The Fulcrum of Thought

The question of an unseeable existence is a hard nut to chew for Philosophical Materialists. The idea of basic axioms, unprovable yet necessary, non-physical yet existing, cannot be allowed within a purely physical domain.

Yet rational thought cannot exist without such axioms as its basis. All rational thought is traceable back to axioms which are necessary if the thought is going to be considered true. These are first principles. Thought has no leverage without the fulcrum of the first principles. The fulcrum must be separate from the force of the argument, and must be stable, unmoving and unmovable.

This is the reason that relativism in thought is without any rational value. The lever of thought has nothing against which to assert its force; the result is randomness, meaninglessness. If there is no stable reference, no fulcrum, the lever arm spins circularly.

In an article for the NYT, Stanley Fish takes on this issue, not in terms of leverage but in terms of relativism that derives from and/or causes non-rational conclusions. His argument is different from one I would make, and that is what makes it interesting. I do think he could make it easier if he would differentiate the types of evidence that could be separated out: physical material evidence which is observationally irrefutable within the constraints of the current state of empiricism; and non-material evidence which is only available by introspection of the personal intuition (and the basis for intuition) that is available to every human.

Of course, many Materialists deny the existence of intuition, by using their intuition to frame their doubt as natural law. They might have been convicted of their Materialism by their intuition that evolution is the fulcrum of thought, not the first principles. But by replacing the first principles, they adopt an empirically unproven, inferred premise as the sole support for their thoughts. If evolution is inferred - only - then what sort of fulcrum does it provide for futher thought?

Fish’s article is worth the read and the contemplation it might induce. But be careful; contemplation might induce a bit of intuition that you might have to deny.