Dr. Cornelius Van Til, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, Presuppositionalism

What has Aristotle to do with Van Til?

This is another response to David Pallmann:

To briefly review our controversy, in my video against presuppositional apologetics I argued that Aristotle’s transcendental argument (TA) for the law of noncontradiction was fatally flawed for three distinct reasons two of which Greg Bahnsen himself supported. So far, Vincent has completely ignored these first two reasons.

Pallmann mentions that I have not paid attention to his other criticisms of Aristotle’s TA. I find this a strange charge because of these criticisms that weren’t relevant to my point.  Namely, dealing with Pallmann’s justification for believing in the Laws of Logic. They aren’t relevant to what I have written about Analyticity. For his conscience, let’s talk about the other objections:

1. Conceptual Necessity

Pallmann argues that all Aristotle’s argument would show is that we merely have to think as if the Laws of logic (referring to the rules of Classical Logic), but that doesn’t entail that these things actually exist beyond the mind. I agree with this criticism, insofar as it goes. There are serval options from here for any proponent for this argument. The individual may possibly accept that it only establishes conceptual necessity. Another option is the person takes some position that connects the mind to the way the world is. That some form of idealism is the case. The last idea that I’ll mention is to argue that one is arguing for laws that aren’t merely reducible to a conceptual scheme.

2. Circular Reasoning

This objection is to state that Aristotle is arguing in a circle. Aristotle is stating that alternative positions are irrational because they are contradictory, but the only reason to hold that contradictions are a problem is if you have established the laws of inference that condemn such. I think Aristotle is trying to argue that some undesirable results come from having contradictions (principle of explosion). I think he isn’t being fair to Aristotle’s actual point. Even if it was Aristotle’s argument, then I don’t think anyone else thinking that the Laws of Logic are transcendentally necessary would argue this particular way and think this would be irrelevant to the presuppositionalists that are his target.

After Pallmann’s recounting of events he states that in order to save my dying argument I have merely changed the topic. He thinks that I have changed the topic from Aristotle’s TA to his justification for logic. Of course, this isn’t true, Pallmann’s justification was always the subject of the discussion. It seems after multiple responses that Pallmann isn’t even aware of what has been in discussion. Let me quote the original article:

Thirdly, I don’t understand talking about the Analyticity of classical laws of logic when stating people like Graham Priests have coherent alternatives. It seems that some may think that classical rules of logic are analytically true and others may think non-classical logics are analytically true.

http://spirited-tech.com/2021/06/01/reponses-to-pallmann-on-presuppositional-apologetics/

Daniel Akande understood my point:

…his problem isn’t with you showing Aristotle is wrong but rather with the implications your argument against Aristotle has for your own view.

Pallmann continued to discuss this in another post:

Presuppositionalists frequently appeal to Aristotle’s defense of the law of noncontradiction as an undeniable example of a valid transcendental argument in an effort to show that they are just doing the same thing as Aristotle but on a grander scale. So by showing his argument to be invalid, I rob the presuppositionalist of his ability to legitimize his apologetic by reference to an uncontroversial example.

Since Aristotle isn’t the only attempted TA in human history this seems like just more a squabble over one of many options. We would merely lose an easily comprehensible example of a TA. I think we have close parallels in the thoughts in Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism and various moral arguments. I don’t think the presuppositionalists lack alternative examples. 

More importantly, most presuppositionalists are in bondage to this idea that the laws of logic are these foundational ultimate principles which cannot be denied on pain of self-refutation. By showing Aristotle’s argument to be invalid, I am actually removing that obstacle. This liberates the careful thinker to go down another level; to get behind logic as it were in order to better understand it and see why we are, in fact, justified in believing that these laws are truth-preserving.
Basically I think that presuppositionalists want to argue about the foundations of knowledge and they incorrectly identify the laws of logic as the foundation due to Aristotle. But in my view, logic isn’t the foundation – direct acquaintance is. But in order to get the presuppositionalist to see that, I have to confront Aristotle. That was honestly my main motivation for addressing it at all. And as can be seen by Vincent’s antics, at least some presuppositionalists are feeling the bite. They realize the implications for presuppositionalism, and indeed this whole idea of arguing by reference to “transcendental necessity”, if Aristotle’s argument fails.

These are a few confusing remarks. The idea that direct acquaintance (DA) isn’t subject to any laws of proper reasoning seems patently absurd to me. Are the deliverances of DA arational, rational, or irrational? If there are no epistemic norms to think about DA, then there is no way to rationally evaluate different claims of DA. If there is no way to rationally evaluate different claims of DA, then there is no reason to prefer one man’s claim of DA over another. Hence the charge of subjectivism seems to still stand the test of time.

Recommendation:

Analyticity, Logic, and Aristotle