On Truth and Falsity

                           The Reality of the Intellect

The skeptics use the word "judgment" in an illogical way. They claim that true judgments need to be made to discover if anything observed by the intellect can be true and real, and then they maintain that all such judgments can only be impossible. One wonders how they ever obtained the idea of "judgment" in the first place. pb. OP ps.114-118. The skeptics certainly do not refrain from using their judgment to declare that no one can tell if anything is real or unreal. In other words, the skeptics maintain that the only true and real judgment that humans can make is that no one can tell if anything is true and real or false and unreal. But how can anyone make that judgment without a real mind to make it? Apparently, the skeptics believe that an intellect that could be real or unreal can not know if any of its appearances are real or unreal. But how could such an intellect make any judgments at all? The skeptics simply ignore the fact that all unreal appearances are useless unless humans apply other ideas to those useless systems in order to make them useful.

The skeptics do admit that humans have appearances. Since humans certainly have appearances, then those appearances must appear to something. In humans, the intellect happens to be a product of consciousness. Humans can use their intellect in creative ways. Therefore, the skeptics must be tacitly admitting that appearances can only appear to human consciousness. But the skeptics require an impossible test that humans must somehow get outside of their appearances, and their consciousness as well, in order to be able to judge whether or not both are real or unreal. But in this impossible test, the skeptics ignore the true logic that when all possible answers to a question or a problem have been logically eliminated except one, then that one solution has to be the true one. Sherlock Holmes knew that. This fact can only mean that when all impossible tests are eliminated because they can produce no results, then the one true and certain fact has to be that only consciousness can have appearances.

Another undeniable fact happens to be that humans can use their appearances; that is, their sense objects and thought objects, to formulate systems that prove to be creative. One wonders how creative systems could ever be unreal since they all prove to be beneficial to humanity whereas unreal systems prove themselves to always be useless. The skeptics argue that because each individual can form their own systems of speculation or opinion about the nature of reality, then that proves that no one can tell the difference between truth and falsity. But the skeptics ignore the fact that while humans know some truths and realities, they are also on a quest to discover whatever truths and realities that lie hidden within the unknown. The skeptics also ignore the fact that each person has individual freedom and their own individual stream of consciousness which they can use to formulate their own systems that attempt to describe the nature of reality. In other words, each individual has their own creative systems within themselves. Sadly, some humans misuse their freedom. Even so, humans often get most of their conclusions about the nature of reality wrong, but each individual has the right to speculate in their own creative ways, even the skeptics. The very fact that humans can use their sense objects and thought objects in creative ways, even if only in speculation and opinion they get most of their conclusions wrong, proves that all of their sense objects and thought objects must be true and real because systems that are not true and real always prove, in themselves, to be useless. All systems of speculation and opinion can only be creative, even if they prove to be wrong, because when they are discovered to be wrong, they can all be usefully discarded from reality. In this way, wrong conclusions increase human knowledge just as much as does true conclusions.  

Systems of speculation and opinion must be investigated to determine if any conclusions reached are true and real or false and unreal. Since about the sixteenth century, the scientific method has been used as a tried and true means to discover the truth or the falsity in many speculative systems. But modern scientists have become arrogant in that, for political reasons, they have embraced certain speculative systems that possess no evidence to support their conclusions, such as the theory of evolution.