Philosophical Breakthroughs

have done one thing which everyone said was impossible.   I have extended the essence of scientific method to all those questions heretofore left out of science, such as: How do we build beautiful cities?   What about capital punishment or abortion?   Is there life after death, immortality, divinity?   Do we have free will?   These questions are neither meaningless nor unanswerable, although I shall only discuss the questions about community actions on this web site.   See A Theory of Mind Body and Consciousness

xtending scientific method to new realms requires two things.   One is the separation of the essence from the accidentals in the existing sciences.  The second thing is to see all epistemology as problem solving.   Then it is easy to see that the problems to be solved in Utopian Analysis or Metaphysics are very different from those of the physical sciences, and are based on different kinds of experiences.   We can still be scientific, however, by insisting on reproducible particulars with veridical details, and by ruling out the alternatives, until we have only one well-established result remaining.   See scientific method.

he function of philosophy is the founding of sciences.   At any rate, that is the only historical achievement of philosophy.   Such philosophical breakthroughs are rare, but they do occur, when a subject which was formerly philosophical becomes scientific.  It is not that a scientist comes in and cleans up the subject.   No, there must be a long philosophical evolution of the subject, one which proceeds by fits and starts, sometimes trapped in a blind alley by false assumptions, sometimes languishing for centuries or millenia without any progress.   The last philosopher of a subject ceases to be called "philosopher" by future generations, and becomes known as the founder of a discipline.   The books used to teach philosophy consist in collections of the work of failed philosophers, ones who failed to found any new science.  Reading this "philosophical" literature is tricky.  What is most important is often an unstated (and false) assumption.

he last philosopher of mathematics was Euclid, building on earlier work by Plato, Zeno, Pythagoras, Thales and the Babylonians.   The last philosopher of physics was Newton, who said he stood on the shoulders of giants.   He didn't name them, but we can imagine it would be Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Hipparcos, Aristarchos and Thales.

n a way, the creation of a science is the solution to a group of philosophical problems.   But they might not all be solved right away.  It wasn't until the invention of the calculus that mathematicians were able to resolve Zeno's paradoxes.   The point is, they were set on the right path, one which produced reliable results.   Euclid's methods have been used by mathematicians from that time forward, just as physicists continue to follow the example of Galileo and Newton.

he new science which is mostly my own work is the new science of Civilization, also called "Utopian Analysis."  I became a utopian dreamer at 15 after reading Plato's Republic.   I got the idea for Utopian Analysis when I was 19 and a Sophomore in college.   My professors told me to forget it, that what I was attempting was impossible.   I got the same message from my graduate school advisor and other professors, and later from my colleagues in what is erroneously called "philosophy."   It took me 30 years to solve these "impossible" problems and another 10 years to find a way to publish them (the invention of the Web).

f you consider such issues as abortion, world peace, beautiful cities, traffic jams, and so forth, the term "ethics" is woefully inadequate.   The solution to all these problems can very properly be called "utopian," and that is why I prefer to use "utopia" instead of "ethics."   What then shall we do with such things as "medical ethics," which pretends to know whether stem cells shall be created in a petri dish?  What grounds the arbitrary opinions of medical ethicists?  Utopian analysis to the rescue. However, I shall leave that to those who follow, as a nice little problem, which may nonetheless require decades of thought.

lease note that the science of civilization is concerned only with community values and community actions, including those which create obligations and rights.   "De Gustibus Est Non Disputandum" when it comes to personal values.   There is no accounting for tastes, which is one reason why liberty is better than "big brother" because no one can decide what is best for you, other than you.

ometimes it is best to leave a term undefined, or at least, it is best not to engage in debate over the "proper" definition of a term, such as "utopia."   For me, any effort to improve society and take the correct community action is utopian, and this does not mean "hopelessly idealistic," nor does it mean "perfection."   The US is a utopia, created by the Founding Fathers.   The UK is a utopia, created by the "glorious revolution" of 1688, which established the supremacy of Commons over Royals, Lords, and Justices.   Communism turned out to be a dystopia, because it was based on false ideals, such as socialism and authoritarianism.   We know both to be false because of their failure whenever tried.   So the idea of utopia incorporates the use of correct and well-established ideals.

call the new science of civilization "utopian analysis," because it always begins with an analysis of a controversy into consequences of underlying ideals which the two sides may not have made explicit.   The abortion controversy was always a touchstone for me.   Could I solve it?   Could I come up with a solution which found some truth and something wrong in each position?   It turns out that they are talking about two different things.   The pro-lifers are talking about morality, although they have it wrong, and the freedom-of-choice people are talking about legality, while ignoring altogether the issue of virtue.

topian analysis does not begin with me.   It can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle and the pre-Socratics. The last philosophers to make significant contributions to the science of Civilization were Hobbes and Locke and they lived in the 17th Century.   I consider "utopian analysis" to pick up where the "moral sciences" of Hobbes and Locke left off.   They discovered an essential idea in the science of civilization, and that is the "social contract," a kind of thought-experiment which reveals the underlying logic, not a description of any phase in human history.

hy the long dry spell?   Why didn't the moral sciences continue to develop to keep pace with natural philosophy?   It could have.   I can easily imagine civilizations that have a highly developed science of civilization, yet no physical sciences, just the reverse of our situation.   Hobbes and Locke did have a great effect on Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson and on the utopias of the US and the UK.   Their efforts were not wasted.   But their work was not picked up and the investigation continued, what we mean by a science.   Why not?   For the answers to that, I refer you to a chapter on "sophistry."   I can only hope that my own investigations will be picked up by others and continued, for there remain many issues in need of utopian analysis, such as those which plague the medical ethicists.

s you will see from the Sophistry chapter, I can show that nearly all academic philosophy after Locke is sophistry.   I am the last, best and only living philosopher.   This is not quite the vainglorious boast it appears, since I had no competitors among the academics, only sophists.   I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course.   They are only doing what they were taught to do in graduate school.

he only academic philosopher of the 20th Century who has had any influence on me is a British philosopher, whose last name is Austin.   He said two things which are both true and worth repeating.   (1) The function of philosophy is the founding of sciences.   (2) Values are guides to action, not properties of things.   Thus, values are relative to the actor.   There is probably nothing which is of value to every person.   However, I have found a number of community ideals which prove true for every community.   I list them in the chapter on "Ideals."