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(1) Platonistic/Kantian philosophies, and prevailing mysticism/neocheating that arise therefrom:
The task of philosophy and the job of a philosopher is not to obfuscate but to clarify reality, not to complicate but to simplify living, i.e., not to further mystify but to progressively demystify the human mind in relation to reality and human life. However, except for Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and a few others, most philosophers throughout history have almost completely defaulted in their responsibility.
Ever since Plato elaborated the sophistry of "reality creation" and developed the matrix of noncontextual logic (inner logic that has no reality-integrating context), philosophy has gone astray, falling ever deeper into the trap of mysticism. Yet, no philosopher, not even Plato, could systematically deny man's rational faculty and attack the validity of reason...until the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
The expressly stated purpose of Kant's philosophy is to save the "morality" of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, i.e., altruism. Since no rational basis can exist to support altruism (Aristotle, for example, successfully disqualified Plato's theory of Forms), what it has to be saved from in honesty is conceptual-centered consciousness and its prime faculty, reason. In order to fulfill his purpose, Kant conjures up a new version of Plato's Forms called the "noumenal" world and sets out to "prove" that the noumenal world by nature cannot be known, that it is out of reach of reason, while declaring all along that it is the world of "real" reality, "higher" truth, and "things in themselves."
Kant imperiously uses his noncontextual logic in proving his brazenly clear conclusion with unintelligible arguments that are full of evasions, equivocations, obfuscations, circumlocutions, and non sequiturs. He proclaims as self-evident what is in reality arbitrary or untrue, and provides erudite references to science as well as to pseudo-science to create an illusion of credibility. Thus, through his non-contextual inner logic and mind-paralyzing unintelligibility, Kant cleverly shifts morality from the sphere of reason to the domain of faith and declares that what cannot be known by reason (the noumenal world --the source of morality) can be believed, whereby making morality exempt from reason.
Kant asserts that the human mind by nature distorts reality because everything that is conceived by consciousness is conceived through automatic filters in consciousness (termed categories). Thus, according to him, reality as conceived by consciousness is inherently subjective, and objective reality, the noumenal world or things in themselves, forever remains on the other shore of reason not to be known but only to be believed. Therefore, consciousness, because it is consciousness, because it is a cognitive faculty -- because of its very identity as a cognitive faculty, cannot cognize reality as such.
If reality conceived by consciousness were in truth inherently subjective and, therefore, relative, then his entire philosophy itself would lose its claim to truth. For, any statement that is made with regard to reality demands itself to be objective. A statement that reality is subjective is inescapably self-contradictory and negates its own validity. In point of fact, Kant's philosophy is an extremely clever exploitation of a common misunderstanding concerning objectivity.
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