I tried to read it. I wanted to. I really did. Is there an outline version of the points you are trying to get across? Maybe it's made for great minds only. If I were an editor, I think at least a paragraph at the beginning outlining the points you are trying to make might help people decide whether to take a lot of effort and time to read it or not. That could be the ADHD talking. Perhaps it's just a style thing or I haven't the intellect, but I may need things broken down into smaller bits. It would take me a month to digest this post alone. I found myself lost in a never-ending woods and gave up less than halfway through. The thing is, I want to understand what you're saying or I wouldn't have even read that far.
I think there is value in the no shortcuts idea expressed on your home page. Anything worth pondering requires deep thought and reflecting, even osmosing - but there also has to be clarity and a thread to follow. What do you think? How does one access your work when we're pulled in a thousand directions and don't want to spend our lives on the internet? Maybe you have actual books in print? If so, please let me know. I'm so sick of everything being on the internet when, for me, many of the answers or at least peace within the paradoxes, reside in nature and face to face connection.
Maybe this was too big a bite for a first-timer? Thanks.
Thank you for taking the time to even attempt it. I mean that genuinely. And thank you for your thoughtful feedback.
First, I don’t think this has anything to do with intellect. The essay is dense because I packed a lot into this essay intentionally. My intention was to be comprehensive with this one. I know that can feel like walking into the woods without a trail map if it’s your first encounter with these ideas. I’m aware that this is a very big first bite. I wouldn’t recommend starting with the densest essay if the topic resonates with you. I have many shorter entry points for people new to my work. Feel free to visit the “Start here” section on my page.
You actually gave very fair criticism, a clearer outline at the beginning would probably help orient readers before asking them to take the long walk. I wrote this one to be very comprehensive, but I know that it comes at the cost of accessibility.
If I had to summarize the core idea in plain language, it would be something like this:
-You cannot opt out of participation.
By existing and perceiving, you are already participating in reality’s structure. The only question is whether you are doing so consciously or unconsciously.
-Truth requires structure.
Science, reason, justice, and communication only work if reality is coherent enough to evaluate consistently. If truth shifts entirely according to preference, disagreement becomes unresolvable and power fills the gap.
-Most public debates happen downstream.
We argue endlessly about politics, religion, capitalism, identity, and morality while rarely asking the deeper question: what structure makes any claim coherent in the first place?
-Different frameworks can sometimes obscure this deeper question.
Some religious approaches reduce it to identity, conformity, or dogma. Some secular approaches dismiss metaphysical questions while still relying on assumptions about truth, reason, and value. In different ways, both can leave the underlying structure unexplored.
-Why this matters urgently:
If people stop examining what makes truth coherent, society becomes increasingly vulnerable to contradiction, manipulation, selective standards, and confusion disguised as progress. We often only notice the importance of foundations once things begin breaking.
The simplest way I could put it is that metaphysics is not optional. It is the invisible structure you are already relying on to make sense of reality, whether you examine it or not.
And sincerely, thank you for trying and engaging. The fact that you wanted to understand means a lot.
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to respond in a way I can understand and have an access point; this makes me want to keep at it, read more, even if it means breaking it down into bits and pondering, maybe doing some writing about the questions that come and the ones asked that we consider. I knew it was an important work and you have helped make it more accessible to me. I will do as you advise and start at the beginning. That you took the time to lay this all out means a lot to me.
For shorter pieces that "get at" what this piece brilliantly delves into, you might want to read Berta Nelson's Substack. I can never remember the URL. But anyway, these short essays "swipe" at what's being said here, IMHO.
thanks. right now i am in the middle of gardening and planting and trying to wrest the garden back from stickers and quack grass so I've no brain right now, but intend to come back here and maybe check out her stack. Feeling resistant to more online things to do when the outdoors is calling so it may wait til i have less to do and more time to read and think.
Oh, take your time & enjoy your garden! I had gardens for many years & thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I wonder if you're sprouting seeds so you'll have young plants to put in when the space is cleared? I didn't do that much, but others gardeners loved doing it.
hi Berta; no seeds though i buy and collect them from everywhere and never seem to get around to starting them, though I used to. This is a plot on someone else's land and it's mainly a pollinator garden though I grow the easy self-sowing things line kale and parsley. Mainly it's flowers and shrubs. I love dahlias too. It's a 3 season garden, in winter nothing happens there. I'm gettting older with lots or arthritis and back issues. Winding down I think - sadly. Bit I find getting outdoors does more for me than anything else - simply watching, communing with nature when i am not working so hard at it- which seems to be most of the time. Lately, my whole idea about gardens is changing and I feel like an interloper on nature and the land. Yet the pollinators are happy. There are snakes, frogs, all mannner of bugs, birds. I do it for that.
Yes. I always grew long rows of peas. I adore fresh peas from the garden & used to stand there for a long time eating them & surveying the flowers, squash plants, carrot tops, garlic, etc. A fabulous time communing with ALL. Never brought peas in to cook or eat indoors.
A core tenet of this essay is not just that coherent existence is required for pretty much any imaginable thing, but also that existence is a good thing. If someone could make an undoing bomb, to make coherence impossible, should they do it?
I agree with you that they should not. But the question remains, why? "Yes, they should" can be answered, and the answer "no, they shouldn't" can be as well. Whether you value coherence is the key difference. I value existence. And so I value coherence.
But some people do not think existence is intrinsically valuable, many antinatalists for example.
Another idea that occurs to me reading is that the unit of stability that is valued, apart from stability itself, is an open question. Is an individual the unit of stability worth admiring, or a lung, a cell, an atom? What about a family, society, humanity? A planet? Is coherence valuable, always? When would an individual be right in sacrificing themselves, if ever? If we blew up the moon to save a goldfish, is that good?
To be more rigorous, Taleb in his book _Antifragile_ discusses both Hormesis, which is the strengthening of the whole by a stressing of the parts, as well as evolutionary antifragility, or a destruction of the parts to make a more sustainable whole. It is my view that evolutionary idea can explain both, and actually explain a large extent of the coherent existence you describe. Parts break down, leaving the parts that are sustainable remaining. This explains catalysts, cellular dynamics, Darwinism, as well as knowledge by conjecture and refutation.
The point is that just valuing coherence isn't enough. The unit of coherence that is valuable is still worth considering more deeply. At least I think so, before coming to the more grand ethical statements you make in the essay.
Excellent critique. You are raising exactly the kinds of questions I hoped the essay would surface.
I agree that coherence alone is not enough if by coherence we simply mean “stability.” A dictatorship can be stable. A tumor can be stable. Each are stable within its context. The deeper question is, stable relative to what? Or as you framed it, what is the unit of coherence being evaluated against?
I actually think your examples (cells, lungs, individuals, families, societies, planets) help illustrate the issue. None of these can serve as the ultimate unit of coherence because all are contingent and context-dependent. Sometimes parts are sacrificed for wholes (cells, organs, individuals, even civilizations), and as you mentioned, hormesis and evolutionary antifragility are real features of reality. Tradeoffs are real.
The deeper question becomes, what remains stable enough to evaluate those tradeoffs coherently?
That is where the metaphysical axiom enters. Historically, this is what people meant by God or gods, not merely theological characters or ritual objects, but the ultimate unit of coherence against which reality, morality, sacrifice, authority, and meaning were evaluated.
The undoing-bomb example you made is interesting because even the claim that “existence is not valuable” still presupposes coherent existence in order to reason, suffer, evaluate, prefer, or conclude anything at all. In that sense, coherence is not simply another value preference, it is upstream of valuation itself.
Where I think modern discourse becomes confusing is that this entire question has been redirected into theology (“Do you believe in a religious idea?”) while political and institutional systems continue operating through implicit units of coherence without making them transparent.
So I agree with your core point that the unit of coherence matters deeply. My argument is simply that the only candidate capable of grounding coherent evaluation universally cannot itself be contingent, composite, or context-dependent.
If you have questions you would like to see covered in an essay, consider joining the God Objectively chat and posting your questions and topics in there, thanks!
Great article! I reposted a paragraph I loved. Your bottom of conference reminds me a lot of Deutch's definition of knowledge.
One nitpick.
> secularism itself still operates metaphysically. It still assumes things about truth, morality, legitimacy, authority, freedom, reality, and evidence.
Does it? Isn't secularism about the promotion of the separation of religion and government? Wouldn't this be like, un-introspective scientism or something?
Every governance system already presupposes a model of reality. Since secularism governs justice, legitimacy, rights, authority, and human value, it too rests upon model(s) that determine those assumptions. Metaphysics comes first because it concerns the underlying model of reality itself. Governance is downstream from metaphysics.
In other words:
metaphysics → governance → institutions
What secularism did is reframe religions as “theology,” shifting them into a downstream institutional or private category, while treating governance as neutral or procedural. This obscures the fact that governance itself still depends on metaphysical assumptions no different than religion.
I think the issue is the way “theology” is being used here.
Religion only appears “downstream of coherence” because it has been recategorized as theology, where it is examined in terms of belief, ritual, and institution. But originally, these were historical expressions of metaphysical models, not something separate from them.
Every religion is already a metaphysical model at the level of its axioms: God, gods, or no God. These are not downstream claims. They are grounding assumptions that determine the unit against which coherence is defined.
Secular ideologies and governance systems do the same thing, they simply do not make their axioms (or lack of axioms) explicit. All metaphysical models ultimately fall into one of three structures: a single independent grounding principle (God), multiple contingent grounding principles (gods), or no grounding principle (no God), which results in purely reactive interpretation.
So the disagreement is not about who cares about coherence. It is about whether any system that organizes humans and reality can exist outside metaphysics. None can.
I think we agree on a great deal, actually. The thing I'm hung up on is how you get to your value system from the thing we agree about. Sustainable coherence is actually amazing and underlies basically everything. Are you trying to define God as coherent "being" itself, as the ability of coherence to exist?
> But originally, these were historical expressions of metaphysical models, not something separate from them
Interesting! Do you have reading suggestions for me to learn more about this :)
> Every religion is already a metaphysical model at the level of its axioms: God, gods, or no God. These are not downstream claims. They are grounding assumptions that determine the unit against which coherence is defined.
Sometimes they are. For instance, some gods of the past were contingent on others. Titans, for instance, were the parents of the gods of olympus. If the claim is religions have grounding assumptions, sure but so does almost everything. Religion isn't unique here either, no?
I’m going to focus on the last part of your question, as I really want to address your other comment because you brought up some excellent points.
You are right on the nose to point out that religion is not unique here. That is actually part of my point.
I agree that everything has grounding assumptions. What I’m highlighting is that this is precisely because metaphysics is unavoidable.
The difference is that historical religions made those assumptions more explicit, whereas modern ideologies and governance systems often treat theirs as neutral, procedural, or self evident.
And yes, good catch on contingent gods like the Olympians and Titans. In that scenario, it is a distinction between contingent gods within a model and the ultimate grounding of the model itself.
For example, in Greek mythology, the Olympians are not the ontological foundation of reality. They are contingent beings inside a manufactured layer of a larger cosmology. The deeper metaphysical question remains: what grounds the system itself?
That is what is meant by God, gods, or no God:
God → a singular independent grounding principle
gods → multiple competing or contingent grounding principles
no God → no stable grounding, leaving coherence reactive or emergent
My claim is not that religion is special here. It’s actually the opposite: no worldview escapes metaphysical assumptions, including secular ones.
The deeper disagreement is about which metaphysical structure can maintain coherence consistently. All metaphysical models ultimately fall into one of three categories: God, gods, or no God.
A singular, independent grounding principle is the only structure capable of maintaining universal coherence, because multiple grounding principles introduce contingency and competing standards, while no grounding principle leaves coherence reactive, interpretive, and unable to ground itself consistently.
In other words, only one metaphysical structure preserves a stable unit of coherence against which reality can be evaluated consistently.
So apparently “they” in this movie i’m watching are ignoring the collective consciousness cloud of proven scientific and metaphysical knowledge and record of historical experience, and seriously really trying to re-define the very meaning, reason, and structure of ultimate existential/co-existential being and reality and according to their own misconceived disassociated alternative reality, what they believe, and what think they know, and to impose and pathologically subject it upon and within the people.
Absolutely BRILLIANT! THANK YOU! This is what humanity is struggling toward, a cohesive "ground of reality." When we go within, it is "there." But this cannot stay "my personal awarenesses when I go within." This awareness must reach out to the whole who can KNOW it as the basis of the material reality we operate within.
First off, I wasn't the one that brought up coherence, you did. My argument is not dependent on coherence, and again I'm arguing the term is nothing more than an abstract concept. So, I'm not making any claim about coherence, I'm simply responding to your framing by pointing out that it's abstract.
You seem to be treating this discussion as some sort of a competition, as in my trying to eat the whole cake. I don't know how else to explain it to you, but in my world there is no whole cake because language is not capable of capturing wholeness. I'm not making any claim that for me looks like I'm attempting to dominate, if anything I'm just pointing out the disconnect between human capacity and universal knowledge.
Let’s stay consistent. Your initial claim, which you are now denying, was that “coherence is a made-up human ideal with no reality outside the brain.” Your words.
That claim makes coherence contingent upon human cognition rather than stable. The implication of that claim is that coherence would depend upon contingent human minds that emerge, develop, disagree, deteriorate, and disappear. In that case, coherence could not function as a stable basis for distinguishing truth from delusion, better reasoning from worse reasoning, or morality from immorality beyond temporary preference or utility.
That means your 95 point procedural system is not an authority structure in any objective sense under your own framing, but at best a contingent tool of preference and utility. If your position is that coherence is a human made construct with no reality outside cognition, then your 95 point procedural system, and your invitation for me to “challenge it”, is also just another constructed framework with no privileged authority status. In that case, this is not a matter of one authority challenging another. It is simply one constructed model being compared to another constructed model.
My claim is the opposite, coherence is objective and therefore produces stable standards for distinguishing truth from delusion, better reasoning from worse reasoning, and morality from immorality. That is precisely why your framing of a “challenge” only makes sense if coherence already has stable meaning. Without that, it collapses into competing preferences rather than adjudication of truth.
The issue is that your own framework relies on the very coherence your original claim denies. You continue appealing to procedural standards, correction, reevaluation, morality, and better reasoning, all of which depend on coherence meaningfully persisting across time and contexts.
So the contradiction remains, you are using stable coherence while denying its objective status.
That is the tension that has consistently remained throughout this conversation. I have now repeated this point sufficiently, and I will not continue the discussion further. Thank you for commenting.
I think I see the problem. You think authority comes from an external source whereas I'm saying authority comes from a transparent, physical and imperfect process. The authority is the process and its ability to modify with changing physical evidence.
I think the author is looking for God, and is doing so by hiding up behind the concept of coherence, which is just a made-up human ideal. There is no coherence outside of the human brain.
If coherence is merely a made up human ideal with no existence outside the brain, then on what basis is your own argument coherent, meaningful, or more true than mine?
The moment we reason, make distinctions, identify contradictions, or expect consistency between claims and reality, we are already appealing to coherence. Science depends on it. Logic depends on it. Language depends on it. Even the statement “there is no coherence outside of the human brain” assumes a coherent relationship between your claim and reality.
I am not “hiding behind coherence” to look for God. My point is that coherence is already being assumed by everyone. The question is whether coherence is merely an arbitrary mental preference or whether reality itself is structured in a way that makes objective coherence possible.
If coherence is only subjective, then truth collapses into preference. But if coherence reliably maps onto reality across minds, contexts, and time, then it points to something objective beyond individual subjectivity.
My argument has coherence and meaning because a) my argument is facilitated by an imperfect process that is continuously open for reassessment and b) my argument is otherwise tied to the constraints of the physical world. Like I said, it seems like you are reaching for god, which is fine if the goal is to assert a metaphysical/religious truth. Let me ask you this, how do you know when an idea is delusional?
You changed the question rather than answering it. You said your argument has coherence because it is open to reassessment and constrained by the physical world. But reassessment itself presupposes standards of coherence, some way of distinguishing better reasoning from worse reasoning, contradiction from consistency, truth from error. Likewise, saying something is “constrained by the physical world” assumes there is a reliable relationship between reason and reality that can be recognized coherently.
So my question remains, if coherence is merely a human invention with no existence outside the brain, why should reassessment or physical constraint produce anything more than sophisticated preference?
As for “reaching for God,” I’m not starting with God and working backward. I’m asking what makes objective reasoning possible at all. If coherence is objective enough to distinguish truth from delusion, then it seems we are already appealing to something beyond subjective cognition.
And to answer your question, how do I know when an idea is delusional? I would say when it fails coherence, when it cannot maintain consistency with reality, collapses into contradiction, or cannot be meaningfully reconciled across contexts. But notice, even the ability to identify delusion presupposes some objective standard beyond mere personal preference.
You are correct, and you can find my standards of coherence contained in my epistemology for the physical world located in my book, "Truth, what is it good for?" and as outlined here: (https://steelemethod.substack.com/p/the-steele-method) and elsewhere in my postings.
Within my epistemology are procedural mechanisms for managing the relationship between reason and reality, which includes accounting for the nature of language and human experience. Physical constraint is not an ideal, it is part of the imperfect process of differentiation. We both agree, that delusion is best offset by grounding ideas in physical reality. I think you are making objectivity into an ideal when I see it as an imperfect process that attempts to strip away magical thinking.
I want to be clear here. You originally said that there is no coherence outside of the human brain and described coherence as a “made up human ideal.” But your explanation explicitly depends on procedural standards that meaningfully relate reason to reality, physical constraints that distinguish better from worse claims, and mechanisms for identifying delusion.
Those are not the same position.
If coherence is only a human invention with no existence outside cognition, then physical reality cannot meaningfully constrain reasoning toward truth, it can only constrain survival or preference. So your original statement is incorrect. Because reality can actually differentiate between coherent and incoherent claims, truth and delusion, that means coherence is not merely something invented inside the brain. It reflects some real relationship between reason and reality.
While it is true that humans are imperfect and open to reassessment, that is not the issue at hand. The issue is that human imperfection does not reduce objectivity to an imperfect social process. Objective coherence is a stable phenomenon that makes the distinction between truth and delusion meaningful in the first place.
Furthermore, you originally accused me of “reaching for God” to undermine my overall argument. Yet your own framework relies on a stronger notion of coherence that you are actively denying. That’s incoherent.
If you would like the opportunity for a direct challenge, then call out one of my 95-rules for the good faith use of language that I linked to above. When I say my epistemology is procedural, I mean it, which is dependent on improvement through challenge.
I see no contradiction to my asserting standards while simultaneously understanding those standards to be of my creation and in needing of constant reevaluation. The contradiction would only arise if I was claiming to understand some larger truth outside of the moment, which I'm not.
I don't follow your law about coherence. All I can say is that coherence is an abstract idea that we humans create and use to make sense of the world, it is our recognition of patterns, that are themselves abstractions we create to represent relationships. I’m a big fan of systems theory but I also understand that systems are themselves human creations we use as tools. Systems are not real like the ground I stand on.
The imperfections of human experience and language are the entire point because it is upon these tools that we build understanding. There is no thought outside of language, the elimination of language is called meditation, and that is the opposite of thinking.
Can you show me a cup or a pound of Objective coherence? It’s just non-physical abstraction.
I'm completely lost as to your last comment, my notion of coherence is dependent on process, which for me is the opposite of metaphysics, ideas that cannot be demonstrated by physical means. I’m happy not knowing what can’t be demonstrated. Wanting more, for me, is religion.
I tried to read it. I wanted to. I really did. Is there an outline version of the points you are trying to get across? Maybe it's made for great minds only. If I were an editor, I think at least a paragraph at the beginning outlining the points you are trying to make might help people decide whether to take a lot of effort and time to read it or not. That could be the ADHD talking. Perhaps it's just a style thing or I haven't the intellect, but I may need things broken down into smaller bits. It would take me a month to digest this post alone. I found myself lost in a never-ending woods and gave up less than halfway through. The thing is, I want to understand what you're saying or I wouldn't have even read that far.
I think there is value in the no shortcuts idea expressed on your home page. Anything worth pondering requires deep thought and reflecting, even osmosing - but there also has to be clarity and a thread to follow. What do you think? How does one access your work when we're pulled in a thousand directions and don't want to spend our lives on the internet? Maybe you have actual books in print? If so, please let me know. I'm so sick of everything being on the internet when, for me, many of the answers or at least peace within the paradoxes, reside in nature and face to face connection.
Maybe this was too big a bite for a first-timer? Thanks.
Thank you for taking the time to even attempt it. I mean that genuinely. And thank you for your thoughtful feedback.
First, I don’t think this has anything to do with intellect. The essay is dense because I packed a lot into this essay intentionally. My intention was to be comprehensive with this one. I know that can feel like walking into the woods without a trail map if it’s your first encounter with these ideas. I’m aware that this is a very big first bite. I wouldn’t recommend starting with the densest essay if the topic resonates with you. I have many shorter entry points for people new to my work. Feel free to visit the “Start here” section on my page.
You actually gave very fair criticism, a clearer outline at the beginning would probably help orient readers before asking them to take the long walk. I wrote this one to be very comprehensive, but I know that it comes at the cost of accessibility.
If I had to summarize the core idea in plain language, it would be something like this:
-You cannot opt out of participation.
By existing and perceiving, you are already participating in reality’s structure. The only question is whether you are doing so consciously or unconsciously.
-Truth requires structure.
Science, reason, justice, and communication only work if reality is coherent enough to evaluate consistently. If truth shifts entirely according to preference, disagreement becomes unresolvable and power fills the gap.
-Most public debates happen downstream.
We argue endlessly about politics, religion, capitalism, identity, and morality while rarely asking the deeper question: what structure makes any claim coherent in the first place?
-Different frameworks can sometimes obscure this deeper question.
Some religious approaches reduce it to identity, conformity, or dogma. Some secular approaches dismiss metaphysical questions while still relying on assumptions about truth, reason, and value. In different ways, both can leave the underlying structure unexplored.
-Why this matters urgently:
If people stop examining what makes truth coherent, society becomes increasingly vulnerable to contradiction, manipulation, selective standards, and confusion disguised as progress. We often only notice the importance of foundations once things begin breaking.
The simplest way I could put it is that metaphysics is not optional. It is the invisible structure you are already relying on to make sense of reality, whether you examine it or not.
And sincerely, thank you for trying and engaging. The fact that you wanted to understand means a lot.
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to respond in a way I can understand and have an access point; this makes me want to keep at it, read more, even if it means breaking it down into bits and pondering, maybe doing some writing about the questions that come and the ones asked that we consider. I knew it was an important work and you have helped make it more accessible to me. I will do as you advise and start at the beginning. That you took the time to lay this all out means a lot to me.
You are most welcome. Please feel free to ask questions as you go through. I’m happy to help clarify.
Copy paste hit summarize. Do people not value their own time
For shorter pieces that "get at" what this piece brilliantly delves into, you might want to read Berta Nelson's Substack. I can never remember the URL. But anyway, these short essays "swipe" at what's being said here, IMHO.
thanks. right now i am in the middle of gardening and planting and trying to wrest the garden back from stickers and quack grass so I've no brain right now, but intend to come back here and maybe check out her stack. Feeling resistant to more online things to do when the outdoors is calling so it may wait til i have less to do and more time to read and think.
Oh, take your time & enjoy your garden! I had gardens for many years & thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I wonder if you're sprouting seeds so you'll have young plants to put in when the space is cleared? I didn't do that much, but others gardeners loved doing it.
hi Berta; no seeds though i buy and collect them from everywhere and never seem to get around to starting them, though I used to. This is a plot on someone else's land and it's mainly a pollinator garden though I grow the easy self-sowing things line kale and parsley. Mainly it's flowers and shrubs. I love dahlias too. It's a 3 season garden, in winter nothing happens there. I'm gettting older with lots or arthritis and back issues. Winding down I think - sadly. Bit I find getting outdoors does more for me than anything else - simply watching, communing with nature when i am not working so hard at it- which seems to be most of the time. Lately, my whole idea about gardens is changing and I feel like an interloper on nature and the land. Yet the pollinators are happy. There are snakes, frogs, all mannner of bugs, birds. I do it for that.
Yes. I always grew long rows of peas. I adore fresh peas from the garden & used to stand there for a long time eating them & surveying the flowers, squash plants, carrot tops, garlic, etc. A fabulous time communing with ALL. Never brought peas in to cook or eat indoors.
A core tenet of this essay is not just that coherent existence is required for pretty much any imaginable thing, but also that existence is a good thing. If someone could make an undoing bomb, to make coherence impossible, should they do it?
I agree with you that they should not. But the question remains, why? "Yes, they should" can be answered, and the answer "no, they shouldn't" can be as well. Whether you value coherence is the key difference. I value existence. And so I value coherence.
But some people do not think existence is intrinsically valuable, many antinatalists for example.
Another idea that occurs to me reading is that the unit of stability that is valued, apart from stability itself, is an open question. Is an individual the unit of stability worth admiring, or a lung, a cell, an atom? What about a family, society, humanity? A planet? Is coherence valuable, always? When would an individual be right in sacrificing themselves, if ever? If we blew up the moon to save a goldfish, is that good?
To be more rigorous, Taleb in his book _Antifragile_ discusses both Hormesis, which is the strengthening of the whole by a stressing of the parts, as well as evolutionary antifragility, or a destruction of the parts to make a more sustainable whole. It is my view that evolutionary idea can explain both, and actually explain a large extent of the coherent existence you describe. Parts break down, leaving the parts that are sustainable remaining. This explains catalysts, cellular dynamics, Darwinism, as well as knowledge by conjecture and refutation.
The point is that just valuing coherence isn't enough. The unit of coherence that is valuable is still worth considering more deeply. At least I think so, before coming to the more grand ethical statements you make in the essay.
Great read. I enjoyed it.
Excellent critique. You are raising exactly the kinds of questions I hoped the essay would surface.
I agree that coherence alone is not enough if by coherence we simply mean “stability.” A dictatorship can be stable. A tumor can be stable. Each are stable within its context. The deeper question is, stable relative to what? Or as you framed it, what is the unit of coherence being evaluated against?
I actually think your examples (cells, lungs, individuals, families, societies, planets) help illustrate the issue. None of these can serve as the ultimate unit of coherence because all are contingent and context-dependent. Sometimes parts are sacrificed for wholes (cells, organs, individuals, even civilizations), and as you mentioned, hormesis and evolutionary antifragility are real features of reality. Tradeoffs are real.
The deeper question becomes, what remains stable enough to evaluate those tradeoffs coherently?
That is where the metaphysical axiom enters. Historically, this is what people meant by God or gods, not merely theological characters or ritual objects, but the ultimate unit of coherence against which reality, morality, sacrifice, authority, and meaning were evaluated.
The undoing-bomb example you made is interesting because even the claim that “existence is not valuable” still presupposes coherent existence in order to reason, suffer, evaluate, prefer, or conclude anything at all. In that sense, coherence is not simply another value preference, it is upstream of valuation itself.
This essay touches on this topic in more detail:
https://www.godobjectively.com/p/business-partners-in-truth
Where I think modern discourse becomes confusing is that this entire question has been redirected into theology (“Do you believe in a religious idea?”) while political and institutional systems continue operating through implicit units of coherence without making them transparent.
So I agree with your core point that the unit of coherence matters deeply. My argument is simply that the only candidate capable of grounding coherent evaluation universally cannot itself be contingent, composite, or context-dependent.
If you have questions you would like to see covered in an essay, consider joining the God Objectively chat and posting your questions and topics in there, thanks!
Great article! I reposted a paragraph I loved. Your bottom of conference reminds me a lot of Deutch's definition of knowledge.
One nitpick.
> secularism itself still operates metaphysically. It still assumes things about truth, morality, legitimacy, authority, freedom, reality, and evidence.
Does it? Isn't secularism about the promotion of the separation of religion and government? Wouldn't this be like, un-introspective scientism or something?
Every governance system already presupposes a model of reality. Since secularism governs justice, legitimacy, rights, authority, and human value, it too rests upon model(s) that determine those assumptions. Metaphysics comes first because it concerns the underlying model of reality itself. Governance is downstream from metaphysics.
In other words:
metaphysics → governance → institutions
What secularism did is reframe religions as “theology,” shifting them into a downstream institutional or private category, while treating governance as neutral or procedural. This obscures the fact that governance itself still depends on metaphysical assumptions no different than religion.
True, but a lot of theology is downstream of coherence.
Secular people and theologians as currently thought about are capable of caring about fundamental sustainability.
I think the issue is the way “theology” is being used here.
Religion only appears “downstream of coherence” because it has been recategorized as theology, where it is examined in terms of belief, ritual, and institution. But originally, these were historical expressions of metaphysical models, not something separate from them.
Every religion is already a metaphysical model at the level of its axioms: God, gods, or no God. These are not downstream claims. They are grounding assumptions that determine the unit against which coherence is defined.
Secular ideologies and governance systems do the same thing, they simply do not make their axioms (or lack of axioms) explicit. All metaphysical models ultimately fall into one of three structures: a single independent grounding principle (God), multiple contingent grounding principles (gods), or no grounding principle (no God), which results in purely reactive interpretation.
So the disagreement is not about who cares about coherence. It is about whether any system that organizes humans and reality can exist outside metaphysics. None can.
I think we agree on a great deal, actually. The thing I'm hung up on is how you get to your value system from the thing we agree about. Sustainable coherence is actually amazing and underlies basically everything. Are you trying to define God as coherent "being" itself, as the ability of coherence to exist?
> But originally, these were historical expressions of metaphysical models, not something separate from them
Interesting! Do you have reading suggestions for me to learn more about this :)
> Every religion is already a metaphysical model at the level of its axioms: God, gods, or no God. These are not downstream claims. They are grounding assumptions that determine the unit against which coherence is defined.
Sometimes they are. For instance, some gods of the past were contingent on others. Titans, for instance, were the parents of the gods of olympus. If the claim is religions have grounding assumptions, sure but so does almost everything. Religion isn't unique here either, no?
I’m going to focus on the last part of your question, as I really want to address your other comment because you brought up some excellent points.
You are right on the nose to point out that religion is not unique here. That is actually part of my point.
I agree that everything has grounding assumptions. What I’m highlighting is that this is precisely because metaphysics is unavoidable.
The difference is that historical religions made those assumptions more explicit, whereas modern ideologies and governance systems often treat theirs as neutral, procedural, or self evident.
And yes, good catch on contingent gods like the Olympians and Titans. In that scenario, it is a distinction between contingent gods within a model and the ultimate grounding of the model itself.
For example, in Greek mythology, the Olympians are not the ontological foundation of reality. They are contingent beings inside a manufactured layer of a larger cosmology. The deeper metaphysical question remains: what grounds the system itself?
That is what is meant by God, gods, or no God:
God → a singular independent grounding principle
gods → multiple competing or contingent grounding principles
no God → no stable grounding, leaving coherence reactive or emergent
My claim is not that religion is special here. It’s actually the opposite: no worldview escapes metaphysical assumptions, including secular ones.
The deeper disagreement is about which metaphysical structure can maintain coherence consistently. All metaphysical models ultimately fall into one of three categories: God, gods, or no God.
A singular, independent grounding principle is the only structure capable of maintaining universal coherence, because multiple grounding principles introduce contingency and competing standards, while no grounding principle leaves coherence reactive, interpretive, and unable to ground itself consistently.
In other words, only one metaphysical structure preserves a stable unit of coherence against which reality can be evaluated consistently.
I agree. I don't think we disagree about the last part. Not everybody wants long term coherence though.
Thank you for your work.
Thank you for reading. Spread the word.
So apparently “they” in this movie i’m watching are ignoring the collective consciousness cloud of proven scientific and metaphysical knowledge and record of historical experience, and seriously really trying to re-define the very meaning, reason, and structure of ultimate existential/co-existential being and reality and according to their own misconceived disassociated alternative reality, what they believe, and what think they know, and to impose and pathologically subject it upon and within the people.
Absolutely BRILLIANT! THANK YOU! This is what humanity is struggling toward, a cohesive "ground of reality." When we go within, it is "there." But this cannot stay "my personal awarenesses when I go within." This awareness must reach out to the whole who can KNOW it as the basis of the material reality we operate within.
Thank you for your comment. Please help spread awareness!
Excellent.
First off, I wasn't the one that brought up coherence, you did. My argument is not dependent on coherence, and again I'm arguing the term is nothing more than an abstract concept. So, I'm not making any claim about coherence, I'm simply responding to your framing by pointing out that it's abstract.
You seem to be treating this discussion as some sort of a competition, as in my trying to eat the whole cake. I don't know how else to explain it to you, but in my world there is no whole cake because language is not capable of capturing wholeness. I'm not making any claim that for me looks like I'm attempting to dominate, if anything I'm just pointing out the disconnect between human capacity and universal knowledge.
Let’s stay consistent. Your initial claim, which you are now denying, was that “coherence is a made-up human ideal with no reality outside the brain.” Your words.
That claim makes coherence contingent upon human cognition rather than stable. The implication of that claim is that coherence would depend upon contingent human minds that emerge, develop, disagree, deteriorate, and disappear. In that case, coherence could not function as a stable basis for distinguishing truth from delusion, better reasoning from worse reasoning, or morality from immorality beyond temporary preference or utility.
That means your 95 point procedural system is not an authority structure in any objective sense under your own framing, but at best a contingent tool of preference and utility. If your position is that coherence is a human made construct with no reality outside cognition, then your 95 point procedural system, and your invitation for me to “challenge it”, is also just another constructed framework with no privileged authority status. In that case, this is not a matter of one authority challenging another. It is simply one constructed model being compared to another constructed model.
My claim is the opposite, coherence is objective and therefore produces stable standards for distinguishing truth from delusion, better reasoning from worse reasoning, and morality from immorality. That is precisely why your framing of a “challenge” only makes sense if coherence already has stable meaning. Without that, it collapses into competing preferences rather than adjudication of truth.
The issue is that your own framework relies on the very coherence your original claim denies. You continue appealing to procedural standards, correction, reevaluation, morality, and better reasoning, all of which depend on coherence meaningfully persisting across time and contexts.
So the contradiction remains, you are using stable coherence while denying its objective status.
That is the tension that has consistently remained throughout this conversation. I have now repeated this point sufficiently, and I will not continue the discussion further. Thank you for commenting.
nice essay
I think I see the problem. You think authority comes from an external source whereas I'm saying authority comes from a transparent, physical and imperfect process. The authority is the process and its ability to modify with changing physical evidence.
The same contradiction remains. Updating with evidence only works if there are stable standards for evidence, error, and correction, i.e. coherence.
I have nothing further to add.
I think the author is looking for God, and is doing so by hiding up behind the concept of coherence, which is just a made-up human ideal. There is no coherence outside of the human brain.
If coherence is merely a made up human ideal with no existence outside the brain, then on what basis is your own argument coherent, meaningful, or more true than mine?
The moment we reason, make distinctions, identify contradictions, or expect consistency between claims and reality, we are already appealing to coherence. Science depends on it. Logic depends on it. Language depends on it. Even the statement “there is no coherence outside of the human brain” assumes a coherent relationship between your claim and reality.
I am not “hiding behind coherence” to look for God. My point is that coherence is already being assumed by everyone. The question is whether coherence is merely an arbitrary mental preference or whether reality itself is structured in a way that makes objective coherence possible.
If coherence is only subjective, then truth collapses into preference. But if coherence reliably maps onto reality across minds, contexts, and time, then it points to something objective beyond individual subjectivity.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
My argument has coherence and meaning because a) my argument is facilitated by an imperfect process that is continuously open for reassessment and b) my argument is otherwise tied to the constraints of the physical world. Like I said, it seems like you are reaching for god, which is fine if the goal is to assert a metaphysical/religious truth. Let me ask you this, how do you know when an idea is delusional?
You changed the question rather than answering it. You said your argument has coherence because it is open to reassessment and constrained by the physical world. But reassessment itself presupposes standards of coherence, some way of distinguishing better reasoning from worse reasoning, contradiction from consistency, truth from error. Likewise, saying something is “constrained by the physical world” assumes there is a reliable relationship between reason and reality that can be recognized coherently.
So my question remains, if coherence is merely a human invention with no existence outside the brain, why should reassessment or physical constraint produce anything more than sophisticated preference?
As for “reaching for God,” I’m not starting with God and working backward. I’m asking what makes objective reasoning possible at all. If coherence is objective enough to distinguish truth from delusion, then it seems we are already appealing to something beyond subjective cognition.
And to answer your question, how do I know when an idea is delusional? I would say when it fails coherence, when it cannot maintain consistency with reality, collapses into contradiction, or cannot be meaningfully reconciled across contexts. But notice, even the ability to identify delusion presupposes some objective standard beyond mere personal preference.
You are correct, and you can find my standards of coherence contained in my epistemology for the physical world located in my book, "Truth, what is it good for?" and as outlined here: (https://steelemethod.substack.com/p/the-steele-method) and elsewhere in my postings.
Within my epistemology are procedural mechanisms for managing the relationship between reason and reality, which includes accounting for the nature of language and human experience. Physical constraint is not an ideal, it is part of the imperfect process of differentiation. We both agree, that delusion is best offset by grounding ideas in physical reality. I think you are making objectivity into an ideal when I see it as an imperfect process that attempts to strip away magical thinking.
I'm using god as a metaphor for universal truth.
I want to be clear here. You originally said that there is no coherence outside of the human brain and described coherence as a “made up human ideal.” But your explanation explicitly depends on procedural standards that meaningfully relate reason to reality, physical constraints that distinguish better from worse claims, and mechanisms for identifying delusion.
Those are not the same position.
If coherence is only a human invention with no existence outside cognition, then physical reality cannot meaningfully constrain reasoning toward truth, it can only constrain survival or preference. So your original statement is incorrect. Because reality can actually differentiate between coherent and incoherent claims, truth and delusion, that means coherence is not merely something invented inside the brain. It reflects some real relationship between reason and reality.
While it is true that humans are imperfect and open to reassessment, that is not the issue at hand. The issue is that human imperfection does not reduce objectivity to an imperfect social process. Objective coherence is a stable phenomenon that makes the distinction between truth and delusion meaningful in the first place.
Furthermore, you originally accused me of “reaching for God” to undermine my overall argument. Yet your own framework relies on a stronger notion of coherence that you are actively denying. That’s incoherent.
If you would like the opportunity for a direct challenge, then call out one of my 95-rules for the good faith use of language that I linked to above. When I say my epistemology is procedural, I mean it, which is dependent on improvement through challenge.
I see no contradiction to my asserting standards while simultaneously understanding those standards to be of my creation and in needing of constant reevaluation. The contradiction would only arise if I was claiming to understand some larger truth outside of the moment, which I'm not.
I don't follow your law about coherence. All I can say is that coherence is an abstract idea that we humans create and use to make sense of the world, it is our recognition of patterns, that are themselves abstractions we create to represent relationships. I’m a big fan of systems theory but I also understand that systems are themselves human creations we use as tools. Systems are not real like the ground I stand on.
The imperfections of human experience and language are the entire point because it is upon these tools that we build understanding. There is no thought outside of language, the elimination of language is called meditation, and that is the opposite of thinking.
Can you show me a cup or a pound of Objective coherence? It’s just non-physical abstraction.
I'm completely lost as to your last comment, my notion of coherence is dependent on process, which for me is the opposite of metaphysics, ideas that cannot be demonstrated by physical means. I’m happy not knowing what can’t be demonstrated. Wanting more, for me, is religion.