0:00 Opening Remarks…KANT IN CONTEXT—The History Of The TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT & How Van Til Utilized It (Though He Did Not Agree With Kantian Philosophy)
0:56 The Precursors To Kantian Philosophy…CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza aka Benedictus de Spinoza, & Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. (Continental rationalism is a retrospective category used to group together certain philosophers working in continental Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries – Source: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ) (…Continental Rationalism is an approach to philosophy based on the thesis that human reason can in principle be the source of all knowledge. (Source: Psychology Wiki))
1:37 BRITISH EMPIRICISM – is a name traditionally used to pick out a group of eighteenth-century thinkers who prioritized knowledge via the senses over reason or the intellect and who denied the existence of innate ideas. The name includes most notably John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. (Source: IEP)
2:08 THE RATIONALIST APPROACH, THE EMPIRICIST APPROACH, THE TRANSCENDTAL APPROACH…(Kant’s “Critical” Philosophy)…A Philosophy Developed Through Examining The Foundations Of Both RATIONALISM & EMPIRICISM – The Transcendentals That Make It Possible For Reasoning Logically & Empirically
2:33 RATIONALISM & EMPIRICISM Share The Autonomous Reference Point Of Descartes’ Philosophical Method…METHOD OF DOUBT
4:09 ALL AUTONOMOUS MAN-CENTERED PHILOSOPHIES REDUCE TO SUBJECTIVISM & SKEPTICISM (Review Part 1 – TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS SERIES)
4:41 AUTONOMOUS SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT, …
4:42 CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM – The Rationalist All Agreed On Two Things: (1) There Are Self-Evident Truths From Which We Can Deduce Substantial Conclusions About Reality. (2) We Should Search For Certainty In Our Knowledge Where Mathematics Is The Ideal Of Knowledge
5:18 Self-Evident Truths?…Then Why Did Descartes, Spinoza, & Leibniz Arrive At Radically Different Conclusions About Reality?…One Was A Dualist, Another A Monist, & Another An Atomist/Pluralist (Review Part 1 – TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS SERIES)
5:52 RATIONALISM’S Impact On Society’s View Of Education (The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment)
6:26 GLB’S INSIGHTS & CRITIQUES OF CONTINENTAL RATIONALISTS: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
6:27 Descartes (The Property/Properties Of An Apple)
8:26 Spinoza (The Oneness Of Reality)
10:01 Leibniz (The Multitude/Plurality/Monads Of Reality)
10:44 [COMMENTS] Spinoza Begins With The One & Leibniz With The Many *Note: This Comment References THE PROBLEM OF THE ONE AND THE MANY – THE PROBLEM of the One-Many relationship is a sensational metaphysical problem in ancient Greek philosophy and raises the question of whether reality is ultimately united or pluralist. Greek philosophy purports to give a rational account of nature, society, and human existence. The One-Many problem exists in various relationships. In Plato’s philosophy, the One-Many problem is epitomized in the doctrine of the form. The doctrine of form is the crown jewel of Platonic philosophy, but also the bona fide object of criticism from other Greek philosophers. (Source: CSU Scholar Works, Xunwu Chen – Article The Problem of One-Many Relationship: Plato, Parmenides, and Aristotle)
12:11 [QUESTION] What Was Their Answer To Bring The One & The Many Together? GLB Explains That There’s Nothing To Unite As Spinoza Would See The Issue, Because It Would Amount To Saying The Same Thing Only In Different Languages. Leibniz Would Bring The Relationships Together With The “Grand Monad” Concept – THE DOCTRINE OF PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY
13:38 Modes Of Spinoza & The Monads Of Leibniz Dismissed As A Dream Philosophies
14:27 GLB’s Explains The Differences Between European, British, & American Philosophy With His Elephant Illustration
15:44 BRITISH EMPIRICISM – (1) There Are No Innate Ideas (2) Only Particulars Exist (3) We Should Seek Common Sense In Observation & Practicality
16:11 (1) GLB Proves This Notion To Be False Because It Was Not Empirically Derived
16:42 [QUESTION] How Does A Sophisticated Empiricist Respond To Criticism? GLB Exclaims That There Are No More Sophisticated Empiricists, Though, There Are Naive Empiricists In The Evangelical Church
17:45 (2) GLB Proves This Notion False Because There Would Be No Unity Among The Particulars…Unity Itself Is Not A Particular…A Kind Of Thing Is Not A Particular It’s Universal…If There’s No Connecting Principle Among Things You Can’t Say That An Apple Is An Apple Because The Properties Have To Be In Some way United…No Causality Because There Would Be No Necessary Connection Between Events
18:55 John Locke On The “Substance – A Substratum For Qualities” That We Think About That Individuates Things And Unites Properties (Pin Cushion Anology Of Substance) “Substance” Is A Mysterious Metaphysical Thing…
19:43 John Locke, Known For Political Theory And The Doctrine Of Private Property As An Inalienable Right…GLB Takes Issue With Locke’s BRITISH EMPIRICIST Worldview Because There Can Be No Inalienable Rights If There Are No Innate Ideas (1)
20:22 George Berkeley, Argued That To Be, Is To Be Perceived, Therefore, There Are No Abstract Ideas. GLB Takes Issue With Berkeley Because Matter Is An Unperceived Abstract Idea (Mental Substance)…GLB Expands…Odd Combination In Berkeley Of A Man Who’s An Empiricist But An Idealist.
22:13 David Hume, Argued Against Both Material & Mental Substance…Worldview Reduces To Skepticism
23:51 GLB Notes How David Hume Delt With His Skepticism Is The Way Our Modern Culture Deals With It—” IT SUPPRESSES THE TRUTH
24:39 (QUESTION) Why Didn’t Hume Stop Teaching His Worldview If There’s No Rational Basis For It? GLB Describes & Explores The “Consistency” Of The Unbeliever
26:02 Van Til Quote – “If You’re Going To Play The Explanation Giving Game, You Have To Be A Christian.”
26:19 (COMMENTS) The Unreliability Of Sense Data
28:07 The Problem In Epistemology Is The Problem With PERSPECTIVAL VARIATION…GLB Expands With How Rowing Oars Are Perceived Underwater
28:59 To Appreciate Kant Is To See That “The Age Of Reason” Ends In Subjectivism & Skepticism…Neither The Rationalist Nor The Empiricist Were Able To Find A Reliable Method Of Knowing…Huge Disagreements Over This Instrument Called “REASON” & What It Was Supposed To Be
30:11 (COMMENTS) About Reality Equaling Rationality (Review Part 1 – Four Types Of Proof @ The Twenty-Four min Thirty-Five secs Mark: RATIONALISM VS. RATIONALITY)
30:42 GLB Explains That The Problem Of Subjectivism & Skepticism Keeps Recurring Is Because Their Fundamental Assumption Is The Autonomy Of Man…They Begin With Man As The Reference Point & Final Authority…GLB Expands On How This Is Taught In Schools…Explains That Though The Christian Position Is Rediculed As Not Being Philosophy But Theology, It Can Save Philosophy Nevertheless
31:36 ENTER IMMANUEL KANT…Was Appalled By The Situation In Philosophy Between Rationalist’s & Empiricist’s Worldviews Reducing To Subjectivism & Skepticism…Shaken Awake By Hume & Changed His View Of REASON…Kant Is Most Known For His Book: A Critique Of Pure Reason, 1781…Book: The Critique Of Practical Reason, 1788… Book: The Critique Of Judgment 1790…Also Known For”Critical” Philosophy
32:44 KANT’s Awakening To A New View Of Reason He Thought Of As A Copernican Revolution…Kant Believed The Mind Was Active & Not Passive As Did Locke…Kant Believed The Mind Makes Our Thoughts Intelligible By Attributing Time & Space Predicates To The Sensations Coming Into It…i.e.The Mind Actively Imposes Order To The Chaos Of The World That We Encounter
34:20 GLB Expands On Kant’s Philosophy Of The Active Mind…Establishes Categories
35:30 Kant Takes Hume’s “Habit Of The Mind” & Uses It To “Save Science, Causation, & Substance”
36:09 Kant’s god, World, & Self Categories
37:05 Kant’s View Of god – Part Of THE NOUMENONAL REALM – in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the thing-in-itself (das Ding an sich) as opposed to what Kant called the phenomenon—the thing as it appears to an observer. Though the noumenal holds the contents of the intelligible world, Kant claimed that man’s speculative reason can only know phenomena and can never penetrate to the noumenon. Man, however, is not altogether excluded from the noumenal because practical reason—i.e., the capacity for acting as a moral agent—makes no sense unless a noumenal world is postulated in which freedom, God, and immortality abide. (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
37:34 GLB Comments On The Wicked-Cleverness Of These Theories & That They Rest On The Assumption That We Don’t Know The Objective World; We Only Know The Internal Phenomenal World – The World As It’s Experienced By Us…The Active Mind Makes Things (Including The Categories) Necessarily Intelligible Through “HABIT”
38:09 GLB Summarizes Kant’s Views…Nothing Can Be Known Rationally Apart From Experience (Favors The Empiricists Against The Rationalists)…However, Against Empiricism, The Mind Is Not A Tabula Rasa (Passive Blank Slate, John Locke’s Philosophy)…What We Know Is To Be Attributed To An Active Mind Constructing A World That Is Intelligible To Us
38:52 GLB Summarizes Kant’s Views Continued…The Famous Line For Which Kant Is Known: Concepts Without Percepts Are Empty, Percepts Without Concepts Are Blind
39:19 GLB Summarizes Kant’s Views Continued…Kant Claimed To Save Science & To Make Room For Faith…How? Through Subjectivizing It…Science Becomes A Necessity Of Our Subjective Thinking Process…KANT QUOTE: “The Understanding Itself Is The Lawgiver Of Nature.”
40:14 GLB Summarizes Kant’s Views Continued…Kant Was Accordingly A Metaphysical Agnostic Who Didn’t Know Reality & Yet He Held The “Certainty” Of The Knowing Process (Active Mind) & He Did So By Subjectivizing It…KANT ESSENTIALLY SUCCUMBS TO SKEPTICISM…Never Gets Beyond THE EGOCENTRIC PREDICAMENT – Egocentric predicament, a term coined by Ralph Barton Perry in an article, is the problem of not being able to view reality outside of our own perceptions. All worldly knowledge takes the form of mental representations that our mind examines in different ways. (Source: Wikipedia)
41:06 GLB Summarizes Kant’s Views Continued…Kant Called His Position, TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM – It’s What’s Presupposed For An Experience To Be Intelligible
41:49 TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYSIS – Asks, What Are The Preconditions For The Intelligibility Of Human Experience? Or, Under What Conditions Is It Possible To Rationally Make Sense Of The World & Experiences?
42:08 Christian Apologetics Is Not Satisfied With Kant’s TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYSIS Because His Method Is Subjective & Reduces To Skepticism. It’s Psychological & Assumes Without Any Warrant The Universal Psychological Operations Of Mankind
42:42 (Comments) How Did Kant Think He’d Prove The Universal Psychological Operations Of Mankind? …GLB Responds, It’s Questionable How Kant Would’ve Gotten Out Of The Dilemma; But Himself Thought That In The Nature Of The Case That’s What Thinking Is. GLB Asks, How Should You Interpret Kant’s Position?
44:06 GLB Opens The Floor For Discussion On Kant’s Potential Reasoning That Mankind Universally “THINKS” The Way He Theorized … [AUDIO DIFFICULTIES]
45:30 According To Kant, Reality Couldn’t Be Understood By A Single Unified Common Set Of Principles…To Understand Nature You Have To Use Causal Principles…To Understand Morality & Human Personality You Have To Use Principles Of Freedom…Kant’s Approach – The Starry Heavens Above [DETERMINISM] & The Moral Law Within [INDETERMINISM] (& You Can’t Bring Them Together)
46:29 GLB Summarizes Kant’s View Continued…Kant Had No Unified WORLDVIEW…Didn’t Save Philosophy
46:52 Van Tillians Like What Kant Was Trying To Do, But Not The Way He Did It…Kant Believed That You Had To Have A Subject Who Thinks (A Unity Of The Person In Order To Know Anything) In Contrast To Hume’s “Bundle” Of Perceptions…[GLB Comments How Mirrors Won’t Help]…The ONLY “Me” Is The Placemarker That Takes In Experiences
48:48 Continued…GLB, We Don’t Find Kant’s Unity As An Adequate Apologetic Because GOD Couldn’t Be Known For HE’s In The NOUMENAL REALM. Any God That You Could Rationally Know Would Have To Be Subject To Scientific Determinism, No Miracles, etc, etc.
49:02 Continued…GLB, The Only God You Could Know Would Be One That Stands Behind THE MORAL LAW Within Us…But That MORAL LAW Cannot Be Related To The World That We Know Rationally About Us
49:26 Continued…GLB, We Don’t Even Know Ourselves, Except As There’s Philosophically Necessity For Something To Unite Our Perception…But That “Unity” Is Just Essentially A Function – A Diaphanous (Vaporous) Placemarker In Our Thinking
49:57 (COMMENTS) [AUDIO DIFFICULTIES] … (MY BEST PARAPHRASED INTERPRETATION: Sounds Like Kant’s Proposal Was A Cop Out] … GLB, Believes Kant Didn’t Think He Came Up With Something Grand, But That RATIONALITY Could Be Saved
50:12 TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT…GLB Passes Out Chart Showing The Distinctives Of THE TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH (TTA)…
50:34 (TTA) KANT – Not Doing The Rationalist Or Empiricist Game, He’s Asking, What Else Must Be True In Order To Make Sense Out Of Thinking?…He’s Asking For The PRESUPPOSITIONS In Order To Make Sense Out Of Any Experience Whatsoever
51:13 In Modern Epistemology You Can Think Of The Strategies In The Theory Of Knowledge As Being Various Responses To SKEPTICISM…When The Philosopher Answers Questions About How We Know What We Know The SKEPTIC Pushes The Philosopher Back To The Assumptions The Philosopher Has Been Using Until Reaching FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS…CAN YOUR FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS BE RATIONALLY JUSTIFIED?
52:06 Continued…The Answer Of THE SKEPTIC Is No; Fundamental Assumptions Cannot Be RATIONALLY Justified; & Therefore All Belief Systems Are Ultimately Arbitrary, Because The Standards Of Justification Also Need Justification…Leading To Either An Infinite Regress Of Justifications, Or Some Level Of Commitment That Is Not RATIONAL…RATIONALITY ITSELF CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED
53:07 If THE SKEPTIC Cannot Be Answered, Intellectual Anarchy Or Dogmatism Ensues…GLB Expands…
54:00 THE THREE ATTEMPTS TO MEET THE SKEPTICAL CHALLENGE #1) THE FOUNDATIONALIST (A) Conceptual/Logical (B) Perceptual (C) Common Sense #2) PRAGMATISM (A) Appealing To The “Model” Of Science (B) Appealing To The Success/Fruitfulness Of Science #3) TRANSCENDENTAL
54:11 #1) FOUNDATIONALISM – Unites Various Epistemologies Which Want To Eliminate Abitrariness In Our Thinking, Also Prejudice, Relativism, Unwarranted Conjecture. It Attempts To Attain Cognitive Certainty By Anchoring Belief In Some Type Of Foundation Of Unassailable Propositions. GLB Expands…
55:19 GLB Critiques FOUNDATIONALISM As Being A Naive Approach To Epistemology…GLB Expands
56:09 (A) Because The Rules Of Logic Are Purely Formal, The Only Knowledge You Can Get Is Knowledge Which Is Going To Be Formalized Without Any Details Of World Experiences, Therefore, It Cannot Meet The Skeptical Challenge
56:35 (B) Because The Way We See Things May Not Be The Way They Actually Are, It Cannot Meet The Skeptical Challenge
57:22 (C) Because One Man’s Common Sense Is Another Man’s Absurdity, This Argument Cannot Meet The Skeptical Challenge
58:37 GLB’s Summary Of FOUNDATIONALISM…Not Many Use This
58:49 (QUESTION) [AUDIO DIFFICULTIES] Who Are They? GLB, Gives Article That Has A List Of Them, Titled, SCIENCE SUBJECTIVITY & PRESUPPOSITIONALISM
1:00:45 #2 PRAGMATISM
1:01:04 (A) There’s No ONE STANDARD Move/Model Among All The Sciences…Science Resting On Experience & Observations Is Itself Assuming Some Organizing Principles That Cannot Be Scientifically Verified Or Made Sense Of; Therefore, It Cannot Meet The Skeptical Challenge
1:05:31 (B) Pragmatism Assumes That We Know The One Rational End We Should Be Achieving…There’s No Justification For That; & Therefore, It Cannot Meet The Skeptical Challenge
1:07:45 #3 TRANSCENDENTALIST – The Transcendental Argument Takes The Form Of Saying That We Know Something Is True From The Impossibility Of The Contrary; Or, What We’re Looking For Is The Precondition For The Intelligibility Of Experience
1:08:10 So Now THE SKEPTIC Can Keep Blathering All He Wants, But Our Point Is That As Long As You Want To Argue Mr. SKEPTIC, You’re Presupposing The Intelligibility Of What You’re Saying. And So You’ve Been Met On Your Own Ground & It Turns Out You Can’t Pursue Your Skeptical Argument Without This Metaphysic Or Worldview In Terms Of Which Your Language, Your Argument Can Make Sense.
1:08:39 SUMMARY
1:09:45 Closing Remarks
Dr. Bahnsen and Michael Butler co-teach a 1995 summer seminar on transcendental arguments. With clear and jargon-free analysis, this course critiques various traditional theistic proofs, unpacks the philosophical background of transcendental reasoning, defends Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic over against his critics, and above all, equips the saints to prove the objective truth of God’s existence—apart from which one cannot reason, make sense of reasoning, or prove anything at all.
- Four Types of Proof (1 of 10)
- Van Til’s Why I Believe in God (2 of 10)
- Kant in Context (3 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (4 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (5 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (6 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (7 of 10)
- Apologetical Transcendental Argument (8 of 10)
- Back to Basics (9 of 10)
- Van Til’s Critics: Hoover, Dooyeweerd, Frame (10 of 10)
