Problem of Criterion as a theological key

How do you know?  How do you know that you know?  This is the problem of criterion, and far from being a technical point in epistemology, it is huge for theology and the life of the church.  It runs like this:

How do we decide in any case whether we have knowledge in that case? What are the criteria of knowledge? (Moreland 2007, 123).

To risk a dangerous oversimplification, "How do we know that we know x?"  Here is an example.  If I tell someone that God gave me a word of knowledge, the cessationist will respond, "Yeah, but how do you know that was from God?"

If I say that I have the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit bearing witness that I am a child of God and destined for heaven, the anchorite will ask, "Yeah, but how do you know that without using your own subjective demon-inspired reason?"

It boils down to this:  Before I can legitimately claim knowledge in these areas I must first satisfy the condition of knowing how I know.  Seems fair enough and few people challenge this.

But there is a problem.  Before I can know anything (say P, representing that I have the internum spiritum sanctum), I must know two other things: Q (my criterion for knowledge, which the critic seeks) and R (the fact that P satisfies Q).  But there is no reason to stop here.  One can now ask how I know Q and R, to which the new answer is Q' and R'.  But now I have to give a reason for Q'' and R''.  Further, I must now give a reason for Q''' and R'''.

Said another way:  Before I can know, I must know how I know.  Before I can know how I know, I must know how I know how I know.  And on the nightmare goes.

Best just to dismiss the critic's question. But before that, let's give our own solution. We can start by knowing specific, clear items of knowledge.  We can solve the problem of criterion by beginning with particular cases of knowledge and generalising to formulate a criterion for true belief.  For example, while I know my faculty of reason can be faulty at times, I had to use the faculty of reason to write that sentence (assuming A = ~~A and that my terms meant what they meant).  Using this reason I am able to read texts (and everyone will assume the text is clear at at least one level, otherwise why would you ever appeal to an opponent to read a text like 2 Peter 1:4?).  This immediately falsifies the claim that I can't understand a text unless I am already in a community of text (no one seriously believes this when push comes to shove).  

Moreland, J. P. Kingdom Triangle. Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2007.  

Read Between the Comments

Orthodox Bridge only approves about half of my comments, and the ones they do approve are always approved later and I rarely find the comments to them and it’s just so unwieldy.  So I put them here. The paragraphs preceded by asterisks are those responding to me. My comments are in normal formatting.

***I’m interested to know what you are persuaded is the judge of truth?***

Better phrased: what is the *final* judge of truth? Before I answer that we need to get clear on the question. There can be numerous, subordinate, yet legitimate judges of truth (such as history, logic, the church–gasp!) which are not the final judge, which would be God’s Speech.

***I think this is what Robert is getting at when he points out the relative “novelty” of the Reformed tradition. Is this not your “judge of truth?” If it is not, are you the judge of truth? How many hard sciences and proofs need to converge for you to have faith in Christ’s work in the Church?***

I am not Reformed, but to continue with the question: yes, there is a subjective aspect to all of truth-judgments (not to truth itself). Everyone does it. You did it when you subjectively evaluated EO.

***You are right, antiquity IS NOT the only judge. But it seems that you are willing to be the ultimate judge of ANY evidence and .***

I am a subordinate judge of truth, as are we all. Otherwise, why bother?

***pick and choose what you’d like to acknowledge and dismiss based on it’ consistency with your worldview***

You would need to provide evidence.

***Nearly all of us here have been in your shoes. I certainly have. I understand where you are coming from. I used to walk into Orthodox Churches in Bulgaria and mutter under my breath, “pagans.” Then I’d go pick up Institutes and placate my own predilections.***

Please don’t patronize me. trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve spent years looking into this. I’ve lost friends forever because they thought I was leaving Protestantism. Even now, they refuse to talk to me.

***but my point is that many of us (Karen, Robert, me) have wrestled with the same cognitive dissonance you are and have had to challenge our own self will and our own limits to faith***

That is fideism.

***There comes a point when you must realize that the obstacle is not the evidence, but who it is you think is the proper judge of truth. If you reserve that right for yourself…so be it. But do so with full understanding of who and what it is you trust in.***

The mormon apologists I debated told me the same thing. Anyway, you made a decision based on your understanding of the relevant factors to enter EO. That is no different than what I am doing. You just don’t like my conclusions.

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Hi John Doe

***Antiquity per se is not a particularly cogent epistemology. ***

Agreed. Otherwise the truth would belong to Hinduism.

***However, the Vincentian Canon is: that which was believed “everywhere, always, by everyone”.*

Vincent also thought the imputation and continuation of Adam’s Guilt was believed by everyone.

***We know that prayers to Mary were widely employed by Christians from India to Iberia in later centuries. That such an early prayer can be found lends credence to the belief that prayers to saints were part of the Apostolic deposit.***

Thank you. This is the classic example of affirming the consequent:

If this, then that.

That.

Therefore, this.

(THIS IS ORTHODOX APOLOGETICS’ FATAL MOMENT.   HERE FALLS THEIR ENTIRE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.  I HONESTLY FEEL LIKE I CAN CLAIM VICTORY)

***It also shows that the Church that determined the New Testament Canon also believed in petitioning the saints in prayer.***

What exactly are you trying to prove? If you mean that the “church” proximately determined the table of contents page in my Bible and *some* of these same guys also petitioned saints, then I don’t disagree.

If you take that proximate recognition as on the same level as God’s speech-act, and that those later witnesses (valuable fathers that they are) are on the same level as the Scriptural writers who warned not to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, then I demur.

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Hi Erik,

My moniker is that I believe in posting under my name. I’ve seen too many people “go crazy” under the protection of an anonymous avatar. See the Mark Driscoll fiasco.

***Does he who formulates a canon need to be infallible?***

No.

***In such case, how can you accept the Athanasian Canon of the New Testament? Athenasius believed in prayers to the saints, so by your reasoning, these are either licit, or his NT canon is not.***

One of my comments will surprise you. First of all, canonical discussions are far wider than Athanasius. Secondly, I believe the NT *canon*–formulated as canon–is fallible. The table of contents page in my bible is fallible and open to falsification. That has always been the Protestant position (though most Protestants have forgotten it).

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David and Erik,

My point RE Adam’s guilt is that Vincent is a two-edged sword. The very guy you guys go to for doctrinal unity taught something you do not believe and he said that was always taught by the church.

Vincent writes,

“Who ever before his monstrous disciple Cœlestius denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin?”

24.62

***Do you seriously believe Robert is arguing that Antiquity is the SOLE judge of Truth?**

No, but it seems like antiquity is being asked to carry a lot of weight.

*** course, there is specific Scriptural verification for Holy Tradition, as I sketched quickly above, also referencing Robert’s excellent blog article above “The Biblical Case for Holy Tradition”.***

I’ve seen it. I believe it commits the affirming the consequent fallacy, but that’s probably not the most germane point at the moment.

**But the Reformed often ask for some confirmation from history for Orthodox practices & Holy Tradition. That’s what you have here. Historic confirma-tion of Holy Tradition. **

Sure, but historic confirmation (like all forms of belief) comes in degrees, and this is not the same thing as a quote from Paul saying burn incense to the Queen of Heaven.

***There are also Ecc. Councils confirming Holy Tradition by hundreds if not thousands of Bishops convocating in counsel with each other to specifically discern what the Holy Spirit has taught the Church in past centuries.***

Sure, but even those decisions do not begin to cover the gamut of doctrine and practice today, as any Old Believer or Old Calendarist will tell you.

***But this is not the case with Prayers to the Saints and Mary for intercession to her Son. You have just the opposite…a consistent pattern, practice and believe throughout the Church which is confirmed by Church Councils.***

Notice I am not disagreeing with you, per se. I am simply examining the belief. Earlier I said that belief comes in degrees (or is strong or weak in varying degrees). The earlier you get the less specific the belief is.

Karen says:

May 7, 2015 at 7:46 am

I’m convinced there is nothing humans do that is completely passive. None of us (even from birth) are a tabula rasa on which our experiences just imprint themselves. God installs some hardwiring there first that makes us active processors and decision-makers from the get-go.

Reply

J. B. Aitken says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

May 7, 2015 at 12:22 pm

If I said stuff like that about you, my post wouldn’t be approved.

Yes, I understand how the brain works (interesting that you collapsed mind into brain), but I use “passive” in the sense of how 100.00% of studies on the brain use it.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

May 7, 2015 at 12:25 pm

*** you are implicitly honoring and “praying to Mary” (and all the Saints) as Orthodox understand this as well.***

that’s begging the question, but otherwise kind of you to say so.

***I’m not convinced if you were to pray to *God* in the sense you understand prayer to Mary, you wouldn’t also be sinning (at least potentially) to be quite honest***

I wouldn’t be, because God attaches a promise to prayers to him, so I can approach him by faith. Since there is no promise attached to prayers to Mary, I cannot approach that with faith–“anything not of faith is sin” and all.

***God is not a divine vending machine, nor a genie to grant our wishes. ***

While that is a straw man, almost all of the prayers in Scripture are petitionary.

***God knows what we need before we ask, so the real purpose of prayer must be to come to know God more fully and in the process come to also more genuinely know ourselves.***

That’s a nice sentiment but not germane to the discussion.

***You cannot worship God rightly in the sense of including everything which goes to make up a fully orthodox Christian corporate liturgy without including prayers to Mary and the Saints.***

Thank you. That finally answered my question.

A brief note against skepticism

This is from Moreland's Kingdom Triangle.
A skeptic, to oversimply, is someone who does not believe we can have rational justification for our beliefs. 

The problem of criterion: let’s pretend we would want to put all our beliefs in two categories: the true or justified ones, and the false or unjustified ones. We have a problem, though. Before we can answer our question about the extent of our knowledge, we must first answer the question about our criteria of knowledge. Yet, to answer our question about criteria, we must first already know the extent of our knowledge (139).

So we are back to an old foundationalist problem: if we don’t know how we know things, how can we know anything at all or draw limits to human knowledge? There are three attempted solutions:

skepticism: no good solution exists and there is no knowledge.

methodism: Before I can know some specific proposition P, I must first know some criterion Q, and I must know that P measures up to Q. But this is problematic. It leads to a vicious infinite regress. The skeptic can then asks, “How is it that we know Q and R?” The methodist will have to offer a new criterion Q’ that specifies how he knows Q and another new criterion R’ that tells how he knows R. And the same problem will arise for Q’ and R’.

Particularism: we start by knowing specific, clear items of knowledge. I can know some things directly without needing to know how I know them. Does this beg the question? Not really, for the particularist can turn it around and ask the skeptic to give reasons for his skepticism. If he does that, then the same problem of criterion can be used against him. And we can only doubt if we have prior knowledge--otherwise, exactly what are we doubting? Finally, just because it is logically possible I am in error (or, e.g., I was born five minutes ago with pre-programmed memories) does not mean there are good reasons for believing that. 

Further, I can rebut the skeptic by showing he hasn’t shown his own position to be adequately true. I place the burden of proof on the skeptic.

A moderate defense of George Berkeley?

On first glance Berkeley's philosophy seems silly.  An object is not real in the classical sense, but only exists as it is perceived and constituted by the observer's stable recollection of its properties.  I don't hold to British Empiricism, but this raises an interesting point.

Heisenberg and Quantum Mechanics point out that an object (albeit on the sub-atomic level) behaves differently depending on the location of the observer.

Outline of Moreland's Kingdom Triangle

1. Recover the Christian Mind
1. Naturalism as intellectual stronghold
2. Thick and thin worlds
1. “possible world”  : philosophical jargon for the way things could have been.
2. Thin and thick possible worlds
1. Thin world:  world with no objective value.
1. Nothing is as important enough to rise above custom.
2. If there is no objective meaning and value, then there is no drama.
2. Thick worlds
3. Tearing down intellectual strongholds (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
4. Naturalism defined
1. view of knowledge:  whatever exists should be knowable by third-person scientific means.  Only scientific related knowledge counts
2. In the beginning was the particles
5. Problems for naturalism
1. Consciousness: if you start with matter and simply rearrange it, you will only come up with more complex arrangements of brute matter.
2. Secondary qualities” naturalism can account for primary qualities, but not secondary ones like color, taste, texture.
3. Normative properties: naturalism can only tell us what, not should or ought.
4. The human will:  the will is immaterial and responsible for actions.  Why are alcoholics not responsible for their actions but pedophiles are?  A naturalist cannot answer that.
5. Intrinsic value:  
3. Postmodernism:
1. Scientism has eroded the ability to make transcendent judgments.
2. Identifies pomo as a form of cultural relativism about reality, truth, reason (77; possibility problematic).
1. Knowledge is a social construction.
3. Postmodern tenets
1. denial of objective knowledge and reason.
1. psychological objectivity not the same as rational objectivity.
2. Denial of correspondence theory of truth
1. CTT holds to a correspondence relation between truth-bearer (propositions) and truth maker (facts).
2. Those who reject CTT hold to it in order to reject it.
3. Confusion between metaphysical and epistemic notions of truth.
1. metaphysical (correct): absolute truth is same as objective. People discover truth, not create it.  Conforms to laws of logic
2. Postmodernists think absolute truth grounded in Cartesian anxiety.   However, a claim to truth says nothing about my inner, psychological state.
4. Problems for postmodernism
4. From Drama to Deadness
1. Shift from Knowledge to Fideism
2. From human flourishing to satisfaction and desire
1. The ancient “good” life was constituted by intellectual and moral virtue.
2. presupposes the availability of real, nonempircal knowledge.
3. From Duty and Virtue to Minimalist ethics (m.e.)
1. m.e. = do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm others
2. severs the connection between rationality and moral truth.
4. From Classic Freedom to Contemporary Freedom
1. Classical freedom meant the power to do what one ought to do. Presupposes availability of relevant knowledge.
2. Contemporary freedom
5. Classic Tolerance to Contemporary Tolerance
2. Recovery of Knowledge
1. Overview of knowledge: ability to represent things as they are.
1. Knowledge by acquaintance (direct intuition)
2. propositional knowledge (Moreland calls this justified true belief)
3. Know-how (wisdom, skill)
2. Certainty, Confidence, and Simple Knowing
1. Knowledge does not require certainty (and this moves the discussion closer to Plantinga)
1. One’s degree of knowledge can grow over time
2. You can know something without knowing how you know it.
1. problem of the criterion: if we don’t know how we know things, how can we know anything at all?
1. skepticism: bites the bullet.  No knowledge
2. Methodism: starts with a criterion that does not itself count as knowledge.  But this leads to an infinite regress.
3. Particularism: we just know many things without knowing how we know them.  It can respond to skepticism by asking the skeptic for a reasonfor his skepticism.
3. Three Kinds of Knowledge
1. knowledge by acquaintance.  rational awareness.  Humans have the ability to be aware of stuff that aren’t empirically verifiable.
2. Propositional knowledge: I must believe something is true and have adequate grounds for it.
3. Know How
3. Renovation of the Soul (virtue ethics)
1. False self: the self we present to others in order to make the world safe for us (141).
1. Individualistic
2. Infantile
3. Narcissistic
4. The empty self is passive
2. Growing in Christian art of self-denial
1. Classical happiness as virtue-life “Christianized” as eternal life.
1. Less dependent on external circumstances like “pleasure-seeking.”
2. Allows one to become an increasingly unified person.
3. Fostering Spiritual Disciplines
1. Habit, Character, Body, Flesh (Romans 12:1-3)
2. Warning and Dangers.  Moreland recommends some good writers (Dallas Willard) and some dangerous ones (Richard Foster), though to be fair he does offer his own warning (157).
4. Restore the Kingdom’s Power
1. Chapter is mainly anecdotal.  
2. The gospel of the kingdom: the reign and rule of God available in Jesus Christ
1. God has power over demons, darkness, and disease.
3. Jesus’s ministry of the Holy Spirit
1. Dependant on the Spirit’s Power (Luke 4:14)
2. Moreland doesn’t mention it, but this is the Reformed doctrine of the unionis theologia.
4. Abandonment of Cessationism