No, this misunderstands the ontological nature of Logic in the argument. Logic is not limited to epistemology or conscious situations where it “kicks in.” Logic is simply the alignment and application of the stable distinctions created and cohered by Truth across all reality.
Even a rock demonstrates this. When you throw a rock and it hits the floor, that interaction requires stable ordered distinctions to form the patterns we observe (this rock bounces off this floor in consistent ways, etc.). These patterns hold whether any mind is consciously applying logic or not.
Your claim actually confirms the argument: the ordered structure and stable distinctions (lines 1–3) are always active, enabling instinct, physical behaviour, and reasoning alike.
How do you account for the reliable patterns in physical processes and instincts without the stable distinctions and ordered structure the argument identifies?
Yes exactly. All perception and logical interpretation requires stable distinctions that any contingent perceiver cannot ground.
This further proves my point. The absence of the “instrument” (senses or tools) makes perception impossible for that perceiver. The “I” that perceives is always limited and contingent. Yet the sound waves, light waves, chemical gradients and pressures themselves continue to exist and follow stable patterns whether any particular perceiver or instrument is present or not.
Those stable distinctions and ordered patterns are not created or grounded by the perceiver’s body or instruments—they are exactly what the argument identifies as requiring Eternal Truth (lines 1–3).
How do you account for the existence and reliability of those mind-independent patterns (waves, pressures, gradients) when no perceiver is there to “read” them?
In the 7 lines, “Truth” is capitalized because it refers specifically to the non-contingent, Eternal precondition that creates and coheres all stable distinctions (A=A) and the universe’s ordered structure (line 4). This distinguishes it from ordinary contingent “truths” (particular true statements).
The capitalization is deliberate to mark this technical use.
It is not a meaningful hypothesis to imagine the perceiver doesn’t exist. Wave and pressure only came into the talking point, because someone raised questions about them. In the middle of talking about them, suggesting the perceivers don’t exist doesn’t make sense.
There will always be the perceivers as well as debaters, otherwise there would not have been the discussions at first place.
The fact that this discussion exists and is going on, proves that there are the perceivers and also the debaters.
You are conflating the contingent naming conventions (“true”, “false”, etc.) with the non-contingent ontological bedrock that grounds them—Truth.
The binary “symbols” (tools from line 2) in code still require actual physical mechanisms to function at all—transistor switches in silicon chips (voltage high = on/1, low = off/0), the presence or absence of electrical charge in DRAM memory cells, magnetic north/south polarity on hard drives, or light present or absent in optical systems. All real computer systems necessarily operate on this concrete physical binary of true (on) and not true (off). These are observable, stable distinctions in reality, not arbitrary conventions. So your nominalist argument is still 100% reliant on the very stable distinctions (A=A) created and cohered by Truth that the argument identifies.
Again, you are conflating “language games” with the ontological bedrock that makes any language games possible to begin with.
There is no such thing as “non-binary logics” at the ontological level. Logic is the alignment and application of the stable distinctions created and cohered by Truth. You remain confined in the epistemic containment trap. The argument is not making an epistemic claim; it is making an ontological one—what must be true for any epistemology (or language) to exist at all.
Languages (both present and prehistoric) are tools that humans use to communicate Truth efficiently (line 2). But any language fully requires stable distinctions and ordered patterns in order to function at all. Without them, meaning and significance themselves would be impossible.
What is inherently faulty in your reasoning is the temporal confusion : truth and eternity does not belong to the same “space”, the same category, does not obey the same causality.
The truth 2+2=4 is strictly atemporal; it does not “exist” in time waiting to be discovered.
I agree to speak here in terms of the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle, except if some particular case comes up which we might want to deal with.
That’s the part I’m not sure about.
It seems to me that we can presuppose the confines of logic without all this. All we need to do is want to make sense to one another for us to adopt these rules of inference and communication.
That is, here’s another reason why true/false, or all the logical rules of inference, might hold: It’s not because there is a Divine Origin binding everything together, but because I want others to make sense to me and I to make sense to others.
That does not rule out a Divine Origin, per se, but is another possibility that odes not presume a Divine Origin, and so undermines your what amounts to a transcendental argument: Since there is another option it’s simply not the case that one must presume a Divine Origin. (here, I’m presupposing that sentences are true or false instead, without some metaphysical explanation)
Of course this discussion requires perceivers and debaters—that is obvious and not in dispute.
This is the same category error of reducing ontology (what exists and functions independently) to epistemology (what we are currently discussing).
Do you accept that video cameras exist outside human minds, free of any epistemic conceptions or language games? If you do, then what are they recording? A camera literally transduces light and sound waves into stable binary distinctions (on/off, 1/0)—exactly what lines 1–3 describe. Put a camera in an empty room and it still records and interprets those patterns flawlessly—even absent any human observer whatsoever.
This is direct proof that the patterns are not epistemically contained in our thoughts or perception. They exist and function reliably whether any human perceiver is present or not.
How do you account for these patterns that are clearly independent of our minds without the non-contingent Origin (line 7) the argument derives?
In the 7 lines, “Truth” is capitalized because it refers specifically to the non-contingent, Eternal precondition that creates and coheres all stable distinctions (A=A) and the universe’s ordered structure (line 4). This distinguishes it from ordinary contingent “truths” (particular true statements).
The capitalization is deliberate to mark this technical use.
You put the situation forward claiming that waves and pressures exist even if there is no perceivers, which was irrelevant to the point.
Which was put forward by yourself.
You need to be open minded. You cannot claim they exist, when you cannot perceive and don’t know about it. You must have another option for unknown existence along with the known existence.
The video camera only records when you set it up and activate to record. It doesn’t record by itself while you don’t know.
If it does, then it is someone else’s camera, which you have nothing to do with. No point talking about someone else’s camera which you don’t have knowledge or control over it. Again irrelevant point.
No—this is a classic nominalist + category-error objection, conflating descriptive tools (line 2: symbols and language) with the non-contingent ontological bedrock that grounds them (Truth).
Truth (A=A) must necessarily be Eternal and non-contingent, independent of any contingent universe. If it were merely “atemporal” in the way you describe and tied to flux (decaying brains, shifting matter, or any contingent structure), then the conditional “A=A as ‘this ≠ that’” would fail: “this” would equal “that”, A=A identity would vanish, Logic’s Law of Non-Contradiction (A ≠ non-A) would not hold, and coherent reality would be an impossibility (line 5). Yet stable distinctions and invariants are observed everywhere and have never failed to hold even once.
How do you account for the invariant stability of 2+2=4 across all contingent change without the Eternal Truth the argument derives?
Eternal means it existed forever—it didn’t “come from” anywhere. It has always been and always will be. That is the standard definition of eternal and exactly what “non-contingent” means in line 4.
“Eternal” is capitalized in the 7 lines to mark this specific technical use: the Eternal Truth, Eternal Origin, etc.
These 7 lines are an excerpt from my full paper The Relational Precondition of Intelligibility and the Resolution of the One-Many Problem. There’s a link in my bio if you want to take a look.
Let’s take a step back. The point is not about who sets it up or has personal control.
Do you agree that video cameras (any camera, regardless of ownership) exist and can function outside of any particular human mind, free of epistemic conceptions or language games?
If you agree, then how do they actually record? What is the technical process? Is it not the case that they transduce light and sound waves into stable binary distinctions (on/off, 1/0)—exactly what lines 1–3 describe?
Logic doesn’t presuppose anything, it instantiates itself through its own verifiability
This is either a definition or it begs the question. There are types of logic that support contradictions. Plus it conflates logic and ontology without justification
This is a corollary of 4 and subject to the same objections
This is just a preamble to 7.
This is just a non-sequitur. You could argue that logic is foundational inasmuch as it is constructive and self-validating. But “Eternal Origin” is just vague. Denying logic presupposes logic inasmuch as you view any kind of rational statement to be a function of logic.
No. Camera can only record when it is set by someone. It doesn’t do it by itself. And the recorded images only have meanings when you see it with your own eyes. Therefore talking about cameras outside of your mind have no meanings at all.
Because of the fact that your statements #1 is wrong and incorrect, the rest of them is not meaningful to go over at this stage. They could be all incorrect too, if they are based on the statement #1.
There is nothing else in existence that can generate this duality. Truth alone creates distinctions.
That’s a claim that could be true or false but the claim isn’t presupposed by Logic is all I am saying. You haven’t shown how Logic presupposes those distinctions are/were created or generated. For example, some might say they exist without having been created.
If every coherent claim, even contradictory ones, requires stable distinctions that are invariant across all possible worlds, then Truth must exist independently of the universe.
Now you are changing the language, “require” is very different from “presuppose”. If you say that for Logic to be, it requires X and you have Logic then X “exists” too. If you say that Logic presupposes X, as I said it doesn’t mean X is ontologically. Which one is it?
How do you know that we “Observe” reality? According to the mind-body problem, there is an enormous issue with making sound judgements about the exterior world (Ie, whether it exists independently of the mind, or is instead a construct of the mind or of other minds, if you are a philosophical idealist), on the basis of what we know about it being obtained by sense organs, of which may be, aside from purely survivalistic purposes, deeply unreliable at forging sound logical judgements about the world, because the world may be, if it is effective at enhancing our survival chances, way different in truth than it is by perception, and if you would contest that this is the case, then you ought to make an argument against why this is. And given that your following six premises (Even though they are somewhat disconnected from one another, unlike true logical arguments) run on the assumption that the universe is observable, and hence intelligible on the basis of logical axioms like that of identity (A = A), then this is contestable because, if the intelligibility of the universe is predicated on the possibility of us correctly applying the laws of logic to the universe as is, but our sense organs, according to the mind-body problem, may prevent us from seeing the universe as is, then the extent to which the laws of logic do truly apply to the actual universe, given that it could exist independently of minds, could be far less than you presuppose that it does, which undermines your last premise that an eternal origin for logic truly explains the reality that is apparently “observed.”
But none of that has anything to do with the conventional meaning of ‘truth’. It is unclear whether you are using a precise definition of ‘truth’ here. It is unclear whether you are using the meaning of ‘truth’ as correspondence or ‘truth’ as mere logical consistency or coherence. In this case, I must ask you: What is an ontological truth to you, and why do you call it “truth”? Because if we take truth to mean correspondence, it makes no sense to bring up examples such as those you have cited. Since “0” and “1” do not respectively mean “does not correspond to reality” and “corresponds to reality”.
But it does at the level of meaning. And that is my point: if there are meaningful contradictions, just as there are paraconsistent meanings, that means language goes beyond binary logic. And so your binary world is not sufficient to account for these things.
But this is not, then, a case of a performative contradiction. Since the performative contradiction is based on the concept of truth as correspondence. This means that you are criticising language games from an epistemic rather than an ontological standpoint. Consequently, your argument is not valid if you claim to be speaking from an ontological level.
2+2=4 is rule invariant, not time invariant : it exist between human agreeing for rules like the non-contradiction rule, it exists in the metaphysical “betweenal” space of Thought. What you call eternal should be named betweenal (to be sure there is not another confusion : you agree eternal relate to time, right ?).
I agree A=A is non-contingent but non-contingent of personal opinion or external facts only : it exists by itself between humans as soon as they agree on logic, it does not exist time-eternally.
Another attempt to have you catch that time and truth are causally distinct : time belong only to the matter category and matter is produced, come from the quantum reality where time does not exists (nor space) : so “time-eternal” truths don’t exist even within this time-truth confusion.
Another confusion you hold : 2+2=4 is no tied to brain/material flux the way you say. 2+2=4 belong to a betweenal causal space that is causally independent, exactly the way this discussion has it’s own causal dynamics. Brain is just a support for that causality to exists the same way a microprocessor is necessary to type this discussion on a keyboard and screen. Confusing these two levels of independent causalities is like saying that typing a text is electrically messing with microprocessor pins.
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