Truth is what works. -William James
William James may have been America’s greatest philosopher. His philosophical approach, one he dubbed, “Pragmatism” underlies my approach here. During the Enlightenment, beginning with Decartes, philosophy struggled against simple, materialist views of reality. Just about every possible view of reality between simple materialism and complete acceptance of mental phenomenon. And of course the dualism of Descarte, accepting both as reality.
William James rejected these continental theories in favor of an approach that arose from a more naive point of view of a psychologist and experimentalist. Doubting everything, James took the scientific view that predictive ability was the value of any theory, whether in psychology or in philosophy.
Taking this pragmatic view of evaluating the truth of a theory, we look only at its predictive value. The more generally a theory can predict, the more true it is. If it misses some cases or is not generally predictive, a truer theory can be found.
If metaphysics is a theory of reality, what can be predicted? I’m working towards a systems based metaphysics that takes complexity into account with probability. This view predicts that knowledge of reality is derived purely from interactions with the systems around us, but that knowledge is ultimately limited by our perspective and system complexity. Getting outside of a system and having a longer, broader view is needed to transcend the limitations.
