Image Abstraction and Analogical Correlation as a Meta-Epistemological Structure: A Proof of Universal Necessity

Philosophical anthropology has long defined the essence of human being through tool use, social cooperation, and linguistic symbols. However, these supposed defining traits either have embryonic counterparts in the animal kingdom or are derivative outcomes themselves, each presupposing a more primordial cognitive structure whose own conditions of possibility have seldom been examined. This paper proposes and argues that this repeatedly presupposed yet unnamed structure, namely quxiang bilei (image abstraction and analogical correlation) in classical Chinese philosophy, can be regarded as the meta-epistemological structure of cognitive activities. Its fourfold procedure—image abstraction, analogical correlation, verification, and feedback—constitutes a logically indispensable necessary condition for typical cognitive acts (this paper proves only its necessity, not sufficiency), offering a transcendental logical framework for understanding the possibility of higher-order cognition. The argument unfolds in six steps: distinguishing the empirical-temporal from the logical-transcendental dimensions of the inquiry into human origins; proving the logical necessity of the fourfold procedure through a transcendental reductio ad absurdum; taking the Zhou Yi (I Ching) as a paradigm of conscious formalization of this meta-cognitive structure; engaging in dialogue with Kant, Hume, and Heidegger; and finally clarifying the Dao as the logical remainder of image abstraction from a phenomenological perspective. This is the first in a series of research papers aimed at laying a logical foundation for meta-epistemology. By “universal necessity” this paper means the status of being a logical presupposition of cognitive activity, not a proof of sufficient conditions for cognition.