I. Epistemology

I.A.1. Epistemic Realignment: Truth as Relational Disclosure

The modern world does not suffer from an information deficit, but from an epistemic dislocation. Truth is not merely harder to find—it has become morally inaccessible, not because it hides, but because it confronts. The problem is not first cognitive, but relational.

Roadmap. We will (1) diagnose the modern “knowledge crisis” as a posture problem, (2) trace the collapse of autonomous epistemologies, (3) recover the covenantal alternative grounded in Christ, and (4) show why, once relation is restored, epistemology itself recedes.

In classical philosophy, epistemology was often treated as a neutral domain: a quest for certainty, a method of justification, a structure for organizing belief. But no method can overcome what is, at root, a posture. The disorder in modern knowing flows from a deeper disorder in moral orientation. When truth is treated as an object to be mastered—rather than a disclosure to which we must yield—epistemology detaches from ontology, and reason becomes self-enclosed.

In this framework, truth is not a conclusion we arrive at, but a reality that arrives to us—from outside the self, and from above creation. It is not constructed, inferred, or extrapolated. It is disclosed—by a God who not only speaks, but confronts.

Thus, epistemic access is not first a matter of method, but of posture. The heart must be humbled before the mind can see. As the biblical witness declares, “The meek will He guide in judgment: and the meek will He teach His way” (Psalm 25:9). Without moral submission, knowledge decays into suspicion, distortion, or idolatry.

Modern systems begin with autonomy and therefore end in illusion. Rationalism grounds knowledge in reason, empiricism in sensation, coherentism in belief networks, and pragmatism in utility—but all of these, detached from divine confrontation, are epistemologies without referents. They do not fail for lack of method, but for lack of submission.

The biblical model, by contrast, begins not with a question, but with a voice: “In the beginning was the Word.” Here, truth is personal, not abstract; relational, not neutral; morally weighted, not inert. The mind is not the master of truth but its respondent.

This is the necessary realignment:

Truth is not epistemically constructed but ontologically disclosed—and epistemically received only through moral responsiveness.

From this follows the collapse of all secular epistemologies that begin in the self. It is not the intellect that secures knowledge, but the conscience that surrenders to it.

I.A.2. Reframing the Classical Aims of Epistemology

Classical epistemology usually opens with a tidy question—What is knowledge?—and then splits into three sub-questions:

1. When is a belief true?

2. What justifies a belief?

3. Can we know that we know?

These produced the analytic slogan Knowledge = Justified True Belief (JTB). Even after Gettier-style repairs, the enterprise stayed the same: belief treated as an abstract object, justification as a procedure, truth as a neutral commodity.

That framework hides as much as it shows because it assumes:

• Truth is morally neutral.

• Belief is a detached mental act.

• Justification is merely procedural.

Our relational-biblical model overturns each premise. Here, truth is a divine subject, not a human object; knowledge is TRP—Truth Relationally Perceived. It is participated in, not possessed; received through moral surrender, not licensed by coherence tests.

The key question therefore shifts from What is knowledge? to With whom is the knower rightly aligned?

• Justification becomes moral, not methodological.

• Truth becomes confrontational, not inert.

• Belief becomes covenantal, not abstract.

Without that realignment, classical definitions loop back on themselves and collapse—an outcome made plain in the secular epistemologies critiqued in the next section.

I.A.3. The Collapse of Secular Epistemology

Secular epistemology has splintered into rival systems—each claiming access to truth, yet each ultimately fragmentary. These systems begin with epistemic autonomy, and thus fail to resolve the most basic challenges of knowing.

I.A.4. Rationalism: The Illusion of Self-Grounded Certainty

Rationalist traditions—from Descartes through Kant and into Enlightenment modernity—sought to ground knowledge in the operations of autonomous reason. By beginning with the doubting or thinking self, they aimed to construct certainty through clarity, logic, or innate categories. Yet this enterprise falters on its own premises. If reason must justify itself using only itself, it collapses into epistemic circularity: either tautology (reason proves reason) or infinite regress (reason depends on a deeper reason yet unproven).

Even Kant, in attempting to salvage the enterprise, admitted that pure reason cannot access things as they are (noumena)—only the appearances shaped by our cognitive structures. This concession, while honest, reveals the internal bankruptcy of rationalism: its project begins and ends in the self, never reaching ontological grounding.

In this model, knowledge becomes a mirror of ourselves, not a disclosure of reality. It is a closed epistemic loop—logically elegant, but existentially untethered. The soul that begins with itself cannot transcend itself. This is the foundational failure of epistemic autonomy.

I.A.5. Empiricism: The Problem of Induction and the Immaterial

Empiricism, whether in the classical form of Locke and Hume or the modern formulations of Ayer and the logical positivists, attempts to anchor knowledge in sensory observation. But this reliance on brute data brings two fatal problems.

First, the problem of induction: as Hume rightly exposed, no amount of observed regularity guarantees a universal law. The sun has risen daily, but this does not ensure it will rise tomorrow. Empiricism cannot justify the very consistency it requires to function. It presupposes the uniformity of nature but cannot derive it from nature itself—revealing a hidden circularity: the future resembles the past because it has in the past.

Second, empiricism cannot account for immaterial realities: logical validity, moral obligation, metaphysical necessity. These are not observed but presupposed. The empiricist framework may describe what happens, but it cannot account for what ought to happen, or why any of it matters.

Thus, empiricism yields an incomplete world: depersonalized, fragmented, and morally silent. It offers not truth, but approximation—a useful map drawn in vanishing ink.

I.A.6. Postmodernism: Deconstruction without Anchor

Postmodern epistemology, emerging from Nietzsche, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, and Rorty, completes the trajectory of epistemic autonomy by rejecting the very possibility of objective truth. In this view, knowledge is not discovered but constructed; language is a tool of power; truth is a function of perspective and culture.

This approach, though shrewd in exposing ideological manipulation, offers no anchor for meaning. Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives” becomes Rorty’s pragmatic replacement of truth with solidarity. Truth becomes what gains consensus, not what aligns with reality. As a result, knowledge dissolves into semiotic relativism: every claim is provisional, political, or performative. There is no referent—only repetition.

This is not humility; it is epistemic despair. It produces pseudo-types—conceptually coherent forms without ontological authorization—and welcomes epistemic fraud as creative freedom. The result is fragmentation, not freedom; disintegration, not diversity.

II. The Scriptural Epistemological Alternative

Secular epistemologies collapse because they begin with the self and presume the sufficiency of autonomy. In contrast, the biblical model begins with the One True God’s self-disclosure and presumes the necessity of epistemic humility, grounded in ontological submission. It does not attempt to construct truth—it receives truth from the One who is Truth. In this model, knowledge is not speculative abstraction but covenantal participation.

II.A. Ontological Alignment as Epistemic Prerequisite

Epistemology is not a freestanding inquiry but a relational response to divine being. What one knows, and how one knows, depends on one's moral posture toward the Creator who defines reality. Knowledge does not begin with neutral observation, but with covenantal reverence: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).

This epistemic humility flows from ontological submission — the recognition that God alone holds the double prerogative: to define what kinds of things may exist (auctoritas essendi) and to instantiate them (auctoritas instantiandi). To pursue truth without reference to this authority is not innocent inquiry, but simulated access — epistemic transgression. Thus, epistemology is not morally indifferent: it is either postured in humility or in rebellion.

Truth is morally weighted because access to it is not procedural but covenantal. The soul does not acquire truth by inference, but receives it through submission. This means that relational posture is not just the mode of knowing, but the condition of knowing.

II.B. The Relational–Propositional Nature of Truth

Truth is the outflow of a person’s alignment with Divine reality. Only within this relationship can propositions be rightly anchored. Truth, therefore, is not an abstract object waiting for verification; it is ontological disclosure that becomes propositional only within right relation to the One who is Truth (John 14:6).

II.B.1. Truth as Ontological Event

Truth is first a condition of reality, not a predicate of sentences. It manifests when the soul is rightly ordered; propositions share in that reality only by participation. Truth is thus ontological before logical, personal-relational before propositional.

II.B.2. Relational Alignment as Epistemic Prerequisite

Truth is never encountered in a vacuum; it meets the hearer through the prism of posture. When the soul is rebellious, truth arrives as confrontation—an unwelcome light that exposes misalignment and is therefore resisted. When the soul is humble, that same truth arrives as invitation—an illuminating grace that is gladly received. Thus the identical proposition can function as blessing or judgment, not because its content changes, but because its reception is morally filtered. Epistemic access, then, is not primarily an issue of intellectual capacity but of relational orientation: only within surrendered alignment does truth become intelligible—and transformative.

II.B.3. Propositions as Carriers of Relational Disclosure

Propositions have weight only in their relational context. Severed from ontological grounding, language drifts into manipulation—simulation without referent. Right relation restores speech to its proper task: reverent participation in disclosed reality, not rational mastery over it.

III.A. Knowledge as Relational Reverence, Not Autonomous Reason

Scripture never treats knowledge as the possession of a neutral observer. It treats knowledge as a moral orientation toward the God who reveals. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). This is not terror, but relational reverence—a recognition that knowing is contingent upon being rightly postured toward the Creator.

Here, epistemology is not a detached discipline. It is an act of covenantal response. One either submits to the truth as it is in God (James 4:7; John 3:21), or suppresses that truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). There is no neutral ground. There is no neutral ground. The soul knows rightly only when it is aligned ontologically, and that alignment expresses itself as epistemic humility.

III.B. Christ as Epistemological Center and Embodiment of Truth

At the heart of this model stands not a principle, but a Person: Jesus Christ. He is not merely a teacher of truth or a pointer to it—He is the Truth (John 14:6). In Him, truth is personal, relational, and incarnate. The Logos through whom all things were made (John 1:3) is the Logos through whom all things are understood.

Epistemology therefore becomes Christocentric: one does not know truth unless one is aligned to the One in whom all truth coheres (Colossians 1:17). Any attempt to know reality apart from Christ is epistemologically distorted, however rigorous the logic or compelling the data. Even Scripture, if approached apart from Christ, becomes misused: it is treated as a static source of content rather than a living witness to the Truth. ‘You search the Scriptures…’(John 5:39–40).

Thus, epistemology is not merely access to propositions—it is access to a Person (Wisdom personified, Prov 8:22-30). And this access is granted not through technique, but through reverence and relationship.

III.C. Relational Correspondence: Resolving the Truth Theories

Philosophers have long debated whether truth is a matter of correspondence to facts or coherence within systems. The biblical model resolves this dichotomy through a third axis: relational correspondence. Truth is not merely external accuracy or internal consistency—it is right relational alignment with the moral and ontological structure of reality, as defined by the One True God and revealed in  His Son, Christ.

To know truly is to be rightly aligned. It is to correspond not merely to facts, but to the Source from which those facts flow. Truth, then, is covenantal: the alignment of heart, mind, and will to the God who defines reality and reveals Himself.

This redefines epistemic success. It is not simply stating what is accurate, but being rightly related to the One who is. In this light, deception is not primarily propositional—it is relational deviation from the Truth-bearer.

III.D. The Logos and the Uniformity and Rationality of Nature

In secular frameworks, the regularity of the natural world is merely assumed. Science depends on the uniformity of nature—the expectation that the future will resemble the past, that laws are stable and discoverable. But this expectation is epistemically unjustifiable from within empirical or rationalist paradigms. As Hume demonstrated, any attempt to justify regularity through past observation is circular: it presupposes the very consistency it seeks to prove. This is the fallacy of affirming the consequent, endemic to secular epistemology.

The biblical model, by contrast, grounds rationality and regularity not in nature itself, but in the faithfulness of the Creator—more specifically, in the sustaining Word of the Logos. “He upholds all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). “In Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). This is not theological metaphor; it is ontological architecture.

What science assumes, Scripture reveals: the cosmos is intelligible because it is spoken into order (Divine Fiat) and sustained in being by the Logos. The uniformity of nature is not a brute fact—it is a covenantal provision. “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). This is not an inference from observation—it is a divine promise grounded in the character of God.

This covenantal regularity is the precondition for all valid scientific reasoning. Both induction (generalizing from repeated observations) and abduction (inferring the best explanation from data) depend on the assumption that nature behaves in a consistent, intelligible, and meaningful way. But this assumption itself is not empirically demonstrable—it must be received. In the relational-biblical model, that reception is made possible through epistemic humility: the recognition that the rationality of nature is a gift of the Logos, not a discovery of autonomous reason. What science assumes, Scripture reveals and guarantees.

Thus, where secular models attempt to derive rationality from chaos, the biblical model receives rationality as revelation from coherence—from the One in whom all reason, order, and meaning are grounded. The Logos is not merely an explanatory principle, but a living Person. And it is only through epistemic humility—the acknowledgment of dependence on this Logos—that the rationality of nature becomes rightly intelligible.

III.E. Epistemology Grounded in Christ from the Beginning

The relational-biblical model of knowledge does not emerge late in theological history—it is embedded from the beginning. The epistemological centrality of Christ is not a New Testament novelty but a foundational truth threaded throughout Scripture, progressively unveiled.

In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is personified as being with God in the beginning, rejoicing before Him, and delighting in the inhabited world. This is more than poetic metaphor—it is a Christological anticipation. The New Testament identifies Christ as “the Wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in Him are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). The Logos through whom the cosmos was made is also the source by whom it is known.

This means that all true knowledge—whether natural or moral, inferential or intuitive—is rooted in the Logos. What is intelligible is so because it was created through, ordered by, and continues to be held together in Christ. The epistemological task, then, is not to construct coherence from abstraction, but to enter into covenantal alignment with the One who makes knowledge possible by His very being.

To know truly is to participate, by grace, in the rationality of the One who is both Creator and Sustainer. The failure to know rightly is not primarily intellectual, but ontological and moral: it stems from estrangement from Christ, not from a lack of data.

Thus, biblical epistemology is not a late-stage supplement to faith—it is its very structure. All true knowing is Christological at its root. The Logos is not only the origin of the world but the medium of its knowability.

III.F. Revelation, Not Speculation: Knowledge as Grace

In the biblical model, knowledge is not the fruit of autonomous investigation, but the result of divine initiative. It is revelation, not speculation. The human mind is not an independent authority—it is a receptive faculty, dependent on the gracious disclosure of the One who knows all things and reveals what He wills.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). This is not poetic license—it is a metaphysical claim. The words of Scripture are not the product of human brilliance or religious intuition, but the gift of divine speech. They bear the character of the One who speaks: truthful, coherent, authoritative, and salvific. “The sacred writings… are able to make you wise unto salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15). This posture is not innovative—it is the rediscovery of what God has always commended: ‘Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths…’ (Jeremiah 6:16).”

Yet this disclosure is not mechanical. Divine revelation is not forced, intrusive, or obtruded upon the soul. It is always consensual. God does not violate the will, but invites the creature into alignment. The revelation is clear—but only those who approach in humility will receive it. This is why “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27)—not arbitrarily, but morally and relationally, in response to posture.

Apart from this divine initiative, the soul remains blind. As Paul writes, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers…” (2 Corinthians 4:4). But God intervenes: “The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

This is not metaphorical light—it is epistemological regeneration. The mind is illumined not merely by argument but by encounter. And that encounter is not earned—it is gifted. Knowledge, in this model, is a grace before it is a grasp.

Therefore, the prerequisite for knowing is not brilliance but epistemic humility. What is needed is not capacity but posture. The soul that submits to the One who reveals will see; the soul that resists will remain blind, regardless of cognitive prowess.

This insight reframes all knowledge-seeking. It is not an ascent by reason, but a descent into reverence. And in that descent, the eyes of the heart are opened—not because man discovers, but because God discloses, and the creature consents.

III.G. Regeneration as Epistemological Healing and Ontological Realignment

In the relational-biblical framework, the human problem is not merely intellectual ignorance—it is ontological rebellion, which gives rise to epistemic autonomy and distortion. The Fall was not the loss of data, but the loss of alignment (the proclaimed inducement to Edenic rebellion was to autonomously and independently determine morality). To know truly, then, requires not simply more information, but a new posture—one made possible only through regeneration.

Regeneration is not merely a spiritual awakening; it is an epistemological healing and an ontological realignment. It restores the soul to its proper position under God: no longer asserting its own categories, but receiving what is revealed; no longer fabricating coherence, but submitting to truth. This healing is not cognitive alone—it is moral, relational, and ontological.

The regenerated soul returns to ontological submission, which gives rise to epistemic humility—a disposition to receive, rather than invent, truth.

This realignment is essential because the unregenerate mind does not merely lack knowledge—it actively suppresses what is already made known (Romans 1:18). The issue is not capacity, but posture. Regeneration reverses this posture by reorienting the will, renewing the affections, and opening the heart to what was once resisted.

III.G.1. Epistemic Humility and the Double Prerogative

At the heart of this healing lies a recovered recognition of God’s double prerogative (see preceding Ontology secion):

1. Auctoritas essendi — the authority to define what kinds of things may exist.
2. Auctoritas instantiandi (fiat actualitatis and fiat veritatis) — the authority to instantiate those kinds into reality.

These prerogatives are not shared with creatures. Human beings may classify, name, and interpret, but they may not define being at its root. Any such attempt—whether philosophical, theological, or ideological—is an act of autonomous epistemic rebellion and transgression. It simulates knowledge where there is no divine warrant.

This results in what we have under Ontology identified as pseudo-essentiation (claiming the authority to define new kinds of being) and pseudo-exempliation (asserting the existence or authority of that which God has not instantiated). Both constitute forms of epistemic fraud—a usurpation of the Creator–creature boundary.

The moral agent does not grasp truth as possession; he receives it as grace. He does not impose form upon being; he submits to what God has defined and disclosed.

Van Til’s distinction between receptive regeneration and rebellious reconstruction is apt here. Knowledge arises not from cognitive engineering, but from moral reorientation. The mind is not a sovereign architect—it is a relational participant, healed and guided by the God who reveals. The diagram below illustrates the binary moral trajectory of epistemology: a moral bifurcation. The created moral agent (γ) either submits to the Creator’s ontological decree (γ_b) or suppresses that order (γ_a) (see diagram below, “Relational Posture and the Moral Bifurcation of Epistemology”). There is no third path. Epistemology, as shown, is always a moral act. All true knowledge involves not only intellectual assent but moral exempliation—expressed both in noetic posture (cognition) and practical alignment (obedient enactment).

Relational Posture and the Moral Bifurcation of Epistemology 
The above diagram illustrates the only two possible permutations in the Creator–creature relationship: one of ontological submission, resulting in epistemic humility and truthful correspondence; and the other of ontological suppression, resulting in autonomous reinterpretation and epistemic fraud. Epistemology is never neutral—it always flows from moral orientation.

III.H. Ontology Precedes Epistemology: Restoring the Order of Meaning

The modern tendency to treat epistemology as the foundation of philosophy—placing knowledge before being—reverses the created order. In the biblical-relational model, this inversion is both methodologically flawed and morally disordered. Yet even this inversion can only be spoken because every act of speech already rests on the four-pillar Tetradic Constraint of Ontology (TCO)—objective reality, perceptual architecture, rational architecture, and metaphysical personality.  Ontology precedes epistemology. (See Ontology sections I & II). One cannot know rightly unless one first is rightly. Knowing flows from being, and being is defined not autonomously but by relation to the One who is.

This is not a mere technical priority. It is a moral and metaphysical sequence. Truth cannot be properly discerned without first being aligned to the One who defines it. Knowledge is not free-floating or morally neutral—it is the consequence of ontological positioning. The soul that rebels against being will distort knowing. The soul that submits will see.

This is why epistemic humility cannot be cultivated in isolation—it must be the fruit of ontological submission. Without right relation to God, the intellect operates as a closed system, suppressing the very truth it was designed to receive.

This restored sequence also clarifies the movement into semiotics. Meaning does not arise from linguistic structures alone—it flows from the ontological coherence of reality as defined and sustained by God. Language, therefore, is not self-referential but referential to truth-bearing being. The right to signify follows from the right to define and instantiate.

Thus, the epistemological sequence unfolds as follows:

• Ontology — What is, as defined by God.
• Epistemology — What is known, as received in humility.
• Semiotics — What is signified, as expressed and interpreted within that revealed order.

This is not a theoretical abstraction but a covenantal sequence. To reverse it—to begin with signification or cognition apart from being—is to sever knowledge from its root and plunge into fabrication.

True meaning is not invented. It is disclosed. And it is only disclosed to the one rightly aligned.

This is why knowledge cannot be secured by brilliance, consensus, or coherence alone. It is secured by relational correspondence to being—a reality which the One True God alone defines, and into which He invites the humble. Thus, when we turn next to the ethics of knowledge and the application of reasoning in the upcoming sections, we do so as tenants of a house built on the TCO, not as architects free to redraw the foundations.

III.I.The Ontological Preconditions for Intersubjective Knowledge

The act of knowing is never solitary. Every attempt to teach, persuade, or reason presupposes a shared frame—stable referents, mutual intelligibility, and coherent selves. This intersubjective coherence is not a cultural accident or evolutionary byproduct. It is ontological. It flows directly from the TCO- discussed in Ontology Part II, which undergirds not only individual thought but collective discourse.

Modern frameworks tend to treat communication and cognition as emergent or constructed. But the very possibility of dialogue presumes a pre-given architecture that enables shared perception, stable reasoning, and personal accountability. It is only within this divine structure that concepts like “truth,” “argument,” or “error” can even arise.

This is the overlooked foundation of epistemic commonality: we understand one another because we are already embedded in a common ontological grammar—not by consent, but by design. Even disagreement presupposes alignment at the structural level. Thus, all epistemology is, at root, a form of ontological submission—whether acknowledged or denied.

To explain intersubjectivity apart from this foundation is to commit an act of parasitic cognition: borrowing the very conditions of intelligibility while denying the Source who authored them. Epistemology, then, is not merely a theory of knowledge—it is a posture toward the Revealer. And until that posture is aligned, even our knowledge is rebellion cloaked in coherence.

IV. Epistemology: Ethical Closure

Epistemology, in this model, culminates not in a theory of justification, but in a moral reckoning. To know is to be accountable. Knowledge is never morally neutral—it is always covenantal, always relational, and therefore always ethically charged.

The denial of truth is not merely an error in cognition—it is a moral rebellion. As Paul writes, humanity “holds the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18). This is not passive ignorance but volitional suppression: a deliberate refusal to receive what God has made clear. The same truth that gently invites the humble stands in judgment over the proud. What the regenerate soul calls revelation; the rebellious soul perceives as intrusion—and resists.

The ethical problem of epistemology is not access to truth, but posture toward it. The issue is not illumination, but reception. Where there is no epistemic humility, there can be no genuine knowledge—only simulation.

This simulation takes form through the fabrication of pseudo-essentiations and pseudo-exempliations: false claims about what may be, and what is, respectively. These are not innocent errors but acts of effigiation—counterfeit projections of knowledge meant to rival divine categories. They are often coherent, persuasive, and even socially accepted, yet lack ontological authorization. They constitute epistemic fraud, because they are relationally severed from the source of truth.

Such constructs are not merely incorrect—they are culpable. As Scripture warns, God’s judgment falls not only on those who believe falsehoods, but on those who “refused to love the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12), and who “loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19–20). Truth is not merely available—it is morally demanding.

Therefore, epistemology cannot be abstracted from moral accountability. The pursuit of knowledge, if divorced from reverence, becomes exploitation. And the result is not understanding, but deceit.

True knowledge requires not only intellectual alignment but ethical submission. The epistemic act is always the relational act—and therefore carries moral consequence.

In the relational-biblical model, then, the soul is not judged merely for what it does not know, but for how it responds to what is revealed. Knowledge is not only a grace—it is a test. And its ethical closure lies in this: to know what is true and reject it is not error—it is rebellion.

Having issued the ethical verdict—that knowing is a matter of obedience, not mere validation—we can now audit the remaining instruments of reasoning (deduction, induction, abduction) and ask how each functions once it is re-anchored to restored ontology.