The Transcendental Ladder from Consciousness to God
An Argument for God from Transcendental Hunger and Existential Satiation
I will prove to you that God exists.
The way we’ll do this is by walking up a ladder of phenomena that you already know are true. At each step, the only way out is to deny something you yourself rely on every day. I’ll show this by highlighting the “tool” (or faculty) that you need to trust to make each portion of climb.
Here goes. . .
Step 1. Consciousness
You are conscious right now.
And your experience is not a homogenous blur; rather, it has differentiation: sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings.
The implications of this experienced differentiation and the way we access it will serve as raw material and foundation for our ascent.
Consciousness is self-evident and undeniable, so we haven’t introduced any real need for “trust” or “tools” yet, other than need to trust that you currently exist.
Let’s call this Layer 1 of reality: The Existence of Consciousness (the self).
Step 2. Intentional Act-Types (IATs)
You notice that there are certain conscious acts you can take that enable you to both process and navigate through that differentiation.
A subset of the acts that you can do entail these three intentional act-types (IATs):
To know or believe something. (know/believe)
To choose or desire something. (choose/desire)
To delight in or be moved by something. (delight/be moved)
These acts are necessarily relational. They are always of something. These acts are about things. There is a fundamental aboutness to them.
You cannot know, choose, or delight in isolation, without a corresponding thing-to-be-known, thing-to-be-chosen, or thing-to-be-delighted-in that connects to and is referenced by your conscious IAT.
You know X, choose X, delight in X.
The implication for this is that now our consciousness transcends itself to a world “out there”, bringing us to Layer 2: The Existence of the World.
Step 2 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Intentionality.
What you must trust: That your acts are about something
Reductionist’s Objection: “There are no genuinely intentional acts.”
Response (Cost of Denial): : Denying intentionality collapses belief into sensation, with no reason or argument left, reducing everything about your consciousness to only feelings and twitches.
You can expose how the reductionist undercuts himself by asking him, “If your words aren’t about anything, what are you arguing about?”
If nothing is about anything, then there is nothing to argue about.
Step 3. Success Conditions (the NAA)
Each intentional act has built-in standards of success:
Belief is true or false.
Choice is better or worse.
Delight is fitting or unfitting.
In other words, whenever I engage in any of these acts, I cannot help but perceive that my act can “succeed” or “fail” in some respect. I perceive success conditions.
My act inextricably feels like it’s “aiming” at some target, such that there is some intuitive sensation of it succeeding or failing with respect to landing on the bullseye, whenever I launch it.
Without success conditions, the acts could not even be what they are. One might endeavor to deny the existence of success conditions, but such a denial itself depends on them. (You argue it’s true that truth isn’t a success condition; you recommend we ought to drop oughts; you “critique” beauty as mere mood)
To state this formally:
Normed Act Axiom (NAA)
Each IAT is constituted by a success/failure condition that gives it its identity:
Know ↔ true/false
Choose ↔ better/worse (right/wrong)
Delight ↔ fitting/unfitting (noble/kitsch)
Denying these while arguing/deciding/criticizing is performatively self-defeating.
The existence of these success conditions are what make the conscious acts of intention possible in the first place, as well as what distinguish them from one another.
Through the following four double-dissociations we can clearly demonstrate that the acts are distinct:
Akrasia: “I know this is wrong (know/believe), but I want it (choose/desire).”
Cold admiration: “I judge the symphony great (know/believe), but it leaves me unmoved (delight).”
Overpowered heart: “I’m moved by the speech (delight), but I judge its claims false (know/believe).”
Resolute will vs. feeling: “I don’t feel like forgiving (delight), but I choose to anyway (choose/desire).”
Simply ask yourself:
Can you correct a false claim without choosing anything or feeling anything special? (Yes)
Can you resolve to do what you do not feel like doing while already knowing it’s right?
(Yes)
Can a sunset move you without teaching you a new fact or requiring any decision?
(Yes)
Again, we can note that there are three distinct satisfaction conditions:
Knowledge is satisfied by evidence and understanding (no action or feeling required).
A decision is satisfied by possession/achievement of the chosen good (action completed).
Heart/Affect is satisfied by contemplative presence (simply beholding the worthy/beautiful).
We can also demonstrate the distinctiveness of these success conditions by swapping the IAT verbs and recognizing how the category of meaning changes entirely:
- I “proved” chocolate cake.
- I “chose” chocolate cake.
- I “delighted” in chocolate cake.
Although all three expressions are about cake, the core action or intention being applied to them is of a different kind.
With this Normed Acts Axiom, we are building our way to Layer 3… though we’ll need to first combine it with Step 4 before we get there.
Step 3 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Phenomenological awareness of normed acts
What you must trust: That every intentional act carries success conditions
Reductionist’s Objection: “Belief/choice/delight have no success conditions.”
Response (Cost of Denial): The cost of denying Step 3 is to leave us with no truth/error, right/wrong, fittingness/unfittingness, which would render argument, ethics, and criticism as mere theater.
In other words, if we deny the phenomena of success conditions, the acts of belief, choice, and delight become indistinguishable motions that are reduced to mere twitches and reflexes.
We also run into the Practical Inescapability of Norms (PIN). You cannot coherently engage in believing/arguing/choosing while denying their success conditions.
Step 4. Instance-Transcending Standards (the ITP)
Here’s where we move from mere “conditions” experienced phenomenologically during the execution of an act, to standards or principles that transcend the particular instance.
From a success/failure feeling to a success/failure thing.
Instance-Transcendence Principle (ITP)
Success conditions for an intentional act-type are fixed by a standard that is not contained in the single phenomenological instance being evaluated. The success condition for a token act appeals to a standard beyond that token.
For belief: there is the world beyond the sentence.
For choice: the end and nature beyond the episode of willing (and the means–end fit that holds across cases).
For beauty: the form and its apt presentation beyond this pulse of liking.
Therefore, success conditions presuppose a case-external standard—what we call truth, good, and beauty, not inventions of the moment.
Truth compares belief to how things are (map ↔ territory). Good compares choice to ends/natures and means–end fit, and Beauty compares delight to form (integrity/proportion/clarity-in-context).
A “standard” contained in the single experience measures nothing. It must transcend that singular experience.
The syllogism would be something like:
P1: To assess a token act (belief/choice/delight) you must appeal to a standard not contained in that token (the ITP).
P2: If the standard were just the token itself, assessment would be impossible (there would be nothing to compare to).
C: Therefore, the act’s success conditions imply a case-external standard: truth, good, beauty.
A token can’t be its own yardstick.
At this point we have established Layer 3 of reality: The Existence of Case-External Standards.
Step 4 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Basic abstraction, recognition of universals
What you must trust: That success conditions presuppose a standard beyond the case
Reductionist’s Objection: “Okay, fine, it feels like my acts succeed or fail. But these success/failure feelings don’t presuppose real standards outside the moment. They’re just local psychological reactions or social conventions. There’s no ‘yardstick,’ just my brain lighting up.”
Response (Cost of Denial): If we deny this basic abstraction, then success and failure become pure illusion and there’s no reason to correct or improve anything.
“Success/failure” becomes indistinguishable from “pleasure/displeasure”. Correction or improvement becomes incoherent; you can’t say you got closer to truth or goodness, only that your mood shifted. And argument reduces to autobiography: “This is how it feels in my head,” as opposed to “This is how things are.”
The skeptic should ask themselves:
If truth is just a feeling, what’s the difference between “I feel convinced” and “it is true”?
If goodness is just a convention, why do we treat genocide as an error, not just a different custom?
If beauty is just mood, why do we train critics, judges, and musicians to refine taste?
If it is possible to “assess” “evaluate” something, then there are necessarily standards you compare that something to, which aren’t that thing itself.
A test with no answer key isn’t a test; a belief with no truth isn’t a belief.
Let’s catch our breath before we move on to Step 5. . .
So far, we have moved from the existence of consciousness to the standards that exist beyond ourselves.
We have been doing this through drawing out the inferences one must make from a singular instance of conscious phenomena.
i.e. We’ve considered the mechanism behind what happens when we experience a single belief, make a single choice, delight in a single encounter.
Now, we will unpack the necessary consequences that come from zooming out (tree to forest) and looking across multiple instances, noticing the broader patterns that multi-instance analysis would reveal.
Specifically, we note that not only do these standards exist, but we can make contact with them. We can properly use them to measure reality, where our perceptions and maps track to those standards, rather than vice-versa, or us projecting them.
Step 5. Corrigibility-to-Contact Argument (CCA)
Our self exists and standards exist.
But what is the relationship between the experienced self and these standards? Can they interact?
What if the “standards” are something that originate from my mind and that I’m projecting? Am I mapping my actions to those standards or are they mapping to me?
When we look at our judgments over time, we notice that they can be corrected. We revise them, sharpen them, learn from others.
We can actually improve our fit to those standards.
We notice and experience the phenomenon of correction/learning/convergence. Our beliefs, choices, and sensibilities also encounter a sort of resistance from the thing out there, which can at times create a certain tension or dissonance.
That only makes sense if there is a “territory” we’re mapping, not just maps we’re inventing.
In other words, we aren’t manufacturing or projecting standards; we are measuring against them. I revise my judgment because the object pushed back, not because my preference changed.
I can be corrected because my acts are measured against reality. We experience the phenomenon of calibration towards something, even when we don’t agree about what that something is.
Let’s write that formally:
Corrigibility-to-Contact Argument (CCA)
Premise 1 (Phenomenology of correction):
We experience our judgments (beliefs, choices, delights) as corrigible — they can be revised, sharpened, and improved over time.
Premise 2 (Nature of corrigibility):
Correction implies that our judgments are not merely projections of preference but are measured against something independent of them (otherwise “correction” would be indistinguishable from mere change of taste).
Premise 3 (Standard vs. self):
If judgments can be improved, there must exist standards that resist and guide them — “territory” that maps can better or worse approximate.
Conclusion:
Therefore, our judgments make contact with real, case-external standards of truth, goodness, and beauty. These standards are not manufactured by the self but encountered by it.
If we were to tighten that up:
Corrigibility presupposes a real difference between “better fit” and “worse fit.”
That difference cannot be grounded in the mind’s shifting states alone (otherwise all revisions would be equal).
Therefore, corrigibility requires stance-independent standards that our acts measure against.
Conclusion: Standards of truth, goodness, and beauty are real, not projections.
So at this point we’ve really added some meat onto what Layer 3: The Existence of Case-External Standards looks like, and how we (our consciousness) interact with it.
As you can you see, establishing Layer 3 required three steps (at least I thought it would be better to split the NAA, ITP, and CCA up, since each carries so much independent meaning).
We essentially just established the different facets of normativity:
Step 3 (NAA) = normativity in the act itself (you can’t believe without true/false).
Step 4 (ITP) = normativity beyond the act (truth not just in me, but in the case).
Step 5 (CCA) = normativity accessible through correction (we can converge on it, it’s not sealed off).
So again, the “standards” stage (Layer 3) is actually represented by a three-step arc:
Norms are intrinsic to the act (Step 3).
Those norms transcend the case (Step 4).
We can track and improve fit to those norms (Step 5).
Step 5 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Memory, private calibration, and reasoning across cases, plus the sense of self-correction
What you must trust: That we can improve our fit to standards (our maps can track the territory)
Reductionist’s Objection: “All ‘correction’ is just changing tastes.”
Response (Cost of Denial): The cost of denying Step 5 is that we then can’t distinguish evidence from preference or whim, as any “revisions” become mere mood-shifts.
If you deny corrigibility and contact, you deny the very intelligibility of correction, education, and expertise. Very simply, do you think education and expertise are real things, or not? Or self improvement? Is it possible to be “corrected” about anything?
Why do we refine maps if there’s no territory?
Does the phenomenon of “regret” make any sense, since it implies that there exists a situation that could have been measured as being “better”.
Can one artist perform a piece of art in a more fitting way than another, or are all renditions equally apt?
Why did you feel the need to revise if it’s just preference?
Different thermometers can disagree; that doesn’t turn temperature into a preference.
Although I may risk being redundant here, I think walking the skeptic through these following 3 principles should suffice in demonstrating the absurdity of his reductiveness:
Resistance Test
You can’t make a false claim true by deciding it; you can’t make an off-key note in tune by liking it; you can’t make betrayal just by decree.
Projection would obey us but reality makes us revise.
Error and Surprise (Corrigibility with Reasons):
We can discover we were wrong and can be shown why (new evidence; a cleaner harmonic analysis; a principled moral argument).
Counterfactual constraint (could-have-been-otherwise).
“If the data had looked like this, the claim would be false.”
“Given this end, that means was wrong—even if we liked it.”
“In this room’s light, that color choice is garish.”
The object sets conditions our preferences must respect.
If all we did were assign labels, none of these three would make sense. But they are exactly how we live and argue.
Step 6. Aspects of Reality
The standards of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (T/G/B) can properly be considered aspects of reality. These aren’t things that you see only somewhere but rather are fundamental structure of reality that you experience everywhere.
Every conscious act is already an attempt to know, choose, or delight. You cannot imagine the absence of T/G/B, because any attempt to do so would itself use them.
No matter what experiential item you consider, you can always ask (a) “is it so?” (true), (b) “what should I do?” (good), (c) “is it striking/sublime?” (beautiful).
The fact that you can always ask these questions related to any experience and of any object suggests that the standards of T/G/B are built into being.
Everything that “is,” is also in some way “knowable,” as “desirable” (or good for something), and as “delight-worthy” (or able to shine).
It’s one reality emanating through several inseparable lenses. These can be considered the ratios or aspects of reality:
True (verum): every being is intelligible. It has a determinate form/structure that can be known. (Even a rock is in principle knowable.)
Good (bonum): every being is appetible/perfective. In some way it can fulfill a tendency or serve an end (even if only for a specific nature).
Beautiful (pulchrum): every being, insofar as its form is proportionate and manifest, can be delightful in contemplation (the “splendor of form” as apprehended).
So, where there is more actuality (more “being”), there is ipso facto greater intelligibility (truth), perfection (goodness), and splendor (beauty) because these are just being viewed under different light.
To that note, consider an analogy via Light. You don’t see light directly, per se, but you see by light.
Look around you. Anything that you can see right now you can see because of the light reflecting off of it.
The same is true of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Anything you experience in reality is reflecting Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. No matter where you look, T/G/B is there. T/G/B illuminates your consciousness and reality itself.
T/G/B don’t sit on top of being; they are being-under-aspects.
At this point, I think we can say that we’ve demonstrated Layer 4: The Existence of the Transcendentals (T/G/B) as aspects of reality
Our intentional acts are not just pointing at objects but at pervasive structures of reality.
Step 6 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Imaginative/conceptual faculty + reflective abstraction (our ability to test universality by trying to imagine T/G/B’s absence)
What you must trust: That Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are pervasive aspects of reality (always present, always presupposed)
Reductionist’s Objection: “T/G/B aren’t everywhere; they’re just add-ons in some cases or illusions of our psychology.”
Response (Cost of Denial): To deny the existence of the Transcendentals (specifically, the pervasive nature of these three case-external standards), the reductionist must deny that every act of knowing/choosing/delighting presupposes T/G/B, which means it would be possible to imagine their absence. But it’s not possible to imagine their absence, and the reductionist’s claim collapses, since even denial of the Transcendentals uses them.
In other words, the reductionist must demonstrate even one example of knowing/choosing/delighting that doesn’t presuppose Truth, Goodness, or Beauty in order for his claim to merit being taken seriously. But he cannot.
Step 7. Gradation and Participation (PP)
In the wild we meet degrees and defects of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Degrees: truer/less true, better/worse, more/less beautiful.
Defects: error/vice/kitsch as lacks relative to a due form.
i.e. It’s not that I simply experience things as “that right there is true… it’s good… it’s beautiful” (binary conditions). It’s that I can see that some claim has more truth than another, I can determine that some choice or means is better at serving an end (or even that some end is better than another), and I can experience one performance or encounter as being more sublime and beautiful than another.
This is to say, gradation of Truth, Goodness, of Beauty exist throughout reality (in the same way that we can perceive varying intensities of light).
Moreover, it’s not just that I experience directionless differences in T/G/B, but rather, wherever there is less T/G/B I experience and feel it as a real defect.
The implications of degrees and defects lead us to note three phenomena:
Common Measure, Privation Realism, and Limited Reception.
The three phenomena will then ground our key point in Step 7, which is that finite things possess truth, goodness, and beauty by participation.
CM (Common Measure)
Premise 1: We make judgments of “more true/less true,” “better/worse,” “more/less beautiful.”
Premise 2: Such comparative judgments are corrigible by shared reasons — we treat ourselves and others as measuring against something beyond taste.
Premise 3: Corrigibility implies that there is a cross-instance standard that those reasons track.
Conclusion: Therefore, gradations in truth, goodness, and beauty presuppose a common measure beyond individual preference.
PR (Privation Realism)
Premise 1: In our experience, “worse” judgments are not merely differences but defects (error, vice, kitsch).
Premise 2: A defect is intelligible only relative to a due form (e.g. crookedness is intelligible only relative to straightness).
Premise 3: Therefore, gradations of “worse” presuppose a real standard of fullness from which they fall short.
Conclusion: Therefore, privation (lack relative to form) is real, not just psychological projection.
LR (Limited Reception)
Premise 1: Finite beings display truth, goodness, and beauty to limited degrees (e.g. partial knowledge, mixed motives, flawed proportions).
Premise 2: The experience of limit presupposes that these perfections are not exhausted by any one finite case.
Premise 3: Therefore, finite beings receive their share of truth, goodness, and beauty only partially.
Conclusion: Therefore, finite things possess these perfections by limited reception.
Next we hinge these into the concept of Participation. . .
Participation = “by another possession of a perfection measured by a common standard.”
PP (Participation Premise)
Premise 1 (CM): Gradations presuppose a common measure.
Premise 2 (PR): Defects are privations relative to a due form.
Premise 3 (LR): Finite beings receive truth, goodness, and beauty in limited (“by another”) measure.
Conclusion: Therefore, finite beings have truth, goodness, and beauty by participation in a common measure, from which they can also fall short.
A defect is intelligible only relative to a due form.
If a finite instance can be defective, that means there’s a fuller reality it falls short of.
So then, the finite instance could properly and analogously be considered a “borrower”: it’s measured by something it doesn’t fully contain..
Before summarizing Step 7, I want to briefly anticipate an desired clarification:
”What’s the difference between your claim of Common Measure (CM) and the Corrigibility-to-Contact Argument (CCA)?”
What CCA establishes
Claim: Correction presupposes that our judgments are measured against something independent of them. My own judgments feel correctable. I notice error, surprise, and resistance in real time (even if it’s just me against myself)
Focus: the fact of contact — when I revise my belief, it’s because the object or standard “pushes back,” not just because I feel differently.
Result: We aren’t manufacturing standards; we’re measuring against them.
CCA shows that there is a “territory” that resists and guides our maps.
What CM adds beyond CCA
Claim: If multiple people can compare judgments (truer/less true, better/worse, more/less beautiful), and if corrections are corrigible by shared reasons, then the standard can’t be “private territory” or a mere idiosyncratic feedback loop. Corrections are not just private. Multiple competent agents converge on better answers under shared evidence (scientists, craftsmen, musicians).
Focus: the fact of comparability across cases and across subjects.
Result: There must be a common measure that makes these comparisons and corrections meaningful.
CM is like CCA “scaled up”: not just that we’re mapping a territory, but that it is a shared, cross-instance measure.
To some extent we are establishing objectivity here. We’re moving from the mere phenomena of “truth-tracking” (where it feels like I’m being objective) to the actual reality of truth-tracking (and likewise for goodness and beauty).
It’s the escape from private judgment to shared, public, and falsifiable domain.
This is to say that CCA establishes contact with a standard (vs. projection), and CM establishes the commonality of that standard (vs. private, idiosyncratic “territories”).
Without CCA, you don’t have a standard at all. Without CM, you’d have only private standards with no possibility of rational correction across people/cases. We move from private contact (where I bump into standards) to public measure (where we converge on what those standards are).
The two principles at play in moving us from CCA to CM are:
Convergence under expertise (calibration):
With training and information, competent judges tend to converge: scientists on facts, craftsmen on good joinery, musicians on pitch and phrasing.
Projection predicts divergence (more training = more idiosyncrasy), but we see the opposite.
Public standards inside practices:
Truth: logic, experimental method.
Good: rules of inference in practical reason, ends–means fit, fairness in games/law.
Beauty: tuning/tempo/voicing in music; composition/exposure in photography; restoration protocols in art.
These are not private vibes; they are shared calibrators.
So to summarize, we combine the existence of a common measure (CM) with the realism of privation (PR) and the limited reception argument to point to the reality that the instances of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that we experience in finite things/beings are participations in perfections (due forms of the full or complete states of the Transcendentals by which we perceive their absence in finite things).
With Step 7, we are building our way to Layer 5… but we’ll need Step 8 to complete it.
Step 7 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?: Comparative judgment across subjects, induction, recognition of universals
What you must trust:
That “more/less” claims are not free-floating feelings but imply a common measure (CM).
That “worse” experiences are not just different but defective relative to a due form (PR).
That limits in finite things are real signs of reception, not exhaustion of the perfection itself (LR).
Taken together: finite beings manifest T/G/B only by participation in something fuller.
Reductionist’s Objection:
“All judgments of more/less are just subjective comparisons.”
“Defect is just disliking difference; there’s no ‘due form’ beyond your preference.”
“What looks like a limit is just all there is; don’t project a greater perfection beyond it.”
Response (Cost of Denial):
Without CM, you can’t explain convergence, expertise, or why we refine judgments.
Without PR, you lose the distinction between error and truth, vice and virtue, beauty and ugliness. All critique collapses into “different strokes.”
Without LR, you reduce “limit” to brute fact with no intelligibility; you undercut the very sense of progress, aspiration, and improvement.
If it’s just taste, why do trained judges converge under better data? Why do we distinguish expert from novice?
If defect is just “difference,” why do we treat lies, injustice, and kitsch as failures, not just variants? Crookedness makes sense only by reference to straightness.
If finite instances exhaust the perfection, why do we always sense “further to go” — more to know, a better good, a deeper beauty? The very experience of limit presupposes something beyond it.
Are there genuinely better/worse performances of the same piece?
What makes a lie worse than truth if defect is just “difference”?
Step 8. Source (Non-Participated Plenitude)
Step 7 showed that finite beings have Truth, Goodness, and Beauty only by participation (CM, PR, LR → PP).
Participation by definition points beyond itself: what has by another implies something that has by itself.
By analogy, the existence of borrowers imply a lender whom they are borrowing from.
Reflected light implies a sun (source).
So there must be a Source that the perfection or fullness of T/G/B.
If the source itself were limited in T/G/B, its limit would arise either from:
a) Reception (it “got” its truth/goodness/beauty from another, so it’s not the ultimate source, but an intermediary participating), or
b) Privation (a lack, which disqualifies it from being the measure of fullness).
Reception alone implies there must be a “non-received” source (otherwise regress).
Privation implies that there must be a fullness (otherwise defect is unintelligible).
Therefore, the Source must possess T/G/B fully, not by participation but formally and essentially.
This Source cannot be merely a heap of finite things or the biggest (yet imperfect) finite thing.
Ten billion partial truths ≠ Truth as such.
An aggregate of partial goods ≠ Goodness itself.
A pile of finite beauties ≠ Beauty as such.
Aggregation can give quantity, not the formality of the perfection itself.
So again, there is a necessary, non-participated Source of truth, goodness, and beauty.
It is plenitude of being: in it there is no reception (it is self-subsistent), no privation (nothing lacking), no limit (not bounded by kind).
Participation to Source Argument
Finite beings have truth, goodness, and beauty by participation (limited, received, defectible).
What is by participation presupposes what is by essence (otherwise the participated perfection has no anchor).
Aggregates of participations cannot equal the perfection as such.
If the source were limited, it would either participate (contradiction) or lack (privation, unfit to be the measure).
∴ Therefore, there exists a non-participated, non-limited Source of truth, goodness, and beauty.
Step 8 completes our build-up for Layer 5: A Source for the Transcendentals
Step 8 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?:
Comparative judgment (seeing parts vs wholes).
Causal reasoning (borrower → lender, reflection → light source).
Privative understanding (defect requires fullness).
What you must trust:
That participation implies a source (what is “by another” depends on something “by itself”).
That aggregation cannot generate the formal perfection as such.
That privation cannot explain itself without a fullness against which it is measured.
Reductionist’s Objection:
“Finite things just are what they are; no need to posit a source.”
“Maybe the heap of finite instances is all that ‘truth,’ ‘goodness,’ or ‘beauty’ mean.”
“Every case has its own standard; there is no fullness to measure against.”
Response (Cost of Denial): If you deny this step, you can’t explain why partial perfections are measured as partial, can’t explain why privations are genuine lacks, not just neutral variations, and you’ll end in nihilism about truth, goodness, beauty — which undermines science, ethics, and art.
Participation without source is incoherent: if X only has by another, there must be a Y that has by itself. Can you have borrowers with no lender? Reflections with no light source?
As far as the heap fallacy goes: many almost-circles ≠ circularity; many partial truths ≠ Truth. Can ten million partial lies ever add up to the Truth?
And without a fullness, “privation” collapses into mere difference, you lose the very intelligibility of defect. What makes vice a lack if there’s no fullness it falls short of?
Step 9. Natural Desire (ND)
Intellect keeps asking, Will keeps reaching, Heart keeps seeking splendor.
. . .
A baby experiences hunger before it ever sees any food.
Because you are physically hungry, you know that food exists,
Because you are spiritually hungry, you know that God exists.
. . .
As we saw in the prior step, participation logic forces you to posit a source that has T/G/B non-participated, i.e., by nature rather than “by another.”
In ruling out “heap” and “big finite source” options, Step 8 already shows the Source must not suffer the kinds of limits that make finite things partial.
But Step 8 does this by reasoning “backwards” from the condition of participants. It tells us that there must be a fullness from which they borrow.
So in Step 8 did in showing that the Source must be non-participated and non-limited in the sense of being the ground of participants, Step 9 will show that the Source must be unbounded plenitude, proportionate to our faculties’ open-ended orientation.
Let’s break down what I mean:
These three faculties are unbounded
Intellect: it never stops inquiring, can always ask “why?” or “what more?”
Will: it is never finally satisfied with finite goods — always reaches further.
Heart: it is always capable of being moved by deeper beauty.
Finite instances never fully sate
We keep pressing beyond any particular truth, good, or beauty.
This isn’t a quirk of psychology but built into the very act-structure of these faculties.
Proportionate object principle (ND)
A natural, universal, non-arbitrary orientation must be proportionate to something real.
Hunger without food-type reality, thirst without water-type reality, is unintelligible.
Conclusion
Therefore, the proportionate object of intellect/will/heart must be unbounded Truth, Goodness, Beauty.
This Source is not just non-limited but plenitude itself — inexhaustible, fully proportionate to our open-ended capacities.’
Natural Desire Syllogism (ND)
P1. Human faculties (intellect, will, heart) are intrinsically ordered to truth, goodness, and beauty as such.
P2. Finite instances cannot fully satisfy these open-ended orientations.
P3. Natural, universal, non-arbitrary orientations are not in vain; they presuppose a real proportionate object.
C: Therefore, there must exist unbounded Truth, Goodness, and Beauty — plenitude itself.
Step 9 Meta Moves
What is the Trusted Tool in Play?:
Phenomenological awareness of desire (intellectual, volitional, aesthetic).
Principle of proportionality of natural desires (orientation isn’t absurd)
What you must trust:
That natural, universal hungers are not cosmic jokes — they correspond to real proportionate objects.
That the “no ceiling” structure of intellect/will/heart points beyond the finite.
Reductionist’s Objection:
“Desires can just be evolutionary misfires.”
“Humans want infinity, but that doesn’t mean infinity exists.”
Response (Cost of Denial): Misfires only make sense against the backdrop of real aims (e.g., sexual desire can misfire, but only because sex is real).
Every other natural desire corresponds to a real kind of object (hunger → food, thirst → water, curiosity → knowable world).
Why would the three deepest, most universal desires (truth/goodness/beauty) be the only absurd exceptions?
If we deny this Step our faculties become absurd: we are hardwired to seek what cannot exist.
Denial here would also collapse rational inquiry, moral striving, and aesthetic experience into evolutionary tricks. And yet, like we’ve demonstrated elsewhere above, Performative defeat: to argue against truth as real is already to presuppose it.
I would ask the reductionist: Do you really think our hunger for truth is like a thirst for water that has no water?
If every other desire has a real proportionate object, why would the most fundamental desires be the only exceptions?
Step 10. Classical Theism Tie-in
At this point, we’ve established:
A Source of Truth/Goodness/Beauty (non-received, non-defective).
This Source is plenitude—it has T/G/B fully, by essence, not by participation.
Now Step 10 has us asking: what kind of being is that?
From metaphysics we know that:
Non-participated plenitude ⇒ it must be necessary (not contingent).
No privation, no reception ⇒ it must be simple (no parts to limit it).
Plenitude of being ⇒ it is infinite in truth, goodness, beauty (no intrinsic limit).
Ground of all else ⇒ it must be ultimate, self-explanatory, uncaused.
Those four marks (necessary, simple, infinite, ultimate) are the “bridge” from the transcendentals to God in classical theism.
So our final step here is less about introducing new phenomena, and more about properly naming what we’ve already reached.
It’s a clarifying step: This necessary, simple, plenitude of being — the source of all finite truth, goodness, and beauty — is exactly what philosophers and theologians call God.
And so, we establish the final layer, Layer 6: Plenitude of Being (God)
A Guided Exercise: Seeing God Through a Storm
We just went through a really abstract heavy lift, and you might be wondering… what does it actually look like to move through the steps of this Transcendental Ladder in a concrete experience of consciousness?
Let’s take a look:
Step 1 — Consciousness (Layer 1)
Look outside: clouds stack, thunder rolls. You’re aware. And your awareness isn’t a blur. Sight, sound, thought, and feeling (as well as the contents found within these modes) are distinct.
Step 2 — Intentional Act-Types (IATs) (Layer 2)
What are you doing with this scene?
Know/Believe: “A storm is coming.”
Choose/Desire: “I should shut the windows.”
Delight/Be moved: “That sky is sublime.”
Each act is about something: you know that, choose that, delight in that.
Step 3 — Success Conditions (NAA)
Each act carries success/failure:
Belief: true/false (“Will it actually rain here?”)
Choice: better/worse (“Shut all windows or just the windward ones?”)
Delight: fitting/unfitting (“Awe here is apt, mockery isn’t.”)
Try to deny this while arguing, deciding, or critiquing and you’ll use the very norms you deny.
Step 4 — Instance-Transcending Standards (ITP) (Layer 3 begins)
Why can your belief be wrong? Because of the sky itself, not your mood.
Why can your choice be worse? Because of ends and means (protect, ventilate) that hold across cases.
Why can your delight be unfitting? Because of the form of what’s there (integrity/proportion/manifestness).
⇒ Success conditions appeal beyond this token act to standards: truth, good, beauty.
Step 5 — Corrigibility & Contact (CCA)
Let’s say your neighbor shows you a radar, showing that the storm veers north. You revise your belief. Such a revision is not a mood swing—the world pushed back.
You keep learning, tuning judgments, correcting mistakes.
⇒ We’re measuring standards, not manufacturing them.
Step 6 — Aspects of Reality (Layer 4)
The same storm is:
True (it is what it is—intelligible),
Good (good-for crops, bad-for picnics—appetible),
Beautiful (splendor that moves you—delight-worthy).
Like light: you don’t stare at light; you see by it. So too with Truth/Goodness/Beauty (T/G/B)—they pervade being.
Step 7 — Gradation & Participation (Layer 5 begins)
Stay with the storm. Notice how your judgments aren’t just yes/no but more/less.
Truth: “The radar that says ‘rain at 5:17pm’ is truer than the one that says ‘rain sometime tonight.’”
Goodness: “Shutting every window is better than shutting one and letting the rug get ruined.”
Beauty: “Watching lightning arc across the whole sky is more sublime than a dim phone photo.”
You also notice defects: the false forecast that predicts hail, the reckless choice to leave things open, the kitschy filter that makes the storm look fake. These aren’t just “different” — they’re worse, because they fall short of what should be.
Three things follow:
Common Measure (CM): Shared reasons let us rank better/worse. If it’s just taste, why do meteorologists converge on truer forecasts, or why do musicians converge on better phrasing? Comparison implies a yardstick beyond the moment.
Privation Realism (PR): “Worse” isn’t mere variation. A false alert, a reckless act, or a kitschy photo only make sense as lacks relative to a due form (truth, right action, real beauty).
Limited Reception (LR): Every forecast, every act, every photo shows truth/goodness/beauty only to a degree. None exhausts it. Finite cases are partial shares.
Put together: finite things have truth, goodness, and beauty by participation. Like borrowed light from the lightning, they show it partly and can fall short.
Step 8 — Source (Non-Participated Plenitude) (Layer 5)
If forecasts and photos are borrowers, there must be a lender. If reflections of light exist, there must be lightning itself.
A heap of vague forecasts doesn’t equal the truth of the storm’s actual path.
A stack of careless acts doesn’t add up to goodness.
Ten thousand snapshots don’t exhaust the beauty of the storm.
Participation implies a source: what is “by another” must depend on something “by itself.”
And the source cannot be defective or borrowed — otherwise it, too, would need another. If it were received, regress follows; if it were lacking, it couldn’t be the measure of fullness.
Therefore, there must be a non-received, non-defective Source of truth, goodness, and beauty — plenitude itself, like the storm in its full power rather than our partial glances.
Step 9 — Natural Desire (ND)
Now notice yourself. Even after checking three weather apps, you still want to know what’s really going to happen. Even after closing the windows, you still want the best outcome. Even after seeing one lightning strike, you still want to watch the next.
Your faculties are open-ended:
Intellect: you never stop asking “what more?”
Will: you are never finally satisfied with finite goods.
Heart: you are always open to deeper awe.
Finite instances never fully sate these hungers. And hunger isn’t a cosmic joke: every natural desire has a proportionate object (food for hunger, water for thirst). Why would truth, goodness, and beauty be the only exceptions?
Therefore, the Source cannot just be non-defective — it must be inexhaustible plenitude, proportionate to our open-ended faculties.
Step 10 — Classical Theism Tie-in (Layer 6)
Non-participated plenitude is necessary (not contingent), simple (no parts to limit), infinite (no intrinsic bound), ultimate (uncaused source).
This is exactly what classical theism names God.
Wrap-up
As is indicated by the subtitle of this essay, the essence of what we’re really saying here is that because you are spiritually hungry, God exists. Pretending you’re not hungry in order to deny the existence of God is fundamentally a suicidal endeavor.
Further, because this is more than some abstract proof, you can empirically confirm and phenomenological verify that the following holds:
Whenever you consciously aim at and seek out the transcendentals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, you notice that your existential hunger gets progressively satiated. There is a very real and inner stillness of peace that gets produced within you. A fruit from the tree, as it were…
The more I “eat” Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, the more I am filled.
I am the way, the truth, and the life… I am the bread of life.. the bread that anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever… unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.. The one who feeds on me will live because of me… Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. ~ Jesus Christ
Game, set, match, atheists?
Drago