Against Autonomy: A Response to David Pallmann

Here I would be responding to a YouTube video released recently by David Pallmann titled “What’s Wrong With Presuppositional Apologetics: A Response to Greg Bahnsen”. His video may be found here (https://youtu.be/kGty9nX9_8U).

Circular Reasoning and the Is/Ought Fallacy

The quotes from Van Til and Bahnsen were taken out of context. He quotes Bahnsen:

All argumentation between non-Christian and believer must inevitably become circular,  beginning and ending with some personal authority.

However, this is the context of the above quote:

But at base, when one is giving reasons for his fundamental outlook on reality and knowledge he will appeal to some personal authority: his own mind, an esteemed scholar, a group of thinkers, the majority opinion, or God. Providing that no mistakes have been made in logical calculus or observation, a difference in personal authority will always lie behind an argument that is at an impasse. Disagreements in world-view (the axis of metaphysics-epistemology-ethics) finally reduce to an absolute antithesis in personal authority.

Until one\"s authority structure changes, his ultimate philosophic position will remain unaltered. Therefore, all argumentation between non-Christian and believer must inevitably become circular, beginning and ending with some personal authority (and not a question of epistemology or metaphysics abstracted from the other). 

Bahnsen was speaking about the inevitable circularity that occurs when people with differing ultimate commitments argue against each other. Because their ultimate commitments are different, they cannot avoid begging the question against each other. This ultimately leads to the discussion being circular because neither one would forfeit their most basic heart commitments. Likewise Van Til, he was quoted as saying:

All reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning.

But the full context of the quote is this:

The answer to this question cannot be finally settled by any direct discussion of “facts.” It must, in the last analysis be settled indirectly. 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.

To admit one’s own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting-point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.

Van Til was also speaking of the circularity involved when reasoning or arguing about ultimate commitments. Our starting point (ultimate commitment) informs our method (epistemology) and also the kind of conclusions we draw. A naturalist who is committed to the truth of naturalism would tailor his method accordingly and the types of conclusions he draws from facts would cohere with that method and starting point. This ties back to Van Til’s point which the larger context of the quote provides: an appeal to facts cannot settle the dispute over fundamental issues between proponents of competing philosophical systems because the interpretation of facts is regimented and organized by their respective presuppositions or ultimate commitments. Circularity, on this interpretation, is merely referring to consistency within a system or worldview. This circularity is not fallacious - it cannot be - because it does not involve any direct argument. It is epistemological in nature.

Basically, David erroneously thinks that Van Til and Bahnsen were speaking about circularity of argument. Circular arguments are fallacious. But neither Van Til nor Bahnsen endorsed circular arguments. Rather, they were speaking about the circularity involved in the arguments over ultimate issues between adherents of competing worldviews. Any direct argument or direct appeal to facts against a worldview would ultimately beg the question against that worldview. This is because such direct appeals assume standards of interpretation that are foreign to that worldview.

Direct Acquaintance, Non-inferential Justification, and Foundationalism

David goes on to present a theory of non-inferential justification. He believes that the presuppositionalist’s claim that all reasoning is ultimately circular stems from an erroneous idea that justification only comes in the form of arguments or inferences. In presenting a theory of non-inferential justification, he believes he refutes this idea. However, as has been pointed out earlier, neither Van Til nor Bahnsen were talking about circularity of argument. So we can dismiss his claim to refute them with his proposed theory. We can, however, turn to his theory of direct acquaintance and critique his Foundationalism.

First of all, it must be pointed out that presuppositionalists hold to some form of Revelational Epistemology. And RE also affirms non-inferential justification. Both Van Til and Bahnsen affirmed that our beliefs in God and in the divine origin of Scripture are justified non-inferentially. They believed that we had direct acquaintance with the divine origin of revelation and this direct acquaintance justifies our beliefs. So David’s assumption that the presuppositionalist would reject non-inferential justification because we think all reasoning is circular is erroneous. We do not believe all justification must be inferential and we believe that direct acquaintance is a cogent theory of non-inferential justification. However, we would take issue with David’s use of these theories in support of autonomy. We can raise some issues for his Foundationalism as an autonomous epistemology.

David attempts to build a house of knowledge autonomously upon allegedly incorrigible perceptual foundations. However some issues arise:

1. He has taken for granted things such as his own existence and the uniformity of his perceptual experience. There may be direct acquaintance with certain perceptions or experiences but why think that these perceptions and acquaintances correspond to a continuously existing subject? The most rational conclusion seems to be that some perception is occurring. However, to assume that these perceptions correspond to a subject of knowledge seems arbitrary. It seems that even the incorrigible perceptual foundations rest upon a more foundational assumption of the existence of a self or subject and the uniformity in this subject’s experiences. If David truly wants to construct an autonomous epistemology, he must not be allowed to take such things for granted. 

2. A second issue that can be raised for perceptual foundationalism is the fact that perceptions without prior concepts are unintelligible. This was brought up by Bahnsen in the article “Revelation, Speculation, and Science” which David interacted with in the video. However, he merely dismissed it. Without in-built concepts and classification systems, all we would have are isolated sense data. Perceptions can only be made sense of when prior concepts with which we can classify and interpret the sense data are in place. Once again, it seems the alleged perceptual foundations of David’s epistemology rest on something more foundational. In this case, prior concepts. However, on this model, how are concepts acquired? Contrary to David’s claim, a working theory of concept formation is essential if his autonomous epistemology is going to get off the ground. He seems to claim that concepts are gained from experience. But as we have noted, prior concepts are needed to make sense of experience! This was Bahnsen’s point that the inability for concepts to be acquired one by one poses a major problem for such a theory of non-inferential justification. We can take David’s example that one is directly acquainted with the fact that one has a headache. Knowing this requires one to possess prior concepts of pain, headaches, etc. It seems, then, that direct acquaintance cannot work without concepts already in place.

3. A final issue that can be raised is that David’s epistemology falls prey to the egocentric predicament. Even if we grant him his perceptual foundations and a direct acquaintance with them, his autonomous epistemology is still found wanting. For perceptual foundations are internal to the subject and as such, one cannot move from subjective premises to objective conclusions. Since his epistemology begins with the subject, he cannot build a bridge from his subjective experience to any external world of facts. David admits this much when he says that an external world is not necessary for his theory. However, if this is the case, we are left wondering exactly what problem his theory of direct acquaintance is supposed to solve and how it’s supposed to support his autonomous epistemology.

Justification of Logic and Deduction

David attempts to provide a foundation for logical truths and deductive reasoning by appealing to analyticity and direct acquaintance once again. He claims that logical laws are analytic truths and as analytic truths they are justified by direct acquaintance with the relevant concepts. We can respond to this in a couple of ways.

First, we could deny the analytic/synthetic distinction which his justification is predicated upon all together. Why should we make a distinction between a certain class of truths which are “analytic” and others which are “synthetic”? As it turns out, the analytic/synthetic distinction is poorly drawn and Bahnsen pointed this out in his paper about Revisionary Immunity (here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e2VNbsYEvg20KRQpdW_MNGmFcFCwO6Yo/view). So contrary to a claim David makes later in the video, Bahnsen did interact with the notion of analyticity. We could ask what it means for a truth to be “analytic”. According to David, analytic truths are true in virtue of the meaning of the constituent terms. In that case we could ask what exactly meaning is and how it is individuated. When do two sentences mean the same thing or different things? It should be pointed out that two sentences may refer to the same thing while having different meanings. Hence, we must draw a distinction between a theory of reference and a theory of meaning. Without a coherent account of what meaning is, David’s notion of analytic/synthetic distinction seems to be dead in the water. David has not demonstrated that there is a special class of truths that qualify as “analytic” and as such his purported justification is left without a foundation.

Secondly, if logical truths are justified by direct acquaintance with the relevant concepts, why is it that throughout the history of philosophy various supposedly analytic logical truths have been heavily disputed by “rational” men? Is  it going to be claimed that these philosophers did not understand the concepts involved in these statements? The vast disagreement about what exactly logical truths are and what truths count as logical truths proves that direct acquaintance with the relevant concepts is insufficient to justify belief in logic.

Thirdly, even granting the pure analyticity of logical truths, there is another problem which the autonomous thinker faces. Bahnsen brought this up in the book but it seems David did not understand Bahnsen’s point. The issue is if logical truths are confined to some analytic a priori realm, what reason is there to think that they have anything to do with the contingent realm of experience? Granting the analytic nature of logic, all we end up with are purely formal, abstract principles. Why, then, should reasoning about concrete matters of fact have these laws imposed upon them? We could ask the question of where one acquires the so-called “relevant concepts”. Do we possess them prior to experience? If so then our application of these a priori concepts to the extra mental world is arbitrary since the extra mental world need not conform to the logical structure of our minds. Do we acquire these concepts from experience? If so then they are not really analytic! 

Alternative (Indirect) Justification of Logic and Deduction

David offers an alternative justification for logic:

Consider that any perception that is given to me has certain properties. Among these are logical properties. For example if it appears to me that I see a red car, then I am not appeared to as seeing the negation. My perception of the red car is non-contradictory. If I acquire a large number of non-contradictory perceptions and acquire no perceptions that are exceptions, then I may justifiably infer that all perceptions will be non-contradictory. And if I believe that my perceptions accurately reflect reality to a large degree I can then conclude that the best explanation for my uniform and repeated experience of non-contradictory facts is that there is a law of non-contradiction 

We can raise problems for this purported justification as well.

Firstly, why should it be assumed that perceptions possess logical properties? This seems unwarranted. When one perceives a red car, all one perceives are the various sensible qualities of that object. One does not perceive any logical properties such as non-contradiction. The notion that one’s perception of the red car is non-contradictory is as a result of one’s interpretation of the perception based on prior logical categories which brings us to the next problem for this view.

Secondly, it is viciously circular as it assumes knowledge of logical categories (such as negation, contradiction, inference and exception).

Third, the majority of logical truths are so complex that it is dubitable that one can have perceptions of them.

Fourth, such an account, even if successful, makes logical laws more like laws of nature than laws of thought. This is not only counter-intuitive but it contextualizes logical truths by making them only apply to the narrow domain of human experience. One can no longer apply logic to the future, past, or possible worlds. 

Justification of Induction

David attempts to answer Hume and justify induction by appealing to direct inference and Bernoulli’s Theorem. It must be pointed out that David does not explain exactly how induction is justified with these, he merely tells us that it is. For example he says:

Yet how are we to justify our belief in the major premise of a direct inference? This can be done by a combination of Bernoulli’s Theorem and a second direct inference

Here David assures us that induction can be justified in this way however he spends no time explaining how exactly it is justified. We can still raise problem for his purported justification, though.

Firstly, by treating experience like a sample and the entire universe as a population, David has taken for granted the interrelatedness of the facts. Once again we must remember that David is attempting a defense of autonomy and as such must not be allowed any freebies. He has assumed that his various experiences are not wholly discrete and disjointed. If every fact was unrelated to every other, and every experience was so distinct as to have nothing to do with the next experience, then the facts and experiences cannot be treated as samples of wider populations since this assumes a relation between them. The whole point of the problem of induction is that there is no reason to move beyond the present testimony of our senses. However, calling the experienced a sample and the unexperienced a population already assumes a relation between the two that allows us to move beyond particular experiences!

Second, even ignoring the above issue, more problems could be raised. I’ll quote Marc Lange at length for he deals with this purported solution in his paper “Hume and the Problem of Induction”. He writes:

However, we might question whether the statistical syllogism is indeed a principle of good reasoning.  It presupposes that we assign every possible large sample the same subjective probability of being selected (so since there are overwhelmingly more large samples that are representative of the overall population, we are overwhelmingly confident that the actual sample is representative). Why is this equal-confidence assignment rationally obligatory? The intuition seems to be that when we have no reason to assign any of these samples greater subjective probability than any other, we ought to assign them equal subjective probabilities. To do otherwise would be irrational. But perhaps, in the absence of any relevant information about them, we have no reason to assign any subjective probabilities to any of them.

In other words, the motivation for the equal-confidence assignment seems to be that if we have no relevant information other than that most marbles in the urn (or most possible samples) are red (or representative), then it would be irrational to be confident that a non-red marble (or unrepresentative sample) will be selected. But this undoubted fact does not show that it would be rational to expect that a red (or representative) one will be selected. Perhaps we are not entitled to any expectation unless we have further information, such as that the marble (or sample) is selected randomly (i.e., that every one has an equal objective chance of being selected). Williams is quite correct in insisting that in the absence of any relevant information, we are not entitled to believe that the sample is selected randomly. So why are we entitled to other opinions in the absence of any relevant information?

This may seem complex but the idea is simple. David appeals to Bernoulli’s Theorem which roughly states that any sufficiently large sample approximates the entire population to a large degree. He uses this theorem to support the major premise of his direct inference. To put it in clearer terms, let’s take the example of our experience of nourishment which bread provides. According to the statistical syllogism (or direct inference) if the proportion of Fs that are Gs is p, then p represents the degree of confidence that we should have that the next F would be a G. Applying this to our bread example it becomes: if the proportion of bread that is nourishing is p, then p is the degree of confidence we have that the next bread would be nourishing. But how do we know that the proportion of bread that is nourishing is p? David says we apply Bernoulli’s Theorem. Applying it to this case, it would mean that our sample (in this case, our total experience of past bread) approximates the entire population (the totality of bread including the ones we haven’t experienced). Lange’s point is that for this syllogism to work we must assume that every large sample has an equal probability of being selected. But without further information, this equal-probability assignment is unwarranted.

If the only relevant information we possess is that most bread we have experienced (samples) are nourishing (representative of the population),  then it would be irrational to be confident that a non-nourishing bread (unrepresentative sample) would be encountered (selected). This much is true. However, this does not imply that a nourishing bread would be encountered! In other words, David’s answer to Hume does not give us reason to expect uniformity in nature and as such his defense of autonomy is found wanting.

Conclusion

David has tried to defend epistemological autonomy and refute Presuppositionalism. However, as we have observed above, his purported defenses are unsuccessful. David must be commended for he, unlike most critics of the position, has read and interacted with the source material and his video is a welcome addition to the entire discourse. His points, however, don’t hold up under scrutiny.