Continuing the Transphilosophical Method

• John Vandivier

This article continues discussion on a modified version of the Scientific Method which I call the Transphilosophical Method.

A long time ago, <a href="http://www.afterecon.com/theoretical-development-and-application/caeconomics-and-transphilosophy/">I wrote on what I call the transphilosophical method (TPM), which is a modified version of the Scientific Method. In this article I want to build on that process to make clearer the hypothesis formulation stage.

I previously wrote that there are 4 aspects of TPM, and they all occur simultaneously:

  1. Action
  2. Observation
  3. Consideration
  4. Preference
I think a useful improvement is to delineate the of output this process into intentional discovery and unintentional discovery. Intentional discovery culminates, sometimes, in an answer to our question. Either kind of discovery can also generate further questions.

I also want to clarify some of the language used in describing the model. For example, the term "action" seems odd because observation, consideration and preference are kinds of actions.

This version of the model, which we may specify as TPM2, comes in three flavors. TPM2 is a general model, which, like the first model, is focused on all information and all questions. TPM2A is the unintentional discovery model. TPM2B is the difference between TPM2 and TPM2A, and it is also the research question model.

TPM2 - At all times, a conscious person is constantly engaged in the following four activities to varying degrees. We will leave consideration of unconscious persons aside, although that's important.

  1. Physical activity
  2. Mental activity
    1. Observe/Capture a portion of a stream of perceivable information.
    2. Calculate/Consider/Evaluate captured information. This includes asking, answering and comparing.
    3. Judging/Preferring/Choosing/Prioritizing
      1. Given certain calculations or expectations, choose which thoughts, beliefs, or activities are preferred.
    4. Immediate Mental Direction
A person might also engage in accidental or intentional versions of those 4 activities, for a total of up to 8 processes in which any given person is engaging at any moment in our model. It would be interesting to look at whether a person could shift up or down their rate of accidental action, a la Kahneman, by choosing to be more or less careful, or place more or less effort into whatever activity. For now that's left out of the model.

TPM2A - Although information capture and consideration of information occur simultaneously, that is not the case for a particular piece of information. A particular piece of information must be captured before consideration. Because of this fact and others like it, the four activities which are simultaneous in the general model are not simultaneous in the discovery models. The general model is created based on human action, while the discovery models are based on particular pieces of information.

A piece of information does the following:

  • Unfortunately, it is not clear to me how information comes about. Therefore, let's suppose some information