Last update: May 18, 2025
When I began college I was quite interested in philosophy and sciences that had mental and behavioral themes. (No in the picture that’s my son graduating High School, with my wife and I next to him, though close enough I guess.) Unfortunately however such endeavors didn’t seem to share my strong conviction that value ultimately exists as the good to bad things that we feel from moment to moment. It wasn’t exactly that science challenged my value premise with a different one, but worse that it seemed uninterested in the “value of existing” concept itself! Thus I figured that modern psychology might do me more harm than good. Furthermore I decided that attempting to glean useful understandings from the field of philosophy might also be unproductive since philosophers admittedly had no generally accepted understandings to provide, let alone my adopted value premise. And just as scientists seemed uninterested in the value of existing, philosophers only seemed interested in the supposed “rightness to wrongness” of what people do. Even back then I considered our various moral notions to exist as a socially constructed tool of persuasion.
Instead it was physics that taught me the potential wonders of academia. Beyond galvanizing my naturalism with an amazing story of interconnected causality, physics also gave me a sense of the potential advancement that ought to occur in mental and behavioral forms of science once they finally accept that we’re all driven by a desire to feel good rather than bad. After a few years I think I gained a basic grasp of physics, but didn’t continue. Not only did physics seem to come far more easily to my classmates than me, but I also knew that the field’s basics had already been worked out. Instead I yearned to establish a solid value premise from which to found the weakest areas of science so that effective models might finally become developed — an achievement which would be historical in scope.
Around this time I realized that the science of economics actually had been founded upon the premise that feeling good/bad constitutes the value of existing. Furthermore I found the field to validate my premise by displaying a vast collection of professionally undisputed models. I did go on to earn a degree in economics, though the field didn’t excite me enough to also try to work in it professionally. Just as the basics of physics had already been established, the basics of economics had too. So in 1994 after earning my economics degree at the age of 25, I continued on with the construction work that I’d done for my father while also attending classes. I decided that I’d try to settle my still adolescent life, and hopefully refine my academic positions on the side to perhaps one day come back with a compelling message for monumental change.
In 2014 with a relatively comfortable life at the age of 45, I could no longer keep quiet and so began blogging about my positions. In the early years I mainly hoped for feedback — instead I got something much better. Blogging taught me about academia itself — the esoteric terms, the reasonable to ridiculous things that people believed, the celebrity thinkers and their adoring fans… I loved it all! What I think I enjoyed most however was that it always seemed to validate my premise that feeling good/bad is what drives the conscious form of function.
Blogging also taught me that my project needed to expand. Beyond that an effective conception for the value of existing still seemed missing (technically under the domain of axiology), I found that scientists in general still needed solid principles of metaphysics (“what exists”) and epistemology (“what can be known”). Here I’m referring to the three essential domains of philosophy. Philosophers however tend to become sensitive about suggestions that they should do more than they have so far. In defense they commonly counter proposals like mine as a fallacy called “scientism”. While I’ve come to accept that philosophers must be permitted to do their work however they see fit, there’s a companion observation that I also make. Because the health of science should depend somewhat upon it working from effective rules of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology, I believe that a respected community must be developed which has the sole purpose of providing scientists with accepted understandings from which to work in these regards. And though many philosophers may still consider this proposal to be a great example of the scientistic fallacy, notice that I leave these three domains beyond science as a structure from which to regulate its function rather than to exist as a part of science. If philosophers continually refuse to provide such a focused community, then scientists will need to establish such a community themselves. In either case I propose that these professionals become known as “meta scientists”. In practice I suspect that several groups would compete to achieve such a distinction.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief account of my life so far. You’ll certainly find radical ideas here, but hopefully they’re sensible too. Beyond providing metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological principles from which to generally found science, I’ll also provide a “bottom up” evolutionary account of what we are in a psychological capacity. Furthermore I will try to keep discussions here respectful, and hope this won’t be too difficult given that my ideas should tend to disturb people who have become highly invested in the institutions that I believe need basic change. We should all remember that respectful dialog tends to help promote our own arguments most.
Will I remake the field of psychology by means of a “hedonistic” value premise, as well as lead a successful campaign to build a community that founds science in metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological ways? OF COURSE I WON’T!!! But because I’m quite sure that progress demands that such changes must eventually occur, I know that trying will continue to be great fun!
Cheers!
Eric
