PART IV: KNOWING
4.1 Contact with reality
The mechanism is currently located in the spiritual dimension, with possession as the illustrating case. Two difficulties to resolve: the illustration is a spirit contacting flesh rather than a mind registering a rock, and the 2021 list defines spiritual existence as inference from effects, which is mediated. Option available: decline to supply a mechanism, on the ground that the Kant diagnosis does not require one.
4.2 All apprehension is formed
Most apprehension is also acquired by method and selected by perspective. Formation alone does not produce idealism: a formed apprehension of something real is still an apprehension of something real. The glass shapes what passes through it and does not manufacture it.
4.3 Revelation
Neither acquired by method nor selected by perspective, though formed by the capacity of the recipient.
Non-acquisition. No one obtains a revelation by executing a procedure correctly.
Non-selection. Evidenced by content that contradicts the recipient: Daniel sealing what he does not understand, Peter corrected three times, Balaam hired to curse, Jonah running.
Formation. John’s imagery from a vocabulary he already had; the prophets in their own Hebrew, distinguishable by style.
Why this does not self-seal. A self-sealing channel is one whose content the recipient determines. Because revelation is not selected by the recipient, it can contradict him, and therefore can be tested against him. Fulfillment, coherence with prior revelation, and fruits are the Triveritas applied downstream to the resulting claim, not to the act of receipt.
4.4 Inspiration is a separate case
Unbidden acquisition with perspective-selection intact. The mathematician, composer, and novelist receive inside the problem they were already working, in their own idiom, addressed to their own question. Not a variant of revelation.
4.5 Reason: structure
Valid inference preserves truth for two reasons that answer different halves. Truth-preservation is an aspect of validity, which explains why inference is internally consistent. Reality has a rational structure, which explains why the machinery applies to the world rather than only to itself. The second is what validity cannot supply. A rationally structured reality is what a Logos metaphysics predicts.
4.6 Reason: operation
Observably unreliable. Perfect logic on bad inputs produces nonsense. Sources of failure: false inputs, equivocating terms, careless operators.
Why this motivates the instrument. The failure modes are of different kinds and are caught by different filters. False inputs by E, quantitative incoherence by M, equivocation by L. That the failures differ in kind is why three independent filters beat one. This is the informal argument for the non-redundancy the proof establishes formally.
Consistency with Axiom 4. The axiom says each filter beats chance, not that reason is reliable. A filter that beats chance while failing often is exactly what 4.5 and 4.6 jointly describe.
4.7 What anchors partial apprehension to the real
Perspective determines which part of the truth is obtained, not whether what is obtained is real. Selection, not validation. As currently worded the answer says apprehension lacks dependence on perspective, which contradicts the fourth principle.
Excise: “it makes no difference if it is mediated or construction.” Construction is the opposing thesis. What is meant is that the route by which a truth is reached does not affect whether it is true.