The Philosophical Framework
Truth is inescapably a philosophical concept because it is fundamental to human functionality. The concept of truth is crucial in determining which conceptual ideas can safely be acted on as we go about creating the values we need to support human life. If we want to properly understand the concept, and the ideas which it presupposes, so as to achieve consistency in our method of validation, we must get philosophical.
But before your eyes glaze over in anticipation of irrelevance and boredom, be aware that you already have a philosophy, even if you haven’t heard the word. You couldn’t function without one. Your personal philosophy is a set of fundamental ideas you hold, that constitute your understanding of the world, of yourself, and of how you relate to the world. You could call it your world view, but its more than that, its the frame work onto which your worldview is built.
You have no choice about whether to have a philosophy or not. Your only choice is to be conscious of the one you have. Only then, can you be in a position to make sure that it supports and furthers your life, rather than undermines and limits it. Only then can you be in a position to change it, if necessary.
A philosophy should be an integrated system of fundamental ideas, the purpose of which is to enable you to make sense of your world and live your life successfully. It doesn’t get any more important than that. In order to serve you, your philosophical convictions must be commensurate with both the nature of reality, and your nature as a human being. A philosophical idea that does so, is true, and is therefore potentially your greatest friend and ally. But one that is false will be your worst enemy, working un-noticed, from within, leading you to inevitable frustration, pain and suffering.
Your philosophical convictions should form a consistent and integrated whole, where each guiding principle connects with, and compliments, every other. However, most personal philosophies are an unexamined hodgepodge of implicitly contradictory ideas; this is no use if thinking effectively, and discerning truth is your goal.
As we have seen, ideas are important, and fundamental ideas are the most important. They inform the values, choices and actions of individual men, and thus, by extension, they steer the destiny of civilisations. Philosophy deals with the most fundamental ideas, and accordingly, it is immensely powerful, because it shapes both the way people think, and if they think. Remember, your mind can only be ‘controlled’ to the extent that you are not conscious of your own convictions, and to the extent that you adopt as true without conscious evaluation ideas that inform your values, choices and actions.
If you want to consistently discern truth with certainty, you must begin by addressing your own philosophical convictions; at the very least, the ones that have a direct bearing on your capacity to think effectively, on the concepts of truth and knowledge. It cannot be overstated how important this is. You have to fully straighten out your thinking down to the philosophical bedrock if you are serious about becoming more conscious, and discerning truth to a level of certainty beyond any reasonable doubt.
As a by-product, you will become more effective at thinking, and therefore at living your life in general. Every area of your life will improve by becoming more conscious of your fundamental convictions. Remember, thinking is THE basic life skill, and your ability depends on your philosophical convictions more than your intelligence.
As I mentioned in the last chapter, if you consider yourself aware that you have been lied to about various issues in the mainstream media, you should extend this presumption into the realm of philosophical ideas, because this is where the roots of deception lie. To be clear, the roots of deception can be found in the false fundamental ideas that slip past our conscious evaluation, in a kind of cultural undercurrent, and remain implicit, and therefore, beyond conscious awareness.
I mentioned in chapter one that human knowledge begins with perceptions of the self-evident, from direct experience of objects and entities around us. From this base, we form conceptual knowledge by observing the common characteristics between particulars in our experience. Philosophy has been called the mother of all sciences because the ideas it properly considers are at the base of all the sciences and of all knowledge. And yet, philosophy is the highest level of abstraction, where the widest principles, and therefore the most fundamental axiomatic concepts are observed. This seems like a contradiction, but it’s not.
The point to note is that a large amount of data must be accumulated and interpreted, or rather, a certain level of knowledge must be reached, before you can identify and fully grasp the philosophical ideas that your method necessarily rests on. It’s as though you have to climb some way up the tree of knowledge in order to properly reverse engineer the method by which you got there. A large amount of data must be collected, and thinking must be done to join all the dots in your mind, in order to be able to understand and hone the process by which you acquire knowledge. Once you are some way up the tree of knowledge, you can look back and evaluate your climbing experience in order to perfect it as you ascend ever higher.
Each of us has already learned to use our consciousness to form a vast wealth of concepts derived from experience. But in order to achieve that prize we refer to as certainty, we must look to the broadest philosophical principles that underpin our thinking, to understand the foundational ideas on which truth and knowledge necessarily stand.
It is only philosophical ideas that can enable us to identify the standard of truth, and to grasp its knowability, as well as the fundamentals of the method to discern it.
The structure
Philosophy deals with the basic ideas that govern every aspect of human existence. It has 5 basic branches. These are necessarily interconnected and form a logically hierarchical structure.
We begin by asking questions such as, what is the nature of reality? What exists? What is real? This is the subject of metaphysics, the first branch of philosophy dealing with existence.
Epistemology is the second branch and is the study of knowledge, and how we know things. Epistemology deals with questions such as: What is knowledge? How do we know what is real, what is true? What is our means of perception? How do we form concepts? How can we be certain? Etc. These first two branches are very closely related and together constitute the base of philosophy. They are the two areas with which we shall be most concerned because truth seeking is about discerning what is real from what is not, and how we can achieve certainty in that respect.
The answers to both sets of questions from these first two branches of philosophy inform the third branch, namely ethics. Once we have addressed the question of what is reality? And, how do I know it? We can then proceed to ask the question, so what? In other words, once I know what is real, and also how I know it, now what should I do about it? How should I act? Ethics is the central component of philosophy, the science of how the individual man should act. This is a big deal! Think about it for a moment. The science of how to live a human life. It necessarily encompasses morality, or what constitutes a ‘right’ action and what constitutes a ‘wrong’ action with respect to living a human life. In other words, what is the standard of the good?
A system of ethics should form a comprehensive set of principles guiding successful human action, action that supports and maintains human life and its enjoyment. In other words, a system of ethics is properly a code of values to support human flourishment. This is the purpose of ethics, and it is a very important one! Happiness cannot be achieved in a meaningful and lasting way without the guidance of a set a rational principles to inform action. We have no automatic knowledge, and so without the guidance of principles we can easily get it wrong.
Once a set of principles is arrived at that answers and addresses the question of how the individual should act, one can then logically proceed to address the question of how men should properly act in regard to each other in a social context. This is the realm of politics, the fourth branch of philosophy.
In this context, we can observe an example of the hierarchical structure of knowledge. All systems of politics logically proceed from a specific view of ethics. It has to be so, because the principles of how a man should act individually must necessarily precede and inform how men should properly interact with each other.
The fifth branch of philosophy is called aesthetics, and deals with the nature of art. Aesthetics addresses questions such as, what is art? What is it for? What defines good or bad art? In the same way that politics must logically come after metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, so too does aesthetics. Principles derived from all three preceding branches are required to inform both politics and aesthetics. Until you know what is real, how you now it, and therefore how to act to sustain human life, politics and aesthetics are not yet addressable questions.
The structure of philosophy looks like the pattern you see if you roll a dice and get a 5. There are four corner dots, and one in the middle. This pattern represents the hierarchical structure of philosophical ideas, with the most fundamental issues addressed by the subjects at the base of the diagram, and the least fundamental addressed by those at the top.
The essential base of all knowledge is a correct understanding of the nature of reality, along with the knowledge of how you arrive at that understanding. For most people, this base remains implicit (as we shall see in chapter 4). Holding ideas implicitly, without conscious awareness, is the reason why contradictory ideas can be held as true. I strongly encourage you to make all your fundamental convictions explicit, and it can be done by simply asking yourself what you think on any particular issue. The truth seeker, or indeed any human being aspiring to higher consciousness, should bring these fundamental ideas into full conscious awareness. This, along with the acquisition of ever greater knowledge, is the essence of becoming more conscious.
Holding our fundamental convictions in full conscious awareness is an essential component of becoming fully personally sovereign, as I shall explain in chapter 8 where I discuss truth and Freedom. It also benefits us by making us less susceptible to mind control, less likely to fall for fallacious arguments, and less likely to contradict one’s self in ones thinking.
A sound philosophy is essential to achieve three things: to enable effective thinking, to gain genuine knowledge that identifies actions that can lead to the achievement of values, and to the achievement of happiness. For the same reason that this is necessary for any individual, so is it necessary for any group of men. It’s the essential basis for any successful and enduring culture. Sadly, mainstream philosophy in western culture today is hopelessly lost; it has reached the dead-end at the end of it’s course. In my opinion, and it is only an opinion, philosophy has been hijacked and deliberately steered into the ditch for reasons of political control. The predominant ideas espoused today would have you believe that reality is an illusion created by consciousness, that knowledge is impossible, and that the mind is impotent to know reality. Well intentioned young thinkers who are unaware of this present philosophical context, are simply led towards the intellectual cul-de-sac that results from adopting the primacy of ideas at the base of one’s world view. Consequently, western civilisation is in decline, if not entirely intellectually bankrupt, and the false philosophical ideas that have been at its base for over two centuries are the root cause.
When you hear talk of humanity ‘becoming more conscious’, or if you hear claims that there is a ‘great awakening’ happening, and that we are somehow birthing a new consciousness, bear the following in mind. Most people have no knowledge of philosophy at all, and no knowledge of its fundamental importance in shaping human life. Without a conscious awareness of the necessity for a framework of ideas and principles to guide human thought, no increase in conscious awareness is possible. It is a contradiction in terms to assert that greater conscious awareness in any form can happen in ignorance of guiding principles. And yet this is precisely what is implied when mystics assert that you can ‘just know’ something to be true without any means of validating the idea.
Becoming more conscious is the solution, but it isn’t going to happen automatically. It will require purposeful intellectual engagement, and the questioning and ultimate rejection of some deeply held, yet false, philosophical assumptions.
Foundations of truth seeking
There are four foundational ideas on which the discernment of truth stands. Like the ideas presupposed by the idea of truth itself, it must be understood that to reject or implicitly argue against any of these, is to undermine your ability to discern truth with the necessary degree of confidence and certainty, and to implicitly empty the concept of truth of meaning.
These four ideas are:
1. Reality must be regarded as an objective absolute.
2. Reason is your only means to know reality.
3. Reality is knowable to the mind.
4. Free will must be exercised in the process of thinking/reasoning.
Any component of your world view can be held either consciously and explicitly, or subconsciously and implicitly. You may be able to explain your premises, and why you hold them to be true, or you may not. But to be an effective truth seeker with respect to any topic, including spiritual ideas, you must bring at least the four foundational convictions into your full conscious awareness. Like any competent barrister or criminal lawyer who is able to justify their accusations or their mitigations, you too must be able to justify your reasoning and your method. You must be able to explain yourself and on what basis your conclusions are true. Anything less isn’t knowledge.
I am not saying that it’s impossible to discern truth while believing in a supernatural deity. I am not saying that it is impossible to hold contradictory ideas as true. What I am saying is that to do so, you have breached the fundamental principle of thinking—the law of non contradiction.
During the rest of this section of the Truth Seekers Guide, we will examine these four foundational philosophical ideas, and look at their implications, as well as those of their opposites. We will examine precisely why they are essential, both for the concept of truth to have meaning, and to be able to rationally argue for anything at all—especially for freedom via the concept of rights.
You may hold whatever philosophical convictions you choose. However, I respectfully suggest that the concept of truth can only have consistent meaning to the mind that consistently holds a philosophy that includes the presupposed ideas on which the concept of truth necessarily rests, and also the premises upon which the discernment of truth necessarily rests. In addition to this, a mind that is not divided against itself, by holding contradictory ideas at the base of its operating system, is a mind that is fully integrated and more capable of reaching its full potential.
The only philosophy that achieves this is Ayn Rand’s philosophy of ‘Objectivism’. Rand picked up (and completed) the work of Aristotle, and has created a unified and consistent set of principles to guide a human life. Her philosophy stands in stark contrast to the nonsense spouted by the mainstream schools of philosophy today, such as pragmatism, existentialism, utilitarianism, logical positivism. Objectivism serves as a consistent principled framework for thinking, acquiring knowledge, achieving freedom, happiness and human flourishment.
It’s particularly important to note that if you want to be free, you need philosophy. Because you have to make sure your fundamental convictions are consistent with freedom. You must be aware of the hierarchical structure of knowledge and the fact that you have to get your thinking straight from the ground up in order to be able to make a consistent and convincing case for rights—the means to freedom.
Summary
We have determined why we need the concept of truth, and what fundamental ideas it rests upon or are presupposed by it. We have noted the importance of ideas, particularly fundamental ideas, and how they have been used to influence the minds of the unthinking. In this chapter, we have identified the framework for the most important fundamental ideas. Now lets begin with the first two fundamentals ideas that the truth seeker should consciously commit to being bound by, in any and all attempts to discern truth and acquire knowledge.
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