They don't they the the the the the the the the the the the the
the the the the people the the the people them to the people, the
the the bum all right, all right, welcome back, Father Deacon Antonius,
Father Deacon doctor Anonius, joins me. Excuse me, I'm depriving you
of your proper titles. Uh and uh we what CP A C I A
c CP should those all be on there as well all of your uh alphabet
acronyms that I'll leave any out s sp X, I like bond. I
need Russian passport here? What's your Russian code name? Dugan? Are your
your Russian code name Dugan? When you're that's your your Dugan pass can pass
right there, so that when you when you come to Russia, Dugan sits
there at the check in gate and he literally checks every person in and he
looks at you and says, you have good beat or you can posts.
You look at Russian who can post? There's only one guy check to Russia.
When I go into Russia, Dugans, the dude with the sign that
says f d A. You know what, like the guy that picks you
up in the limo. He picks you up in the limo and takes you
to McDonald's. Is the Russian McDonald's. When I was in Russia, I
did take a picture of they had all these ads for like billboard ads for
Papa John's pizza, and it was like this hockey hockey player with like a
missing tooth and like, so I took a bunch of pictures of Michael hilarious.
Did you taste the vodka in Russia? Does it taste different or is
it all the same everywhere? I made the mistake of like we were at
a hotel, so you ordered wine cooler and you ordered Arnolds and James all,
what's the Russian zema? You ordered? The Russians they had like this
really nice spread for at this one of these hotels for breakfast, and then
they had like bottles of vodkas kind of like set up like cannons and stuff.
And I asked my spiritual father and I'm I'm like vodka for breakfast,
And he's like, well the Russians and blah blah blah, said well,
can I get your blessing to try vodka for breakfast in the morning. It
was the worst mistake I've ever made, because of course, like I was
just like I want to go back to bed. Are you being serious?
Like there's actually an option for vodka breakfast. They drink vodka for breakfast.
Wow. And my father was telling me like, well, you got to
see, like a lot of these guys are just like out manual labor and
so they like, you know, you're just burning through and working it off
and stuff like that. I'm like, yeah, because I mean, I
don't want to drink alcohol for breakfast, man, I was. It's yeah,
so terrible, and it reminds me of in Italy, like the odd
choices they have for breakfast. In Italy. There's there's always like a million
like crumpets and cakes, super soggy bacon which doesn't even look cooked, which
is weird, and then like cold ham and cold eggs, like the eggs
are never hot, they're cold. It's just just a weird breakfast idea.
I don't know anyway. Anyways, Yeah, I was on a pilgrimage,
so I wasn't actually searching for like distilleries and Russian tasting Russian vodka and stuff
like that. But when I go back, I'll make a habit of finding
It'll be like an Indiana Jones the Search for the Holy Vodka. All right,
So tonight we're gonna discuss the the new paper that Father deaconductor Anonius has
written, which is I thought he mentioned this idea a few months ago,
that was a great idea for a paper to address some of the specific challenges
that we've heard in recent years to the transcendental argument for God's existence, and
a lot of these revolve around higher level argumentation, and really a basic kind
of idea that I think you had said Russ Manion pointed out to you a
while back, which is that it's really just asking the question of, like,
what's the reason for reasoning itself? And when we think about it in
that way, it's actually prior to any of the atheistic argumentation that they might
even engage in, because you're not even allowing them to sort of make the
first move, which any first move is going to assume again reasoning. So
if we're asking questions about reasoning itself, that's a perfect kind of segue into
the domain of tag. So do you wanna how do you want to kick
it off? And uh, and maybe maybe was there certain discussions you had
that prompted you to have this as your paper topic. Yeah, so I'm
really indebted to russ man Into and just let everybody know he did pass away
last week, So keep him and his family and your prayers. My godson
who is dear friends with Russ and did the dialogue group with They were working
on a book, and so I've been in correspondence with them and reading some
other articles that most people haven't seen. Because what I was trying to think
about is what was really good about russ Mannion is his psychology. The ability
to grasp the kind of psychological component of the other person, kind of get
to the question behind the question and stuff like that, and then reduce it
what would seemingly be really complicated to a really kind of basic way of like
explaining stuff. Yeah, I like this intro. This this intro sentence at
the top. The hardest problem is convincing people the problem is not hard at
all, but simple. That's a good Yeah, that's me. Yeah,
I'm saying that's a perfect introductory sentence. But that's kind of like channeling the
you know, russ Mannion. Let me give you an example of where he
could take something that apparently would be really complex and then boil and it relates
to this opening kind of quote that you you gave. There's no purely rationalistic
rational argument for the existence of God. Hold on, let me find it.
So Butcher the where is it goes something to the effect that there's no
purely rational argument for the existence of God or for theism. There's only a
theistic account of rationality. And when I heard that, I was like,
Oh, that's perfect. And then I started so I really started kind of
trying to get into the psychology of the other, like what's going on?
Why is this so difficult? Because once you get it right, once you
get tagged, don't you feel that it's like this is so obvious, Like
in fact, there's nothing more obvious. Yeah, it's almost like a hidden
in plain sight type of thing, like this is should have been obvious the
whole time. So let me give you another conversation that I had that kind
of illustrates the same point. I was talking with my chair of philosophy,
really great guy. He graduated from Thomas Quantas College like myself. Of course
he's older. But so I stopped by his office maybe like a month ago
to ask him a question if because I was dealing with arguing with some people
about nominalism, and I said, well, I'm just kind of interesting what
his thoughts where I said, do you have any good arguments against nominalisms?
And said he says, well, what do you mean? And I said,
well, that nominalism's false and he says, well, isn't it obvious?
And I'm like, yeah, it's like this story of my life.
I'm sitting here. The hardest problem is arguing like, isn't it obvious?
The hardest problem is convincing people the problem isn't hard at all but simple.
And I really it's kind of the frustrating part about philosophy. And it illustrates
too that what's really going on is not an intellectual issue. Yeah, it's
a spiritual issue that people want to attempt to kind of justified their their idols
as they put out a talk about in the paper and so and Saint Paul
talks about this too. All men know that God exists, but they suppress
that knowledge. And so there's different ways you can suppress that. But the
philosophers build systems, don't they, And they make it super complicated and they're
really smart, and then it puts the burden on us that it's like,
well, now I've got to learn all this stuff. I've got to learn
logic, modal logic and all this analytic philosophy and epistemology just to cut through
all the bs and show you that the problem is not hard at all but
simple. And that's the hardest problem. Would you agree? Yeah? I
mean that the there's this illusion that's cast that makes people think that it's all
very you know, profound and deep and sophisticated, and really the only sophisticated
part is when where a direct asking this supposed sophisticated arguments of the opponents,
but are really just kind of like, you know, smoke and mirrors to
cover up total bankruptcy and absolutely no foundations for anything. And I'm not even
sure that most people are aware that they're doing this. And we also talked
about two is that once the systems are constructed for you, and when I'm
talking about the systems, because we're going to get into the paper of and
what I mean by autonomous epistemology, but it's system building. Once these systems
are kind of built, you're brought up in that right, and a good
way to kind of think about it is or you adopt it, you work
within it. It's an operating system, and they're operating systems that can make
you dumb. I had one of the interesting enough, he was a Jesuit
priest, but that was one of my master's advisors, and he would always
criticize different like schools of thought like Marxism, and he was like, oh,
it's stupid. He's like, but it's sort of stupid that you have
to go to school to learn it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a stupidity
that only intellectuals could believe. That's right. So we have this kind of
naive view that it's like, well, the enlightened you see there in college,
and that's there's the stupid, and then there's the educated. And it's
like, no, you go to school to educate yourself in stupidity. And
so part of the problem is not being able to see the obvious. Is
that, and we've talked about this too. You've got yourself into a bad
program and a bad operating system that doesn't allow you to see kind of clearly
and think through stuff. So, you know, the natural theologian at I'll
think that what would just give people arguments and they'll just see it. But
the problem is in an argument how are you going to see the proof or
the argument when you're operating system doesn't allow you to and you also have you
also have an inner partial motivation to suppress that truth. Right. This is
that point about virtue epistemology, virtue knowledge, or of virtue ethics that is
often ignored by the natural theology proponents where they which is ironic because I've asked
a lot of them if they think that, you know, choose a person
who is an unbeliever and prefers vice, would that in any way maybe affect
the evidences that they see and how they interpret the evidences. And most of
them will say yes. But then when you really drill drill down into their
approach, they're still acting like, but all I have to do is like
pile up evidences and eventually they'll kind of tip over and convince the person to
maybe believe. Now, all that being said, it doesn't prevent me from
trying to figure out better ways again, kind of in the spirit of russ
mannion of cutting through all of that. And one of the ways that motivated
this paper was if I was the other person, how would I be seeing
this? Why? If? I mean, it's really hard to kind of
do to get yourself out of your own paradigm and think in terms of the
other person so that I can come back into the paradigm and then work some
of that into my paper. So one of the things that I did was
just kind of put an ad out on all the socials, give me your
best objections, like, let me see it from your point of view,
so that I can go back and kind of think through like what is that
people are struggling with, how can I answer it? And then again how
to boil down a lot of this really kind of complicated stuff and make it
a lot more presentable. So hopefully, you know, I have different kind
of reactions to the paper. Obviously, some people are really confused. I
see that there, and when we get into this second and first order statements
and knowledge that people get really confused about that. And I think one of
the difficult things about this too is I was just talking to my brother on
the phone and he was like, I just found out that like over fifty
percent of people don't have an inner monologue, and I'm like, oh,
yeah, we just I just did a stream on that too the other day,
and that this kind of inabilit this cognitive inability and would also relate to
I think kind of paradigm analysis. So there's we've talked about this, well,
this is just the way you think, right. So I find that
people have had it really difficult kind of stepping out at kind of higher meta
levels to kind of ask kind of metaological, meta epistemological questions. And there's
something tied to kind of introspection, I think, because introspection kind of questions
and doubts our own thoughts, right, I mean, when I would this
would an example be something for the audience, something simple like if I said
the dog is brown, right, that would be a basic knowledge claim.
If I said I have knowledge that the dog is brown would be a higher
level order of questions. And a lot of people get this confused too about
what we're arguing. I've never actually posited that an atheist or anybody else who
doesn't embrace the orthodox worldview can't have knowledge. I it's possible, but the
state that you have knowledge to claim that you do, or to know that
I'm in a state of knowledge and I know the dogs there, that's a
second order. Yeah. The first time I came to one of those conferences
in Texas with you. There was a bit of a disagreement with an individual
over this very question where he thought that I was saying that an unbeliever literally
has no knowledge, when the point was that they can't justify the knowledge that
they have, but they know things, they just don't have an account for
the knowledge. Yeah. And again, because orthodox provides, as we'll see
through the theonymous epistemology of revelatory theism and epistemically privileged position, we can actually
say, of course the atheist knows. Remember we discussed this too, and
I'm trying to remember if it was Stanny Loy, I think it was that
said Orthodoxy is not married to any particular philosophy. It's not wedded like Tony's
wedded to a restituianism. Why, because it transcends all these man made systems.
Yeah, there's a great an epistemic kind of privileged position to look and
be like, sure, right, here's a there's a Fluorovsky I say,
I think that's really good where he talks about how the Batristic era didn't just
adopt Plato or adopt Aristotle, that they would pull from any of these and
the terminology and the ideas are really revelatory in the sense of the nature person
distinction, for example, is not an Aristotle. It's a unique revelation to
the Christian position. Even though it might utilize terminology from Aristotle or Plato,
the meanings that fronema behind the terms that are used is intended to be revelatory
revelation, not not just sort of one to one Greek borrowing cribbing from Greek
philosophy. So I'm trying to set up like the kind of whole prolegemina to
my paper, and I've explained what the motivation was, why this is kind
of a different style that I was trying to also get the objections and then
answer and kind of think through these things and articulate it, which I was.
You know, of course I didn't get all the objections, but I
thought kind of the more serious or more common objections. And the other thing
too, If you remember I had this phone call with you, that first
and second order argument that I developed in there came to It came to me
in a dream. It wasn't a fewer dream. And I remember in the
dream I was arguing with this atheist because I don't know what your dreams are
like, but this is all I do in my serious or joking? Did
you really have a dream about it? I'm not pretty serious. I was
debating this atheist in my dream and I developed this argument, and I remember
thinking of the dream. I'm like, I think I'm onto something here.
Now. I've had all those kinds of thoughts and dreams before, and the
totally nonsensical right when you wake up, oftentimes you're like, what was I
thinking? That didn't that didn't make any sense. But in this dream,
I thought about I think I'm on, you got to remember this and pull
it outside of your dream and write it into your paper. And I just
kept reminding myself that I pull this out, don't forget, because it's easy
to forget something from a dream. And of course I wake up and I
forget, and I'm driving down to leturgy with my subdeacon and I'm telling him,
I'm like, I think I just stumbled upon this really cool argument,
and I can't remember it. After the liturgy, after partaking of the Eucharist,
I remembered it and I'm like, I got it, And I tell
him, my subdeacon, and he was just like, probably thought I was
like super nerdy, and I'm like, so if you remember I called you
because I don't know, like this is part of my introspection. I'm like,
what if this is totally nonsense, And I think, oh, this
is so great. I got it from a dream and this totally makes sense.
So i'd called you and some other people and I told you about this
argument between this kind of circularity between first and second order knowledge in terms of
autonomous epistemology, and both you and other people said, I think it's a
really good argument, and so that I kind of put it in there and
refined it in the paper, So that was another motivation behind the paper too,
which is really interesting. All right, so'slet's get into the paper,
Like what's so. You lay out the introductory paragraph where you're talking about how
you want to present a theonomous epistemology or revelatory theism account for knowledge versus autonomous
epistemology, utilizing this first order second order tiered approach, and then you argue
that the give an account for second order statements in terms of the existence of
knowledge reveals a unique epistemic problem that requires justification for the second order. And
then the conclusion is that of your argument is that only really theism is capable
of grounding a solution or giving a solution to the necessary conditions for the possibility
of knowledge. Yeah, so what I want to do, there's two things
that I did in this paper is to put in onto a two disjunct.
And what that means is in a bunch of Malpass's asses, I call them
these alkoli asses that kind of pseudo intellectuals that just kind of parrot these arguments
that they get from Malpass, and I put this in my paper. They're
presenting an argument from Malpass that basically when I present the orthodox version of tag
and one of the arguments that I used to kind of pedagogically illustrate what's kind
of behind all of this is the disjunctive argument. And so Malpass had this
argument that you know, either it's not a true just junk, meaning there
could be other options like for example, you're iding or eating a peanut butter
and Joe sandwich or a steak. Well that means a true just junk.
It's not either a arb but a or not a And then we'll get into
this later. They have their own criticism of that, but I really do
want to put it into a true dichotomy within the disjunt, and so it's
going to be either autonomous or theonomous. There can't be any third option.
And then what I do is I take the autonomous project and I look,
okay, what is epistemically more than just epistemically problematic but devastating self refuting.
And in this section I think I had titled it the failure of autonomous pistemology.
There's two main arguments that I develop in here. That's the putting your
epistemological horse before your metaphysical cart argument, which you know that I had already
kind of developed that before the writing the paper, and then the first and
second order, which I had kind of a version of that I actually did
something. I refined it and did something different here, partly in base two,
not only on my dream, but objections that I heard that where people
thought that I was simply just kind of recashing, rehashing the Chisholm problem,
and so I had to kind of make it more clear that it's like,
it's similar, you know, in so far as a dialectical kind of tension
and circularity, but it's it's fundamentally different, so that no answers to Chisholm's
criterion problem. Are going to transfer over and answer the argument that I'm making,
but just let me restate. Those are the two main arguments of the
failure of the autonomous epistemology, putting your epistemic course before your metaphysical cart and
circularity epistemic bootstrapping that arises from the dialectical tension but between the first and second
order knowledge. And we can go over those, but if you well,
one question before that is why are you Why are you saying a dialectical tension
between first and second order? Excuse me? I meant the dialectical tension was
between the the metaphysics and epistemology. I guess the first I'm not calling it
into question, I'm just could you flesh that out for me and the audience.
So the dialectical tension between and I guess there is a dialectical tension between
the first and second and it's something similar to the the epistemological and metaphysical.
Right, So die two Right, I have two categories. And with the
epistemological metaphysical again, the metaphysics we would say the way the universe is and
the ontology determines what if we know anything at all and how But then I
have all these different metaphysical accounts. So then what I have to do is
what's contingent upon metaphysics has to be placed prior to metaphysics so that I can
actually determine, I know, before I could even know what metaphysical account is,
so that I can then justify my my epistemology. So what I'm doing
is an unjustified move. I'm going, let's just pretend that's not the case,
and like, let's put this over here and just remember what I always
say, Grant me all my assumptions so that I can and then pretend to
justify my pistemologics. So what we see is I can't get to this without
this, but I have to put this to figure out this. Right,
So there's there's two things that are kind of the intension that can't kind of
resolve each other. They both seem to kind of be dependent on each other,
but because they're divided in this kind of dialectical tension, I can't actually
solve the problem or accomplish a task that I set out to actually do in
any of the philosophy or e pistemology that I'm trying to do likewise with the
first and second order. I have what two categories. With the first order,
John knows the dog's brown, right, and then our claims that John
knows that a dog is brown, or that knowledge exists. Now, clearly
I couldn't make the second claim order claim unless the first order were true.
But what's the problem. I'm always making second order claims about the first So
it's well, yeah, obviously I've got to provide justification. So what grant
me all my assumptions about first order, so that can make all my statements
about my second order that John knows knowledge exists. Basically everything everybody would ever
put in a chat. All the objections that we're getting are all second order.
They're all making epistemic claims, which is different than a person being in
the state of knowledge. Is very different than somebody actually making claims. So
again we have this kind of tension between two categories. I can't get number
two without number one, but I'm always in number two, so I assume
and bootstrap unjustifiably, so category one to arbitrarily and unjustifiably try to justify and
that, and that's similar to the criterion problem. Move right. It's similar
to yeah, but it's not identical because the criterion problem. He'll be like,
people will be like, well, you start off with a methodology and
blah blah blah. But this is more of a fundamental problem. I'm sure
once you grasp the the circularity, the vicious circularity, and dialectical tension between
the first and second order, and realize I'm always in second order from an
autonomous position starting point, I can never I can never get the one,
and so thus have to get to one in order to established to level Yeah,
and so the conditions for the possibility of knowledge are a level two type
of statement. But but they're also a level one statement, and so that
thus the dilemma. Yeah, so I have this. I tried to put
it into some easy premises. If it's true that knowledge exists first order,
then our beliefs are statements that knowledge exists is also true? Why because one
is constitutive for two. So there's some people in the audience still before you
go to those, hold on, people are still kind of wanting to understand.
Again, first we don't get this point. Then we're talking past everybody.
So again, help help me with some examples. Yeah, let's assume
a kind of standard with the possibility given. Gettier that there could be a
fourth condition, but at least knowledge requires a belief, a believer who believes
as a true belief that's for the right reasons, i e. Justified.
So a true, justified belief, with the caveat that perhaps there could be
a fourth condition or something. All right, So that means, let's say
John is believe something about an apple. The apple is there's two apples in
front of me, or something like that. Now he doesn't guess he actually
has a reliable let's say, mechanism, his faculties, whatever. I'll give
it, whatever you guys want. Let's say we agree it's possible that John
not only has a true belief, but he arrives at it for the right
reasons. Okay. Anybody can do that, regardless of whether they're an atheist
or not. We would say that's possible. Okay, So that would be
a first order. John knows there's two apples in front of him. Okay,
it's different to say. It's a different claim to say that John knows
that he knows. John might have knowledge there's two apples. This came up
when I was an undergraduate. We were doing the Pythagorean proof in Euclid,
and a professor asked me, almost kind of a second order question, what
do you think of a student doesn't actually know the proof right or know that
they know? Do you think that they don't know the A square plus B
squared equal C square. So what I would say now is that, well,
if they came to the the belief that A squared basically the sides the
area on the sides of a right angled triangle is equal to the area on
the hypot news for the right reasons, I don't think they would have to
know that they know that as long as they were justified. So again,
on all the literature on epistemology, everybody says you could know something without knowing
that you know it. Does that make sense? That's the first thing we
have to grasp something, or stated knowledge doesn't mean that you know that you're
in a state of knowledge. Yeah. So basically, imagine audience, I'm
looking at the pen and it's just the pen is blue. That's level one.
Then the higher order thinking is it's an abstracted, higher level way of
viewing it. Jay knows that the pen is blue is that good? Yeah,
yeah, exactly, because otherwise it would be way too stringent if we
said that knowledge is a sufficient condition for second order knowledge. I mean,
it's just obviously not true. I think there's many cases where we make that
people probably know stuff and they don't know why that they know it. But
yeah, as father Degan pointed out, like the second statement here, the
higher order statement is also a statement of knowledge, right, but it's a
higher order statement of knowledge. And so this is what you're saying. They're
sort of reciprocal, right in that this one might also lead to this one,
but this one rests on also being a level one type of statement.
So the point is that a person who recognizes this is then in a kind
of a dilemma. And this is the dilemma that we're pointing out that pretty
much all the atheists end up in when encountering TAG. They typically respond to
TAG as if every proposition, every argument, every statement is just a level
one statement and never addressing the meta or the second order type of reasoning,
and thus they never typically get the argument until we really you know, flesh
it out or hash it out after a while. So anyway, and that's
why that's What happened in my dream is that, Yeah, I'm reading through
all this literature where it's like, this is first order logic, this is
second order logic and epistemology, this is a first order knowledge. John knows
there's a blue pen in front him, and John knowing that he knows as
a blue pant is. They're making all these distinctions. And then in the
dream it dawned on me that I'm like, yeah, but you're talking about
you're making claims about all this stuff like what order do I put that in?
And I'm like, that's always second order. You're always at the second
level, at the higher level. You're making claims about knowledge about John,
about first order. And then in my dream it started around like I don't
think you can ever get out of the second order. We're always at this
kind of meta level making claims about assuming what we want to prove that knowledge
exists, because that could only make those claims if knowledge actually exist, which
is the heart of the paper and the heart of the matter, right,
how do we determine how do we know that knowledge exists? And let's just
run through in our heads right now, that's not a level one statement.
I mean or it is a level one statement, but it's also it's a
both, and it's a level one and a level two statement. Right that
there that knowledge exists, I would say it's a level it's a second order.
That's my point about the first order. Well, but I'm but you
were making the point that every second order statement is also a first order statement,
right at the same time, No, No, that's not the argument
is all of our statements are second order, and concerning epistemology, there's second
order about the first order. But I can't have my second order be true
or justified unless my first order. That's what That's what I mean to say.
So how do I So here's the question to everybody in the audience and
every atheist, how do I justify first order claims? I mean first order
knowledge? Another word? How do I justify that knowledge exists or reason?
And what are like let's go over what would the possible answers people could give.
Well, and I'm not trying to be ob to, but I'm trying
to understand because how is it not the case that the second order statement isn't
also a knowledge claim? Isn't it? Yes? So that's the whole point,
right, it's a knowledge claim only, and it can only be true
if knowledge exists. So it gets us back to number one, how do
we know knowledge exists? And guess what they're going to say, Well,
if knowledge exists, then knowledge exists, right, I know, I understand,
But but isn't the second order statement also still just a knowledge claim?
Yes, but it's a knowledge claim about the it's self referential about the subject
itself, and it's having of the knowledge. Okay, but it's still a
knowledge plan. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. The content
and subjects not different. It's in both cases first order and second order,
the content subjects the same. It's knowledge. Yes. So if somebody had
brought up an objection that, well, I don't need to justify the two
because it's the same content as the second order because it's the same content.
But like, you're missing the point entirely my questions about how do we justify
number one? I know it's the same content, we're talking about the same
subject knowledge. I'm trying to figure out how from autonomous reasoning you're ever going
to be able to establish without vicious circularity or bootstrapping that knowledge exists, especially
when you're always assuming what you want to prove. So basically, second order
statements are that while making a knowledge claim and I'm assuming that knowledge exists because
i'm talking to Yeah, that's what i'man That's what I was getting at.
Yeah, that's what I meant. So in other words, it's still it's
not answering the question to say that, well, it's a higher order statement,
but it's still just a claim about you know, the subject of knowledge
or the subject in the sense of the agent having the knowledge. So but
that doesn't get you to justification, is your point. It's that's just that's
just kicking the can down the road exactly. And somebody said, well,
because it's the same content, right, the second order statements don't need a
different sort of justification. And I grant that, I'd be like, that's
fine, I'm just looking for a justification for knowledge. Like So, what
they don't realize is this was a really sophisticated kind of amological way of basically
saying what we always say, just grant me all my assumptions so I can
make my case and prove to you that my made up story is true.
Okay, So I have a question here, and this is something I don't
understand. So are you saying that there's this inherent problem in epistemology just from
first and second order statements about justification? Or are you saying that TAG is
like this move from one to two. I'm saying epistemology has the problem that's
illustrated between one and two that nobody seems okay, So you're not likening the
transcendental categoriess the possibility knowledge to the level too. I thought that's what you
were doing. Oh that is that certainly is so? For example, because
the orthodox tag admits the possibility that people can have first story knowledge without preposing
and the question is how do you ground or count it. What world views
or positions, possible positions could actually account or justify that knowledge exists. Now
that's a second order. And what I'm going to show in this paper is
that, yeah, tag's dealing with the second order. So because it's admitting,
sure, you could know stuff, but you can never actually, from
your position, make a statement, an epistemic statement, the claim that you
that knowledge exists or that you're in a state of knowledge. Why, because
you'll assume the exact thing that you want to prove. So put in the
dichotomy, then we see one who is in a radically different kind of category.
Because what I started thinking through is like, well, why is this
even happening? Why is it the autonomous man can't get out of this epistemic
quagmire? And again, the very notion of dialectical tension seems to be something
to do with finitude, right, Finite means abounded, and so you have
these categories of well I would say I would say it deals more so with
the fall rather than than natural nature infinitude, because the way Maximus talks about
the I mean, I wouldn't say there's any dialectical tension that's natural or in
terms of the world. It's just you're probably right because it's just a result
of a division. In fact, you have division and time. This is
where you get chronology. I would have to disagree there, but we don't
have to go into that. But that's a whole lot of men metaphysical topic.
But I mean, do you think that there's a question here in then
I don't mean like kind of like absolute unity or anything like this, but
there's where are broken and they're not tied together. Do you see what I'm
saying, yeah, dialectical tensions as a result of the fall is the you
know, the result of like the way things are structured now in terms of
all the problems in the world are a result of the fall. But they're
not anything to do with like nature. They're the corruption of nature anyway,
there's a question that is but I still think there's something to do with that,
both the fall and probably the finitude. So that if you took if
you took finite categories, you can't absoluteize them, right why Because they're created.
They're not all encompassing. In other words, none of the things that
we take right, all of which may be true, good and beautiful,
we can't take those of the created things and absoluteize them, which is basically
what philosophy is actually doing. Right. It's taking something good, just like
every heresy, something true, and it's taken out of its proper context,
right, And it's elevating this to the level of being an absolute rather than
something that's contingent upon. And I think this is the problem of why these
problems can't be resolved. Yeah, but time is a creation, so I
just wouldn't locate dialectical tensions within time or the created order itself. It's a
result of the fault because time is a is a there's the aon, which
is the eternal, timeless creation of God. So time itself is good and
it's as any las has taken up into the divine. I just wouldn't equate
that with thing to do with with dialectics because I was just and there's a
total different topic. I was actually thinking about chronos, not aon or Cairos
like possibly could be a product of the fall. I don't think chronological time
being lifted up and healed. Yeah, but that's because of the like,
it's not time itself that's that's fallen, like the fall into time. Something
specifically about chronology that might be that might be fallen, but not time itself.
Yeah, I don't think time itself. Well, this is this is
This is a different discussion. I don't mean to get off the try,
but there is a great question by a person in the audience I would like
you to address. Chroderick says, is what you're saying, Father Deacon germane
to the discussion with Malpass, where Malpass objected to necessary preconditions of intelligibility by
saying that he lacks a belief in them, yet his sense of intelligibility is
still held. Well, I think this is why the first and second order
comes in, because one of the things that I noticed that atheists we're saying,
was well, I don't have a worldview. Have you noticed this?
A yeah, they'll they'll oftentimes say, oh, I have actually no position,
and that allows them to sort of slip and slide into different positions.
And so what I realized, I'm like, well, those are second order
claims about your position, right, Like you never get out of the problem,
you just move it up to a higher order. But yeah, this
guy says his next statement is is a malpass, perhaps conflating whether or not
he has sense to a proposition with it being true or not right, like
a kind of like fallacy of incredulity, Like, well, I just don't
see how it could be, so you know, I don't believe in it.
So yeah, exactly, But again, there's no way out of it
in two senses. I point this out in my paper. There's nobody that's
positionless, right or presuppositionless, so we can just move it up to higher
orders. You're making a whole bunch of epistemic claims about that you're understanding my
paper, you understanding what the argument is, that you're understanding what your h
agnostic position, that I'm not taking a position, all the various things that
even go into that, right. I mean it's almost kind of reminiscent of
like Descartes, right where they think they actually get to this kind of foundational
like why can make this agnostic claim and you see this doesn't depend on making
any other commitments to anything. It's like all you have to show them it
is that It's like that's impossible. Like the cojito assumes a whole host of
different things. So I'd say there's a similarity there that with this kind of
incredulity agnostic position, Right, they don't get out of the problem because it's
like, yeah, but you just you have a whole host of epistemic presuppositions
and commitments just even with that. Yeah, it's almost just a way.
It's like another way of saying, I choose not to address this problem and
so it's not there basically. Yeah. Second of all, it doesn't matter
because as soon as I put it into the dialectical tension, if you don't
assume the necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge is truly put into the disjunct
between if you don't accept purposeful intentionalism theistic revelation. If you don't accept that,
then whether you assent to atheism or accidentalism, you're or saying it's possible.
Because notice that's the way that I define autonomous epistemology. Autonomous pistemology is
the Thumistic system too. Why even though he believes in God and then ultimately
God grounds everything, including knowledge, does a quitness not start with the assumption
that it's possible to account for reasoning deduction inferences even if God might not exist,
and then it just turns out we find out he exists later. No,
there's an element of irrationality in the tonistic scheme for sure, which is
ironic because it's a highly rational That's what natural theology is, what the mind,
by the natural light of reason, can know, apart from divine revelation,
which is insane. It's totally blasphemous from our position. So anyways,
regardless of whether you're an atheist or not, if you do not assent,
because it's in the radical disjunk, it's almost kind of like Pascal's wager.
Right in the sense that you must wager. To not wager is to wager
right. The radical disjunk is actually like that, if you even think that's
a possibility, which is what a gnosticism would suggest, you're an accidentalism.
Yeah, so it doesn't matter what Malpass's arguments are. He's in the accidentalism
and accidental as a defeat for the possibility of knowledge. Hold On and I
agree that accidentalism destroys the possibility of knowledge. But there is a question by
Colby who says, the deacon, it appears that you are presupposing the thing
that you want to demonstrate. You're positing that there's a realist account for knowledge,
realist towards knowledge. He says, but the atheist or the pragmatist does
not grant any kind of realist position. I assume you means realism in the
sense of h No. I think he means like in this sense of like
I just went blank on the account of objects external to you, uh,
in terms of ontology, like you're like, you're really not necessarily essences,
but there are there's a there's real objects that you're apprehending through your sense data.
Colby, do you want to qualify in what's because real realist is used
in different senses and history philosophy, so you want to qualify in what sense
you're using it, Go ahead, a realist account of like indirect realism and
direct realism in the sense of of of enlightenment debates. As I think what
he's talking about, I don't think so, I think I get what he's
saying. Why because this is a more fundamental that's getting into the kind of
details. I feel like i'm the c I do. So let me let
me ask Colby, do you mean realism in the sense of essence as being
real ontological metaphysical things, or do you mean realism the sense of the Enlightenment
debate about whether we apprehend things directly or indirectly in the external world. So
I see what he's saying. He's a scriment ontology to knowledge. The atheist
defines knowledge simply as a system of thoughts. That. Yeah, well,
first of all, that doesn't make any sense. Nobody's we're all saying that
knowledge is a property of the mind. Right, So, in other words,
you could make the same arguments with a metaphysically quiet approach, right like
your approach here is not necessitating epistem this is prior to any of the details
of those kinds exactly. So it does. This is a great point we
got we got to address, and I thank you for a point of that
out, Father Deacon, which is this was your point you made earlier in
than we got sidetrack to apologized for that. That was probably my fault.
You made the point that what we're addressing here is the Enlightenment objection to metaphysics,
which is that you can't put your metaphysical cart before your epistemic horse.
And that's what Father Diggin's pointing out. So Father Diagan's argument is not relying
on any grandiose metaphysics. He's actually critiquing the ancient and medieval idea like natural
theology and Aquinas has that metaphysics is somehow self evident and epistemology is secondary to
that. No, Rather, we're agreeing in saying, yes, how do
you know that you know before you start telling me about all these metaphysical claims.
Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the way that I usually do
my arguments is I grant take whatever definition of knowledge and justification you want.
Why because it's such a general and what's the term I want? These are
such general and more fundamental questions. They proceed the kind of more detailed questions
about like how to cash all this stuff out. So all of these arguments
actually designed to I'll give you everything you want. As far as what you
think knowledge is, how that works, it doesn't really matter because issues and
problems about the way that how we would just how we would justify that whatever
you think. Yeah, so this is prior to This is an argument about
arguments. It's an argument about reason itself. Is it even possible? And
now that's why it's prior to any first order claim about what exists, what
doesn't exist, what's out there, what's not out there? Do I know
this? Do I know? No? Redefining it to any ad hoc redefine
is going to escape the problem. And that's one of the things I noticed
with all the objections, is there a saying, well, the atheist isn't
going to do that, Well, we'll just suit and there are all these
kind of ad hoc rediffins. Now I'm assuming you're going to say that the
ad hoc redefinings don't work because they're missing the very point, which is that
that's just another type of knowledge claim. And what's in question is the possibility
of knowledge, right, yes, so really easy if I just say I'll
grant you whatever you think knowledge is, the issue still stands. Redefine it
however you want. The issue is so fundamental and prior to all of that
that it doesn't really matter. Then there's no kind of way out of it.
And I think that's one of the issues too that I've noticed, and
I put in h the final section of the paper missing the epistemological force for
the epistemic trees that I'm like, why are these people getting so bogged down
on and being like that it's not a true disjunctive. Well, that's not
how knowledge. What if they just define it this way? And I'm like,
what's going on here? Like why are they saying this? And I
realized they're looking at the details and they don't see the bigger question that the
kind of meta question that's being asked exactly. Let's see, this is one
of the This is one of the great points of Kant. I mean,
I have a lot of disagreements with Kant, but one of the great points
of Kant is to really go into kind of the possibilities of philosophy with transcendental
categories, and you have this, you had it kind of positive in aerosols
categories what the category worries are, and I disagree with Kant's move to ultimately
make them not metaphysical. But regardless of all that, what he's doing,
the types of thinking that he's doing about these types of arguments really are revolutionary
and they're they're they're worthy of note. And so people that do understand like
the content, not the content system, but the type of questions Kant is
asking with what he has and what he proposes with a transcendental category. And
again we're not saying that we agree with the content position that they're all psychologized
or they're all just in the mind or whatever. We're setting that question aside.
So let's let's say we don't have any metaphysical commitments. We're just taking
the type of argument that a transcendent argument is about the possibilities or the preconditions
for knowledge. And we're saying that that is very useful here because it shows
us that any knowledge claim that an atheist might have, the move very first
move they make is assuming the knowledge is possible That's why the question is prior
to the doing of any argument or logic at all. I just don't understand
why this guy called me the great thinks I'm assuming the type of exists.
I haven't assumed anything. I've granted. I've literally given everything over to the
atheist. Yeah, we could say that, Let's say let's say there is
no metaphysics that's noble at all. Let's just grant that there's no realism at
all, no essences, no essentialism at all. The question that then is
what is the account for knowing? How is knowledge possible? Right? I
just brought up the metaphysical and epistemological tension because there are people that would admit
and I still think that the pragmatist gives a metaphysical I don't think there's any
kind of way out of making metaphysical claim. I mean, even if you
think you're a metaphysical quietess. I'm just showing that those who accept that would
have this problem. Now, the first and second order issue has nothing to
do with the dialectical tension between metaphysics and epistemology, So any one of those
are sufficient to basically show the flaw of I was just developing two sufficient arguments
together. And I wasn't making any metaphysical claims about or assuming or anything like
that. I was just basically taking other people's positions and be like, you
admit, And this is what people always get wrong about tag is, Oh,
so I have to just arbitrarily just assume all of your presuppositions in order
for knowledge to work. No, that's not what we said. I take
as far as the impossibility of the contrary, and I show that people on
their own grounds are engaged in performative contradictions and things that might you yourself the
rules that you arbitrarily establish. You say I require this, and then you
do just the opposite. So it's it's not my like, oh, it's
my arbitrary rules of the game here. And if it's like on your own
account, you violate your own principles, like your system doesn't do what you
want it to do. And guess what on your own admittance, orthodoxy does
everything that you want your paradigm or epistemology, philosophy or religion to do,
but it doesn't do. And I find that people really get that confusion.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's misunderstanding that even though what we're talking about
focuses on a couple examples, it's still a comparison of paradigms. Right,
If we're going to compare paradigms, we still have to pick something within the
paradigms. Right, the orthodox paradigm, you have an atheist paradigm. The
argument is just simply pointing out that it doesn't matter which thing we pick,
Like if you have a belief in if you believe that you have true knowledge
about some object or whatever, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter which object
or thing we choose. Within the worldviews. The question that Father Deacon is
raising is always automatically there because this is a question prior to any knowledge claim,
and they seem to have a really hard problem grasping that. And because
they think that, yeah, they think that when you say it's a higher
order type of argument, they assume that means you're importing a bunch of metaphysical
baggage to this. Oh, you're trying to say that the higher order is
like universals, And like, no, no, it doesn't matter what you
think about metaphysics or what I think about metaphysics. Is like, this is
prior to any any of those types of claims. That's what they have real
quick because this illustrates it too. So what was the gentleman we were just
referring to Colbally the great? I've heard this a million times. Well,
the anominalists will just say this, or the atheists won't accept right, they'll
say this, and so your argument doesn't work. And what they're missing again,
they're missing epistemologic for us, for the epistemic trees. Guess what those
are second order claims about pragmatism, about how they're defining truth and falsity and
stuff like that. So it doesn't matter, it's irrelevant to the question of
how do you justify that? How would we possibly justify that the pragmatist is
justified in that move to actually say that? And I don't know why,
Like to me, it seems like I said, the hardest problem is convincing
people the problems not hard at all, but simple. To me, that
seems really simple. You're making a bunch of epistemic claims about what counts as
knowledge, how they'll redefine it, and I want to know how you justify
that, And nobody can seem to like pick up on like what that question
even is, and like why that's so detrimental. Well, you see what
eventually is going to happen is they're going to say, well, if gramting
my assumptions about pragmatism, that I can actually redefine knowledge and all this stuff,
and then that's what would justify my position. So that's exactly what I'm
trying to show in all these arguments is that you're epistemically bootstrapping. You have
no justification for your justification criteria. Yeah, so let's look at look at
this on a diagram, and this illustrates what you're talking about. The tree
is green. Bob knows the tree is green. First order, second order.
The atheist response, like Father Deacon says, is almost always well,
a pragmatist will just say this and then interject whatever the pragmatist account is,
Oh, well a relatives will just say this, Oh, an epistemic nihilist
would just say this, Oh, matirosts would just say this. These answers
are missing what the argument actually is because none of this is addressing what the
challenge is. It doesn't matter what all types of things you try to put
in there, because every time you try to make a knowledge claim with one
of these failed systems, pragmatist relatives, nihilist materials. It's not going to
give an account for how you ground the knowledge. That's the point. Then
watch what the they'll say that they think this is an objection, because then
it's the burden of proof game. Right, Well, you're seeing the wrong,
so you're gonna have to prove that those are all wrong. Well wait
a minute, on what terms? If we haven't even been able to get
a justification for proof itself, do you see what the issue is? Like?
Who's proof of proofs do we use? Yeah? Just saying that,
well, you can't answer a primati has an account of this, that's not
showing that that is a justification for knowledge. Do you know what it reminds
me of? You know, these weirdo creepers that you get calling on your
Twitter space and stuff like that, and they start toning these like long,
weird, wild stories about you don't understand man. Back in like five thousand
BC, the Mesopotamians were visited by a space force of aliens that set up
and they tell this whole story, and you see what the Tower of Babbel
really was was gamatry and confusing the people. That's why we have to actually
any word that sounds like another word really is that word. It's not a
genetic fallacy that was created. The genetic fallacy was a fallacy created by the
elites trying to right. They have this whole story, right, and you're
like, that's great, wonderful storyteller. I want to know if it's true
and how we determine. Isn't this exactly the question that Plato says, I
don't. I'm not concerned with doxa. I want so you opinion versus knowledge,
And so all that's happening is with a progmant will take like congratulation.
Pragmas wrote a non fictional progmance history. It never gets into the category.
I'm still wondering, Right, telling a story isn't what it means to give
justification? And right, well, what if it's possible that that's true?
Like again, even that it is already assuming epistemic categories. Yeah, so
sudden, suddenly the atheists are like these creative writers where everything's possible. Right,
if you're a theist, nothing is possible. That's suddenly like when this
question comes up, anything's possible. We live in a universe where like metaverse
multiverse, were like, there's a universe where there's dragons and I'm the king
of it, and it's like everything. So it's like suddenly everything is possible,
even though like nine to nine percent of the time when the atheist is
arguing, there's nothing that's possible except for material causation, right, like causing
effect, like a determined scheme, And then they think they get out of
this, but it's like you're making second higher order claim about possibility and about
sentences and all this stuff. That's why I'm like, I can't get them
to realize they're committing and presupposing stuff that are unjustified before they provide any justification
for that. So if you remember that guy am Deer came on to your
stream and did the same thing and then with me, and he had some
like ideas. Oh, he was saying something like, well, if it
doesn't plug into the equation, into the modal you know, structure perfectly,
then the whole thing collapses and you can't actually put it into a modal argument.
Well, he was saying that with you, but when he was when
I was debating him on Patrick's stream, he had like this kind of mystereingism
possibly what is that? I don't know what that is. I don't it's
I don't know. It's an ad hoc word that like everything made up.
No, he came up with it was like mysterious. Yeah, he was
like, my epistemology is like I have to look what exactly said. But
it was like, I mean, was he using this as like a hypothetical,
Like well, what if I just say my epistemology is mysteriumism or something.
Yeah, that like you know, we may not know what the justification
is, but you know it's there, and started going through all these like
well, it's possible that you missed, and if it's logically possible, then
your position cannot be that it's necessary. And again it misses the whole thing
that it's like, now, guess what you're making third order claims about possibility
and assassin and logic and all this stuff. And I'm like, I just
can't get people to actually see what the actual issue is. And that's the
most frustrating thing. It's like, I mean, maybe I could appreciate this
being a d D, but it's like there's a squirrel, right, hey,
look at that over and it's like you're just trying to direct people to
It's like, do you not see what I'm saying? You're making all these
epistemic claims. How are we ever going to justify that? And they get
distracted down another route and another route and it's just like I can't holmee people
in to actually see what the problem is. Second issue to so, in
other words, how is any knowledge at all possible? Is prior to any
knowledge claim? And every time you try to answer it, you don't get
out of the box because it's a knowledge claim, right too? That is
that right? Or? Am I miscons? The second issue too that we
always get with this too is this, well how do we know? I
mean it could be or this person could just say like yeah, it's like,
well there's there's some other justification and uh, you know over in China
that we don't know about that philosopher. You know ching Dong has developed and
you just don't know about it. But so how does your position Jim Bob
and this guy in Jim Bob's YouTube today basically saying what if there was an
alien race that developed the exact same theology is orthodox? I mean, would
that serve as a necessary condition, and I was like, well, this
is ridiculous, of all, it's just ad hot. Number two logical,
I mean, uh, conceivability is not a good guide to logical possibility.
And number three, part of the orthodox revealed paradigm is the exclusivity of the
paradigm. In other words, paradigm a orthodoxy says not B. So an
alien race creates theology B that's identically orthodoxy. You know what that means,
be and not be. It would also be obvious that it would also be
obvious that the newer one is totally cribbed from the previous too, so it
would be it was be an obvious fraudulent copy. Because we have people in
the discord making this argument like five years ago, they so, well,
I believe in the new revelation given to me as a Viking of a Viking
trinity that does all the same grounding and justification of your trinity, except it's
my Viking. And I'm like, but that would not be the historic Christian
Church. And so evidentialism would come into play here as well. So that
goes back to my uh, excuse me. Evidences would come into play,
not evidentialism excuse me, Yes, that's right. So anyways, this goes
back to the disjunctive is that, well, obviously, what is it that
they're doing when when they're like, well, I'm thinking of a possibility,
I mean, what if there's this other religion that revealed what they're doing is
system building. Yeah, it's like it's it's the same thing when JF said,
what if there is a planet I can conceive of whether there's a robot
and no people and the robot runs the planet. Then it's like suddenly creative
writing is cool and any kind of metaphysics goes right, which again the Christian
no, no, no, no metaphysics for you. However, when I
do my creative writing hypotheticals, I get to imagine all possibilities. So they're
missing again the epistemological forest fort of the pistemological trees, because guess what they're
doing. They don't realize the radical disjunct. That's autonomous epistemology, and the
only other option is theonymous. So all of your hypotheticals, all your objections
will always fit into autonomous epistemology because it's not revealed. I think they're just
gonna go ahead as soon as I show the failure of autonomous epistemology, and
it will always fail. That's why there are no objections. Well, at
this point they're just gonna say, well, you're that is a mean that
yours is revealed. That's your claim. You just have another elaborately built system,
and you engaged in a system building project through the system of Christianity over
many centuries and millennia, and so your system building and you're not doing anything
different than I am. It's just that mine's more updated with science code or
something science was reviewed by science. Well that's why I look. I put
a footnote in there, and I'm like, well, let's just look at
what the ones that are claimed to be revealed because that's the next one,
right, is that, Well, how does tag prove the Orthodox God?
I'm like, all right, so if we move past the okay, it
couldn't be system building autonomous epistemology. But I've got all these other competitors of
religions that are claiming to be revealed. I'm like, we could look at
those. How many are there? Six, seven, eight religions that claim
to be revealed from God? And remember this is part of the objection to
that. Well, there could be an infinite amount of you know, possibilities
you have to eliminate. Well, first we could show that most worldviews boil
down to a few options. Ultimately with this paper I do is that it
boils down between accidentalism and intention. This is a example or of something it
boiled down to or theonymous or autonomous. So let's look at theonymous autonomous.
Okay, so there's a few more options that can consider. Telmutic, Judaism,
Islam. I don't think Buddhism claims to have special revelation, right,
like it's not nothing. Hinduism, yes, Mormonism. I mean really,
guys, how many think you think there are ten? And then I can
we can go through and then look at their paradigms, right, and if
they have principles that are would make knowledge impossible, we can eliminate those.
So again, even on other people's grounds, like they're kind of litimus tasks
and their standards, we'd say we fulfill it. We're not creating our own
hey, in our own game. We have this, but you don't have
it. We'd say everything that you want we just fulfilled. And your system.
None of these systems can do and what is that. Well, you
certainly want to have historical continuity, right, that's kind of fits the like
your paradigm or theory should describe reality to come up with some physics theory that
like doesn't describe anything. So it's a historic matches historical continuity. It has
descriptive power, right, it's describing. It's uh, not only lacks contradictions,
but it's coherent. What does that mean? That means that, for
example, I could hold two different true propositions that have nothing logically connected with
each other. The tree is green and the apple and the I don't know
the MIC's working or something like that. Okay, they're not contradictory, but
I can't derive or infer one to the other. Now, what's really nice
about when we talk about a coherence, Right, we're not just talking about
propositions don't contradict each other. We're saying they cohere together, that there's inferences
from one to the other. So I could list all these kind of attributes
that, yes, from your paradigm, you want all this, and you
can't pull it off. Orthodoxy does claim to be the revealed religion, and
it can pull it off by your own standards, where are you gonna go?
Like, what better proof do you want? Do you know what I
mean? Yeah? The next thing I would ask is could you flash out
a little more about the contrast between like a teleological worldview and a disteleological worldview,
or theism versus accidentalism, and how this is a great way to kind
of suss out a large portion of worldviews with one question and a couple other
a couple other fundamental types of questions like this would also cancel out a lot
of world views, like is knowledge objective or relative? I mean, there's
if you put together a few disjunctives, you could pretty quickly cancel out most
worldviews. It's not hard at all. So one of the things I want
to qualify, and I qualified in my footnote when I use the word intentionality.
I realized when I was arguing with am dear they were taking the technical
philosophical sense of intentionality and philosophy of mind and philosophy and philosophy of language.
Is our propositions or mental states are about or directed towards something. No,
you mean it in the sense of will and Tilo's correct intention. Yeah,
and more kind of a common colloquial sense. This real quick. So the
reason I'm saying that is it oftentimes the argument about I mean, you put
God purposefully and intentionally creates the world. So uh, you know there's a
book about this that that it's an Oxford Press book. The name of it
escapes me, but basically it's arguing that there's only two options on this,
and you might just come up with a third where there's maybe some mix between
a God who creates a world with uh, with purpose, purposiveness, intentionality
telos versus a world that has no direction, no guidance, no end,
no no, no purposiveness, or this teleological universe. But to be clear,
the only reason I'm bringing this up is that when we start saying this,
I'll immediately say, oh, you're making the teleological argument. It's not
the teleological Yeah. I think that's what happened with a is. He thought
I was making the teleological argument. So he was saying, well, I
can think of things that are His objection was it doesn't have to be intentional,
is it? Because I can if that's what you mean by directed,
because I can think of directedness without intention or a person behind it. Like
now I don't think that's possible. I think it's plenty of literature, especially
in philosophy of mind, about intentionality as a mental property. We don't attributed
kind of directedness and intentionality in the technical philosophical sense to material objects. But
let's say I grant that, and you're missing the point that but by intentionality
I mean purpose there's a being who's putting things and directing them. So,
in other words, suppose I grant the argument. Sure, maybe not every
directedness implies a purposeful agent. However, every purposeful agent acting applies directedness.
Do you see that? Yeah? And also to consider the totality of reality
or the entiret universe, Right, it's either purposive and intentional and has a
t los or it doesn't. Yes, so if there is exactly so,
it's really a red herring to get caught up on directedness. I mean,
look, there's either an agent who does things and creates the laws allows for
the possibility of knowledge because he has the intention and chooses it. So there's
purpose behind everything holliology in that sense, or what's the opposite, It would
be accident. Yeah, So then I think about what accident like that would
be your ultimate principle that you'd have to appeal to, and at that point
you'd have to say, with standing behind everything is the antithesis, the true
dichotomy of a purposeful, intentional action, which is an accident. So that
means I have to explain ultimately everything in terms of like knowledge, accidental knowledge,
yes, accident morality, accidental laws of physics, right would become non
justifiable? Right well, not only yeah, it's self refuting. For example,
in when you're reading epistemology and they have these examples of John. One
is asked how many jelly beans he believes in the jar? And he says
fifty four. John has a true belief. Somebody says, well, how
did you How did you get that true belief? John? It matches reality.
There's actually fifty four jelly beans in the jar. And John says it
was an accident. I guessed there was no reason for rhym a reason.
I just kind of guessed. When we say that's not knowledge, you have
to have the right reason. So knowledge itself precludes accident. If you study
philosophy of science or even science itself, not only are laws not simply correlation,
they preclude accident as well. There's a causal relationship beyond just two things
being correlated that has a sort of kind of necessity that precludes accident. So
now you have an oxymoron with the accidental laws of physics, and so on
and so on. I can keep going to yeah, and I want to
I want to address that. One of the objections is that the transcenal argument
for God does not allow you to come to the particular. I mean,
this is really a fundamental misunderstanding of what the argument's about, because you could
theoretically pick anything in the worldview to make an argument about. I could start
with particulars and make a transitional argument on the basis of the need for the
particular, and so I can make an argument on the basis of the one
and the many that would be relating to the particular. And also he notes
that he claims that tag is inherently self contradictory anytime you come down to a
specific particular. Just because it's a paradigm level argument doesn't mean that it doesn't
account for or belief have a belief in particulars. I mean, paradigms include
particulars. So I don't understand even what that objection means guess what, it's
another example of missing the Oh, it's missing the objection the objection or so,
how do you know that? How do you know? Well, he
would just say here that, he would just say here the tag. I'm
not making a claim about paradigms. I'm just telling you a flaw on tag
is probably what he would say. Well, then why is it a flaw?
How do you know it's a flaw? He was, He's saying it's
an internal contradiction and tag. I think, okay, but that's an epistemic
claim of correct. What the So that's why I point out on my paper
even if even if the details of my argument are incorrect, let's say I'm
messed up somewhere, I still win. We still win. Why because of
that exact issue right there is you're saying it doesn't work, the just jump
doesn't work, or it's flawed this it's a tautology, it's a Those are
all epistemic claims. So even if I mess up somewhere, the question still
stands, how do you know that? How do you know? And you
could say, well, it's an internal critique, Well, then you're putting
yourself in a position to know what the paradigm is, why all kinds of
stuff right within the assessment of that, and why that would be? Why
is that as what? Why not critique? And could we just frame the
question and make it really quick, simple and easy and to the point,
how do we know knowledge as possible? What if we ask the atheist that
how do we know knowledge as possible? Not can you give me your list
of knowledge claims and beliefs, but how do we know knowledge as possible?
Yeah, that's all I'm trying to do. That's all I'm trying to ask,
and they won't answer it. So let's ask the atheist that in this
so we've got several skeptics and kind of people who are disagreeing, which is
fine. The question is how do we know knowledge as possible? And every
attempt at answering that you give clearly presupposes that you have knowledge, so it's
missing the point. So we want an account for knowledge itself, not your
knowledge claims, but an account for knowledge. That's what you have to address.
That's the point. Yeah, that's the excellent way to put it.
And so you know, these are kind of more sophisticated details that go into
in the paper. Oh wait, one more question on that? Is that
a good way to phrase it? Two? Because of like, because at
this point, a lot of times people are going to say, well,
look, I don't know about all this episode. Why can't we just look
to science and like the pragmatic conclusions that we get from the doing of science.
Maybe that's a more reliable pragmatic approach. Why do we even have to
busy ourselves with these kind of abstract kind of questions that you're asking so that
they'll oftentimes defer to saying that you're just doing a lot of word solid and
like fancy tap dancing, and and well, why do we even have to
I guess here, rage quit, We're done, So I'm just joking,
I'm out of here. Why can't we just go to science and like the
pragmatic value of the data that we get from science. That's a typical kind
of move I hear at this point. I mean, just it's the same
question, like, why our tai to take that. I hear what you're
saying. I hear you're making claims about that. Now justify why that's justifiable
move like I should take. And what you'll find is they'll assume exactly what
they're proving attempting to prove number two and I even get into this, So
that's the question of like why should I even accept a sort of kind of
pragmatism of science, Like why would that even be a good move for me
to do, and how would that be a justification. The second problem is
science in pragmatics never even get to truth or knowledge far from for you know,
you've seen in the other papers that I've written for a couple of different
issues too. One is the KWin Donheim's indeterminacy of data, Like you can
construct multiple contradictory theories that all were Yeah, the data doesn't tell you which
paradigm is correct because you never get the truth, knowledge, or justification from
science and because it works and number two, all of those are going to
be making universal claims from particulars. And you have the problem of induction and
the problem of circularity with induction too, So you're back epistemic bootstrapping again,
and you don't even get to the cattrall. I mean, basically that move
that we just mentioned, let's just do a pragmatic move to scientific data.
That's really just surrendering epistemology and justification. That's essentially saying we can't do it,
it's not possible, there is no answer, there's no such thing as
justification. That's basically throwing up your hands and giving out. At that point,
then that okay, Then argumentation is not is no longer possible? Right?
And the other the number three is pragmatism is arbitrary because you just pick
arbitrarily the goals that you want to work without any justication. Yeah, like
how do we know what does it mean to work? Right? And that
assumes that you've chosen a criteria, some sort of you know, benchmark of
value judgments to judge the good the thing that works versus the one that doesn't
work, which again makes it arbitrary. Now the same Yeah, all the
same issues that I'm bringing up, But I really like the way that you
put it is how do we know or justify anything? That you're saying?
How do we know knowledge is even possible? Like what's the because that's prior
to all of your first order claims, and the atheist just never understand that
the transfer argument is about second order questions and justification. Now, now,
Phillips said, where was his last statement. Yeah, but let's see,
he had a comment about Socrates as an example that we could address. Where
is it, I've already lost it. Socrates does the same thing where he
goes out and questions worldviews and he doesn't assert his own Well, Socrates therefore
justified in doing internal internal critiques. Well, my response to this, I'll
let further you can give response is that, now, maybe in the apology
he didn't prefer a worldview, but in the rest of the dialogues he does
actually assert a worldview. It's called platonism. So Platonism does assert quite a
bit. It's very metaphysical and in fact, I mean some of the same
types of transcendental presubsisitional argumentation. You can find that in Plato Platonic dialogues asked
some of the types of questions that we're asking. Aristotle also does transcendental type
moves in argumentation. However, the fact that Socrates is questioning worldviews does not
make his own position justified. And that's also not what we're doing. We're
not saying that just because we question worldviews, they're not justified or excuse me,
ours is therefore justified. Let me read you what he says father Deacon.
Socrates did the same thing and question world views without asserting his own.
Was Socrates justified in doing an internal critique? Was his question? Well,
why would this gentleman think that we haven't asserted our worldview? That's a good
point. Yeah, he says, why ought we have competing worldview? A
competing world view in order to do an internal critique of another worldview? Oh
so he's saying that you're doing an ought move. Now that we're not saying
that you ought. We're saying that everybody necessarily has a worldview, even if
they recognize it or not. It's impossible to have no worldview, even if
you're a oh I'm a total agnostic. Well that's still a position on epistemology
exactly because you just moved it to a higher order and assume a whole bunch
of epistemic things to even make those statements. So, I mean the skeptic
and they don't get out of this problem. Now, this is a very
common objection. I'm glad we're hitting on this because a lot of times the
atheists will then say, oh, well, actually I don't have any worldview,
and no, I have no commitments I'm totally neutral. I'm totally agnostic
on everything, so you can't critique me. There's nothing that you can give
me on. Then watch what they do. You make an argument right,
right, and it's a slide of hands. So they told you I'm not
going to do this, right while they slip in their other hand right and
start making a bunch of that doesn't work. You can't do that. See
the tag doesn't I'm doing an internal critique right. Well, women, you're
doing the exact thing that you said that you're not committed to doing. So
again, all of these things are slides of hands and cons and stuff like
that. You just got. Well, I'll address that more specifically. Why
is it a slide of hand con move? If I'm a total agnostic and
then I start critiquing your position and saying, oh, you're you're, you're,
you're contradicting yourselfiest, why am I violating my agnostic stance by using these
logical arguments to call you out on conversations? Because they just assume, or
they just said, I don't have any commitment on logic, contradiction, semantics,
reservation experience, right, because right they're saying that because of the next
move, they'll come in and be like, I hear what you're saying,
and it's wrong. You're contradicting to Oh wow, now you're slipping in.
All of those are observational statements and epistemic statements that you said, I've bracketed
and I'm non committal with that. Yeah, And well, I mean just
to say, if you know, the same type of person is always saying
something like Christianity contradicts itself. Then they turn around and say, I have
no logical commitments to or philosophical commitments to anything. Well, you just invoked
the law of non contradiction, so you do. And I really think it's
a character flaw two you, because think about the person who can't actually commit
to anything like any dates or meetings or anything like that. Well, what
if they're a genuine sort of skeptic or a genuine person who says, I
just don't know which you know, I've had a lot of philosophy classes and
I don't know which one's true. Like there's a lot of positions out there.
Start telling you that you're arguing it's wrong. That's usually what a genuine
person who's well, what if they said, well, I'm just arguing the
positions to see who's got the better case. Right, Well, yeah they
might not, that might not be a disingenuous person or a character flaw.
But then they're just confused. We'd have to just kind of show them.
But do you see that you're you're committing to something a methodology or access to
a methodology, or some sort of standard lenses or anything by which you think
that you could actually assess and figure this stuff out. Right now, we
have some questions here in the super Chats comments GNOME's body noses I'll go ahead
and read this and then comment on it, reading it for him Nomes Body
ten dollars. Can perception of information be relative to the human mind. There
might be a subjective element to the incoming data which the human mind misinterprets or
distorts or doesn't want to see or know that they might suppress or misinterpret the
data or something like that. But I wouldn't say that the perception of information
is therefore completely relative just because there can be instances of misinterpretation. I am
not entirely convinced that knowledge is transcendent. Well, knowledge can be had by
human beings, that is not transcendent, there is knowledge of the transcendent,
So if you mean it's a little ambiguous what you mean by that. So
I wouldn't say that knowledge is like necessarily always transcendent. We're saying that knowledge
it self requires the transcended to be grounded. Thank you for being better than
a lot of the other online apologists. What you say makes me think,
well, I appreciate that. Numbs body a good question. Do you want
to comment on that? Can perception of information be purely relative to the human
mind? Can, let's say, can perception of information be relative to the
human mind? In other words, is it possible for the incoming information or
data to be relative to each person getting the data? Um? I don't
think so, because this is kind of similar to like Fickenstein's there's no private
language. Yes, so that's a great point. Yeah, the fact is
there's commensurability, and there's clues to that. If that were actually the case,
we could never talk to each other, right, we could never actually
talk to each other. So if everything was completely subjective, we wouldn't be
able to relate with one another, we wouldn't be able to develop language.
And so although like you said, well, certainly the mind can kind of
contaminate the sense data that kind of comes in, skew it and stuff like
that. It can't, you know, And there's this kind of subjective element
and kind of imposing and stuff that could happen. It couldn't be absolute,
otherwise we wouldn't be understand each other or developing a language. Yeah, there's
a lot of fascinating transfl argumentation that that is just kind of sitting out there,
ready to be the depths of it, ready to be plumbed. Some
philosophers like Carlotto Apple have done this where they look at the logical structure of
languages, and even though languages differ, there's actually fundamental necessary things going on
in every language everywhere. So for the possibility of language at all, you've
got to have certain structures in place to make which makes that meaning possible.
Yeah. Transcendental categories absolutely, Yeah, And I mean they're necessary for language.
That's why I mean, like five or six years ago, every time
I was doing TAG, I was just going back into like language meaning arguments
because every time an atheist makes it's it's similar to what you're doing with like
knowledge claims. I can just say that every time an atheist makes a sentence,
he's assuming all kinds of linguistic structures that he hasn't proven yet. Homicidal,
self conscious cake one dollar. What do you think of this claim?
Epistemology is the expression of a reductionist ontology that infuses the entire Western tradition.
Thus, epistemology reduces all being to some mere presence. It forces all knowledge
to conform to some single standard. My response would be, I'm assuming that
that's a like a Heighigger quote. I think you were saying, unless I'm
mixing out with somebody else that you were interested in a response to this Highigger
objection. Sometimes the German idealists would and people after them would be very critical
of certain schools of epistemology that would reduce ontology to some minimalist, like hyper
rationalist type of uh not rationalists, because German idealists rationalist. What am I
trying to say, like a reductionist like a like a materialist type of move
right. So let's say epistemology in the modern sense develops in this anti metaphysical
stance of like Kant and Hume. So it's probably a critique, but maybe
he's going back to Plato and saying that all epistemic search for truth is somehow
reductionist against being I mean, this sasity from Heidiger, but I don't I'm
not well studied in Hidigger to know if if this is the case, I
mean in terms of his views, But I would just say that, I
mean, it shouldn't be odd to think of epistemology as a discipline itself somehow
being like necessarily flawed. And we were just asking the question of what is
knowledge? Is knowledge possible? How do we know? What does it mean
to know? You know, I don't see why that would be inherently problematic,
but I'm sure Heideger has some take that, you know, like back
to Plato it was a problem or something. Yeah, again, it just
kind of goes back to my paper too. I'm staying general enough in these
considerations that I'm not wetting myself to any kind of particular view, particular metaphysics,
particular epistemology. There was a guy that was saying, well, you're
to redefine, and I'm like, I'm not redefining knowledge that I'm giving you,
because again, these are such fundamental and prior questions. I'm giving you
everything that you want, whatever you would say, right, it still stands
that there's these kinds of questions exactly like you said, how do we know
that knowledge exists? Oh? Anybody can't? Like, like, it's really
I think, I think if if you so, if Heidegger said to you,
father Deacon, uh, epistemology is the expression of a reductions ontology that
infuses the entire Western tradition, and you've missed being right. I mean,
it's kind of like his system building project to dismiss any sort of epistemology argument
that you're making. So how would you respond to like a Heidigger man that
is sort of dismissing epistemology arguments as some sort of reductionist expression. I would
just tell him, you're your president hand bestond standing reserve and its projectedness has
confused the antic and antist relationship on your own metaphysical and epistemological grounds bracketing,
and I just throw out a bunch of Hidiger words to him back and watch
and see what he does. And I'm kidding, yeah, I would.
I would basically try to work through with him and say can we get past
that? Like I'm not going to make any commitments help me, And again,
phenomenologists can be good with the kind of language. One of the things
that Heiderger was trying to do is the exact task that I'm doing. Is
this kind of deconstruction project, right that there's like all these layers of paradigms
and language and stuff like that, and he's trying to get down to primordial
being, right, and so that he doesn't have to kind of think through
incorrect categories. So he's stripping off the layers. I'd basically say that to
Hidiger, why don't you help me? Maybe I'm not good at my words
and arguments, so why don't you help me? Because he's obviously much smarter
than me. I know what you're doing, though. You want to get
in more kind of primordial basic kind of questions, and that's what I want
to do. How would you, Hidiger, help me phrase this question?
How do we know that we know? Yeah? I think that just responding
with things like oh, we have to plunge into being or find find being,
he's really missing the point, right, because I mean, first of
all, what does it even mean to say I mean being? This is
like the most generic term in the history of philosophy, right, I mean
it has all kinds of different meanings in different philosophy, and you always know
it's about philosophers. They have these wonderful proposals, well, I'm going to
get rid of all this stuff, and then their answer is something dumb.
Right. Well, not only that they bring in the exact stuff they're trying
to get the same problem, the same problems for me. Look at this,
who's roles? Who's roles? Uh? Discovery of reduction? So I
bet that's what did you notice? This was Dermott Moron's phenomenology here? But
I find that funny. I keep noticing this throughout philosophy. You know,
Descartes brings in the stuff that he's trying to get rid of. The people
like responding to Descartes, like, we got to get rid of this stuff,
right, and this dualism, right, We're going to materialism and identity
theory, and then they bring in conceptual like yeah, I think a lot
of people misunderstand that what we're saying is that philosophy is a failed project.
So from the pre Socratics to today, philosophy is a giant failed enterprise.
And I think that when they hear us saying that they're like, what,
because aren't you talking a bunch of philosophy jargon and baggage and word salad and
are you going back to Plato unprestocratics and using these terms correct? Because yeah,
sometimes they say things that are correct and true. But our whole point
is that all of these secular and man made autonomous system building projects are always
doomed to fail, and that's why they always have these fundamental problems in their
systems. John seven point fifty. I've encountered many atheists that claim that atheism
is not a paradigm, it is simply a non belief based on the fact
that there's no evidence for God. Can you please explain why atheism is actually
a paradigm and why there's no such thing as a quote non belief for theism?
Thank you? Yeah, So, I mean, I'll grant you it
and be like, all right, it's not a paradigm. My position is,
well, well, hold on, but wouldn't it be the case that
even though the claim of atheism itself is not equivalent to a paradigm, that
person still has paradigm level commitments. Yes, that's true, paradigm level commitments
in other words, in my paper, there's nobody that's not presuppositionless, right,
in order for you to make a statement about that, Again, it
goes all the way back to everything I was saying about the second order.
You're taking positions, you have a paradigm in which you make that, whether
you realize it or not. And so I just feel like it's again it's
it's a dishonest and ad hoc move. I don't have it. It's like,
well, then you deced yourself, Like, I mean, it's clear
you have a set of like what is a paradigm. Yeah, it's basic
beliefs about knowledge, ethics, and metaphysics. Right, So that's all it
is. Well, you can't open your mouth and make any claims and be
like that just came out of nowhere. Right, I literally have no beliefs,
correct, Yeah, everybody has some commitments, even if you're a complete
like skeptic slash agnostic. Those are beliefs, those are positions. Right.
You're basically saying that I and pretty much no one else can know or we
just don't know, or I don't know. I mean, that's still a
commitment to all kinds of different things. And you may not think that it
is. But it is, and I think what they'll say to you,
Okay, I'll grant that, but there's no common denominator of which you can
categorize atheism is a worldview or position. It's like, absolutely, that's what
the whole papers about your accidentalists exactly. Yeah, they didn't even realize that
they already have a commitment to accidentalism by just saying that. That's the point.
So, in other words, saying that is already a commitment. It
entails all of these positions, whether you've recognized it or not. So the
fact that you haven't recognized it doesn't mean that you don't have all of these
commitments. To John Bollerman ten dollars, Thank you, gentlemen. I'm from
Vancouver aka the News Autumn. Thank you so much, Anonymous. Five dollars.
I've been listening to this for a long time, only just now I
have the courage to pipe up. Jay, You've been very edifying. Thank
you for being a nerd who does my homework for me. Glory to Jesus.
Thank you so much. Kristen five dollars, Thank you, Thank you,
Kristin, Sir from Craig ten dollars. If we can't accurately, if
we can't reason accurately from a fallen nature to God because of death, couldn't
tag fall into the same error. No, I mean we're not saying that
you can't reason accurately because of the fall per se. You can't. I
mean an atheist can write a paper about mathematics, can write papers about earthworms
that are correct and make new discoveries. Rather, the point is that they
can't justify how knowledge is possible. So those are two different that's another example
of the second order. Right, So let's give an example of an atheist
writes a science paper some breakthrough discovery about earthworms because he's been studying for the
twenty years and it turns out that it's all true. His theories on earthworms
are correct. Okay, nobody's saying that he doesn't have the first order knowledge
about the earthworms and his research and data. What we're saying is that he's
not able to give an account for how that knowledge is possible. That's the
higher order claim. Should this should be obvious that people think about it,
that these are two different things, two different claims. Somebody, Yeah,
I'm still confused with this guys saying that TAG can't differentiate particulars. Have you
figured that what that means? I mean, I addressed that earlier. That
I mean, you could make a transcendental argument with anything within the paradigm.
I I could start with pencils and make the argument up to God. It
wouldn't matter what object you pick, because ultimately everything it's the same question of
how do we ground the knowledge of those objects? Right? So that's the
question he was asking. He seems to think that somehow TAG is only dealing
with universals. It's not a question of universal particulars. So he thinks that
it's a universal type argument. I think, and therefore there's not a basis
for particulars. Seems to be what he thinks it is. TAG is not
the equivalent of universals. Okay, remember too that it's always misunderstanding everything.
Yeah. People get confused because they hear the word transcendental in yeah, and
they think that's reasoning about universals or something like yeah, or the all presidential
category must transit arguments must be about the reasoning about our grounding transcendental categories.
And that's not the case. So transcendental comes from the transcendental deduction of Kant,
and it basically a transcendental is simply just what's prior, right, transcendare
what's over and above and prior that makes the stuff below p Yeah, well,
maybe preconditions is better, because if we talk about preconditions for knowledge,
then that really doesn't anything to do with the question of universals per se.
You might ask other universals and can you give an argument for universals in your
worldview? But preconditions for knowledge, though it might relate to that, is
not the same thing as the question of universals. So hopefully that clears it
up. Because remember, in just general methodology, the transcendental deduction Kant is
actually trying to answer that exact question of what makes it possible to make predicates
of particular sense data right right, and and entities and stuff like that.
So that's exactly what a transcendental argument generally speak. I'm not saying Kant pulls
it off, but like the type of inference or transiental deduction that's an argument
that that's making is specifically attempting to ground and distinguish between particulars. Yeah,
I mean all of Aristotle's categories at the beginning is dealing with how to pick
out and know objects and to give them, give the relations that make them
what they are. Right, So quantity, position, substance. Right,
these are all different things that are listed in the category. And then cont
takes that and then tries to make his structure of the categories, and rather
than than being metaphysics, they're just in the mind. So it's it's but
it's the same basic idea of what categories are to make knowledge of objects possible.
That's so, in other words, to have knowledge of an object,
right, if we looked at Aerosol's categories, I would need to know that
it is one of the things the categories that we need to know is that
is over there, and over there is five free feet from that thing,
and it's ten feet from this thing. Right, that's the position and relation
is one of the things he lists in those categories. Then he says,
what about the fact that our relationship to transft categories seems contingent on fallen nature?
I would not say that at all. Has nothing to do with transpo
categories. I have nothing to do with being contingent on fallen nature. So
I don't know what you said that you say, look up the laws of
physics. I don't know how that relates. Thank you for everything that you're
doing. First Corinthians one twenty three. Frankie d five dollars. My brother
and me Austin came up with a new way form of calculating how far away
a different location is. For example, if you look at a place,
we might say it is one jay dire stream away, and if they say
it's two day dire streams away, you know it's very far. That's creating.
Do you have five dollars? Father? Deaging out a nice question for
you. Can there be a contradiction between first order and second order thinking?
For example, let's say somebody says in the first order statement the law of
identity does not exist. Would that result in a contradiction with a second order
statement that they know that the law of order latinity doesn't exist. Yeah?
And then what's really interesting too that I mean, this gets really met a
level, but it's something I developed with my argument from the immateriality of the
intellect and with like Bullian logic, you can't have existential import with universal propositions.
So that means if you derive a particular for I'll give you an example.
All dogs are animals on the bullion interpretation, that has no existential import
But if you say some dogs are animals, it does. It implies dogs
exist, all right. So then comes al for Tarski and al for Tarski.
Uh makes this distinction between language, optic language, and meta language.
So this is when we first start getting into this kind of first and second
order, and eventually this is going to develop into first and second order logic.
So I started thinking about a statement. Now, the reason why Tarski
developed that was because of the liar paradox. This sentence is false, and
he was able to make do you see how the second and first order is
relevant. He's able to make a distinction between the language that talks about objejects
versus language that talks about the language, and so something could be both true
and false depending on the distinction. Anyways, So then I was thinking about
because I'm doing all this work with second order statements. Yeah, but by
the way, that doesn't exist, right because J Mike and some of the
other atheists said there was no such thing as that question. So okay,
So even though the philosophers are out here talking about it. It's famous discussion.
It doesn't exist because there's no such thing. It's a nonsense thing that
you've made up that you could talk about the language of objects. So there's
knowledge of objects, and then there's discussions of the language of the knowledge of
objects. That doesn't exist. It's a thing that's made up by you.
Well, I'll make sure to go into I put my time machine in every
bean of Patristic faith right here, so I'll make sure to actually go into
my bag with Partrific Faith coffee, which you can purchase on in the bio
from Jays. Yeah, I'll put the link in the chat. This is
real coffee too. By the way, organic Orthodox based company. Every link
is a second order being that actually talks about lower order beings. And I
think you really appreciate the meta level roast of this particular blend. But I've
also put a time machine here, so I'll make sure to actually go into
my bag a pacific faith go back in time and tell Tarski. I'm sorry
to tell you Tarski the Internet atheist keyboard wizard. By the way, isn't
this the whole Douglas Hofstetter book that was a Pulitzer prize winner Gourdell Asherbach.
Right, do you know what I'm talking about? Yes? Yeah, Where
he talks about strange loops and the whole point is that there's there's language,
and then there's a language about language. And then he talks about how m
c ass artwork displays the like geometric patterns that that evidence this strange loop principle
that if you you're just raising the question one one step above one higher order,
he says, answer that question real quick. I'm sorry for going on
tangent on that. So anyways, think about this second order claim. All
propositions are all sentences contain words. That's a metaw language, right, Why
because I'm using language to talk about the object, right, Okay, So
what happens that's an universal proposition, and therefore I conclude to a particular therefore
some words, some sentences contain words. Have I committed on the bully interpretation
an existential's fallacy? And it came to this discovery. I actually wrote mathematicians
and logicians and nobody's even thought about this, which is weird stuff that seems
so basic that I'm like, why has nobody ever thought about this? It
can't apply to second order. The Boolean existential import rules can't apply to second
order. Why because to answer your friend's question in the chat, I would
be making a second order claim. That's basically contradictory. Right, I'm speaking
about words and concepts and universals, but they don't exist. Do you see
the problem? So to answer yeah, because the sentence is engaging in it.
So the sentence itself. Absolutely, you could make second order claims about
first order of things in which you're engaged in contradiction. And it's something I
just actually worked out in recently. Yeah, I brought when I was talking
to a deer, I brought up the Gardell the move that Gardell makes,
and he was like, that's not a transcendental argument. I wasn't arguing that
Gardell was making a transfer argument. I was saying that the move that he
makes from in the in the argument against Russell, when he makes the set
argument, he says that every set eventually appeals outside of the set. And
that's an example of the strange loop stuff in the Hofstetter book illustrates illustrates the
point that you're making about the move up to second order and the Tarsky point.
It's really difficult. He's got his other books really difficult to metamagical themos
but I mean hop setters, I mean he's not engaged in a lot of
metaphysical Actually kind of is because he says, maybe we can reconcile some of
these things with like Zen philosophy, and he talks about Zen cones and how
Zen's philosophy sometimes makes the same move to first order second order, but the
move is the same. That's the point. It's not saying that that is
the transcendental argument. Not saying that mc esher's artwork exemplifying this move is the
transcendental argument is really stupid. But anyway, Yeah, if anybody just watches,
uh, there's actually some lectures that explain the Goerdell lecherback book to you.
It's a really difficult book, but if you watch some of those lectures,
you'll see the point that we're making here about how whether it's box the
beginning chapters, he gives an example of box fugue. One of his is
like fugues, and it's actually the musical structure repeats, so it's a never
ending loop. If you play it on those old timey pianos or whatever.
That it would just play in a loop and it would be the same structure
over and over and over, and you can by the way, Yeah,
I actually did want to. There's a much better argument than the tag.
It's completely an irrefutable proof. But the problem is it's it's such advanced logic
that none of the atheists would be able to understand it. So I never
actually used that one. But if you come up to Montanica, I might.
I might actually pull it out just so we could actually look at it,
and nobody's going to challenges in trust me. It's an infallible proof because
I'm much smarter than all of you on logic, and so you're gonna have
to just trust me on this. I actually was thinking about, like,
what if I came up on an argument like that. Well, I do
have a proof, but it's just far too complicated for you to understand what
the atheist would actually say. Yeah, there is a hopstarter giving a lecture
in twenty thirteen explaining the book and explaining the principle of strange loops. So
if you want to watch that lecture, you'll get an idea about what we're
talking about. Yeah, I wish he had used some graphics, but it's
kind of like just him talking. He should have used some imagery because his
book is actually full of a lot of images. But anyway, so the
next question is Frankie die. On a serious note, I've been struggling with
Nietzsche. There's a guy whose name is Kosten Alamaru. He argues that Plato
and Nietzsche were arguing for an aristocracy and that philosophy is therefore not real,
it's only a tool of stake craft. Well, I mean that would be
a theory, but the fact that he has this theory that mean that it's
true. So I'll throw this one to Father Deacon. What would you say
to somebody who said, look, Plato, Nietzsche, they've shown us ultimately
the real meaning of their philosophy is that there's an ari aristocratic elite. There's
not a real philosophy. It's just a tool of control. Man. Well,
suppose I grant that there's a certain element of they're using. Suppose I
grant that they're still telling me if that's really who Nietzsche, Nichtsche and Plato
are, there's still something viable about philosophy because it exposes the con And I
would agree somewhat with that, right, I think all the philosophers are basically
con artists. Yet I engage in philosophy, in other words, philosophy and
the general sense of thinking correctly and with excellence that you could train yourself in
that that How would you fight bad philosophy of the elites or something like that
with good philosophy, right, good thinking skills? So even fight granted that,
that's kind of the move that I've taking. Well, I mean,
what did those argument still be some kind of philosophy and therefore self refuting,
because it's that's what I'm saying, either self refuting or they're still saying there's
some advantage to use this to expose the con So and what what would you
say? This is like a like a Nietzsche and it says something like your
quest for absolute truth is silly. Everything is just sort of uh, you
know, will to power power dynamics, and you're just duped into thinking that
you're finding this absolutely true. Absolutely it's an assual claim. So it's the
same problem with you. It's like, oh, I'm gonna pretend I'm not
making second order claims. They are contingent upon the first order. So just
grant me my assumption. Right, there are no absolutes, so I can
make an absolute statement about it. There are no absolutes. It's like mind
hacked. Five dollars, Thank you so much, Robi ten dollars. Do
you think that something deeper concerning knowledge was distorted in the confusion of the languages
at the Tower of Babbel. I don't know. I mean, maybe it's
possible that humanity's knowledge was damaged in some weird way at that time, But
I mean it looks like, as per Daniel, what eleven or twelve,
knowledge is increasing as we get towards the end, So good question. I
don't know. Prodrick five dollars. Do you have any thoughts on Mila Sue's
necessity of contingency appearing like he accidentally stumbled across Saint Maximus is where God exists?
I do not. Where I exist, God does not. I don't
know what that means, honestly, So, I mean, I've read a
lot of Saint Maximus, but I don't know what that means. Maximus is
probably just trying to express apathetic theology that the inner being of God, in
terms of his essence, will never know that I'll never be there, I'll
never perceive it, and it might be a statement of humility to like,
where I exist, God does not exist just in the sense of like because
I'm sinful, I don't feel close to God. But Maximus isn't literally saying
that God is not imnipresent. So but I mean, I'm discussing because I
don't know who. I don't know who Melisu is or what this had five
dollars? Is there any atheists that you could think of who does a decent
account giving a justification for knowledge claims father Deacon, my PhD advisors and atheists
at that's freaking He's a Contian scholar, He's a Soilarisian scholar, and it's
a sophisticated account of it's people like that that I think of. I would
say Malpass, but he, as far as he knows, Malpass kind of
takes more of like an agnostic like I don't know, kind of position,
but typically like at the level of like a good academic professor or something like
that, they could give you a good run for your money. If that's
what I mean. I think again, it misses the kind of greater points
of missing the epistemological forest for the epistemic trees and getting bogged down on I
would just saw this in like one of the comments too, like the tag
doesn't work because it fits into one of CONT's categories and probably referring back to
Stroud's argument of the lack of verification principle and transcendental deductions that it can never
establish an object to which it and two problems here, and it's again it's
this, I hate to say it, this pretended autonomy and kind of holding
on to your idols so you can't actually see the question. It's like,
why is anything that cont said even true or justified? And we're just granting
Kant like his arguments work and everything that he said let me get my cat
by the way actually works. And again it's just missing the kind of the
more fundamental kind of question of even if my argument doesn't work, tag,
it still works. Right. Let me put it this way to you,
what comes first? The necessary condition for all arguments, including transcendental arguments or
the transcendental arguments, which one comes first? Epistemically speaking? What would you
say? I was reading Phillip's comment, I missed what you're saying apologize.
So I want to one way to kind of illustrate why none of these people's
objections will ever work. I want to ask them, epistemically speaking, what
comes first the necessary conditions for arguments, including transcendental arguments or the transcendental argument.
The condition the conditions that have to come first. Yeah, the necessary
conditions. So what that means is, even if my transcendental argument fails,
the question still stands. Do you see what I mean? Why? Because?
Yeah, yeah, right? I mean, Let's let's say that somebody
was engaged, like, was arguing very poorly. Right, Let's say they
argue TAG very poorly, like I don't know a lot of the Matt Slick
or one of these people. Right, Let's say they argued it very poorly,
like, the question is still there, right, Yes, And that's
what I'm saying, even if I granted it to you, that like the
TAG is open to these continent critiques of Stroud and blah blah blah, all
this different stuff, or I made a mistake or something like that. The
question all it means is I wasn't that great with my language? The argument
prior to argument still stands, doesn't it? Yeah? And this was my
point to am Deer or J Mike. I forget which one, but yeah,
this was the point I was making of them. BMX nineteen six six
ten dollars, Thank you so much for that, Big Boss, twenty dollars.
Dang. The FDA Food and Drug Administration is against people playing tag win
will to tyranny end, so he's doing a little bit of pun with your
name and other things like tag attack. Thank you so much, Big Boss.
Appreciate attack Dog five hundred and five dollars. Jay, I'm just starting
to understand get into presop. I'm slow boy. What are the top five
books or papers or essays for a nube that doesn't have a philosophy background.
I would say watch the Bonsenstein debate about two or three times and take notes.
I would say, read the very easy introduction book Ultimate Proof by doctor
Jason Lyle. Then I would read something like Always Ready by Greg Benson,
and then I would read father Deacon Ananias's papers, and I would read then
Contingency of Knowledge by russ Manyon. All right, guys, I want to
remind you that we do have a show sponsor. Who is chalk dot Com?
Now is your paper public or not yet. Yes here, I'm just
because a lot of people were saying, hey, we want to read this,
and we we got through several key points, but we didn't get through
every single thing because it's uh, I mean, it's not super long.
It's a twelve page paper. But so if you guys want to read the
paper, father deacon and will give you the link right somewhere there is.
Somebody told me that unless you subscribe to Academy dot e D you can't download
the You have to log in with like your face Book or your Google is
how you do that? Okay, you can read it though it's yeah,
you can read it, but to download you have to be logged in through
Facebook or Google. Okay, thanks for yeah, and I guys almost all
my papers are on there. Remember to head on over to chalk dot com
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life JAY five three l f E uh. And good news, guys,
we will be doing an event in Vegas in June, so look for the
Vegas June event. Father Diggon, I don't know if you've sold your tickets
to your event. If you want to plug that you can. Yeah.
So the twenty first ends the Orthodox Montanica discount tickets the early bird tickets,
so get those. We are expected to sell out we're way ahead of where
we were ticket sales last year, and we're going to get a lot more.
And also we've if many of you don't know, in Missoula, there's
a mega church, evangelical church about two thousand people that are converting to Orthodoxy.
So we'll probably get a lot of them too, So don't procrastinate,
get your tickets to put it in the chat right there for the conference and
what what what's going on at at your conference? This year? It's themed
around is it film or icons? Theology to icon So we're gonna have film
famous film directors like Nathan Jacobs who's also a doctor of philosophy and uh,
I think he was a student doctor David Bradsha at one point, and uh,
father Turbo Qualls who's an iconography Also father Matthew Garrett from Boise who's an
iconographer and WI Corps. And Shane Swinson who is our resident iconographer paying the
temple. Yeah, shout out to Shane, longtime buddy of ours. So
and then it looks like we might get some other film directors and some other
famous guests that I Stanley Kuberg's coming, Mel Gibson is coming. Uh,
that's a jokes. Burgs, that's a joke. Yeah, Martin Heideger probably
will show up, Lenny Lenny Rievanshall will be there. Yeah, it's a
joke. People. Yeah, now they're going to be like, I demand
my ticket refunded because you lied and told me that Stanley Kuber would be there
and he's not here. You're a liar. Whatether if if I had to
get any film director, who would be your favorite film director to bring in?
They don't have to be orthodox? Well, I think everybody would prefer
Mel Gibson probably like as the most like based film director. I mean,
somebody said, is Tom Cruise coming? No, but Tom kom is coming
and that's even better, So I don't. I mean, you would probably
be better situated to know orthodox directors. I'm trying to think of the only
ones I've heard of are the ones that you know about. I think I
don't. I can't think of any any other ones that are We could get
Nick caged because you know that I've met him and had some conversations with down
at the Lava Lounge and Angeles. Oh you know who should get speaking of
Tom's Tom Waits, He has nothing to do with it. So I said
get so, I said get quit and Tarantino to go. Yeah, I
don't think that's gonna happen, but anyway, thank you for coming back.
My mind is much. I'm so tired from traveling, so thank you for
coming on. And everybody should read the paper and anything you want to leave
us with. All of you have at We're halfway through Lent. Have a
great rest of lent. My God give you the grace necessary for that.
Again, you've got our patristic faith. Coffee Jay, I know that you're
starting up some I think going to be releasing some courses after PASCA. I'm
going to start releasing some new courses, canvas courses, so stay tuned.
Also, we're bringing on other PhD philosophy Orthodox philosophy professors onto particular Faith to
deliver courses, so stay tuned. We're really excited about that. And just
like you, Ja, we want to provide quality university education that isn't woke,
it isn't broke, and it won't cause you to go broke to for
an affordable price. Yeah, I think that's the model. I mean,
the future will be this. People are not going to care about these mind
control brainwashing universities and they're going to be moving to learning what they want to
learn on their own initiative, and that's a much better model anyway. So
that's what I think the future is. So yeah, it's good to hear
that. Big Boston's another five dollars and says if you don't subscribe to Jason
Elysis, you're sigh opping yourself. That's a good selling point. I like
it. So yeah, you can also subscribe to my website get access to
the archives. I forgot to mention that I did finish this, so if
you guys didn't see the really deep dive that we did on Through the Looking
Glass, I highly recommend it. Actually we touched on some of the strange
loops stuff because Lewis Carroll, if he didn't know it, was a mathematician,
and a lot of the word games and word play is highly philosophical.
In fact, Father Deacon, you might find this interesting. There's elements of
the later chapters Through the Looking Glass that not only deal with the question of
identity, but questions of like substance and accident and Arisitilian questions. There's a
lot of weird stuff in this book that you wouldn't think about perhaps even counting
by identity versus accounting by division, I think comes up. And again,
Lewis Carroll was a weirdo for sure, and we covered that in part one.
But he does include a lot of interest. Seriously, he was accused
of being a ped oh because of well, odd things that happen. He
was in the circles of a lot of the Golden Dawn Ritual magic weirdos.
So there's a lot of bizarre stuff with this book and with him, And
I'll be doing the part two very soon because I just finished it on the
plane. And if you don't know, it also has questions relating to like
word concept fallacies. So a lot of the stuff that yeah, actually like
when she goes into Wonderland or when she goes through the looking glass into the
opposite world, the mirror world, everything functions like fallacies are the case.
So there's contradictions happening. Words are misunderstood in two different references to different senses,
and so part of the magic of Wonderland is identifying and picking out things
like fallacies and work concept fallacies, et cetera. So Part two will be
up in the next few days and thank you for your patience while I was
gone hanging out with Sam Hyde. That would a super awesome, very very
thankful. It was a blessing to be able to go do that. Very
thankful to them for hosting me up there and putting me up and having me
get beat up by the Olympic trainer dude, so I got to do some
boxing. It was intense. It was an asthetic endeavor. I really enjoyed
it. So anyway, it's gonna be a fun PGL when it comes out.
And thank you guys so much, and we'll be back very soon.
Everybody, have a good night. God bless