Start With The Obvious

How does one come to know anything at all?  Start with the obvious.  What this entails is certainly not clear to non-rationalists, who are enslaved to assumptions or philosophical negligence whether they have considered this or not.  The things a typical person might believe are obvious often are demonstrably false or at best not verifiable.  For instance, it might seem obvious that all biological organisms die or that the sun will "rise" and "set" tomorrow.  But upon attempting to truly prove these or other empirical or inductive matters, someone making no assumptions would see that there is no way to logically demonstrate that because one or all such creatures up to this point have died, so would others, or that because the sun has risen and set each day, this cycle must repeat by necessity.

And this is aside from the epistemological barrier prevent us from knowing if what we see in the external world, including various creatures and the sun, is really there!  The future has not happened yet, and while anything inherently impossible cannot happen by virtue of being impossible (as dictated purely by the laws of logic and nothing else), literally anything that is possible could happen with little to no warning.  It does not logically follow that anything but a strictly necessary truth will remain unchanged, and it is logically true that even if someone retreated away from pure reason to experience, future experience has not yet occurred.  On all levels, there is no logical way to truly know if scientific patterns will continue.

As "obvious" as it might seem that you will live to see the next sunrise or that the sun will rise again to begin with, any certainty about matters like this beyond a seeming likelihood is sheer illusion that the irrational cling to out of a pathetic philosophical negligence or stubbornness—folly either way.  It is also impossible to demonstrate that certain other things are true, such as the existence or nonexistence of morality, despite how it might seem "obvious" to irrational people that their subjective intuition reveals such things about reality (for instance, that stealing is immoral).  On the contrary, if logic was false, there would be a logical reason, which could only be the case if it is not actually false.  Logical axioms like the fact that truth exists could not be false without still being true (in this case, because it would be true that there is no truth).

Consequently, it is inherently impossible for logic to be anything but true.  Logical axioms do not become true only when one reflects on them, and they are not mere psychological perceptions, though one must put in some sort of initial mental effort to recognize their genuine self-evidence.  Years ago, I spoke with someone who idiotically questioned the veracity of logic because they asserted that simply not thinking about the laws of logic would make them unverifiable!  The nuance is that they are obviously true, but this is not apparent to anyone who holds to assumptions or ignores necessary truths and rationalistic epistemology altogether.

Logical axioms are not obvious to non-rationalists who go about their lives in the grip of assumptions.  Despite how they will selectively assume logic is true (and must rely on it to argue against it in addition to metaphysically relying on it to even exist, since their existence must be logically possible in order to be the case), they never realize or accept that it cannot be false, because then it would still be metaphysically true.  They do not recognize its utter distinction from all other things, both metaphysical and epistemological.

Logical axioms are self-evident because their falsity still involves their veracity and thus they cannot be dismissed or doubted without someone relying on the fact that they are true, whether they like it or not.  Nothing could be more obvious!  Yet adjusting to knowledge of these axioms or initially realizing their intrinsic correctness can be very difficult for someone who simply operates on whatever assumptions they would like to hold to.  However, because logic cannot be false and is thus self-evident, it is incredibly easy for someone sincerely seeking the truth without making assumptions to recognize these facts.  Everything else hinges on it and every truth or falsity stems from the inherent veracity of logical axioms.  In turn, any willing person can discover a host of other objective truths which stem from them.

It is not self-evident that five added to five equals 10, or that there is some kind of God (an uncaused cause), or that water quenches thirst.  In fact, the latter of these three things is not ultimately provable, as extremely likely as it appears to be, because the accuracy of such sensory experiences and the true relationships between scientific causes and their effects are not logically demonstrable!  But all of these things hinge on logic for their truth and their very possibility.  Logic allows one to explore what must, must not, and might or might not true, and some of these other logical facts are obvious, but only in the sense that they are easily accessible to any willing mind, not that they are self-evident (relying on no more foundational truth or only capable of being denied by one inescapably relying on them).

Starting with the obvious in the only valid sense that this can be done is inherently rationalistic.  This extends far beyond recognizing the intrinsically correct nature of logical axioms and then discovering what follows from them.  For instance, someone might be overwhelmed with where to start when trying to determine what the Bible really claims about a given subject, something which is not self-evident and which could span many of its 66 books.  Starting with what is logically obvious, and then seeing what necessary connections exist between miscellaneous verses, parallels how one must start with logical axioms and make no assumptions in order to know anything to begin with.  Of course, it is not equivalent in regard to how logical axioms are true in themselves, something which sets them apart from all else at the metaphysical and epistemological level.  Nothing is knowable without forgoing assumptions and grasping the only things that in themselves cannot be false.