On Roach’s Presuppositional Response to Licona’s New Historiographical Approach

In a recent article, William C. Roach (2019) offers a presuppositional critique, which is inspired by Carl F. H. Henry, of Michael R. Licona’s (2010) so-called New Historiographical Approach (NHA) to defending the resurrection. More precisely, Roach attempts to defend six key theses, namely, that (1) the NHA is an evidentialist approach, (2) the NHA is a deductive argument, (3) the NHA is an insufficient approach, (4) believers and unbelievers share no common ground, (5) the NHA does not embrace a correspondence theory of truth, and (6) the presupposition of divine revelation is necessary for apologetics. We respond to each of Roach’s arguments, respectively.

Personal and Objective Ethics: How to Read the Crito

Dominant interpretations of Plato's Crito attempt to reconstruct the text deductively, taking the arguments in the famous Laws’ speech as consisting solely in the application of general principles to facts. It is thus conceived that the principles and facts are grasped independently of each other, and then the former are applied to the latter, subsequently reaching the conclusion that Socrates must not escape. Following the lead of Cora Diamond, who argues against this ‘generalist interpretation’, I argue that the Laws’ speech essentially involves an exercise of our moral imagination through which both principles and the facts to which they apply are grasped. This is not to say that a deductive argument is absent from the Laws’ speech. Rather, for the first time, we understand how the deductive arguments in the Laws’ speech can function through imagining a life in which these arguments make sense. The Crito is an attempt to exercise the readers’ imagination, thereby presenting ethics that is both personal and objective. Understanding the Laws’ arguments essentially requires the readers’ imaginative involvement with Socrates’ personal story, but they still have objective import.

The Internalist Justificatory Function of Reductio Ad Absurdum

In the present essay it is discussed the main features of reductio ad absurdum as a source of justification. These properties are consequences of the employment of contradictions as a reason for proving if a statement is true. Although a valid deductive argument can build an internalistic justification, I would suggest that the justification obtained by reductio ad absurdum cannot be externalist. This is because contradictions as reasons can be considered internal states from different definitions.

The Scandal of Deduction and Aristotle’s Method for Discovering Syllogisms

(1) If a deductive argument is valid, then the conclusion is not novel. (2) If the conclusion of an argument is not novel, the argument is not useful. So, (3) if a deductive argument is valid, it is not useful. This conclusion, (3), is unacceptable. Since the argument is valid, we must reject at least one premise. So, should we reject (1) or (2)? This puzzle is usually known as the ‘scandal of deduction’. Analytic philosophers have tried to reject (1) but have assumed premise (2). I argue here that Aristotle would deny (2). Aristotle thinks that at least some deductive arguments are useful, even though they present no new conclusions. Thus, Aristotle’s view contrasts with analytic philosophers of logic, who assume that all useful deductive arguments present novel conclusions. I don’t claim that Aristotle ‘solves’ the problem: it was never posed in Aristotle’s time. Rather, I suggest that Aristotle does not face the problem because he assumes deductions can be useful, without presenting novel conclusions. Aristotle’s view of deduction tames the scandal.

Necessity Lost

A long tradition, going back to Aristotle, conceives of logic in terms of necessity and possibility: a deductive argument is correct if the truth of its conclusion follows necessarily from the truth of its premises or, put differently, if it is not possible for the conclusion to be false when the premises are true. A relatively unknown feature of the analytic tradition in philosophy is that, at its very inception, this venerable conception of the relation between logic and modality was put into question. The founders of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, held that there are no genuine distinctions among the necessary, the possible and the actual. In this first of a two-volume book, I investigate the grounds and consequences of this anti-modal position. The grounds lie in doctrines on truth, thought, and knowledge, as well as on the relation between mind and reality, that are central to the philosophies of Frege and Russell, and are of enduring philosophical interest. The main consequence is that logic is fundamental, and, to be coherent, modal concepts would be reconstructed in logical terms. This rejection of modality in early analytic philosophy remains of contemporary significance. The coherence of modal concepts is rarely questioned nowadays, because it is assumed that suspicion of modality derives from logical positivism, which has not survived philosophical scrutiny. The anti-modal arguments of Frege and Russell, however, have nothing to do with positivism, and remain a challenge to the contemporary acceptance of modal notions.

On the Legal Syllogism

This chapter argues against rule-deductivism. Rule-deductivism is the view that the justification of law-applying decisions is adequately understood on the model of a deductive argument—a “legal syllogism”, as it is often called—with a statement of an applicable rule as the “major premise”, and a statement of the relevant facts as the “minor” one. Rule-deductivism—not to be confused with formalism—has long been a popular view in legal argumentation theory. Endorsed by Kelsen, Hart, MacCormick, and Alexy, it continues to be accepted by authors such as Gardner, Leiter, and Marmor, among many others. But it is wrong, as this chapter tries to show. This chapter begins by offering a clear characterization of rule-deductivism; goes on to argue that rule-deductivism is not, even in its stronger version, a view that should be accepted; and concludes by sketching and motivating a new model of the justification of law-applying decisions that overcomes the flaws of the model of the legal syllogism.

On Evidence in Philosophy

This book offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term—the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third, and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases, in a carefully specified sense of that term. Chapters 1–4 expound a version of Moore’s method and apply it to each of several issues. The version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. Chapters 5 and 6 argue that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. Chapters 7 and 8 defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, this book advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic—and nothing more, not ever.

D. Dennett and Scientific Realism: Empirical Equivalence and Evidential Support of Theoretical Statements

The paper aims to interpret the reasoning of L Laudan and J. Leplin on the inconsistency of the theses of empirical equivalence and underdetermination of the theory by data within D. Ross’s rainforest realism and D. Dennett’s real patterns concepts. Following L. Laudan and J. Leplin, the main problem is with the absolutization of the idea that the only significant form of evidential support of a theory is the empirical confirmation of its consequences (consequentialism). We believe that the conception “to save the phenomena” (P. Duhem), as a possible alternative strategy of evidential support, could be connected with the narrative type of explanation. The definition of “perspective” that defines a pattern in terms of the “information channel” concept ensures that the explanation within D. Ross’s conception is not a deductive argument, it is precisely a “story telling” that makes it possible to single out what is significant in the intended explanation. At the same time, the non-consequentialist nature of the evidential support of the pattern (that is defined with respect to the relations between data) is justified by the fact that the pattern is real only if it contains information about another pattern, reproduces only the structural characteristics of reality, and represents the probable causes of the phenomena explained via the idea of “natural classification” within “to save the phenomena” conception.

The Value of Methodological Deductivism in Argument Construction

“Deductivism” is a broad label for various theories that emphasize the importance of deductive argument in contexts of rational discussion. This paper makes a case for a very specific form of deductivism. The paper highlights the dialectical importance of advancing deductively valid arguments (with plausible premises) in natural-language reasoning. Sections 2 and 3 explain the various forms that deductivism has taken. Section 4 makes a case for a particular form of deductivism. Section 5 discusses the value of deductive argument in law. Section 6 concludes and acknowledges critical questions that need to be addressed more fully in future work.