Prolegomena to Scientific Speculation: An OS Engineering Architecture Compatible with Chinese Civilization and Silicon-Based Civilization

This book seeks to point toward a distant future: what kind of philosophical system could become the underlying operating system of thought and logic for a silicon-based civilization? Thus, “AI philosophy” in current academia refers to interpreting AI from the standpoints of various philosophical schools, whereas what this book calls “silicon-based philosophy” means using silicon-based thinking to investigate fundamental philosophical problems. Likewise, the prevailing academic method means doing textual exegesis and interpretive reading from the perspectives of established philosophical schools, whereas this book’s “silicon-based philosophy” means constructing an engineering-style philosophy—built upon the foundation of modern science—through the method of “scientific speculation” (that is, metaphysical-philosophical reasoning conducted primarily by means of modern scientific knowledge). The contrast is like poetry and prose versus an operating system. Take Part II of this book as an example: | Dimension | Traditional philosophy of life (Laozi–Zhuangzi / Buddhism / existentialism, etc.) | *Prolegomena to Scientific Speculation*, Part II | |---|---|---| | Mode of thinking | Intuition and insight; vagueness and metaphor | Axiomatized definition and inference; clarity and precision | | Aim of life | Attaining the Dao, free wandering, liberation, nirvana, freedom — transcendent states, not computable | Maximizing the satisfaction of individual needs — a clear direction, computable | | Method of life | Non-action, equalizing things, sitting in forgetfulness, prajna, dhyana/Chan meditation — mystical experience, hard to put into words | Objective methods and subjective methods — an executable and operable optimization plan for the life system | | Relation to science | Basically isolated from or opposed to science | Deeply integrated with science, extensively using scientific models from physics, psychology, economics, etc. as theoretical foundations | | Temperament | A poet who reveres the humanistic spirit | An engineer who reveres logical derivation | Because this book adopts a highly strict axiomatic form of “proposition—definition—inference—extension—explanation,” and because its logical chains are traceable and computable, it can also be regarded as a semi-structured corpus. Therefore, in addition to its reading value for humans, it also has engineering value for AI in areas such as causal reasoning, value alignment, and strategy generation. Using AI’s mode of thinking and learning—completely different from that of human beings—to study fundamental philosophical problems can yield many answers that are logical yet astonishing and subversive. Of course, this book fully acknowledges that these astonishing answers and civilizational sketches remain, for now, unproven philosophical hypotheses and thought experiments; yet the exploration itself may already be sufficiently interesting and worthy of research.