Discovering a Philosophy of Science

            Growing up in rural Ohio and being the youngest of three children, I was exposed to a set of rather unique circumstances that has in at least some ways led to my current philosophical purview. I can remember spending much of my time either at my grandmother’s house—she lived right next door—working on puzzles; playing scrabble; watching Matlock, MacGyver, and Murder She Wrote; or being outdoors exploring the seemingly endless woods. The neighbors on the other side had a dog kennel while the neighbors across the road were an older couple named the Kovach’s. Mr. Kovach was a veteran and what could likely be considered a master craftsman. He was almost always working on something in his garage that was set up for woodworking. My father worked for the telephone company and was also frequently working on or building something. One of the things I helped with for most of my life was baling hay. My family was heavily involved in the 4H program and the county fair so I was generally around hard-working people that cared about teaching young people how to self-sustain. I was never forced to attend church so my thought processes weren’t restricted to unnecessary, untenable claims and unquestionable truths. It left my mind mostly open to explore the workings of the world free from the threat of eternal damnation—something I find utterly ridiculous now. But, it wasn’t until I began my college endeavor almost 8 years ago that I realized I knew very little about the world and that the philosophy I had grown up with—certainly worthwhile in several aspects—was still rather flawed. Interestingly, it was outside of school where I was introduced to the lifework of a man that quickly piqued my interest: Jacque Fresco. And it was then, in 2009, that I began to seriously consider examining a philosophical outlook by which to live. Much of my general decision-making since that time has been influenced by the countless hours I spent watching interviews of and listening to lectures given by Fresco. Therefore, it is safe to say that I have arrived at a philosophy, which I will attempt to explain below, by aligning my values, as far as I have been capable, with those of Mr. Fresco.

            Perhaps the most controversial concept that I have grown to embrace—the one that is certainly most difficult for people to even consider as plausible—is that of a global society that transcends the supposed necessity of an economic model based upon money. I’ve come to realize that the immediate rejection of this idea is easily understood as normal to us since everyone currently living on the planet, regardless of social status or geographic location, has known only a monetary based economic system and others like it. (Of course, it’s ridiculous because there can only be a system based upon money…right?!) But history is replete with instances proving that normal isn’t always correct. As Fresco states₁, “Everybody once believed the Earth was flat, but that didn’t make it so.” However, it should be noted that taking the idea of going against the norm to one extreme can also lead to the pockets of people nowadays that still believe the Earth is flat despite having an abundance of readily-accessible evidence and the ability to easily produce even more by performing their own version of an experiment Eratosthenes developed over 2000 years ago! And just as those people staunchly believe the Earth is flat and NASA is just a conspiracy mill churning out endless streams of CGI videos and pictures made in Photoshop, virtually the entire human population of Earth staunchly believes that economies are just not possible without some form of money or bartering. Lest we forget our massive technological achievements! Lest we forget that we were exposed to no other types of systems! To me, this is utterly bad science. But, what would a good philosophy of science say of such concepts as money? How would such a philosophy address several key issues such as experimentation, ethics, and asking the right questions?

            I feel that a good philosophy of science should become completely detached from the idea of monetary economics. While I admit that money is in some ways a motivator of human behavior in our current society, it certainly is not the only possible one; nor can it be called the best since we haven’t fully and exclusively implemented any others to test outcomes. In today’s economy, nothing happens unless the movement of money occurs. Nothing! This means that any type of scientific exploration must survive a gauntlet of investment-related inquiry to be even remotely considered a worthy endeavor. In other words, funding, in a significant, perhaps unsettling, way, now dictates the direction of discovery. In my opinion, science should lead the economy—not the other way around. That is, anything that can be automated should be automated as quickly as possible. This has not been the case since displacing workers through automation without a replacement for income would cause the house of cards that is the current economic model to collapse. And if something is designed to better our lives, through mechanisms of the current economic model, such as intrinsic obsolescence, it is technically impossible for the final product to be the best, most efficient, most reliable product. The system itself will not allow it since a company must remain competitive and cannot do so by utilizing the most state-of-the-art designs, technology, and materials. Frankly, it would cost too much to be profitable—which, by the way, is the only real motivation of the current economic model. Irrespective of the amount of resources we have available on this planet, the motivation for companies has been to continually grow and produce more. But how can infinite growth happen on a finite planet? Simply, it cannot. So, the practice of monetary exchange is far more inhibitive, wasteful, and dangerous than it is motivating. Without the constraints of an unnecessary exchange medium, we could be freed from pointless, mundane “occupations”—most of which only exist as a direct consequence of a monetary system itself.

Fig. 1: A graphic from the site www.thevenusproject.com₂.

Sparing a long exploration of the transition to a moneyless society, which is far beyond the scope of this paper, the underlying philosophy of what Fresco calls a Resource Based Economy is based upon ideas and technologies we already have available to us today. In fact, we’ve had most of the technology required to manage such a society for about half a century. And that technology was developed through ongoing experimentation and improvement in design. But without money to influence the direction of research, as was undeniably the case up to now, how would we choose which experimental endeavors are worthwhile? The short answer is that no one chooses.

One of the most fascinating concepts that I learned from Fresco is that of arriving at solutions₃. Expanding on the concept of Figure 1, imagine that, rather than starting completely from scratch, we had all the knowledge and technology of our current society, but for one reason or another we also had the opportunity to develop a new method of social organization. What kinds of questions would we examine when money is no longer the dominant factor affecting all our decisions? First, the questions would shift from financial to practical concerns. For example, we might ask, “Do we have the resources and technical know-how?”, rather than, “Do we have the money?”, as Fresco has often suggested. Second, the questions regarding the ethics of scientific inquiry, discovery, and experimentation would be reexamined through a lens focusing on maintaining the environment which sustains us and the betterment of humankind (Figure 2). By reorienting our values in a manner that aligns with natural processes—for example, by recognizing factors such as carrying capacity before developing residential or industrial areas—we have the highest probability of maintaining a sustainable economic system for countless generations to come.

Fig. 2: Another graphic from The Venus Project website.

            In any economic model that embraces scientific discovery, a method of theoretical development and confirmation must be accepted for cumulative progress to occur. While some might argue that science, at least in some areas, fails to present a complete picture of the workings of the universe, this is easily dismissible both as a logical fallacy, i.e. argument from ignorance, and by the crucial aspects that set science apart from every other discipline, i.e. two requirements that must be fulfilled in order for something to be considered a valid and sound scientific theory: 1. The theory must present reproducible evidence; and, 2. The theory must be falsifiable. So, science doesn't strive to discover and present us "the truth". ("The truth" tends to be un-falsifiable so it begs the question, is there such a thing?) Science can only give us close approximations to what we understand about the universe at a given time. As we refine the apparatus we use to probe the events of our world and the universe, our understanding, of course, is also refined₄. However, we can never reach a state of 100% understanding about a given phenomenon. The result is an arguably irrelevant epistemological/linguistic quagmire—one I can accept and move on from since it is abundantly clear to me that the methods of modern science, which have built the world around us and expanded our knowledgebase exponentially, works. The question people get hung up on is whether it will continue to work tomorrow; and the next day; and so on. My answer? Who the hell cares? The questions we should be asking deal with feeding the population of Earth; providing energy to everyone; curing diseases; reducing unnecessary human suffering; things that matter here and now. Philosophy is a wonderful endeavor, but as with any intellectual pursuit, even the whole subject runs the risk of extremes stifling progress. A good philosophy of science would teach experimenters to recognize this danger and develop ways to avoid it.

            A good philosophy of science would teach us to immediately implement all current technology capable of feeding and providing clean, fresh drinking water to the entire human population; and do all we can to reduce human suffering across the globe as quickly as possible. This can begin today if we truly wanted. While theoretical models are beautiful and should be given credit when due, we have to test those theories. According to www.worldhunger.org₅, “the world produces enough food to feed everyone.” But, we don’t feed everyone. Poverty.com tells us that roughly 21,000 people starve to death daily₆. So, what’s the problem? Why aren’t we testing these data that tell us we can feed everyone? Clearly, our economic models and our general philosophy of science are experiencing some sort of disconnect. A good philosophy of science would recognize this and work to improve the system or reject it and develop a new system based upon all refined knowledge up to that point. (Knowledge, as I describe it, consists of aggregate data—all things that are and can be known.) It’s simply a matter of applying knowledge and technology that we already have. In my opinion, the defining characteristic of a good philosophy of science is that it, as Fresco says, enhances all human life.

I truly feel that we are living in the most pivotal point in humankind’s history. This is a bold statement that I will continue to make for the rest of my life since the range I have chosen to define as pivotal begins in the mid-1800s with the Second Industrial Revolution and will continue until around the mid-2100s. Three hundred years of exponential technological development; yet, what have we to say of our social values now that we are at the halfway point? We have so much potential as a species to build a truly magnificent civilization. Every great transition in the history of human thought was accompanied and possibly influenced by a technological revolution; that is, until the 20^th Century. Our technology quickly outpaced an evolution in social values and left us stuck in a sort of paradigm limbo. The clash of mostly-stagnant, traditional values with rapidly-updating technology has culminated in this extremely tumultuous, weird time that is the year 2017. We have more technical capabilities than ever before; yet, cling to outmoded and unnecessary concepts because they “make us feel good or special”. A final point a good philosophy of science addresses is that when dealing with evidence arrived at through repeated experimentation that may contradict our current understanding, our personal feelings toward the matter are mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately, this is perhaps the most difficult part to accept about what I feel is a good philosophy of science.  But, with time and through the application of known technologies by those that currently have the economic standing to do so (a long stretch, I admit), perhaps I will live to see the day that we at least lay the groundwork for a Resource Based Economy.

           

           

           

Works Cited

1.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

2.     https://www.thevenusproject.com/

3.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa45LRPJXG0

4.     This is from the first email I sent you dated January 18, 2017.

5.     http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/

6.     http://www.poverty.com/

Fiction & Reality Response Essay 2: Subjectivity, Perception, Language, and Subtlety

How is it that we take so much for granted as real in our everyday lives, when it is typically more complicated than that?

The fact that, in order to write this essay, I am staring into what has essentially become our technological oblivion, tapping a few buttons that I’ve practically memorized, and watching my thoughts manifest in a program—which, by the way, is translating, in some unseen, intangible yet very real realm, a constantly-updating stream of 1s and 0s into several successive higher-level languages and eventually into something called “Times New Roman” text set to a 12-pt size, double-spaced, on a two-dimensional screen that is capable of representing the three-dimensional “real world”, manufactured from multitudinous disparate materials brought together as the result of an extremely long, complex web of design, innovation, business transactions, and manual labor—speaks volumes about how much in our modern age we truly take for granted. (Eat your heart out, Proust!) Berger explains, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are” (p 9). With advertising and marketing agencies feeding us endless streams of mind-numbing “But wait, there’s more!” idiocy; telling us how disgusting our bodies look; how inadequate we are in the bedroom; how we will never amount to anything unless we get out there, unquestionably clock- in to the dictatorship for 40+ hours a week, and prostitute ourselves for money in whatever ways we morally rationalize to ourselves as acceptable so that we can buy all of the trinkets, planned obsolescence, and other wastes of precious, limited resources that will supposedly make our lives so much better; it’s no wonder people typically are just too inundated with distractions and perception manipulation to notice nuance nowadays.

Are there pragmatic reasons for doing so?

Of course! —There are pragmatic reasons for doing everything...right?

Are there consequences?

Cheesy philosophical jokes aside, by pragmatic standards, the idea of “consequence” is really just a description of our ongoing interaction with the paramount reality we all mutually experience. So, we call things choices and pat ourselves on our backs for being so very special and capable of making those choices; but we don’t realize, or perhaps refuse vehemently to realize, that none of those choices would exist were they not consequences of some earlier and earlier consequences—a possibly never-ending chain. In fact, none of us would exist by the same reasoning. Talk about consequences!

Why might it matter that we recognize what we take for granted?

In 1928, a book called Propaganda was released by Edward Bernays that was essentially the foundation for the highly influential sector of our world called public relations. In this book, Bernays describes the rather simple process of manipulating public opinion on large scales using regional and situational biases, nuance, and unrecognized consequences. Today, coupled with the ubiquity of the Internet, using these and several other techniques to manipulate public opinion has never been easier! Whereas Berger claims that the “camera isolated momentary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless” (p 18), the Internet—or more accurately our misuse of the Internet and perhaps all of our modern technology—has simply destroyed the idea of actually knowing things and replaced it with the idea of looking things up. In other words, knowledge of how to look things up has become a poor simulacrum of, and at the same time has successfully depreciated and supplanted, knowledge itself.

Perhaps the most irritating “argument” I hear tends to reference minimum wage and how some people apparently don’t deserve a living wage because they “flip burgers” or something— as if that should be viewed as a pejorative. (By living wage, I mean a wage that can allow one to afford to live without any assistance programs outside of reasonable extenuating circumstances.) At its core, the argument hinges on self-placement upon some imaginary hierarchical scale that only exists in the minds of those perpetuating it which basically states “Everyone must EARN what they get. No entitlements. No freebies...” and so on. Well, I love being the eradicator of unsubstantiated claims, so think about this: Just by being born in a so-called First World country in our modern age, you were GIVEN cell phones, automobiles, planes, interstate highways, healthcare systems, supermarkets, the Internet, and computers; clean, fresh water delivered right to your spigots; and lights at the flick of a switch (or even the clap of your hands). You got all of that and more and in fact expect it—and what did you contribute toward it? Nothing! Don’t feel bad, though—I didn’t do anything to contribute toward it either; but I certainly expect it. For, we are all entitled to the fruits of our predecessors’ innovations because that is the nature of innovation itself: To allow for the free flow of information so that others can build upon that information and perhaps better some aspect of our world with it. But, a dangerous situation manifests when people begin alienating others by using dehumanizing tactics: Social stratification. This idea is not just socially constructed; it is socially reinforced—fascinatingly, even within the lower echelons of the class system itself. In other words, no matter our place on the hierarchical scale, the assumption that classism even exists is taken for granted without exception. So, I suppose the question at this point is this: What kind of consequences will arise from our current actions and social organization on this planet considering we’re no longer captivated by our own experiences of the universe because we were duped into striving to live vicariously through and emulate other people’s experiences instead? 

Quaestio 2.0

     For centuries, Aristotle’s Function Argument has been one of the most hotly debated ideas in philosophy. In essence, in his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops the idea that humans have a particular function. And, it is within this function that the “good” resides in accordance with virtue. By virtue, Aristotle means a quality that makes one good at performing one’s function. As well, he narrows human function down to three possibilities: 1. the life of nutrition and growth; 2. the life of perception; and, 3. the active life of the element that has a rational principle. After ruling out the first two, he settles on the third as being peculiar to human beings. Essentially, this argument seems to be teleological in that it establishes a baseline for human function as being that which most closely approximates the lives of the gods. Moreover, the language used by Aristotle leads to ambiguity when defining the term function; i.e., it is often conflated with purpose. And, while it may be commonplace to synonymously interpret these terms, it is actually upon these subtle differences that Aristotle’s argument rests. In other words, describing an object’s function, i.e., how something does what it does, is much different than describing its purpose, i.e., what it does. Aristotle essentially spends the first nine chapters of the book fleshing out dismissals of popular conceptions of happiness, elaborate descriptions of human function, and explanations on why human function is important to our sense of moral virtue, only to, almost nonchalantly, wave his hand at all of it in chapter 10 by simply exclaiming that the happy life is “the contemplative life”. What makes the Function Argument itself so appealing to humans, however, is that it attempts not only to define our function but also to separate our function from that of all other forms of life that we know of by saying that it is through our rational activity, i.e., how we do what we do, that we are unique. Hence, the debate continues. So, how does the Function Argument hold up to scrutiny when compared to popular conceptions of happiness?

     One might claim that gaining a lot of money can lead to happiness. For instance, in at least the case of winning the lottery, by Aristotle’s standards the basic supposition is that one is acting in accordance with some rational principle. However, the odds are well known to be stacked so far against an individual as to be almost frivolous. Yet, millions of people still play—some even becoming so entranced by the delusion of the prospect of winning that they can be considered addicted, sometimes selling their houses and cars for it. But, there is no doubt that if they do win, they will be happy. For, they will have access to all of the things they believe will make them happy, even if it is temporary. So, are we to suppose that the purpose of a human being is to try to win and that the function is to try to win well? Is that rational?

     Happiness, another might argue, is doing what one loves to do. If one finds ultimate joy in knitting scarfs, but their scarfs are sights of horror to most in society, then, by the Function Argument, that person is not fulfilling their function since they did not knit the scarfs well. But, this is plainly ridiculous by the fact that they are happy irrespective of other people’s opinions. In fact, the knitter likely doesn’t even care about what their presupposed function is. And, it doesn’t matter whether people do like their scarfs; they are happy in any case when knitting them. In other words, the assumed function—to perform the purpose, in this case knitting, well—is irrelevant when determining happiness.

     Still others may offer the idea that the only way one might gain happiness is through their acceptance by others. For example, a guitar virtuoso obviously performs in an almost unparalleled manner; i.e., he plays the guitar well. However, if people ignore him, he may feel distanced, alone, and perhaps even depressed. Despite how well he plays the guitar, in itself, it does not equal happiness for him. Instead, it is only through others listening to his playing, buying his albums, and frequenting his shows, i.e., through their acceptance, that he feels happiness. So, is it reasonable to claim that being accepted well is how this virtuoso fulfills his function? Of course not! That would imply that his purpose is to be accepted by others. And, this leaves a rather large gap in the logic utilized here; i.e., what if he kills someone? Is it still his purpose to be accepted by others? Considering that neither is his function of playing guitar well conducive to happiness, it is obvious that the Function Argument breaks down here.

     The Function Argument, as Aristotle explains it, is fundamentally dependent upon his idea of virtues and how they essentially consist in the rational activity mentioned before. Admittedly, within the framework of Aristotle’s way of viewing virtues, purpose, and function, his Function Argument seems to be applicable in a number of circumstances. However, the entire argument obviously assumes that human beings have a function. Here, an elaborate dismantling of that assumption, i.e., one that could fill an entire book itself, will be forgone for its thesis. That is, I will simply state that there is nothing in nature that indicates humans have to have a purpose or a function, nor is there a wholly objective scale with which we can compare semantically ambiguous, relative, descriptive terminology, such as how well something is done by someone, effectively rendering the argument itself obsolete.

     Regarding money, the current socioeconomic paradigm is inextricably interlinked with a monetary/market system that almost no one bothers to learn about. Instead, we are forced into believing that we need money. Never mind where it comes from, what it represents, or whether it’s even relevant in our digital age. We are told that all we need to know is that we need money. Thus, the edifice of our all of our wants and the rest of our needs becomes a direct outgrowth of this indoctrinated, unsubstantiated claim; i.e., our wants, needs, and conceptions of happiness are artificially imposed. And this unfortunately continues mostly without question and with total obedience. So, can we really claim that when happenstance bestows a large sum of money upon someone that it automatically means they will be happy because they can go out and buy all of the crap that they have been bombarded with their entire lives by advertising agencies telling them that their life sucks unless they buy the latest, greatest whatever? How could it possibly be considered rational to partake in something so unreasonably, yet obviously, unfair?

     It seems reasonable at first to concede that doing what one loves undoubtedly leads to one’s happiness. However, a number of flaws become apparent when examining this claim, two of which will be outlined here. First, what if, as was the case with the lottery winner and perhaps all of society, the conceptions of what one loves as well as what one deems “happiness” have been imposed upon them. In other words, how is one supposed to know, say, without having experienced much in life, that what they view as love and happiness is accurate or objectively (that is, being as objective as we are capable of being) correct? Secondly, and this hinges on the first, what if someone loves to kill and eat babies, as Albert Fish once did?

     Finally, gaining happiness through the acceptance of others is essentially the same thing as having the concept of happiness imposed. But, this time one is actively seeking this type of imposition outright which seems to indicate they have lost any semblance of self-worth. In other words, they feel as though there is no possible way to bring into fruition self-induced happiness. So, what this amounts to is artificial, presupposed conceptions of happiness being readily accepted from others without question. But, when the fans leave, as in the case of the virtuoso, the happiness leaves with them. And so, he fails to recognize that the most powerful resource on the planet also happens to be the only thing conducive to true happiness—his own mind.