*Principles and the Common Good*

This paper is about principles of science, philosophy and logic, but it is also a statement *of* principle: we do not believe that any philosophic 'work' of the kind we are engaged in can be justified, as can pure science, if it is 'pure' philosophy. The use of human and natural resources can be justified for science, as such and as a part of natural philosophy, *because* is directed at increases in understanding of the real world. At the other extreme, we have the discussions, following Kripke and others, of possible worlds that have no existence other than that of fictional objects.

There is another operative principle that we can state as a conclusion of this study: any synthesis we seek will not be dependent on any absolute criteria of truth or completeness, but will seek to incorporate or in any event refer as far as possible to contradictory or opposing points of view. The second is that, as a metaprinciple, one can talk about principles at all, which some have contested. We are left with a criterion of utility like that of J. S. Mill which has been considered 'weak' and non-scientific. But this is exactly our thesis, even though by our own criteria we cannot prove or justify it, but support it on a methodological basis, that is, that dialectics and the Lupascian logic give the least abstract possible picture of the world.

Our dialectical approach leads to recovery of both dialectics and semiotics from reductionist interpretations and to their reunification in a new synthetic paradigm centered on meaning and its communication. Our concept unites science, logic and philosophy in a common meta-thesis and provides the real contours of a basic understanding of nature and civilization.

Formalization of dialectical logic cannot be complete and that is why it tends, like other 'diversities', to be ignored in scientific discourse [29]. However, the logic of real processes to redefine the ontological relations between meaning, communication and language will always remain a fundamental task; it forms the background of any description of nature that can accompany the new functional convergence of science and philosophy in progress. We consider the development of this 'dialectical realism' as a basis of the ethical development of knowledge for the common good.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, J.E.B. and A.U.I.; Writing—original draft, J.E.B. and A.U.I. **Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors acknowledge with gratitude the friendly and critical support of Rafael Capurro, Wolfgang Hofkirchner and Wu Kun. We look forward to an on-going dialogue with them on the philosophical and scientific issues addressed in this paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
