Hi TOK List,

So I am deep into my book, The Unified Framework: A Metapsychology for the 21st Century (what else is one going to do during a pandemic shutdown?). In Part I of the book, I review the problem of psychology and demonstrate the frank inadequacies of the mainstream academic view of psychology as the science of behavior and mental processes.

In Part II, I introduce the Unified Framework as a new (a) theory of knowledge in general (i.e., it offers a new descriptive metaphysical system that ties together the ontic reality (i.e., Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture) with scientific ontology and epistemology (i.e., it delineated the epistemology of natural science and specifies the four broad domains of the physical, biological, psychological and social sciences) and does so in a way that is effectively aligned with a humanistic ethic-aesthetic-spiritual morality); (b) a new unified theory of psychology that gets both the field's descriptive/systematic metaphysics correct and provides a unified metatheoretical framework that assimilates and integrates the major paradigms; and it does (b) in a way that it effectively grounds a (c) unified approach to psychotherapy (and more broadly, psycho-technologies that foster psychosocial well-being). Part II consists of three chapters which (I) provide an overview of the Unified Framework, (II) tell the story of the joint formation of the two foundational ideas of Justification Systems Theory and the Tree of Knowledge System in the late 1990s, and (III) show how this framework is consistent with modern big picture views of science (like Big History) and also resolves long-standing Enlightenment problems, such as the proper conceptual relationship between (i) matter and mind and (ii) social and scientific justification systems.

In Part III, where I am currently, I am reconstructing the science of behavior and mental processes in four chapters so that it is actually coherent. First, I am reconstructing the concept of behavior as the central concept in modern naturalistic science writ large, and laying out the Periodic Table of Behavior<https://www.gregghenriques.com/uploads/2/4/3/6/24368778/periodic_table_of_behavior4b.pdf> in the process. Then, I will be devoting three chapters to my recently realized three domains of mental processes, which are 1) Mind1, which corresponds to mental-animal behavior; 2) Mind2 which corresponds to subjective phenomenology; and 3) Mind3, which refers to self-conscious justification. Each domain will be the subject of its own chapter. What is very clear to me now regarding the problem of psychology is that these are different ontological reference points that have different epistemological considerations and they have never before been effectively disentangled. I would say now that the solution to the problem of psychology is now obvious to me and really represents the solution to the problem of developing the science of mind, which is resolved by realizing these three separate onto-epistemological domains.

Currently, I am in the thick of disentangling the various layers of the concept of behavior (i.e., those concentric circles of behavior) and its foundational relationship to the birth of modern naturalistic science. In so doing, I am tracing the core justification system that became modern science via Galileo, Descartes, Francis Bacon and Newton. I came across this lecture today on Galileo and Descartes as the two key founders of modern science, which I recommend for anyone who is interested: https://www.albany.edu/~rn774/fall96/science2.html

I am sharing it because, in it some of the key points I am trying to make "pop". Namely, the lecturer reviews how Galileo's focus was on empirically mapping matter in motion and how he attempted to eschew any "old school" Aristotelian metaphysics that characterizes the fundamental and unobservable essence of things. This is aligned with my argument in that matter in motion observed via an exterior empirical position is foundational to the conceptual grammar of modern science. Galileo's work on matter in motion is later advanced by Newton, whose synthesis represents the foundational fulcrum point of modern science. The second piece is from Descartes, which emphasizes two important points. First, it reviews how Descartes linked math to physics via his Cartesian coordinate system, and subsequent algebraic geometry. This allows us to mathematically map objects in motion with much greater sophistication, and it lays the ground work for Newton's calculus, which allows for the mathematization of change over time. Second, the review of Descartes also reminds us how hard it was to fit the human mind/self-conscious thinking processes (i.e., Mind3) into the matter-in-motion scheme, which is why Descartes goes with substance dualism. The bottom line is that the empirical mathematical mapping of matter in motion that eschews unobservable metaphysical claims can be thought of the conceptual grammar of classical mechanics, and thus the exemplar of modern science.

However, the formulation ultimately is not really up to the task of giving us a complete picture of the unfolding wave of behavioral complexity that includes the human knower. Thus we need an update. The ToK updates the classic mechanical matter-in-motion view into a Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture Behavioral view that includes the evolution of human knowledge and the identity of the human knower and allows us to resolve both the difference between social and modern scientific justification systems and delineates the proper relationship between matter and mind.

For the record, although this might sound distant and abstract, I believe it is very much relevant to the pandemic and the current situation we find ourselves in. The reason is that the old knowledge systems were not up to the task to provide us with an understanding of our fundamental natures, the nature of Culture and cultural evolution, the nature of technology and our relationship to Mother Earth. We have gotten out of balance and over the last 50 years we have not been building national/global systems that are healthy and resilient, but rather they are stacked with fragility and being coordinated by institutions and ideologies that were generated centuries ago. It is time for a reboot--a new Enlightenment 2.0 revival--that allows us to reset our fundamental conceptual grammars and start making sense of the world as it exists and our place in it in the 21st Century.

Best,
Gregg

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