Method and Temporality

A Method is a Means to an End.  It therefore consists in at least two stages; but these stages are not simultaneous.  In other words, Method is inherently Temporal, and, as has been previously discussed, ordinally so, i. e. a Means precedes an End, but not vice versa.  Now, even though Time is of only marginal interest to the pioneering Rationalists and Empiricists, it is implicit in the Foundationalism that they share--they each begin with some certain element, and then derive others, e. g. more complex elements, copies, etc.  But that inattention to Time is more than incidental in both traditions--the privileging of Eternity by the Rationalists relegates Time to a subordinate status at best, and the Associationism of the Empiricists is symmetrical, and, hence, atemporal.  It is not until Kant recognizes the inadequacy of that Associationism to Causality that the fundamentality of Temporality to Experience gets recognized, though he still misses its role in Practice.  Nevertheless, to whatever extent Philosophy is Methodical, it is Temporal.

Method, Volition, Self

A Method is a plan of Action that may or may not be successful in particular instances.  But, regardless of the outcome, an attempt at executing it has been made.  In other words, Method entails Volition.  Thus, entailed in the Epistemological methods Rationalism and Empiricism, and typically abstracted from their execution, is Volition, and its immediate expression--I Will.  Now, Volition might be neutralized, but not contradicted.  Thus, not only can I Will not be the object of Skepticism, it is, in fact, its subject.  So, the various notable Rationalist and Empiricist attempts to conceive the Self, e. g. Cogito, Bundle of Perceptions, etc., are misdirected from their textual outsets.

Method and Mathematics

A Method is a plan of action in pursuit of some goal.  It is thus designed to be executed, with respect to which a Theoretical operation such as examining it or contemplating it is derivative and inessential.   A Method has an inherent sequential structure, or, in other words, it is inherently Ordinal.  Thus, it is inherently Mathematical, i. e. it entails First, Second, etc.  Accordingly, the Mathematical concepts of the predominant Modern Methods, Rationalism and Empiricism, e. g. that Mathematical knowledge requires the existence of a deity, that it is constituted by static associations of representations of Sense-Data, etc., are all derivative.

Method, Certainty, Infallibility

Certainty can be either Theoretical or Practical--the former is Necessity of Truth, while the latter is Infallibility.  Thus, for example, a Proposition that is certain is necessarily true, while a Method that is certain is one in which success is guaranteed.  Likewise, to doubt a Proposition is to consider that it might be false, while to doubt a Method is to consider that it might be unsuccessful.  Now, a notable confusion of the two varieties is in a traditional argument against Skepticism--that applied to itself it cancels itself--the pioneering version of which is Descartes'.  But Skepticism is in this case a Method for determining Theoretical Certainty.  Hence, it is inapplicable to itself, which is why Descartes cannot doubt that he is doubting, and, thus the presumed contradiction--that he is both doubting and doubting that he is doubting--does not obtain.  Likewise, because the negation of Practical Uncertainty is not Theoretical Certainty, as a Method of determining Theoretical Certainty, his Skepticism about Skepticism fails.

Metamethodology and Modern Philosophy

The study of Method per se could be called Methodology, but since that term is commonly used for more specialized purposes, an alternative is Metamethodology.  So, insofar as each of the main doctrines of Modern Philosophy, Rationalism and Empiricism, begins, as has been previously discussed, as a Method, the study of Modern Philosophy, if not the foundation of any Philosophy, is Metamethodology.  Now, a Method is an organized way of proceeding.  Hence, Method connotes both How-to and Can-do.  In other words, it is an expression of Techne, and evinces the equivalence of Knowledge and Power, in the most general sense of the latter concept.  Thus, for example, Descartes' I Think, arrived at via a Method, is preceded by both I Know How and I Can Do.  Likewise, whether or not Locke is correct to assert that there are no innate Ideas, his Empiricism is a Rational procedure.

Interpreting the World, Changing the World, Escaping the World

To Marx' contrast of Philosophy as interpreting the World and Philosophy as changing the World can be added a third option: Philosophy as escaping the World.  For example, Modern Philosophy begins with Bacon as Method, one aspect of which is the attempt to "produce effects".  From that origin, on the one hand, Descartes extracts the Cogito, attached to the World only by the pineal gland.  Leibniz then severs his Monad from any such connection, and speculates that it might inhabit other Worlds, leading eventually to the denial of any Actual World by some contemporary Modal Logicians.  On the other hand, Locke reduces Empiricist Method to sensory Ideas, which Berkeley further reduces to private phenomena that are the medium of divine communication.  Subsequently, Hegel also spiritualizes Phenomena, and Heidegger, via Husserl, ontologizes them as Being, differentiated from Beings inhabitating the World.  In other words, to add to another of Marx' famous sayings, Philosophy is the opiate of some Philosophers.

Knowledge, Power, Mathematics

Bacon's fundamental principle--Knowledge is Power--means that Knowledge is fundamentally Techne, i. e. Know-How, a formulation usually falsified by its fragmentation into Knowing-That and Having-Power-Over.  Likewise, the foundation of Modern Epistemology is Method, from which, in accordance with that fragmentation, competing concepts of Knowing-That emerge--Rationalism and Empiricism.  Thus, still remaining disavowed by mainstream Philosophers, is the rogue insight two centuries later that Descartes' Discourse on Method is an expression of a Will to Power.  Also overshadowed in the Meditations, the usual attention to which is on a Jesuit's wrestling with orthodox Theology, is its more radical heterodoxy--the introduction of Mathematics as Techne, i. e. founding it on the Cogito, thereby supplanting the tradition, beginning with Pythagoras, of it as a Knowing-That.  So, Descartes can be conceived as advancing Baconism with a principle that is formulated as: Mathematics is Power, the consequences of which have been much of subsequent history.