Summary Text 1

The first immediate truth and fact accessible to the human mind is the fact of perception or experience. Perception is the immediate contact between human intellect and reality. All truths are derived from the truth of perception, foremost the truth of existence and the truth of awareness. We recognize that there are 2 modes of perception, sensory and mental perception. Both are valid sources of truth. Through the combination of both modes of perception, we are able to discern the truth of the world and the meaning of the world as we receive it through our perception.

The first mode of perception is mental perception. Mental perception is roughly said the perception of the self towards the mind or in more proper term, the intellect. Mental perception is thus applicable to the entirety of perception in so far all forms of perception are proper to the intellect. However, when I say mental perception, I mostly refer to the inner perceptions of the intellect which consists of the intellect recollecting various perceptions it contains within itself and presenting them before itself to make various decisions of act. 

What may we know fundamentally from mental perception? There are 2 principal truths that are obtained from mental perception alone, that is of God and of the intellect itself. Let us discuss God first. From the intellect, we may know that God is the necessary, simple, and infinite existence. As opposed to contingent objects which possess some sort of metaphysical composition, God is not composed at all. He is utterly simple in being one thing only which relative to us we describe as Existence. However, we call Him Existence as we lack any better word to describe what or who He is.

The second truth is the intellect. The intellect is an object possessing 4 abilities or functions, the reception of information, the storage of information, the action on information, and the action by information. Information is the term we use to describe objective perception, whereas perception from the first person point of view is subjective, information is observed from its effects and that is primarily from the existence of the intellect. The intellect is by nature an object of objective perception, it itself is pure information. 

From these truths we may work out several things to know. God is the source of all contingent realities and all contingent realities summit at the intellect. Therefore, God creates everything for the recognition of Himself by the intellect. The reality of the intellect perceiving is not a perception of separate objects from God, but instead it is the intellect perceiving God through the limitations of the intellect. The intellect's self-perception is itself a perception of God through the limitations of the intellect. 

God is infinite, this necessitates immutability and non-sequentiality within God Himself. Therefore, there is only ever one point of time or existence from which God can communicate His entire act to contingent reality. This is precisely what happens, He immutably acts upon all of contingent reality to be the way He desires it to be and so the contingent reality is created, that is to say caused, by Him in an eternal way. As such, however the world is and every instance of the world can be traced back to God because He is the infinite existence. Then the relationship of causation exists only formally between God and the entirety of contingent reality.


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