– A –
What do you think about someone (a materialist) who says that the same concept can be located at two spatio-temporal locations? This happens because the brain is like a computer that copies another computer’s program. So, when I speak, the sound waves enter your ears and your brain copies the concept that I had in my head.
I would expect a materialist to say this – it seems to follow from his view of reality. I can directly challenge him on this point, but I can also demand justification for premises that are logically prior to it.
For example, I do not believe (1) that a “concept” is physical, and I do not believe (2) that brains “think” at all. Rather, thinking occurs in the incorporeal mind, and the mind continues to think when it separates from the body at death. Now, suppose I challenge the materialist on (2). If he assumes the reliability of science and empiricism in his attempt to prove that brains think, then I will challenge science and empiricism. My own position on this topic of thinking and concepts is a version of occasionalism, so I am able to avoid all the problems that I present against the materialist.
If the point of your question is about communication in the materialist scheme, then it is best to challenge empiricism right away. If it is possible for two people to communicate under the scheme of materialism, then when communication occurs, there would be two physical copies of the same thought. However, I deny that communication is possible under materialism, so the materialist will need to first prove that communication is possible by an empirical epistemology – that is, even if we were to ignore for the moment whether materialism is true, whether thoughts are physical, and whether brains can think.
As for occasionalism, I use the expression “on the occasion” to describe epistemological and metaphysical relations more than I use the bare term “occasionalism.” Many beginners read my books and they would have no idea what the term means, so I often expand the sentence to use the explanation or the meaning of the term instead of the term itself.
My position is that God’s providence includes complete control of everything about everything, which means that he must be the sole power controlling all communication and knowledge acquisition. Using the brain as an illustration, if there is any relation between the brain and thinking, it would mean that on the occasion that God causes a thought in the mind, he also causes activity in the brain; and on the occasion that he causes activity in the brain, he also causes a thought in the mind. The brain has no necessary and consistent relationship with thinking – thinking can be done apart from it. At death, God separates a person’s mind from his body, and thus also from his brain. God continues to cause thoughts in the person’s mind, but on those occasions that he does this, he no longer causes any corresponding activity in the brain that used to be associated with this person’s mind.
Jonathan Edwards affirmed a form of occasionalism, and also Malebranche, as well as a number of other Christian thinkers. You could see Calvin, Luther, etc., at times saying things that sound like occasionalism. In any case, it is unimportant who affirms it or who rejects it. It is nothing less than a necessary implication and a consistent application of the biblical doctrine of providence.
– B –
Why would you deny communication for them? Is it because when you communicate, you are communicating propositions, and propositions are not material, so that the same proposition cannot be in more than one spatio-temporal location?
That would be the logically prior reason – I do deny that propositions are material.
But even if we ignore the logically prior issues, they still need to show that they can communicate by speaking and hearing. Whether propositions are material or not, they need to give me a logical proof showing that when one hears a proposition spoken, he actually hears what is spoken. That is, they need a proof for empiricism.
– C –
(1) Now they would probably say that your response is self-refuting, since you had to use your physical mouth to ask the question, and you assumed that my ears would hear your question. At this point you would deny this in favor of your occasionalism, right?
(2) On the other hand, I could say that within my worldview, God made our mouths to communicate and our ears to receive information, but within his worldview and by empiricism, how would he know that he is actually hearing what is spoken? At this point, he would probably reassert his conclusion that he knows this because he answered my question.
(1)
Occasionalism is my positive answer – it would describe my understanding of what happens in communication. But I do not need to mention this first.
Rather, I can first point out that the materialist begs the question by assuming a physical world without justification. I can illustrate this problem by pushing the debate into a purely mental world. That is, I can suggest that we might be having the conversation in a dream, or some purely mental state. How do we know that we are not? It begs the question to say that we know we are in the physical world because we are using physical organs to speak and to hear, because we might be speaking and hearing in a purely mental world, in which case no physical organs are involved. Since, by definition, the materialist constantly needs the physical world in his philosophy, he cannot proceed until he provides the rational justification that I demand.
On the other hand, all my basic principle are intact, and my worldview is immune and undamaged, since in my worldview, the physical world is deduced from a non-physical principle. So I can deny that I am necessarily using my physical mouth when I ask or answer anything – the materialist will have to prove it to me.
So when I suggest that we might be having the conversation in a purely mental world, it challenges the assumption that we are necessarily operating in a physical world. If the opponent’s philosophy cannot survive in a purely mental world, or if he cannot by rational argumentation reintroduce a physical world into the conversation once forced into a purely mental world, then he loses the debate.
(2)
Since you follow Van Til, I assume that you will want to formulate an answer that is consistent with his philosophy. I cannot help you with this, because I do not follow him, and I do not think that a good answer can arise from his philosophy. This is because, at best, he postpones adopting empiricism by one logical step by asserting that biblical presuppositions can account for the reliability of sensations. But I have shown elsewhere that sensations are inherently unreliable, so that nothing can justify it or account for it. Also, since his philosophy assumes that sensations are required to access these biblical presuppositions in the first place, he in fact embraces empiricism at the start. Therefore, his philosophy is doomed to immediate and complete failure no less than the philosophy of the materialist or empiricist.
Your argument makes a false inference from the Bible. The Bible indeed teaches that God made our bodies and organs; however, just because God made the ear does not mean that its abilities and purposes are what you think they are. Scripture itself shows that the eyes and ears are often mistaken, and people who are supposedly seeing and hearing the same things often come to different conclusions, or disagree on what they are seeing and hearing (2 Kings 3:20-22; John 12:27-29).
All the problems with empiricism remain for you. Even if you begin from biblical presuppositions, there is no way to show in any instance whether your sensation is correct. Even if you begin from biblical presuppositions, you still cannot rescue what is inherently irrational and logically impossible.
With occasionalism, there is no problem. The ears at best provide the occasion upon which God communicates directly to my mind – on the occasion of the sensation but independent of the sensation. In addition, he is the one who controls everything about both the occasion and the communication.
It is unlikely that a materialist will think of this and bring it up. Since he is an empiricist himself, it is unlikely that he will challenge you on empiricism. So the main issue is not one of winning debates, but of truth and honesty.
– D –
(1) How do you know you are not dreaming?
(2) It would be fallacious for my opponent to argue that since sensations are sometimes mistaken, therefore they are always mistaken. Or, it would be fallacious to say that if sometimes you cannot know whether your sensations are working properly, therefore you can never know whether they are working properly.
(1)
I might be dreaming, and it does no damage to my worldview, and all my basic principles are intact. That is the point. But I can be dreaming and still affirm that there is a physical world, not because I trust my sensations, but because the Bible reveals this to me.
On the other hand, my sensations feel the same to me when I think I am dreaming as when I think I am not dreaming, so by my sensations I cannot reliably confirm whether or not I am dreaming. Even if my sensations are different when I think I am dreaming as when I think I am not dreaming, how do I know that I am really dreaming when I think that I am dreaming, and that I am not dreaming when I think that I am not dreaming? Perhaps I have them in reverse, so that when I feel a certain way and I think that I am dreaming, I should really think that I am not dreaming when I feel that way, and vice versa.
But since I reject empiricism, this poses no problem.
(2)
Unless you can show how you know at any given instance whether or not that particular sensation is reliable, then you cannot justify a policy that allows you to trust any given instance of sensation.
Even if some instances of sensations are reliable, unless you can show which instances of sensation are reliable and which instances are unreliable, it makes no difference – you have no warrant to trust any of them, since you have no way of knowing when your sensations are right and when they are wrong.
Your opponent does not need to show that you never sense what you think you sense. As long as your sensations are not infallible, and as long as you have no non-empirical infallible standard by which to judge each instance of sensation, the result is that no instance of sensation is reliable.
Likewise, your opponent does not need to show that your sensations are never working properly. As long as you cannot infallibly show whether they are working properly in each instance, a general acknowledgement that they might often work properly is useless, since you still do not know whether they are working properly in any given instance. Also, what does it mean for sensations to work “properly”? If for sensations to work properly imply their reliability in gaining knowledge, then this begs the question.
– E –
But could they say that since sometimes your dreams have been false (i.e. a big monster chasing you), how do you know that you are communicating truth? You would probably say that to deny your worldview, whether in a dream or not, would result in irrationality, and that the laws of logic, necessary inferences, etc., hold in dreams as well.
I affirm the things that I believe not because of what I “see,” whether in the physical or the mental world (or a dream), but because of divine revelation and logical necessity.
It would be convenient if an empiricist would ask this question about dreams. It would be, in fact, a challenge against him and not against me. Unless he can answer his own question, it would mean that we must not trust what we sense whether or not we are in a dream. It provides yet another illustration of the impossibility of gaining any knowledge by sensation.
In any case, the real contrast is not between the dream state and the non-dream state, but between a purely mental world and a physical world. I refer to a dream only to make it easier for one to envision a purely mental world.
Also, we need to talk about what is meant by “real.” If a monster chases me in a purely mental world, or in a dream, then this is what is “real” in the purely mental world or in the dream. That is, it is really true that a monster is chasing me in the dream.
On the other hand, the question seems to imply that if something does not happen in the physical world, then it is not “real,” but this begs the question.
– F –
I would say that (1) God made us this way, and (2) this is how we normally operate. (3) There needs to be a proper environment so that if I were on drugs, in poor lighting, deprived of sleep, etc., then I would not have a hard time saying that I was mistaken about some trivial observation, but sensations are generally reliable.
(1)
Your position is the same as the materialist and the empiricist. The difference is that you appeal to God as a “just so” defense for your indefensible epistemology. You need to show from Scripture that God made us “this way.” It is not enough to show only that God made the eyes and the ears, but you must show that they do what you claim that they do, that you can reliably derive knowledge through them by sensation – through some inherent function in them – and that you would know in any given instance why that instance of sensation is reliable.
(2)
It begs the question to say that we normally operate a certain way, when how we normally operate is one of the things in dispute. Your statement assumes that knowledge normally comes by sensations, or that sensations are normally reliable. But this is the very thing that we disagree about.
Moreover, even if we normally operate a certain way, it does not therefore prove that we are correct. I can just say that we are normally wrong.
(3)
You will have to show that Scripture says that sensations are reliable under certain conditions, and that it is unreliable under these other conditions you listed. Since you claim that Scripture accounts for sensations, then you need to show how it accounts for them.
You cannot make your assertion about these conditions if you “discovered” them by your sensations in the first place, since that would beg the question. That is, how do you know that drugs affect your sensation? You cannot claim to know this by sensation if you have yet to establish the reliability of sensation. How do you know that lighting affects the reliability of sensations? In fact, how do you know that the lighting is good or bad in a room? Maybe the lighting is good (what is good?), but you are going blind.
Also, even if Scripture says that sensations are reliable under certain conditions, and that they are unreliable under other conditions, you must still have a way to discover what kind of condition you are currently under. If you use sensations to discover what condition you are under in order to determine whether your current sensations are reliable, then this begs the question.
– G –
(1) The knife cuts both ways and you need to show from Scripture all the things that you affirm and counter me with.
(2) Also, I think you would have to deny some common sense things, so that you do not know that “Vincent is a man.” You may be willing to bite that bullet, I do not know.
(1)
Yes, I have done that in my books, showing in detail that my position is in accordance with Scripture. Please read them.
But for you to say that “the knife cuts both ways” is to admit that it cuts your way. So by your own statement, you have accepted the obligation to show from Scripture that your view is correct.
(2)
Is “common sense” now your authority? What happened to Scripture? What happened to reason? What happened to sensations even? I am skeptical against common sense, and I think that the very idea is incoherent. In fact, common sense is not common and it makes no sense. What common sense dictates is not the same for everyone, and what is sometimes regarded as common sense is irrational and false. Arguing on the basis of common sense betrays desperation.
If I know that “Vincent is a man,” I certainly do not know this by my sensations or by common sense, but by illumination from the Logos, in accordance with my explanation on occasionalism. To assert a belief on the basis of common sense is another “just so” tactic to excuse oneself from a lack of rational warrant for the belief.
If you “know” something, you know something – only opinion can be held by degrees of rational reliability. Therefore, if I do not know something – if the proposition is formed in my mind by some fallible process rather than by God’s direct insertion as something that he considers true and justified – then I do not know it.
Therefore, I will never say, “By common sense, I know that I am a man, and this proposition that I have derived from common sense is just as rationally reliable as the Scripture, or God’s revelation. Both common sense and Scripture give me equal rational warrant, and so I believe common sense just as much as I believe Scripture. My own ‘sense’ of reality is just as good as God’s revelation. Scripture is not more reliable and certain than common sense.”
I refuse to state or imply that what I can discover apart from God’s revelation is just as good as God’s revelation. So I refuse to say that “common sense” is just as reliable as Scripture. To make such a claim would be both irrational and irreverent. You seem eager to “bite that bullet,” showing no distinction between the two, but I refuse to do it.