Category: Epistemology and Method

WORKING ON DEFINING PHILOSOPHY

I have been working on defining philosophy (because like truth, it wasn’t defined before).

And you know, there are a few ways to approach it: western philosophy (argumentative methodology) or philosophy in all cultures (multiple argumentative methodologies). And whether the philosophy is literary and imaginative (possibilities), escapist (most), a form of assistance(sinic), or problem solving (western).

And what constitutes truth in each methodology – which differs dramatically from civilization to civilization.

Now, I’m going to say that philosophy is to reason what apperception is to consciousness: the re-measuring of all related relations in response to the new measure provided by the new information. In other words: recursive recalculation in response to new measurements.

The difference being that while cognition and apperception are continuous autonomic processes, reason and philosophy are guided processes, in which we devote (concentrate) resources (mental) to achieve desired ends.

This is, I think, the correct description of the processes of reason and philosophy.

Reason measures. Philosophy seeks commensurability of new ideas to old Ideas and refactors old ideas recursively as a consequence.

At this point we should see the general union of neurology, computer science, and information: commensurability that makes judgment (comparison) possible.

Western philosophy differs in its analytic (deconflated) versus synthetic (conflated) method of reasoning.

The categories of philosophy form an expanding hierarchy:

– existence (actionability)

– epistemology (knowledge)

– truth (testimony)

– ethics and morality (cooperation in production )

– politics (cooperation in production of commons )

– group evolutionary strategy (competition against other groups)

– aesthetics (means of associating emotions with principles that advance all of the above)

And we make use of a hierarchy of argument types:

– reason

– rationalism (non-contradiction)

– logic (internal consistency)

– empiricism (external correspondence)

– operationalism (existential possibility)

– voluntarism (moral possibility)

And we make use of a hierarchy of measurements

– identity (category)

– counting (measurement)

– arithmetic (operations)

– mathematics (sets)

– geometry (space)

– calculus (change)

– post-euclidian calculus (logical rather than physical relations)

And we practice different fields:

– physical science(s)

– cooperative science(s)

– informational science(s)

– aesthetic science(s).

(and we conflate these fields as needed to produce goods, services, and information)

And we conduct these arguments using different languages and methods appropriate to each of the classes. And each language places greater demand on the individual’s ability to reason.

So my view of philosophy proper is an analytic deconflated process by which we recursively render commensurable the full range of stimuli from the most primitive to the most complex.

Everything else I would tend to describe as moral literature, or literary law.

I don’t see philosophy proper anywhere other than in the west and a touch of it in the east.

What I see is analogies to philosophy proper, that we have no names for, but can be decomposed into the forms of conflation that they use, across fields, measurements, and argument types.