Internal Critique refers to critiquing a worldview (philosophy, idea, etc.) from within, internally, based on its own standards.
Yet, is this even actually possible?
For example, I’ve internally critiqued Atheism many, many, many times in order to show how it fails before it even begins.
Yet, I can’t actually do that from within since it contains no premise upon which to even be concerned about whether or not it fails, at any stage for that matter.
Thus, an internal critique always, or will tend to, contain a foreign substance, a premise that one brings with them so that the internal critique is not necessarily 100% internal.
The very premise of internal critique implies setting out to critique from within so that the concept of critiquing comes with the territory, comes into the exercise.
When I debated Skylar Fiction, I did a lot of internal critique so as to show him the Atheist bed he had made and in order to see if he would sleep in it. Yet, that one ought to sleep in the bed one has made is premised on consistency as a universal imperative but Atheism lacks any and all universal imperatives.
This is why Atheists are always consistently inconsistent—although I will say that TJump aka Tom Jump was very, very consistent when I noted to him that on Atheism, reality (truth, facts) is accidental, as is our ability to discern it, there’s no universal imperative to adhere to it, nor to demand/expect others adhere to it.
TJum ended up agreeing with me and took the fallback position that it all comes down to having fun based on subjective personal preferences du jour.
Now, Skylar Fiction is an exclusivist moral relativist/subjectivist but not long after our debate, he debated someone else about the evils of some events recorded in the Old Testament.
See what I mean about lack of consistency? An exclusivist moral relativist/subjectivist (pseudo) condemning anything is incoherent—good thing, for him, that being coherent is not a universal imperative, on Atheism.
He did so by beginning the debate by stating that for the debate he was granting “objective morals.”
Now, it’s one thing to do an internal critique, especially temporarily (for the duration of the critique) but it’s a wholly other thing to literally abandon one’s worldview at the get-go and argue against another worldview via that other worldview’s views and never appeal to one’s own again.
In other words, since internally there’s no way to condemn the debated some events recorded in the Old Testament then he couldn’t condemn them regardless. Thus, he lost the debate from the get-go and did so on various levels.
See, if he were to say that, say, the conquering of Canaan narratives contradict the concept of an all-loving God then 1. he can’t argue that because such is not the case, internally 2. nor can he argue that based on his own exclusivist moral relativist/subjectivist. Thus, he failed regardless—in typical manner, he merely emoted (not that there’s anything wrong with that on Atheism).
Now, back to the specific point about internal critiques: it’s like trying on someone else’s glove which you can put on and move around but it’s your hand doing the moving.
When I internally critique Atheism, for example, I’m bringing into my internal critique my worldview according to which reality is purposeful, as is our ability to discern it, there’s a universal imperative to adhere to it, and to demand/expect others to do so as well. Thus, when I point out Skylar Fiction’s failure that is as per my worldview that I snuck into his because strictly within his, there’s no premise upon which to condemn well, anything at all—not even logical inconsistencies such as contradictions.
In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton noted the following about literally insane people “The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory” meaning that their explanations are internally consistent.
He goes on to write, “Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable” since it is internally consistent.
He continue directly with, “this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do” which is internally consistent since, “His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.”
Moreover, he continues thusly, “Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.”
He concludes, “A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason” which is the case since it can be said that the madman’s worldview is internally consistent to one cannot claim there’s anything wrong with it strictly from within.
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