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20201031 Templeton CFP, Overview, General Form, Create DOI for papers

The Science of Purpose Funding Initiative is focused on the philosophical and scientific foundations of goal-directed outcomes in nature.

Templeton Foundation Values

• Humility in theology - methodology
• Opposed to dogmatism or nonreflective presumption (not know the answer)
• Typically inter-disciplinary
• Integrate novel sources of information (from the empirical sciences) into domains where such sources are often under-utilized (theology, philosophy)
• Glean insights from "non-empirical" disciplines as a way of spawning novel research hypotheses

Science of Purpose

Category: Models

Start date: August 2021. End date: July 2023

Budget

• 48,000 EUR wage
• 6,000 EUR publication and travel
• 5,000 EUR website
• 10,000 EUR assistants
• TOTAL 69,000 EUR = 81,000 USD

Summary (750 words)

Science is purposeful. Investigation has goal directed outcomes. What are the conceptual models that can and do get used for scientific discovery? To what extent is there an overall mental framework which organizes such disparate models into a comprehensive epistemology? What does this epistemology reveal about the metaphysical presumptions which underlie scientific disciplines? Across disciplines, how can we meaningfully, usefully, unambiguously identify and clarify degrees of knowledge (why, how, what, whether) and other concepts that may be pertinent to investigative agents (such as measurement, observation, perspective, subjectivity, objectivity, consciousness, ambiguity, entropy, miracle, life, love, creation, God, intervention, prayer, solidarity, culture, humanity)?

A simple way to proceed is to collect examples of the many ways of figuring things out. I propose to work for two years to collect 3,000 examples, systematize them, and publish them online as a database that others might reference and contribute to as well. I will survey the most prominent ways used in 20 different disciplines. I will also survey those used by 10 distinguished personalities. In each discipline, I will identify recurring patterns among the examples, and then classify and systematize those patterns using a toolkit of conceptual frameworks that I have documented over the years. Here in Lithuania, I will meet in a seminar every other week with colleagues to pursue, share and clarify related ideas. I will also organize a circle of colleagues online. I will publish three academic papers in mathematics, biology and epistemology about this endeavor, the methodology and the findings. The goal is to introduce this endeavor so as to encourage collaboration. Future projects could be hosted by a local institution.

The overall idea is that the human imagination is extremely limited and that there is much knowledge to be gained from comprehensively studying those limits. In particular, the methods how we think are especially limited. We can give and collect examples of them. We can distill the examples into patterns. We can document the cognitive frameworks which relate these patterns. We thus have the grounds for fostering a community of researchers who want and need an empirically-grounded interdisciplinary language of conceptual models to address great questions with great answers.

This all grows out of my resolve in 1971, as a six-year-old before God, to know everything and apply that knowledge usefully. Such a quest should be collaborative. However, I grew up in an age which ever denied the possibility of absolute knowledge. In 1982, when I entered the University of Chicago, I realized that the concept of everything could serve as an anchor for absolute knowledge. In philosophy and elsewhere there are recurring structures which function as divisions of everything. For matters of existence we need two perspectives, as with free will (opposites coexist, things may or may not be) and fate (all is the same, things are as they are). A learning cycle of three perspectives grounds the scientific method: We take a stand (hypothesis), follow through (experiment) and reflect (on the results). We allow for four levels of knowledge: why, how, what, whether. We approach these levels in two ways, as idealists asking questions (Why? How? What?) and materialists giving answers (Whether! What! How!) Idealists dismiss Whether, materialists dismiss Why, and so we enter unnecessary arguments. I have developed a vast conceptual language by methodically collecting and relating the frameworks that ground such recurring disagreements.

In 2010, I surveyed the ways that I myself have figured things out. I organized about 200 examples into a "house of knowledge", a system of 24 ways of figuring things out. Subsequently, I found the system to arise in mathematics, physics, business innovation, and also the thinking of Jesus, the Vilna Gaon and my choir director Dee Guyton.

The 24 ways/methods/models include those which establish a system and those which presume one. In neuroscience, this grounds a Cartesian duality between brain and mind. Nature has no purposes why, only persistences whether. The brain organizes an organism so that it persists as an association of recurring activities. Neuroscientists study the "errors" a brain makes regarding whether (phantoms), what (illusions), how (novelties) and why (fictions). For the brain in Pavlov‘s dog, "mealtime" is a recurring association, a most flexible level of persistence, a mistaken notion of a cause. This can be taken as a thought, an atomic purpose, a building block of a dog's mind. The divergence of persistencies into subtle associations is dual to the convergence of atomic purposes into a unified will which may marshal itself for supernatural goals.

References (500 words)

Epistemology

I refer you to two posters and two presentations in which I share preliminary results in developing and applying this epistemological approach.

Expressing the Organizer of an Organism's Behavior: An Epistemological Overview of Neuroscience, XI International Conference of Lithuanian Neuroscience Association, Behavioural Medicine and Neuroplasticity, 2019.11.29, Kaunas, Lithuania DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20096.87040

A Universal Grammar of Games as the Basis for Language and Human Culture, Applications in Cultural Evolution: Arts, Languages, Technologies, 2018.06.06, Tartu, Estonia. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18419.14882

Games as the Foundation for Universal Grammar, Originally: Could the Basis for Language Be the Reduction of Vagueness In Order to Coordinate Activity? Cognition and Language, 2017.11.25, Brno, Czechia. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14224.84489

Discovery in Mathematics: A System of Deep Structure DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35615.79523 An extended version in English of the presentation given in Lithuanian: Matematikos išsiaiškinimo būdų apžvalga. Lietuvos matematikų draugijos 57-oji konferencija. 2016.06.21, Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitetas, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Data

In 2011, I created a web database at .../ways/ where I collected, grouped and organized examples of ways of figuring things out. You may think of it as an early prototype of the online collection that I wish to assemble, publish and curate. I refer you to the following three collections which show the variety of examples that interest me.

284 Ways That Andrius Kulikauskas Figured Things Out. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.36454.65607

198 Ways of Figuring Things Out in Mathematics. A Collection of Examples. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23662.02889

413 Ways that Jesus of Nazareth Figured Things Out. A Collection of Examples. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32679.78248

Metaphysics

Finally, I share a couple of presentations about the conceptual frameworks which serve as building blocks in assembling the "house of knowledge".

Time and Space as Representations of Decision-Making, Space and Time: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2017.09.30, Vilnius University, Lithuania DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30372.91524

Imagining God's State of Mind As a Question: Is God Necessary?, Philosophy of Religion, XXIV World Congress of Philosophy, 2018.08.19, Beijing, China. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33728.35843