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Metaphysics: Theory of Everything

Reality is existence, and existence is everything. Every theory of everything must start there.

There’s existence, and there’s essence. These two things are separate but not separable.

In the language of Thomas Aquinas, esse (or essence) is identity: To be, in other words, is to be something.

The conclusion is inescapable because (as Aristotle noted) the only alternative to that which exists is that which does not exist. But that which does not exist doesn’t exist.

“There is no nothing,” said Victor Hugo.

Nothing, by definition, is not something.

The only alternative to reality, therefore, is unreality, which, as the very word implies, is not real — i.e. which isn’t.

These principles form the fundamental laws of metaphysics — metaphysics being the study of ultimate reality (meta for “beyond” and physics for “physical reality”).

New-Age pseudo-philosophy has unfortunately bastardized and perverted the term metaphysics, but please don’t be duped. Nothing is more important than metaphysics. It is the highest part of philosophy, the part from which all others derive, the science of “being as being.”

The universe (paraphrasing Thomas Aquinas) is the sum of everything that exists. That’s what the universe is. That’s not what it may be, and that’s not what some people might think. That’s what the universe actually is.

The universe is everything. There can thus not be “the possibility of many universes,” as many modern physicists would have us believe.

Nor is there anything “beyond the universe”:

If something exists, it is by definition part of the universe.

If it does not exist, it does not exist.

Metaphysically, the fact of existence is the peg upon which the entirety of human knowledge hangs.

Without it, knowledge degenerates into a buccal-fecal carnival of solipsism, skepticism, postmodernism, and relativism.

The proper defense of independent reality is as follows:

Any attempt to deny existence refutes itself at the outset, because even the barest, most laconic denial of existence implies some kind of existence.

Quoting the man Dante called “the master of him who knows”:

“Why a thing is itself” is a meaningless inquiry, for the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident … but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given to all such questions as “why is man man” or “the musician musical” (Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.16.1041a15-18).

And again:

He who examines the most general features of existence, must investigate also the principles of reasoning. For he who gets the best grasp of his respective subject will be most able to discuss its basic principles. So that he who gets the best grasp of existing things qua existing must be able to discuss the basic principles of all existence; and he is the philosopher. And the most certain principle of all is that about which it is impossible to be mistaken… It is clear, then, that such a principle is the most certain of all and we can state it thus: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1005b12-20).

In support of which, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas, added this:

Nature is what we call everything that can in anyway be captured by the intellect, for a thing is not intelligible except through its definition and essence…. All around us are existing things. They are certainly different, but they all exist.

Metaphysically, then, the facts are these:

Existence is everything.

There is no nothing.

Existence is reality.

Reality is what’s real.

Nature is reality.

The universe is everything.

Nature is the universe.

There is no “super-nature.”

All else proceeds from that.

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The Elegant Universe

A reader writes:

Dear Sir: You are reported to have said that there is no order or disorder in the universe apart from what man himself puts there — this in spite of your well-known preoccupation with a fluid and congruent universe. Can you tell us how you reconcile this, with regard in particular to your views on God?

Sincerely,

Sarah H

Dear Sarah H: I don’t recall my exact wording of that statement, but I’m certain it’s not as you recapitulate. Presumably you’re referring to my conviction that order and disorder are epistemological words, not metaphysical. By which I mean, they are products of the human brain, and nothing in nature is “disorderly”; it simply is. To speak of order or disorder apart from the human mind is like speaking of color to a person born blind.

Using a slightly less elaborate metaphor, I might, however, concede that nature is “congruent” in the sense that each thing in the universe, however small or large, has a specific nature and must act in accord with that nature.

In this way — and this is also known as the law of essence or identity — the universe is indeed congruent and elegant.

Matter acts and reacts as it must. Matter does not possess will. That is why there’s really no such thing as chance.

It is in this sense that the Nobel Prize winning doctor Christian de Duve, in his fine book Vital Dust, speaks of the universe as a “cosmic imperative.” By that he means nature does not possess volition – or, if you prefer, nature does not possess choice, as humans do.

Nature must act as it does because the identity of each thing determines how it must act. This applies as much to a bursting star as it does to a microscopic particle.

As for God, I can only explain Her popularity by an atheist’s nighttime sweats.

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Epistemology: The Science Of Thought

Epistemology is the science of knowledge. The word derives from the Greek episteme, which means knowledge.

Epistemology proper didn’t actually begin until Rene Descartes (1596-1650), but the stuff of epistemology — logic, reason, deduction, induction, et cetera — has been with us since the Ancient Greeks.

Epistemology is an extraordinarily complicated discipline that starts with three simple words:

Consciousness is awareness.

That is an epistemological axiom which cannot be refuted or denied: any theory of knowledge that purports to refute that consciousness is awareness must rely on the awareness of his consciousness to refute it.

First there exists the external world, and then there exists the awareness of it.

These two things are separate, but not equal: by definition, existence comes first, before there can be an awareness of it.

In the words of the philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen:

“Consciousness is ultimately of or about something other than itself — it is ultimately relational.”

The argument that one cannot prove anything beyond one’s own consciousness was, contrary to what you may have heard, refuted long ago, and thoroughly so, by Thomas Aquinas, when he wrote the following:

“No one perceives that he understands except from this, that he understands something: because he must first know something before he knows that he knows.”

This insight was explicated upon by the neo-Thomist priest Celestine Bittle, in his 1945 textbook The Whole Man:

“Consciousness,” says Father Bittle, “is irreducible [because] consciousness can’t be reduced to other facts or broken into component parts.”

Father Bittle goes on to describe consciousness as “an ultimate datum of experience … at the very root of all mental activity.”

This is called by neo-Thomists “the reflexive nature of consciousness,” which means that consciousness, by its very definition — by nature of what it is — cannot be conscious of only itself since consciousness is awareness, which by definition means that it must first be aware of some thing.

In other words, “I’m only aware of my faculty of awareness” is a meaningless statement.

Why?

Quoting another erudite neo-Thomist epistemologist, Jacques Maritain:

“The first thing thought about is being independent of the mind…. We do not eat what has been eaten; we eat bread. To separate object from thing is to violate the nature of intellect” (Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, 1938).

The ramifications of all this may be summed up thus:

The existence of the external world (i.e. reality) and the awareness of it (which is to say, consciousness) form the very underpinnings of all knowledge.

Whether scientists know it or not and whether scientists like it or not, every field of every scientific endeavor, and every part of every field of every scientific endeavor, no matter how postmodernistic the curriculum, and no matter how relativistic the agenda, assumes the following:

There exists an external universe, which human consciousness does not in any way create but rather apprehends and measures.

That is the proper starting point of any philosophy of science, as well as the rest of learning.

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Postmodernism: The Destruction Of Thought

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Postmodernism, in all its vicious variations, is a term devoid of any real content, and for this reason dictionaries and philosophy dictionaries offer very little help in defining it.

And yet postmodernism has today become almost universally embraced as the dominant philosophy of science — which is the primary reason that science crumbles before our eyes under its corrupt and carious epistemology.

Postmodernism, like everything else, is a philosophical issue. Accordingly, postmodernism’s tentacles have extended into every major branch of philosophy — from metaphysics, to epistemology, to esthetics, to ethics, to politics, to economics.

In order to get any kind of grasp on postmodernism, one must grasp first that postmodernism doesn’t want to be defined. Its distinguishing characteristic is in the dispensing of all definitions — because definitions presuppose a firm and comprehensible universe.

You must understand next that postmodernism is a revolt against the philosophical movement that immediately preceded it: Modernism.

We’re told by postmodernists today, that modernism and everything that modernism stands for is dead.

Thus, whereas modernism preached the existence of independent reality, postmodernism preaches anti-realism, solipsism, and “reality” as a term that always requires quotation marks.

Whereas modernism preached reason and science, postmodernism preaches social subjectivism and knowledge by consensus.

Whereas modernism preached free-will and self-governance, postmodernism preaches determinism and the rule of the collective.

Whereas modernism preached the freedom of each and every individual, postmodernism preaches multiculturalism, environmentalism, egalitarianism by coercion.

Whereas modernism preached free-markets and free-exchange, postmodernism preaches Marxism and its little bitch: statism.

Whereas modernism preached objective meaning and knowledge, postmodernism preaches deconstruction and no-knowledge — or, if there is any meaning at all (and there’s not), it’s subjective and ultimately unverifiable.

In the words of postmodernism’s high priest Michel Foucault: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of — or against — Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.”

Why?

Because according to Mr. Foucault again: “Reason is the ultimate language of madness.”

We can thus define postmodernism as follows:

It is the philosophy of absolute agnosticism — meaning: a philosophy that preaches the impossibility of human knowledge.

What this translates to in day-to-day life is pure subjectivism, the ramifications of which are, in the area of literature, for example, no meaning, completely open interpretation, unintelligibility.

Othello, therefore, is as much about racism and affirmative action as it is about jealousy.

Since there is no objective meaning in art, all interpretations are equally valid.

Postmodernism is anti-reason, anti-logic, anti-intelligibility.

Politically, it is anti-freedom. It explicitly advocates leftist, collectivist neo-Marxism and the deconstruction of industry, as well as the dispensing of inalienable rights to property and person.

There is, however, a deeply fatal flaw built into the very premise of postmodernism, which flaw makes postmodernism impossible to take seriously and very easy to reject:

If reason and logic are invalid and no objective knowledge is possible, then the whole pseudo-philosophy of postmodernism is also invalidated.

One can’t use reason to prove that reason is false.