Chapter 24 Final Epilegomenon : Noumena and the Critical Method in Science

In deciding how to best bring this treatise to a close I have been guided by two considerations. The first of these is to prepare for a transition to an applied metaphysic for the not-yet-born science of mental physics. My vision for this is that this science will unite the works of neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, system theory, and philosophy in carrying forward with the grand goal of understanding the reciprocal phenomena of mind and the central nervous system. John Stuart Mill touched upon an important observation in his quote with which this Chapter begins. I think there is very little chance of uniting the divers works of the different specialties so long as “the elementary notions with which the science is conversant” are not shared by all the practitioners of the science. Here I think philosophy, and, more particularly, metaphysics, has a duty to step up and earn a seat at the council of science. Proper metaphysics is the science of the general and ought to be re-made into what it once claimed to be: the parent of the special sciences. That metaphysics has not yet earned its place is a blot on its record but is not a sufficient reason for it to withdraw from the effort. Bloom’s scathing criticism of the state of philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s is well deserved. Fortunately, I think I can detect the faint signs of a new renaissance in philosophy and, if I am not wrong, it is a hopeful sign for the future. Yet it must be admitted that philosophy today is greatly hampered by the fact that many, perhaps most, professional philosophers are too much lacking in an adequate science education. If it is ironic that so many Ph.D.s in the sciences are untrained in philosophy, it is more ironic still that so many practitioners of what Aristotle called “the first science” are untrained in any one of the