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Explains what theoretical frameworks are and why they are necessary for all theoretical work.
The Structural-Systematic Philosophy (SSP) is a systematic philosophy in progress. Books developing it so far are (in English) STRUCTURE AND BEING (2008), BEING AND GOD (2011), and TOWARD A PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING (TAPTOE; 2014). Podcasts describe the project and present details.
TAPTOE Chapter 2. Theoretical Frameworks
2.1 briefly indicates why the SSRPP, the structural-systematic research program in philosophy, relies on the term "theoretical framework." 2.2 further clarifies the SSRPP's methodology, first treated above in 1.3. 2.3 introduces and comments on several of the SSRPP's central theses concerning theoretical frameworks. 2.4 presents the central components of a family of abstract theoretical frameworks members of which have been dominant throughout the history of philosophy, but that the SSRPP rejects. 2.5 introduces the most central components of the SSRPP's own abstract framework, and 2.6 explains how the SSRPP's framework is concretized.
2.1. The term "theoretical framework"
Two relatively well-known philosophical terms with significations at least similar to that of theoretical framework are "linguistic framework" and "conceptual scheme." The SSRPP avoids those terms because they could be taken to imply, misleadingly, that the components of the relevant frameworks or schemes are, respectively, exclusively linguistic or exclusively conceptual.
Although it is a thesis of the SSP that abstract theoretical frameworks for systematic philosophies include linguistic and what are commonly termed conceptual components, because, in colloquial terms, theories are collections of meaningful sentences, an additional thesis is that any presentation of any theory must rely on other components as well.
The most important components relied on by the SSRPP are, in addition to the syntactic and especially semantic aspects of its linguistic component, its ontology, which identifies what it recognizes as beings or entities, its methodology, and its true theory, which makes fully explicit how its linguistic component relates to its ontological component or, colloquially, how its sentences relate to the world.
Footnote: its sentences are both within the world -- better, they are within being and are themselves entities -- and about the world, about being, and in most cases about entities More precisely, the sentences are themselves entities that express or articulate either entities or being as such or as a whole. The distinction between being and entities is explained in Chapter 8. End of footnote.
One point of central importance that recurs in various forms throughout this book is the following: although it is common to consider such things as standpoints, perspectives, and even languages as limiting or restricting theoretical inquiry, theoretical frameworks, which as just indicated include languages, make subject matters available to theoretical inquiry. If we could not develop theoretical frameworks, we could not develop theories.
2.2 The SSP as a network
What the SSRPP terms science has a relatively precisely identifiable point of historical origin in ancient Greece. Its first participant known by name is Thales, and it reached vital points of initial culmination with Aristotle's POSTERIOR ANALYTICS, which shows how theories can be developed on the basis of axioms and deductions. Euclid's ELEMENTS and Archimedes's MECHANICS h present theories of just that sort.
Footnote: See Wolpert 1993/199: xii, Ch. 3 or, for a more detailed account Russo 2004. End of footnote.
As physics began to emerge as a distinct science, the need for axiomatization decreased in importance as increasing emphasis was placed both on quantification, reflected in Galileo's dictum that the book of the world is written in the language of mathematics, and on experimentation. Because, however, the subject matter for the inquiry that continued to be most central to philosophy, the inquiry that Descartes, following Aristotle, termed first philosophy, is not quantifiable and not available for experimentation, the axiomatic method, so successfully applied in geometry, continued for far longer to appear to be the only one available for it. Presumably in significant part because of both (1) the success of Euclidean geometry, and (2) philosophy's lack of attend to find alternatives to the axiomatic theory form, throughout modern philosophy philosophical theories have had as their most analogical counterparts buildings having foundations. Conceived of in light of this analogy, components of the theories are supported or grounded by resting on previously supported components, down to the foundation that, in the analogy, supports everything else. Among metaphysical uses relatively ordinary English that reinforce this analogy, in addition to talk of theses and theories being founded, grounded, and supported, is talk of there having groundworks, bases, and footings, and of there being undermined. Demands that philosophical theses be proved often also reinforce this analogy.
Footnote: a famous passage from Wittgenstein's PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIOINS (section 115) reads as follows: "A picture held us captive and we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably." The buildings-with-foundations analogy ("picture" or not) has held philosophy captive, in part because it is repeatedly implied by the English terms and phrases introduced in the main text. But, as this section shows, it is possible to get outside it. End of footnote.
TAPTOE avoids foundational language by using variants of the term "stabilization." in order better to stabilize that usage, this section identifies some of the flaws in the buildings-with- foundations analogy, introduces two analogies that avoid some of those flaws, and then clarifies the SSP as a comprehensive theory by means of theses drawn from consideration of these two analogies. Worth noting is that the podcast "Avoiding-the-turtles- all-the-way-down problem" is also relevant to this issue. Back to the main text.
One central flaw of the buildings-with-foundations analogy arises from what can reasonably be termed its pre-Copernican status. A building resting on a foundation is a terrestrial edifice whose structural integrity can require, but is also threatened by, gravity, and is preserved in some but not the simplest cases by its inner structuration, but also, in all cases, ultimately by the earth. The earth is presupposed simply to be stable. So, even in uses of the analogy that recognize -- as, for example, does Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON -- that foundations must be laid on solid ground presuppose that whatever underlies that ground supports it. A somewhat different way of articulating this decisive flaw in the buildings with foundations analogy is the following: the structuration of buildings with foundations proposes ground, the earth, and gravity, but because the SSP aims to be a theory of everything, there is nothing outside the scope of the SSP, so nothing analogous to ground for the SSP to rest upon and nothing analogous to gravity to either threaten it or hold it together.
A first analogy that avoids this flaw is provided by D-stix building sets.
Footnote: In the philosophical literature, the standard coherentist counterpart to the buildings-with-foundations analogy is Neurath's boat, introduced in Neurath 1921 and made philosophically prominent in Quine 1960, pages 3 and following. According to the latter, "We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship, but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction." Among the flaws of this analogy is that it remains pre-Copernican in the sense introduced above: ships are held up by the sea and held down by gravity. Back to the main text.
A first analogy that avoids the flaws of the buildings-with- foundations analogy is provided by D-stix building sets. These sets include colored wooden sticks of various lengths and flexible plastic connectors, each of which has several slots into which the sticks can be securely inserted. The stability of heaps of such sticks and connectors, like that of buildings with foundations, presupposes ground and gravity, but even the simplest of linkages, that consisting of a single stick inserted into a single connector, does not. The two components are stabilized in that they remain connected when tossed into the air. As components are added to the simplest D-stix structure stabilizations of various sorts become possible.Adding two or more sticks and two or more connectors in any manner whatsoever yields a structure that is stable in that none of its connections depends on either ground or gravity, but that structure is made more stable if it is reconfigured into a triangle. It then also maintains its shape independently of ground and gravity.
D-stix structures are of course constructed and hence require constructors. There is, however, an important sense in which the constructor does not determine structural stabilization. The sense is revealed by an example: the most stable structure that can be made with six sticks of the same length and four connectors is a tetrahedron, and this fact is independent of any constructor. This is relevant to theorization because, as initially indicated above in 1.3 and especially 1.4, when theories are assessed, the most appropriate assessment is of the theories and not of the theoreticians who formulate them.
The D-stix analogy can also clarify the distinction between consistency and coherence. Any heap of D-stix pieces is consistent in the sense that there will be no piece whose inclusion precludes the inclusion in the heap of any other piece, and that consistency remains unchanged if the pieces are heaped differently. As merely heaped, however, the configuration of the pieces is incoherent in the sense that no pieces are interlinked. As pieces are interconnected, the coherence of the configuration of pieces, the coherence of the structure, increases.
D-stix structures, considered as analogs to theories, avoid some of the most important flaws of the building-with-foundations analog, but one important way in which they are disanalogous to philosophical theories is that their components can be definitively determined. They include only sticks and connectives.
As a second analogy or analog, which improves on the D-stix analogy in this respect, is that of the space station. Components of space stations, like those of D-stix structures, are not stabilized by being grounded or supported. The reason for this in the case of space stations is the at least frequent and possibly permanent absence of significant gravitational fields that those components must resist. The components are therefore stabilized, like those of D-stix structures, by being interconnected. The components and their interconnections can be of various sorts and of various strengths. A wire that dangled loosely would be minimally stabilized. Securing the loose end would increase its stabilization. Wires or girders, for example, connected to many other wires or girders would generally be more integral to the structure than would those with fewer connections in that their disconnection or removal would destabilize the station itself to greater degrees.
Correspondingly, theses within the network structure of the SSP vary in status in that some are more tightly and multiply interlinked and hence more central, whereas others are more loosely and less multiply interlinked and hence more peripheral. Alterations to relatively peripheral components of the SSP could improve the SSP, whereas if superior alternatives to central components were discovered, the theory relying on those components would presumably be an alternative to the SSP and presumably a superior one.
Footnote: For specific identifications of some peripheral, intermediate, and central components of the SSP, see STRUCTURE AND BEING section 6.4. End of footnote.
In addition, a space station, like a systematic philosophy, could qualify as the best available at some time, but not as absolutely the best; the possibility of superior alternatives could not be excluded.
Although the space station analogy is appropriate to the SSP in ways that the building-with-foundations analogy is not, it is potentially misleading in one important way. Space stations are situated within space -- there's much that it has outside them -- whereas the SSP is coextensive not only with the physical universe, but with being as such and as a whole. This coextensivity is considered in various places below and in STRUCTURE AND BEING and in BEING AND GOD. According to the SSP, being as a whole is, as explained below in Chapter 8, the comprehensive configuration of facts identical to true propositions expressible by true sentences. To be sure, no presentation of the SSP could include all of those sentences and thereby those propositions and those facts. But that is not because any of those facts are someow beyond or outside of its scope. It is instead because human finitude precludes the possibility of any human being developing a comprehensive account of everything that is within the SSP's scope, and because the subject matters of the non-philosophical sciences are within its scope only in that those sciences themselves are within its scope.
2.3 Seven central theses concerning theoretical frameworks
Seven of the SSP's central theses concerning theoretical frameworks, theses that, as emphasized in 1.3 and 2.2, are in no way foundational, are the following.
TF1: True sentences are situated within theoretical frameworks. They cannot be situated beyond or outside any theoretical framework whatsoever because, as indicated above in 2.1, they must linguistically express semantic contents -- colloquially, meanings -- and the sentences must somehow qualify as true, as must the theories. In the terminology of the SSP, the language in which a true sentence is articulated, the semantic content it epresses, and the way in which it qualifies as true, are components of a theoretical framework.
TF2: Being, which includes all that is, vertically manifests itself -- truly or genuinely reveals itself -- within all adequately determined or determinble theoretical frameworks. Among such frameworks are the tacitly presupposed and only vaguely determined frameworks that human beings rely on in their everyday lives when they are concerned with discovering and presenting truths, as, for example, when someone consults a newspaper in order to discover when the sun will rise the following morning and presents the truth thereby discovered by uttering an indicative sentence, perhaps "Sunrise tomorrow is at 4:33."
TF3: All truths are relative to the theoretical frameworks within which they are situated. Again, beginning with mundane truths like "Sunrise tomorrow is at 4:33," situated within everyday theoretic, everyday frameworks. That's a sentence of course not true within the framework of contemporary astronomy, wherein among the truths that are situated are that the sun is stable relative to the Earth within the solar system and that the Earth both rotates on its own axis and revolves around the sun.
The two frameworks can be compared within a metaframework encompassing both. The comparison yields an explanation of why the earth, although veridically revealing itself within the framework of astronomy as moving, also veridically appears within everyday frameworks as immobile.
Footnote: This example is reconsidered in 6.3. End of footnote.
A consequence of this is that astronomers can non- problematically, in their everyday lives, speak of the sun as rising and setting, as can non-astronomers who knew enough about contemporary astronomy to be heliocentrists about the solar system. As is suggested by the example of earth and sun, the fact that being vertically manifests or reveals itself within all theoretical frameworks does not lead to any crippling relativism, because according to
TF 4, within metaframeworks, apparently conflicting theoretical frameworks can be compared and, when comparison reveals the conflict to be genuine, ordered with respect to their theoretical adequacy. In the case just considered, comparison shows that the conflict is merely apparent, so neither framework need be rejected. Everyday theoretical frameworks are more adequate with respect to everyday convenience and efficiency, and the SSP accepts those criteria as the ones appropriate for ordering such frameworks, but not as the ones appropriate for ordering scientific frameworks. The SSP's criteria for comparing and ordering theoretical frameworks for systematic philosophies are relatively maximal coherence and intelligibility, such that the relativity is both internal -- that is, the superior account is more coherent and intelligible than is any other available concretization of its own framework -- and external -- the superior candidate is more coherent and intelligible than are concretizations of competing theoretical frameworks that are available.
Footnote: Determining the degree to which the truth of TF4 is relative to the theoretical framework of the SSP requires considering the relation between the systematic and metasystematic levels of the SSP. See STRUCTURE AND BEING 1.5.2.2-2.3 Chapter 6. End of footnote.
Although theoretical frameworks can be ranked with respect to theoretical adequacy, according to TF5, no human theoretician could ever establish that the framework they relied on was the best possible framework for any sufficiently complex subject matter, definitively including the subject matter of systematic philosophy. Establishing a framework as absolutely optimal would require identifying and comparing all of the infinitely many possible theoretical frameworks or families of frameworks for the relevant subject matter, and that, for human beings, is impossible.
From the conjunction of TF3, that all truths are relative to theoretical frameworks, and TF5, that human beings can identify neither all such frameworks nor any optimal framework, it might appear to follow, but does not in fact follow, that there cannot be, or indeed that human beings could not identify, any absolute truths.
The reason this does not follow is articulated in TF6, which reads, absolute truths are truths that have identifiable versions in all theoretical frameworks. The most obvious such truth is the principle of non-contradiction, for no framework lacking a version of it as a component could qualify as a theoretical framework.
Footnote: Determination that two distinct formulations situated in different theoretical frameworks qualified as versions of the principle of non-contradiction would require reliance on a metaframework considering both. End of footnote.
So, the reason that the principle of non-contradiction is an absolute truth is that within a framework or what was presented as a framework that didn't have a recognizable version of that principle, no definitive truths whatsoever could emerge.
One of the clear consequences of TF5 is that the SSP cannot include the thesis that its own theoretical framework is the best possible for systematic philosophy. It can and indeed does, however, include TF7, which, as indicated above, is stabilized in part by examination of alternative frameworks, either in isolation or in comparisons developed within appropriate metaframeworks.
TF7: the SSP's theoretical framework is the best that is currently available for systematic philosophy.
One consequence of TF5 and TF7, in conjunction, is that although the status claimed by the SSP is in one respect highly ambitious, in another, it is notably modest. It claims, ambitiously, to provide the best theoretical framework currently available for systematic philosophy, but it also anticipates the future development of frameworks that will be better. It therefore claims for itself a theoretical status in no way inferior to that of any of the natural sciences. Those sciences also operate within the best theoretical frameworks that are currently available, but nothing precludes, and there are overwhelming reasons to anticipate, future developments of superior frameworks.
It is important to emphasize one additional consequence of the SSP's inclusion of these theses concerning theoretical frameworks. It is the following: the SSP is reasonably termed a philosophical theory of everything because its subject matter is the unrestricted universal discourse; within the scope of what is best termed its systematic level is, in a sense clarified above, everything. But this everything does not include theoretical frameworks or theories that are alternatives to those of the SSP and that are not yet available. There are alternatives as suggested above addressing such theoretical frameworks and theories requires development of and reliance on metaframeworks, which are developed on metasystematic levels of the SSP.
The consideration in the following section, 2.4, of a family of alternative frameworks requires a step to a metaframework within which it becomes evident that the family is of frameworks that are different from the SSP's framework. The critique of that family of frameworks is an imminent critique in that it exposes problems inherent in members of that family, that is, not in comparison with any other frameworks. The next section, 2.5, shows how the SSPs framework avoids those problems. The argument that the SSP's framework is therefore superior to the rejected frameworks is situated on a metasystematic level because it requires considering both the SSP's framework and the family of alternative frameworks.
The point made in the preceding paragraph further clarifies the sense in which the SSP, if completed, would be a philosophical theory of everything. Its subject matter, the unrestricted universe of discourse, is comprehensive, but also incomplete in the specific sense that it continues to develop over time. The SSP does not ignore that development. Indeed, it explicitly acknowledges it. As a result, future theoretical frameworks and theories fall within its scope in that it explicitly anticipates their development. At the same time, however, no concretization of the SSP clould anticipate specifically what theoretical frameworks or theories will develop in the future.
This yields one sense in which the SSP remains an open system; see STRUCTURE AND BEING, pages 20 and 428. It is open to the arising of new theoretical frameworks and capable, as they arise, of examining them. When, within a metaframe work, a new theoretical framework or theory shows itself to be superior to the SSP, the SSP will no longer be the best available systematic philosophy. This point may also be put in the following way. Indeed, no concretization of the SSP can include considerations of specific but not yet available alternative theoretical frameworks or theories, but what prevents its consideration of them is not any restriction of its universe of discourse, but instead, precisely the fact that there are not yet available. As they become available, they enter the scope of the SSP's metasystematic investigations.
2.4 A family of theoretical frameworks rejected by the SSRPP
The theoretical framework of the SSRPP develops in significant part from the rejection of a family of frameworks members of which have been relied on since the beginning of the scientific enterprise in ancient Greece, by the vast majority of theoreticians, and at least in much of the world by human beings in their everyday lives. Showing that all members of this family are inadequate prepares the way for showing the superiority of the SSRPP's framework.
All of the rejected frameworks rely on more or less ordinary languages, such as English. Their components include semantic ones whose syntactic counterparts are subject terms such as "Socrates" and predicates such as "is a Greek philosopher." The grammatical or syntactic subject most important to this semantics is the singular term taken to have a semantic reference whose ontological counterpart is a thing or substance or object, such as Socrates.
The grammatical predicate is taken semantically to designate what is ontologically either a property of that subject or thing, such as is a Greek philosopher, or a relation in which the substance stands to other substances or things or objects, for example, is a teacher of Plato. That frameworks of this sort have dominated is not surprising given their everyday efficiency and convenience. In their everyday lives, human beings find themselves surrounded by, to choose items now common in at least much of the world, and ones that have obvious counterparts elsewhere, such things as tables, rugs, oak trees, and Siamese cats, and it is non-problematic for human beings in their everyday lives to think of those items as things having properties and standing in relations to one another. Tables, unlike rugs, generally have legs, and the two often relate such that tables are on rugs, but far more rarely such at rugs are on tables. Everyday efficiency and convenience are wholly reasonable criteria for rating everyday theoretical frameworks, and frameworks relying, generally tacitly, on substance or thing ontologies often satisfy these criteria quite satisfactorily. Systematic philosophy, however, aims not at everyday efficiency and convenience but instead at relatively maximum coherence and intelligibility, and frameworks relying on substance or thing ontologies fail to satisfy those criteria.
They fail because substances proved to be unintelligible. According to thing ontologies, things have properties and stand in relations, but to have properties and stand in relations, they must have an ontological status that is different from the statuses of properties and relations. The only way to articulate that status would be to answered the question, what is a specific table, considered not as a table, but instead, simply as a thing. As a table, it has legs and is on the rug, but those attributes characterize it as the table that it is, not simply as a thing. The only way it could become accessible and hence intelligible simply as a thing would be by means of abstraction from the properties and relations that it has as a table, but the greater the abstraction, the less is left. Indeed, if the abstraction is complete, if no table attributes remain, then there is no content whatsoever. The concepts thing, substance, and object, as components of theoretical frameworks having substance or object ontologies, are therefore unintelligible it that it is impossible to determine or articulate what things or substances or objects as such, simply as such that is, could be.
Footnote: STRUCTURE AND BEING 3.2.2.3 treats this issue in greater detail. See also 2.5.1 below. End of footnote.