Maybe one would disagree that there needs to be anything at all, there could have been nothing, but we just happen to exist. — QuixoticAgnostic

@Esse Quam Videri

'Nothing' cannot be, for 'it' has no it - no properties; therefore 'it' cannot even be meant and so 'it' isn't an option.

Therefore, since there is something, the base uncaused existence is ever, this meaning that it is eternal and still here. It is the Fundamental One, for if it had parts then those parts would have been even more fundamental.

Therefore the Permanent One can only give rise to the basic temporaries such as electrons by rearrangements of itself. Yes, this seems akin to quantum fields, but perhaps not quite, as there are 25 fields all atop one another.

This is all fine, but to go further we must suppose what the nature of the One could be, since there would be no 'when' that any specific design could have been imparted to it. No cause, no certain form.

Must it be a superposition of everything at once, such as in Eternalism, or everything in some linear way, such as in Presentism? We don't yet know the mode of time.

Thoughts?

I think your description of intelligibility as temporally enacted and internally differentiated is right as far as it goes. It captures something essential about how understanding actually unfolds: we never encounter meaning as fully present, fully settled, or immune to revision. At the level of experience and even at the level of insight, there really is a play between recognition and novelty, presence and absence. I don’t want to deny that, and I don’t think inquiry could even get started without it.

Where I hesitate is when that play is treated as sufficient on its own. My concern isn’t that experience is never absolutely coherent (that seems obviously true) but that inquiry is more than the mere description of experience. In practice, we don’t just undergo intelligibility; we assess it. We ask whether an account is adequate, whether it explains more than it leaves unexplained, whether it’s better than its alternatives. Those questions don’t arise from play itself; they introduce a further irreducibly normative dimension to it.

So while I can agree that intelligibility maintains itself only through change, I’m not convinced that this exhausts what it means for intelligibility to be binding. The fact that understanding is always provisional doesn’t remove the orientation toward saying this is so, however revisably. And without that orientation, it’s hard to see how philosophical disagreement remains anything more than a contrast between different enactments rather than a rational engagement over what is actually the case.

So I don’t take judgment to abolish play or excess. Rather, judgment iteratively perfects it by securing what has been authentically understood and making it available for further, and often more imaginative, insight and inquiry. Judgment is not the end of play but the condition of its cumulative depth.

Finally, acknowledging the reality of play and excess doesn’t settle the metaphysical question of whether intelligibility itself is conditioned or unconditioned; it only describes how intelligibility is encountered, not what ultimately makes it possible. This is where I think we may ultimately diverge.

Finally, acknowledging the reality of play and excess doesn’t settle the metaphysical question of whether intelligibility itself is conditioned or unconditioned; it only describes how intelligibility is encountered, not what ultimately makes it possible. This is where I think we may ultimately diverge — Esse Quam Videri

Hegel believes that intelligibility is not given as an unconditioned starting point, and contra Kant, he doesn’t believe that intelligibility is merely conditioned by subjective forms, categories, intuitions, or epistemic limits that stand over against an unknowable thing-in-itself. Intelligibility is unconditioned only insofar as it is self-conditioning. Intelligibility is therefore not externally conditioned, as in Kant, nor immediately unconditioned, as in some rationalist metaphysics, but dialectically unconditioned through the immanent development of concepts. My own position follows phenomenology and hermeneutics in deconstructing Hegelian dialectics, but it follows Hegel in basing intelligibility in a self-reflexive
movement that is both subjective and objective rather than to Kant’s ahistorical grounding of intelligiblity. Where do you stand with respect to Kant and Hegel?

An excellent and thought-provoking reply. I think it succeeds in clarifying your position even more sharply than before, and that helps a great deal.

I want to begin by acknowledging and briefly recapitulating what I take you to have shown successfully. You’ve given a detailed and coherent anthropological and pragmatic account of intelligibility. On your view, intelligibility arises from the capacity for discrete experience and the need to avoid contradiction in order to survive and pursue desired ends. Within that framework, deduction is necessarily preferable to induction when accuracy is the goal, and norms of reasoning are justified by their success relative to those goals. I don’t think that picture is confused or incoherent, and I agree that it explains a great deal about how inquiry functions for creatures like us.

Where I think the remaining disagreement lies is not about whether intelligibility works, but about whether its norms are merely useful or are genuinely binding.

You consistently explain the authority of intelligibility (i.e. why contradiction matters, why better reasoning should be preferred) in terms of motivation: survival, comfort, social pressure, or desired outcomes. That explains very well why people care about intelligibility. But my question has been about something slightly different: why incoherence counts as error rather than merely inconvenience, even when nothing practical is at stake.

To put the point as cleanly as I can: suppose a discrete experiencer knowingly affirms a contradiction in a case where there is no survival cost, no practical downside, and no motivational penalty whatsoever. Is the judgment simply impractical, or is it incorrect? If it is incorrect, then intelligibility has a normative authority that is not fully exhausted by its usefulness. If it is merely impractical, then what drops out is truth as such, not just metaphysical grounding.

This is why I continue to think the question of grounding reasserts itself. You have shown that intelligibility is not necessary for all forms of life, and I agree. But the issue was never whether intelligibility is universally instantiated; it is whether, when intelligibility is operative at all, its norms are contingent products relative to particular forms of life, or universally undeniable constraints built into intelligibility as such. From my side, the binding force of contradiction, coherence, and explanatory sufficiency points beyond instrumental success to a non-negotiable (transcendental) condition of inquiry itself.

If we differ there, then I think we’ve probably reached a genuine and irreducible philosophical divide; not about induction, causality, or even necessity in the abstract, but about what reason is and what ultimately obliges assent. I’m happy to leave it there, with much appreciation for the care you’ve brought to the exchange, unless there’s anything further you’d like us to address with respect to these topics. I'm content either way.

I think you’re right that “nothing” isn’t a genuine option. In my opinion, absolute nothingness isn’t just empty, it’s unintelligible. The real contrast isn’t between something and nothing, but between what exists conditionally and what exists without conditions.

Where I’d draw a line is in how we understand the role of that unconditioned ground. I don’t think it should be treated as a kind of ultimate physical stuff that rearranges itself into electrons, fields, or other entities. Those belong to empirical explanations, which already presuppose conditions, laws, and structures. The point of an unconditioned ground isn’t to compete with those explanations, but to explain why any such conditioned explanatory order exists at all.

For that reason, I’d also be cautious about applying theories of time like eternalism or presentism to the unconditioned. Those theories concern temporal realities. Presumably, the ground of existence wouldn’t be “spread across time” or “located in the present,” but not temporal in the first place.

So I'd likely agree with you that explanation must terminate in something simple and unconditioned. I just don’t think that termination belongs to the same explanatory level as particles, fields, or models of time.

You consistently explain the authority of intelligibility (i.e. why contradiction matters, why better reasoning should be preferred) in terms of motivation: survival, comfort, social pressure, or desired outcomes. That explains very well why people care about intelligibility. But my question has been about something slightly different: why incoherence counts as error rather than merely inconvenience, even when nothing practical is at stake. — Esse Quam Videri

It seems to me that @Philosophim's analysis is implicitly Darwinian in character in assuming that the ground for the faculty of reason is successful adaptation to the environment. Take for example this paragraph:

Think about a bacterium. Its a purely reactionary chemical construct. It does not think intelligibly. Its an enclosed chemical reaction reacting to the environment around it. Intelligibility is not necessary to itself or most of life in general. It is only important and useful to us because we have the capacity to use it to understand and live the way we want to most successfully. — Philosophim

There are two things to say about that. The first is that it is true that bacterium and other single-celled organisms do not think 'intelligibly'. It seems to me that language and symbolic representation are essential to whatever we call 'intelligibility' (hence mainly restricted to h.sapiens notwithstanding the rudimentary reasoning abilities shown by some other species). However, science has shown that bacteria can learn - which is something no inorganic product does. Minerals simply react, whereas any form of organic life seeks to maintain itself in distinction from the environment. (This goes to @Joshs 'enactivist' view as it is a fundamental point in phenomenology of biology.)

The second and more relevant point is the belief that rationality is something that can be understood purely in terms of successful adaptation. Which is understandable to the extent that in today's cultural landscape evolutionary biology is the default 'theory of everything' when it comes to human capabilities. But notice the implication that in this view, reason is valued because it is useful or practical, not for its own sake.

An essay that comes to mind is Thomas Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion (<link>). In that essay, he invokes 'the soveriegnty of reason', ostensibly one of the hallmarks of Enlightenment philosophy, where it was intended to displace the sovereignty of imperial power (i.e. the aristocracy) on the one hand, and of religious revelation on the other. Nagel notes that rationalism has a "religious flavor" because it suggests a "natural sympathy" between the human mind and the deepest truths of the universe (Galileo's 'il lume naturale'). However, he then defers to "the sovereignty of reason" to argue that reason must be its own final authority, independent of both religious belief and the "fear of religion" that he says drives the huge popularity of naturalistic accounts (hence the title of the essay!)

Nagel criticizes a book by Robert Nozick, The Nature of Rationality, which attempts an evolutionary explanation of reason, similar to what is being discussed here. He cites Nozick’s proposal that reason is a "dependent variable" shaped by evolutionary facts, where reality selects for what seems "evident" to us. Nagel finds this problematic because it suggests that what we find self-evident might only be a contingent adaptation to approximately true facts rather than a grasp of necessary truths. Nagel argues that such an explanation is "necessarily incomplete" because it cannot underwrite our use of reason. He contends that we must be justified in trusting reason "simply in itself" before we can accept any evolutionary story about its origins. '

In other words, when asked to justify a rational proposition, such as 'if all humans are mortal and Socrates is a human, then Socrates is mortal,' then we ought not to have to invoke an external reason (such as evolutionary adaptation) in defence of that justification. There are, says Nagel, 'thoughts we cannot get outside of' - we can't justify them with reference to something else. And the insights of reason are exemplars of such thoughts.

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

I think that is the nub of the debate between Esse and Philosophim.

Presumably, the ground of existence wouldn’t be “spread across time” or “located in the present,” but not temporal in the first place.

So I'd likely agree with you that explanation must terminate in something simple and unconditioned. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, not temporal, since Eternal, and it perhaps has the ultimate lightness of being, as it appears to have to be the simplest possible in order not to be composite. A problem here to be resolved is that how could it be limited to be the smallest - what decided that, as there can be no deciding for the uncaused eternal.

It seems we can also banish 'Stillness', which is kind of a cousin to 'Nothing', since naught could happen if it were completely still; movement has to be.

So far…

Of Necessity: Ground of Existence, Movement, One (as continuous - gaps of 'Nothing' impossible), unconditioned/undesigned, Eternal, Simplest, causeless, energetic, permanent, forms temporaries.

Impossible: 'Nothing', 'Stillness', Composite, 'Designed/Conditioned', Temporal, 'Infinite Regress', 'God', cause, doesn't do anything.

Perhaps further clues to its nature can be found in the temporaries that the Permanent spawns…as if it ever seems to have broken symmetry as it being the perfect instability…

The basic temporaries, such as the elementary 'particles', form in pairs - matter and anti-matter, as well as the positive kinetic energy of stuff countering the negative potential energy of gravity overall, and more.

The base Something appears to be a Sum-thing.

Any more clues?

But my question has been about something slightly different: why incoherence counts as error rather than merely inconvenience, even when nothing practical is at stake.

To put the point as cleanly as I can: suppose a discrete experiencer knowingly affirms a contradiction in a case where there is no survival cost, no practical downside, and no motivational penalty whatsoever. Is the judgment simply impractical, or is it incorrect? — Esse Quam Videri

Fantastic, I think we've explored down to the nub at this point. Again, thank you for your pointed questions and follow ups. Let me pose another question to you: What is the definition of incorrect that can be applied without contradiction? Since the term "incorrect" is a definition, it is formed by a discrete experience, and then must be applied outside of itself without contradiction.

We've defined intelligibility within the context of a discrete experiencer not being contradicted by the application of their discrete experience. Therefor a correct application is one that passes this, while an incorrect application does not.

To put the point as cleanly as I can: suppose a discrete experiencer knowingly affirms a contradiction in a case where there is no survival cost, no practical downside, and no motivational penalty whatsoever. Is the judgment simply impractical, or is it incorrect? — Esse Quam Videri

It is incorrect in terms discrete experience application. The failure state for being incorrect might not be punishing in this particular instance, but the person still did not correctly create applicable knowledge.

But the issue was never whether intelligibility is universally instantiated; it is whether, when intelligibility is operative at all, its norms are contingent products relative to particular forms of life, or universally undeniable constraints built into intelligibility as such. — Esse Quam Videri

We don't have the context of all forms of life to see. We do not have the context of universal experience. We only have the context of us as discrete experiences. And for any discrete experiencer with the intelligence to allow intelligibility, a correct or incorrect application of knowledge would be the same given the knowledge process is followed.

If you are asking if there is some universal apart from the discrete experiencer and contradiction of one's actions by reality, I don't know. Such a question is very like asking if we are a brain in a vat. You can only know what is within the scope of knowledge, not anything outside of it. Perhaps there is some other intelligent life that does not have discrete experiences, but a state unlike we could imagine. Within that state, intelligibility might or might not be possible. Perhaps it is an intelligence that morphs and changes instead of being contradicted by whatever it encounters. Our version of intelligibility would necessarily be different.

We cannot claim a universal apart from context. If we could extend our context out to observe and understand everything, then we could probably establish universal laws. But it would still be within the context of a being that discretely experiences and is looking to not contradict itself.

If we differ there, then I think we’ve probably reached a genuine and irreducible philosophical divide; not about induction, causality, or even necessity in the abstract, but about what reason is and what ultimately obliges assent. I’m happy to leave it there, with much appreciation for the care you’ve brought to the exchange, unless there’s anything further you’d like us to address with respect to these topics. I'm content either way. — Esse Quam Videri

Same. Fantastic conversation. I'm always grateful to have encounters like this where its just about the subject material and both parties are being reasonable. Thank you again for an excellent discussion.

It seems to me that Philosophim's analysis is implicitly Darwinian in character in assuming that the grounds for the faculty of reason is successful adaptation to the environment. — Wayfarer

Not only our environment, but our personal reality. You might be interested in reading the theory for yourself. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1

I believe I also adequately answer this part:

The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Thomas Nagel

But I'll leave you to judge after reading if you think this is the case.

Where do you stand with respect to Kant and Hegel? — Joshs

I would place my position as neither Kantian nor Hegelian, though it takes something from both. Against Kant, I don’t think intelligibility is imposed by fixed, ahistorical subjective forms set over against an unknowable reality; the norms of knowing are discovered in inquiry itself, not legislated in advance. Against Hegel, I’m not convinced that intelligibility can be unconditioned simply by being self-conditioning through dialectical development, since conceptual self-mediation explains how intelligibility unfolds but not why inquiry is answerable to reality rather than merely to its own coherence. Where I differ from both is in locating the issue primarily in the structure of inquiry rather than in the structure of concepts: inquiry is historically conditioned in its unfolding, but it is driven by an unrestricted demand for understanding that implicitly appeals to a standard of sufficiency no merely conditioned or purely self-reflexive process can finally supply from within itself. Intelligibility, on this view, is neither an externally imposed framework nor a closed dialectical system, but something that unfolds in response to reality while always pointing beyond any given set of conditions.

You might be interested in reading the theory for yourself. — Philosophim

It starts with:

Knowledge does not capture the truth, but is a tool to arrive at the most reasonable assessment of reality for survival and desired goals. — Philosophim

Which is the target of Nagel’s criticism. But I guess if you don’t see that, there’s no point repeating it.

Knowledge does not capture the truth, but is a tool to arrive at the most reasonable assessment of reality for survival and desired goals.
— Philosophim

Which is the target of Nagel’s criticism. But I guess if you don’t see that, there’s no point repeating it. — Wayfarer

I acknowledged that already. Not a worry if you're not interested in diving in.

inquiry is historically conditioned in its unfolding, but it is driven by an unrestricted demand for understanding that implicitly appeals to a standard of sufficiency no merely conditioned or purely self-reflexive process can finally supply from within itself. Intelligibility, on this view, is neither an externally imposed framework nor a closed dialectical system, but something that unfolds in response to reality while always pointing beyond any given set of conditions. — Esse Quam Videri

Certain authors come to mind here who may share your view. I’m thinking of Schelling, Peirce, Charles Taylor and John Mcdowell. I don’t know if you’ve read any of them, but a post -Hegelian critique of their work would look something like this:

A residual metaphysics of grounding in your position can be put into question. Despite your rejection of Kantian a priori form and Hegelian closure, you continue to assume that normativity must be underwritten by something more fundamental than the practices in which it is exercised. You suggest that intelligibility’s norms must be explained in order to be binding, that unless non-contradiction, coherence, and explanatory sufficiency are grounded in something non-contingent, their authority becomes inexplicable. But from a Wittgensteinian point of view, norms are not the kind of thing that gain authority by being grounded in something else. Their authority consists in their role within practices of giving and asking for reasons. To ask for a further ground is not to deepen the explanation but to change the subject.

Normative authority isn’t a causal force that needs metaphysical backing; it is a status conferred within a space of reasons. To demand a further metaphysical explanation is to assimilate normativity to the wrong explanatory model, one appropriate to causes, not commitments. Chess rules are binding even when nothing practical is at stake; their bindingness does not require an ontological ground beyond the practice of chess. Anything that purports to ground the norms of intelligibility would already have to be articulated and assessed under those very norms. The grounding project therefore generates an infinite regress or a pseudo-foundation.

Unrestricted intelligibility isn’t a coherent ideal. The demand that intelligibility be grounded “without remainder” is not simply reason being faithful to itself; it is reason overreaching its own conditions. Finitude isn’t a defect to be compensated for by grounding, but a constitutive feature of understanding. For instance, Robert Brandom argues that the force of norms like non-contradiction arises from their role in inferential articulation. To contradict oneself is not to violate a metaphysical law but to undermine one’s own standing as a reason-giver. That is a genuine error, not a mere inconvenience, but its seriousness is pragmatic in the space of reasons, not metaphysical in the space of being. The normativity is real, but it doesn’t point beyond itself to a necessary existent; it points sideways, to the social and inferential structure of discursive commitment. What drops out isn’t truth, but the idea that truth needs a metaphysical guarantor.

Transcendental reflection can clarify what we are committed to when we reason; it cannot deliver an account of what must exist in order for those commitments to be valid. From this vantage, your appeal to necessary existence is unnecessary.

- I've been enjoying our exchange very much, so let's continue on. By the way, I do try to tie this back to the question of grounding and necessity at the end, but if you think that my reply here will take us too far afield then just let me know and we can move our discussion to a separate thread.

We've defined intelligibility within the context of a discrete experiencer not being contradicted by the application of their discrete experience. Therefor a correct application is one that passes this, while an incorrect application does not.

It is incorrect in terms discrete experience application. The failure state for being incorrect might not be punishing in this particular instance, but the person still did not correctly create applicable knowledge. — Philosophim

My sense is that, given all that you’ve said so far, you would be willing to say that normativity is reducible to instrumental success. Assuming this is an accurate portrayal of your position, the consequence is that it places a substantive restriction on what your theory can accomplish. Specifically, it cannot now function as a standpoint from which to make claims about the structure of inquiry as it really is. This, in turn, has the effect of deflating its normative authority over competing epistemological theories, even those that make use of thicker accounts of normativity, truth and grounding. Once this deflation is acknowledged, the disagreement between us is no longer about which theory is true in a thick sense, but only about which stance one is prepared to adopt relative to their own internal criteria of success.

If you are asking if there is some universal apart from the discrete experiencer and contradiction of one's actions by reality, I don't know. Such a question is very like asking if we are a brain in a vat. You can only know what is within the scope of knowledge, not anything outside of it. — Philosophim

I take your point, but here's my difficulty: that very claim - “you can only know what is within the scope of knowledge, not anything outside of it” - presents itself as unscoped with respect to any particular context. When you say we cannot know anything apart from the scope of discrete experiencers, you’re (presumably) not offering that as one more application that might be contradicted tomorrow, but as a reflective insight into the intrinsic structure of knowledge as such; one that you expect me to grasp as unconditionally valid, not merely as your particular contextual commitment. If I asked "could that claim be contradicted by reality?" I don't think you'd say "perhaps, let's wait and see." You'd say something like: "No, because any contradiction would itself presuppose discrete experience, so the point stands necessarily."

But if that's right, then you're already operating in a register your framework doesn't officially acknowledge; what is typically called transcendental reflection, or reflection on the conditions that make any knowledge possible at all. And once that register is admitted, the question becomes whether other transcendental claims might be equally legitimate, thereby dropping us back into our discussion of grounding and necessity.

Transcendental reflection can clarify what we are committed to when we reason; it cannot deliver an account of what must exist in order for those commitments to be valid. From this vantage, your appeal to necessary existence is unnecessary. — Joshs

Yes, I was waiting for you to say something like this. But the clarification transcendental reflection can give must be cast in terms that stand outside of the contextual limits of meaning making. How is this explained? As i see it, one then has to move into talk about intuitions, intimations of a nature that is not "reasons given" but something else, something "behind" rules, notwithstanding that the term 'behind' is itself rule bound. When I examine causality as such, I am first, prior to even knowing the term, forced to yield to something that is insistent absolutely, even though the language used to say this can taken up into contextualizations in which doubt occurs. In others words, doesn't language, when analytically brought to bear on its own nature and limitations in the world, have to yield to something that is simply NOT language at all, and if this is allowed, then the delimitations you refer to above, which I take to be essentially a denial of what I will call "linguistic absolutes" entering into explanations, "absolutes" that can be tossed about freely in doubt and suspicion simply because they ARE language, and language possesses nothing stand alone, nothing that stands as its own as its own presupposition, as Kierkegaard put it, these delimitations face a ground for acceptance and denial that is not contingent, for it is not realized IN conditions in which it can be gainsaid.

So when you talk about truth needing a metaphysical guarantor, I am suggesting that there is something oddly Kantian about truths as propositional structure. After all, the ground of reason as reason is first something given prior to its being called reason, and prior to all of this talk about inferences, entailment, soundness, validity, and so on.

You [Esse Quam Videri] suggest that intelligibility’s norms must be explained in order to be binding, that unless non-contradiction, coherence, and explanatory sufficiency are grounded in something non-contingent, their authority becomes inexplicable. But from a Wittgensteinian point of view, norms are not the kind of thing that gain authority by being grounded in something else. Their authority consists in their role within practices of giving and asking for reasons. To ask for a further ground is not to deepen the explanation but to change the subject.

Normative authority isn’t a causal force that needs metaphysical backing; it is a status conferred within a space of reasons. To demand a further metaphysical explanation is to assimilate normativity to the wrong explanatory model, one appropriate to causes, not commitments. Chess rules are binding even when nothing practical is at stake; their bindingness does not require an ontological ground beyond the practice of chess. Anything that purports to ground the norms of intelligibility would already have to be articulated and assessed under those very norms. The grounding project therefore generates an infinite regress or a pseudo-foundation.

Unrestricted intelligibility isn’t a coherent ideal. The demand that intelligibility be grounded “without remainder” is not simply reason being faithful to itself; it is reason overreaching its own conditions. Finitude isn’t a defect to be compensated for by grounding, but a constitutive feature of understanding. For instance, Robert Brandom argues that the force of norms like non-contradiction arises from their role in inferential articulation. To contradict oneself is not to violate a metaphysical law but to undermine one’s own standing as a reason-giver. That is a genuine error, not a mere inconvenience, but its seriousness is pragmatic in the space of reasons, not metaphysical in the space of being. The normativity is real, but it doesn’t point beyond itself to a necessary existent; it points sideways, to the social and inferential structure of discursive commitment. What drops out isn’t truth, but the idea that truth needs a metaphysical guarantor.

Transcendental reflection can clarify what we are committed to when we reason; it cannot deliver an account of what must exist in order for those commitments to be valid. From this vantage, your [Esse Quam Videri's] appeal to necessary existence is unnecessary. — Joshs

:100: Excellent! I've never agreed with you more, sir.

A residual metaphysics of grounding in your position can be put into question. Despite your rejection of Kantian a priori form and Hegelian closure, you continue to assume that normativity must be underwritten by something more fundamental than the practices in which it is exercised. You suggest that intelligibility’s norms must be explained in order to be binding, that unless non-contradiction, coherence, and explanatory sufficiency are grounded in something non-contingent, their authority becomes inexplicable. But from a Wittgensteinian point of view, norms are not the kind of thing that gain authority by being grounded in something else. Their authority consists in their role within practices of giving and asking for reasons. To ask for a further ground is not to deepen the explanation but to change the subject. — Joshs

I agree that norms don’t gain their authority by being “grounded” in something else in the way empirical claims are justified. I’m not suggesting that non-contradiction or explanatory sufficiency need an external metaphysical backing in order to be binding. My question is different: what are we already committed to when we treat these norms as binding rather than merely operative within a practice?

Practices of giving and asking for reasons don’t just apply norms; they also criticize explanations as inadequate, confused, or insufficient. That critical stance presupposes that norms function as standards by which practices themselves can be assessed, not merely as habits internal to them. My worry is that if normativity is exhausted by practice-description alone, it becomes unclear how this critical dimension (distinguishing genuine understanding from merely stabilized discourse) remains intelligible rather than merely procedural.

So the issue isn’t whether norms need a further ground to have authority, but whether a practice-only account fully explains why inquiry continues to treat sufficiency and adequacy as more than local conventions.

Normative authority isn’t a causal force that needs metaphysical backing; it is a status conferred within a space of reasons. To demand a further metaphysical explanation is to assimilate normativity to the wrong explanatory model, one appropriate to causes, not commitments. Chess rules are binding even when nothing practical is at stake; their bindingness does not require an ontological ground beyond the practice of chess. Anything that purports to ground the norms of intelligibility would already have to be articulated and assessed under those very norms. The grounding project therefore generates an infinite regress or a pseudo-foundation. — Joshs

I agree that normative authority is not a causal force and does not need metaphysical “backing” in the way explanations of events do. I also agree that any attempt to ground norms would already presuppose those norms, and that a foundational grounding project would either regress or collapse into pseudo-foundation. That’s not what I’m trying to do.

Where I think we still diverge is on whether a practice-only account fully captures the scope of normative authority involved in inquiry. Chess rules are binding conditionally—if one is playing chess. By contrast, the norms of intelligibility do not present themselves as optional in that way. Even critiques that historicize, deconstruct, or pragmatize reason rely on coherence, non-contradiction, and sufficiency as standards that cannot simply be suspended while inquiry continues.

My question is not what grounds these norms, but why inquiry treats them as unavoidable once questioning is underway. That reflective question is not an attempt to step outside the space of reasons or assimilate normativity to causality; it is inquiry turning back on the commitments it finds itself unable to disavow without self-defeat. If normativity is exhausted by practice-description alone, it’s not clear how this non-optional, critical dimension of inquiry is anything more than a contingent feature of a particular language game.

Unrestricted intelligibility isn’t a coherent ideal. The demand that intelligibility be grounded “without remainder” is not simply reason being faithful to itself; it is reason overreaching its own conditions. Finitude isn’t a defect to be compensated for by grounding, but a constitutive feature of understanding. For instance, Robert Brandom argues that the force of norms like non-contradiction arises from their role in inferential articulation. To contradict oneself is not to violate a metaphysical law but to undermine one’s own standing as a reason-giver. That is a genuine error, not a mere inconvenience, but its seriousness is pragmatic in the space of reasons, not metaphysical in the space of being. The normativity is real, but it doesn’t point beyond itself to a necessary existent; it points sideways, to the social and inferential structure of discursive commitment. What drops out isn’t truth, but the idea that truth needs a metaphysical guarantor.

Transcendental reflection can clarify what we are committed to when we reason; it cannot deliver an account of what must exist in order for those commitments to be valid. From this vantage, your appeal to necessary existence is unnecessary. — Joshs

I agree that finitude is constitutive of understanding and not a defect to be overcome, and I’m not committed to an ideal of exhaustive or remainder-free intelligibility. By “unrestricted,” I mean only that inquiry does not acknowledge a principled boundary beyond which further questioning is illegitimate; not that it ever achieves total understanding.

I also agree with Brandom that norms like non-contradiction function through inferential articulation, and that contradiction undermines one’s standing as a reason-giver. What I’m less convinced by is that this exhausts the normativity involved in inquiry. Inferential role can explain how commitments and entitlements are tracked within the space of reasons, but it does not by itself explain why inquiry is answerable to truth rather than merely to discursive propriety or mutual score-keeping.

The fact that we can criticize entire practices, communities, or inferential frameworks as mistaken suggests that correctness outruns social endorsement, even ideally regulated endorsement. That “beyond” need not be a metaphysical guarantor in any crude sense, but it does mean that intelligibility cannot be fully accounted for by sideways reference to practice alone.

In that light, my appeal to necessary existence isn’t meant as an extra metaphysical posit, but as a way of naming the fact that inquiry treats intelligibility as finally answerable to what is the case, not merely to the conditions under which reasons are exchanged. If that orientation is illusory, then truth itself becomes internal to practice; if it isn’t, then intelligibility points beyond practice, even while being exercised within it.

doesn't language, when analytically brought to bear on its own nature and limitations in the world, have to yield to something that is simply NOT language at all, and if this is allowed, then the delimitations you refer to above, which I take to be essentially a denial of what I will call "linguistic absolutes" entering into explanations, "absolutes" that can be tossed about freely in doubt and suspicion simply because they ARE language, and language possesses nothing stand alone, nothing that stands as its own as its own presupposition, as Kierkegaard put it, these delimitations face a ground for acceptance and denial that is not contingent, for it is not realized IN conditions in which it can be gainsaid — Constance

I see a number of issues wording their way through here. There is the issue of the pre-propositional and pre-reflective, which Henry formulates as immanent self-affecting. And the. there is the question of ether language has to be understood in terms of a space of reasons based on the logic of predicational grammar. In responding to Esse Quam Videri, I offered a non-foundational grounding of intelligibility that I thought he might related to better than introducing phenomenological language. My own preference is to move in the direction of Wittgenstein and Husserl in bracketing and reducing propositional truth.

Not how I would have phrased it, but your diagnosis of the problem here is spot on.

@Esse Quam Videri's account amounts to the argument that discourse requirers words.

The topic has moved from that there exists a necessary being to that discourse presupposes a world-structure in which claims can be true or false.

@Wayfarer, the issue is much the same as in 's Absolute Presuppositions of Science thread, in that it confuses the domain of discourse with the language being applied.

Davidson might point out that a discussion already supposes a shared world within which agreement is the constant that permits interpretation.

Something I've gone to write in this thread, but haven't, is that the very wording of 'necessary things' is a problem to begin with. In my understanding, things must always be contingent, as they are compounded and temporally bound. In the classical tradition, this is why the ideas (forms, principles, eidos) were said to possess a higher degree of reality than 'things'. Here in a secular context, the traditional understanding is deprecated, but it might be worth recalling what exactly has been deprecated.

That characterization is neither an accurate representation of the argument I'm making, nor an apt framing of the state of the discussion in general.

I've been enjoying our exchange very much, so let's continue on. — Esse Quam Videri

I as well! Continue as long or as little as you want.

My sense is that, given all that you’ve said so far, you would be willing to say that normativity is reducible to instrumental success. Assuming this is an accurate portrayal of your position, the consequence is that it places a substantive restriction on what your theory can accomplish. Specifically, it cannot now function as a standpoint from which to make claims about the structure of inquiry as it really is. — Esse Quam Videri

I don't think its simply about instrumental success. What if I told you this knowledge theory shows the structure of inquiry as it really is? Recall that in the beginning there is one thing that we could absolutely know, and that is discrete experience. Only you can experience discrete experience. Its the one thing that there is nothing behind it as it really is. Discrete experience, as you experience, is truth. To be clear, not our interpretations of it. Not our application of it. The experience itself is 'what is'.

The nature of inquiry is to take a discrete experiencer and try to see if we can discover the truth of something. We are able to conclude the truth of our own discrete experience. But can we know if there is truth outside of our immediate experience? Or is it that we interpret our discrete experience in a way that allows us to accurately capture the world?

Logically and by application, we can never know anything 'behind' discrete experience Can we ever know what a rock on the ground is apart from our discrete experience of it? No. Does that mean the rock doesn't exist if we don't discretely experience it? No to this as well. We know there are things beyond our will to discretely experience, because despite the desire for our interpretations to hold or to apply, we keep having something that interferes with them called contradictions. If that rock hits me in the back without me first being aware of it, it will still harm my body. Do we know what that is in itself? We can't. Just like I can't know what its like for you in particular to discretely experience in itself. Nothing can. Only you can.

But can this theory of knowledge make claims about the discrete experience as it is in itself? Yes. In fact, it has to. Knowledge as a whole cannot be gained without first having a discrete experience of something like an experience, feeling, or identity. That is what it is in itself. And inquiry simply is taking our discrete experiences and seeing if its application or interpretation is contradicted by something outside of itself. It explains all the fundamentals. There is not any need for anything more, as there is nothing that can be gleaned from outside of the context of a discrete experiencer.

This, in turn, has the effect of deflating its normative authority over competing epistemological theories, even those that make use of thicker accounts of normativity, truth and grounding. — Esse Quam Videri

Since the theory is laid on the foundation of an actual truth, your personal discrete experience, its actually the strongest theory of knowledge that I know of. There is an epistemological ground, the 'assumption' that one can start with, and prove without contradiction or circularity. Feel free to post any theory of knowledge you wish, and I'll almost certainly be able to point out its fatal flaw. I won't say this one is 'the' theory, but it is a vast improvement over all other theories of knowledge and should be a standard comparative measure upon which new theories are founded.

The idea that there are limits in knowledge is not a criticism against it, only a note that we should be aware of those limits and not attempt to assert what we cannot. Knowledge is a tool, and all tools have effective, ineffective, and limited use. Lets go back to probability for a second. Every good induction is a prediction of the unknown with as much basis on what is known as possible. To know the probability of a coin landing heads or tails, you need to know what a coin is, a flip, and what each side is. What we know, is that we can not know what the forces of each flip will be to predict the landing. That knowledge of limitations allows us to create a probability that, given enough flips over time, is remarkably accurate.

It is not that my knowledge theory has no answer to 'what is something in itself'. The answer is we can only know a discrete experience in itself. Logically then, we can not know something outside of the ability to discretely experience. It is both a logical and applicable assertion. Try not to discretely experience and know some (a/one) 'thing'. See the contradiction?

When you say we cannot know anything apart from the scope of discrete experiencers, you’re (presumably) not offering that as one more application that might be contradicted tomorrow, but as a reflective insight into the intrinsic structure of knowledge as such; one that you expect me to grasp as unconditionally valid, not merely as your particular contextual commitment. — Esse Quam Videri

Correct. Do you see above as a discrete experiencer why that is now?

But if that's right, then you're already operating in a register your framework doesn't officially acknowledge; what is typically called transcendental reflection, or reflection on the conditions that make any knowledge possible at all. — Esse Quam Videri

I think the knowledge framework allows reflection on itself perfectly. But please, feel free to disagree and point out if I'm missing something.

That characterization is neither an accurate representation of the argument I'm making, nor an apt framing of the state of the discussion in general. — Esse Quam Videri

Ok. Yet that is how your argument appears.

In my , I showed that requiring an individual to exist in all worlds is a stipulated metaphysical condition, not a logical or semantic consequence.

I take that as pretty much setting the OP.

There is a different question, concerning intelligibility, that you raised. It appears that you are making some sort of transcendental argument, along the lines that we have an ongoing discourse; that the only way in which we could have an ongoing discourse is if the world is intelligible; and that therefore intelligibility is necessary.

The following appears to be making exactly that argument:

In that light, my appeal to necessary existence isn’t meant as an extra metaphysical posit, but as a way of naming the fact that inquiry treats intelligibility as finally answerable to what is the case, not merely to the conditions under which reasons are exchanged. If that orientation is illusory, then truth itself becomes internal to practice; if it isn’t, then intelligibility points beyond practice, even while being exercised within it. — Esse Quam Videri

Being intelligible is not a feature of the world as such, but of our practices within the world. That's the point makes.

Interpretation depends on some sort of triangulation involving the speaker, the interpreter and a shared world against which the interpretation occurs. That shared world is a part of the practice and amounts to what is the case - what is true.

Perhaps this shows that there isn't any real tension between you and @Joshs. We should however recognise that talking of intelligibility in terms of necessity and existence risks conflating two very different language games, one concerns the semantic and pragmatic conditions for discourse (the shared world, interpretation, triangulation); the other concerns ontological or metaphysical necessity (existence in all possible worlds).

↪Banno Something I've gone to write in this thread, but haven't, is that the very wording of 'necessary things' is a problem to begin with. In my understanding, things must always be contingent, as they are compounded and temporally bound. In the classical tradition, this is why the ideas (forms, principles, eidos) were said to possess a higher degree of reality than 'things'. Here in a secular context, the traditional understanding is deprecated, but it might be worth recalling what exactly has been deprecated. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I think I agree. the problem is common to the two threads. I can express it most clearly, at least for me, in terms of the difference between the formation rules and the domain of discourse in a formal language. In natural language that'd be the same as distinguishing what we say from how we say it. In Wittgenstein's language it might be the difference between playing the game and setting up the rules.

The problem is how we might deal with treating the formation rules as a part of the domain; treating how we talk as what we are talking about; mistaking putting the pieces on the board for playing the game.

You will recall the game I sometimes try to play in which players take turns to make up a new rule. That's a joke on the same theme. Playing the game involves changing the way the game is played.

And the answer, it seems to me, is that we are always playing the game, that putting the pieces on the board is as much a part of the game as is moving the pawn two squares forward.

@Esse Quam Videri would have us seperate out, as a preliminary, a prior, that the world is necessarily intelligible, before we can start to talk about the world. But does it work that way, or is part of talking about the world making it intelligible?

In view of your concise commentary of Meillasoux, what is mapped out in the extent of the formal representation is a semantic statement of itself carrying forward the notion of dialectical motion when in modal logic, that which is contained in evolution of extant terms within dialectical text, typically those that posit new terms bourne of precedence. This could lend itself to obscure practices of the production of academic text, as much as more widely studied figures whose rendering of theories perplexes the reader with new modes of linguistic gymnastics in prose as confounding as or as edifying as the literary style of fiction writers skilled in scene setting and for the perplexed reader the art of model building in verbal structures in unfolding text.

As a matter of fact, I agree that the world (the sensory domain) is intelligible in some fundamental sense. In the classical tradition, the 'necessary being' was always held to be God (even in Aristotle, before the absorption of Greek philosophy into theology). With the abandonment of classical theism, much of the dialogue, on the contrary, seems implicitly shaped by the requirement to avoid anything of the kind. Now, I'm certainly not here to evangalise 'belief in God' - but I feel some sense of the 'unconditioned ground of being' is necessary. I suppose that is an acknowledgement of what Sartre called the 'god-shaped hole'. The underlying factor is the loss of formal and final causation, which is the proper domain of logical necessity. But important to understand this doesn't posit 'a being' or even 'a God'. Much more in line with Tillich's 'beyond existence'.

I agree that the world (the sensory domain) is intelligible in some fundamental sense. — Wayfarer

Well, it's not unintelligible...

Let's set out a plausible argument so that we have it out were we can see it and talk about it.

1. The world is intelligible.
2. Hence something made it intelligible
3. And this we all call...

Now we agree as to (1), and I think we agree that (3) doesn't follow.

What of (2)? Why should we think of intelligibility as in need of explanation?

I don’t think intelligibility is the sort of thing that calls for explanation in the way empirical relations do. The intelligible relations within the world can be explained, but intelligibility as such is a condition of there being anything to explain at all. So the 'something' (italicized) in (2) is a problem because it is attempting to flatten the hierarchy of explanations, to put the explanans on the same level as the explanandum.

Actually, thinking further about that, one of the reasons this seems so inscrutable, is that reason itself is not visible, so to speak. It is another instance of the 'reflexive problem of consciousness' - the mind can't see itself reason. But that's precisely why reason is 'transcendental' in the Kantian sense. Hence also subject to the implicit animus towards 'the transcendental'.

I don’t think intelligibility is the sort of thing that calls for explanation in the way empirical relations do. — Wayfarer

Yep!

Good response.

And this is why, going back to the thread, answering "Is there anything that exists necessarily?" with "Yes - intelligibility" is disoriented.

The something in (2) is not a thing.

Thanks for the chat - it helped my articulate what we troubling me about the posts hereabouts.

I'll take some issue with

the mind can't see itself reason — Wayfarer

In so far as the mind is singular that might be so; but at least a part of discourse is one mind seeing the reasoning of another.

The transcendental answer to "Why are things so-and-so?" is "In order for things to be so-and-so, it must be the case that such-and-such".

The Wittgensteinian answer is more "Because that's how we do it"

Right, I could probably go along with that, provided we maintain the appropriate sense of wonderment ;-)