Levy's Program for Philosophy

(Note: This is the first post in a series of posts on restructuring the natural sciences, which I introduced in a previous post)

As I mentioned in the introductory post, I recognize that philosophy is not a physical science. That said, philosophy (particularly metaphysics and epistemology) forms the foundation of all work in physical sciences, so it must be included in an overall sweep of that field. This post will be more about the tools that should be used for the project than about examining the foundations of philosophy itself, although I will make some suggestions for progress.

Since this project is intended to take place within an Objectivist framework, the vast majority of this part of the plan will amount to "listen to Ayn Rand" (this does not make me a dogmatist; rather, I am acknowledging the context of these posts and the fact that I can't prove the entirety of a philosophy in a blog post, especially since others have already done the proving for me). In what follows, I divide philosophy up into the standard 5 fields:

Metaphysics: The best place I know of for a complete, in-depth presentation of a proper metaphysics would be the first few chapters of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (or OPAR). Some essential points for scientists are that:

• Existence exists. In other words, there is a world external to our consciousness, this world is real, and it is primary to and independent of our consciousness
• Everything that exists has a definite, specific identity. Unlike many Objectivists, however, I don't think this necessarily implies a universe with "finite" size or that the vacuum can be excluded on philosophical grounds. Similarly, as I expect to discuss in the physics part of this series, I don't think this necessarily rules out so-called "action at a distance".
  
• The purpose of consciousness is identification of reality. This is in contrast with creation (or destruction) of reality.
• Men have free will.

Epistemology: Primarily, an objective theory of concepts needs to be fully formulated. Using terms with an objective meaning would be a great boon to scientists and clear up much confusion for scientests and laypeople alike. The meat of this work has already been completed in Ayn Rand's masterful Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. That being said, however, I think the theory would benefit greatly from an in-depth fleshing-out, something like what Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics did for Rand's theory of ethics. Additionally, certain principles such as "Rand's Razor" and the classifications of certainty as found in OPAR need to be accepted.

Second, induction needs to be seen as the primary process in gaining knowledge (moving deduction to a secondary role). This is an implication of the fact that existence is primary: in essence, deduction is the process of applying ideas to concrete facts, while induction is the process of forming ideas from concrete facts (an oversimplification, but essentially correct). This requires a full theory of induction, an incomplete form of which is given in Dr. Peikoff's Induction in Physics and Philosophy lectures, which are currently being turned into book form (and hopefully expanded) in David Harriman's upcoming book The Inductive Method in Physics. Until the book is finished, I'll withhold further advice on this front.

Finally, since no one person can observe all the relevant data first-hand, a full theory of indirect knowledge needs to be developed. While the totality of my thoughts on this issue could take up a whole post (and may, in the future), for now I will include two principles that I think should apply:

• The rigor required in evaluating knowledge presented by others is dependent on how important the truth of that information is to your work/life
• Directly observed facts should be treated as innocent until proven guilty and the interpretation of those facts should be treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Ethics: Science should, in the larger scheme of things, be directed toward enhancing human life. An important implication of this is that theoretical science is not in any way "purer" than applied science. Any science which cannot be applied to something is ultimately meaningless (that application may be very indirect, however). This is not to say that an individual scientist can't devote his work to only theoretical science, but it does mean that that scientist should not look upon the applications of his work with disdain.

Another implication of the principle of enhancing human life is that science should not impose limits on itself that are not motivated by making life better for man. Examples of this include bans on stem-cell research, onerous restrictions on animal research, and conservationist limits that aren't motivated by the value of the nature being conserved to human life.

Politics: The role of politics in science boils down to two facts: people have rights to their own lives and property, and nothing else has a right to its own life or property. The first fact has two implications: on the positive side, anyone willing to participate in human research should be allowed to if the researcher wants the person in the study, and on the negative side, no one can be experimented on or have their property damaged by research without their permission. The second fact implies that non-human research should have no legal restrictions (although it would have moral ones) beyond the fact that the owners of affected entities (such as animals) give permission.

Aesthetics: While I do think there is a role for aesthetics in science, I currently don't have a basis for many suggestions. I will say that the general statement of what I consider the proper fundamental concepts and principles in art is laid out in Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto, and that I think the concept of "elegance" has some role in proper physical theories, though I'm not sure how to put this in objective terms.

I recognize that the preceding was very abstract, but this was by design. The primary purpose of this post was to outline the philosophy that will inform the following posts, not to discuss a restructuring of that philosophy (though I did make a few suggestions for progress). Therefore, the concrete examples will have to wait until I apply that philosophy to the next subject, mathematics.

Levy's Program for the Natural Sciences

In the 1920s, David Hilbert set out a challenge to himself and his fellow mathematicians that would become known as "Hilbert's Program". In essence, Hilbert's goal was metamathematical: to examine the whole of mathematics, from the base up, and to ensure the entire system had a logical, consistent foundation. While Hilbert's grand plan was a failure, and may have actually set mathematics back (I may explain why I think this is the case in a later post), thinking about it has inspired me to set out a similar plan. Being an ambitious man, however, my plan will encompass all of the theoretical natural sciences (of which I consider mathematics to be a particular example), and of course my plan will attempt to take an Objectivist approach at the issue, rather than a formalist approach as Hilbert took. Over my next few posts, I'll outline the specifics of my plan for each of the following fields, and may add more to each post as I gain more in-depth knowledge of the field:

Philosophy, particularly epistemology (not a physical science, but the foundation thereof)

Mathematics (as the science of measurement, definitely a member of the physical sciences)

Physics

Astronomy

Chemistry

Earth Sciences (geology, meterology, etc.)

Life sciences (general biology, neuroscience, theoretical medicine, epidemeology, etc.)

EDIT: I realize I forgot to say why I'm doing this. In essence, I think that scientists and mathematicians are putting a lot of effort into dead-ends (or at least inefficient ends). Additionally, I think a lot of what's put out as science isn't really science, and a lot of people (particularly laypeople) are being misled because this information has the prestige of SCIENCE.