all right this time I'm going to talk about transcendental arguments I want to give an introduction to them and ultimately maybe this will be a midlevel examination of the question um I've had a lot of commenters and people have requested this type of a discussion I'm a little bit sick forgive me the first thing to consider is that what is a transcendal argument well a transcendal argument is basically uh it is a logical uh argument it is a type of argumentation um but they have a different form compared to most types of arguments or propositions or statements as they would be displayed in a syllogism or an argument or so forth so transal arguments are unique they are something closer to um what we call apophatic theology um in Christian theology biblical theology it's in Jewish theology too and I suppose Islamic there's the idea that God's uh attributes um are not directly known in the sense of we don't know as humans what it is to be infinite we don't know what omniscience is we can give a uh an explanation of what omniscience or infin it is but generally speaking when we do that we're doing it by showing what it is not and so negative theology via negativa or a apophatic theology is the Theology of what something isn't and it's what something isn't when we're talking about something like God simply because we don't have a direct experience or knowledge of what it is to be something beyond what we know as humans we don't know directly what what um omnipotence is we have an idea of it but the idea of it again comes from the negations of what it is not it is not to be limited it is not to be you know a um contained level of human power it is it's beyond that right so a lot of times the Divine attributes then ultimately are um apophatic or if we talk about God's nature which we don't have any knowledge of we don't know what it is to be the divine nature we'll never know that um and so it is spoken of uh negatively in the same way when it comes to logic or when it comes to human reasoning and argumentation it's it would seem to follow as well that when we talk about the ultimate principles of logic or how logic works or human cognition or uh the forms of argumentation um we we come to similar types of um principles so a transcendental argument and a good example of this is um the first example is Aristotle gives this when he's arguing with the sopus and this comes up in the metaphysics the sophist or the relativists of his day come along and say well Aristotle how do we know that the law of non-contradiction is true because you've got all these fancy arguments and you got all this this logical um uh laws and all this but how do we know that these laws are right maybe these laws are wrong and Aristotle gives they transcendental argument he says well when you as the sophist uh try to refute the law of non-contradiction you actually prove it in the act of denying it because you're using it in the in the process of denying it when you're saying that it's contradictory the law of non-contradiction is contradictory that is a contradiction so it's unavoidable and other words you can't um you can't be involved in this kind of logical process or in any kind of logic or mathematics or anything like that without uh if If you deny the fundamental principles um or maxims you end up contradicting yourself and so aist says this is actually a unique form of argument that I'm giving right so a lot of people have all these misunderstandings they think well that's not actually an argument that's not uh you're just playing word games no no no no no this is not word games right it's not word games anymore than say grell's theorems were word games because he's using a transcendental kind of argument um for number sets in the same way uh when you talk about logic when you talk about the law of non contradiction what we're actually saying is um what is the logic behind logic that's ultimately where we're going so it's a question of metall logic um so that's the first example that Aristotle gives and and we might say that it's an indirect argument when Aristotle gives that argument against the sophist it's it's indirect it's not it's not a positive claim it's not an empirical claim it's an indirect more of an a priori claim intended to repute the sopus through reductio at absurdum which is reducing the opponent's position to absurdity now a lot of people will make the criticism about this kind of argument that well yeah but just a reductio it because it's an indirect argument it doesn't prove anything positive well that's not true in other words just because an argument is stated in uh an indirect form it can also be reversed and put into a positive form and you can do that with any kind of argument just depends you could just universalize it and make it a universal claim so the fact that it's an indirect argument really has nothing to do with um the um force or uh Power of the argument so that's a a misapply criticism that a lot of people who either don't understand or don't like transcendal arguments gives they say well it's just it's just because it's an indirect argument it doesn't it doesn't really prove much it's also not true because there are all kinds of things that are implied by um an indirect argument like this that just because they're implied and not immediately stated doesn't mean that they don't necessarily follow right so it's kind of like it's kind of like a trick where the person who who rejects this kind of argument or the the force of this this kind of an argument is saying well just be well because you haven't stated it uh therefore it's not true well in other words if I say 2 + 2 equal 4 right I haven't immediately included the number one anywhere there right but the number one is implied it's implied in making up two and making up two and then making up four so just because something isn't immediately included it does not follow that it is therefore not necessarily implied um so when we have an indirect argument such as the law of non-contradiction is uh contradictory that the sophists gave when we point out that that is itself a contradiction we are not merely uh saying only that um there are all kinds of other things that are implied there one of which is that the law of of noncontradiction is true so just because the the the argument as it's immediately directly stated just because it doesn't also State um explicitly that the that the law of noncontradiction is true that's the very thing that it demonstrates why because when the sophist denies the law of noncontradiction he assumes it so that's the thing so it's almost like yeah in one sense um what we're trying to prove is is maybe is cloaked or or or implied a bit but that really has nothing to do with the status of whether or not it's true or false and that brings me to the next the next crucial point that ever U is is commonly misunderstood about these types of um arguments which is that well transal arguments are not that good uh because they don't prove anything right they just they might give us a kind of indicator of questioning radical skepticism but they don't prove anything so you can never have some transcendental argument that proves God because transcendental arguments by their very nature can't prove anything well that also is again a misunderstanding uh very similar to the the misunderstanding I mentioned a moment ago was kind of a cousin uh an evil Offspring misunderstanding of the first so in other words when we say well um when we talk about proving something this is a very difficult U loaded philosophical question because um while there may be a common sense notion of what it is to prove something in another way in another sense um what do we actually mean when we prove something right so this gets into a whole long historical debate in the subject of epistemology and how do we know and so forth how do we have certainty is certainty [Music] possible well the first thing to point out is that just like when we we mentioned apophaticism about God's nature or um you know highly uh U esoteric principles or you know um you know some abstruse principle of logic you know or mathematics or maybe physics or something like that there are always aspects of things that are unknown to us there are always things that we don't know about an object or about another person or about an idea or a principle so this veiled or cloaked nature uh of everything ultimately um is always going to be the case it's inescapable because we're finite will'll never have in we'll never have omniscience so we have two options when we realize that which is something that you know I don't think anybody would deny that um you know unless there may be some crazy uh sectarian who thinks that he has omnition or something who thinks he's Jesus or thinks he's the Messiah or something like that generally speaking most people will not think they have omniscience so given that we don't and we probably won't ever um unless you maybe you're some transhumanist who thinks he's going to be like a great God computer or something one day um would we we are left with the option of saying well either we have no knowledge then and all all knowledge is um uncertain uh where we're total relativists and Skeptics or there's some other way um by which we can have um some sort of degree of certainty so we might talk about degrees of certain certainty um some philosophers speak of warranted and unwarranted beliefs in other words do I have um significant epistemic justification ation to believe in one thing over another thing um and um we can also talk about you know empirical claims different levels of status for um you know something like investigating a murder and you know coming to conclusions based on the evidence um but what we see here is that clearly things like empirical observations related to science or a murder case or something like that uh judge and jury have a higher level of Doubt or Reasonable Doubt or skepticism because they're empirical claims as opposed to something like say you know 2 plus 2 equal 4 right so we're we just tend to intuitively think and believe and I think rightly so that mathematical claims or claims that deal with um ideational we might say logical conceptual principles maxims things like that uh tend to be a little more objective and they tend to have a an AR priori necessary quality about them right so there's not you know excluding questions of really really um you know advanced mathematics you know about numbers and number Theory um if we look at something like you know there's no there's no new facts that we're going to gain you know tomorrow or you know through some research in a lab that's going to make 2+ 2 not equal four know that's that's we we have a clear Justified certain belief that tomorrow 2 plus two is still going to be four uh whether or not tomorrow you know there's still going to be a Dairy Queen at the end of my street I have less certainty right so that is an example of how there's different levels of what it is to be certain about things and and how um different beliefs and experiences are categorized in you know levels of um justification for those beliefs and so a lot of times with the people who are very critical of or misunderstand this timee the transel argumentation they're not keeping that in mind so they're they're coming at this and thinking that either you know um we can't have any certainty uh or more often than not it's you know the Dawkins Darwin materialist type person who encounters a transcendental argument for God and so the first thing he goes to is wanting to show that a transal argument doesn't prove anything and why not well because it's not empirically verifiable that's one of the most common objections that we get to this type of argumentation well that's really just you know grade school level response because it's not even taken into account all the different levels of you know certainty and uncertainty that we have about different beliefs and different types of things so when we talk about proofs when we talk about what we know and what we don't know there's always a level of uncertainty there's always a level of um veiled character about um any object here's another helpful example in this regard and one of the points that um phenomenology is good in bringing out which is a branch of a school of philosophy is that if you were to take any object right if let's say we we do want to let's say for the sake of argument we wanted to start with our empirical experience any object of perception any object in our field of vision um it's always going to be limited by what we can immediately see so if I'm looking on a book the book has a whole bunch of pages inside and it has a backside that's not immediately perceptive perceptible to me I have to turn the book around but alas when I turn the book around I no longer see the front when I open the book I'm limited to only seeing two pages and then no longer the front of the back and this is true of any object right if I'm standing outside of my house I see the outside of the house I'm limited as uh you know to where I don't see the inside or the backside so this is called in PH philosophy The Horizon of an object and so just any empirical object itself having this Horizon this limiting veiled aspect should show us that no empirical claim um really ultimately is as strong as any sort of empiricist would like it to be it's always limited right now that does not mean that we don't have knowledge or that we don't have certainty right we don't humans have this tendency to always jump to the radical um polar pendelum opposite of of whatever it is they've just discovered so you know if you're a philosophy student or something like this and you've come to this point and you've realized this then the tendency is to say well then we don't have any knowledge and we just leave deep to the opposite end of the spectrum and I'm a total relativist I'm a total skeptic nothing can be known because there's a horizon of objects or there's you know we can always call into question any kind of empirical observation and so we might be a humean skeptic well we don't have to go that route either there's another way um and so what I'm talking about is this mediating um sensible I think way to approach these questions based around transcendental arguments and what transcendal arguments do is it really ultimately is a very revolutionary way of looking at all these kinds of questions as it applies to logic mathematics metaphysics and knowledge because we can say yes we do have limitations on our empirical knowledge but the doesn't mean that we don't have a warranted um justification for our empirical observations and beliefs and it also doesn't mean that logical and mathematical principles are therefore empirical or dubious right um 2 + 2 equal 4 is not dubious it is not um um it is not um equally as doubtful as uh is there a Dairy coin at the end of my street all right so we we already kind of have this sense that there's a difference between those two kinds of questions The Logical and mathematical types of questions seem to give us a higher level of AR priori certainty because they kind of they they have this intuitive certain uh self-evident quality about them that no facts of experience are going to interrupt or change or alter the invariant immaterial aspects that they have right the number five is never going to turn into the number eight and you know the whole universe suddenly be cast into you know chaos we have whatever the highest level of certainty is that a human can have we can have that about those types of things you see what I'm saying so we can always in other words a better way to explain this is that well yes human knowledge is limited it it's apophatic in character but whatever it is right that is the highest level of certainty 2 plus 2 equal 4 type certainty that type of certainty can be had and it is had um it may not always apply to every s every single thing that we experience you know is the uh is your girlfriend cheating on you you know that's something empirical you don't know maybe she is maybe she isn't um but regardless um 2 + 2 = 4 um definitely has this non-empirical you know um independent uh uh character or property about it whereby it it functions to always be the case universally and it's not bound by time either or local so um when we talk about knowing things what I'm going to say is that the transcendental argument or transcendental argumentation is not like empirical claims it's more like the kinds of claims I was talking about before it's more like a logical claim more like a mathematical claim more like a strict necessary propositional to of claim right and it it's it's follows necessarily like the number four follows in the 2+ 2 equals equation so when we look at questions of metalogic and you know we don't want to get too fancy here too fancy pants but makes me think of that Jerky Boys with the fancy um um all we mean by metal logic is what is the logic of logic when we look at 2 + 2 = 4 we're just looking at the first level of that simple addition problem but math Theory asks the questions of what are the numbers there what is a number how is it that number exists how is it that the combination of these two things equals one thing even though it's two things combining right so the problem of the one and the many in philosophy is kind of a fundamental problem of math Theory or number theory in the same way when in logic we have these logical claims and postulates and then you know necessary conclusions or uh fallacies or so forth we can ask another question uh about well how is it that logic works why does it work you know what what's going on here um because as I said before you know logic is is part of everyday life it's part of everything it's used in the you know in science philosophy of science is based on logic and you know something like induction you know learning from trial and error we expect the future to be like the past right the problem of induction well how is it that something that underg guards empirical knowledge is so Elusive and yet so certain right and has that apathetic character about it well the explanation that I think is the best and that I think makes the most coherent sense and you know brings all this together is a transcendental argument in other words these are there are preconditions for the possibility of experience right now that's very important so if by chance any any fellow nerds are taking notes I would highlight that what is a transcendental argument simply put it's a precondition for the possibility of experience and we don't necessarily have to keep it you know only in this um you know Sub sub subjective human sense right so um it's not like um you know if there were no humans there would not be any any objective metaphysical principles or categories you know there still would be but just in so far as we are at this point in this discussion talking about human knowledge we are we can say well a transcendental argument or a transcendental category or a presuppositional category um is a precondition for the possibility of their being experienced at all so excuse me um before we get um further down that road I want to make the point as well that um let's say um let's take an example of uh this is one I always use because I think it's really good um because language is very very good about uh demonstrating transcendental categories and thinking right now um as I'm talking to to you you know through this little iPod we're having uh you know uh not an immediate but a but a human uh communication exchange so I'm forming sentences and and and spitting out words and hopefully they make sense and hopefully you you're receiving them um and they are going into your ears uh and your brain is processing that so forth so most people in philosophy most scientists most right like they they come to this and they say they have all these um um naive assumptions about what's going on here between this human interchange you know or you and another friend talking any human exchange of conversation information doesn't matter what most people approach and they say well this is a you know this is a dude who's who's uh pretentious dude who's rambling on about philosophy and what it is is you know this a series of determined chemical biological processes that have triggered the uh neurons in his head to spit out these sound waves through his vocal cords and this produces uh similar chemical uh and neurological reaction uh in the receiver uh and because uh the social situation in which they exist has decided to accept certain sounds as symbolizing other things when he talks about you know cats and dogs and philosophy and whatever these are social constructs that are you know um registering in the other brain and so uh based on Empirical research and sociological Sciences uh these are all just U material uh events uh predetermined and caused and blah blah blah blah blah so the whole field of modern science and modern philosophy for the most part is just completely dominated by that just that one level the here and the now and a purely materialistic isomorphic uh on level approach to explaining all of what's going on there and there's all you know a whole history of hundreds of years of philosophy and Scientific Revolution and so forth as to why that is as to why everyone just assumes all this stuff it's just it's just this dogmatic assumption across the board that everybody has that um most people have that you know all that medieval Plato Christian biblical Superstition metaphysics is gone we we've grown out of all that we're we're we're Progressive man now and we don't need any of that and we we are all now enlightened darwinian materialists blah blah blah well the transcendental philosopher or presuppositionalist or so forth comes through this example and says well wait a minute you would have me believe Mr atheist that all that's going on here is a bunch of um uh physical processes that's all that's going on here how is it that the arvar Well's see an arvar I'm talking about and thinking about an arar in my head and when I uh talk to another person about the arbark they get the same image or impression in their head when there's no artar around right how is it that we're able to communicate meaningfully about the same object given that the electrical impulses in his brain are different from the electrical impulses and chemical reactions in my brain how is it that there is some way in which the universal notion or concept of an arvar which is nowhere around is able to meaningfully be transmitted from one to the other now the typical U maybe a little bit higher IQ atheist at this point will say ah well that's a neat question but it's simply answered by saying that you at one time recorded an image of a arar through your eye cameras and because you're a blank slate the biological camera that is your brain uh computer camera recorded it and this other dude recorded it as well he knows what anark is and so um the symbols triggered this sort of sim that's this U uh similar um imagery to come to mind because you use the vocal cords AR bark that brought it to mind well the problem here is that we don't know that we are thinking of the same thing we also don't know how it is that that we mean the same thing now yeah we might talk about it and further Define our Concepts and you know get an approximation that we are thinking of the same thing in art but these electrical impulses themselves are not going to show us that we're actually talking about the same thing so in other words we're getting into a deeper question of uh universals because there's no art Ark around we're not talking about um that there are no essence on this view so how is it that we are able to meaningfully discuss something that is nowhere present that both of our minds seem to somehow grasp and understand and this is ultimately the question that Plato asked a long time ago and again I'm not making a Plato third man argument that's not the point here the point here is just that that question that Plato asked right we're not talking about a particular single arvar because the arvar I might be thinking of probably looks different than the one that the other dude's thinking of you know he might have saw an art of arc on the Discovery Channel you know I might have seen it in something I Googled right so that particular being or animal that I'm thinking of is not the same particular thing that he's thinking of how is it possible that we're having a meaningful exchange about this subject because we're talking about two different things right well the clever atheist responds at this point with well okay uh but you're just talking about the same classification that you two guys have right so yeah there's no artness out there in the world there's no there's no Ence of arbark or or form of that you know animal or something like that you guys are just talking about um um a similar symbolic token classification that Society has given we just call it an art you know we could have called it we could have called it ghetto booty if we wanted to it wouldn't matter it would still be just an art so the the S the um taxonomy the the names that we've given to it don't matter says the atheist it's just the same classification structure that you and the other guy know well my response there is but wait a minute you haven't really answered the question because what's in my mind and what's in his mind are not classification structures right cuz those those aren't material things in our minds are these images of different arars let me give you another example Mr atheist to make this point even clearer when we talk about the number seven when I think about the number seven and when you think about the number seven let's say for the sake of argument that you don't imagine in your head you know any actual number or image of seven you know maybe the Roman numerals V and then you know I I or you know uh maybe I'm thinking of you know seven apples uh you know maybe you're thinking of you know the actual um Arabic numeral seven or something none of these are the same in themselves right seven apples is not the same as Roman numerals VII but seven is still there somehow right how is that and we can't just say it's a social construct token symbol category categorization because that just moves the problem back a step okay so it's a so a token symbol well if it's a social construct how is that social constructs like seven operate universally all over the planet and invariantly over all times right social constructs would be humanly created they wouldn't have the principle of being objective immaterial and invariant uh across the board across cultures in across time right so the number seven was still doing its seven thing for the Greeks as it is for us today as it is in China and that should be pretty obvious right and it as it is at this point that the atheist materialist is just completely flustered across the board I've had this debate I don't know how many times probably 150 times um because this is really the Crux of where we're at we need universals we need these kinds of objective metaphysical categories and principles there's no answer for them there's no explanation for them on the kind of worldview presented by these people this my friends is a trans transcendental argument so what I just gave is a great example of a transcendental argument now I'm sure the atheist questionable listeners the the inquiring Skeptics who will hear this will have all kinds of responses I'm sure I'll get some you know bunch of emails and comments and so saying well you didn't understand blah blah blah your arguments dumb blah blah blah now look again let's let's just make it really really clear in driveing home the number seven when I write the number seven on a chalkboard is that the number seven in one sense it's the number seven but in another sense it's not the number seven because if I erase it seven hasn't completely disappear from the face of the Earth right so how is it then that we can have instantiations of a thing we can have particular symbolic uh um images of a thing and yet when we erase them they seem to have this invariant unchanging unalterable character about them on the atheist perspective in worldview there is no way for those kinds of things to be because there are no possible objective unifying principles so what do I mean by that what I mean is that things like seven are not dependent upon human knowledge human creation human invention human thought they are independent of them right but the number seven is also not out there in the world it's not like it's out there laying under a rock somewhere I found the number seven it was under my it was in my sock bar now the world can be happy we have seven back because I found it under my sock drawer in my sock drawer no no no there's some other there has to be some other way for numbers to be so that's what I'm getting at and this is an example of a transal argument now granted the transal argument is applied to say numbers or or concepts are universals uh that may not immediately prove everything that we want to about God directly right we we have to attach other points and uh other data points and other um other principles and knowledge yes but ultimately yes it does follow that the only coherent explanation for how these things can be is God and that's where we're going with this so um I I might have started with uh uh a little more a more advanced example of a transcendental argument but uh um you know other versions of this can be given um the more clear the more simple version is when we give the ethical version we say well if there's no God then everything is permissible is what Doki said um but when we scratch an atheist when we punch an atheist when the when Dawkins is robbed I feel sure that he will have have a sense of moral indignation and the ultimate point with that is just that there's not really any reason for indignation I mean you may not personally like it there's not really a reason for it right but now if there is a God and there is objective right and wrong moral absolutes then then there is a reason um without God there's no reason at all for anything um and whatever happens just happens um killing a million people people is not any more or less moral or advantageous than giving than a nation having a million births and there's no qualitative difference between one or the other they're just events and in The Atheist materialist worldview events are completely leveled they they they're just events they're just phenomena because ultimately it's just chemicals reacting there's no difference difference between you may not again you may not like it you may this is you think of bur and Russell's famous essay why I'm not a Christian and he levels all these arguments about well actually that are just fallacies and emotional appeals he says well you're weak you know you can't rely on logic and science you're this or that you know a lot of which is is he's directing at red herrings and you know people that have presented bad arguments but the the the presentation is not a logical presentation it's just an emotional appeal in the same way as the atheist you may not like um bad things happening to you or people stealing from you but the the only thing you can come up with as a response is either well that's not what I like or Society has decided otherwise right so there's some sort of a social construct version of of morals um which is completely obviously laughable because you can socially engineer a society to believe anything so on this view there was nothing wrong with ASC sacrificing 10,000 people a day um that was perfectly acceptable for the Aztec because that was what was socially constructed for them um and today we've socially constructed The View that I don't even know what we would say is the socially acceptable view of morals in say modern America I mean it's just all over the board so ultimately the social construct view of uh morals is just complete nonsense it's there's no content there at all doesn't say anything and by the way which society I mean that what I mean is it local so if I if rape is allowed in you know one state and I drive to the state where it isn't and I do it does it then be I mean it's just it's just nonsense there's no there's no content to that view it's so elastic that it can mean everything anything and everything and nothing so uh so there's a a couple examples of the application of a transcendental argument um but from here we want to take it into U you know a deeper uh deeper questions about the status of them um how strong are they um which I've already kind of hinted at but we're going to go further in that direction um and then we're going to talk about theories of Truth coherence theory of Truth versus um the classical foundationalist versions of Truth um and then we'll talk about more about presuppositions talk more about um how it is there are there are preconditions for even having truth so all of these ultimately are just questions that the atheist materialist and most philosophers and even you know most theists most religious people apologists blah blah blah they're just Realms that these people haven't gone to questions they haven't asked or thought about or know about and so this is just an area that's so just unknown okay so what I really want to do is make this this known make this more public more more accessible um and point out that although on the surface a lot of this seems really obscure and Technical maybe um really it's not I mean we can have we can give really simple versions of all these points and principles that are accessible to anybody that are still transcendental arguments right like the the moral point Point like well if there's no God everything's permissible that's transcendental argument so um what I want to do then is say well what would be the what's what's the typical response to if there's no God everything is permissible typical response is okay well that doesn't prove anything so maybe there is a God which God how do we know right so we'll go from there so what are this what is the status of a transcendal argument in terms of uh strength um strictly speaking well I've said before that they are the I think the strongest form of argumentation that we have because they're actually the preconditions for how we can have arguments or truth at all so there are kind of a higher metaphysical epistemic and metaphysical category for um creating the possibility for not knowledge or for um well ultimately metaphys metaphysics or being or or the world at all um you know in so far as we in so far as this world is constituted and in so far as humans are constituted in this life transal arguments form the strongest version of argumentation so you know like the question we mentioned earlier of the law of non-contradiction um you know with Aristotle and sofus when Aristotle gives the transcendal argument for the law of noncontradiction what he actually shows is that this is a higher level or a or a more foundational level however you want to put the analogy version of logic or truth or principle that underg guards and creates the possibility for the law of non-contradiction itself to be the case so a good example I'm going to read um from this is a philosopher Hillary putam and now putam putam of course would not be would not agree with all the things that I'm saying or I want to take transal arguments where I think they go particularly with God but um his his comments here um do highlight some of what we're getting at and this is from um Stanford uh sopia philosophy on transal arguments uh and in my grad classes we did get to read a good bit of putam so you know I do have a pretty decent familiarity with with where he goes in this regard um but it says putam is Keen to emphasize the transcendental nature of his of his of his Enterprise in this respect he stresses that the kinds of constraints on reference that operate here disprove um basically he's talking about um skepticism and he put is trying to give a transal argument against skepticism which is really just it's sort of the most common usage of it and then and that makes sense because ultimately materialistic um you know atheistic non-believing worldviews end up in some kind of skepticism they can't provide any kind of real objective principle but to quote putting him he says what we've been doing is considering the preconditions for thinking about representing and referring we have investigated these preconditions not by investigating the meanings of words and phrases like a linguist might but by reasoning a priori not in the old absolute sense but in the sense of inquiring into what is reasonably possible assuming certain General premises or making certain very broad theoretical assumptions such a procedure is not empirical uh nor not quite a priora which a point I've made before but has elements of both ways of investigating in spite of the fallibility of my procedure it is its dependence and its dependence upon assumptions which might be described as empirical my procedure has a Clos relation to what Kant called a transcendental investigation for it is an investigation or repe repeat of the precondition of reference and hints of thought preconditions built into the nature of our minds themselves though not at as Kant hoped toly independent of empirical assumptions exactly and this is where we need to discuss Kant because Kant really really forged forward with the idea of transcendental argumentation we have to be very careful and have to be very clear because the next um confusion or question or objection that everyone has at this point generally is oh you're Conan this is all from Kant this is no no no no no a transcendental argument in its form is independent of Kant and his uh opinions and theories about things K was ultimately working with empiricist presuppositions and assumptions and gave a kind of transcendental argumentation uh that was only uh about the human mind itself so for con the human mind you know forms all these these categories of prec these preconditions of experience no no no no no that is absurd that is in fact what um I just argued against above in the or earlier in the U the point with the number seven or with the art the um the principle here is not empirical um and like putam says it's also not completely a priori because we are going to engage in aspects of experience but Kant thought that we could not you know have any knowledge or certainty of the external world so he has the Divide between the um the phenomenal and the ninal we do have these phenomena of experience and we know all about that we c c and classify that but we don't know that the world out there so I mean we can do actually do a transcendental critique of Kant because kant's assumption is that other minds work the same way as his mind that he's examining well by definition Khan has no knowled no ability to know how other minds work because that's part of the Pinal realm so K's philosophy works on a whole bunch of assumptions that he also did not question or engage in rather what we are saying is that some of the insights that Kant has about categories or preconditions of experience those are objective metaphysical principles and truths so we're simply saying that con divide between a phenomenal and Nal is false that is a an empirical construct and I've quoted and given uh points where philosoph opers other philosophers have refuted this um argument in K particularly HL responds forcefully to K's um error here but um puam gives us an example um here with what kind of a thing we're doing here it's more along the lines of um aiori argumentation which is um you know not based on empirical claims more like mathematics and uh it's not C all right so we're not we're not you know we we must be careful here of the error of fallacy of Association you know where oh when Kant said transcendental you're saying that you are cont and this is all Enlightenment stuff no no no no no this is 100% anti- enlightenment skepticism and empiricism and again this goes back to aerosol right so you know aerosol is not a skeptic the of course I would have disagreements with Aristotle's philosophy um in many regards you know as a person who um is more in line with Biblical views and uh you know patristic um investigation and Analysis of these questions but um you we're also not wholly agreeing with Aristotle but we can make the point that you know well Aristotle is not Aristotle uses transcendal arguments he's not a contion okay yeah you might argue that ultimately Aristotle's errors lead to K but there's nothing about a talking about a precondition of experience that necessitates Us in adopting all these other crazy things in K and that's another big big big misunderstanding that people have um and and even putam here you know makes the point that he's not um you know Kant thought that he was doing a transcendental idealism um but ultimately you you can escape the empirical world the empirical world is real it's there um all of these claims that we're making have clear empirical import and reference so um another important point to make when we do this kind of reasoning and argumentation in response to atheist materialist Etc is the point of what Dr bonson called the crackers and the pantry fallacy and you have to constantly explain this and make this point because the materialist assumption and presupposition which is what we're doing this kind of argumentation is critiquing those presuppositions uh is that all arguments are proved the same way so everything it proly this goes back to that question of proving things and the problem of what exactly we mean by proving things and levels of certainty and so forth um the material is pre uh you know uh version of um proof um 99% of the time is again just some sort of positivist empiricist um you know empirical collection of facts and then you know judgment and jury by the brain or whatever well if we are going to discuss objects that transcend uh empirical experience obviously the way that we would prove them is not the same way that we would prove whether there are crackers in the pantry so what happens is when we're discussing something like God or something immaterial and we're talking about proof for those things what the atheist does is sort of Poison the Well or skew the the discuss question from the outset uh by saying where is the physical proof of God right this is the Dawkins kind of thing like where's this the Flying Spaghetti Monster stuff like that this also is a very common um error for the the pop you know Reddit neck beard atheist types well it should be obvious that something that we're saying has the characteristics of being immaterial and invariant uh and unchanging and not bound by or altered by you know um physical manifestations is not going to be proven in the same way that physical things are by the very fact that we're saying or claiming believing that it is not like those things so you know it's like saying literally it's like saying I'm not going to believe that 2 + 2 equal 4 until you sh me that um you know there's uh until I can find the number two and the number two and the number four right I mean that's a that's a nonsense question right because the the type of thing that we're talking about is not Material yeah you can have material um manifestations of two items and two items and say that they're four items but you're not um experiencing you're not you're not showing by that the actual number two and the actual number four these are just examples of those things so if you were to ask the question how do we know or you know the law of logic or the law laws of nonc laws of logic or the law of non-contradiction is true and until I see physical proof of the law of non-contradiction I'm not going to believe it you're talking about things that by them very nature are prior to empirical experience and that's the point here that's the crucial crucial point something prior to physical experience empirical experience something that's a precondition for by its very nature cannot be demonstrated or proven in the same way that something that is empirical is proven or demonstrated or known and that should be obvious and so when we talk about God um I don't want to equate God with numbers or logic but God is the source of numbers and logic and so they do bear a clear relation to him and have their origin in him and in that regard um logical mathematical truths and principles are closer to the kind of um argumentation that we would give for God than you know classical what's called evidentialist apology etics you know the idea that well um you know the apostles rose from the dead and and uh or excuse me when Jesus rose from the dead and the apostles uh were changed after that uh so therefore Jesus rose from the dead that's a very very bad argument um may be true but also might not be true you know given um the unbelieving worldview you know maybe guys just you know rise from the dead maybe um maybe it was a freak occurrence maybe it was a you know maybe the apostles had uh mental issues and they just turned into you know sort of fearless crazed guys after that uh again the point being that you're you're not getting anywhere with that kind of argument it's it's it's incidental to the religion as a whole and it depends on um more foundational prior questions is Christianity or is religion or is theism true as a whole all right that's going to those questions are going to condition how you interpret the evidence such as Apostles having their you know lives changed I mean there might be Buddhists who have their lives changed after some experience right so changing lives really has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the worldview as a whole people change their lives all the time you know maybe um Muslims Chang their lives after they convert to Islam so it really has nothing to do again just this doesn't prove anything it's only going to be useful um in so far as the religion itself is true or false um so that's just again and that's why this is such a better version in form of apologetic or argumentation or presentation than any kind of of U evidentialist view right and that's not to say that evidences don't have a place but that when you bring forth a bunch of facts the Assumption there like you know Apostles changing their lives after Jesus was resurrected they went from fearful to bold when you bring forth a a fact or an Evidence like that that really only has Force um in so far as again the religion itself is true and it also has this faulty character of giving the impression that that it's not clear whether there's a God because you know again that argument presents a degree of skepticism and uncertainty and you know it's usually followed up by things like well you got to take a leap of faith and you know fism and you know we can't know um about theism or God really with any certainty we just kind of have to Marshall up a bunch of facts and and have this case and you know then hopefully we can make the leap and we'll be right in the long run that's all terrible that's terrible terrible argumentation terrible terrible apologetics and it really does a disservice to the religion in terms of what we think we believe about it and it also you know gives the wrong impression to non-believers that um you know this this is just silly you know I mean if this is the best kind of argument you've got well I mean why would I believe that it's it's silly it's dumb that's a terrible argument so if your religion has terrible arguments then you know what you what you say is supposed to be true about this God isn't true you know is he the Lord of logic if he's the Lord of logic which you would say according to your religion why are your arguments so illogical right so um evidences only have force in so far as they uh are part of a um correct precondition or presupposition and until you challenge those presuppositions for the atheist or the materialist or whatever um he's always going to interpret such facts um in so far as they line up with his presuppositions in other words it's a filter he's got a he's got a he's got this materialist filter on any kind of incidental fact that you bring up like that uh so for him it's just you know well they made it up you know they made it up that he that he resurrected or you know it was a freak science you know freak occurrence that science doesn't hasn't explained yet you know some guy you know passed out for a few days and he he woke back up um so because you haven't challenged the assumptions of his whole system which are assumptions of human autonomy um you know Rebellion against God so forth um at that that's why the argument is no good and why it fa s you know in other words until you take out the foundation of his um mental castle that he's built you know of unbelief and and Rebellion um you're not going to make much Headway right the fool has said in his heart there's no God so the the presentation you know according to Revelation about the person who is an atheist is not that he's an intellectual and the Christian is the you know leap of faith fiist it's it's the reverse right Revelation is intellectual and the atheist has the leap of faith uh foolishness that is characteristic of his worldview and that's important right because you know we need to do the kind of apologetic and methodology that God reveals not the kind of method methodology and apologetic that we think is more palatable and that is ultimately the big flaw with classical quote unquote you know to mytic style evidential apologetics is that It ultimately leaves a final court of appeal about God's existence in the hands of man but the way that Revelation describes God is that God does not give man the final quar of appeal about his existence you know as if God is on trial and then you know uh if if if enough humans um you know uh give a thumbs up you know to his existence then then God's existence will be proven you know otherwise otherwise you know well it's just all up in the air we know we don't know maybe maybe God exists May no no no that's all silly uh again because what is what are the implications for epistemology and metaphysics if the god of the Bible exists given what he says about his existence right so if God does exist according to what the biblical narrative and Revelation presents then he is the precondition for knowledge and experience and logic and Mathematics and Science period uh and so you couldn't do those things if there wasn't the kind of God that exists now you might say well how could that be that's crazy but no that's you're making such a strong claim there's no way you could prove that I mean that's that's just so farfetched from the standard mode of apologetics that so that that you know most Believers engage in you know most theists in general even you know this is this is unheard of and it it really it's unheard of not so much because it's it's difficult or hard per se I mean it might be there are te technical aspects of this argumentation but it's it's it's so revolutionary in the sense of being opposite of what we're conditioned to that it seems hard to believe it seems hard to believe that there could be uh you know proof for God like absolutely certain proof like that God's existence is more certain than anything else and it seems so far-fetched and revolutionary not because of the force of its of its logic but just because of what we're used to and that's what's so big here that's what's so huge and so difficult we're just so used to as humans being conditioned in a fallen world to doubt to unbelief to um empiricism that any um any argument in this constructed in this way presented in this way making this kind of a strong claim just seems astounding nevertheless it turns out much of our world as it really is is astounding much of the world is hard to believe is it hard to believe because there's a fault in the argument or is it hard to believe because there's a fault in man and that's really what we're getting at here because when you when you get into this kind of a uh discussion so often the response the criticism the objection is that well people if this was true then we'd all believe in God well no um something being true doesn't mean that people necessarily accept it I mean people people lie all the time and the biblical presentation is that man is fallen in in Rebellion against God and that's what's key here right so the the flaw in the certainty of God's existence is not found in God it's not found in the presentation of creation or in you know there's not a flaw in philosophy or logic or it's not it's not like God didn't present enough proof you know like maybe God presented 75% you know good evidence and then there's 25% of you know of uh of of the facts are you know maybe against God and you know we'll just kind of have to throw our weight in like with some kind of pascalian wager you know towards uh thinking maybe God exists no no no no no again let think about it from the perspective of God existing and from what's revealed there's no question of God's existence right I mean look at the way God speaks in Revelation does he ever speak like you know well I know it's kind of unclear whether I'm here or not but hey trust me I'm here no it's always like certain right he castigates Israel over and over and over for not believing well how could he castigate Israel over and over and over for not believing uh you know if he had failed to present the clarity of his own existence right it's so it's crazy but and this was a good point that van made for all of his theological errors and and you know points in Calvinism I would disagree with but this point is great and it still holds true because it's faithful to Revelation it's faithful to ultimately I think what even the church fathers present because even though there may not be you know an explicit transcendental argument in um you know uh you know basil or somebody that doesn't mean that what's being said here isn't true because the idea is still there uh you know transcendental arguments quote unquote is something that really wasn't examined or or thought about in this way until modern philosophy so just because a name is used or or a an idea comes up in modern philosophy it doesn't mean it's bad it's just a you know any more than you know quantum physics isn't discuss Church fathers directly so you know we're not going to say that that's bad because you know they didn't have an idea yet of that level of atomic reality or subatomic excuse me right so just because there's not a explicit reference or or or usage of the terminology shouldn't really scare anybody away or be a question of you know of um of it being you know dangerous or something like that when you really understand what this is is far from being dangerous is exactly what's needed right so this change in thought and you know van was right to call it a revolution in apologetics because it's an apologetics not it's not revolutionary in the sense of overturning you know traditional theology or traditional metaphysics it's a revolution in apologetics in making Christian or biblical revelational Theology and metaphysics makes sense with what God says about himself that's what's key and the classical arguments that that are principally really summed up in aquinus you know and there's a lot of problems there are based on an epistemology that's called classical foundationalism now that's somewhat anachronistic because in his day it wasn't didn't have that that that title the title comes about later but it's a title that describes a specific kind of epistemology and it's an empirical epistemology ultimately and it's an empirical Theology and so because there's not an empirical theology this is why ultimately the Tom mistic method and the classical quote unquote traditional Roman style of apologetics doesn't work it's not good argumentation and it's not good argumentation because it doesn't take into account the Revelation that God gives about himself in his existence when it does apologetics it gives too much place to Fallen man's um intellectual reasoning and status and ability um as opposed to um grounding certainty about metaphysics in Revelation or about metaphysics in Revelation and grounding epistemology in Revelation and that's what's unique um whereas for Tom ISM um autonomous man unbelieving human thought um is able to reason to um the certainty of God's existence um on its own and then later you tack on um whether God is personal or not so you you can reason to the point of through um classical ideas like thology and cosmology you know for the theological argument the cosmological argument you can reason through those to the point where you think that there's one you know first cause but whether or not that first cause is personal or impersonal or whatever that all comes on through Revelation you tack that on from Revelation no no no no no you don't reason at all without Revelation that's the point you couldn't have human cognition at all without Revelation and I don't mean by that that like if you don't if you don't read the Bible like you can't know things that's not what we're saying what we're saying is that the metaphysics presented the epistemology presented in Revelation must be the case or the precondition for how humans are able to have knowledge and that's the key that's crucial so make a note of that if you're taking notes that's the point because again it's misunderstood people think you're saying oh so you're saying I don't know anything if I don't know the Bible well you can have knowledge of the world and you you've learned things you know you know your name and you know 2 plus 2 is four or something like that but you don't understand that you need a revolution in your thought a metanoia uh in your mind a turning of your mind to understand that you're not able to do any of that the precondition for you to be able to do that is the existence of the kind of God presented in Revelation well how is that because to deny him is to destroy the possibility of any of those things because God ultimately what we're saying here is that any one of these transcendental preconditions right we could step it back and do a kind of a higher level like what's the transcendental precondition for transcendental categories God that's the argument that's it right there so let me say it again we have preconditions for experience we have preconditions for metaphysics and all these things right what what things seem to have to be the case um for intelligibility but we don't just stop there because you know somebody might come along and say okay well yeah you can go let's I'll be a transcendental philosopher but uh you I don't believe in God there are just these categories well just like we asked the question of metalogic and we said well how what's the logic of logic we're going to ask the same question and say well what is the precondition for all of these preconditions for humans so human precondition human human conceptual preconditions right for the possibility of knowledge and the possibility of interacting in the world so forth having conversations language meaning numbers blah blah blah how how what holds those things together how is is that possible like how is it possible that the world is constructed in this way such that we can have knowledge and do all this stuff and the answer is that we need a being we need a God who is omnis omnipotence etc etc has all those attributes that is able to string all of these facts together right so these these universals these categories that we talked about from Plato um um you know AR Darkness sness Etc it's not enough to just speak about Essences it's not enough to just say well there's there's there's categories there's Essences they're just out there because ultimately that's irrational and this is ultimately where where Plato's philosophy uh falls off and it makes a good point in getting us past materialism and and raising the questions about you know immaterial metaphysical substrates or or principle or so forth but that's not enough because the presentation of of God in in the Bible is not merely that he's just some abstract principle on the contrary he's personal he's covenantal he makes a covenant so the relation with God is not um abstract intellectualism it's personal and that's not to say that you know no well then therefore numbers are bad and metaphysics is bad uh and because they're abstract no no no no they're abstract only in one sense because ultimately they're personal that's the key and that's what's again hugely re that's a massively Revolution revolutionary claim revolutionary in the sense of the way most men think not revolutionary in the sense of Truth like not like some French Revolutionary you know rejecting you know uh theology no no no revolutionary counterrevolutionary against you know atheist Fallen man that's what I we're saying um so yeah maybe we should present it that way that uh transcendental argumentation is is the ultimate counterrevolutionary argumentation because man ultimately with the devil has has chosen to Rebel so um so I'm hoping I'm making myself clear you know as I'm sitting here doing this I'm thinking about you know what what would Skeptics and what would the opposition say you know you're constantly running through the opposing sides um line of argumentation how they're going to how they're going to perceive this and what they're going to say in response um and usually in in this kind of argumentation presentation what I've been doing for I'd say 15 14 15 years now maybe not that long 13 you know having had this debate and this discussion so many times you know at this point usually what happens is um the person that you're explaining to is kind of lost they're kind of like uh you know you lost me when you went from you know transcendental categories to to God right I don't how'd you make that leap I don't get that's where I don't I don't buy it well we're we're saying that the existence of God is certain and it's just as certain or more more certain than merely transcendental categories because critics make the error of think of of of um of mistaking um chronological uh priority or presentation with metaphysical priority or epistemic PR priority in presentation right so this is the point that I made at the very beginning that just because something is indirect doesn't have really anything to do with um the truth or falsity of um um things that are implied by it right um and this is this is a common common mistake in metaphysics and and in philosophy people make it all the time where it's like because you because you present something first in time or you know chronologically or you know in a in a proposition or something that somehow that means it has like actual metaphysical priority no no no no no there's no reason to think that uh in other words The Ordering of something you know unless you're talking about time itself or something or so unless you're trying to make an argument about when things happened I guess then chronological priority would have significance but when we're talking about things that are immaterial and invariant um you know chronological priority really has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of it and it's just really irrelevant to it um you know basil makes this point when he's arguing against um and I think Gregory Nissa too when he's arguing against different different uh sectarians he says he says you know just because the father is presented as the Fountain Head of deity or the the starting point of the godhead it doesn't follow from that that that the son is of lesser metaphysical significance or power uh that's there's just no reason to assume that priority in presentation leads to um uh some sort of lesser status to what follows so when it comes to um arguing for a certainty about God from you know preconditions or categories so for so forth I mean it it just there's just no reason to think that it's just a logical um error that so many people make so when we when we look at all these pre conditions and these things that that seem to need to be the case you know we need universals we need these invariant math mathematical entities so forth and we say all right look let's say these things are are real well they can't just be floating out there in The Ether because if they're just impersonal you know a number just considered as a number is just an impersonal thing or um you know law of logic just out there as a you know abstract principle well abstract principles don't have the characteristic of having purpose so we you know we can bring in teos at this point we can say they don't they don't really do anything they don't they don't give meaning in themselves they just kind of are that's hence they're abstract in personal principles so what we actually need need for meaning is a sort of a macrocosmic version of how the human mind works we need a Divine mind and just like these principles and ideas can be contained in my mind and because I am a person and not just a collection of um chemicals and and scientific you know datum or you know I'm not just a big computer there's another aspect to my being which is person um we can say it's clear then that what really strings all this together is the Divine mind and so the human mind is a kind of analogy or an analog to the Divine mind although a very imperfect and pale image of it it is an image of it right and so we have an Incarnation then that explains how this is possible with the Divine mind actually did become incarnate in a human mind so we have an even greater uh model there there with the logos and so all these facts of experience all these principles that we encounter you know laws of logic mathematics out there um you know universals out there the stuff that we interact with what brings all these things together that's that's the key question at this point right so the Greek philosophers you know were able to get far enough to say there are these abstract and personal principles out there these metaphysical principles but they did not have an impersonal omniscient omnipotent God that linked these things together that um bentel had a good analogy he said what what strings this chain what how do we have the what strings the chain of pearls together like we have this Pearl here and this Pearl here and this fact there and this fact there but we need an objective unifying principle to bring all of these things together to work in coherence cuz what is it what good is it to say if to say well there are abstract logical principles um and there are abstract metaphysical principles like universals but you know maybe they're like two competing forces may maybe they fight against each other or something maybe they're they're abstract forces in tension maybe they're just like forces of nature out there or something well if that's the case then they're not coherent then don't work together they're not in in unison or they're not symmetrical they don't work in harmony but clearly because we can talk about mathematics and logic and universals together they seem to work together and so what does all this point to well it points to a single Divine mind it points to all of these things being held together by a single objective un uh unifying metaphysical principle that it's logic that is um omniscient that is the Divine mind and that's where we get to the point where we say well there's only really one religion that presents it this way and that is you know the theology presented in biblical Theology and particularly in eastern theology because Eastern theology presents the logoi which are the archetypes or principles of things um the same idea as Plato's forms but presents them in the Divine mind the Divine logos um the logoi principles of things are all one in the Lo in the Loos uh and it has then its clearer presentation in eastern um thinkers like Maximus the Confessor with his principles of ly uh and in more recent Eastern writers like Dr Philip Shard who in many um essays and articles gives this kind of argumentation um and I will post links to those below feel free to put your comments hopefully we can have an enlightening uh discussion and really kind of make this um form of argumentation known because it's so powerful and so it's such a shift in Paradigm in thinking uh as to what we are used to in standard uh metaph physics theology apologetics and presentation