Axiomatic Metaphysics & Science & Technology: Metaphysical Technology
Metaphysics was at the forefront of human knowledge, enabling modern sciences and technologies and transforming our understanding of the world.
Science is at the forefront of human progress, continuously pushing the boundaries of knowledge and transforming our understanding of the world.
AI Technology is at the forefront of human progress, continuously pushing the boundaries of sciences and technologies and transforming our interactions with the world.
This article explores a groundbreaking transdisciplinary metaphysical technology shaping our future and opening new world of opportunities and possibilities.
As Leo Tolstoy said: "a misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people".
Among the worst general misconceptions are metaphysics, prima philosophia, and its universe of discourse: reality, as the totality of all and everything, science at large and AI as a whole.
My message is simple: "All is Reality", rather than "All is Illusion". Philosophy and Science, Engineering and Technology are all about reality, and [computational] metaphysics is their real master.
Metaphysics as the study of reality or the world at large is "the science of all sciences and technologies" thus enabling a universal metaphysical technology, integrating all the general-purpose technologies, as the internet and the web and artificial intelligence.
It is transcending physical and cybernetic systems, material and intelligent technologies to produce hyperintelligent [hyper]automation, a holistic integration of next-gen technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), robotics, automation, digital technology, virtual/augmented reality, quantum technologies, and other emerging technologies .
Its computational ontology is the world knowledge and inference engine (the "brains") of AI & ML & DL & LLMs.
Introduction
Today, metaphysics as the study of the nature of reality (the world as such) is a forbidden academic study and forgotten science.
And this is regardless of its noblest history of being prima philosophia and "the science of all sciences", involving the greatest minds ever , from Parmenides and Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Newton.
As a result, almost nobody has systematically studied metaphysics as the axiomatic foundation of all sciences, natural and formal, social and technological, as an axiomatic and formal structure.
Metaphysical axioms or assumptions, ontological postulates or premises or principles are embedded in all sides of human intelligent life, in all sciences and technologies, business and practices, ideologies and religions.
Most fundamental theories and general models, scientific or mathematical, social and political, economic or cultural, are some applications (theorems) of metaphysical postulates (axiomatic systems).
Given all that, I argue that Metaphysics as an axiomatic and formal fundamental system, is a missing link in the human knowledge, especially scientific and technological knowledge.
Axiomatic Metaphysics is introduced as a comprehensive and complete and consistent data/knowledge structure for listing and describing, learning and understanding, modeling and simulating reality as everything in the world.
All is in terms of entities (things that exist in the world), interactions (how entities are interacting with each other), and properties (the quantities or qualities that entities possess), at various levels of depth and granularity, scope and scale.
AM opens the causal gateways to Computational Global/Universal Ontology to Automated Science to Generalized AI, Machine Intelligence and Learning.
In the long history of philosophical metaphysics and short period of information science ontologies, our study emerges as one of the first axiomatic systems of AM enabling the computational universal ontology as the world learning, inference and interaction model engine for real AI metaphysical technology.
At one time, "philosophy [metaphysics] was the science of all sciences" (Aristotle), their supreme ruler. Latter physics was regarded as the science of sciences and technologies.
New Metaphysics as the Science of All Sciences and Technologies
AM is emerging as "the science of all sciences and technologies", producing the metaphysical technology of man-machine hyperintelligent systems, networks and platforms.
It generates and underlies all the sciences as empirical and theoretical branches of metaphysical systems of axioms, construed by outlining a set of ontological axioms and definitions from which scientific statements (assumptions, definitions or theorems) and theories are deduced:
Metaphysical Technology includes AI technologies, machine learning and data analytics, can integrate and analyze World's Data and Knowledge various disciplines, domains and practices. It is synthesizing information from all possible diverse sources, creating intelligent complex simulations and models to study all possible interactions and outcomes in transdisciplinary contexts, and providing a comprehensive holistic worldview of complex problems.
What are axiomatic systems?
An axiom or postulate or assumption or premise is what is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true, an accepted truth without controversy, question or evidence, general truth or principle.
There are logical axioms and non-logical, mathematical, or scientific assumptions or postulates or premises, all is deriving from metaphysical axioms or postulates, ontological assumptions or principles.
To axiomatize something (a system of knowledge) is to show that its conclusions and predictions, claims or theorems can be derived from a small, well-formed set of axioms/postulates.
Axioms are the key elements of an axiomatic system, a set of axioms to deductively derive theorems or predictions by a set of inference rules or algorithms.
A typical axiomatic system is a consistent, without contradictions, complete, formal or abstract structure, having its syntactic objects, as symbols or tokens, formulas or theorems, sensical or nonsensical. It is closely connected with formal systems and deductive systems, abstract theories, formal languages or logical systems, as syllogistic logic of Aristotle or mathematical logic.
A system of axioms or premises, assumptions and definitions, principles or postulates are the starting point for research or inquiry, study or reasoning in any science, formal or natural, social or technological.
Axiomatic abstraction or formalization of logic or mathematical knowledge makes them general, capable of multiple different meanings, modeling, and so applicable in multiple contexts. This relates to mathematical logic and mathematical theories, as the set theory or the category theory.
Experimental sciences also have general founding assertions, principles or postulates from which a deductive reasoning could predict properties, general or specialized to a specific experimental context.
It relates to?Newton's laws?in classical mechanics,?Maxwell's equations?in classical electromagnetism,?Einstein's equation?in general relativity,?Mendel's laws?of genetics, Darwin's?Natural selection?law, etc.
Metaphysical axiomatic systems are overruling formal axiomatic systems and theories, which are defective or limited by their design and nature, according to G?del's incompleteness theorems.
Metaphysical axioms or assumptions, postulates or premises or principles are embedded in all sides of rational activities or intelligent life, in all sciences and technologies, in ICT, computer science and engineering, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Metaphysics is everywhere, as far as it deals with the world and its realities and existences, things, entities, properties, actions and interactions.
What is Metaphysics? A brief history of the greatest idea
No critically significant ideas have been so confused and complicated as the notion of reality, being, existence, universe or world, with its discipline of study, known as metaphysics or general ontology.
It is regardless the fact that metaphysics studied by such figures as Heraclitus, Plotinus, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, David Hume, Georg Hegel, Friedrich Schelling, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Charles Renouvier, Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, émile Boutroux, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Nicolas Berdyaev, as well as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida.
As the study of being and existence and knowing, it could be the first human effort to know the world in terms of gods, spirits or beliefs, and highest possible abstractions and conceptions, starting from a pre-historic shamanic metaphysics.
Including ontology and cosmology and theology, epistemology, science and mental science, metaphysics is defined in different ways, from philosophy to general science to doctrine to philosophical speculation, as in:
Meanwhile, Francis Bacon?rejected?scholastic?metaphysics in favor of?empiricism, being seen later as the father of modern empirical science. In the 18th century, David Hume argued that all genuine knowledge involves either mathematics or matters of fact and that metaphysics, which goes beyond these, is worthless.
"If we take in our hand any volume [book]; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion".
Christian Wolff ?divided theoretical philosophy into an?ontology?or?philosophia prima?as a?general metaphysics,?the?three?"special metaphysics"?on the soul, world and God:?rational?psychology,?rational?cosmology and?rational theology
By the end of the 18th century, science as knowledge with its experimental scientific method had branched from natural philosophy, a part of metaphysics.
Since then science and philosophy have been increasingly parted as an empirical inquiry and a speculative, non-empirical study of the world.
The system-building metaphysics of process philosophy, ontology of becoming or processism, of A. N. Whitehead and Bunge's Ontology as a world of systems were attempts to restore metaphysics as foundational science and basic research.
I. Lakatos insisted that all scientific theories have a metaphysical "hard core" essential for the generation of hypotheses and theoretical assumptions, and "scientific changes are connected with vast cataclysmic metaphysical revolutions."
A big blow metaphysics had received from now dead logical positivism, "logical empiricism" or "scientific philosophy", where all philosophy was reduced to natural language with a logical syntax, reanimated by the large language models.
We could ignore metaphysics but at the cost of ignoring the world itself, what reality is made from or what exists or how it exists or why everything exists.
What has been missing in the long rich history of metaphysics, it is the research program of axiomatization or formalization, as in its branches of mathematics, geometry and logic.
Axiomatic Metaphysics: the Universal Axioms of Reality
To axiomatize metaphysics and formalize its general ontology, we have to extensively define it as complete as possible.
Axiomatic metaphysics is a comprehensive and complete and consistent way of listing and describing, learning and understanding, modeling and simulating reality as everything in the world in terms of
entities (things that exist in the world),
interactions (how entities are interacting with each other),
and properties (the quantities or qualities that entities possess), at various levels of depth and granularity, scope and scale.
In all, there are 3 universal truths, of Reality or the World at large or All Existence, Entity or Thing and Interaction or Interrelationship and Causation.
The number one Truth/Principle/Rule/Maxim is the Axiom of Infinite Reality. Reality Axiom. All is Reality.
Definition A. Reality is the interacting totality of things or entities, known and unknown, existent or nonexistent, material or immaterial, abstract or concrete, ideal and real, objective or subjective, mental and non-mental, universal or particular, possible or actual, physical or conceptual, observable or latent, empirical or theoretical
The world in general (W) exists as the universe of all entities (E) and interactions (I):
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Reality = Existence = Being = Universe = the World = All Entities + All Interactions = W = <E; I>
Depending on its content, there is a hierarchy of realities/entities/interactions:
Ontological/metaphysical/transcendental reality
Physical actuality
Biological actuality
Psychological reality
Social reality
Information actuality
Technological actuality
Digital reality
Virtual reality
Intelligent reality
The number two axiom of reality is the Entity Axiom/Principle/Rule/Maxim/
Entity Axiom. Everything is Entity or Thing
Definition B. Entity is a piece of reality, an interactive thing having independent being and distinct existence, composed of pure entity (substance) and property (interactive powers):
Entity = Thing = Object = Pure Entity (Substance (Matter (Internal Structure)) + Interactive Property (Form (Functional)
Properties describe the characteristic ability of a substance interact to change its states or to react to form new substances, like material [physical or chemical] properties, interactively supervenient to the underlying reality.
As quantitative and qualitative properties, they are formalized as interactive or causal variables objectifying independent-rules/laws/functions-dependent variables schema widely applied in mathematical and statistical modeling and experimental sciences.
Formally, any entity could be described as an Entity/Object-Attribute/Parameter-Value data model or the Quantitative Property/Structure-Activity Relationships, generalizing standard data modeling techniques, as datasets, structured tabular row or column modeling data widely used for Statistical AI/ML models.
Another topmost class of reality is Interaction ; for nothing exists out of interactions, from elementary particles to life to the whole universe.
Interaction Axiom. Everything Interacts.
Definition C. Interaction is Causation or Causality or Interrelationship, mutual actions or changes or reciprocal effects between or among entities to exchange or interplay matter and energy, data or information, knowledge or communication.
It is the third onto-scientific axiom or postulate or self-evident truth or universally received principle.
Interaction involves entities and interrelationships via causation mechanisms, as the fundamental forces of gravitation, electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction (Interactive Causality):
Interaction (Structure, Network, System, Whole) = Entities + Interrelationship (Association, Correlation, Interdependence) + Causation Mechanism (Causality, Causes and Effects, Action and Reaction Forces, Agency and Efficacy, Changes and Events, Activities and Processes) = I = <W x W>
The Interaction Axiom/Principle/Rule/Maxim/Basis/Premise rules the Onto-scientific Inferences/Causal Reasoning about the World. The universal axiom, "Whole is greater than the part", is a consequence of the Interaction Axiom, due to its interactive features and integrative properties, as entity's states, quantities or qualities, attributes and features.
In every interaction, there is a pair of forces, as action force and reaction force, acting on the two interacting entities, things or objects.
The fundamental physical interactions, the action and reaction forces, chemical reactions, biological processes, social interactions, digital interfaces, etc. all is underpinned by the Interaction Axiom.
The study, learning and application of interactions with causation mechanisms are the ultimate goal of all the sciences, natural and social, fundamental and applied, engineering and technology, as well as business models and politics.
If to remind, the basic assumption of cause or reason as the search for causes of natural phenomena originated the “inquiry into Nature”, a quest for “the causes of each thing; why each thing comes into existence, why it goes out of existence, why it exists” (Plato).
Again, metaphysical "reality is the totality of all things, structures (actual and conceptual), events (past and present and future) and phenomena, whether observable or not. It is what a world view (whether it be based on individual or shared human experience or machine learning) ultimately attempts to describe or map".
Machine Intelligence: Axiomatic Metaphysics/Computational Ontology + Science + AI [ML & DL & ANNs]
The axiomatic formal metaphysics enables the universal data and knowledge, learning and inference reference framework, the "brains" for real AI entities.
Real AI's mentality is simulating reality, rather than simulating human mentality.
Real AI & ML & DL & LLMs simulate reality in machines, while unreal AI & ML & DL & LLMs simulate human mentality or specific intelligence in computer systems.
To build real intelligent machines, teach them the world metaphysics or universal ontology or how to interact with the world, as transforming deep neural networks into the world hypergraph networks generalizing computer networks, artificial neural networks, natural networks, biological networks, technological networks, brain networks, climate networks, social networks, etc.
The universal metaphysical technologies, as its hyperintelligent [hyper]automation are emerging as the key driver of the real and true AI technology and its fifth industrial revolution, Industry 5.0 .
For more detailed knowledge, look up Machine Metaphysics for MI and ML: from universal metaphysics to universal AI technology and the references below.
Resources
SUPPLEMENT 1
Real AI Project Confidential Report: How to Engineer Man-Machine Superintelligence 2025: AI for Everything and Everyone (AI4EE); 179 pages, EIS LTD, EU, Russia, 2021
Content
The World of Reality, Causality and Real AI: Exposing the great unknown unknowns
Transforming a World of Data into a World of Intelligence
WorldNet: World Data Reference System: Global Data Platform
Universal Data Typology: the Standard Data Framework
The World-Data modeling: the Universe of Entity Variables
Global AI & ML disruptive investment projects
USECS, Universal Standard Entity Classification SYSTEM:
The WORLD.Schema, World Entities Global REFERENCE
GLOBAL ENTITY SEARCH SYSTEM: GESS
References
Supplement I: AI/ML/DL/CS/DS Knowledge Base
Supplement II: I-World
Supplement III: International and National AI Strategies
SUPPLEMENT 2: Metaphysical concepts
Supplement 3
There are a lot of meaningful things that could be found on the internet, but one special item. Try to Google Search or Bing Search <axiomatic metaphysics>. The search results are almost nothing, if only mentioning <New Seminar: "Axiomatic Metaphysics" (Prof. Ed Zalta, Stanford) >, which having nothing to do with real metaphysics.
A deeper search could bring you to the Wisdom post from Armenia, An Аxiomatic System of Philosophical Ontology . Its abstract reads "for the first time in the history of philosophy, this article presents an axiomatic system of philosophical ontology intending to demonstratively solve “eternal” questions related to the most fundamental problems of human cognition of the natural (material) world".