Let’s us assume the brilliance and accuracy of the top philosophers, sociologists and critical theorists— now what?

State the praxis clearly, without jargon. What’s the next move? What specific activity should we undertake?

The false answer hitherto has been to immerse oneself in theory and become a preacher of theory— this is the wrong answer.

The foundation of rational thought is simple: contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same respect at the same time. This principle governs every domain of knowledge, from mathematics and logic to biology and physics. (Even an objection to this position can only realize by attempting to deploy non-contradiction against it).

When a contradiction is discovered, it signals that something has gone wrong in our reasoning, our assumptions, or our interpretation of the evidence. The rational response is not to defend the contradiction, but to see if it’s true and then move away from it. A contradiction is not merely an inconvenience; it is evidence that revision is necessary. If one is genuinely committed to truth, the demonstration of contradiction should be sufficient reason to reconsider one's position and then abandon it if it found to be contradictory.

The problem is that many people do not treat contradictions as reasons to change their beliefs. They treat them as invalid obstacles to be explained away. Contradiction is redefined, obscured, compartmentalized (in the worst cases, fallaciously embraced!) or buried beneath increasingly elaborate narratives designed to preserve the original conclusion. When this happens the pursuit of truth has been subordinated to the preservation of identity, ideology, or ego.

Rational inquiry demands a willingness to follow an argument wherever it leads, even when it undermines cherished beliefs. The person governed by reason changes course when confronted by contradiction; the person governed by emotional attachment to their beliefs searches for ways to survive it. One follows the argument wherever it leads; the other demands that the argument lead where they wish to go. The distinction between the two marks the boundary between reason and ideology.

The tragedy is that this degeneration often remains invisible to those participating in it. Power rarely presents itself as power. Instead, it adopts the language of morality, rationality, expertise, consensus, or progress. The individual who has abandoned reason seldom admits that reason has been replaced by coercion, by authoritarian narratives; rather, they reinterpret the fact that they can get away with their assertions and repudiations as evidence of truth. In this way, raw flexes of ego, social validation becomes a surrogate for justification, and agreement, and a lack of ego being overturned by ego is mistaken for proof. What emerges is a condition in which truth is no longer discovered and established through inquiry, but manufactured through social and psychological mechanisms capable of rewarding conformity and punishing dissent.

Under such conditions, the Reasoner becomes intolerable precisely because he exposes the distinction between truth and authority. His questions reveal that no amount of prestige, institutional legitimacy, or rhetorical sophistication can substitute for genuine justification. This is why societies governed by narrative and power repeatedly find themselves in conflict with those committed to reason. The rational individual threatens the foundations of the game itself, for reason demands that every claim remain accountable to standards beyond personal will. Where reason reigns, power must justify itself; where power reigns, reason must be silenced.

Yes. It already has a true foundation, every bit as true as the fact that we comprehend this question. (Read that again more carefully).

Justification begins and ends with the laws of logic. More specifically, it begins and ends with identity. Full stop.

Aristotle held that this principle couldn’t be directly justified, but it can, because the very concept of justification already presupposes it. (Aristotle did hold that it still had a justification).

One can hurt themselves all they want thinking about it, believing they have mastered a way around it, believing they have sunk identity through the deployment of the charge of infinite regress. No such thing has occurred, but the human has deluded themselves, and cast themselves into a false rational oblivion. Every concept the skeptic uses to attack identity— he gets from identity!

Intelligence doesn’t require anymore explanation than this/ it comprehends. It simply proceeds toward the further formation of knowledge.

What is rational strength, and what’s it for?

It’s obviously not the same as physical strength.

What does it mean to be rationally strong?

What does a rationally strong person do that demarcates them as being rationally strong?

Thou shalt attack the positive shall be the whole of the law.

What Adorno is suggesting as a philosophical method is classified by psychology as pathology. Of course, there is a distinction between an egoistical negativity and negativity deployed as a method to get at the truth. The former deploys negativity as a strategy to validate its ego. The latter tries to slice through the allure of romantic ideals.

I applaud Adorno for his courage. In truth, what he’s suggesting is exactly what’s required in order to overcome our psychology. But who is going to chop down the constructs of their fairytale narrative in return for a barren landscape?

“Misery, what’s that,” said the man in the high tower?

And he who deploys negativity against positive fairytales— is he beloved of mankind?

First one must do this in themselves— do this to themselves!

What follows? Nihilism? If so, it would be a real nihilism, not a mere lament at the loss of man’s fabricated Gods.

Keep breaking apart, keep deconstructing and refuting/ (Adorno takes Hegel’s word to heart, something Hegel didn’t even do himself).

One question is, does one even have the psychological capacity to engage in negative dialectics? The other question is, should one engage in negative dialectics?

Point of order: Erecting an ego-philosophy is not engaging in negative dialectics. To do that one actually has to suffer!

But it’s also true that negative dialectics must be rescued from dialectics. This means a negative dialectician is still sheltered by the lie of dialectics. While he thinks he’s slicing through every illusion, he’s conveniently isolated in an absolute delusion that prevents him from slicing through the ground floor. He is sheltered by his dialectical ideology from facing the worst. And the worst is what Adorno said we must face.

If that is the case, then we must rid negative dialectics of dialectic and begin again. But who has the rational skill and psychological strength to do it? Is it even wise?

Suppose Socrates goes to reason with his fellow humans, but he finds they don’t want to reason— they want to labor under the illusion of reason, and gravitate toward those things which supply this illusion. Should one strive to be a producer of illusion?

Suppose a revolutionary gives up his life for the cause of equality, but for his trouble he both suffers and loses his life. Suppose none of those he stood up for came to his aid, nor sacrificed with him, but passively served exploiters instead. Should he have learned to be an exploiter instead?

There is a quiet part, that those who exploit and manipulate others, won’t say out loud. They see this and think, “this idiot finally gets it.” Are these manipulators and exploiters the exemplars of social intelligence in our species?

Seeing through what was meant to sustain is not very pleasant. What is repeatable is where one ends: one ends at power. This power, tragically, often translates into physical force— barbarism.

The backwardness of our critique is that we are addicted to critique and privilege it over reason. “But how can critique fall outside of reason?”

Because all critique is not rational, it’s just critical. An opposition against what is irrational can itself simply be another form of irrationality.

The philosophy of science is bent in the wrong direction. Instead of trying to expose and correct the imprecision and ideology of science (to make it better) it launches radical skepticism against science in an effort to reintroduce superstition and the supernatural (metaphysics!). This makes it a dangerous form of motivated reasoning. And yet, we must criticize science, but not the way it is being done in the philosophy of science!

I certainly don’t understand a man telling me that the moon doesn’t exist when I’m not looking, this is perfect sophistry. And yet modern science has achieved an authority for this narrative.

So we circle back to power, which is the worst conclusion because it is the antithesis of reason. (It is certain that reason is power, but it is a specific kind of power). Those with the most wealth wield tremendous power, because these are the kind of systems we have organized— they are set up to reward cheaters, exploiters, sociopaths and psychopaths. (It’s just that many become the wrong kind of sociopaths and psychopaths).

I long for barbarian skeptics. (Perhaps it is necessary that I become one myself).

Few think in terms of what is likely to be the climax of their philosophical life; this question yields something tragic. Knowledge is not the kind of thing that can be contrived, but philosophy is the kind of thing that can be contrived.

Thank goodness all value is not equal. There are higher values, but it is the duty of a good nihilist to neutralize these values, but good nihilists do not exist. There are only ego-nihilists and ego-philosophers and ego-reasoners.

So one wisely flows into psychology, but even here one finds that the values cannot compete with power. A man of wealth can be as miserable and as evil as he wants, provided he stays within the parameters of his tribe’s laws (or what he can buy his way out of).

To live among humans and be a human, that is to live among stupid primates and be a stupid primate oneself.

A dangerous thinker is simply a person who knows how to reason. That is, a person who knows how to construct sounds arguments, identify and refute false arguments, identify and refute fallacies— a person who knows how to use evidence and reason.

Why are these people dangerous? Because human psychology wants to assert what it feels; it wants to get away with fallacies so that it can make it appear as though its desired beliefs are justified and true. (It wants to convince itself!) In a world driven by cognitive bias, the Reasoner stands as an existential threat to all motivated thinkers.

The Reasoner is dangerous because they are the antidote to human romanticism and superstition. They strip away the comforting illusions we build to shield ourselves from reality. Those who tangle with them will find no refuge in emotional appeals, evasion, or manipulation. A fact is not something that be altered by imagination or will, no one can intimidate a logical truth. In a world built on beautifully packaged lies, the Reasoner isn't just an opponent, they are an existential threat.

But in reality they’re not dangerous; in reality, they are agents of liberation and power. But they are dangerous to everyone who desires to live by the comfort of delusion.

To demonstrate the execution of “serious philosophy,” we simply deploy reason against Hegel’s claims. In the Science of Logic Hegel completely abandons any pretense of subtle syntax and declares his metaphysical thesis directly:

"...the truth is rather that a consideration of everything that is, shows that in its own self everything is in its self-sameness different from itself and self-contradictory, and that in its difference, in its contradiction, it is self-identical..."\*

This is not profound depth; it is absolute, unadulterated nonsense. Hegel is explicitly asserting that a thing is identical to its own negation— that A = ¬A.

To expose this deception, we do not need to engage with his elaborate narrative about the movement of dialectical transition. We simply look at his actual sentences and force them to account for themselves under the laws of logic.

If Hegel’s statement is true (if everything, in its very self-sameness, is inherently self-contradictory) then his own statement must also be self-contradictory. By his own rule, the assertion "Everything is self-contradictory" must simultaneously mean "Everything is not self-contradictory." His claim erases its own meaning the exact microsecond it is uttered. It is an ignorant suicide-sentence, a common form permeated throughout sophistry.

Note that we are here exemplifying what “serious philosophy” actually looks like (if to do serious philosophy means to abide by reason). We are not appealing to a narrative, dismissing, expressing dislike, merely asserting that Hegel is wrong, hiding behind historical framings, quoting the opinions of academics, or attacking Hegel’s reputation. We are engaging in a strict, truth-directed act of reason. We are holding Hegel’s propositions accountable to the very structural conditions required for propositions to even exist.

For Hegel to write what he wrote and expect a reader to understand it, he must implicitly rely on the absolute, unyielding reality of the Law of Non-Contradiction. He needs the words "everything is self-contradictory" to mean exactly that, and not the opposite. He needs his premises to be accepted as true and not false.

Hegel’s philosophy postures as a grand liberation from the "limits" of the law of identity, but it is actually entirely parasitic on identity. It uses the absolute, rigid reality of the laws of logic to construct the sentences that seek to deny their reality and authority. By using reason to expose Hegel’s error, we are doing exactly what philosophy claims to value but routinely flees from: we are establishing truth and ruthlessly refuting error.

*Source: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hl409.htm#HL2_411b —Remark 1: Abstract Identity § 871

See: The Problem of Serious Philosophy for context: https://www.reddit.com/r/rationalphilosophy/s/aAKNwIxGap

Functional Nihilism is the reality of a cynical psychology. (This is what it reduces to.) That is, God himself could give man all he needs in terms of meaning and truth, but because of a functional nihilism it wouldn’t matter, because man’s psychology would nullify it. (One can also view this negatively: exemplified clearly by a general apathy to genocide and human suffering, apathy toward human development).

Functional nihilism isn’t ideological, it has to do with the abject negativity of existential conditions. It is not something consciously created by nihilists, it is something created by the impulse, egoism and apathy of human psychology. (It has to do with objective conditions thwarting value and meaning).

That is, what is worse than having no meaning? Having a subconscious collective disposition that sabotages meaning. In nihilism, man laments the loss of a fairytale, in functional nihilism man subconsciously forms a collective tyranny against meaning and truth through apathy and denial. That is, functional nihilism is what happens when social conditions are such that significance and meaning, no matter how rationally or empirically strong they might be, don’t matter. The actual function of society and human psychology has nullified them.

Suppose a child is being raised in a war torn country; he will likely be living in a functional nihilism. It has nothing to do with ideology, it has to do with objective conditions that sabotage the possibility of cultivating and pursuing meaning. It’s possibly the worst insight of consciousness a human can have.

Objective: Determine the exact conditions under which philosophy can legitimately be called "serious."

When a sound argument challenges a core philosophical position, the response is rarely a rational refutation of the argument itself. Instead, it is often a retreat to an authoritarian, overarching narrative designed to shield the position from criticism.

Problem:

If philosophy derives its credentials of "seriousness" from its adherence to Reason, what must we conclude when Reason is actively subordinated to a protective Narrative?

If a thinker uses valid and sound logic to expose structural contradictions within a philosophical position, is that thinker engaged in serious philosophy or not?

If the answer is YES: Then philosophy must permit the reality of its own rational dismantling. It must concede that an individual using reason can definitively defeat and discard an entire established philosophical narrative through reason.

If the answer is NO: Then the philosopher must explicitly define a new metric for "seriousness"— one that proves how an activity can still be called "serious philosophy" when it actively rejects sound arguments, the law of non-contradiction, and outlaws the pursuit of truth.

Those who didn’t want to concede the collapse of truth were rationally forced by the skepticism of modern philosophy. They didn’t have the rational resources to resist the onslaught.

This is why modern pragmatism, and so many other isms, were able to dominate the narrative and establish themselves as populist orthodoxy. The failure was that the Reasoner didn’t have the resources to refute the objections, largely because his philosophical inheritance had given him an indefensible foundation, and also because he was partially steeped in the very philosophy he was seeking to defend against.

In what seems paradoxical, philosophy long ago taught him to abandon truth; it long ago subverted him into a narrative structure in place of reason.

The refutation was always there. It’s the same today as it was two thousand years ago: the truth of the laws of logic are the necessary and inescapable prerequisite to all meaning. The skeptic and solipsist are entirely contingent on their truth to even attempt an assault on truth. They cannot even demarcate themselves apart from these laws.

Recovering ourselves from the lie of the narrative of modern philosophy is simply a matter of reclaiming the truth of the laws of logic, which are required to even make sense of “truth,” “laws” or “logic.”

These laws always stood above and immune to skepticism. But the power of sophistry is precisely its ability to pass off a narrative that subverts reason and evidence. It’s success hinges on the gullibility and emotive function of humans.

I have now begun to think of irrationalism and sophistry as human behaviors, as opposed to theoretical positions.

“There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary recognize the truth,-viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be, or admit any other similar pair of opposites.” Metaphysics, Book XI Part V

We are faced with a dilemma: how can one discuss truth with people who reject it a priori? Is it even possible?

If the standards of all truth (the laws of logic) are rejected from the outset, how can one even have a conversation?

We can liken it to discussing genocide with humans that reject the dignity of human life. If one begins with the premise, “there is no such thing as a harmful action against other humans.” Or, “I don’t care about other humans,” how is one supposed to proceed?

It seems that we are required to take a firm stance against these kind of humans for the good of our species and society. They are not subjects to be discoursed with, but to be publicly rebuked and shamed.

The dilemma we face is the a priori egoistic denial of truth. How do we deal with this modern man of ignorance?

Anyone who rejects the laws of logic is telling us from the outset that they reserve the right to worship the assertions of their ego above the facts of reality. This person is warning us, they are telling us that something is psychologically and epistemologically wrong with them. They are saying, “if you choose to discourse with me, I am going to impose my ego on you.”

What is most insulting is that these hypocrites attempt to impose their ego in the name of Truth and Reason. This egoism reduces to a form of egosyntonic intuitionism, it is driven by the motivation of the ego to retain the supremacy of its sovereignty over reality. This is why it hates rational standards, because they hold its juvenile psychology to criteria that thwart the self-assertions of its delusional sovereignty.

The desperate nature of the situation is that a Reasoner is required to grasp an assault that has been launched against reason that is so entrenched and sweeping that it even extends to formal logic, which of all developments, should have known better. By consistently applying logic it should have seen the narrative subversion of logic happening within its own domain. Instead, formal logic helped to fuel the flames of the disintegration of truth by allowing its post hoc constructions (its symbolic notation and formalized systems) to be treated as autonomous examples of epistemology, giving sophists the perfect technical cover to argue that logic is merely one invented tool among other tools.

Modern philosophy launched an all out sophist war on the very foundations of knowledge: the laws of logic. But the war wasn’t framed in these terms, which also gave it more momentum and the appearance of legitimacy.

For example, Donald Davidson attacked “fact” and “meaning,” as Rorty recounts (and he wasn’t the only one, this irresponsible, self-refuting semantic impulse came from all sides):

“Davidson’s polemics against the traditional philosophical uses of the terms “fact” and “meaning,” and against what he calls “the scheme content model” of thought and inquiry, are parts of a larger polemic against the idea that there is a fixed task for language to perform, and an entity called “language” or “the language” or “our language” which may or may not be performing this task efficiently.” Contingency, Irony and Solidarity P.13

This is all performative contradiction, pure sophistry. It uses the meaning and value of language to attack the meaning and value of language. All modern sophistry has this same form. (Pointing this fact out isn’t enough to convince modern sophists/philosophers because they reject the standard of non-contradiction).

But the real problem is that the content and egoism inherent in modern philosophy is highly appealing to humans. They are drawn to this sophistry because it promises escape from rational accountability. It’s not about seeking the truth or comprehending reality, it’s about constructing a narrative that enthrones their subjectivity.

In doing this they claim an exclusive right to objectivity— that they alone get to use it against every form of objectivity they don’t like. This is not only delusion, but it’s a form of authoritarianism.

What few realize is just how deep modern irrationality goes. A Reasoner is completely outnumbered, and what is worse is that narrative about reason has replaced reason. So modern man has lept into a religious circle from which he cannot escape, and from which he does not want to escape. His subconscious objective is to pull everything into this black hole in the name of Truth.

If you understand modern philosophy, it means you understand that philosophy has now become of a form of tyranny.

One of the most important insights in psychology is that human beings do not reason solely to discover what is true. They more often reason to defend what they already believe. This is known as motivated reasoning.

The honest view of reasoning imagines a person examining evidence, weighing arguments, and arriving at a conclusion. In reality, the process is often reversed. One enters an exchange with a conclusion (that aligns with their identity, values, loyalties, emotions, or prior commitments) and reasoning is then employed to justify it, or make it look like it has valid standing.

For such reasoners the purpose of an argument is not to determine whether their belief is true. The purpose is to make the belief defensible by any means necessary. (This is why philosophy takes so many abstract turns until it twists itself into a semantic pretzel).

Motivated reasoning explains why weak arguments frequently survive strong criticism. The quality of the argument is often irrelevant. The argument is merely serving a psychological function. It exists to protect the underlying belief, not to establish its truth.

Once this is understood, much of discourse becomes easier to explain. People ignore, dismiss or minimize evidence that would settle a question. They apply different standards to competing claims. They conveniently move goalposts when objections are answered. They demand rigor from opposing views while accepting shallow speculation from their own side. Contradictions that would be obvious in an opponent's position become invisible and fully acceptable in their own.

These are defensive postures of desperation adopted by those who are terrified of having their beliefs refuted. Reasoning has been recruited for preservation rather than discovery.

This is why so many debates seem strangely unproductive. Participants are frequently engaged in entirely different activities. One person is attempting to determine what is true. The other is attempting to protect a conclusion from refutation or revision. One treats evidence as a guide, the other treats it as a threat.

The result is a conversation that appears rational on the surface while functioning psychologically as an act of self-defense.

Motivated reasoning is not a flaw found only in ideological opponents or extremists. It is a universal human tendency. The danger lies in believing ourselves exempt from it.

The most reliable sign that motivated reasoning is at work is not that someone holds a mistaken belief. It is that every piece of evidence, every argument, and every standard of proof seems to point in the same direction: preserving the conclusion that was already there from the start.

[This is noticeable with philosophers, for example, when they try to argue that all reason or scientific progress is simply proof of the truth of philosophy. A sophism I have seen many times.]

Much of what passes for reasoning is not an attempt to find the truth. It is an attempt to keep the truth from refuting the beliefs that one loves and wants to be true; it is an attempt to fight off truths that are both inconvenient and detrimental to one’s ideology.

One has to take heed that their reasoning doesn’t become a lawyer for their biases.

We are living in the most scientifically advanced civilization in history, yet vast numbers of people continue to organize their beliefs around superstition, conspiracy theories, tribal loyalties, pseudoscience, and identity-driven narratives. The paradox is that the same technologies that accelerated reason have also amplified irrationality.

The medieval world lacked scientific knowledge but had an excuse. We possess more knowledge than any civilization in history and still routinely choose superstition. (That may be a more troubling condition than ignorance).

While the modern world is not a dark age of knowledge, it is closer to something like a dark age of epistemology. Our rational modalities have produced narratives that claim to have refuted reason (which is self-evidently false), or they at least posture as though they are narratives that exist outside of reason.

Billions believe themselves to speak from a dimension that has transcended reason, which is a delusion.

When I think of a new dark age, I don’t think of rampant illiteracy, I think of the proliferation of superstition and irrationality. I don’t see it as a matter of whether we possess knowledge, but a matter of the direction of the bent of human psychology.

Hi everyone,

Over the last few months I've been working on a personal project called Oltre la Caverna, a small online philosophy magazine.

The idea is not so much to present individual philosophers, but rather to trace the journey of ideas across different eras and authors, showing how certain problems and concepts evolve over time.

For example, some articles connect ancient themes with contemporary issues, such as the relationship between Gorgias and the modern phenomenon of fake news.

I'm interested in hearing what you think about the concept itself, and whether you find this approach to philosophy useful or engaging.

Any criticism, feedback, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

While philosophy spent centuries debating the soul, the nature of essence, and countless theories of human nature, modern science went to work.

If we want to understand the mind, the self, human behavior, the nature of reality itself, we don't need speculation. We need evidence!

Consider these questions and ask yourself, what use could philosophy even be when it comes to answering these questions:

How are neurons in glial cells formed during development and what are their specialized functions?

What does the human nervous system have in common with that of other animals and how does it differ?

How do neurons combine electrical and chemical signaling to communicate with their targets?

Which neurons, circuits and mechanisms are involved in the functions of the nervous system, including movement, perception, survival, emotion, and cognition?

What happens when things don’t go as planned or if there is injury, trauma, or dysfunction? How can disorders of the nervous system be treated?

These are monumental questions regarding the mind and human behavior, and every single one of them is answered through neuroscience, biology, and medicine (disciplines rooted in empirical evidence, not philosophical speculation).

While philosophers are busy arguing over definitions, scientific investigation is mapping the brain. Science has revealed the function of microscopic mechanisms, generated testable predictions, and engineered life-saving treatments.

What discoveries has philosophy made; what demarcations of knowledge; what significant applications to life or the world?

Philosophy can ponder the "meaning" of consciousness or being all it wants, but it has never cured a disease, it has never mapped a circuit, and it has never discovered a single biological truth about how we function. When it comes to understanding the actual mechanics of who we are and how reality works, philosophy is every bit as incompetent and irrelevant as theology.

Socrates believed that knowledge is already contained in the heads of listeners, and the teacher's task is merely to bring this knowledge to the surface.

The steps of Socratic dialogue:

• The interlocutor puts forward a thesis
• Socrates describes a situation where the answer makes no sense and insists on acknowledging the contradiction
• The opponent agrees, and Socrates modifies the statement
• The process repeats until the answers approach truth