Anthony Flood

There are no “brute facts”: here’s why.

In one of Bill Vallicella’s recent posts on his journey through philosophical theology, he engaged the effort of Reformed apologist R. C. Sproul (1939-2017). Sproul preferred “classical apologetics” to the “presuppositional” approach of Cornelius Van Til against which he co-authored a book.[1] Questioning Sproul’s putative theistic proof and reviewing four possibilities, Bill the theist writes (as an atheist might):

Sproul needs to explain why the cosmos, physical world, nature cannot just exist. Why must it have an efficient cause or a reason/purpose (final cause)? Why can’t its existence be a brute fact? That is a (fifth) epistemic possibility he does not, as far as I can see, consider.[2]

What follows is essentially the comment I posted on his blog in answer to his question, except I’ve converted my address to Bill in the second person to the third.

As Bill may know, I first encountered the notion of “brute fact” in Bernard Lonergan’s 1957 Insight. There couldn’t be a brute fact, he held, because being is completely intelligible . . . and therefore, God exists! (Okay, there are about two dozen steps in between.[3])

I’ve argued elsewhere (here and here ) that Lonergan had it backwards: there are no brute facts (for God or anyone else) because God exists. “There are no brute facts” is another way of saying “Being is completely intelligible.”

Continue reading “There are no “brute facts”: here’s why.”

Joe Sobran’s encomia for Murray Rothbard

Anent yesterday’s reminisence, I rediscovered two clippings from early 1995 on which I foolishly failed to note where they appeared. (I know roughly when, but not whence.)

Murray Rothbard had died on January 7th; obits followed soon thereafter, including several from the eloquent American conservative commentator Joseph Sobran, the traditionalist Roman Catholic who “anarched” under Murray’s influence.[1]

I believe one clipping was snipped from The Wanderer, the Catholic newspaper to which Joe contributed; the other, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. I could be wrong about either or both; I invite readers to correct my memory or render my account more precise, if any of you can.

Having no wish to infringe on copyright, which I believe is held by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, I can only provide excerpts (which I will take down if FGF believes I exceeded fair use). Joe, a careful writer, was not given to hyperbole, but since what he said about my friend and intellectual hero squares with my experience, I’m happy to give you a glimpse of it. It’s much more impressive coming from him.

Continue reading “Joe Sobran’s encomia for Murray Rothbard”

“What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?”

Murray banging out an article or chapter in his and Joey’s second-floor, West 88th Street apartment.

That was the title of my tribute, which went undelivered, for the “Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Murray N. Rothbard” on March 24, 1995, at his widow JoAnn‘s church, Madison Avenue Presbyterian (at 73rd Street), three weeks after what would have been his 69th birthday. (I still have her handwritten invitation to Gloria and me.) Next March 2nd will mark the centenary of his birth, so the text of my inadequate salute to Murray must serve as a belated notice of his 99th birthday. I hope you’ll consider marking the occasion by having a look nine Rothbard-related posts appended to this one.—A.G.F.

“What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?”

What friend of Murray’s has not asked that question? I asked it regularly over the last twelve years. After all, unlike many of Murray’s other friends, I had no accomplishments, literary or otherwise, that he could associate me with when I introduced myself. It took some doing for me one night a dozen years ago, after having recently read his The Ethics of Liberty [I am mentioned on the copyright page of the second edition.—A.G.F.], to look up his phone number and call him. I was ready to apologize for the intrusion, keep my questions brief and few, resist the urge to prolong the conversation, and then, after about twenty minutes, thank him for his time.

Ninety minutes into our talk, however, I noticed that he was enjoying the exchange as much as I was! His showing as much curiosity about my interests as I did about his ideas surprised me utterly. As I was being drawn into the vortex of his ideas for the first time, I wondered for a moment if there was something else I should have been doing. But only for a moment. Continue reading ““What did I do to deserve a friend like Murray?””

Every Wind of Doctrine: A Former Captive of Philosophy and Vain Deceit Remembers

Yesterday, I thought out loud about this question; bit by bit, I’ll begin to answer it: How did an Irish-Italian Catholic kid from the Bronx break with the world of Marvel comics in the 1960s, discover philosophy, come under the influence of a notable communist, and a few years later follow an obscure dispensationalist Bible teacher and then a leading anarcho-capitalist theoretician—all while studying guitar theory under a jazz giant, working as Folk City’s doorman and later for a world-class architect?

A day later, I can think of at least a dozen major influences that I mercifully omitted from that already intolerably overlong sentence.

Sixty years ago, I could not ask, let alone answer, such a question for the simple reason that I was unself-conscious. It’s hard to recall what unself-consciousness felt like because memory tends to impose mature, reflective categories onto what we selectively remember. Yet, I must make the effort. There is a transition from directly experiencing what we enjoy to reflecting on how we might shape our lives and the world around us.

I had a notion that there were struggles, but also that they were all “settled” by authority—parental, ecclesiastical, social, or governmental. That made my world full of interest but, more importantly, safe. Dangers existed, but they were manageable. Unmanageable dangers belonged to movies and comic books.

That romantic sense of safety was hard to maintain after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, followed within five years (from my 10^th to my 15th year) by the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. It was bewildering for a pre-teen and teenager to live through. And what I found confusing or unsettling, I put out of my mind. The world as mediated by movies and television was my norm. I vaguely sensed that reality could be different, but I couldn’t work up enough interest to pursue the idea. My unself-consciousness was a blissful state, one I subconsciously knew better than to disturb. It rarely, if ever, occurred to me that one day I would have to make my way in a world beyond the television or movie screen. Continue reading “Every Wind of Doctrine: A Former Captive of Philosophy and Vain Deceit Remembers”

The Challenge of Autobiography

When you write about your life, you have to connect the particular people, places, and events that shaped you to strangers who will view those particulars through the lens of their experiences. For that, there’s no guidebook. To you, they are abstractions: you don’t know them; they don’t know you. All you have in common is your humanity.

You’re not writing to make them care about you. They care about themselves—and about your story only to the extent that it illuminates theirs: their lives, struggles, and fears.

So if I ask, “How did an Irish-Italian Catholic kid from the Bronx break with the world of Marvel comics in the 1960s, discover philosophy, come under the influence of a notable communist, and a few years later follow an obscure dispensationalist Bible teacher and then a leading anarcho-capitalist theoretician—all while studying guitar theory under a jazz giant, working as Folk City’s doorman and later for a world-class architect?,” the likely response is, “Who cares?” or “Sounds like a very confused kid!”

But if the narrator frames his story as a key to unlocking history that they’re curious about—or, even better, lived through—and hints at answers to questions they’ve long asked themselves, then he won’t just attract an audience. He’ll hold them. And if he delivers, they won’t just stay. They’ll bring others to the fire.

[To be continued]

Posts with autobiographical content:

How to defeat the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), if that’s what you wish to do

You can defeat the TAG[1] if you can show that there is a way to account for intelligible predication without presupposing the Christian worldview. Otherwise, the latter’s claim to account for it stands.

Go ahead. Make my day.

If Christ is πρό πάντων (pro pantōn), that is, before (“prior to”) all things (Colossians 1:17), then He is πρό φιλοσοφία (see Colossians 2:8), that is, before philosophy.

If awareness of Christ is the foreword or prologue to sound philosophizing (wisdom-seeking), if such cognizance is the beginning (תְּחִלַּ֣ת, tehillat) of wisdom (חָ֭כְמָה, hakmah); Proverbs 9:10), then believing that God exists (ὅτι ἔστιν, Hebrews 11:6) is not an afterthought, an inference from something created (e.g., a “theistic proof”).

If Christ is the ground of inference, then you cannot philosophize (analyze, synthesize) profitably without acknowledging the priority that πρό implies, that is, without acknowledging who Christ is. You’re just beating the air. Continue reading “How to defeat the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), if that’s what you wish to do”

My Sidney Hook Collection

For my relationship to American philosopher Sidney Hook (1902-1989), see this 2018 post. For my effort to sell off my library, see this, this, this, and this.

I’d love to sell them as a set

Hook as Author

- From Hegel to Marx (1971 [1936])
- The Hero in History (1967 [1943])
- Education for Modern Man (1946)
- Marx and the Marxists: The Ambiguous Legacy (1955)
- Common Sense and the Fifth Amendment (1957)
- The Quest for Being (1961)
- The Paradoxes of Freedom (1962)
- The Fail-Safe Fallacy (1963)
- Political Power and Personal Freedom (1965 [1959])
- Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy (1970)
- Philosophy and Public Policy (1980)

Hook as Contributor and Editor

- Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (1958) (Blanshard, Munitz, et al.)
- American Philosophers at Work: The Philosophic Scene in the United States (1956) Blanshard, Black, Carnap, Nagel, Sellars, Stace, et al.

On dogma and dogmatism

Bill Vallicella, a friend and philosophical sparring partner of two decades, recently discussed another thinker’s argument from design to God.[1] Since my interest lies in biblical rather than “classical” theism, I will not engage with the argument itself or his discussion of it. Instead, I want to examine the presuppositions of philosophical theology general and a thesis of Bill’s in particular.

The presupposition of philosophical theology is that it is licit for a human being to suspend his knowledge of יהוה (Yahweh)—the God of the Bible—in order to explore the limits of philosophical inquiry with respect to God’s existence. From time to time, Bill revisits his thesis that there are no rationally compelling (“knock-down”) arguments for or against any metaphysical position. He did so again in his recent post, providing an opportunity for me to restate my position.

I was reminded of an essay I reposted in 2023, which first appeared on my old site twenty years earlier. In it, I critique “Dogmatic Uncertainty” by the British libertarian classicist and novelist Sean Gabb.[2] Both Gabb and Bill implicitly rely on the contrast between δόξα (doxa) and ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē)—that is, between “mere” opinion and certain knowledge. I presume that Bill, an expert in argumentation, has not ruled out the possibility that we are within our rights to claim ἐπιστήμη about God without supporting argumentation. But if I make that claim, am I being necessarily “dogmatic” in the pejorative sense? Continue reading “On dogma and dogmatism”

Copleston’s “A History of Philosophy”

Yesterday I put my set of Durant’s The Story of Civilization up for offer. I said “you may expect more posts like this one in the near future.” The near future has arrived.

Here’s what Frederick Copleston‘s classic A History of Philosophy, a 15-volume paperback set, looks like on one of my library’s shelves. They’re clean and in great shape. Here’s the Wiki entry.

To repeat part of yesterday’s post, please “do your research about what this set is going for elsewhere and then, if interested, make inquiry. If we come to terms, I will lovingly wrap and package them, which are in very good condition (clean, no handwriting, no underlining, no highlighting) and [take] the box to the post office; you’ll have them in about a week. (Those of you who know that these are not idle words are free to leave testimonials to that effect below.)”

For background on this offer, please go here.

“The Story of Civilization”: Yours for a (yet undetermined) price.

One of this blog’s first posts was a tribute to Will Durant, the author (and beginning with Volume VII, co-author with wife Ariel) of The Story of Civilization.[1] I regret never having made the time to peruse every page of this series, unique in its high literary and esthetic quality, which more than compensates for the shortcomings that specialists have found reason to complain about. I no longer believe that the prospect of luxuriating in these volumes can compete with the urgent tasks that demand my attention.

I must part with these eleven tomes (1975 edition), pictured above, as I must with so many other books, asking something in return from visitors who have benefitted from what they’ve found on this site. Scholars who are still in their book-accumulation stage are my preferred customers for the contents of my library. So, do your research about what this set is going for elsewhere and then, if interested, make inquiry. If we come to terms, I will lovingly wrap and package them, which are in very good condition (clean, no handwriting, no underlining, no highlighting) and wheel the box to the post office; you’ll have them in about a week. (Those of you who know that these are not idle words are free to leave testimonials to that effect below.)

As I must accelerate the book-liquidation phase I’m in, you may expect more posts like this one in the near future.

Thank you for considering this offer. Whatever you think of it, at least have a(nother) look at that old post; it’s not half-bad.

Note

[1] “Will Durant: Fending off ‘the Reaper’ for almost a century,” November 20, 2028.