This is an excerpt from Dennis Bonnette’s recently published work, Foundations for Universal Certitudes: A Catholic Philosopher Defends Metaphysical First Principles that Firmly Support Traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic Sciences.
Read excerpts from Book 1, Book 3, Book 4, Book 5 and Book 6.
Following Vatican Council II, most of the previously orthodox Catholic colleges and universities slowly abandoned their firm commitment to the Catholic intellectual heritage, especially by decreasing both the number and traditional content of required theology and philosophy courses—and even by changing theology courses into what they called “religious studies.” This tendency was especially evident in their failure to continue to teach the Thomistic philosophical sciences, such as philosophical psychology, metaphysics, natural theology, and natural law ethics. Such courses were routinely replaced by far fewer ones, which were then taught using an historical method inherently inimical to the truth status of competing historical positions. This, in turn, has led to generations of otherwise educated Catholic college graduates who have little or no real understanding of the Church’s intellectual heritage, and especially, its unequalled contributions offered by the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In 2022, my book, Rational Responses to Skepticism, a rather large volume (569 pages), was published—offering robust rational defenses of the philosophical foundations of authentic divine revelation, specifically as seen in Catholic doctrine. It also contains defenses of certain central revealed truths, such as the genuine scientific possibility of a literal Adam and Eve.
Foundations for Universal Certitudes, is the second of a series of six publications containing shorter portions of the much larger volume, Rational Responses to Skepticism. Each smaller work contains themes coherent in themselves as subjects of independent investigation, and yet, still subordinate to the overall message of the original volume from which they are taken.
The first book in this series, Atheistic Materialism’s Unseen Errors, reveals devastating weaknesses and contradictions inherent in the worldview known as atheistic or scientific materialism, which is essentially the same thing as philosophical naturalism.
This present work is the second book of the six book series. Entitled Foundations for Universal Certitudes, it contains eight chapters. Each was itself originally published online as an independent essay—making it easier for the reader to make complete sense of its content without reading the other seven chapters of this book or the entire much larger volume, Rational Responses to Skepticism, from which it came.
We live in a world in which many people are skeptics, agnostics, or simply claim that the most the human mind can attain is high degrees of probability. They maintain that nothing is absolutely true.
On the contrary, an entire body of truths can be known with certitude, including the existence of the God of classical theism, the spirituality of the human soul, and natural law ethical principles. It is not the purpose of the present book to prove all those truths. They are more fully developed in the parent volume, Rational Responses to Skepticism. Rather, the work of Foundations for Universal Certitudes is simply to show the apodictic certainty of some metaphysical first principles which apply to all things and which can be used as the basis for demonstrating a much larger body of absolute truths, including those mentioned above.
The present book begins in chapter one with an examination of the most basic principles known to the human mind. Every thinker, logician, natural scientist, and philosopher necessarily presupposes the universal truth of these first principles. This first chapter shows that the mind inherently knows the concept of being and its implications for the first principles, while the alternative denial of this ability would destroy all knowledge of reality. It will show the meaning and validity of that concept of being, not as a mere logical construct, but as an object of metaphysical knowledge which can serve as the basis from which all other fundamental metaphysical principles flow and obtain their apodictic truth.
From the initial encounter with any reality whatsoever, the mind forms a judgment of being which first affirms the principle of identity: Being is being or being is what it is. The simultaneous corollary of this principle is the principle of non-contradiction: Being cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Next comes the principle of sufficient reason: Every being must have a sufficient reason for its being or coming-to-be. Other metaphysical principles flow from these most basic ones and serve as the secure foundation for all natural science, logic, and any rational grasp of reality.
Chapter two explores the next metaphysical principle: causality—a principle whose meaning and certitude derives directly from the principle of sufficient reason.
The reasoning is as follows: If something is not entirely its own reason for being, then, to that extent, it requires an extrinsic sufficient reason. Another name for such an extrinsic reason is “cause,” while that which receives its reason from that cause is deemed an “effect.” Therefore, every effect requires a cause. David Hume confused matters by maintaining that cause and effect entailed a temporal sequence: Given event A, event B necessarily and subsequently follows. But authentic metaphysics demonstrates that the cause must be simultaneous with its effect. To take away the cause is to take away the effect. Historically, Hume’s failure to grasp the necessary immediate dependence of the effect upon its cause has led to many other misunderstandings, especially with respect to the validity of proofs for God’s existence based on causality and motion.
Chapter three addresses the claim made by some that certain realities, such as the very existence of the cosmos, are simply “brute facts,” needing no further explanation. This essentially irrational view undercuts even the role of natural science whose very method demands investigation of the reasons for all things. On the contrary, the principle of sufficient reason applies to all things, especially to the very existence of the cosmos itself. This chapter defends the absolute truth of the need for a sufficient reason for each and every bit of reality—cosmos included.
Chapter four examines the intriguing question as to whether an infinite regress among causes is possible. This is important because most people think of a causal regress as a regress going back through time. Since—as the argument goes—the universe had a beginning in time, an Uncaused First Cause must exist—the Cause which is the timeless God of classical theism. That is the essence of the Kalam cosmological argument.
But science cannot definitively prove that the cosmos had a beginning in time, since it is always possible to conceive of some prior state from which the Big Bang—or any other hypothesized beginning—itself arose. A temporal regress is like that of children coming from parents and the parents coming from their parents—backwards to infinity. While parents cause the coming-to-be of their children, the children are not existentially dependent on their parents. The parents can die while the children survive. Nothing prevents this kind of causality from regressing to infinity, since there is no immediate dependence of effects on their prior causes.
On the contrary, authentic metaphysics demonstrates that a true and proper cause must be simultaneous with its effect. To take away the cause is to take away the effect, as shown in chapter two above. So, each effect is immediately and simultaneously existentially dependent on its proper cause. It is a regress of such proper causes that cannot go to infinity, not the one assumed by the Kalam argument. And this is the kind of causal regress fully explained in chapter four.
Many writers err in assuming that we are dealing here with accidental causal chains that can regress in time. Nothing prevents such temporal causal chains from regressing to infinity, unless we assume that the world had a beginning in time. But, a proper cause must continue acting for its effect to continue. The true meaning of causal regression among proper causes requires that the cause be simultaneous with its effect, like the top floor of a skyscraper being held up by the floor beneath it which, in turn, is held up by the one beneath it and so forth. Clearly, removing the lower floors in such a chain of causal dependency would prove a disaster to the top floor! That is the kind of causal regress which absolutely cannot go to infinity. Such causation necessarily entails an uncaused first cause. That is an essential truth which is demonstrated in chapter four and which is also a key principle employed in certain proofs for God’s existence.
Chapter five addresses the major Aristotelian claim that whatever is in motion requires a cause of such motion. Under the influence of modern physics since the time of Newton, many scientists and others assume that the principle of inertia is all that is needed to explain the motion of bodies in motion. “A body in motion tends to remain in motion.” What is missed here is the simple fact that, while the principle of inertia describes the behavior of bodies in motion, it does not explain how and why such motion is taking place. This chapter explains in detail precisely why motion necessarily requires a cause of such motion, acting here and now so as to produce the motion which is its effect. This analysis is, of course, critically important to the proof for God’s existence based upon the fact, evident to the senses, that in the world some things are in motion.
Chapter six examines the amazing character of the principle of non-contradiction: A being cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same way. This principle is so immediately evident to all that we often do not even notice its foundational role in all that we can think, do, or say.
Some logicians claim it is merely a supposition of logic, and yet, no logician can enunciate even the least proposition without presupposing its ontological validity, or else, the proposition itself is meaningless—since its opposite could be equally true.
The principle of non-contradiction is apodictally true. It is transcendentally universal. That is, it applies to all things, including God. Moreover, natural science cannot explain why the PNC possesses these properties, because natural science’s experimental methodology itself absolutely presupposes its truth. Chapter six explains and demonstrates the objective truth of the foregoing claims. It also spells out some implications of these facts.
Finally, chapters seven and eight explain how absolute certitude is possible and why the rules of reason are also necessarily the rules of reality. They begin with an examination of the most fundamental truth the mind attains, what is expressed by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain as this: Scio aliquid esse; I know something to exist.
This most fundamental truth is implicit in any act of experience at all. From this judgment of existence, we form the concept of being, which is not a logical abstraction, but a metaphysical judgment. From that concept the mind conforms to reality in expressing the most basic metaphysical principles, the principles of non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle, and sufficient reason.
These last chapters of the book categorically prove the most basic truths inherent in all intellectual knowledge, which lie at the foundation of the science of metaphysics and all the other philosophical disciplines—a realm of certitudes presupposed by and inherently superior by nature to all the natural sciences. Herein the qualitative superiority of such philosophical knowledge over that of all the natural sciences, which modern skeptics hold in such total reverence, becomes evident. This examination of being and its correlative content shows why this type of knowledge is both the pinnacle and objective foundation for all human knowledge and science.
Because these are all principles of being, they apply to each and every actual or possible being, including a possible Infinite Being, the God of classical theism. In a word, these metaphysical first principles must be understood to transcend the entire finite order of our experience and of all creation—actual or possible. They must be universally and transcendentally valid.
This volume will show how all the above-mentioned principles flow with absolute certainty from the initial apprehension of that being which is found in every aspect of the reality we encounter in lived experience. Of course, this will all be done in far greater detail than in this merely introductory note.
The intended result of this book, Foundations for Universal Certitudes, is to clearly demonstrate to the reader that foundational truths can be known with absolute and objective certainty. Moreover, such truths can then serve as the basis for the development of entire bodies of absolute truths. These further truths are to be discovered and developed in all of the various Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical sciences, including philosophical psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, epistemology, natural theology, and natural law ethics.
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The Transcendental Certitude of Metaphysical First Principles
How do we really know that basic metaphysical principles, such as, that contradictions in being are impossible, are both certain and transcendentally true? That is, how do we have perfect certitude that they apply validly to every possible thing, including the God of classical theism?
Some have argued that the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), which states that the same thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect, applies merely to macroscopic reality—to the humans and horses and even bugs we see in the full size world of our normal experience. They claim, in the name of science, that at the submicroscopic level of subatomic entities, such as photons, the principle may be violated. For example, a photon presents experimentally both as a wave and as a particle, which seems to be contradictory.
The problem with this type of objection is that in order to make the observations that allegedly “prove” that a subatomic contradiction can be real, one must be certain that subatomic observations are what they are and are not otherwise. In other words, the observer must assume that the PNC is working at the subatomic level in order to judge, for example, that the photon is in truth behaving as a particle and not like a wave. It is bad logic to presuppose that the PNC is working at the subatomic level in order to “prove” that it does not work at the subatomic level!
What limits the extent of a principle’s application is the nature of that to which it applies. What applies to one kind of being may not apply to a different one. For example, a rule about chickens may apply to all possible chickens, but it may not apply to squid.
The PNC is a principle, not about any particular kind of being, but of being or existence itself. It does not matter what kind of being we consider, for example, whether macroscopic entities or submicroscopic ones. Once the mind understands what it means to exist, as opposed to not existing, it immediately and validly applies the PNC to anything and everything.
While it is possible for something to be a non-chicken, it is not possible for something to be a non-being. The PNC applies to both creature and God, not because they are like in nature—which they are not, but because both have being or existence. So, once we understand what it means to be, we know that the PNC applies both to creature and Creator and to every least existing aspect of every possible being. That is, it is transcendentally true.
The Problem with Some Logicians
Others object that the principle of non-contradiction is really merely a rule of logic, which says that the same predicate cannot be both affirmed and denied of the same subject.
In this view, the rule may have universal conceptual validity within the mind, but what is to guarantee that it applies universally to extramental beings? How do we know that the PNC can apply validly to a transcendental entity, like the God of classical theism—the reality of which would be utterly beyond the finite world in which we live?
The problem is that even such objectors, like the rest of us, find themselves unable to think of anything, except in terms of “being” or “non-being.” Even claiming that truth is merely a matter of probability still requires absolutely affirming the state of probability.
What makes the mind work this way? What makes skeptics keep trying to find contradictions in the God of classical theism, as if that would prove with certitude that such a being is impossible? They keep demanding that God obey the PNC in spite of being highly skeptical about its transcendental application to God.
We must recall that the concepts used in logic do not represent direct knowledge of things themselves, but merely abstract notions of things existing in the mind. What we first know, in fact, is not a concept, but real things in a real world—even if that real world is merely a really experienced bad dream. Even if someone is hallucinating pink elephants dancing on the ceiling, the hallucinations are still real as hallucinations. In knowing our own hallucinations, we, in fact, know something real in its own order.
It is objected by some that we simply do not encounter abstractions, such as “being” or “existence.” But, the concepts formed through abstraction, which are the ones logicians deal with, pre-suppose encounters with real things. You don’t form a concept of “animal,” unless you first have judged that you have encountered a real animal from which to abstract the universal form of animal.
The first knowledge we have of things is had in a judgment of existence, that is, that “something is real.” If I encounter a tiger, I judge that something is real and tiger-like in my experience. This judgment contains both the nature of the tiger and its reality or being, confusedly apprehended at first.
It is not the structure of my language that determines the content of my experience, but the reverse. That is, it is the content of my experience which has developed the structure of my language. First, we know things, and then we invent words to describe them. Even though my words reflect the structure of my experience, they do not determine it. Rather, as I reflect on what I perceive, I express language which I judge describes it correctly.
Unlike irrational animals, I not only have sense experience of some object, but I also am fully aware that I am judging that it actually exists before me. That is why it is correct to say that “I know something to be or exist,” not by sense knowledge alone, but by an intellectual judgment that this is true.
Rather than some presupposed theory forcing the description of experience, it is the experience itself as understood that forces the description of what is taking place. That is, first there is awareness of something there, second, self-reflective awareness of the awareness itself, and third, awareness of something (the self) having the awareness of something there.
Thus, the primary act of knowing things is a judgment of some kind of nature being real, that is, as existing. This is not to be confused with the concepts, empty of all existential content, which the logician studies in terms of their proper relationships. The logician’s concepts need not exist extramentally at all, once they are abstracted from really existing things or formed through a fictional combination of qualities taken from real things, as in the case of the unicorn.
That is, we first encounter some real being, even if it is merely a real mental experience, and only secondarily do we form the concepts of things that we use in logic.
We know full well that our judgment about whether something is really existing or not is not a mere judgment about relationships between concepts, but about real being itself.
This is why judgments about the nature of being itself do not fall under the purview of the science of logic, the practical science which determines correct relationships between concepts. The rule against contradictions in predication is simply an application to logic of the metaphysical principle of non-contradiction. Metaphysics regulates the science of logic, not vice versa.
That is why the Thomistic philosopher Jacques Maritain tells us that “…logic is the science of conceptual being and not a science of real being.”
The Foundation of Certitude
Nor is there any doubt about the reality of being as encountered in lived experience. I often tell people just to try sitting on a large roofing nail. One might doubt whether the experience is (1) merely one of a subjective psychosomatic symptom or (2) one caused by an objectively real extramental nail. But one cannot doubt the reality of the pain involved!
That is because doubt is the fear of error, that is, the fear that something may not be the way we think it is. But, this means that there must be a real distinction between what one thinks to be real and some distinct objective reality. For example, if I think my car to be in my garage, but it actually has been removed by a thief. But, in the direct experience of the nail-induced pain itself, although I might doubt the reality of the nail, I cannot doubt the reality of the pain, because my experience of the pain is identical with the pain’s very reality—thereby allowing no possibility of a real distinction between my experience of the pain and the pain itself.
This is why we have perfect certitude that we encounter reality or being in our first experience of anything at all. For, in experiencing something, there can be no real distinction between the act of experiencing and its own real content, regardless of whether the experience is merely of some subjective fantasy or directly of some external object. The lack of a real distinction between the act of experiencing something and the reality of the experience’s own content precludes the lack of conformity required for the possibility of error and its associated doubt—at least as far as to the fact that something, some reality, some being has been encountered.
I can doubt whether the pink elephant I hallucinate dancing on the ceiling exists extramentally, but I cannot doubt that I am experiencing seeing one. Also, in that selfsame act of experiencing anything at all, we know immediately in a general way what the nature of being is, since being’s nature is given to us with certitude as our mind conforms to the real being of its own experienced content.
We do not know a mere concept of being, but being itself in this direct experience of it—in the mental act in which we judge, “Something is, something is real, something is existing.”
This immediately-given understanding of being we express in judgments, such as, the principles of identity (that being is being) and non-contradiction (that being cannot be non-being). Our mind finds itself conformed to being itself in the selfsame act by which we first encounter being and in every subsequent such act. That is also why even skeptical logicians cannot help but think of all reality in terms of being and non-being, even if they formulate denials of such knowledge in their scholarly tomes.
No Rabbits Out of Genuinely Empty Hats
Just as we are perfectly certain that being cannot be non-being, we are equally certain that non-being cannot beget being. Everyone who is intellectually honest knows and admits that you cannot get something from nothing. A few confuse the “nothing” of quantum mechanics with the “absolutely nothing at all” that the philosopher is talking about. But, when they say that you get protons popping into existence from nothing in quantum mechanics, the “nothing” they refer to is not really nothing at all: it is merely a “quantum vacuum,” which is the lowest state of energy thought to be found in physical reality. It is still something–not the “total non-being” to which the philosopher refers.
Even materialists do scientific handstands to try to avoid the suggestion that the cosmos was actually somehow generated from absolute nothingness. They do not seem to want to get caught in the position of trying to explain how a magician’s completely empty hat can generate a real rabbit.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)
The human intellect knows truth in the self-reflective act of knowing its own conformity to reality or being. That is why certitudes such as the PNC are possible. But the intellect or mind is always searching for reasons to assure itself that it is in conformity with reality or being so that it knows that perfect certitude has been achieved. The Thomistic PSR has to do with whether or not all things have reasons for being or for being true.
In seeking to understand whether all things must have reasons for why and how they exist, we must first make a distinction. Some things are directly evident to our senses and can be known to exist because of this. On the other hand, the principle of sufficient reason addresses the question as to whether all things must have reasons for their existence—reasons founded in being or reality sufficient to account fully for what exists.
Note the difference between what is known to be true from direct experience and what may still not be explained by that experience. For example, we may know that something exists by direct observation. Still, that does not mean that such a being is self-explanatory or is the reason for its own existence. For example, I know that the sun exists because I can see it. But that is not the same thing as to know why the sun exists, that is, whether there is a reason for it existing and what that reason may be.
Thus, the existence of what is directly experienced is truly affirmed in the sense that we have immediate knowledge of its presence. But that is not the same thing as its being able to explain why it is present or existent.
The plain fact is that we use our minds to reason to conclusions that we expect to be true. If we could not trust our reasoning processes to lead to true conclusions, then all human knowledge would be worthless—philosophy, theology, and all the natural sciences alike. But true conclusions demand true reasons leading to them. If a conclusion is true when it conforms to reality or being, then solid reasoning requires true premises—premises or reasons that faithfully reflect objective reality or being itself.
It makes no sense to trust the mind to lead us to know true being, and yet, not to trust the way the mind demands reasons for all things in order to reach that true being.
If (1) the mind demands reasons for things that do not fully explain themselves and if (2) we trust the mind to tell us the truth about reality when it reasons correctly, then the fact that the mind is not satisfied with things that fail to fully explain themselves proves that there must be a reason for everything.
In other words, since the mind demands reasons that conform to reality or being for any statement or thing that does not fully explain itself, it necessarily follows that a thing or statement must fully explain itself in order not to need extrinsic reasons.
I say, “thing or statement,” because, although the mind reasons in terms of judgments expressed as statements, those judgments are true solely when they conform to being. So, if a thing is explained by premises, which are expressions of judgments about being, true reasoning manifests the actuality or being on which something actually depends. Thus, I shall speak of true premises as actual extrinsic reasons for something actually having being or existence.
Just as the extrinsic reasons must conform to reality or being, a thing can fully explain itself only if that self-explanation itself conforms to reality or being. That is, it must be a real intrinsic explanation of why the thing exists as it does. To the extent a thing fails to fully explain itself, then, other reason(s) must exist to explain the thing’s being.
That being the case, it must be that all things either are fully their own reason for being, or else, to the extent that they do not have sufficient intrinsic reasons for being, there must be extrinsic reasons sufficient to complete their explanation.
This is merely a complicated way to state the principle of sufficient reason, whose metaphysical expression is this: Every being must have a sufficient reason for being or coming-to-be either within itself or from some extrinsic reason or reasons. And, since these reasons are grounded in being or reality, the PSR is itself one of the metaphysical first principles of being.
The principle that you cannot get something from nothing, or being from non-being, is simply an application of the principle of sufficient reason.
Thus, being itself must be known truly by the mind for the mind to be a valid faculty with which to know reality. That is why the mind must know true being in its true judgments and why being must have a sufficient reason for itself either in itself or from another. If a thing’s sufficient reason is “from another,” that is what we speak of as a “cause,” and hence, everything that does not fully explain itself (meaning, an effect) necessarily requires an extrinsic sufficient reason (meaning, a cause).
Some, especially scientific materialists who normally demand explanations for all observable phenomena, will claim that possibly some things, such as the very existence of the entire cosmos itself, are simply “brute facts” for which there is no explanation or reason at all. In so doing, they fail to grasp the necessary relationship between the mind’s validity as an instrument of true knowledge and the need for things to have existential reasons that correspond to the mind’s demand for reasons—as was shown above. In effect, a “brute fact” is no more possible than is the production of something from absolutely nothing, which latter truth every intellectually honest person knows is totally impossible.
