Why the Human Mind Can Discover the Truth

Why the Human Mind Can Discover the Truth

An Instancological View

From an Instancological standpoint, the question “Why can the human mind discover the truth?” is not epistemological first, but ontological. The issue is not how clever the mind is, nor how powerful logic or science may be, but why truth is in principle accessible at all to a finite being like the human.

Instancology answers this by re-locating both mind and truth within a shared ontological structure.

1. Truth Is Not Invented by the Mind

Traditional philosophy oscillates between two extremes:

Rationalism (truth is produced by reason)

Empiricism (truth is extracted from experience)

Instancology rejects both as incomplete.

Truth is not created by the mind, nor accumulated from sensory fragments. Instead, truth pre-exists the mind as part of the structure of reality itself. The human mind does not manufacture truth; it discovers it because truth is already there.

This is why mathematics, logic, and natural laws exhibit necessity rather than contingency. They are not conventions, nor psychological habits, but manifestations of what Instancology calls the Relatively Absolute (RA)—the domain of law, logic, mathematics, and life-structure that exists independently of human cognition.

2. The Ontological Placement of the Human Mind

In Instancology, reality is articulated through four irreducible domains:

AA (Absolutely Absolute) – the unspeakable, non-representable source

RA (Relatively Absolute) – law, logic, mathematics, life-structure

AR (Absolute Relative) – nature, life, and humans as natural instances

RR (Relative Relative) – language, culture, symbols, theories

The human mind belongs primarily to AR (as a natural instance), but it is structurally open to RA.

This is the decisive point.

The human mind is not merely a biological survival machine. It is a natural instance with access to absolute structures. This access is not learned; it is issued with the instance itself.

That is why humans can:

Discover mathematical truths they did not invent

Recognize logical contradictions universally

Identify natural laws before fully understanding them

Experience insight that exceeds sensory input

3. Why Discovery Is Possible at All

Instancology holds a fundamental principle:

No whole is produced by assembling parts unless the whole already exists as an instance.

Truth, therefore, is whole-first, not part-assembled.

The human mind can discover truth because:

Reality itself is an instance structured by RA

The human mind is also an instance structured compatibly with RA

Discovery is the matching of instances, not construction from fragments

This explains why purely statistical systems, brute computation, or symbol manipulation alone cannot reach metaphysical truth. They operate entirely within RR. They rearrange symbols but do not match structures.

4. Why Logic Alone Is Insufficient—but Indispensable

Logic plays a crucial but limited role.

In Instancology, logic belongs to RA, not to human invention. Humans use logic, but do not ground it.

This explains two facts that classical philosophy struggled to reconcile:

Logic is universally binding

Logic cannot justify itself

Thinkers like Kurt Gödel demonstrated that no logical system can be both complete and self-grounding. Instancology explains why: logic is not the foundation of reality; it is a manifestation within RA.

The human mind can recognize logical truth because it is structurally aligned with RA—but it cannot generate absolute truth through logic alone.

5. WuXing: Why Insight Exceeds Reason

Instancology introduces WuXing (悟性)—not as mysticism, but as an ontological mode of cognition.

WuXing is not:

Sensory experience

Rational deduction

Linguistic construction

It is the direct apprehension of an instance as a whole.

This explains why the greatest breakthroughs in philosophy and science arrive as insight, not as step-by-step derivations:

“I see it.”

“Now it becomes obvious.”

“It suddenly makes sense.”

This is not psychological accident. It is the mind aligning with an already-existing structure in RA.

6. Why Animals Cannot Do This—and AI Will Not Either

Animals live entirely within AR, without reflective access to RA.

They adapt. They survive. But they do not ask why laws are necessary.

AI, by contrast, operates entirely within RR—symbols manipulating symbols. No matter how powerful, it lacks ontological anchoring in RA or access to WuXing.

Thus:

Animals do not seek truth

AI cannot discover truth

Humans can—and must

Because humans alone are natural instances capable of recognizing absolute structure.

7. Why Truth Is Discoverable—but Never Exhaustible

Finally, Instancology explains a paradox that haunted thinkers from Plato to Martin Heidegger:

Truth is discoverable

Truth is never fully sayable

This is because AA cannot be represented, only indicated through RA, AR, and RR.

Human cognition approaches truth asymptotically. Philosophy is not endless because it is confused—but because it is moving toward what cannot be fully spoken.

Instancology does not end truth-seeking.

It explains why it was possible in the first place.

Conclusion

From an Instancological view, the human mind can discover truth because:

Truth precedes cognition

The mind is a natural instance structurally aligned with absolute law

Discovery is matching, not construction

Insight surpasses language and logic

Reality itself is intelligible because it is issued as an instance

Truth is not a human achievement.

Human discovery is a response to what already is.

And that is why truth can be known at all.