the role of philosophy and science, part 3

now, to tie up some loose ends. first of all, someone once pointed out to me that making assumptions about human nature is dangerous unless we can either reach a state where biological determinism explains everything or we can analyze humans in pre-cultural states. however, human nature is part of metaphysics, and thus is also a part of the collective political ontology of mankind. using this logic, shouldn't we stop espousing metaphysical political opinions until either biological determinism or a way to study pre-cultural states emerges? however, given the practical need for analyzing metaphysics in politics, i would argue that it is a necessary evil of sorts to make assumptions about human nature. perhaps it is best to only make these assumptions within the context of the collective political ontology so that while existing there, human nature as an underlying root of everything is still inextricably tied into the political structure, and as a result, cannot be fully reduced in and of itself to being subjected to an ultimate judgment.

the second issue i wanted to tackle deals with something i mentioned in a previous post. here is the excerpt:

furthermore, he/she might offer an objective ontology of what he/she predicts will happen, and then offer an alternative ontology of what he/she wants to happen or what could happen if certain changes are made by introducing a new ontology or subtle changes to the old ontology -- basically, in everyday language, this amounts to a social scientist predicting what will happen culturally, etc. if we do nothing and sit back and observe world events versus being proactive and making efforts to convince people to change things, etc.

now, revisit the political declarations i made in the post "bridging the gap between theory and praxis: an optimal political ontology". what this means is that this theorist should act within the guidelines of what i had written, both in terms of the message and the messenger. the theorist is not some external observer outside of the system he/she is studying; he/she is an active observer and participant in the system. as such, in following that "politics is everything", the theorist must believe what he/she preaches, including the decision to include proposed alternate collective political ontologies and/or revisions to the old collective political ontology, and furthermore, that his/her success is governed by the degree to which he/she succeeds in realizing his/her intentionality. the funny dilemma here is that by introducing more than one collective political ontology, the theorist has automatically set himself/herself up for at least partial failure, for only one objective collective political ontology exists in reality (postmodernists would disagree with this and claim reality is subjective, but they are silly with regard to this context and i am therefore dismissing their notions for this); a theorist who proposes only one collective political ontology sets himself/herself up for the remote possibility of not failing and instead having total success. perhaps this is why so many theorists are outspoken and preachy for their single framed arguments instead of taking a back seat and proposing numerous possibilities -- by preaching what will be as being the same as what should be, they are attempting to eliminate the gap between theory and praxis, whereas employing an argument with many possibilities admits, until or unless one of the possibilities turns out correct, that there currently is a difference between theory and praxis in politics (attempting to eliminate the gap between theory and praxis by preaching what will be as being the same as what should be implies that there is not a current difference between theory and praxis, only that the result proving there exists no difference between theory and practice will not occur until later. as such, attempting to eliminate the gap between theory and praxis is a "work in progress" with a destined endpoint.). on the other hand, analytics do not care about any sort of realization of a political intentionality because there is no way of knowing if you have fulfilled your intentionality barring the most extreme of extreme cases which i discussed in that previous blog entry because there is no way that one's realization of his/her intentionality can be objectively measured. so, in this sense, through their actions, both politically-minded and "apolitical" theorists affect the collective political ontology, but neither knows just how exactly they manage to do so. so while the former has good intentions and the second might have what you call a "realistic perspective", both end up without any sort of validation despite the fact that they know that their approaches to create some kind of different effect, negligible or not it is not known, on the collective political ontology. as such, my solution to the problem is what i mentioned in the previous blog entry: analytics "could use analytic social philosophy as a starting point and, combined with soft science, propose sensible representations of the changing political climate and offer possible solutions for ongoing problems", while continental/postmodernists could "theorize about metaphysics within the realm of metaphysics itself without many any outstanding political claims to knowing the truth, instead having their metaphysical ideas have political implications that can be interpreted by political scientists to enhance the knowledge of their field and research."