Somewhat ironically, cosmotheandrism is every bit as materialistic as materialism, in that it fully endorses the principle that we must begin our metaphysical enterprise with the certitude of the objects of the extra-mental world, not with our ideas about them. Nor do we endeavor to “prove” the existence of the world outside our skulls, for to begin in thought is to end there: thought itself is finished, at least insofar as it is free to think about reality. Theories about reality are all well and good, but what does reality say about the theory?
Objects have the last word about our words about objects.
Unless we leave Descartes or Kant in charge, in which case our ideas are the first and last word. Reality can no longer get a word in edgewise due to the willful imposition of subject on object, idea on thing, theory on fact. “Feedback” is supposed to proceed from world to mind, not vice versa. Should we enclose ourselves in the metaphyscial onanism of our own ideas about reality, there go the surprises, for as we have already stipulated, reality is full of them: it is not a machine, nor can we discover anything new about it via logical deduction.
To suggest that the truth — or “truth,” rather — of the world is “socially constructed” is a murder-suicide pact, since it eliminates reality while taking out the mind along with it. Supposing we cannot submit our ideas to the tribunal of reality, then it is a matter of who has the power to impose his ideas on the restavus — or of Who and Whom.
Hammer and nail.
First things first, which is to say, things. Only subsequent to the existence of objects do we — subjects— get in on the act. Which leads to Livi’s principle #2 (which Descartes mistakes for #1), which is “The evidence of the I as subject: the eventual verbal expression of this evidence could be the assertion that ‘in the world, there is myself, I who know the world.’”
We all recognize — or used to, at any rate — an extra-cranial world of objects. But this immediately implies principle #2, since this exterior world of objects is revealed to an interior subject. Slattery writes that “only by arbitrarily isolating the unity of the knowing subject’s mind and body does the Cartesian critical question arise,” that is, of how the two relate. But they always and already relate — this being enshrined in our very own Axiom 4 — so it is a false problem with no conceivable solution: “once one suspends theoretically the certainty of immediate knowledge of things through sensations in the hope of justifying knowledge of reality from the starting point of isolated consciousness, one can never reunite certitude and the extra-mental world.”
Thus, “The ultimate presupposition for the truth of judgments is the intelligibility of all realities, truth as being (ontological truth). Since being is truth the intellect is able to know the being of things.”
A theory is generally judged by its fruitfulness, and the idea that we do not have access to reality is both fruitless and self-defeating.
A Tree of Death for those who cling to it for some stupid reason.
Moreover, to even say we cannot know reality is affirming an absolute truth about the nature of reality. It is presumptuous in the extreme, the opposite of epistemological humility, another ontological Humble Brag. By boasting of the inability to know reality, the anti-realist is simultaneously affirming a transcendent certainty about the boundary conditions of knowledge, which is far more ambitious than the realist who simply claims to know this or that aspect of the real.
To summarize: 1) Things are, and 2) I am the subject who knows damn well that they are. You are free to disagree, but do you really want to double down on that ship and die on your dug-in heels?
No, let’s stick to our puns and take that hill!
We consider the matter of matter settled: reality is about thinking, and vice versa. This is an intentional Cosmos (in the philosophical sense of the term), meaning that, like it or not, aboutness is woven into the Cosmic Area Rug (which, BTW, is only recognized by the RH).
Just try to think or say anything without it being about something. Or even nothing if you like. In reality, the aboutness of things must be prior to saying anything about them. We know that thinking is about reality. But in order to think about reality, reality must be about thinking: in other words, there must be a two-way link between these poles.
I’m thinking about unicorns. Doesn’t mean they exist.
True, but it still means aboutness exists. Likewise a fear of imaginary fascists or of genuine nihilists. Aboutness is the bridge or link between two terms, or poles, rather. Take DNA: what is it about? As we have said, it is about the organism in particular and about Life more generally. But cosmotheandrism permits us to reverse the terms and say: Life is about DNA, this being due to the Axiom of verticality in which causation flows both upward and downward.
Not to jump the gun, but what is the Theos about? Among other things, the Cosmos and Anthropos. Therefore, the Cosmos and Anthropos are about the Theos even if only we can know about this.
This is the dirty little secret of knowledge as such -- its very possibility -- that it is “not the union of two elements, subject and object, but the internal unity of this very act [of the thing known and the fact of knowing]” (Marechal, in Slattery).
So, a prior unity (a noun) that makes the re-union (a verb) possible. In the absence of this prior given unity, the re-union could never be. “The object of every cognitive power is constituted by that which is knowable and that by which it is knowable form” (Slattery).
Thus there must be three kinds of existence: (prime) matter is the principle of indetermination; form the principle of determination; and intellect the principle of their prior unity. In which case knowledge is the possibility -- or re-cognition -- of their re-union. “Cognition is accordingly a relationship between the soul and things, a real relation with two correlatives: what is measured in relation to its measure.”
We don’t need to build a bridge between matter and form or form and intellect because the bridge was here when we arrived, and defines the Anthropos: “the definition of both subject and object mutually include each other -- the thing only exists for the soul as object because it is immanent to the subject.”
Livi’s second certitude again goes to our Axiom 4, relational interiority, for “The object is only intelligible through reference to the subject and the subject’s activity is intelligible only by reference to the object.... the soul and its object are not taken as absolutes but rather a relationship” (Slattery).
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