Tag: Reasoning

Exhaustion.

Published on January 9, 2026

The mind that is disordered and irrational seems to be subject to extreme exhaustion. How is it that the mind is so inclined to abstract when it is not necessary to do so? Is the prior cause of this tendency the tech driven world we live in, a lack of discipline, or the natural disposition of the hapless fool who thinks too much, or a combination of all the three? It is my sincere hope, the greatest desire of my heart, to be wise. To be free from these endless, pointless circular abstractions.

In preserving this mental faculty from unnecessary abstractions, it seems that it either comes with experience, or through studying with a master teacher like Aristotle. Time will tell, and we’ll see.

EAR

Unnecessary things.

Published on January 8, 2026

Why do we concern ourselves with things outside of our proximity and control? What is it to us of what happens elsewhere in another city, another state, another land, where the moon is out, while here the sun is risen? Is life, in the moment, right now, not full of its own concerns?

I have stripped myself of all the outside noise of this world, and I wouldn’t say that I’m anymore at peace than the poor fool who concerns himself with sifting through the cacophonous media. What I can say is that I can more clearly control what exactly is consoling my soul and strictly eliminate the unnecessary noise that may disturb it. Yet, despite operating in this mode of simplicity, there is still struggle, a fight for reason, for the ordering of the intellect, a labor for wisdom. It is not easy, but very difficult, and in this wrestling as it were, there is much to look forward to, much to hope for, much to dream of, many wonderful and beautiful experiences in store.

But it’s not for free, it’s not for the faint of heart, but for the valiant, the persistent. There is too much work to do, such little time to do it, the clock keeps ticking, and the last thing we should do is concern ourselves with unnecessary things.

EAR

Slugs.

Published on January 7, 2026

What is this unwillingness to speak up? This desire push things on other people, to not share the burden, but watch someone else suffer for the sake of your own comfort, laziness, and illusional peace of mind? Why do people do this? I think it comes from an unwillingness to take risks. To make oneself vulnerable to defeat, or possibly victory. So, like a bunch of fat slugs, we hide in our little holes and deflect, redirect, forward, and forget. This can’t be human, or normal behaviors. It seems to be a sign of a culture that is slowly dying and imploding on itself. A culture and society that is devoid of reasoning, logic, and wisdom, ethics too.

In this cesspool of sloth, everyone is operating in this mode but pretending to act as if they are indeed acting upon anything at all. Yet, when one calls things out for what it is, feathers get ruffled, feelings get hurt, and tenured positions become threatened. Passive aggressive toxicity rises, and enemies are made. The very same enemies who, prior to you speaking up, were your friends when they were permitted to shove their responsibilities onto your desk, your inbox. Now, no longer.

The cost of this is the deprivation of the victim’s peace of mind, his willingness to serve is exploited, and the freedom to study is slowly taken away from him. This is a great paradox, a culture that prides itself on being scientific and learned, becomes the very black hole which destroys any contingency for the higher things that it imagines itself to be promoting.

EAR

Deserts.

Published on January 6, 2026

Deserts seem to be the place, where a man’s intellect and heart are tried, and tested, by an arid desolation that permeates to the core of one’s entire being. They also seem to be a reminder of the place that one left behind, when pursuing wisdom, and the incarnate Word. Though to be completely honest, a desert must not have been apparent to one prior to taking up the labor of seeking wisdom, and the grace of baptism. We must have been severely distracted, blissfully ignorant, or in serious denial of the severity and danger of this condition.

It seems to me there are a few options in response to this season of aridity: distraction, despair, or persistence. To distract is to be in denial. To despair is to be buried alive. To persist is to grow. It also seems that this desert never really goes away but lingers as we are reminded of what we left behind. Perhaps as we persist in wisdom, this reminder of the desert only grows more painful, and distasteful when it presents itself. It’s as if to go back to it, would only bring greater torment, because your eyes have opened to the truth, and you cannot unsee, or unlearn what you now know.

So, the only option is to persist and go on. To do anything else, seems unbelievably unreasonable, and irrational.

EAR

Mnemonics.

Published on January 4, 2026

Had I not stumbled upon the mnemonic chart of syllogisms, as used by the Renaissance masters for their students at that time, I would have been utterly lost in this chapter. I honestly could not figure out, why in the world Aristotle would provide all these different examples of invalid syllogisms, and not provide one demonstration of a valid one with predefined terms from natural philosophy. I was trying to understand the point and purpose of this. Every example he provided did not make any sense to me and felt very absurd to even reason with: “Some horse is no white, no crow is a horse, therefore no crow is white.” I kept asking myself, “So what? That, ‘no crow is a horse, while some horse is not white?’ What does that have to with a crow not being white? It has nothing to with it; these things are irrelevant and prove nothing about each other.”

Learning of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, and Ferio shed light on this question. It was such a huge breakthrough for me. Once I learned their propositional order, then it became a piece of cake to simply diagram out each syllogism in my notes and see why these were not working. In fact, I was able to quickly recognize what was universal, particular, privative, categoric, and the quick determination of the validity of each demonstration. I also noticed a commonality between the four perfect first figure syllogisms: viz. B A, C B, C A. Coming back to my original conundrum of not understanding why he demonstrates these as he did: it seems that he is showing us examples that are wrong, in order to make what is true more apparent to us.

Aristotle, Prior Analytics. Book I, Chapter 4.

EAR

Necessity.

Published on December 31, 2025

What is necessary seems to be a convergence point for the intellect to enter into, in order to be transfigured by what is in energy, in order to be at rest and at peace. I.e., what is necessary is what happens right now. What is priority is right now. What happened before, or what could happen later, are useful to know, in moderation. It seems to me that an unhinged, wild mind is incapable of resting in what is in energy now and is tormented by what was or what could be. Perhaps without training in Prior or Posterior Analytics, there would be no possibility of a human mind, naturally predisposed for analysis, to escape this inevitable fate of insanity. This seems to be the great parody of the human rational faculty. Indeed, it might be the reason why some, by consequence of their decisions as new independent and young adults, suddenly find themselves distracted by various earthly things in order to relieve themselves of the potency of insanity by way of unhinged abstractions.

Therefore, I think peace seems to be tied to what is necessary right now; yet, to defend that peace, I think one needs to be trained in how to properly deal with what was and what could be. Having both of these—a condition of being present while being absolutely capable of entering into inductive or deductive abstraction, regressively or progressively to deal with whatever comes—is essential to living in the way we were designed to.

EAR

Modes of service.

Published on December 30, 2025

It seems to me that there are two modes of operation: serving others and serving oneself; within the three vocations that encompass all of mankind: the productive, the political, and the contemplative.

Beginning with the political, it seems obvious to me what a self-serving politician would do. They campaign on promises, and upon election, do whatever is necessary to line their wallet and belly with cash and Turkish delights, respectively. Whether this contradicts the original promises is beside the point; the point is to get the cash and the Turkish delights. On the contrary, a politician genuinely serving others seems to be one who never rests because the contingency to help those he represents is vast, and his efforts are never good enough, thus necessitating a perpetual drive toward the golden mean.

Next are the productive ones. The self-serving among them seemingly ask the same kinds of questions: “What can I make that will help me acquire more, for the sake of getting more?” and “What corners can I cut to maximize my yield at little to no cost to me, even if it leaves my customer high and dry, which is no concern of mine?” On the contrary, the one seeking to serve others asks, “What can I make that will help people now?” and “What can I do to bring the absolute best quality into this thing I am making and wish to share?”

Lastly, the contemplatives. The selfish ones seem to ask, “What little bit can I learn for the sake of appearing wise to others, so that I may not be interrogated, but pretend to be the sole source of truth and become a guru who will sell things and write many books?” On the contrary, the legitimate philosopher asks, “Where can I go? Who can I turn to, to pursue the truth and know the truth, so that I may better serve others by revealing to them the wisdom I have received from those who served me by sharing what they know?”

EAR

Conversions, & contingencies.

Published on December 19, 2025

I could not understand what the difference was between the fact that a necessary universal privative proposition is converted, and a contingent universal privative proposition is not converted. I thought that perhaps the answer would be revealed by asking figuring out why this was the case metaphysically. So, I went down the rabbit hole and tried to do an abstraction, and brought it to the tutor: “Why are universal privative propositions impossible? I reason that it is because even if A and B were not, the fact that they are, begins from somewhere, or some inductive universal predicate, or point of origin. E.g. every man is not every rock, and every rock is not every man, but both exist, and so therefore, they can’t mutually and indefinitely exclude the other into subversion.”

I overstepped myself, and the tutor tried to clarify and reel me back, while citing from Posterior Analytics, and later chapters in the Prior Analytics. I was not having any of that, so after a dialectical tennis match, I felt utterly lost, and that was not a good feeling. With a shattered brain the tutor finally brought me back to my original question, and demonstrated in a way in which clarity returned, and I could see again: “… the key difference between the conversion of necessary and contingent universal privative propositions lies in their logical necessity and how their conversion relates to syllogistic validity. First: “A is present with no B” being the necessary, and the second: “It happens that A is not present with any B” being the contingent.”

EAR

Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Book I. Chapter 3.

Asymmetry.

Published on December 17, 2025

Once I got passed the extremely subtle style of Aristotle’s demonstrations, the complex web of elements composing a proposition, and perceiving the entire treatise as being divided into four main parts, a question arose in my soul: “Why are there no universally converted affirmative universals?” I attempted to abstract the idea in my mind. It is difficult to explain what exactly I was seeing, for it wasn’t necessarily tied to any known natural dianoetic conception, but the image I got seemed to be a reduction to a single point, upon which there was simultaneous convergence, and divergence from which the entire fabric of reality flowed into, and out of.

In this painfully abstract image, I noticed something: it was not symmetrical, but asymmetrical. For it seemed that what is universal can only regress to something more universal, and likewise whatever is particular can only progress to something more particular. This seemed to be simply the way things are. I abstracted further, “Then what would symmetrical look like with this image?” I attempted to assert the condition in my mind, and whatever fabric of reality I was seeing, seemingly flatlined, immediately subverted, and then there was nothing. I didn’t know exactly what to interpret from this at first, but after pondering on it, the answer seemed to come up from the depths of my soul, I took it to the tutor: “Asymmetry allows for potency.” The tutor replied: “This asymmetry is important because it preserves the logical potency and prevents contradictions. If universal affirmatives converted universally, it would collapse distinctions between categories and make reasoning unreliable. In short, the lack of universal conversion of universal affirmatives allows for logical structure and potency by maintaining asymmetry in predication, which aligns with Aristotle’s syllogistic framework.”

So, I have learned that universal propositions seem to scale and model the logical deduction of predications that exist with what is, and the rational soul, with reasoning, through Aristotle, now has a way to coherently express these in proposition, with precision.

EAR

Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Book I, Chapter 2.

Ex nihilo.

Published on December 16, 2025

At first, the main ideas of this chapter were not immediately apparent to me on my first two introductory light reads. I was trying to organize it into parts but was not understanding how to divide the chapter. I think my field of view was too deductive, or narrow, having just come out of On Interpretation. It wasn’t until I began the process of taking careful notes and working through each line, that the main ideas revealed themselves: proposition, term, syllogism. It seemed as if Aristotle just picked me up by the collar from the ground, while I was in the middle of looking at the individual grains of sand, and showed me the bigger picture of the beach we were standing on, or at least to be aware of it. The terms form the proposition, the proposition forms the syllogism, and the syllogism signifies the reasoning, and perhaps the deeper meaning beyond it.

Everything after that, as far as comprehension were concerned, was locked into place, and it was not difficult to organize my notes. My question to the tutor then became: “Is this structural framework (proposition, term, syllogism) necessary to penetrate the truth of reality?” The simple answer was “Yes… this framework is fundamental to Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and demonstration, as it enables the penetration of truth by logically deriving conclusions from primary truths.” My reply was: “Then it seems to me that rational minds are incapable of omniscience, and creating anything from nothing, but rather coming to know what is, and what was; also, coming to fabricate, or form new things from what is, and what was, created prior to Man’s existence, am I correct? It seems as if Man was put into a reality, which he can come to know, and interact with, but could not create himself. In fact, it seems as if nothing tangible, or intangible, whether physical, or intellectual, would be something outside of, or in addition to, the given and designed capacity, or potency, of what could be.

So, i.e. rational minds must have been designed to employ this framework: to be aware of the truth, to investigate the truth, the know the truth, to be protected by the truth, and to teach the truth. The truth is, what is, as God has it to be. In His omniscience, it seems that he gave us the power to be able to come to know the energy of His will, which is what is. So, therefore, logic seems to be an invitation to walk with Him, to penetrate the truth, be transformed by the truth, and perfected by the truth.”

The tutor replied and introduced me to a new term: “The intellect does not bring into being new essences or realities from nothing but discovers and works with what is. Therefore, your understanding that man is placed in a reality where he can know, interact with, and form new things from what is pre-existing, but cannot create himself or reality ex nihilo (from nothing), aligns well with Aristotle’s philosophy as presented in these classical texts.”

EAR

Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Book I, Chapter 1.