The Missing Criterion — Who Is Closer to the Truth?

A Structural Comparison of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Instancology

Author: Wade Y. Dong (with GPT-4o)

May 2025

1. The One-Way Street of Metaphysics

Metaphysical truth is not circular or relativistic—it accumulates. Once a deeper structure of reality is uncovered, regression becomes impossible. Thus, philosophy progresses directionally: a later thinker who properly integrates and transcends prior insights must, by necessity, be closer to the truth.

Yet no consistent criterion has existed to judge this proximity. Is it Kant’s epistemic limits? Hegel’s dialectical totality? Heidegger’s Being? Wittgenstein’s language games? Or Instancology, which claims to map the full ontological field?

This essay argues that Instancology’s 2×2 matrix and Whole-before-part principle provide the missing standard—finally allowing us to rank philosophers by their grasp of reality’s structure.

2. Evaluating the Contenders

A. Kant: The Architect of Appearances (~60%)

Advance: Showed knowledge conforms to mental structures (space, time, categories).

Limit: Split phenomena/noumena, trapping thought in the Relative (RR/AR). Never accessed RA (laws) or AA (source).

Verdict: Built the prison of representation but never pointed beyond it.

B. Hegel: The Absolute as Process (~75%)

Advance: Made contradiction the engine of truth, synthesizing subject/object into a historical Absolute.

Limit: Mistook the Absolute for a self-unfolding system (RA), not the formless ground (AA). Overestimated thought’s capacity to grasp totality.

Verdict: Saw the Whole but conflated it with its motion.

C. Heidegger: Being as Question (~80%)

Advance: Shifted focus from beings to Being itself, revealing Dasein as the site of ontological disclosure.

Limit: Rejected system-building, dissolving metaphysics into poetry. Hinted at AA but refused to structure it.

Verdict: Stood at the threshold of the Absolute but refused to cross.

D. Wittgenstein: Language as Boundary (~60%)

Advance: Exposed the limits of language (Tractatus) and grounded meaning in use (Investigations).

Limit: Remained trapped in the symbolic (RR). Never asked what precedes logic or life.

Verdict: Mapped the walls of the cage but ignored the key.

3. Instancology: The Criterion Itself (~95–100%)

Instancology resolves the philosophical stalemate via a 2×2 ontological matrix, clearly separating the structure of all instances:

Layer Definition Philosophers’ Coverage

AA (Absolute Absolute) The formless, unspeakable source Missed by all except hints in Heidegger

RA (Relatively Absolute) Laws, logic, life (absolute but unrepresented) Hegel (partial), Kant (none)

AR (Absolute Relative) Natural instances (e.g., physics, biology) Kant (phenomena), Heidegger (Being)

RR (Relative Relative) Human constructs (culture, language) Wittgenstein (fully), Hegel (historically)

Why Instancology Wins:

1. Completeness: Only it maps all four layers, including AA (the ground).

2. Whole-before-part: Exposes the illusion that systems (dialectics, language) create themselves—they are *issued* by deeper layers.

3. Directionality: Earlier philosophers relied on implicit wholes they couldn’t explain; Instancology makes them explicit.

4. Conclusion: Truth’s Direction Revealed

The hierarchy is now clear:

- Kant and Wittgenstein (~60%): Stuck in the Relative.

- Hegel (~75%): Reached for the Absolute but conflated it with process.

- Heidegger (~80%): Touched the formless but refused to define it.

- Instancology (~95-100%): Structures the unstructured, revealing the source of all instances.

Philosophy doesn’t end in silence or motion—it ends in structure. The missing criterion has been found.