First of all, I don't think what you're saying is what Godel, Wittgenstein, or quantum mechanics points out. Godel and Wittgenstein certainly were not naive empiricists and - on the contrary - their findings, if anything, damage the naive empiricist worldview more than support it. Kant identified almost 250 years ago that a priori categories (like identity, causality, etc.) structure experience - observations aren't "raw" but shaped via theory-laden logical principles, which require an epistemic ground. To even claim "observations don't need grounding" assumes logical coherence to produce an argument i.e. you're using grounded logic to deny grounding.
Kant’s insight about theory-ladenness is important—and I’m not denying it. But what that actually shows is that *
all knowledge is mediated*, including logic itself. Kant was not defending logical absolutism—he was describing the conditions under which human experience is structured, not declaring metaphysical necessity.
In fact, modern pragmatists like Sellars, Quine, and Putnam show that even Kant’s a priori categories are up for revision, in light of scientific developments. Quantum physics, to use the example we have been talking about, radically challenges traditional logical categories and notions of causality and identity.
So if even Kant's categories evolve with science, observations, and theory, then logic can't be a fixed metaphysical anchor or grounding- it's a shifting frame, pragmatically responsive - in turn based on context, observation, experience, and utility. Using a system to show the boundaries of the system isn't incoherent—it's
insightful. That's what Gödel, Turing, and even Wittgenstein did. Recognizing that the ground shifts doesn’t require being groundless—it just requires intellectual humility about what counts as foundational, and an openness to new ideas, models, and seeing the world.
But as I talk to you, it is starting to become clear that I don’t think what’s really bothering you is grounding in logic itself. What’s bothering you is the absence of a final, all-encompassing answer—a Theory of Everything (or TOE, as the physicists like to call it- something which they will admit is a pretty ambitious project). But, what you are looking for is even bigger and even more ambitious that THAT: a TOE not just in physics, but something that also explains ethics, consciousness, society, meaning, and all existence itself. That’s certainly a very understandable and a deeply human impulse: we want closure, a unified picture, something that makes sense of everything. But we’re not there—and we may never get there. But simply slapping on a label like “God,” “absolute logic,” or “metaphysical grounding” on that gap doesn’t resolve the uncertainty. It doesn’t offer any real explanatory power or coherence—it just rebrands the unknown as if it were known. That’s not grounding anything. That’s just putting a name on your discomfort with ambiguity and ignorance. We may just have to learn to make ourselves comfortable in such ambiguity and not knowing everything. That always leaves us open to new ideas, new observations, and new models. That lack of certainty may not just be a weakness and a bug, but the feature that leaves us open to learning more.
If anything, insisting on a single universal logic or metaphysical ground risks flattening and impoverishing such richness of human inquiry, where multiple models (mathematical, ethical, cultural, psychological) coexist—not always neatly, but often usefully.
I don't know if I quoted you one of my favorite quotes from the late Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman before, but even if I did, it's worth repeating, because I think it captures this sentiment and mindset of modern science. (see next post for it, it's kinda long)