That the Cognitive is Prior to the Material

What is possible is necessarily possible. This can be shown with rigor in the following way. With modal logic such as this anywhere is says "Possibly" you may exchange this for "Not necessarily not" and anywhere it says "Necessarily" you may exchange this for "Not possibly not."

Axiom: If possibly P then not possibly necessarily not P.

1) If possibly P then not not necessarily not necessarily not P.

2) If possibly P then necessarily not necessarily not P.

Conclusion: If possibly P then necessarily possibly P.

Another argument I shall use, and which others have discovered elsewhere, has the conclusion that "If possibly necessarily P, then necessarily P." It is as follows:

Axiom: If possibly not P then not possibly necessarily P.

1) If not not possibly necessarily P then not possibly not P.

2) If possibly necessarily P then not possibly not P.

Conclusion: If possibly necessarily P then necessarily P.

As in many rigorous demonstrations dealing with possibility and necessity, the actual argument can be followed without much understanding as to what its conclusions precisely mean. That what it is to be possible means not impossible, that is, not contradictory, most people understand clearly. Likewise most people know that something is necessary if its denial involves a contradiction. But what is it to be possibly necessary? What is it to be necessarily possible? These things are a little less clear to us.

"Possibly necessary" and "Necessary" are perhaps equal even in the sense that they mean the same thing, with one qualification. I suppose the same could be said of "Necessary" but one thing comes clear to mind which "Possibly necessary" makes explicit. It means that so long as a given P is not impossible, if it is possibly necessary it is necessary. We do not consider everything not impossible necessary (many things not impossible are merely possible), but if a proposition is possibly necessary, this means so long as it is not impossible it is necessary. An infinity of numbers existing falls into this category: so long as it is not impossible for there to be ever higher numbers than what we have formerly contemplated, it becomes necessary for there to be higher numbers forever.

But let us go back to our proposition, "If possibly P, then necessarily possibly P." What this means is that what is possible has forever been possible, through all times and modes of being, eternally. Necessary possibility and possibility are logically equivalent; but I find here a concept contained in necessary possibility that is not quite fully expressed in mere possibility. What is necessary holds for all times, worlds, and modes of existence - it is eternal truth. To be necessarily possible, then, means that what is possible, everything that eventually is actual and even what is possible but never actual, is eternally possible on some level of existence. It may be actual that I went to the store earlier, and actual only a moment; but for all eternity, that moment I went to the store existed in some mode, as a possibility that then I should then go. If I went to the store then, it has forever been possible that I should go to the store then, and so will it ever be.

And to be possible requires a certain ontological status in itself. We need not suppose it is in the mind of God any more than we need to suppose if two plus two equaled four a million years ago this requires a mind - God's mind - to have contemplated this truth. All it requires is that a truth shall exist - a truth that a given thing is possible - with no mind contemplating that truth. I call this a cognitive ontology, a mental existence as it were, though never supposing this requires a mind or consciousness for it to be. It is, after all, not so very difficult to suppose a given immaterial truth exists with no mind at all to contemplate it, than it is to suppose that it is true that I am named Jason at an instant when no one is contemplating this fact. It is only slightly more difficult to suppose that the cognitive reality exists without any mind, than it is to suppose that the earth was covered in water at a given time, before there was life to perceive it with the empirical senses.

If what is possible has forever been possible, which is the same as saying it is necessarily possible, then Mozart's "Jupiter" (41st) Symphony had some level of ontology before there was any such thing as the cosmos, supposing there was such a time. Mozart did not quite strictly invent the "Jupiter" symphony, nor did he quite discover it; rather, he selected it, from among the possibilities at hand when he wrote it. Note by note he made his choices, and so the symphony was selected by him, rather than created or discovered.

We have a limited number of letters in the English language. And likewise there is a limited number of combinations it is possible to make with them in a book of less than 1,000 pages (for a book of infinite pages of course there are infinite combinations of these letters possible, but no one writes books of infinite pages). That all these possible combinations exist before the fact of the book's authorship follows from the mere notion of a given set of 26 letters, and a given number of spaces we fill with them. Immediately, in fact prior to every written work, those possible combinations that constitute the work exist. This follows from the pure mathematical possibilities of combinations of the letters, and the number of spaces we have to fill with them. There are 26 to the power of 3 possible combinations of these letters for a word of three letters. Likewise there are 26 to the power of 10 possible combinations for 10 spaces where we may place these letters. These follow from the mere concept of a set of 26 letters and their possible combinations, just as Mozart's "Jupiter" existed as a possible combination of musical notes 100 years before Mozart ever wrote it. And before those notes existed? Well, if the notes themselves were ever actual, they have always been possible; and so every combination of them has also, then, been eternally possible. Even before the notes themselves existed, the "Jupiter" was existing as a possible combination of notes that were eternally possible themselves, even before they were actual.

Thus all books, all novels, all paintings - everything that is eventually actual, was before that fact possible. The novelist selects his or her novel word-by-word, rather than inventing or quite discovering it, as the words are commonly used. All novels that will ever be written in the future exist now in a cognitive, eternal realm of possibility, even though no minds may be conscious of them, and they have forever so existed.

This is why I say that the cognitive reality is primary, or prior, to the phenomenal, material reality. For though the actual world may never have existed - the world of atoms and energy - yet all of it was forever possible, and its existence as pure possibility could never have not existed, for this is what it means to be necessarily possible. Though the cosmos, stars, and galaxies may not have ever been actual; yet everything that would be in such a world, everything that could be and is not, would have some level of ontology - a cognitive ontology, an ontology near to the ontology of a truth no one is aware of. It is an ontology not of matter and atoms, but of conceptual possibility, that is necessarily possible but not necessarily actual - thus the cognitive is prior to and more fundamental than the material. Nothing material is necessary, but everything both possible and actual is necessarily and eternally possible - and possibility devoid of actuality is in the realm of the cognitive rather than the material.

Angelhaunt.net: Because earth's madness is heaven's sense.