The Geographer
by Jan Vermeer, an august virtuoso of light,
symbolizes ALEMBIC TRUTH.
Symbolically speaking, ALEMBIC TRUTH is the play of stippling broad daylight on a mundane, palpable object of the visible world which, once consciousness directly perceives its perceptual form as a unitary manifestation of awareness distinct from sensations and the faculty of reason distils its fundamental attribute into a universal aesthetic ideal, furnishes humans with an explicit insight into a shared feature of concrete Being. By acquiring aesthetic understanding in this fashion, humans connect their sublime cognitions to objective reality and thereby pass from the darkness to the stippled light.
In view of the fact that universal aesthetic cognitions stem from the distillation of perceived objects of the visible world, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that art mirrors objectivity.
The term "ALEMBIC TRUTH" means: "the conscious identification of a determinate thought distillation and its logical fidelity to the objective facts of determinate Being."
ALEMBIC TRUTH is a reality-describing agreement of a mental depiction with the object that is being depicted. In this sense, ALEMBIC TRUTH is valid knowledge; i.e., a statement of objective facts that is totally reliable and provable.
Knowledge is a depiction of the observed facts of determinate Being by means of determinate thought distillations--reality-describing, truth-seeking mental constructs that underscore objective facts of determinate Being--and a capacity to know and to understand the meaning of these determinate thought distillations. Knowledge aims at ALEMBIC TRUTH. And the purpose of ALEMBIC TRUTH is its application to practical spheres pertaining to industry, science, art, ethics, and social policy.
The preceding formal definition of ALEMBIC TRUTH is supported by the following logical canons:
These rational rules of logic, be it noted, in conjunction with the universal and absolute Law of Identity (A is A.) are our compass which, like the thread of Ariadne, leads us through the maze of diversified objective reality and, as a consequence, enables us to lay hold of the Holy Grail of philosophy: refulgent ALEMBIC TRUTH--the polestar of humanity.
At the bedrock of ALEMBIC TRUTH lies the Law of Determinacy:
Being is always manifestly determinate by virtue of the apodictic fact that it is necessarily limited by its identity over time.
In order to comprehend in toto the explicit meaning of the Law of Determinacy, it is a prerequisite to grasp the multifarious shades of meaning of the term "determinate": "of specific scope and nature (i.e., this-something); delimited by identity over time; unceasingly subsumable under sortal concepts; evidentially supportable and accordingly demonstrable; this-worldly and hence not other-worldly nor hypostasized; necessarily subject to causal law and thus not subject to any contingent factors, such as miracles, random chance, or creatio ex nihilo; holds good for all people in all places and at all times."
Since metaphysics (the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of first principles and the nature and structure of Being qua Being) denotes the definitive touchstone of truth, therefore the validity of ALEMBIC TRUTH stands or falls on the validity of its underlying metaphysical principle that the Law of Determinacy is the thole-pin of reality; that is to say, it is the overriding principle of regularity that accounts for the unbending stability of motion, change, growth, and development in the universe, and that accounts for, in turn, the emergence of intelligent life-forms and the comprehension of the universe by those intelligent life-forms.
The Law of Determinacy may be inferred from the following axiomatic argument:
Being, necessity, identity, determinacy--these four axioms are complementary aspects of the same irreducible, self-contained, self-ordering, self-sufficient primary: determinate Being. None of these four axioms can be reduced to any antecedent or external principles; none of these four axioms can be broken up into constituent elements; and none of these four axioms can be derived from a priori speculations or, what amounts to the same thing, from flights of fantasy. This being the case, these four axioms, when considered jointly, are the ultimate starting-point of inquiry into resolving the hitherto inexplicable conundrums of the universe. For this reason, these four axioms lay the groundwork for a true science of metaphysics. But how these four axioms, as well as the axiom of consciousness (a state of awareness and the faculty that perceives and identifies and systematizes determinate Being), come into play in the formulation of a comprehensive overview of determinate Being, mostly by a convoluted process of induction and deduction in conjunction with the black and white rules of logic and inference, lies beyond the scope of this Web site.
Conversely, the term "indeterminate" may be defined as: "not clearly determined and incapable of being distinctly explained; without fixed limit (read infinite) and sans manifest identity; contingent and hence not subject to causal law nor verifiable by evident proof; means different things to different people at different places and times." Indeterminacy, insofar as it is employed in a metaphysical context, implies that incoherency is the law of reality, which in turn implies that incoherency is the litmus test for truth. Surely indeterminacy is an illegitimate concept, yet it is the fraud that props up religion and philosophy.
No matter what stratagems you may devise to justify or rationalize your belief in indeterminacy, you will never be able to explain why the laws of nature do not suddenly go off the rails without warning or how order comes from disorder without either lapsing into circularity or falling into a hornet's nest of fictitious concepts, such as God, evil demon, infinity, miracles, design, chance, mechanism, the anthropic principle, etc. By the same token, you will be at a loss to elucidate how you perceive objects and organize your perceptions into thoughts if the objects that you directly perceive lack stable and related properties persisting over time. Any attempt to defend something that is indefensible such as indeterminacy is an exercise in futility since it leads ultimately to a contradiction (A is non-A.) and consequently to a denial of existence. And once a contradiction like indeterminacy has taken root, no absurdity will seem too outlandish. The upshot is that the Law of Determinacy voids indeterminacy for ever and a day.
To reiterate: Being, necessity, and identity culminate in determinacy--the thole-pin upon which the universe pivots. If it were otherwise, then Being would be coupled with indeterminacy, resulting in incoherency and nullity.
The heart of the matter is this: In order for an existent to exist actually, it must have an exclusive variety of interconnected and interrelated properties. Properties actualize an existent by affording it with "whatness" over time, rendering it in its individual whatness a "this-something" over time; otherwise it would not be anything whatsoever. Properties, then, denote the determinate identity over time by which an existent manifests itself. To put the argument more formally, since Being must have actuality of some sort or other, and since Being can have actuality only if it is determinate, then determinate Being is an actuality. This conclusion bears out the apodictic fact that determinacy is correlative with Being and ergo an indispensable axiom that applies throughout the universe.
Further, to deny the Law of Determinacy is tantamount to proclaiming that Being is not a "this-something" persisting over time; viz., that A is non-A; viz., that Being is not. To put it another way, any artifice that attempts to circumvent the Law of Determinacy by positing metaphysical chimera, such as Entity, Forms, primary substance, God, the Unknowable, evil demon, monads, things-in-themselves, Absolute Idea, ideal objects, pure experience, atomic facts, nothingness, and the like, will engender a logical fallacy for it amounts to saying that something actual exists without possessing actuality.
Moreover, if, on the one hand, you drink a glass of water, you ipso facto acknowledge and confirm the unassailable fact that water has determinate properties persisting over time which render water salutary to your health. If, on the other hand, you contemplate drinking a glass of sulphuric acid, you explicitly know beforehand that sulphuric acid has determinate properties persisting over time which will mortally jeopardize your health. Let the proponents of indeterminacy who disavow the Law of Determinacy demonstrate their irrational assumption by quaffing a large glass of sulphuric acid! This last point demonstrates a fundamental truth: No one can cheat determinate Being with impunity.
Again, ants don't give birth to elephants because ants have a determinate identity over time that not only differentiates but also segregates them from elephants. Like elephants, ants belong to a unique species; and this biological fact absolutely delimits the sort of origins that they can have, the sort of changes and forces to which they can be subject, the sort of things with which they can interact, and the sort of things that they themselves can produce. These natural and invariant limitations that the Law of Determinacy imposes on the ant species denote the real, invariant essence of ants and ensure that ants fall within the same sortal concept throughout reproduction, thereby marking off ants from elephants and vouching for the reproduction of ants by ants as a means of self-preservation.
In addition, the origin of life had nothing whatsoever to do with supernaturalism, randomness, or extraterrestrials (that merely pushes the argument back one step), but everything to do with the invariant structure over time of self-assembling ribosome, a "machinelike" particle consisting of protein and RNA found in cell cytoplasm that reads the genetic code and then synthesizes the proper amino acids in order to make the protein molecule that is called for by the code. In a seminal 1953 experiment by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, two American biochemists, basic chemicals common to the primordial atmosphere--hydrogen, ammonia, and methane--were sealed in a flask containing water, heated and zapped with electricity (a realistic substitute for lightning), creating amino acids, the building blocks of protein molecules. On this view, life was inevitable given the original conditions of our planet. The Miller-Urey experiment shows that amino acids don't form randomly, since every time that the experiment is performed it always yields amino acids. However, the Miller-Urey experiment did not prove that natural, spontaneous action could create more complex mechanisms necessary for life to emerge. Sergev Steinberg, a biochemistry professor at the University of Montreal, was able to demonstrate that ribosome was self-assembled using simple structural rules. For critics who ask why natural, spontaneous formation didn't lead to something other than ribosome, Steinberg irrefutably proved using mathematical models that there was no other alternative. The ribosome simply couldn't hold together if it were constructed any other way. "The self-assembly of ribosome followed rules that were logical and for which there were no alternatives." These invariant "rules" of which Steinberg speaks are, in point of fact, the irrefragable laws of nature, which in turn are logical derivatives of the invariant Law of Determinacy, the ultimate principle of the universe. Life, to be sure, had a natural, spontaneous origin from nonliving processes by virtue of the fact that ribosome formed spontaneously as dictated by its determinate identity over time. Determinacy affords a veridical account of the origin of life.
At bottom, what applies to water, sulphuric acid, ants, and ribosome also applies equally to everything else in the universe. From the smallest quantum particle to the largest galaxy, the Law of Determinacy subordinates Being, the whole kit and caboodle, to fixed laws of regularity. It ineluctably follows that everything that is, is parasitical on the Law of Determinacy. The fact that the Greek word for universe, kosmos, means order attests to the validity of the Law of Determinacy. In a nutshell, the Law of Determinacy adequately explains why order permanently pervades the universe. Ground-breaking implication:
DETERMINATE BEING RULES!
The foregoing proofs validating the Law of Determinacy can be summed up into an axiom: Determinate identity over time is the requisite for change. This axiom is confirmed by the fact that throughout any process of change, matter, energy, motion, and indeed Being itself, are always conserved; and they are always subject to and satisfied by the eternal and irrefragable laws of nature, whose operation is merely the same law--the Law of Determinacy--operating in different spheres. If this were not the case, things could not conjoin or commingle, like could not possibly come from like, chaos would hold sway over the cosmos, and all events would be scientifically indeterminable occurrences. Furthermore, if a concrete existent lacked a determinate identity over time, it would be impossible to ascribe change to it, since a concrete existent whose essential nature continuously changed would be indeterminate: to wit, nothing at all.
That said, the anti-identity crowd--those who believe that A is non-A--reject the thesis that a concrete existent has a determinate identity over time. The champion of this view is the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who holds that convulsive, hotchpotch changes in the constituent elements of a concrete existent are the source of its identity; and he cites the example of a river whose identity hinges on the continuous changes of its water, which leads him to the conclusion that reality is in flux, unstable. At first blush, there appears to be a grain of truth in Heraclitus's contention that something is not a river if it does not involve changing waters. However that may be, the identity of a river is not predicated on that fact alone. A river also consists of a specific size, a well-defined course and terminus, and banks--and all of these attributes of a river may indeed change slowly over time but nonetheless remain comparatively stable, thereby conserving a river's determinate identity over time.
Equally significant, determinate identity over time lays the foundation for causality: a natural occurring, never-ending transformation process involving the motion of concrete existents and their determinate identities persisting over time.
Cause and effect are complementary aspects of the same transformation; neither can exist on its own. Cause is a motion which engenders a change--an effect. Effect is a state of affairs produced by some event, action, or process. Every causal transformation has a "beginning" and an "end." The beginning is called the cause, the end, the effect.
Causality is the Law of Determinacy in motion, which characterizes the transformation of an existent's properties while the existent itself remains and which in turn indicates that causality and the conservation of energy and matter operate hand in hand. When we observe the universe, we find an invariant order conserving a regularity of action according to the consistency of the properties of existents. Since the nature of the universe continues to be exactly the same, since the laws of nature remain immutable, since existents are "this-somethings" over time and endure in energy and matter, then it necessarily follows that causal transformations exhibit regularities and uniformities throughout the history of the universe. The universe is, was, and always will be orderly because causal law rules the cosmos.
Causality implies four antecedents: the motion of concrete existents and their determinate identities enduring over time, the Law of Determinacy, conservation laws, and an initial state of affairs (equilibrium). When the motion of a concrete existent(s) disturbs the equilibrium of the initial state of affairs (the cause), some elements of the initial state of affairs undergo change in strict accordance with their determinate identities over time and in strict accordance with the determinate identity over time of the concrete existent(s) which acts upon them, resulting in a new state of affairs (the effect), which restores equilibrium. The new state of affairs then becomes the starting-point for a new process of change, which will result in yet another new starting-point--and so on and so forth.
On this view of causality, it is evident that to be a concrete existent necessarily means to be a "this-something" persisting over time, which strictly limits what a concrete existent can or cannot do at any given time or place. For example, being a concrete man with a determinate identity over time strictly limits my ability to get pregnant or to develop ovarian cancer or to flap my arms and fly to Venus. In this connection it is worthwhile pointing out that nothing, with the exception of the volitional choices of human beings, who are capable at times of being totally irrational and of bringing about their own destruction as well as the destruction of the planet upon which they live, in the universe can act in contradiction to its determinate identity. So whatever is just is what it is--and it must act accordingly.
This last point fends off the riposte that quantum particles are indeterminate and random; i.e., the motion of quantum particles is entirely unpredictable and there is no fact of the case in existence at a preceding time that can determine their occurrence--and hence causality is invalid. In truth, quantum particles move about unimpededly but they are subject to causal law at all times and in all places by virtue of the fact that they are all "this-somethings" persisting through time, which absolutely limits how they can or cannot act in any given situation. The main point to remember is that quantum particles are always determinate, necessarily limited by their identities over time. On this view, quantum particles are pregnant with all possible causes and effects from the outset, so that cause and effect is the explicit nature of quantum particles when they are in motion--and nothing in reality can overthrow this state of affairs. Causality, then, is an insurmountable aspect of Being; it does not imply, however, that humans are omniscient or that they can measure or observe all cosmological events. None of this goes against Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, although whether or not humans can ascertain simultaneously the position and momentum of quantum particles remains a moot point.
Despite the fact that causality is quite elementary, philosophy has managed to make a complete muddle of it. Nevertheless, common sense commands us to look askance at those airy-fairy explanations of causality that attempt to lead us down the garden path: for instance, demiurge, prime mover, first cause, ultimate cause, mind-controlled reality, the accidental sequence of two objects, and motion in and of itself. Such arcane explanations are wrong because they take for granted the primacy of indeterminacy and because they gainsay scientifically proven laws and facts.
Causality, then, gives the lie to the prevailing orthodoxy that natural phenomena emanate from design or are subject to chance. Suffice it to say, if you are a faithful lover of ALEMBIC TRUTH, you will have no truck with either design or chance. Instead, you will embrace the only viable alternative, that being causality.
If the facts of reality were indeterminate, then there would be no way of establishing logical or causal relationships among them. Likewise, if there were no ultimate principles, then there would be no way of ascertaining the validity of any others. Evidently, then, both views are philosophically impotent, and hence they lack the efficacy to sire truth.
A potent alternative comes to mind. The observed facts of determinate Being are metaphysically ultimate, and as a result they provide the hard and fast raw materials with which epistemological adepts can logically weave a conceptual paradigm of determinate Being "in here" in order to make sense of the world "out there." This makes it perfectly clear that determinate thought distillations are epistemological, with metaphysical components; and that what determinate thought distillations exist depends on what actually holds good of observed facts and their determinate properties persisting over time. It can be seen from what has been said that determinate thought distillations echo objectivity over time.
Establishing a logical relationship between a determinate thought distillation and the objective facts of determinate Being that it purports to encapsulate sows the seeds of ALEMBIC TRUTH. And the validity of ALEMBIC TRUTH rests on the validity of a determinate thought distillation's objective referents, which in turn rests on the validity of a determinate thought distillation's definition, which in turn rests on the validity of core traits. Simply put, only the formulation of a determinate thought distillation into a formal definition that specifies the core traits of a determinate thought distillation's objective referents can pave the way for the elicitation of ALEMBIC TRUTH.
ALEMBIC TRUTH, the rational brainchild of a chaste mind, is alive and kicking.
Although I am a marginalized vassal of Canada's inhumane, demeaning, destructive, and unbearably humiliating neo-fascist welfare state--that honey-tongued siren who, under the guise of compassion and social justice, lures the unwary into a living death on the instalment plan--and although I don't have a ghost of a chance of ever acquiring the moral franchise while residing in a corrupt, illiberal society like Canada, yet I persevere at the behest of my inner voice of reason in spite of the fact that my fate lies beyond deliverance.
As crazy as it may sound, I still regard myself as being a real, full-fledged, honest-to-goodness human being (a metaphysically determinate fact) and not a lamb whose life and rights the State can sacrifice on some tribal alter in order to bring about a multicultural Utopia or a will-o'-the-wisp "Just Society." Be that as it may, I have succeeded, against all odds, in discovering the Achilles' heel of philosophy and religion--indeterminacy--as well as the primary principle of the universe--the Law of Determinacy--and its logical derivative--ALEMBIC TRUTH--which constitutes living testament to the invincibility of the human spirit. Nothing, not even liberal political correctness, can subdue it.
For me, Vermeer's The Geographer evokes an awe-inspiring reverence for ALEMBIC TRUTH. I deem that ALEMBIC TRUTH is the guardian angel and keystone of life and ethics. Life is purposive action directed towards the attainment of rational values, the end result of which is a sense of meaning and peace of mind. Still, before we can possibly discover the rational values that are required to steer us down the road of life, we must first embark on a long, arduous quest for ALEMBIC TRUTH. A sincere search for ALEMBIC TRUTH is the necessary precondition for establishing a code of values (ethics); and being faithful to ALEMBIC TRUTH necessitates applying all the derivative moral principles from such a code to our daily lives, which will surely render us paragons of virtue in complete harmony with our nature as rational beings and responsible moral agents. If we fail the test of virtue, we shall surely perish, as the history books teach us, since there is no escape from the law of consequences. As human beings, however, we are neither infallible nor omniscient. We don't know everything. We make honest mistakes, and sometimes we go astray. But we can always correct the errors of our way before we become completely lost so long as we remain faithful to ALEMBIC TRUTH--the supreme guide which illuminates the path to human virtue. To that end, ALEMBIC TRUTH is the fountainhead of virtue. What a shame, then, that ALEMBIC TRUTH has been excluded from playing any role in human affairs.
But over and above all else, I pine for the dawn of a civilized, enlightened world: a world in which all people will be responsible, respectful, and righteous; a world in which all people will live together freely, equally, and peacefully; a world in which ALEMBIC TRUTH supported by unconditional proof will be the sole criterion for deciding what constitutes good and bad human conduct; and a world in which ALEMBIC TRUTH will take its rightful place as the crown jewel of human knowledge.
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