What Do You Think of Presuppositionalism?

[Jackalope]

On a more important note. Is your new avatar picture of anyone we should know? Did you get a new familiar? (Good looking pup!)

Sadly, no - though it reminds me of an acquaintance's dog who has warmed up to me to the point where he doesn't try to rip my arms out every time I see him (the dog, not the acquaintance).

When I get back from my vacation in 6ish weeks I'm going to start hitting the shelters and see who needs a friend (besides me).

[Angrboda]

But seriously, all branches of epistemology have underlying assumptions / axioms - assumptions that one who favors another branch to tackle an epistemological is not likely to share. To an empiricist (at least to me), presupposition sounds like bullshit, and the reverse is likely true as well. I cannot reasonably assert that they are wrong - though I remain unconvinced that presuppositionalism is anything but circular wishful thinking. I *can* point to empiricism's track record and explain how it has been *useful* - but that comes down to a question of what one values.

I'm tentatively convinced that it's all a matter of what approach one prefers more than anything, and that claims of "truth", particularly capital-T Truth are not entirely justified.

... It is more a humbling recognition that we aren't any of us in any position claim capital T truth, once and for all. ....

Speak for yourself, fish face.

[Napoléon]

"What Do You Think of Presuppositionalism?"

I think it's a word with too many syllables...

[Clueless Morgan]

Presuppositionalism, to me, is a way for small people to feel big by playing word games with others who might not be as philosophically well read or well-versed at refuting philosophical bullshit when they're hit with it so intensely as presups are prone to do.

If presuppositionalism is so irrefutable, why aren't the presup apologists turning their focus to those they could actually have a conversation with instead of the average person off the street who has probably never even considered matters of philosophy? Is that honest? No. Just like it's not honest for a microbiologist to walk up to a regular person on the street and start grilling them about... whatever microbiologists talk about and then claim victory when the other person doesn't know what "Conservation of the PTEN catalytic motif in the bacterial undecaprenyl pyrophosphate phosphatase, BacA/UppP" means. (I totally just googled that.)

Oh, that's right, presuppers are not interested in having a conversation, they just want to make people look stupid and reflectively bask in the glory of having made that someone look stupid.

[MindForgedManacle]

I'm drunk and psychotic tonight, but off the top, I'd say the math and logics are self-evidently self-verifying. The epistemology isn't foolproof, but our best wisdom points to it being reliably true. (To fulfill that promise requires a comprehensive philosophy which I haven't seen. Systematizing appears to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.) (This in a way, asks whether Platonism or nominalism rules. IMHO, neither, because neither asserts a coherent view of the nature of "meaning.")

Oh, I wasn't trying to invalidate logic or anything. I mean, we also invent the rules of mathematics, but that doesn't make it any less useful and (usually) coherent. Or does my objection still not really work against that 'reasoning about reasoning' bit?


Lol, drunk and psychotic? Were you trying to eliminate the latter with the former?

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Many presuppositionalists will admit that their apologetic isn't about honest conversation, but to shut atheists up and keep the presupper from doubt. Or at least, the more popular presuppers like Sye Bruggencate have said so.

[Whateverist]

... It is more a humbling recognition that we aren't any of us in any position claim capital T truth, once and for all. ....

Speak for yourself, fish face.

I always only do. Fish face? Dog face is more like it. Or was that a Chthulu reference? (Or perhaps a dig at my penchant for cunnilingus?)