The Properly Basic Beliefs

This list is a compilation from a video published a year or so ago by Ozymandias Ramses II.

When a presuppositionalist such as Matt Slick asks how your worldview accounts for logic and reason, your answer should be that you hold to these nine properly basic beliefs (there may be more, but these are the most basic ones).  These nine "beliefs" can be thought of as a ladder: as we go up the ladder (by number) the previous belief(s) may be required in order to use them. 

1) Existence of a mind-independent reality

2) The validity preserving character of logical deduction

3)  The reliability of induction

4)  Causation  (for which deduction and induction must be assumed)

5)  Concept of Truth

6)  Existence of other minds

7)  Reliability of perception  (senses)

8)  Reliability of memory  

9)  Concept of a unified sense or agent 

If you're asked how you ground them or account for them, your answer is simple:  you cannot defend them by pain of self-referential or performative inconsistency and circularity.  You are validating them in the very act of responding to the presuppositionalists' question.

And, if you note, the existence of a mind-independent reality precedes the validity preserving character of  logical deduction and reliability of induction.  In other words, you have to be aware of the reality around you in order to use logic.

Ozymandias offers the following explanation for why these beliefs are so foundational:

The presup could not learn or conceive of such a god (contemplate his attributes, or apprehend his nature, or correlate the words said about him with the Bible) without properly basic beliefs. With respect to scripture being divinely revealed truth, you can't read it without assuming there's a mind-independent reality. You must first assume your god is "out there"--you must presuppose other minds exist (those who wrote it, and your god). You assume your senses are reliable, that your view is veridical, as you read the text. You assume your memory is functioning (so you can trust you can remember the start of a sentence by the time you get to the end of it). You assume your inductive and deductive reasoning is working when you think about what you are reading, especially when you compare one verse with another and assess them. And when you speak of "the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit" operating within you, you are assuming another mind, you're assuming you exist, and you are an agent with a mind having that experience, and it goes beyond your mental state that some other entity causing something to happen to you, so you are assuming causation. You can't presuppose the above two propositions without presupposing properly basic beliefs. Causation is assumed the moment you decide to read the bible. You couldn't act without presupposing you exist.

What the theologians try to staple onto this list is the need for a god, but by virtue of Occam's Razor, a god is not necessary, and therefore NOT BASIC.