Is All Reasoning Circular: A Respectful Response to David Pallmann

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics.

I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have a good friend of mine on the show,

Matt Yester, and I'll let him introduce himself in just a moment.

If you guys notice on the thumbnail of this episode, Joshua Pillows is on the thumbnail.

Unfortunately, he is unable to join us today.

Something came up for him and so he will be missed.

It would have been great to have him on as well because his knowledge base is very relevant

to this particular topic, but that's okay.

Matt Yester, I've known for quite some time.

He's a super sharp guy and I've learned a lot from him.

He's just gotten cooler over the years, this mustache.

I think he looks like a presuppositional pirate.

I just made that up, a presuppositional pirate.

I appreciate you coming on and I'll introduce you more formally in just a moment.

Just as people are coming in, I want to remind folks that at January 15th,

my PresuppU Introduction to Biblical Apologetics five -week course on presuppositional apologetics will be

starting.

Up.

The premium version is what we're doing, so January 15th. That means that the people who sign

up, and there are folks already signed up already, they will receive the video content, the lectures of the five -week

course, along with all of the PowerPoints, all of the outlines, and they will meet with me once a week for

five weeks to go deeper into the content.

Folks can sign up for that.

We start that on January 15th.

You can go to revealedapologetics .com, click on the PresuppU button, and you get RSVP

premium version of the course, and it's an awesome way to support Revealed Apologetics as well.

Sorry if I sound like a commercial.

I said that at the beginning of a couple of other episodes, but I need to continually remind

folks as the time is drawing near.

I'm excited.

I've got a few people signed up already, so I'm looking forward to that.

Without further ado, let's introduce Matt Yester.

If Matt Yester, you could unmute yourself and maybe tell folks a little bit about yourself, and then we'll jump right into the topic of our discussion today.

All right.

I've been a Christian for coming on about 20 years, next year, back

in 2004, and became Reformed back in around 2010, 2011 timeframe, and I got

into Presuppositional Apologetics because I saw someone's profile having this complex word on

there.

I was like, go on, look into this thing, and so that was related to Reformed Theology,

and they got me studied at the Boston Van Til and stuff like that, at least the main authors there, and then some other followers,

third and fourth generation Van Tilians, later on in the second decade.

Been on your show before, just laid out basic, a little bit more advanced Presuppositionalism, a little bit

better than the base level, just go a little bit higher and deal

with more of the terminology and vocabulary and stuff like that, so it's been a while.

Those are great episodes.

If folks are interested, the video's entitled Advanced Presupp.

You can type that in on Revealed Apologetics, and that was some years ago, but I thought that was a great discussion.

I think people would benefit greatly if they're interested in the methodology.

So let's dive into our topic for today, and I want to do more of these.

Folks have expressed to me interest in doing these responses, playing a video and

interacting with the content, and I'm going to, whether I have a, fun fact, Matt is part Nephilim.

I love the comments.

That's pretty intense.

Made me lose my train of thought.

I don't know where I was going with that.

Thanks a lot, Sky Apologetics.

Anyway, we're doing a response video to David Paulman.

David Paulman is, well, he has a YouTube channel called Faith Because of Reasons.

He is active on Facebook and YouTube, and he is

an evidentialist with respect to his apologetic, and of course, that's going to be connected to his

epistemology, his theory of knowledge, as we'll see as we kind of unpack the details of the position, at

least presented in the video that we're going to be interacting with.

And he is, let's just say he's not a fan of presuppositionalism,

okay, as an understatement, but that's okay, all right?

It is important to talk about these issues, and hopefully we can properly represent his position

as best we can.

I have no intention of making this kind of an ongoing back and forth between him and I or anything like that.

He just put out a video.

It's called Do You Know Your Reasoning is Valid?

Is All Reasoning Circular is kind of the main question that is being addressed here.

And so we're just going to address that the best we can, and there's that, okay?

I hope it's useful for folks.

But nevertheless, let's begin here.

We're going to start.

Now his video that he put up is about 20 minutes long, and there's a five -minute section where he

plays some of Sy Ten Bruggenkait's content from his documentary, How to...

What is it?

How to...

Oh, my goodness.

What is it? The Fool?

Something?

How to Answer the Fool.

How to Answer...

I don't know what's wrong with me.

How to Answer the Fool, okay?

And so I'm going to zip through that because it's five minutes, but to set some context here, I'm going to play a

small clip that he has of me in a talk that I gave when I was speaking out on apologetics in

Kansas, in which I speak of the issue of circular reasoning and the nature of

ultimate authorities and things like that.

And then it'll jump right into his content, in which, Matt, I would like you to tell me to stop,

and I will stop, and we can comment.

Or if I think we should stop, I'll stop, and we'll comment and things like that.

How does that sound?

Sounds good.

All right.

Well, let's get started.

Let me see if I have this.

Let me go a little back here.

We'll start here.

I was able to hear it, so I figured there was something with the audio.

What was that?

I don't think they can hear it in the chat either.

They can't hear the video?

No.

I was waiting for them to say something.

Oh.

Can you hear the video?

No, I can't.

Oh.

Well, that's not going to work here.

Good thing I took copious notes.

So for whatever reason...

I was just waiting for you to bring up the topic, and then I was just going to roll with the punches here.

Let me see.

Hold on.

Let me try this.

Let me get rid of it.

I'm going to stop the screen share.

And then...

This is the beauty of going live.

There we go.

That's how it is, baby.

Let's see here.

Window. YouTube.

To share audio, share a tab instead.

I don't know what that means.

Let me see here.

How about now?

Can you hear it?

No.

No.

Okay.

Well, I might be sharing it wrong.

Let's see here.

Air screen.

Okay.

Share tab audio.

So if I do this...

Let's try this.

Turn this on.

Okay.

This has to work.

This has to work.

Ready?

Okay.

Let's see.

Before you demonstrate it...

Can you hear it?

All right.

So I'm going to zoom it back just a little.

Okay.

That's fine.

It's not the end of the world.

We'll make it work.

Let's see here.

Okay.

Let's begin.

And that's the problem.

In logic, we call this circular reasoning.

You assume the thing you're trying to prove.

Surely you can't do that.

Surely, Eli, you're telling us this is an inappropriate way of interacting with the unbeliever.

Well, if we were talking about something that is not fundamental, something that is not ultimate in our

thinking, then you're correct.

It is a logical fallacy to engage in circular reasoning.

However, it is not a fallacy when you are talking about ultimate

commitments, our ultimate authority in our thinking and our reasoning.

Someone says, you can't assume something before you demonstrate it.

Well, let me tell you, unbeliever, do you believe that we should use our reasoning when we're interacting about these

issues?

Well, of course.

Reason and science, right?

Can you prove to me the validity of your reasoning without using your reasoning?

I'm going to stop right here just to qualify something.

And David, when I shared this video, David pointed something out that I agree with him.

I kind of misspoke here.

I'm kind of speaking in a casual context.

The audience is not at all scholarly or anything like that.

I'm kind of speaking in colloquial terms.

And so it's not quite accurate.

I said, how do you know your reasoning is valid?

It is correct that validity has to do with the structure of an argument and soundness has to do

with the truth of premises of an argument.

So we're going to be very specific.

Yes, that's that's not literally, literally true.

However, if you go back to David's video where Saiten Brugencate is asking this very

question in the informal context in which he uses it, the people seem to understand perfectly well

what he's asking.

And so, yes, if you want to be a stickler for the terms, that's fair.

That's fair.

We want to be able to communicate clearly.

But in general terms, most people kind of know what is being asked there,

just generally.

Speaking.

Any thoughts on that, Matt?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

When someone could use what they think are synonymous terms, they're not being really rigid

philosophically, as people narrowly defy stuff and utilize it, certain things can be used

synonymously.

It's the way I take it in principal charities, you know, do you know your reason is accurate?

What standards are you employed here in it?

You know, if they're using laws of logic, obviously, they would, you know, cough that up and then dig into the issue of logic, the

nature of logic, things like that.

So this is just, you know, certain clips of certain interrogative questions asking the unbeliever to,

or a bet he's right there to just provide what they're utilizing, if it's

not just reason itself, that if it's, you know, the laws of logic or something like that, they could come up with it, but,

you know, on the spot, but, you know, usually that would be like another undergirding issue.

You're employed the laws of logic with your reasoning, discursiveness, and things like.

That.

You know, but he's really just saying, okay, that those would have to be accounted for along either a priori or

a posteriori lines, you know, which way they want to go, you know, either prior to experience or you're just

good to sort these things evidentially, but I don't know how they'd be universally true on there.

They'd always have to be just up until the time that you've experienced it, but no one's universally

experienced that, so it would leave the problems there.

But yeah, the principle of charity, I think it would just be good just to think of, you know, what's,

someone's asking what your standard of reasoning is there.

You're actually doing it correctly versus someone who's insane or something or schizophrenic or

has some sort of mental problem or something like that.

You know, how do you know that you're reasoning about something correctly or accurately, validly, you

know, that you're actually using a logical structure in your reasoning process, and otherwise you're just

saying, you're reasoning without logic, you know, what is that?

Right.

David is in the chat here.

He says here, Eli, they don't, they don't, implying that they don't understand what Psy.

Means.

The people in the video look confused.

I would actually argue the confusion is not because they're confused over validity and soundness.

I don't think any of those people probably have knowledge in those particular terms and how they're used.

Maybe they do.

I just think that they, I mean, because you see, as Psy continues to ask the questions, they answer him

appropriately in the sense they try to answer what he's asking.

So I don't think that's the reason why they're confused, this issue of validity over soundness.

But nevertheless, I mean, we can't really know.

I don't know the background knowledge of the people he's talking to.

So, but nevertheless, let's, let's continue on.

Think about that.

He'll have to assume the validity of his reasoning to demonstrate to me that his

reasoning is.

Valid.

He has to assume the very thing I'm asking him to prove.

Circular reasoning is generally understood to be fallacious.

The reason for this is that circular arguments assume what they purport to prove.

At least one premise in a circular argument depends upon the truth of the conclusion, making the

argument lose any justifying force.

For in order to accept the relevant premise, one would have to already believe the conclusion.

But if one already believes the conclusion, then one has no need for the argument.

And if one does not already believe the conclusion, then the argument will not yield any grounds for belief.

Despite the seeming obvious.

All right, real quick.

So something that stuck out to me that he defines circular reasoning.

He says it's an informal logical fallacy in which an argument includes the conclusion as a premise.

And the argument begins where it ends.

The conclusion is assumed from the start.

I noticed a shift in language.

I don't know if this was intentional.

I'm not sure the source he's using, but he says that circular reasoning is generally understood to be fallacious.

The reason for this is that circular arguments assume what they purport to prove.

At least one premise in an argument depends upon the truth of the conclusion.

He seems to be speaking first about circular reasoning and then switches to the use of the term circular

argument.

And I'm not sure these are the same thing.

In fact, there's an important distinction.

I think as presuppositionalists, traditionally when we formulate the argument, when some happen to formulate the

argument in a more direct approach using a premise, a premise conclusion, they never

put the argument, at least like in a deductive form in which the conclusion is stated in one of the premises.

So for example, if I were to say, if knowledge is possible, the Christian worldview's true, knowledge is

possible, therefore the Christian worldview's true, notice that in this argument the conclusion is not stated in

any of the premises.

This conclusion, I'm sorry, this argument is a perfectly valid one as the conclusions follow from the premises.

However, notice that the person stating this argument would have to, in order to be consistent, presuppose the truth of the

conclusion since the argument in essence is arguing that the Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for the

possibility of knowledge.

So we want to make a distinction between the presupposition of an argument and the premise of

an argument.

So I think that's an important distinction to make.

Do you have any thoughts on that, Matt?

Yeah, I mean, there are presuppositions prior to an argument being laid out.

Whether or not your argument involves the presuppositions, explicitly stated or not, they do come

with the baggage there, you know, with assuming truth of the premises, you know,

to even start with, you know, to get to the, you know, true conclusion.

So there is worldview baggage there, it's not like, you know, we just start with logic.

There's definitely philosophical baggage there that's undergirding even the very logical process we want to employ in

deduction and deduction, you know, when we lay out a particular argument from either facet, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I wanted to share this quote here from Scott Oliphant in his article, what's it

called?

It's entitled, Answering Objections to Presuppositionalism, and I think he's responding specifically to Paul

Copan's objections against presuppositionalism.

He makes this distinction too between circular reasoning and circular argument.

He says here, Van Til is not advocating fallacious reasoning, and this is with respect to circularity, though much more needs to be said,

a couple of points should be remembered when Van Til wants to affirm circular reasoning.

Circular reasoning is not the same as a circular argument.

A circular argument is one in which the conclusion of the argument is also assumed in one or more of the premises.

Van Til's notion of circularity is broader and more inclusive than a strict argument form.

For example, in William Alston's The Reliability of Sense Perception, Alston argues that it is impossible to

establish that one has knowledge in a certain area without at the same time presupposing some knowledge in that area.

His example is an argument for the reliability of sense perception.

Any argument for such reliability presupposes that reliability, and it does so because of the epistemic

situation in which human beings exist.

Alston is right here, Skolofin says, not only so, but to go deeper, the epistemic and metaphysical situation

in which human beings exist is one in which the source of and rationale for all that we are and think

is ultimately in the triune God of Scripture.

Of course, he goes into other details there.

But there is the point being made that there is a difference between a circular argument and circular reasoning.

And so I think that's an important distinction that I noticed a shift in the language there that I thought was worth mentioning.

Let's continue on.

The obviousness of what I have just said, it nevertheless remains startlingly popular to claim that

circular reasoning is in some cases acceptable and even worse, ultimately

unavoidable.

Do you think, Matt, that it should be shocking for him to think that some people think

circularity is unavoidable?

I mean, this isn't like a weird idiosyncratic pre -supper thing, right?

Right, right.

Yeah.

What do you think of that?

No, we're not the first to assert that.

There's been other philosophers, or at least trilemmas laid out and stuff like that.

So if we're talking about ultimate authorities, that is really the context here.

What you're talking about is your ultimate authority, your ultimate context.

I would say it's not a truncated, narrow, telescoped

sliver of it, because if you understand the transcendental argument, it's a worldview

apologetic, not just one piece of argument here or argument stacked up that you get to the whole.

It's argued for the entire system.

What's overarching governing authority, ultimate authority is, is your ultimate standard.

By what standard is the question to be asked here?

What is the...

One who's asserting a particular epistemology, if it's not revelatory, then what epistemology are they asserting?

And what are the standards asserted within that?

And that is the overarching view, but also that's just epistemically.

You're also dealing with the other areas of philosophy.

You can't avoid metaphysics, you can't avoid ethics.

They overlap, they intersect, they're symbiotically linked, even though you can distinguish between

all three, there is a broad branch of the philosophy.

When it comes to worldview, that's assuming there's going to be unity and diversity there to cash out how

these things are related.

I mean, you got to pay the bills, the worldview has to pay the bills of those things first.

They can't just be taken for free and then say, oh, now we just leaped out to evidence.

It's intelligent, we got to cash out the preconditions on it.

Yeah.

Now, what I think is interesting, though, he seemed to be like, well, this is weird that one would think that circularity

is, you know, unavoidable.

I mean, I was thinking of the Munchausen trilemma, for example, I mean, whether one agrees it's a legitimate trilemma or not.

I mean, the idea that this is brought up is, is, is a thing.

And presuppers aren't kind of these weird people bringing up this issue of the necessity of a foundation and things like that.

So if you consider the trilemma, the trilemma basically is intended to try and demonstrate

basically the impossibility of proving some truth, even in like logic and mathematics without appealing to accept

accepted assumptions.

And so the trilemma posits kind of these three choices that a person has.

You could engage in circularity in which each proof requires further proof.

And you go in, you know, ad infinitum, you have the infinite regress issue in which each proof requires

further proof.

So how do you know this?

Well, here's a proof.

Well, how do you prove that proof and so on and so forth?

And then you have the dogmatic argument, which rests on accepted presuppositions, which are

just asserted, right?

You kind of start with these authoritative axioms, if we can use that language.

So whether one agrees with that being a legitimate trilemma or not, this is a thing that people talk about.

It's not something that we that we are just making up.

And it's these weird things that he's startled that that presuppers bring it up.

I just thought that was odd.

Even also this idea that you can't avoid this foundation.

I mean, this I mean, I was reading here that Karl Popper, the the late

philosophical, I mean, he was a philosopher of science.

He accepted the trilemma as being an issue.

And so he whether he's right or wrong, it's not that we're simply bringing this up and no one has ever pointed this

out and no one of any note.

Right now, David might think he has an answer to these issues and that's fine.

But to make it look like, you know, presuppers are weird for bringing this up.

And we haven't really confronted this in the literature.

I just thought that was that was odd.

Yeah, I think the trilemma itself is even taking a lot of stuff for granted.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's why I said, regardless of one thinks it's legitimate or not.

But nevertheless, let's let's continue.

This claim is common among those Christian apologists known as presupposition lists.

Don't don't.

John Frame claims there is no alternative to circularity.

No system can avoid circularity because all systems, as we have seen, non -Christian

as well as Christian, are based on presuppositions that control their epistemologies or

evidence.

The critic of circular reasoning will inevitably be just as guilty of circular.

Reasoning.

Yeah, I'd like to read a Bonson quote there.

So if someone doesn't understand Frame's quote there, Bonson, I think, says it well.

And this is a quote taken from Robert Raymond, Robert Raymond's book, The Justification of Knowledge.

And he's quoting Bonson.

I don't remember the source he's quoting from, but Dr. Bonson says all argumentation about ultimate issues

eventually comes to rest at the level of the disputant's presuppositions.

Pardon, if a man has come to the conclusion and is committed to the truth of a certain view, P, when he is

challenged as to P, he will offer supporting argumentation for it, Q and R.

But of course, as his opponent will be quick to point out, this simply shifts the argument to Q and R.

Why accept them?

The proponent of P is now called upon to offer S, T, U and V as arguments for Q and R.

But all argument chains must come to an end somewhere.

One's conclusions could never be demonstrated if they were dependent upon an infinite regress of argumentative justifications.

But under those circumstances, the demonstration could never be completed.

And an incomplete demonstration demonstrates nothing at all.

He continues.

Eventually, all argumentation terminates in some logically primitive starting point of view or premise held as unquestionable.

And then he talks about apologetics tracing back to such ultimate starting points or presuppositions.

He says in the nature of the case, these presuppositions are held to be self -evidencing.

They are the ultimate authority in one's viewpoint, an authority for which no one, no greater authorization.

You know, it continues on here.

So that's kind of another kind of just to expand on on frames thoughts there.

Do you have any thoughts or comments on Dr. Bonson there?

You say your reasoning process, the actions and stuff like that, we'll get to dissociation

action and propositions like that are going to be governed by that controlling ultimate authority,

whether it's God or man, you know, or some abstract principle, something like that.

Something's got to be placed in that location of ultimacy.

So it's not to try and God, what is it?

They cash out and account for the things we experience are intelligible.

All the things in creation that can account for the world, us, intelligibility, rationality,

their, you know, coalescing of sense perception and all kind of things like that.

You know, we could ask that question to Matt, what is David's?

Ultimately, what's it.

What if it does David have an ultimate and if not, what are the

implications?

If so, what is the ultimate?

I think that's a fair question.

Right.

What is the nature of that of that ultimate?

Yeah.

All right, let's continue on.

It is not my purpose here to critique circular reasoning in general or to offer a non -circular

alternative, although I have done this elsewhere.

See my series on epistemology for a more developed theory of knowledge which avoids circular

reasoning.

My purpose in this video is to critique one popular argument commonly employed by

presuppositionalists, which purports to show that circular reasoning is unavoidable.

The argument is typically phrased something like this.

You must use reason in order to prove reason, or sometimes it is implied in a question along the

lines of how do you know that your reasoning is valid?

Any thoughts on how he formulates what he thinks we're saying or you want to add more precision?

Any thoughts, any comments there?

It's very narrow in scope.

If understood as a broader apologetic, why I would ask that we're talking about your

epistemic lines for accounting for knowledge as well, I mean, provide the authentic foundation for how you grow out of the

epistemology.

Or if you say the epistemology exists, then you're thrown to metaphysics anyway, because you have to deal with the nature of what an epistemology is.

So if you're just saying, someone just thinking along

epistemic lines and just trying to make a transcendental argument for reason, you're going to undergird that

with logic or some abstract principles such as them, and

that's usually where it bottoms out there epistemically.

You're being a logical foundationalist or sense perception, perceptual foundationalist.

With logic, you don't have any concrete content there, everything would just be purely abstract and no concrete data.

And then on how you justify the empirical observation is infallible or anything like

that.

You can build a sense perception that are less

accordable, but they're not infallible.

So I don't see that hold a very, very strong weight there.

And then you have some that want to try to blend the two.

But that's the very thing you were bringing up, too, when you brought up in your part of your speech there, you were bringing up

science.

I think you meant along the lines of empirical sense perception, of course, and or logic

reasoning when you're distinguishing between those two.

When you said science and reason, so just different terms there.

But that's what Sai was saying, too.

How do you know that your senses and reasoning are valid?

Because your senses presuppose causal connections, relationships that are, quote unquote, functioning properly.

What is a quote unquote proper function?

You know, and same with the cognitive process,

which I didn't really see any concrete data used other than really just the terms thrown out there.

Just there's this primitive cognitive process that it counters the evidence and that it could

interpret, sort things and evaluate the quality of

that evidence there, employ a reasoning process there.

We want to know whether that's accurate or not correct, where the standards for these

types of things are thrown out there.

So we say, you know, earlier, you know, the reason is valid.

Another slavish way of saying it, you know, your reason is correct.

You reason correctly about these things in a valid structural way.

You know, I think people want to say they're employed logic there.

They're not maybe thinking it's syllogistic for, but they're employed, you know, one thought to another thought.

They believe there's coherence, there's relationality, but those things have to be philosophically cashed out,

too.

They are really just taken for granted.

It ties in saying, well, or as I said, you know, what is your ultimate standard or how do you actually cash

it out these things?

If you just say you just take this for granted and you're just using the stuff you take for granted to pay the debt or

account for what you're taking for granted, you know, just a bunch of freebies that aren't really philosophically

being cashed out even at a related level, though, just to get them thinking about these things.

You're going to have to be epistemically self -conscious of the things they've been taking for granted.

So this is my quick thoughts on that.

Yeah. Thank you for that.

Let's continue.

The rest of the argument seems to be that since one cannot prove reason apart from the use of reason,

circularity is simply inescapable.

Although I don't encounter this argument much in scholarly literature, at least not in this form, it is

rather popular among Internet presuppositionalists.

And while I generally prefer to discuss scholarly issues on this channel, the pervasiveness of this argument,

coupled with the fact that I am not aware of any direct interaction with it, moves me to make this

video in reply.

In this video, I intend to briefly explain my motivation for addressing this argument.

After that, I will try to disambiguate the argument and clarify both what it means and how

one might respond.

After disambiguating the argument, I shall argue that it either assumes a theory of epistemic justification,

which could be rejected, or else it fails to recognize an important distinction between two different types

of usage.

Under either interpretation, I shall argue that circular reasoning can be avoided.

Before engaging the argument directly, it will be helpful to provide some motivation for examining it at

all.

After all, why should the argument concern us?

Is it really a problem if all justification is circular in the end?

Or perhaps we should not even try to justify the reliability of reasoning?

Perhaps it is simply a fundamental assumption of all philosophical inquiry, which needs no justification.

It would be an understatement to say that many philosophers are content to say that belief in the reliability of

reason can only be justified in a circular way.

Still, others take the essential reliability of reason to be a fundamental axiom which is

incapable of justification and which needs none.

But I have never found such answers to be satisfactory.

I have never been content to suppose that I should require justification for my beliefs down to the bottom level,

but then give the foundational beliefs a free pass.

Yeah, just a couple of things.

So I agree with him that we shouldn't give our foundational beliefs a free pass.

That's that's not the presuppositional position at all.

That's I mean, it's been caricatured by many that that's the presuppositional position, but it's not.

So we don't believe in giving our foundational beliefs a free pass.

I agree with David that to do so, if we do give our foundational beliefs a free pass, that's going to be

arbitrary and in some cases going to be inconsistent.

But I think as presuppositionalists committed to transcendental reasoning and argumentation, I

would say that we would want to justify our foundational beliefs transcendentally, right?

The transcendental argument, and I think, Matt, you'd agree, is an attempt to justify our foundational belief

or ultimate presupposition.

This is neither arbitrary.

It's not inconsistent, nor is it logically fallacious.

In fact, given the nature of the kind of God we are dealing with that's presented in Scripture, I think the transcendental approach

is demanded.

The triune God of Scripture is an all or nothing kind of deity, right?

So I think that we are not wanting to simply have foundational beliefs or an ultimate

presupposition and just assert it.

And then that's it.

What do you think about that?

Can you can you kind of explain for us, Matt, how is it that a

transcendental argument is not arbitrary, but that we actually try to provide

justification from a presuppositional transcendental perspective?

Can you share that with us?

Yeah.

Ours is, philosophically speaking, externalist.

I mean, it's residing outside of ourselves.

We're not appealed to some outside process, right?

Like we're talking about the ontological creator of all things, who's spoken and revealed himself in

general revelation and special revelation, and revealed that as a worldview package, and that there's also

internalist considerations given the ontological trinity.

So we're externalist in one sense, internalist on another, given our ultimate basis.

We're talking about worldview justification here.

OK, it's a worldview apologetic, it's worldview philosophy, the

whole caboodle, OK, the whole enchilada, not just a sliver of it.

So if someone said, you know, foundationalists have just taken, you know, you know, after human

traditions and after Christ in Colossians 2, yeah, that would be a problem on

a creaturely level.

Just say we just start with these creaturely foundations and just, you know, have a whole host of beliefs.

Well, it gets back to, you know, they'll just say, we've got the beliefs that in order to justify, we need the evidence.

So the evidence is of a justifier.

So it starts with a collaboration of beliefs, it assumes that the beliefs are related to each

other, but that's not cashed out, bills aren't paid on that one.

That's just another assumption there, that there's coherence, there's relationality, unity among diversity

that needs to be paid first and foremost.

We're saying, apart from the triune God, who's revealed himself as the personal one of many, to grout such fundamental

philosophical issues such as that, that a lot of people just take that for granted.

And like all these things are pre -packaged with coherence, conceptual adequacy,

that one fact can correlate to another fact, or the concepts relate to the object, the concepts hit the concepts, or object to

objects.

Just take it for granted.

I mean, the world needs to pay the actual bills on the more fundamental issues, instead of leaping

forward to, well, beliefs, we just have these are intelligible, that, wow, evidence is intelligible too,

and that somehow the beliefs correlate to the evidence or vice versa.

But that unifier, that relationality, what is that?

Is that just an abstract principle or something?

You know, but what's the evidence for that?

Because the thing between the beliefs and the evidence, how's that evidenced?

You know, you're just arguing for pure abstract formality there, really.

And if that's your ultimate governing authority to even stay between those two things, the beliefs and the evidence,

where you really cash it out philosophically, just an abstract and personal principle, which

doesn't know anything, it's not cashing out knowledge or unity and diversity, you have a conceptual monad without a

mind.

So we're dealing with it in the broadest context here, not just some narrow scope here where, you know, things are just flip

-flopped or reversed to try and get out of a justification

issue or something like that.

That's what I saw going on, at least when people bring up these philosophical, epistemological things, they'll

just, you know, switch the order and say, well, we're not arguing that way, we're just going to argue this way, and then we'll reverse it here.

But I think there's underlying philosophical issues to be dissected there to see what the

real meat of the issue is there, whether or not it's violated its own standard, and take a lot of stuff for

granted.

You still there?

I lost the audio.

There we go.

Yeah.

I said, we're making good time, which is good.

Hopefully that wasn't too fast.

You know, it'll go too fast.

That's good.

You're doing great. I appreciate it.

Such a move seems completely arbitrary and even inconsistent.

If our most foundational beliefs are unjustified, then I take this to entail that all beliefs which depend

on them for their justification are likewise unjustified.

I suspect that many viewers feel the same way, but this conviction forces those of us who hold it to face

the original argument, for if there is no non -circular means of justifying foundational beliefs,

then we may well have to face the conclusion that none of our beliefs are justified.

For those wishing to avoid such a gloomy conclusion, there is strong motivation for addressing the original

argument.

And, and we would say that our foundational beliefs can be justified.

So we're, we're, we're not victim to the gloomy conclusion that we can't justify our

foundation and therefore everything else that the foundation is based upon can't be justified.

Yeah.

Having provided some motivation, let's turn to assess the merits of the argument.

Roughly, we are concerned with the claim that one must use reason to justify reasoning.

Stated thusly, the claim is quite incoherent.

Reasoning is a deliberative cognitive process.

It is not a proposition.

It is not the sort of thing which can be true or false.

As such, reasoning itself needs no justification since it is an action rather than a belief.

Imagine how absurd it would be to demand justification for walking or for driving or for swimming.

Such activities need no justification precisely because they are activities.

All right.

I want to get into this here.

Um, I do see David typed here something.

Uh, I said that we're not stuck.

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to, I think I've got this right.

I said, we're not stuck in the gloomy position of not being able to justify our foundations.

And then he says, put this up on the screen.

Yes, you are.

I assume we are stuck in the gloomy situation of not being able to justify.

That's the problem with circular foundation.

Uh, I hated, I guess he didn't finish the word there.

I don't see how that's a problem.

If the transcendental argument is a legitimate argument, we're attempting to provide a

non -arbitrary justification for, for our position.

Have I got it wrong?

I mean, I'm trying, I'm trying to be gracious here.

What do you think, um, Matt?

Maybe circular foundationalism, but if you want to say the evidentialist, uh, just say it's a cognitive

process there, it's an activity, uh, just like you laid out there.

It's a verb, you know, I guess no weed, but if we're just saying no weed doesn't need to be justified,

uh, you know why you've asked the question, I guess, uh, but make that parallel to like drive or something like that.

Uh, if we're talking about, you know, your, your epistemology is supposed to be cashed out, how you know, things is dealing with the

process.

Epistemology, how do you know things?

Uh, if you're saying epistemology can't be justified because it's a process, it's a verb, you know, how do you know

things, uh, if that's, if that's not what's meant by it, uh, if it's going to trade on the language here of a

process here and stuff like that, of, you know, what's, what's being, what's the actual concrete content being employed.

Uh, you want to switch it and change it to propositions.

You can change it to propositional content.

No, no problem.

Uh, but if you're just saying just the brute cognitive processes, what, what, what does this impound here?

Just matter of motion or something like that?

Or is it talking about employed abstract principles that would be propositional character?

Uh, you know, uh, what's, what's really undergird this whole, uh, thing here regarding, well, you can't,

uh, apply it to a, uh, uh, you're, did you, well, here's, if you're using reason in order to

justify reasoning, if there's something undergirded, uh, what you, what you mean by reasoned

abstract principles of logic, things like that, that they should be ontologically cashed out as well.

If you're providing a worldview apologetic, if someone's just arguing epistemologically, they're just have tunnel vision in there.

They're divorced supposedly from, uh, metaphysics and ethics.

I still think the, you know, uh, that can actually carry through.

Uh, cause then you just trade on abstract terms here to switch it up.

What's the actual content of this, uh, uh, activity, you know, is it just, is it just merely

matter of motion, just electrical signals, synapses, whatever, you know, uh, where we talk about bare bones,

uh, conduct processes that just has some capacity to deliberate, you know, and

things like that.

So, uh,.

Circular foundations are unjustified.

That seems to me just to assume that, well, transcendental arguments aren't a thing.

Cause transcendental arguments are, are what we're trying to justify our ultimate presupposition.

We're not foundationalists.

We're transcendentalists.

I'm talking about that, which goes at the broadest context on some truncated, uh, sliver of,

uh, uh, epistemology just has, uh, uh, uh, arbitrary creaturely notion that, you

know, has other ones that just want to pay each other's debts at the argument there, uh, or, uh, multiple,

not just, it's not usually strictly one foundation.

Usually it's, uh, it will include a cluster of, you know, uh, uh, ideas and stuff like that

and say, there's a, there's a cluster of, of these things, which you assume they're, they're correlated, you're unified, they're somehow

related to each other.

And then from these base are probably basic beliefs, you know, certain foundationalists say that it's

not just one belief is probably basic beliefs that are obviously related to each other, correlate or whatever, that

it could be used as a foundation for, uh, other things in a discursive fashion, but it's not,

it's like one thing, it's, it's one thing built upon one another.

There's usually a lot of things that are taken at the same level that assumes there are likely, uh,

coherent and unified it's in some, uh, underlying manner, but then there's something else undergirding that to provide for the

unity of that, that, that, uh, diversity of beliefs.

Yeah.

Cause, uh, I don't think anyone's very, very strict in that sense there.

I think it's, you're dealing with clusters of beliefs, you know, it would be your foundations.

Okay.

Let's continue on.

Thank you for that.

Rather than propositions.

Once we have understood that only propositions require justification due to their potential to be faults,

it becomes evident that the act of reasoning does not need justification because it is non

-propositional.

Sometimes the problem is phrased as a question along the lines of how do you know that your reasoning is valid?

But stated in this way, the argument is guilty of a category error.

Validity is not.

It is a category error.

If you press it for like, literally, that's what we mean when

that's not, that's not what most people who use that phrase mean when they're saying it in kind of a colloquial

informal way.

Um, but again, as I said before, um, he's correct that a reasoning is validity.

I'm sorry, is with respect to the structure of argumentation.

Um, and so in that sense, reasoning in that sense, reasoning wouldn't be valid or invalid.

However, we could just simply reformulate what we're saying to be more precise.

And I think that's a good that David pointed out the importance of, uh, uh, speaking with more clarity.

I think, uh, admittedly, that's something we all could, uh, we could all improve on.

What I appreciate about David's presentation here is that while there's a whole host of things that I disagree with and I find questionable,

um, I like how he has placed everything in an orderly way so that it's easy to at least follow.

And so I appreciate that.

Um, but nevertheless.

A property of reasoning, but rather a property of arguments to be sure we sometimes speak of

valid and invalid reasoning, but this sort of language refers not to the cognitive processes

themselves, but rather to the validity of the logical inferences that the reasoning is following.

To say that one's reasoning is literally valid makes as little sense as saying that one's driving is

valid or that one's swimming is valid.

Validity simply doesn't apply to activities.

It applies to arguments, but perhaps it will be objected that I have missed the point.

After all, I am taking advantage of very poorly worded versions of the argument.

As I observed earlier, this argument is not as prominent among scholars as it is among

presuppositionalists on the internet.

But I do think that addressing these muddled versions of the argument is an important task because it helps us to

clarify what is and what is not an issue.

Now, I agree.

People should still address apologists and philosophers should still address sloppy arguments because sloppy

arguments can be persuasive to some people.

So I, again, this is another thing I appreciate about the video.

Um, I actually agree helps to clarify what is and what is not an issue.

That's correct.

Forces proponents of these arguments to be more precise.

That's correct.

I think that's something we could all improve on.

Um, and let me see, I can read the last point.

We'll let him read it.

Actually, he's going to go through it now.

Moreover, it forces those who would use these problematic formulations of the argument to be more

precise.

Finally, pointing out the incoherence of these simplistic formulations of the argument can also

serve to rob them of their rhetorical force.

So let me attempt to reconstruct a more sensible version of the argument.

It seems to me that when someone says that we must use reason to justify reasoning, they mean that one

must use their ability to reason in order to defend the proposition that reasoning is

reliable.

One must in effect, assume that their ability to reason is a reliable guide to truth.

Certainly this is a much more robust argument, but to answer it, we must seek still greater

clarification.

Before turning to answer the more robust version of the argument, we must ask what is meant by the phrase

reason is reliable.

Taken quite literally, it would mean that the cognitive process of reasoning itself somehow

yields justification for beliefs by virtue of being reliable.

Taken in this way, the argument is saying that one must assume that reasoning yields justification for

beliefs by virtue of being reliable in order to reach the conclusion that reasoning yields

justification for beliefs by virtue of being reliable.

Thus construed, the argument appears to be assuming that the reliability of reason is a

necessary condition for justification.

This appears to essentially be a reliabilist epistemology.

Reliabilism is a theory of epistemic justification, according to which beliefs are justified

if they have been produced by a reliable process.

If this is what the proponent of the argument is claiming, then we may happily agree with him.

It is not at all controversial that reliabilism and externalist theories of justification more generally

are committed to a proving of epistemic circularity.

This is a well -known fact, which is typically admitted by reliabilists and critics of reliabilism alike.

Notice, however, that if this is what the argument is trying to establish, then it assumes reliabilism

and reaches the uncontroversial conclusion that reliabilism leads to circularity.

However, so so basically in English, if some people are following, they're like,.

What does he mean?

And that's not it's not David's fault at all.

I mean, these concepts are alien to the average person.

But when we ask for a foundation and then we point out, look, circularity can't be avoided,

he's saying that that doesn't that doesn't work against a position that he's going to explain his position of

evidentialism and the assumptions that are built into that.

He's going to say that that our questioning or bringing up that line of reasoning actually presupposes

epistemic reliabilism, which is something he as an evidentialist rejects.

And so when we say, you know, how do you know, how can we why should we trust our reasoning, all these sorts

of things?

He's going to say, well, that assumes reliabilism and he accepts a different position.

Any thoughts on that, Matt?

I'm sure he'll go into some more detail, but do you have anything to say to that?

Yeah, they're they're free to do that.

I mean, the presuppositionalist, the transcendentalist is holding to a revelational epistemology.

Anyone who doesn't hold to that automatically disagrees with us.

That's why we're comparing the worldviews and the standards that are being asserted there, at least in comparison there.

So it's not we're at least when Zai's asking the people or whatever, they're putting them on the

street, just to feel it out, like what their standards are, you know, cough them up or whatever.

If you don't hold to reliabilism or, you know, this narrow philosophical sense that we're not necessarily reliable in that sort of

sense, certainly philosophically speaking, but at least try

to feel where the opponent's coming from.

So if it's not that, they're free to disagree and say, no, that's that question doesn't really hit me, whatever.

I go, then what standard are you using?

You know, feel free to cough it up.

I'm not going to actually critique you, bro.

So, you know, we want to internally critique them.

So we need them to understand what their what their standards are so we can understand what they are to properly represent them.

But then do an internal critique on it.

But no one's assuming you have to hold to our standard, hold the revelational epistemology, or even if

we were playing the reliablist game, assuming, well, if you don't hold to a reason as, you

know, something as has a justificatory force, what would that be then?

What is it if they would say, OK, it's the evidence there that we're going to critique the evidentialists on their own terms, which is, you know, going to

be profiteer.

And then we do an internal critique of that.

It just reverses the order of it.

Not saying there's something undergirding your beliefs in some regress fashion to where there's going to be something

underlying this, underlying this, underlying this.

It really says, no, cognitive processes that we move forward and that now the justification is on the

consequent, not the antecedent or the consequent.

So it just showed a different reversal of logical order there to say, no, the justification is now along a

posteriori lines.

And that's the only thing you'd be narrowed down is justification.

Everything prior to that's really just a tool that has no justificatory force,

because I think that justification has been repositioned there.

Sure.

Thank you for that.

There's an interesting comment here revealed.

Matt Yester is a Calvinist.

You're a Calvinist, Matt?

I knew Matt is a Calvinist.

Why discuss reasoning with him?

Well, there seems to be kind of an assumption of if he's a Calvinist, everything's determined.

So we've covered that in another video.

Yes, King James only.

I am a Calvinist.

So if you followed my channel, that would be evident rather

quickly.

So thank you for being in the comments.

I don't know if that will make you go away.

If you don't like Calvinism, I'm sorry.

Sorry about that, King James only.

All right.

Let's see.

Let's continue.

Not all philosophers are reliabilists.

Reliabilism's main contender is known as evidentialism.

According to evidentialism, the justification that any subject has for a belief is always

relative to the evidence which that subject possesses for that belief.

As Earl Connie and Richard Feldman explain, evidentialism is the view that the epistemic

justification of a belief is determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief.

It serves to indicate the kind of notion of justification that we take to be characteristically

epistemic, a notion that makes justification turn entirely.

On evidence.

Well, let's take a look at that.

So he quotes here.

Earl, is it Cone?

Earl Cone, I'm sorry if I mispronounce the name, he says, evidentialism is the view that the epistemic justification of a belief is

determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief.

What does he mean by that?

It seems to me that to determine the quality of evidence is going to require some presuppositions and

some worldview commitments that can be challenged.

What do you think of that, Matt?

Seems very subjective to me.

Yeah.

How do you determine the quality of the evidence?

The objective scale.

What was that?

The objective scale that's been laid out that we can see, you know, what you utilize it.

Yeah.

Maybe that's what else got a different scale or that, you know, how we really nailed this out, I guess.

OK, let's continue.

Evidentialism seeks justification in evidence, not in reliable processes.

Hence, the argument considered earlier will simply not work against evidentialism because it

assumes a theory of justification, which the evidentialist rejects.

As such, one need only reject reliabilism in order for the argument to fail to

establish that circularity is unavoidable.

Now, the critic of evidentialism and the defender of this argument might want to maintain that we cannot

really escape reliability requirements by asking if evidence is reliable.

But this is just to misunderstand the nature of evidence and reliability.

Reliability refers to belief sources which produce true beliefs more often than not.

Evidence, by contrast, refers to sources of justification, not sources of belief.

A belief which comes from a fundamentally unreliable source may nevertheless be justified

when it is accompanied by sufficient evidence, as you've heard that there are points.

Yeah, I think that one point there is where the shift of reliability is all the evidence.

I'd say, how about this antecedent there?

Before you get the evidence, how about the cognitive process?

How does it avoid reliability of the cognitive process, which is, you know, go through deliberation or quality

discernment or something like that.

I go, but why put it on the, supposedly it's like the object, which would be the evidence or

the consequent, not the antecedent.

I go, well, push it back to the antecedent.

Is the antecedent reliable?

Just this mere cognitive process, brute,

just the bruteness of this, is it, you know, is that just taken as reliable, just

unqualified as reliable or whatever?

I don't see really how to get out of that, where it was only shifted towards the evidence and say, ah, but see, the evidentialist

has a pushback on it because we're not saying that's the, that's the,

the justificatory lie there is not, it's antecedent, it's all the consequent, it's, it's dealing with the evidence there.

So you can't, he's a circular reasoning there, but I'm saying, I don't know why the reliability, you couldn't push back

on the antecedent to do that before you cover the evidence is a mere cognitive brute process

here, which has never been really enumerated in any detail though.

It was just, you know, this reasoning tool is used there that it covers the evidence, puts these

quality discernment on it, whatever those were really laid out just as quality in

general.

Uh, so I, I kind of see problems with that, uh, to where it was applied to the one, but not the other, uh,

regarding reliable there.

Not that I would, uh, necessarily, uh, maybe that's just me thinking alternatively of the way, uh,

where the applicability of reliabilism would be asserted there by the reliables and just say, well, I would apply it to the, uh, ladder, but

not the former.

Now I'm going to stop the video here because he's going to go into an issue that I can just mention here.

Cause I have it jotted down here so that we're not, uh, cause he does go through some other stuff that, um, I don't want to

bore people.

Um, I, I appreciate David's work in putting in the time to do

all this, but just, uh, his voice tends to be a little monotone, so I don't,

I'm sorry, David.

I don't mean that as an insult or anything.

I know you're, you're reading a script and stuff and that's perfectly fine.

And I love how your information is orderly, but just for the sake of those listening, uh, I'm going to move to my

notes and address, I think, uh, an important aspect of what you present the video folks can definitely check out the actual

video.

Um, and I recommend, um, I recommend that, uh, folks, if you're interested in what David has to say, check out

his channel faith because of reasons.

Um, and check out the video entitled, how do you know your reasoning is valid?

Um, the video is only 19 minutes and 51 seconds long, so you can totally check that out in one sitting.

Um, but I don't want to spend too much time just playing the video.

There's a couple of minutes left, but, uh, I'm going to wrap the video part up, but I'm going to keep my screen up because a lot of people have been

asking Matt about this issue of direct acquaintance.

So I think as we finish, I might just play my five

minute clip of Brant bosserman unpacking the, uh, direct acquaintance.

I might just share it up on the screen and let people listen to it because I direct people to it.

I'm not sure how many people actually go and see.

And I think bosserman, uh, I might, I might have flummoxed the question, but he still addresses

important aspects of direct acquaintance and that might be useful for people who, um, who are interested.

Uh, so let's remove this for now.

Okay.

And, um, David brings up the, the issue of just, uh, different uses of reason.

Okay.

And he makes a distinction between, uh, what he calls justificatory sense says something is used in a justificatory sense

when it is offered as a rational justification for belief.

And, uh, he, as an evidential is an evidentialist seems like he rejects this particular use of it.

I'm not sure if he rejects it.

Uh, it's definitely not the view that he's assuming.

Um, and then he makes a distinction between that sense of the use of reason and the sense, um, he calls

functional, the functional usage, something is used in a functional sense, he says, when it is employed as a

tool in the process of ascertaining or offering rational justification, and this seems to be his

particular use of, um, reasoning.

And so if reasoning is used in a functional sense, then it doesn't make sense to

ask, how do you know your reasoning is reliable?

And so he says, Hey, we don't fall into as evidentialist.

We don't fall into that issue because that assumes a use of reason that we're not assuming.

Uh, how would you speak to that, Matt?

I think the way he lays it out at a, uh, uh, further on part of the video, the thing it

starts with is this brute kind of the process they hear use in a functional sense.

You carry the evidence just to be a justificatory, uh, uh, for your

beliefs.

But then he says, well, you'd use your reasoning then from, uh, the evidence to certain

conclusions.

And therefore, uh, reasoning in that other sense, there could be justificatory in that justificatory sense, but

not in the antecedent functional sense where it's just brute cognitive function, uh, or cognitive

processes going on in, uh, in order to, uh, encounter the evidence itself, whether you remember the

evidence is supposed to be the, the justification for the beliefs that you have something

underlying the beliefs.

And there's a regressive justification there as the appeal about the layers it's moving forward, usually that which

moves forward from the brute cognitive processes to the evidence and go, oh, the evidence is the,

uh, the justifier, you know, for my antecedent beliefs.

So that's how I'm using it.

It's consequence here.

So you understand the relationship there, uh, to what's moving either behind or forward

there in the, uh, in the, uh, in the linear fashion here, it's either go backwards or forward.

So I think it's the evidentials wants to move forward with it.

It says, look, we've got these cognitive processes.

There's more meteor philosophical issues.

I think need to be addressed there, uh, to be cashed out intelligibility to even discern evidence or qualities of

evidence, things like that is there's a lot of philosophical baggage here.

It needs to be cashed out.

Uh, and then what, what is that unifier between the cognitive processes and the, uh, evidence

itself?

Uh, cause if you use a reason to be a functional sense there that the evidence, uh, as, uh, being interpreted

there, well, what's that thing that underlies and you dice the, those, those two, is it some non -cognitive

thing?

Uh, it, it just wants to have this on that, uh, symbiotic relationship there when it covers, you know, the facts

or whatever, this distinct from your cognitive process.

You have the, uh, you know, it's just taking for granted the capability and it's a rational

engagement of the evidence, uh, not that the evidence makes it rational.

It's, uh, uh, I think they're presuming it's already rational to begin with.

You're, you have these rational cognitive processes going on.

Uh, there would, uh, need, how would those be evidence themselves?

Really?

You know, if it's really sad, you got to start with a philosophical presupposition that's not based on evidence.

You got to have the evidence justify these things.

Uh, but how, how is that really correlated there?

Uh, if there's something that's, uh, uh, being the mediator between the mere

brute cognitive processes, uh, I think it's just taking for granted is just, uh,

it's a fact that rational, you know, I think that needs to be cashed out first.

That's why we're, we're, you know, broader context here philosophically and theologically.

So you would say that David is not being broad enough.

I think it's just, it's just pigeonholed.

I think it just, it's no different than, uh, in my, my mere opinion.

I'm no expert though.

I just, uh, just on a pure, uh, intuitionic notion here.

It just sounds like it's no better than pragmatism or just a form of pragmatism.

Uh, that just really truncates itself into a very narrow, uh, epistemic field.

It's not really try to cash out the big underlying, uh, philosophical issues, uh, there

that are presupposed to even have rational discourse or discernibility of plurality of senses that they're unified.

It can be discerned, uh, from, from one another working at cohesive system.

I mean, a worldview system has got to be cashed out here.

That's what we're talking about.

A worldview justification, a worldview account for the very things that we employ, uh, on a

daily basis.

And, uh, need to be philosophically, uh, the philosophy needs to actually pay the bills for these, for

these underlying issues, instead of leapfrogging two things, uh, further on down the line.

And then there's these, uh, other epistemic philosophical maneuvers that are already, once you take it off.

So for granted that everyone's like, yeah, we all take it for granted.

Here's all this meandering back and forth of this narrow field here after you've already taken a lump sum of things for granted,

uh, I didn't really see the big meteor things to be cashed out, uh, unity, adversity is being taken for granted, like from your

ultimate metaphysical starting point.

And obviously epistemic and ethical, which we're grounded in the triune God is greater of all things.

So you have the metaphysical level of God, the epistemic level of God, God's ethic, God's character,

and you have the creator creation distinction.

So we have a sub level there of the creatures, metaphysic, epistemology and ethic,

and there's, uh, you know, harmony between those two, but we're transcendentally vindicating that by saying you let the world be

system.

And then someone compares theirs.

If they're pressed to that location of ultimacy, if it's not the triune God, then what is ultimately cashing these out of

a physical level as well.

Cause you got that metaphysically grounded in your epistemology.

It's not just, you know, well, even like Paul was going to say, reasoning is not some mythical thing or whatever.

So is it epistemology?

It's not some mythical thing.

Just get out of the ether.

How you metaphysically grouting this, uh, do you actually have, you know, existence, uh, you know,

and, uh, existence of an epistemology and things like that.

I mean, they correlate together.

You just really can't separate those categories from each other.

So we never conflate epistemology ontology.

We're just showing there's an intricate relationship there and they are distinguished, but you can't have one without the other it's, you know, until

say what's their knowledge is based upon what his view of reality is.

And vice versa.

Yeah.

You gotta have them as a, uh, all their wood stroke.

So, oh, thank you for that.

Yeah.

So, uh, so let's summarize his position here in this summary is taken from the latter part of his

video where he summarizes his own position.

So I'm reading directly from his own summary.

Uh, he says, summary, I have assessed the claim that all reasoning is circular because one must, in some sense, use

reason to validate reason.

He says the argument is usually unintelligible.

And of course that depends on how we're understanding the terms.

And I agree with him more clarity in expressing what we mean.

Uh, it should be the case.

Um, when it is made intelligible, it appears to assume reliabilism.

And this makes the argument forceless against evidentialism because evidentialists reject reliabilism.

And it ignores a critical distinction between two types of the usage of reason.

And he makes a distinction between the justificatory sense and the functional sense.

He says, Hey, we're using it in the functional sense.

And so every time you ask us a question about how we justify, you know, justify our use of reason, so on and so forth.

Um, he's saying, Hey, you're assuming the justificatory sense and we're not.

Um, and so, uh, so there you go.

That's a summary of his position.

These are some of our thoughts on his position.

And, um, I, I hope that we've represented issues accurately and, um,

I appreciate David's work in putting the video together.

And even though I disagree, uh, it's all good.

Um, it's good to have these conversations and discussions and I really appreciate it.

And for the most part, you're getting a little saucy in the comments, but people are behaving and I appreciate that.

Um, so real quick, um, I'm going to play, I want to close our show off with the five

minute clip because I keep getting this issue of direct acquaintance.

And I think, uh, Bram Fosterman did a good job in kind of explaining some of the details of that, as it relates to

the specific issues that are, that people ask about with respect to knowledge and presuppositions and so on and so forth.

So I'm going to play that.

But before I do that, are there any last comments or thoughts, Matt, before we close off, uh, with that, that clip?

Uh, no, I echo the same sentiments there.

I appreciate the video to very, uh, clear manner with, uh, things enumerated, something that was easy to follow.

Uh, yeah.

What does that, the philosophical acumen, which I don't necessarily, I get pretty brain fried on those things.

So they get quite heady and complicated with a lot of, uh, now sort of that with like, you know,

uh, you can do some things with like five different adjectives that are qualified that now or something like that.

So it get quite heady and stuff like that.

But it made it at least understand the brass tacks, what the fundamental issue was and how people were using it and certain

maneuvers and stuff like that.

I understand people have those sorts of things.

It's like, well, what if you presented it this way, you know, and, uh, we're going to avoid this or whatever,

you know, I can understand that.

I was just trying to track as best as I could and offer my, uh, cause I think the video that came out like quite

a few days ago, so I only had a number of times to go over it, make sure I get down to the nuts and bolts of it.

So I got to try and offer my, uh, my thoughts on it.

So it takes a little thought to do.

I'm not, I'm not a professional philosopher.

So some of the terms I I'm familiar with,.

By trade.

So, uh, yeah, I just, I'm just a beat, beat counter by trade.

So, you know what a beat counter is, right?

You're not that, that, uh, young to that.

What a beat got me.

No, I said being counter.

Oh, I thought you said meat patter.

Like he beat for a

accountant.

So, so I just like doing stuff on the side with our apologetics and theology and philosophy and stuff like

that.

So just as an educated labor, the very labors level, you know, the average guy, but, uh, still

got some work to do.

So I like, uh, deal with, uh, more complex things like that just to get the juices flowing and stuff like that.

So I, I, uh, give a kudos for that, for like a clear presentation and, uh, uh, what you thought was an issue

or something like that.

I think, uh, it's just business markets a little too truncated, uh, on both accounts, both, uh,

reliable list and, uh, uh, evidential list, uh, really deal with

the worldview apologetic, the transcendentalists, you know, laid out by Vaughn Savantill and his followers,

uh, you know, regarding the way they're represented as a worldview apologetic, even though we get, why do you slivers of it, of, uh,

uh, you know, certain videos or something like that in.

Yeah.

How the answer fools a pretty long, long video there.

And so I'm really just saying, Hey, this is the, the, the argument here.

That's one sliver of questions that I would be asking people on the street level, and he's getting to the broader

context there, but he has to ask them narrowing questions there to start with that brought it out from there.

Uh, you know, the discourse there of, uh, pre -evangelism, it's laid out the, uh, so that the unbeliever

understands his governing presuppositions there.

He becomes more episodic self -conscious of them.

And it usually happens to, you know, given the interrogatives that, uh, side was guilt of their, you know, the question.

So you only got a sliver of the apologetic there.

It's not, you know, the meat and potatoes of the whole kid caboodle.

You know, if you understand the transcendental argument of presuppositions, sure.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for that.

And I appreciate your friendship.

I appreciate you coming on and, um, I hope that this has been somewhat helpful.

Of course, this is not going to end all controversy.

Obviously there's other issues and broader issues and more technical things to consider.

And, um, as, as you know, um, David, uh, seems to be coming from a very

analytic perspective in terms of how, uh, words are being used and whatnot.

So that can get very intricate very quickly.

And I think it's an important discussion to have, to be more detailed and more specific.

And so, uh, David, thank you for putting out your video, giving us something interesting and useful to interact

with.

And, um, and for those who are listening, I hope it's been useful.

So we're not going to end just yet.

We're going to end after playing this clip of a younger me.

Uh, I don't have white hair in this video, a younger me with, uh, with a younger brand foster men talking about the

issue of direct acquaintance, not a topic directly related to the video, but it comes up so often I figured why not?

Let's end with that.

As soon as that video clip ends, uh, the episode will end.

And I, I'll do so right now.

I bid everyone a farewell for now.

I actually, I will be on Chris Arnzen's radio show on December 21st.

So if folks are familiar with the radio show, iron sharpens iron, um, you follow Chris Arnzen on Facebook or on the

website, uh, the radio station website.

I will be on his show on the 21st of December.

So throwing that out there.

All right, let's play this bad boy and then we'll end things here.

Ask question.

And it's a greedy question that I want to ask.

Uh, so I apologize if I, if I skipped over anyone's questions, I did want to kind of move along

here.

We're already at an hour and 44 minutes and, and Dr. Bosterman has been so generous with his time.

Um, and so, um, this is going to be the last question.

Okay.

So I have heard folks say that presuppositionalism doesn't work.

The transcendental argument doesn't work.

You don't need the Christian worldview, uh, to ground knowledge because, um,

I have an argument from direct acquaintance.

I can be directly acquainted with certain experiences that I have.

This is undeniable.

And so I don't need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism.

These are things that I know immediately.

Um, and so it doesn't, you know, either transcendental argument, presuppositionalism, uh, doesn't deliver

on what it says it delivers.

And I don't need it anyway.

So how would you respond to an argument from direct acquaintance that we can be directly acquainted with things and

cannot be wrong about it?

So there you go.

I don't need any Christian presuppositions.

I don't need circularity in my arguing.

I, I know these things.

They're direct.

I'm a directly acquainted with them.

Okay.

So a few things, um, I, you know, what people are usually speaking about there, I mean, they probably don't

know Johan Fichte, I mean, no one reads him anymore.

Uh, that essentially, you know, uh, feelings and states of, uh, states of

feeling or things that, that are immediately known or more immediately know or, or things like that.

Um, I would, first of all, ask them, you know, what they mean by no.

Um, a feeling is not knowledge.

Um, if you give a name to that state or to that condition, and you even say that those states are

alike, you know, even the way you're describing it, I have immediate knowledge of states.

Um, what is the universality or the generality of those states?

Uh, and, and how can you, how are you able to protect, to predicate that thing to multiple

things?

You don't have an immediate knowledge of that.

In fact, what that means is you don't have an immediate knowledge of those states, you have a mediated knowledge of those states,

wherein you're, you're applying a universal descriptor to that state,

even as you're reflecting on it or knowing it or recalling it, which you're not just telling me you're having an immediate state right

now, you're remembering a state.

So in fact, every time you're having a state, you're, you're remembering a state, um, of, of feeling,

uh, slightly thereafter, at least in terms of your cognitive process.

So to call that unmediated is a grave mistake.

It is mediated.

It's mediated even in that rational subjective realm in which you name it, speak of it, recall

it, all of it.

And then you ask yourself, how can you be certain that you had any of those states?

Um, and, and again, we would answer the only being who could speak with authority is that being who

resides outside of you, who knows himself and knows all things by himself.

And that's why we'd say you have to know the God who knows everything to know anything.

And these more immediate states are themselves, uh, immediately bearing witness to the

God who made you the God who created you.

So when someone says, I am currently having a sensation of pain, that

statement is in the past, I just said it, but

isn't it the case that even the statements in the, in the past, I'm still experiencing the pain immediately?

No, you're experiencing it through time.

You're experiencing that through space.

You're experiencing that through the very names and language that you can ascribe to it.

You're experiencing that with reference to a multitude of other things.

In fact, when you speak of, uh, uh, uh, I'm immediately experiencing pain.

That right there has a reference to what you're not experiencing, evidently pleasure.

You know, there's a whole cognitive world that that's, that's married to.

And this is what we talk about.

When we talk about, you know, description and definition themselves requiring

multiplicity.

And so you're still in a place of saying, you know, uh, how do you unify the one in the many?

I mean, the human is ready to contemplate that he would say that there's

surely no proof that your cognitive state is one unified solar being who's who could

say that you weren't like a string of, uh, chasing Christmas lights going on and off

your consciousness itself being totally discontinuous with prior states of being.

So even when you say I am an experiencing pain, you're already referring to a one in many,

uh, an eye that maintains unity through a diversity of things.

And again, you would say, uh, yeah, what can facilitate that?

You know, what can facilitate this unity through diversity?

And the answer is nothing in creation suffices.

And the answer is that, um, again, uh, that's why everything bears witness to the God

who's an absolute one in many and can, uh, it has made a created one in many to bear

witness to him.

That was an excellent answer.

All right.

Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

Until next time.

Take care and God bless.

Bye -bye.