The Logical consequences of either caring about or ignoring ‘What Is Truth?’ – causality & its effects (g)

Logic, which Aristotle developed upon his Metaphysics, and Analytics, guides us in how to use reason methodically in relation to what is real and true. The point is to methodically identify and eliminate contradictions from our assumptions and to show us where we need to flesh out the abstractions we haven’t taken notice of. I won’t attempt to go further into that here either, but keep in mind that being objective is not ignoring our subjective thoughts & feelings, it is grounding them in what is real and true. The substance of this, and of the preceding judgments, form the foundation of all Western thought, both Greco/Roman and Judeo/Christian (see especially Proverbs 8-14? for starters), which explicitly or implicitly rests upon them.

When we’re able to understand that the subject of our thinking, conforms to that aspect of reality that is the object of our thoughts, we recognize that reality is intelligible to us and affirm our relation to what is real and true. That is so far from being a small thing. Metaphysics is the science of those first principles, and its role is not to play word games, but to put you in closer contact with and understanding of, what is real and true, and the life that recognizes, abides by, and resonates most with them, is a life that surer to be well worth living, than one who is ignorant of that.

The person that is surprised and confused by the events of ‘one damn thing after another’, is living in a very different world from the person who has an understanding of the principles behind the causes of those things, and their own role in them.

The attention we give to metaphysical fundamentals, enables our thinking to become and remain firmly grounded in reality, and by respecting what can and cannot be known through it, our knowledge is able to lead to a wisdom that is rooted in what is real and true and worthy of knowing, and enable us to live lives that are worth living. That same ground is also a fertile one for developing a scientific understanding of what is, and how and why that understanding can best be utilized.

The conscious attention to that ‘Why’ will lead you into ethical considerations of what you should and should not do, all of which presupposes a link between the thoughts and questions you’re thinking them within, and about – AKA: What Is Truth.

With that in mind, it’s worth considering what telling or ignoring or living by lies, does to the very heart of yourself, and the life you are in reality living.

Those who are arrayed against reality, whether the Sophists of 2,500 years ago (see the Socratic dialog: Gorgias), or the Woke of today, begin and center their attacks upon metaphysics, in order to separate our thoughts from what is real and true. As Josef Pieper put it in his excellent ‘Abuse of Power – Abuse of Language‘,

“…”The sophists’’, he says, “‘fabricate a fictitious reality.”’ That the existential realm of man could be taken over by pseudorealities whose fictitious nature threatens to become indiscernible is truly a depressing thought. And yet this Platonic nightmare, I hold, possesses an alarming contemporary relevance. For the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable even to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language…”

Modernist propaganda aside, it’s important to be mindful that the scientific method did not arise from Descartes’ Method of Doubt – more often than not, once the clutter of doubt is brushed away from the journals of actual scientists, you find that it wasn’t arrived at by faking arbitrary doubts (more often than not, those are what slowed them down), nor even from Francis Bacon’s questionable effort to one-up Aristotle with his ‘Insturatum’, but through the careful application of good honest questions, many of which Aristotle had asked long before them).

What actually led to the first scientific experiments in modern times, as I noted here some time ago, began centuries earlier, with two clergymen who were steeped in the philosophy and religion of Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian civilization. Beginning with Robert Grosseteste, followed later by Roger Bacon, between the 1100-1200′s, who, believing that God’s creation is good, and intelligible, and worth knowing, they judged that it would be worth the time to apply their metaphysical understanding of reality to the particulars of the world they found themselves within, both to further their understanding and appreciation of it, and in the belief that the practice would surely bring the types of benefits that predictably accompany a greater knowledge and understanding of what is real and true.

Those first principles of methodical reasoning in conjunction with careful action, and the examination of the results, are what these two clergymen were the first to put into practice as proto-scientists, and as their methods were grasped, it guided and improved our knowledge and experience in such a way as to become the general scientific method, which has been summed up as,

“…a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results…”

, or for everyday use, methodically questioning and verifying the answers your questions logically lead you to. Rinse. Repeat.

But always the point is to learn what is in reality true, to the degree the context warrants, and to do so by respecting what is true. To sum up,

• Reality is intelligible and available to us all,
• What is in reality true, is true no matter who or how many wish to believe otherwise,
• Through methodical reasoning, we are better able to understand and uncover what is true, and what is false,
• Judgments can be shown to be objectively True, by how well they conform our subjective thoughts, to the object of reality, which enables them to be intelligibly communicated to others,
• Metaphysics precedes and guides our reasoning, the logical method, and scientific fact, are dependent upon, and do not contradict, metaphysical truths

The reason for pointing all of this out, is that Modernity has been willfully attacking and denying every point – not by argument… at least not anymore, but instead by evasion and by force of lies, and that sequence has absolutely insinuated itself into every aspect of what is taught to our students in our schools today – and not just by the *Woke*. For that reason, we’re going to chew up a good chunk of HTML in looking at how the floorboards of reality have been (pretended to be) torn up & out from under us, by the pharisees of modernity.

Next up – Laundering the unreal through Epistemology

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