Very Important article

 Philosophy is Fundamental, Science is Secondary (A Short Essay)

Nature has kept us at a great distance from all of her deepest and most precious secrets, and has afforded us only the immediate knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends. From the perspective of the naked eye the table looks smooth and even, but if we look at it through a microscope, we see roughnesses and hills and valleys, and all sorts of differences that are imperceptible to the naked eye. Empirical facts are but half-truths because our perception of the world is limited by our finite senses. We measure the world in accordance with horizons that confine us within prison walls. The eye can only see a certain distance, we see less than one-percent of the light spectrum, we can only hear a limited portion of the decibel range, and objects are composed of more than ninety-nine percent empty space. Our senses are deceivers, they tell us something is as such when it is not really so, and we shouldn’t trust those who’ve deceived us even once, let alone those, like our senses, that deceive us all the time. We can conceal the moon from our sight using just one finger, but that doesn’t mean that the moon is small enough to fit inside the palm of our hand. And just because the moon is there, now, as an object of our perception in this particular moment of time, doesn’t mean that it will be there in the next moment, or that it has been there forever; or rather, that while it is not in the process of being perceived, that it exists in the actualized (spatialized) sense.

The senses can, in some way, make known that something is, and reveal the relationships between one appearance and another, but they cannot make known what must be or what absolutely cannot be otherwise; and since the senses and induction can never teach us truths that are fully universal, nor what is absolutely necessary for objects to be as they are (i.e. a priori knowledge); it follows that we have derived these truths, at least in part, from what is within us and not from the external world (see The Principle of Pure A Priori Self Knowledge). Indeed, the external world is known to exist inductively, and is therefore inferential and secondary, while the internal world is known to exist deductively; and is therefore primary and not secondary, and this must be the case, for we cannot attain the first-person perspective of any object but ourselves. We must never forget that the external world exists only in so far as we perceive it consciously, and that we cannot prove that it exists “in and of itself” apart from our perception of it. There is not a sun and an earth, but an eye that sees a sun, and a hand that feels an earth. No truth is more certain and less in need of proof than this: that every object in this world is conditioned by a subject, and thus exists only for the subject, and also, cannot exist apart from the subject (see The Law of Precedence and The Principle of Reason and Limitation). Thus, if it is our wish to make a science out of philosophy, we cannot ground the principles of our philosophy in empirical truths that are contingent upon the fleeting frivolities of our sense perceptions.

Since Bacon most philosophers (empiricists) have agreed that there is no real knowledge save that which rests upon observed scientific facts. The ultimate goal of the empiricist (empirical reductionist), in a sense, is to ignore the fact that subjectivity and consciousness are not the same, and then reduce consciousness to neuroscience and chemistry, neuroscience and chemistry to the apparently unchanging abstract relations of physics, and then stop there as if nothing is transcendent of the abstract relations of physics, or as if that which lies beyond them is somehow unknowable because ‘non-empirical’ (and therefore requires a priori reasoning). The empiricist, absolutely confined to his empiricism, allows nothing to be true except what his eyes behold, yet admits the existence of abstract relations (i.e. the laws of physics) – even despite the contradictory fact that abstract relations cannot be perceived by the senses (i.e. that some objects of knowledge are non-empirical). The way we conduct philosophy today is all backwards, for the sciences (formerly known as “Natural Philosophy”) have lost their metaphysical roots, and now philosophy is seen as secondary and not primary, when the truth is that all scientific thought is merely a derivation of philosophical thinking. The whole of philosophy is like a tree whose roots are metaphysics, the trunk of which is physics, and the branches of which extend out from that trunk are the rest of the sciences. Philosophy isn’t science; it is the foundation of science. Science is not a metaphysical belief system, but a method for establishing empirical truths of facts – a method that was established using philosophical truths. Science hasn’t ‘made philosophy irrelevant’ – in fact, without philosophy, science is absolutely meaningless. Without philosophy, the value of science cannot be justified: this is because the question of value is a question of meaning, and the question of meaning is a philosophical question which is more fundamental than any question that science can ever hope to answer.

We seem to have forgotten that empiricism is not a ‘self-evident’ system and therefore must be proven. But ironically, to establish this proof, we must use the principles of reason which science aims to discredit. Science presupposes that every truth requires a demonstration when the truth is that every demonstration requires an undemonstrated truth! Science does not demonstrate its first principles but uses them unconsciously in demonstrating its own! The empiricists use synthetic a priori truths to claim that synthetic a priori truths cannot be known, and don’t even know that they’re contradicting themselves! Oh the irony! Philosophers and scientists today seem to believe that all positive metaphysic is a kind of “speculative’ delusion.” They believe that metaphysics is entirely presuppositional while science presupposes absolutely nothing, and this is simply not the case, for science, too, rests on faith. There is simply no “presuppositionless” science, for in holding “no assumptions,” as they presume, they assume that nothing must be assumed, or rather, that nothing is self-evidently true (i.e. that there are no abstract universal or absolute truths which are prior to and necessary for scientific facts). Thus, science stands proudly on the assumption that there is something rather than nothing – a philosophical question – and then proceeds to try and understand it. Science says: “give us one free miracle (Big Bang), and we’ll explain the rest!” One go even go so far as to say science is no longer scientific, for in the attempt to ‘dispel all dogmatism,’ scientists have become dogmatic, and scientism has become the norm (this should come as no surprise considering the materialistic biases of those who fund scientific and philosophical research not for the sake of knowledge, but for the sake of power and profit).

Each generation of philosophers and scientists hitherto, with the exception of a few, has assumed the essence of an absolute context, or rather, the necessary paradigm in which all contingent beings have their being – a context that cannot be proven to exist using the Scientific Method. They have then used their assumed absolute context, that is, a false context, as an absolute standard of truth in order to interpret and give meaning to the scientific facts that they discover in the world a posteriori. The problem with this is that so long as the true essence of the absolute context (e.g. “mind is prior to matter in the absolute sense” and “all scientific facts must be brought in relation to at least one absolute truth in order to contain absolute validity (absolute certainty)”) remains unknown, or rather, ignored, the meaning that we give to scientific facts is subject to change. But much to our dismay, the materialist holds on to his assumed absolute context as if his life depends on it, and this is because the validity of the interpretations (meaning) that he gives to the scientific facts that he’s spent his life researching (i.e. his legacy) depends entirely on its being true and not false. It is for this reason that when new scientific facts that contradict the validity of the dogmatists presupposed absolute context are discovered, they tend to reject them impulsively, and sometimes even contemptuously. As such, scientific paradigms change, not when new scientific truths are discovered that contradict them, as they should, but rather, when the proponents of those paradigms die and new generations without a preconceived bias grow up to replace them; and it is for this reason that science advances, not one truth at a time, but one death at a time, much to our dismay.