This is my rough draft for a script for a response-video to Paleocrat. Paleocrat's videos can be found here:

Part 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-tnG-GELK4

Part 2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq33ki2_o-8

I, the lowly migkillertwo, have been endowed by the almighty paleocrat with a video response discussing just some comments I left on his video. I just wonder why someone as ignorant as I am and someone who is part of the "mongrel horde" warrants the devotion of over 20 minutes of life. I guess I'm trying to get at the fact that I'm very flattered that you just left a substantive response (not that I agree with the substance)

There were several points in these two videos Paleocrat made, and they were kinda jumbled, but I'm going to try to make my response as clear and ordered as possible.

The First point I want to tackle was Paleocrat's last point about Anarchy being impossible because a state would just rise again just if only a few people want to implement a state. Paleocrat's more thorough explanation can be found in his video "Anarchist Conundrums"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUSFi4PvghE

This claim is false on both theoretical and empirical grounds

Theoretically speaking, this claim is false because a marginal state cannot be sustained. To clarify, a marginal state is a state whose will is forced upon the people purely by violence. For instance, here in the United States, we don't kill very many tax-evaders. Ergo, we do not have marginal state. Robert Mugabe's state was much more marginal than our own state, and a bank robber holding his hostages at gunpoint is a purely 100% marginal state. No marginal state could exist for a prolonged period of time for two big reasons

1: People are not going to blindly accept that this marginal state is legitimate

2: Violence is expensive, and unless people recognize the legitimacy of that state, the state will not be able to use violence.

Empirically speaking, it is false because there are examples of when civilizations existed without a state. The earliest permanent settlements archaeologists have been able to unearth had pretty much equal buildings and no sign of a hierarchy. There were no palaces or chiefly residences. The oldest civilizations were stateless. The first large, ornate buildings that have been unearthed were temples. The oldest states were theocracies.

Another example is Pre-conquest Ireland. The Irish before being savagely conquered by the British were, practically speaking, stateless, and they were so for a thousand years, and it took the British a century to finally conquer Ireland.

I like Confederalsocialist's explanation for this phenomena. Ireland was difficult to conquer for the same reason you can't tame Afghanistan. There is no structure by which you can coerce people. It was like Napoleon going to Moscow after the Czar had left. Unless there's a fantasy structure in place, you'd have to subdue every town and village in order to establish a state.

In sum, anarchy is possible because establishing a state in a stateless society (By stateless society, I mean a society where there is no state and people do not believe in states, not a once-statist society wherein the government has been completely eviscerated by a violent Coup) would be like herding cats.

The next point that Paleocrat makes is that Free trade and relying heavily upon imported goods is like "putting all your eggs in one basket", and therefore, to some degree, independence and self-sufficiency is the ideal.

Empirically and theoretically speaking, this is wrong

On the empirical level, this is wrong because there has never been a famine in a free-market society.

Theoretically speaking, the reason for this is that the price system causes people to shift buying habits. If one source of food can no longer produce the required amount, it will be bought elsewhere. Sure, it'll be bought at a higher price, but it will not completely disappear

The next point Paleocrat makes is criticizing me for advocating an ideal when Statism is the status quo. Do you fail to see the inherent hypocrisy in such a statement? You yourself are a distributist. You are advocating that, rather than the status quo where productive property is concentrated in the hands of the few it ought to be dispersed among the general population.

The next point was a response to my point that less income equals less demand. I was arguing this point because if wages really are and really do plummet here in the united states thanks to outsourcing, then we will stop outsourcing because there will no longer be a need to outsource because there's no demand to satisfy.

Paleocrat's response was very semantical. The economic literature uses "demand" and "spending" synonymously when dealing with macroeconomics.

The next point that Paleocrat makes is one that is incredibly popular. Corporations hire factories which pay their workers very poorly and even use child labor. Basically those big bad evil corporations build their products with wage-slavery.

Empirically speaking this argument wouldn't even carry against market anarchy, the most radical tradition of capitalism. Every single nation has, at some time or another, employed child labor. Sweden used to do it, Western Europe used to do it. The UNITED STATES used to employ child labor. "wage-slavery" and child labor is an inevitable result of industrialization.

And why complain about this anyway? For children, the alternative to working in a sweatshop is subsistence agriculture, drug dealing, or prostitution.

Its easy to understand why. In a purely free market, no two parties will enter into a contract unless they both benefit. So the only way you could plausibly rid the world of sweatshops would be if people were forced to work in sweatshops by the state.

I want to cap my discussion about wage-slavery by saying this: By calling people who work menial jobs for meager pay "wage-slaves", it marginalizes the brutality and barbarism of real slavery.

The next claim that Paleocrat makes is that wages for middle-****Americans have been stagnant or have, for some, been depressed over the past 30 years.

Well first this claim is false, according to the Census Bureau. I'll just quote Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute

If we define the middle ****as households earning between $35,000 and $75,000 a year, the middle ****in America remains a huge demographic group. According to the Census report, Table A-1, the middle ****made up 33.3 percent of U.S. households in 2005. That share is indeed somewhat smaller than in 1980, when 38.2 percent of households earned between $35,000 and $75,000 a year in real (inflation-adjusted) 2005 dollars.

Aha, so the middle ****really is shrinking if not exactly disappearing, the alarmists might respond. But the Census numbers also show that over the past 25 years, the share of U.S. households earning less than $35,000 a year has also shrunk, from 44.5 percent in 1980 to 38.4 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, the share of households earning more than $75,000 a year has jumped from 17.4 percent to 28.3 percent.

In other words, if the middle ****in America has shrunk, it is only because so many formerly middle-****households have moved to the upper-income brackets, while a significant number of households previously in the lower brackets have moved up to the middle ****and beyond.

The solid economic growth of the past two decades has indeed lifted all kinds of household boats. By the most basic measure of real household income, a broad swathe of Americans are better off than they were 25 years ago—thanks to growth fueled in good measure by lower marginal tax rates, expanding trade, and a more flexible domestic economy.

The second problem is that the people who argue this fail to take into account the fact that health and other fringe benefits have become an increasingly large portion of total compensation packages for workers.

The next claim that Paleocrat makes is that Distributism (that's his economic philosophy) embraces the division of labor and the allocation of labor where they are most talented.

Well first and foremost this is completely antithetical to an economic theory which advocates self-sufficiency.

The second point I want to make is a problem that I have with distributism, and that is the problem of economic calculation. Its just as strong here as it is with Socialism. Central planning cannot work because regulators cannot know how to plan the economy. If central planning is preferable to free-market capitalism, Then we have to believe that regulators and "central-planners" are in fact more knowledgeable about the market than entrepreneurs, workers, and investors. But this is absolutely absurd. If someone knew more about the market than the market players themselves, then they would be working as an investor, not as a regulator.

In my next criticism of Distributism, I'll just paraphrase the mises institute scholar Thomas Woods. It is not always preferable for a man to own his own business than to work for another. Managing a small-business is an extremely long, hard, and tedious endeavor. Some people would rather spend more time with their families and have a more constant and secure living. Lemme quote Ludwig von Mises take on various histories of the Industrial Revolution

It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play.These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from starvation….the fact remains that for the surplus population which the enclosure movement had reduced to dire wretchedness and for which there was literally no room left in the frame of the prevailing system of production, work in the factories was salvation. These people thronged into the plants for no reason other than the urge to improve their standard of living

The point that I am making is simply this: It is not always preferable to own a small shop or a farm (as the industrial laborers in the Industrial revolution) than to work for a rich "greedy capitalist"

Finally, my last problem with distributism is its inherent hypocrisy. In order to equally distribute property and move away from the status quo, you have to first take the property of someone else. Ergo, only some people have a real right-to-property. Distributism is not like Socialism. It advocates the right to private property, unlike Socialism which treats property as a fantasy.

The next point is about the demand for manufactured goods. You say that the demand is just as high today as it was decades ago, and that I "balked" at such a claim.

What I was trying to say is that stagnant demand is what has killed manufacturing jobs in America. The demand for manufactured goods simply has not kept pace with the skyrocketing productivity of the manufacturing sector. The production-per-man-hour of labor, over the past roughly 30 years, has gone up by 103%, but only 50% in the non-industrial sector.

Next I want to deal with Paleocrat's appeal to the Bible talking about "nations". If we are to take paleocrat's exegesis seriously then I guess slavery would still be morally permissible in our society. We, of course, know that the Bible would have to endorse slavery because of societal customs, just as it had to endorse nationalism.

Finally, I want to address the claim that capitalism causes wealth to be concentrated at the top.

I have two main problems with this contention

First, as we saw earlier, most sectors of our economy have performed better over the past 30 years. So this argument would only carry if the Rich were somehow getting rich at the expense of the poor, in essence, they were TAKING property away from the poor.

Second, the problem is that people at the top produce an enourmous amount of wealth. 20% of the people in this world (those living in developed countries) own 80% of the world's wealth. But this isn't because the West is stealing from the 3rd world, it is because 20% of the world produces 80% of the world's wealth.

Finally, Performance of CEOs isn't the sole factor which has contributed to their "obscene" salaries. The tax code, as it stands, makes it very efficient for corporations to pay executives these "obscene" wages.

More on that in the description.

Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed this adventure in the world of libertarian politics. Have a nice day.

______________________________________________________

Middle ****squeeze?

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/08/29/middle-****squeeze/

Executive pay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOHcfiMwlAQ

Anarchic Ireland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hBgcyEL-A

Civilization predates statism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLVZpQjigbQ

Today I am going to talk briefly about the existence and nature of truth. First, let us introduce the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory holds that truth is some sort of proposition that corresponds to reality.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let us talk shortly about truth relativism vs. truth absolutism. Truth relativists say that truth is relative to individuals or specific communities, while truth absolutists say that truth is absolute and transcends individuals and communities.

There is an obvious reason for truth absolutism over truth relativism. Simply put, relativism is self-refuting. To say that "truth is relative" is either true or false in the absolute sense. If it is true in the absolute sense, then it is self-refuting because it amounts to the absolutist claim that there is no absolute truth.

If the latter, then it becomes meaningless. One certainly cannot recommend truth relativism to anyone else without presupposing its truth in the absolutist sense.

This dialectical objection to truth relativism will be very important as we assess the debate between realists and postmodernists over the existence and nature of truth.

Our second response is more of an undercutting defeater for relativism, in that relativists confuse many things, including the relationship between truths and propositions. Truth conditions are things which make a proposition true, and truth criteria are those methods we use to discern truth. Truth relativists often confuse these

Our final response focuses on the law of noncontradiction, the law of the excluded middle, and the law of identity. Postmodernists often call these western, Aristotelian constructs. But surely this is not the case, for any statement which asserts their falsity would be either self-defeating or be completely meaningless.

Let us turn to another theory of truth, the redundancy theory of truth. The advocates of this theory say that Truth doesn't really exist, but rather is just a way of expressing agreement with an assertion. For instance, the statement T "It is true that Lincoln is dead" is equal to statement U "Lincoln is dead".

However, we can object to this theory on two grounds

1: People experience truth, and if this is so, then truth exists and the redundancy theory is to be rejected. People appeal to U to know whether Abraham Lincoln lived, died, etc, but people appeal to T to organize their beliefs in a coherent manner

2: U and T are not equal. The Statement "Lincoln is dead" is a statement about Lincoln, but the statement "It is true that Lincoln is dead" is a statement about the proposition "Lincoln is dead"

Let's take a fuller look at correspondence theory now that we have covered the redundancy theory of truth. Within correspondence theory, there are truth bearers, and truth makers. Truth bearers are simply truths. They are either statements, mental states, or propositions. Truth makers on the other hand make these truth bearers true.

Let's take a look at statements as truth bearers. The problem is that a truth bearer cannot be true or false if it is meaningless. But of course there are meaningless and meaningful statements. One may wish to resolve this by saying that it is the content of the statements which make them true or false. But the person who responds in this manner saws the branch he is sitting on, for he has moved away from the linguistic content towards the propositional theory of truth bearers.

Let's take a look at mental states as truth bearers. These seem to hold the upper hand over statements and sentences as truth bearers because only statements which reflect mental states can be counted as true or false. Second, one can have true or false beliefs without thinking in language.

But these have problems because it is not the mental state itself which is true or false because even mental states can be meaningless. Say one person has a thought that the grass is green and then this thought passes away after an instant. This is surely meaningless. When mental states are considered by themselves, they don't have meaning. It is the content of those mental states which makes them true or false.

We seem to only be left with truth bearers as propositions. What is a proposition? Well of course there is no definitive answer, but we know that they are 1: Not located in space or time, 2: not identical to linguistic sentences or statements which express them, 3: not sense perceptible, 4: that they can be in more than one mind at once, need not be grasped by any person to exist, may be objects of thought, and are not physical entities.

So now that we've covered truth-bearers, what are truh makers? Simply put, they are facts or states of affairs. Truth makers make truth bearers true because of intentionality. Truth makers certainly do not cause truth bearers to be true

Some counterexamples have been given to undermine this relationship

1: Baal does not exist

2: Dinosaurs are extinct

3: All ravens are black

4: Loving a child is morally right

5: The U.S. President in 2070 will be a woman

6: If Jones were rich, he would buy a Lexus

2 responses are given

1: Abandon truth maker maximalism. This is where the correspondence theorist says that most, but not all truths have truth makers

2: Find what the truth makers for these statements are

It seems that the second is the best one

Consider the first one. The truth maker is simply that of all the states of affairs that obtain, none of them is "Baal exists"

Consider the second one. The truth maker is simply that there were dinosaurs many years ago, but none today

Consider the third one. It is a universally quantified statement, and as such, it applies to all ravens, both actual and possible, and not those that just happen to exist. The truth maker seems to be the proposition "if something is a raven, then it is black".

The fourth one is a proposition of morality that doesn't imply that children exist or are being loved. So what is the truth maker? It seems that there is an action, which is Loving a child, that has the property of being morally right

The fifth one is a future tense statement. Let's grant for the sake of argument that the president in 2070 will be a woman. It seems to be true now, even if the election hasn't taken place

One strategy involves eliminating tense, whereas a state of affairs obtains, tenselessly, where the president in 2070 is a woman

The second strategy retains tense, where the state of affairs "The US president is a woman" obtains in the future, specifically 2070.

For 6, it seems that a counterfactual state of affairs, where If X then Y, is the truth bearer for "If Jones were rich, he'd buy a Lexus"

Now that we've covered that, let's move onto the correspondence relation. Simply put, it is not a property, but rather an intentional object between a state of affairs and a proposition.

Now that we've covered that, let's actually give 2 arguments in favor of correspondence theory of truth. First , a phenomoneological argument seems to support it.

The example just cited presents a clear case where truth is experienced, and where the intentional object is a sense-perceptible one, that being a book in the bookstore. But it need not be the case that object be sense-perceptible. You can "see" the truth of modus ponens in certain logical inferences.

Some reject the argument on the grounds that it is simplistic. Now while it is simple, it is not simplistic because more complex cases where philosophers, scientists, or mathematicians experience truth. Moreover, it is a virtue of a theory to accord with how we actually experience truth.

The second argument is the dialectical argument, namely that people presuppose it in their arguments against it. For instance, the pragmatic theory. It is true that truth is just redundant. If they say that their arguments are not true in the correspondence sense, then their statements are meaningless.

3 objections have been given to the correspondence theory

1: That there isn't a highly developed theory of the 3 entities in the correspondence theory. We could respond to this by either A: Pointing out that all that follows from this is that more work needs to be done on the theory, or B: That our analysis above seems to be on the right track

2: That by drawing a dichotomy between truth and evidence, one can have all the evidence, but not the truth. But 2 things may be said in response

1: It only follows that we cannot attain truth if we grant it

2: it IS the case that evidence is not the same thing as truth. So this turns out to be a virtue on the part of the correspondence theory

3: Finally, some say that the correspondence theory predicts queer entities, like propositions, irreducible intentionality, the correspondence relation, etc.

But its hard to see the force in this argument. The "mystery" of an entity isn't enough to reject it. Furthermore, these seem to be commonsensical, not mysterious, as we saw in the phenomenological argument.

Now that we've covered the correspondence theory, let's talk briefly about the Coherence theory of truth. Coherence theory is the statement that a belief is true if it coheres with one's entire set of beliefs.

There's a difference between the coherence theory of truth and the theory of justification. The latter is compatible with a correspondence view of truth, but the former is not.

One problem with this theory is that there really isn't a very specific definition of "coherence".

The main argument for coherence theory of truth is to adhere to the coherence theory of justification and avoid skepticism. On the correspondence theory, one may have highly justified, but false beliefs. Not so on the coherence theory of truth.

The major problems for this theory are the fact that there is no such thing as a justified false belief, since justification and truth are identical. Some claim this to be a virtue, but it is a problem because it is often the case that people have justified, though false beliefs. Some may define appropriate justification as truth to avoid this, but this begs the question.

The next problem is that it allows for completely contradictory sets of beliefs that are coherent.

You could respond by saying that coherence theory of truth is a form of relativism, but the problem is that truth relativism amounts to the absolute claim that truth is relative.

Finally, we saw in the phenomenological argument that people learn truths through experience, not by comparing them to their entire web of beliefs.

The last theory of truth we will assess is the pragmatic theory of truth, where a belief is true if and only if it is useful to have that belief.

Some define pragmatism in a non-epistemic way, whereas acceptance leads to greater happiness, less suffering, etc. and others in an epistemic way.

For the latter, belief P is true only if one's colleagues let them assert it rationally, or one is justified in asserting it, that it exemplifies simplicity, etc.

The problem of course is that this is self-refuting because pragmatists do not advocate their view on the view that it is pragmatic to hold to the pragmatic theory of truth, but that it corresponds to certain facts about language or science etc.

We've seen that the correspondence theory holds the high ground in regards to various theories of truth. Let us turn to an assessment of postmodernism. It is short, sweet, and to the point because of the fact that it isn't entirely necessary, as Non-chrsitians here on youtube and the rest of the internet are far and away comprised more of scientific naturalists than postmodern antirealists.

In regards to metaphysics, they regard "reality" as a social construction.

In regards to truth, they deny the correspondence theory of truth. Moreover, they reject so-called "dichotomous thinking" which groups things into areas like good/evil, beautiful/ugly, right/wrong, irrational/rational, etc.

In regards to rationality, they reject the fact of normativity and over-arching "rationality"

In regards to justification, they reject foundationalism

They also hold to a form of nominalism, whereas they reject the existence of universal properties. They also reject the idea that there is a difference between some thing's essential properties and accidental properties. For instance, a roof is an essential property of a house, and the color of paint used is an accidental property. Postmodernists reject this idea

In regards to the philosophy of language, they do not hold that it has any real meaning or authority. Finally, there are no metanarratives.

It seems obvious on the face of it that post-modernism is self-refuting. They make absolute claims of relativism.

As my family was driving back home from our stay in New York City for July 4th weekend, my brother rented TDTESS thinking it would be a nice action thriller. It succeeds in this respect, it had some nice action sequences. Of course the story was very implausible and very hard to believe, and all throughout the movie I was very aware of this fact.

But overall I thought the movie was poor because of its moralizing agenda. The political philosophy of environmentalism, and IMO marxism to some degree, was very obvious, so obvious in fact that one would have to be deaf to be unable to percieve it.

In fact, just understanding the premise reveals its moralizing agenda. The movie is premised on the idea that aliens, who represent a large group of civilizations, come to destroy the human race because we are polluting the earth and are endangering its capacity to support life, and therefore we must be stopped since so few planets are capable of supporting intelligent life.

The idea that we are destroying this planet was deliciously mocked by George Carlin when he loudly proclaimed in his standup show that the planet will be fine and isn't going anywhere, but WE are the ones who are ****ed. Further, if someone seriously thinks that we are destroying our planet, I encourage them to pick up a copy of Johan Norberg's book In Defense of Global Capitalism, Published in 2003 by the Cato Institute. By every measurable standard, the overall quality of life for humans has dramatically increased in the past 30 years, and this has taken place most rapidly in CAPITALIST countries. That this movie tries to decry capitalism is painfully obvious.

Now if the premise of the movie wasn't enough to reveal its agenda, even more revealing is the protagonist's attempt to reason with the alien (played by Keanu Reeves) by saying that "we can change our ways" throughout the film. Further, Keanu tries to facilitate this change by going to the U.N. and speaking with our "leaders". That is what we call "statism"

Towards the middle of the movie, Reeves is brought to a nobel-prize winning biologist played John Cleese, who says that only during disaster or the brink of disaster do we "change". I may just be paranoid, but that sure does remind me of the worker's world revolution that Marx advocated.

So that's the political philosophy that I really did not like. This movie also has the testicular fortitude to weigh in on metaphysics. Jaden smith plays a child who lost his father in Iraq, and so he brings Reeves to his father's gravesite because Keanu has these wierd healing powers and one time brings a guy back to life (after being dead for a few seconds), and so Jaden thinks that the alien (reeves) can bring his father back to life. During this, Keanu says that nothing really dies, everything is just transformed.

HELLO! This isn't some self-evident truth of experience, its a very particular metaphysic of reductionist nominalism and rejection of substance and property dualism! I've already outlined the numerous problems with this metaphysic in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjrBMn_nIX0&feature=related and I dont believe I need repeat my problems with this metaphysic here.

So, in sum, The Day the Earth Stood still is a moderately entertaining action thriller, although the implausibility makes the story very unbelievable plus how it very obviously preaches very poor philosophy to its audience kills it.

Today I am going to begin my talk on the structure of justification, which is how all beliefs in our minds are related. This network of beliefs is called "noetic structures". There are two main competing structures of justification, Coherentism, and Foundationalism. By way of analogy, we will explain both of them.

Imagine you have a chain of beliefs, P, Q, and R. P justifies Q, and Q justifies R. But what justifies P? Perhaps O justifies it, and N justifies O, and M justifies N, and so on out to infinity. Obviously this is highly flawed because it leads to a vicious infinite regress, and hence most philosophers have abandoned it.

Perhaps P is just a brute faith assumption. But if that is the case, what justifies Q and R?

Maybe R justifies P, or the 3 beliefs form a web of mutual justification. This structure is called Coherentism

Or perhaps P is just some self-evident belief or sensation from experience. This is called Foundationalism. We shall turn to an explanation and defense of Foundationalism presently.

Within foundationalism, there are two classes of beliefs, Basic beliefs, and nonbasic beliefs. Basic beliefs are immediately justified, and nonbasic beliefs are justified by other nonbasic, which are ultimately justified by Basic beliefs.

Properly basic beliefs are not justified by any beliefs. The term "Evidence" Denotes a belief which justifies another belief.

So what is a "properly basic belief"? Well, simply, properly basic beliefs are both Basic and those which meet some criterion for being proper to call "basic". Basic beliefs are foundational to knowledge.

Now what are the conditions for properly calling a belief "basic"? There is much debate within foundationalist schools of epistemology over what qualifies a belief as "properly basic". This debate is important to understand because, often, when giving arguments for God whose premises are to be taken as properly basic, detractors will say "no, that doesn't meet the criterion for being a properly basic belief" while being completely oblivious to the fact that there is no settled, universally agreed-upon standard by which beliefs are to be held as properly basic.

Now, the first criterion given is from the classical foundationalists. Classical Foundationalists hold that only incorrigible sensory data, like "I feel pain right now" or "I have a red sensation right now" and self-evident truths of reason (logical and mathematical truths) qualify as properly basic beliefs. However other foundationalists hold that truths about theology and ethics can also qualify as properly basic.

There are also two schools within Classical foundationalists, ancient classical foundationalists, and modern classical foundationalists. Ancient classical foundationalists held that sensory beliefs like "There is a tree in front of me" are properly basic beliefs. However, Modern classical foundationalists, like Descartes, hold that incorrigible sense data is properly basic. For instance "I believe that I see a tree in front of me" is properly basic, but the existence of the tree is not properly basic.

An incorrigible belief is a belief which is unable to be wrong. For instance, "I feel pain" is an incorrigible belief. One can show the source of the pain to be an illusion, but that doesn't mean that you do not feel pain. Strong foundationalists say that incorrigibility is a criterion for something properly basic, and if it is not incorrigible, it is not properly basic. By contrast, weak foundationalists hold that beliefs need only be prima facie justified to count as properly basic. In our defense of particularism against Methodism and skepticism, we saw good reasons to adopt the weak foundationalist standpoint. Recall that the reason for this is that people can still have knowledge even if they do not know what knowledge is, or the criterion for having knowldge. It would seem that for the strong foundationalist, one is only justified in believing that a tree is in front of them if they reflect upon their incorrigible sensations. But people can clearly know that there is a tree in front of them without reflecting upon their incorrigible sense data.

Finally, Foundationalists say that basic beliefs are not grounded in evidence while they still have grounds. Some foundationalists are internalists, while others are externalists.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the relationship between basic and nonbasic beliefs.

First off, the relationship is irreflexive and asymmetrical. P justifies Q, but Q does not justify P

Second, Basic beliefs do not need to deductively justify nonbasic beliefs

Third, Our noetic structures are strengthened if our basic and nonbasic beliefs cohere with eachother

Now let's talk about the arguments for Foundationalism. First off, the argument from experience and perceptual beliefs. It's a phenomenological fact that experience itself seems to enjoy a privileged epistemic status, and being immediately justified, it seems to be the justification for most other beliefs. This is very close to foundationalism. There are several coherentist responses to this argument.

1: Perception is full of error and is full of theories, which we have a precondition bias towards.

The foundationalist could respond to this by saying that it still seems as though we see things directly. Take for instance seeing a car drive by, but being preoccupied with work, you do not notice it. Then say that you recall it from memory. Your memory could serve as justification for your belief that a car drove by earlier.

2nd response by coherentists: That which grounds a basic belief can only do so if the grouding itself is rooted in some sort of argument, or "meta-level" justification.

But we could response by simply pointing out, once again, that this is not the case. People still form beliefs about the external world without appealing to some sort of meta-level justification

3rd response by coherentists: This priority of experience is merely a fact of psychology, not of epistemology.

Foundationalists would respond by simply pointing out that a structure of justification which takes into account how we actually form beliefs is more plausible than one which does not. So this counts in favor of Foundationalism. On coherentism, this priority is simply ad hoc

The second argument for Foundationalism is the fact of truths of reason. We know truths of logic, like Modus ponens (If P then Q, P, therefore Q) and Mathematics (2+2=4) without justification by other beliefs. These are self-evidence and are immediately justified just by our awareness of them.

So how do coherentists respond? They don't. There really is no response other than limiting coherentism to perceptual beliefs.

The final argument is the regress argument. Recall our epistemic chain outlined earlier, with P, Q, and R. If P justifies Q, and Q justifies R, and R justifies P, then this is a viciously circular noetic structure. Add more beliefs and it doesn't change. Now if we say that there is an interlinking web of beliefs, then it is still circular. If the only justification for beliefs is other beliefs, then beliefs, in a way, justify themselves. This is viciously circular.

There are several arguments against Foundationalism, to which we shall now turn.

First, Coherentists allege that there are no incorrigible beliefs, and that everything is subject to revision, and this includes EVERYTHING, as Willard Van Orben Quine noted. Sometimes, allegedly incorrigible beliefs turn out to be wrong.

There are a few responses to this argument

1: We could abandon strong foundationalism and say that foundational beliefs do not need to be incorrigible.

2: We could reassert the incorrigibility of the foundations. If we limit ourselves to immediate sensations, like seeing a red object, then one can't be wrong about their red sensation. There are a few responses to this argument

1: You can be wrong because you still need to first experience redness in order to believe that you have a red sensation.

But this response seems to appeal to Methodism, which leads to a vicious infinite regress.

2: One must have language and meaning for "sensation" and "red" because we think in language.

But this is flawed on 4 levels

1: People can think rapidly without signs and words in their minds

2: Small children and animals can think, but they do not have language

3: How could we ever enter into a language in the first place if language takes priority to belief?

4: Finally, there is a difference between actually having a belief, and telling others about that belief

There is one counterexample brought up to show the falsity of incorrigibility. Let's imagine that a brain psychologist has built a machine which can read brains and what mental sensations patients are having. Now let's say that the machine says that the patient has a blue sensation, but the patient says that he has a red sensation. The patient would be wrong about this

But this response is flawed in that it begs the question. It assumes that foundational beliefs are not incorrigible, for if the patient's belief was incorrigible, then the doctor would have to stop insisting that the patient has a blue sensation.

The second argument against foundationalism is that foundationalists cannot outline the relationship between beliefs, or how one belief justifies another.

Foundationalists would respond by saying "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black", because on this ground, coherentists don't fare any better. All that follows from this is that more work needs to be done on the transfer of justification.

3, finally, cohernetists allege that foundational beliefs are too slim to justify all other beliefs.

Again, we are not sure about this statement, as Robert Audi, and Roderick Chisholm have developed theories of how foundations justify other beliefs.

Now that we have covered Foundationalism, I want to focus now on Coherentism.

Coherentism has several tenets, including the idea that beliefs are justified by how they fit with other beliefs, or how they "cohere" with other beliefs. This is called the "Doxatic assumption".

The next tenet is that There is no privileged class of beliefs. Rather than being basic and immediately justified, sensory perception is nothing more than theory-laden judgement.

There is some debate over how justification is transferred. Some coherentists say that as long as beliefs don't contradict other beliefs, the set is "coherent". But surely this is incorrect, for one could believe that they were Napoleon and say that everyone else who disagreed was lying, or insane.

There is positive and negative Coherentism. Positive coherentism says that one must show how beliefs cohere with other beliefs. Negative coherentism says that you assume that beliefs cohere with each other until they are shown not to.

Then there is strong and weak coherentism. Strong coherentism says coherence is the sole determinant for whether a belief is justified, and weak coherentism says that coherence is one among many determinants for justification.

Then there is linear and holistic coherentism. Linear coherentism says that there is a circular chain of beliefs, where individual beliefs individually justify other individual beliefs, and those justify other beliefs. Holistic coherentism says that all beliefs form an interlinking web. The relationship between belief X and the entire web of beliefs justifies X

Linear coherentism is plainly circular, and we should abandon it.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let us turn to an evaluation of coherentism. We will not focus now on arguments for coherentism, because as we saw earlier, these revolve mainly around the alleged failures of foundationalism.

The first argument against coherentism is of course that, as a matter of phenomenological fact, experience and perceptual beliefs enjoy privileged epistemic status.

Now, coherentists respond charge of vicious circularity in one of 2 ways

1: They claim that once the circle becomes large enough, we needn't be bothered by it. But this is patently absurd because it is still a circular argument

2: They adopt holistic coherentism, where beliefs are justified by their relation to the web of beliefs. Now it seems obvious that even holistic coherentism is circular because if only beliefs justify beliefs, then every belief justifies itself in a way. Secondly, it doesn't allow truths of reason or perceptual beliefs to contribute to our web of beliefs. Finally, it clearly severs the relationship between the person and the outside world. This is because for a coherentist, the relationship between beliefs is the only thing that justifies beliefs.

Regarding the last charge, Coherentists have responded in one of 3 ways

1: They deny the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence theory of truth is the theory of truth where truths are propositions which correspond to reality

2: They say that we can't know the external world anyway because all perception is theory-laden

3: They say that the external world just causes our beliefs.

Regarding the last one, this is a problem because it doesn't allow the external world to play an epistemically relevant role in our beliefs.

There are 2 more problems with Coherentism

The first being that we have no way of differentiating between coherent illusions and coherent, justified beliefs

The second being the isolation plurality problem. There could be two equally coherent sets. A therapist and a patient who believes that he is Jesus. Both sets are coherent, but they are logically incompatible with eachother. They're both justified, and we can't know which one is really true.

That being said and done, we shall close our discussion on the structure of justification, and we shall continue with an analysis of truth and various theories of truth, and then finally we will talk about Religious Epistemology

Today I'm going to talk about the problem of Skepticism. Simply put, Skepticism in present times is the epistemology which says that all claims to knowledge require some sort of justification, and that the skeptic, the person doubting a certain claim to knowledge, bears absolutely no burden of proof.

This has very serious implications for the Christian faith. Skepticism leads to the rise of the idea that weak atheism is a sort of default position that need be based on nothing more than the lack of evidence of theism, and that because of this, theists do not have justification for their belief, and therefore we should not believe in God.

I aim to show that this sort of epistemology is not as universal as atheists would claim.

Let's get some historical background to appreciate this more fully. Skepticism had its heyday in pre-christian times with Academic skepticism, and then Christian writers like St. Augustine defeated them, and skepticism sort of died off for the next 1500 years, and then experienced a revival with people like Descartes. Academic skepticism held to two tenets

1: We do not have knowledge of anything

2: We have knowledge of the above statement

The problem is that this is ultimately self-refuting. To say that we have knowledge that we have no knowledge implies further that there is such a thing as truth, that there is meaning behind the statement "there is no knowledge" and that the person uttering the statement exists. Further, these sorts of skeptics never really showed why someone cannot assert other truths besides "we have no knowledge" or the beliefs it obviously entails.

Skepticism, as stated above, experienced a revival with Descartes, who advocated a methodological doubt, which said that knowledge requires certainty, and that we could only know that we ourselves existed with "I think, therefore I am"

There are several varieties of skepticism, and we will discuss them briefly here

First is "iterative skepticism", which is when the skeptic constantly asks "well how do you know? Well how do you know that? And that? And that?...". This is not a real position, its just a word game, and can be dismissed as such.

Second is "metaepistemological skepticism", which has doubts about epistemology and philosophy itself, and advocates a reduction of philosophy to a branch of natural science, like saying that epistemology is a branch of neuro-psychology.

There are several obvious problems with this position

1: It rejects the normative element within epistemology, the notion that one has rights to believe certain propositions, or that one has an obligation to believe certain things

2: Science holds to certain unscientific assumptions, like the existence of truth, the existence and knowability of the external world, the uniformity of nature, etc.

3: This argument itself uses philosophy to question the reliability of philosophy. If you knock out philosophy, you knock out your own objections to philosophy

Then there is methodological skepticism, which says that you should question claims to knowledge to get to knowledge. This isn't so much as a position as it is a tool to help one get knowledge

Then there is knowledge skepticism, which sets the standards for knowledge so high, and concludes that there is no knowledge.

Then there is mitigated and unmitigated skepticism. Mitigated skepticism says that one holds to knowledge claims tentatively, and unmitigated skepticism holds that there is no knowledge.

Next, there is global vs. local skepticism. Global skepticism says that there is no knowledge in any area of human thought. Local skepticism says that some areas, but not others, create knowledge. For instance, many local skeptics say that science gives us knowledge, but ethics and theology do not.

Finally, there is first-order vs. second-order skepticism. First-order skepticism directs skepticism towards everyday beliefs, or rather beliefs about the external world. Second-order skepticism directs skepticism towards knowledge of beliefs. How does one know that they know X (?) the second-order skeptic asks.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, we shall examine the many arguments for skepticism

The first argument is the argument from error or fallibility. Simply put, we've been wrong before, and we might be wrong now

The second argument is the various arguments that it is possible that we are wrong. We could be a brain in a vat, or in the matrix, or possessed by an evil demon. Therefore we should not be certain about knowledge claims because we could be wrong

The final argument the problem of the transfer of justification. Most of the time, our beliefs confer justification on to other beliefs inductively. We sense a tree, but it does not gurantee that a tree is there. This goes with all other beliefs which confer justification upon another in an inductive way. Because of this fact, we may be wrong in just about everything we believe. Therefore, we do not have knowledge.

Now that we've given an exposition of Skepticism and the arguments for Skepticism, I want to offer two points in a broad critique of skepticism, first by showing why skepticism itself has major problems, and second by giving short rebuttals to the arguments for skepticism.

Now, the argument against skepticism I shall give is the problem of criterion. The problem of criterion is simply this:

If we are to know anything, P, then we have to know two more propositions, Q, which is how we know something, and R, how P satisfies Q.

Here we run into a major problem, Q and R are themselves knowledge claims. So therefore we need Q', which is how we know Q, and R' which is how Q satisfies Q', and we need to do the same for R. But Q' and R' are themselves knowledge claims. Allow me to explain it in a different way. If we know some proposition, then we know how we know that proposition, but how do we know THAT proposition? And how do we know THAT proposition? So the problem of criterion leads to a vicious infinite regress.

There are 3 main responses to this problem.

The first is skepticism, which says that this is a good argument, and therefore no one has any knowledge. But this is itself a self-refuting claim, and surely cannot be correct, for if someone said that we have no knowledge, then they would be making a knowledge claim. Secondly, it undercuts the reasons given for skepticism, for the arguments given for skepticism rely upon knowing the falsity of certain propositions, but those themselves are knowledge claims.

The second response is Methodism. Methodism says that one starts out with a method of garnering knowledge, and then uses this method to justify propositions, or see whether propositions are justified. The problem however is whatever method one uses is itself a claim to knowledge, and therefore leads once again into a vicious infinite regress.

The third and final response to the problem, which we shall defend today, is particularism. Particularists teach that we start out with clear cases where people have knowledge, or in other words, we have knowledge even if we don't know what knowledge is, and upon these cases we build our method of justification.

There are 2 skeptical responses to particularism

First, the skeptic could allege that Skepticism begs the question by assuming that people have knowledge, and that the particularist doesn't really know because even if we assume cases of knowledge, they could be wrong. There are 4 responses we shall give to that claim

1: Skepticism is STILL self-defeating, and therefore people must have knowledge

2: By asking the question "How do you know", The Skeptic is forcing the particularist to become a Methodist because he is implying that there is a criteria for knowledge before we have knowledge. but we saw how that leads to a vicious infinite regress.

3: The particularist could say that logical possibility is simply not enough, and that we need a defeater for these beliefs

4: Finally, the particularist holds the high ground because it avoids a vicious infinite regress, unlike Methodism, and accords with the fact that people DO have knowledge, unlike skepticism.

Before we go on to the second major objection to particularism, let's look at this diagram, taken from page 101 of Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. The purpose of this diagram is to outline the different approaches to knowledge.

First off, let's talk about the burden of proof. For the skeptic, the burden of proof is on the cognitivist, the one who is making the claim to knowledge. By contrast, for the particularist, it is the skeptic who shoulder's the burden of proof.

Second, the Particularist ays that knowledge does not require certainty, while the skeptic says that knowledge does require certainty because the cognitivist could be wrong

Third, the phrase "You might be wrong" as used by the particularist, implies an epistemic "might", where there are reasons to doubt the claim to knowledge. By contrast, the skeptic merely says that there is no logical contradiction in a state of affairs in which the cognitivist is wrong. So "You might be wrong" is of no consequence for the particularist, because showing the mere logical possibility of falsity is not the same as showing reasons to doubt the cognitivist

Fourth, the way of dealing with the skeptic. The particularist holds that the skeptic must be rebutted, or rather must merely show that the reasons for doubting the cognitivist are wrong. The skeptic, by contrast, holds that the skeptic must be refuted, in that show that the reasons for doubt are wrong, and that the claim in question should be believed.

Fifth, The particularist and the skeptic hold to two different tasks of epistemology. The particularist holds that the paradigm of goals in epistemology is finding more justified true belief, while the skeptic merely believes that we should just avoid unjustified beliefs.

Finally, skeptics and particularists have two different understandings of the phrase "Right to be sure" as used by the particularist. The skeptic understands this to mean that the particularist can dogmatically assert any claim he wants without having to look at the evidence. By contrast, the particularist merely says that he has a right to rely on the truth of a claim in explaining other things, and in forming other beliefs, but remain open to future evidence.

So now that we have shown the different approaches to knowledge, let's examine the second objection to particularism, which is probably the objection you thought of first. That objection is: Could one not abuse particularism and assert any sort of claim that they want, under the label of "particularist"?

Now that we've understood how the particularist approaches knowledge, we can give a clear response. Just because it is possible that the particularist is abusing his particularism, it does not follow that he really is abusing it. The skeptic must show that we should believe that particularism is being abused in a certain instance. Moreover, the particularist does not need a set of criteria for determining when particularism is or is not being abused before he adopts a particularist view of a certain proposition.

Now that we have given our arguments against skepticism, let us respond to the arguments for skepticism.

First, the argument from error, which is the whole "I have been wrong before, I could be wrong now" argument. Just because one has been wrong in the past, it does not follow that one is wrong now. Until one has defeaters for current beliefs, we are still justified in holding to our sensory experiences. Second, we could give a dialectical objection to this argument by merely pointing out that knowledge about past false beliefs is itself an instance of knowledge, and therefore people have knowledge

The second argument about the brain-in-the-vat is flawed in that logical possibility of falsity does not gurantee any sort of epistemic possibility of falsity, or rather, it is not itself a reason to doubt knowledge claims.

The third argument, the transfer of justification. This is still not an argument against knowledge because knowledge does not require certainty, and people can still have inductive knowledge without a theory of transfer of justification.

Now that we've covered the broad philosophical issue of skepticism, I want to talk about naturalism, and how naturalism may imply global skepticism.

Yes, this is the evolutionary argument against naturalism, as given by Alvin Plantinga.

Plantinga, and a number of other philosophers, have argued that if naturalism and evolution are to be believed, then we are irrational to believe it, because evolution, in all probability, would not produce reliable cognitive faculties that give us truth.

The main reason for this point is that natural selection doesn't give a damn about whether we have true belief, it is only concerned with whether we behave in a certain manner.

Now the naturalist might object, and often does object, that true beliefs are selectively advantageous. This however is not necessarily true because the relation between our beliefs and our actions could have evolved in 5 different ways

1: Beliefs could be mere epiphenomenon and have no relation whatsoever to the external world or our behavior in that world

2: Beliefs could be caused by the external world, but not cause behavior.

3: Beliefs could cause behavior, but not by virtue of their content. Think of a poem that is read very loudly, so loudly that it breaks glass. But the content and meaning of the poem did not break the glass, it was irrelevant to the breaking glass.

4: Beliefs could cause behavior by virtue of their content, but could be maladaptive because it causes them to survive, albeit less efficiently, or causes maladaptive behavior which is overridden by other more adaptive behavior. For the former, many scientists have stated that large brains are inefficient because they take up lots of metabolic energy

5: Finally, evolution could produce a state of affairs in which beliefs are causally related to behavior and are true.

But this is improbable because for every selectively advantageous behavior, there are a plethora of false beliefs that could produce it.

Let's take a look at Paul, a prehistoric hominid who needs to run away from a tiger or he will be eaten. Let's say that Paul wants to be eaten, and that in order to be eaten, he needs to run away from the tiger and climb up a tree. This false belief would cause the exact same selectively advantageous behavior. Or say that Paul believes that the tiger is an illusion and that it is a que to run a marathon in the opposite direction. This too would create the same selectively advantageous behavior. Whatever selectively advantageous behavior, one can think of plenty of examples of false beliefs which could produce the same behavior. Because of this, genetic drift would cause these false beliefs to become much more common than true beliefs.

Given all these reasons, we have very good grounds for believing that natural selection would produce improperly functioning cognitive faculties. Since our cognitive faculties are not working, we are not justified in believing naturalism. Ergo, naturalism is self-defeating

Some have responded to this argument by saying that we use our cognitive faculties to form true beliefs all the time, and therefore have reason to trust our cognitive faculties. But this is circular because it assumes that our cognitive faculties are working.

Some have responded by agreeing that our cognitive faculties are not working, and that because they are not working, we cannot trust the evolutionary argument against naturalism. Since we cannot trust the evolutionary argument against naturalism, therefore we don't have reason to doubt our cognitive faculties. But this is viciously circular because once we are back to the position of saying that our cognitive faculties being trustworthy, we once again can trust the evolutionary argument against naturalism.

Today I'm going to begin my discussion on Epistemology. When we finish our study of epistemology, we will understand the profound implications it has for Christian apologetics and the general debate between Atheism and theism. That being said, I hope that nearly every one of my subscribers will watch this, especially the more, let's just say, scientifically minded atheists. I hope that particular crowd will watch my video series because, more often than not, when they make arguments against Theism, or arguments for atheism, or even arguments responding to theistic arguments, more often than not they are presupposing a very particular, and very flawed epistemology.

I want to look at just one example right now. Spacefoetus of theologyweb said that the evolutionary argument against the moral argument is a good one because our moral sense is only evidence of objective morality if we have some reason to believe that objective morality causes our moral sense. Since we have another naturalistic explanation, namely Darwinian evolution, then we are not justified in our belief in objective morality. To someone knowledgable of the moral argument, but not knowledgable of epistemology, this would seem like an EXTREMELY powerful undercutting-argument to the moral argument for God. But as we shall see in this video series, it absolutely falls apart when we examine the epistemology behind it.

So what is epistemology? Epistemology is simply a branch of philosophy that understands what we know and how we know it.

There are 3 types of knowledge, knowledge by acquaintance, which means knowledge of something present to one's consciousness, Know-how, which means the ability to do something, like fix cars or computers, and finally Knowledge-by-description, which means knowledge of propositions. This will be our focus of study throughout our discussion, and so we'll just call it "knowledge" from now on.

The standard definition of this sort of knowledge is Justified true belief. Justified means that we have an epistemic right, or epistemic duty to believe said belief. So something is knowledge if that belief is true, and we are justified in believing it. There is no such thing as knowledge of a falsehood. This justified true belief is called the tripartite analysis.

Let's take a look at justification. Let's say that you run across someone across the street and you have a thought "Wow, that person is a real douche", and it just so happens that the person in question is a douche! Did you have knowledge that he was a douche? Of course not, your belief that he was a douche is just a random thought. It wasn't justified by anything.

Some have tried to question this notion that knowledge is justified true belief, but none have been more successful than Edmund Gettier, who in 1963 published a paper giving a counter-example to this idea.

Let's say that Jones and smith are both being interviewed for a job. Now let's say that Jones has strong evidence for the following propositions

1: That Smith will get the job, because the interviewer said so, and 2: That Smith has 10 coins in his pocket. Jones then forms the following belief, that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket.

Now say that it is jones who really gets the job, and unbeknownst to him, he has 10 coins in his pocket. So on the standard tripartite analysis, Jones still has knowledge that the man who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket. But surely we know that he doesn't have knowledge of this!

There are 3 ways of escaping the Gettier counterexamples.

1: Retain the tripartite analysis, and say that Jones didn't really have justification. This has not convinced most philosophers because it elevates the standard of justification, and so severely limits what can be known to incorrigible beliefs.

2: Retain the tripartite analysis, and say that knowledge is justified true belief, plus some other condition, and finally

3: Abandon the tripartite analysis altogether and say that knowledge is true belief, plus some other condition.

Let's look at the 2nd strategy, but before we do so, we should look at two theories of justification, internalism, and externalism. Internalism says that the factors responsible for justification are those internal and immediately accessible to the subject, and Externalism says that the factors outside the subject are those that are responsible for justification.

Let's apply this to a certain question. Mary is sitting in a room and there is a red ball sitting in front of her. How does she know that there is a red ball in front of her? An Internalist would say that she knows because she has the sensation of a red ball. The Externalist would say that she knows because the lighting is good, her eyes are functioning correctly, she is not dreaming, etc. etc.

Probably the strongest argument in favor of internalism is the first-person perspective within epistemology. Epistemology as a discipline deals with the individual subject and explains how he or she knows things. In our discussion on mind/body dualism, we will examine this first-person perspective more closely.

The debate between internalism and externalism is relavent because most philosophers use "Justification" in an internalist way.

There are 2 internalist strategies of resolving the Gettier-type counter examples. The first strategy is the no-relavent-falsehood strategy. This says that beliefs can only be justified by true beliefs, and cannot be justified on the basis of false beliefs. This seems to solve the getter-counter example because Jones' belief that the man who would get the job has 10 coins in his pocket was based upon the false belief that Smith was the man who would get the job.

But this particular strategy has been subjected to criticisms, which undermine both its necessity and its sufficiency for knowledge, as in there are cases where knowledge can be justified by false beliefs, and there are cases where one does not have knowledge even though no justifying beliefs are false.

First, to the first example undercutting the necessity. Let's look at Gary. Gary knows that the stock market went up yesterday. He heard it on the radio, read it in a newspaper, and heard it from his wife who claimed to see it on TV.

Now let's say that his wife did not really see it on TV. This means that Gary's knowledge that the stock market went up yesterday is justified by a false belief among many other beliefs. But Gary obviously knows that the stock market DID go up yesterday. This example seems to show that the no-relevant falsehood is not necessary for knowledge.

Moreover, it is not sufficient for knowledge. Alvin Goodman has put forward a counterexample which seems to show the folly of this theory

Let's look at Henry. He is driving through a town and sees a barn. His senses are working, and so this is a justified true belief. But, say that this town is full of paper-mache barn facades. They look an awful lot like barns, but they really are not. He just arrived in town, but has not encountered any facades of barns. If he had seen a fake façade of a barn before seeing a real barn, he would mistake it for a real barn. Therefore, he does not have knowledge that there is a barn in front of him.

A second solution to the gettier examples is the condition of defeasibility, in that there should be no belief which, if known, would falsify a belief. Now this certainly solves Alvin Goodman's barn example, but it is not a necessary condition for knowledge.

Let's look at Beth. She has very good reasons to believe that her children are at school. However, unbeknownst to her, her neighbor called her husband and invited the kids to skip school and go to Cedar Point for the day. Say further that the husband had been saying that he would let this happen for some time. But now say that her children have a test that day, and therefore cannot skip school. Now if Beth had known that the neighbor had called, this would defeat her belief. But if she had known about the test, this would defeat her defeater. The problem is that people have knowledge despite the fact that there are true defeaters, which themselves have defeaters.

These two examples are internalist responses to the Gettier examples. Now let's take a look at externalist responses.

First, the causal theory of justification. When discussing the causal theory, recall the original problem I outlined with the axiological argument at the beginning of this talk. This theory says that one is justified in believing X if their true belief is caused by a state of affairs involving X. This solves the smith and jones example because Jones' belief that the man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket was not caused by his having 10 coins in his pocket.

This theory has been subjected to severe criticisms. First, a belief being caused by a certain truth is not sufficient for knowledge. In essence, states of affairs can cause beliefs, but in epistemically irrelevant ways.

Let's take a look at Smith. He is short, and he is a hypochondriac. Let's say that while working on his car, he suddenly grows tired, and so he goes inside and turns on the evening news where he learns about a disorder that makes people tired, and that this affects mostly short men. Suppose further that Smith does have this disorder. Smith concludes that he has this disorder. But he doesn't have knowledge because his belief was caused by his being a hypochondriac, not his disorder.

The second problem is that it is not necessary for knowledge. There are areas where we obviously have knowledge which are not caused by the state of affairs. For instance, we have knowledge of truths of mathematics, like 2+2=4, and truths of logic, like "If P then Q, P, therefore Q". But our knowledge of these truths isn't actually caused these truths, they are known simply be reflection.

Consider another example, our knowledge of future events. We can know obvious future truths like "Newt Gingrich either will or will not win the Republican nomination for 2012" or "The United States either will, or will not, go to war with Iran". There simply is no other option. But surely our knowledge of these facts isn't caused by them. Is backwards causation even a coherent concept?

This ties back to our original problem with the moral argument. Spacefoetus was using the causal theory of justification when he said that we are only obligated to believe that morality is objective if our moral sense is caused by morality, and we have no positive reason to believe that. However, we have seen one very powerful argument in favor of internalist justification. Therefore, we are justified in our belief in objective moral values simply because we sense them and form beliefs about them immediately without much reflection.

Finally, the last externalist response to the Gettier example we will talk about is the reliability theory, which is the idea that if our beliefs are formed by reliable belief-forming methods.

The problem with this theory is simple: There is no way of actually determining which methods are reliable without some independent, internal method of justification. If we tried to use reliablism, then it would be viciously circular. Reliable beliefs would be those that are formed by reliable methods, and reliable methods are those that form reliable beliefs.

Further, this is not sufficient for knowledge. Consider the case of Norman. He is a psychic, who is 100% reliable under certain conditions, but he has no evidence for or against the reliability of his psychic powers. One day, he suddenly thinks that the President has visited his home town, and he has absolutely no evidence for it.

On the reliability theory, he would have knowledge. But clearly, Norman does not have knowledge that the president visited his town.

Let's reflect for a moment

Even if one cannot solve the Gettier-examples, it still is no problem to say that knowledge is some true belief with some thing that confers rationality, warrant, or justification upon that belief. Further, knowledge, as it should be painfully obvious to all, presupposes truth. There can be truth without knowledge, but no knowledge without truth.

Second, it should be noted that one does not start out with a set of necessary and sufficient principles for knowledge before evaluating whether people have knowledge. Rather, you start out with cases where people obviously have knowledge, and then find the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. In our next topic, the problem of skepticism, we will look at some challenges to this notion that one presupposes knowledge and then formulates conditions for knowledge.

Finally, people have knowledge even if they don't know exactly what knowledge is. A Child can know that there is a tree in front of him even if he has no comprehension of what knowledge is.

I have planned an ultimate defense of Christianity. It will consist of roughly 60 blogs. I plan on making a series of youtube videos and facebook vids in which I will read the scripts for a more widespread audience

Jake's Ultimate Defense

Of Christianity

I: Christian Philosophy

A: Epistemology

1: What is knowledge?

2: Foundationalism

3: Skepticism

4: Evolutionary Argument against naturalism

5: Religious Epistemology/warrant without evidence

B: Metaphysics

1: Defense of the existence of properties

2: Arguments for mind/body dualism

3: Alternatives to Mind/body dualism

4: Free will, determinism, and compatibilism

5: Personal Identity

F: Philosophy of science

1: What is science?

2: Scientific realism vs. Antirealism

3: Science and Theology

4: Philosophy of time

D: Ethics

1: Moral objectivity vs. moral subjectivity

2: Defense of Deontological and Virtue ethics

E: Philosophy of Religion

1: Arguments for the existence of God

a: Cosmological arguments

b: Teleological argument

c: Moral argument

d: Ontological arguments

2: Coherence of Theism

a: Necessity

b: Aseity

c: Incorporeality

d: Omnipresense

e: Eternity

f: Omniscience

g: Simplicity

h: Immutability

i: Omnipotence

k: Goodness

3: The Problem of Evil

4: Providence

II: The Historical Reliability of the Old Testament

A: The Hebrew Kings

B: Exile

C: Saul, David, and Solomon

D: Canaanite Conquest and the Exodus

E: The Patriachs

F: The Prophets

III: The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

A: Textual Criticism and the Gospels

B: Authorship of the Gospels

1: Matthew

2:Mark

3: Luke

4: John

C: Dating the Gospels

D: The Transmission of the Gospel Traditions

1: Papias' testimony

2: Palestinian Jewish names and Names in the Gospel traditions

3: The Twelve disciples and Inclusio

4: Formal transmission of the Gospel traditions

E: Gospel Communities

F: The Relationship between Paul and Jesus

IV: The Resurrection of Jesus

A: Regarding miracles

B: Historical knowledge

C: Pagan and Jewish beliefs about the Resurrection

D: The nature of the Resurrection in early Christian literature

E: The Resurrection and Pauline Theology

1: The Resurrection outside of Corinth

2: The Resurrection in Corinthians 15

F: The Empty tomb of Jesus

1: The Actual evidence

2: Explaining the empty tomb

G: The Appearances of Christ

1: The appearances

2: Explaining the appearances

H: The Necessity of explaining the origin of the Christian faith

In this blog post I'm going to be posting books and websites that Apologists really ought to consult when doing apologetics work and debating Atheists. I shall first list websites that I use sometimes

The first website I make use of is tektonics.org. Tektonics is run by James Patrick Holding. It is mainly a website devoted to defending Biblical accuracy and I have in the past found his website quite helpful.

The Second website I make use of is bible.org. Bible.org actually has quite a bit of material on textual criticism, the reliability of the Gospels, and systematic theology. There is a whole host of credentialed Scholars (like Daniel B. Wallace) who contribute to the Website

The last website, certainly not the least, is reasonablefaith.org. It is run by Philosopher, historian, and theologian William Lane Craig. I have found his podcasts from his defenders ****s and his reasonable faith podcast enourmously helpful in debates on natural theology and the philosophy of religion.

Now onto the Books that I recommend. The first one is called Scaling the Secular City, by JP Moreland. I am recommending this one first because it is the best christian apologetics book I have ever read hands down. The book only weighs in at a little more than 250 pages, but the incredible scope it covers from the cosmological argument to the argument from the mind to the historicity of the New Testament, to the resurrection of Christ, and finally onto the integration of Science and Christianity makes this an invaluable resource and starting point for any Apologist

The Second book I strongly recommend is Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig. This book is very similar to Scaling the Secular city, but I would strongly recommend that anyone who reads this book read it in tandem with Scaling the Secular city.

The third book I recommmend highly is The Jesus Legend, By Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd. It should be called a 2-part book because it is dedicated to 2 subjects, first a sweeping refutation of the Jesus myth, and secondly a scholarly treatment of the nature of oral tradition in the ancient world and other pre-literate socieites

The Next book I recommend is called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. As I noted in a previous blog post, Professor Bauckham provides a sweeping case for the connection of the Gospel traditions to the original eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This makes an excellent resource to anyone interested in defending the faith. I however only would recommend this one for serious apologists.

The next book I highly recommend is Philosophical Foundations for a Christian worldview. Foundations is actually a philosophy textbook written by JP Moreland and William Lane Craig and covers nearly every section of modern philosophy from ethics to the existence of God to metaphysics to the philosophy of science. This book will make an invaluable resource should you encounter a moderately philosohpically literate skeptic.

The Next book I recommend is Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. This book is basically a sweeping refutation of some of the most popular and oft-touted claims against the reliability of the Gospels as sources for the life of Christ. After discussing the Burden of proof and how it relates to the reliability of te Gospels, it makes a nice case for hte reliability of the Gospels. I however would recommend that you read this after reading The Jesus Legend, as it is severely lacking in its utility for making a positive case for hte reliability of the Gospels, wholly unlike the Books by Bauckham or Eddy and Boyd which offer incredible positive cases for the reliability of the Gospels

The Next book I recommend is Reinventing Jesus by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace. I recommend this book because in only 250 pages it covers an incredibly wide range of issues including: The reliability of Oral tradition, Textual criticism and the New Testament, Ancient extra-canonical Gospels and the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, the Council of Nicea, and finally the issue of Pagan parallels. I recommend this as an introduction to defeating the arguments of the more radical skeptics of the interwebz

The Last, certainly not the least, book I recommend is The Resurrection of the Son of God By Bishop N.T. Wright. N.T. Wright in the first 500-600 pages surveys ancient beliefs about the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead. First he begins with a survey of Pagan beliefs, then Old Testament statements on the afterlife, then ancient 2nd-temple beliefs abotu the afterlife to set the context in which the Jesus story is set, then onto Paul's beliefs about the Resurrection, then the early Christian and heretical beliefs. Later he discusses the Gospel stories and their relation to the original disciples' belief about the resurrection of Christ, and then concludes his entire book with a case on how within the context of 2nd temple Judaism and hellenism, the best explanation for the origin of the Christian faith is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have in my apologetics work found this book invaluable, however I am not entirely sure if you will, But if you encounter someone who talks about the "Spiritual resurrection of Christ", it will be invaluable, and it will certainly be valuable should you encounter a fan of Dr. Richard Carrier

ADDENDUM: Since Writing this blog post I will have to put another book in there called On the Reliability of the Old Testament, by Kenneth Kitchen. Kenneth Kitchen conducts, in a tour de force fashion, a sweeping case for the essential historical reliability of the Old Testament. He doesn't start at the beginning however, but rather begins at the top layer of history and works his way down, or backwards, through the millenia of Near-Eastern and Egyptian history and archaeology and shows how the data we actually have rather clearly and concisely supports the historicity of the Old Testament. Recently with the release of The Bible's Buried Secrets by PBS has led many to doubt that any of the Old Testament beyond the period right before the exile is actually historical. This attitude towards the Old Testament is called "Minimalism". Kitchen begins his work by talking about the post-solomonic hebrew kings and discusses the evidence for them. After he talks about the historicity of the exile. After that he discusses the issues surrounding the existence of Saul, David, and Solomon, and talks about the existence of the Solomonic empire. Then he discusses the canaanite conquest and how many archaeologists are sadly mistaken in their quest for evidence for the Canaanite conquest under Joshua. After that he talks about the Exodus, then the Patriarchs, then the prophets (Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), and finally the Protohistory which includes the flood, and creation narratives. In the last chapter he discusses the work of other minimalists of the field. Overall I highly recommend this book. One major plus is the fact that this book is thoroughly readable and is very humorous at times.

So, roughly a year ago, Baker Academic Press published a book called "The Jesus Legend", probably named after the book by the same title written by George Albert Wells R.J. Hoffman. The Jesus Legend is divided up into 10 chapters
Part I
chapter 1: Miracles and Method
chapter 2: A Jewish Legend of "YHWH embodied?"
chapter 3: One among many legends?
Part II
chapter 4: A Conspiracy of Silence?
chapter 5: The "Silence" of Paul?
Part III
chapter 6: Ancient Literacy and Oral tradition
chapter 7: Historical Remembrance or Prophetic imagination?
Part IV
chapter 8: The Genre and Nature of the Canonical Gospels
chapter 9: Evaluating the Synoptic Gospels as Historical Sources
chapter 10: The Synoptic Tradition and the Jesus of History

The First chapter I found incredibly almost mind-bogglingly helpful. Chapter 1 is intended to provide arguments against the common academic presuppositions against the possibility of using history to prove that miracles happened. In the end, Boyd and Eddy show rather conclusively that the modern bias against the supernatural is limited to a small guild of scholars of the western world.
The First 2 parts are, as one can probably imagine, are intended to be a sweeping refutation of the more scholarly presentations of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Scholars and especially lay-persons will find these arguments helpful and powerful as the more prolific scholars have simply, for better or for worse, not taken these theories seriously enough.
I of course found all 4 chapters on this topic to be immensely helpful. Chapter 2 discusses the supposed hellenistic influence on religious matters in 1st century Palestine. The fact that there is so little evidence for such influence, and so much evidence against hte possibility of such influence strongly tells against the idea of Christianity being a Syncretism of Judaism and Hellenistic religions
Chapter 3 discusses the more scholarly presentations of the Pagan parallels argument which today is presented by the likes of Dundes, Price, Wells, or Doherty. But it also, for a brief moment, discusses the "Jesus as a mythic hero" which was presented by Dundes in "The God who wasn't there" (Of course the atrocious documentary produced by Brian Flemming is not mentioned). The chapter provides a compelling presentation of the methodological and foundational flaws in these arguments
Chapter 4 discusses the silence of ancient historians on the life of Christ and provides useful discussions on Suetonius, Mara Bar Serapion, Tacitus, and Josephus. It makes a useful antidote to anyone whou would use the old "no contemporaneous historian mentions Jesus" Canard
Chapter 5 Discusses the alleged silence of Paul on the life of Jesus and counters the more radical theories proposed by Wells such as "The Cosmic Savior Jesus of Paul".
Chapter 6 discusses the nature of oral tradition in ancient Palestine and modern pre-literate cultures and shows how Oral tradition can be a very reliable medium for transmitting information about Jesus
Chapter 7 provides a useful discussion on the involvement of eyewitnesses in the transmission of the Gospel tradition
Chapter 8 discusses the genre of the Canonical Gospels and concludes that they are ancient bioi (lives) and that the authors, thus, intended to write accurate history. But it also provides a useful argument that the Gospels were intended as oral performance pieces and not necessarily meant to be read alone by literate individuals.
Chapter 9 discusses some oft-touted claims such as contradictions or geographical errors
Chapter 10 wraps it all up
I found the presentation on the Jesus myth very useful to my efforst as an apologist, and the presentation on oral tradition was superb. However, if you are interested in the subject of the reliability of the oral tradition found in the Gospels then You should check out the previous entry, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
I would have to give this book 13 points out of 10. In my apologetic s work, this book has been an invaluable resource to my work in defending the Gospels. For anyone who is serious about defending the reliability of the Gospels, I would very highly recommend this book and Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Together, these books make an excellent 1-2 punch against the assumption that the Gospels are wholly unreliable and together make incredible, powerful, and scholarly arguments for the reliability of the Gospels

Richard Bauckham is the Bishop Wardlaw professor of New Testament Studies at The University of St. Andrews, St. Mary's college. Basically, the thesis of Richard Bauckham's book was first published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 5 years ago, and in a nutshell, this is his thesis: The original eyewitnesses to Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection were the ultimate origins of many of the traditions found in the Gospel narratives and played a vital role in their transmission up until the time of the composition of the Gospels.

These are the 18 chapters in Bauckham's Study
1: From the Historical Jesus to the Jesus of Testimony
2: Papias on the Eyewitnesses
3: Names in the Gospel traditions
4: Palestinian Jewish names
5: The Twelve
6: Eyewitnesses "from the beginning"
7: The Petrine Perspective in the Gospel of Mark
8: Anonymous persons in Mark's passion narrative
9: Papias on Mark and Matthew
10: Models of Oral tradition
11: Transmitting the Jesus traditions
12: Anonymous tradition or Eyewitness testimony?
13: Eyewitness memory
14: The Gospel of John as Eyewitness testimony
15: The witness of the Beloved disciple
16: Papias on John
17: Polycrates and Iranaeus on John
18: The Jesus of Testimony

Bauckham in these 18 chapters presents cogent, powerful, and above all useful arguments for the reliability of the Gospel portaryal of the Jew from galilee. The first argument he presents is that Papias' prologue, preserved in Eusebius, contains information that he assembled his 5 books called The Exposition of the Logia of the Lord, and that he personally had access to traditions rooted in eyewitness testimony. His phrase "a living and surviving voice" is very similar to the opening statement in Luke's Gospel, and conforms to other Ancient historiographic preference for living oral sources rather than written sources. This similarity shows that Luke had access to traditions extensively rooted in eyewitness testimony, and hence the rest of the Gospels likewise had similar testimony to back up their veracity.
ADDENDUM: After contemplating and re-reading Bauckham's 2nd chapter on Papias and the Eyewitnesses, I think a second very cogent argument this gives for the Chrisitans is that Papias' claim to have access to traditions passed down by "the Elders" like John the Elder or Aristion of Philipp the Evangelist shows that the witnesses were by-and-large passing down their stories. Even when Papias wrote (90s AD), long-lived disciples and witnesses still told their tales. This is strong evidence that the Gospels surely would have been rooted in eyewitness testimony.
The second argument comes from his second chapter. In this chapter, Bauckham discusses a pattern of name-dropping we observe in the Synoptic Gospels. In Mark, we see some named characters change to anonymous characters in Matthew and Luke, but we never once observe an anonymous character in Mark gain a name in Matthew or Luke. Couple this with the fact that there are many named characters where the names are simply unecessary (Such as Simon of Cyrene and his sons), or anonymous characters where a name may be necessary (Such as Cleopas on the road to Emmaus), seem to give a nice cumulative case for this phenomena being best explained by the named figures being the very persons who passed down the traditions about these events in the life of Jesus
The third argument which was marginally helpful was his discussion on Palestinian Jewish names. Richard Bauckham makes use of Til Ilan's Lexicon of Jewish names and shows how the personal names in the Gospels conform well to known Palestinian and Galilean naming practices. I dont remember if Bauckham pointed this out in his book, but this would seem to indicate an Aramaic substratum to the Gospels. If the Gospel tradition has an aramaic substratum, this would attest to its reliability and connection to much older traditions, strengthening the case for eyewitnesses involved in the origination and transmission of the Jesus traditions
The fourth argument I found to be very helpful was Bauckham's case that the careful preservation of the list of the twelve apostles indicates that the Twelve disciples, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, were an official body of witnesses who passed on the Jesus traditions. This, again, further reinforces Bauckham's case for the involvement of eyewitnesses in the origination and transmission of the Jesus tradition
The fifth argument I shall repeat is Bauckham's discussion of the literary device of inclusio and its use in the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John. Basically, Bauckham shows how a good portion of Mark's Gospel sort of revolves around Peter, Luke's gospel revolving around the women disciples, and John revolving around Peter, and around that inclusio (I am using "inclusio" and "revolution" interchangeably as I think it would be easier for my audience to visualize this device) there is an inclusio around The Beloved Disciple. Bauckham's discussion on Porphyry and Lucian's use of a similar device in their works to show their own primary witness lends strong evidential support to Mark, Luke, and John revealing eyewitnesses as their main sources.
The sixth argument I will provide is expressed in 2 chapters of Bauckham's work, which is an argument for the traditional authorship of Mark's Gospel. First, Bauckham discusses how the Gospel of Mark is essentially a Petrine Gospel, in that it is more centered around Peter than any of the other Gospels, and this provides strong internal evidence of Peter being the primary witness behind Mark's Gospel. Bauckham then discusses the external evidence from Papias of Hierapolis and its attestation of Markan authorship

I will stop for now and simply recap. In this book, Bauckham provides an incredibly scholarly and compelling case for the reliability of the Gospel tradition by showing its essential origins on eyewitness testimony.