Realizing that some things conceptually follow from others and that this form of sound deductive reasoning cannot be false--or else it would still be true, as its own falsity would require that some things still follow from certain ideas--is one of the vital first steps in understanding anything about reality with absolute certainty. There is no point in epistemology where one has escaped logical axioms even if the issue being contemplated is not about the very foundations of knowledge or the attainability of absolute certainty. In this regard, the self-evidence of logic is always confronted even when it is not considered or recognized.
Even years of constant reflection on the self-verifying nature of reason and logical axioms might not get a person to the realization that logic is not merely an epistemologically true method of understanding things other than itself. Its nature exceeds this, as if having all epistemological matters hinge on logic is not significant enough: reason is a metaphysical thing. It is a set of necessary truths and laws that exist without depending on anything else, whereas everything else that exists, nonphysical or physical, only exists out of logical necessity or logical possibility. In fact, logic is the one thing that spans all of reality without relying on anything other than itself, but it is also the only thing that cannot not exist due to its own nature.
Epistemology and metaphysics are inseparably intertwined in that one cannot know anything apart from one's own existence and grasp of reason, both of which are things that actually exist. Knowledge stands on metaphysics. The epistemological nature of logic can nonetheless be distinguished from its metaphysical nature. The vast majority of people who intentionally share their philosophical ideas seem to not even understand the epistemological nature of reason, much less its metaphysical nature that can be revealed by sound epistemology. Logic, when it is considered directly, is more likely to be mistaken for a process, personal comprehension, or a means to an end than a thing that truly exists in its own right.
If God and the universe themselves ceased to exist, reason would still exist because nothing can remove that which must exist due to intrinsic necessity. Certain conclusions would still follow from certain premises, and certain necessary premises would still be true: there would still be a reality and all logical truths, including that specific conclusions follow from premises which would not be true in such a scenario, would still possess inherent veracity. Reason is so much more than an epistemological tool or just one of several "ways of thinking." It is the set of laws that dictate what must be true!
These distinctions are of the utmost importance in both understanding the nature of reason to the fullest extent possible and identifying certain truths that have been neglected or contradicted by almost everyone one could either converse with or find in the historical record [1]. Both goals are philosophically significant. All the same, both appear to have few concerned with them. Some truths are only realized by a minority of devoted rationalists, such as the metaphysically necessary existence of reason in the absence of all other things, and some truths I plan on addressing in future articles may not have even been discovered by others at all apart (I have hinted at this set of potentially unheard of philosophical truths before, such as here [2]), and this matter falls into the first of the two categories.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-list-of-neglected-truths.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/04/online-information-storage-part-2.html
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