Tag Archives: skepticism

Void Between Empiricism & Knowledge

Void Between Empiricism & Knowledge

Why sensation is not an epistemology

Empiricism walks up to the Knowledge Club door holding one chip. Sensation. A color. A pressure. A sound. That is the whole stake. Not revelation added later when the argument gets lonely. Not logic smuggled in as a house rule. If the starting point is sensation, the starting point is sensation. Think about that for three seconds. If sensation is the starting point, then that is all the starting point is. Anything that shows up in the conclusion and was not in that chip is a void. Not a hunch. Not “it feels solid.” A missing license.

A newcomer can get lost in the word epistemology. Forget the word for a second. A starting point for knowledge has one job. It has to license the first claim. A claim, here, is a sentence that can be true or false. “This is a mountain.” “The cup is on the table.” “I am sensing.” Those have a thing, and something said about the thing. A color event does not. It happens. The ticket booth at the door wants a sentence for the ticket to be valid. The chip is a patch of gray. Already the transaction looks funny. The booth attendant holds it up: “Where’s the sentence? This happens. It doesn’t say anything.”

People hear this and reach for the lights coming on, the cup where the hand expected, the plane that landed. Those are great stories about feelings of confidence. They are not evidence. A long streak of confident feelings is still a streak of feelings. Confidence and feelings are not subjects and predicates; they are not invisible premises of true or false. The question is whether the sensation contains the conclusion. It does not. The logical voids are still there. I will be using “logical void” and “hole” as the same.

Logical Void One: a sensation cannot justify a sensation

Vincent Cheung puts the knife in with a plain question (Sermonettes, Vol. 1: Questions for Empiricists), the kind a newcomer can ask without a philosophy degree. If information comes from sensation, how do you know you are having a sensation? Do you sense the sensation? Then do you sense the sensation that senses the sensation? If the answer is always another sensation, the stack never lands. This is a true definition of being circular or begging the question. You are looking for the bottom of a pile of mirrors and calling it a foundation. Cute. If the answer is not another sensation, you have already left the foundation of empiricism to certify empiricism with a different foundation. You stepped outside the sensation to stamp the sensation as valid. When this is done, sensation is no longer a starting point.

Try it in the kitchen. The light is on. You want to know that you are seeing the light. If seeing is the only way to know, then you need a seeing of the seeing. Then a seeing of that. The light itself never said, “You are seeing me.” That sentence was extra. You do not even get to name the method. “Sensation” is a word. A word is not a color. Naming the method was a non-sensation doing the work the sensation was supposed to do.

The absence is worse, and this is the part that gets ridiculous. Do you ever not have a sensation? How do you know that? A lack of sensation is not a sensation. The report “I am not sensing that” is a non-sensation licensing a claim about sensation. You cannot sense “not doctored,” “not an atom,” “not a second moon,” or “I do not know this.” There is no color of absence. There is no pressure shaped like “not.” The moment you know an absence, is the moment sensation stopped being foundation.

That is begging the question in the strict sense. Not the loose sense of “I don’t like your tone.” The thing to be proved — that sensation can justify — is assumed in the attempt, or dropped the moment the proof needs a non-sensation. Sensation cannot pay for its own admission. It cannot pay for the sentence “this is a sensation.” A start has one job: make knowledge possible. This one cannot even introduce itself. The chip looks for the bottom of a pile of mirrors and still gets bounced at the window.

Calling the sensation patch “data” is the same loan, taken out early, with a nicer font. Data means something that counts, that differs from noise, that can be read. A color event does not contain “this is data or information.” The word already imported intelligibility, difference, and “this one counts.” The patch never issued those. If you need a non-sensation to know that you are sensing, the sensing was never the start.

Logical Void Two: the categories are not in the patch

Suppose, for the sake of argument, the first hole is ignored and a patch is simply had. Be generous. Hand the empiricist the gray slope and do not ask how he knows he has it. Knowledge still does not start. Knowledge is a premise that can be true or false. A subject, a predicate, a copula. “This is a mountain.” A sensation is an event. Events are not true or false. They happen. Rain happens. A sentence about rain can be wrong or true. Knowledge about the event is not the event itself. Not the same categories. The sentence is invisible. The look is not invisible. One is incorporeal, the other is corporeal. One is non-data, the other is data. One has meaning and the other has no meaning.

The gray slope in the eyes is not the mountain. This is the copy problem, and it is not a trick. What you have is the sensation; a momentary transient non-data patch. The mountain, if there is one, is a different item. Sameness between picture and object is a relation. No shade of gray is that relation. Dream-slope and valley-slope can wear the same colors. A heat haze can wear them too. Nothing in the colors stamps one of them “real” and the other “nice try.” If the patch is all you have, the patch does not tell you which world you are in. The booth wants a sentence that can be true or false. Your gray patch is just an event. Rain happens. “This is rain” is a different category the chip never issued.

Two slopes in a row are not “the same mountain.” Blink. A cloud passes. New shade of gray. Each moment is a new event. Nothing in the new event is stamped “still the mountain from five seconds ago.” That is not data; an event is not data. That is meaning; sensation is not meaning. Continuity is added. You brought the idea of one persistent thing. The colors did not sell it to you. Slope, then moving leaves, is not “the wind caused it.” You got order. You did not get production. The “makes it happen” is not a color and not a sound. Ball touches ball, second ball rolls. The push-power is not in the picture. One is not knowledge, the other is. One has no meaning, the other does.

This slope is not “mountain” as a kind, and not “all mountains.” One occurrence does not contain the unseen cases. A universal is not a very large particular. No pile of patches, however tall, contains the “all.” Some is not all. Grace is not works, and works are not grace. And the slope is not the law that a thing is what it is, or that it cannot both be and not be a mountain. Turn the light off and the colors go. Those relations do not go with them. They were never in the patch. Cheung’s question lands here too. How did you sense the law of contradiction? If you used it to keep sensations from being nonsense before you “learned” it, it was not learned from them. You were already using it to keep the patch from meaning everything at once.

So the order is this, and a newcomer can keep it on a napkin. First the standard fails on its own ground. Sensation cannot justify a sensation, and cannot justify the lack of one, without a non-sensation. Then, even granting the non-data patch, identity, difference, cause, motion, sameness over time, and a subject and predicate that can be true or false are different categories not in the non-data patch. They have to come out of the “sensation gave me this” column before a knowledge claim is possible. After both removals, what remains is a non-data patch. A patch is not a premise. Without a premise there is no knowledge, only an event somebody later narrates with tools the event did not contain. No ticket. No entry.

“Reliable enough” is not a middle

The soft exit sounds modest, which is how a lot of fake tickets get past the ticket booth. Sensation does not have to be certain. It is reliable enough. It predicts. The cup is where the sensation said it was. So it gives knowledge, or close enough that mentioning the difference is rude. Handing over a sticky note that says “usually works” is not a valid ticket.

Modest is not a license. If the senses are less than infallible, you need a standard that cannot fail, to judge each instance. You cannot know by sensation which sensation is the correct one, or how reliable this one is. A mirage is a perfectly ordinary visual event. A stick in water looks bent, and the bent look is a perfectly ordinary visual event. “Usually right” is a story about other days. It does not label today. The non-data haze does not come with a flag that gives the data “this is one of the bad ones.”

Cheung’s line is the sharp one, and it is worth hearing slowly. Even if seeing a mirage is “properly basic,” it is properly useless unless you can know by sensation that it is a mirage. Properly basic reliability is not enough. The empiricist needs properly basic infallibility. He does not have the weaker thing either, because he cannot know by the sensation how reliable the non-data patch is.

Any degree of dependence on empiricism on that issue drops you into agnosticism about it. Not a softer knowledge. A blank. If a non-sensory standard stamps this instance “good,” then you accepted this new non-sensation standard as your new starting point. You did not accept the sensation as the source. There is no humble middle. Either the standard can fail, and you do not know whether this case is a hit, or it cannot fail, and the infallible item is doing the knowing. The booth does not do soft exits. Your percentage is a confident feeling wearing a number, hoping no one asks to see the receipt.

The twin question is just as empty, and newcomers skip it. How do you know that you do not know? A miss is not labeled inside the non-data patch. The same sensation that cannot certify a hit cannot certify a miss. A percentage you cannot audit is not knowledge with the edges sanded off.

For knowledge to be possible, you need to know what is true or false. If the standard does not give an infallible way to know what is true or false, then you don’t know what is true or false, and you fall into an agnosticism and skepticism that denies the law of contradiction. Some might argue with rhetoric like, “Only true or hard skepticism is a denial of the law of contradiction.” This is misleading. If the topic is your starting point of knowledge, then without the infallible standard it is skepticism and skepticism denies the law of contradiction. When knowledge never starts, you don’t have it. The starting point is not a small side issue about knowledge; it is the issue. If knowledge never started, then you don’t have the knowledge to say you have knowledge, and you don’t have the knowledge to say that you don’t have knowledge. Those are violations of identity and contradiction.

The fraction that was never finished

In Paul and the Philosophers, Cheung catches the rescue in the act. A theory that cannot be proved true gets called “probably true.” Sounds humble. Sounds numerical. Probability is a fraction. Favorable cases on top. All possible cases on the bottom. You must know both. Before you have knowledge you cannot know the denominator, the complete set of relevant possibilities. Without it you cannot calculate a probability at all. To have the denominator you would already need the knowledge the experiment was supposed to deliver, and you would have no need for the experiment.

Picture a chicken coop you have never seen. And Johnny says to you this afternoon, “I picked up six eggs this morning, therefore I have half of the eggs for today.” Half of what? If you do not know how many eggs there are, “six” is not a fraction. It is a story about six. Observation gives you the hits you happened to have. It does not give you every way the thing can go, including the failures you have not met, including the cases nobody has sensed. Particulars do not contain the “all.” That is the same logical void as “this slope is not all mountains,” wearing a lab coat. Probability without the full coop is like waving a half-stamped chip and saying “probably good enough for the VIP section.” Booth: “Show me the denominator or get out. Felt confidence isn’t a ticket.”

What people actually have is a feeling of confidence, or a pattern their minds have supposedly recognized, dressed in the language of numbers. Cheung’s line is the one to keep. Probability without a true denominator is psychology disguised as epistemology. A feeling that the next slice will be there is not the fraction.

Inside a closed toy — a die you have defined as six faces — someone can divide hits by the faces they stipulated. That is arithmetic inside an assumed box. Useful for board games. It is not a probability that corresponds to reality, and it is not a measurement of how reliable sensation is. The real denominator would include every unseen case and every way the non-data patch can fail. Observation never delivers that set. So no one has completed the reliability fraction. “Decently reliable” was never calculated. It was felt, then named. The badge was never issued.

If it is not the start, it is not the epistemology

Put the logical voids next to sensation and the starting-point claim collapses in plain sight. A starting point has to pay for the first claim. This one cannot pay for its own admission, cannot pay for the categories inside the claim, and cannot pay for the stamp that says this instance is one of the good ones. That is not an epistemology. An epistemology is an account of how you know. An account that cannot license a single premise is a mood of confident feelings; what it is not, is knowledge about anything.

Confident emotions are why people still talk this way. The cup was where the hand expected. The emotion of success got promoted into a theory of knowledge. When the claim on the table is “this is how knowing starts,” the streak is irrelevant. Success at finding the cup is not a proof that the patch contained “cup,” “same cup,” and “true.”

“Part of the process” is a retreat, and it should be treated as one. Even if that concession is granted — that sensation is part of the process — part of the process is not the same as the start. The start is whatever licenses the first premise. If sensation is not that, empiricism is not the theory of knowledge. Sensation is, at most, an occasion somebody else has to interpret with knowledge, meaning, logic, and tools sensation cannot supply. The later steps inherit the bankruptcy. They do not cure it.

The dismissal makes sense only if the attack is heard as “you do not have eyes.” That is not the attack. Eyes are not an epistemology. If someone offers sensation as the starting point, it deserves the question any starting point deserves. Does this actually give knowledge? Is it possible? Looking at the non-data sensation, no. There is no route from the event to the premise that does not spend money the event never had.

They already attacked a starting point

Here is the part that gets called weird, and it is the most ordinary move in the room. A scientist says the earth cannot be that young, so if the Bible says otherwise you should not believe the Bible. That is an attack on a starting point. Reliance on the text, they say, means you do not have knowledge. They treated your start as an epistemology and checked its ticket. Fine. That is allowed. In fact, as Christians we prefer to take the debate to the starting point level. If they attack our start, we are allowed to attack their start.

Science, if it claims knowledge, has a starting point too. Whatever it does later — instruments, models, long runs, very serious faces — it still has to get a premise from observation. Observation is sensation. If sensation never issued a premise, the later steps have nothing to inherit. Length of experiment does not mint a denominator the start never had. A hundred trials are a hundred patches. A thousand are a thousand patches. None of them is “all possible outcomes,” and none of them is “this premise is true.” Doing a bankrupt thing for a long time does not make it solvent. They checked the Bible ticket and said no knowledge. Cool. Now the sensation chip gets the same check at the same booth. Long runs of patches don’t mint a premise. Plane lands — utility is great. Knowledge is different. They crossed the line first.

Attacking sensation is not a dodge around the lab. It is the parallel question. They asked whether a claimed start, in our case the Bible, gives knowledge. Sensation is the start they have to defend. Showing that it does not give knowledge is the same kind of check.

Utility can stay on the table. This is the distinction that keeps the argument honest. The plane can land. The bulb can come on. Pragmatic utility is great and we use it; but it is not knowledge. Something can be pragmatically repeatable and still be a false claim against reality; thus it is not knowledge. The cup can be where the hand expected. Pragmatic success is a different claim from knowledge. They are the ones who crossed that line, when they said reliance on the Bible means you do not know. Turning around and checking their necessary start is not unjust, and it is not a change of subject. It is the ticket check they already ran on us, but now pointed at their own.

If sensation is not the starting point, then knowledge never starts for the scientist. If knowledge never started, then there is no knowledge for any point for the scientist. The booth stays closed. Meanwhile, God’s revelation doesn’t need a chip; He stamps the ticket Himself and opens the door. Only the Bible ticket clears it, because the God who issues it causes the mind to know it. Everything else is a void, a missing license, a bankrupt chip.

Is It Not With Your Senses?

This is a good example to go over. It shows how the other side often does not even understand what a worldview is, let alone how to argue for one.

Oshea (replying to a video): “Christians usually respond by attacking metaphysics, which isn’t wrong. However, it is better to attack their starting point for knowledge. Attack it hard. Using sensations to prove sensation is circular nonsense. Without knowing, there is no knowledge about any aspect of their worldview.”

Johnny Billy: “How do you come to belief in God? Is it not with your senses? Doesn’t everyone have the same epistemic limits? Presupposing God to prove God is also circular nonsense.”

“How do you come to belief in God? Is it not with your senses?”

No.

That sentence already assumes your starting point and then demands I live inside it. That is the very thing under dispute. If that is how debates are won, then I can just say, “Since you read the peer-reviewed article using God’s innate knowledge, I win.” I know that is what happened in the causality of the thing — knowledge comes from God — but that is not a public argument in the context of a debate. It is me describing reality on my worldview’s terms.

A blank slate cannot interpret a tree. Look at the bark all day. What leaves the eye is not “tree,” “oak,” “living,” “outside me,” or “this is not a dream.” Those are universals and judgments. Universals do not leak out of particular sensations. To understand any datum at all you already need logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, and causation. The data does not give you those. You bring them, or you do not have “data.” You have a twitch.

It is logically impossible to start with sensation in the premise and arrive at “logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, causation” without jumping categories and breaking identity. Sensation is not logic. A color-patch is not the law of contradiction. A sound is not “therefore.”

So no: I did not come to God by cataloging sensations and then inducting my way to the Trinity. The reason is simpler than a conversion story. If I start with sensation, I cannot know any term about anything in reality. Nothing. Not “God.” Not “no God.” Not “senses.” Not “Johnny.”

Vincent Cheung puts the wheel in the open in “Questions for Empiricists” (Sermonettes, Volume 1):

“What is a sensation? How did you learn the meaning of a sensation? How do you know when you are having a sensation? Do you sense the sensation to know that you have a sensation? If you sense a sensation, then how do you know that? Do you sense the sensation that senses the sensation? Then, do you sense the sensation that senses the sensation that senses the sensation? … If information comes from sensation, then how do you know when you are having a sensation?”

That is not a cute riddle. That is the start eating itself. If knowledge comes from sensation, then knowing that you are sensing is another sensation, and knowing that is another, and you never get the first justified term. You do not even get to name the method.

“Doesn’t everyone have the same epistemic limits?”

No. That is the whole fraud you bought.

Worldviews have different starting points. Different starting points do not have the same limits, because they are different. That is the law of identity, not a Bible tract. You assume an empiricist start, then act shocked that another start does not share your ceiling. The Christian start is God’s revelation. The causality of knowledge is defined by that same account of reality: God, not nerve endings. Very different start. Very different limits.

“Epistemic limits,”

is a polite way to say your starting point cannot justify knowledge and meaning. A start has one job: make knowledge possible. Empiricism fails that job and then calls the failure humility. What it actually yields is skepticism. Skepticism cannot even be stated without using the knowledge it denies. “I know that we cannot know” is a contradiction. So empiricism does not survive as a starting point. A start that makes knowledge impossible is not a limited start. It is a dead one.

Pretending we all begin with sensation is not humility. It is a failure to argue for a worldview. The whole point of a worldview debate is that the starts differ, and you are here to show yours can carry knowledge and the other cannot. Assuming we all begin as empiricists is like walking into a room of rival worldviews and saying, “Aliens gave us consciousness, so why do you believe the Qur’an?” That is not an argument. That is you treating your story as the weather. If aliens-gave-us-knowledge is your epistemology, it is your job to argue for it. It is not a human default.

And since Scripture contradicts empiricism, if I granted that I depend on sensation to know the Bible, I would be denying the worldview I claim to believe. I would be saying the start is sensation and the start is revelation. Those are not the same thing.

“Presupposing God to prove God is also circular.”

You are confusing empiricism with every other starting point. You are so used to empiricism’s circle that you think every axiom must be the same shape. That is sloppy on its face, because my start is not yours.

Every system has an undeduced starting point. That is what a first principle is. If you can deduce it, it is not first. Empiricism uses sensation to prove sensation. That is circular, it never terminates, and it dies as skepticism. Skepticism cannot be spoken without contradicting itself. You need knowledge to deny knowledge.

Scripture does not lean on premises outside itself. It is self-authenticating by the sufficiency of its own content — similar to the law of contradiction, rather than to a hamster wheel called empiricism. The law of contradiction is not “proved” by a second, backup law of contradiction. It is the standard: to use it, you use it; to deny it, you use it. Empiricism is not like that. To “prove” a sensation you need another sensation, and another, and another. That is infinite regress, not self-authentication. So yes: sensation, used as a start, is circular. Revelation, used as a start, is a first principle. Calling both “circular” is how you hide that only one of them can even speak.

You want to talk metaphysics? Fine. You still do not have knowledge. Using sensations to prove sensation leaves you with no start. Without a start, you have no knowledge about any aspect of your worldview — including the objection you just made. You borrowed logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, and causation. You borrowed “circular.” You borrowed “limits.” You borrowed the demand for justification. Then you pretended those tools fell out of an empiricist start you also admit is defective and limited.

Empiricism does not yield any knowledge. That is the argument.

It was never “God exists because a sunset felt warm.” It was this: your method cannot know anything, including that sentence. You cannot even know to deny my stance on God, because on your start you have no knowledge.

Skepticism Just Ate Its Own Lunch

It is always dumb to disagree with the bible.

A rational, public starting point given by an omniscient God—who causes His elect to know it by His power—is the only coherent definition of a worldview axiom. There is no other way to define it without the Bible, which declares itself true and every rival false.

“Axioms are the product of not being omniscient, and being capable of assenting to propositions. Any first principle would lead to skepticism under such a standard.” – Johnny Billy

The reply looks tidy on the surface. He claims axioms are merely the product of finite, non-omniscient minds that can still assent to propositions. Under the demand that a starting point deliver knowledge, he concludes that any first principle collapses into skepticism. That is the claim. It is also the problem.

Start with the self-refutation, because it is immediate. If every first principle under that standard leads to skepticism, then the first principle underwriting his own sentence also leads to skepticism. The statement “any first principle leads to skepticism” is itself advanced as knowledge. By the rule he just announced, that statement has no ground left. It cancels itself. You cannot know that all knowledge foundations fail without already standing on a foundation that, according to you, fails. That is not a minor technicality. It is the claim eating its own lunch. Skepticism of this kind is impossible for the same reason the law of non-contradiction is non-negotiable: you cannot affirm knowledge while denying it. The biblical system treats the law of non-contradiction as part of the Logos Himself. Jesus appeals to it. Paul distinguishes grace as grace and law as law. A position that requires you to know what it says cannot be known is already finished.

Even if we set the self-refutation aside for a moment, the conclusion still does not follow from the premise. He moves from “the mind is finite and not omniscient” to “therefore any first principle collapses into skepticism.” That leap only works if the first principle is treated as a bare human product limited by the same finitude that produced it. The biblical first principle does not fit that description. It only logically follows if you assume empiricism.

On its own terms the starting point is not merely a set of propositions. It includes the full metaphysical package: an omniscient, omnipotent God who actively causes finite minds to know those propositions and to assent to them. The limitation of the human mind is real, in that it cannot hold a true beginningless infinite amount of propositions as God does. However, this is already accounted for inside the system. God supplies both the content (the Bible as the public starting point revealed by God) and the ability to grasp it with certainty. The bible is a subset of propositions from the Mind of God revealed to man as a public starting point. It is so substantial that it covers all life and godliness. It is so extensive and perfect it labels itself as interchangeable with God. It is a worldview.

So what about the finite human mind? The finite is not left to bootstrap its own knowledge. The infinite Source does the causing. Finitude is swallowed by the infinite power already articulated in the first principle itself. That is why the “not omniscient” premise does not force the skeptical conclusion. Human-originated axioms have no such resource. They remain products of limited minds trying to generate certainty from limited materials, and they collapse. The biblical first principle starts with the unlimited Mind and includes the claim that this Mind sovereignly causes knowledge in limited minds. Once that metaphysical claim is part of the axiom, the limitation of the receiver no longer functions as a barrier to certainty.

This is exactly the move Vincent Cheung called out years ago in “Blinded by Atheism.” A critic treated Scripture as a locked safe and occasionalism as the combination sealed inside it, then complained of a vicious circle. Cheung’s reply was simple and devastating: Where is God in the analogy? God is the defining factor in both the metaphysics and the epistemology. The Almighty tears the door open or simply imparts the knowledge. Once you quietly delete God from the picture, of course the system fails. The whole thing is about God. Cheung even grants the point without embarrassment: remove God and the apologetic collapses; with God it stands.

He is running the same pattern. He defines an axiom as the product of a non-omniscient mind, then treats the limitation of that finite mind as an inescapable barrier that sinks every first principle. But that framing evaluates the biblical starting point while God is already removed from the equation. On the system’s own terms the limitation of the finite mind is real, yet it is completely overcome and dominated by God’s limitless power to cause the mind to know and to assent. The first principle itself includes that claim. So the critique is testing a God-powered epistemology under the assumption that God is not there. Of course it looks broken once the central Agent is deleted. It would be like doing an internal critique of empiricism while completely ignoring sensation. You cannot internally critique empiricism without the definition of the senses. The same thing is happening here. Without God nothing in the apologetic works. With God everything does. That is not a hidden weakness. It makes Christian apologetics unstoppable.

There is still a deeper problem. His definition of what an axiom even is already contradicts the only standard that matters under the biblical system. Scripture is not human interpretation or a finite mind’s invention. It is given by God. The Christian public revelation is produced by omniscience and given to finite minds. God does not need an axiom for Himself. He creates and supplies one for us. The origin is the unlimited Mind; the recipients are the limited ones. So the axiom is not a product of non-omniscience. It is a product of omniscience designed to help those who are not omniscient.

Once the Bible is the sole public standard for knowledge, that is the only coherent way to define a real axiom: the infallible one the omniscient God gives. Anything that originates from finite minds instead of from that divine source is not a true axiom. It is an anti-axiom—a starting point that cannot deliver knowledge and therefore collapses. The production line is the other way around. The omniscient One is the source, not the customer who needs the product. That single reversal undercuts the premise that leads to his skeptical conclusion.

The Christian system is a system of propositions. God Himself is also a system of propositions—His infinite, eternal, and immutable. Ours is finite. God’s sovereignty is involved in knowledge absolutely and directly, as He is with everything else. With our finite minds and our system of propositions, He makes us know which propositions align with the Bible and are indeed true. The Bible says we can know, and the sovereignty of God ensures it. That is occasionalism. God does not leave finite minds to guess which propositions are true. He causes the knowledge and the assent. The limitation is real, but it is dominated by the One who is not limited.

This is also why the Christian apologetic is the Bible itself. Showing the self-refuting nature of opposing positions is a useful method, but the apologetic is the Word of God. That is why the definition of an axiom can only be intelligently defined as coming from an omniscient mind—because that is how the Bible defines it. Every other way is an anti-definition of axiom. It is the same pattern we see with the Trinity. The biblical definition of monotheism is the Trinity. Every other definition is an anti-monotheism. The Bible defines it one way, and that is the only intelligent, non-refuting definition. The same holds for “axiom.” On biblical terms an axiom is the infallible revelation produced by the omniscient God and given to finite minds. Anything else is not an axiom at all.

God’s sovereignty is not an afterthought added to shore up a weak epistemology. It is the center. The finite mind’s limits are real, but they are not decisive because the infinite God is the one who causes the knowledge, the assent, and the coherence of the proposition in our system of propositions. God’s power swallows up all human limitations. The system does not pretend to work without Him. It insists that only with the omniscient, omnipotent God who reveals and causes knowledge does any of it stand. Once that is left in place, the finite-mind limitation is only a problem if you leave the biblical worldview.

The claim that every first principle collapses, the inference from finitude to skepticism, the definition of axiom as a product of non-omniscience, and the quiet removal of God from the critique all fail for the same underlying reason. They evaluate a God-centered starting point under assumptions that have already deleted the God who makes the starting point possible. The biblical system does not apologize for that dependence. It announces it with triumph. Without Him there is no knowledge. With Him all limitations for the elect are lost under an sea of God’s endless power and ability. That is not a side point. It is the entire point.

Empiricism, Induction and Science Is Anti-Logic

If a system-of-thinking’s epistemology ends with a skepticism, “I know that I don’t know,” then that epistemology does not exist. It does not mean knowledge does not exist, but empiricism as an epistemology is false. Knowledge is from another epistemology. The answer for knowledge is of course the bible. It is the only first principle for knowledge.

To conclude that “I know that I do not know,” is an impossibility of reality and of thinking. A contradiction, because it affirms and denies the same thing, affirms nothing. To affirm Y and then deny Y, gives no knowledge. There is no knowledge, no subjects, or predicates if an epistemology ends in skepticism, which denies the law of contradiction. I cannot deny my own existence, nor can I do it in my thoughts, without using my existence. I cannot deny the law of contradiction without using it. A contradiction does not exist. A doctrine of knowledge that leads to skepticism, which denies the law of contradiction does not exist. Any starting point that reduces to skepticism when scrutinized must be rejected, because skepticism, by its own merit, cannot assert its own truth without contradiction.

Empiricism is a logical fallacy. Sensation is not subjects or predicates, nor can one assert that it does without a category fallacy, which when taken to their essential attributes would deny the law of contradiction. To deny the law of contradiction is anti-logic. The same is for logic and mathematics. A visual input, which is a copy of something else, is not the category of logic.

Also, to use sensation to justify knowledge ends in an infinite regress of more sensations. How do you prove a sensation, except with another sensation, and so on. How do you sense you are not sensing? With a sensation? Also, transient, momentary descriptions of sensations as premises always leads to a logical fallacy when the conclusion ends with universals. To say some and all is the same thing denying the law of contradiction. To deny the law of contradiction is anti-logic. Thus, Empiricism and conclusions from them is anti-logic.

To have more information in the conclusion than the premises is a non-sequitur fallacy, because the conclusion does not logically follow if your conclusion has more information than your premises. Thus, all induction is technically a non-sequitur fallacy, because all conclusions of induction has more information than the premises. If your conclusion does not logically follow the premises, then it leads to skepticism; “you know that you do not know.” But this denies the law of contradiction. Thus, induction makes knowledge impossible because it leads to skepticism. Induction is anti-logic because it violates the law of contradiction.

Science relies on Empiricism and Induction, and thus science by extension also denies the law of contradiction by leading to skepticism. Thus, science is anti-logic. In addition to these two fallacies, scientific experimentation commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Affirming the consequent takes a sufficient connection in the premise, but then in the conclusion states it as a necessary one. Thus, the conclusion has more information in it than what the premise provides. This additional information makes the conclusion not logically follow from the premises. Thus, experimentation is by definition a non-sequitur fallacy. This means the conclusion leads to skepticism; it leads to, I know that I do not know. This is anti-logic, because it violates the law of contradiction. There is no logical justification to say otherwise, other than mindlessly asserting so.

Science is a triple anti-logic enterprise. There is no knowledge in the conclusions of science; there are no subjects or predicates in science. It is logically impossible to say science has knowledge without denying the laws of logic. What is worst, to attack science or deny logic? But without the law of contradiction you cannot even think. This does not mean science has no role, but it cannot be used for knowledge.

I asked Grok AI to show in formal validity,– a necessary conclusion, without additional information being added into the conclusion or committing a category error from the premises to conclusion,– sensations (empiricism) to laws of logic in the conclusion. It said it was technically impossible. It said if one includes the Socratic method or abstraction (which allows induction and category leaps not included in the premises) then you could, but if one is being strict with categories and the laws of logic, then you cannot logically go from sensation in the premise to a conclusion of something like logic, or math, ethics, universals (etc).

 This just goes to show that the Socratic method is still the intellectual fudge factor morons use to manufacture knowledge when there is none. It is an intellectual ass wipe, to make their crappy conclusion seem legit.  Whether it was the Socratic method or Aristotle or David Hume, or Science, all of them involve the same magical moment where one category, without justification, turns into another category and where conclusions that do not necessarily follow from the premises, do follow from the premise without logical warrant. Of course, by this irrational thinking I can define reality however I want, and this has always been the end game for fools.  

Lastly, when asking the difference between definitions of Rational and Irrational, the AI said Aristotle and Russel, in the realm of logic used rational to be about deduction and necessary inference, and thus, irrational was the opposite. Irrational is about inference that do not necessarily follow from the premises. But when I asked if science was irrational, it denied it. Despite telling me the conclusions from induction and affirming the consequent do not logically follow from the premises, which is what Grok defined as irrational, it wanted to say science was not irrational. After probing it more, I again found out that it considered the Socratic method or the modern use of it called abstraction, rational. This is of course nonsense, because it involves induction and category errors.  As Vincent Cheung says in Professional Morons, they have abandoned trying to be rational and magically make the irrational manufacture knowledge. Even though such a prosses violets the laws of logic, they are under the delusion they have knowledge, or they know they don’t have knowledge and will just pretend they do. And yet, these are the ones telling us they are smart, and Christians are dumb? Lol.