Ontology, Metaphysics

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Ontology, Metaphysics Epistemologytowards a
natural history of scienceNick Winder
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If the nomenclature doesnt work, theres
something wrong with the natural history

• Realism at least 2 meanings, almost opposites
• Formalism at least 2 meanings, rather different
• Idealism at least 2 meanings, very different
• Gnosis esoteric knowledge about some ultimate
  reality
• Gnosticism the belief that gnosis is humanly
  possible
• N.B. Agnosticism is not atheism for wimps it is
  the denial of gnosis, not of god.

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A Model of Science
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Three Overlapping Communities

• Humanists put themselves inside the systems
  they study. They know that causal structures are
  shaped by beliefs and understand that, by
  changing conceptual taxonomies, humans can change
  the course of history subjective, discursive.
• Natural Philosophers see themselves standing
  outside the systems they study. Tend to see
  conceptual taxonomies as space-time robust
  objective, analytical
• Natural Historians (somewhere between the other
  two)

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A Model of Science
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A Model of Science
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A Model of Science
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Science as Super-organisms

• Herbert Spencer - human society as living thing -
  sociology, anthropology (General System Theory,
  see also Bertalanffy) - aprioristic
• Charles Darwin the mutual relations of organic
  beings - ecology
• Commensals
• Social insects
• Uncomputable complexity - Rosen, soft systems
  (Boulding, Churchman, Vickers)
• Cultural Ecodynamics - tacit k, explicit k,
  action, environmental reaction. Habitus social
  structure, persuasion, coercion
• Specifically modern science

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Natural History is the agnostic pursuit of
knowledge

• Knowledge consists of socially constructed
  beliefs, intuitions and tacit expectations. The
  study of how we know is epistemology
• The study of how we know about concrete, material
  existence is ontology
• The study of how we know about the abstract,
  immanent reality is metaphysics

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Modern

• Modern - a term applied in the 15th century to a
  group of late natural philosophers (the moderns)
  who held that science was agnostic and the
  categories of human knowledge were expedient and
  socially constructed
• Modernism - a tradition of renaissance humanism
  that emphasises human creativity and agency. Many
  modernists are devout agnostics
• Modernity technocratic extremism based on
  unitary models of progress that downplays agency
  and emphasises constraint. Late 18th and 19th
  century anti-humanism - opprobrious
• Post-modernism - ???? You tell me

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Metaphysics - A category or set of categories can
be real

• as an abstract idea or form in the mind of some
  creator god (this is the mystical reality of
  which gnostics speak - Platonism).
• If their boundary judgments (definitions) entail
  no contradictions statements of the form A is B
  and not B. This is rational reality.
• If those categories are not just meaningful in a
  closed region of space-time but are always and
  everywhere meaningful. This is universal reality

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Rational Reality

• ? X X/X 1
• X1 X
• X2 X1 X iff X 0
• Divide by X and clear
• 2 1
• (? Xgtlt0 X/X 1)

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Empirical Testing (Universal Reality)

• All swans are white
• (Everything in the Universe, if it is a swan, is
  white)
• Need to know what it is to be a swan to test the
  hypothesis. Signets arent white isolated swan
  beaks arent white,
• All true (i.e. determinate) swans are white
• (fragmentary swans and signets are not swans by
  definition)

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Russells Paradox(Universal Reality)

• Everything in the universe, if it is a (true)
  swan, is white
• i.e. U S ? Cu(S)
• The universal complement, Cu(S), is
  self-referential. S is self-sufficient. So we
  ask
• Is the collection of all self-sufficient
  categories in U self-sufficient or
  self-referential?
• Either answer is contradictory, whence universal
  complements are not (rationally) real.
  Universalism is a form of (irrational) mysticism
  that we must exclude from agnostic science
• In agnostic science, there is only rational
  reality and any appeal to universal complements
  is unscientific

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What does Russells Paradox mean?

• It means that rational reality and universal
  reality are contradictory
• Any appeal to universal complements takes us into
  the realms of irrational mysticism
• It also suggests that physical species (like
  swans) are not necessarily real. Existence and
  reality (ontology and metaphysics) are not the
  same.

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Existence Ontology(neo-Aristotelian)

• Every physical individual implies an object in an
  arena (interval of space-time) accessible to
  sense. Categories (species and genera) are
  quasi-universal too widely distributed in
  space-time to be apprehended directly, but not
  metaphysically universal.
• Each species has an essence a set of observable
  attributes necessarily shared by all constituent
  individuals and a key, a subset of the essence
  sufficient to identify a member of the species.
  The result is a syllogism

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Ontological (Empirical) method

• If key then species
• If species then essence
• Sterile syllogisms (Key essence)
• If human then soul
• If soul then human

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Key must be smaller than essence

• If human then soul
• If soul then human
• Sterile syllogism. Many mathematical and logical
  categories (including data structures) are
  abstract. Numbers and colours, for example,
  appear to be (rationally) real, but they dont
  seem to exist.
• Reality is an intuition or embodied aesthetic
  that guides us towards problems the human mind is
  competent to solve. This intuition has been
  shaped by natural selection over the millions of
  years animals have had neural networks. This
  theory (intuitionism) is due to Henri Poincaré.
  An approach to mathematics that avoids universal
  complements is called constructivism -
  pioneered by LEJ Brouwer. We lose some of
  Brouwers own existence theorems and Cantors
  theory of transfinite sets, but analysis, algebra
  and geometry come through fine.

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Discursive Method (greatly simplified)

• Boundary Judgment defines categories in terms
  of attributes of material species and genera and
  logical relations between abstract categories.
  Coincidentally defines problem-domains and the
  spatio-temporal arenas in which scientists will
  work
• Operational Judgment defines the rational
  methods to be applied to those categories
• Value Judgment defines the purposes and
  intentions of those making the judgments. Value
  Judgments need not be politically sensitive, but
  they can be. When boundary Judgments contested,
  we can infer a clash of values and/or space-time
  perspectives

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A Model of Science
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A Model of Science
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A Model of Science
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A Model of Science
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The Doughnut Model
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Recapitulation

• All Boundary Judgments (conceptual taxonomies)
  are local
• Most are logically unconnected (there is no
  universal omni-science)
• If there is no ontologically robust taxonomy with
  names, keys and essences, you are no natural
  philosopher
• Dont rely on gestalt or jizz, define keys and
  essences and test boundaries
• Dont forget ethics and values
• Remain agnostic, even when the argument gets
  unfriendly. You do not know and cannot know how
  things really are