Occasionalism and Empiricism

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This is an outdated and unofficial item. The article was released as a draft/preview to Captive to Reason. For the current and official version of the article, please download the book from the online library.

The following is an edited correspondence in which I discuss occasionalism and empiricism.

Note that I have attached numbers to the other person’s various statements, so that you can more easily recognize the answers that correspond to them.

— A —

What do you think about someone (a materialist) who says that the same concept can be located at two spatiotemporal locations? This happens because the brain is like a computer which copies another computer’s program. So, when I speak, the sound waves enter your ears and your brain copies the concept that I had in my head.

I would expect a materialist to say this — it seems to follow from their view of reality. I can directly challenge them on this point, but I can also demand justification for the logically prior premises. For example, I do not believe: (1) that a "concept" is physical, and (2) that brains "think." Say that I choose to first challenge the materialist on (2). If he uses science and empiricism on the way to prove it, then I will challenge science and empiricism. My own position on this topic of thinking and concepts is a version of occasionalism, so I am able to avoid all the problems that I present against the materialist.

If the main point of your question is about communication in the materialist scheme, then I would quickly challenge empiricism. I would admit that IF the materialist can communicate to another person, then there would be two physical copies of the same thought. But I deny that they can communicate, so they will need to prove that they can communicate via empiricism first — that is, even if we were to ignore for the moment whether materialism is true, whether thoughts are physical, and whether brains can think.

As for occasionalism, I use the expression "on the occasion" more than the term "occasionalism," since many beginners read my books and they would have no idea what the term means, so I use the explanation or the meaning of the term instead of the term itself. The point is that God’s providence includes complete control of everything about everything, which means that he must be the sole power controlling all communication and knowledge acquisition.

Jonathan Edwards affirmed a form of occasionalism, and also Malebranche, as well as a number of other Christian thinkers. You could see Calvin, Luther, etc., at times saying things that sound like occasionalism. I would just say that it is a necessary implication and a consistent application of the biblical doctrine of providence.

— B —

Why would you deny communication for them? Is it because when you communicate, you are communicating propositions, and propositions are not material, so that the same proposition cannot be in more than one spatiotemporal location?

That would be the logically prior reason — I do deny that propositions are material.

But I am saying that even if we ignore the logically prior issues, they still need to show that they can communicate by speaking and hearing. Whether propositions are material or not, they need to give me a logical proof showing that when one hears a proposition spoken, he actually hears what is spoken. That is, they need a proof for empiricism.

— C —

(1) Now they would probably say that your response is self-refuting, since you had to use your physical mouth to ask the question, and you assumed that my ears would hear your question. At this point you would deny this in favor of your occasionalism, right?

(2) On the other hand, I could say that within my worldview, God made our mouths to communicate and our ears to receive information, but within his worldview and by empiricism, how would he know that he is actually hearing what is spoken? At this point, he would probably reassert his conclusion that he knows this because he answered my question.

(1)
Occasionalism is my positive answer, but I don’t need to use that yet.

Rather, at this point I can push the debate into a purely mental world. For example, I could suggest that we might be having the entire debate in a dream. How do we know that we are not? This is just to say that I refuse to presuppose the physical world without justification, and it begs the question to say that we know we are in the physical world because we are speaking and hearing, since we might be doing all of it in a purely mental world, or in a dream. Since the materialist constantly needs the physical world in his philosophy, he cannot proceed until he provides the rational justification that I demand.

On the other hand, my basic principles, and indeed my entire worldview, is completely immune and undamaged, since in my worldview, the physical world is deduced from a non-physical principle. In fact, if not for the fact that Scripture teaches that there is a physical world, I can discard it completely and still have everything else intact. So I can actually deny that I am necessarily using my physical mouth when I ask or answer anything — the materialist will have to prove it to me.

(Note: I do not deny that there is a physical world — to deny that there is a physical world would be to deny what Scripture teaches. What I am saying is that I don’t have to be in the physical world in order to function, and IF the teachings about the physical world were to be absent from Scripture, then I could deny the existence of the physical world altogether, and all my beliefs would still be intact.)

So I could force everything to pass from the physical to the purely mental just by suggesting it, and this destroys everything that is physical (for the physical world has been assumed without justification up to this point). If the opponent cannot survive in a purely mental world, or if he cannot get back out once forced into a purely mental world, then he loses right then and there.

(2)
Since you follow Van Til and I do not, you will have to formulate your own answer using Van Til's approach.

But note that just because God made the ear does not mean that its purpose or ability is what you think that it is. Scripture itself shows that the eyes and ears are often mistaken, and people who are supposedly seeing and hearing the same things often come to different conclusions (2 Kings 3:20–22; John 12:27–29).

So, the problems of empiricism are still as real as ever — even if you begin from biblical presuppositions, there is no way to show in any given instance whether your sensation is correct. This is one reason why I say that even given biblical presuppositions, you still cannot rescue what is inherently irrational or logically impossible. Even if it was somehow possible for one to receive knowledge through sensation before the Fall (but I affirm that empiricism is irrational and impossible even apart from sin), we must take into account the noetic effects of sin on the reliability of sensation.

With occasionalism, there is no problem. The ears at best provide the occasion upon which God (the Logos) communicates directly to my mind — on the occasion of the sensation but independent of the sensation. In addition, he is the one who controls everything about both the occasion and the communication.

It is very unlikely that your opponent will think of this and bring it up. I mention this only as a remote possibility (that someone will challenge you this way), but if it happens, then you must have an answer for it. And it will have to be an exegetical answer, since you claim to base the reliability or possibility of sensation on biblical principles.

— D —

(1) How do you know you're not dreaming?

(2) It would be fallacious for my opponent to argue that since sensations are sometimes mistaken, therefore they are always mistaken. Or, it would be fallacious to say that if sometimes you cannot know whether your sensations are working properly, therefore you can never know whether they are working properly.

(1)
I might be dreaming, and it does no damage to my worldview, and all my basic principles are intact. That's the point. But I can be dreaming and still affirm that there is a physical world, not because I trust my sensations, but because the Bible reveals this to me.

On the other hand, my sensations feel the same to me when I think I am dreaming as when I think I am not dreaming, so by my sensations I cannot reliably confirm whether or not I am dreaming. Even if my sensations are different when I think I am dreaming as when I think I am not dreaming, how do I know that I am really dreaming when I think that I am dreaming, and that I am not dreaming when I think that I am not dreaming? Perhaps I have them in reverse, so that when I feel a certain way and I think that I am dreaming, I should really think that I am not dreaming when I feel that way, and vice versa.

But all of this poses no problem to my approach.

(2)
Yes, but unless you can show how you know at any given instance whether that particular sensation is reliable or not, then you can’t show how you could trust any given instance of sensation.

So, even if some instances of sensation are reliable, and that in these instances, what you sense really corresponds to what is there to be sensed, unless you can show which instances of sensation are reliable and which instances are unreliable, it makes no difference — you still can’t trust any of them, since you have no way of knowing when your sensations are right and when they are wrong.

So your opponent does not need to show that you never sense what you think you sense.

— E —

But could they say that since sometimes your dreams have been false (i.e. a big monster chasing you), and so how do you know you're communicating truth? You'd probably say that to deny what your worldview, whether in a dream or not, would result in irrationality, or that the laws of logic, necessary inferences, etc., hold in dreams as well.

Right, I affirm what I affirm not because of what I "see," whether in the physical or the mental world (or a dream), but because of divine revelation and logical necessity.

Actually, it would be convenient if an empiricist would ask this question about dreams. It would in fact be a challenge to him and not to me — unless he can answer this question, it would just mean that we cannot trust what we sense whether or not we are in a dream. It provides yet another illustration on the impossibility of gaining any knowledge from the senses.

But of course, the real contrast is not between the dream state and the non-dream state, but between a purely mental world and a physical world. Also, we need to talk about what is meant by "real." If a monster chases me in a purely mental world, or in a dream, then this is what’s "real" in the purely mental world or in the dream. That is, it is really true that a monster is chasing me in the dream. As stated, the question seems to imply that if something does not happen in the physical world, then it is not "real," but this begs the question.

— F —

I'd say that (1) God made us this way, and (2) this is how we normally operate. (3) There needs to be a proper environment so that if I were on drugs, in poor lighting, deprived of sleep, etc., then I wouldn't have a hard time saying that I was mistaken about some trivial observation, but generally they [sensations] are reliable.

(1)
You need to show from Scripture that God made us this way. "This way" cannot just mean that God made the eyes and the ears, but you must show that we can reliably derive actual knowledge through them by sensation — through some inherent function in them, and that you would know in any given instance why that instance of sensation is reliable. My contention is that this cannot be done.

(2)
Then I can just say we are normally wrong.

(3)
You will have to show that Scripture says that sensation is reliable under certain conditions, and that it is unreliable under these conditions you listed. You can't specify these conditions if you "discover" these conditions from sensation in the first place, since that would beg the question.

That is, how do you know that drugs affect your sensation? You can’t claim to know this by sensation if you have yet to establish the reliability of sensation. And how do you know that the lighting is poor in a room? Maybe the lighting is fine (what is fine?), but you are going blind.

Also, even if Scripture says that sensation is reliable under certain conditions, and that it is unreliable under other conditions, you must still have a way to discover what kind of condition that you are currently under. And if you use sensation to discover what condition you are under in order to determine whether your current sensation is reliable, then this begs the question.

— G —

(1) The knife cuts both ways and you need to show from Scripture all the things that you affirm and counter me with.

(2) Also, I think you’d have to deny some common sense things, so that you don’t know that "Vincent is a man." You may be willing to bite that bullet, I don't know.