Let me begin by saying that I continue to be impressed by the care and effort you’ve put into your essays. You’ve clearly thought through your position in a systematic way, and I don’t think our disagreement is due to vagueness or oversight. Rather, I think your essay on knowledge and induction brings even more clearly into view where our philosophical commitments genuinely diverge, especially with respect to grounding and necessary existence.

What follows isn’t a point-by-point rebuttal (that would take more time than I can reasonably invest), but an attempt to explain how I understand your position, how it responds to my concern, and why I still think the central metaphysical issue remains open. That said, I also want to apologize for the length of what follows. I’ve really done my best to try to understand your perspective and, in the process, have probably spent more time on this than I should have :smile: .

1. How I understand your account of knowledge
As I read you, your framework rests on several key claims.

First, you explicitly frame knowledge as instrumental rather than truth-constitutive. Knowledge, on your view, does not aim at grasping reality “as it is in itself,” but at arriving at the most reasonable orientation toward reality given our goals, limitations, and need to act. Rationality is therefore practical before it is metaphysical.

Second, you ground knowledge internally in what you call the “discrete experiencer.” Instead of beginning with a claim about existence or truth, you begin with the indubitable fact that experience can be partitioned into identities (this rather than that) and that thoughts, memories, and distinctions arise within that partitioning. This capacity is taken to be deductively certain because any attempt to deny it already presupposes it.

Third, you distinguish between two kinds of knowing. What you call distinctive knowledge is simply awareness of discrete experiences as experiences. Applicable knowledge arises when those distinctions are applied to experience in such a way that, given the current context and available distinctions, they are not contradicted by reality. The sheep, goat, and hologram examples are meant to show that identities depend on chosen essential properties, and that knowledge is always indexed to a context of application.

Fourth, you treat induction as unavoidable once deduction, so understood, reaches its limits. You accept Hume’s critique but argue that inductions can still be ranked by cogency: probability being strongest, then possibility, then plausibility, and finally irrational belief. Rationality, on this view, consists in managing these inductions responsibly rather than eliminating them.

Finally, you extend this framework to social knowledge by introducing negotiated “distinctive contexts.” Language, mathematics, and shared standards allow multiple subjects to coordinate their distinctions and applications. Objectivity becomes a matter of convergence within agreed contexts, rather than correspondence to a context-independent ground.

I take all of this to be internally coherent, and I don’t think it collapses into skepticism or trivial relativism.

2. How this reframes the question of necessary existence
Where I think our disagreement sharpens is when this epistemological framework is brought to bear on the question of necessary existence.

My original concern was not simply whether we can justify claims about necessity in practice, nor whether science or everyday reasoning can proceed without positing something that exists necessarily. It was whether intelligibility itself - the fact that there is a stable, law-like, and explanatory order at all - can be ultimate yet ungrounded without remainder.

Your response effectively answers a different question: how a finite subject should reason once deductive justification runs out. From that standpoint, positing a necessary being or necessary ground appears either (i) inapplicable, (ii) merely plausible, or (iii) unjustified relative to available distinctions. That is a coherent epistemic verdict.

What remains unclear to me is whether this epistemic verdict is meant to settle the metaphysical issue, or whether it simply brackets it.

If intelligibility is treated as a brute feature of reality - that is, something we manage, but do not explain - then the denial of necessary existence is not so much argued for as presupposed. The framework shows why we cannot establish necessity deductively (as you have defined it) within experience, but it does not show that necessity is unnecessary.

3. Where the grounding question reappears
This becomes especially clear when we consider several features of your account that seem to rely on what they officially set aside.

3.a “Contradiction by reality” presupposes a non-derivative norm
Your framework repeatedly appeals to the idea that beliefs must submit to contradiction by reality. But the authority of contradiction is not itself explained in instrumental terms. To say that belief ought to yield to reality is already to invoke a norm that is not merely convenient, but binding.

In the context of grounding, this matters because binding norms suggest something non-arbitrary at work. If intelligibility were wholly brute, it becomes unclear why contradiction should have this authority rather than being just another contingent feature we happen to accommodate.

3.b Elective distinctions sit uneasily with necessary structure
You emphasize that the selection of essential properties and identities is up to the subject, and that distinctive contexts are not dictated by reality itself. Yet the success of application, the hierarchy of induction, and the very notion of “better” or “worse” reasoning presuppose a stable background structure that constrains which distinctions work and which fail.

From my side, this looks like a tacit appeal to something like necessity: not a necessary entity perhaps, but a necessary order or intelligibility that is not reducible to choice or practice.

3.c Redefining deduction deflates necessity rather than refutes it
By treating deduction as “what cannot be contradicted given current distinctions,” necessity becomes a local epistemic status rather than a metaphysical one. But that redefinition does not show that there is nothing that exists necessarily; it shows only that necessity cannot be established by the methods you allow.

That is an important result, but it does not settle the ontological question. It changes the standards of admissibility rather than answering the original demand.

3.d The dynamism of inquiry points beyond brute fact
Your account presupposes an ongoing drive to refine distinctions, improve applicability, and prefer explanations that are more coherent and comprehensive. This dynamism is difficult to understand if intelligibility is merely accidental. It suggests that inquiry is oriented toward something more than survival or local success, but toward understanding as such.

If that orientation is legitimate at all, then the question of whether intelligibility has an ultimate ground reasserts itself.

4. Bringing this back to necessary existence
With that contrast in view, the issue can be stated more precisely.

Your framework shows, convincingly, that if deduction is understood as you understand it - namely, as what cannot be contradicted within a given context of distinctions and applications - then we cannot arrive at the conclusion that something exists necessarily from within finite experience. On those terms, necessity cannot appear as an admissible conclusion, since it cannot function as a candidate alongside contingent possibilities. But this limitation follows from how deduction is defined, not from the structure of inquiry itself.

The question of necessary existence, as I understand it, is neither empirical nor hypothetical. It is transcendental: it asks what must be the case for intelligibility itself to be possible. It does not arise from extending classifications further into experience, but from reflecting on the conditions that make any classification, correction, or application intelligible at all.

On your account, deduction is essentially contextual and negative: a belief counts as deductive insofar as it is not presently contradicted by reality, given a chosen set of distinctions. That is a coherent and useful standard for managing belief within experience. But it is not a standard designed to address metaphysical sufficiency. It tells us when a claim is undefeated; it does not tell us whether intelligibility itself is ultimately grounded or merely assumed.

A necessary judgment, as I am using the term, is not reached by adding premises or narrowing context. It arises when reflection shows that denying a certain conclusion undermines the very norms one relies on in inquiry. The issue is not whether necessary existence can be applied without contradiction, but whether treating intelligibility as wholly contingent is coherent given the binding role intelligibility plays in reasoning.

This is why I think your framework, while successful on its own terms, does not close the door on necessary existence. It shows that necessity cannot be established by contextual deduction; it does not show that necessity cannot be known through reflection on the conditions of intelligibility itself. The binding force of the norms you rely on (non-contradiction, rational preference, hierarchical evaluation) already presupposes that intelligibility is not merely accidental.

If intelligibility were brute all the way down, its normative authority would be inexplicable. Contradiction would lose its force, coherence would become optional, and better or worse explanations would collapse into preference. Yet your epistemology depends on the opposite: that intelligibility obliges assent when conditions are met.

So when I resist the claim that intelligibility can be ultimate yet ungrounded, I am not proposing a rival empirical explanation or a speculative add-on. I am making a transcendental claim: that finite intelligibility, precisely as conditioned and corrigible, points beyond itself to something non-derivative. That “beyond” is what I mean by necessary existence, not an object within experience, but the ground that makes intelligible experience possible at all.

5. Divergent accounts of inquiry
Before closing, I think it may help to explicitly thematize the fact that we are working with two very different conceptions of inquiry. On your account, inquiry is fundamentally corrective and managerial: it begins with distinctions, applies them where possible, and revises them when contradicted by reality. Its norms are procedural, context-relative, and justified by their success in navigating experience. On the view I am working with, inquiry is not merely corrective but also intrinsically oriented toward being in-itself: questioning itself carries an unrestricted demand for intelligibility, and the norms of coherence, adequacy, and sufficiency are immanent in the act of understanding. I think the disagreement about necessary existence may ultimately turn on which of these conceptions is taken as prior.

6. Where that leaves us
At this point, I think the disagreement is clear: you offer a powerful epistemology of how inquiry proceeds under constraint and uncertainty. I’m asking whether that epistemology presupposes, rather than replaces, a deeper transcendental/metaphysical account of intelligibility itself.

If reason is merely a tool, then necessary existence will always look like an overreach. If reason is intrinsically normative and oriented toward unrestricted intelligibility (being in-itself), then the question of grounding (and with it, the question of necessary existence) cannot be dismissed without cost.

That, I think, is the real point of divergence, and it explains why we’ve been circling the same issue from different sides.

Thanks for clarifying. I think we’re circling a deeper disagreement that’s worth naming. It’s not really about becoming, difference, or performativity, but about what counts as an intelligible explanation in the first place.

From my side, reason is intrinsically normative. Inquiry involves judgments of coherence, adequacy, and sufficiency, and those norms are internal to questioning itself. On that view, asking “why?” isn’t a metaphysical excess but an expression of an unrestricted demand to understand. If that demand is legitimate at all, then a purely groundless intelligibility, one that can never answer whether it is sufficient even in principle, looks unstable.

From your side, as I understand it, that very demand for sufficiency already presupposes a metaphysics of grounding or presence that you want to resist. Intelligibility is enacted in use, difference, or repetition rather than secured by an underlying ground, and the refusal of a final ground is a principled stance, not a failure of explanation.

My concern isn’t that such accounts are incoherent, but that they remain descriptive with respect to the normativity we rely on when we argue. Even to say that repetition both generates and destabilizes meaning presupposes criteria for recognizing when meaning is generated rather than lost.

So the real question may be this: are the norms implicit in inquiry (coherence, adequacy, explanatory sufficiency) themselves intelligible and binding, or are they contingent products of practice with no further warrant? I don’t expect that to settle things, but I think it names the divergence more precisely.

Bitbol is not trying to establish normative limits on reality in the Kantian sense of legislating what can or cannot be the case tout court. Rather, he is diagnosing a performative incoherence in a specific epistemic stance —namely, the assumption that consciousness (I actually prefer ‘mind’) can be treated as a fully objective explanandum from inside the very practices that presuppose lived experience. — Wayfarer

Quite right. However, in order to diagnose the purported performative incoherence, Bitbol must presuppose universally binding normative standards of judgment (correctness, error, and order) that he then withholds from metaphysical inquiry. If the standards are universally binding, then reason has authority beyond any particular stance, and it becomes unclear why that authority should suddenly stop at metaphysics. If they are not universally binding, then Bitbol’s charge of incoherence loses its force because the diagnosis is only valid from within the (non-universal) scope of the framework from which it is made.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think this clarifies the disagreement quite a bit, and I appreciate the acknowledgment that the move to panentheism is an hypothesis rather than a forced conclusion.

Where I still want to push back is on the claim that, absent such an Intellect, intelligibility must be either brute or a matter of coincidence. From an Aristotelian standpoint, intelligibility is neither a coincidence nor an unexplained remainder, rather it is grounded in the very structure of being itself as intelligible relations (form, order, lawfulness) that do not depend on being understood in order to be what they are.

Of course intelligibility is relative to intellect in the sense that it is what the intellect grasps. But that does not entail that intelligibility is ontologically dependent on an intellect in order to exist. The relation is asymmetric: intelligence is ordered toward being because being is intelligible, not the other way around.

At some point, explanation has to bottom out. My suggestion is that it can bottom out in being in-itself without incoherence, rather than requiring a further appeal to a cosmic subject. The latter may well be a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis, but I don’t yet see an argument that shows the former to be unstable, self-undermining, or equivalent to brute facticity.

So I think we’re now at a more precise question: is intelligibility a fundamental feature of being itself, or must it be further grounded in a non-contingent intellect? That seems to me a genuinely open metaphysical choice, not one settled by the antinomy as such.

Happy new year to you and to all!

Also, I have to compliment your mastery of the written word. Your use of higher level vocabulary in intelligible and clear in ways beyond my crafting capability, and its both impressive and fun to read. — Philosophim

Thank you for the generous compliment! I admire the clarity and sincerity of your writing as well. It's been a pleasure reading through your replies.

I think you’ve articulated your position clearly and consistently. I don’t think the disagreement is due to misunderstanding, but to a genuine philosophical divergence.

First, I agree that your view is internally coherent. You’re explicit that existence as such is accidental, while intelligibility is local and conditional. Once something exists, it has determinate properties and stable relations. That position does not undermine science or everyday reasoning, and your appeal to Hume makes clear that you’re comfortable accepting limits on justification without succumbing to irrationality, which is a serious and well-established philosophical posture.

Second, I also agree that appealing to infinity can deflate certain intuitive improbability worries. On an infinite scale, long-lived stable structures are not mathematically shocking. So I don’t think your view collapses into obvious absurdity, nor do I think it’s refuted by simply pointing at order and saying “that seems unlikely.”

Where I think the issue remains, however, is that your response declines a particular explanatory demand rather than answering it. My question isn’t whether brute contingency is coherent, or whether we can live with it pragmatically. It’s whether it is explanatorily sufficient once we take intelligibility itself as an explanandum.

In particular, appeals to probability, infinity, or randomness all presuppose a stable framework within which those notions apply. Infinity can explain why something occurs given a space of possibilities, but it doesn’t explain why there is a persisting possibility space, or why law-like regularity rather than total non-repeatability is instantiated at all. Treating that framework as brute is consistent, but it is exactly the move I’m questioning.

Similarly, I don’t think the regress worry touches the position I’m gesturing at. I’m not proposing another conditioned cause or another link in the chain. The claim is that causal explanation and metaphysical grounding are different kinds of explanation, and that running out of the former doesn’t show that the latter is illegitimate, only that it isn’t causal.

So I think the disagreement now turns on the following question: is intelligibility something that can be ultimate yet ungrounded, or does its very presence place a demand for a non-derivative explanation? You’re comfortable saying the former; I’m not persuaded that doing so leaves intelligibility fully intact rather than merely assumed.

That’s where I still see the question as open, not because your position is incoherent, but because it seems to me to stop one step earlier than the explanatory demand itself invites.

Another excellent post, thank you. I don’t think you’re being naive, but I do think there is still a gap that hasn’t been closed.

You’re proposing a two-level view:

(1) Existence as such is accidental - there is no reason why anything exists.
(2) Once something exists, it has determinate properties and behaves intelligibly.

I agree completely with (2). My worry is that (2) silently presupposes more than (1) can support.

Saying “once it exists, it is what it is” explains why given an oxygen atom, it behaves like oxygen. It does not explain why there are enduring, repeatable, law-governed entities at all rather than momentary, non-repeating flashes.

Appeals to infinity don’t solve this. Infinity guarantees abundance, not structure. An infinite range of brute possibilities does not explain why stable probability spaces, mathematical describability, and persistent laws are instantiated rather than not.

This is especially clear in your appeal to probability. Probability only makes sense relative to a stable sample space and enduring rules of combination. But on your view, there is no reason for the sample space itself to persist, or for its rules to remain fixed from moment to moment.

So the question isn’t “why do oxygen atoms behave consistently once they exist?” The question is “why is there a reality in which consistency itself is instantiated rather than not?” Saying that we are adaptations to a rare pocket of stability explains our survival, not the intelligibility of the pocket itself. Anthropic reasoning explains selection, not grounding.

This is why I keep pressing the grounding question. You’re not denying intelligibility, you’re localizing it. But the existence of localized intelligibility without any intelligible ground still makes intelligibility as such accidental. And that is the worry: can intelligibility be ultimately grounded in what is itself unintelligible without undermining intelligibility altogether?

I’m not claiming that this position is incoherent. I’m claiming that it leaves the success of explanation (including probabilistic and mathematical explanation) as a cosmic coincidence. That’s the precise point where I think the metaphysical question remains open.

It may be that we've reached a principled stopping point here, as I think the issue has boiled down to a question regarding the criterion of adequate explanation. I would frame this in the following way:

(1) If the highest criterion is coherence and parsimony, then I think your position holds
(2) If the highest criterion is explanatory adequacy and intelligibility, then I think my position is stronger

Obviously, I feel that my position is on firmer ground overall (or I wouldn't still hold it), not because yours is indefensible by any means, but because I think yours leaves too much unexplained while still subtly relying on what it refuses to ground.

What do you think?

What exactly is he discerning in this essay? Bitbol is not claiming that he can determine what reality is like independently of experience. Notice at the outset, he says 'no alternative metaphysical view is advanced.' He is claiming that reason can notice when it has overstepped its bounds by mistaking the conditions of experience for objects within experience. That critique does not establish an alternative ontology - it is ameliorative rather than constructive. — Wayfarer

Indeed, and this point is well taken. However, there's a real tension in Bitbol's position. The issue is not that he wants to engage in a critique of reason, but that his critique relies on a normatively binding use of reason to establish limits, while simultaneously denying reason any standing to make normatively binding claims about reality. In contrast to Nagarjuna, Bitbol's critique is not merely therapeutic. He makes claims about correctness, error and order which raises the question: are these claims themselves unconditionally valid, or merely perspectival? If they are unconditionally valid, then reason seems to have precisely the kind of authority Bitbol denies it in ontology. If they are not, then it becomes unclear why his critique binds anyone who does not already share his stance.

There's a Buddhist metaphor that comes to mind. This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in. There's another simile, the 'simile of the raft'. This compares the dharma to a raft 'bound together from fragments of sticks and grasses' (hence, nothing high-falutin') which is used to 'cross over the river' but which is discarded when the crossing is accomplished (Alagaddupama Sutta.) This has been compared to Wittgenstein's 'ladder' metaphor, that philosophy is like a ladder that is discarded after having been climbed. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is philosophy as therapy. People can (and do) find real value in such an approach, but the persistent worry is that if reason is simply discarded along the way (e.g. ladder, veil, raft, etc.), what is left to adjudicate insight from delusion, depth from emptiness, transcendence from regression?

I think this is where we bottom out. You’re treating metaphysical necessity as defined by invariance across admissible worlds, so that necessity is entirely a function of model-theoretic structure. I’m treating modal invariance as something that tracks deeper explanatory or grounding facts rather than constituting them. Once necessity is defined modally, your stipulation point follows; that definition is exactly what I’m not accepting. At that point the disagreement is methodological rather than technical, and I don’t think there’s much more to be gained by pressing it further here, so this where I will leave it. Thanks again for the discussion.

But I think the subsequent discussion of "intelligibility" goes astray, perhaps confusing the map with the territory. I don't know what it would mean for the reality to be intelligible (or necessary, or contingent, for that matter), except in the obvious sense that making the reality intelligible to us is what we as intelligent creatures do. This framing already implies that a world in which intelligent creatures thrive exists, and is perforce intelligible to those creatures. Fair enough. But if we go on to ask whether it is necessary that such a world exists, the question loses its meaning. Necessary in relation to what? What is the framing theory and whence it came from? — SophistiCat

Thanks for the incisive reply. To clarify, I don’t mean “intelligibility” as a feature of our representations but as a condition of the possibility of inquiry itself. If reality were not intrinsically intelligible (i.e. constrained independently of our cognitive activity) then the distinction between correct and incorrect explanations would collapse.

When I speak of an unconditioned ground, I’m not asking what is necessary relative to a theory, but whether a totality of conditioned explanations can be intelligible without something unconditioned. A ground that is itself contingent on the explanatory structure is not a ground but another explanandum.

So the issue is not anthropocentric but structural: contingency presupposes intelligibility, and intelligibility cannot be wholly contingent without undermining explanation itself.

I don't know if that fully addresses your questions, but I'd be happy to try to clarify further if necessary.

Appealing to grammar doesn’t really answer the point. Grammar explains how judgments are expressed, not what makes them meaningful or truth-apt in the first place. The norms grammar presupposes - correctness, sense, truth - already belong to intelligibility at the level of judgment. My concern isn’t metaphysical hypostatization but the performative fact that universal claims about contingency still rely on those unconditioned norms.

I must be misunderstanding you. — Banno

Yes, that’s a misunderstanding. I’ve already clarified the distinction I’m making a few times now, so I don’t think there’s much more to add. Thanks for the discussion.

I’m not denying that metaphysics requires a framework; I’m denying that metaphysical necessity is itself a framework stipulation (language, logic, modality) rather than an explanatory conclusion.

I’m not reifying intelligibility or invoking Platonic Forms. The point is transcendental: conceivability presupposes intelligibility as a condition of judgment, not as a metaphysical entity. That X can be conceived as ~X shows only a lack of logical necessity, not metaphysical contingency. “Only contingency is necessary,” when asserted universally, already relies on the unconditioned intelligibility it claims to exclude.

Again, I'm not challenging accountability. I'm challenging reducibility. Metaphysical conclusions as to the existence of necessary beings (if there be such) are reached by inquiry and argument, not by stipulation.

Thank you, this helps clarify your position a great deal. You've covered a lot of ground and introduced some interesting and unexpected (in a good way) considerations. I still have a lingering concern, and it turns on one specific inference you’re making.

First, I agree with your first two points: (1) Accepting a metaphysical limit does not shut down scientific inquiry, and (2) we may never know whether we’ve reached the ultimate explanatory limit.

Where I think the argument possibly breaks down, is here:

If there was no reason for existence to be, then there is no reason for any existence not to be. — Philosophim

The absence of a reason for why anything exists at all does not entail the absence of intelligible constraints within existence. You are moving from “no ultimate explanation” to “no internal intelligibility,” but I'm not sure that follows.

In fact, the model you propose depends on there being constraints. You introduced theoretical constructs such as an infinite plane, spatial dimensions, time units, probability distributions, etc. But these aren't neutral, they already presuppose a highly structured and law-governed reality.

My worry is that if existence were genuinely unconstrained in the way you suggest, then there would literally be no reason for persistency over time, stable entities, probabilistic regularities rather than total chaos, or even the continued existence of the probability space you are modeling.

Furthermore, saying "anything could happen" immediately raises a new question: why in fact does almost nothing happen that could happen? Appealing to brute contingency does not answer these questions, it intensifies them. The stability of reality that we manifestly experience becomes radically inexplicable.

This is why I’ve been insisting on the difference between exhausting causal explanations and providing a metaphysical one. Reaching “the limit of causality” only tells us that a certain kind of explanation has ended. It does not show that what remains is self-explanatory or unconstrained. An infinite regress of contingent explanations, or a probabilistic model of unconstrained possibility, does not explain why there is an intelligible order rather than none. It simply assumes that order while denying any ground for it.

So the issue isn’t whether inquiry continues, I agree that it does. The issue is whether intelligibility itself is ultimately grounded or ultimately accidental. And if intelligibility is accidental, then the success of explanation becomes a coincidence — which undermines the very probabilistic and mathematical reasoning your proposal relies on (and on which science itself is based).

To state my worry more cleanly: can we ground the intelligibility of being in a radically unintelligible foundation without undermining intelligibility itself?

Thanks for the thoughtful clarification. I think this helps me better locate where we’re really diverging.

I agree with you that the epistemological and ontological dimensions can’t be simply sealed off from one another. My worry, though, is that the antinomy only arises if we assume that intelligibility itself must be grounded in a conscious subject, rather than being intrinsic to being as such.

Following a more Aristotelian line, I would want to say that intelligibility is not something projected onto the world by consciousness, nor is it a mere coincidence. Rather, being itself is intelligible: it is structured, law-governed, and dynamically ordered in ways that can be grasped by intelligence. Consciousness is required for the act of understanding, but not for intelligibility to be operative in reality in the first place.

On this view, the fact that the empirical world is intelligible does make a genuine ontological claim, but it is a claim about the nature of being, not about the presence of a fundamental cognizing consciousness underwriting it. Intelligibility belongs to things insofar as they are, while understanding belongs to subjects insofar as they inquire and grasp.

This is why I’m still inclined to think the force of the antinomy depends on collapsing two distinct explanatory orders. Questions about how consciousness arises in the world concern the order of efficient causality. Questions about knowing concern the structure and operations of consciousness as oriented toward grasping the intelligible order of being in-itself. The latter does not, I'd argue, require that consciousness be ontologically fundamental.

That is a penetrating critique of Nagarjuna's philosophy, and I think it exposes a major instability in his thought. I get the impression that this instability is by design, though, in the sense that Nagajuna's aim is not to produce a philosophical system, but to force the mind out of any such system. As such, his critique causes the mind to cycle endlessly between affirming and denying both conventional and ultimate reality, never finding a stable resting point between the two. On this interpretation, the generation of aporia is intended to work as a therapeutic device, kicking the mind out of it's attachment to representation and into...well, that's the question. Enlightenment?

Like you, though, I think this approach works "too" well, as it undercuts any stable ground from which Nagarjuna can assert the "reality" of emptiness, nirvana, samsara, karma, or anything else. In other words, his (non)-doctrine of emptiness seems to be left teetering precariously on a precipice with nihilism on one side and naive realism on the other. Some might see this as a boon, but I'm not so sure.

Thanks for clarifying.

Since the post I originally responded to specifically referenced Meillasoux I think it is worth noting that Meillasoux would resist framing his argument in terms of modal semantics or (mere) logical conceivability. This deflates his metaphysical/transcendental meta-claim about the nature of modality itself into a question of technical formulation within modal logic. That said, if we’re content to set Meillesoux’s argument aside, then we can move on.

I would say that your claim that modal logic does not, by itself, compel the affirmation of a necessarily existing being is uncontroversial. What would be more controversial is the claim that metaphysical necessity is reducible to logical necessity. While you don’t seem to have explicitly stated this claim anywhere in your argument, I would say that it implicitly relies on that reduction in order to have any metaphysical force.

The hidden premise seems to be something like “all genuine necessities must be expressible as necessities in modal logic”. This collapses a genuine distinction. Logical necessity is about entailment between propositions. Metaphysical necessity is about what reality must be like in order for there to be anything at all. The argument you presented does not address the latter. As such, the argument regarding stipulated constraints doesn’t have any force because metaphysical necessity is not merely stipulated as part of a model-building choice, it is inferred as part of an argument or discovered as the end result of inquiry.

Thoughts?

Thus there is no causal explanation ultimately for why there is existence. It simply is. — Philosophim

Thanks for the additional clarification. Your additional comments do a great job of hammering in the logic behind your argument. It seems like the question comes down to whether or not one thinks there is still an additional unanswered question lingering at the termination of the causal chain. You argue that once all contingent causal explanations have been exhausted, there's nothing left to explain. The residual worry is that this leaves the contingent totality itself unexplained.

Another way of framing the worry is that explaining each individual item within a contingent series by reference to its predecessor does not explain why there is a contingent series at all. The relations within the series can't be used to explain the existence of the series itself. The response "it just is" seems to arbitrarily terminate inquiry rather than satisfy it. I wouldn't argue that this is incoherent, but I might argue that it is unprincipled. To see what I mean, one might ask "why accept brute contingency at the level of the series but not at lower levels? If we accepted "it just is" earlier in the inquiry, explanation would never get off the ground."

What do you think? Is this a legitimate concern?

Yes. In standard modal semantics (e.g. S5), whether an individual exists in all possible worlds depends on how we stipulate the domain of worlds. Modal logic allows expanding domains, shrinking domains, and varying domains. Nothing in S5 forces the existence of a necessary individual.

But the argument is not that modal logic forces us to accept a necessarily existing individual. Nor is It that there must be an individual whose existence is logically necessary in all possible worlds. You keep trying to reframe the issue as only about the modal status of individuals across possible worlds, whereas the argument concerns the conditions under which any such modal reasoning about individuals is intelligible at all.

To put it another way:

1. There is no metaphysical necessity whatsoever; reality is absolutely contingent. (Meillasoux)

simply does not follow from:

2. For any individual object, I can construct a world where it does not exist. (Modal Semantics)

The former is a full-blooded metaphysical claim. As such, an appropriate rebuttal was given in equally metaphysical terms.

Ironically, Meillassoux himself explicitly rejects the application of possible world semantics to the problem of absolute contingency as methodologically suspect. I don't think he'd support your translation of his thesis into a trivial point about modal semantics.

I think we're talking past each other. The point isn’t that incoherence is acceptable; I'm not advocating for inconsistency, I'm doing the opposite. The claim “only contingency is necessary,” when asserted as a true description of reality, already presupposes necessity, intelligibility, and universal scope. The criticism is not “your account is messy,” but “your account relies on what it denies in order to be stated as true at all.” Yes, modal logic can ensure formal coherence, but it doesn’t address that deeper dependence.

That something is necessary for the sake of other things does not automatically mean it is metaphysically necessary in the strict sense.

There's a small notion of necessity as that which must be the case in order for something else to be the case - If you would read this post, it is necessary that you read English. There is a broader notion of necessity as what is true in all possible worlds - that two and two is four. They are not the same.

The advantage of the latter is that it avoids the contentious and irrelevant notion of causation. — Banno

The original argument was not claiming that intelligibility is causally prior, instrumentally required or merely pragmatically unavoidable. It was claiming that the very meaning of contingency presupposes a necessary intelligible order (being, non-contradiction, negation, truth). These are conditions of the possibility of meaningfully asserting anything at all, including claims about contingency.

As such, the appeal to possible worlds semantics doesn't help as it already assumes a stable notion of truth, determinate identity across worlds, modal structure itself and the intelligibility of worlds as such. These cannot themselves be contingent all the way down. Modal logic describes relations between propositions, it doesn't explain why there is an intelligible order in virtue of which modal distinctions are meaningful at all.

The original argument was not about causation, but about explanatory dependence. Contingency implies intelligible dependence relations, intelligible dependence cannot be infinite or self-cancelling, therefore contingency presupposes something non-contingent.

Or so the argument goes...

I see what you are saying, but let me counter that slightly. The scope is not the entire universe, the scope is the totality of explanations for that universe. Meaning this includes all of the sub-causalities inside of it. When we trace backwards through these chains we either get a 'start' to the chain, or we see the whole chain in its totality. Either way, there is no cause at these points of reference. It simply is. It just so happens that these points of reference are the limits of causality for the causal explanations of that universe. And in either case, there can be no prior cause which allowed the causation of the universe to be. — Philosophim

Yes, this makes sense, but I don't think it fully evades the original objection. The original objection wasn't that you hadn't traced the causal chain far enough, it was that even if you trace every causal explanation available within the universe, you have still not explained why there is any contingent reality at all. In other words, the objection is distinguishing between causal explanation and metaphysical explanation. Causal explanation can explain one contingent entity by reference to another, but it can't explain contingent existence itself. Calling something "the limit of causality" does not show that it is self-explanatory, it only shows that a certain kind of explanation has run out. The objection is saying that there is still more to be explained even after taking all causal explanations into account.

What do you think?

Nuh. Sure, all you have said is that if we are to be consistent, then we need to not be inconsistent. Well, yes. If you what to be inconsistent, go ahead, but don't expect to be able to do it consistently. — Banno

The point is not a trivial reminder that consistency is good, it's that the claim "only contingency is necessary" is being advanced as a true account of reality, not as a shrug or a stylistic preference. Once it's put forward as such, it implicitly claims universal scope, necessity and intelligibility. In other words, it depends on the implicit acceptance of what it outwardly denies. Once inconsistency is embraced at the level of first principles, rational discourse no longer functions as inquiry into reality.

And what is a groundless ground? It is performativity itself, becoming before being, difference prior to identity, intra-action before self-presence. — Joshs

I just realized I didn't address this point:

I would say that these (performativity, becoming, difference, intra-action) are descriptions, not grounds. They tell us how discourse or reality behaves, but not why there is such behavior in the first place. For example:

• To say “becoming” is prior to being still presupposes that becoming exists.
  
• To say “difference” is prior to identity still presupposes something that differs.
  
• To say “performativity” grounds intelligibility still presupposes that performativity is intelligible enough to ground anything.

In other words, I would argue that these smuggle intelligibility back in while denying it at the level of principle.

Again, I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

What if the ground of intelligibility is itself groundless, as Wittgenstein and Heidegger maintain? — Joshs

I consider this is a position worth taking seriously and part of why my "yes" is tentative, but ultimately I find it unsatisfying for the following reasons:

1. It's more of a refusal to ask certain questions than a rebuttal, casting intelligibility as an optional philosophical preference. This strikes me as untrue to the authentic spirit of the human desire to know, which continues to ask "why" until an answer is reached or inquiry is abandoned. Abandonment is a performative choice, rather than an explanatory achievement.

2. Groundless ground is, ultimately, a contradiction in terms. I don't think of this is a mere rhetorical point. A ground is, by definition, that in virtue of which something is intelligible. Terminating explanation in a groundless ground is another way of saying "that which makes everything else intelligible is itself unintelligible", thereby affirming intelligibility everywhere except at the decisive point and exempting the most fundamental reality from the very standard it Is supposed to support.

3. If intelligibility is ultimately groundless, then the claim itself has no intelligible ground and cannot be rationally affirmed as true, only enacted as a stance. Perhaps this is what drove Heidegger into poetics and Wittgenstein into silence, but the moment it is offered as a philosophical claim - especially one meant to correct others - it implicitly submits to normative standards like coherence, explanatory adequacy and rational assent, thereby re-engaging the very operations it tries to overcome.

I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.

I would tentatively answer "yes", and argue that contingency means dependency on conditions. Dependency implies ordered explanatory relations. A structure of ordered explanatory relations ultimately requires an unconditioned (ungrounded) ground.

Contra Meillassoux ( ): the claim "only contingency is necessary" is put forth as a universal and necessary truth about the structure of reality. Thus, the assertion of this claim implies its own denial and reveals an equivocation between logical conceivability and real intelligibility. That X can be conceived as not-X without formal contradiction implies absence of logical necessity not absence of metaphysical necessity. The very act of conceiving ~X presupposes a stable intelligible order (non-contradiction, being, negation, truth) none of which can be coherently negated without self-undermining. Universal contingency therefore parasitically depends on an unacknowledged necessity; the unconditioned ground of intelligibility. In other words, contingency only makes sense against the background of intelligibility and, therefore, cannot be absolutized.

Contra : the argument correctly shows that the universe cannot have a temporal cause (something earlier in time) or a compositional cause (something spatially outside the totality of things) , but it does not address the question of existential contingency per se. Scientific and descriptive causes explain how states of affairs arise within the universe, but they do not explain existence as such. The argument purports to address the question of existence as-such, but treats existence as if it were the last member of an explanatory chain (category error). Explaining existence does not mean finding an external producer in time or composition, but an unconditioned ground. Expanding explanatory “scope” to include the entire universe merely aggregates all contingent entities into a contingent totality, but does not address the question of why there is something (I.e. contingent totality) rather than nothing. Even an eternal or infinite universe remains a collection of contingent beings whose existence is not self-explanatory. This is a question of metaphysical grounding rather than causality and (in my opinion) is left unaddressed.

So, as a way to solve the antinomy, I propose that we need to accept both stories and reconcile them. Yes, our consciousness is contingent, is ontologically dependent etc and it can't be the ground of 'intelligibility' of ourselves and the 'external world' (and also the 'empirical world', at the end of the day). But at the same time, I take seriously the other 'side' of the antinomy and I also affirm that intelligibility seems to be grounded in consciousness. However, in order to get a 'coherent story' that includes both insights, I acknowledge that I have to posit a consciousness of some sort that can truly be regarded as the ground of intelligibility. Panentheism is a way, I believe, to overcome and at the same time accept the 'main message' of the antinomy you are referencing. — boundless

This is an insightful reply to antinomy framing. I wonder, though, if there's another way forward that renders the antinomy only apparent. An alternative framing is to see it as two separate questions that are being run together:

1. A question about the genesis of human consciousness in time
2. A question about the conditions of possibility of knowing anything at all

To my mind, these are not strictly contradictory. In order to see this, we need to distinguish between two different orders:

1. Order of being / efficient causality: how X comes to be
2. Order of knowing / intelligibility: how X can be known, affirmed, understood

I would argue that this only feels contradictory when questions about the "conditions of knowing" are collapsed into questions about the "conditions of being". But asking after the conditions of our knowing X is not the same as asking after the conditions for there being X. These two sets of conditions are not identical, and the fulfillment of the former is generally neither necessary nor sufficient for the fulfillment of the latter. To put it more bluntly, transcendental conditions are not efficient causes, though they are the conditions for the knowledge of efficient causes.

Thoughts?

Agreed. I am familiar with these thinkers, and would say that my own thought on these matters is indebted (at least in part) to all three of them.

Nāgārjuna’s analysis is subtler: it is the rejection of the inherent existence (svabhāva) of particulars, not of their existence tout courte. Phenomena are real, but relationally and dependently — not as self-grounding entities possessing inherent reality. In that sense, Madhyamaka doesn’t abolish metaphysics so much as reframe it, replacing substance-based ontology with an analysis of conditions, relations, and modes of appearing. A key point is that there is nothing to grasp or posit as a first principle or ultimate cause. The causality Buddhism is concerned with is the cause of dukkha — the suffering and unsatisfactoriness of existence. And Buddhism refrains from positing views of what is ultimately real, as it has to be seen and understood, rather than posited, which leads to 'dogmatic views'. Nāgārjuna is well known for saying that he has no doctrine of his own. — Wayfarer

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have encountered Nāgārjuna before through the secondary literature in the philosophy of religion, but I didn't realize that Bitbol was influenced by him so specifically. This actually helps me to better understand Bitbol's reticence toward metaphysics and also helps to clarify more precisely where I think Bitbol's position is unstable.

The more I reflect upon it, the more it seems to me that Bitbol's aim is really to set boundaries on what can and cannot be said. This is not the quietism of the early Wittgenstein ("what we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence") but something more like the therapeutic stance of the later Wittgenstein ("philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday"). Bitbol isn't saying "stop talking about metaphysics", he's saying "take a critical look at what makes you talk this way and then you will stop talking about metaphysics".

I don't think this is incoherent per se, but there is definitely a major tension implicit here. Basically, Bitbol relies on the authority of rational critique, but refuses the ontological consequences of that very authority. As part of his critique Bitbol makes claims such as:

1. Some ways of framing questions really are mistaken
2. Some metaphysical claims really are illegitimate
3. Some explanations really do invert the explanatory order

It invites the question: are these claims about the way things really are? I think this is a tender point for Bitbol. He wants to gatekeep the bounds of reason, but in order to do this he needs to grant reason a level of authority that he also seemingly wants to deny to it. If reason has the power to say what is unconditionally the case when engaging in critique, then how can we deny it that same power when it comes to ontology?

Nāgārjuna, by contrast, seems to take the bull by the horns in a way that Bitbol doesn't. While Bitbol and Nāgārjuna seem share some of the same methodological interests, Nāgārjuna seems much more willing to simply jettison any ultimate commitment to grounding, normativity or truth as final arbiters of anything at all. In response to the charge of inconsistency or self-contradiction Nāgārjuna's response would simply be "yes". As such, Nāgārjuna isn't really proposing a philosophy in the modern sense of the word, but rather something more like a path of liberation from philosophy (in the modern sense of the word).

Before I say anything further I want to get your thoughts. Does my critique of Bitbol hit the mark? Is my characterization of Nāgārjuna's intent accurate?

This is a surprisingly interesting question. I think I would throw my hat in the ring with those who say that the question is poorly framed because "things that do not exist" are not "things" at all, but are merely intelligible contents that lack existence apart from the acts of understanding and meaning through which they are constituted.

Consider an impossible "object" such a square-circle. I understand what "square" means. I understand what "circle" means. I understand that their definitions are incompatible. I judge that square-circles can't exist - they are not a "thing" over-and-above my understanding of the definitions and their incompatibility.

Thoughts?

Welcome back! And many thanks for the well written summary of Bitbol's essay. I've been aware of Bitbol for some time but have never had the chance to directly engage with his work until now.

I've been reading through Is Consciousness Primary and am enjoying it very much. I think your summary is generally very faithful to Bitbol’s thesis, but I do feel that you sometimes slide into an ontological register that Bitbol himself would resist. Here are some examples:

This asymmetry leads to Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur. (emphasis mine) — Wayfarer

Any attempt to treat consciousness as derivative — as some thing that “comes from” matter — therefore reverses the real order of dependence. (emphasis mine) — Wayfarer

As such, consciousness is not something over and above the world, nor something inside it. It is the condition for there being a world at all. (emphasis mine) — Wayfarer

Bitbol makes it fairly clear that it’s not his intention to make any positive pronouncements regarding the ontological relationship between mind and world, whereas I feel that your interpretive comments are a bit more ambiguous on this point:

It turns out that any attempt at proving that conscious experience is ontologically secondary to material objects both fails and brings out its methodological and existential primacy. No alternative metaphysical view is espoused... (emphasis mine) — Bitbol (Is Consciousness Primary? (2008))

So, asserting that consciousness is “existentially primary” was no metaphysical doctrine. Asserting the existential primacy of consciousness was no idealist, property dualist (Chalmers, 1996), or panpsychist (Strawson, 2007) doctrine of the ontological primacy of consciousness to be contrasted with a doctrine of the ontological primacy of matter…we refrain from any such doctrine. (emphasis mine) — Bitbol and Luisi (Science and the Self-Referentiality of Consciousness (2011))

So while Bitbol’s answer to the question “Is Consciousness Primary” is “yes”, he’s not thereby positing an ontological dependence between mind and world, only a methodological dependence (as others on the thread have also noticed). He’s willing to say what he thinks the ontological relationship between mind and world is not, but he entirely refrains from proposing any positive account of that relationship.

Personally, I find this dissatisfying. While I think Bitbol is right to reject reductive materialism, right to expose the limits of objectification, and right to insist on the primacy of lived experience, I don’t think Bitbol is successful in dissolving the ontological question and, therefore, simply ends up leaving it unanswered. In my opinion, this results from a refusal to move from phenomenological critique to a positive, critically grounded account of being and truth. It mistakes the dissolution of bad metaphysics for the end of metaphysics itself.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree with my interpretation of Bitbol, or am I getting him wrong, and how does this criticism relate to your own view?

No problem! Thank you for your question. It helped me to clarify my own thoughts on these matters.

Prepared to be wrong? — Tom Storm

Of course!

But isn't this antithetical to antifoundationalism as it seems to presuppose a foundational standard of correctness — Tom Storm

As mentioned in my comment, it depends on how strictly we are defining "anti-foundationalism".

Foundationalism in ethics typically refers to the view that all moral truths are grounded in self-evident moral axioms, divine commands, natural law propositions, fixed metaphysical moral facts, a-priori moral rules, etc.. These are typically understood to stand outside of moral deliberation, provide bottom-up justification for all other moral truths, and terminate the need for further inquiry. I reject these and, in that sense, consider myself an anti-foundationalist.

However, I do affirm the existence of universal norms implicit within rational subjectivity. While these can't be used as justification for any particular set of moral truths, I believe they do express the internal conditions of possibility for moral error, objectivity and progress.

I think this qualifies as weak anti-foundationalism, but it's reasonable to disagree.

I think you’re saying that we may assess other communities from a position of our intersubjective values. One potential problem with this is that there are conservative and religious intersubjective communities that would see the present era (and perhaps our community) as a failure of moral progress. How do you determine which intersubjective community has the better case? — Tom Storm

I'm not proposing an algorithmic decision procedure or a moral high-ground that can be used to definitively decide all disputes. There's no substitute for honest inquiry in these matters, despite its manifest limitations. I'm simply proposing that our meta-ethical theory at least try to make sense of cross-cultural critique in a way that legitimizes it rather than deflates it, while also respecting the reality of the limitations that make it so deeply problematic in practice.

Not a view from nowhere, just an adherence to the norms that are implicit in the act of judging anything to be correct or incorrect.

Anti-foundationalism doesnt deny such normative foundations for our preferences, values and claims, it denies that there some meta-foundation for fallibilism beyond contingent normative communities. Fallibilism functions within particular normative communities, not between or beyond them. — Joshs

I don't think anti-foundationalism has to deny trans-community fallibilism. Personally, I'd argue that such denial fails to account for the fact that we do judge communities to be morally mistaken and traditions to be ethically distorted, and we do speak meaningfully of moral progress against communal consensus. Fallibilism is socially mediated, but not socially grounded.

Not sure why we’re talking about relativism or what it can or cannot say. We’ve already discussed the well-established relativist fallacy in this thread and dealt with it, I do not disagree with it. — Tom Storm

A few people on the forum still seem to be defending various forms of relativism, which is why this response keeps resurfacing.

I’ve been trying to explore anti-foundationalism. — Tom Storm

To answer the question you raised in the OP, yes, I would say it is possible to make moral claims from an anti-foundationalist position provided that "anti-foundationalist" means rejecting metaphysical or axiomatic starting points, rather than rejecting normativity or objectivity itself. I would argue that a moral claim is simply an affirmation or denial of value that one is prepared to be wrong about, in contrast to other moral utterances that merely express feelings, preferences, loyalties, power moves, identity markers, etc. Given this definition, the making of moral claims does not seem to be incompatible with the rejection of axiomatic moral foundations, and implies fallibilism rather than nihilism with regard to moral truth.

So the conclusion is not “religion bad, secular good.” — Truth Seeker

I'm skeptical. After all, your thread is entitled "Comparing Religious and Scientific Worldviews". You literally spend the entirety of the OP showing how religions contradict each other and how secularism offers a way out. In contrast, you spent no time at all reviewing the ways in which secular ideologies contradict each other. In your reply to you even have a section entitled "Why not religion?" in which you list out the characteristics that are supposedly unique to all religions that make them unsuitable for adoption as worldviews, again, without any analysis of how similar dynamics play out in secular ideologies. I'm sorry, but despite what you now claim, it's very hard to take you seriously when you say that you never intended for the conclusion to be "religion bad, secular good."

That said, if you claim this was not your intention, then so be it. Thanks for the lively discussion.

So If i were to for instance attempt to stop someone harming my child, it's not because I think its right, its because I, personally, don't want that to happen because it'll make me feel bad. — AmadeusD

That strikes me as a mischaracterization of the situation. If I saw someone about to harm my child, my implicit response would not be "this will make me feel bad, and I prefer not to feel bad, therefore I'll intervene". Rather, feeling bad would be a response to the perceived worth of my child and the destructiveness of the harm. If my only motivation were only to avoid bad feelings then I would have to regard sedating myself as morally equivalent to protecting my child. But I don't because I judge the child's well-being to be objectively worthwhile and the harm to be truly wrong. That's why I might be willing to risk immense suffering or even death in order to protect them. You're taking a complex cognitive assessment and trying to reduce it to pure emotion.

Emotivism can't adjudicate between competing moral positions. No morality rightly can, because it cannot appeal to anything but itself (the theory, that is - and here, ignoring revelation-type morality as there's no mystery there). The only positions, as I see it, that can adjudicate between conflicting moral positions on a given case is are 'from without' positions such as the Law attempts to take. I still don't think there's a better backing than 'most will agree' for a moral proclamation. — AmadeusD

This proposal seems self-defeating. When you claim that no moral adjudication Is possible you are making a judgement, claiming it is more reasonable than alternatives, and implicitly inviting others to accept it. This already presupposes a commitment to the bindingness of certain norms of rationality, such as that we should consider all positions, understand them accurately and weigh the arguments for and against them. If you truly thought that normativity is reducible to emotion there'd be no point in coming to a philosophy forum to engage in complex arguments in support of anything at all.

Maybe you didn't add a category to the thread when you originally posted it? I'm not sure, I've never started a new thread on this site before. It is strange that it's not showing up on the forum's home page, though. At least, it isn't for me.

My claim is: orthodoxies grounded in authority and sacralization are systematically riskier than orthodoxies grounded in public reasons, fallibilism, and accountability to sentient welfare. — Truth Seeker

You've conceded quite a bit here. Notice that your claim has shifted significantly to being one about the comparative risks of orthodoxies grounded in authority, etc. vs. those grounded in public reasons, etc., whereas your original axis cut across the religious/secular divide. It should now be fairly straight-forward for you recognize that there are plenty of secular orthodoxies that can (and do) meet the former criteria (e.g. Stalinism, Maoism, etc.), and there are plenty religious orthodoxies that can (and do) meet the latter criteria (Quakerism, Universalist Unitarianism, etc.). Now you could respond by saying that former "are actually just religions" and the latter "are not real religions", but then you're just defining religion in a way that makes your critique true by definition.

If you think that’s wrong, the strongest move isn’t “secular groups do it too.” The strongest move is to show that revelation-anchored, sacralized authority is not more prone to harmful insulation than reason-anchored, publicly contestable frameworks. — Truth Seeker

Again, this wasn't really your original claim, which you seem to have now more-or-less abandoned.

Let's go ahead and put the nail in the coffin with regard to your original claim. While it's always difficult to quantify harm, I think you'll be hard pressed to say that religious institutions have caused more harm than dysfunctional secular orthodoxies such as Stalinism, Maoism or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime.

The bottom line is that the true fault-line here is not between secular and religious orthodoxies, but between functional and dysfunctional orthodoxies, of which we have religious and secular examples of both.