Afterthought
Puritan Board Senior
How should we think about such things as facts requiring interpretation? Facts never occur in a bare setting; the facts themselves change according to how we interpret them. For example, to observe an object as part of a scientific process, one needs to interpret that fact of data according to something in order to use it; indeed, our understanding of the world becomes so ingrained that we tend to think of that as a fact that we see in the world. Indeed, not just facts, but our perception too isn't bare. For example, we can see a ball because we interpret it to be different from its surroundings; that interpretation is itself based on a theory of how objects behave and are distinguishable from their surroundings. Even further, that ball we see we distinguish from its surroundings by its color; but the distinguishing between colors, saying one color is different from another, is itself an interpretation and requires a theory.
This sounds a lot like Van Til's ideas about facts, so perhaps thinking this way about facts is fine? If we do think about facts this way, an obvious worry presents itself: how do we escape subjectivism? I suppose some form of subjectivism can be escaped by being a Christian, though it would seem we still have an element of that subjectivism present in both our observations of the world and in our reading and interpretation of the Bible. But I'm also not sure how one would dialog with an unbelieving philosopher who held this view because if we both agreed that facts change according to one's background beliefs (which differ amongst people), it would be difficult to argue that Christianity is objectively true.
Thoughts? Answers to the questions and worries?
This sounds a lot like Van Til's ideas about facts, so perhaps thinking this way about facts is fine? If we do think about facts this way, an obvious worry presents itself: how do we escape subjectivism? I suppose some form of subjectivism can be escaped by being a Christian, though it would seem we still have an element of that subjectivism present in both our observations of the world and in our reading and interpretation of the Bible. But I'm also not sure how one would dialog with an unbelieving philosopher who held this view because if we both agreed that facts change according to one's background beliefs (which differ amongst people), it would be difficult to argue that Christianity is objectively true.
Thoughts? Answers to the questions and worries?
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