The most first thing we need to go over for my argument to work is the function of logic and rationality in the world. As I’m sure most of you will agree, logic by itsel fis no guarentor of truth. The process can lead in several directions depending on the facts one uses- and not only facts explicitly brought up in the argument, either. There’s always background knowledge that affects things. For example, suppose a woman of prominence in the town invited me to her home for a dinner party. Suppose sometime between now and then, I see an insect exterminator’s truck pulling into her driveway. There’s any number of things I could conclude, here’s two of them:
“Ew, that lady has a bug problem, maybe I don’t want to eat there after all.”
or
“Ah, Mrs. So-and-so is married to the Orkin Man? This will be fascinating, I’ve always wanted to talk with someone in that line of work.”
Now, clearly I’m not informed enough to decide between the two. But the interesting thing is, if I believe the second statement above, no new evidence will get me to the first. If you tell me the woman isn’t married, I can just conclude that she’s dating the Orkin Man. If you tell me she’s married to someone else, then I’ll be aghast that she’s cheating on her husband with the Orkin man, and so on. Add for the sake of argument that the first statement is the truth, and we see a basic problem that skeptics have been blowing around for ever:
- ) Any body of evidence, no matter how complete or compelling, is suited for a infinite number of conclusions.
So in any situation we would care to examine, we are relying on the data we’ve been immediately given, and other things that we know or believe from past situations- not to mention our moods and dispositions. The situation would be utterly hopeless, except that people seem to agree on a lot of the background information- the existence of other minds, the general reliability of the senses, and so on. With all of that in common, we usually agree on the same conclusions when presented with the same evidence- except in the cases of fields which are agreed upon to be very difficult and require special education- like philosophy.
When it comes to philosophy, those commonly agreed upon background beliefs are often the most controversial and hotly examined claims around. The whole point, it seems, is to talk about that stuff, which means not taking it for granted as true. One of the first things we might notice is a sort of inverted application of (1, above. Any philosophy we come up with- the denial of the existence of matter, or the self, or anything but the self- can all be forced to fit the data we all seem to have in common. This person can say there is no such thing as matter, and that person can say there is no such thing as mind, and both of them have perfectly logical explanations for why there seem to be people thinking about mountains. This general predicament leads to a skepticism in one form or another- whether it’s a pessimistic nihilism or a dumbly-optimistic post-modernism.
I think, though, we need to look at why exactly this is problematic a little deeper. OK, so sometimes our beliefs aren’t going to be correct because we have the wrong assumptions. We still basically know what we have to when we have to, right? Not according to the skeptic, and I think the reason why can be best expressed as a little narrative that goes through our heads in one form or another when we contemplate the difference between what we think, and how it is.
The Common Narrative:
What came first (conceptually or chronologically) is the world of non-thinking stuff- knowing and believing are newcomers to it, contained within it, and yet fundamentally seperated from it. The world of matter goes on as it will regardless of the fruits of these 'ideas' or the developments of these 'concepts'. Knowing is a completely one way street and a terminal chain- the universe does stuff, that stuff causes you to believe something (true or otherwise) Top-down like that, it's clear that the universe will be as it is whether human knowledge can capture it all, or is a complete folly.
~The End~
I think this half-concept of Knowledge as Interloper exists at the bottom of all the skepticism- it justifies why the possibility of doubt of even fundamental things is so problematic. We can be proud of our soundness, but just that and no more. Without any actual truth, rationality is basically just a sort of grammar, and when it comes to deciding what to believe, it’s ultimately no better than irrationality or anti-rationality.
The other thing I notice about Knowledge as Interloper is that it’s very presumptive, and profoundly materialistic. Why presume that knowing is a new thing to the universe at all? Even people who would say they don’t believe that let it creep into their epistemology un-examined, it seems to me. But there is an alternate view.
The Alternate Narrative:
What came first was a Knower, which to begin with knew Itself. Matter, stuff which doesn't know, is the Interloper- it exists as a substrate in which to perform acts of Will, and the capacity to be known is essential to that. When new knowers come along, they are in the image of the original in the sense that have the capacity to know matter sufficiently to act out their wills on it.
If knowing came first, and matter was created (knowledgably) to be the object of such an act, then these problems melt away. My basic act of presuming there is a tree when I see one is every bit a part of the original universe as gravity- knowing was in the mix there with the flour and confectionary sugar. The universe can be known because it was created as an essentially knowable thing*, and Knowledge trumps matter both chronologically and metaphysically- it is in all ways prior. It is a function of intentionality.
Obviously this narrative is theistic. So then, the question that immediately comes up is "Why suppose there is a God in the first place? What's the proof?" Well, the proof is in the pudding in this case- the product of the narratives. If the universe is naturally and originally unknown, and unknowable by us due to the problems of skepticism, then I submit that the skeptics win, and even asking for proof of what we believe is sophististry, and ultimately a waste of everybody's time. However, if Knowing happened first, then everything we know is essentially information passed along from one Person to another, which is much more sensible than wringing knowledge out of the dumb world like blood from a turnip.
What's interesting is that the alternate narrative isn't just deistic, it needs to be very particularly theistic- not only was there an original force, but that original force was a Knower. A Mind. Not just a Mind in some dim that's-the-best-word-we-have-for-it sense, but a Mind similiar enough to ours that it's knowing could justify our own. The knower has to have power to create the world of matter out of it's knowledge, and one could argue the benevolence to put us in a state where our knowledge can apply as we imagine it to do.
So then, when I say that theism is the only rational option, I don't mean it in the sense that it's the only option that can justify itself rationally (that is, show coherence). I'm saying theism is the only option that justifies our pre-occupation with reason and coherence in the first place.
