God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat?

Tony Flood has gone though many changes in his long search for truth. He seems to have finally settled down in Van Til's presuppositionalism.  Tony  writes,

God, the cosmos, and a plurality of minds other than one’s own are in the same epistemological boat. [. . .] To be skeptical about one but not the other two is arbitrary. Our innate predisposition to be realistic about all three is divinely written “software” that informs our cerebral “wetware.”

I wish I could accept this, but I don't, and I believe I have good reasons for my non-acceptance.

By "in the same epistemological boat," Flood means that God, the physical universe, and other minds are all on a par in respect of dubitability. No one of them is more open to reasonable doubt than the other two, and none of them is open to reasonable doubt. Therefore, one can no more reasonably doubt the existence of God than one can doubt the existence of other minds.  Atheism is on a par with solipsism in point of plausibility.

And bear in mind that by 'God' here is meant something very specific, the triune God of Christian theism, the God of the Bible as understood by Van Til and Co.  It is one thing to argue -- and it can be done with some plausibility -- that the validity of all reasoning about any subject presupposes the existence of an omniscient necessary being. It is quite another to argue that the presuppositum must be the God of Christian theism as the latter is expounded by a Calvinist!

Now I concede that doubts about the external world and the the reality of other minds are hyperbolic, and if taken as genuine doubts, as opposed to thought experiments deployed in an epistemology seminar, unreasonable. No one really doubts the existence of rocks or other minds.  Not even Bishop Berkeley doubts, let alone denies, the existence of rocks, the tree in the quad, and suchlike.  This is why it is perfectly lame to think that Berkeley's idealism can be refuted by kicking a stone. (See Of Berkeley's Stones and the Eliminativist's Beliefs and Argumentum ad Lapidem?)

The hyperbolic skepticism of Descartes' dream argument and its latter-day brain-in-the-vat incarnations are methodological tools of the epistemologist who seeks to understand how we know what we know, and what it is to know what we know.   A philosopher who wonders how knowledge is possible may, but need not, and typically does not, deny or have any real doubt THAT knowledge is possible. For example, I may be firmly convinced of the existence of so-called abstract objects (numbers, sets, propositions, uninstantiated properties, etc.) but be puzzled about how knowledge of such entities is possible given that there is no causal interaction with them.  That puzzlement does not get  the length of doubt or denial. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for knowledge of the past, knowledge of other minds, and knowledge of the external world.

My point, then, is that (i) practically no one has real doubts about the existence of the external world or the existence of other minds, and that (ii) it would not be reasonable to have such doubts.  But (iii) people do have real doubts about the existence of the God of Christian theism, and (iv) it is not unreasonable to have such doubts.  The various arguments from evil, and not just these, cast reasonable doubt on Christian theism.

One type of real doubt is an 'existential' doubt, one that grips a person who succumbs to it, and induces fear and perhaps horror.  There are those who lose their faith in God and suffer in consequence.  They experience a terrible sense of loss, or perhaps they fear that they have been duped by crafty priests who exploited their youthful innocence and gullibility to infect them with superstitious nonsense in order to keep the priestly hustle going.  One can lose one's faith in God, and many do.  No one loses his faith in the external world or in other minds. And this for the simple reason that there was no need for faith in the first place.

I believe I have said enough to cast serious doubt on, if not refute, the idea that God, the the cosmos, and other minds are are in the same epistemological boat. That's a boat that won't float.

Comments

[Tom]

As an aside, can you say a little more about 'existential doubt' and the reaction of fear/horror? I find this reaction interesting and not all that uncommon among many thoughtful people.

Thanks!