Meta-Philosophy - The approach to a new paradigm of Philosophy
The limits of descriptive knowlege
Below I describe the overall philosophy; sufficient to provide an overview of the methodological approach and the complexity of the endeavour.
Yet, whilst a description is sufficient to understand how; it is insufficient to actually convince or prove its claims.
Progress must be demonstrated rather than described.
Understanding must be experienced, rather than merely believed. The intention therefore is to not only demonstrate understanding, but also facilitate it for the reader.
This is the challenge of this approach to philosophy.
A new paradigm of Philosophy in a nutshell
The modern obsession with knowledge; its production, description, justification, methodology of argumentation is insufficient to prove the truth of any of its claims. Yet, modern epistemology ignores the underlying process of understanding (i.e. how knowledge becomes understanding, how understanding forms from experience, and how understanding makes progress - in revolutionary leaps, just as Hegel described, and demonstrated objectively in the history of science.)
The collective failure to understand or preemptively act on climate change is a failure of philosophy, and modern thinking, to understand or explain how understanding works.
Modern philosophy, and it’s methodology, is nothing but a dogmatic defence of ordinary thinking. In microcosm, just like the west, it is a self-reinforcing system, lacking depth or self-awareness, and failing to make progress. It is the systemic barrier to progress.
A Scientific Philosophy
I present a scientific approach to philosophy; introducing discovery, using the history of science as empirical evidence of how progress in understanding is made, and different standards of acceptance. I then emulate the same progress in philosophy, and justify it through an explanation of the history of scientific progress: 1) discovering discovery, 2) introducing discovery into philosophy; 3) discovery and reason as incommensurable modes of cognition; 4) analogous to the quantum revolution, consilience of complementary principles requires a more complex ontology and epistemology.
Not knowledge and its justification, but systems of understanding, the process by which understanding forms, and by which progress in understanding is made, and the process by which we understand.
Philosophy as a process of Understanding
Yet, knowledge, even empirically justification knowledge is not sufficient to achieve the aims of this project. The intention is not merely to describe the process of understanding, but demonstrate and facilitate it.
The intention is to present philosophy as a process of understanding.
Against-philosophy
This isn’t a traditional work of philosophy; an argument from knowledge, from defined premises, rigorous argumentation, to epistemically justified conclusions. I use an experiential and empirical reference for meaning (rather than epistemic), and provide a coherent systemic framework of explanation that is grounded in both science and in experience.
The intention is to provide a coherent theoretical framework, and bring coherence to our own dividiaul understanding. By challenging the unconscious assumptions that we may hold, and a more complex framework to better explain them. Necessarily, this means challenging some of the beliefs we may hold dear, yet with the promise that the understanding will make more coherent sense of all we believe we know.
For those familiar with Kuhn; the kuhn loss is our own superfluous beliefs that are the implicit source of our collective incoherence, that no longer serve us, and that only to divide us. These are the beliefs provided by Modern philosophy; a reductive form of self-understanding, a failure to understand or explain understanding, and the source of the human problems and inconsistencies that are now manifest within culture:
a focus on knowledge, description and justification; without understanding the process of understanding, and progress in understanding; understanding as an intentional process extended over time; a process self-reflectively applied to deconstruct knowledge into coherent and higher orders of complexity of understanding.
a failure to explain the process of understanding, and collective failure of understanding
a simplistic understanding of cause and effect, without understanding complex systems and the process by which they evolve over time.
a failure to understand others, and also ourselves, and neither the self-awareness to realise the insufficiency nor the intention to overcome it.
An Antidote to Philosophy; healing a world divided
The modern obsession with categories of division, and superficial identity has served only to divide us. Complexity has exposed the inusfficiency of philosophy, and made the divisions manifest within society.
It is time to overcome modern philosophy; to understanding ourselves collectively, to start to heal the divisions once again, and coherent into a complex collective, as a force for cultural transformation.
Philosophy from experiential inquiry
This is the culmination of a process of finding patterns throughout the history of philosophy, culture, scientific progress, finding connections and fitting pieces together into a coherent understanding that only comes clear when the process is complete. Then one must strive to conceptualise it, and develop a methodology by which to articulate it such that the modern analytic thinker, and a general audience, can understand (or no longer deny it).
The whole discovery process has been a recursive psychological process of discovery and synthesis (Hegelian); the best analogy is seeing glimpses of a landscape through the fog; unfocused pieces of a larger picture, finding a way to connect different pieces into a coherent structure, and then bringing a fuzzy picture it into increasingly sharper focus, and discerning different layers within it. The philosophical methodology and the thesis statement have been the last pieces of the puzzle to come clear, only after most the understanding is already clear. A process that has taken many years, from self-discovery, self-inquiry, zero understanding of philosophy to intensive immersion, approximately 50k research notes, and a recursive writing process of over 750k words to refine into an increasing concise, coherent and communicable form.
You cannot imagine how frustrating it is to understand a complex picture, yet lack the words to communicate it such that another can understand, and no-one willing to listen or help make it coherent, and cognitive dissonance when trying to approach those who claim to appreciate wisdom, or claim to be looking to the future.
Complementary approaches
The ideal is that philosophers can recognise the historical precedent and hence proactively recognise the parallel with modern philosophy, and so choose a more enlightened, complementary approach, from both inside and outside the tradition, and choose to work together towards a common goal.
More likely it will require proof before they accept it, that is, if they don’t appropriate it first. Yet, wisdom is not merely in the knowledge produced, i.e. the proof, but the complex understanding that underlies it; knowledge is a specialised and communicable form that underdetermines the wisdom that produced it.
Meta-Revolution
Modern philosophy is an unconscious system, lacking depth or complexity, and self-reinforcing unable to progress. It is the ontological foundation of western culture, and the reason the west also fails to progress.
Progress can be demonstrated in philosophy first, to explain and solve problems now manifest within culture (problems created by simplistic modern thinking, and which modern thinking cannot solve).
So what’s the plan?
I have no idea of how to publish or promote this work; until complete it doesn’t speak it’s meaning, and is only now becoming coherent and sufficiently conceptualised such that I can communicate it.
I have included an introductory abstract, research proposal, and some early writing samples that communicate some aspects of the structure, the scope and the implications of the research in the writing section of this webpage.
The initial chapters communicate the structure, methodology and scope of the research, states its conclusions as hypotheses to be tested, and the methodological approach of the remaining thesis that will serve to test their truth status of the hypotheses, provides an underlying theory of explain them, along with empirical evidence to lend support to the stated underlying theory, and the implications that follow from it.
The thesis will conclude with a political manifesto for change, as the foundation for the next phase of progress as a culture and a species; a shift from modern analytic thinking, and egocentric, closed system understanding to an open system of understanding, and progress in self-understanding.
Philosophy; as a higher order science
A proof is merely descriptive account of what it is to be wise, and how one achieves it, sufficient to satisfy the intellect. To actually achieve it requires that one learn how to use the subconscious to make discoveries and resolve contradictions, and become sufficiently skilled in this hegelian mode of dialectical thinking, to deconstruct the rigid pathways of one’s thinking into a more systemic mode of thinking, and then deconstruct the logical structure of one’s knowledge into a coherent form of systemic understanding. By adopting a more objective perspective on one’s interpretation of experience, one can then adopt a scientific approach to experience using feedback to test one’s understanding, and so undertake a revolutionary journey in self-understanding to discover more about the true nature of oneself, others, etc. This is the royal science that Hegel described.
Thesis Structure
A Historical parallel: Modernity and Modern science
I tell a story of modern science, identify common patterns within recent history, and so rationally reconstruct an objective historical narrative.
The limits of classical science and the limits of modernity
Discovering a more complex reality
An incommensurable challenge to the intellectual collective
Discovery of what is missing
Reconciliation within a more complex whole; a more complex ontology
Inferences from recurring history
In order to understand the historical parallel, it is necessary to explain the different scales at which these recurring patterns occur, and the different orders of complexity. Accordingly, and as introduction to the philosophy that follows, some necessary adductive inferences can be stated at the outset. For example, self-similar patterns at different scales implies a fractal structure to reality. These inferences from the historical narrative are stated as premises, yet will be inferred from further evidence later in the argument.
Understanding methodology, complexity, understanding, and process
Again, by way of introduction to further thesis, I present a brief methodological description, and a brief methodology demonstration by way of illustration with examples; a contextual and experiential understanding of complexity, understanding and the process of understanding.
Metaphilosophy
An overview of the contrary approach to philosophy; an argument from phenomena, an objective, coherent system of philosophy, and foundation for progress as a culture. Explanation of a scientific approach to philosophy.
A brief introduction to the process of understanding, and the process by which understanding can be facilitated;
Understanding and compassion: speak to collective uncertainty and scepticism, and provide reasons to believe.
The process of understanding: Inspire intrigue, highlight patterns within experience, provide a coherent system of explanation, acceptable by one’s own authority, and makes more coherent sense of what one already believes one knows.
A more coherent understanding; makes more sense of what we collectively believe we know
A historical retrospective: collective historical experience reframed from a new ontological perspective.
A retrospective self-awareness: from a new paradigm perspective, it is necessary to take ownership of mistakes we made, and so can make amends.
A Contextual Understanding of Science
I provide a contextual definition of science, and through application of the same logic, demonstrate its wider applicability across a greater breadth of domains of inquiry.
A Scientific philosophy
identifying cultural phenomena that philosophy fails to explain, discovery within the history of science, achieving complementary progress in philosophy, explanation as inference to simplest explanation, explanation of phenomena.
Experimental Confirmation
A practical demonstrating of the process of understanding, and realisation of the same. Of course, modernity ends via an act of appropriation; you can bring conscious to philosophy, but self-awareness comes in retrospect.
Yet, this demonstrates a more enlightened revolution; simultaneously from within the old tradition, and also from outside.
Modernity is already over; it now just needs to be made public; emergent into collective consciousness.
Philosophical Science
A reconciliation of philosophy and science; putting humanity back into our understanding of reality.
Trascending Modernity; a vision of cultural progress
The modern West is an unconscious system; one insensitive to feedback from the environment, resists attempts at progress and adapts to changing circumstance only to stay the same. It is an unconscious system heading towards disaster and which cannot change its direction.
I challenge the ontology of the Modern West, present a more complex, coherent foundation and construct a progressive, self-aware cultural framework upon it.
I present the necessity for a leadership class, committed to the process of inquiry, progress in understanding, complexity of understanding and cultivation of wisdom. This provides a missing, necessary complementary force to intervene when the system becomes unbalanced, to provide a negative feedback effect and brinmaintain homeostasis. make homeostatic balance.
This necessitates a separation of capital and power as complementary forces that must be kept in balance; an engine to drive progress and a wise hand to steer it.
A Polemic on Modernity
Modernity has been defined by conscious individuals acting in their own individual self-interest. Yet, the system itself is unconscious, driven by the unconscious forces over time of which the system is unaware; these manfiest self-reinforcing positive feedback effects that destabilise the system, and drives the system unconsciously towards a final end.
I conclude by providing evidence to support the conclusions the end of modernity meets sufficient criteria to meet the definition of hell.