Bolt's Pile of Knapp, Pt. 1

In my blog The Uniformity of Nature, I addressed questions which presuppositional apologists often raise in their debates with non-Christians. The overall purpose of pressing the questions which presuppositionalists pose to non-Christians is to put non-Christians on the defensive, thus keeping the spotlight of attention off their own religious worldview. When their questions are answered, apologists typically insist that the answers given to their questions by non-Christians are inadequate for some reason. The purpose here is to keep the spotlight trained on the non-Christian position, thus allowing their religious position to continue hiding in a fog.

There is another purpose behind pressing questions against non-Christians. That purpose is to get the non-Christian either to produce some kind of answer, or to confess ignorance on the matter altogether and do as the theist has done, namely to throw up his hands and blurt ”Duh, I donno, must be God did it!” If the non-Christian produces an answer, expect it to be dismissed as insufficient. If you’re lucky, the presuppositionalist may give some indication why the non-Christian’s answer should be dismissed as insufficient, but it is often the case that little or no counter-argument is given. The crucial task of the apologist at this point is not to enlighten his “opponent,” but to disqualify the non-Christian’s position as a viable solution to the matter in contention and to discredit the non-Christian personally as a thinker. The aim in doing this is to maneuver the non-Christian in the direction of confessing ignorance on the matter. The Christian delights in human ignorance, and seeks to uncover it everywhere he imagines it resides in other minds. Human ignorance is the darkness where the Christian seeks to locate his god. Whenever a non-Christian replies “I don’t know” to a question which the apologist treats as all-important, you can rest assured that the apologist is there, waiting like a spider, ever-eager to announce “Gotcha!” and thus claim a victory on behalf of his god-belief. The believer needs this, as he is ever seeking to validate his own god-beliefs within the confines of his own imagination.

The types of questions which I addressed in my blog The Uniformity of Nature have to do with, you guessed it, the uniformity of nature. This is a topic which presuppositionalists treat as a central point of contention between their worldview and whatever worldview a particular non-Christian might represent, particularly on the topic of justifying induction.

Apologist Chris Bolt recently offered a reaction to select portions of my blog, insisting throughout that I have not adequately addressed the issue and thus have failed to answer presuppositionalism’s challenge. Unfortunately, Bolt’s response to me is remarkably weak on substance, fails to address important challenges which I have raised in my piece, and gives the impression that he did not give my post a very careful reading before publishing a response to it.

An example of weakness on substance is Bolt’s objection to what he interprets my response to be in answer to the question “Why is nature uniform?” Now this was not one of the questions which I had set out specifically to address, but Bolt apparently decided that what did write was sufficient to guess at my response to this question would be, and that is, “It just is [uniform],” which he apparently takes to be a non-answer. What is weak about his discussion on this point is that he offers no reason to suppose that it is not true, even though he clearly rejects this view.

An example of failing to address important challenges which I raise in my blog would be Bolt’s decision to ignore totally a series of questions which I highlighted expressly in order to preempt the standard presuppositionalist obfuscations from clouding the issue. Since it just may be the case that Bolt did not see the questions on his first reading (which would be an example of not giving my blog a very careful reading of my blog), I will restate those questions here:

1. Is nature uniform? (Yes or no)

2. If no, we would likely have an instance of the fallacy of the stolen concept, for a denial of the uniformity of nature would have to assume that nature is uniform in order for that denial to make sense.

3. If yes , is nature uniform independent of consciousness, or is nature’s uniformity a product of conscious activity?

4. If nature is uniform independent of consciousness, the uniformity of nature cannot imply theism.

5. If it is thought that nature’s uniformity is a product of conscious activity, why suppose that such an overt appeal to subjectivism is at all philosophically impressive?

These questions cut to the heart of the matter as I see it, and thus I would be very interested in seeing how a presuppositionalist would respond to them. I would think that Bolt would want to preclude any confusion from obscuring what the Christian position affirms on the issue of the uniformity of nature, which is why I would think that he would welcome the opportunity to take a stand on the issues underscored by these questions. If he did in fact read my blog, I don’t know how he could have missed these questions, for the issues which they raise occupy a significant portion of the text. Perhaps he just thinks it is unimportant to clarify whether or not his worldview affirms that nature is uniform independent of consciousness. Or, he realizes that Christianity makes the uniformity of nature dependent upon consciousness, and he didn’t think it would be apologetically expedient to admit this. Either way, his choice to react to my blog and yet completely ignore these questions, speaks volumes.

In his reaction to my blog, Bolt sought to focus the discussion on a different set of questions. They are:

1. “Why is nature uniform?”

2. “How do we know that nature is uniform?”

In this post I will be examining the first of Bolt’s questions, leaving no doubt that it has been addressed, regardless of how “satisfying” Bolt finds my answer.


Considering the Question “Why is nature uniform?”

Bolt quoted me:

[N]ature is uniform on its own, independent of anyone’s conscious activity. A person can deny the uniformity of nature, but nature remains uniform all the same, in spite of such denials. This means that if no consciousness exists, the entities which do exist still act according to their natures.

And his response to this goes as follows:

Why is nature uniform? It just is.

Again, considering the question “Why is nature uniform?” was not the specific purpose of my post. But in spite of this, the position which I affirmed in my post did in effect answer this question definitively. I had stated at least twice that, on my view, nature is inherently uniform independent of conscious activity by virtue of the fact that it exists. Bolt interprets this to mean simply that nature “just is” uniform. While this overlooks many of the surrounding points which I made in my blog (for instance, it ignores my points about the concurrence of existence and identity and the objectivity of the uniformity of nature – that’s the part about nature being uniform independent of consciousness), let’s suppose that all I did say was “it just is”: “Nature is uniform because… it just is, like it or not, so get used to it.” This would be an answer to the question, so even though I did not set out to address it specifically, there’s no question that an answer to this question, which Bolt thinks is so important, can be obtained from what I did write, even if it has been under-appreciated by careless handling or deliberately de-valued for apologetic expedience.

Apparently Bolt does not find such a response acceptable. But why not? Why can it not be the case that nature “just is” uniform? Why can’t nature be inherently uniform independent of conscious activity by virtue of the fact that it exists? Bolt never explains why this cannot be the case. Nor does he raise any intelligent objections against the rationale which I had put forward on behalf of this view, namely that “existence exists, to exist is to be something, and nature, since it exists, is therefore itself.” To deny this, it seems that one would have to do at least one of the following:

1. Deny the premise that existence exists (but this would be self-defeating – the axiom being denied would have to be true in order for anyone to deny it);

2. Deny the premise that to exist is to be something (which amounts to a denial of the law of identity, which again is self-defeating – specifically what is being denied?);

3. Deny that nature exists (in which case one can only wonder why Bolt thinks his questions are so important); or

4. Acknowledge that nature exists but deny that the law of identity applies to nature (which too would be self-defeating, for it would be affirming the existence of something which is not something – a patent self-contradiction).

None of these options is very promising, to say the least.

Now if Bolt has any good reasons for supposing that nature is not or cannot be inherently uniform, he did not present them in his reaction to my post, and I for one would be curious to see them. But since I affirmed the position that nature is inherently uniform in my post, and he has published his reaction to it, I’d think that he would have taken the opportunity to educate me on the matter if in fact he knew any better. He did not. I am thus open to the possibility that he may in fact have no good reason against supposing that nature is inherently uniform. At any rate, my position thus far remains intact.

Bolt did follow up his own rendering of my position with this parenthetical statement:

(Stating that the contingent entities in question act according to their natures is another way of stating that nature is uniform but not an explanation for why it is uniform.)

First, Objectivism does not subscribe to the necessary-contingent dichotomy. In my examination of the law of causality, I nowhere characterized the entities which exist as “contingent.” Objectivism is well known, even among its more informed detractors, for its rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy along with all its variants (see for instance Leonard Peikoff, “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” in Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, pp. 88-121). By interpreting my position as affirming “contingent entities” Bolt indicates either that he is not very familiar with Objectivist epistemology, or that he has an unconscious habit of putting words into his opponents’ mouth. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Second, if it is truly the case that stating that entities act according to their natures “is another way of stating that nature is uniform,” then denying the view that entities act according to their natures also denies the uniformity of nature. If Bolt holds that nature is indeed uniform and believes that the view that entities act according to their nature is just another way of affirming the uniformity of nature, why did he enlist the likes of John Robbins to argue against the Objectivist conception of causality (see here)?

Third, pointing out the fact that entities act according to their natures is not intended (nor did I offer it) specifically as “an explanation for why [nature] is uniform.”

Fourth, I don’t think the question “Why is nature uniform?” is entirely valid philosophically. In fact, this is not the question which I set out to answer in my post. This is because the question “Why is nature uniform?” strikes me as fallaciously complex. I think it is fallaciously complex because it requires thinkers who attempt to answer it on its own terms to accept hidden illicit premises which have no objective basis.

When the presuppositionalist asks the question, “Why is nature uniform?” is he asking what causes nature to be uniform? If so, then the question is indeed fallaciously complex, for it assumes that the uniformity of nature is the result of some prior cause and in so doing it invokes a natural law (the law of causality) prior to the uniformity of nature. But this is conceptually absurd for it blatantly commits the fallacy of the stolen concept: it makes use of a concept (namely causality) while ignoring the metaphysical context in which that concept can only make sense (i.e., a nature uniform with itself). Christians confirm this analysis whenever they name the actions by which their god supposedly causes nature to be what it is, such as when their god “creates” and “sustains” nature according to its will. By naming these actions (“creating” and “sustaining”), the Christian confesses that he assumes that these actions do in fact have identity – i.e., that the law of identity does after all apply to action as well as to the entities which perform them. The laws of identity and causality are natural laws: they are formal recognitions that whatever exists has a nature. Thus the question “Why is nature uniform?” - if it is asking us to identity what “causes” nature to be uniform – is bankrolled on a stolen concept just as the question “Why does existence exist?” does.

Now it is important to note that Bolt nowhere attempts to validate the question “Why is nature uniform?” He just assumes that it is valid, perhaps never having paused to consider whether it is valid or not. Nor does he address the questions which I posed regarding the uniformity of nature, namely those having to do with whether or not nature is uniform independent of consciousness. For instance, in addition to those which I quoted above, I stated:

This is the central question to be considered before all others: is consciousness involved in “making” nature uniform, or is nature uniform on its own, regardless of what consciousness does?

Bolt does not address my questions because he knows that the Christian view characterizes the uniformity of nature as a result of prior conscious activity (thus tacitly employing a stolen concept). On such a view, this can only mean that nature is not inherently uniform, and that any uniformity which is said to obtain in nature can be turned on and off at will, depending on what the ruling consciousness wishes. I explained all this and the attendant problems which such a view entails, but Bolt ignores all of this completely in his reaction. Why?

There is another point that I would like to make, similar to the one which Jeffrey J. Lowder made in one of his debates. In his debate with Christian philosopher Dr. Phil Fernandes, Lowder, past president of Internet Infidels. Inc., made the following statement:

I want to make one point about the big bang model and the beginning of the universe. I'm going to paraphrase [Dr. Phil Fernandes]. He says, "But naturalism or atheism mystifies the beginning of the universe. It says it's just a brute fact, it offers no explanation. Whereas theism explains it." Notice there's going to be brute facts no matter what you believe. In every metaphysical theory there's going to be brute facts. It is impossible for a theory to explain absolutely everything, even its own basic assumptions. Even theism has a brute fact, namely why God exists instead of absolutely nothing. But what about Naturalism's brute fact that the universe exists instead of just nothing? I guess I just don't see the problem here. [The Lowder-Fernandes Debate – Naturalism vs. Theism: Where Does the Evidence Point? This debate took place September 26, 1999 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

The essence of Lowder's point here is that in any viable philosophical system (particularly if it is a form of foundationalism), there must be a starting point beyond which explanation is impossible (otherwise it ceases to serve as a starting point). We need to start somewhere.

Objectivism recognizes the fact that knowledge has a hierarchical structure to it. This hierarchical structure of knowledge should be apparent every time we develop new knowledge on the basis of already existing knowledge, such as when we integrate newly learned facts about someone with what we already know about him. For instance, just recently my boss, whom I’ve known for a while now, revealed to me that one of his uncles was involved in the raid at Los Baños, Philippines. This new information has now been integrated with the rest of what I know about my boss. Also, concepts can be formed by integrating previously formed concepts, which is how we have higher abstractions (see for instance chapter three of Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “Abstraction from Abstractions,” pp. 19-28). The formalization of any inference is likewise a means of making the hierarchical structure of a conclusion vis-à-vis its premises explicit. As Peikoff rightly explains:

Human knowledge is not like a village of squat bungalows, with every room huddling down against the earth’s surface. Rather, it is like a city of towering skyscrapers, with the uppermost story of each building resting on the lower ones, and they on the still lower, until one reaches the foundation where the builder started. The foundation supports the whole structure by virtue of being in contact with solid ground. (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 130)

If you continue to reduce your knowledge to its fundamental bases, you will eventually come to what is irreducible, the bedrock on which it all stands. The Objectivist axioms identify the conceptually irreducible foundations of knowledge (see here). That which is irreducibly primary cannot be “explained” in terms of anything prior, for there is nothing prior which can be referenced in explaining that which is irreducibly primary.

So, on my view, just as nature is uniform independent of consciousness (and is thus an objective fact about reality), and since nature is existence as it exists apart from conscious manipulation (cf. Rand’s concept of the man-made in her essay “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It, pp. 23-34), if existence is irreducibly primary, there is nothing “prior” to nature to “explain” or “cause” its uniformity. Thus it is inherently uniform. The question “Why is nature uniform?” as Bolt has posed it tends to ignore all these facts, and thus can be dismissed as fallaciously complex.

Now Lowder refers to this type of bedrock as a “brute fact.” And by this he clearly means a baseline fact for which there can be no prior explanation. Now it may be the case that presuppositionalists like Chris Bolt will seize on Lowder’s use of this term to dispute what he says, but I don’t think even they can outrun his point. Presuppositionalists of course insist that there is no such thing as “brute facts” (numerous references to 'brute facts' and presuppositionalism’s rejection of them can be found in Bahnsen's Van Til's Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, cf. pp. 38, 78, 268, 279-280, 310, 316, 355-57, 376-79, 570, 673). What they seem to be saying is that "It's a brute fact that there are no brute facts." This is the kind of absurdity that we can expect to find in presuppositionalism once we scratch the very top surface of its systemic gimmickry.

To be continued.

by Dawson Bethrick

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Irrefutable Evidence that Christianity is True!

In a recent blog entry, presuppositional apologist Chris Bolt once and for all settles the age-old question about evidence for the truth of the Christian worldview.

In his blog Bolt tells his readers:

If you want evidence that Christianity is true you need not look any further than Dawson Bethrick.

With this incontestable revelation now out in the open, I would think that the folks over at Choosing Hats would be eager to post a hyperlink on their blog’s main page directing traffic to my site in the interest of advertising evidence for the truth of Christianity for the benefit any doubters who stumble onto their blog.

Send the doubters to me, and I will be more than happy to set them straight on the matter.

Will they do it?

Well, I don’t see why not if Chris Bolt truly believes what he says.

But we must keep in mind that actions do in fact speak louder than words. If Bolt does not provide a link to my blog from his blog’s main page, what does this tell us about his confidence in what he says in his blog?

One can only infer.

by Dawson Bethrick

John Robbins and the Foreclosure of His Critique of Objectivism

In a recent blog entry on Choosing Hats, Christian apologist Chris Bolt quoted from the late John Robbins, the student of “Reformed” theologian Gordon Clark who sought at one time in his life very strenuously to take down Objectivism. Though they have historically called themselves “Scripturalists,” Gordon Clark and his followers have commonly been referred to as “presuppositionalists,” however their apologetic viewpoint differs significantly from that of Cornelius Van Til and his followers. Clark and Van Til, both believers in the Christian god whose followers claimed that they were “led by the Spirit” in their walk and talk, found themselves locked in a bitter, unending dispute over some trifling aspect in their respective theologies (specifically, on the issue of the incomprehensibility of their god).

Robbins vs. the Vantillians

For the benefit of the uninitiated, it should be noted that the rivalry between Van Til and Clark spawned a blood feud which continues to boil to this day among their ideological heirs. Consider for instance the recent controversy brewing between Vantillian James Anderson and Clarkian Gary Crampton on the issue of “paradox” or “apparently contradictory” teachings. The constant believer-versus-believer imbroglios which have characterized Christianity since the Pauline epistles summons to mind the old “Spy vs. Spy” cartoons in Mad Magazine: humorous and inconsequential.

John Robbins (1948-2008) was a die-hard Clarkian who eventually died. He is probably best known for his work with the Trinity Foundation and sundry trouble-making on the internet. Robbins did write a book attempting to refute Objectivism called Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System (Hobbs, New Mexico: The Trinity Foundation, 1997. 399 pp.). The cover of Robbins’ book features a photograph of Ayn Rand’s headstone. This book offers a glimpse into the horrific sophistry of the Calvinist mindset, and has been reviewed by several non-Clarkians (see for instance Bryan Register’s and Jim Peron’s).

Now when a Vantillian presuppositionalist runs to Robbins as his savior, you can be assured that he’s on the ropes. Vantillians and Clarkians are bitter enemies, but in my experience Vantillians tend to cave into the Clarkian camp before Clarkians ever resort to Van Til. This is because the Clarkian position is more consistently mystical. For instance, it denies empiricism in toto (and just so readers know that I’m not making this up, check out this monstrosity). As such, it is only logical – on the basis of Christianity’s premises – for believers who are faced with insurmountable difficulties to retreat into the thick forest of an overtly subjective viewpoint, even if it belongs to one of their arch-rivals. So in a sense, Bolt is right on schedule.

Robbins on the Objectivist Conception of Causality

Unfortunately, Robbins makes numerous mistakes in his attempt to challenge the Objectivist position, and scores zero points in discrediting the conception of causality which I have presented in this blog. Some of Robbins’ mistakes are incidental, while others demonstrate a significant failure to grasp the position which he was critiquing.

As an example of a somewhat easily corrected mistake, consider the following. Robbins quotes (purportedly) an Objectivist source (no citation is given in the portion which he quotes from Robbins’ book) stating:

the premise that every action is only a reaction to an antecedent action, rules out, arbitrarily and a priori, the existence of self-generated goal-directed action

Robbins mistakenly states that Objectivists “hold that this premise applies to all reality except man.” But this is not the case, and it’s puzzling that Robbins didn’t know any better. As Rand stated:

Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex—from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man—are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life. (“The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 16)

Clearly Rand held that more than merely man is capable of self-generated, goal-oriented action. Rand identified this as a distinguishing characteristic of life as such, not just human life, but all living organisms. All living organisms is certainly much broader than just human beings. The former category includes single-celled protozoa, plants, tilapia (yum!), kangaroo rats, gorillas, etc. And even when it gets to man, this attribute is not restricted merely to his volition, but also includes autonomic biological functions, such as his heart beat, respiration, nerve activity, etc. The type of actions which these entities and features perform are not of the billiard-ball-acting-on-billiard ball type of causation.

Also, it is arguable that some entities other than biological organisms are capable at least of self-generated action (apart from goal-orientation), such as magnets and celestial bodies exerting gravitational pull on others. At any rate, Robbins is wrong to assume that Objectivists hold that only man is capable of self-generated action.

Robbins then states (in reaction to the quote above purportedly from an Objectivist source):

This is the central problem in their theory of free-will.

At best this is misleading. While man possesses free will (as Objectivism understands it), the theory of causality which Objectivism endorses (namely that the relationship between an entity and its own actions is a necessary relationship; see here) pertains to more than just human beings given the volitional nature of their consciousness. As noted above, other types of biological organisms are capable of self-generated and goal-oriented action, and yet Objectivism does not attribute a volitional form of consciousness to these species.

Robbins continues, saying:

They also reject the modern notion that causality is a relationship between motions, in favor of an older view that it is a relationship between things.

No, not “a relationship between things” (where “things” is understood to be different entities), but between an entity and its own actions. Either Robbins was not aware of what the Objectivist theory of causality holds, or he was simply a poor reader. Another possibility is that he was so consumed with a lust for smearing Objectivism that he didn’t care to factor in such pesky details, since they don’t serve his agenda.

Taking such confusions as a point of departure, Robbins presses on only to prove himself to be a rather belligerent thinker. After quoting Nathaniel Branden at length (see Bolt’s post for the entire quote; Bolt states that Robbins is quoting Branden from The Objectivist, March 1966, pp. 11-12), Robbins accuses Branden’s position of

presuppos[ing] that which an empiricist cannot presuppose: that he somehow ‘knows’ the nature (or identity) of a thing apart from observation of it.

Unfortunately, Robbins does not pinpoint where Branden’s position relies on knowledge of things acquired apart from observation of them (unless of course Robbins is objecting to conceptual integration and application of concepts here, which of course would be glaringly self-defeating). Robbins simply asserts that Branden does this, and probably does so by clinging to the Humean conception of causality without realizing it (and thus failing to perform an internal critique of Objectivism). In the portion which Robbins quotes from Branden, Branden nowhere claims to know something apart from observation. If Robbins thinks that Branden’s statement implies such a move, he needs to show us where. But he doesn’t.

Robbins goes on to stipulate that

observation, of course, does not mean staring at an immutable object, but manipulation of an object and watching the changes it undergoes or “causes”.

These are not jointly exhaustive alternatives, so it is unclear why “observation” must mean either horn of Robbins’ dichotomy. We can observe objects which are not immutable without manipulating them, too. I can, for instance, observe a squirrel gathering nuts or the second hand of a clock moving in radial fashion. Neither object here is “immutable,” nor am I manipulating them. But I am observing entities in action all the same. Robbins’ stipulated meaning of observation arbitrarily rules out such activities. Nor is it clear what Robbins thinks he may be gaining by doing this.

At this point Robbins says that “this is precisely Hume’s point,” but what specifically does Robbins have in mind here as “Hume’s point”: that we cannot know the identity or nature of something without observing it, or that observation entails manipulating an object and “watching the changes it undergoes or ‘causes’”? I ask, because Robbins’ own statement here suffers from imprecision and clumsiness.

Contrary to what Robbins is saying, Hume’s point was precisely what Branden states, namely that

If all that is involved [in causality] is motion succeeding motion, there is no way to establish necessary relationships between succeeding events: one observes that B follows A, but one has no way to establish that B is the effect or consequence of A.

Unfortunately, Robbins’ muddle gets increasingly thicker after this point. For instance, he writes:

the observation of change (of motion-to-motion causality to use Branden’s term) is the only observation that can be made.

But what is Robbins’ argument for this claim? None that I can see. He has yet to justify the dichotomy into which he tried to shoehorn “observation” in the first place. But even if we do accept Robbins’ preferred notion of observation, why is “observation of change” “the only observation that can be made”? We can observe entities as well as what they do (i.e., their actions, movement, change, etc.). Also, we can observe things which are not acting, in motion, or changing, such as a photograph. Indeed, even if one claims that one observes changes within the photograph (such as from one color to another, or one image in the photograph to another), this type of change itself is not a form of motion, but rather a static difference.

Even more to the point, Objectivists would be right to point out to Robbins that when we observe change, we are observing some thing that is undergoing the change, not just the change itself as if it could exist independent of the thing which is changing. When I observe the second hand moving in radial fashion around the face of a clock, I’m observing the second hand - a thing,not merely “change” in and of itself.

So if, contrary to what Robbins asserts (without argument, mind you), we observe not only “change” but also the entities which undergo the changes we observe, and we understand that there is a necessary relationship between an entity and the actions it performs, we observe not only the action (or change) but also the entity which performs it. We are not observing merely a succession of “events,” but rather entities in action. But even here, Robbins seems to think that, neither can we observe entities in action, but to have knowledge of what entities do we need some kind of non-sensory input. Not surprisingly, Robbins never explains how this works.

Robbins then asserts:

In the example Branden uses, no empiricist, including Ayn Rand, can state truthfully that the lighted match caused the wastebasket to burn.

Apparently Rand and other “empiricists” are supposed to know that the lighted match caused the wastebasket to burn through anamnesis or some other non-empirical means (perhaps prayer?), even though this could be observed directly. According to Robbins, observing a lighted match being thrown into a wastebasket supposedly gives no indication of how the wastebasket ignited in flames. But that’s Hume’s view, not the Objectivist’s view. If action is the action of a thing (a premise which Robbins & co. never refute), and a thing acts in accordance to its nature (another premise which Robbins & co. never refute), why would not a flammable object burn when it comes into contact with a flame? It is in the nature of a flammable object to burn when it comes into contact with a flame. But Robbins objects to the recognition that we can learn this by perceiving a flammable object catching fire when it comes into contact with a flame. Presumably we are supposed to ignore what we observe and rely on mystical means to learn about reality (though this always leads to conflict among mystics; see for instance here and here).

Notice that throughout all this, Robbins gives no indication of any alternative means by which one can know these things, nor does he make any genuine attempt to refute the recognition that action has identity or the view that an entity’s actions depends on the nature of the entity performing that action.

But Robbins has not exhausted his appetite for bald assertions. He continues, saying:

Causality is not observed at all.

Again, Robbins is simply affirming the Humean conception of causality here: we observe “events” in succession, but not the causality which connects them. But this requires that we observe only “change,” arbitrarily implying as we saw above that we do not observe the entities which do the changing. But if causality is the identity of action, and we perceive action (such as when an entity moves) as well as the entity which does the action, why are we not also observing causality? Robbins’ explanation appears to be in the following statement:

What is observed is a change in the condition of the wastebasket following the placement of a lighted match in it.

If Objectivism adopted the Humean conception of causality, where all that is observed is a series of events in succession (as Robbins himself believes to be the case), then the charge of fallacy here could be sustained. However, if it is conceded that we are observing “a change,” and change is action, and action is the action of some entity which does the acting, then it is conceded that we are in fact observing causality, for Objectivism conceives of causality as the law of identity applied to action. Q.E.D. Thus no such fallacy as Robbins claims has been committed. On the contrary, Objectivism demonstrates its dynamic potential by adhering to reality.

Robbins then seeks to charge “empiricists” with an elementary fallacy:

On empiricist grounds, to say that the latter caused the former is the fallacy post hoc ergo proper [SIC] hoc.

But this charge cannot apply to Objectivists, for on the Objectivist view we are observing causality (contrary to Robbins’ confused contentions to the opposite), and we also have recourse to concepts – i.e., we can integrate what we perceive according to objective principles (including the law of causality) in formulating rational judgments about what we have observed.

Meanwhile, Robbins demonstrates that he can only beg the question against Objectivism by assuming – without argument or any attempt to validate it – the Humean conception of causality while advancing his criticisms of the Objectivist alternative. All that he accomplishes is to deny the Objectivist position while assuming it to be false. He denies that we observe causality, only “change” or “events,” and claims arbitrarily that we cannot know that an action rests on the nature of the entity performing it except through some non-sensory means which he never identifies or explains.

Robbins offers the following highly confused summary of what Objectivism (as he disunderstands it) to entail:

The Objectivists illegitimately separate knowledge of events (motions) and knowledge of things (identities) and seek to establish causality on the latter, while conveniently ignoring that knowledge of things (identities), insofar as it deserves to be called knowledge at all, on empirical grounds must be identical with knowledge of motions.

Really? Which part of the Objectivist viewpoint does this: the part which recognizes that action has identity (again, if action did not have identity, how could we form concepts denoting actions in common parlance?), or the part which recognizes that the action of an entity depends on the nature of the entity which performs that action? In affirming these positions, are Objectivists really trying to “separate knowledge of events (motions) and [from?] knowledge of things (identities)”? On the contrary, Objectivism holds that an entity acts in accordance to its nature; it does not seek to “separate” these as Robbins insinuates. (That is not to say that we cannot abstract the actions which an entity performs and apply them in various ways; see below).

Does Objectivism “seek to establish causality on the latter [i.e., on “knowledge of things (identities)”], while conveniently ignoring that knowledge of things (identities)… must be identical with knowledge of motions”? No, it does not. Apparently Robbins (and I suspect other detractors of Objectivism) interpret the Objectivist view of applying the law of identity to action in formulating the law of causality, as affirming that an entity and its actions are one and the same, that they are not distinct. If that is the case, then they have completely misread what Objectivism teaches. Objectivism teaches precisely the twin components which I explicated above, namely that:

(1) action has identity (since action exists, it is something; concepts denoting certain actions confirms this), and

(2) the actions which an entity performs depends on the nature of the entity which performs it (i.e., an entity acts according to its nature).

That Objectivism does not hold that “knowledge of things (identities)… must be identical with knowledge of motions,” owes to the conceptual nature of knowledge. Where Robbins’ critique implicitly depends on a one-to-one relationship between knowledge of entities and the entities one perceives and likewise for actions or “events” (confirming that Robbins himself cannot, ironically, break away from the anti-conceptual, concrete-boundedness of his own presuppositions), the Objectivist theory of concepts accounts for man’s ability to apply concepts of actions to different types of entities. For instance, human beings can swim, and so can fish; waste baskets can burn, and so can houses; index fingers can point, and so can traffic signs; babies can crawl, and so can ants, etc. True to certifiable subjectivist form, Robbins drops the entire context of the conceptual nature of knowledge from his attempt to interact with the Objectivist position. For Robbins, it’s simply embarrassing.

Back to the point, when an individual, operating on the Objectivist view of the world, says that it is the nature of a match to ignite a wastebasket, he is not (as Robbins stipulates) merely saying “no more than ‘I (or others) have seen wastebaskets ignite after lighted matches have been dropped into them’,” but rather applying the law of causality to entity classes, a capacity for which Robbins’ (and Bolt’s) Christian worldview cannot account (since it lacks a theory of concepts as well as a consistent understanding of causality), and which their attempts to exegete and discount are self-undermining.

Tabula Rasa

Robbins, clearly failing to have seen the manifold shortcomings of his own analysis of the Objectivist position, attributes the “problems” he says he’s uncovered to Objectivism’s theory of knowledge, namely

that the mind is a tabula rasa at birth and that all its knowledge comes by the senses. By accepting this premise, they must also maintain that the three laws of thought are derived from experience, unless they wish to deny the three laws are knowledge. But the establishment of the law of identity, for instance, as an ontological law on the grounds of experience, cannot be done. It would involve knowing the objects of experience in some non-sensory manner and comparing this knowledge with one’s sensory data.

To buttress this criticism, Robbins quotes from his mentor Gordon Clark, who wrote:

…Aristotle’s claim that the law of contradiction is an ontological law as well as a law of thought involves a hysteron proteron. To suppose that logic is adequate to reality requires a knowledge of reality prior to and independent of the law. But the law itself denies that there is any knowledge independent of it. Therefore, concludes Nietzsche, we can never know that the world of things corresponds to our laws of thought.

Robbins then continues:

Just as the three laws as ontological laws cannot be established by an appeal to experience so neither can the knowledge of “identities’ be established by experience of events. Events are all that is experienced by man’s senses. To claim that some sort of superior knowledge of “identities” as the Objectivists do, is to claim a means of knowledge other than the senses. Their view of causality is radically at odds with their epistemology.

It is true that Objectivism affirms that man’s mind is tabula rasa at birth (cf. Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 28; Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 54; et al.), and it is right to do so. This is the view that, at birth, man begins life without content in his consciousness (particularly conceptual content, but also perceptual), and implies that man acquires awareness of the world by means of cognitive activity which begins in infancy, that knowledge must be developed by an objective process (beginning with sense perception) which a human subject must perform, that man learns his knowledge through effort, etc.

Now it is hard to see how any mature thinker could seriously deny this aspect of man’s nature, and the reasons which Clark-Robbins give are not the primary motivation for rejecting this view. Mystics have historically had problems with the tabula rasa model because it threatens their enshrinement of the imaginary. Since imaginary beings cannot be perceived, for instance, mystics find it necessary to oppose any epistemology which endorses an objective process for discovering and validating knowledge. An objective process for discovering and validating knowledge begins with sense perception and adheres to the primacy of existence. But as we have seen, theists reject (either in full or in part) the fact that human awareness begins with sense perception of objects existing independent of their cognitive activity, and are continually befuddled when confronted with the primacy of existence.

Robbins attempts to find fault with the tabula rasa model by insisting that those who accept it

must also maintain that the three laws of thought are derived from experience, unless they wish to deny the three laws are knowledge.

Why must any laws of thought themselves be derived from experience, as opposed to merely one’s knowledge of those laws being derived from experience? On the latter view, rather than being “derived” from experience, the “laws of thought” are foundational to experience as such, regardless of what that experience may be or what one takes away from it, owing to the nature of the faculty which makes experience possible in the first place (namely consciousness) and its interaction with any object. In affirming the tabula rasa model and the view that there are “laws of knowledge” (i.e., general principles which objectively guide the mind in discovering and validating knowledge), there is no conflict in supposing that the principles obtain independent of any particular experience, but that one’s knowledge of those principles must come by means of experience (i.e., through conscious interaction with the realm of independently existing objects). Notice that Robbins does not show any conflict in this proposal; he doesn’t even consider it. In fact, in developing his line of criticism, Robbins fails to integrate Rand’s understanding of consciousness and the primacy of existence (which Robbins sought to slander by revising it as “the primacy of unconscious - a flagrant stolen concept if there ever were one) with the tabula rasa position and the Objectivist understanding of logic as a conceptual system based on the axiom of identity. Robbins is implicitly (whether he realized it or not) relying on the diaphanous model of consciousness here, which is riddled with irresolvable problems (see Kelley, The Evidence of the Senses and The Primacy of Existence). In his review of Robbins’ book, Bryan Register points this out about Robbins’ presuppositional underlayer. It is evident from Robbins’ criticism that he implicitly accepts the premise that, as Register puts it, “if a means of awareness conditions how we are aware of the world then it must distort that awareness.” Thus by ignoring (and performatively denying) the fact that consciousness has identity, Robbins fails to consider the possibility that the relationship between a subject and object by itself sets in place the metaphysical fundamentals which are later discovered and understood as principles governing objective thought. This is just one reason why the primacy of existence is so pregnant with valuable philosophical meaning.

It should also be noted that the axiomatic concepts of existence, consciousness and identity put to rest the remainder of Robbins’ concerns by tying human knowledge directly to reality at the most fundamental level of cognition. Robbins holds that

the establishment of the law of identity, for instance, as an ontological law on the grounds of experience, cannot be done. It would involve knowing the objects of experience in some non-sensory manner and comparing this knowledge with one’s sensory data.

Robbins does not elaborate on what he means by “the establishment of the law of identity… as an ontological law,” but by using this language and the context of his complaint he suggests that it is a formal process. Nor does Robbins explain why this process requires “knowing the objects of experience in some non-sensory manner and comparing this knowledge with one’s sensory data.” Just by referencing “sensory data,” Robbins is granting the application of the law of identity. “Sensory data” as opposed to what? If one perceives an object, he perceives an object, whether by sight, hearing or touch. This is to say that the law of identity is not a phenomenon which needs to be formally “established,” since it is implicit in any act of awareness to begin with:

Man grasps [the concept of “existent”] implicitly on the perceptual level—i.e., he grasps the constituents of the concept “existent,” the data which are later to be integrated by that concept. It is this implicit knowledge that permits his consciousness to develop further. (Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 6)

Since the same is the case for the axiomatic concepts of consciousness and identity, I would even say that the law of identity is inescapable: it is implicit in any awareness, including the perceptual level, and therefore inavertible (as we saw above in the relationship between an entity and its own actions). Why then does the law of identity need to be “established… as an ontological law” rather than simply recognized in an explicit manner and integrated contextually throughout his knowledge, a la Rand’s axiomatic concepts? Blank out.

In grasping the axiomatic concepts explicitly, one does not need to acquire non-sensory awareness of objects and then compare it to sensory data. To suggest this is simply ridiculous.

Robbins then states that

Just as the three laws as ontological laws cannot be established by an appeal to experience so neither can the knowledge of “identities” be established by experience of events.

Why can’t “knowledge of ‘identities’ be established by experience of events”? Robbins simply asserts this, as if Objectivism taught that we do not also perceive entities as well as the actions (“events”) which they perform. He provides no argument, nor does he seem able to interact with Objectivism on its own terms, especially given its explicit affirmation of the view that perception gives us direct awareness of entities:

A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. (Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 19)

As man integrates the entities which he perceives into concepts, he also integrates their attributes into abstractions. Some of these abstractions integrate the actions which some entities perform. These actions are included in the concepts subsuming the entities themselves (as units integrated by the conceptual process), but can also be abstracted and re-applied to different entity classes (if this were not possible, there’d be no such thing as metaphors).

Apparently Robbins was eager to make his intellectual belligerence plain for all to see, for he states:

Events are all that is experienced by man’s senses.

On Robbins’ view, we can experience only “events,” but not the entities which participate in bringing those “events” about. This is like saying that we can only perceive action, not the things which perform the action which we perceive. And yet above Robbins claimed that it was Objectivists who “illegitimately separate knowledge of events (motions) and knowledge of things (identities).” Here Robbins is doing an even graver disservice: he’s saying we can experience only events, and not entities. To do this, one would at minimum need to “separate” (and arbitrarily so) actions from the entities which perform them, and then ignore the entities responsible for the actions they perform as if they didn’t exist.

If I look at a picture hanging on a wall which stands motionless before me, I’m apparently unable to experience anything, since there’s no action here, and therefore no “event” taking place. I’m awake, I’m conscious, but there’s no object to my consciousness, because there’s no activity, and – according to Robbins – “events are all that is experienced by man’s senses.”

Does Robbins provide an argument for this claim? Of course not. Indeed, in order to provide an argument, he would hardly be able to contain its disastrous implications any more than by leaving it as a mere assertion as he does. Sadly, Robbins comes across as someone who embraces the Humean view of causality entirely uncritically, and who has no discriminated awareness of what he himself as a conscious subject perceives.

Epitaph

In all, I cannot find anything that Robbins gets right in his attempt to critique Objectivism. He exhibits in concrete form Rand’s dictum (attributed by Barbara Branden) that people who believe in God are either stupid or dishonest. It seems that in Robbins’ case, he was both, at least to some degree.

Now we shouldn’t want to make the mistake of supposing that the steady stream of mistakes uncovered here is any indication of the validity of any of Robbins’ criticisms in the remainder of his book. This could open us up to the charge of hasty generalization, and that wouldn’t be very nice. After all, it could be that the section of the book where Robbins interacts with the Objectivist understanding of causality is marked by circular reasoning, context-dropping, baseless assertions, unstated alternatives, false dichotomies, and the like, while the rest of Robbins’ book exhibits scholarship of the most exquisite caliber. Indeed, one could adopt the mentality expressed in a now-retired campaign slogan for John Kerry, which stated:

It may be the case that Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bali, Malaysia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Sudan, Somalia, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Florida, Oregon and Ohio. But don’t expect me to believe that they’re in IRAQ! Vote John Kerry for President!

Translation:

It may be the case that virtually every sentence of the quoted section of John Robbins’ book is dripping in misstatements and fallacy, but don’t expect me to believe that faults such as these will be encountered elsewhere in his writings!

Again, we could adopt this type of mentality. But I wouldn’t recommend it.

As a side note, I must say that Robbins, apart from his pervasive confusions, was quite a character. I recall the days in the late 1990s when I encountered him firsthand in a mock e-mail forum which a friend of mine had assembled (he had the e-mail address “jrob1517@aol.com”). Robbins inserted himself into every discussion as if he had some endangered reputation to protect. Truly, he was one of the most presumptuous individuals I had ever encountered in life up to that point. He exhibited no limit to the amount of hot air he was able to produce. His angst against the senses was ever-present in virtually every message that he submitted to that forum, insisting that no knowledge could ever be gained from what we perceived. It seemed difficult for him to hold back his resentment for the human mind, particularly the ability to generate inductive generalizations. After he had made some statement condemning inductive generalizations, one of the participants asked how he could know that his criticism could apply to all inductive generalizations without relying on induction. I remember specifically that he avoided answering this question. And yet he continued to participate, railing against the role of sense perception in developing knowledge. When the obvious question was asked how he could acquire knowledge of his god’s will from the writing in the biblical storybook, he still insisted that one cannot acquire knowledge from “scribbles inked on a page.” When I asked how he knew what he saw on the page were “scribbles inked on a page,” he confessed in reply to this, “I don’t know the answer to your question,” and soon abandoned the discussion entirely. One little pin prick is all it takes to pop an over-inflated balloon.

By the way, now that John Robbins is dead, should Objectivists publish a book with a photograph of Robbins’ grave on the cover? The title of the book could be something like, John Robbins: A Man Who Prayed and Then Died. Just a thought…

by Dawson Bethrick

Causality as a Necessary Relationship

In my blog Humean Causality and Presuppositionalism, I found that Hume’s view of causality entails the following points:

1. Causality is a relationship between “events”

2. There is no inherent necessity connecting one event to another (they “seem entirely loose and separate” and “we can never observe any tie between them”)

3. A single instance is never sufficient to inform a general principle

4. Exhaustive knowledge of all instances is needed to form a general principle (repetition)

5. The “necessity” of cause and effect relationships is ultimately grounded in the imagination

In addition to these findings, I noted that I could find in Hume’s analysis no defense of the premise that causality is properly understood as a relationship between “events” or of the claims that “all events seem entirely loose and separate” and that “we can never observe any tie between them.” I also noted that these premises are crucial to Hume’s skeptical conclusion about induction. Hume seems to take them for granted as if they were self-evident and unquestionable in spite of the problems which plague them.

Fortunately we do not have live with Hume’s mess. The Objectivist conception of causality, which differs significantly from the Humean view, offers serious thinkers a promising alternative.

In contrast to the Humean view which characterizes causality as a relationship between “events,” the Objectivist view is that causality is grounded in the nature of entities. This is only reasonable since it is entities which perform actions in the first place. On this view, causality is essentially the identity of action, which is directly consistent with the Objectivist axiom of identity: to exist is to be something, to have identity. Since action exists, it has identity, just as do the entities which exist. Ayn Rand explicated the principle as follows:

The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature . . . . The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it. (Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech).

Notice several points here. To say that “the law of causality is the law of identity applied to action,” is essentially to say that action has identity, just as an entity does, and for the same reason: it exists. Also, since “the nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act,” the actions which an entity performs depends on the nature of the entity which performs it. Moreover, the law of causality is objective: contrary to Hume’s notion that causal connection ultimately depends on the input of human imagination, causality, as a relationship between an entity and its own actions, exists independent of consciousness and cannot be abrogated.

On Rand’s view, causality is absolute: it does not conform to our imagination, feelings, ignorance, wishes, commands, etc. (This is true even in the case of man’s volition, which is a type of causation.) Since for Rand causality is the identity of action (and therefore also of motion and change), if you see an entity acting, you see causality. This flies directly in the face of Hume’s view that all we can see are “events” in succession, but not the connection which ties them together, and demolishes his skeptical argument from its very foundations. (We will see in an upcoming blog how one attempt to challenge this point results in blithering absurdity.)

H. Acstonus offers a succinct summary of the contrasts between the Humean view of causality and the objective theory of causality:

Causality, at least since Hume, has been conceived of as a chain of events, each antecedent event causing the other. This conception has led to confusion. While it is true that antecedent factors play a role, a proper conception of causality would have to incorporate a wider context. In Aristotle's view, cause and effect is rooted in the identity of acting things. What a thing is, says Aristotle, will determine what it does. An acorn can become an oak tree, and not a catfish, because that is its nature. The actions an entity can take are determined by what that entity is. On this view, when one billiard ball strikes another it sends it rolling because of the nature of the balls and their surroundings, not just antecedent events. (An Aristotelian Foundation for Objectivity)

For Hume, as we saw in my previous blog, the upshot is that causality, being conceived of as a relationship between events, entails a necessary connection only so long as one’s imagination is involved. Thus it should not surprise us when theists insist that we accept Hume’s overall position, since they too share Hume’s primacy of the imagination in both metaphysics and cognition.

The Aristotelian alternative to Hume’s position, is refreshingly sober by contrast. It is founded on the recognition that causality pertains primarily to action, that the action which an entity performs depends on the nature of the entity which performs it. As the above statement indicates, this is a broader understanding of causality than Hume’s vague notion of a succession of events, for it subsumes not only actions resulting from antecedent factors, but also includes those actions which are self-generated and goal-oriented, such as those which biological organisms perform in the effort to exist. The standard Humean view is unable to account for this latter type of action, while failing to provide an objective account of the type of action it seeks to represent (since it bases causal connectivity ultimately in the imagination of the perceiving subject).

When explaining the objective conception of causality to presuppositionalists, it never fails to provoke their ire. They apparently have ample resentment for anyone who dares to check Hume’s premises. A case in point is a recent exchange I had with one presuppositionalist who, incidentally, hesitates to state for the record whether or not he thinks Hume’s argument for inductive skepticism is sound. In a comment of mine, I stated the following:

Causation is the law of identity applied to action. Specifically, it is the recognition that the relationship between an entity and its own actions is a necessary relationship. The cause of action is the entity which does the acting. The idea of “causeless action” essentially affirms action without something which performs the action, which is self-contradictory. As Kelley puts it, “you can’t have a dance without a dancer.”

In the same comments section, presuppositionalist Chris Bolt responded to my statement with a question:

How do you know that the relationship between an entity and its own actions is a necessary relationship?

Because, as I had quoted Kelley, “you can’t have a dance without a dancer.” There can be no action without an entity to perform it. The existence of something which acts is a necessary precondition for any action. Also, action is the action of the entity which performs it. As such, action is an attribute of something that exists, which means: it is part of its nature. Since a thing is itself, and what a thing is includes all of its attributes (not just some arbitrary selection of those which belong to it), the actions which a thing performs are part of its nature. This can only mean that an entity acts in accordance to its nature. Why? It must first exist before it can act, and if an entity exists, it must be something specific, it must have a nature, it must be finite. An “infinite range” of actions is not possible for something which is finite in nature (and there is no such thing as an entity that is infinite in nature).

Stated another way: without something which performs an action, there can be no action to begin with. Action is not an entity, but the activity of an entity. Action is something that an entity does. In order for action to exist, an entity must first exist in order to perform the action. In this sense, existence comes before action. Since there cannot be any action without an entity which performs the action, an entity is necessary for action to take place. This recognition is axiomatic: it is implicit in any perception of entities performing actions, and the axiom of causality makes this recognition explicit.

As Kelley notes:

If actions depend on entities, then an action must depend on the nature of the entity that acts. A thing is its nature. If we try to imagine an action that depends on an entity but not on its nature, we have to imagine the entity as distinct from its nature. We have to drive a kind of metaphysical wedge between a thing and what it is. But a thing is what it is. There’s no such gap. So now we know that an action must depend on the nature of an entity. (Universals and Induction)

The law of identity is the recognition of the fact that to exist is to be something, to have a nature. Since action exists, action has identity. Why would the law of identity not apply to action if action exists? Blank out. But consider: if action did not have identity, how could we formulate concepts which identify actions? Think of all the verbs in the English language. Verbs like ‘to walk’, ‘to swim’, ‘to think’, ‘to exercise’, etc. All these verbs name actions. How could actions be named if they did not have identity?

But Bolt seems to think that the law of identity does not apply to action. In the same comment, he continued:

If the law of identity functioned as you assume it does (applied to action) then I am not sure that there can be change.

Notice the uncertainty here. Notice also that Bolt does not explain why he’s not sure that there can be change if the law of identity applies to action as well as to entities. Yet Bolt himself uses verbs all the time to specify actions, just as he does in the above statement. How could he do this if the law of identity did not apply to action?

Also, if change is the identity of action, then when we observe change, we are observing the identity of action. Thus to deny the identity of action is to deny change as such. But since we perceive action directly – such as when we perceive an entity moving, then we are perceiving change. And if we perceive change, then we are perceiving action which possesses identity.

On a later occasion, Bolt expressed himself more confidently:

Trying to apply identity to the problem leads to the conclusion that there is no change.

Again, no argument here. Just more bald assertion. Also, no explanation of how we could identify actions if the law of identity did not apply to them. To say that the law of identity does not apply to action, is to affirm that action has no identity. Thus, using verbs to denote actions while affirming such a view, commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. If Bolt is going to be consistent with his position, he will have to stop using concepts which denote actions. But I wager that he will not be consistent with his own position and continue to trade in stolen concepts.

In a recent blog, Chris Bolt openly confesses that Christianity does not hold to the objective understanding of causality:

The Christian is not committed to this Objectivist idea that natural law is essentially identity applied to action. Such an idea is inconsistent with the Christian worldview since there are actions God has taken which may be identified but have nothing to do with anything natural (e.g. the exchange of love between the Persons of the Trinity).

In other words, according to Bolt (Christianity’s spokesman of the moment), Christianity holds that the law of identity does not apply to actions. This can only mean that on the Christian worldview, action has no identity, for the law of identity does not apply when it comes to action. And yet, Bolt still thinks that actions “may be identified,” even though on his view they have no identity which can be idenitfied. What is it that he is identifying when he pretends to be identifying action when what he pretends to be identifying is said not to have any identity? Blank out.

Again, we find that stolen concepts are unavoidable for the Christian, as I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions before. Bolt insists, for reasons which remain unexplained, that the law of identity does not apply to actions, and yet he performatively undermines this position every time he uses concepts to denote any action. How do you identify something that is exempt from the law of identity? How can you integrate units which have no identity into a concept? Bolt has no explanation for these questions, and seems not even to have anticipated them.

But I have seen the type of objection raised by Bolt before, and can only suspect that it is informed by an understanding of identity which Objectivism does not share. According to Objectivism, the identity of an entity is not restricted to what that entity is at a given instant in time, as if it were freeze-dried and placed on a microscope slide. Such a view would arbitrarily divorce an entity from any actions it performs or could perform. If this does not characterize the Christian understanding of identity, what is its understanding of identity, and where would one go to find it? Many Christians point to Exodus 3:14 as the source for their knowledge of the law of identity (or its several immediate applications), but I’ve already pointed out several problems with this before (see here). So the question remains: Where does one go to find a distinctively Christian understanding of the law of identity, hopefully for Bolt’s sake one which supports him in his denial of the application of the law of identity to action?

Now the theist could, in contradiction to Bolt, acknowledge that action does have identity (i.e., that the law of identity does, contrary to Bolt’s protests, apply to action), and yet affirm that the action which an entity performs does not depend on the nature of the entity performing it. On this view, a billiard ball’s rolling across a pool table has nothing to do with its spherical shape; a bird’s flight has nothing to do with its wings’ movements; a skier’s descent on a snowy mountain slope has nothing to do with the skis attached to his feet, etc. But what would justify such a position? I’ve seen no attempt to address such quandaries, and yet they result directly from a denial of the Objectivist conception of the law of causality.

Neither alternative – whether it be denying that action has identity, or denying that an entity’s actions depends on its nature – bodes well for intelligibility whatsoever. Either denial reduces to a belligerently absurd conception of the universe.

By recognizing that causality is the law of identity applied to action, Objectivism is noting several facts which are perceptually self-evident, which include (but are not necessarily limited to the following):

1. Action exists

2. Because action exists, it has identity

3. Action is action of something which acts

4. The actions of an entity depend on the nature of the entity which performs it

Etc.

The first of these is perceptually self-evident: we perceive the action which entities perform directly. When we see a squirrel darting across the street to avoid an oncoming car, we see it acting (though for the Christian this action apparently has nothing to do with the fact that it possesses legs).

The second point is also perceptually self-evident: when we see a squirrel running, we see it running (as opposed to baking a cake, drilling a hole, operating heavy machinery, etc.). In other words, its action has identity, which means: the law of identity applies to the squirrel’s actions as well as to it as an entity distinct from others. Indeed, if the law of identity did not apply to the squirrel’s actions, how could we speak about its actions? How could we identity those actions? How could we make sense of them? Not surprisingly, there is no answer to these questions from the anti-Objectivists.

The third point is the recognition that action does not exist on its own, that action is the action of something which performs the action, that action only occurs if there is some entity or substance which acts. We do not say “I saw running” while intending to mean that there was nothing which did the running. We would naturally ask the question “What did you see running?” (for it could have been a squirrel, a mouse, a cat, a businessman, etc.), because – as the third point recognizes – action is action of something which acts. If in response to the question, “What did you see running?” your respondent answered, “Oh, nothing was running, I just saw running by itself,” would this be sensible? To be consistent in denying the Objectivist conception of the law of causality, one would indeed have to affirm this, and thus openly announce his worldview’s enshrinement of the absurd.

The fourth point continues the sequence of perceptually self-evident recognitions, noting specifically that, since action exists (point 1), action has identity (point 2) and action is the action of something (point 3), the identity of action rests on the identity of the entity performing it. A billiard ball has the ability to role because it is spherical, is heavier than air, is not fixed in place, etc. A bird can fly because of the movements of its wings. A squirrel can run because it has legs. Etc. To deny these facts is to say that the nature of an entity is irrelevant to the kinds of actions it can and does perform, which is simply to declare an open assault on the data we perceive in the world. Again, what justifies such a move? For some, belief in invisible magic beings apparently does. On a view which denies the objective understanding of the law of causality, the fact that a man’s legs have been amputated has no causal relationship to the fact that he can no longer walk. Given the absurdity of such a position, don’t be surprised when theists fail to be consistent with it. Don’t be surprised when you see these same people acting in accordance with their own natures. For instance, if they want to get to another part of town, don’t be surprised to find them either walking, driving a car, taking a bus, etc., as opposed to being magically transported there.

So while many thinkers will kick and scream against the objective understanding of causality, it should be of no surprise when their preferred subjective alternative leads to absurdity and is typically abandoned before it is even attempted.

Bolt asked some additional questions, and apparently believes his questions constitute problems for my position:

You have a much bigger problem though. How do you know what actions an entity is capable of?

Luckily, my worldview allows for the fact that the human mind is capable of learning about the world. I know what actions an entity is capable of by the same process that I use in knowing anything else: by means of conceptual integration. This process is explained in Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, which outlines the objective theory of concepts. What method does Bolt propose as an alternative to the objective theory of concepts? The last time I checked, Christianity has no theory of concepts. And when asked to indicate where he would turn to find a reliable theory of concepts, Bolt can only respond with snarky sarcasm. Does he suggest that praying to his god is a viable alternative to conceptual integration? Or, waiting for transmissions from the “sensus divinitatus”? Since Bolt rejects the objective worldview, let’s put whatever method he proposes as an alternative side by side with the objective position, and see which is more reliable in producing genuine knowledge about the world. We could take this discussion as a point of departure.

Bolt then asks:

How do you know that the entity of water is not in a necessary relationship with the action of producing merlot all by its lonesome?

Of course, we know this by means of induction. Specifically, I know this by integrating the law of causality (as it is understood objectively) to concepts of existents. As a rational animal – i.e., as a biological organism possessing a consciousness which has achieved the conceptual level of cognition, I am capable of inductive reasoning, which makes use of a broad spectrum of specific information that I have gathered from reality and validated according to an objective process, and subsequently integrated with yet further information which has similarly been developed through the same objective process, to produce knowledge on a general level. After all, that is what induction does: it empowers a mind to move from knowledge about particular units to knowledge about the general class of units to which those particulars belong. This is a conceptual process, but it will never be understood fully without a good understanding of concepts.

I expect that Bolt & co. will charge my answer here of begging the question. But this would be a category mistake, and suggests that charging opponents with such fallacies is an acquired habit which has not been critically examined. When one is asked to identify the process by which he arrives at a judgment about the behavior of a specific class of entities or substances, how could induction not be part of the process? Asking “How do you know that the entity of water is not in a necessary relationship with the action of producing merlot all by its lonesome?” is not asking one to justify induction (as if it needed justification), but to apply it.

It is fascinating, however, that a Christian would ask the question which Bolt poses above. It suggests that his real concern is not to defend Christianity, but to denigrate human cognition as such (it’s true: in the end these two activities share the same goal). Suppose for a moment that I were to respond to Bolt’s question by saying, “I see no reason why the entity of water should not be in a necessary relationship with the action of producing merlot all by its lonesome,” I would well be in the position of supposing that Bolt’s god was not necessary for the water in the water pots at the marriage of Cana to turn into wine (cf. John 2:1-11). The skepticism which Bolt is in effect endorsing here would effectively bring his god’s role in causing miracles into serious question. The miracle story in the gospel of John assumes that something other than the water itself brought about its transformation into wine, namely the conscious activity of an omnipotent savior-deity. Similarly, what if one affirms that there is no reason to suppose that a human corpse cannot rise from the dead on its own, thus dismissing Christianity’s supernatural explanation of the resurrection of Jesus? By going with the alternative view which Bolt raises in his line of questioning, how is Christianity served? How is he giving glory to his god? If Bolt’s god is glorified by his denial of the fact that action has identity, that the actions which an entity performs depend on the nature of the entity performing it, that the relationship between an entity and its own actions is therefore a necessary relationship, this tells us not only about Bolt’s overall worldview, but also the god which he worships.

by Dawson Bethrick

Humean Causality and Presuppositionalism

David Hume’s Understanding of Causality

Back when I was explaining to Chris Bolt the importance of an objective approach to induction, I pointed out one of David Hume’s key flaws in formulating his skeptical conclusion about induction. Specifically, I explained that Hume’s conception of causality as a relationship between “events,” as opposed to a relationship between an entity and its own actions, is a crucial premise in his infamous argument for skepticism in induction (see for instance here and here). The reason for this should be simple to understand: on Hume’s conception, there is no inherently necessary relationship which connects one event to another which happens to follow it.

As Hume himself put it:

All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

Hume’s conception of causality, as expressed here, essentially guarantees a skeptical analysis of induction. (Hume made other mistakes as well, and these simply doomed the Scottish thinker’s understanding of induction all the more.) Since “all events seem entirely loose and separate,” and causality is understood essentially as a succession of events - one called cause, and the one which happens to follow it called effect - it’s just a happy accident that touching the hot surface of a stove (the “cause”) results in the experience of pain (the “effect”). On this view, touching the hot surface of a backyard grill or molten iron could just as easily result in pleasure, a musical performance, paper production, or anything else, since they “seem… never connected.”

The implications which such a view of causality has for induction are hard to miss. For instance, since on Hume’s view “all events seem entirely loose and separate” and “we never can observe any tie between them,” a single instance of one event following another is never sufficient to give us knowledge of a necessary connection between two events such that we can be assured that they are causally related (or “connected,” as Hume puts it). In other words, for Hume, observing one instance of cause and effect is insufficient to validate what some have come to call “the inductive principle,” that is, “the principle that future unobserved instances will resemble past observed instances” (James Anderson, Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction; cf. also Brian Knapp, “Induction and the Unbeliever,” The Portable Presuppositionalist, pp. 121-122). Hume tells us this explicitly when he states:

When any natural object or event is presented, it is impossible for us, by any sagacity or penetration, to discover, or even conjecture, without experience, what event will result from it, or to carry our foresight beyond that object which is immediately present to the memory and senses. Even after one instance or experiment where we have observed a particular event to follow upon another, we are not entitled to form a general rule, or foretell what will happen in like cases; it being justly esteemed an unpardonable temerity to judge of the whole course of nature from one single experiment, however accurate or certain. (Op. cit.)

Why is “one instance or experiment” not enough for us “to form a general rule, or foretell what will happen in like cases”? Because, according to Hume, “all events seem entirely loose and separate” and, he says, “we can never observe any tie between them.” This seems strange to me, as the pain that I experience when I touch a hot stove top does seem very much “connected” to my touching the hot stove top in the first place. But Hume says that “we never can observe any tie between” the one and the other. Apparently we’re supposed to take his word for this.

But Hume doesn’t think we’re entirely lost on this. There is a way around this, as he explains:

But when one particular species of event has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other, and of employing that reasoning, which can alone assure us of any matter of fact or existence. (Ibid.)

So touching a hot stove top and experiencing pain only once is not sufficient, says Hume, to draw the general inference that touching it again will result in the same experience. But, he says, if this happens “always, in all instances,” there is apparently no objection against considering such a rule. In other words, in order to formulate the general rule that touching a hot stove will cause pain, we need to know that in “all instances” of touching a hot stove – that is, not 50%, not 75%, not 98% of the time, but 100% of the time – the one touching it experiences pain.

The question at this point becomes: how do we know when we have knowledge of “all instances” of “one particular species of event”? Since we are not omniscient, it can reasonably be supposed there will always be the possibility that some instances of a particular species of event lie outside of our knowledge, and among them may be instances which do not resemble the instances which we do know about. Hume gives no indication as to how one could confidently be assured that he has “all instances” to work with, or how one can reliably conclude that there are no instances outside of his knowledge which defy the norm of those which he does know. Since no one individual has knowledge of “all instances” of touching a hot stove, Hume is essentially saying that no one meets the minimum requirements needed to conclude as a general rule that touching a hot stove will cause pain.

Hume’s own terms arbitrarily require omniscience as a standard, even though there is no such thing as omniscience. But without it, his conception of causality dooms us to the skepticism for which he is so famous.

To make matters worse, Hume seemed to believe that the imagination serves as some kind of final court of appeal in settling the difficulty. In his search for a “connexion” between one event (the cause) and another (the effect), Hume explicitly pointed to what one “feels” in his imagination, and only when repetition of the conjoined events in succession is involved:

It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connexion among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights and positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only, that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion. Nothing farther is in the case. Contemplate the subject on all sides; you will never find any other origin of that idea. This is the sole difference between one instance, from which we can never receive the idea of connexion, and a number of similar instances, by which it is suggested. The first time a man saw the communication of motion by impulse, as by the shock of two billiard balls, he could not pronounce that the one event was connected: but only that it was conjoined with the other. After he has observed several instances of this nature, he then pronounces them to be connected. What alteration has happened to give rise to this new idea of connexion? Nothing but that he now feels these events to be connected in his imagination, and can readily foretell the existence of one from the appearance of the other. (Ibid.)

Essentially, Hume is saying here that, without a sufficient number of iterations (Hume indicates no specific quantity here), the imagination does not have enough input from the world to consider one event “conjoined” with another, to be “connected” – i.e., to be causally connected. If you touch your finger to a hot stove and feel the pain of a burn one time, that’s not sufficient to attribute a causal connection between the one action of touching your finger to a hot stove and feeling pain. For Hume, you have to do this numerous times (how many, he does not say) for you to finally “get it” (or “feel”) in your imagination that touching a hot surface and experiencing pain are causally “connected.”

To make sure we understand this correctly, Hume states it again as follows:

In all single instances of the operation of bodies or minds, there is nothing that produces any impression, nor consequently suggest any idea of power or necessary connexion. But when many uniform instances appear, and the same object is always followed by the same event; we then begin to entertain the notion of cause and connexion. We then feel a new sentiment or impression, to wit, a customary connexion in the thought or imagination between object and its usual attendant; and this sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for. (Ibid.)

Streminger interprets Hume accordingly:

Since we never perceive a propter hoc, but only a post hoc, causal connections have to depend on the creative imagination. (Hume’s Theory of Imagination)

Notice what is being affirmed here: that something metaphysical (“causal connections”) depends on what the imagination creates. The role of man’s imagination, says Streminger (interpreting Hume), is “to structure the stream of [one’s] perceptions” (Ibid.). Presumably, a “stream” of perceptions has no structure apart from what the imagination imposes on them. Or, they do have a natural structure, but, perhaps, the structure provided by the imagination has greater epistemological import as a faculty by which those perceptions are assembled into content amenable to inductive inference. Either way, the sequence here seems to be perception plus imagination yields the material needed to generate inductive conclusions. Causal connections in themselves are ultimately subjective phenomena on Hume’s view. As John Vickers puts it, “the objectivity of causality, the objective support of inductive inference, is thus an illusion” (The Problem of Induction, from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

In this way, I wager that David Kelley is correct in his assessment of Hume when he interprets Hume to be saying (note that Kelley is not presenting the Objectivist view here):

The mark of an axiom, of a self-evident truth, is that we cannot deny it without contradicting ourselves. And the test of whether a proposition is contradictory, is whether we can imagine it. We cannot imagine a case where A equals not A. That’s why the law of identity, A is A, is self-evident. It cannot be denied without contradiction; we cannot imagine it being false. But we can imagine that fire soothes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and burns on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, Sunday being a day of metaphysical rest. The law of causality can be denied without self-contradiction, so it cannot be an axiom. And even if it were an axiom, finally, that wouldn’t do us any good. Axioms, says Hume, are merely relations among our own ideas. They are arbitrary constructs that we make true by the way we define our own terms. And therefore they don’t tell us anything about reality. (Universals and Induction)

To be sure, Hume held some seriously defective views. To summarize, Hume’s view of causality entails the following points:

1. Causality is a relationship between “events”

2. There is no inherent necessity connecting one event to another (they “seem entirely loose and separate” and “we can never observe any tie between them”)

3. A single instance is never sufficient to inform a general principle

4. Exhaustive knowledge of all instances is needed to form a general principle (repetition)

5. The “necessity” of cause and effect relationships is ultimately grounded in the imagination

Given underlying assumptions as strange as these, it should be no wonder why Hume could only come to the conclusion about induction for which he is so well known. Indeed, it could rightly be said that the problem of induction is the problem of seeking an adequate justification for inductive generalization when one’s conception of causality is so expressly geared against it. Absent from Hume’s analysis, so far that I’ve been able to find, is a defense of the view that causality is a relationship of events, or of the premise that “all events seem entirely loose and separate” and that “we can never observe any tie between them.” And yet, as should be clear, these are key assumptions in Hume’s skeptical argument.

Hume and Presuppositionalism

Now it is important to note that, when presuppositionalists raise the problem of induction in their apologetic challenges against non-believers, they very typically cite Hume as an authority on induction. And in doing so, they express no concern for or dissatisfaction with Hume’s conception of causality which underlies his skeptical conclusion about the nature of inductive inference. On the contrary, presuppositionalists generally point to Hume as if he were an unquestionable authority on the matter. In this way presuppositionalists tacitly endorse the premises in Hume’s argument, among them, sadly, his conception of causality.

When engaging presuppositionalists who attempt to raise the problem of induction as a debating point, it is a good idea to ask them whether or not they think Hume’s argument for inductive skepticism is sound. This will answer many questions at the outset. For instance, if the apologist concedes that Hume’s argument is not sound, then he should acknowledge the fact that raising the issue to begin with is futile. An argument admitted to be unsound is not one which needs to be taken seriously. If the apologist insists that Hume’s argument is sound, we should invite him to reconstruct the argument and argue for its premises. Moreover, if he truly thinks Hume’s argument is sound, then he needs to live with its skeptical conclusion, and this would be counterproductive to his apologetic agenda.

In my experience, however, apologists who invoke the inductive version of presuppositionalism typically resist stating for the record whether they think Hume’s argument is sound or not. (See for instance my 08 Oct. 2009 comment in this blog and my exchanges with Paul Manata in the comments section of this blog.) This is quite telling, for it suggests that apologists who raise the issue are unwilling to take much of a stand on it. It becomes all the more revealing when it is pointed out that Hume’s conception of causality is faulty, and apologists subsequently distance themselves even further from taking a stand.

Swallowing Hume’s conclusion about induction in whole without examining his premises seems to be commonplace among presuppositionalists, even in the case of those who should know better. Greg Bahnsen, for instance, who holds that “the causal principle is seen to be intelligible only within the Christian framework of thought,” cites Hume as an “unbeliever” who was “both brilliant and honest about the matter,” pointing to Hume’s “devastating critique of causal reasoning in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding” as “the foremost example of this” (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, pp. 618-619, including 619n.143). Hume is said by Bahnsen to number among those “unbelievers” who “have openly conceded that they have no rational basis for believing that the future will resemble the past” (Ibid., p. 619). Bahnsen summarizes the essence of the Humean concession as follows:

We may have observed that event B followed event A many times in the past, but to know that B necessarily follows A (i.e., that the relation is causal), calls for reference to a metaphysical principle (namely, the future will be like the past) for which the unbeliever has no warrant or right. As Bertrand Russell was driven to conclude: “The general principles of science, such as the believe in the reign of law, and the belief that every event must have a cause, are as completely dependent upon the inductive principle as are the beliefs of daily life. All such general principles are believed because mankind have found innumerable instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But this affords no evidence for their truth in the future, unless the inductive principle is assumed.” Assumed? But that is what was supposed to be proved! Russell was aware of his defeat: “Hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle without begging the question. Thus we must… forgo all justification of our expectations about the future.” (Ibid.; quoting Russell’s “On Induction,” in The Problems of Philosophy (1912; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 69, 68.)

What is noteworthy here is that neither Bahnsen nor Russell ever seems to question Hume’s conception of causality, an element which is integral to the skeptical conclusion for which Hume is so famous.

Similarly, in his essay “Induction and the Unbeliever” (The Portable Presuppositionalist, pp. 118-142), presuppositional apologist Brian Knapp cites Hume as one raising the question of how we can justify induction (cf. pp. 122-123), but never questions the premises underlying Hume’s argument for the view that “induction is hence unjustifiable” (p. 129, citing this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article). Nor does Knapp express any concern for the particular understanding of causality assumed by Hume in framing the famous problem.

So the tendency to miss the significance of Hume’s conception of causality in generating his skeptical conclusion in regard to induction does not appear to be an isolated incident, but rather a widespread habit. It is therefore unlikely to occur to presuppositionalists that a worldview which avoids the defects in Hume’s conception of causality may very well be immune to the systemic skepticism to which it leads. Since Hume’s conception of causality plays a central role in establishing his skeptical view of induction, a philosophy which holds to an alternative understanding of causality is unlikely to suffer from the same vulnerability.

In a forthcoming blog, I will explain just how the Objectivist view of causality does in fact avoid the pitfalls which plague Hume’s problem of induction. However, it is my prediction that presuppositionalists will ignore these points as if they did not pertain, and continue to insist that only Christianity somehow solves the problem of induction (even though it lacks an objective understanding of causality). But don’t be surprised when at this point they fail to present arguments and instead prefer simply to rattle off questions in rapid succession in the manner of “How do you know….?” over and over and over again, while ignoring answers given to those questions.

by Dawson Bethrick