Treatise III - on God as a Semantic Problem

III. KNOWLEDGE, LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

It’s no coincidence that the root meaning of the word “logos” in Greek is “word”. Logic derives from words and its essence lies in the syntax that forms the logical consistency of a language as a system of intersignificance. We have already observed the individual qualities of things as word/signs: the three-tiered qualities of positive things (the primary quality of space-time, the secondary qualities of form, multiplicity and causality, and the tertiary qualities of substance and significance), the four qualities of transubstantials (typification, causality, relativity of significance, antitheticality), and the extraordinary qualities of negative things (immaterial thingness, mystery, goodness, and original causality) which gauge our interest the most and which we will be studying with more depth as we proceed through this exploration of the roots of knowledge. Now it’s time to see how these individual types of word/signs interact within the system of intersignification to produce what we call knowledge.

First let’s take a look at the five principles of knowledge. Spatio-temporality: We know that all things have some sort of spatio-temporal dimension. For positive things it’s implied in its substance, and implicit in its substantiality (even though this is a tertiary property when it comes to our understanding of a positive thing, which we looked at earlier). For transubstantials, since they represent and symbolize certain types of interactions and relationships between positive things, they too can only exist for our understanding and use through the premise of their having a spatio-temporal dimension (albeit an indirect one). As for negative things, we saw that their peculiar form of spatio-temporality rested precisely on the necessary absence of one which an imaginary (negative) word/sign had to fill in, albeit in accordance with its concomitant property of mystery. In other words, it is precisely the lack of spatio-temporality in a positive sense which necessitates the creation of these peculiar word/signs and furthermore the attribution to them of some form of “mysterious spatio-temporality”. Causality: We’ve gone into this enough already, and considering causality is a common quality of all three categories of word/signs (although with the slight variation of “original causality” with negative things), there’s no point in going over it again. Suffice it to say that causality is what makes a thing recognizable to us and thus consistent to our understanding. Consistency: This quality is implied in individual word/signs as part of the quality of causality, but when it comes to complex interactions of word/signs in the system of intersignification, we will see that it becomes important to distinguish this quality from causality, even though it’s fundamentally intertwined with it. In any case, when it comes to things, it’s our experiencing a thing more than once, and indeed many times, that enables us to recognize it, but furthermore, once having recognized it, it’s our ability to see that that thing is apparent to us in consistently perceived circumstances and with consistency of secondary formal qualities that we are able to make it a known thing. Unless I consistently witnessed and expected to see sand when I was on the seashore, I would be perplexed every time I saw sand on the seashore. Obviously the difference is not enough from the qualities already explained by causality when it comes to particular things as word/signs, but we’ll see the difference is greater when it comes to data or complex facts for the sake of forming knowledge, at least great enough for us to establish it as an independent principle.(27) Again, when it comes to negative things, there may be no perceived empirical consistency, but a certain consistency is implied in the “original causation” of a negative thing. Since a negative thing (Soul, God, Spirit) lies at the origin of the world of causation as a part of the original causation from which sprung the world of causation (supposedly), then a certain consistency is implied in negative things by the very nature of their being founded in divine (or pre-causal) origins which must have a constant quality to them, seeing as they are more primordial than the world of causality which is subject to change, flux and impermanence, etc. Typality: All things, as we have shown, are also types of things, and must necessarily be so for them to become identifiable and utilizable word/signs, as symbols, as representations of individual things, and to be known at all. This has already been made sufficiently apparent. Signification: The whole section on word/signs concerned the way things become known to us as word/signs and thus gain significance within a system of intersignification through which knowledge is made possible as fact. Now it’s time to look at how knowledge – complex knowledge as an intersignification of word/signs – is made possible.

Propositions
Although we have observed that word/signs are the atomic building blocks of the system of intersignification – language – propositions are what result from the intersignifying word/signs to become the atomic building blocks of knowledge. In fact, propositions are also the building blocks of word/signs themselves. For example, “Red” would mean nothing and would remain unknowable unless I could state the proposition “Red is not blue, or yellow, or any other color”, or if I could add to it “red is the color of this rose”, and further, if I have enough data at hand, “red is how we perceive the longest (least frequent) waves of light that reach our eyes in quanta called photons.” How could “red” then be an atomic building block of knowledge when it can only be known first by way of propositions. This not to say that we don’t know red when we see it and give it some arbitrary name “red”. It means that if we are to establish “red” as knowledge, to intersignify it and to use it for knowledge, the proposition must precede (or at least be synchronous) with the word/sign. Hence, propositions have a meaning of their own, and in fact each sentence that we use is actually a monad of knowledge composed of word/signs that are themselves dependent on other propositions for the sake of their existence – or their “standing out.” As we saw with the formula for the positive existence of things ([a = x – a] and [– a = – x + a]), a thing is only a “thing” as a word/sign that is differentiated (and differentiate-able) from other “things” as word/signs. Anything that does not exist (stand out) as word/sign can not be spoken of, and thus cannot be known. So to create the word/sign we must begin with at least one proposition: That a is not not-a, which is precisely what the formula for the positive (and negative) existence of things is: a proposition. Without that proposition we would not be able to speak of anything, to intersignify it and use it to create language, and thus be able to have any foundation for knowledge. We would be, in a word, animals. So what came first, the word/sign or the proposition? The “word” probably came first, but, and this is a big but, before it was abstracted, and thus before it was a word/sign, when it was merely a vocal response to an observed thing. How do we know this? By the arbitrary nature of word/signs which indicate the pre-signified origin of these words. What this means is that there is no meaning or reason or rationale as to why a certain thing is called by a certain name or a certain sound. Hence, the color “red” is referred to as “kyzyl” in Turkic languages, and different way in every other language on earth. This is because the initial sound uttered by our ancestors was obviously an arbitrary one that just proceeded to be used consistently every time that particular color was seen and referred to, eventually evolving into a distinct abstract word/sign based on that initial arbitrary sound/name. Thus words would have originated in the stages of human evolution when we were as yet still not human (i.e. Homo Sapiens Sapiens). For the origins of our words were no different and no less arbitrary than the sounds monkeys use to indicate “terrestrial danger” or “airborne danger” etc. So originally, before we “knew” anything or had any language to speak of, there would have existed “words” but not word/signs, not abstract concepts and ideal representations, but mere stimulus-response sounds. The breakthrough would have come with the evolution of human skills in manipulating the environment and creating composite tools so that applying abstract concepts to things would have become crucial. Other words would have developed too from original, basic ones. For example, the first words for “fire” and “red” and “burn” and “cook” and “danger” were probably alterations of a common sound, which may have had something to do with a certain initial experience that united them all (and that experience would have differed for separate human communities, hence the existence of different languages and different word/signs to describe the same things). When humans had the need and were able to create things like tools or knives or spears, they would have also had the need to plan things in advance, since a stick had to be found, a vine had to be found and a good stone had to be chipped by another stone, and the stone had to be tied to the stick to create a spear. Thus, referring to something that wasn’t already observably there would have been impossible before it had an abstract name as a word/sign that could be used and understood by other humans without it actually being present. You couldn’t say “fetch a vine” to someone, or “I will fetch a stick”, if they didn’t know what that sound for “vine” or “stick” represented except as an abstract word/sign that could only mean “vine” or “stick”. This was probably (very crudely and clumsily speaking) the origin of the first sentences, when humans had to be able to speak of things that were not there so they could plan for their future needs. Thus it’s only with such propositions that words would have become abstracted and identified as word/signs, because “spear” would have meant nothing in itself unless it was already some sort of crude proposition that implied “tying” “sharpened rock” “on” “stick” “with” “vine”. And so the first sentence probably emerged around the time of the development of the first composite artifacts of humans, and it would only have been possible by the evolution of words into actual abstracted word/signs. So we see that when it comes to knowledge and language, propositions are actually the main atomic data that form this and which actually give word/signs themselves meaning and recognition for our understanding. But we’ve strayed enough as it is, now let’s look at the three different types of propositions: apodictic, synthetic and negative-synthetic.

Apodictic propositions
Let’s begin with a simple example of a complex monad of knowledge:

“A wheel is round.”

Now let’s apply our five principles to this datum:
Spatio-temporality: A wheel is a thing.
Causality: Roundness is the principal quality, and thus the principal causes of wheel.
Consistency: Wheels always have the quality of roundness.
Typality: All wheels are round.
Signification: It is thus a “round wheel” as recognizable fact.

Thus we know that “a wheel is round.” This is a sound datum, and thus a fact. We have no problem with it. So why is this an apodictic fact? Because it is self-evident. Why is it self-evident? Because the predicate is already implied in the subject. In other words, the essential quality that defines a thing as a “wheel” is its roundness. Therefore, simply by saying “a wheel is round” we are really only extrapolating a quality that is already inherent in “wheel.” If I were to only say “wheel” you would unconsciously assume it is round as soon as you heard the word. Therefore apodictic facts are not of the greatest importance when it comes to knowledge. They are only important if it becomes necessary (for some reason) that a certain latent and granted quality of a thing be made a conscious fact for the sake of making a certain point (i.e. sarcasm, or wit for edification purposes, etc.).

Now what happens if we say something else:

“A wheel has spokes.”

Spatio-temporality: A wheel with spokes is a thing.
Causality: Having spokes is a possible quality, but not a principal cause of wheel.
Consistency: Wheels don’t always have spokes.
Typality: Not all wheels have spokes.
Signification: We do not have sufficient knowledge to establish “wheel with spokes” as recognizable fact.

We see from the above that we have a problem with this particular datum. The datum at hand is false because a wheel doesn’t always have spokes, nor is it only wheels that have spokes – ladders can also have spokes as rungs. Thus this datum is not apodictic (self-evident) since we need to bring in some added quality or clause to modify the datum and make it knowable, and thus a fact. Then we can say instead of the above:

“A wheel may have spokes.”

Spatio-temporality: A wheel (with spokes) is a thing.
Causality: The possibility of having spokes is sufficient cause for us to assume it’s a wheel (though not completely).
Consistency: Wheels always may have spokes.
Typality: There are many wheels that have spokes.
Signification: We have sufficient knowledge to establish “wheel, possibly with spokes” as recognizable fact.

Here we find that “spokes” is not a strong enough quality of “wheel” – is not a universally applicable quality to all wheels – to make the fact of “A wheel has spokes” acceptable to us. It needed a modification so as to satisfy the latter four principles of causality, consistency, typality and signification. Thus this particular arrangement of word/signs is made “logical” because this particular order of intersignification (or proposition) remains true to the qualities signified by the individual word/signs in association with each other. As we saw in the diagram of types (a = x – (tn – a), etc.), things become known and signified as word/signs by their being differentiated from other things, a process that would be excruciatingly lugubrious without the quality of typality so that we can immediately recognize a word within its narrowest typical context. Thus we immediately recognize “A” meaning one, or any, or all, and NOT a particular one which would be signified with “The” or a certain quantity that would be signified with a number; “wheel” we know is an instrument that facilitates transport, is round, and has a use as part of some kind of transporting carriage – we know it is NOT a square shape, we know it is not a “wing”; “may” indicates a particular causal relationship between two or more word/signs that signifies that there is a possibility of a certain quality being made known to us, but since it is what it isn’t within its narrowest type, it is clearly understood by us as NOT meaning “will”, “must”, etc. and thus NOT signifying what we think of as “certainty” but instead “possibility.” “Have” signifies the quality of possession of certain qualities which we immediately recognize as NOT being “lack” of possession of qualities. And “spokes” are recognized as being particular attributes often associated with wheels (rather than ladders) and NOT being any other of the things used to make wheels (although it can further be narrowed down to “metal spokes” or “wooden spokes”).

What we see then is that logic is something inherent in language and can only be found in language. It lies in the significance that we have come to accept in things as represented and made known to ourselves as word/signs, and those word/signs are known to interact in certain ways and represented in those certain ways of interaction through the system of intersignifance which aligns, orders and represents knowledge through syntax. A proposition or event then becomes logical to us, and therefore known, by the way it becomes manifested within a certain syntactical ordering of word/signs in which those word/signs are intersignified in a way that is consistent with their own qualities, but also with unique qualities that result from the intersignification itself. In other words, a syntactically logical datum of knowledge – or fact – isn’t simply the sum or addition of the individual qualities of the word/signs that compose it, but is a new, unique thing with its own qualities that are independent of the individual qualities of the word/signs that create it. For example, “space” and “shuttle” make up a new word/sign “space shuttle” which has a significance independent of the two word/signs that form it. So too with individual data: “My horse is grey” becomes a fact independent of the individual qualities of the individual word/signs that make it. It conveys a separate, independent idea that emerges in our head and becomes a separate fact, but only because it is syntactically logical. If I were to use the same word/signs in a different order than that, the same meaning would not emerge: “Grey horse my is” is unrecognizable to us, and as soon as we see it we set to the task of trying to reorder the word/signs in a way that they will convey a syntactically logical ordering of intersignificance that will create an independent and self-sufficient monad of knowledge. Even though each of the word/signs are immediately recognizable in themselves, the right syntactic ordering is the only thing that can make their intersignification logical to us in a particular sentence, which is really just a monad of knowledge.

Synthetic propositions
Then there are the types of knowledge where the predicate is not evident in the nature of the subject, but has to be verified through experience to be made knowable and to satisfy the five principles of knowledge. For example:

“Pet owners are lonely assholes.”

Spatio-temporality: “Pet owners” and “lonely assholes” refer to things.
Causality: “Owning a pet causes one to be a lonely asshole” or “being a lonely asshole may cause pet ownership”, but we’re not sure which (even though we think the latter more likely). The causality is obscure.
Consistency: Pet owners are not always lonely assholes – or at least we can’t be sure they are. So no consistency.
Typality: We assume there are pet owners who are lonely assholes. But again, we don’t know for sure, so the typality remains unsatisfactory.
Signification: We do not have sufficient knowledge to establish “pet owners are lonely assholes” as recognizable fact in the system of intersignification.

Conclusion: The proposition “pet owners are lonely assholes” is not satisfactory knowledge, and thus not a fact, at least as far as we can know. Therefore, this particular proposition can only remain a matter of judgment or opinion, not universal fact. Put simply, the proposition is not “logical” as fact, only logical as opinion because there is possibility of truth but no sufficient proof of it. We can understand how this factor is crucial for scientific knowledge to be possible, but a lot of our everyday knowledge relies on no such proof. It relies instead on belief – or rather, on a will-to-believe. This means that we can and do accept knowledge that does not rely on first-hand empirical experience or observation of truth, by virtue of this will-to-believe. For logic to work in the system of intersignification, this seems sufficient for us in ascertaining that we know something. Thus when we say “spiders have eight legs” we observe this to be true. The fact is consistent with our sensory experience. But when we say “the earth’s core is molten lava” even though we have no experience of this first-hand, we can nevertheless say in all certainty that it is – but only because we believe others’ experiences (i.e. scientists) that this is so. In other words, we are confident that other people “know” because they will have made the necessary observations and acquired the necessary empirical evidence that the proposition holds as fact. So when it comes to synthetic facts, we must have solid empirical proof of its validity, but in the absence of that we can believe something to be true just as easily, if we happen to have sufficient faith in who’s backing it up.

Negative-synthetic propositions
We have seen that apodictic and synthetic propositions which make up the bulk of knowledge have inherent logic as long as they follow the five principles of knowledge (knowability). But the most fascinating and controversial part of language and logic is that which is found in the third category of language: that of negative-synthetic propositions. Neg-syns are the only propositions that form a logical sentence with the use of ideal-complex transubstantials. Examples are: “God is Good”, “The Soul is Immortal”, “Heaven is Bliss”, “Satan is Evil”, etc. Now most people will take the negative subjects of these propositions to be consistent with the predicates (or vice versa) and accept these neg-syns as being in keeping with logic. Thus the average person will instinctively agree that “God must be Good”, that “the Soul must be Immortal”, that “Heaven must be Bliss”, and that “Satan must be Evil”. But unlike apodictic and synthetic propositions, when we subject neg-syns to our five principles of knowledge, we find that certain contradictions arise:

“God is Good”

Spatio-temporality: As we saw earlier, God’s existence is granted as a result of “lack”, meaning that “God” exists only because we perceive the lack of his existence. Therefore this sharp contradiction arises: if God can exist only if God is lacking, then he can never be subject to empirical observation. Indeed, as we saw, “Immaterial Thingness” was one of the qualities of God, and we fancied that that “Immaterial Thingness” could be covered up with the quality of Mystery (“perhaps God is everything?”, “perhaps God exists where we do not know he exists?”, “perhaps God occupies another dimension?”) Either way, this quality can never be subject to empirical verification, and thus can never be known. This is in keeping with the formula for the existence of negative things, and therefore we can never gain a grasp of the subject in a positive sense to be able to understand if the predicate (Good) is true or not.
Causality: If God is the creator of everything (which is what the word/sign “God” implies) then God is the source of all Good, and all that is Good, and indeed, all that is created must be Good. But we have just seen above that we can never hold God to this criteria, for if God lacks spatio-temporality, then God can never be subject to any test of this quality. We know that God as word/sign must necessarily be Good, sure (Goodness is one of the fundamental properties of negative things), but if this is to become a logical fact as a part of language, this must be able to be verified empirically. But lacking spatio-temporality, this is not possible. Hence, whether God is the cause of Good, or Good is the cause of God remains unverifiable, and thus… a Mystery.
Consistency: How can any consistency of a causal condition that is unverifiable be ascertained? It can’t. And furthermore, if we assumed that “God is Good” and sought to find consistency in this proposition, we would find simply by empirical observation that there is much in the world that is not Good, for the mere existence of sorrow, pain and suffering is a contradiction of this proposition. But we need not even go this far, because as we have seen with the first two conditions, the causality of the proposition is lacking, as is the spatio-temporal principle, and therefore any further study is pointless. Oh, but Mystery again comes to the rescue! We cannot know, therefore we can say “God works in Myterious ways” and that’s that! We do not see his consistency, only the Mysterious God himself does.
Typality: God is a type of negative thing, and thus as a type of negative thing, it must share the quality of Goodness with other negative things. This is in keeping with the quality of God as word/sign. Goodness is implied, since God is born of Lack, and Lack is perceived through Pain, and Pain is Bad, therefore the negative thing we create to fill in the Lack must necessarily be the opposite of Bad, i.e. Good. But as soon as we try to take this particular word/sign and fit it into a logical proposition in the system of intersignificance as a monad of knowledge – so as to make it logical – we find that there is a contradiction. The word/sign that we accept the existence of in the system of intersignification becomes a dubious subject when applying any sort of predicate to it, because it already lacks the first three principles of knowledge, and therefore, if all other such negative things as word/signs also lack those first three principles, then we can never truly ascertain if they share a logical – knowable – typality, or indeed, what sort of typical characteristics they share. Lo and behold, if it weren’t for the quality of Mystery, we’d have a right shit of a time being able to say anything about any negative thing whatsoever, let alone God!
Signification: We see then that although we must necessarily assume that Goodness is a quality of God (and other negative things) as word/sign, the paradox is that we cannot justify this as a logical foundation for knowledge, because it can never be subject to empirical proof. And this is the dilemma with all negative things: The qualities we attribute to them logically as word/signs are illogical when considered as candidates for knowledge as logical propositions. Thus a negative thing (as word/sign) can never become fact. Thus, negative things are illogical. God is illogical.

We see then that negative-synthetic propositions do not fit the five principles of knowledge, except with the quality of Mystery, which acts as a philosophicological shoehorn. Only if we shoehorn Mystery into every proposition can we maintain the validity (as possibility) of neg-syns. Thus:

Mystery > negative-synthetic propositions = negative things (as word/signs) + ideal-complex transubstantials < Mystery

If each end of the proposition is bounded by Mystery, then we can never know where the boundary is, because the boundary is always Mystery. Take away the quality of Mystery, and it becomes absurd to apply transubstantials as a signification of a relationship between two or more things, when one of the things not only has no existence, but when its existence as word/sign (negative thing) is in fact dependent on its Lack of existence as positive thing. Thus we say “Mystery” and assume it does have a positive existence of some sorts that we do not – and cannot – know about. For this is the nature of Mystery – that it is unknown. Therefore, if this cannot be known, then NO NEGATIVE SYNTHETIC PROPOSITION CAN EVER BECOME A PART OF KNOWLEDGE. And we can go even further and say that if no negative word/sign can be logically intersignified as knowledge, then even the existence of negative things as word/signs becomes pointless. So then why do we have them? Why do we go on with the charade?

Footnotes
27. To give a preemptive example, the cause of a ball being dropped and the perceived effect of its bouncing would be meaningless for the sake of knowledge unless it consistently bounced every time it was dropped. Thus consistency becomes a crucial factor in determining the causality of a phenomenon if we are to convert that phenomenon into knowledge as a scientific fact. But when simply seeking the knowledge of a thing, the causality of ball already implies the consistency of the qualities that also make up its causality, and it’s thus unnecessary to differentiate consistency from causality. The spherical nature of a thing makes it a ball, ball is the effect of a spherical cause, and so consistency is already implied in the cause and the effect. But determining that “a ball bounces” means not only determining the cause and the effect but the consistent occurrence of the said phenomenon for us to know that it is so.