I was intent on making this web site a window on the progress in my current philosophical writing projects, and still am. However, the progress I am making at present is rather Socratic, I am learning that I have not yet reached a sufficiently clear and complete conception of the projects to consider myself properly engaged in their implementation. I do believe that I am close, but I know that such beliefs are often ill-founded.

So at present this site may be thought of as providing a glimpse of my thinking on a pair of closely coupled book writing projects on which I will properly launch just as soon as the ideas become sufficiently settled.

It feels like a revolution at present, that I am going through in my conception of the project, and a little too new to articulate very clearly what is involved. There follows a little sketch of how my recent ideas have evolved, from some modest if central adjustments as I and then a step further in II, to something which seems like it may be a big change which I try to sketch in III.

Whereas the original idea was for a monograph on "The Fundamental Triple-Dichotomy", which broadened into a book on "Metaphysical Positivism" which would hang around a story about the triple-dichotomy, my conception of Metaphysical Positivism is now so substantially changed that a complete re-think of the structure of the exposition may be necessary.

Metaphysical positivism might be thought of as originating in the logical positivism of Rudolf Carnap, which was itself substantially inspired by Russell's conception of "scientific" philosophy. This is a positivist philosophy which is more pragmatic and less dogmatic than previous positivistic philosophies.

Metaphysical positivism had first to find an answer to the supposed refutations of logical positivism by Quine and Kripke, which is not hard to do. It then brings into the methodological picture an analytic method which is improved upon Carnap's in virtue primarily of advances in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. Finally it continues the elimination of dogma by a fuller (if not entirely complete) rehabilitation of metaphysics.

The books projects which I am trying to progress began with an intended monograph on "the fundamental triple-dichotomy", to which was added an analytic history of philosophical logic, as a means both of drawing out the historical threads which lead to the analytic method central to metaphysical positivism and of exhibiting that method in application to historical exegesis. The idea for the monograph then broadened into one for a book on Metaphysical Positivism and the analytic history became one of philosophical analysis.

I have decided to soften the stance on the analytic method and on the underlying conceptual framework, from one of proposing a specific method and providing the necessary underlying metaphysics. The prescriptive aspect of this is to be eliminated by the adoption of a comparative methodology. Rather than proposing the method and it philosophical underpinnings, the idea is to provide a variety of objective comparisons of methods.

My aim in this site is to give the reader a vivid sense of the dynamics of my current philosophical projects.

I have two book-writing projects taking off right now, and every step along these roads of discovery will be presented here on RBJones.com long before the books ever appear in print.

The site also contains a variety of previous cogitations.

The first of these projects is to be entitled "Metaphysical Positivism" and will be a new formulation of positivist philosophy. The book is intended to be a prose volume of similar scale and character to A.J.Ayer's "Language Truth and Logic". However, the book is primarily a presentation of an analytic method. It offers, rather than prescribes, a method, and provides analysis of that method, rather than polemic in its favour or against other methods.

The second, which provides both background for the former and an extended exemplar of the method of analysis informally described in that book, will be an analytic history of philosophical analysis, tracing the origins of our method and exemplifying its use.

Metaphysical Positivism is systematic constructive positivist philosophy. We present here sketches of Metaphysical Positivism together with some related historical material which might possibly help the reader come to an understanding of this system and its place in the history of ideas.

An analytic examination of varieties of analysis (mostly but not necessarily philosophical) and their philosophical, technical and technological underpinnings, historical and contemporary, formal and informal.

If you want to see the rest of the site,
some places to start are:

Materials on the history of philosophy which provide context for an understanding of Metaphysical Positivism.

In essence Metaphysical Positivism is a positivisitic philosophy with negative dogmas excised, with a positive attitude towards metaphysics, based around a method of logical analysis together with appropriate philosophical (including metaphysical) underpinnings.

The motivation.

Metaphysical Positivism is a positivistic philosophical system formulated for the twenty first century, building on a heritage going back at least as far as David Hume; cognisant of developments in logic and computer science which have taken place in the 20th Century, but turning away from some of the recent tendencies in analytic philosophy.

A few words on the purposes and character of the work.

Part II of Analyses of Analysis is the part where I seek to present and subject to comparative analysis modern analytic methods and their philosophical underpinnings.

First part of an analytic history of Philosophical Analysis, consisting of examples of exegetical analysis pertinent to the origins of modern methods.

A condensation of the formal backbone to the formal analyses, presenting the naked analytic truths obtained by deduction in the context of the formal models.