Presuppositional Apologetics & Direct Acquaintance

Revealed Apologetics

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ask you one last question and it's a greedy question that I want to ask. So I apologize if I skipped over anyone's questions.

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I did want to kind of move along here. We're already at an hour and 44 minutes and Dr. Bosserman has been so generous with his time.

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And so this is going to be the last question. Okay, so I have heard folks say that presuppositionalism doesn't work.

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The transcendental argument doesn't work. You don't need the Christian worldview to ground knowledge because I have an argument from direct acquaintance.

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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.

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These are things that I know immediately. And so transcendental argument, presuppositionalism doesn't deliver on what it says it delivers and I don't need it anyway.

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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?

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So there you go. I don't need any Christian presuppositions. I don't need circularity in my arguing.

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I know these things. I'm directly acquainted with them. Okay. So a few things.

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You know, what people are usually speaking about there, I mean, they probably don't know Johann Fichte. I mean, no one reads him anymore.

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But essentially, you know, feelings and states of states of feeling are things that are immediately known or more immediately known or things like that.

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I would, first of all, ask them, you know, what they mean by know. A feeling is not knowledge.

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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,

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I have immediate knowledge of states. What is the universality or the generality of those states?

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And how can you, how are you able to predicate that thing to multiple things?

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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.

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You have a mediated knowledge of those states, wherein 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.

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And so, in fact, every time you're having a state, you're remembering a state of feeling slightly thereafter, at least in terms of your cognitive process.

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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.

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

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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.

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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 immediately bearing witness to the

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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.

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I just said it. But isn't it the case that even the statements in the past,

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I'm still experiencing the pain immediately? No, you're experiencing it through time.

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

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You're experiencing that with reference to a multitude of other things. In fact, when you speak of I'm immediately experiencing pain, that right there has a reference to what you're not experiencing, evidently pleasure.

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There's a whole cognitive world that that's married to. And this is what we talk about when we talk about description and definition themselves requiring multiplicity.

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

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I mean, Hume is ready to contemplate that. He would say that there's surely no proof that your cognitive state is one unified solar being, who could say that you weren't like a string of chasing

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Christmas lights going on and off your consciousness itself being totally discontinuous with prior states of being.

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

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I that maintains unity through a diversity of things. And again, you would say, yeah, what can facilitate that?

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You know, what can facilitate this unity through diversity? And the answer is nothing in creation suffices.

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

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God who's an absolute one in many and has made a created one in many to bear witness to him.