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From An Enquiry into the Nature of Being

This website is dedicated to the free publication of a philosophical enquiry concerning ontology and epistemology.

A work initially written over a decade past is being systematically rewritten by the author in hopes of improved clarity and cohesion of arguments. The completed rewrite is anticipated to be approximately 450,000 words (roughly, 1,500 pages), and will likely take well over a decade to produce. Until the rewrite’s completion and release in paperback form, first drafts of revised chapters will be uploaded onto this site, making them freely available to anyone who might be interested.

All contents of this website are offered as public domain under the CC-0 license. The reader—just as much as the author—thereby has the right to reproduce and modify the contents uploaded onto this website in any way the reader sees fit.

Uploaded revisions will be denoted with a bullet (•) in the table of contents. Sections not yet uploaded are provisionally listed for reference and are subject to substantial change.

If you have criticisms of what's been uploaded and would like to share these with the author, if you have questions, or if you would otherwise like to be informed of newly uploaded chapters via email, please contact me—Michael W Moiceanu, the author of this work—at michael@anenquiry.info.

Due to time constraints and the increased ease of administration, for the time being this MediaWiki-based website is closed to public modification.


— Update (December 3, 2024):

Chapter 15: A Basic Anatomy of the Total First-Person Self has now been posted.

So that it is known, it is possible that in the months which follow I might find myself in need of tweaking the chapter's contents for the purposes of properly falsifying what is otherwise considered to be an unfalsifiable hypothesis: that of metaphysical solipsism. I however don't currently foresee the need to do so. That mentioned, in not wanting to overly postpone the release of chapters, I've decided to upload Chapter 15 onto the website prior to finalizing Part 4 in total.



An Enquiry into the Nature of Being

Michael W Moiceanu (MWMoiceanu)

michael@anenquiry.info

• Preface

Preface Stub

Volume One: Certainty, Awareness, Will, Mind, and Selfhood

• Part I: Foundational Principles

Chapter 1: Demarcating Certainty, Uncertainty, and Doubt

Chapter 2: The Cohort of All Those Concerned

Chapter 3: Validating the Law of Non-contradiction

• Part 2: First-Person Awareness

Chapter 4: The Reality of the Eidem

Chapter 5: Our Four Modes of Awareness

Chapter 6: Our Three Strata of Awareness as Eidems

Chapter 7: Demarcating Consciousness

• Part 3: Causation, Volition, and its Determinants

Chapter 8: Concerning Determinacy

Chapter 9: Three Metaphysical Classifications for Causes

Chapter 10: The Reality of a Causally Semideterminate World

Chapter 11: Validating Our Free Will

Chapter 12: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part I—Intentions

Chapter 13: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part II—The Prototelos

Chapter 14: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part III—Teleions

Part 4: Negating the Possibility of Metaphysical Solipsism

• Chapter 15: A Basic Anatomy of the Total First-Person Self

Chapter: An Eidem’s Discernment of its Body

Chapter: The Impossibility of Being the Sole Self in Existence

Part 5: Mind

Chapter: An Eidem-Inclusive Bundle Theory of Mind

Chapter: Enactive, Inherent, and Disjoined Volitions

Chapter: The Prototelos and Choice Making

Chapter: Concerning Thought

Chapter: Concerning Memory

Chapter: Concerning Forethought

Chapter: Concerning Expectations

Chapter: Selfhood Revisited

Chapter: Self-Awareness Revisited

Chapter: The Anima and Animus Revisited

Chapter: Happiness and Suffering Revisited

Volume Two: Formations, Objectivity, Compatibilism, Truth, and Value

Part 8: Formational Determinacy

Chapter: Formational Interdeterminacy

Chapter: Four Jointly Exhaustive Formation Possibilities

Chapter: Of Relations between Body and Mind

Part 9: Deriving the Metaphysics of Objectivity

Chapter: Concurrences of Eidems

Chapter: Four Jointly Exhaustive Types of Reality

Chapter: Concerning the Two Types of Objective Reality

Chapter: Retroactive Compatibilism

Chapter: Progressive Uniformitarianism

Chapter: Concerning the Supernatural

Part 10: Concerning Truth and Belief

Chapter: Four Truth Types

Chapter: Of Trust and Belief

Chapter: Enactive, Learned, and Innate Trust

Part 11: Value Theory

Chapter: The Identity Preservation Drive

Chapter: Deriving What Should be from that Euteleion which Is

Chapter: The Apeiroson

Chapter: The Turannon

Chapter: The Permanon

Chapter: The Nihilon

Chapter: The Dysteleion

Chapter: Compound Teloi and Teloi Concessions

Chapter: Competition between Teloi

Volume Three: Reasoning, Epistemology, Spacetime, Aesthetics, and Science

Part 12: Reasoning

Chapter: Logical Identity, Noncontradiction, and the Excluded Middle

Chapter: Of Form and Causal Information

Chapter: Of Reasoning and Justification

Chapter: Of Pre-Socratic Logos and the Notion of Karma

Chapter: Abductions, Inductions, and Deductions

Chapter: Of Numbers and Mathematics

Part 13: Epistemology

Chapter: Justification

Chapter: Knowledge

Chapter: Understanding

Part 14: Spacetime

Chapter: The Intrareal Present Moment

Chapter: The Equireal Present Moment

Chapter: Intra-, Inter-, and Equi-syncretic Spacetime

Part 15: Aesthetics

Chapter: Biological Fairness

Chapter: Psychological Fairness

Chapter: Conceptual Fairness

Part 16: Science

Chapter: The Scientific Method

Chapter: Natural Selection

Chapter: On the Emergence of Life from Nonlife

Chapter: Concerning the Beginning and End of the Universe