Objective Moral Standards

The first time the word "objective" was apparently used was "1610s, originally in the philosophical sense of 'considered in relation to its object'".

Objective moral truths are in relation to the object, rather than subjective in relation to pragmatic or other types of ends.

The object which such objective truths are in relation to is the standard that makes morality necessary: the life of Man both as species and as individual. This is set according to what Aristotle called "Man qua Man", or to put it another way, what is it about man that makes morals necessary?

It cannot be simply the preservation of the species--Hitler was doing that by preserving what he believed were Aryans. What Aristotle, Aquinas, Wm. of Occam, Averroes, and other rational thinkers could not conceive of didn't become a concrete idea until Jefferson and others like Madison and Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine read the works of Locke and Rousseau.

Locke, along with Rousseau, described a civilization in which government is "by the consent of the governed." This led to the American realization that there was such a thing as "individual sovereignty." This was logical, since to give consent to a government to do for you what is best not to do vigilante style, and what is best for "the general welfare", and what leaves you the most time on your hands for such things as living---to give consent you must first have that which you are giving away.

"Locke's theory of natural rights was, indeed, the theory of natural rights to which the Declaration would refer..."Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

It is individual sovereignty, until the 18th century only a vague idea in the minds of freethinkers and libertarians, that is the source of the need for moral standards. "Objective truths" are those that correspond to man's nature as the rational animal: he must be given the freedom to utilize that rationality as nature has given it to him.

But more than that, it is that each man must be protected from force and coercion that would prevent him from utilizing that gift of individual sovereignty that nature gave him.

The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism ^sm,  
Journal of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism ©, 
 The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger ©, 
 Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra ©
and The Metaphysical Naturalist ©,
  and Ardi Pithecus ™
  are the educational arms of 
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC, and are:  
©2008-2010 by Curtis Edward Clark and, Naturalist Academy Publishing, ^sm 

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com 

Existence Exists: A is A; Concepts in Naturalism

Tautology: a thing that is "true by virtue of its logical form alone." (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008.)

Logical truth. A statement which is necessarily true because, by virtue of its logical form, it cannot be used to make a false assertion. Example: "If neither John nor Betty is here, then John is not here." http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/t.htm#taug

Existence exists. This is generally what people mean when they use the definitions of "tautology" that are listed first in almost every dictionary, which are: "needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word," and "redundant" and "superfluous."

At first glance, to the uninitiated, "existence exists" does look redundant. But it is true by virtue of its logical form, which makes it important because besides being necessarily true, it is true about the first subject of metaphysics, "Being."

"Existence exists" is in the form of "A is A." This form is proper both gramatically and in its syntax. Any word that represents any subject can take the place of the first "A." Any word that is a predicate (i.e., tells something about the subject,) can take the place of the second "A." It is like math, where "A+B=C." You can put any number in "A" and in "B," but if "C" is incorrect then you have not put the proper values into one of the positions.

So we take "A is A" and we put words in the place holders "A" and "A." Apple is fruit. Sun is hot. But without being so primative, you can say "An apple" as the subject, or "The sun" or "Twenty dogs" or "Dancing ladies." But if the predicate that takes the place of the second "A" does not logically follow from the subject, then you are using the wrong word in one of the places. You have created a contradiction.

For example, "Dancing ladies are shaped like cows." That is not only not a tautology, it isn't true by virtue of the definition of the words. "An apple is fruit" is a not a tautology not because it does not make a "false assertion," but because you could have said "is red or green;" or "is round;" or "has seeds containing arsenic." "An apple is fruit" is a good part of the definition of an apple, but it is not the denotation; a denotation is the one definition that defines the essence of a thing. Many things are "fruit." The word "fruit" is generic to a lot of different foods, but something called a "differentia" takes a thing out of the generic and puts it into its own class all by itself.


That is to say, once you find the correct differentia it then puts a thing into its own class. Some of the differentia of "apple" are "round, red, green, juicy, tart, sweet," etc. One particular differentia is what sets the apple apart from all other entities in existence, and that one particularity is the denotation. A general dictionary like my Webster's gives the denotation of "apple" as "fruit of the trees of the genus Malus."


Pears don't come from Malus; nothing comes from Malus but apples. So that is the differentia that sets the apple apart from all other existents in existence. This is not a tautology. It says something about something, something that is not self-evident.


"Existence exists" is an axiom which states that there is something, as opposed to nothing. [ ] Existence is axiomatic because it is necessary for all knowledge and it cannot be denied without conceding its truth." http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_ExistenceExists.html "Exists" can be said to be the one predicate, the one differentia of "existence" that denotes "existence."


"Existence exists" is a tautology because it describes what seems to be self-evident. But because tautologies are axioms, they describe everything that has ever been known, is known, or will be known about a thing, in this case "existence." We can still learn much about the apple. Saying it is the fruit of Malus is not the full extent of what has been known, is known, or will be known about the apple. We know it is "delicious."

Existence cannot ever have "not existed." That is why the tautology is so important. To concede that existence could once have "not existed" is to concede a contradiction in terms. Even if you say that god created matter, heaven, and earth, it must be true that god existed; therefore god did not create existence.


(I am aware of the theological argument against this statement of naturalism, but in this context it is not germain. This theological argument could be one of the "defeators" as defined by Dr. Quentin Smith http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile , discussed in last week's series about keeping naturalism "secular." So it is an important theological objection against "therefore god did not create existence." Knowing this argument and how to rebut it would qualify as an "undefeated justifier for naturalism." But this is another subject for another day.)


Existence is defined by naturalists as a self-sufficient primary not in need of the supernatural for its presence nor its natural laws. Existence has always existed; but has this present universe always existed? Probably not. Man cannot fathom "infinite time." There could have been billions or trillions of universes before this one.But they all existed in existence; they could not have existed in non-existence. Therefore, existence has always existed, and the material form of it is ever changing.

Naturalism cannot deny the existence of existence. "A is A" is Aristotle's Law of Identity. It's like saying E=MC². It doesn't tell the whole story. It's just the code phrase. It is the conclusion of Einstein's long mathematical formula, its denotation. "A is A" is the shorhand for the Law of Identity, just as E=MC² is shorthand for the entire Einsteinean equation.


Aristotle's Law of Identity states: "These truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being . . . . For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis . . . . Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 3 (W. D. Ross, trans. Quoted from “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” The Virtue of Selfishness ; Ayn Rand)


Let me repeat; the Law of identity is this: that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.


Naturalism relies on the identity of existence for all of its propositions. If "Existence did not exist" as a tautology, nothing about metaphysical naturalism would make any sense. Before Aristotle's formulation of the Law, it had to have been a sub-conscious concept in the minds of pre-Aristotelean philosophers who set the standards for the science of naturalism. Had it not been even sub-conscious, in other words, if the concept had not existed in any form in the minds of men, naturalism could not have been conceived.

Naturalism is the recognition that all things in existence including the laws of nature are "natural." Again, that sounds redundant, but that is only if you forget that the opposite of "natural" is "supernatural." So it means even the laws of nature do not rely on a supernatural entity to have created them, or to maintain them, or to cause them to work.


Existence for the metaphysical naturalist is the acceptance that existence has always existed, that it is primary, necessary, and impossible never to have existed; that it could not have been created. To accept that existence was once non-existent and had to be created means at one time it was nothing, that nothingness was a metaphysical entity, that nothingness was an existent and that it was existant.


If nothingness was once an existent, then language means nothing. Contradictions have validity in a world where non-existence is accepted as once having existence. Naturalism is the science of removing contradictions from the identity of all things in existence. Naturalism is the antidote to dogma, superstition, supernaturalism, and the contradiction that existence must have been created from the the nothingness of non-existence.

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

The Big Question of Existence

What “Exists”?
“Existence” is often referred to as the "Universal Truth.” It is common for people to ask, “What is truth?” or “What is reality?” They are asking about Existence, the Big Question.
Cartoons depict people climbing to the top of a mountain to consult a “wise man,” to get the answer to a question that is burning in their minds. The comic strip B.C.1 integrated the “wise man” right into the prehistoric era of man, where the “wise men of mysticism,” Socrates and Plato, belong.

Often when asking about the “Big Question” it is with the expectation that a secret and mystic explanation will be given, and that perhaps it will be years before they can “divine” what the wise man told them is “the answer to the universe.” (That is why the mystics belong in the pre-history of philosophy.

But more than likely they harbor the wish that they, too, will comprehend this secret and divine or mystic explanation in one single lecture, in a revelatory moment. Sometimes, as with “Yahweh,” a single word which if spoken would do something. There are those who even say that word, when spoken correctly, will destroy the world.
People who ask about reality or facts don't always understand that they, too, are asking about existence. Existence is the universal preoccupation of our intellectual lives, because we not only want to know, “Where did it come from?” but it is the cognoscenti of our intellect. It is the object for which our consciousness pines and on which it is inextricably linked—cognoscenti are objects. Our consciousness is the subject of those objects.
When the Big Question is not phrased as "What is reality?" or "How do I know I exist?" or "Isn't the whole world subjective?", or “What exists and what does not?”, then, the Big Question is provoked of us in the angry, defiant tone of the indignant statement "Prove that I exist!"

Yes, people actually get angry about logic, and demand that someone talke them out of their irrationally induced life of skepticism. More often than not the Big Question is yet another but equal statement, “Prove God does not exist.”

Knowledge of what exists and what does not has become smudged and greyed when “existence” comes to be seen as “perceptions”. Don't you often hear the question, “Is reality our perceptions?” [continued]
[1Johnny Hart; http://lambiek.net/artists/h/hart.htm ]

[continued] The lines of knowing what exists and what does not have been blurred, sometimes erased altogether. A person can be convinced that the ego is necessarily egotistical; that nothing one does in life can have any meaning because “in the end we all die”; and that being “dust in the wind” has some significance to the life one must lead.
They can be convinced there is the possibility the sun won't rise in the morning, that the dog who got out won't get hit by a car, so they don't worry or hurry, then the dog gets hit, proving the human is flawed because he has been convinced of that (Kant) or because he wants to be convinced of that. Sketpicism has convinced him he cannot be right because there is the possiblity that he his not right.
Those two concepts of being “dust in the wind” and “in the end we all just die anyway” are the most skeptical arguments for un-reason in today's verbal arsenal on existence. Those questions have a lot of people flummoxed. What is the purpose of following a principled life if in the end you just wind up dead? We will get to the answer.

Consciousness and “Existents” Must Exist
But this concept of existence itself is not possible to comprehend without consciousness, and that very fact as a thing in itself implies the existence of at least one one thing in existence: consciousness. If one thing exists in existence, it becomes the proof of the existence of existence. That is how a tautology works, and why it must work. It cannot be defeated without at least one unworkable concept going to its grave, or another one proving to work right along it. Aristotle out; Copernicus and Galileo in.

(You can also say this is the time that traditional metaphysics went to its grave, because Aristotle out means his metaphysics. In came physics, standing alone in the mind of one man, and his metaphysics were different from Aristotle's. It was modernly cosmological, and ever since the cosmology of astro-physics has become more remote from its roots. I met a cosmologist in his office on a university campus, where he proceeded to call ideas of metaphysics other than those of physics to be “Bunk!”

“Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go,” wrote Ayn Rand, in “For the New Intellectual.”
In her “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,” she writes, “It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences.”
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/science.html

The "universal truth" is the following: "Existence exists." It is also equally as true that “Existents exist”, and neither statement can be true without the other also being true.
Existents (noun) are any thing and all things that exist, have existed, and can exist. From the “strings” in string theory—even if strings are someday proved not to exist, they still exist as ideas—to the spaghetti on your plate and the plate under the spaghetti.
Ideas are existents because they have existence in the mind. Rocks and gas, and muons, and Harry Potter, trolls and fairies and elves are existents, if not in empirical, “material” reality, then at least as subjective reality, i.e., concepts, in our heads. Concepts are subjective existents. Spaghetti is an objective existent. Spaghetti the idea is a subjective existent.

An “existent” is anything that exists; therefore, existents exit in existence.

Proof of the correctness of this statement is as follows;
If: existence did not exist, You would—could not—exist in any form, not as an independent objective existent in an independent, objective, empirical universe;
nor as a subjective existent in someone's mind or in the “godhead” or as figment within another mind;
nor as an existent in Your own mind whether or not you believed Your mind was the only existent in existence.

(To be existent in Your own mind, and to argue that all other things in existence are created by Your consciousness is called “Solipsism.” This is also called the Primacy of Consciousness.1 But it is a fallacy, having no basis in empirical reality. It still requires the acknowledgment that at least one thing, Your consciousness, is an existent. Solipsism is sometimes the reason for asking “IF a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?”; with the resultant answer, “No, because a 'sound' is something heard, and if you were not there to create the falling tree it could not fallen in the first place.2

(I have seen the question asked—more than once—“If I die, or close my eyes, does the world cease to exist?”)

If existence did not exist, You, in any form whatsoever would not exist because there would be no existents whatever. In what medium can an existent such as "consciousness" exist except in the medium of existence? Even if we discovered that the only existence is in “the godhead,” at least one thing would exist. Certainly nothing can be an existent in the absence of existence.

The "axiomatic concept"3 that "existence exists" began at least no later than Aristotle, who used it as formulaic. The formula "A is A" means literally that a “thing” cannot be something else. To Aristotle it means first and foremost that [continued]

[[1Ayn Rand: “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”
[2This is not even the true meaning of the question, but for most people that meaning has been lost or never found. We will examine that Q&A in Chapter &.
[3“An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts....all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought—consists of axiomatic concepts.” Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology; Ayn Rand; © The Objectivist, Inc. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axiomaticconcepts.html ]]


[continued] Existence exists.”

The Axiomatic Concept (see Note 3 above) becomes “Just” an Axiom.
The first “A” in the formula is any “object” you want to put in the formula; the second “A” is its non-contradictory identity, called the “subject,” no matter which “identity” one chooses as the subject.
For example, Man can be identified as “an upright primate with opposable thumbs”; or as “the animal with grammatical and syntactic vocal patterns, or as “the rational animal.” None of these description contradicts what we know “Man” is, but the first two descriptions are more general as differentia than the second, which is more particular. (Differentia is the difference between two or more things. The cagegory the two or more things are in are called a genus.) They do not contradict each other, but the identity of “rational animal” supersedes any other description because it is the most particular of all the descriptions of “Man.”
The “most particular definition” of a thing is found in the “axiom”1. And that “most particular definition” is called the “essence” of a thing.“Rational animal” is the ultimate, most particular definition of the concept “Man.” The “essence” of a thing is always contextual. The “essence” of the concept “latch” can be either a thing that keeps something else, like a door, closed; or it can mean to secure something like a door with that thing called a “latch.” One is a noun; one is a verb. But if you are talking about “latching” on to a husband, the meaning of the verb again changes. There is no contradiction in these differences, because in each case we are not talking about the same thing.
But in the case of the question, “What is the essence of Homo sapiens?”, it can only be “the rational animal” because Bigfoot walks upright also, but we don't know if he is rational, yet we know that the only known rational animal is Man.
Existence in Metaphysics2 and in Epistemology3 See Chapter $"Existence exists" is the epistemological axiomatic concept ; "existents exist" is the metaphysical axiomatic concept. This means it cannot be said that “existence” does not exist; and it cannot be said that existents do not exist. To say either one, is to deny that whatever means by which you comprehend such things and come to deny them also does not exist!
These axiomatic concepts have, therefore, been argued if not utilized by all [continued]

[[1 “An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” Galt's Speech; “For the New Intellectual”; Ayn Rand http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/axioms.html
[2 “Metaphysics” is the identification of the “essence” of a thing, as well as all the constituent identities, and whether or not they exist in the first place. And if one is found to exist, like “Goldilocks”, only in the mind and literature, but not in empirical physics, its placement in the importance of all things metaphysical may be low. All things metaphysical have a placement in a hierarchy of values that your mind determines. Your spouse would probably come before Goldilocks, your dog before your shoes.
[3 “Epistemology” is the method by which identifications are discovered, identified, and verified as true or real. It is a hard-wired faculty of the mind, ready at birth to go to work identifying the new world, just as the lungs are ready to go to work breathing. But neither faculty works until birth. ]]


[continued] philosophers, and none disagrees, at least by default, that existence exists because it would require the statement that "existents do not exist."
As axiomatic concepts, they are the given, the self-evident, and describe all things that have existed, exist now, and ever will exist. Therefore, since no philosopher can disagree that existence does not exist, even if he acknowledges it with Solipsism, all must agree that existence cannot never have existed, at the risk of contradicting that .
The Default Position on Creation Non-existence is not the "default position" to argue from. Creationists make it the default position. But why should it be said that at one time God was the only existent?
To argue this default position is to contradict the axiomatic definition of the word "existence", not to mention contradicting the axiom of physics that states that matter does not cease to exist, it only changes forms. God had to make Creation out of things that already existed, because the matter he used never disappears. (If you don't believe in God, it's OK; this is just a sidebar.)
Since matter, according to the accepted laws of physics, does not cease to exist, it must always exist in the future and cannot have been created or it cannot have always had the nature of being existent. If we admit that God exists, we must also admit that he used material in the Creation that exhibits the physics of not ever having been non-existant.
That goes directly back to the concept that the "absence of existents" is not the default position. The "absence" of a thing is not the existence of the absence of a thing. "Absence" of existence cannot be an "existent."It is from these axiomatic concepts that all other concepts, axioms, propositions and thoughts are derived.Axiomatic concepts are the most particularized definition (denotation) of existents. The concept “existence” is derived from the perception of “existents,” the very fact of which proves that at least one this exists in existence, even if that one thing is the consciousness of a Solipsist.

Please send all comments and all unsolicited material for publication here, to
freeassemblage@gmail.com
or see http://www.advocatesmanifesto.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and
Naturalist Academy Publishing ®