Page Text: Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Cutting Through the Jargon
This post is inspired by a comment left on my previous pos t by blogger and thinker Al Fin . I decided to make it a post instead of just a comment because it opens up some interesting conversation about different methodologies of scientific investigation and other fun stuff.
As Al points out I am a philosopher by training and so I will try to elucidate a bit on the mission of the organization I linked to in the last post and hopefully cut through some of the jargon.
Before I directly attempt a translation of the quotes below I will explain a bit about things you should know when trying to read philosophy. First, just as in any discipline, there are a plethora of philosophical traditions and branches of study , etc. It would be very helpful to have some knowledge of the history of philosophy – more so than in other disciples. About two hundred years ago there arose somewhat of a bifurcation in the western tradition of philosophy. This split was between continental Europe and the English speaking world. These somewhat separated traditions are usually referred to as continental and analytic philosophy (though this separation is not really that tidy). In General continental philosophy has tended to be more concerned with questions of ethics, philosophical anthropology, political philosophy, and ontology; while the Anglo-phonic analytic philosophers were/are concerned almost exclusively with epistemology which includes mathematical logic, scientific methodology, and philosophy of language. Though both of these traditions share a lot of thinking and both draw on the same historical cannon of philosophers they are really quite different in many ways. So whenever one is going to be reading some philosophy one should first try to ascertain from what tradition the philosopher is writing. In the case of the organization I linked to these philosophers are from continental Europe and so one should understand that their manner of speaking and the jargon they use will almost certainly be unfamiliar (sometimes in an intentionally obscurantist manner unfortunately).
The second thing that anyone reading philosophy should understand is the principle of charity . The principle of charity is a way of reading a philosopher. The basic idea is simply that whenever one is reading another thinker one should assume that the thinker is intelligent and has something meaningful to say (even if this isn't quite always the case).
So with both those things in mind I will elaborate on the following first stated objective:
"To contribute to a single and comprehensive transdisciplinary scientific research programme forinvestigating self-organization by elaborating selected epistemological, ontological and axiological implications, thus attempting at unifying the scattered approaches in the so-called non-linear science of complexity"
First the organization is stating that they are attempting to unify the science of non-linear complexity. Presumably they say “so called” science because it has not yet been unified and so cannot really be called a science yet. Now the manner in which they are attempting this unification is through investigating the phenomenon of self-organization (such as the process of biological evolution) through a method of examining certain implications of self-organization for the historical subjects of western philosophy (epistemology, ontology, axiology).
Briefly I will explain what this might entail as a research program. First it is an attempt to bring together the traditional studies of the humanities and the sciences into a unified whole by applying the scientific and experimental conclusions of what we know about self-organizing systems to traditional questions of philosophy. The traditional questions of philosophy fall under thee categories that each have many sub categories. The first category is epistemology . Epistemology asks what knowledge is and how it is possible. Some of the sub categories include philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logics, mathematical logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, etc. Now there are at least two very important examples of self-organization that have the power to really illuminate epistemology in a way that has never before been possible. These two examples are the self organization of the human brain and the self organization and evolution of planet earth's biosphere (human evolution in particular). For instance both evolutionary psychology and cognitive science are disciplines that inform us about the traditional problems of epistemology and this could be advanced even further by really understanding how both the human brain and mankind as a whole are self-organizing systems. Next is ontology . Ontology asks what exists, or what is being, or what is real. The science of cosmology studies one big self-organizing system – the cosmos. When studying the cosmos scientists must understand how everything in the cosmos interrelates, from the smallest things to the largest things, in order too understand how the cosmos is developing and what “it” is. Is the universe ultimately indivisible particles and space as Newton thought? Is it quanta of energy, or two dimensional strings existing in a many-dimensional space, or is it merely the interrelation of ultimate forces? Or perhaps information is the most real “substance”. At any rate it seems very likely that applying what we know about self-organizing systems to ontology is likely to yield some answers.
Finally we come to axiology . Axiology asks what value or quality is. This is closely related to the question of what consciousness is and is related to ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. Understanding what consciousness or mentality is has alluded both philosophers and scientists for centuries and is considered to be a holy grail by many in both camps (and many have made pretensions of having answers). Some examples of how an understanding of self-organizing systems could be applied to axiology are (1) how the brain is organized to create consciousness, (2) how society is a self-organizing system and (3) how the self-organizing system of biological evolution has effected what we consider to be of value, and (4) how the organization and evolution of the cosmos may shed light on what is actually of value.
Now for the second objective:
“To contribute to a scientific understanding of the "feedback-loop" of human action and reflection in a historical moment in which the destiny of the world system is at stake”
This objective appears to be rooted in the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics .
Phenomenology is concerned with interpreting the world as it is presented to the consciousness and is a descendent's of both the philosophies of Descartes and Kant. Hermeneutics is concerned with the interpretation of the phenomena as akind of text(I realize that this just seems like more confusing jargon but if you are interested you can always turn to Google).
Now what this objective is stating is an understanding that at every moment the future is determined by present action and that present action arises from how we understand the present and the past (this is known as a heurmenutical circle and is also a problem in the philosophy of science). So this is just a fancy hermeneutical way of saying that they are interested in contributing to a more accurate understanding how mankind understands himself so as to greater empower man to direct his own future.
If anyone still has any questions or would like to further discuss these ideas feel free to comment.