Prolegomena To Any Future Obfuscation

by Richard May

What is the relationship between the reality of existence and the existence of reality? This question is answered quite clearly in May-Tzu's Prolegomena To Any Future Obfuscation. There is no single relationship between the reality of existence and the existence of reality, but multiple relationships. This is a simple matter of ontological-existential combinatorics in N-valued logic. For Aristotelian logic in which N = 2: Existence is either real or unreal. Likewise,† non-existence is either real or unreal. Furthermore, reality also either exists or does not exist. Likewise, non-reality either exists or does not exist.

However, in N-valued logic there may be gradations or degrees of existence and/or non-existence, a quantized set of values approaching a continuum as its limit. Ideally in this case the continuum may be mapped upon various topological structures in N-dimensional hyperspace, in order to maximize the degree of lucidity of the obfuscation.

William of Ockham's Razor, the principle proposed in the fourteenth century, said "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate", which translates as ”entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." By contrast May-Tzu's Canon is more useful in metaphysics: "Words should not be simplified unnecessarily," thereby reducing the danger of being understood.

May-Tzu