A conclusion is gears-like with respect to a particular ontology to the extent that you can “see the derivation” in that ontology. A conclusion is gears-like without qualification to the extent that you can also “see the derivation” of the ontology itself.
Seeing the derivation of the ontology itself starts to run us into what some call the hard problem of consciousness and I think of as the hard problem of existence, that is, why does anything exist at all? Obviously it could be no other way else we wouldn’t be here asking these questions, but it points towards the existence of an epistemologically irreducible point of ontology origination where something is somehow known before we can know how we know, yet anything we will come to know about how we know will be tainted by what we already know.
In phenomenology this is the sometimes thought of as looking into the transcendental aspect of being because it is not perfectly knowable and yet we know of it anyway. This is not to mix up “transcendental” with mysticism, merely to point out that we see there is something we know that transcends our ability to fully know it even though we may reckon it is just as physical as everything else. As this unfortunately suggests for the line of reasoning you seem to be hoping to pursue, it is impossible because we are forever locked out of perfect knowledge by our instantiation as knowers in the world, and we must content ourselves with either being consistent but not complete in our understanding or complete but inconsistent.
I don’t claim that you become completely gears at any point. You just keep looking for more objectivity in your analysis all the time, while also continuing to jump ahead of what you can objectively justify.
Seeing the derivation of the ontology itself starts to run us into what some call the hard problem of consciousness and I think of as the hard problem of existence, that is, why does anything exist at all? Obviously it could be no other way else we wouldn’t be here asking these questions, but it points towards the existence of an epistemologically irreducible point of ontology origination where something is somehow known before we can know how we know, yet anything we will come to know about how we know will be tainted by what we already know.
In phenomenology this is the sometimes thought of as looking into the transcendental aspect of being because it is not perfectly knowable and yet we know of it anyway. This is not to mix up “transcendental” with mysticism, merely to point out that we see there is something we know that transcends our ability to fully know it even though we may reckon it is just as physical as everything else. As this unfortunately suggests for the line of reasoning you seem to be hoping to pursue, it is impossible because we are forever locked out of perfect knowledge by our instantiation as knowers in the world, and we must content ourselves with either being consistent but not complete in our understanding or complete but inconsistent.
I don’t claim that you become completely gears at any point. You just keep looking for more objectivity in your analysis all the time, while also continuing to jump ahead of what you can objectively justify.