Perfect Consistency

A blatant inconsistency stands out far more than the more subtle disparities that plague common worldviews, but both can be purged completely.  Since consistency is a minimum requirement for something to be true, as both a self-contradictory nature and conflict with another truth render something inherently false, it is vital for sound thinkers to be as consistent as possible.  At least some parts of a given worldview are otherwise false.  However, there is no inconsistency that cannot be identified, avoided, or surrendered.  It may sound arrogant to non-rationalists to even suggest that perfect consistency is possible, but it is entirely obtainable.

Consistency merely means that two ideas, or an action and an idea, are not in opposition with each other.  To be consistent, a concept must not exclude another; the two must either be logically tethered to one another so that one follows from the other or be compatible even if not directly related.  Without either of these two kinds of relationships, two concepts would exclude each other so that neither could be true at the same time as the other, and so the logically impossible nature of such a thing means that consistency is an inescapavle part of reality itself, not just an arbitrary notion.  Thus, to be intellectually aligned with reality, one must be consistent.

If there is no single error or inconsistency that someone must inescapably embrace, there is nothing to keep a self-aware rationalist from becoming or remaining fully consistent.  This does not mean that there will never be additional philosophical revelations of any kind, as a newly discovered truth will never contradict a separate truth.  What it does mean is that perfect consistency is not the same as omniscience--one might know every logically necessary truth about a given part of reality, as logic provides absolute certainty and governs all things, but it is impossible to know at least certain truths given human epistemological limitations.

Perfect consistency is not unattainable, but it can only be secured by intentionally abandoning whatever assumptions were in one's worldview before the turn to rationalism and by refusing to believe that which cannot be known.  Reason is the only key to genuine, provable consistency and perfection in that consistency.  All one must do to be without consistency is understand the foundational axioms reason reveals about itself and reasom out subsequent truths about logic and one's own experiences without making assumptions or beliving contradictions.  For some, this may seem incredibly difficult, but it is the only way to escape the philosophical and practical pitfalls of ideological incompleteness.

It needs to be understood that consistency alone does not make an idea true.  A concept can be consistent with itself and with reason and still not be true.  A thinking being could conceive of a false religion that does not have any internal contradictions and that does not contradict the necessary laws of logic or any other aspects of reality, for example.  This is the difference between logical possibility and that which is already a part of reality, so conflating the two is philosophically disastrous.  Moreover, a person can be consistent without being rational in that he or she may be consistent within a framework of assumptions and arbitrary preferences rather than a set of logically verifiable truths.  All of these truths are consistent with each other!