Reformed Philosophy

I am currently working on a paper involving Crispin Wright’s theory of entitlement, which has led to a decrease in the amount of posting I do on ReformedPhilosophy.com. Furthermore, what I do post will probably involve this aforementioned paper (see my last post, for example). Regardless, here is a snippet of my (very) rough draft that can, hopefully, coherently stand on its own. I talk quite a bit about ontology here, which I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about; hence, any feedback/criticism is deeply appreciated. I am afraid that I pass through some of these issues far too quickly.

Background information:

• Undermining Defeater: Blocks the justification/warrant in favor of a proposition.

Roughly sketching the position, Van Til saw the existence of God as epistemically and ontologically basic. All facts (a priori and empirical) rely on God.

‘God’s knowledge of the facts precedes…facts… It is…God’s comprehensive interpretation of the facts that makes the facts what they are.’[1]

Furthermore, given Van Til’s rendition of the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God, his ontology sees logic, morality, aesthetics, etc. as so dependent on the proposition “(the Christian) God exists” that to deny this would be to ‘make nonsense of the human experience’.[2]

This view of ontology, though rarely held, is internally coherent, at least as far as I can tell. Furthermore, the nature of logic, morality, aesthetics, and so forth are not so firmly established as to dismiss this Reformed view out of hand. Since entitlement of cognitive project does not pick out a specific ontology, I see no reason why this Reformed view of ontology couldn’t be hypothetically considered alongside Wright’s theory.

Assuming Van Til’s ontology is at least internally viable, let us proceed and see if the proposition ‘God exists’ passes what I am taking as Wright’s criteria:

• Cornerstone Criterion: for any proposition, P, if P is to be deemed entitlement eligible, then P must be a cornerstone proposition of rationality itself.
• Revised First Criterion: We have no Undermining Defeater for P
•  (Slightly) Revised Second Criterion: The attempt to justify P would involve further presuppositions in turn of no more secure an epistemically prior standing…and so on without limit: so that someone pursuing the relevant enquiry who accepted that there is nevertheless an onus to justify P would implicitly undertake a commitment to an infinite regress of justificatory projects, each concerned to vindicate the presuppositions of its predecessor.

It is worth noting that from a more naturalistic ontology, the proposition “God exists” does not even get off the ground in terms of entitlement eligibility, since conceivably it would not be a cornerstone for rationality. From Van Til’s Reformed ontology, however, ‘God exists’ is indeed a cornerstone of rationality. In addition, there does not seem to be any Undermining Defeaters against it; how could there be if belief in God is epistemically foundational for Reformed Epistemology? Finally, what would happen if we were to ‘attempt to justify’ the proposition ‘God exists’? From Van Til’s perspective, we would simply run in circles; if working from Van Til’s ontology, we presuppose the supremacy of the presupposition ‘God exists’ at the outset.

So there you have it, without an outside reason to reject Van Til’s ontology, the proposition ‘God exists’ is eligible for entitlement of cognitive project according to what I understand to be Wright’s theory. Does this mean Wright’s theory supports Christianity or at least theistic belief? No. Wright understood that his theory lacked a certain ontological punch; all I have done so far is exploit that weakness.  Now, the mere fact that the proposition ‘God exists’ gains entitlement eligibility according to Wright’s theory is not necessary a strike against it. Some people, myself included, would welcome this result. Unfortunately, however, at this point the case of God’s existence gaining entitlement eligibility is simply the first strike that shows the insufficiency of Wright’s criteria.

Take the basic structure of Van Til’s ontology, if we substitute the terminology of ‘God’ with ‘The Flying Spaghetti Monster’ or ‘The Great Pumpkin’ or, even worse, ‘The Evil Demon (of the Cartesian sort) exists’, then what is to keep us from declaring that such propositions are entitlement eligible according to Wright’s criteria? Without an expressed means of picking one ontology over another, there does not seem to be any way to without entitlement status from such odd and wholly problematic propositions. As they stand, Wright’s criteria are at best helpful only for elucidating what propositions are entitlement eligible in each ontological theory, but this may have limited epistemic value if there are no means to champion an ontology that advocates ‘perceptual faculties are generally accurate’ over an ontology that advocates the existence of evil demons of the Cartesian sort.