Transcendental Ontology and Logic

This post and its successors discuss the need for a transcendental logic, so that we can reason with our transcendental ontology and arrive at correct conclusions regarding spiritual life. If you find it difficult to understand, you should review the other posts on transcendental ontology. Then you will have the necessary background to follow our line of thought herein.

The type of logic found in Western spiritual thought and philosophy is called Aristotelian logic, after the Greek philosopher Aristotle who expounded it. Unfortunately, while Aristotelian logic may be adequate for reasoning about simple materialistic subjects, it is completely inappropriate for spiritual reasoning. Because they use mundane logic to reason about transcendental entities, Western science, philosophy and theology often come to completely false conclusions regarding the real truths of spiritual life.

Any system of logic designed for reasoning about material things breaks down and provides wrong answers when applied to transcendental objects such as the spirit soul, its attributes and qualities. This is a basic premise in the system of transontology given in the Esoteric Teaching. The logic system used for reasoning must be appropriate to the ontological class of the objects reasoned about. Therefore transcendental objects require transcendental logic, or we shall be misled by false conclusions.

Aristotelian logic is known as two-valued logic. In Aristotelian logic, any statement, proposition or syllogism may have only two truth values: true or false. Any assertion, such as “The book is on the table,” must therefore be evaluated as either true or false, and there is no other evaluation possible. While this simple logic may be adequate in simple material cases, or simplify teaching elements of logic to children, it does not express the actual nature of the world, life and human experience.

In the early 20^th century, Einstein and Bohr introduced the concept of three-valued or ternary logic, where an assertion may have three truth values: true, false and unknown or indeterminate. For example, in the famous example of Schrödinger’s Cat, whether the cat is alive or dead is indeterminate until the box is opened. In other words, as long as the quantum wave function of any system is left in its natural state, the quantum state of the system remains unknown. Its state becomes known only when we measure the quantum wave function by interfering with it.

Similarly, the state of any transcendental entity remains unknown or indeterminate until we measure it by establishing a relationship with it. Since transcendental entities can have a very large number of possible states, reasoning accurately about them requires a logic that accommodates many truth values; otherwise we shall nearly always come to inaccurate conclusions about transcendental objects.

Therefore any logic that can support accurate reasoning about transcendental concepts, objects and entities must be non-Aristotelian; that is, it must have provision for more than two truth states. In future posts, we will introduce three-valued (ternary) logic as a simple example of non-Aristotelian logic. This will show how increasing the number of possible logic states creates a much richer environment of possible logical operations and interactions. A practical understanding of non-Aristotelian logic is required for complete realization of the Esoteric Teaching or the perfection of yoga.

Next: Western Scientific Logic