It was an accurate account of what the problem space looked like in 1920. It is therefore hopelessly out of date. In 1925, as the world was still trying to digest the Tractatus, it was justifiable to say metaphysics had run its course. But then quantum mechanics was discovered and the situation was transformed, because physicalist science was now forced to confront the role of the observer, which it had been ignoring for the previous 200 years (since Hume and Kant). This was the beginning of a metaphysical crisis in science that has now been brewing for a century and is ready to boil over. There is precisely nothing about this in your article. It is an article about how political thought must be post-metaphysical, based on the state of metaphysics before the crisis began.
In short, that isn’t the real problem space. It’s not even close. This crisis is not just political. It is much more fundamental than that.
You said it was a good account of the problem space, but its account of the history of metaphysics ends in the early 20th century, before Quantum Mechanics was discovered. It contains absolutely nothing about the the century-long metaphysical crisis which has followed, and has now deepened into a three-pronged disaster which the scientific materialists are desperately trying to mis-represent as three entirely unrelated crises.
That article does not describe the real problem space at all, because it simply assumes a Wittgensteinian/postmodern view that metaphysics is dead - that physicalism works for science, and will continue to do so forever. That is not what is happening. In reality, cosmology is now in a worse state than Ptolemaic geocentrism was in the 16th century, and this crisis has the same root cause as the crises in consciousness studies and quantum foundations. Metaphysics is very much alive and relevant, and must be central to any “paradigmatic cultural change”. You aren’t defending change at all - you are unapologetically defending the old paradigm.
You are only interested in political affairs? As I already said, the current crisis – the metacrisis, polycrisis and meaning crisis, and the ecological crisis we can’t fix — is not just about politics. Yes, politics is an important part, but without the rest of the crisis for context, it is no more than one piece of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle.
As for how metaphysics changes political potentials, the answer is very complicated indeed, but the absolute core problem concerns realism and anti-realism. We desperately need to reground realism, without repeating the mistakes of physicalism and objectivism. If we could do that, at the level of Western society, it would transform political potentials. That was what my previous book was about.
Ecocivilisation (Ecological Civilisation) is any form of human civilisation which has established a stable long-term balance with the ecosystem in which it is embedded and upon which it depends, and is therefore sustainable indefinitely. The final state or stage of the evolution of human social organisation.
Can western society create an ecocivilisation?
What might a western ecocivilisation look like?
What is the least bad route from here to there?
Could a new sort of movement be based on this concept?
Could it unite enough people to sustain the necessary transformation?
What could serve as the ideological foundation for such a movement?
The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation is an attempt to answer these questions. This is a book about personal and societal transformation.
RPE was about how a coherent epistemology and metaphysics could provide a foundation to unify a movement to create an ecocivilisation, but the metaphysical model was incomplete. It was just an outline, with the crucial mechanism missing. Only after that book came out, and I could discuss that outline in public, was I presented with the clue which allowed me to nail the mechanism, and once that had happened, all of the major problems in cosmology – 20 of them – were either dissolved, resolved or fundamentally reframed and made tractable. That is why I wrote another book.
I set out to find a way to reground realism and integrate science and spirituality. When I finally figured out how to make that work (which took me 20 years), out popped an explanation for the cause of the Hubble Tension, why we can’t quantise gravity and the identity of dark matter. And 27 other problems (including consciousness and quantum foundations).
This has got very little to do with the discussion we were having. This thread isn’t about politics. Or do you seriously think “Second Rennaissance” is just about politics?
Re: your answers to the questions.
Achieving the needed synthesis of science and spirituality will become the catalyst of an emergent global civilization.
And how do you think we can synthesise science and spirituality without finding a metaphysical system which can ground both? How can we synthesise science with anything else when science itself is deep in crisis? Surely it is obvious that the synthesis must itself resolve the crisis.
Human psychology is the most difficult system to change, for the simple reason that it has deep roots in human biology.
Human psychology can’t be changed at all. Only culture can change.
I fully agree that we need to synthesise science and spirituality. But rather than just having endless meetings about how this might happen one day, while defending the postmodern position that metaphysics is dead, I am providing a detailed blueprint which explains how the metaphysical multi-crisis in science can be resolved with exactly what you claim to be looking for: a deep synthesis of science and spirituality.
And yet you aren’t even remotely interested in it. And neither is anybody else here (well, almost).
You think that offers a potential resolution of a three-pronged metaphysical crisis in science and a new path to a fully integrated synthesis of science and spirituality?
I don’t know where to start, Robert. People have been asking whether God or consciousness can be scientifically proven for a very long time now, and the resulting discussions have gone precisely nowhere. I don’t think you have been listening to anything I am saying. No new thoughts are entering your mind. You apparently still believe metaphysics died in 1920, and that mainstream science is happily trundling along not proving God or consciousness, like it has been doing since Darwin’s Origin was published.
I don’t think you are paying any attention. You are very comfortable in your thoroughly old paradigm ways of thinking. For you, a real “Second Rennaissance” is something that, if it happens at all, will happen long after you are dead.
And as for the causal powers of spiritual practices? I am not just asking questions. I am providing detailed metaphysical answers. I am not just explaining how it is possible for spiritual practices to have metaphysically real causal power (not just psychological), but how the same model of reality resolves the crises in cosmology and quantum foundations, and provides the first coherent scientific theory of consciousness. And you aren’t interested.
According to actuarial tables, I have already exceeded my life expectancy at birth by over 2 years. Having reached that age, 14 more years is the likely expectation from here. Will the metacrisis be fully resolved by 2040? Unlikely. Quite a bit that is unresolved now will likely be unresolved then. Somehow, life goes on anyway.
That sums it up. You are actually (de facto) defending the old, entrenched paradigm, and you feel no urgency to make a real paradigm shift happen.
So what is 2R? What is this forum for? It sells itself as being like LessWrong (who refused to accept my posts “because they are about QM, and that’s too controversial and hard to be sure it is right”), but focused on making a major cultural paradigm shift happen, but in reality it is nothing of the sort. It’s actually a talking shop for integral-type people. It’s a social club. And I am not interested in the rules of a social club, because I’m actually doing everything in my power to make a real paradigm shift happen.
You aren’t in any danger from the metacrisis. Has it occured to you that the future of humanity is more important than your individual life situation?
That’s just more talking, Robert. It isn’t actually achieving anything, is it?
Paradigmatic change doesn’t happen when people talk more. It happens when people do the harder work of actually changing themselves. New thinking is required.
Anyone who still believes in radical epistemological and ontological relativism hasn’t done it. That is the core problem, not the solution. Once you admit that there really is such a thing as truth, then you have a duty to attempt to find out what it is. Which means ignoring what I am saying is not a legitimate option.
You also have to be honest with yourself about when you’ve lost a debate, and be prepared to change your views accordingly. Even if that means a total rethink of your belief system. I see none of that happening here. Instead, I see a group of people trying as hard as possible to accomodate each other’s beliefs, even though they contradict each other. There is zero respect for the actual truth, which allows everybody to go on believing whatever they like. This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the existing cultural paradigm. And not just the postmodern end of it – materialistic science is just as guilty, not because it denies truth in principle, but because nobody in the scientific community is taking responsibility for the total lack of a coherent model of the whole. Their truths are only ever reductionist and fragmentary, never holistic.
I have been through this process of total rethink twice. Once aged 19, and then again in my mid 30s. Once when I had to admit civilisational collapse was unavoidable (leading to a psychological collapse), and once when I had to admit physicalism is incoherent (leading to extreme “paranormal” phemonena while I was Dawkins’ forum admin). I no longer fear being wrong about things. I welcome it. I see very few other people who are commited to truth in this way, although it is more common in analytic philosophers. Most people will lie through their teeth and say things which they know don’t make any sense, rather than accept that they might have made a mistake about something important. Either that, or when confronted with something that doesn’t fit their belief system, they just don’t bother thinking any harder. They “delete” it, and forget about it.
Maybe a contemporary example will help. The kind of person who hasn’t even begun this work (and the internet is overflowing with them) now uses AI to respond whenever their own brain can’t think of a decent reply. Instead of thinking “I might be able to learn something here”, their ego kicks in, and assures them that they are already correct, even though they can’t think of a decent answer. So they post the problematic question or point into an AI, and cut-and-paste the response (sometimes having edited it to make it appear like it wasn’t produced by an AI). No new thinking takes place, but they feel like they’ve defended their view. Often, they don’t even read the AI-generated response they are posting.
Having to think for yourself, in a situation where you are struggling to come up with a good response, is how you actually become wiser. But it is only possible if your rational mind is in control of your emotions and your ego, and it is also much harder if you are a relativist about truth, because that allows you to say “each of us has our own truth, it doesn’t matter if we don’t agree”.
My “spit in the wind” estimate is something like 99.9% of the global population has not done the work as you define it, and never will, for lack of academic prerequisites, among other things. Gemini is more lenient in its estimate. In any case, if even understanding what you are talking about is a prerequisite for the future of humanity, it seems we are all generally in a lot of trouble.