Hi TOK List,

  I am continuing to plug away on my book, The Unified Framework. I am in the thick of Part III, where I am laying out how the Unified Framework defines science, behavior and the three domains of mental processes.

  I would love feedback on what follows, if it strikes anyone's fancy:

  I am almost done with Chapter 8, which makes the case that behavior is the central concept in modern science (whereby modern science is a particular kind of system of justification that emerged via Galileo, Descartes and Newton). Here is a summary statement of the chapter, "A central thesis of the Tree of Knowledge theory of scientific knowledge is that behavior is a concept that bridges the ontic reality represented by the dimensions of Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture with modern scientific justification systems, characterized as ontological theories of reality justified by scientific epistemology."

Here is a schematic representation of the central thesis:

[cid:image003.png@01D6244F.D8A0EE10]

(Note, those who are familiar with Plato's Justified True Belief theory of knowledge should see parallels here).

I am now in the process of working on the subsequent chapter, which spells out the Periodic Table of Behavior. The PTB maps scientific ontology into a 3x4 behavioral levels by dimensions taxonomy.

This gives rise to the "12 Floors of Science" representation that is attached.

There is a lot to unpack here, but it basically is showing that the ToK offers two novels conceptions about the nature of scientific knowledge that leads to a novel prediction about how scientific knowledge should be organized if the central thesis about behavioral complexity and its linkage between ontic reality and scientific onto-epistemology is valid.

The novel conceptions from the ToK are:

  1.  The concept of behavior, defined as change in object field relation, provides the foundational conceptual grammar for modern science as a kind of justification system that emerges in 16th Century, and is most clearly associated with Galileo's theories of matter in motion and his antipathy toward Scholastic metaphysics. Modern science is an "empirical natural behavioral justification system" and that these are the commitments that defines its epistemology and ontology, and the way it frames/reveals ontic reality
  2.  The linkage between scientific onto-epistemology and the ontic reality is such that behavioral patterns operate in nested holarchies that exhibit identifiable frequencies of behavioral change per unit of time that can be categorized across four dimensions of behavioral complexity and three levels of object-field analysis, as represented by the PTB.
[cid:image004.png@01D6244F.D8A0EE10]
The novel prediction that follows from 1 and 2 is:
Modern scientific knowledge of the natural world should be organized based on these behavioral frequencies. It is a novel prediction in that no one has proposed a general ontology for scientific knowledge and its relationship to ontic reality.

Consider, for example, this representation of the hierarchy of the sciences that is on Wiki<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science>. It places them on a horizontal dimension of "scale/size", but does not map this in relationship to behavioral complexity, except to note "some kind of hierarchy" that moves from chemistry into biology into psychology and the social sciences, somehow.

[cid:image005.jpg@01D6244F.D8A0EE10]

This confusion about what we might call the vertical dimension is what the PTB, as an extension of the ToK System, clarifies with the attached 12 floors of science.

Note that IT IS THE DESCRIPTIVE METAPHYSICS OF BEHAVIORAL COMPLEXITY THAT THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE failed to solve/resolve.

This is one of the central reasons why we are so confused and why we need an Enlightenment 2.0 revolution.

Best,
Gregg



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