Concepts and Induction

Years ago I was in correspondence with a Christian apologist who presupposed that Christianity and only Christianity could solve the problem of induction. There were many Christians at one time who actually believed this. Perhaps some still do.

This apologist carefully demonstrated how a number of prominent academic treatments of the matter missed the mark, sometimes by wide margin, when it came to providing a justification for inductive presuppositions. The apologist of course claimed that the existence of a universe-creating deity which actively “ordains and sustains” the “created order” provides the rational justification which secular scholars could only miss due to their chronic “unbelief.”

Same Old Song and Dance: Anderson on Induction... again

Christian apologist James Anderson has published yet another article on the problem of induction, this time as others essentially repeating the same superficialities from two decades ago, as though he has learned little in the intervening years: David Hume is still the prevailing authority on the topic of induction, and the problem of induction is “solved” by imagining an invisible magic being which ensures the uniformity of nature by means of sheer will. Nothing else really needs to be considered. The fact that he can point to academics who continue to be confused on the nature and basis of induction, as though this were even relevant, only serves to reinforce his theistic prejudices.

My views on the problem of induction have indeed evolved over the years. More and more I have come to the assessment that the problem of induction commits the fallacy of the stolen concept: the very framing of the problem of induction in fact tacitly assumes the validity of induction, and yet the validity of induction is what the problem essentially aims to call into question.

Some Thoughts in Response to Anderson’s Argument on Propositions

Last month, the Ivy League International Apologetics Database, aka ILIAD Forum, published an article by Christian apologist James Anderson titled In What Ways is God the Foundation for all Knowledge? The ILIAD Forum is new to me, and it may be new to readers here at Incinerating Presuppositionalism as well. In its obligatory About page, it states that it “was founded in 2021 by undergraduate students from all across the Ivy League, who wanted to provide an online, accessible, and rigorous database of answers to common questions about the nature and commitments of orthodox Christianity.” The site hosts articles by some of the more familiar names (e.g., Vern Poythress, K. Scott Oliphint, William Edgar) and some not so familiar (to me at any rate). Without having explored much of it, already it appears to be a promising quarry for future reading.

In Anderson’s article (cross-posted on his own blog here), he includes a paragraph which demonstrates how apologists can pack so much distortion into so little space. Brian May must be green with envy!

In this entry I will first quote that paragraph in its entirety, then I will follow that with my own interaction, and readers can post their own reactions in the comments section.

Anderson versus Materialism, Part II: The Problem of Personal Identity over Time

Back in February this year I posted an entry in which I interacted with the first of several “daunting philosophical problems for materialists” culled together by James Anderson in a blog entry of his own titled Materialism and Mysteries. Anderson himself cited statements made by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman in a blog post of his own about his relationship to materialism, where Ehrman states that he has been “more-or-less a complete materialist for about twenty years.”

In my own entry, I examined what Anderson dubs “the problem of the unity of consciousness,” which consists of a single question (mind you, not an argument): “How could a material object like the brain, extended across space and composed of billions of discrete physical parts, serve as the basis for the unity of our conscious experience?” The way Anderson frames this “problem,” I get the impression that he thinks the elements of each brain are scattered all over the universe.

Answering the Epistemologist

A reader who contacted me privately asked a number of questions the proper philosophical starting point and related matters. This reader, in spite of all the material I’ve assembled on my blog, apparently persists in thinking that some cognitive structure or mental operation (e.g., beliefs, faith, reasoning, inference, etc.) must be the proper starting point, apparently unaware of the fact that mental operations must always have some independently existing object to which said mental operations must refer and conform, and without which those mental operations would simply have no basis or purpose. 

After I made several attempts to explain why the human mind must start with the objects of consciousness rather than with some cognitive structure or mental operation, the reader announced that we had basically reached an impasse and that we were “going to agree to disagree.” However, where exactly the disagreement lies remains a bit of a mystery, at least to me. 

Anderson versus Materialism

In a recent post on his blog, Christian apologist James Anderson takes NT scholar Bart Ehrman to task for his (the latter’s) overt confession of materialism. Really, Erhman’s post announcing his materialist views serves as a good opportunity for Anderson to articulate challenges against materialism; tarnishing Erhman’s worldview as an indirect way of undermining his views regarding a historical Jesus may be a meager but happy bonus. For the present purposes, Erhman is just a bystander. The main event here is Anderson’s critique of materialism. 

The springboard for Anderson’s attack on materialism is Erhman’s statement that “This materialist view creates enormous conceptual problems that I wrestle with all the time.” Admissions of internal troubles is like baiting sharks with the smell of blood. Curiously, however, this notion of “enormous conceptual problems” shows up in several places in Anderson’s blog entry, which makes me wonder on behalf of both Anderson and Erhman: If either party is wrestling with problems of a conceptual nature, what exactly is their respective worldview’s theory of concepts? 

Presuppositionalism and Induction: Thoughts on the Uniformity of Nature

It is very common for presuppositionalists, when making the problem of induction a debating point, to center the issue on the uniformity of nature and demand that non-Christians explain their assumption that nature is uniform in a way that does not imply theism. Induction, it is said, presupposes the uniformity of nature, and if one cannot justify his presupposition that nature is in fact uniform, then he has no justification for his inductive inferences. 

In this way, the use of the problem of induction in debate gets stuck in a short-sighted rut, focusing all energy on a discussion of the uniformity of nature and how we can justify the uniformity that is observed in nature, an observation which in itself owes much to our powers of inductive reasoning. In essence, this is a set-up, and once one accepts this approach, his fallacies line up for the picking. 

WSIBC: "God and Science"

I shall now take up the sixth and final case which James Anderson presents in the fourth chapter of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC), which is found under the subheading “God and Science.” As this would have the reader suppose, here Anderson attempts to secure the conclusion that science as such implies, or rather “presupposes,” the existence of what Christians throughout history have called “God.” If it could be shown that science were not possible unless the god of Abraham and Moses were real, that would be rather noteworthy, or earthshaking as believers would prefer.

If readers have been following along, one might expect at this point to find more god-talk than science in Anderson’s string of paragraphs. That would be due at least in part to the fact that the previous five cases have not survived scrutiny well at all, which is regrettable given that Anderson’s book enjoys a spot on Steve Hays’ list of Required reading for atheists. Incidentally, Hays’ list also includes William Lane Craig, Edward Feser and Craig Keener, and even plugs the ontological argument as well as Anderson’s own “Argument for God from Logic.”

But I digress. 

WSIBC: "God and Reason"

We come now to the fourth section of the fourth chapter of James Anderson’s book Why Should I Believe Christianity? which is subtitled “God and Reason.” Here he presents his case for the view that reason is best explained by Christian theism.

Anderson opens this section as follows:

Critics of religion often pride themselves on their rationality, and they like to cast the debate in terms of reason versus faith. Atheists stand on reason, we’re told, while religious folks have to fall back on faith. Richard Dawkins, for example, pejoratively refers to religious believers as ‘faith-heads’ while presiding over the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. (p. 115)

It’s true that disagreements between religionists and rational thinkers often touch on the conflict between reason and faith, and this is a serious issue. I see it as a good thing that Anderson at least acknowledges that it is an issue. However, I found that the word ‘faith’ appears only three times in this entire section, and those three instances are confined to just this first paragraph. The statement here reads as though Anderson disagrees with the view that reason and faith are in conflict with each other, but he does not actually expand on this in the proceeding section. I’d think that, if he suspects that critics of religion are mistaken in concluding that faith and reason are at odds with each other, this section would be a great place to put that supposed myth to rest once and for all. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens here. Rather he drops the topic of faith just as in “God and Existence” he dropped Heidegger’s “The Question.” Seems to be a pattern here. 

Edward Feser on Ayn Rand

A couple of months ago a reader of my blog wrote to me privately and asked me to comment on a January 2014 blog posting of one Edward Feser titled Does existence exist? In this entry I’m finally getting around to posting some reactions to it.

Feser headlines his blog, simply called Edward Feser, with several bits of praise, all of it I’m sure very true, such as “One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy” (National Review) and “Feser… has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable” (Times Literary Supplement). It’s not clear where in these publications one can find such laudations. But given these accolades, one would suppose that his efforts to interact with Rand’s axiom of existence might unearth startling and profound truths missed by the average armchair philosopher.

Beyond this article, I’ve never read anything of Feser’s (not that I remember anyhow), so without studying more of his work (it will have to get in line), I will take his profile for its word when it says that he “write[s]… from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.”

Is the Christian God a "Necessary Being"?

Recently Steve Hays over at Triablogue posted a blog entry titled Who Made God?. This entry offers some instructive opportunities for engaging the kind of thinking many believers indulge in, so I have decided to comment on it.

Hays begins with the following provocative statement:

Some atheists think they can dismiss cosmological arguments by simply asking, "Who made God?"

Given the tone Hays uses here (“you’ll never get away with it, you meddling atheists!”), I get the impression that he believes the question “who made God?” is an inappropriate reaction to the cosmological argument. However, it seems to be a perfectly valid response to an argument which insists that everything was made by a “who” in the first place. If someone wants to validate his belief in invisible magic beings by asking “who made the universe?” why would it be wrong to suppose that, if a person, specifically a consciousness, must have created the universe and everything in it, a person, specifically a consciousness, must have created the person who created the universe?

Do Gardens Imply the Existence of Invisible Magic Beings?

Christian apologist James Anderson has posted another fun little blog entry, this one titled On Fairies and Gardeners, over on his site Proginosko. In this entry Anderson objects to overt comparisons of the Christian god to fairies while implicitly comparing man’s cognitive faculties to a garden implying the existence of a gardener. Anderson opens his blog with the following announcement:

I’ve been revisiting Richard Dawkins’ best-seller The God Delusion in preparation for an apologetics class I’ll be teaching next week.

Anderson is writing this in July 2017. And yet, back in April 2009, more than eight years ago if I have my math right, Anderson announced his conclusion (referring specifically to The God Delusion, mind you) that “Dawkins’ case against theism is philosophically inept” (see here). With such a condemning assessment, I’m wondering if Anderson has changed his mind, or whether he prefers to spend his time sparring with low-hanging fruit before a captive audience in his classroom. Consider the impressionable young minds who have chosen to take on the burden of a heavy student debt at so early a time in life as to sit through such a course. Indeed, just what kind of living does one set out to achieve with an education in “apologetics”? Perhaps if one confuses a career with a living, it could be said that Anderson may be doing fairly well as a vested member of the professoriate.

Craig’s Eight Arguments for God, Part IV: “God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world”

This is the fourth installment in a series of blog entries which I am posting in response to a set of theistic arguments published by Christian apologist William Lane Craig. The first three installments can be found here:

Part I: Introduction 

Part II: “God is the best explanation why anything at all exists”

Part III: “God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe”

Craig’s third argument is intended to support his claim that “God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world.” Craig’s first two arguments have already been shown to be complete failures. Let’s see if Craig’s third argument does any better.

Petersen vs. the Universe

Jason Petersen has posted a reaction to my several posts refuting his faltering attempts to criticize Leonard Peikoff’s assessments of god-belief. Petersen’s article can be found here: A Response to Dawson Bethrick: Leonard Peikoff’s Objections to God’s Exitence. Apparently Petersen believes that by responding to my blog entries, he’s somehow doing his position a service. He does not realize that he is simply giving his critics more ammunition. When religious believers attempt to erect defenses for their worldviews, they very often fail to see the inconsistencies they wander into and end up affirming. I’m glad this isn’t my problem!

Curiously, in examining Petersen’s lengthy diatribe (I don’t find David Smart or Sye Ten Bruggencate – both of whom have complained about the lengthiness of some of my blog entries – whining that Petersen’s article is “longwinded”), I nowhere found any active hyperlinks to my series of blog entries interacting with Petersen's objections to Leonard Peikoff, of which there are five! Petersen does give a few URLs to my blog entries, but in case anyone has missed them, I’m happy to post links to them here:

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Preamble - October 11, 2014

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 1 - October 12, 2014

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 2 - October 13, 2014

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 3 - October 14, 2014

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 4 and Conclusion - October 15, 2014

Now, don’t get me wrong. I admit that I really do like seeing Christians attempting to interact with my writings, if for nothing else the entertainment value that can come of such endeavors. But articles like Petersen’s also help get the word out for me, and given the wide array of issues covered in them, they also provide ample opportunity for more cutting-edge atheology! In fact, a number of my readers have informed me that they had discovered my blog through Christian sources and that they were glad to find my writings. So while Jason Petersen may think he’s out slaying dragons for Jesus, he is in fact helping in his own way to promote my ideas. So for this alone, I want to extend my gratitude to him. May Jason Petersen continue to be the gift that keeps on giving!

The Primacy of Existence vs. the Prior Certainty of Consciousness

Recently I posted a lengthy blog entry comprehensively analyzing a Youtube video titled Why The Primacy of Existence Is No Problem For Any Presuppositionalist by someone calling himself “Ozymandias Ramses II” – or simply “Ozy” – who apparently has a number of videos discussing presuppositionalism.

In my examination of what Ozy states in that video, I found a number of outstanding errors, errors which bring into question Ozy’s familiarity with Objectivism, and I set out to correct them in that examination.

Yesterday I received two comments responding to my blog entry by one or more anonymous visitors to my blog. Both comments are posted by “Unknown,” and the commenter did not sign his or her posts with a name. The second comment appears to be an elaboration on the initial one, and it came before the first one was published on my blog for visitors to read. So all indicators are that both comments were submitted by the same author.

Presuppositionalism, Atheism, and Confusion over the Primacy of Existence

It is not uncommon for me to find even intelligent adult thinkers confused over the primacy of existence. In fact, confusion over this fundamental principle is a norm among those who are not familiar with Objectivism. It’s even worse for those who have heard about the primacy of existence from sources other than Objectivists who know what they’re talking about, sources which may in fact be hostile toward Objectivism for whatever reason. Sometimes this confusion is occasioned in thinkers who are otherwise well-meaning but have learned the expression “primacy of existence” from non-Objectivists who themselves do not understand what it means or its implications for knowledge.

Anyone who examines the entries I have published on my blog over the years, going back to March 2005 – nearly 10 years ago now – will find many posts that deal directly with the primacy of existence, how it is fundamental to human cognition, and how it is incompatible with theism.

In a Youtube video titled Why the Primacy of Existence is No Problem for Any Presuppositionalist, video blogger Ozymandias Ramses II (to whom I shall refer as simply “Ozy” from here on out) makes some startling statements intended to support what the title of his video affirms.

Jason Petersen's Abysmal Ignorance of Concepts

A rather lengthy paragraph, said to have been composed by “Clarkian Presuppositionalist” Jason Petersen, was posted to a comment by a frequent visitor on my blog entry Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 4 and Conclusion.

Now, I do not know the original source of this paragraph, but I have no reason to suspect that Petersen did not author it. That said, I do suspect that the ideas contained in it are not original to Petersen, but rather that he is simply recycling the same kind of ignorance-borne, fallacy-ridden objections we’ve seen here at Incinerating Presuppositionalism for many years now, for the locution and tactics Petersen uses are quite familiar. Regardless, while I am happy to suppose that Petersen is the author of the paragraph in question, I’d welcome any readers to post a link to the actual source if they are aware of one.

In this paragraph, Petersen is apparently attempting to refute the role of concepts as the basic units of knowledge. This is evident from the concluding sentence, which states: “Thus, concepts are not ultimately reflections of reality and do not lead to knowledge.” More specifically, Petersen’s aim here is to dismantle the Objectivist position by denying the role of concepts in human cognition altogether. Perhaps this is ambition is motivated at least in part by the fact that Christianity has no theory of concepts and thus offers no conceptual understanding of the nature of knowledge. So his statements here can be taken as an attack against Objectivism.

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Objection 2

This is the third entry in my series examining attempts by “Clarkian presuppositionalist” Jason Petersen to refute a series of statements by Objectivist philosopher Dr. Leonard Peikoff on the topic of the existence of a god.

The first entry in this series can be found here.

The second entry in this series (Objection 1) can be found here.

Dr. Peikoff’s statements in question can be found here.

Jason Petersen’s response to Peikoff can be found here.

In this entry I will examine Petersen’s attempts to refute Peikoff’s “Objection 2” against theism. As in his approach to Peikoff’s “Objection 1,” Petersen again tries to perform an internal critique against Peikoff. In the present case, Petersen charges that Peikoff is making affirmations which Objectivist epistemology cannot support. We will find that Petersen makes this charge in glaring ignorance of what Objectivist epistemology actually teaches. Not to give the whole thing away, but Petersen repeatedly shows that he has little if any understanding of concepts. This lack of understanding, of course, can be traced back to Petersen’s own worldview, Christianity, which provides no understanding of concepts.

So let’s jump in and see what we see.

Petersen’s Failed Attempts to Refute Leonard Peikoff: Preamble

In a brief essay titled A Response to Dr. Leonard Peikoff on the Existence of God, the founder of ”Answers for Hope Ministries” and “Clarkian Presuppositionalist” (according to his bio page) Jason Petersen interacts with a set of statements transcribed from Leonard Peikoff’s lecture series titled The Philosophy of Objectivism. The transcription of Peikoff’s statements can be found here. Peikoff’s statements encapsulate several brief reasons why it is proper for rational individuals to reject all forms of god-belief. Petersen treats Peikoff’s statements as though they were intended to be fully developed arguments, which they are not.

Although Petersen allows that Objectivism is “one of the more interesting atheist philosophies,” his goal in his paper is to “demonstrate that there is no substance to the Objectivist’s objections to God, or specifically, Christianity.” Perhaps Petersen is under the impression that merely interacting with Peikoff’s brief asides should be sufficient to discredit Objectivism in toto. If that is the case, Petersen puts his reputation as a serious thinker into grave doubt.

Before launching into his interaction with Peikoff’s statements, Petersen gives some prefatory remarks about Peikoff in particular and Objectivism as a whole. I will confine the present blog entry to considering the remarks he gives here and examine his responses to Peikoff’s statements in subsequent entries.

How Bahnsen Gives Away the Farm in His Debate with Gordon Stein

Taking the points I make in my blog entry Presuppositionalist Pseudolosophy as a point of departure, we now turn to a poignant example in the annals of presuppositionalist debating history which shows how easily apologists succumb to the ignorance-riddled view of knowledge on which they base their sophistry.

Presuppositionalists make explicit appeals to products of human psychological activity, such as concepts, laws, propositions, etc., and make claims to the effect that they do not change and are not subject to space and time. Because of these attributes, theists associate such phenomena with the supernatural. They even go so far as to treat products of human psychological activity as though they were entities existing independent of human cognition, perhaps floating in the air or in some other dimension, and somehow they are pressed into our passive consciousnesses by means of supernatural force.

Often Christian apologists will interrogate non-Christians on whether they think everything that exists is “material” or physical. The underlying implication of such questions is that the theist has mind-independent phenomena in mind here. But then they quickly shift focus, perhaps for some apologetic expedience, to things which are mind-dependent. This becomes apparent when theists raise as examples things like truth, universals, mathematics, the laws of logic, etc.