Thanks, Zac. I agree, it’s good to understand something before you criticize it, and I know there’s still a lot I could learn about presuppositionalism. Maybe I’ll look into it. I was just trying to deal with what was being presented, but I know that’s not the whole story.

While I won’t directly address Jimmy’s comment, I would like to apologize to Jennifer for letting the conversation get to where it got. I would simply like to clarify one or two things (and not continue this discussion). I was no where saying or implying that you were stupid or unable to grasp the topic at hand. What I was trying to say was simply that this is a complex topic and that you had admitted that you were not familiar with it. Even though I said on several occasions that a conversation on this blog post was not going to be adequate, I continued the discussion. That was my fault. I should have simply directed you to appropriate resources and left it at that.

I was directing you to those resources not in an attempt to shut you up, but in an attempt to direct you to where you can read some things (two of those books are around 100 pages or less and that website is full of short, free articles) if you were interested in reading more about Clark. If you’re not, then that’s fine.

I was not intending to communicate that I thought that I was somehow smarter than you–especially with my comment about teaching the undergrads–my comment was meant to explain why it is that problems with ambiguity might be arising in this discussion whereas they might not arise in every day conversations or even conversations about other issues.

Finally, I am all for people to bring critical questions and evaluations against positions to which I hold. I merely think that it’s a good idea to understand the view before one attempts to criticize it.

However, I am asking that this exchange end. In my estimation it has clearly moved beyond Scriptural boundaries for such an exchange as I see very little “gentleness and respect” (1Pet 3:15-16) taking place in the tone of some of these responses.

Jennifer and Zac, you are both welcome to post here, and I appreciate your posts. But I think this conversation has run its course and has moved beyond the topic and become more personal than it appropriate.

I will delete any further posts on this thread related to this discussion.

If you were making anything approaching the kind of attempt to respect my thoughts and consider carefully my questions/observations that you are demanding I make for you, I can’t imagine you would continue to accuse me of misunderstanding and ignorance.

If your only response is again to trumpet my ignorance, please do not respond.

I’m sorry, are there reasons or aren’t there? I’ve suggested that there are reasons, but those reasons aren’t grounded in rational principles. You’ve suggested this is nonsensical. I’m at a loss.

Perhaps you are at a loss because you stopped reading after your bolded selection. Let me quote it again in its entirety:

While there are many reasons why you in fact do accept the presuppositions you do accept, there are no reasons that imply the truthfulness of your presuppositions–or else they are not presuppositions (things that are presupposed).

The earlier quotation of “It is simply nonsensical to say that one has reasons for one’s presuppositions.” was in response to your claims that one’s presuppositions are not arbitrary but that one can have reasons for accepting them.

Let’s illustrate with some basic logic. One system of formal propositional logic has as an axiom schema the following A -> (B -> A) which reads as If A then if B then A. There is no epistemic reason why one would accept it. It’s an axiom. One needs it (in this particular system) in order to start the system. However, there are plenty of pragmatic reasons why one might accept it: namely, that it (along with two other axiom schemata and one rule of inference) lets you deduce all of propositional calculus which purports to capture all of propositional logic.

By way of example, let us suppose that an atheist assumes that all phenomena has a naturalistic explanation. This is something that he could never prove. He has no reason to accept it; that’s why he assumes it. Yet, he has plenty of reasons (pragmatic) why he might accept it: it allows him to marginalize Christians whom he hates.

Again, back to my quotation with the bolded part: just keep reading.

Your worldview creates a world. In what sense, then, is objective truth true no matter what anyone thinks?

I don’t believe I am the only problem in this discussion.

I’m not seeing a problem anywhere else. I directed you to resources where you can study this topic, if you are interested, and then you think it to be a problem with my position because you can’t understand it in a few short comments on a blog? Perhaps you’re just too used to the sound byte culture.

One must understand truth claims. Certainly I don’t think that historical materialism is true. I think that it is false. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Marxist thinks that it is true. I don’t give any weight to hist. mat. at all. Yet, if I simply imposed my system upon the Marxist, then he would simply assert that I’m begging the question.

I do not have “access” to the external world, meaning my senses do not acquaint me with the external world. One needs only to study the history of science (in particular pay attention to Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend). One scientific ‘paradigm’ will tell of a phenomenon that it purports to explain, while the next system doesn’t recognize that particular phenomenon as something to be explained and it will offer some new phenomenon that the old paradigm didn’t recognize as a phenomenon to be explained.

So, in that sense, the only facts that we have “access” to are facts without our system: facts for us. This does not, however, change the fact that there is objective truth. Hence, the illustration that I gave earlier of Popper talking about the peak of a mountain. Just because we are not sure that we are at the peak and can not confirm it, does not change the fact that there is a peak.

Again, I reiterate, this is not a topic that you can fully explore on a few short blog posts. That’s why people still write books. I directed you towards some sources if you are interested. The amount of things that would need to be explained in order for you to work through the system is beyond the task of even 20-something comments (though I have made maybe half, so 15 comments or so). I’m not meaning to insult you, but you are ignorant of the complexities of this subject and that then causes you to miss much of what is being said.

This isn’t because you are incapable of understanding it. Imagine if a physicist tried to explain to you quantum physics in 15 comments on a blog post. It ain’t happening. I’m trying to point you in the right direction and show where you misunderstand presuppositionalism, but you must understand that this is not a substitute for in-depth study (again, only if you are interested).

“It is simply nonsensical to say that one has reasons for one’s presuppositions.”

“While there are many reasons why you in fact do accept the presuppositions you do accept, there are no reasons that imply the truthfulness of your presuppositions–or else they are not presuppositions (things that are presupposed).”

I’m sorry, are there reasons or aren’t there? I’ve suggested that there are reasons, but those reasons aren’t grounded in rational principles. You’ve suggested this is nonsensical. I’m at a loss.
_____

“I’ve explicitly stated that I do believe in ‘objective truth’.”

“I would say objective truth is something that is true regardless of what anyone (except God, of course) thinks about the matter.”

“your worldview explains the world that it creates.”

Your worldview creates a world. In what sense, then, is objective truth true no matter what anyone thinks?

I don’t believe I am the only problem in this discussion.

That’s what philosophers spend a good deal of their time doing in graduate school doing: learning about the seemingly irrelevant distinctions that have made a huge difference over the centuries in philosophical discourse.

I have never had this much trouble with someone understanding the way I use words, or with someone constantly suggesting I’m misusing them. Either everyone else I’ve ever interacted with is just being polite, or else we just operate in different circles. But either way, that break down in communication makes it impossible for me to either inquire into what you’re saying, or to refute it, so I feel pretty powerless in this conversation. Maybe I’ll read some Clark, although my summer reading list is already more than I can manage.