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The Wealth Pies of Plato’s Library
No full textThis letter discusses a method of thinking about economics in terms of mutual information, and modeling economic progress as a process of increasing mutual information with transcendent knowledge. This provides a way of understanding market growth in terms of Shannon's doubling rate
Implications of Two Opposing Variations of Neutral Theory
Get PDFThis letter discusses the difference between neutral theory as an observation of present evolutionary dynamics compared to neutral theory as a more-or-less comprehensive theory of evolution. The letter suggests that prior information, not neutral evolution itself, creates the patterns in the genome in ways that make the dynamics described by neutral theory possible in modern organisms
Creativity and Machines
No full textSome philosophical problems can be analyzed by creating mathematical analogues which can be analyzed more rigorously. Even when different classes of causation are theoretically capable of producing the same results, a combination of information theory and probability theory can be used to analyze the relative probabilities of each class of cause. In this case, the halting problem is leveraged to show that certain classes of causes are more likely to produce certain classes of results
Philosophical Shortcomings of Methodological Naturalism and the Path Forward
No full textMethodological naturalism, when used to enforce an exclusive view of scientific investigation, is based on three problematic streams of philosophy: mechanical philosophy, positivistic epistemology, and divine incomprehensibility. Each of these philosophies has inherent flaws that prevent them from being usable across the entirety of causal relationships that science attempts to investigate. However, even in the face of such criticisms, methodological naturalism as a methodology does have some positive features that should be retained even if methodological naturalism itself is not
Psychology
No full textAt present there is no explanation for the Mind/Brain relationship. It is hard to conceive of mentalistic explanations in terms of mechanistic explanations, where mechanistic explanations refer to explanations common in the sciences such as neurophysiological and computational, and mentalistic explanations are based on the individual's inner world such as will, belief, intention, and purpose. And, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive explanation of behavior and its components by an appeal to mechanistic explanations only. Therefore, it makes sense to develop a new methodological approach, Methodological Dualism, which leads to the construction of a Multi-Explanation Framework for developing specific psychological theories. This approach is not based on the usual attempt to reduce mental processes to neurophysiological processes. It addresses complex behavior by means of multiple explanations (mechanistic and mentalistic), which are appropriately matched to behavior and its components. This approach offers a deeper understanding of behavior than that provided by mechanistic explanations alone
Design as a Criterion of Demarcation
No full textMethodological naturalism, though inexplicit in the denial of purpose, operates exclusively under the tenets of ontological naturalism and, therefore, proceeds only by way of the empirical and naturalistic. A more neutral epistemology is less presumptive and would allow science to flourish without the strictures of such a philosophical commitment. The task of divorcing science from methodological naturalism requires the abandonment of the idea that the structure of knowledge, or justified belief, requires no epistemic foundation (Neurath, 1959) and that inferential justification possess a uniquely superior epistemic status in the sciences than that which is non-inferentially known. As I see it, the persistent problem of science, and thus the criterion of demarcation that undergirds it, is two-fold. First, it is assumed that only inferential knowledge is genuinely justified, and second, that theories must be, at the very least, theoretically falsifiable.
In this paper, I intend to provide a criterion of demarcating science that is practical and heuristically useful to spur scientific progress. My proposition does not presuppose the causal powers of chance and necessity. Instead, it forces the scientist to appreciate the ontological characteristics of nature and to leave the question of causation completely open, thereby, avoiding the pitfalls that ontological naturalism, and its faithful ally, methodological naturalism, habitually impose on science
Applied Theology
No full textHow can one know the capability of one's measuring tools without an external calibration source and an absolute frame of reference to provide a basis for what one is considering? Looking at these kinds of questions, this paper introduces the claim that theological method can be useful in science. It discusses the research being done to address these kinds of questions, summarizes the general approach being used, and points out preliminary observations
Methodological Naturalism and Its Creation Story
No full textThe objective of this paper is to survey how science, when aligned to materialist philosophy through methodological naturalism, answers questions about the origins of some of the entities that present the highest interest to science. It will discuss the elements of the materialist origins narrative and how successful these elements are in providing support for the exceptional claim of materialism: that everything (meaning among other things, life, living organisms of all sorts, brains, our solar system, our Earth, minds and consciousness) "``can be explained as manifestation or result of matter." The paper analyzes the nature and the internal complexity of living organisms through the use of the concept of machines