Apples & Transcendental Arguments

Imagine you had a basket full of apples and you wanted to distinguish between the ones that are good and the ones that are bad. You decide to build an apple-sorting machine that would do exactly that. This machine is supposed to sort the good apples from the bad apples. But how can you build this machine without already knowing how to differentiate good apples from bad ones? You can’t. But you also can’t sort the good apples from the bad ones without the machine. So you are left in a position of helplessness - unable to tell which apples are good and which apples are bad.

The above analogy perfectly summarizes the age-long philosophical conundrum known as the problem of the criterion. The problem can be explained by asking two questions: (1) what do we know? and (2) how do we determine in any particular case that we know?

It seems that we cannot answer (1) without having an answer to (2). We cannot point to particular cases of knowledge without a standard/criterion according to which we demarcate cases of knowledge from non-knowledge cases.

On the other hand, we cannot answer (2) without already having an answer to (1). We cannot determine a criterion of knowledge without already possessing some paradigm cases of knowledge because the criterion must itself be an item of knowledge.

So it seems we are stuck in a vicious circle with no way to get our epistemological theorizing off the ground. Without a criterion, there’s no rational way to demarcate truth from falsehood. But how do we know any proposed criterion does the job of demarcating truth from falsehood if we do not already have an idea of what’s true and what’s false? Many responses to this problem have been provided but none of them work.


The problem of the criterion provides a nice foundation for us to launch a transcendental argument for Christianity. Christianity alone provides the solution to this problem. Through divine revelation, we are supplied with both criterion of knowledge and particular knowledge. As such, divine revelation can be shown to be epistemically necessary.

This is an argument I develop in my book, The Best Argument for Christianity. You can grab your own copy here. 

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