About the Work
An Enquiry into the Nature of Being (for online reference purposes, abbreviated in post titles as “AEITNOB”) is a three-volume-long, currently ongoing philosophical work of both metaphysics and epistemology which structures itself by progressively accumulating maximal certainties that nevertheless remain formally falsifiable. More detailed information about this work can be found in the work’s preface (below).
I am placing the contents of the work’s first volume online as they become available, and am offering these contents as public domain under the CC0 license. The reader, just as much as the author, thereby has the right to do with them as they please — and is encouraged to share them at will.
Sections not yet uploaded are provisionally listed for reference and are subject to substantial changes.
Update: May 7, 2026
So its known, the website on which the content has been uploaded to date, anenquiry.com, has in recent weeks experienced an unprecedented number of hits, thereby slowing down the site to a standstill. I’ve now decided to transfer the contents to this, my personal website in hopes that the possibility of increased traffic will not encumber the viewability of the chapters. Finalizing this transfer might take some time. That said, thank you for your interest.
Table of Contents
Volume One: Certainty, Awareness, Will, Mind, and Selfhood
Part I: Foundational Principals
Chapter 1: Demarcating Certainty, Uncertainty, and Doubt
Chapter 2: The Cohort of All Those Concerned
Chapter 3: Validating the Law of Non-contradiction
Part 2: First-Person Awareness
Chapter 4: The Reality of the Eidem
Chapter 5: Our Four Modes of Awareness as Eidems
Chapter 6: Our Three Strata of Awareness as Eidems
Chapter 7: Demarcating Consciousness
Part 3: Causation, Volition, and its Determinants
Chapter 8: Concerning Determinacy
Chapter 9: Three Metaphysical Classifications for Causes
Chapter 10: The Reality of a Causally Semideterminate World
Chapter 11: Validating Our Free Will
Chapter 12: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part I – Intentions
Chapter 13: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part II – The Prototelos
Chapter 14: Basic Determinants of Volition, Part III – Teleions
Part 4: The Self, Mind, and the Impossibility of Solipsism
Chapter 15: A Basic Anatomy of the Total First-Person Self
Chapter 16: An Account of Realities, Truths, Perception, Knowledge, and Teleionic Awareness
Chapter 17: The Animana – A Bundle Theory of Mind
Chapter 18: On Physicalism, Non-physicalism, and P-Zombies
Chapter 19: An Eidem’s Discernment of its Body
Chapter 20: Of Dreams, Waking States, and the Possibility of the Spiritual
Chapter 21: The Impossibility of Being the Sole Self in Existence
Part 5: Reappraisals
Chapter: The Prototelos and Choice Making
Chapter: Concerning Thought
Chapter: Concerning Forethought
Chapter: Concerning Expectations
Chapter: Selfhood Revisited
Chapter: Self-Awareness Revisited
Chapter: The Anima and Animus Revisited
Chapter: Happiness and Suffering Revisited
Volume Two: Formations, Objectivity, Compatibilism, Truth, and Value
Part 8: Formational Determinacy
Chapter: Formational Interdeterminacy
Chapter: Four Jointly Exhaustive Formation Possibilities
Chapter: Of Relations between Body and Mind
Part 9: Deriving the Metaphysics of Objectivity
Chapter: Concurrences of Eidems
Chapter: Four Jointly Exhaustive Types of Reality
Chapter: Concerning the Two Types of Objective Reality
Chapter: Retroactive Compatibilism
Chapter: Progressive Uniformitarianism
Chapter: Nature and the Possibility of the Supernatural
Part 10: Concerning Truth and Belief
Chapter: Four Truth Types
Chapter: Of Trust and Belief
Chapter: Enactive, Learned, and Innate Trust
Part 11: Value Theory
Chapter: Deriving What Should be from that Euteleion which Is
Chapter: The Apeiroson (Static, Dynamic, or Negative)
Chapter: The Turannon
Chapter: The Permanon
Chapter: The Material Nihilon
Chapter: The Dysteleion
Chapter: Compound Teloi and Teloi Concessions
Chapter: Competition between Teloi
Chapter: The Personal Identity Preservation Drive
Volume Three: Reasoning, Epistemology, Spacetime, Aesthetics, and Science
Part 12: Reasoning
Chapter: Logical Identity, Noncontradiction, and the Excluded Middle
Chapter: Of Form and Causal Information
Chapter: Of Reasoning and Justification
Chapter: Of Pre-Socratic Logos and the Notion of Karma
Chapter: Abductions, Inductions, and Deductions
Chapter: Of Quantity, Numbers, and Mathematics
Part 13: Epistemology
Chapter: Justification
Chapter: Knowledge
Chapter: Understanding
Part 14: Spacetime
Chapter: The Intrareal Present Moment
Chapter: The Equireal Present Moment
Chapter: Intra-, Inter-, and Equi-syncretic Spacetime
Part 15: Aesthetics
Chapter: Biological Fairness
Chapter: Psychological Fairness
Chapter: Conceptual Fairness
Part 16: Science
Chapter: The Scientific Method
Chapter: The Entailment of Evolution via Natural Selection
Chapter: Implications for Behavioral Evolution Among Lifeforms
Chapter: On the Emergence of Life from Nonlife and Panpsychism
Chapter: Natural Laws and Thermodynamics
Chapter: Concerning the Beginning and End of the Universe
Michael W Moiceanu 