Checkmate

The most crucial piece in chess is the one without value. All others ascribe to a points system: queen 9, rook 5, bishop 3, knight 3, pawn 1.. these are useful for determining under what circumstances a trade with the opponent is likely to leave one on top. For the king, however, no such points can be determined. It is the piece that gives the other pieces their value.

The game is lost when the king is both in check, and has nowhere to move.

The concept of checkmate applies nicely to the understanding of when one is utterly wrong on something. If it so be that one's thought is necessarily stopped while he tries to move, each step of the way he is stopped - his argument must be wrong. The same applies to one's understanding of knowledge. If one is to make an argument and then determine that it leads to thoughtlessness, this is the killer of truth.

Suppose, for example, one denies their own existence, as Descartes once attempted to do. He doubts himself, then determines that he had made a doubt in order to do so. His argument is necessarily contradictory. If he wishes to maintain that he does not exist, he must conclude the he cannot think - thoughtlessness. Because he does think, it is wrong that he does not exist. He thinks, therefore he is.

Other arguments include one's desire to digress with regard to the existence of soul. If one concludes that the soul does not exist, he is in contradiction with the idea that his agency could pull through a wonder that caused his existence to have meaning. If the existence has no meaning, there would be no thoughts to select of infinite possibility, and one of those thoughts would not be happiness. Thus, he is concluded to thoughtlessness, insofar as no thought could ever be of value, when his statement assumes that his thought contains it so.

Another regards one's deduction of the soul. Suppose one determines the soul does exist necessarily, by deduction. One could argue that it does not because there is no evidence for it - but as soon as he does so, he concludes that evidence has weight. This is not true unless the soul exists as a means for evaluating that weight. That no soul could exist in a non-evaluative state, this concludes that either the soul or another evaluator exists, and the soul is the only evaluator. Put differently, if the soul does not exist, there is no valuation of what does or could, including thoughts, thus leading to thoughtlessness of a different form.

Forms of thoughtlessness include inability to think, but also, as the above examples demonstrate, concluding no value to thinking: a performative contradiction as one assumes the value of their own statement. No value to thinking is essentially an oxymoron - valueless thought cannot exist because each thought paves the way to some end, which must have value in order to be so. There is no valueless end, and so no valueless thought - it is the nature of thought to have and end, and thus value.

Some can conclude that the soul does not exist because it is infinite, and there is no infinite thing, but in this they are mistaken. An absolute whose artwork is the soul - the self - is not an infinite thing, but an absolute. It is something whose conception is approached as an asymptote, but it in not an infinite thing, nor could it be. This is what differentiates the self from other objective truths: it maintains itself to be never infinite on pain of thoughtlessness. But thoughtlessness is also concluded via these means to any absolute that is stated as infinite; for an absolute infinity is never approachable in the absence of infinity as determined by the finitude of the soul which approaches it.

There are further considerations with regard to what makes the soul valuable. If the soul were not, it would not be - value is ascribed to things according to the soul, the artwork in physical space of the non-physical self, which is the determiner of all value. If none were to conclude that the soul is of equal worth to value itself, in the physical realm, then they would all be wrong by virtue of the soul's infallibility. That is, they could not make up for the fact that their own souls value their statements. And how is it that there can be no other evaluator? I will tell you: because the soul is defined as such.

The soul, though the artwork of the self, is not the self, but defined by its evaluation of physical value in conjunction with existing in the physical world. That is to say, the soul cannot be removed in the presence of necessary value, for such value implies its existence. That the soul maintains itself as artwork simply implies that the non-physical self is the A Priori evaluator, which is true, though it does not maintain itself in physical space, which is the work of the soul. That is, the soul is defined by the self's ability to judge physical value in the physical realm; else the soul could not find the workings of God to be appreciable, and so would damn itself to oblivion or worse in the struggle to find the truth. There is no alternative; it's checkmate.

I cannot stress enough the meaning of the soul's definition. It is an artwork, but must not be labeled as such with regard to its purpose. Its purpose is to serve as the self in a physical sense; and it does this under the ownership - the A Priori possession - of the non-physical self which rules over it.

Consider one who posed that free will was not, because the soul is not. First, how does the soul establish free will? This is simple: it provides unbound ends by virtue of existing under the artwork of the non-physical absolute - the self, which allows it to strive for other absolute ends. Thus the soul need exist for free will, but one whose contention strikes against this freeness is instantly degraded; for how else could one pose a question with regard to an indefinite end? That he seeks to rebuke a concept outside the realm of the physical maintains as necessary his ability to strive for perfect ends, which he could not do without a soul, and which defines his being unbound; being free. There is no alternative-- the refutation is in check and has nowhere else to move.

Other arguments that suffer this fate include the notorious God is dead. How could he be if from one's thought one can deduce his existence? That is, how can it be with the knowledge of absolutes, including God, whose meaning is located in their very existence as such? That is to say, if God exists as an absolute, and he does, then who can deny Him? For do they not deny that thing which they cannot conceive, and as such vow their inability to deny it, and, further, note their own ability to pursue unthinkable ends, perfect ends, in a physical sphere provided to them, by that which we label God? Yes to all questions; their refutation is null - the proof is in the pudding.

Consider further one's denial of the will's freeness. Is it not so that one's actions are defined in value by that which they pursue? If all is determined, what point is there to discussion? Indeed, thoughts would have no value. If all was determined, there should be no questioning, for it all would be for not. Which is not to say it necessarily concludes that one could not think, but that one would not think, and as they do, for the value provided, this determinism, too, leads to the thoughtlessness of the former examples.