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.