February 2, 2026 • 39 mins
What do you think before you think? What are the blind spots and starting assumptions that you don’t even know you have? If you get your starting assumptions wrong, every view you have on politics, family, religion, money, etc. will be wrong. In this episode we talk about presuppositions and how to find your starting point.
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0:00 Understanding Presuppositions and Their Impact on Critical Thinking6:27 Exploring Presuppositions in Stories, History, and Science13:00 Challenging Presuppositions in Politics, Family, and Religion24:41 The Influence of Presuppositions on Religious Beliefs and Debates29:08 Uncovering Presuppositions in Business and Personal Beliefs
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
If you can be wrong on things asstupid and banal as Humpty
Dumpty and Peter Pan's tights, why on earth do you think your
presuppositions are going to be right when it comes to religion,
family, business, politics, or anything more important?
So these things that are like the most important things, the
(00:21):
things that if you get them right, you'll get everything
else right, and if you get them wrong, you'll get everything
else wrong. We are off on so many of those
and we have no idea. Hello, and welcome to another
edition of Ideological. I'm your host, Zach Lee.
(00:43):
Now, today we're talking about something that I am extremely
passionate about, and it is the idea of what are called
presuppositions. So before you change the channel
and go watch some sort of bikinipodcast that might sound boring,
let me explain why this is so, so important.
We all believe certain things about certain things.
(01:04):
That's kind of a generic statement.
We have political views, religious views, views about
family, views about money, etcetera.
And those typically rest on a foundation of things that we
presuppose, of things that we bring to the argument or to the
conversation. It's kind of the foundation for
our little thought house, if youwant to think of it that way.
The problem is, is that it's very hard to see your
(01:26):
presuppositions there. There's a lot of blind spots and
it causes us to get a lot of things wrong.
So let let me let me give you a few examples and explain why
this is tremendously important. OK, let's say you're going to
build a house and you have blueprints for the house.
The problem, though, is that youhave a ruler that's only 11
inches. Rulers are not typically 11
inches. They're 12 inches, but yours is
(01:49):
11 inches. When you go to construct that
house, though, it will be to scale.
Will that be the house that matches the blueprint?
No. It'll be a totally different
house because your ruler, your standard, the thing that you
presupposed was what you were supposed to use to measure all
the stuff for the house, is incorrect.
And so if you get your ruler wrong, if you get your starting
(02:14):
point wrong, your house will be wrong in every other area.
Let me give you a, a more fun example.
Do you know how George Washington died?
You thought you, you would thinkthat he died like fighting
communist or riding on a bald eagle and falling off or
something crazy like that because he's like Mr. America.
He died because he had a fever and the doctors let out too much
(02:35):
of his blood. OK.
They used to do a practice called bloodletting.
Whereas if you had a fever, they're like, we got to get that
hot blood out of you. That's bad blood.
You know, we, we that's where weget the term bad blood today.
That's not actually what that means, but they would they, they
bled it out something like 40% of his blood, which did not help
him recover from what a like tonsillitis, something in his
(02:56):
epiglottis. Is that, is that a science term?
Anyway, So he died. That was a presupposition that
they had in medicine and it killed America.
OK, So these things are extremely, extremely important.
So what I want to do is I want to give you some definitions of
presuppositions. And then I want to give you some
examples that I think are super helpful.
And then I want to tell you why this is so important.
(03:16):
So if you came into this lecturethinking, huh, I don't know much
about this, this topic sounds kind of technical.
Pay attention because this mightbe the most important thing on
which we can talk, OK, Or about which we can talk.
So let me give you some definitions.
What is a presupposition? That's a fancy term.
It is. I'm going to give you several of
these just to make it stick. A thing assumed beforehand at
(03:38):
the beginning of a line of argument or course of action.
OK, that's kind of technical. It's fine.
An initial assumption that serves as the ground or
beginning of an argument, That'sabout the same thing.
That's kind of technical. Still, how about this?
To suppose or assume beforehand,take for granted in advance.
These are all kind of technical definitions of a presupposition.
(03:59):
Let me just tell you what it is.It's what you think before you
think it are the IT are presuppositions are these things
that you just assume that you take into the argument or into
the conversation that you typically don't prove.
You just kind of start there. They're what you think before
you think. They are assumptions that you
bring into other categories in life.
(04:21):
Or as I like to say, a presupposition is something that
you suppose pre OK, that makes that makes sense.
For example, what are some things you have to presuppose
before you can test to see if water boils at 212°F, which by
the way, it does at sea level. Yes, if you change the altitude
or you put stuff in it, it's 212°F, which is a stupid number.
(04:46):
We should just be using the metric system.
This episode of ideological is brought to you by the metric
system. We're smarter than you conform
to us. OK, what are some things you
have to suppose beforehand? You have to suppose pre.
You have to think before you think to test whether or not
water boils at 212°. Well, there's a few things like
that you exist, that water exists, that heat exists, that
(05:10):
you have a thermometer, that youare at sea level, that you're
not in a dream right now. I mean, there's a lot of things
you're presupposing that the scientific method is an accurate
way of finding empirical knowledge.
There's all kinds of things thatyou're presupposing and trying
to figure out and test that water boils at 212°F that you
(05:31):
just start with. You assume that the water is
pure. Maybe it's got stuff in it that
would slightly change the temperature, whatever it might
be. So let me go over some examples
that I think are really fun justto show you how ignorant you
are, as am I of our presuppositions.
OK, so these things that are like the most important things,
the things that if you get them right, you'll get everything
else right. And if you get them wrong,
(05:52):
you'll get everything else wrong.
We are off on so many of those and we have no idea.
They're just these huge blind spots.
We don't even see it. Let me give you a few examples.
Let's talk about your friend andmine.
Humpty Dumpty. All right, Humpterd J MC
Dumpterd Humpty Dumpty. And, you know, he sat on a wall.
There was some horses and men. You know the story.
(06:13):
So one time I was trying to teach a group of people about
presuppositions and I asked for a volunteer.
So a young man came up to the whiteboard and I said, I want
you to draw exactly what I tell you.
Do not add to it. Do not take away from it.
Do not add your some, you know, artistic flourish.
Only draw exactly what I tell you.
Ready. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
(06:34):
So he draws a little, you know, Humpty Dumpty guy, and he gives
him a smile. And I'm like, I didn't say he
had a smile or any of that. He puts little shoes on him.
I didn't say that he had shoes or whatever.
And he draws him. And I asked the guy, OK, great.
This is a pretty good picture. Why did you draw Humpty Dumpty
as an egg? I didn't say he was an egg.
The nursery rhyme doesn't say he's an egg.
(06:56):
What? It's just a story about a guy
that busts himself. OK, that sounds like that should
be part of our history of sex lecture.
It's about a guy who falls, has a great fall, and gets injured
and no one can put him back together again.
The reason we think of him as anegg is just because for
children's stories and books, wedon't want to draw some guy with
his guts hanging out. Right?
(07:17):
Like, I think this actually comes from Lewis Carroll, the
Alice in Wonderland kind of pedophile guy.
I think that he originally presented Humpty Dumpty
originally as an egg, even though the original nursery
rhyme did not say that. So that's one.
There's a presupposition. Here's another one ready.
You can do this at home. Take a quick second grab, grab
yourself a pen and draw a picture of Plato, the
(07:41):
philosopher, not the children's molding clay.
Carrying a book. OK, carrying his most famous
book, probably the Republic. So draw a picture real quick.
Draw a little stick figure, givehim a little beard.
Draw a picture of his book, you know, and write the word
Republic or something like that on it.
Here's probably what you drew ifyou did this.
Most of you are just listening and you're not going to do what
(08:03):
I say. That's fine.
That's fine. I'm just here spending my free
time trying to trying to, you know, give you all this sick
wisdom. You probably drew a book that
looks something like this with flippable pages.
OK. That is called a codex that is
not going to come around until about it'll become popular about
700 years after Plato. A book to Plato is a scroll.
(08:28):
Yet when we hear book and you draw a picture of a book, you're
thinking of a codex. You're thinking of what we think
of as a book like books today, where is actually it is a scroll
for Plato. Let's think of our friend, your
friend and mine again, Peter Pan.
OK, you know, he's he's an interesting character.
He flies around. What is he typically wearing?
(08:49):
If you were to draw a picture ofPeter Pan, he's got his little
archer's hat kind of Robin Hood style, maybe with a feather or
whatever, but he's always wearing green tights.
He's always wearing green tightsfor some reason.
In the original story, he's not wearing green tights that for,
you know, aerial acrobatics on stage and for modesty was added
(09:10):
for plays and, and then the the Disney cartoon of Peter Pan had
him wear tights. But in the original story, he
doesn't have tights. He has on like leaves and
cobwebs and and weird stuff. But you didn't think about that.
You presupposed Peter Pan and his sick kind of Robin.
Gay Robin to the Batman green tights.
(09:30):
By the way, I need to share a hilarious meme with you that I
sent to a friend that I just think is phenomenal about Peter
Pan. It says this.
It takes a spin on the Peter Panstory and actually makes Captain
Hook the good guy. It says this.
They're called the Lost Boys because they are spiritually
lost. Hormonal development, stunted
furries in the thrall of the demon Tinkerbell.
(09:52):
Hook is just a normal man, disgusted by what he sees.
He could easily sail away to another island, but his
conscience will not allow it. That's so good.
So, Peter Pan, you. You're presupposing he's the
good guy. What if he's the bad guy?
Trying to keep everyone in a state of adolescence?
That's Michael Jackson. That's kind of weird, right?
Maybe. Maybe Hook is the good guy.
(10:13):
Let's take an example of religion when it comes to
presuppositions. Somebody who is a Christian
Scientist. I don't mean belonging to the
cult Christian Science. I mean like a Scientist who
happens to be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever.
When they look at the universe, they are going to see all this
design and all this intelligenceand all this wisdom because they
(10:36):
assume God exists. So when they look at things,
things look designed like they're made by a brilliant
creator. A scientist who's an atheist is
going to look at the exact same data and come to a different
conclusion. Do you know why?
Because they started in a different place.
They supposed PRI something else.
They had different assumptions. So the person that starts with
(10:58):
this assumption that God exists happens to see it when they do
their science, which is supposedto be objective.
But science is not never objective fully like that.
It's it's only probable. It's not.
It's not like math where it's certain, but then the atheist
who starts with this idea that God doesn't exist happens to
find that when he looks at the science.
OK, here's another one. What kind of hats did the
(11:21):
Vikings have? Like if you were to draw a
picture of a Viking or don't even draw, just think of it in
your mind, they have what I callhorny hats, right?
The Vikings, they have these hats and they've got these horns
and they've got these axes and they're mainly blonde and they,
you know, pillage and plunder. They're kind of the the Pirates
of the North or something like that.
Supposedly, though they never actually had hats like that.
(11:42):
That would not be very convenient for battle, by the
way. But that was popularized I think
in the IT might have been the 19th century because of opera
and these kind of things, but supposedly the Vikings never
had. Again, this is the technical
term from history. Horny hats or a joke.
There's a joke I told in the episode about pirates that we
(12:03):
did for ideological And what youdo is you get somebody to think
in a certain pattern. So you go to like a little kid
and you say, what is a pirate's favorite letter?
And they say rated R, you know, I'm sorry, Rated R What is a
pirate's favorite movie? Rated R And, you know, maybe his
favorite letter. Where does a pirate go after
work? To the bar.
(12:24):
What does a pirate drive to work?
And everyone says a car, but no,it's a ship.
He's a pirate. His work is thievery at sea.
It's robbing at sea. So he drives a ship.
But because you've already heardthe word R and you've already
heard the word bar, you think car when it's actually ship.
Or if I ask, what is a pirate's favorite letter, you want to say
(12:45):
R, but no, it's the sea. OK, now those are all stupid
examples. Pay attention to what I'm about
to say. Ready.
Look at me. Look at me in the eyes or listen
to me in the ears if you're listening on, you know, Spotify
or something. If you can be wrong on things as
stupid and banal as Humpty Dumpty and Peter Pan's tights,
(13:08):
why on earth do you think your presuppositions are going to be
right when it comes to religion,family, business, politics, or
anything more important? If you can't get Humpty Dumpty
not being an egg because you're just presupposing it, what are
other areas in your life where you're presupposing things that
(13:29):
are way more important than a, achildren's nursery rhyme?
I mean, that's, that's a that's a big question.
OK, what do we do? Can we get rid of these
presuppositions? So Zach, you've scared me.
We start with all these pre madeassumptions that we can't see.
They're these blind spots. If we get them wrong, we get
everything else wrong. What do we do?
Well, here's some bad news. You cannot get rid of your
(13:51):
presuppositions, that meaning you can change them, but you
can't have a completely presuppositionless existence.
You cannot get rid of presupposition simplicity or as
as a category, although you can change what your individual
presuppositions are. Even if you say Zach, I disagree
with this whole lesson. I don't have any
presuppositions. You've already presupposed
(14:12):
several things. That you exist, that you are
speaking, that I can hear you, that we both know English, that
your words have meaning, that I am a human, that I exist, that
your position is not a contradiction, and that not
having presuppositions is possible along with a bunch of
other things. There is no not having
presuppositions. You're going to have them.
The only thing you can do is tryto be more aware of them.
(14:35):
OK, Let let me give you an example.
Let's say that we're looking at a whiteboard, OK?
It is a new whiteboard. Nobody has ever drawn on it with
all the dry erase markers. It doesn't have that weird stain
that all white, you know, dry erase boards have.
You're looking at a whiteboard and it's new.
It's it's it's pretty white, OK.But let's say for a second that
nobody gets to just look at the whiteboard.
(14:55):
Everybody has on different colored glasses.
And let's say they're epoxied toour face.
They're like cemented to our face.
We cannot take them off. Somebody has blue glasses,
somebody has green glasses, somebody has yellow glasses.
Maybe if you're a more optimistic person, you have rose
tinted glasses. No one is going to be able to
see the whiteboard as white. They're only going to see it
(15:16):
through the lenses with which they view it.
So all you can do then you can'tget to the board, you can't take
off your glasses. The only thing you can do is be
more aware of what color your glasses are.
If you knew what color your glasses were, you could see your
own glasses. Somebody else could tell you
(15:36):
what color your glasses look like through theirs.
Right? So, you know, if you're wearing
yellow and they're wearing blue and they look at you and it
looks kind of greenish or something like that, maybe we
realize, oh, maybe you're wearing yellow glasses, whatever
it might be. So all you can do is be aware of
your presuppositions. You cannot fully get rid of
them. OK.
David Hume, who's one of my favorite philosophers, one of
(15:57):
the things that he points out isso much of what we do and think
is not rational, It's emotional.It's led by our passions, our
culture and our upbringing and luck and our emotions and what
we want to be true is there. And then we use reason to make
ourselves feel better. We like to think that we have a
smart system that's built on reason, that, you know, we're
being rational and we're being intelligent.
(16:19):
And but in real life, here's really what we do.
People are not actually led by reason.
We're led by our passions, education, upbringing, emotion,
what's practical and other factors.
And then we use reason to support what we already want to
be true. OK, that's true.
We will actually bend our worldview and we will, we will
(16:42):
create a very intelligent argument for super stupid
positions because we don't want to change our passions, what we
care about, what we like. And so humans, at the end of the
day, we're primarily emotional. We like to think that we're
logical and we should try to be as logical as we can, but we're
primarily emotional. So in Greek rhetoric, there were
three different main components.There was ethos, that's
(17:05):
somebody's morality, their ethical character.
There was pathos, which is the emotions and the passions, OK,
trying to trying to persuade people and make them cry and
make them laugh and make them get excited, etcetera.
And then there was Lagos, which is the actual logic of the
argument, by the way, it is Lagos and ethos and pathos, not
pathos and ethos because it's with an Omicron and not an
(17:25):
Omega. Anyway, know you're Greek, So
what should be most important inan argument is Lagos.
It should be the actual logical argumentation, it should be the
propositions, it should be the syllogisms, it should be all
that kind of stuff where you canprove that an argument is true.
We have a tendency, just as humans, to mainly be led by
(17:46):
pathos, by the emotions, by the passions.
Do you know what the Greeks thought was actually most
important? It was the ethos.
It was the ethical character of the person speaking.
Because if that person was not ethical, they could sway your
emotions and they could build a really strong case for something
that wasn't actually best or wasn't actually true.
That's the problem with the sophist.
They just built great cases, persuasive cases for dumb
(18:11):
positions so that they would getpaid.
So don't do that. OK, I want to go over some
presuppositions. First of all, let's get a water
break. OK, just a water break that
usually I have alcohol, but you know, it's still morning, so I
need to need to pull it back, you know, or at least this is
actually just pure vodka. So.
Gotcha. OK, let's go over some
(18:34):
presuppositions and some different areas and I'm just
going to ask some questions. Not going to answer all of
these. I'm just going to ask some
questions to help you see some of the presuppositions that you
might have. Let's start with politics.
Are all forms of equality good? Have you ever even asked that
question? We have a tendency to think,
yeah, all forms of equality are good.
Really. Should everyone have the right
(18:56):
equal right to perform surgery with or without a license?
Should everyone have equal sexual access to somebody else's
spouse without their consent? Should everyone be paid the same
amount, even if somebody's job is much harder and takes more
education than somebody else's? We have a tendency to just
think, yeah, equality equals good.
Well, what kind of equality do you want?
(19:16):
Equality of height, where we cutpeople in half so that the same
size as other people. I guess I'd be pretty short
people. Do we stretch little people?
Like what? What do we do?
Here's another one. Is democracy a good idea?
Again, if you want to find your presuppositions, you're going to
have to ask yourself questions that sound crazy because your
presuppositions seem so certain to you that that's just where
(19:39):
you start. You're going to have to ask
yourself crazy questions so you can actually see what you
believe and where you're starting.
OK, but it's it's amazing. I remember reading in Plato
where he's talking about how terrible of an idea democracy
is. And you're like, I'm sorry,
what? I thought this was like the
default now. I thought this was like the the
best form of government or the worst form, except for all the
others that have been tried to do the Churchill quote.
(20:02):
Here's another one. Do your experiences help you see
things more clearly or do they bias you and get in your way?
Listen to this. We have a tendency to think
that. Diversity of opinion is always
good. Sometimes it's good, but
sometimes it's not. Let me give you an example.
I was giving a lecture one time on Jean Jacques Rousseau.
We've got an episode on Rousseau.
Go watch it. It's fantastic.
(20:23):
And I was giving a lecture on Rousseau and somebody raised
their hand and they said, hey, everything you're saying about
Rousseau and all your research is primarily from like, you
know, white guys that lived, youknow, 300 years ago.
You know, why don't you quote more black authors or more
Latina authors or more female authors or whatever it might be
(20:44):
on Rousseau? And I had to say to him,
Rousseau is a white male living during the Enlightenment in
Europe, unless you're a white male living in the Enlightenment
in Europe during the, I mean, I mean, during this, this time,
right? So this age of reason, all your
other demographics would not help you see Rousseau more
clearly. They would just get in the way,
(21:05):
including mine, because I don't live during the Enlightenment.
I have certain presuppositions living in 2025 right now or
whatever. Like so we have this idea that
that this student had this idea that somehow that would be
helpful, somehow that would helpyou see Rousseau more clearly.
To take somebody who has a worldview completely different
than Rousseau and an experience completely different than
(21:26):
Rousseau, that would just get inthe way.
It wouldn't actually be helpful.How about this presupposition?
Are some humans better than other humans?
What? Think about it, you want to say
no. To be clear, I don't mean are
some humans more human than other humans.
I'm not saying that like somebody is subhuman, that's a
(21:48):
human. I'm saying are they better,
smarter, faster, stronger, good looking, whatever it might be.
And the answer is yes, OK, Like a guy who helps the poor is
probably better than a pedophile, OK.
Or somebody who's super intelligent is probably better
than some neo Nazi that lives ina trailer somewhere.
(22:09):
Like some people are better thanother people, but we just get
uncomfortable with these questions 'cause we presuppose
no, everyone's basically the same.
And the only reason some people are better than is that they
stole or they cheated or they, you know, are corrupt in
business or whatever it might be.
Let's talk about some presuppositions when it comes to
your family. Are men and women equal?
If yes, why do you think that? If no, in what ways are they
(22:31):
equal and in what ways are they unequal?
I'm not saying that they are or are not.
I just want to ask the question.Or does the question even make
sense? The question is a
presupposition. Is there a When we say are men
and women equal, do we just meanontologically or do we mean in
what areas? Like women are better at some
things than men and men are better at some things than women
generally? What do we think?
(22:53):
Here's another one. Is it loving to discipline your
kids or is it unloving because it hurts them?
Do you give them a little bit ofpain now to keep them from a lot
of pain later or not? Is your child's disobedience
only due to lack of age or due to rebellion?
You will see this all the time. You'll go to dinner and some kid
is freaking out, throwing a temper tantrum and like hitting
their mom and screaming and flopping on the floor and
they're like, he never does this.
(23:15):
And I'm like he does. But also they're like, you know,
he's only two and I'm like, yourkids can rebel super freaking
early. Wake up.
You just don't want to acknowledge the fact that you're
riding off his rebellion as an age issue.
Ouch. The shoe fits.
Wear it. What is the goal of having a
(23:36):
family? What does it look like to have a
good flourishing family? There's a lot of guys who work
really hard and make a bunch of money and their family is not
flourishing. They think that, oh, I'm doing
this for the family and really it's just a cover up for them to
pursue their own vanity. But if your family's not doing
well and your kids are not doingwell and your wife hates you and
you're never home, like what? What is the purpose of having a
(24:00):
family? What is flourishing?
If I were to sit down with you and say, draw for me the perfect
family, what would those elements be?
And are you living that way? Maybe not.
That's an interesting notice, aninteresting presupposition.
Let's talk about some presuppositions.
Presuppositions, presuppositions.
Again, I have trouble saying suppositions.
It's like if you ever seen Letter Kinney, how there's a guy
named Derry and he can't say breakfast.
(24:20):
He says breakfast. That's kind of made with
presuppositions. Let's talk about some religious
ones. How many times?
I like asking Christians this question?
How many times does the word Antichrist occur in the Book of
Revelation? So this Book of Revelation is
very prophetic and apocalyptic. And you know, there's this
(24:42):
beastly figure, this man of lawlessness, there's all this.
And I say, OK, how many times does the Book of Revelation
mention the Antichrist, right? Like we've got all these dumb
shows and books about left behind or whatever, and the
answer is 0. The word Antichrist never occurs
in the Book of Revelation. It only occurs in John's
epistles. It does not occur in the Book of
(25:04):
Revelation. Again, it's a presupposition, A
beastly figure, a man of lawlessness does, but the word
Antichrist does not occur. How about this one?
Why do you hold the particular religion you hold?
Maybe it's a presupposition. Is it because that's what your
parents held? Did you grow up in a Muslim
country? So you're Muslim.
You grew up with Christian parents, so you're Christian.
You grew up in a Jewish family, so you're Jewish.
(25:24):
Like what? What?
I mean, what denomination are you in?
The same denomination or group that you started in?
You're probably just catching itby osmosis from your parents and
your culture. Maybe that's not the right
religion. Maybe no religion's the right
religion. Who knows?
Why do you hold the particular religion you hold?
Well, Zach, listen, I'm not biased.
I don't have presuppositions. I just came to my religion by
(25:45):
reading the Bible. Cool.
Why did you read the Bible? Because you thought it was God's
word. Why did you think that?
That's a presupposition. You didn't get that from the
Bible, or else you would have picked up maybe a different
book. Why didn't you start with the
Vedas or the Quran or something like that?
You already believed the Bible was God's word, so then you
started reading it like it's God's word, and then it claims
to be God's word. At no point is there a building
of a foundational argument there.
(26:06):
It's just where you start. It's a circular kind of thing.
What about the problem of evil? OK, so if, if people are
debating in religion and you bring up the problem of evil,
that if God is all good. And by the way, we've got a
lesson on the problem of evil, go check it out.
It's pretty awesome. I mean, I, I do it.
So it's a presupposition is thatit's excellent.
The problem of evil. If God is all good and God is
(26:29):
all powerful and there's evil inthe world, what is going on?
It's also called theodicy. So what the non religious
person, the atheist is going to say is the fact that there is
evil in the world is proof that God does not exist.
Or at least he's not all powerful or all good because he
could have just as much glory and there be 1 less child raped
(26:50):
than there is and he didn't do it.
That's a problem. The believer will say, no, no,
no, God didn't create the world bad.
He didn't create the world with like a clump of stuff called
evil. Mankind rebelled.
The reason that there's rape andcancer and tornadoes and all of
that is because all of creation has become broken because
mankind rebelled against God. So God cursed mankind.
(27:11):
And then the atheist will respond and say that assumes
that God exists. You, you can't say that the
reason there's evil in the worldis because God exists and humans
just rebelled. We're trying to figure out
whether or not God exists to begin with.
Like you're assuming that in your argument and they're going
to say, well, you're assuming that God doesn't exist, which is
how, how do you even know that it's evil?
(27:31):
And it's not just something you don't like If it's just a bunch
of random chemicals and matter and we don't have souls and
there is no God. Like you can't even say it's
objectively evil. You can just say humans don't
like it and they go back and forth, but it is all based on
their presuppositions. Listen, if you want a good
summary of this entire lesson, it's this.
Where you begin is where you'll end.
(27:52):
If you begin, for example, believing a certain view of
politics, you're going to end uphaving confirmation bias.
You're going to find out that that's the view of politics you
think is right. If you begin believing in God's
existence, all the evidence is going to point to God's
existence. If you begin believing that God
doesn't exist, all the evidence is going to point to the fact
that God doesn't exist. How can you make sure that you
(28:16):
have the right presuppositions? Why do Protestants and Catholics
disagree? Both Christians both have the
Bible. They disagree because they have
different presuppositions. Who gets to interpret the Bible?
Who gets to determine what booksare in the Bible?
Is it a tradition through the Magisterium of the Roman
Catholic Church? And they as a group get to
(28:36):
overtime interpret and come up with official interpretations of
the Bible. Or do you as a random person
who's a Protestant, get to see what God says to be true to you
in your heart as you read scripture And it's self
authenticating as is the interpretation.
That's why they disagree that they they don't disagree on
certain things like the resurrection or the Trinity or
whatever. They disagree on a
(28:58):
presupposition, A hermeneutic. OK, let's do some
presuppositions when it comes tobusiness.
Again, briefcased presuppositions when it comes to
business, and then we will talk about some ways to try to see
your presuppositions. So it's very difficult.
First, what is the goal of business?
Most people just grind their entire life and they have no
(29:19):
idea what the goal is. There are times I sit down with
people who are wealthy and I say, what do you want out of
life? And they say more money and I
say, cool, if you had that, whatwould you use it for?
And they're like, I don't know, I guess I would retire early.
I'm like, cool, let's say I gaveyou a billion dollars and you're
financially independent tomorrowand you're not allowed to work,
meaning for a job. What would you do?
And they have no freaking idea. They're like, I guess I would
(29:43):
sleep in and go for a walk and hang out with my family.
And I'm like, you can do that. Now you're grinding every day to
get something that you can already do and you don't know
why you're doing it. How asinine Is that OK?
The goal of making money can't be just to make money or else
you could just make money and then kill yourself.
The goal has to be something beyond that.
What do you want the money for? What is the goal of business?
(30:05):
What are the fears you have whenit comes to how you conduct
business and how do these subtlyinfluence you?
A lot of people are driven by fear when it comes to business
because our livelihood is attached to our income and our
money. What do you do with that?
Here is something that I have anallergy to that just gets in my
craw. Is that a phrase that sounds so
gross? I don't know what a craw is and
I don't want anything to get up in it.
(30:26):
Calling a wealthy person successful drives me nuts.
Oh, this guy is very successful.I'm like that guy.
He's like 100 lbs overweight andhis wife is a bitch and his kids
don't want to talk to him and hedoesn't have any friends and
he's not very educated and he never reads like he's the least
(30:48):
successful person I've ever seen.
You just mean he's wealthy. Oh, that's easy.
Making money is easy. There's a lot of a lot of hacks
and tricks to do that. That was So when somebody just
says that person's very successful, it better be in
every area of your life. If you're not good at humoring,
you're not successful. But we just use that phrase all
the time. It's a presupposition.
(31:08):
The client is always right. The customer's always right.
The client always knows what's best.
That is a presupposition, and I think it's a wrong
presupposition, right? That's like a doctor saying the
patient always knows what's best.
Nope. The doctor knows what's best.
Sometimes the client needs to take advice.
The client doesn't always know what's best.
It's a presupposition. OK, Water break.
I mean vodka. I mean just pure gin.
(31:31):
Gin just tastes like perfume. I just filled this bottle of gin
perfume. It's delicious in the morning.
OK, Is it all hopeless? Maybe.
Maybe it might be the case that you just get lucky and start in
the right world view. It might be the case that if God
exists, he ordains for you to bein the right worldview and
(31:52):
others He ordains not to be in the right worldview.
It might be the case that your emotion and your brain chemistry
and your family and your psychological experiences cause
you to start in one thing where you do not see other things
clearly like you should. That that could all be true.
Since we cannot get rid of presuppositions completely, all
we can do is be aware of them. I've got a bunch of questions
(32:12):
that I want to end with to help you see your presuppositions.
OK, so the So what the practicality of this lesson is
this these questions, you ready some questions to help you find
your presuppositions #1 what do I already think is true?
A lot of people just start making decisions or making an
argument or voting or commentingon social media or doing
(32:34):
something before they've stoppedand said, what do I think is
true? And maybe it's not OK #2 what is
something that seems so obvious that you've never questioned it?
OK. If you want to be good, a good
thinker and a good philosopher, you want to be good at seeing
your presuppositions. You have to try to argue against
things that you think are super obvious.
(32:55):
You have to make a case for positions you don't actually
hold, but you at least have to try it.
Like if somebody says something really stupid, like, you know,
I'm trying to think what it should be.
If somebody's like, you know what we should do?
We should reinstitute, you know,slavery or something like that.
(33:16):
You we should not, by the way, just to be clear, we should not
reinstitute slavery. But if they say something like
that, you can't just dismiss it.You've got to try to make a case
for, you know, the best case youcould and then shoot it down.
But anytime you just dismiss something, even if it sounds
crazy, because that does sound crazy.
Again, to be clear, slavery's bad.
You still have to have the argument right?
(33:36):
And so you, you're not going to see your presuppositions if you
just assume certain things, eveneven things that are super
obvious. Murder is bad.
Really all types of murder, right?
What about it? What it?
What if vengeance was actually good?
I'm not saying it is. Again, I think murder's bad,
just like I think slavery's bad.I'm saying you have to question
and ask difficult questions on things that seem even super
(33:59):
obvious. OK #3 what do I want to be true?
What do I already like? That is a great question to ask
yourself. What do I want to be true?
Because usually you're going to find that you will reshape facts
and relationships and all kinds of stuff around what you
actually want to be true. What am I afraid is true?
(34:22):
That's number four. What am I afraid is true?
Like, oh man, I don't think that's true.
But if it was, oh gosh, that would be awful.
That would be awful #5 how has my thinking been affected by the
culture, language, time period, and political climate in which I
live? OK, how has my thinking been
(34:42):
affected by the culture, language, time period, and
political climate in which I live?
Reading history can be super, super helpful.
The reason I love history and the history of thought and
history of philosophy and intellectual history is if you
want to see where your presuppositions are, read
history. Because people think about
things in a very different way and it's shocking.
They just say crazy things. Like I just said, they'll be
(35:03):
like, yeah, we should kill people for this.
And you're like, whoa. Or Aristotle, who's like, yeah,
some people are made to be slaves and they're happier that
way. And you're like, whoa, that
sounds crazy. But you you don't see it and you
don't see your presupposition. By the way, I'm not saying
they're right. I'm just saying that like, it
helps you see your presuppositions when you see how
people of the past thought, because it's very different than
the way that we think today. Number six, what experiences do
(35:25):
I have that might cause me to think a certain way?
OK. A lot of people live life
through their past experiences, never questioning whether or not
those experiences are right or that's the right way to view
life, or your experiences shouldaffect how you view truth.
Maybe they shouldn't #7 Listen to this one.
This one's spicy. You ready?
(35:45):
Buckle up. What issue, if I found out it
was true, would ruin my life andit would not be a world in which
I would want to live? There is a world that you would
not want to live in if certain things were true.
What are those fears? If this political position was
actually right, I would hate to live in this world.
If this religious position was actually right, I would hate to
(36:07):
live in this world. If I was actually this kind of
person, I could not look myself in the mirror.
What? What do you hate?
What are you afraid of that would make you not want to live
anymore if it were true? It's a great place to see your
presuppositions #8 what world views do I hate or what really
turns me off? I don't mean sexually, I mean
certain viewpoints, certain kinds of people, certain
(36:28):
political positions or politicalparties or religious positions
or religious or non religious positions, non religious
parties, whatever it might be. Certain types of parenting,
certain types of business, certain types of industry,
whatever it might be #9 almost done.
Hang in there, you're doing great.
What kind of people do I not want to be like?
(36:50):
Who are my enemies? Who would disagree with me if we
sat down over a cup of coffee tochat about big things #10 I
already kind of mentioned this. What have people in different
periods of world history thoughtabout this issue #11 with what
groups do I, I identify that could cause me to skew
information? So you probably have certain
(37:11):
groups that you see yourself as a part of.
Maybe it's your race or your gender or your religion or your
nationality or whatever it mightbe.
In what ways could that cause you to see things in a biased
way? In what ways could that cause
you to have the blinders on? In what ways could that cause
you to skew information #12 whatare opinions that I hear that I
(37:32):
think are absolutely crazy? You still have to question them.
That doesn't mean, by the way, you're not saying that they're
right or might be right just by asking the questions, right?
Just by asking what should we think about slavery?
That does not mean in any way you actually support it.
And again, in fact, you shouldn't, but you have to ask
that question, OK, even for things that sound absolutely
crazy #13 last one. And there's more than this.
(37:55):
Again, I'm just presupposing there's 13 here and that'll be
helpful for you. But that could be wrong.
And what areas of my life am I not willing to budget?
And even if you corrected me, I would find a way where you were
actually the one who was wrong and not my view.
What is your issue that others are not allowed to touch or
challenge you on? How about that one where if
(38:16):
somebody, you hold it so tightly, if somebody were to try
to correct you, you would find away where they were wrong and
they were the one who was off. Because you're not willing to
change that view, you're going to hold it super tightly.
No one's allowed to challenge it.
No one's allowed to touch it. You get mad when people try to
you think that they're against you.
What is that issue for you? It's probably several issues.
(38:36):
These are presuppositions. You can't avoid them.
You can only be aware of them byso, so, so, so then go go back
to the illustration I gave earlier of the whiteboard and
everybody's got different color glasses stuck to their face.
You would have to ask questions like this.
What color do I think my glassesare?
What color do you think my glasses are?
(38:58):
What color do I think your glasses are?
What color glasses did they havein the past?
What, what color glasses am I hoping that they are?
What colors do I like? What colors do I not like?
What kind of people with different color glasses have
made me mad in the past? How do I actually get to the the
whiteboard? Can I make my color a little
less bright so that I can see the whiteboard a little more
clearly? That's the kind of thing you're
(39:18):
going to have to do in every area of your life or you will
always be building a thought house on a wrong foundation with
an 11 inch ruler. So presuppositions.
Presuppositions are the thing. See, in doing this lesson, I
even presuppose that I could saypresuppositions.
Breakfast. Thanks for joining us.
(39:40):
We will see you next time. Ideological retweet, smash that
like button, share, subscribe, blah blah.
Do all the things that influencers tell you to do.
All right, talk to you guys later.
If you can be wrong on things asstupid and banal as Humpty
Dumpty and Peter Pan's tights, why on earth do you think your
presuppositions are going to be right when it comes to religion,
family, business, politics, or anything more important?
So these things that are like the most important things, the
(00:21):
things that if you get them right, you'll get everything
else right, and if you get them wrong, you'll get everything
else wrong. We are off on so many of those
and we have no idea. Hello, and welcome to another
edition of Ideological. I'm your host, Zach Lee.
(00:43):
Now, today we're talking about something that I am extremely
passionate about, and it is the idea of what are called
presuppositions. So before you change the channel
and go watch some sort of bikinipodcast that might sound boring,
let me explain why this is so, so important.
We all believe certain things about certain things.
(01:04):
That's kind of a generic statement.
We have political views, religious views, views about
family, views about money, etcetera.
And those typically rest on a foundation of things that we
presuppose, of things that we bring to the argument or to the
conversation. It's kind of the foundation for
our little thought house, if youwant to think of it that way.
The problem is, is that it's very hard to see your
(01:26):
presuppositions there. There's a lot of blind spots and
it causes us to get a lot of things wrong.
So let let me let me give you a few examples and explain why
this is tremendously important. OK, let's say you're going to
build a house and you have blueprints for the house.
The problem, though, is that youhave a ruler that's only 11
inches. Rulers are not typically 11
inches. They're 12 inches, but yours is
(01:49):
11 inches. When you go to construct that
house, though, it will be to scale.
Will that be the house that matches the blueprint?
No. It'll be a totally different
house because your ruler, your standard, the thing that you
presupposed was what you were supposed to use to measure all
the stuff for the house, is incorrect.
And so if you get your ruler wrong, if you get your starting
(02:14):
point wrong, your house will be wrong in every other area.
Let me give you a, a more fun example.
Do you know how George Washington died?
You thought you, you would thinkthat he died like fighting
communist or riding on a bald eagle and falling off or
something crazy like that because he's like Mr. America.
He died because he had a fever and the doctors let out too much
(02:35):
of his blood. OK.
They used to do a practice called bloodletting.
Whereas if you had a fever, they're like, we got to get that
hot blood out of you. That's bad blood.
You know, we, we that's where weget the term bad blood today.
That's not actually what that means, but they would they, they
bled it out something like 40% of his blood, which did not help
him recover from what a like tonsillitis, something in his
(02:56):
epiglottis. Is that, is that a science term?
Anyway, So he died. That was a presupposition that
they had in medicine and it killed America.
OK, So these things are extremely, extremely important.
So what I want to do is I want to give you some definitions of
presuppositions. And then I want to give you some
examples that I think are super helpful.
And then I want to tell you why this is so important.
(03:16):
So if you came into this lecturethinking, huh, I don't know much
about this, this topic sounds kind of technical.
Pay attention because this mightbe the most important thing on
which we can talk, OK, Or about which we can talk.
So let me give you some definitions.
What is a presupposition? That's a fancy term.
It is. I'm going to give you several of
these just to make it stick. A thing assumed beforehand at
(03:38):
the beginning of a line of argument or course of action.
OK, that's kind of technical. It's fine.
An initial assumption that serves as the ground or
beginning of an argument, That'sabout the same thing.
That's kind of technical. Still, how about this?
To suppose or assume beforehand,take for granted in advance.
These are all kind of technical definitions of a presupposition.
(03:59):
Let me just tell you what it is.It's what you think before you
think it are the IT are presuppositions are these things
that you just assume that you take into the argument or into
the conversation that you typically don't prove.
You just kind of start there. They're what you think before
you think. They are assumptions that you
bring into other categories in life.
(04:21):
Or as I like to say, a presupposition is something that
you suppose pre OK, that makes that makes sense.
For example, what are some things you have to presuppose
before you can test to see if water boils at 212°F, which by
the way, it does at sea level. Yes, if you change the altitude
or you put stuff in it, it's 212°F, which is a stupid number.
(04:46):
We should just be using the metric system.
This episode of ideological is brought to you by the metric
system. We're smarter than you conform
to us. OK, what are some things you
have to suppose beforehand? You have to suppose pre.
You have to think before you think to test whether or not
water boils at 212°. Well, there's a few things like
that you exist, that water exists, that heat exists, that
(05:10):
you have a thermometer, that youare at sea level, that you're
not in a dream right now. I mean, there's a lot of things
you're presupposing that the scientific method is an accurate
way of finding empirical knowledge.
There's all kinds of things thatyou're presupposing and trying
to figure out and test that water boils at 212°F that you
(05:31):
just start with. You assume that the water is
pure. Maybe it's got stuff in it that
would slightly change the temperature, whatever it might
be. So let me go over some examples
that I think are really fun justto show you how ignorant you
are, as am I of our presuppositions.
OK, so these things that are like the most important things,
the things that if you get them right, you'll get everything
else right. And if you get them wrong,
(05:52):
you'll get everything else wrong.
We are off on so many of those and we have no idea.
They're just these huge blind spots.
We don't even see it. Let me give you a few examples.
Let's talk about your friend andmine.
Humpty Dumpty. All right, Humpterd J MC
Dumpterd Humpty Dumpty. And, you know, he sat on a wall.
There was some horses and men. You know the story.
(06:13):
So one time I was trying to teach a group of people about
presuppositions and I asked for a volunteer.
So a young man came up to the whiteboard and I said, I want
you to draw exactly what I tell you.
Do not add to it. Do not take away from it.
Do not add your some, you know, artistic flourish.
Only draw exactly what I tell you.
Ready. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
(06:34):
So he draws a little, you know, Humpty Dumpty guy, and he gives
him a smile. And I'm like, I didn't say he
had a smile or any of that. He puts little shoes on him.
I didn't say that he had shoes or whatever.
And he draws him. And I asked the guy, OK, great.
This is a pretty good picture. Why did you draw Humpty Dumpty
as an egg? I didn't say he was an egg.
The nursery rhyme doesn't say he's an egg.
(06:56):
What? It's just a story about a guy
that busts himself. OK, that sounds like that should
be part of our history of sex lecture.
It's about a guy who falls, has a great fall, and gets injured
and no one can put him back together again.
The reason we think of him as anegg is just because for
children's stories and books, wedon't want to draw some guy with
his guts hanging out. Right?
(07:17):
Like, I think this actually comes from Lewis Carroll, the
Alice in Wonderland kind of pedophile guy.
I think that he originally presented Humpty Dumpty
originally as an egg, even though the original nursery
rhyme did not say that. So that's one.
There's a presupposition. Here's another one ready.
You can do this at home. Take a quick second grab, grab
yourself a pen and draw a picture of Plato, the
(07:41):
philosopher, not the children's molding clay.
Carrying a book. OK, carrying his most famous
book, probably the Republic. So draw a picture real quick.
Draw a little stick figure, givehim a little beard.
Draw a picture of his book, you know, and write the word
Republic or something like that on it.
Here's probably what you drew ifyou did this.
Most of you are just listening and you're not going to do what
(08:03):
I say. That's fine.
That's fine. I'm just here spending my free
time trying to trying to, you know, give you all this sick
wisdom. You probably drew a book that
looks something like this with flippable pages.
OK. That is called a codex that is
not going to come around until about it'll become popular about
700 years after Plato. A book to Plato is a scroll.
(08:28):
Yet when we hear book and you draw a picture of a book, you're
thinking of a codex. You're thinking of what we think
of as a book like books today, where is actually it is a scroll
for Plato. Let's think of our friend, your
friend and mine again, Peter Pan.
OK, you know, he's he's an interesting character.
He flies around. What is he typically wearing?
(08:49):
If you were to draw a picture ofPeter Pan, he's got his little
archer's hat kind of Robin Hood style, maybe with a feather or
whatever, but he's always wearing green tights.
He's always wearing green tightsfor some reason.
In the original story, he's not wearing green tights that for,
you know, aerial acrobatics on stage and for modesty was added
(09:10):
for plays and, and then the the Disney cartoon of Peter Pan had
him wear tights. But in the original story, he
doesn't have tights. He has on like leaves and
cobwebs and and weird stuff. But you didn't think about that.
You presupposed Peter Pan and his sick kind of Robin.
Gay Robin to the Batman green tights.
(09:30):
By the way, I need to share a hilarious meme with you that I
sent to a friend that I just think is phenomenal about Peter
Pan. It says this.
It takes a spin on the Peter Panstory and actually makes Captain
Hook the good guy. It says this.
They're called the Lost Boys because they are spiritually
lost. Hormonal development, stunted
furries in the thrall of the demon Tinkerbell.
(09:52):
Hook is just a normal man, disgusted by what he sees.
He could easily sail away to another island, but his
conscience will not allow it. That's so good.
So, Peter Pan, you. You're presupposing he's the
good guy. What if he's the bad guy?
Trying to keep everyone in a state of adolescence?
That's Michael Jackson. That's kind of weird, right?
Maybe. Maybe Hook is the good guy.
(10:13):
Let's take an example of religion when it comes to
presuppositions. Somebody who is a Christian
Scientist. I don't mean belonging to the
cult Christian Science. I mean like a Scientist who
happens to be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever.
When they look at the universe, they are going to see all this
design and all this intelligenceand all this wisdom because they
(10:36):
assume God exists. So when they look at things,
things look designed like they're made by a brilliant
creator. A scientist who's an atheist is
going to look at the exact same data and come to a different
conclusion. Do you know why?
Because they started in a different place.
They supposed PRI something else.
They had different assumptions. So the person that starts with
(10:58):
this assumption that God exists happens to see it when they do
their science, which is supposedto be objective.
But science is not never objective fully like that.
It's it's only probable. It's not.
It's not like math where it's certain, but then the atheist
who starts with this idea that God doesn't exist happens to
find that when he looks at the science.
OK, here's another one. What kind of hats did the
(11:21):
Vikings have? Like if you were to draw a
picture of a Viking or don't even draw, just think of it in
your mind, they have what I callhorny hats, right?
The Vikings, they have these hats and they've got these horns
and they've got these axes and they're mainly blonde and they,
you know, pillage and plunder. They're kind of the the Pirates
of the North or something like that.
Supposedly, though they never actually had hats like that.
(11:42):
That would not be very convenient for battle, by the
way. But that was popularized I think
in the IT might have been the 19th century because of opera
and these kind of things, but supposedly the Vikings never
had. Again, this is the technical
term from history. Horny hats or a joke.
There's a joke I told in the episode about pirates that we
(12:03):
did for ideological And what youdo is you get somebody to think
in a certain pattern. So you go to like a little kid
and you say, what is a pirate's favorite letter?
And they say rated R, you know, I'm sorry, Rated R What is a
pirate's favorite movie? Rated R And, you know, maybe his
favorite letter. Where does a pirate go after
work? To the bar.
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What does a pirate drive to work?
And everyone says a car, but no,it's a ship.
He's a pirate. His work is thievery at sea.
It's robbing at sea. So he drives a ship.
But because you've already heardthe word R and you've already
heard the word bar, you think car when it's actually ship.
Or if I ask, what is a pirate's favorite letter, you want to say
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R, but no, it's the sea. OK, now those are all stupid
examples. Pay attention to what I'm about
to say. Ready.
Look at me. Look at me in the eyes or listen
to me in the ears if you're listening on, you know, Spotify
or something. If you can be wrong on things as
stupid and banal as Humpty Dumpty and Peter Pan's tights,
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why on earth do you think your presuppositions are going to be
right when it comes to religion,family, business, politics, or
anything more important? If you can't get Humpty Dumpty
not being an egg because you're just presupposing it, what are
other areas in your life where you're presupposing things that
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are way more important than a, achildren's nursery rhyme?
I mean, that's, that's a that's a big question.
OK, what do we do? Can we get rid of these
presuppositions? So Zach, you've scared me.
We start with all these pre madeassumptions that we can't see.
They're these blind spots. If we get them wrong, we get
everything else wrong. What do we do?
Well, here's some bad news. You cannot get rid of your
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presuppositions, that meaning you can change them, but you
can't have a completely presuppositionless existence.
You cannot get rid of presupposition simplicity or as
as a category, although you can change what your individual
presuppositions are. Even if you say Zach, I disagree
with this whole lesson. I don't have any
presuppositions. You've already presupposed
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several things. That you exist, that you are
speaking, that I can hear you, that we both know English, that
your words have meaning, that I am a human, that I exist, that
your position is not a contradiction, and that not
having presuppositions is possible along with a bunch of
other things. There is no not having
presuppositions. You're going to have them.
The only thing you can do is tryto be more aware of them.
(14:35):
OK, Let let me give you an example.
Let's say that we're looking at a whiteboard, OK?
It is a new whiteboard. Nobody has ever drawn on it with
all the dry erase markers. It doesn't have that weird stain
that all white, you know, dry erase boards have.
You're looking at a whiteboard and it's new.
It's it's it's pretty white, OK.But let's say for a second that
nobody gets to just look at the whiteboard.
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Everybody has on different colored glasses.
And let's say they're epoxied toour face.
They're like cemented to our face.
We cannot take them off. Somebody has blue glasses,
somebody has green glasses, somebody has yellow glasses.
Maybe if you're a more optimistic person, you have rose
tinted glasses. No one is going to be able to
see the whiteboard as white. They're only going to see it
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through the lenses with which they view it.
So all you can do then you can'tget to the board, you can't take
off your glasses. The only thing you can do is be
more aware of what color your glasses are.
If you knew what color your glasses were, you could see your
own glasses. Somebody else could tell you
(15:36):
what color your glasses look like through theirs.
Right? So, you know, if you're wearing
yellow and they're wearing blue and they look at you and it
looks kind of greenish or something like that, maybe we
realize, oh, maybe you're wearing yellow glasses, whatever
it might be. So all you can do is be aware of
your presuppositions. You cannot fully get rid of
them. OK.
David Hume, who's one of my favorite philosophers, one of
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the things that he points out isso much of what we do and think
is not rational, It's emotional.It's led by our passions, our
culture and our upbringing and luck and our emotions and what
we want to be true is there. And then we use reason to make
ourselves feel better. We like to think that we have a
smart system that's built on reason, that, you know, we're
being rational and we're being intelligent.
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And but in real life, here's really what we do.
People are not actually led by reason.
We're led by our passions, education, upbringing, emotion,
what's practical and other factors.
And then we use reason to support what we already want to
be true. OK, that's true.
We will actually bend our worldview and we will, we will
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create a very intelligent argument for super stupid
positions because we don't want to change our passions, what we
care about, what we like. And so humans, at the end of the
day, we're primarily emotional. We like to think that we're
logical and we should try to be as logical as we can, but we're
primarily emotional. So in Greek rhetoric, there were
three different main components.There was ethos, that's
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somebody's morality, their ethical character.
There was pathos, which is the emotions and the passions, OK,
trying to trying to persuade people and make them cry and
make them laugh and make them get excited, etcetera.
And then there was Lagos, which is the actual logic of the
argument, by the way, it is Lagos and ethos and pathos, not
pathos and ethos because it's with an Omicron and not an
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Omega. Anyway, know you're Greek, So
what should be most important inan argument is Lagos.
It should be the actual logical argumentation, it should be the
propositions, it should be the syllogisms, it should be all
that kind of stuff where you canprove that an argument is true.
We have a tendency, just as humans, to mainly be led by
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pathos, by the emotions, by the passions.
Do you know what the Greeks thought was actually most
important? It was the ethos.
It was the ethical character of the person speaking.
Because if that person was not ethical, they could sway your
emotions and they could build a really strong case for something
that wasn't actually best or wasn't actually true.
That's the problem with the sophist.
They just built great cases, persuasive cases for dumb
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positions so that they would getpaid.
So don't do that. OK, I want to go over some
presuppositions. First of all, let's get a water
break. OK, just a water break that
usually I have alcohol, but you know, it's still morning, so I
need to need to pull it back, you know, or at least this is
actually just pure vodka. So.
Gotcha. OK, let's go over some
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presuppositions and some different areas and I'm just
going to ask some questions. Not going to answer all of
these. I'm just going to ask some
questions to help you see some of the presuppositions that you
might have. Let's start with politics.
Are all forms of equality good? Have you ever even asked that
question? We have a tendency to think,
yeah, all forms of equality are good.
Really. Should everyone have the right
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equal right to perform surgery with or without a license?
Should everyone have equal sexual access to somebody else's
spouse without their consent? Should everyone be paid the same
amount, even if somebody's job is much harder and takes more
education than somebody else's? We have a tendency to just
think, yeah, equality equals good.
Well, what kind of equality do you want?
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Equality of height, where we cutpeople in half so that the same
size as other people. I guess I'd be pretty short
people. Do we stretch little people?
Like what? What do we do?
Here's another one. Is democracy a good idea?
Again, if you want to find your presuppositions, you're going to
have to ask yourself questions that sound crazy because your
presuppositions seem so certain to you that that's just where
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you start. You're going to have to ask
yourself crazy questions so you can actually see what you
believe and where you're starting.
OK, but it's it's amazing. I remember reading in Plato
where he's talking about how terrible of an idea democracy
is. And you're like, I'm sorry,
what? I thought this was like the
default now. I thought this was like the the
best form of government or the worst form, except for all the
others that have been tried to do the Churchill quote.
(20:02):
Here's another one. Do your experiences help you see
things more clearly or do they bias you and get in your way?
Listen to this. We have a tendency to think
that. Diversity of opinion is always
good. Sometimes it's good, but
sometimes it's not. Let me give you an example.
I was giving a lecture one time on Jean Jacques Rousseau.
We've got an episode on Rousseau.
Go watch it. It's fantastic.
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And I was giving a lecture on Rousseau and somebody raised
their hand and they said, hey, everything you're saying about
Rousseau and all your research is primarily from like, you
know, white guys that lived, youknow, 300 years ago.
You know, why don't you quote more black authors or more
Latina authors or more female authors or whatever it might be
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on Rousseau? And I had to say to him,
Rousseau is a white male living during the Enlightenment in
Europe, unless you're a white male living in the Enlightenment
in Europe during the, I mean, I mean, during this, this time,
right? So this age of reason, all your
other demographics would not help you see Rousseau more
clearly. They would just get in the way,
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including mine, because I don't live during the Enlightenment.
I have certain presuppositions living in 2025 right now or
whatever. Like so we have this idea that
that this student had this idea that somehow that would be
helpful, somehow that would helpyou see Rousseau more clearly.
To take somebody who has a worldview completely different
than Rousseau and an experience completely different than
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Rousseau, that would just get inthe way.
It wouldn't actually be helpful.How about this presupposition?
Are some humans better than other humans?
What? Think about it, you want to say
no. To be clear, I don't mean are
some humans more human than other humans.
I'm not saying that like somebody is subhuman, that's a
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human. I'm saying are they better,
smarter, faster, stronger, good looking, whatever it might be.
And the answer is yes, OK, Like a guy who helps the poor is
probably better than a pedophile, OK.
Or somebody who's super intelligent is probably better
than some neo Nazi that lives ina trailer somewhere.
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Like some people are better thanother people, but we just get
uncomfortable with these questions 'cause we presuppose
no, everyone's basically the same.
And the only reason some people are better than is that they
stole or they cheated or they, you know, are corrupt in
business or whatever it might be.
Let's talk about some presuppositions when it comes to
your family. Are men and women equal?
If yes, why do you think that? If no, in what ways are they
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equal and in what ways are they unequal?
I'm not saying that they are or are not.
I just want to ask the question.Or does the question even make
sense? The question is a
presupposition. Is there a When we say are men
and women equal, do we just meanontologically or do we mean in
what areas? Like women are better at some
things than men and men are better at some things than women
generally? What do we think?
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Here's another one. Is it loving to discipline your
kids or is it unloving because it hurts them?
Do you give them a little bit ofpain now to keep them from a lot
of pain later or not? Is your child's disobedience
only due to lack of age or due to rebellion?
You will see this all the time. You'll go to dinner and some kid
is freaking out, throwing a temper tantrum and like hitting
their mom and screaming and flopping on the floor and
they're like, he never does this.
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And I'm like he does. But also they're like, you know,
he's only two and I'm like, yourkids can rebel super freaking
early. Wake up.
You just don't want to acknowledge the fact that you're
riding off his rebellion as an age issue.
Ouch. The shoe fits.
Wear it. What is the goal of having a
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family? What does it look like to have a
good flourishing family? There's a lot of guys who work
really hard and make a bunch of money and their family is not
flourishing. They think that, oh, I'm doing
this for the family and really it's just a cover up for them to
pursue their own vanity. But if your family's not doing
well and your kids are not doingwell and your wife hates you and
you're never home, like what? What is the purpose of having a
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family? What is flourishing?
If I were to sit down with you and say, draw for me the perfect
family, what would those elements be?
And are you living that way? Maybe not.
That's an interesting notice, aninteresting presupposition.
Let's talk about some presuppositions.
Presuppositions, presuppositions.
Again, I have trouble saying suppositions.
It's like if you ever seen Letter Kinney, how there's a guy
named Derry and he can't say breakfast.
(24:20):
He says breakfast. That's kind of made with
presuppositions. Let's talk about some religious
ones. How many times?
I like asking Christians this question?
How many times does the word Antichrist occur in the Book of
Revelation? So this Book of Revelation is
very prophetic and apocalyptic. And you know, there's this
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beastly figure, this man of lawlessness, there's all this.
And I say, OK, how many times does the Book of Revelation
mention the Antichrist, right? Like we've got all these dumb
shows and books about left behind or whatever, and the
answer is 0. The word Antichrist never occurs
in the Book of Revelation. It only occurs in John's
epistles. It does not occur in the Book of
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Revelation. Again, it's a presupposition, A
beastly figure, a man of lawlessness does, but the word
Antichrist does not occur. How about this one?
Why do you hold the particular religion you hold?
Maybe it's a presupposition. Is it because that's what your
parents held? Did you grow up in a Muslim
country? So you're Muslim.
You grew up with Christian parents, so you're Christian.
You grew up in a Jewish family, so you're Jewish.
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Like what? What?
I mean, what denomination are you in?
The same denomination or group that you started in?
You're probably just catching itby osmosis from your parents and
your culture. Maybe that's not the right
religion. Maybe no religion's the right
religion. Who knows?
Why do you hold the particular religion you hold?
Well, Zach, listen, I'm not biased.
I don't have presuppositions. I just came to my religion by
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reading the Bible. Cool.
Why did you read the Bible? Because you thought it was God's
word. Why did you think that?
That's a presupposition. You didn't get that from the
Bible, or else you would have picked up maybe a different
book. Why didn't you start with the
Vedas or the Quran or something like that?
You already believed the Bible was God's word, so then you
started reading it like it's God's word, and then it claims
to be God's word. At no point is there a building
of a foundational argument there.
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It's just where you start. It's a circular kind of thing.
What about the problem of evil? OK, so if, if people are
debating in religion and you bring up the problem of evil,
that if God is all good. And by the way, we've got a
lesson on the problem of evil, go check it out.
It's pretty awesome. I mean, I, I do it.
So it's a presupposition is thatit's excellent.
The problem of evil. If God is all good and God is
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all powerful and there's evil inthe world, what is going on?
It's also called theodicy. So what the non religious
person, the atheist is going to say is the fact that there is
evil in the world is proof that God does not exist.
Or at least he's not all powerful or all good because he
could have just as much glory and there be 1 less child raped
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than there is and he didn't do it.
That's a problem. The believer will say, no, no,
no, God didn't create the world bad.
He didn't create the world with like a clump of stuff called
evil. Mankind rebelled.
The reason that there's rape andcancer and tornadoes and all of
that is because all of creation has become broken because
mankind rebelled against God. So God cursed mankind.
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And then the atheist will respond and say that assumes
that God exists. You, you can't say that the
reason there's evil in the worldis because God exists and humans
just rebelled. We're trying to figure out
whether or not God exists to begin with.
Like you're assuming that in your argument and they're going
to say, well, you're assuming that God doesn't exist, which is
how, how do you even know that it's evil?
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And it's not just something you don't like If it's just a bunch
of random chemicals and matter and we don't have souls and
there is no God. Like you can't even say it's
objectively evil. You can just say humans don't
like it and they go back and forth, but it is all based on
their presuppositions. Listen, if you want a good
summary of this entire lesson, it's this.
Where you begin is where you'll end.
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If you begin, for example, believing a certain view of
politics, you're going to end uphaving confirmation bias.
You're going to find out that that's the view of politics you
think is right. If you begin believing in God's
existence, all the evidence is going to point to God's
existence. If you begin believing that God
doesn't exist, all the evidence is going to point to the fact
that God doesn't exist. How can you make sure that you
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have the right presuppositions? Why do Protestants and Catholics
disagree? Both Christians both have the
Bible. They disagree because they have
different presuppositions. Who gets to interpret the Bible?
Who gets to determine what booksare in the Bible?
Is it a tradition through the Magisterium of the Roman
Catholic Church? And they as a group get to
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overtime interpret and come up with official interpretations of
the Bible. Or do you as a random person
who's a Protestant, get to see what God says to be true to you
in your heart as you read scripture And it's self
authenticating as is the interpretation.
That's why they disagree that they they don't disagree on
certain things like the resurrection or the Trinity or
whatever. They disagree on a
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presupposition, A hermeneutic. OK, let's do some
presuppositions when it comes tobusiness.
Again, briefcased presuppositions when it comes to
business, and then we will talk about some ways to try to see
your presuppositions. So it's very difficult.
First, what is the goal of business?
Most people just grind their entire life and they have no
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idea what the goal is. There are times I sit down with
people who are wealthy and I say, what do you want out of
life? And they say more money and I
say, cool, if you had that, whatwould you use it for?
And they're like, I don't know, I guess I would retire early.
I'm like, cool, let's say I gaveyou a billion dollars and you're
financially independent tomorrowand you're not allowed to work,
meaning for a job. What would you do?
And they have no freaking idea. They're like, I guess I would
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sleep in and go for a walk and hang out with my family.
And I'm like, you can do that. Now you're grinding every day to
get something that you can already do and you don't know
why you're doing it. How asinine Is that OK?
The goal of making money can't be just to make money or else
you could just make money and then kill yourself.
The goal has to be something beyond that.
What do you want the money for? What is the goal of business?
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What are the fears you have whenit comes to how you conduct
business and how do these subtlyinfluence you?
A lot of people are driven by fear when it comes to business
because our livelihood is attached to our income and our
money. What do you do with that?
Here is something that I have anallergy to that just gets in my
craw. Is that a phrase that sounds so
gross? I don't know what a craw is and
I don't want anything to get up in it.
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Calling a wealthy person successful drives me nuts.
Oh, this guy is very successful.I'm like that guy.
He's like 100 lbs overweight andhis wife is a bitch and his kids
don't want to talk to him and hedoesn't have any friends and
he's not very educated and he never reads like he's the least
(30:48):
successful person I've ever seen.
You just mean he's wealthy. Oh, that's easy.
Making money is easy. There's a lot of a lot of hacks
and tricks to do that. That was So when somebody just
says that person's very successful, it better be in
every area of your life. If you're not good at humoring,
you're not successful. But we just use that phrase all
the time. It's a presupposition.
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The client is always right. The customer's always right.
The client always knows what's best.
That is a presupposition, and I think it's a wrong
presupposition, right? That's like a doctor saying the
patient always knows what's best.
Nope. The doctor knows what's best.
Sometimes the client needs to take advice.
The client doesn't always know what's best.
It's a presupposition. OK, Water break.
I mean vodka. I mean just pure gin.
(31:31):
Gin just tastes like perfume. I just filled this bottle of gin
perfume. It's delicious in the morning.
OK, Is it all hopeless? Maybe.
Maybe it might be the case that you just get lucky and start in
the right world view. It might be the case that if God
exists, he ordains for you to bein the right worldview and
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others He ordains not to be in the right worldview.
It might be the case that your emotion and your brain chemistry
and your family and your psychological experiences cause
you to start in one thing where you do not see other things
clearly like you should. That that could all be true.
Since we cannot get rid of presuppositions completely, all
we can do is be aware of them. I've got a bunch of questions
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that I want to end with to help you see your presuppositions.
OK, so the So what the practicality of this lesson is
this these questions, you ready some questions to help you find
your presuppositions #1 what do I already think is true?
A lot of people just start making decisions or making an
argument or voting or commentingon social media or doing
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something before they've stoppedand said, what do I think is
true? And maybe it's not OK #2 what is
something that seems so obvious that you've never questioned it?
OK. If you want to be good, a good
thinker and a good philosopher, you want to be good at seeing
your presuppositions. You have to try to argue against
things that you think are super obvious.
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You have to make a case for positions you don't actually
hold, but you at least have to try it.
Like if somebody says something really stupid, like, you know,
I'm trying to think what it should be.
If somebody's like, you know what we should do?
We should reinstitute, you know,slavery or something like that.
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You we should not, by the way, just to be clear, we should not
reinstitute slavery. But if they say something like
that, you can't just dismiss it.You've got to try to make a case
for, you know, the best case youcould and then shoot it down.
But anytime you just dismiss something, even if it sounds
crazy, because that does sound crazy.
Again, to be clear, slavery's bad.
You still have to have the argument right?
(33:36):
And so you, you're not going to see your presuppositions if you
just assume certain things, eveneven things that are super
obvious. Murder is bad.
Really all types of murder, right?
What about it? What it?
What if vengeance was actually good?
I'm not saying it is. Again, I think murder's bad,
just like I think slavery's bad.I'm saying you have to question
and ask difficult questions on things that seem even super
(33:59):
obvious. OK #3 what do I want to be true?
What do I already like? That is a great question to ask
yourself. What do I want to be true?
Because usually you're going to find that you will reshape facts
and relationships and all kinds of stuff around what you
actually want to be true. What am I afraid is true?
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That's number four. What am I afraid is true?
Like, oh man, I don't think that's true.
But if it was, oh gosh, that would be awful.
That would be awful #5 how has my thinking been affected by the
culture, language, time period, and political climate in which I
live? OK, how has my thinking been
(34:42):
affected by the culture, language, time period, and
political climate in which I live?
Reading history can be super, super helpful.
The reason I love history and the history of thought and
history of philosophy and intellectual history is if you
want to see where your presuppositions are, read
history. Because people think about
things in a very different way and it's shocking.
They just say crazy things. Like I just said, they'll be
(35:03):
like, yeah, we should kill people for this.
And you're like, whoa. Or Aristotle, who's like, yeah,
some people are made to be slaves and they're happier that
way. And you're like, whoa, that
sounds crazy. But you you don't see it and you
don't see your presupposition. By the way, I'm not saying
they're right. I'm just saying that like, it
helps you see your presuppositions when you see how
people of the past thought, because it's very different than
the way that we think today. Number six, what experiences do
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I have that might cause me to think a certain way?
OK. A lot of people live life
through their past experiences, never questioning whether or not
those experiences are right or that's the right way to view
life, or your experiences shouldaffect how you view truth.
Maybe they shouldn't #7 Listen to this one.
This one's spicy. You ready?
(35:45):
Buckle up. What issue, if I found out it
was true, would ruin my life andit would not be a world in which
I would want to live? There is a world that you would
not want to live in if certain things were true.
What are those fears? If this political position was
actually right, I would hate to live in this world.
If this religious position was actually right, I would hate to
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live in this world. If I was actually this kind of
person, I could not look myself in the mirror.
What? What do you hate?
What are you afraid of that would make you not want to live
anymore if it were true? It's a great place to see your
presuppositions #8 what world views do I hate or what really
turns me off? I don't mean sexually, I mean
certain viewpoints, certain kinds of people, certain
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political positions or politicalparties or religious positions
or religious or non religious positions, non religious
parties, whatever it might be. Certain types of parenting,
certain types of business, certain types of industry,
whatever it might be #9 almost done.
Hang in there, you're doing great.
What kind of people do I not want to be like?
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Who are my enemies? Who would disagree with me if we
sat down over a cup of coffee tochat about big things #10 I
already kind of mentioned this. What have people in different
periods of world history thoughtabout this issue #11 with what
groups do I, I identify that could cause me to skew
information? So you probably have certain
(37:11):
groups that you see yourself as a part of.
Maybe it's your race or your gender or your religion or your
nationality or whatever it mightbe.
In what ways could that cause you to see things in a biased
way? In what ways could that cause
you to have the blinders on? In what ways could that cause
you to skew information #12 whatare opinions that I hear that I
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think are absolutely crazy? You still have to question them.
That doesn't mean, by the way, you're not saying that they're
right or might be right just by asking the questions, right?
Just by asking what should we think about slavery?
That does not mean in any way you actually support it.
And again, in fact, you shouldn't, but you have to ask
that question, OK, even for things that sound absolutely
crazy #13 last one. And there's more than this.
(37:55):
Again, I'm just presupposing there's 13 here and that'll be
helpful for you. But that could be wrong.
And what areas of my life am I not willing to budget?
And even if you corrected me, I would find a way where you were
actually the one who was wrong and not my view.
What is your issue that others are not allowed to touch or
challenge you on? How about that one where if
(38:16):
somebody, you hold it so tightly, if somebody were to try
to correct you, you would find away where they were wrong and
they were the one who was off. Because you're not willing to
change that view, you're going to hold it super tightly.
No one's allowed to challenge it.
No one's allowed to touch it. You get mad when people try to
you think that they're against you.
What is that issue for you? It's probably several issues.
(38:36):
These are presuppositions. You can't avoid them.
You can only be aware of them byso, so, so, so then go go back
to the illustration I gave earlier of the whiteboard and
everybody's got different color glasses stuck to their face.
You would have to ask questions like this.
What color do I think my glassesare?
What color do you think my glasses are?
(38:58):
What color do I think your glasses are?
What color glasses did they havein the past?
What, what color glasses am I hoping that they are?
What colors do I like? What colors do I not like?
What kind of people with different color glasses have
made me mad in the past? How do I actually get to the the
whiteboard? Can I make my color a little
less bright so that I can see the whiteboard a little more
clearly? That's the kind of thing you're
(39:18):
going to have to do in every area of your life or you will
always be building a thought house on a wrong foundation with
an 11 inch ruler. So presuppositions.
Presuppositions are the thing. See, in doing this lesson, I
even presuppose that I could saypresuppositions.
Breakfast. Thanks for joining us.
(39:40):
We will see you next time. Ideological retweet, smash that
like button, share, subscribe, blah blah.
Do all the things that influencers tell you to do.
All right, talk to you guys later.
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