Abstract

The Shape of Knowledge is the product of an eight-year-long journey to develop the basis of a new philosophical science called paraphilosophy. This mission began after a deeply meaningful experience led me to abandon my nihilistic and materialistic outlook and find a sound explanation for my newly acquired truth through the language of Western philosophy. The central problem that the book addresses can be termed the 'no-progress problem' of philosophy. Why is it, after more than two millennia of thought and discourse, that we have been unable to produce any meaningful progress in philosophy? Philosophers today tackle the same problems philosophers tackled back in Ancient Greece, and paraphilosophy provides a true end to this tradition. Crucially, paraphilosophy is not just a new philosophy, and it is not something that could have emerged from the academy by chance. Paraphilosophy is an entirely novel subject of science, with new methods and a new scope of interest. Its subject matter is philosophy, but it is not engaged in dialectical nor rhetorical activities. Paraphilosophy describes the underlying structure of the psyche which determines the ideas we can formulate through the act of doing philosophy-it is the being beneath this doing, and the 'bridge' between psychology and philosophy.