 Welcome to the 34th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. This is a very special episode because I'm coming to you from Auckland, New Zealand, and I'm very happy to announce that my first book on philosophy is finally complete and you can now pick up a copy. It's called Square One, The Foundations of Knowledge, and as I've said before, it's literally the most important thing that I've ever written. You can pick up a copy of Square One on Amazon. There's a paperback version and a Kindle version, and in the next couple of months there's also going to be an audiobook edition. Or another way you can get a copy is by becoming a patron on Patreon.com slash Steve Patterson, where if you sign up to be a contributor to the show, then you immediately get a copy of What's the Big Deal About Bitcoin, which is my previous book, and Square One, The Foundations of Knowledge, the book that I just released. You get a free copy immediately. And so I want to talk to you today about Square One, why I consider this book to be so important and why I chose to write this one first of the several philosophy books that I have planned. But before I do, I want to give a massive shout out to all of the supporters that have been following my work and supporting me on Patreon for the last year or so. Without you guys, I would not have a career in the world of ideas outside of academia. Every support is making it possible for work like this to be produced, and it's about to be ramped up majorly in the future. Now that the book is done, I'm super excited to go back to writing frequent articles from my website. I'm going to be producing regular YouTube videos, even some animated videos about philosophy. The book was awesome, and I'm so, so dang proud of it, but it's been kind of a bottleneck for some of the other work I wanted to accomplish because I wanted to make sure that this one was done perfectly. And right now there are more than 50 patrons on Patreon.com who are contributing. Every time I post a new episode or a new article or a new video, and I want to give you my heartfelt thanks for demonstrating your support for valuing the mission of creating a rational worldview, it's very exciting and encouraging and humbling for me. And I think this community of rationalist renegades is going to be really growing significantly in the coming year. I've got big ambitions for 2017, and I want to start by telling you guys about Square One. Why you guys, who have demonstrated that you are interested in a new, clear-headed approach to thinking about big ideas, why you can get excited about what's in Square One. You can tell your friends about what's in the book, because I think you'll find the ideas force people who have not heard them, maybe life changing, and the way that it's written is immensely approachable. I explicitly tried to make it as non-academic as possible. There's almost no jargon in the book because there doesn't need to be. One of my suspicions is that the reason that academics write so poorly is because they actually aren't clear thinkers. If you can be a very clear thinker, you should be able to be a very clear writer. All right, so let's dive into the book. A great summary of why I wrote the book and what the general purpose of it is is on the back cover. It says, truth is discoverable. It's not popular to say. It's not popular to think, but you can be certain of it. Ultimately, if you had to sum up my whole project as a philosopher and the purpose of the book, it is to say that right now we live in a culture which denies the existence of truth. They think it's naive to say there's such a thing as objective truth, much less to say that the mind can grasp some parts of what objective truth is. Well, that is my position and I'm not just gently claiming that that is true. I'm saying you can actually have certain knowledge, knowledge that is objectively true that cannot be false. It may not be a great list of knowledge that is objective certain truths, but we can still have an underlying foundation of certain knowledge. Now, this in context of modern philosophy is heresy and it's naive, right? To address topics like, is there objective truth? Is not really a topic that's written a whole lot about in philosophy. Yeah, some people write about it, but it's not a central issue. In my mind, there is no more central issue. We shouldn't be talking about anything else really until we resolve whether or not it's the case that objective truth exists and whether or not it's discoverable. There is no such thing as any kind of objective truth and why are we talking about anything? Why are we trying to sort through and discover things? If all there is is opinion, then when we're doing philosophy, we're essentially just sharing one another's opinion and I'm not a big fan of that. There are some popular philosophers out there who think that the role of philosophy is akin to poetry because there's no such thing as objective truth. So we're essentially just assembling words together that sound nice and make us feel nice and represents some kind of artistic perspective on the world. I completely disagree with this and that is one of the reasons I wrote this book. It's called the foundations of knowledge because I'm not just claiming this is arbitrary truth that we can know. I'm claiming that underpinning all knowledge, 100% of knowledge, is the same foundational truth. That truth I've talked a little bit about on the show, it's logic. It is logical necessity, which I'll talk a little bit more later in this episode. So the book starts with a couple of analogies to try to help people understand the connections that we have in our worldview. I say that ideas are not held in isolation from one another. Our worldviews are like trees. Each part is connected to another part. When you look at a tree, you have the leaves of the tree that are connected to little branches. The branches are connected to bigger branches which are connected to the trunk. The trunk grows out of its roots. All of these things are connected together. And I claim worldviews work the same way. Conclusions you can think of like leaves. They're connected to premises, which are the branches. Premises are connected to deeper premises. All of those deeper premises ultimately grow out of foundations. And the foundations is what this book is about. I want to examine, first of all, is it the case that there are foundations? And second of all, if there are foundations, what are they? And my discovery is the foundations of everybody's worldview. Without exception, share the same core presuppositions. The exact same truths are the foundation of my worldview as they are somebody else's worldview in Africa that I've never met. So the first chapter is really trying to get people to realize that they have a worldview and they shouldn't just view things in isolation. Our ideas grow out of one another. And the more foundational the idea, the more base level the idea, the closer to the roots, the more important, because the more ideas follow from those base level ideas. So, for example, if you have a flawed theory of physics, if you think that the earth is flat or you think that the earth is in the center of the solar system, a great number of ideas you hold will be incorrect, versus if you think that the surface temperature of the sun is a little bit hotter or colder than it actually is, well, there's not that many ideas that have to be revised if you get that particular belief wrong. So the deeper we go into our worldviews, the more foundationally critically important those ideas become. And if you get the foundations wrong, these ultimate inescapable foundations, these logical foundations, if you get those wrong, your entire worldview is essentially based on sand. So the next part of the book is trying to frame some of the most popular objections to the idea that there is foundational knowledge. And I categorized two types of ideas. I call them the arguments from impossibility and the arguments from implausibility. So the implausible arguments say that maybe it's the case there is objective truth and foundational knowledge, but even if there is, it's totally implausible to think that humans could ever access it, were too limited and finite creatures to think that we could ever know such a thing as objective truth. The arguments from impossibility say that it's not even true in principle that there are such things as objective truths, or some of them argue that there are actual logical contradictions in the world, which means that we can't actually be certain about anything. So I give brief summaries of these positions in anticipation of refuting them, which I do in chapters 3 and 4. Now, if you are already a philosopher, and for whatever reason you don't want to read, you know, 25 introductory pages, and you want to jump straight into the higher level important philosophic ideas of square one than starting chapters 3 and 4. That's really the whole meat of the book. And it's an idea that I've spoken a bit about on the pie-cast, but I'll give you a taste of these ideas. What I consider to be the foundations of knowledge can be discovered through a process of internal doubt, introspection, and skepticism. So there's all kinds of ideas that we hold about the world that might be wrong, right? Whether or not a physical world exists, maybe everything is illusory and we're just brains in a vat and we're hallucinating everything and maybe it's the case I'm not even a human, maybe I'm a Martian that's dreaming and there's all kinds of possible ways that my ideas might be wrong. Are there any ideas then that can withstand radical skepticism, doubt, and scrutiny? And I say, yes, in fact there are. So I'll give you a simple example. There are no square circles. Since you guys have been listening to the show, you know, I actually talked about this particular idea with the professor at Columbia and he was saying, well, maybe there are square circles. So this is an important idea and what I'm claiming to be certain knowledge is still doubted by some people. Nevertheless, when you unpack the meaning of the terms square and circle, you discover a certain truth. There cannot be any square circles or spherical cubes, given what we mean by the terms. You cannot have things which have mutually exclusive properties. Another simple example of a certain truth be something like this. All of the students in class with blonde hair are students. This is another certain truth. Now, some people might disagree. They might try to have some weird circumstance. Well, if somebody we think is a student isn't actually a student. They come up with all kind of silly objections, but if you unpack the meaning of your words, you will discover that indeed, if it's the case that somebody is a student in class with blonde hair, then it is the case that they are a student. That is a necessary truth. Okay, so then we have to go one step farther. We have to ask, why is it the case that all the students with blonde hair are students? Why is it that there are no square circles? Why is it that there are no married bachelors? The answer is logic. Logic is the reason that there are no square circles. Logic is the reason that 2 plus 2 equals 4. It's the reason that all the students in class with blonde hair are students. Logic is necessary. When you understand necessariness, what is meant by the term necessary, you discover logic and it is extraordinarily powerful. Logic is the reason that contradictions are false. If somebody contradicts themselves, that means what they're claiming is necessarily false. And logic points to the foundation of knowledge, what I call square one. You simply have to ask, why is logic necessary? Could there be any exceptions to the laws of logic? My answer is this, the laws of logic are necessary and inescapable, universal, because logic and existence are inseparable. Logic and existence are inseparable. That is the foundation for knowledge. What I mean is this, that for anything that exists in any circumstance whatsoever, it's a physical thing, mental thing, conscious thing, some kind of existent that we can't even comprehend, for any existent thing, it is the case that it exists the way that it exists and it does not exist the way that it does not exist. So in other words, anywhere that you have existence, you must have logic. You have the law of identity, which is A is A, a thing is exactly what it is and it is not the case that things are not the way they are not. This is true for everything. So this means when we're talking about the world that literally doesn't matter what we're talking about, we can know that any existent thing whatsoever must play by the laws of logic. So if that is true, which I make the case for in obviously more detail, that is true, that implies that any contradiction is necessarily false. Reality cannot be contradictory, that doesn't make sense and I give explanations for why that's the case. There are no true mystical paradoxes in the world where something is and it isn't and we just have to throw our minds away and say, well, this is something we can never comprehend. This is the reason why when talking with some Christian evangelicals about the Trinity, they say things like, well, maybe it's a logical contradiction, but God is bigger than logic, God supersedes logic, God is transcendent. And my position is, if it's the case that your conception of God contains a logical contradiction, it is necessarily true that your conception of God is false or that God does not and cannot exist because there cannot be logical contradictions. It is not the case that God created the laws of logic, I'm certain of it. And if you don't believe me, that's fine, but pick up a copy and see why I say that's the case. Because if it's true that God exists, then it is true that God exists and it is not true that God does not exist. Or God also plays by the laws of logic, to the extent that he exists. The only thing to which logic does not apply is nothing, as I've spoken about on this show before. And because nothing isn't something that exists, logic applies to everything. Now this, friends, is why I wrote this book first. In my own pursuit of truth for the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, whatever, I have been seeing whether or not there's any kind of objective truth out there. I've been interested in these topics. I discovered this several years ago and my life changed. I realized this is it. This is actually certain truth. You can build an entire world view based on the fact that logic and existence are inseparable, based off of logic and logical consistency. So this is my mission. I want to build an entire world view based on the truths that you will find in square one the foundations of knowledge. There's no faith involved. There's no trust involved. Don't take my word for anything. I am completely convinced that in chapters three and four of this book, as I explain, when you, in your mind, you conceive of things the way that I conceive of them, you understand the meaning of my words, you will agree with me that there is certain truth. Even if it's limited in scope, we can only say things like, you know, things are the way that they are, which doesn't tell you a whole lot about the world. But it tells you a limited amount of things that you can be certain of. And one of the nice things about working outside of academia is I don't have to be quiet and have this fake humility about it. I'd be like, oh, well, I'm just adding to the conversation and maybe my ideas are wrong and I don't know. I'm just commenting on somebody else's ideas that they wrote about 3,000 years ago. No, that's, I don't have to say any of that, right? I can say very honestly, I sincerely believe that if you read this book with an open mind, don't take one thing that I say based on the fact that I said it, scrutinize, be skeptical about every single thing. The purpose of the book, the methodology of the book is skepticism and doubt first. So that obviously applies to me, the author. But try to understand what I have tried to clearly communicate about the necessity of logic, and I am all but convinced that you will agree. So it is square one. It is the foundation I say for everybody's worldview. It's certainly the foundation for mine, and I'm trying to build off of it. So the next book that I'm going to be writing is on metaphysics. And I've got books planned on politics and economics and language and mathematics. And eventually I'm going to write a book on ethics, all of which are going to draw from the ideas of square one. If the ideas in this book are wrong, then you can unsubscribe from the podcast. You can ignore anything that I say, because everything I'm going to say is going to contain a fundamental catastrophic flaw in it explicitly. And I'm the first to admit it, right? If it's the case that there is some true logical contradiction out there, then nobody should take anything that I say seriously, not even myself. So after I lay out the case that logic and existence are inseparable, therefore is an explanation of kind of where we can go from there. So it's an explanation of conceptual reasoning, of a little bit of the relationship between our minds and the world, how we can build theories, some of the problems with rationalism, some of the problems with empiricism. And I make the case that there is an objective hierarchy of knowledge, that if it's the case we value understanding truth about the world, then it must be the case that philosophy is more fundamental and more important than art history, right? Philosophy affects virtually every single idea you have in your worldview. Art history affects very few, so we have to acknowledge there is indeed a hierarchy. So for me, people should be skeptical, oh, you're just saying philosophy is important because you're a philosopher. Well, no, the reason I got involved in philosophy is because I recognize philosophy is categorically more important than political theory and economics, which is how I got into philosophy in the first place. And this is true regardless of the field of study. As you get more fundamental in whatever you're studying, you will eventually discover philosophy, the primacy of philosophy. So I also lay out in chapter 4 a bit of methodology, a bit of technique for building a rational worldview. And then the last chapter is devoted to responses to objections. So I have the first thing I talk about is the Liar's Paradox, which is the most popular objection to this idea that there is certain knowledge, that logic is inescapable. People say, oh, this sentence is false, as they try to make a true contradiction out of that. And I give a fairly thorough refutation of the idea that that somehow is a logical paradox. It certainly isn't. It's entirely resolvable, as are all other paradoxes. And I give several more examples. So I talk about the bittersweet paradox, the logic of nothing, this idea of vagueness. It's a similar idea to what I was talking with Dr. Giazzo at Harvard about this idea of universal flux, that everything is constantly moving and there's kind of an infinite regress all the way down to nothing. And so therefore, no thing really exists per se. I address all that in chapter 5. And then I address a popular objection, at least in coming from the 20th century, that, oh, all these ideas are mere tautologies. You can't actually prove anything just by saying A is A. That's a tautology, which means it's devoid of content. This is certainly mistaken, and I address it in some detail in chapter 5. Though I'm sure I'll have more to say on my next book about the philosophy of mind. This is not a one-off book. This is the first step in creating an entire world view. And it is written in a style that is meant to be read. I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm trying to communicate ideas as clearly as I can. So as somebody who's just obsessively interested in the world of ideas, I think there's nothing more important than the world of ideas and the truth that we discover, you can see why I say, and this is the most important thing I've written. And of all the books I intend to write, I'm going to continue coming back to this one and look if you find anything that I say interesting or plausible or worth investigating, read this book. It's a little bit more than 100 pages and anybody from the philosopher who's been studying philosophy for 40 years to the complete novice is going to be able to get something out of it. And I also know based on some of the emails that you guys sent me that I'm not isolated in seeing that we live in a culture of what I call irrationalism, that denies everything I've just said. Truth is indiscoverable or non-existent and it's just a complete waste of time and everything is gray and fuzzy. It's all around us. That is the dominant cultural philosophy is something like an epistemological nihilism and a relativism. And it's frustrating as heck because a lot of these people don't mind if they end up contradicting themselves. I know you guys can sympathize with that and this book you can also hand to those relativists and nihilists and say, look, just read this one and if you disagree with the ideas in this book, tell me where and then talk about it. My claim I make very explicitly in the book is if you can't agree on the laws of logic, the law of identity and non-contradiction, then you cannot make meaningful progress in any kind of intellectual discourse. You must presuppose the laws of logic in order to make sense. I think, I'm not sure, but I think this will get through to a lot of people who are stuck in kind of an intellectual cloud where they are convinced that truth is indiscoverable. I think this book might reach them, at least that's my goal. So if I've piqued your curiosity and you think this is a worthwhile goal, a worthwhile purpose for a book, then pick up a copy. You can get it on Amazon, you can get a paperback version, you can get the Kindle version, there will be an upcoming audiobook version which will be me narrating the book. You can become a patron, patreon.com, where you can immediately get a PDF version and quite frankly, if for some reason committing a dollar a month or the $9.99 on Amazon, if that's too much and you're somebody that can't afford it, I understand, been there, done that. I don't want these ideas to be restricted from anybody, so find a pirated copy. I'm sure online, if you Google around, you'll be able to find a pirated version. It's much more important that if somebody is interested in these ideas, that they have access to them and can have a clear voice to say that truth exists, then it is, I get a couple of dollars of royalty or a supporter. So one way or another, pick up a copy of the book. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you guys next week.