J. P. Moreland on Presuppositions

JP talked about presuppositions in Metaphysics I on last Wednesday and I thought I'd share some of the notes I transcribed from my recording. This is pretty short, and I don't think that posting this is inappropriate (posting the audio lecture itself, yes), but if it is I'll take it down. Any comments? I think I fully agree with him!

Student: so this [approach] is where you question your presuppositions?

JP: Yes, though I don’t really like the word “presupposition” myself. Let me tell you why that term bothers me. People tend to think that we start with presuppositions and I don’t believe that. I don’t think we start our investigation of the world with presuppositions. So if all you mean by that is what we’re gonna do is analyze the things that are fundamentally basic to everything else, yes. But I don’t believe that we start our knowing of the world with presuppositions.

Student: If someone argues that everyone has a bias, you would say no?

JP: I would say it’s irrelevant because I would draw a distinction between psychological and rational objectivity. Psychological objectivity is the absence of bias. Rational objectivity is the ability to tell the difference between a good and bad argument for a conclusion. And I would say that even though people are psychologically biased, therefore not objective, it doesn’t follow that they aren’t rationally objective. And so the fact that some person starts with a bias is irrelevant to me.

Student: Last time you said that in your view we encounter objects and then receive concepts off those objects. What would be difference then in having a thought about a concept and having a presupposition?

JP: The difference would be that given that my thought is now about a concept that I derived from the object, I now have a way of testing which of my concepts are accurate by comparing them to the objects. Because I have conceptual independent access to the objects through experience.

Student: So you’re not saying that we approach any further inquiry concept-less?

JP: No, we use concepts, we don’t start with the concepts. We start with direct encounters of the things themselves and it’s through that direct encounter that I have a way of adjudicating which set of concepts is more accurate. By contrast, if you say that we start with presuppositions then we simply start with our conceptual machinery and we have no independent way of testing whether they are veridical or not.

Student: So we can use them in a sense but we don’t start with them.

JP: Right. Well, we all use presuppositions in detailed arguments but they’re not presuppositions in the sense that we posit them or they’re sort of stipulated or we start from them or anything like that. They are not arbitrary. Some presuppositions are more reasonable than others.

Student: The things themselves are prior to presuppositions?

JP: Both ontologically and epistemologically. Things exist before I cognize about them, so in the order of ontology, yeah, things are prior to my conceptual existence. And my experience of things is prior to my conceptualizing about them. So first in the order of epistemology is not the things but my experience of the things.

Student: So when you’re born, is there anything within you?

JP: No, I’m not a tabula rasa, I think that whole conversation is mistaken. I think there’s a third option. What I’m born with are powers of perception and so the mind is not a blank slate, it has powers of awareness in them. And perception is not limited to sense experience. There are all kinds of things we can perceive. I believe you can perceive abstract objects that aren’t in space and time through an act of the intellect. So I don’t limit perception to sense perception, I believe there are forms of rational perception where the mind can see things that the senses can’t. So when you hear me talking about experience and perceiving, don’t think empiricism. Jesus, Mary, Joseph…don’t think empiricism.




Sam: So yeah, basically it's more fundamental to talk about intuition, perception, and phenomenological language (we describe how we experience objects, not necessarily what we believe about them) than presuppositions. Presuppositions appeal to our concepts of objects, and thus, to start from presuppositions is to start with concepts and not the objects themselves. But appeal to our perception of real objects is prior to our formation of concepts and thus a more important question than our presuppositions.