There are two things to remember about circular reasoning when it comes to an ultimate standard.
It's unavoidable and it's not necessarily fallacious. There has to be some degree of circular reasoning when proving an ultimate standard because an ultimate standard can't be proved FROM anything else, otherwise it wouldn't be ULTIMATE. So if it's going to be proved then it must use itself as the criterion. An argument can't go on forever. If it did it wouldn't prove anything. Plus we cannot know an infinite amount of things, so our chains of reasoning have to be finite. Everyone must have an ultimate standard whether you realize it or not.
Not all circles are fallacious. When begging the question it's not actually invalid but can be considered a fallacy if it is arbitrary.
The question is whether or not your ultimate standard is self attesting or self refutting.
Is empiricism self attesting?
Is it able to prove itself by it's own standard?
No.
If all knowledge is gained by observation then we could never know that empiricism is true.
Materialism?
No.
We could never prove that materialism is true by its own standard, because we need laws of logic to prove anything and they are immaterial. Is there anyone that disagrees with me still?. Immaterial laws of logic cannot exist in a metrialistic universe.
So the question is not which worldview uses circular reasoning because they all do. But which worldview is actually able to do it successfully.
It's unavoidable and it's not necessarily fallacious. There has to be some degree of circular reasoning when proving an ultimate standard because an ultimate standard can't be proved FROM anything else, otherwise it wouldn't be ULTIMATE. So if it's going to be proved then it must use itself as the criterion. An argument can't go on forever. If it did it wouldn't prove anything. Plus we cannot know an infinite amount of things, so our chains of reasoning have to be finite. Everyone must have an ultimate standard whether you realize it or not.
Not all circles are fallacious. When begging the question it's not actually invalid but can be considered a fallacy if it is arbitrary.
The question is whether or not your ultimate standard is self attesting or self refutting.
Is empiricism self attesting?
Is it able to prove itself by it's own standard?
No.
If all knowledge is gained by observation then we could never know that empiricism is true.
Materialism?
No.
We could never prove that materialism is true by its own standard, because we need laws of logic to prove anything and they are immaterial. Is there anyone that disagrees with me still?. Immaterial laws of logic cannot exist in a metrialistic universe.
So the question is not which worldview uses circular reasoning because they all do. But which worldview is actually able to do it successfully.
James Holmes acted consistent with what evolution teaches. He evolved from an animal, and when he murdered those people, He acted like one. You can't say he's wrong since evolution made him that way.
