Why Rationality and Logic Cannot Reach the Final Truth of Metaphysics

An Instancological View

1. The Historical Confidence in Reason—and Its Limit

From Parmenides to Hegel, Western metaphysics has been animated by a persistent confidence: that reason, logic, and conceptual necessity can ultimately reach the final truth of reality. Whether through deduction, dialectic, or systematic closure, the assumption has been that if thinking is sufficiently rigorous, it will eventually coincide with Being itself.

Instancology does not deny the power of rationality. On the contrary, it affirms reason as one of the highest achievements of human cognition. What it denies is something more specific and more radical:

that rationality and logic are ontologically capable of reaching the final truth of metaphysics.

This denial is not skeptical, pragmatic, or anti-intellectual. It is structural.

2. Reason and Logic Are Not Ultimate—They Are Instances

The decisive move of Instancology is to treat reason and logic not as absolute tools, but as instances.

Logic, no matter how formalized, always satisfies three conditions:

It has structure (rules, relations, inferential constraints)

It operates within a domain (propositions, symbols, axioms)

It presupposes validity rather than generating it

In Instancological terms, this places logic firmly within RA (Relatively Absolute)—the domain of laws, mathematics, and formal necessity. RA is powerful, universal within its scope, and non-empirical. But it is not the ultimate background of reality.

The mistake of traditional metaphysics is to confuse universality with ultimacy.

Logic is universal relative to instances.

The final truth of metaphysics concerns the issuance of instances themselves.

3. Why Logic Cannot Ground Itself

Every logical system must presuppose:

A domain of applicability

A notion of validity

A distinction between form and content

But none of these can be logically deduced without circularity.

This is not merely a technical issue (as in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems). It is ontological. Logic cannot justify its own being-as-logic.

Instancology expresses this as:

No instance can exhaustively account for the condition of its own issuance.

Logic can describe relations within an instance.

It cannot describe why there are instances at all.

4. Metaphysics Fails When It Treats the Absolute as an Object

Traditional metaphysics repeatedly fails at the same point: it attempts to represent the Absolute.

Whether named as:

Being

Substance

God

the One

the Absolute Spirit

the Absolute is treated as something that can be captured by rational determination.

Instancology rejects this move entirely.

The final metaphysical truth—AA (Absolute Absolute)—is not an object, not a principle, not a totality, and not a highest concept. It is the non-representable background from which all instances arise.

Reason always operates by:

distinction

determination

negation

relation

But AA is prior to all distinction.

To apply logic to AA is not to clarify it, but to distort it.

5. Why Dialectic Also Stops Short

One might argue, following Hegel, that dialectic does not fixate on static concepts but moves dynamically toward the Absolute.

Instancology acknowledges Hegel’s insight—but also his limit.

Dialectic still:

presupposes contradiction

presupposes negation

presupposes conceptual movement

These are all intra-instance operations.

Dialectic can approach the horizon of AA.

It cannot cross it.

Hegel reaches the foothill of the Absolute, not the Absolute itself.

6. The Category Error at the Heart of Rational Metaphysics

The deepest error is not logical failure, but category confusion.

Metaphysics traditionally asks:

“What is the ultimate nature of reality?”

Reason answers by constructing:

“The most comprehensive conceptual system possible.”

Instancology responds:

The ultimate nature of reality is not a concept at all.

Final metaphysical truth is not something known, but something encountered as the condition of knowing.

7. What Replaces Reason at the Limit? WuXing (悟性)

Instancology does not end in silence or mysticism. It introduces a different cognitive mode: WuXing.

WuXing is not:

intuition as feeling

experience as perception

reason as inference

It is direct grasp of an instance as a whole, without reduction to parts or predicates.

At the metaphysical limit:

Reason clarifies RA

Experience informs AR

Language structures RR

WuXing alone can align with AA

This is not irrationality.

It is pre-rational alignment.

8. Conclusion: Why Philosophy Ends—and Why Metaphysics Does Not

From an Instancological perspective:

Philosophy, understood as rational inquiry into Being, must end

Metaphysics, understood as alignment with the source of instances, does not

Reason reaches its perfection precisely when it recognizes its boundary.

The final truth of metaphysics is not unreachable because it is obscure, but because it is not the kind of thing reason was designed to reach.

Logic explains reality.

AA issues reality.

And no explanation can replace its own source.