Ethan, This is an excellent article. But it has a problem in your understanding of how these things work in the human brain.
Sorry Ethan, you are wrong. You need to consult the experts. You make the assumption that "reason" can come to "truth" which, in the human brain, it generally cannot. What you miss, and miss badly, is that there are a very large number of "truths" -- far larger than you give credit. Uncountably large. It is fundamental to how the human brain computes. In 400 years we now know you are wrong. Sorry, but, and I have to say this as another scientist, "spoken like a stupid scientist."
What is missing are all the pieces needed for evidenciary truth. You assume a person can be his own judge. Generally speaking, this never works, and forgivable, for reasons that are obvious in the computational cognitive neuroscience of lies. Humans are not reasoning machines. We are natural language machines.
