Early Proposition on a New Metaphysics and Logics of Value Science for Life

1 Norm Hirst’s Propositions A New Metaphysics and Logics of Value Science for Life-Itself As edited by Skye Hirst - 7/15/11 From the first 24 years of TAI research, a beginning set of discoveries is now being published. This neoscience of the logos of life-itself is underway. Building on the initial 50 years of inquiry by founders, Norm Hirst, Skye Hirst and Gene Pendergraft, what TAI researchers are doing today is focusing on discoveries that have been emerging from laboratories around the world in the last 2-3 decades. These discoveries are virtually unknown because no one seems to know how to talk about them. Talking involves categories. Categories are based on experience and the predominant thought is based on the experience of materialism. Though there are many experiences that go beyond materialism they get largely marginalized. Thus to introduce what is going on beyond materialism requires new language, a new mind. As we present the theory of life-itself (zero point energy, non-manifest in physical space and time, which can create life and manifestation) involving ... • organisms (organism is a society of organisms) • values, • non-locality, • consciousness and evolution, • integration, • connectedness (all life is connected), • knowledge leading to "informare", we have to remember that it cannot be boiled down to linear, single concept thinking, nor most of all, the mental habits we're used to in understanding materialism. Mechanism takes a slice out of reality, a small slice and materialism forces a confinement to that boundary. Reality is far more than that mechanistic slice. It involves processes that we've never been aware of. Those are processes that create and promote life. Materialism forces us to disconnect from the life-promoting-creating processes, thus the human race has lost meaning, lost direction and indeed have turned to the most dangerous, suicidal directions. Early Proposal for Norm Hirst's Life's work (while at University of Texas at Austin) (A paper Some Thoughts on Logic and Metaphyics to Charles Hartshorne in 1966?) Dear Professor Hartshorne; This is not the kind of paper I would prefer to write. It would be nice to develop thoroughly a manageable topic; perhaps even reach some conclusions. Nevertheless, the topic of greatest interest to me 2 is the formalization of metaphysics, and this is not a subject that can be thoroughly dealt with in one semester. When one faces such a task as formalizing any subject matter, he is not faced with a lack of logic; rather he is faced with far too many logics...1st to find one's way around in this welter of systems and to eliminate the irrelevant. Some years ago I was a physics major at M.I.T. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed physics; when it comes to methodology, I am a physicist through and through. Yet, I became painfully aware of the fact that, in this twentieth century of ours, there are far more important problems than those of physics; namely values. Even so, it was a move I made with no little reluctance since the methodology of philosophy is deeply frustrating to me. This last remark is certainly not meant to be disparaging. As I see it, human knowledge advances from initial vagueness into clarity by philosophical analysis. Finally, when our knowledge of a given subject matter becomes sufficiently clear, it is ready for formal synthesis. At that point, our treatment of the subject moves from philosophy to science. Thus, however frustrating the philosophical method may be to me personally, I see it as an absolutely necessary beginning. With this in mind, I can say that no touchdown has ever thrilled a gridiron fan more than the following paragraph from page 54 of the chapter on methodology thrilled me: A second clue to the success of science is its use of mathematical symbols at key points instead of ordinary words. Should metaphysics take this path? If not, it cannot be because metaphysics is non-empirical, for neither is arithmetic. Moveover, logic, also aprioi, has advanced in modern times only when it has, like physics, made use of mathematical devices beyond those few which Aristotle and the Greeks employed for this purpose. Leibniz, not Kant, is impressive in this regard. How far can metaphysics profit by this tendency to mathematicize, i.e. reduce thinking to rigorous formal procedures with perfectly explicit and clear rules? No other way has been found to reach the same degree of mutual understanding concerning the precise interrelations of concepts. On the other hand, Godel and others have also proved that formalization has its limits. Always something escapes, on pain of a vicious regress. We can always say informally more than we can formally; which might also be put by saying, we shall 3 always know intuitively more than we know technically. Miro Quesada has discussed this situation illuminatingly (1963). I incline to agree with Quesada that this does not mean we should give up trying to formalize. The limits of formalization are to be ascertained by trying to formalize in each hitherto untried direction, to see how we come out.