Methodology is needed not to determine which theses may be expressed, but to uncover the operations through which a thesis was obtained.
The same analysis must be applied both to another person’s assertion and to one’s own. A method that discovers unjustified transitions only in the opposing position, but cannot examine its own foundations, itself becomes a closed framework.
1. Fix the Thesis
First, it is necessary to determine what exactly is being asserted.
Not the topic of conversation, not the author’s presumed position, and not a possible consequence, but the concrete thesis.
For example:
“Neurons compete.”
“Consciousness emerges from complexity.”
“The world has fundamental laws.”
“Truth is objective.”
“No objective truth exists.”
Each of these theses must be examined in its own formulation. One cannot first replace it with a more convenient version and then investigate that instead.
2. Determine the Status of the Assertion
One must distinguish:
- observation;
- description;
- distinction;
- definition;
- model;
- metaphor;
- hypothesis;
- causal explanation;
- ontological thesis;
- normative assertion.
One of the principal errors occurs in an unnoticed transition between these statuses.
“This dynamic can be described as competition” and “competition exists within the system” are not the same assertion.
“The model behaves as though it chooses” and “the model makes a choice” are not the same assertion.
3. Find the Subject of Distinction
One must ask:
Who made this distinction?
If a subject distinguished a particular state as “competition,” “resource,” “information,” “problem,” “goal,” “error,” “system,” or “function,” one cannot automatically transfer the existence of that distinction into the object being described.
It is necessary to separate:
X occurred in reality
from
the subject distinguished what occurred as X.
This does not assert that X necessarily exists only in language. It prohibits making the reverse transition without an additional foundation.
4. Examine the Origin of the Category
One must ask:
Where did the concept used to describe what is happening come from?
A category may have been transferred:
from social interaction;
from subjective experience;
from technology;
from economics;
from the language of management;
from a mathematical model;
from another scientific field.
It is then necessary to check whether, along with the word, more structure was transferred than had been established in the phenomenon under investigation.
For example:
“competition” carries a structure involving multiple participants, incompatible outcomes, some object of competition, and a relation between the participants.
If the observed phenomenon contains only changes in concentrations of a substance, that is not yet sufficient to automatically transfer the entire structure of the concept “competition.”
5. Check for Reification
Has a distinction introduced by a subject been transformed into an independent element of the reality being explained?
A characteristic transition:
a process is observed → the process is given a name → the name begins to designate an independent property → the property begins to explain the original process.
For example:
“A particular dynamic has been called competition.”
↓
“Competition exists within the system.”
↓
“The system behaves this way because its elements compete.”
At the final stage, it is necessary to check whether the original description has become the cause of the very phenomenon that it merely described.
6. Check for Anthropomorphism and the Transfer of Subjectivity
Have structures that originally have meaning in relation to a subject been transferred to a nonsubjective process?
Words requiring particular attention include:
“chooses”;
“decides”;
“tries”;
“prefers”;
“strives”;
“recognizes”;
“evaluates”;
“interprets”;
“competes”;
“struggles.”
Using such a word does not in itself prove an error. It is necessary to determine whether it is shorthand for an established mechanism, or whether a subjective structure really has been introduced into the explanation.
7. Check for Teleology
Is an existing state being explained through its future result?
For example:
“A tree grows upward in order to obtain light.”
One must separate the observable causal structure of the process from the subsequent description of the result as a goal.
Function, result, and goal must not become interchangeable merely because of the grammatical form of an explanation.
8. Check for the Homuncular Transfer
Is a subject’s capacity being explained through a mechanism to which the same capacity has imperceptibly been attributed?
For example:
“A person understands an image because the brain interprets the visual signal.”
If the word “interprets” already presupposes the distinction of meaning, one must separately explain what occurred at the level of the mechanism.
Otherwise, the phenomenon to be explained is not explained but moved inside the system.
9. Find Hidden Presuppositions
For every thesis, ask:
What must already be regarded as true for this thesis even to be formulated in this way?
For example, the assertion:
“When science develops sufficiently, it will construct a complete model of reality”
may presuppose, prior to any investigation:
the existence of a single, fully determined structure of reality;
the possibility of representing that structure exhaustively;
the structure’s accessibility in principle to a subject;
isomorphism between the model and what is modeled.
The subject of investigation then becomes not only the final thesis, but also its unstated foundation.
10. Examine the Psychological Function of the Thesis
One must ask:
What does this thesis do for the subject?
It may:
close uncertainty;
preserve the internal consistency of an existing worldview;
provide a feeling of explanation;
eliminate the necessity of leaving a question open;
preserve belonging to a particular system of views;
defend distinctions already made;
create a feeling of predictability;
allow further investigation to stop.
Discovering such a function does not make the thesis false.
The psychological origin of an assertion and its truth are different questions.
But a discovered function makes it possible to check whether the assertion was accepted before sufficient foundation had appeared, because the subject needed the result it provides.
11. Check the Explanatory Remainder
After using an explanatory concept, one must ask:
What exactly has been explained that was not already present in the original description?
If:
“neurons compete”
means, when unfolded, only:
“activation of one circuit leads, through certain connections, to a reduction in the activity of another,”
one must determine whether “competition” adds new knowledge or only a new name.
The case in which an additional word initially adds nothing to the mechanism, but is then used as an independent cause, is particularly important.
12. Remove the Category
A useful operation:
mentally remove the concept under investigation and leave only what is directly asserted about the changes taking place.
What remains without:
“competition”?
“information”?
“goal”?
“decision”?
“law”?
“system”?
“emergence”?
If removing the word leaves the description of what is happening completely intact, it is necessary to establish separately what additional work the introduced category performs.
13. Test an Alternative Description
Can the same observed events be described through a different system of distinctions?
If so, a question arises:
Which part of the original assertion belongs to what is happening, and which part belongs to the way the subject has chosen to organize it?
The existence of several possible descriptions does not in itself make them equivalent. It demonstrates the necessity of an additional foundation for moving from “this is one way to distinguish it” to “this is how reality itself is structured.”
14. Check Whether the Data Are Exceeded
One must separate what has been established from what the thesis adds.
If observation confirms A, while the assertion contains A+B+C, one must find independent foundations for B and C.
It is precisely here that description frequently turns into ontology without the speaker noticing.
15. Check Self-Applicability
Every methodological thesis must be directed toward itself.
If it is asserted:
“People create ontological theses to close uncertainty,”
one must ask:
Does this thesis itself create certainty through the same operation?
If it is asserted:
“All categories are constructions of the subject,”
one must ask:
What is the status of the category “construction of the subject”?
If it is asserted:
“Distinctions must not be reified,”
one must ask:
Has “reification” itself been reified into an independent mechanism?
Self-application is not intended to automatically destroy a thesis. It reveals where the method must withstand its own demands.
16. Do Not Turn Genesis into Refutation
One may establish:
“This thesis arose because it is psychologically convenient.”
It does not follow that:
“This thesis is false.”
One may establish:
“This concept emerged historically under particular social conditions.”
It does not follow that:
“What it designates does not exist.”
One may establish:
“This category was created by a subject.”
It does not follow that:
“It distinguishes nothing real.”
Investigating the origin of a thesis answers a question about its genesis.
Investigating its truth requires a separate foundation.
17. Leave Open the Possibility of No Thesis
Methodology does not have to finish every investigation with a new assertion.
The result of analysis may be:
“there is no foundation for this transition.”
After this, it is not necessary to immediately introduce the opposite ontological thesis.
Removing an unjustified assertion and creating an opposite assertion are two different operations.
The absence of a thesis is not automatically a negative thesis.
Basic Principle
Methodological analysis must constantly distinguish:
what happened;
what the subject distinguished in what happened;
which concept the subject used to name it;
what additional structure the concept introduced;
at what moment this structure was transferred back into reality;
at what moment it began to be used to explain reality itself.
The task of methodology is not to prohibit categories, models, and metaphors.
Its task is to make the transition between levels visible, so that the result of one’s own distinction is not presented as the original structure of that which is distinguished.
