(Hanna, 2024)
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Why Read Science for Humans? —A Plea for Speculative and Value-Laden Philosophy of Science
Here’s the back-cover blurb for my book, Science for Humans: Mind, Life, The Formal-&-Natural Sciences and A New Concept of Nature:
This book presents and defends an original and paradigm-shifting conception of formal science, natural science, and the natural universe alike, that’s fully pro-science, but at the same time neither theological or God-centered, nor solipsistic or self-centered, nor communitarian or social-institution-centered, nor scientistic or science-valorizing, nor materialist/physicalist or reductive, nor—above all—mechanistic. It does this by presenting and defending what Robert Hanna calls the neo-organicist turn, including manifest realism and the three sub-parts of metaphysical organicism: liberal naturalism, mind-life continuity, and explanatory inversion, whereby mechanical systems are explained by grounding them in organic systems, and not the other way around. Or more briefly and simply put, the purpose of this book is to present and defend science for humans. As such, it will be highly interesting and profoundly relevant to graduate students and specialist researchers in philosophy and the formal-&-natural sciences. (Hanna, 2024)
And here’s the Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
A Note on References to Kant’s Works
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Mind is a Form of Animal Life: The Essential Embodiment Theory Now
2.0 Introduction
2.1 The Essential Embodiment Theory Briefly and Compactly Re-Presented and Re-Motivated
2.2 Three Later Significant Elaborations and Extensions of The Essential Embodiment Theory: Natural Libertarianism, The Neo-Organicist Worldview,
and The Metaphysics of Liberal Naturalism
2.3 One Cheer, But Only One, For Analytic Panpsychism
2.4 Concluding Semi-Autobiographical Quasi-Whiteheadian Postscript
Chapter 3. Physics For Humans: Kant, Physics, and The Neo-Aristotelian Natural Power Grid
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Kant’s Theory of Physics Revisited
3.2 Kant’s Neo-Aristotelian Natural Power Grid
3.3 Conclusion
Chapter 4. The Incompleteness of Logic, The Incompleteness of Physics, and the Primitive Sourcehood of Rational Human Animals
4.0 Introduction
4.1 From Gödel to Physics 1: Definitions
4.2 From Gödel to Physics 2: Logico-Mechanical Incompleteness and Physico-Mechanical Incompleteness
4.3 From Incompleteness to Creativity
4.4 Conclusion
Chapter 5. Frame-by-Frame: How Early 20th Century Physics Was Shaped by Brownie Cameras and Early Cinema
5.0 Introduction
5.1 Special and General Relativity Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and The Representation –> Represented Fallacy
5.2 John Locke’s Big Idea
5.3 The Cosmic Moviola and The Representatio–>Represented Fallacy
5.4 Conclusion
Chapter 6. How to Complete Quantum Mechanics, Or, What It’s Like To Be A Naturally Creative Bohmian Beable
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Some Definitions
6.2 A “New Idea” About Quantum Mechanics
6.3 An Experimental Argument Using My “New Idea” About Quantum Mechanics
6.4 Conclusion
Chapter 7. Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism
7.0 Introduction
7.1 Some Definitions and Glosses
7.2 The Moderate Anthropic Principle
7.3 Conclusion
Chapter 8. A Neo-Organicist Approach to Formal Science: The Case of Mathematical Logic
8.0 Introduction
8.1 What is Strong Supervenience?
8.2 Formal Systems and Rational Human Mindedness
8.3 Computability and Uncomputability
8.4 The Hierarchy of Formal Systems
8.5 Conclusion
Chapter 9. A Neo-Organicist Approach to The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem and “Skolem’s Paradox”
9.0 Introduction
9.1 The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem
9.2 Explaining Away “Skolem’s Paradox”
9.3 Conclusion
Chapter 10. How To Solve Zeno’s Paradox of Motion Without Supertasks
10.0 Introduction
10.1 The Problem of the Continuum and the Neo-Organicist Worldview
10.2 A Neo-Organicist Theory of Real Motion
10.3 A Derivation of Motion in The Parasitic Sense
10.4 Conclusion
Chapter 11. Sensible Set Theory
11.0 Introduction
11.1 Kant’s Theory of Sensibility in Nutshell, and Manifest Realism
11.2 An Argument For The Core Thesis of Sensible Set Theory
11.3 Conclusion
Chapter 12. Neo-Organicism and The Rubber Sheet Cosmos
12.0 Introduction: From The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics To The No-Leveled Scalar Dynamic World Picture
12.1 From The No-Layered Scalar Dynamic World Picture to The Rubber Sheet Cosmos
12.2 The Rubber Sheet Cosmos
12.3 Partners of Gravity: How We Move Our Own Bodies
12.4 Conclusion: A Plea For Speculative and Value-Laden Philosophy of Science
Chapter 13. A Philosophical Case For Holding That The Second Law of Thermodynamics is Only a Special Law of Nature, and Not a Universal Law
13.0 Introduction
13.1 Entropy and Negentropy, With a Dash of Isentropy
13.2 Schrödinger’s Two-Part Explanatory Hard Problem, and A Six-Part Counterproposal
13.3 An Illuminatingly Different and Highly Compact Five-Step Argument That The Second Law of Thermodynamics is Not a Universal Law of Nature
13.4 Conclusion
Chapter 14. The Epiphenomenality of Natural Mechanical Systems and The Salvation of Everyday Objects
14.0 Introduction: The Epiphenomenality of Natural Mechanical Systems
14.1 My Answer to Q1, in a Nutshell
14.2 A Real-World Example: How a Steam Engine Works
14.3 Proving My View
14.4 Another Real-World Example: Eddington’s Three Tables
14.5 Conclusion: The Salvation of Everyday Objects
Chapter 15. The Attunement Thesis and Cosmic Dignitarianism
15.0 Introduction
15.1 Manifest Realism and The Non-Isomorphism Problem
15.2 How To Solve The Non-Isomorphism Problem: The Attunement Thesis
15.3 The Incredible Shrinking Thinking Man, Or, Cosmic Dignitarianism
15.4 Conclusion
Chapter 16. Human Rationality, Consciousness, and Cosmology
16.0 Introduction
16.1 The Circularity of Human Rationality
16.1.1 Human Rationality and its Problems
16.1.2 The Fully Generalized and Strengthened Logocentric Predicament, And What To Do About It
16.1.3 The Axiocentric Predicament, And What To Do About It
16.1.4 The Good or Virtuous Circularity of Human Rationality
16.2 The Psychocentric Predicament,The Impossibility of Any and Every Hard Science of Consciousness, and Soft Sciences of the Mind
16.2.1 The Ratiocentric Predicament and The Psychocentric Predicament
16.2.2 Cognitive Neuroscience and Pseudoscience
16.2.3 On The Impossibility of Any and Every Hard Science of Consciousness
16.2.4 Cognitive Neuroscience Within its Proper Bounds
16.2.5 On Soft Sciences of the Mind
16.3 Is Consciousness a Fifth Fundamental Force?
16.4 Consciousness and Top-Down Cosmology
16.5 A Brief History of the Discovery that Consciousness is the Fifth Fundamental Force
16.6 Conclusion
INDEX
As such, Science for Humans is clearly and distinctly an investigation in what Joel Katzav and Krist Vaesen aptly call speculative and value-laden philosophy of science, which, as they’ve persuasively argued, was systematically marginalized by post-classical Analytic philosophers of science and also by many formal and natural scientists heavily influenced by them, in the mechanistic, scientistic tradition of the exiled Vienna Circle logical empiricists/positivists, during the 1950s (Katzav and Vaesen, 2022)—and, in fact, also through the end of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century, right up to 6am this morning.
So, in effect, precisely the kind of speculative and value-laden philosophy of science that I’ve presented and defended in this book—see also, for example (Nagel, 2012)—is streng verboten (i.e., “strictly forbidden”) and highly apt to be strangled in its intellectual cradle, by the undead social-institutional dead hand of the Vienna Circle.
Prime examples of such speculative and value-laden philosophizing are chapter 12 and chapter 15.
In chapter 12, I argue that the affirmation and recognition that complementarity, entanglement, and nonlocality pervade manifest natural reality at all basic scales finally enables us to reject the paradoxically problematic layered world picture, characteristic of metaphysical materialism or physicalism, and also part-&-parcel of the mechanistic worldview, and replace it with the inherently non-paradoxical, non-problematic, and original and paradigm-shifting no-layered scalar dynamic world picture that’s part-&-parcel of what I call the rubber sheet cosmos. And in chapter 15, I argue for I call the attunement thesis, which says that all the formal and natural sciences are grounded in the metaphysics of weak or counterfactual transcendental idealism, and that the primary source of epistemic evidence for this grounding is our essentially non-conceptual, disinterested, and pure aesthetic experience of natural beauty. In sections 15.1 and 15.2, I argue (i) that the attunement thesis is true, and (ii) that unless the formal sciences and the natural sciences—principally, logic, mathematics, physics, and biology—(iia) were to acknowledge the truth of the attunement thesis and also (iib) were to incorporate the attunement thesis into their respective repertoires of foundational a priori principles, then those sciences would be metaphysically alienated from manifest natural reality, with nothing for those sciences to be either meaningful about or true of. Then in section 15.3, building on the attunement thesis, I argue for a second thesis I call cosmic dignitarianism.
If these unorthodox and “untimely” ideas and lines of reasoning are wrong, then at the very least they’re interestingly and greatly wrong, and might inspire someone else to do truly original, paradigm-shifting work. Hence there should be a legitimate place for them in contemporary philosophical and scientific space.
But if I’m right and Vienna-Circle-heavily-influenced, post-positivist, mechanistic, scientistic philosophy of science is wrong, then in the near future there will be an Überwindung (i.e., an “overcoming,” just as the Vienna Circle proposed to overcome metaphysics) of precisely this kind of philosophically and scientifically repressive and retrograde dogmatism in the philosophy of science and in the formal and natural sciences alike, and above all, a new Kuhnian paradigm shift (see, e.g., Kuhn, 1970), the paradigm shift to end all Kuhnian paradigm shifts, the mother of all Kuhnian paradigm shifts, The Big Kahuna of all Kuhnian paradigm shifts, and the alpha-&-omega of all Kuhnian paradigm shifts: namely, the not only figuratively earthshaking but also quite literally cosmos-stretching neo-organicist revolution. When formal and natural science finally become science for humans, that progressive revolutionary longjump will not only figuratively but also quite literally change the world.
REFERENCES
(Hanna, 2024). Hanna, R. Science for Humans: Mind, Life, The Formal-&-Natural Sciences, and A New Concept of Nature. Berlin: Springer Nature. Available online in preview HERE.
(Katzav and Vaesen, 2022). Katzav, J. and Vaesen, K. “The Rise of Logical Empiricist Philosophy of Science and the Fate of Speculative Philosophy of Science.” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of the Philosophy of Science. Available online HERE.
(Kuhn, 1970). Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edn., Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.
(Nagel, 2012). Nagel, T. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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