Abstract

This is an updated and expanded version of my book “Our Incorrigible Ontological Relations and Categories of Being”, originally published in 2017. The subject matter of this version includes other innate a priori constituents of knowledge. Among the main conclusions arrived is that reality is para-rational in nature. The work can thus be said to be about the role in cognition of innate information of the sensorial and of the structure of the non-sensorial rational aspect of a para-rational reality. This augmented version preserves the previous content of the former book, but also addresses the innate a priori forms with which the intellect responds to sensorial activation and represents to itself the sensorily given -that is, what acts in our senses- and the forms with which it represents or makes patent to itself the things in the world which do not act on our sensory organs, such as the feeling brought forth by beauty or the emotion of the sublime in mystical experiences, and how these too, constitute a limit to possible knowledge. As the former version it refers to the innate a priori information about reality in itself, with which the intellect makes possible its cognition, yet also constrains our possible knowledge of what there is to the rational aspect of what exists. As shown in this work, the information they provide, no matter the extent of empirical data, does not suffice to explain reality, which makes necessary to presuppose the existence of, either a higher order of reality beyond the rational cognitive reach, or that the nature of what is judged rational reality be a mere aspect of what there is. In other words, that mankind is doomed to have a mere glimpse of what exists and its nature, and totally unable to attain an ultimate explanation of reality. August 16, 2023