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Wells Glossary of Critical Philosophy and Mental WELLS' UNABRIDGED GLOSSARY OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY and MENTAL PHYSICS FOURTH EDITION including Critical social-natural science terminology Edited by Richard B. Wells PUBLISHED BY THE WELLS LABORATORY OF COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE & MENTAL PHYSICS THE UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO BOISE, IDAHO FIRST PRINTING: October 31, 2014 ©2014 by Richard B. Wells All Rights Reserved INTRODUCTORY That there are many names in use amongst speculative men which do not always suggest to others determinant, particular ideas, or in truth anything at all, is what nobody will deny. – Berkeley Preface to the Fourth Edition The fourth edition of the Critical Glossary adds almost two hundred new technical terms for empirical social-natural sciences. These new social-natural sciences include education theory, economics, political science, social-natural sociology, psychology, organization and institution theory, management theory, mathematics and logic, deontological ethics, and justice theory. The edition covers new terminology development up through the publication of volume III of The Idea of Public Education, entitled The Institution of Public Education. Like the third edition, this edition consists of six main parts arranged in the following order: the Main Glossary, the Table of Realdefinitions of the Categories, the Critical Acroams and Principles, the Summary of the Transcendental Ideas, the Synopsis of the Momenta of Practical Judgment, and the Synopsis of the Momenta of Reflective Judgment. Richard B. Wells, Ph.D., P.E. (ret.) Emeritus Professor, University of Idaho written at The Wells Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience & Mental Physics 8105 S. Diego Way Boise, Idaho, USA 83709 [email protected] Oct. 30, 2014 in Boise, ID ii INTRODUCTORY Preface to the Third Edition This third edition of the Critical Glossary reflects continued developments in the application of the Critical Philosophy and the mental physics of the phenomenon of mind to social-natural science applications. Problems to which these are now being applied extend into the fields of social-natural economics, social-natural sociology, and further development of a social-natural science of education. The edition covers new terminology development up through publication of volume II of The Idea of Public Education, entitled Critique of the American Institution of Education. The Glossary has also been extended to include several terms inadvertently left out of the previous editions. This edition of the Glossary consists of six main parts arranged in the following order: the Main Glossary, the Table of Realdefinitions of the Categories, the Critical Acroams and Principles, the Summary of the Transcendental Ideas, the Synopsis of the Momenta of Practical Judgment, and the Synopsis of the Momenta of Reflective Judgment. Richard B. Wells, Ph.D., P.E. (ret.) Emeritus Professor, University of Idaho written at The Wells Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience & Mental Physics 8105 S. Diego Way Boise, Idaho, USA 83709 [email protected] August 4, 2013 in Boise, ID iii INTRODUCTORY Preface to the Second Edition In just the single year that has passed since the publication of the first edition of this Glossary, the scope of applications for the Critical Philosophy and mental physics in science has expanded at a pace that has been well beyond anything we expected. New fundamental results have been obtained in basic research in neuroscience and psychology, which our Laboratory expected would happen. But the most significant development, one which we did not anticipate, has been the pace of discovery at which mental physics and Critical metaphysics has made it possible to recast the social sciences, turning them for the first time into social-natural sciences capable of producing specific theories and making precise predictions on a par with the traditional physical-natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. This same discovery has also made possible the development of new social-natural sciences. This has led so far to development of a social-natural science of leadership, to a new formulation of the theory of the Social Contract, and to a new metaphysic for a social-natural science of public education. We anticipate that social-natural reformations in political science, economics, sociology and social psychology, the management of organizations, and history will soon be forthcoming in the next several years. Another development that has taken place during the past year has been the development of a precise methodology for how to mathematically deduce an applied metaphysic. The grounding of any empirical special science requires its connection with the fundamental principles and laws of Critical metaphysics proper, and this is the role of an applied metaphysic. The lack of a Critical doctrine of method for making the transition from metaphysics to science was recognized by Kant near the end of his life. It left a hole in his system that he was working to fill in before infirmities of old age incapacitated him. This hole has now been filled through application of mental physics. These developments have brought with them an expansion of the technical vocabulary of Critical theory. The main glossary has grown by almost fifty percent as Critical metaphysics and mental physics have been brought to bear on various research problems and questions. This, in our opinion, more than amply justifies bringing out a second edition at this time. In addition, we have been provided with much useful feedback regarding the clarity – or, more accurately, lack of clarity – in some of the glossary explanations and definitions provided in the first edition. The new edition addresses these shortcomings and we thank those who have pointed out shortcomings in the first edition. A number of minor editorial and typographical errors have also been found and corrected in this edition. Finally, the omission by the first edition of the tables providing Realdefinition of the momenta of practical judgment and reflective judgment has been corrected in this second edition. The Wells Laboratory is proud to present you with this much improved edition of the Glossary of the Critical Philosophy and Mental Physics. Richard B. Wells, Ph.D., P.E. Professor, The University of Idaho written at The University of Idaho Buchanan Engineering Laboratory, Rm. 316 Moscow, Idaho, USA 83844-1024 [email protected] June 20, 2012 in Moscow, ID iv INTRODUCTORY Preface to the First Edition The great 18th century chemist Antoine Lavoisier wrote that it is impossible to improve a science without improving its language and that it is impossible to improve its language without also improving the science. One of the several reasons that Kant's Critical Philosophy has been historically difficult for his readers and interpreters to comprehend is because Kant found himself forced to invent from scratch an entire new philosophical vocabulary to express it. But he then neglected to provide definitions and explanations of his new terminology or even to indicate when he was using familiar words in a technical context in which these words meant something very specific and, usually, different from their common usages. The purpose of this Glossary is, in part, to correct this deficiency. Mental physics is a new Critical science deriving from Kant's Critical Metaphysics. Its Object of study is the phenomenon of being a human being in a human being's twin aspects of the phenomenon of mind and the phenomenon of body. In one respect, it can be regarded as what Kant called the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe or "metaphysical rudiments" for the practice of applying Kant's Critical epistemology to applied metaphysics and to the special sciences. There is no science without the scientist, and it is because of this that mental physics is pertinent to every field of scientific study. The scientist must always be concerned in the foremost about what is knowledge vs. what is semblance, what he knows with objective validity vs. what he thinks on merely subjective grounds of judgment. Discerning these differences is always a metaphysical task. If a scientist pays no attention to the metaphysical premises he uses in making his observations, conducting his experiments, or constructing his theory, then he will use an unscientific pseudo-metaphysics. Every human being develops such a personal pseudo-metaphysics for himself during early childhood. This is an unavoidable consequence of the mental physics of the infant's earliest processes of understanding and judgmentation. In a practical context, any metaphysic is "the way one looks at the world" and every one of us develops his own way of "looking at the world" as part of learning to cope with the empirical circumstances of living. The proper practice of any science must be grounded in a scientific and epistemology-centered doctrine of metaphysics. This is what Kant's Critical Metaphysics provides. Failure to heed this necessitation eventually leads a science into unanswerable antinomies, paralogisms and irresolvable paradoxes. Furthermore, the doctrine chosen must be a doctrine specifying conditions that must be satisfied in order for theories and ideas to hold with real objective validity. No ontology-centered doctrine of metaphysics can provide this, and every such doctrine has always eventually had to call upon the agency of some god to rescue its premises. The second most common version of this in science today worships a "god of probability" as if probability, which is a mere construct of mathematics, had a power to affect Nature. The third most common practice employs one or another accidental doctrine belonging to a genus of Neo- Platonic doctrines. This is especially the case in mathematics, but can also be seen emerging in mathematical physics today as well. The most common metaphysics employed in science today is the hodgepodge of individual, personal pseudo-metaphysics employed by individual scientists. Among many harmful effects, this one is responsible for the great gap between the successes that have been achieved in physics, chemistry and biology vs. the far lesser achievements of the social science disciplines.
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