stock criticisms, but he leaves a few questions unanswered. Particularly, he leaves questions as to whether TAG contains a uniqueness proof of the Christian worldview, whether TAG provides the necessary and not merely sufficient conditions of human experience, and whether TAG establishes the necessity of God's existence or merely the necessity of believing that God exists.
In the last section of this paper I shall endeavor to
develop Bahnsen's programmatic remarks and offer a
fuller defense of TAG. Before I turn to
this task, however, it will be helpful to survey the recent philosophical
literature concerning transcendental arguments (TAs). This literature contains similar objections
to TAs in general that were made against TAG, but are more precisely stated and
more vigorously argued.
Though Transcendental Arguments (TAs hereafter) have been
used by various philosophers since Aristotle,[41]
it is with the publication of P. F. Strawson's Individuals,[42] that TAs
have become a prominent fixture in contemporary philosophy. The discussion of the structure and nature of
TAs has generated a good deal of controversy.
In what follows, I will overview the contemporary literature on TAs with
the aim of setting the most common criticisms of TAG in sharper focus.
Before plunging into the current debate over TAs it will
helpful to first sketch the form TAs generally take as well review a few
definitions proffered in the literature.
The aim here is not so much to analyze the nature of TAs – this would
require a paper of its own – but to get something of a feel for what kind of
arguments they are.[43]
A TA takes on (roughly) the following form: For x to
be the case, y must also be the case because y is the necessary
precondition of x; since x is the case, y must be the
case. By itself there is nothing
particularly distinguished about this form of argument. For with it I could argue that having parents
is the precondition of having grandparents and since I have grandparents I must
have parents. Though this shares a
structure similar to that of a TA, it is not a TA because it appeals to a posteriori
knowledge – in this case, knowledge of basic biological facts. TAs are distinguished from this type of
argument by the fact that they appeal only to a priori knowledge – what we can
know without any appeal to experience.
From this it follows that form alone is not the distinguishing feature
that sets TAs apart from other arguments.[44] Most recent commentators are in agreement
with this conclusion. Grayling is
representative:
[T]o argue, or reason, or proceed transcendentally, or to
employ standard philosophical techniques transcendentally, is just to argue or
proceed, etc., with a certain aim in mind and a certain subject-matter to hand
. . . there is nothing distinctive about the form of TAs, and that what is
distinctive about them is their aim and subject-matter.[45]
What, then, is the aim and subject matter of TAs? Before answering this, it is helpful to
consider what is not the aim or subject of TAs.
TAs should not be confused with paradigm-case and/or polar concept
arguments popularized by Austin, Ryle and others of
the so-called
With this aim in mind, we are now in a position to survey a few
representative definitions found in the contemporary literature. According to Anthony Brueckner
a TA is:
an argument that elucidates the conditions for the possibility of some fundamental phenomenon whose existence is unchallenged or uncontroversial in the philosophical context in which the argument is propounded. Such an argument proceeds deductively, from a premise asserting the existence of some basic phenomenon (such as meaningful discourse, conceptualization of objective states of affairs, or the practice of making promises), to a conclusion asserting the existence of some interesting, substantive enabling conditions for that phenomenon.[47]
Brueckner points to three salient
ingredients that are involved in TAs.
First they begin with some unchallenged or uncontroversial phenomenon or
experience (e.g. I speak a language or I have an idea of a single spatio-temporal system of material things). Next, from this phenomenon they proceed
deductively to a conclusion. Finally,
this conclusion is a non-trivial condition for the possibility of the
phenomenon. Grayling further refines the
nature of a TA's conclusion:
...the aim of transcendental arguments is to establish the
conditions necessary for experience, or experience of a certain kind, in
general; and, at their most controversial, to establish conclusions about the
nature and existence of an external world, or other minds, derived from paying
attention to what has to be the case for there to be experience, or for
experience to be as it is.[48]
The conclusion of a TA either tells us something about the conditions necessary for experience or something about the nature of reality. That it, the conclusion of a TA may either be conceptual or ontological.
Ross Harrison adds one more characterization of TAs:
Transcendental arguments seek to answer scepticism
by showing that the things doubted by the sceptic are
in fact preconditions for the scepticism to make
sense. Hence the scepticism
is either meaningless or false. A
transcendental argument works by finding the preconditions of meaningful
thought or judgment. For example, scepticism about other minds suggests that only the thinker
themselves might have sensations. A
transcendental argument which answered this scepticism
would show that a precondition for thinking oneself to have sensations is that
others do so as well. Expressing the scepticism involves thinking oneself to have sensations;
and the argument shows that if this thought is expressible, then it is also
false.[49]
According to
While it is true that most (though certainly not all)
contemporary TAs are used as skepticism-refuting arguments, this aim is not a
necessary feature of them. Indeed, the
view that TAs are essentially anti-skeptical in nature rests upon a historical
mistake. This mistake is revolves around
a faulty interpretation of Kant's understanding of a TA. In
the next section I offer an analysis of the nature of Kantian TAs.
Before analyzing and evaluating contemporary TAs, it is obligatory to say a few words about Kant. Contemporary proponents of TAs, such as Strawson, often cite Kant as their inspiration. The TAs they offer, however, differ in at least one fundamental way from Kantian TAs. Whereas Kant's understanding of a priori knowledge, and hence transcendental reasoning, was closely tied to his view that the forms of sensibility and concepts of the understanding in some way constitute experience,[51] contemporary TAs tend to avoid anything resembling Kant's transcendental idealism.
Because of this, a number of philosophers have accused contemporary advocates of TAs, such as Strawson, of denuding Kant's TAs of their distinctiveness. Indeed, some go so far as to claim that the contemporary reformulations do not deserve the title of "transcendental argument" at all. Before one is tempted to cast aside this whole debate as a petty etymological squabble,[52] it should be realized that more than nomenclature or lexical proprietorship is at stake. Kant is, among other things, the father of TAs.[53] Thus it would be a rather odd conclusion to state that his arguments were not TAs. Indeed, one is tempted to say that whatever Kant is doing in the first Critique he is arguing transcendentally. This is perhaps what Jaakko Hintikka is getting at when he states that "the first order of business in any discussion of such arguments is to try to see what Kant understood by the term."[54] Ross Harrison is even more explicit, "Since Kant invented the label, anything properly called a 'transcendental' argument must have some analogy to the arguments which Kant used."[55] These considerations have weight and so, taking Hintikka's advice, understanding Kant's use of transcendental arguments shall be my first order of business.
In his preface to the second edition, Kant mentions in a note that the only addition to the Critique was the Refutation of Idealism (Bxl), the purpose of which was to once and for all do away with the scandal of philosophy: that the existence of things outside us must be accepted merely on faith. A cluster of controversial issues revolve around the interpretation of Refutation that are of import for the contemporary debate about TAs. Should, for example, the Refutation be viewed as Kant's main TA? Much of the recent literature on TAs insists that is the case. But this raises an immediate question. If the Refutation is indeed Kant's main TA, how are we to explain its absence in the first edition? A related issues concerns the Refutation place in understanding Kant's transcendental project. Even it is not Kant's main TA, it appears at least to be the clearest. Should we therefore use it at a heuristic in understanding the more difficult arguments contained in the Deduction? A final issue has to is whether the Refutation is an example of a transcendental argument at all. Since the answer of this last question is needed before we tackle the other questions, it is to this I shall turn.
To help answer this question, a preliminary questions needs to be addressed. What did Kant mean by the term, 'transcendental"? Perhaps the clearest expression is found in the Introduction of the Critique:
I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is
occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects
insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori (A11/B25).[56]
Elsewhere Kant says that the only way we can know something
about objects a priori is knowing what we put into them (Bxviii). He also flatly denies that the word
'transcendental' has any reference to knowledge of things; it refers only to
cognitive faculties.[57] Hence, transcendental knowledge is knowledge
of what our cognitive faculties "impose" upon the world. From this Hintikka
concludes, "Thus a transcendental argument is for Kant one which shows the
possibility of a certain type of synthetic knowledge a priori by showing
how it is due to those activities of ours by means of which the knowledge in
question is obtained"[58] (Hintikka, p. 275).
Hintikka rightly takes Kant's main
TAs to be those in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental
Deduction. Though he admits that they
are not as lucid as they could be (a mild understatement), Kant indicates his
intention to show that a priori knowledge always involves the active processes
of the mind. In a programmatic passage,
Kant writes: "But only the productive synthesis of the imagination can
take place a priori" (A118). What
then of the Refutation? Hintikka (again rightly) maintains that the Refutation
should not be viewed as Kant's paradigm TA.
Indeed, he thinks it is not even a TA at all. It is an ad hominem
argument showing that the idealist contradicts his own position in the very
process of stating his position. In other
words, this is a very different kind of argument than those found in the
Aesthetic and the Deduction.[59]
A further considerations bolsters his claim. It is difficult to construe the Refutation as
the paradigm TA in the Critique since it was latter a addition to the second
edition. And unless one wants to argue that the first and
second editions offer significantly different philosophical outlooks (which
nobody does) it is absurd to think of it as his central TA. The retort to this is that while the Refutation
is not Kant's central TA it is his clearest example of one. Thus in understanding it we can better
understand his more difficult ones in the Aesthetic and Deduction. I will return to this contention
presently. What is important to note now
is that Kantian TAs always involve appeals to constitutive or productive
knowledge. Appeal to transcendental
psychology is thus the sine qua non of TAs.
If Hintikka is right most of
passes as TAs today are, as we shall see, unKantian. He further adds that if they are unKantian they are spurious. What this second charge amounts to, though,
is not clear. If he uses "spurious
TAs" as a synonym for "unKantian TAs"
there is no problem. But if he means
that "spurious TAs" are not TAs at all then we have to ask why this
is the case. The next question we must
address, then, is whether his take on Kant is correct.
According to Grayling, Hintikka is
wrong – or as he says, Hintikka gets "the wrong
end of the stick altogether."[60] He tries to prove this by pointing to Kant's
use of the metaphor of a legal deduction at the beginning of the Transcendental
Deduction (A84/B116). There Kant asserts
that like a legal deduction which tries to justify a particular claim or
possession (i.e. prove that the claim or possession was lawfully obtained) so a
transcendental deduction tries to justify the employment of certain
concepts. And it does this in a way that
is different from an empirical deduction.
The latter type of deduction merely shows how a concept is acquired
through experience and "therefore concerns, not its legitimacy, but only
its de facto mode of origination" (A85/B117).[61] Grayling immediately concludes from this
that "the task [of transcendental deductions] is to provide a vindication
of title, not to show where the concepts come from."
The problem with Grayling's reading of Kant is that to Kant,
these are not separate questions. In
order to vindicate the use of a concept one must be able to demonstrate where
the concepts come from. This is shown by
Kant's later remarks on transcendental proofs in The Discipline of Pure
Reason. There he says that
transcendental proofs are always direct or ostensive and explains this by
saying that this type of proof "is that which combines with the conviction
of its truth insight into the sources of its truth" (A789/B817, my
emphasis). In other words,
transcendental proofs or deductions are ostensive because they point to the
source or origin of truth.
As Hintikka has already noted, it
is abundantly clear that the main transcendental proofs in the Critique
are found in the Aesthetic and Deduction.
It is also clear that understanding the TAs in them is extremely
difficult. This is why many take the
comparatively easier argument of the Refutation as a model to help understand them. And since the basic form of the Refutation is
a reductio, it follows that the Aesthetic and
Deduction must also be reductios. This practice has been a common if not often
stated assumption among Kant scholars to approach his more difficult transcendental
proofs by comparing them to easier and allegedly analogous ones. That is, they pay attention to Kant's alleged
practice rather than his theory.[62] This has resulted in much confusion as to
what the exact nature of Kant's argument is.[63] It is precisely because of the clarity of the
passage at A789/B817 that it should be used as a heuristic device to understand
Kant's main transcendental proofs.[64] Thus the way to understand these difficult
arguments is via his metatheoretical comments in the
Discipline of Pure Reason.
But what then are we to do with the above passage from Kant
(A85/B117)? Based on Grayling's reading,
Kant must be contradicting himself. This
throws doubt on Grayling's reading. Does
Kant not contrast a transcendental deduction with a empirical deduction that
depends on the "mere" origin of the concept? Does this not clearly state that whatever
transcendental deductions turn out to be, they are not concerned with the
source of the concept in question? A
careful study of the text leads us to a negative answer. Grayling mistakes the gist of what Kant is
getting. Kant indeed is making a
contrast between transcendental and empirical deductions, but this contrast is
not that the latter is concerned with the mode of origination while the former
is not. Rather the latter is concerned
with only its de facto or empirical mode of origination (e.g. the actual
perception of an object) while the latter is concerned with the a priori mode
of origination (in this case, the transcendental ego). Grayling's contention is based on a profound
misreading of the text. And so it is he,
not Hintikka who gets the wrong end of the stick.
Before we acquiesce to Hintikka
and claim that contemporary TAs are unKantian because
they do not make appeals to constructive knowledge, it is important to point
out the obvious. Kant did use an
argument analogous to contemporary TAs in the Refutation and the Second
Analogy. Even Hintikka
admits this much. So in another sense it
is not correct to call contemporary TAs unKantian. They are indeed Kantian arguments, but they
are not Kantian transcendental arguments. What then of the charge that they are
spurious? At this point the question has
become a mere linguistic matter. Nothing
of philosophical import hangs on the answer at all.
Since it has been the practice to call contemporary TAs
'TAs' and since, as
Over the last century there have been many examples of TAs
in the analytic philosophy tradition. Frege, Wittgenstein, Davidson, Putnam and Searle all have
offered TAs for conclusions as various as the necessity of senses (meanings),
the impossibility of a private language, the claim that beliefs are generally
true, the claim that radical skepticism is false and the truth of external
realism.[66] It was with the publication of Strawson's, Individuals in 1959, however, that
transcendental arguments came to the forefront of philosophical inquiry.
Strawson has spent much of his
career resuscitating what he thinks are Kant's important insights while at the
same time removing the dross. His Individuals
and later The Bounds of Sense[67]
make extensive use of TAs while at the same time eschewing synthetic a prioris and transcendental psychology. Strawson thinks
that once the swamp of intuition and the rest of Kant's transcendental
psychology are put aside, there remains a core insight into how our conceptual
scheme works. According to Strawson, Kant's work is best seen as analysis of our
conceptual scheme rather than a transcendental deduction of categories. By taking away from Kant what he considers to
be this core insight, Strawson employs TAs to solve
two tradition problems in epistemology: skepticism about other minds and
skepticism about the external world.
Since the use of TAs against the latter has a longer pedigree I will
concentrate on it. Whatever is said
about this TA, however, applies, mutatis
mutandis, to the other.
Strawson's argument against the
external world skeptic is deceivingly simple.
There is no doubt that we have the idea of a single spatio-temporal system of material things; the idea of every
material thing at any time being spatially related, in various ways at various
times, to every other at every time.
There is no doubt at all that this is our conceptual scheme. Now I say that a condition of our
having this conceptual scheme is the unquestioning acceptance of
particular-identity in at least some cases of non-continuous observation.[68]
Except perhaps for the last sentence, Strawson's
claim seems to be perfectly correct. It
is just a fact that we think that every material object is in some relation to
every other physical object – spatially and temporally. Of course we do not usually speak of having a
spatiotemporal system of material things, nor are we generally cognizant of
this fact. But the way we use language
demonstrates that we presuppose this conceptual scheme. A few pedestrian examples prove this rather
easily. Think of a father telling his
son to move his bicycle off of the driveway so he can park the family car or a
dry cleaner who tells the customer to pick his suit up on Tuesday morning. In both of these scenarios, all individuals
involved presuppose that material objects share a spatial relation to each
other (either the car or the bicycle can be parked in a particular spot but not
both) and temporal relations (the suit that is dropped off today will be the
same one that will be ready on Tuesday morning). If they did not presuppose these
relationships communication would quickly break down.
But now the skeptic comes along and challenges these
presuppositions. Perhaps the car
disappears when no one is looking and a different (though similar) one appears
when it is observed again. What the
skeptic is challenging us to do is justify our belief that our conceptual
scheme is true. To the skeptic Strawson replies:
He pretends to accept a conceptual scheme, but at the same time quietly rejects one of the conditions of its employment. Thus his doubts are unreal, not simply because they are logically irresoluble doubts, but because they amount to the rejection of the whole conceptual scheme within which alone such doubts make sense. So, naturally enough, the alternative to doubt which he offers us is the suggestion that we do not really, or should not really, have the conceptual scheme that we do have; that we do not really or should not really, mean what we think we mean, what we do mean. But this alternative is absurd. For the whole process of reasoning only starts because the scheme is as it is; and we cannot change it even if we would.[69]
The claim is that in order to get his doubts off the ground,
the skeptic must presuppose the very conceptual scheme he calls into
question. And this illicit importation
uncovers the very absurdity of his position.
It is important to realize that Strawson
thought[70]
that this once and for all defeats the external world skeptic. Were this the case it would have been a true
mile stone in the history of philosophy.
Like most bold claims from well-recognized philosophers, though, it has
become somewhat of a cause célèbre attracting many defenders and critics.
One of the most trenchant critics of Strawson
is Stroud. In his elegant article
entitled simply "Transcendental Arguments,"[71]
Stroud sets out to show that TAs in general and Strawson's
in particular fail to deliver on their promise of silencing the skeptic.
Stroud takes Strawson's argument
to be:
1. We think of the world as containing objective particulars in a single spatio-temporal system.
2. If we think of the world as containing objective particulars in a single spatiotemporal system, then we are able to identify and re-identify particulars.
3. If we can re-identify particulars, then we have satisfiable criteria on the basis of which we can make re-identification.
6. Objects
continue to exist unperceived.
Stroud thinks the argument stops here. And if this is the case, it is plainly a non
sequitur. Stroud has no qualms with the
move from (1) to (3). The problem is
that they do not get Strawson to (6). Additional premises are, therefore, needed
and Stroud is ready to oblige with
4. If
we know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of particulars
have been satisfied, then we know that objects continue to exist unperceived.
And
5. We
sometimes know that the best criteria we have for the re-identification of
particulars have been satisfied.
Without these or similar premises, the argument is not
valid. But since (5) is a statement of
fact, the skeptic surely would not let Strawson (or
anybody) get away with it. So from this
Stroud concludes that Strawson is wrong to take the
skeptic as denying (6). Instead he
should be taken as denying whether we can know the truth of (6); whether we are
justified in ever asserting it – and this is far different from the exotic Berkleyan claim that objects cease to exist when not
observed. So (5) is superfluous. All that is really need is (1) - (4) which
says that if we think of the world as containing objective particulars in a
single spatiotemporal system, then we can know whether objects continue to
exist unperceived. Or better put, if it
is meaningful to speak of objective particulars, then we must have a way of
knowing whether they continue to exist unperceived. But this is a verification principle; a
principle that maintains that for propositions to be meaningful, there must be
a way, at least in principle, of knowing or testing whether they are true or
false.
The problem with this is if TAs rely upon an implicit
verification principle, then TAs turn out to be superfluous for the skeptic is
directly refuted by the such a principle.
If we sometimes know that the best criteria we have for the reidentification of particulars have been satisfied, then
we know that skepticism is false.
Later in the article Stroud goes on to generalize this point
by maintaining that is hard to imagine that there could be any TA that does not
in some way rely on a verification principle to bridge the gap between belief
and reality. The reason being is that
any TA will maintain that denying the truth of a given discourse presupposes
that discourse. But this will not do
since the skeptic can simply bite the bullet and say that the whole discourse
is muddled. And because the skeptic has
this route always open, the transcendental arguer will have to make a universal
claim and hold that all discourse is meaningless unless a certain set of
propositions (Stroud calls it the privileged class) are necessarily true given
the general discourse. There are several
problems with this, but the main one is that this does not set the skeptical
problem to rest. All this proves is that
the privileged class must be believed; it does prove that the privileged class
propositions are in fact true. To assure
this a verification principle is necessary.
But again, why spend so much time discussing the intricacies of a TA
when the verification principle itself is all that is necessary to vanquish the
skeptic directly?
But if we have the former, the latter is superfluous and,
thus, there is nothing special about transcendental arguments. To put it crassly, to divorce meaning from
truth is to render TAs impotent, but to conjoin meaning and truth is to render
them (TAs) extraneousness.
One
of the most prevalent criticisms of transcendental arguments was first raised
in the contemporary literature by Stephan Körner.[72] Körner argues that
while Kant's arguments provide sufficient conditions for human experience (in
this case the categories of understanding) they are not necessary conditions.
The person propounding a transcendental argument assumes that
every and any thinker employs the same categorial
framework as he does himself, and tries to show that, and why, the employment
of this particular framework is 'necessary'.
The defect of all transcendental arguments is their failure to provide a
uniqueness-proof, i.e. the demonstration that the categorial
framework is unique.[73]
The objection is that while it may be possible to prove that
some conceptual scheme is sufficient for experience, it is not possible to
prove that it is necessary. The reason
that no uniqueness proof is possible is laid out nicely by Körner. Körner contends
that there are only three possible ways of establishing a schema's uniqueness.
First, to demonstrate the schema's uniqueness by comparing it
with experience undifferentiated by any method of prior differentiation... Second, to demonstrate the schema's
uniqueness by comparing it with its possible competitors... Thirdly, one might propose to examine the
schema and its application entirely from within the schema itself, i.e. by
means of statements belonging to it.[74]
These three possibilities are subject to powerful
criticisms, however. The first
possibility cannot establish a schema's uniqueness by comparing it with
undifferentiated experience since in order for a comparison to be made,
statements about the undifferentiated experience would have to be expressed by
making recourse to some prior differentiation of experience. That is, there is no way to formulate a
statement about experience without differentiating experience. But even if
such a comparison could be made all that could be demonstrated is that
the schema under consideration does represent or reflect the undifferentiated
experience. But this does not establish
the uniqueness of the schema since it may be that other schemas also represent
or reflect the undifferentiated experience as well.
Körner offers two criticisms of
the second possibility. First, in order
to establish the uniqueness of one schema, all other possible schemes would
have to be exhibited and refuted. But as
Rorty has pointed out, we could never know whether
all possible schemas have been exhibited.
"Nothing in heaven or earth could set limits to what we can in
principle conceive."[75] No matter how many alternative schemas one
can conceive and refute, there is always the possibility that there is another
schema (or several!) that has not yet been conceived.
[T]o establish [the uniqueness of a schema] would involve an
examination of all possible conditions.
But by what criterion could we determine that all possible conditions
had been enumerated? Further, this means
an examination of all possible conditions in detail: a humanly impossible task.[76]
Second, Körner maintains that the
very act of demonstrating a schema's uniqueness by comparing it with another
schema is contradictory. Such a
demonstration would presuppose that another schema, a schema distinct from the
one whose uniqueness is trying to be proved, can possibly represent or reflect
undifferentiated experience. But if this
is presupposed, the demonstration is self-contradictory. "[This] requires anyone who uses it to
admit before the argument begins that what he is trying to prove is false,
otherwise he could not even try to prove it."[77]
The third possibility (attempting to establish the uniqueness of a schema from with the schema itself) is quickly dispatched by Körner. All that can be shown by such a proof is how the schema differentiates a region of experience. It cannot show that it is the only possibly schema able to differentiate that region.
Stroud's argument against TAs is that they either rely on
dubious factual premises or that they require a verification principle. Either way, the TA will not do the requisite
work against the skeptic since he will either reject the factual premise out of
hand or reject the verification principle upon which the TA depends. Thus Stroud places defenders of TAs on the
horns of a dilemma: either the verification principle must be dropped and with
it the claim that the TA gets us to what the world must be like or the
verification principle can be maintained, but only at the price of rendering
the TA unnecessary – the verification principle answers the skeptic directly. Almost all recent defenders of TAs have tried
to meet this dilemma by tackling the first horn.[78] Three basic strategies have been employed in
this endeavor.
First, Stroud himself puts forth the possibility of denying
the skeptic's claim that it is sufficient that we must merely think the world
is a certain way (have a certain conceptual scheme) and not that the world must
be a certain way.[79] The skeptic is just wrong in asserting that
mere belief is enough. The only way to
account for the fact that our conceptual scheme must be believed (or,
conversely, to say that it makes no sense to question our conceptual scheme) is
that it must be true. Our conceptual
scheme is impossible to deny because it "corresponds" to the way in which
the world actually is.
Stroud points out that it is extremely difficult to conceive
of a defense for the strong modal claim of this position (i.e. the world must
be this way in order to make experience possible). "...how can truths about the world which
appear to say or imply nothing about human thought or experience be shown to be
genuinely necessary conditions of such psychological facts as that we think and
experience things in a certain way, from which the proofs begin?"[80] Not only has no argument been advanced toward
this end, but what such an argument would look like is difficult to imagine.
Second, a defender of TAs may accept Stroud's contention
that such arguments merely give us the conclusion that we must believe the
world to be a certain way and not that it really is that way. In order to bridge the gap from belief to the
world, the defender need not make recourse to a verification principle, but can
contend that the way in which we conceive of the world constitutes the way the
world actually is. That is, there is in
reality no gap between our thoughts and the world since the world does not
exist independently of our conception of it.
This, of course, is a version of idealism. Given idealism, the move from
our conceptual scheme to reality is immediate and the TAs that make this
idealist assumption do indeed tell us something about the world.[81]
Accepting idealism is a high price to pay to get TAs to
work, however. Indeed, Strawson's reinterpretation of Kant was motivated by the
attempt to purge out his problematic transcendental idealism and preserve his
ingenious insights into the analysis of concepts. Idealism is, thus, the very thing that Strawson (and other proponents of TAs) attempts to get away
from. Moreover, a move toward idealism
will not in actuality strengthen a TA since idealism is itself subject to
serious criticisms (e.g. those of Reid, Moore and Russell). And even if a good case can be made for
idealism, the assumption of idealism renders the anti-skeptical TAs unnecessary
since idealism refutes skepticism directly.
Third, one may concede that Stroud is correct in arguing
that TAs must rely on a verification principle to get from our conceptual
scheme to the world, but rather than give up on TAs altogether, propose a more
modest view of what TAs are supposed to prove.[82] Grayling, for example, makes a distinction
between two types of TAs – option-A and option-B. These two options differentiate between TAs
that have metaphysical conclusions ("The world must be thus and so")
and those that have conceptual ones ("We must not deny thus and so because
of our conceptual scheme"). For
obvious reasons, Grayling is pessimistic about the prospect for option-A
TAs. As for option-B TAs, they have
troubles of their own. Such arguments
attempt to establish that given our conceptual scheme, certain concepts must be
presupposed. That is, it makes no sense
to question our conceptual since, in so doing, we must presuppose it. But the skeptic's reply to this line can be
anticipated: Even if certain concepts are essential for this conceptual scheme,
it may not be for another. Our current
scheme might indeed presuppose causation, but that does not mean that other
possible conceptual schemes must do so as well.
This difficulty is addressed in the following section.
Körner 's criticisms of the first
and third possible ways in establishing a conceptual scheme's uniqueness are
sound. There is no way to prove the
uniqueness of a conceptual scheme by comparing that scheme to undifferentiated
experience or by testing its application from within the conceptual scheme
itself. His criticisms of the second
possibility are, however, subject to serious criticism.
Körner, recall, argued that the
second type of proof, the proof that attempts to demonstrate the uniqueness of
a given conceptual scheme by comparing it with its possible competitors, is
impossible for two reasons. The first is
that it is "self-contradictory in attempting a 'demonstration' of the
schema's uniqueness, by conceding that the schema was not unique." What Körner means
by this is that in attempting to establish the uniqueness of a particular
conceptual scheme by comparing it with possible competitors, this comparison
denies the very uniqueness of the scheme it is trying to establish.
This argument, however, rests upon a confusion. It is true that if such a uniqueness proof
assumes that there are other legitimate conceptual schemes that are in
competition with the one that it is being established, such a proof would be
self-defeating. To say, for example,
that such and such a conceptual scheme is the only possible one and then go on
to compare it with another genuine conceptual scheme is an absurd affair. However, the other possible conceptual
schemes that are compared to the one that is trying to be established by a
uniqueness proof need not be considered as genuine competitors. These other conceptual schemes appear to be
in competition with ours, but on closer examination, it is show that they are
not. Such an argument would look like
something as follows: "One would think that this supposed conceptual
scheme poses a challenge to our conceptual scheme, but on closer examination,
this supposed conceptual scheme is, in actuality, not a genuine conceptual
scheme."
The distinction between a genuinely competing conceptual
scheme and a merely apparent competing conceptual scheme shows that we can make
sense of a uniqueness proof that compares one conceptual scheme with its
possible competitors. But here we face a
further difficulty. Granted that
conception of such a proof is not self-defeating, how could such a proof
actually proceed? There are at least to
possible ways. First, one can argue that
the competing conceptual schemes violate some necessary precondition of
experience. That is, the competing
conceptual schemes are not genuine because that are unable to account for the
experience we have. Second, one can
argue that all other possible conceptual schemes are dependent upon (and thus
reducible to) the one he is trying to establish as unique.
Schaper contends that the first option
(demonstrating that a supposed competitor scheme violates some necessary
precondition of experience) is out of the question.[83] This is because, on the one hand, if the
necessary precondition of experience belongs to the supposedly unique
conceptual scheme the argument is question begging. All that is being demonstrated is that
because the competing scheme does not adhere to the supposedly unique scheme's
necessary preconditions of experience, it is not a genuine competitor. This is hardly a persuasive argument. But if, on the other hand, the necessary
preconditions of experience do not belong the supposedly unique conceptual
scheme, that scheme is thereby shown to be not unique. Either way, the first option of demonstrating
uniqueness is impossible.
The second option is to argue for the uniqueness of a
particular conceptual scheme by proving that it is the only possible conceptual
scheme. Such an argument is advanced by
Donald Davidson.[84] Davidson contends that the notion of a
completely foreign conceptual scheme that philosophers such as Quine and Kuhn advance is incoherent. Although his arguments are subtle and tied in
with his extensional semantics, the gist of his contention is not difficult to
understand. In order to recognize
something as an alternative conceptual scheme, we must be able to map it onto
our own conceptual scheme. If a
conceptual scheme is so different from ours that we are not able to accomplish
such mappings, we would not even recognize it as a competing conceptual
scheme. This is because the only why for
us to recognize something as a competing conceptual scheme is that we compare
it to our own. When no such comparison
is possible (where two "paradigms" are "incommensurable,"
to borrow from Kuhn), there would be no way for us to recognize it as a
conceptual scheme at all. In other
words, the notion of an inconceivable (i.e. unrecognizable) conceptual scheme
is thus incoherent.
This brief discussion of Davidson is a nice segue into Körner's second reason why this kind of uniqueness proof is
impossible. Recall that in order to
establish the uniqueness of one conceptual scheme all other possible conceptual
schemes must be refuted. But surely this
is an impossible task since we do not have the time, let alone the capacity, to
conceive of every possible conceptual scheme and then proceed to refute them
one by one. If this were indeed the
task, there would be no hope of ever accomplishing a uniqueness proof. But fortunately for TAs and their defenders,
this is not what they set out to accomplish.
Rather than refuting every possible alternative conceptual scheme, TAs
endeavor to simply refute one – the negation of conceptual scheme being
defended. Förster's
comments are insightful.
A transcendental argument...in order to establish a
particular condition of knowledge or experience, proceeds by considering an
alternative, that is, the negation of the condition, and subsequently
demonstrates its internal incoherence.
Clearly, this exhausts the field of possible alternatives to this
condition. For although one may
perhaps imagine different philosophical positions or conceptions based on the
negation of the original condition, this would not add to the number of
alternatives to it.[85]
Since there is nothing particularly daunting about
disproving the negation of a conceptual scheme, a uniqueness proof for a
conceptual scheme is certainly not impossible.
An objection may be raised at this point that while this may
be what a TA sets out to do, in practice it only refutes a particular competitor
of the conceptual scheme that it is trying to establish. So, for example, Strawson's
argument that in order to reidentify particulars we
must have an objectivity condition proceeds by refuting the sense datum
hypothesis. But notice that the sense
datum hypothesis is simply one version of the negation of the objectivity
condition (the "non-objectivity condition"). In refuting a particular version of this
"non-objectivity condition," Strawson
intends to refute the "non-objectivity condition" in general. In other words, the refutation of one version
of the "non-objectivity condition" is meant to show that all versions
of such a condition are reducible to absurdity.
Of course one may argue that in refuting the sense datum hypothesis Strawson is only showing a problem intrinsic to it and not
the "non-objectivity condition" in general. But in order to make this objection work, an
argument must be provided by the skeptic to show that this is indeed the
case. If no such argument is provided
(and it is difficult to image what such an argument would look like), the
refutation of one particular version of the "non-objectivity
condition" should is nothing less than a refutation of
"non-objectivity condition" in general. And because the "non-objectivity condition"
is the negation of the objectivity condition, a refutation of the former
provides a proof for the latter.[86]
With the survey of the recent philosophical literature on TAS complete, we are now in a position to see how this debate bears upon TAG. The two major objections, that of KØrner and Stroud, as should be apparent, are similar to objections (2) and (4) above. Specifically, KØrner's argument against the possibility of a uniqueness proof is the identical concern as objection (2). While Stroud's concern about what he considers to be the illegitimate move from what we must believe to be the case in order for us to account for human experience (or a particular slice of human experience) to what must be the case is roughly the same concern as the move from conceptual necessity to necessary existence. I shall turn to these objections in order.
Recall that objection (2) against TAG maintains that it is
impossible to provide a uniqueness proof for the conclusion that the Christian
worldview is the necessary precondition for experience. This is due to the fact that there is no way
of refuting all possible competing worldviews.
Thus, even if all actual worldviews in competition with Christianity
(naturalism, Islam, etc.) are shown to be false and Christianity is shown to be
a sufficient precondition for experience, it does not follow that Christianity
is the necessary precondition for experience.
But as Förster has pointed out,
TAs, and, by implication, TAG, do not set out to provide a uniqueness proof by
refuting an indefinite or infinite number of worldviews. Rather the proof is provided by refuting the
negation of the conceptual scheme or worldview that one is attempting to establish. It subjects the non-Christian worldview to an
internal critique and shows that, on its own terms, it is contradictory,
arbitrary and cannot provide sufficient preconditions of experience.
What, then, is the nature of the non-Christian
worldview? Simply put, all non-Christian
systems presuppose that experience can be accounted for on autonomous
lines. The non-Christian worldviews
share the common feature that experience can be made sense of independently of
God and his revelatory word. Thus all
non-Christian worldviews deny the Creator-creature distinction, the doctrine of
the Trinity and the biblical doctrine of man as being created as God's
image. They deny the fall and the noetic effects of sin.
They deny the necessity of Christ's redeeming work for not only personal
salvation, but the salvation of the human intellect. They also deny the necessity of divine
revelation, the foundation of all of these doctrines.
From this we can see that Van Til
is correct, "We have constantly sought to bring out that all forms of antitheistic thinking can be reduced to one."[87] Bahnsen elaborates
on this important insight:
Despite "family squabbles" and secondary deviations
among unregenerate men in their thinking, they are united at the basic level in
setting aside the Christian conception of God.
The indirect manner of proving the Christian position is thus to exhibit
the intelligibility of reasoning, science, morality, etc., within the context
of biblical presuppositions...and then to make an internal criticism of the
presuppositions of autonomous thought (in whatever form it is presently being
discussed) in order to show that it destroys the possibility of proving,
understanding, or communicating anything.[88]
Thus the Christian apologist may boldly assert that without
an absolute personal being as the foundation of all things, there is no
possibility of ethics. Without the
ontological Trinity as the fount of all being, there is no possibility of
unifying the particulars of human experience.
Without the combined doctrines of the Trinity and man being God's image
bearer there is no possibility of predication and thus language. Without the doctrine of God's sovereignty and
providence there is not ground for inductive logic and science. Without a good and all-powerful God that
creates both man and the natural realm there is not reason to believe that our
senses are reliable. From these
considerations it is clear why TAG is often described as an argument that
proves the impossibility of the contrary.[89] There is, at bottom, one non-Christian
worldview and this worldview is easily reduced to absurdity. FØrster's insight
is relevant at this point. When one
version of the non-Christian worldview is refuted, the general non-Christian
worldview is refuted for all of them are variations on a common theme.
The radical relativist may at this junction assert that
there is no way we can set a limit on what is conceivable. He, in affect, says that it is conceivable
(possible) that there are other worldviews that are inconceivable to us. Here Davidson's arguments against the notion
of a conceptual schemes is relevant.
The Davidsonian contention about
conceptual schemes is that it makes no sense to speak of a possible conceptual
scheme that is inconceivable to us.[90] If a conceptual scheme is so different from ours
that we are not able to somehow map it out against ours, we will not even
recognize it as an alternative conceptual scheme. Indeed, the very notion of an inconceivable
conceptual scheme is without significance.
The relativist's contention that there may be conceptual schemes or
worldviews so radical from ours that we cannot conceive of them and that one
(or more) of these conceptual schemes or worldviews may be able to provide a
set of sufficient conditions for experience is thus abortive. No sense can be made of such a claim. And with this, the fangs of objection (2) are
effectively removed.
We are not quite out of the woods yet, however. As we saw earlier, the critic of TAG offers a
special version of this objection.
Objection (3) contends that there is another (conceivable) worldview
that does provide sufficient preconditions for experience and thereby cuts off
the proof that the Christian worldview is necessary precondition of
experience. This worldview is in many
ways identical to Christianity except that it contradicts it a one or more
points. The example mentioned above was Fristianity. Fristianity is said to be identical to Christianity except
for the fact that instead of a Trinity it has a quadrinity. With regard to this objection, the recent
literature on TAs is of little help.
The only way we know that God is a Trinity is that he
revealed it to us – mere speculation or empirical investigation would never
lead us to this conclusion. But the Fristian worldview, which is, ex hypothesis, identical to
Christianity in every other way, asserts that its god is a quadrinity. But if Fristianity
is otherwise identical to Christianity, the only way for us to know this would
be for Fristian god to reveal this to us. But there is a problem with this. Supposing Fristianity
had inspired scriptures (which it would have to have since it is all other ways
identical to Christianity), these scriptures would have to reveal that the Fristian God is one in four. But notice that by positing a quadrinity, the Fristian
scriptures would be quite different from the Christian Scriptures. Whereas the Christian Scriptures teach that,
with regard to man's salvation, God the Father ordains, God the Son
accomplishes and God the Spirit applies, the Fristian
scriptures would have to teach a very different order. But exactly how would the four members of its
imagined godhead be involved in man's salvation? More fundamentally, whereas in the Christian
Trinity we read that the personal attribute of the Father is paternity, the
personal attribute of the Son is filiation and the
personal attribute of the Spirit is spiration,[91] what
would be the personal, distinguishing attributes of the members of the Fristian quadrinity? What would their relationship be to each
other? Further questions flow out of
this. How would the quadrinity
affect the doctrine of man and sin? How
would redemptive history look different?
What about eschatology? This all
needs to be spelled out in detail. This
illustration reveals a general problem.
One cannot tinker with Christian doctrine at one point and maintain that
other doctrines will not be affected. It
does no good for the proponent of Fristianity to
claim that the only difference between his worldview and the Christian
worldview is over the doctrine of the Trinity.
Christian doctrine is systemic and a change in one area will necessarily
require changes in others. It is
necessary, therefore, that the advocate of Fristianity
to spell out how this one change in doctrine affects all other doctrines. But once this is done, there is no guarantee
that the result will be coherent.
Thus without providing the details of Fristian
theology, this objection loses its punch.
It can only be thought to be a challenge to Christianity if it, like
Christianity, provides preconditions of experience. But without knowing the details, we cannot
submit it to an internal critique. Until
this happens, we can justifiably fall back on the conclusion that there is no
conceivable worldview, apart from Christianity, that can provide the
preconditions of experience.
At this point the proponent of object (3) may attempt one
last desperate stand. He can argue that
we can take Christianity at it stands and, rather than replace one of its
doctrines with another, simply remove some distinguishing feature. For example, rather than positing something
as problematic as a quadrinity, the objector may
simply invent a religion identical to Christianity except, say, that the book
of Jude was never written and thus has no place in its canon.
But this is not a worldview that is relevantly
different from the Christian worldview.
For all it really does is ask us to think counterfactually about the
Christian canon. That is, the answer we
give to the counterfactual question, "Did God have to inspire Jude to
write his epistle?" answer is, of course, no.[92] Furthermore, for much of redemptive history
God's people did not have the privilege of reading Jude (old covenant times)
and even in the era of the church, Jude's canonicity was not universally
acknowledged until the fourth century.
Are we to infer from this that the old covenant people or certain second
century Christians did not have a genuine Christian worldview? Such a conclusion would be absurd.
With this, objection (3), as presently advanced, is not a
threat to the conclusion of TAG – that Christian Theism is the precondition of
human experience.
Turning now to objection (4) – the contention that the move
from conceptual necessity to necessary existence is unwarranted – it is clear
that much of the contemporary literature on TAs is relevant to TAG. Stroud's arguments against moving from the
necessity of believing or accepting a conceptual scheme to demonstrating what the
world is actually like can be easily restated in terms of TAG. The challenge is, thus, to bridge the gap
between having to believe the Christian worldview because it provides the
necessary preconditions of experience and showing that the Christian worldview
is true.
Grayling's distinction between option-A and option-B TAS is
helpful at this point. Recall that Bahnsen's response to this objection was that the debate
between the Christian and the non-Christian assumes that one of the views has
to be true. While this may indeed be the
assumption between opponents in a debate, Bahnsen
provides no reason for why this assumption is correct. Without an argument for this contentious
assumption, Bahnsen seems to forced to be construe
TAG as an option-B TA. The Christian
worldview is shown to be the necessary precondition for experience in general
and the necessary precondition for rationality in particular. To deny Christianity, a move that presupposes
rationality, is to presuppose Christianity.
If TAG does show that we must believe in Christianity in
order to make our experience possible, this is certainly a powerful apologetic
tool. The problem, however, is that
while TAG, on an option-B interpretation, demonstrates that the Christian
worldview is necessary precondition for experience, it does not prove that the
Christian worldview is true. For it may
be that our experience of rationality, morality, science, etc. are
illusory. Bahnsen's
reply to
One way out of this predicament is to make the strong modal
claim that the world is actually rational, that universals exist, that our
sensory faculties do get us in touch with the external world, etc.
Given this premise, it can readily be shown that TAG does get us to the
truth of Christianity. For if the
necessary precondition of experience is the Christian worldview and if our
experience must be of a real, mind-independent world, this conclusion follows
immediately. The problem, of course, is
how to prove such strong modal claims.
Certainly this cannot be achieved by using contemporary TAS such as Strawson's, for Stroud has shown that such arguments need
either an addition factual premise or a verification principle in order to
work.
There is another way around this problem. If, as some have maintained, Van Til was something of an idealist, we can see how he was
able to bridge the gap between thought and reality. This reading of Van Til,
however, is not only implausible, but there is nothing in his writings that
indicate that he relied upon some version of idealism to make the move from
what we must believe to what the world is like.
Furthermore, even if Van Til was an idealist,
this would be of little help to the Christian who is, like Bahnsen,
an epistemological realist.[94] But the major problem with this move is that
Christian theology and idealistic metaphysics and/or epistemology are
fundamentally at odds with one another.
It is difficult to see a way through this predicament. All exits seem to be blocked off and it appears
that the Christian apologist is forced to conceive of TAG as an option-B
TA. And as such the claim that TAG
proves the existence of God can no longer be made. This seriously diminishes force of TAG. It seems that the best the presuppositionalist can do at this point is to argue that
the most likely explanation for the fact that Christian worldview is the
necessary precondition for experience is that Christianity is true. But notice that even if it is granted that
this is the most likely explanation, the argument for God's existence is
reduced to one of probability claim. And
if it is probable or even highly probable that God exists, it follows that
there is some possibility that he does not exist – even if that probability of
this is relatively low.
Before we abandon hope, there may be a way out of this
problem. The source of the present
difficulty seems to be the way in which the TAG has been set up. Given the context of this discussion, the
tenancy is to conflate the notion of the Christian worldview with the notion of
a conceptual scheme. Although there is a
certain surface similarity between the two, these two notions do not, in fact,
correspond to one another. It is a
serious error to conceive of the Christian worldview as nothing more than a
mere conceptual scheme that organizes our experience. Certainly Christianity does, in some sense,
organize our experience, but it does more than this. The Christian worldview is much richer than
the conceptual scheme that is the precondition of, say, reidentifying
particulars. Christianity provides us
with a detailed metaphysical, epistemological and ethical system. The foundation of this system is an absolute
personal God who has created all things including man. This God, moreover, has given man his word so
that he may know the truth. The
Christian worldview, thus, not only provides a way to organize experience, but
it tells us that a sovereign God has revealed truths about the world to us.
Stated another way, the necessity of a conceptual scheme cannot
guarantee anything about the way the world must be. For while such a scheme may organize our
experience, it itself is dumb and mute and cannot, definitionally,
tell us anything about the world itself.
But the Christian worldview is not a mere conceptual scheme. It claims to do more than simply provide us
with the necessary preconditions of experience.
The Christian worldview posits a sovereign, creator God who is both personal
and absolute in his nature. This God is,
moreover, a speaking God who reveals truths to us about himself and the
world. In his revelation to us he
declares that he has made a world and that this world exists independently from
himself and us.[95] On the basis of his revelation, therefore,
which is itself the necessary precondition of experience, we can know truths
about the world and God.
In setting forth TAG, Van Til gave
the Christian apologist a powerful argument for Christian Theism. Indeed, Van Til
claimed that this argument is "absolutely sound."[96] As we have seen, however, there have been a
number of objections raised against this argument. Van Til left it to
his followers to answers these objections.
But while in Bahnsen we find an able defense
of TAG, much of what he says is merely programmatic in nature and calls for
elaboration.
In the footsteps of Van Til and Bahnsen, I have endeavored to further elaborate and defend
TAG against common objections. In order
to do this more effectively I have surveyed the relevant philosophical
literature in order to set these criticism in sharper focus and formulate the
objections in the strongest possible way.
In doing this, I hope to have offered a more thorough and robust defense
of TAG. And though this defense of TAG
is not meant to be the last word – certainly vigorous debate will continue and
further refinements will need to be made – the conclusion we may draw is that
none of the common criticisms of TAG are cogent. And as a corollary to this, we can
justifiably maintain that TAG accomplishes just what Van Til
set it out to do: establish the truth of the Christian worldview as the
necessary precondition for human experience.
[1] Examples of the former include Jim Halsey, For a
Time Such as This (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976) and
William White, Van Til: Defender of the Faith
(Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 1979).
See John M. Frame's incisive comments about the "movement
mentality" of some of Van Til's followers in Cornelius
Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought
(Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 1995), 8ff. The two most respected apologists that fit in
the latter category are Van Til's students Edward J.
Carnell and Francis Schaeffer.
Interestingly, Carnell quotes his apologetic mentor only once in his
books on apologetics, and that in a footnote, An Introduction to Christian
Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1948), 41, n. 22.
Schaeffer never published any acknowledgment of his dependence on Van Til.
[2] I would be remise to pass over this opportunity to
say a few words of appreciation for John Frame.
Though Frame is more critical of Van Til than Bahnsen (his criticism of Van Til's
transcendental argument, for example) he has certainly offered many valuable
insights and performed a genuine service for the Christian community in his
sympathetic and philosophically sensitive treatment Van Til's
work. Even when disagreeing with some of
Frame's conclusions about Van Til, the Christian
scholar is always forced to take his considerations seriously. This can be said of very few
theologians. Unfortunately Frame's work
on Van Til has not been fully appreciated by both
those within and without the Reformed community.
[3] Bahnsen's personal
acquaintance with Van Til is of some interest at this
point. Bahnsen
studied under Van Til and Westminster Theological
Seminary during the early 1970's. Bahnsen was recognized by Van Til
as an outstanding student and was even called upon to lecture for him (Van Til) on apologetics when he became ill. After earning the M. Div. and Th.M. degrees from
[4] "Why I Believe in God," (Philadelphia: The
Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,
1948). Van Til
does offer many examples of philosophical criticism of other non-Christian
worldviews, but these tend to be highly abstract, enthymematic, and written in
a difficult style. They are, thus, of
limited practical use.
[5] Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic:
[6]Audio tapes of these debates are available from
Covenant Media Foundation (www.cmfnow.com).
[7] Frame, Van Til, 392.
[8]"The Authority of Scripture (A Responsible
Confession)" in E. R. Geehan, ed.,
[9] "Response by C. Van Til,"
in Geehan, ed.,
[10] Toward a Reformed Apologetic (Philadelphia:
privately printed, 1972), 27 quoted in Bahnsen, Van
Til, xviii, n. 4.
[11] The syllabus has been incorporated as part of Bahnsen's posthumously published book, Always Ready:
Directions for Defending the Faith, Robert Booth, ed. (Texarkana, Tex.:
Covenant Media Foundation, 1996).
[12]"Socrates or Christ: The Reformation of Christian
Apologetics," in Gary North, ed., Foundations of Christian Scholarship:
Essays in the Van Til Perspective (Vallecito, Cal.: Ross House Books, 1976), 191-239.
[13] "The Encounter of
[14] These criticism are stated in: Alister
McGrath, Intellectuals Don't Need God and Other Modern Myths (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), 218; Colin
Brown, Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968); John M. Frame, Van Til; Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace (Tyler,
Tex.: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
[15] Van Til, 675, n.
268.
[16]See, for example, John M. Frame, "Cornelius Van Til," in Walter A. Elwell,
ed., Handbook of Evangelical Theologians (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Books, 1993), 156-167.
[17]Van Til, An Introduction
to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Co., 1974), 26.
[18]Van Til, The Defense of
the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1955)
363-4.
[19]
[20]
[21] Gordon H. Clark, "Apologetics," Contemporary
Evangelical Thought (Carl F. H. Henry, ed.), 140. Quoted in Nash, 301.
[22]Trinity Review,
September, 1979.
[23] Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (
[24]"A Reformed Epistemologist's Closing
Remarks" in Five Views on Apologetics, Steven B. Cowan, ed. (
[25]R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner
and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984).
[26]A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969),
204-5.
[27]A recent criticism of TAG is the so called counter
argument, TANG (transcendental argument for the non-existence of God). Michael Martin, the inventor of TANG,
contends that God's non-existence is transcendentally necessary in order to
account for human experience. Since this
argument did not appear until 1996, a year after Bahnsen's
death, Bahnsen did not have a chance to respond. For a refutation of TANG see my "The
Great Debate Gets Personal," Penpoint,
vol. 7, no. 7, August 1996.
[28]Apologetics to the Glory of God and Cornelius Van Til:
An Analysis of his Thought.
[29]The above quotes are found in Van Til's, The Defense of the Faith, 117-18.
[30]Frame, Apologetics, 76.
[31]Van Til, 371.
[32]Van Til, 319.
[33]Van Til, 264.
[34]In E. R. Geehan, ed.,
[35]"Once Upon an A Priori...", 387-88.
[36]Van Til, 488 n. 41.
[37]Van Til, 488 n 41.
[38]As far as I am aware, the only place this objection
seems to be touched on in the literature on TAG is David P. Hoover's article,
"For the Sake of Argument" (Hatfield,
Pa.: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, n.d).
[39]This objection may be recast in terms of psychological
necessity. On one reading of Hume, for
example, he argues that our notion of causality is illegitimate because it is
neither analytic ("relation of ideas") nor is it grounded in our
experience ("matter of fact").
Nevertheless, Hume contends that we are not able to give up our belief
in causality. No matter what the
philosophical arguments might tell us, our belief in causation is left
undisturbed. It is a determination of
the mind that we have no control over.
Thus belief in causality is, according to this reading of Hume, a
psychological necessity. This line of
reasoning is not used in the literature of TAG for obvious reasons. Since there are people who claim to be
atheists, it would be difficult to prove that belief in God is psychologically
necessary.
[40]Van Til, 486, n. 37.
[41]In Metaphysics (v. 1061a 5-1062b) Aristotle
demonstrates the transcendental necessity of the law of contradiction.
[42]Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1959).
[43]It should be noted at the outset that some
philosophers argue that there is nothing at all distinctive about TAs. Moltke Gram is,
perhaps, the leading advocate of this view.
The following articles by Gram are representative: "Transcendental
Arguments," Noõs, vol. 5, no. 1 (February
1971), 15-26, "Must We Revisit Transcendental Arguments?" Philosophical
Studies 31 (1977), 235-248. Gram's
arguments, however, have not been persuasive to most commentators on TAs.
[44]See T. E. Wilkerson, "Transcendental
Arguments," Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1970), 200-212 and Ralph C.
S. Walker, Kant: The Arguments of the Philosophers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978)
for insightful discussions on the logic of TAs.
[45]The Refutation of Skepticism (London: Duckworth, 1985), 94.
[46]Michael Dummett denies that
there is (was) such a school. Assuming
he is correct, the name is still useful and in this context innocuous. See his "
[47]"Transcendental Argument" in Robert Audi,
ed., The
[48]"Transcendental Arguments" in Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa, eds., A Companion to Epistemology
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1992), 507.
[49]"Transcendental Arguments" in Edward Craig,
ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
vol. 9 (New York: Routledge, 1998) 452.
[50]Barry Stroud, "Transcendental Arguments," Journal
of Philosophy 65 (1968), 241-256.
[51]Even a cursory reading of the Critique makes
this clear. In the very beginning
remarks of the Introduction to the second edition Kant states: "But though
all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises
out of experience. For it may well be
that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through
impressions and of what our won faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions
serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself" (B 1).
[52]Although some of the debate is indeed trivial. For although Kant made the term a technical
one and, thus, must be conceded a certain propriety over it, philosophers
should be more concerned with the success and failures of the arguments at hand
rather than lexicographical particularities – Johnson, after all, was modest enough
to call himself a harmless drudge.
[53]Although Kant never actually used the term
"transcendental argument"; his closest term is "Transzendentalen Deduktion".
[54]"Transcendental Arguments: Genuine and
Spurious," Noûs vol. 6 (1972), p. 274.
[55]"Atemporal Necessities
of Thought; or, How Not to Bury Philosophy in History," in Reading
Kant: New Perspectives on Transcendental Arguments (
[56]All references from the Critique of Pure Reason
are from Norman Kemp Smith, trans. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965).
[57]Prolegomena, p. 294 (Academy edition). Cited in Jaakko Hintikka, "Transcendental Arguments: Genuine and
Spurious," Noûs vol. 6 (1972), p. 275.
[58]Hintikka, 275.
[59]For slightly different reasons, David Bell also
considers it a mistake to view The Refutation as a transcendental
argument. See his "Transcendental
Arguments and Non-Naturalistic Anti-Realism," in Robert Stern, ed., Transcendental
Arguments: Problems and Prospects (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 189-210.
[60]The Refutation of Scepticism, 80.
[61]Grayling misleadingly paraphrases this phrase as
"mere 'mode of origination,'" Grayling, The Refutation of Scepticism, 80.
[62]Graham Bird is one of the few who makes his commitment
to this practice explicit. "Kant's
Transcendental Arguments," in Eva Schaper and
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (eds.), Reading Kant,
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
[63]Perhaps the most famous example of this is found in Strawson's misreading of the Deduction in his The Bounds
of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966).
[64]By 'clarity' I mean that it is clear what Kant
intended the goal of transcendental proofs to be. I do not mean that it is at all clear how
Kant actually goes about doing it.
[65]"Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism,"
in Eva Schaper and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl
(eds.),
[66]Gottlob Frege,
"Thoughts," in Logical Investigations, P. T. Geach, ed. and trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1977); Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.
E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958); Donald
Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984); Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); John R. Searle, The
Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin, 1995).
[67]The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason (London: Methuen, 1966).
[68]Individuals, 35.
[69]Individuals, p.
35.
[70]Strawson has since changed his mind. See his Skepticism and Naturalism: Some
Varieties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
[71]Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968), 241-56.
[72] In a
fascinating study of early Post-Kantianism, Paul Franks show that Gottlob Schulze offered a similar objection to Kant and his
follower K. L. Reinhold in his Aenesidemus
(1792). "Transcendental Arguments,
Reason, and Scepticism: Contemporary Debates and the
Origins of Post-Kantianism," in Stern, ed., Transcendental Arguments,
111-45.
[73] Categorial Frameworks (Oxford: Blackwell,
1974), 72. Quoted in Eckart
F_rster,
"How Are Transcendental Arguments Possible?" in Schaper
and Vossenkuhl, 15.
Roderick Chisholm's strictures on TAs are similar to K_rner's. See his "What is a Transcendental
Argument?" in The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis Minn.:
University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 98.
Originally published in Neue Hefte f_r Philosophie 14: 19-22.
[74]"The Impossibility of Transcendental
Deductions," The Monist, 51 (1967), 320-21.
[75]Richard Rorty, "Transcendental
Arguments, Self-Reference, and Pragmatism," in P. Bieri, R.-P. Horstmann and L. Kròger,
eds., Transcendental Arguments and Science (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), 82.
[76]A. Phillips Griffiths, "Transcendental
Arguments," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. Vol. 43 (1969), 171.
[77]Eva Schaper, "Arguing Transcendentally,"Kantstudien 63 (1972), 107.
[78]Richard Rorty actually
tackles the second horn. He agrees with
Stroud that a verification principle is necessary, but not the empiricist kind
that Stroud maintains. Rorty argues that this empiricist form of verificationism is not only dubious, but demonstrably
false. TAs that rely on such a principle
are therefore directly refuted. However,
Rorty maintains that a Peircian
form of verification (to know the meaning of a term is to know inferential
relations), is not obviously false and can do the requisite work of answering
the skeptic. But this answer to the
skeptic takes us no further that Stroud.
It merely shows that the skeptic must assume the truth of our conceptual
scheme in order to call it into question.
But this, of course, does not establish anything about the way the world
is. Richard Rorty,
"Verificationism and Transcendental
Arguments," Noõs vol. 5, n. 1, (February
1971), 3-14. See
Anthony Brueckner, "Transcendental Arguments
I," Noûs 17 (November, 1983), 551-575 for
a trenchant criticism of Rorty.
[79]"Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and
Invulnerability," in Paulo Parrini, ed., Kant
and Contemporary Epistemology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994).
[80]Stroud, "Kantian Argument," 234 quoted in
Stern, ed., Transcendental Arguments, 7.
[81]Bernard Williams suggests that both Kant and
contemporary philosophers who employ TAs implicitly assume some form of
idealism. See his Problems of the
Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
[82]This move is the most common in the TA
literature. See, for example, Peter
Hacker, "Are Transcendental Arguments a Version of Verificationism?"
American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1 (January 1972), 78-85, Eckart FØrster, "How are Transcendental
Arguments Possible? in Reading Kant, 3-20, Ralph C. S. Walker,
"Induction and Transcendental Argument," in Stern, ed., Transcendental
Arguments, 13-29, Robert Stern, "On Kant's response to Hume: The
Second Analogy as Transcendental Argument," also in Stern, 47-66.
[83]Schaper, "Arguing Transcendentally," 107-8. Interestingly, Schaper
thinks that this type of proof is the only one possible.
[84]"On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,"
in Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1984), 183-198.
[85]FØrster, "How
Are Transcendental Arguments Possible?," 15.
[86]The example in this paragraph is due to FØrster.
[87]Van Til, A Survey of
Christian Epistemology, xi.
[88]Bahnsen, Van Til, 489.
[89]Van Til, A Survey of
Christian Epistemology, 205.
[90]I am borrowing from the insights of Davidson and
generalizing them for my own purposes.
No doubt Davidson would reject the use of "conceivability" to
replace his own term, "translatability."
[91]See Herman Bavinck, The
Doctrine of God, William Hendriksen, trans.
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1977), 304-13. Bavinck states,
"The trinity is not capable of being augmented or decreased, it is
'complete.'" He then cites Augustine, "But within the essence of the
trinity in no way can any other person whatever exist out of the same
essence."
[92]Saying this does not imply that Jude is thus
unnecessary. God determines the canon
because he determined Jude to be a part of it, in another sense, it is most
necessary.
[93]Bahnsen, Van Til, 487, n.
41.
[94]It is interesting to pause at this juncture and ponder
what Jonathan Edwards, who almost certainly held to some version of idealism,
could have done with TAG.
[95]Independently in the sense that God is distinct from
his creation.
[96]Van Til, The Defense of
the Faith, 256.