Presuppositionalist Nonsense Part I

Following a few recent encounters with some presuppositionalists, I have given some thought to their position on the laws of logic. It seems clear to me that the laws of logic are simply general rules that we humans use to interpret the world around us. However, the presupper will have you believe they have some sort of transcendent mystical origins and are in fact a reflection of God's nature.

Let's just say I am skeptical of this.

A favourite starting point for their onslaught of idiocy is to ask a non-believer for an account of the abstract, universal, invariant laws of logic. This initial question commits the fallacy of the loaded question. For example it's like asking someone "Have you stopped beating your wife?". In this case, regardless of the answer, you are automatically insinuating that the person beats his wife when there is no justification for this. Similarly, presuppositionalists are loading their question with the 'fact' that the laws of logic are abstract, universal and invariant and then simply asking the non-believer to account for that fact, thus putting their opponent on the defensive. This makes a non-believer think that they should indeed have an account for these proposed properties of the laws of logic, even though the presupper has never actually proven their initial premise. It's just a devious deflection tactic.

As for these proposed properties of logic, I for one don't accept that the laws of logic are necessarily universal or invariant. I will, however, concede that they are abstract in that they are not physical entities but instead they are used as a tool for human consciousness to describe physical phenomenon. I will not say that I am certain that they are not universal or invariant, but I think there is room for debate. For starters, I doubt whether it can be proven that they are definitely universal or invariant as this would be an impossible task. On the other hand, if the laws of logic are not universal or not invariant, it can easily be proven by finding an example of such a case.

So, if it can be shown that a law of logic does not hold in any particular situation, then this would automatically refute the presuppositionalist position, as it would disqualify their claim that the laws of logic, and thus the character of God, is unchanging. This would be devastating for their position as it would not be consistent with their claims to certainty.

So are there any incidences where the law of logic do not hold?

Well, yes.

In fact, none other than Einstein himself provided a scenario where an object can be said to be both moving and not moving at the same time, violating the law of non-contradiction...

Imagine person A sitting on a train and a person B standing on the platform. Both are looking at an object on a table in the train carriage, let's say it's a flower in a vase. The flower is clearly visible to both A and B, albeit through the carriage window for B. As the train passes by the platform, the flower stays still from the perspective of person A and yet the flower moves from the perspective of person B. The flower is clearly both moving and not moving at the same time.

So is it moving or not moving? Which interpretation is correct? Well, the answer is that both are equally correct. That is relativity.

A more extreme example would be to say that although you think you are not moving right now (assuming you are sitting at a desk with your computer), from the theoretical perspective of someone looking at you through a telescope from outside our solar system you are travelling at 500,000-600,000 mph. That's a big contradiction!!

So, if you think about it, the law of non-contradiction is broken all the time. This law states that something cannot be both A and not A. Well if A is movement, then, due to relativity, many things are both moving and not moving at the same time when considered from multiple perspectives, and, crucially, all interpretations are equally correct.

Now some may say that this example doesn't matter because the perspectives of two different observers does not qualify for the law of non-contradiction. They would say that I am equivocating or deliberately misleading by using ambiguous definitions of the same word or concept. However, I am not doing this. Movement of the flowers from different perspectives is not an equivocation. It is an objective description of the flowers from two different, yet equally accurate, perspectives.

What this means is that the law non-contradiction is not universal - it does not hold in all places and at all times. In the above example of the train it holds for person A and it holds for person B, but when both A and B are considered at the same time, it does not hold. Hence, it is not universal. No further examples are needed - point proven. (However, for those still in doubt as to the validity of this example, I will provide a different example of the law of non-contradiction not holding in part II)

How is this the case? Why does a law of logic not universally represent reality?

Well, this is actually consistent with the idea that the laws of logic are simply mechanisms our brains use to understand reality and process information. These laws of logic were necessarily subject to how reality was thought to be in the past. However, as we have now seen, the law of non-contradiction is not compatible with relativity. I imagine that this can be somewhat explained by the fact that relativity, in it's current form, is a modern idea and so it does not fit into the classical laws of logic.

Now that we have shown that the law of non-contradiction is not universal, how would the presuppositionalist respond? Here is a typical response:

Riiiight!!!! If the law of non-contradiction was proven wrong, it would also necessarily NOT be proven wrong as well.

Now the above is not a strawman (scmike says it here and Sye says something similar in the sidebar here). Let's examine what this means and if it's a rational response. Essentially, the presupper is claiming that if you show that the law of non-contradiction is wrong in one instance, then contradictions are universally acceptable. This means that that 'A' can equal 'not A' whenever you want it to, hence 'proven wrong' can become 'not proven wrong' - and hey presto, you have just proven that the law of non-contradiction is actually true!!!

There is one word and one word only for that position - pathetic

First of all, we did not show that the law of non-contradiction is wrong, just that it is not universal. It is still a useful law. It still works in most, if not all, cases from an individual's perspective. It only seems to break down when multiple perspectives are considered at the same time.

Secondly, extrapolating from this to say that any contradictions are now allowed is just a juvenile response. It leads to an infinite regression of absurdity as demonstrated here:

Non-believer - "The law of contradiction does not hold in this particular instance, therefore it is not universal"

Presupper - "If the law of non-contradiction is wrong, it would also necessarily NOT be wrong as well. Hence the law of non-contradiction is right"

Non-believer - "If the law of non-contradiction is right due to fact that it has been proven wrong, then it is also necessarily NOT right. Hence the law of non-contradiction is wrong"

Etc....ad nauseum

So the assertion that if the law of non-contradiction was proven wrong, it would also necessarily NOT be proven wrong as well is clearly absurd and should be dismissed as such.

To conclude part I of this post, I just want to re-emphasis that the original claim of the presupper is that the laws of logic are universal. This is impossible to prove, so there is a huge weight of burden on the presupper to back up this claim, and as such they never do. They simply say it, again and again and again.

What is possible though, and quite easy in fact, is to disprove this claim by simply finding one example of a law of logic not holding true. One single example from a whole universe of possibilities is all it takes to refute the presupper claim.

Well, relativity is a perfect example of this. It breaks the law of non-contradiction as it allows for an object to be both moving and not moving at the same time and in the same way. I stress that this is not equivocation, although the presupper will undoubtedly claim otherwise in a vain attempt to prevent their bubble of semantic lies from bursting.

In short, the presupper position is refuted.

More to follow in Part II