The Real Origin of Positive Thinking

Wisdom is always a crow feeding on dead bodies.
--Nietzsche

Analysis Predicts The Empirical

Computer simulations based on just 50 or 60 atoms are able to mimic the properties of real matter. If a small group of atoms is surrounded by other identical groups, every atom behaves as if it were part of a larger material. This makes it possible, for example, to simulate the behaviour of solids and liquids at high temperatures, and to study chemical reactions at surfaces to aid in the design of better analysis.

--Slightly redacted from the QPB Science Encyclopedia, "Quantum Simulation"

The Uninferable System of Inference

Any kind of distinction between what is and what is not empirical is *itself* a non-empirical object. Moreover, the necessary system of thought whose aim is necessarily truth, is uninferred. Not only that, it is uninferable in the strict sense of inferential sequence. But at epistemic rock bottom, that's really not a problem, due to two factors.


First, the definition of the system, in the nature of the case, epistemically exempts the system itself already, yet the reasons that *are given for that system---logic, general reason, and so on---still provide *some kind of justification on the basis of motives, which are in turn driven by values. The reason this is necessary is because the system already has a set of operating values in its standards of intellectual propriety, And because that propriety itself is made up of universals, that system necessarily predicates universal values.


Second, if you could infer this thought system, it would not be the system as defined, because it would itself be justified as true *only* by means of one or more premises that are even more epistemically basic, which contradicts the original definition of the system as the methodologically basic set of cognitive assumptions. If it's basic, it does not itself need a logical basis.


But the system does need an existential basis in motivation and values to be meaningfully preferred as the necessary means of purposive thinking in the pursuit of universal truth---or anything else for that matter. The system of inference is still operating in that sense, but on top of a set of background universal predications of both the rules of thought and basic values, including the values behind standards of intellectual propriety with regard to such universals---as well as those standards themselves.

Empirical Void Discovered in Axiomatic Mummies During Epistemic Audit

There's no -logical- basis for logicality in the strict sense of inferential sequence, since logicality itself must be merely preferred at the outset of thought as an operative value. Otherwise, a fallacy of logic is committed in an attempt to provide such a basis. The necessity of logic, even in these statements of mine themselves, is an -existential- necessity based on a situated grasp of a -system- as a whole, with logic as an integral aspect (along with a set of definitions, an instruction set, language rules, contextual simples, and other primitives). But this cannot be said to be merely -arbitrary- since that claim to arbitrariness would -itself- rely on the same uninferable necessity of logic to have any import.


But again---reasoning at that epistemic level is an existentially or heuristically or if you like, an intuitively grasped inference system. It is, and functions as, the ultimate operating system of thought, some grasp of which occurs in not-so-ultimate finite minds with the various tendencies toward willed self-contradiction and the need for constant tune-ups, both caused by defecting from the envisioned ideality of the structure of God's mind. And even though that structure is operatively a set of predications, operative is the key term. God's mind is an irreducible design integrity, as Buckminster Fuller might have said (at least if he had talked to me at length), and IS a set of simultaneous predications, the rational necessity of which determines the structure of the world, God, and all reality. Aside from also being an aspect of God's being, namely God's mind.

So the necessity of logic at that basic level would be intuitive, although not in a vacuum. Logic's necessity in this sense is a situated grasp of a comprehensive and universal system whose aim at truth is existentially necessary (an intuitive sine qua non or epistemic cul-de-sac) as a heuristic package deal. It -would- be arbitrary and relative, except that any claim to that effect would -itself- be dependent on this same -existential-, and not inferential, necessity. Nice try. Too bad. You're still singing my song in spite of yourself.

But just what is it, this necessity? Un-inferred, it's still---itself---an inference system. But in the case of this particular system (or engine, make the synonym circle---still doesn't change anything) the aspects of its nature can only be a mind object, precisely because a universal ultimate inference system and a universal ultimate mind are indistinguishable.

God's Mind Under the Hood

Universals and similar mind objects are thoughts in the divine intellect.

--Redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 90, characterizing a statement by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Mental Reality Detectors Behind the Curtain

"The problem is turning mental being into real being. Because scientists use concepts that exist in mind but can't have independent existence in reality they start to attribute real existence to these mental entities."

---Aquinas3000 over at Edward Feser's blog.

But it's no problem if you're not assuming that the mental can arbitrate that initial difference between "mental" and "real" to begin with in the analysis itself.

Also, why should mind objects need to exist beyond the factors they are in thought? In fact, that is even more real than the unstable "reality", since mind objects adjudicate and pass constant judgment on what is "real" and what is mental just to use them as distinct terms in the discussion.

I don't know how anyone could decide what is "independent" existence in "reality" without criteria that is itself already independently existing as a necessary operating system of evaluative thought that we necessarily use universally in analysis.

Reasons Decide The Conclusions

The criteria for evaluating the issue of the existence of God is already God level. It has to be, in order to have the authority as sole systemic instrument for analysis---the ultimate epistemic court of last resort---to decide this universal ultimate question. Those criterial assumptions not only imply the existence of God---they are a proper subset of the divine mind. That's guaranteed by their universality, necessity, and ultimacy, even _prior_ to a successful argument.

To give reasons is to appeal to a higher authority than the conclusion for precisely the purpose of judging that conclusion's truth value. But in the case of arguing for God on the basis of criterial and other background assumptions, those ultimate reasons end up being necessary aspects of the ultimate mind whose existence those reasons necessarily imply.