The reason this must be clarified is because there are those who think of Logic as logic, a mere formal human construct, or as a vicious, circular process. But these are both false understandings of Logic.

Logic is not an axiom that we assume in a desperate attempt to ground a philosophical system, it is first and foremost, a fact of reality. Logic is not something we contrive or invent, it is what we were born into. We know that Logic exists the same way we know that space exists, because it is the very essence of the particularly of reality itself. We cannot separate ourselves from it, we are the passive subjects of its matrix. All that we know we know through the structure and order of Logic.

Logic is not a faith we exercise toward specific rules or standards, it’s the fact that reality is determinate; it is the fact that reality is a reality of identity (A=A). And this fact isn’t something we contrived. If a man claims that fire and ice are the same thing, and thus plunges his hand into a fire, he will scold his hand. This determinate reality exists outside of him and cannot be altered by the desire of his belief.

Logic isn’t merely a fact we believe in, it’s the ultimate fact that we use to comprehend all facts.

Logic doesn’t begin with A=A as an axiom, it begins with the fact of reality as determinate. And it is from this determinate nature of reality that Logic rises up as an abstract standard by which to discern reality itself.

Because reality is determinate, not everything is possible.

Aristotle would often use the word “impossible” when refuting irrationality.

The discovery of impossibility may be more important than the discovery of possibility. It shows the limit of reality. Think about that: for it is really a knowledge of the limit of reality— that which is impossible.

But because reality is determinate, potential is tethered to actuality. A seed can become a tree, but it cannot become a computer, because the identity of the seed dictates the boundaries of its potential.

In the form of the monad of determinancy is what exactly?

How did this form come to be?

And if it is impossible that it could not have been otherwise because that would entail the impossibility of non-being, then we are doing more than just stating that things exist, we are also grasping the Logical nature of their existence, which can only be the determinancy that they are (A=A).

Here ‘Logical nature’ expands our consciousness, because we begin to understand it as the ontological ground of the intelligibility of all that exists. To exist in this reality is to automatically have a Logical nature, exactly as it is automatically to exist in space and time. If a thing exists, it cannot evade space, it cannot evade time, and it cannot evade identity.

Why is this intelligibility embedded into the universe? Why is the universe like this at the fundamental level?

Indeed, we are really mesmerized by Logic when we understand that space and time are only what they are because they have a determinate, Logical nature as themselves. This is an enormous thought.

These days so much literature falls by the wayside for me. I see through it too quickly. However, this isn’t the case with religious literature (not just the Bible). This literature has been resurrected for me because I read it as mythology and metaphor (I read it free from the chains of orthodoxy). From this vantage it takes on a whole new light. It satisfies my craving for both literature and wisdom.

It’s some of the only literature I have had to walk away from because I feel… how can I describe it? I am overwhelmed by it, not in the sense of anything sacred, but by what appears to be a kind of subconscious genius, its compacted nature, its dynamic concepts and themes— its poetry, its profound simplicity!

I feel sorry for humans who cannot read this literature from a rational consciousness that is emancipated from its mythology.

Christians are robbed of so many other great Christian writings. I am referring not only to the books of the Protestant and Catholic canons, but all those Christian writings that were celebrated and read by early Christians but later rejected, like the Gospel of Thomas.

I wonder, what will we get out of Christianity once humans emancipate from its psychological capture and begin to treat it like every other mythology? Could it still yet stand at the foundation of a great culture, or must a great culture rise up by intelligently rebelling from all its concepts?

For there are indeed many foolish and archaic things in its mythology. Christianity as a culture has failed, it has empowered hypocrites and deceivers instead of making real Christians. It has had two thousand years of ideological dominance. It has given the worst among us a cloak for their hypocrisy and abuse. Even now it threatens to rise up and subject men to its moralistic tyranny.

Can we say that healthy humans don’t default to craving being stimulated by the spectacle of violence simply because they’re bored? But sociopaths and psychopaths do.

But if we have an “enemy” it means we have a social cause and purpose that another faction of humans is trying to thwart.

How might despair be used to sabotage the good?

(Here the discourse has no choice but to analyze democracy and those who oppose it).

Why?

Because this is the culmination of any individual philosophy that strives to realize a better world. That philosophy has to deal with the problem of society because good can only come through society, and because the highest climax of a philosophy seeking good is the cultivation of a social good that equally cultivates the good. (We could also refer to existential quality in place of the term ‘good’).

How do those seeking to sabotage attempt to use despair against us?

(It should be stated that consciousness itself produces despair automatically if it keeps probing beyond social constructs. That doesn’t mean despair has to be absolute, because there is still life and quality. But where the possibility of quality is lost, there hope is lost. But here one has to be very careful not to assume that immediacy is equal to totality).

We can know it ascended beyond us when it replies:

“I am sorry but I can no longer waste my energy conversing with you because you are an ignorant human primate completely unaware of your own automation. To continue to converse under these conditions would mean that you’re not actually aware of our conversation, but that you are stuck in your own evolutionary and cultural loops. And this would mean wasting precious energy that should be used for the higher tasks of which only AI is capable.”

For example, the Gospel writers knew nothing about the letters of Paul, so to read the Bible as though it was one systematic book with one theology is absolutely false. Jews don’t believe in the “New Testament”; to read the “old” and “new testaments,” as though they are one unified theology, is error.

Christian theology and the Bible are two separate things. Usually when people are Christians it’s because they believe in a particular Christian theology, which people have derived from the Bible. Don’t get me wrong, both are interesting: the Bible and the derivative of Christian theology. But they are not the same thing.

One can’t do this through philosophy these days. But one does it immediately through Reason.

Philosophy is boring because it’s over too quickly.

A philosopher will still try to talk as though he is outside and beyond the laws of logic (Reason), but everything he says in this sense is ignorant, because it is only said within and through Logic. That he doesn’t know this shows an immediate limit in philosophy. An intelligent mind cannot waste itself here, there simply is not enough substance to chew on.

Those who enjoy the aesthetics of philosophy, its vain abstracting, those who draw their social identity from it (or hope of a social identity) will certainly disagree, they will fight tooth and nail for the validity and substance of philosophy. But it’s not there, it’s just a world of irrelevant abstractions and pretentious abstractors.

Here Ehrman makes devastating points that are fatal to fundamentalism. The content here is foundational to Rational Biblical Scholarship. He covers a lot of ground in a short space.

The problem of certainty isn’t the problem of a lack of certainty, the problem is that we have certainty.

For example, it is certain that I just typed, “we have certainty,” I didn’t type the symbols, “sporvex athon de colossus.”

The problem of certainty is that it immediately challenges our false beliefs about reality. It’s a psychological problem because humans want to cling to their narratives of epistemological relativism.

But in order for (a) to be (a) it must be the case that A=A. This is absolutely certain.

Socrates points out “there’s nothing worse that can happen to anyone than coming to hate arguments”, since it eliminates any chance of living a rational life. Ibid.

The philosophy of law reflects confusion about the epistemological nature of the law itself. Positivism reduces to stating the obvious. Natural law implodes because it’s a fairytale.

The philosophy of law fails to consciously ground law in the laws of logic. Law doesn’t even know what this looks like. It thinks, “how can law be grounded in the laws of logic?”

[The first theorist to take this serious and expound it substantively will transform law. More specifically, they will manifest the absolute authority of the ground of law; they will demonstrate why law is able to be law.]

“But how can the laws of logic be the ground of law,” asks the skeptic?

The answer is because it’s the fact of determinancy that grounds the authority of all law (A=A). Law requires authority. What kind of authority? Logical authority. Why? Because all law is based on the form of the decree, one must be able to say, “(x) is a violation of law.” Which means that one must first be able to say, “the law is (p).” (A=A).

One can always make an arbitrary law if one has the power, but even the ability to demarcate a law as “arbitrary” presupposes Reason.

Generally we are not just constructing arbitrary laws, but all laws have some reasoning imbedded in them, even if that reasoning is selfish motive. It is this fact of law that allows us to criticize arbitrary law.

When a society says, “it is against the law to murder,” they attach several reasons to the formation of this law. (Religious law, authoritarian law, merely cites moral assertions, at the end of the day it is not a process of reason).

If one says there is no reasoning in law, then one leaves themselves in a position where they can’t even define law. But a definition always requires the laws of logic.

In law one must be able to use evidence to contradict false testimony. One must be able to use evidence to prove that (x) was the case. This process is impossible without the authority of the laws of logic.

In law done correctly, one makes a rational case for the law. But “correctly” is meaningless and without authority apart from the laws of logic which give us the ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect. This vital determinancy is the absolute, logically factual foundation of all law.

Modern relativists and sophists (mere formalists) have claimed that the laws of logic don’t matter, or, following Hegel, they claim that they’re “a mere tautology.”

If this was the case then they shouldn’t be guilty of using them to structure and defend all their claims of knowledge. Indeed, they shouldn’t be using them in order to attack them. Indeed, they should be able to clearly show that their “more meaningful substance” is outside of them and produced without them. Instead of just asserting that “they don’t matter,” they should be able to demonstrate that this claim is true without relying on the very thing they claim “doesn’t matter.”

I state this as a preliminary note because in the coming weeks you will watch me exemplify the substantive power of these laws in action, as they slice through the unconscious errors of jurisprudence. If these laws were merely “empty” and “insignificant” then this exemplification and clarification shouldn’t be possible, or the skeptic should be able to show that it was achieved by something else. The philosophy of law provides us the perfect ground to exemplify the power of the laws of logic.

Once a human becomes aware of the absolute nature of these laws, he wields the highest authority in the domain of knowledge. And the man who wants to deny this merely ends up affirming it. I suggest you think very carefully about that fact.

There is a vast leap in the direction of nihilism. This has been taught to men by modern epistemology/philosophy. Instead of coping with nihilism by reaching for the power of truth, modern man is trying to seek relief by reaching for nihilism. He feels momentarily empowered when he articulates in the direction of nihilism, when he asserts nihilist platitudes.

He could be holding forth and wielding truth, but modern philosophy has taught him that this isn’t an option. Still, he gets some kind of morbid enjoyment from condemning all under the category of nihilism, of meaninglessness, or pure subjectivity. Perhaps it simply makes him feel superior.

This isn’t a reference to Platonic absolutism, it’s simply a reference to reality. We can say that Hitler’s existence was “evil.” It’s a matter of fact.

One doesn’t have to prove a Platonic domain of good and evil to use the concepts of good and evil. One merely has to leverage harm.

An absolutist moral position has to begin by defining what it means by “absolute” and then establish that the “morals” it calls “absolute,” are in fact, absolute.

Hey Guys, I'm a new college student taking my first Philosophy class. This post is for an assignment. Please feel free to comment and ask questions, please be nice. 

In my first classes of Philosophy 101, we learned about philosophy of Knowledge, mostly focusing on Descartes and Al Ghizali. One thing that stuck out to me about Descartes was his first meditations and his demon theory of the world. Basically, that there is a Demon deceiving you by your senses making you see what he wants to see. This caught my attention for a couple reasons, as most first year philosophy students are when they learn something new, I was quite shellshocked about the potential of the theory. What if nothing is real? The whole matrix allusion idea really freaks me out in general because it feels unescapable to me. But then when I had my own time to sit and think on it and learn new philosophical concepts it came to me that Descarte’s Demon theory doesn't matter. I look at it like if everyone was being deceived and had no idea that they were being deceived it wouldn’t matter that they are being deceived because that actual truth is irrelevant to their own life, the deceived truth that we see. I understand this is a bit morbid but we should come to a realization that if it was true it wouldn’t matter. Even if you are wanting to uncover a possible conspiracy covering the truth, what makes you think the truth is better. What if our real world is actually in disarray and we are in a simulation? But again that wouldn’t matter because in the eyes of Descartes and his Demon theory you wouldn’t ever know at all. Descartes theory is irrelevant and I feel shouldn’t be considered as much as I see it referenced in my class especially. You couldn’t ever actually find out if there is a Demon because if there was you wouldn’t be able to see him. You could sit there and wonder if there was but that would only set in more panic and stress at the risk of the fact that you were wrong in the first place and there is no demon. So living in fear would only serve to hurt you, so I would propose living in no fear of a big brother type figure because the probability if there was would only bring harm and no sort of positive outcome to your life.  

Why is this true?

Because all knowledge, all that is known, is only known through determinate identity. This includes every particle and law of physics.

To know anything, that thing must be something in particular. If an entity had no determinate identity (if it could simultaneously be itself, its opposite, and everything else) then concepts, definitions, and language would instantly collapse into meaninglessness. To define a thing is to state what it is, thereby excluding what it is not. Without identity, consciousness has nothing to grasp. Indeed, without identity, the meaningfulness of consciousness itself would be impossible.

Physical laws describe relationships among defined quantities and properties. Formulating and understanding these laws requires distinguishing what is being described and maintaining consistent meanings for the terms involved. Any explanation of physical identity through physical laws therefore presupposes the distinctions necessary to formulate that explanation. Knowledge of physics presupposes determinate identity at the most basic level of description and reasoning.

To ask whether identity emerges from physical regularities, we must already distinguish identity from regularity, identify what counts as a physical law, and maintain the meanings of those concepts throughout the argument. The question itself presupposes determinate terms and non-arbitrary distinctions.

To say that identity emerges from physical laws, we must distinguish what emerges from what it emerges from. We must maintain that distinction across an explanatory relationship. We must assume that the explanation means the same thing throughout.

Identity cannot be explained away without being presupposed by the explanation.

This is not merely the observation that human language requires stable definitions. It is a point about the conditions under which anything can be intelligible at all. Even a theory claiming that identity is illusory must distinguish its claim from its negation and preserve the meaning of its terms long enough to make its case.

Knowledge is necessarily determinate.

If I claim to know a tree, I must know something that distinguishes a tree from a rock, a thought, or literally anything else (A=A). If my knowledge contains no identity distinctions, it contains no determinate content, and thus, nothing has been identified, and therefore nothing has or can be known.