[RC] Metadigms (WAS: Applied Philosophy)

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi all,

I agree with most of what Billy & Matt said.  I especially enjoyed:

Matt wrote:
> Ultimately though tools are really neat and useful to create 
> non-tools.  Would not philosophy without application be like 
> metal-smithing with no definable product?  Just pounding molten metal? 
>  A painter only mixing paints?

A noisy gong or a clanging symbol?  Certainly I can think of some who 
qualify. Which ties into Billy's taxonomy of philosophers:

> This leads to other comparisons. Kant: The Alps. Hegel: The ocean.
> Feuerbach: An avalanche. Heraclitus: Undetonated explosives. 
> Pythagoras:
> An archeopteryx. The first bird.

[I do believe I've finally started to grasp your sense of humor. ;-]

So, let me take this in a slightly different direction.  Paradigms are 
clearly central to this discussion, and clearly have a tight (if 
currently ill-defined) relationship to philosophy.  But what the heck 
are they?

Here's a few apothegms, for your consideration, critique and feedback:

	Paradigms are how we encode knowledge and apprehend truth
	- They can be formal or informal, implicit or (rarely) explicit
	- Individual people typically employ:
		countless micro-paradigms (proverbs),
		one macro-paradigm (worldview),
		many (incoherent) overlapping paradigms in between
		
	A Metadigm is a paradigm for creating, evaluating, and understanding 
paradigms

	Pure philosophy is the search for valid metadigms

	Applied philosophy is the use of metadigms

Again, I don't know if any of these statements are true (even within 
their level of precision), but I hope they are at least wrong in 
interesting ways.  I look forward to your comments.

-- Ernie P.
---------------------------------
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D. <DrErnie at RadicalCentrism.org>
RadicalCentrism.org exists to pursue and employ the metadigm of modern 
life, which we believe is contained in our Radical Centrist Manifesto: 
Ground Rules of Civil Society 
<http://RadicalCentrism.org/manifesto.html>