French Philosopher Crashes Live Stream

Guillaume Bignon’s Question on the Transcendental Argument

To let this person share here. We have Guillaume Bignon, who as recently was on my show to critique Braxton Hunter, Leighton Flowers and Tim Stratton. You know, one Frenchman versus one French Calvinist versus three libertarians.

And he was a tour de force in his critiques. And I thought it was a total default. I can't even. I'm not even going to try. But he is saying, all right, let me crash this Calvinist love fest. Eli, will you ask vocab my question?

So he has a question for you. Tell him his question is misguided because Calvinists have.

No love. That's right. And he is asking me to read the question with a French accent. And this might actually make me lose my viewership. You know, you're not French, are you? I'm Puerto Rican, bro. He's like, if you don't provide additional premises, then it seems you're committing a non sequitur because it's a biblical nature of the triune nature of the transcendent creator.

That's too much, too much. Let me try it. I'm regular. Pretty good, though, bro. I couldn't keep it consistent. It just feels awkward. And his question's too long. Maybe I can get away with it if it was a shorter question.

But oh, my goodness. All right. So here's this question. He says, if you don't provide the additional premises, then it seems you're committing a non sequitur because the biblical nature and triune nature of that transcendent creator don't immediately follow from the laws of logic and morality.

But if you provide additional premises, then how is it different from the classical two-step approach? Basically, if I can guess what Guillaume is thinking here, he is thinking in terms of the transcendental argument and the attempt by many presuppositionalists to demonstrate the truth of the Christian God via a transcendental argument.

Do you want to address that? And.

Maybe I'll give my two senses or I don't think. I don't think. I mean, if I start talking, I'll just be saying stuff that's probably not totally relevant to what he's saying. I mean, I have you know, it's funny.

I mean, so Guillaume is like a legit philosopher,.

Right? You know, I've hung out with him. He's I apologize. He has. He had an extra point there.

I didn't read that. Oh, no, I apologize. He really says this to do. Guillaume, this is what you can do. I can't do this. Can you break down the transcendental two steps? One. Wait, no, it's not one, isn't it?

The existence of the laws of logic and morality until the existence of a transcendent creator and step. This transcendent creator must be the triangle because of other good premises we provide. Right.

I think I think if I can give my.

Two cents here is please do. There is there are extra steps in a transcendental argument if you formulate a transcendental argument within a deductive context. So if I were to get if I were to give a transcendental argument deductively, we can say something like this.

Premise one, if knowledge is possible, then the Christian worldview is true. Premise two, knowledge is possible conclusion. Therefore, the Christian worldview is true. And so the transcendental premise there that's going to be at issue when you're presenting it deductively like that is going to be the first premise.

And so I'm going to have to defend the premise that the acquisition of knowledge is only possible given the entire Christian package. And so how would we unpack that? You'd have to go through various premises and things like that.

But that's if you form the argument within a deductive structure. You have to understand that what I said just a few moments ago, when we argue presuppositionally, we're not arguing up to God. Rather, we are arguing from God.

The argument transcendentally is that if you do not start with the triune God that already has within that the Christian worldview, the the packaged in concepts of oneness and manyness and his revelation and how that relates to human beings.

When we speak of the triune God, that presupposition, that transcendental presupposition is the entire package. So the indirect method of defending the transcendental argument is don't assume that. And you couldn't even justify inductive principles, deductive principles, or any principles of rationality at all.

And so there are also two sides of the presuppositional approach. We can use an indirect proof, which is traditionally what transcendental arguments try to do, at least as Bonson presented in Van Til, but we could also use the vocabulary that Gordon Clark used of providing a positive construction.

So that when someone says, but I don't see the connection as to how the triune God grounds all these things, then we can lay out what was our metaphysical and epistemological starting point, the Bible, and talk about what God has said about himself and draw those connections within the context of a discussion.

So that's a very compact response to the question, but of course, that'd be way beyond the scope of our show here to address.

Presuppositional Apologetics and the Transcendental Argument

It in more detail, but go ahead and vocab. Yeah, that works for me. You know, uh, game comes on here. I mean, aren't you supposed to be at wall street right now or doing something like that game? Aren't you supposed to be like in New York walking around and your loafers looking down on the plebs or something like that, but maybe social distancing doesn't allow that.

I don't know. Uh, but with all seriousness, uh, there's a certain, I could be wrong on this, but there's a certain way in which I almost notice a strange hesitancy and it's weird. I almost ended up sharing this for like legit preceptors to actually give arguments for God's existence.

It's almost like, Hey, look, God exists. Now let's hold your world, you up against mine and all that the trying God of scripture existing, all that entails and let's find out what happens. And that's where the collision comes in.

And as we push the antithesis, we have the confidence and know that it's going to be the case that there is no competing worldview of any sort or any variety that at the end of the day is going to be able to withstand proper scrutiny and win in a sense, as far as the worldview doesn't mean any given debate or anything like that.

And so it's kind of almost like, uh, that's why there's this very indirect argument. That's like, we know Christianity is true by the impossibility to the contrary, the idea of everything else is, and it's, it's, I see like a lot of people, um, there seems to be a hesitancy for preceptors, unless I'm wrong, you know, to even necessarily formulate even tag, which is sometimes thought of as an argument for the existence of God and a traditional, um, syllogism.

It's almost like, well, let me, let me show you what it means that God's exists. And, and, and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting thing. Uh, I don't know if that's exactly what you were saying. And Guillaume is a whole nother level.

You probably, you, you said you've already interviewed him because it seems like you probably should really interview him.

Positive Construction and the Indirect Proof

And have this discussion. Not me. Well, we, we did, we did interview him on a topic of, of, uh, as he would say, uh, Calvinism, uh, and, uh, and the philosophy, uh, um, and, uh, so we didn't talk about apologetic methodology.

However, we have spoken on the phone over our disagreements and we had a very nice, uh, respectfully conversation, um, in which, um, we just, uh, disagreed on various points. Um, but again, that might be due to, uh, just the difficulty of navigating the topic, the ambiguity of, as you mentioned before, there's been a of presuppositional is trying to formulate the transcendental argument in that way.

Uh, traditionally it's often been understood as a disjunctive syllogism and not necessarily deductive argument. We have people who kind of fall on different spectrums there. Um, but thank you for the question, Guillaume.