Knowledge – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Our Knowledge of Sameness (2021 Version)

How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness! The strangeness of the ordinary. Sameness is a structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. There is synchronic and diachronic sameness. I will be discussing the latter.

How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.

But this answer is open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or rather my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all. Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware — not mediately via inference — that they are the same. Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.

What is the nature of this immediate awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference or by literally seeing (with the eyes) the numerical sameness of yesterday's tree and today's tree? And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?

A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change. Change is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change.

Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters if and only if it has incompatible properties at different times. Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my kitchen counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana, has objectively changed in respect of color.

But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.

I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana. I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for. Sameness is like existence: neither are empirically detectable features of things.

Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.

How then do I know it? I don't for a second doubt that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same girl. I am strongly inclined to say that I know that it is the same tree, etc. The question, however, is how I know it. How is it possible that I know such a thing given that transtemporal identity is not empirically detectable? My inability to explain how it is possible would seem to some to cast doubt on my claim that I do know that it is the same tree, etc. Others will demur and say that what is actual is possible whether or not one can explain how it is possible. One simply waxes dogmatic in the face of critical raisonnement.

If I cannot know diachronic identity empirically, do I impose the concept of such identity on what I literally see so as to enforce the numerical identity of the two trees, the two bananas, the two girls? Do I really want to say that identity is a transcendental concept to which nothing in the sensory manifold corresponds, a concept that I impose on the manifold?

Knowledge and Belief

If there are truths that we cannot know but only believe, should we deny ourselves those truths because they cannot be known but only believed?

Knowledge of Existence: Is Existence Hidden?

1) I see a tree, a palo verde. Conditions are optimal for veridical perception. I see that the tree is green, blooming, swaying slightly in the breeze. The tree is given to my perceptual acts as having these and other properties. Now while I do not doubt for a second the existence of the tree, let alone deny its existence, the tree is not given as existing. It is given as green, as blooming, etc., but not as existing. I see the green of the tree, but I don't see the existence of the tree. If existence is a property of the tree, it is not an observable property thereof. Whatever existence is, it is not phenomenologically accessible or empirically detectable. And yet the tree exists. We might be tempted to reason as follows:

a) The tree is not exhausted by its quiddity: it is not a mere what, but an existing what.
b) The existing/existence does not appear: only quidditative properties appear.

Therefore

c) The existing/existence of the tree is hidden.

2) Should we conclude that the existing of things is mysterious or hidden, an occult depth dimension beyond our phenomenological ken? P. Butchvarov and others would answer in the negative. And presumably anyone phenomenologically inclined would have to agree. Now there is a class of views according to which the existence of a concrete particular such as a tree is a sort of coherence of the facets, aspects, guises, noemata, intentional objects — pick your term — that are presented to us directly and in their turn present the thing itself. Following Butchvarov I will use 'object' and distinguish objects from entities. The tree itself is an entity; the various facets, aspects, guises, noemata, are objects.

For example, I am seated on my porch looking at the tree. I cannot see the whole of it, and I don't see all of the properties of the portions I do see. Seated, I enjoy a visual perception the accusative of which is (incomplete) object O1. When I stand up, still looking at the tree, I am presented with a slightly different (incomplete) object, O2. Advancing toward the tree, a series of objects come into view one after another. (This makes it sound as if the series is discrete when it is actually continuous.) Arriving at the tree, I put my hands around the trunk. The resulting object is richer than the others by the addition of tactile data, but still incomplete and therefore not identical to the completely determinate entity. But these objects all cohere and 'consubstantiate' (Castaneda) and are of one and the same entity. In their mutual cohesion, they manifest one and the same entity. They present the same infinitely-propertied entity in a manner suitable to a finite mind.

Butchvarov speaks of the material (not formal) identity of the objects. On such a scheme the existence of an entity is naturally assayed as the indefinite identifiability of its objects. Existence is indefinite identifiability. By whom? By the subject in question. We could call this a transcendentally-subjective theory of existence, although that is not what Butch calls it. We find something very similar in Husserl and Hector-Neri Castaneda. In Husserl, existence is 'constituted in consciousness.' Sein reduces to Seinsinn.

On a scheme like this, existence would not be hidden but would itself be accessible, not as a separate monadic property, but as the ongoing relational coherence of objects, noemata, guises, aspects or whatever you want to call them. It would seem that the phenomenologically inclined, those who agree with Heidegger that ontology is possible only as phenomenology, would have to subscribe to some such theory of existence.

3) On the above approach one could 'bracket' the existence in itself of the tree entity and still have available existence as indefinite identifiability. But does this 'bracketing' (Husserl's Einklammerung) merely put existence in itself out of play or does it cancel it?I suspect it is the latter.

Let's be clear about the two senses of 'exists.'

In the phenomenological sense, existence is the mutual cohesion of Butchvarov's objects, Castaneda's guises, Husserl's noemata. Existence is thus accessible from the first-person point of view. It is in the open and not hidden. The question, How do I know that the tree exists? has a ready answer. I know that the tree exists from the manifest coherence of its objects, their indefinite identifiability in Butchvarov's sense.

In the second sense, existence is such that what exists exists independently of (finite) consciousness and its synthetic activities. In this second 'realist' sense of 'exists,' things could exist even in the absence of conscious beings. Existence in this second sense is that which makes existents exist outside of their causes and outside the mind and outside of language. In the former 'idealist' sense of 'exist,' nothing could exist in the absence of consciousness.

4) One conclusion: if you deny that existence is hidden, then it looks like you will have to embrace some type of idealism, with its attendant problems.

5) How might existence be hidden? Suppose that everything apart from God is kept in existence by ongoing divine creative activity. If so, each thing apart from God is an effect of the divine cause. Its being the effect of a hidden Causa Prima is itself hidden. My tree's being maintained in existence outside of its (secondary) causes and outside the mind is not manifest to us. Perceiving the tree, I cannot 'read off' its createdness. Its createdness is its existence and both are hidden.

6) My final conclusion is that no classical theist can adopt a phenomenological theory of existence.

Secure Epistemic Foundations, Language, and Reality

This from Grigory Aleksin:

I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and find the most foundational and basic pieces of knowledge that are required by any worldview.

It seems to me there are at least two things that are in some sense foundational:

(1) Something exists

(2) There are correct and incorrect inferences

(1) seems to follow from what is meant by a 'thing' and what is meant by 'exists'. However this is only the case, if there are correct and incorrect inferences. Therefore, (2) is in some sense prior to (1). Hopefully that makes sense.

BV: It does indeed make sense. But I would approach the quest for secure foundations more radically. How do I know (with objective certainty) that something exists? I know this because I know that I exist. 'Something exists' follows immediately from 'I exist.' To say that one proposition follows from another is to say that the inference from the other to the one is correct. The correctness of the inference preserves not only the truth of the premise but also its objective certainty. I agree that your (2) is in some sense prior to (1); it is a presupposition of the inferential move from

(0) I exist

to

(1) Something exists.

My problem arises when I consider that both (1) and (2) are not actually part of reality: both are sentences or linguistic expressions.

BV: Here you have to be careful. Surely a sentence token is a part of reality, even if you restrict reality to the spatio-temporal. The truth that something exists is not the same as its linguistic expression via the visible string, 'Something exists.' That same truth (true proposition, true thought) can also be expressed by a tokening of the German sentence 'Etwas existiert' and in numerous other ways. This suffices to show that the proposition expressed is not the same as the material vehicle of its expression. And already in Plato there is the insight that, while one can see or hear a sentence token, the eyes and the ears are not the organs whereby one grasps the thought expressed by marks on paper or sounds in the air.

So we need to make some distinctions: sentence type, sentence token, proposition/thought (what Frege calls der Gedanke). And this is just for starters.

And should we restrict reality to the spatio-temporal-causal? Are not ideal/abstract objects also real? The sign '7' is not the same as the number 7. A numeral is not a number. I can see the numeral, but not the number. I can see seven cats, but not the (mathematical) set having precisely those cats as members. I can see the inscription '7 is prime' but not the proposition expressed on an occasion of use by a person who produces a token of that linguistic type. The ideal/abstract objects just mentioned arguably belong to reality just as much as cats and rocks.

Thus I have come to consider the role of language. The issue is that language is just a way of mapping reality, and as such is disconnected from it. This raises the question of what 'truth' is, since on one hand we know that there are objective truths, yet truths are only expressed [only by] using language. My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions? I know that linguistic analysis plays a central role in analytic philosophy, but I cannot help by having [but have] doubts or suspicions that something is wrong. As you see, I cannot fully express what it is that causes me such a headache, but it stems from a suspicion with respect to the use and limits of language, and thus philosophical inquiry.

BV: We do distinguish between WORDS and WORLD, between language and reality. But this facile distinction, reflected upon, sires a number of puzzles. My cat Max is black. So I write, 'Max is black.' The proper name 'Max' maps onto Max. These are obviously distinct: 'Max' is monosyllabic, but no animal is monosyllabic. So far, so good. But what about the predicate 'black'? Does it have a referent in reality in the way that 'Max' has a referent in reality? It is not obvious that it does. And if it does, what is the nature of this referent? If it doesn't, what work does the predicate do? And then there is the little word 'is,' the copula in the sentence. Does it have a referent? Does it map onto something in reality the way 'Max' does? And what might that be? The transcendental unity of apperception? Being? If you say 'nothing,' then what work does the copula do?

One can see from this how questionable is the claim "that language is just a way of mapping reality . . . ." We don't want to say that for each discrete term there is a one-to-one mapping to an extralinguistic item. That would be a mad-dog realism. (What do 'and' and 'or' and 'not' refer to?) Nominalism is also problematic if you hold that only names refer extralinguistically. And you have really gone off the deep end if you hold that all reference is intralinguistic.

Here is another ancient puzzle. A sentence is not a list. 'Max is black' is not a mere list of its terms. There is such a list, but it cannot 'attract a truth-value.' That is a philosopher's way of saying that a list cannot be either true or false. But a sentence in the indicative mood is either true or false. Therefore, a sentence in the indicative mood is not a list. Such a sentence has a peculiar unity that makes it apt to be either true or false. But how are we to understand that unity without igniting Bradley's regress?

And then there is the question of the truth-bearer or truth-vehicle. You write above as if sentences qua linguistic expressions are truth-bearers. But that can't be right. How could physical marks on paper be either true or false?

My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions?

It is not clear what you are asking. You say that there are objective truths. That's right. Your problem seems to be that you do not see how this comports with the fact that truths are expressed only by using language. The source of your puzzlement may be your false assumption that sentence qua linguistic expressions are the primary vehicles of the truth-values.

Combox open.

Butchvarov: Knowledge as Requiring Objective Certainty

We begin with an example from Panayot Butchvarov's The Concept of Knowledge, Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 47.

[CK is the red volume on the topmost visible shelf. Immediately to its right is Butch's Being Qua Being. Is Butch showing without saying that epistemology is prior to metaphysics?]

But now to work.

There is a bag containing 99 white marbles and one black marble. I put my hand in the bag and without looking select a marble. Of course, I believe sight unseen that the marble I have selected is white. Suppose it is. Then I have a justified true belief that a white marble has been selected. My belief is justified because of the fact that only one of the 100 marbles is black. My belief is true because I happened to pick a white marble. But surely I don't know that I have selected a white marble. The justification, though very good, is not good enough for knowledge. I have justified true belief but not knowledge.

Knowledge, says Butchvarov, entails the impossibility of mistake. This seems right. The mere fact that people will use the word 'know' in a case like the one described cuts no ice. Ordinary usage proves nothing. People say the damndest things. They are exaggerating, as a subsequent post may show. 'Know' can be used in non-epistemic ways — think of carnal knowledge for example — but used epistemically it can be used correctly in only one way: to mean absolute impossibility of mistake. Or as least that is Butchvarov's view, a view I find attractive.

Admittedly, knowledge as impossibility of mistake is a very stringent concept of knowledge. Why should we care to set the bar so high? Why is knowledge in the strict sense important? It is important because there are life and death situations in which one needs to know in order to decide on a course of action.

Indexicality and Omniscience

Patrick Grim gives something like the following argument for the impossibility of divine omniscience. What I know when I know that

1. I am making a mess

is an indexical fact that no one else can know. At most, what someone else can know is that

2. BV is making a mess

or perhaps, pointing to BV, that

3. He is making a mess.

Just as no one except BV can refer to BV by tokening the first-person singular pronoun, no one except BV has access to the indexical fact that, as BV would put it to himself, I am BV. Only BV is privy to this fact; only BV knows himself in the first-person way. Now an omniscient being knows everything that can be known. Although I am not omniscient, there is at least one proposition that I know — namely (1) — that is not known by any other knower, including an omniscient knower. So an omnisicent being is impossible: by its very definition it must know every fact that can be known, but there are indexical facts that it cannot know. God can know that BV is making a mess but he cannot know what I know when I know that I am making a mess. For any subject S distinct from God, the first-person facts appertinent to S are inaccessible to every mind distinct from S, including God's mind. That is what I take to be Grim's argument.

I suppose one could counter the argument by denying that there are indexical facts. But since I hold that there are both indexical propositions and indexical facts, that response route is not available to me. Let me see if I can respond by making a distinction between two senses of 'omniscience.'

A. X is omniscient₁=_df X knows every fact knowable by some subject or other.

B. X is omniscient₂ =df X knows every fact knowable by some one subject.

What indexical facts show is that no being is or can be omniscient in the first sense. No being knows every indexical and non-indexical fact. But a failure to know what cannot be known does not count against a being's being omniscient in a defensible sense of this term any more than a failure to do what cannot be done counts against a being's being omnipotent. A defensible sense of 'omniscience' is supplied by (B). In this second sense, God is omniscient: he knows every fact that one subject can know, namely, every non-indexical fact, plus all facts pertaining to the divine subjectivity. What more could one want?

Since no being could possibly satisfy (A), (A) is not the appropriate sense of 'omniscience.' Compare omnipotence. An omnipotent being cannot be one who can do just anything, since there are both logical and non-logical limits on what any agent can do. Logical: God cannot actualize (create) an internally contradictory state of affairs. Non-logical: God cannot restore a virgin. So from the fact that it is impossible for God to know what is impossible for any one being to know, it does not follow that God is not omniscient.

To sum up. There are irreducible first-personal facts that show that no being can be omniscient in the (A)-sense: Patrick Grim's argument is sound. But the existence of irreducible first-personal facts is consistent with the truth of standard theism since the latter is committed only to a being omniscient in the (B)-sense of 'omniscience.'

Does Omniscience Require Incarnation? Pursuing Some Consequences

Dr. Vito Caiati occasioned in me a new thought the other day: that divine omniscience might require divine incarnation. The gist of the thought is as follows. If God is all-knowing, then he possesses not only all knowledge by description, but also all knowledge by acquaintance. But it is not easy to see how God in his disincarnate state could have all or any knowledge by acquaintance of beings whose subjectivity is realized in matter. And this for the simple reason that if God is a pure spirit then his subjectivity is real without being realized in matter.

One could know everything there is to know objectively about bats but still not know subjectively, 'from the inside,' what it is like to be a bat in Thomas Nagel's sense. Objective omniscience is compatible with subjective nescience. To know what it is like to be a bat I would have to be one: I would have to have the physiological constitution of a bat. And so for God to know what it is like to be a man dying on a cross God would have to be a man dying on a cross. To have objective knowledge of every aspect of dying on a cross is not to experience dying on a cross. That's the rough idea. It has interesting and troubling consequences which I didn't pursue on Saturday night. So I am pleased to hear from Jacques.

Jacques writes,

I agree that God has to become a human being in order to know everything. But, as you say, this seems to lead to further problems. Here are two things that come to mind.

First, there would be the same problem with respect to every sentient being. God has to be one of us in order to know certain perspectival or subjective facts about us. But God also has to be a bat or a beetle, for the same reason, if God is to be truly omniscient.

It seems so.

But in addition, it's not enough for omniscience that God has been incarnated once as a certain type of being. After all, that would mean only that God knows what it's like to have been that human being–a male one, living in the Roman empire, etc. Surely God also needs to know what it's like to be a woman, or a Mayan, or whatever. And also needs to know what it's like to be me as opposed to you, and you as opposed to me. Does this mean that believing in an omniscient God rationally supports some kind of Hindu-ish or pantheistic theory over Christianity? (Or does it mean that Christianity properly understood implies that God is every single one of us, and every bat and beetle?)

This is much less clear. You and I are two numerically different human beings, but I don't need to be you in order to know what it is like to be you. Despite the privacy of experience, most if not all of our sensory qualia are similar if not qualitatively identical. Lacking the special powers of Bill Clinton, I can't feel your pain: I cannot live through numerically the same pain experiences you live though when you are in some definite kind of pain, such as non-migraine headache. Your experiencings are in your psyche; mine are in mine. But I know what it is like when you have a headache since the subjective qualitative features of the experiencings are the same or very similar. What makes this possible is that we are animals of very similar physiological constitution. I suspect that sensory qualia are universals of a sort.

I am not a woman and I so I don't quite know what it is like to experience menstrual cramps. But I know what muscle cramps are like, and so I have some basis for empathy with the distaff contingent of child-bearing years.

And so I would not go so far as to say that for God to know what it is like to be a human, he must be or become every human. It suffices for him to become a human. Nor is it necessary that he become a woman for him to know what it is like to be a woman.

But then there is this consideration:

Is there something it is like to be me, this particular person, numerically different from every other person? Sometimes I have the strong sense that there is. Call it one's irreducible haecceity (thisness) or ipseity (selfness). It is irreducible in that it cannot be reduced to anything repeatable or multiply exemplifiable or anything constructed out of repeatable or multiply exemplifiable elements. This is a sort of quale that I alone have and experience and that no one distinct from me could have or experience. We are all unique, but each of us has his own uniqueness 'incommunicable to any other' as a scholastic might say. I sometimes have the sense that each of us is uniquely unique as a person, as a subject in the innermost core of his subjectivity. And sometimes it seems that I know what it is like to be this uniquely unique person, absolutely irreplaceable and (therefore?) infinitely precious and of absolute worth.

If God exists, he is super-eminently uniquely unique and we, who are made in his image and likeness, are derivatively uniquely unique.

Trouble is, this notion of a uniquely unique haecceity tapers off into the mystical. For my thisness or your's or anything's is ineffable. It cannot be conceptually articulated or put into language. Individuum ineffabile est as a medieval Aristotelian might say. Is the ineffable nonexistent because ineffable? That was Hegel's view. Or is the ineffable existent despite being ineffable? That was the Tractarian Wittgenstein's view: Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche. One cannot eff the ineffable. Does this mean that it is not there to be effed? Or does it mean that effing is not the proper mode of access to the existent ineffable? I incline in the latter direction.

Now suppose that each person at the base of his subjectivity is uniquely unique and is acquainted with his own irreducible haecceity and ipseity. How could God know anyone's haecceity? He can't know it objectively, and to know my haecceity subjectively, as I know it, God would have to be me. This leads on to the heretical thought that for God to be all-knowing, he would have to be every sentient being, as Jacques appreciates.

Second, it seems that having all objective knowledge precludes subjectivity and vice versa. While incarnated as a particular man, with a perspective and personality, God was not simultaneously aware of all objective facts. That kind of awareness would seem to make it impossible to have a perspective and a personality. So is true omniscience impossible? Either you know everything objective, or you know only something objective and only something subjective. I don't mind this result too much. I have no strong intuition that omniscience is possible. But then what should a Christian or other theist believe about God's knowledge?

A God's eye view is a View from Nowhere (to allude to a title of one of T. Nagel's books.) An incarnate God would have to have a definite perspective and personality. But then he could not be objectively omniscient. If, on the other hand, he were objectively omniscient, then he could not be incarnate. That seems to be what Jacques is saying.

It might be replied that that Jesus qua God is objectively omnisicent but subjectively nescient, but qua man is objectively limited in knowledge but has knowledge of qualia. If that makes sense, then we could say that an incarnate God knows more than the same God aloof from matter. For then the incarnate God knows everything the disincarnate God knows plus what it is like to be a man, and by analogy what it is like to be a cat or a dog or any sentient being sufficiently similar in physiological make-up to a man.

Is true omniscience possible? If true omniscience requires knowing everything there is to know, both objectively (by description) and subjectively (by acquaintance), then true or full omniscience is impossible, i.e., no one person could be fully omniscient. What then should a Christian theologian say?

He could perhaps say this: God is omniscient in that he knows everything that it is possible for any one person to know. Now it is not possible that any one person know everything both objectively and subjectively. Therefore, it is no restriction of God's omniscience that he does not know everything.

Could an eternal God know what time it is? Presumably not. Could God be both omniscient and ignorant with respect to future contingents? Why not? God knows whatever it it possible to know; future contingents, however, are impossible for anyone to know.

It is like the situation with respect to omnipotence. It is no restriction of God's omnipotence that he can do only what it is logically possible to do. God is powerless to restore a virgin. But that's nothing against the divine omnipotence.

God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat?

Tony Flood has gone though many changes in his long search for truth. He seems to have finally settled down in Van Til's presuppositionalism. Tony writes,

God, the cosmos, and a plurality of minds other than one’s own are in the same epistemological boat. [. . .] To be skeptical about one but not the other two is arbitrary. Our innate predisposition to be realistic about all three is divinely written “software” that informs our cerebral “wetware.”

I wish I could accept this, but I don't, and I believe I have good reasons for my non-acceptance.

By "in the same epistemological boat," Flood means that God, the physical universe, and other minds are all on a par in respect of dubitability. No one of them is more open to reasonable doubt than the other two, and none of them is open to reasonable doubt. Therefore, one can no more reasonably doubt the existence of God than one can doubt the existence of other minds. Atheism is on a par with solipsism in point of plausibility.

And bear in mind that by 'God' here is meant something very specific, the triune God of Christian theism, the God of the Bible as understood by Van Til and Co. It is one thing to argue — and it can be done with some plausibility — that the validity of all reasoning about any subject presupposes the existence of an omniscient necessary being. It is quite another to argue that the presuppositum must be the God of Christian theism as the latter is expounded by a Calvinist!

Now I concede that doubts about the external world and the the reality of other minds are hyperbolic, and if taken as genuine doubts, as opposed to thought experiments deployed in an epistemology seminar, unreasonable. No one really doubts the existence of rocks or other minds. Not even Bishop Berkeley doubts, let alone denies, the existence of rocks, the tree in the quad, and suchlike. This is why it is perfectly lame to think that Berkeley's idealism can be refuted by kicking a stone. (See Of Berkeley's Stones and the Eliminativist's Beliefs and Argumentum ad Lapidem?)

The hyperbolic skepticism of Descartes' dream argument and its latter-day brain-in-the-vat incarnations are methodological tools of the epistemologist who seeks to understand how we know what we know, and what it is to know what we know. A philosopher who wonders how knowledge is possible may, but need not, and typically does not, deny or have any real doubt THAT knowledge is possible. For example, I may be firmly convinced of the existence of so-called abstract objects (numbers, sets, propositions, uninstantiated properties, etc.) but be puzzled about how knowledge of such entities is possible given that there is no causal interaction with them. That puzzlement does not get the length of doubt or denial. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for knowledge of the past, knowledge of other minds, and knowledge of the external world.

My point, then, is that (i) practically no one has real doubts about the existence of the external world or the existence of other minds, and that (ii) it would not be reasonable to have such doubts. But (iii) people do have real doubts about the existence of the God of Christian theism, and (iv) it is not unreasonable to have such doubts. The various arguments from evil, and not just these, cast reasonable doubt on Christian theism.

One type of real doubt is an 'existential' doubt, one that grips a person who succumbs to it, and induces fear and perhaps horror. There are those who lose their faith in God and suffer in consequence. They experience a terrible sense of loss, or perhaps they fear that they have been duped by crafty priests who exploited their youthful innocence and gullibility to infect them with superstitious nonsense in order to keep the priestly hustle going. One can lose one's faith in God, and many do. No one loses his faith in the external world or in other minds. And this for the simple reason that there was no need for faith in the first place.

I believe I have said enough to cast serious doubt on, if not refute, the idea that God, the the cosmos, and other minds are are in the same epistemological boat. That's a boat that won't float.

If God Cannot Cause Himself, How Can He Know Himself?

This from a reader:

If we say God cannot create himself since this implies a contradiction (God existing prior to himself to act on himself), how can we say God does anything with regard to himself?

For instance, we say God knows himself. But how is this possible, seeing as God would need to first exist, in order to know himself? Knowledge is a relation in the mind to what is outside it. If I "know" a thing, I have the thing, the thing that is not me, in my mind. But if there is only simply God, how does he "have" himself in his mind?

An interesting question worth thinking about.

I grant that God cannot create himself. For if he creates himself then he causes himself to exist, and nothing can cause itself to exist. For a thing cannot enter into a causal relation unless it exists. So if God causes himself to exist, then his existence is logically, if not temporally, prior to his existence. And that, we agree, is impossible.

The main point is that the existence of a thing cannot be logically prior to its existence. (And if it cannot be logically prior, then it cannot be temporally prior either.) But the existence of a knower not only can but must be logically prior to its self-knowledge. I cannot know myself unless I exist, but I can exist without knowing myself. In the finite case, then, it is clear that existence is logically prior to self-knowledge, and indeed other-knowledge as well.

Now God is omniscient and exists in all possible worlds. So there is no possible situation in which he does not know himself or fails to know everything there is to know about himself. If we think of God as omnitemporal as opposed to eternal, then at every moment he enjoys full self-knowledge. At every moment, his existence and self-knowledge are simultaneous. But this is not a problem since there is no problem with God's existence being logically prior to his self-knowledge even if the former is not temporally prior to the latter. We get the same result if God is eternal.

In sum, God's existence cannot be logically prior to God's existence as it would have to be if God creates himself. But God's existence can be logically prior to God's self-knowledge.

There is a second problem that the reader conflates with one I just discussed. If God alone exists, how can God know himself if "Knowledge is a relation in the mind to what is outside it"? This problem is solved by denying the assumption. Self-knowledge is NOT a relation to what is outside the mind. I feel good right now, and I know it. The object of my knowledge is an internal state. God's self-knowledge can be said to be analogous to finite self-knowledge.

How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?

Chris M writes,

If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if the world didn't exist – his knowledge would be different in content. Yet God is supposed to be a single act of being, purely simple and identical across all possible worlds. God's essence just is his act of necessary existence, knowing and willing. It seems God's knowledge of contingents thus is an accident in him. But God can have no accidents. How then can he, as actus purus and necessary existence, have properties (such as knowing x or willing x) which he may not have had ?

That is a clear statement of the difficulty. As I see it, the problem is essentially one of solving the following aporetic tetrad:

1) God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.

2) God knows some contingent truths.

3) Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.

4) God exists necessarily.

The classical theist, Aquinas for example, is surely committed to (1), (2), and (4). The third limb of the tetrad, however, is extremely plausible. And yet the four propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.

For example, it is contingently true that Socrates published nothing and contingently true that God knows this truth. He presumably knows it in virtue of being in some internal mental state such as a belief state or some state analogous to it. But this state, while contingent, is intrinsic to God. The divine simplicity, however, requires that there be nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God. Since God exists necessarily, as per (4), the belief state exists necessarily, which contradicts the fact that it must exist contingently.

I discuss this problem here, and in nearby posts in the Divine Simplicity category.

Disagreement in Philosophy: Notes on Jiří Fuchs

That philosophers disagree is a fact about which there is little disagreement, even among philosophers. But what this widespread and deep disagreement signifies is a topic of major disagreement. One issue is whether or not the fact of disagreement supplies a good reason to doubt the possibility of philosophical knowledge.

The contemporary Czech philosopher Jiří Fuchs begins his book Illusions of Sceptics (2016) by considering this question. He grants that the "cognitive potential of philosophy" is called into question by the "embarrassing fact that there is not a single thing that philosophers would agree on." (13) Nevertheless, Fuchs insists that we have no good reason to be skeptical about the possibility of philosophical knowledge. His view is that "Discord among philosophers can . . . be sufficiently explained by the frequent prejudices of philosophers . . . Consequently, the existence of discord among philosophers does not imply that their work is of fundamentally unscientific character." (16)

Besides the prejudices of philosophers, the lack of consensus among philosophers may also be attributed to philosophy's difficulty: "the discord may just be a consequence of the specific challenging character of philosophy."(19)

Fuchs maintains that "consensus has no relation to the core of scientific quality. . . ." (24). The core of scientific quality is constituted by "proof or demonstration." (24) His claim is that interminable and widespread disagreement or lack of consensus has no tendency to show that philosophy is incapable of achieving genuine knowledge, where such knowledge involves apodictic insight into the truth of some philosophical propositions.

There are two main issues we need to discuss. One concerns the relation of consensus and truth; the other the relation of consensus and knowledge. My impression is that Fuchs conflates the two issues. I will argue, contra Fuchs, that while it is obvious that consensus and truth are logically independent, logical independence is not obvious, and is arguably absent, in the case of consensus and knowledge. My view, tentatively held, is that the lack of consensus in philosophy does tend to undermine philosophy's claim to be knowledge.

Consensus and Truth

I maintain, and Fuchs will agree, that the following propositions are true if not platitudinous.

1) Truth does not entail consensus. If a proposition is true, it is true whether or not there is consensus with respect to its truth.

2) Consensus does not entail truth. If most or all experts agree that p, it does not follow that p is true.

3) Consensus and truth are logically independent. This follows from (1) in conjunction with (2). One can have truth without consensus and consensus without truth.

Lack of consensus, therefore, does not demonstrate lack of truth. Even if no philosophical proposition wins the agreement of a majority of competent practitioners, it is possible that some such propositions are true. But it doesn't follow that some philosophical propositions have 'scientific quality.' To have this quality they have to be true, but they also have to be knowable by us. But what is knowability and how does it relate to consensus? To answer this question we must first clarify some other notions.

Truth, Knowledge, Knowability, Cognitivity, Justification, and Certainty

I add to our growing list the following propositions, perhaps not all platitudinous and not all agreeable to Fuchs:

4) Knowledge entails truth. If S knows that p, it follows that p is true. There is no false knowledge. There are false beliefs, and indeed false justified beliefs; but there is no false knowledge. You could think of this as an analytic/conceptual truth, or as a truth about the essence of knowledge.

5) Truth does not entail knowledge. If p is true, it does not follow that someone (some finite mind or ectypal intellect) knows that p.

6) Truth does not entail knowability by us. If, for any proposition p, p is true, it does not follow that there is any finite subject S such that S has the power to know p. There may be truths which, though knowable 'in principle,' or knowable by the archetypal intellect, are not knowable by us.

7) Cognitivity does not entail knowability. Let us say that a proposition is cognitive just in case it has a truth value. Assuming bivalence, a proposition is cognitive if and only if it is either true, or if not true, then false. Clearly, cognitivity is insufficient for knowability. For if a proposition is false, then it is cognitive but cannot be known because it is false. And if a proposition is true, then it is cognitive but may not be knowable because beyond our ken.

8) Knowledge entails justification. If S believes that p, and p is true, it does not follow that S knows that p. For knowledge, justification is also required. This is a bit of epistemological boilerplate that dates back to Plato's Theaetetus.

9) Knowledge entails objective certainty. Knowledge implies the sure possession of the object of knowledge; if the subject is uncertain, then the subject does not have knowledge strictly speaking.

Consensus and Knowledge

Fuchs and I will agree that consensus is not necessary for truth: a true proposition need not be one that enjoys the consensus of experts. But consensus may well be necessary for knowledge. Fuchs, however, seems to conflate truth and certainty, and thus truth with knowledge. A truth can be true without being known by us; indeed, without even being knowable by us. But, necessarily, whatever is known is true. On p. 30 we read:

By denying that the thought processes of philosophers can exhibit a scientific quality simply because of the existence of discord among philosophers, we make consensus a necessary condition for the general validity and potential certainty of scientific knowledge, which is the attribute of science. (Emphasis added.)

On the following page we find the same thought but with a replacement of 'potential certainty' by 'certainty':

. . . the necessary question of whether the consensus of experts is really such an essential and indispensable condition for the certainty and general validity of scientific knowledge. (31, emphasis added.)

When one speaks of the validity of a proposition, one means its truth. ('Valid' as a terminus technicus in formal logic is not in play here.) So it seems clear that Fuchs is maintaining that consensus is necessary neither for the truth of propositions nor for their certainty. He seems to be maintaining that one can have certain knowledge of a proposition even if the consensus of experts goes against one. This is not obvious. Why not?

Knowledge requires justification. Now suppose I accept the proposition that God exists and that my justification takes the form of various arguments for the existence of God. Those arguments will be faulted by an army of competent practitioners, not all of them atheists, on a variety of grounds. What's more, the members of the atheist divisions will marshal their own positive arguments, in first place arguments from evil. Now if just one of my theistic arguments is sound, then God exists. But I do not, by giving a sound argument for God, know that God exists unless I know that the argument I have given is sound. (A sound argument is a valid deductive argument all of the premises of which are true.) But how do I know that even one of my theistic arguments is sound? How can I legitimately claim to know that when a chorus of my epistemic peers rises up against me?

If what I maintain is true, then it is true no matter how many epistemic peers oppose me: they are just wrong! Truth is absolute: it is not sensitive to the vagaries of agreement and disagreement. Justification, however, is sensitive to agreement and disagreement. Or so it seems to me. My justification for considering a certain argument sound is undermined by your disagreement assuming that we are both competent in the subject matter of the argument and we are epistemic peers. You may disagree with what I just wrote, and thus disagree with me about the implications of disagreement, but you ought to grant that I am raising a very serious question here. (If you don't grant that, then you get the boot!)

In a situation in which my justification for believing that p is undermined by the disagreement of competent peers, there is no certainty that p. If knowledge logically requires certainty, and certainty is destroyed by the disagreement of competent peers, then I can no longer legitimately claim to know that p. So, while truth has nothing to fear from lack of agreement, knowledge does. For knowledge requires justification, and justification can be augmented or diminished by agreement or disagreement, respectively.

Interim Conclusion

Fuchs makes things too easy for himself by conflating truth and knowledge. We can agree that consensus is logically irrelevant to truth. Protracted disagreement by the best and the brightest over the truth value of p has no tendency to show either deductively or inductively that p is not either true or false. Truth is absolute and thus insulated from the vagaries of opinion. But truths (true propositions) do not do us any good unless we can know them. It is not enough to know that some truths are known; what we need is to know of a given truth that it is true. But disagreement inserts a skeptical blade between the truth and our knowledge of it.

Disagreement in philosophy undermines her claims to knowledge. As I see it, Fuchs has done nothing to undermine this undermining.

Dream and Reality

Suppose I become aware of something while dreaming. Does the fact that I am dreaming invalidate the content of my awareness? Or are there cases in which I become veridically aware that p even while and despite dreaming?

In bed I am puzzling over a chess problem. The book drops from my hands and I fall asleep. The solution occurs to me in a dream, and I later upon waking verify that it is correct. This happens. The solution I dreamt was correct despite my having dreamt it. So not everything that appears in a dream is invalidated by so appearing.

Or during a dream it occurs to me that the number of primes between 13 and 19 inclusive is itself prime. (A prime number is an integer greater than 1 the positive integer divisors of which are only 1 and the number itself. Examples: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29.) The content of my dream-thought is true, indeed necessarily true. So again one cannot validly infer the invalidity of a dream content from the fact that it is a dream content.

Are all items of a priori knowledge that are knowable while awake also knowable while dreaming? I think so. At least in principle. Suppose I come to know a priori by working through the proof that Zorn's Lemma is equivalent to the Axiom of Choice. Could I come to this insight while dreaming? In principle, yes, but not in practice inasmuch as I would need to have visual aids, paper, pencil, books, etc.

In sum, my dreaming that p is consistent with the truth of p if p is knowable a priori.

Due to my embodiment and its limitations, what I know a priori I know in most cases only on the occasion of sense experience, but never on the basis of sense experience. (That's what makes it a priori.) Now suppose there is a visio intellectualis, an intellectual intuition, not only of necessary truths, but also of spiritual substances. Suppose there is mystical knowledge of God or of Persons of the Triniity. Would such mystical insight, if veridical, lose one iota of its veridicality if it were enjoyed while dreaming? Why should it? Perhaps the quiescence of the senses and bodily functions in sleep disposes us toward such extraordinary experiences.

"You're speculating!" No doubt. But if a philosopher can't speculate, who can?

Again on Divine Simplicity and God’s Knowledge of Contingent Truths

This entry continues yesterday's discussion. The question was: How can an ontologically simple God know contingent truths? Here again is yesterday's aporetic tetrad:

1. God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.

2. God knows some contingent truths.

3. Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.

4. God exists necessarily.

I briefly discussed, without endorsing, an externalist way of rejecting (3). Reader Dan M. has a different idea for rejecting (3):

. . . a kind of nominalism about mental acts or states.

To illustrate, consider this truth: (A) Bill is sitting. Because 'Bill' is a singular term denoting a man, (A)'s truth implies the existence of at least one item. But there's disagreement about whether (A) implies the existence of other items. A property realist might say: (A) implies the existence of a property, sitting-ness. An event or state realist might say: (A) implies the existence of an event or state, Bill's sitting. But a nominalist may say: no, an item (e.g. Bill) can be a certain way (e.g. sitting), without that consisting in (or otherwise committing us to) the existence of any further items (such as a property of sitting, or a state or event of Bill's sitting).

Bringing in God's knowledge, we can say: (B) God knows that Bill has two cats. Someone who accepts proposition 3 might say: (B) implies the existence of an item intrinsic to God, namely a particular state of knowledge. If I understand you on knowledge externalism, that sort of response takes issue with 'intrinsic'. On the alternative view I'm entertaining, we take issue with 'item' instead. We say: there is no item of God's knowing that Bill has two cats. Just as Bill can sit without there being a state of Bill's sitting (construed as a bona fide item), God can know that something is the case without there being a state of God's knowing it (construed as a bona fide item).

Very interesting!

The suggestion, to put it generally, is that if a subject S believes/knows/wants/desires (etc.) that p, a correct ontological assay of the situation will not turn up anything in addition to S and p. Thus there is no need to posit any such item as the state (or state of affairs or fact or event) of S's believing/knowing/wanting/desiring that p. So on Dan's proposal, if 'God knows that Bill has two cats' is true, this truth does not commit us ontologically to the state (state of affairs, fact, event) of God's knowing that Bill has two cats.

In Cartesian terms, there is an ego and a cogitatum, but no cogitatio. This amounts to a denial of mental acts and thereby a denial of the act-content distinction.

Well, why not? One reason off the top of my head is that such a parsimonious scheme cannot account for the differences among believing, doubting, suspending judgment, wanting, desiring, willing, imagining, remembering, etc.

One and the same proposition, that Bill has two cats, is known by me, believed but not known by my loyal and trusting readers, doubted by a doubting Thomas or two, suspended by Seldom Seen Slim the Skeptic who takes no position on the weighty question of the extent of my feline involvement, remembered by last year's house guests, etc. Indeed, one and the same subject can take up different attitudes toward one and the same proposition.

Suppose a neighbor tells me there's a mountain lion in my backyard. I begin by doubting the proposition, suspecting my neighbor of confusing a mountain lion with a bobcat, but then, seeing the critter with my own eyes, I advance to believing and perhaps even to knowing. So one and the same subject can take up two or more different attitudes toward one and the same proposition.

These examples are phenomenological evidence that we cannot eke by with just the subject and the object/content but also need to posit mental acts, particular mental occurrences or episodes such as Bill's seeing here and now that there is a mountain lion in his backyard. The differences among believing, knowing, doubting, desiring, remembering, etc. will then be act-differences, differences in the types of mental acts.

How would a resolute denier of mental acts account for these differences? Will he shunt all the differences onto propositional contents? Will he theorize that there are memorial, imaginal, dubitable, desiderative, etc. propositional contents? Good luck with that.

Suppose that S goes from doubting that p to believing that p. The denier of mental acts would have to redescribe the situation as one in which there are two propositions, call them a dub-prop and a cred-prop, with awareness of the first followed by awareness of the second. How could one display these two propositions? Dubitably, there is a mountain lion on the backyard and Credibly, there is a mountain lion in the back yard?

Perhaps such a theory can be worked out plausibly. But it makes little sense to me.

And so we are brought back to our problem: How can a simple God know contingent truths?

Divine Simplicity: Is God Identical to His Thoughts?

Theophilus inquires,

I've been researching the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) recently and I've had a hard time figuring something out. On DDS, is it the case that God is identical with his thoughts? Surely on the view (as you say in your SEP article) God is identical with his omniscience. But does that also mean he is identical with the content of that attribute?

I would appreciate your input on this question, and your SEP article has given me a lot to think about.

The good news for Theophilus is that he has stumbled onto a serious problem. The bad news is that there is no really satisfactory solution known to me.

On DDS, God is identical to his attributes. Omniscience is one of the divine attributes; ergo God is identical to omniscience. This seems to imply that God is identical to the mental states in which his omniscience is articulated. But a good lot of what God knows is contingent, for example, that I am the author of the SEP entry in question. Someone else might have been the author of that encyclopedia entry, not to mention the fact that there might not have been any such entry, or any such encyclopedia.

If we think of knowledge as a propositional attitude, and if this holds for God as well as for us, then there are many contingently true propositions with respect to which God is in corresponding contingent mental states. For if it is contingent that p, then it is contingent that God is in the state of knowing that p. Thus God is contingently in the state — call it S — of knowing that there is such an on-line publication as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

But how can God be identical to S? This, I take it, is the question that vexes Theophilus. He is right to be vexed. How can an ontologically simple God know contingent truths?

The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.

2. God knows some contingent truths.

3. Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.

4. God exists necessarily.

The plausibility of (3) may be appreciated as follows. Whatever else knowledge is, it is plausibly regarded as a species of true belief. A belief is an intrinsic state of a subject. Moreover, beliefs are individuated by their contents: beliefs or believings with different contents are different beliefs or believings. It cannot be that one and the same act of believing has different contents at different times or in different possible worlds.

That the tetrad is inconsistent can be seen as follows. Suppose God, who knows everything there is to be known, knows some contingent truth t. He knows, for example, that I have two cats. It follows from (3) that there is some item intrinsic to God such as a belief state whereby God knows t. Given (1), this state, as intrinsic to God, is not distinct from God. Given (4), the state whereby God knows t exists necessarily. For, necessarily, if x = y, and x is a necessary being, then y is a necessary being. But then t is necessarily true. This contradicts (2) according to which t is contingent.

Opponents of the divine simplicity will turn the tetrad into an argument against (1). They will argue from the conjunction of (2) & (3) & (4) to the negation of (1). The classical theist, however, accepts (1), (2), and (4). If he is to solve the tetrad, he needs to find a way to reject (3). He needs to find a way to reject the idea that when a knower knows something, there is, intrinsic to the knower, some mediating item that is individuated by the object known.

So consider an externalist conception of knowledge. I see a cat and seeing it I know it — that it is and what it is. Now the cat is not in my head; but it could be in my mind on an externalist theory of mind. My awareness of the cat somehow 'bodily' includes the cat, the whole cat, all 25 lbs of him, fur, dander, and all. Knowledge is immediate, not mediated by sense data, representations, mental acts, occurrent believings, or any other sort of epistemic intermediary or deputy. Seeing a cat, I see the cat itself directly, not indirectly via some other items that I see directly such as an Husserlian noema, a Castanedan ontological guise, a Meinongian incomplete object, or any other sort of merely intentional object. On this sort of scheme, the mind is not a container, hence has no contents in the strict sense of this term. The mind is directly at the things themselves.

If this externalism is coherent, then then we can say of God's knowledge that it does not involve any intrinsic states of God that would be different were God to know different things than he does know. For example, God knows that I have two cats. That I have two cats is an actual, but contingent fact. If God's knowledge of this fact were mediated by an item intrinsic to God, a mental act say, an item individuated by its accusative, then given the divine simplicity, this item could not be distinct from God with the consequence that the act and its accusative would be necessary. This consequence is blocked if there is nothing intrinsic to God whereby he knows that I have two cats.

I don't find externalism plausible, so I am left with an impasse. I cannot see how God can exist without being ontologically simple. So I cannot reject (1). And of course I cannot solve or rather dissolve the problem by disposing of the presupposition that God exists. As for (2), I am not about to deny that there are contingent truths or that God knows contingent truths. As for (4), if God is simple, then surely he is a necessary being. A being that is its existence cannot not exist.

Few philosophers will follow me to the conclusion that our tetrad is a genuine aporia. Most theists will cheerfully deny (1). A few will deny (4) which implies the denial of (1). Atheists will dismiss the whole discussion as an empty academic exercise since it is plain to them that there is no God. A few brave souls will deny (2) either by denying that there are contingent truths or that God knows them. And then there are those who will deny (3). This I should think is the best way to go if there is a way forward.

Could we go mysterian on this? The limbs of the tetrad are each of them true, and so collectively consistent; it is just that we cannot understand how they could all be true.

REFERENCE: W. Matthews Grant, "Divine Simplicity, Contingent Truths, and Extrinsic Models of Divine Knowing," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 3, July 2012, pp. 254-274.

Anti-Pyrrhonian Haiku

The truth we need
We cannot know.
So we must believe
That it is so.