If there is to be any rational basis for our thoughts, then there must be something upon which we can base them. If we only reproduce in our minds that which we are able to sense, we can still have an idea of reality. And reality has some features that are considered basic, so basic in fact that they are primary principles in nature, with no other principles that precede them.
These are called the "first principles". Here are some of the most useful and widely agreed upon:
1. Identity. If it exists, then it exists.
2. Non-Contradiction. If it exists, then it cannot also not exist.
3. Excluded Middle. It either exists or does not exist; it cannot "somewhat exist", or partially exist.
4. Cause and Effect. For every effect there is a necessary and sufficient cause.
5. Immutability of Mathematics. Math is the same for all places and time in the universe.
6. Immutability of Physical Laws. Physical Laws are the same for all places and time in the universe.
7. Nothing exists except that which is sensate (either primarily or secondarily through instrumentation) to human investigation.
8. Godel's Principles of Hierarchical Validation.
There are more, certainly, than these. But these should be sufficient to deal with the first issue of the day, the purported "magesteria" of empiricism (materialism) and metaphysics (spirituality).
Stephen J. Gould, the renowned American evolutionary biologist, proposed that the two realms of empiricism and metaphysics existed in their own separate "magisteria". In other words, each had its own domain where it could exist and be autonomous. But metaphysics could not encroach into empiricism without damaging it due to the untestability of supernatural propositions. In fact, it has been shown that most empiricists believe that there does not exist any supernatural realm of reality at all. This is the question that we will address in this first post.
If one looks at the "first principles" above, it should be seen that none of them are provable in the empirical domain. (I will use the word "domain" for reasons that will become apparent). yet these principles are presupposed to be true, by all who pursue any science. If they were not true, the pursuit of scientific laws and principles would be futile. So each and every empiricist has laid his bed upon principles that cannot be proven within the domain of empiricism. So in what domain do they belong?
These principles belong to the intuitive domain. This domain is actually transcendent (beyond empiricism) and since empiricism depends entirely upon these principles being true, then this (second) domain entirely encompasses the empirical domain.
Let's repeat that, slightly restated: The transcendent domain in which the first principles exist, completely encloses the empirical domain, which depends upon the truth of the transcendent domain.
This concept is the exact point where Hume went wrong, and where Nietzsche went right ahead through to the very end of the Enlightenment thought. Nietzsche merely denied that the first principles could be proved, therefore no good philosopher could accept them. This stroke led straight to Nietzsche's form of proto-fascism, a topic for another day.
For now let us realize that transcendence is a valid form of reality. It is not rational, as Nietzsche showed, to embrace empiricism and reject the first principles. It is rational to understand that the first level of transcendence is intuited.
3 comments:
Stan,
We can say that first principles are testable through empirical methods...at least some of them. We can say that based on the exploration of them that we've done, it appears that empirical methods validate our "intuition".
This is important for a number of reasons. First, it serves as a foundation for the critical nature of empiricism. Second, it allows us to move forward, to progress inside our natural world, without much speculation about the transcendent domain.
So here's something to think about: What if it is the transcendent domain that resides inside the empirical domain?
Anonymous,
Which of the first principles is verifiable empirically? If you look at the list, none can be proven. These are principles that are just "known" intuitively to be valid.
It is the first principles that philosphers always call into question because of their inability to be verified by anything other than intution...which philosophers reject because intuition itself cannot be proven to exist, empirically.
As for transcendence being inside the realm of the empirical, well, then it wouldn't be transcendent would it? By transcendent is meant to be outside or beyond. And that is what the first principles have to be, as unprovable, non-empirical "transcending" principles upon which rational thought, logic and empiricism are founded.
Even at the level of presuppositions, a valid question of meaning arises, if not by logic, from within our consciousness. Sartre is more poignant in stating this "why."
It is in nothingness alone that being can be surpassed. At the same time it is from the point of view of beyond the world that being is organized into the world, which means on the one hand that human reality rises up as an emergence of being in nonbeing and on the other hand that the world is “suspended” in nothingness. Anguish is the discovery of this double, perpetual nihilation. It is in terms of this surpassing of the world that Dasein manages to realize the contingency of the world; that is, to raise the question, “How does it happen that there is something rather than nothing?” Thus the contingency of the world appears to human reality in so far as human reality has established itself in nothingness in order to apprehend the contingency.
Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology New York, New York: Citadel Press, 2001), 18.
The "why" of existence is tied in a sense to the inquiry of the existence vel non of God. Otherwise, we can must self-invent our meaning and adjust it to whatever helps us sleep better at night.
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