Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Still Dependent On Reason

Even if one was omniscient or lacked the epistemological limitation preventing knowledge of whether general sensory perceptions match the real external world [1], this knowledge would still depend on reason [2].  The truth about scientific issues also would depend on reason on the level of metaphysics, for nothing other than logical axioms can be true without axioms first being true, and yet axioms and other necessary truths are independent of all else, having either self-necessary veracity or following inevitably from another necessary truth.  The law of identity, for instance, can only be true.  If a thing is not what it is, then whatever else it is would still be what it is, rendering it true by self-necessity enjoined with the other handful of logical axioms.

This is true in the absence of all concrete examples beyond itself.  Still, an earthquake cannot be an earthquake, a star cannot be a star, and a vein cannot be a vein unless the law of identity is already true.  Likewise, if a stone exists, it is true that it is false that this very stone does not exist, but this is because of the inherent truth of the logical law of non-contradiction, as it might be called.  Furthermore, since one thing has to follow or not follow from another--without this, not even other axioms could be true since it follows from their falsity requiring their veracity that they are intrinsically true--this is a necessary fact independent of science altogether and that science entirely hinges on.

It is a logical necessity that there can be no laws of nature without a natural world (one follows from the other, since a physical world is a metaphysical prerequisite to the existence of scientific laws, or there being a way it behaves), and there can be no external world of matter without it being true that something is true, yet this is a matter of logic and not of science.  Things are true of the scientific method or of the natural world, but not ever strictly because of the cosmos.  Logic is separate from the material world and is still what it depends on.  Among many other things, if there is a material environment or object, it follows that it is not some environment or object other than what it is, and it also follows that it is not immaterial.  All of this can only be true if some things follow by logical necessity from others.

Logic has to be true for anything else to be true and it is also true in itself, regardless of all else.  Neither God nor nature can escape it, alter it, or have any relationship to it except one of utmost, strict metaphysical dependence.  The laws of reason are the supreme existent because of this, for a thing that is true in itself and that cannot be false cannot not exist.  Nature and even the uncaused cause, which is itself both something with an absolutely certain (logically necessary in light of contingent things) existence and vast superiority over the universe, could only be lesser than logic, for it alone is true in itself, and it is only logical possibility and necessity that allow for or require there to be an uncaused cause and physical cosmos.

Nothing but logical axioms has to exist in itself, because even the necessary existence of empty space, which is also distinct from the matter it holds and does not depend on God to create it since it is already present [3], only exists because it is both logically possible (consistent with axioms, which cannot be false) and necessary in light of the logical truth that the absence of matter still means there is a metaphysical dimension where it could have existed.  Other necessary truths that follow from axioms cannot even be true on their own, since they hinge on axioms, although they are inherently true in that nothing else could have followed and that since axioms cannot be false, the other logical truths stemming from them likewise cannot be false.  Metaphysical naturalism and epistemological scientism are somewhat popular in the modern West and yet are just as intrinsically, demonstrably false as theistic irrationalism (which is metaphysical) and epistemological fitheism.


[1].


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