Epistemic Aphorisms

A. Reality and Its Constitution

• • Truth, like reality, must be located somewhere in the range of the possible. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated all alternatives, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Commentary. Inquiry often proceeds not additively by new findings but subtractively via the elimination of seeming possibilities. Of putative importance here is the “Sherlock Holmes Principle” (See A. Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four” (1890)). However, for the application of this principle, it is crucial! (1) that the registration of alternatives be complete, without gaps or omissions, and (2) that the “elimination” of the alternatives does actually establish their untenability.

• • Our thought perspective on things must distinguish between
  • — a possibility: a possibly realizable state of affairs, which in turn divides into two:
    • # a logical (formal) possibility: a state of affairs consistent with the laws of logic and the normativities of discourse.
    • # a physical (substantive) possibility: a state of affairs consistent with the laws of nature and the normativities of the world’s constitution.
  • — an actuality: an existing state of affairs; one that is actual and forms part of Reality.

Commentary. This is ultimately a matter of how our thought, as shaped by logic and language, comes to be in a position to view its objects of concern.

• • Reality—the totality of what there actually is—encompasses both natural (or concrete) and theoretical (or abstract) existence.

Commentary. The former (natural) realm includes trees, clouds, sandstorms, and such features of Nature; the latter (abstract) realm includes quantities, shapes, and relationships, and such modes of interpretative characterization.

• • The sector of Reality that is most crucial for us in the conduct of life is Natural Reality—the realm in which we live and move and have our being, alike physically and mentally.

Commentary. Homo sapiens (mankind) exists within the realm of Natural Reality, managing life largely by means of exploiting putative information about it. It is simply a “fact of life” that we are creatures that generally guide action not by instinct and automaticity, but by thought. And we act on the basis not of the truth as such, but rather of what we think to be true, of putative rather than actual facts.

• • Mathematics is the science of structure, and understanding some aspects of the structure of Reality is essential for an intelligent being’s ability to act successfully within its orbit.

Commentary. Mathematics is essential to the characterization of natural Reality. Our mathematics is destined to be attuned to nature because it itself is a natural product as a thought-instrument of ours: it fits nature because it reflects the way we ourselves are emplaced within nature as integral constituents thereof. Our intellectual mechanisms—mathematics included—fit nature because they are themselves a product of nature’s operations as mediated through the cognitive processes of an intelligent creature that uses its intelligence to guide its interaction with a nature into which it is itself fitted in a particular sort of way.

The apparent success of mathematics in characterizing nature is thus not amazing. It may or may not call for wonder that intelligent creatures should evolve at all. But, once they have safely arrived on the scene through evolutionary means, it is only natural and to be expected that they should be able to achieve success in the project of understanding nature in mathematical terms. A mathematicizing intelligence arrived at through evolution must for this very reason prove to be substantially successful in characterizing the world’s ways. (But of course there are other modes of attunement to Nature than by thought.)

B. Reality and Appearance

• • We humans are imperfect knowers: We have every reason to realize that our knowledge of Reality and its constituents is both: (1) incomplete, with gaps, and (2) imperfect, including items that are incorrect.

Commentary. Ample experience indicates this, and the ensuing deliberations will substantiate this in detail.

• • Reality stands in contrast to our conception of it.

Commentary. Actual Reality encompasses two domains: (1) Actually existing reality, and (2) the merely possible but nonexistent. Both of these differentiate in line with the contrast with Putative Reality: that which we merely think to be actual or possible.

• • Actual Reality is the overall state of things—the whole of existence. It is the condition of affairs as the manifold of fact represents it.

Commentary. This is effectively a matter of definition—conjointly of “fact” and “reality.”