Existence: The Evident And The Self-evident

The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.

Aristotle

It is impossible that there should be a demonstration of absolutely everything; [for then] there would be an infinite regress so that there would still be no demonstration.

Aristotle

Existence means, typically, extant being. With historical sensibility, existence means being in a broad sense of history, current moments, and the future. The quality of "to be" seems like the act of existence. 

The domain of reasonable discourse seems split between the evident and the self-evident in existence. Evident, in this frame, means the sensory continuum of experience and its extended continuum into formalized empiricist mechanisms and methodologies. 

The self-evident as a being which knows and knows that it knows; no way out of this: existence, then self-evidence, and then evidence. Powerful derivations form from this. An object – dynamic – universe develops a separate station in the process of evolutionary change with a subject emergent in it. 

Slowly, subjectivities come birthing forth out of the universe, as a part of the nature of nature. It’s a peculiar happenstance of the ordinary structure of reality. An object universe producing independence of mind within itself, as such. This makes metaphysics a useless subject matter. 

Where metaphysics unnecessarily complicates the study of this operational framework. The world becomes existent, ontology, and knowable to some extent, epistemology, but integrated into and of itself, voiding metaphysics, because the knowledge of the structure of reality requires reality. This is so a priori with an evolved/constructed mind with the capacity to know to such a degree or a posteriori through the study of material reality. 

The knowing cannot be decoupled from the known because the knowledge exists as a property of a being capable of knowing, which exists in the extant or the known, the potentially known, and the unknown. Even though, the concept of a “property” makes little sense with the demarcation, the line, drawn by an observer. Only existence exists, and properties, the inherencies of an object or process, derive from this, while existence remains the ground state and the self-evident makes the distinctions. 

The evident would form the basis of the latter (a priori) and the self-evident the former (a posteriori). In this manner, we come to ontology and epistemology as an integrated loop and metaphysics as moot. Another field dealing with values is axiology. 

Axiology is mere as the values held by such minds evolved or constructed within the universe. Those are tautologically necessary for survival, so good enough, plus some room for variation – good and bad for further survival. Valuelessness is the currency of the universe, while values are produced internally to it – global valuelessness and localized value. 

It’s akin to metaphysics as without place. A higher-order language isn’t raining down upon the universe. The universe integrates its functionality into itself, while evolved critters appear to have derived some truths about it – mistaking symbol use for some externally derived law (leading to an infinite regress or merely definitional games to close the gap). 

This does not require a unicity of reality but becomes assisted with an apparent unicity of it. Assume as such, the physical laws seem to represent it – work, a reframing with merely axiology, epistemology, and ontology, and constrained further, at that. The evidently requires the existence and the self-evident implies existence. The nature of the evidence here means the senses, lower-order, and higher-order, and tools and types to extend them. 

Those capable of back-translation into the mind of the being which knows and knows that it knows. Without this translatability, the entire pursuit of knowing remains internal. As noted in other works, existence seems statistical more probably – vastly so – than non-existence. In this, we come to another profundity. 

A simple argument for the statistical inevitability of existence over non-existence, so the nature of reality is to exist rather than not. The object universe with apparent unicity across all fundaments becomes an extended first principles assertion without necessary coherence, without the complete mapping of the universe. This means a convenient placeholder for all of science. 

“It works,” doesn’t mean true. It means functionally true, operationally factual. Structures and processes are known better than before. This knowledge comes from inside the system, not outside, once more voiding metaphysics. 

What happens in this context, we have existence marching merrily along with its statistical probability in existing over not, then separation with technical evolution of complex interconnected, integrated information processors capable of knowing, at a basic level, and knowing that they know, at an advanced level with no known upper limit to the latter. 

The self-evident comes from existence in the form of consciousness, not a magical-mystical process or phenomenon, but a technical mastery of mapping the world into a system internal to the universe as a natural occurrence. A sensibility of recursion comes into play here. 

Further, the sensory system built into such an organism means the consciousness develops degrees of freedom incomprehension of the apparent unicity of reality for self-developed evidence about the world. These refined and formalized in something akin to science in empiricism if not outright advanced science means the self-evident extends to the evidence in two senses.

One, it’s internal integration only. Two, its further external extension brought back to the internal integration and filtered into the self-evident and its framework too. The frames of referents coalesced in one mind. 

From this, the ‘metaphysical,’ in fact, means the epistemological for the ontological, even if unable to sense the rules of the universe. It’s not top-down or bottom-up; it’s integrated internally or not. The integration happens within a system capable of doing so. 

Naturally, this excludes metaphysics and requires ontology and epistemology as natural parts of the way the cosmos works and internal minds to it operate, unavoidably. Philosophy needs a complete overhaul and reconstruction in this manner. Furthermore, the axiological simply means the evolved or constructed values of organisms or mechanisms. Things of significance or not, i.e., valued or not, or valued in different ways and to different degrees. 

Existence means an integrated whole of the past, the present, and the future, unfolding by its own nature. Sometimes, a separation between the object into subjects with the unavoidable self-evident in the subjectivities and then the occasional evident (and extensions) with more comprehensive couplings of their minds and the universe.