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The Logic that Dr. Johnson’s foot can never refute

An idealist recognizing Reality, the facts-Truth behind appearances, strikes realists as an absurdity. Realists who lack the vision of Logic and can only recognize appearances on the surface with the body’s senses that are one with the appearance.  This is the real absurdity: self-referential circular “reasoning” that takes staring into a funhouse mirror as objective reality.

The idealist recognizes Reality, the facts-Truth behind appearances, by its function. By what it does, its usefulness, as well as by what it is. By its Definition which necessarily includes Purpose. Recognizing Reality behind appearances could not be logical otherwise. The definitions of Logic center upon the function-usefulness of its subject. Upon its Purpose which, to be logical, must fit within the larger order of Reality-Creation harmoniously. The fitting-together of every aspect of Reality-Creation is its Logic, that makes it governable.

The idealist’s recognition of one Reality behind appearances may strike realists unable to see with the vision of Logic as an absurdity. But when this one fact, one Purpose, takes its place within a harmonious composition of facts that serve a logical Purpose, that explain its composition through the implications of Logic, its interconnections with consistency and clarity -- a feat that all of human inquiry has yet to achieve through the realist’s reliance on body-sensed appearances, -- it can no longer be dismissed as an absurdity. The arch-realist Dr. Johnson can no longer “refute it thus” by kicking a wastebasket.

Explanation that leads to Understanding can only be the end result of Logic, and Logic is not an absurdity. Absurdity lies not in the idealist’s reliance on the vision of Logic but in the realist’s lack of it. In the realist’s so-called reasoning that attempts to find Purpose and meaning in constructs of “fact” without Logic. That can’t hold together without it. That defy explanation and contradict Understanding.

What physics, neuroscience, and biology can’t explain 

Physics can’t explain its subject – the material universe, unreality – when the point of its origin is singularity. The state of inaccessibility to the laws of physics. “Laws” which particle physics – quantum mechanics – flout anyway simply because the magician behind the magic of illusion is energy, inseparable and indivisible, the agent of Mind whether conscious or unconscious. Energy, the Force of Creation, which can, if called upon by mind unconscious, animate its dreams almost as convincingly as it can the Reality of Mind that’s conscious. Energy, the connection between the neurons of body-brains, powered by electrical impulses in unreality and imagining, while connecting with the thoughts and feelings, the Logic and Love, of Mind in the Now, in Reality Creating.

Neuroscience ruled by the arbitrary bias of realists falls for the deception and claims consciousness for the brain. The organ split between left and right hemispheres, the judgment of choice and the spontaneity of freedom. Split between its limbic system, the mindless willful act of herd instinct and the reflective deliberation of its prefrontal cortex. Between captivity to a false self and receptivity to its Real Self. In step with itself or at war with itself. Programmed to join with other brains in shared Purpose or to confront other brains in lethal combat – take your pick.

Neuroscience served by thoughtfulness instead of mindless bias isn’t so sure. Allows for the possibility that Mind and its consciousness are not the province of Energy stored in bodies – cells encased in matter that live and die, come and go, appear and disappear, without notice in cosmic time. Neuroscience split by consciousness like its subject, mind as well as brain, into two incompatible views.

Molecular biology, empowered by the discovery of DNA-RNA and the genome, still can’t explain its subject – organic cellular life – when the point of its origin is singularity, the state of inaccessibility to the laws of biology. Still can’t heal the psyche’s wounds, fix the mind’s psychiatric flaws. Despite the gains of the past, all of body-centric science leaves us in a state of not-knowing. Despite the gains to come, that is where it will leave us.

The ultimate realist’s ultimate fantasy

All of human inquiry into inorganic matter and organic life, armed with philosophy, psychology, and theology, dutifully subservient to its insistence on “realism" -- on the dictates of appearances, the body’s senses -- has marched forward with confidence that enlightenment will come. Answers will reveal themselves and finally! we will know.

This mysterious situation we find ourselves in will be mystery no more. And we can continue our march forward together, in harmony and shared Purpose, at last! Without conflict and misery, pain and suffering, that insist that this is the only reality and nothing can change. The promise of bodies and their senses brought to reality: heaven on earth. The apotheosis of Hawking’s “Quest for knowledge:” his boundaryless universe of Being that needs no source.

Why? Because bias hard-wired into animal-instinct willed it. Because it’s creation and he’s the creator, the ultimate “realist’s” ultimate fantasy. The ultimate absurdity of “realism:” there can be no other Reality because I’m God and the world is my creation. This is the mind of the “realist.” The authoritarian at heart who yearns to be arbitrary rule above the law. Who craves “liberty” – Freedom without Order, an impossibility. The lawlessness of insanity.

Where is the real realism?

Confidence once unbroken is now broken. Inquiry that relies on the falsehood, the blatantly illogical unreality of “realism,” has failed. The mystery is still with us. Pointlessness is still with us. Contradiction, confusion, and ambiguity are still with us. And we still fight, at war with ourselves and among ourselves. The issue unresolved while our disappearing habitat goes about resolving it for us.

Who’s getting it right? Idealists looking inward toward substance guided by the vision of Logic? Or realists peering outward toward an absurdity: form detectable only by itself?

Who sees Purpose and meaning that add up? That hold together and explain themselves? Where is the “proof” that was promised from experimental science – physics, neuroscience, and biology? Where is coherence from this mad aggregation of unruly atoms and mutating cells, conflicting mass ideologies and personalities, incurable psychiatric disorders, unmanageable family dynamics, convoluted theologies and mythologies, haunted, schizophrenic minds?

Where is the real realism?

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Preface: Why these principles? Why Logic?

Albert Einstein observed in 1951 that “physicists have no understanding of logical and philosophical arguments.” (Becker 273) Adam Becker wondered himself why Hawking, Tyson, and Krauss “know so little about philosophy.” The answer he came up with is unsettling, not just because it brings a defect to awareness but because there’s defect in its awareness. It’s insufficient. He doesn’t seem to grasp the enormity of the problem he describes:

[A]t the birth of quantum physics, all physicists received some schooling in philosophy. . . . But in postwar America, . . an intelligent student [could] go all the way. . . to a PhD in physics. . . without ever darkening the door of a philosophy classroom. . . . With the massive increase in knowledge and information in the last century, education became unavoidably specialized. (Becker 273)

Physicists having no understanding of logical and philosophical arguments can’t be waved off as a failure of the classroom. It’s massively problematic. It means their serious “quest for knowledge” is being driven by minds that don’t take thinking seriously. It means their premises and their conclusions might as well be choreographed by musicians. If they don’t understand Logic, the discipline of philosophy, the heart and soul of rhetoric, they’ll never get to its goal: an understanding of Reality.

The purpose of these principles is not to push an agenda for any particular source or creed. It’s to push Logic.

Certainly not to guide Hawking’s vaunted “quest for knowledge.” In a universe that trumpets its weirdness – quivering, singularities, dark matter, spacetime curvature, particle behavior that defies explanation – talk of “knowledge” seems more than a bit presumptuous. In a funhouse of mirror images what could possibly be “known?” “Search for reality and truth” makes a better fit if we’re not to be fooled by appearances.

To set an example

Another purpose is to set an example. To demonstrate what systems thinking might produce in the way of insights and answers. To suggest how the process and structure of analysis might better serve us when established lines of inquiry aren’t measuring up to their promise. When the dominant paradigms of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, once thought to hold answers to the origin and meaning of Life, the universe, and Consciousness, have become a chorus of “Shut up and calculate!” A collective admission of defeat not only from physicists at a loss to comprehend quantum mechanics but its equivalent from philosophers, psychologists, and theologists, enervated by centuries of hidebound “realism.” By rote convention that demands obeisance rather than thought.

From the time of Aristotle, when science took off on its “quest for knowledge” from the study of finite matter, the infinite possibilities of mind have fallen out of favor. Lost their relevance until an arch-apologist for matter, the physicist Stephen Hawking, could declare all of philosophy dead. What’s actually dead is the energy great minds like Democritus, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, and Bohr injected into physics, not with calculations alone but with their Intuition. Intuition that could only lead them on a true course to Reality and Truth if it was grounded in Logic. In thinking that coheres with implications that connect. That carry thought forward rather than back to where it started, in circular disappointment and defeat.

Why these principles? To move thinking away from its dominant paradigms that got us this far but can’t take us the rest of the way. To help persuade the theorists who dominate to reclassify a sacred premise from settled to not settled. From a given to the live, legitimate philosophical issue that it is: the premise that bodies and their sensed physical environment of spacetime and matter are real. If its basis is sensory perception then it has no logical basis, because matter can be no judge of whether matter is real. Common law doesn’t assign credibility to conflict of interest, so why is matter allowed on the witness stand to testify to itself? Who but a mind blind to logic would allow it?

Wake up and think!

Circular self-referential “reasoning” is everything that Logic isn’t: a sinkhole of disorder and conflict instead of a portal to order and harmony. It’s the reasoning equivalent of a curved universe where launch from any point is destined to end where it started. But so what: the reality of matter won’t need Logic to stir up doubt when it’s got quantum mechanics. Does anyone hopelessly muddled by the sacred premise of “realism” understand its meaning?

The theorists who dominate on the strength of illogic can do better. There’s no honor, no glory, in “Shut up and calculate!” They can try Logic for a change. How about “Wake up and think!”

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Principles and assumptions

Each of the following numbered principles will be the subject of a separate entry:

1. All fields of inquiry require Logic. Logic must be followed wherever its implications and interconnections lead, to all legitimate, logical possibilities.

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2. Search for Reality-Truth requires spontaneous insights from Mind-Intuition. Requires “realism:” Intuition-Memory of experience from another Reality. Mind-Consciousness and brain are not the same.

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3. Mind-thought and Love-feeling are inseparable in Reality, but not here. It is timeless and always Now in Reality, but not here.

4. Judgment and Free Choice are essential to the Creation and affirmation of Worth.

5. The first line of judgment about what is real is Mind-Love in a conscious state. The final authority on what is real is Logic.

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6. “Reality” is at issue because Logic requires that opposites be unreal to protect the integrity of Reality-Creation from contradiction. Reality-Creation and its governance by Logic cannot tolerate the presence of conflicting realities. therefore one must be unreal.

7. Reality is relational to Consciousness.

8. Matter is relational to Mind. The nature of the relationship is accessible through Intuition aided by all fields of inquiry into Mind in alignment with Logic.

9. Creation comes in two states: Real and unreal. Reality and unreality are the products of states of Mind: Conscious and unconscious.

10. The thoughts and Creations of Mind-Love brought to Reality by Consciousness all have opposites. Opposites can only be made real within a dream of Mind-Love’s Child who is unconscious. Every observable attribute of dreamed un-reality is the mirror-image opposite of an attribute of Conscious Reality.

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11. Reality of bodies-matter is a live philosophical issue, not a given. Body-centered Science that dismisses reality of Mind, that treats it as irrelevant, is philosophy, religion.

12. Body-centered physics and biology have reached their limits in the search for Reality and Truth.

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13. Perceptions of what is real and true are influenced by personality types.

14. Logic required to guide the search for Reality-Truth can be facilitated by Mind-Intuiting personality types guided by Logic, who accept that the reality of matter is an open philosophical issue.

15. History’s ongoing philosophical divide between rationalists-idealists and positivists-realists, between empiricism and reason, subjectivists and objectivists, is heavily influenced by opposing personality types: Mind-Intuiting vs. body-sensing.

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Works cited

Adam Becker, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (Basic Books 2018)