tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson) (10/08/85)
Metaphysical axioms do not require faith for their validity. They are differentiated from all other tenets by their necessity in every thought and utterance. Thus, in every attempt to deny them one is implicitly asserting their truth. Similarly, their necessity makes them obvious. But neither their requirement for self-refutation nor their obviousness makes them metaphysically axiomatic. Metaphysical axioms differ from axioms in aprioristic sciences in that they cannot be chosen. You may vary the number of parallels through a point not on the line, but you may not vary the reality upon which non-metaphysical axioms are founded and in terms of which they are expressed. Any attempt to arbitrarily select a set of metaphysical axioms may serve the desires for play, but will necessarily not create the metaphysically axiomatic, for the contrived axioms will depend upon the perfectly axiomatic. The two metaphysical axioms are existence and identity. Rand summarized them as "Existence exists." and "A is A.". Others were a bit longer-winded. Existence, not of one's self but rather of everything, is axiomatic. Existence is what is accessible from the senses, including as a sense the faculty of awareness of what is going on inside the mind. Existence is sensed, directly or indirectly. Further knowledge leads to the observation that having an observer is a necessary aspect of existence, and in that sense makes the existence of an observer axiomatic. Identity, in its most general sense, is the partitioning of existence. What is, in some respect, is differentiated from what is not, in the same respect. There are no flashing neon signs saying, "Include me! Include me!" or "Hey! We are the differentiae! Use us!" The qualities that determine how reality ought to be partitioned are only primitively automatic, and in some ways sometimes deceptively so, but they are inescapably part of reality. Identity can be complex. A physical thing of a minute ago is likened to a thing in the very recent past we call the present. The transition from the past to the present is projected into the future and even into timelessness. A term, formerly defined by one set of differentiae, is with increased understanding refined under a different set of differentiae (the referents remaining essentially the same). One thing is temporally related to another thing as effect to cause, while yet others, not being so related to any other thing, are identified as uncaused. Our own individual existence is the application of the axiom of identity on the basis of relations between external things and relations between external things and our senses. Without existence, there would be nothing to talk about. Without identity, talk would be meaningless. Existence is the soil of knowledge. Identity is its root. Both are true, i.e. knowledge conformant to reality. Neither requires faith. David Hudson