Bill Pratt | April 20, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Recall that in part 2, we looked at a couple skeptics’ views on testimony. The first skeptic’s view appeared to be self-defeating, but the second skeptic singled out testimony about supernatural events, thus avoiding the self-defeating approach of the first skeptic. However, the second skeptic has a different sort of problem, which [...]
Bill Pratt | April 18, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In the previous post, we talked about the role of testimony in our everyday lives. There are some, however, who cast serious doubts on the reliability of testimony. Here is a typical quote from a skeptic who commented on this blog: As we all should know, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. There are [...]
Bill Pratt | April 16, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt There are 3 ways that a person can gain knowledge: experience, reason, and testimony. Experience simply means that we observe something directly with one of our five senses for ourselves (e.g., “There is a computer screen in front of me”). Reason means that we make rational and logical inferences from knowledge we [...]
Bill Pratt | November 23, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Thomas, the disciple of Jesus, is famous for the following statement: ”Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” There have always been people like Thomas who demand that they directly experience [...]
Bill Pratt | November 7, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt I’ve been reading the famous eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant lately. Kant’s theory of knowledge only allowed for human knowledge to extend to those things we can directly experience through our senses. Kant argued that we could not have direct experience of our self, the cosmos, or God. Kant’s empiricism ruled out rational knowledge of [...]
Bill Pratt | June 22, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt This is a familiar theme for long-time readers of the blog. I am deeply interested in where the scientific method can shed light and where its light begins to fade. For mankind, to know everything is to know all that really exists. If you think of everything that exists as falling [...]
Bill Pratt | May 6, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, we discussed Francis Parker’s argument that the process of knowing cannot be physical. A purely physical account of knowledge simply does not work. In part 2, we pick up where we left off. Parker draws out more disturbing consequences of the materialistic account of knowing. [...]
Bill Pratt | May 4, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt If you are a materialist, physicalist, or naturalist, then you must say “yes” because everything reduces to physical processes on those views. Francis Parker, Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College, argues, however, that the act of knowing cannot be a physical process. Parker offers the following scenario that a materialist may [...]
Bill Pratt | May 2, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Joseph Owens’ book, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, argues for the existence of an immaterial human soul. In part 1 of this post, we looked at three of his arguments for an immaterial soul: 1) the human intellect’s ability to know things as universals, 2) the human intellect’s ability to know in [...]
Bill Pratt | April 29, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Another chapter from Joseph Owens’ book An Elementary Christian Metaphysics urged me to write. This chapter has Owens explaining why he believes humans have an immaterial soul. He first points out that “actions and reactions in the material universe take place under the conditions of singularity.” He explains that an “individual [...]
