THE EPISTEMIC CORRELATIVE

By G. Brady Lenardos

Let’s take it one point at a time.

1. Basic background. Here, we are going to get into some philosophy and logic, so hang in there. If anything exists, it is necessarily true that whatever exists, exists via intention or without intention (accident is a synonym). This is an extension of the third law of logic, the law of excluded middle. It is usually written, “Aâ€ or “not Aâ€, but not both. “Aâ€ and “not Aâ€ are contradictory terms. That means they both can’t be true. We also call this, “an antithesis.â€ What we are getting at is, logically, one must be true and the other must be false. To reiterate, we are saying what is behind the universe is either intent or not intent.

2. We don’t have the means or ability to get behind the universe and find out which is the case. In other words, either could be the case, but we can never know which is the case.

3. The human experience. As humans, we feel that our lives have meaning. We believe that we have epistemic standing; in other words, we have the faculties and abilities that allow us to know things about ourselves, about the world around us, and how we and that world relate to each other. We believe that our thoughts and our spoken and written words have meaning and that we can communicate our meaning to others. We believe that rational thought, logic, and critical thinking help us communicate with others, and understand more about the world around us.

4. By examining the intentional and unintentional positions, we can extract the implications of each position. 

a. For the intentional background position, we can see a narrative that says we are in a universe that is intended to be known, and there are creatures in the universe that are intended to know it. This gives you, me, and the scientist the possibility of epistemic standing. In other words, we are able to know the world around us. The intentional background allows for things to be what they are for a purpose and with a purpose and for a reason. Going back to our previous point 2, it is possible that none of this is true, we just don’t know. What we do know is that if the intentional background is true, it can provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for meaning, knowledge of a world external to us, and rational thought. This is just another way of saying an intentional universe is a theistic universe.

b. For the unintentional background position, there is no purpose or reason for anything to be what it is. If anything does exist, it exists without any intent, by accident, by happenstance, by pure chance, there is no plan, and there is no reason for anything to be what it is. There is no reason that anything should relate in any way to anything else. The unintentional background cannot offer the necessary and sufficient conditions for meaning, knowledge of a world external to us, and rational thought, because it cannot offer any conditions at all. You see, it is not that the implications of this background lack a few things here and there. The implications themselves make meaning, knowledge, and rational thought impossible. In the unintentional background, everything that exists (if anything at all can exist) just is, that is its state of affairs. We must here acknowledge that this could be the actual case; that nothing we say or do has meaning, that it is possible there is no world external to us, that we know nothing and are not reasoning at all. In an accidental universe, a scientist would be a person trying to find the reason for how and why things are the way they are while holding as a first principle that there is no reason for how and why things are the way they are. This is just another way of saying an unintentional universe is a non-theistic universe.
5. So here we are. There are two positions in front of us. We can never know for sure which is the case, or which is not. There are implications for both backgrounds. That’s it. We are done. 

Conclusion: At this point, may I make a suggestion? If you are planning to write back to me (or anyone else) and you are assuming your thoughts, your words, your human experience, and even that you have any meaning at all, if you assume you are actually communicating with an actual person in an actual world external to yourself, you might want to start with the background position that allows for the possibility of meaning, knowledge, rational thought, and that allows for an epistemic standing that correlates to your human experience, and avoid the background position that denies the human experience and reduces you, your thoughts and words to nothing more than “Sound and fury, signifying nothing.â€
