Presuppositional Pillars
An Example from Linguistics
By: Jay
Several recent discussions I’ve had demonstrate the importance of thinking in terms of a worldview, which amounts to ultimately adopting transcendental argumentation. This is relevant, not only for apologetics and arguing for God’s existence, but for analysis in general, especially as it applies to analyzing systems of thought, be it some given community’s modus operandi or a religious system, etc. This is precisely the revolution transcendental argumentation brought, but which has largely gone unnoticed. There are many reasons for this. In the numerous debates I’ve had with thinkers, one can often detect this process, even when the opponent cannot. Once one is aware of worldview thinking and transcendental argumentation, it is truly a paradigm shift in the approach to rational discourse, be it some issue of metaphysics or morals.
What we can trace out from this is that persons operate on the basis of their presuppositions. More often than not, individuals are inconsistent with their operating principles, and hold to conflicting positions. When dealing with more intelligent individuals, this tendency is certainly decreased, yet more often than not it is still a prevalent tendency. For example, we may look at a person who claims to be a hardcore, reductionist materialist. Irrespective of the goal of argumentation involved in engaging or analyzing this person, one can trace out the kind of conclusions they ought to come to, given their pre-commitments. Thus, for an illustrative example, a reductionist materialist will often make the universal claim that “all that exists is matter.” This is problematic on numerous levels, not merely that it attempts to show what it cannot do in its own system. But thinking of this view as a totality system is what is key. In other words, we trace out all the multitude implications of what would follow from adopting the foundational precondition that this person believes to be “rational.”
First of all, we consider the claim itself – that all that exists is purely material. On the first level of analysis, we can consider whether this question is possible to demonstrate, since generally those who advocate such a notion will also claim they adhere to the “scientific method.” The scientific method, however, gives no possibility of ever demonstrating such a universal claim. One would have to demonstrate perceptual knowledge of every possible location in the universe, and further show that each locale is purely material. This is of course, impossible, but even if it were, it would not follow from some mind doing this that some locale not presently under examination does not contain something immaterial. It is impossible to demonstrate a universal negative. But rarely would any materialist go to such extremes, though I have seen some otherwise highly intelligent people jump to absurd and irrational conclusions in such worldview analyses. What usually occurs at this point is that the person concedes that his view is a hypothesis, and it is the most rational. It becomes an agnostic view. A view, however, which admits that it’s most foundational premise is itself doubtful begins to give rise to bigger and bigger problems. Read more of this post
