Description

Most arguments for God’s existence – or for anything, really – start on a shared plane of axiomatic beliefs, such as “we can know truth,” and “we ought to desire the truth,” and so on. I think this is a fair approach. It’s like two people getting into a car and taking turns driving to see which destinations they can reach and how. However, this is not the only type of argument – there is a type of argument which involves popping the hood and looking inside the car itself. These are transcendental arguments. These constitute a whole family of arguments; I make use of a few in my argument against existentialism, for example. However, this particular formulation is often referred to as the transcendental argument because it addresses basic epistemology (knowledge claims). It is, in a sense, the most fundamental argument possible.

YouTube video presentation of this argument here.

The Transcendentals

Consider the following sentence: “we should use logic to know the truth.” This simple sentence entails four things about reality. First, universality. It is a “we” statement, something that applies to everyone. Second, ethics – it is a should statement. We have some kind of moral obligation to seek truth that goes beyond pure pragmatism. Third, metaphysics. The fact that logic can aid us in reaching true beliefs entails that reality “is a certain way” and will continue to be that way – that the “rules” will be the same tomorrow as they are today, that things exist, have identities, and exist in the way they exist and not some contradictory way. Fourth, epistemology, the fact that we can know things. Not only is reality a certain way, but we can adequately assess it and align our minds to it.

Denying this sentence is impossible, since its denial assumes it. The sentence “we should not use logic to know the truth” is a metaphysical and epistemological claim which the speaker thinks you should accept. Merely saying this sentence is a performative contradiction. Even the ambivalent approach, “we aren’t obligated to use logic to know the truth” makes the same claims. Doing anything, thinking anything, or saying anything necessarily entails ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. This is the unquestionable foundation for all argument; it is the “car” we all share when driving to any epistemic destination.

Justification

However, there is a difference between necessity and justification. For example, it is necessary that I eat to survive, but this necessity is not self-explanatory. In order to justify or explain the fact that this is necessary, we need to investigate preconditions for this fact. So, in this case, one necessary precondition for this necessary state of affairs is that humans need more energy than sunlight can provide. So the format of this type of argument is as follows:

X is the necessary precondition of Y. Y is necessary. Therefore X is necessary.

In this example:

Caloric needs are a precondition of needing food to live. Humans need food to live. Therefore, humans have caloric needs.

So, back to our statement: “we should use logic to know the truth.” This is necessarily true, so we must necessarily believe in ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. But again, necessity does not equal justification. Like the example with food, if we want to justify our beliefs, we need to look towards preconditions. What needs to be true first in order for ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology to be necessary?

Preconditions

Since we cannot observe a transcendental precondition, the only way to be certain of what it or they might be like is by proposing mutually exclusive, binary options and arguing from impossibility of the contrary. For example, the transcendental precondition either is a rock, or is not a rock. Considering a rock depends on metaphysically conditioned realities like space and time, we can be absolutely certain that the precondition we’re looking for is not a rock.

First, this precondition either is or is not universal. Given that the transcendentals we’re trying to justify apply always and everywhere, their precondition must likewise be universal. This same explanation entails that the precondition must be invariant (always and everywhere means it can’t change), which is also means it must be immaterial (since matter changes and can only occupy a certain space at a certain time).

This precondition either has universal power, or does not. If metaphysical rules existed as pure concepts, there’s no reason to think matter would conform to them any more than my backyard conforms to a unicorn I imagine running around in it. So, this precondition actually has universal power over reality as a lawgiver. This lawgiver thus has to be coherent and objective; the laws of logic are reflections of this precondition’s absolute, coherent nature, not creations (since that would make them non-necessary and subjective). So, it must also be one, since competing universal sources of reality could not thus reflect objective transcendental coherence by nature.

Finally, this precondition is either personal or impersonal; a knower or an object. Understanding immaterial principles like the transcendentals is a function of mind. We know that this precondition must understand the transcendentals, since He binds reality to them, as previously discussed. It’s not like this could be done by mindless matter. Further, recall that we are bound to truth by an ethical obligation. But one cannot have ethical obligations to objects like rocks or chairs; our innate duty to assent to truth is actually an innate relational obligation to this person.

All told, we have a universal, invariant, immaterial, omnipotent, coherent, objective, personal precondition. Such a thing is called God. Let’s put this back into our modus ponens:

God is a precondition of the universal necessity of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. Ethics, metaphysics and epistemology are universally necessary. Therefore, God exists.

It’s important to note that we are not giving a logical account of theism; we are giving a theistic account of logic. We know things, and God is the only coherent justification for this; therefore, we must believe in God.

Münchhausen Trilemma

But doesn’t this just push the problem back a step? Doesn’t belief in God need a justification? No; ultimate standards cannot be justified by something more fundamental than themselves, or they would cease to be ultimate. Whether one chooses reason, science, or God every worldview eventually arrives at a self-referential foundation, a precondition of preconditions. The question, therefore, is not whether some foundation is self-referential; foundations always are. The question is whether a foundation is self-consistent or self-refuting. We have demonstrated that God coherently provides a self-consistent environment for epistemic claims to be possible in the first place. On the other hand, any alternative precondition is going to lack one of the discussed qualities, and thus result in a self-refuting system, either by appealing to infinite regress, vicious circularity, or an arbitrary stopping point.

Infinite Regress

The first horn of the trilemma is the infinite regress, which suggests every statement whatsoever requires yet another justification. This lack of grounding destroys the possibility of knowledge, as justification is endlessly deferred. A TV plugged into an endless chain of power strips could never turn on; likewise, an endless chain of truth-claims could never present any real justification to a finite mind. Knowledge needs some kind of ground and foundation.

Vicious Circularity

The second horn is vicious circularity. This would include responses such as, “my belief in logic is justified because logic works according to logic” which is both circular and fails to make any account of why the universe behaves according to invariant, universal abstracta such that logic works. Other attempts include claiming that all knowledge claims are conjectural and thus don’t need a ground – which either is itself conjectural or self-refuting – or claiming that knowledge is a web without a foundation – ignoring the fact that a web of falsehoods (like a fiction novel) can be coherent.

Arbitrary Stopping Point

The third horn, while just as unsatisfactory as the others, is the greatest source of confusion. Arbitrary stopping points often disguise themselves as self-consistent by appealing to common intuitions or beliefs. They are not, of course; lacking Godhood, they always fail to achieve self-consistency. Because of their particular malignance, I will use several particular examples:

“Maybe transcendentals don’t need justification.” This is an attempt to appear neutral or healthily skeptical. However, while one can justifiably be agnostic about a posteriori claims, like how many aces are in a deck of cards, to suggest that the laws of logic, the reliability of knowledge, and the duty to truth may not need justification while using all three to make that very point is a performative contradiction. It’s like arguing a house you’re on the third floor of might not have a second floor.

“Some knowledge is just properly basic, like the fidelity of our senses to reality.” But this relies on the idea that there’s some raw experience of reality that isn’t filtered through one’s preexisting transcendental framework, which is clearly false. One person can consider their sensory experience evidence that they perceive reality accurately; another can consider it evidence an evil demon is putting a bunch of false sensory experiences into their consciousness. In either case, the exact same data serves as equally compelling evidence for either presupposition. There is no criterion by which one can objectively determine whether one thing or another is actually properly basic, since that criterion would rely on a properly basic knowledge of the criterion to identify it. How do you know sense experience is properly basic? Occam’s razor. That’s a law of logic; how do you know logic is properly basic? Etc…

“Logic is just a descriptive tool and our ‘duty’ to it is merely a manifestation of our survival instinct.” First, this gives no account of why logic actually corresponds to the material world, why it does so universally, and why we would anticipate it to continue doing so. Second, survival does not depend on truth, it depends on survival-improving beliefs. Natural selection is indifferent to whether you think tigers are vicious predators or fun kitties playing hide and seek as long as you run away from them; it cannot thus serve as the basis for knowledge. Further, making this argument means one believes that they themselves are not seeking truth, but trying to survive the argument. It’s a performative contradiction.

“Laws of logic just reflect physical properties, and our brains evolved to recognize those patterns.” This gives no account of why physical properties are logical, why they are universal, and why we would anticipate they will continue to be the way they are. Further, if our brains are just picking up meaningless patterns according to fixed, inflexible, physical laws, then our evaluations aren’t actually truth-bearing, they’re just chemical reactions. There’s no meaningful difference between you stating a claim and a fox yelping.

“Transcendentals are brute facts; they just are what they are.” This proposition fails to explain why the brute fact transcendentals apply to the material world, why they apply universally, whether they will continue to apply to reality in the future, why we can comprehend them, and why we have an ethical duty to them. This assumes the problem with proposing any foundation (self-reference) while needlessly assuming the problem of arbitrariness. If one is willing to believe this, they should be more willing to believe in the non-arbitrary explanation, God.

Conclusion

The eyes perceive the sun not by looking directly into it, but by looking at the world it illuminates. Likewise, our minds perceive God, not by empirical observation, but by recognizing that we can ascertain truth using observations. Ultimately, we know God exists by virtue of the fact that we can know anything. To argue against such a foundation is to fall into a performative contradiction: one must use the laws of logic, the reliability of the mind, and an implicit moral devotion to the truth to construct the case against those things having a justification. It’s like saying the words “I might not have a mouth.” In other words: should one open the hood of the car of human reason before making their journey, they’ll find that God was the engine the whole time.