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Author Topic:   Presuppositionalism
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 1 of 2 (789866)
08-21-2016 1:35 PM


For those who haven't encountered them, presupositionalists are the creationists of philosophy. What seems obvious when reading the productions of both groups is that they are largely uninterested in the questions they are ostensibly addressing. What they are interested in is their predetemined answer: they want to get to goddidit as quickly as possible, riding roughshod over facts and reason to get there --- because a solution involving God implies that he exists, and proving his existence is all that really interests them.
Here's an example chosen more or less at random, culled from the musings of one James N. Anderson on the topic of "The Theistic Preconditions of Knowledge". The essence of Mr. Anderson's argument is to perform what I think of as the Mjolnir Maneuver, which goes something like this:
(1) Define lightning to be that phenomenon caused by Thor wielding his magic hammer Mjolnir.
(2) Point out that we all know that lightning exists.
(3) Conclude that you have proved the existence of Thor.
The problem with this, of course, is that we do not all know that lightning exists in the sense in which it has been redefined in step (1). On the contrary, this is very much in doubt. (For an example of the maneuver used in creationism, see Werner Gitt's nonsense about "information".)
Anderson, similarly, manages to concoct a definition of "knowledge" in which we know something if (a) we believe it and (b) we arrive at this belief by a method which is approved of as morally virtuous by a supernatural personal being. This, combined with the fact that knowledge does exist, is meant to make theists of us all. But we are only convinced that knowledge exists in the ordinary sense; we have no reason to believe that "knowledge" exists in Anderson's sense. And we should note that Anderson's sense is not at all like the ordinary sense: for if we were to take Anderson seriously, it would seem that a man can look at an elephant, walk round it, touch it, and thereby become thoroughly convinced of its existence, and yet he does not "know" that it exists unless there is a supernatural being somewhere who approves of him drawing this conclusion from his observations. (Whereas in the ordinary sense we would say that the man knows that the elephant exists because he has seen the elephant; and we would add that it is the job of the philosopher of knowledge to make this concept of knowledge formal and rigorous, and not to gratuitously dick about with it.)
If anyone thinks this is an unfair sample of presuppositionalism, please show me a better one; or if anyone thinks that this particular example is defensible, please defend it, and I shall elaborate on Mr. Anderson's mistakes.

AdminAsgara
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Message 2 of 2 (789871)
08-21-2016 3:26 PM


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