CVT: Without a universal mind, unbelievers have to know everything to know anything

Confessor · #1 (**permalink**) 06-05-2009, 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cornelius Van Til

In all non-Christian forms of epistemology there is first the idea that to be understood a fact must be understood exhaustively. It must be reducible to a part of a system of timeless logic. But man himself and the facts of his experience are subject to change. How is he ever to find within himself an a priori resting point? He himself is on the move. The futile effort of Descartes stands out from the efforts of other non-Christian thinkers not because it is essentially different but only because it is more consistent. Every effort of man to find one spot that he can exhaustively understand either in the world of fact about him or in the world of experience within, is doomed to failure. If we do not with Calvin presuppose the self-contained God back of the self-conscious act of the knowing mind of man, we are doomed to be lost in an endless and bottomless flux.

But granted that man could get started on the way to learning by experience on a non-Christian basis, he could add nothing new to what he already knows. There would be nothing new. If it was known it would be no longer new. As long as it was new it would be unknown. Thus the old dilemma that either man must know everything and he need ask no questions, or he knows nothing and therefore cannot ask questions, remains unsolved except on the basis of the Reformed Faith.

Systematic Theology, 167; qtd. in Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic, 314-315

This kinda makes sense, but it kinda doesn't. Can anyone elaborate or critique this in a way that is a bit clearer than Van Til usually was?

CharlieJ · #2 (**permalink**) 06-05-2009, 01:29 AM

Ben, if you have the fortitude to make it through to the end of this paper by Plantinga, you may be rewarded by the knowledge you seek, not because Plantinga references Van Til, but because the same thought process is at work.

http://www.philosophy.ubc.ca/faculty...ntirealism.pdf

Confessor · #3 (**permalink**) 06-05-2009, 01:50 AM

Thank you for the link Charlie. I look forward to reading it, although I am happy to say that a few seconds ago I think I answered my question in the OP.

I came across this quote of Van Til on the-highway.com: "It has already been noted that on a non-Christian basis man cannot know what this task is. He would then have to know everything in order to know anything. Yet, he is himself surrounded by Chance and cannot even distinguish one fact from another."

I had already understood why the unbeliever is in an epistemological conundrum if a universal Mind is not rationally connecting events in Providence, because in that case the unbeliever must posit that nothing but chance is "behind" every event; chance is what links thinks together. And in that case, the unbeliever contradicts himself when he acts as if there is a rational connection between any type of events.

What I did not realize is that this is essentially the same point as "unbelievers must know everything in order to know anything." For if they do not posit a Mind who organizes everything, then they themselves are the highest form of rationality, assigning the task of rationally organizing all the facts of the universe together to themselves. Therefore, insofar as chance is what "links" facts together, then man must provide the rational connections, and insofar as man must provide the rational connections, he has to be omniscient in order to know anything.

chbrooking · #4 (**permalink**) 06-05-2009, 09:39 AM

I have an illustration of the principle in the OP that may help. It really only applies to the inductive path to knowledge, but it should get you started. Hope it helps:

Imagine you have never seen a deck of cards.
I turn up a 2 of clubs. What do you assume the next card will be? You can only assume that it is a 2 of clubs, since that's all that you have experienced.
Now I turn up a 3 of clubs, then a 4 of clubs. Now you may be smart enough to predict a 5 of clubs, but you certainly cannot think that it will be anything other than a 2,3,4 or 5 of clubs, since that's all you've experienced. Sure enough, it's a 5 of clubs, then a 6. Now you move from theory to law. You are absolutely certain that the next card will be a 7 of clubs.
But this time it's a spade, a 7 of spades! What you 'know' must be adjusted based on the new information. What happens when a diamond is introduced, or a face card?

Until you've seen every card in the deck you don't know if they are all unique, and you don't know what the possibilities are. You have to know everything to know anything. And that's in a very closed system (only 52 cards!!!!). What happens in the much wider world of science? Any new datum will throw off your entire base of knowledge, and you cannot know what new data may occur unless you've experienced every possibility.

Does that help?

Another illustration will be required for dealing with deduction, but I'm still working on coming up with that.

Confessor · #5 (**permalink**) 06-05-2009, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chbrooking

I have an illustration of the principle in the OP that may help. It really only applies to the inductive path to knowledge, but it should get you started. Hope it helps:

Imagine you have never seen a deck of cards.
I turn up a 2 of clubs. What do you assume the next card will be? You can only assume that it is a 2 of clubs, since that's all that you have experienced.
Now I turn up a 3 of clubs, then a 4 of clubs. Now you may be smart enough to predict a 5 of clubs, but you certainly cannot think that it will be anything other than a 2,3,4 or 5 of clubs, since that's all you've experienced. Sure enough, it's a 5 of clubs, then a 6. Now you move from theory to law. You are absolutely certain that the next card will be a 7 of clubs.
But this time it's a spade, a 7 of spades! What you 'know' must be adjusted based on the new information. What happens when a diamond is introduced, or a face card?

Until you've seen every card in the deck you don't know if they are all unique, and you don't know what the possibilities are. You have to know everything to know anything. And that's in a very closed system (only 52 cards!!!!). What happens in the much wider world of science? Any new datum will throw off your entire base of knowledge, and you cannot know what new data may occur unless you've experienced every possibility.

Does that help?

Another illustration will be required for dealing with deduction, but I'm still working on coming up with that.

I was trying to think how to apply scenarios like this to the secularist worldview, or how to illustrate that believing in Chance (rather than God's providence) as existing anywhere entails that this Chance can "swallow up" whatever knowledge already exists. Fortunately, I kept reading Van Til's Apologetic and came across this excellent footnote (p. 331, n. 146):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg Bahnsen

If there is a segment of reality that he is not aware of and cannot account for or understand (and who could know how extensive it is?), then he cannot be sure that there are not factors that are relevant to, or would interfere with, the adequacy of the explanations he has offered for what he experiences. If his explanatory principles cannot be thought of as universal, but are subject to possible qualification, he cannot say in any particular case that it is appropriate to use those principles or that he is not being arbitrary or shortsighted.

To apply this to deduction, we would simply tell the unbeliever that he can't make a deductive argument in the first place, for as long as he presupposes Chance as existing somewhere, no true universal statement can be known to him (on his principles).

I still have some other questions about this book, so I have a feeling a few more threads are gonna pop up in the next few hours.

***Semper Fidelis*** · #6 (**permalink**) 06-06-2009, 05:58 PM

To the OP, that fact made sense once when Matthew Winzer noted that our knowledge is relational: We do not know the thing in itself but God knows it.

Think about how man tries to know things.

On the one hand, the Idealist tries to focus on the Universals and, in the end, loses the particulars because the particulars have to be neglected in the search for the ultimate thing that ties all the particulars together.

For the empericist, everything has to be taken apart into its particulars. They attempt to know something about it by breaking it apart into its components - smaller and smaller. We are now at sub-sub-atomic particles trying to ascertain the "meaning" of the universe. But everybody knows that you can't describe a cookie by simply listing all its ingredients. There is a joy in a cookie that the component parts don't explain. Something is lost in the experience of it.