Presuppositional Apologetics Applied to Plato

Platonism, Abstract Objects, and the Challenge to Autonomous Reason

Not needing to justify things like laws of logics or opposing ones, but I just want to pose one because I think it'll move us in a helpful direction. Suppose I'm an atheist, but suppose I'm not a materialist and suppose I posit Platonism and I say, well, I think there are these abstract things like laws of logic and mathematics and so that's how I justify them.

So whichever one of you wants to take that first.

Yeah, I think one of the defining features between the Christian worldview and any non-Christian worldview is that every non-Christian worldview to some degree adopts some form of autonomy with respect to man's ability to reason.

And so what is inherent within Platonism is an assumption of the ability of autonomous reasoning to conclude and reflect upon and come to conclusions with respect to the nature of metaphysical reality.

How does Plato know anything at all? Much less that there is this immaterial realm of ideals. And when you push Plato far enough, you know what Plato eventually said, he kind of had to reduce his explanation to metaphor and kind of this story to kind of justify these audacious claims.

And so at that point I would challenge the assumption of autonomy of Plato and move him into skepticism with respect to his ability to know that given his own limitations. That's one way you can go about it.

So I do think that there are problems with the assumption of autonomy. This is inherent within every non-Christian perspective. When you posit the ability of man's reasoning without the resources of divine revelation to gain knowledge about the fundamental nature of reality, there you're going to run into some problems.

And that's just not me as a presuppositionalist saying this. This is an issue that comes up throughout the history of philosophy. What is unique about the Christian worldview, if we use Kantian terms, for example, between the phenomenal realm and the noumenal realm?

The noumenal realm, this metaphysical reality, what connects the noumenal to the phenomenal for the Christian? You see, the fundamental nature of reality is the personal triune God who reveals. So on our perspective, the ultimate grounding of all reality and all derivational facts is the personal God who can communicate to us, who exist in the phenomenal realm, noumenal truths.

But for Plato, you do not have an absolute revealing God who does that. And so what you have with Plato is a man who is stuck in an egocentric predicament trying to grasp for knowledge with respect to the metaphysical situation.

And I don't think he can do that given his philosophy. And I think it's been shown. I think Bonson addresses Plato. He refutes Plato in multiple lectures. And even in his book, I think, Van Til's Apologetic Readings and Analysis, there's a section on Plato where he refutes Plato precisely because of this point and some other things we obviously won't have time to get into.

The Meaning of Laws of Logic and the Mind of God

But that's how I would approach it. Yeah, I mean, I approach it a little bit differently, but I would agree with everything you said. I would approach it, you know, I have kind of a cheeky article where I talk about William and Craig.

What's up with you and cheeky? I've never heard you say cheeky all night. Kind of whatever. I have an article where I argue that William and Craig is a mere presuppositionalist. And I would answer that question the same way that I would answer, the same way that William and Craig would answer when people would try to answer his moral objection from something like Platonism, like Thomas Nagel or something like that, or, you know, my friend Ben Watkins, who tries to do something like that, it's irreducibly normative or something along those lines.

And I would say, OK, well, in the same way that William and Craig, when we talk about, OK, well, what is justice in the Platonic sense? Right. I don't I don't know what that means. Like, I know what it means to say that a person is just or an action is just.

I'm just ripping off William and Craig right here right now. I'm not this is not an original idea. When it goes to the same thing with with laws of logic, I know what it means to sit to talk about laws of logic as as rational properties, as properties of the minds, as laws of true thought, as inferences within thinking.

I know what it means. I can understand it if they're if they're kind of housed in a mind that, you know, they're housed. I don't know what it means. I literally don't I can't I don't know what it means to say the law of non-contradiction just exists.

And somehow that that that that platonic form of the law of non-contradiction somehow is incumbent on on material reality such that contradictions can't be instantiated in the material world. I I don't know what that means.

And I don't know how a causally a feat, even if it was true, a causally a feat, an entirely impotent platonic form would mean that contradictions couldn't exist in the real world. There's no there's no bridge between those two things, so I don't even know what that means to say those types of things.

And so I would go back and say, well, the only rational way to understand those things is to understand those as that is a reflection of the structure of the mind of God. Now, the Platonist could say, well, I start with this numeral realm as a presupposition.

It's my axiom. I just accepted and I build everything on. The problem with that is that you can't argue Platonism transcendentally because the transcendental claim of the Christian is not a bare claim to authority.

We actually, as Dr. James Anderson has said, we have what it takes to pay the bills on the claim. You see, if you posit a platonic presupposition with respect to the idealistic realm and things like that, if you hypothetically grant the truth of that perspective, but you have no revelatory connection between the idealistic realm and the phenomenal realm, then on your own principle, you couldn't even know if that's true.

You see what I'm saying? So even if we grant platonic thought categories, it doesn't meet the burden to provide the necessary preconditions of intelligible experience and knowledge and things like that.

All it is is just a stipulated presupposition, which is not what the presupposition list is arguing. Contrary to popular opinion, we're willing to argue the transcendental necessity of our presupposition.

Presuppositions, Axioms, and Transcendental Arguments

You see, this is important because in my discussion with Tom Jump, we spoke briefly of presuppositions and Tom seemed to suggest that presuppositions by definition are unprovable. They're just your presuppositions.

You start with them and that's not right. OK, if you think that presuppositions by definition are unprovable, number one, you might be confusing a presupposition with an axiom. They're not necessarily the same.

And if you are to say that it's impossible to justify a presupposition, what you're inherently doing is you're denying the possibility of transcendental arguments in general. Are you going to tell me that no transcendental argument can be done?

Because what does a transcendental argument seek to do? It seeks to justify your presupposition by appealing to its transcendental necessity. You see, so it's very important to understand the nature of the presuppositional claim.

We're not making bare authority claims. We are making authority claims, but we claim that we can make good on those claims by presenting a transcendental form of argumentation.