This is a well written article, Patrick. You have obviously put a lot of thought and care into it. That said, I think you have made some major philosophical errors. I will briefly comment on the more important ones. “Existence, the primacy of existence, the primacy of the individual over society, and identity are the most notable. From these absolutes, natural laws can be found and universally validated.”
First, you seem to be saying that “natural laws” can be rationalistically deduced from some primary absolutes. But this is not how science proceeds. If it were, we could simply move from one clear thought to the next, following the correct method, and pretty soon we would know everything about everything.
I grant that scientists do proceed from theories, but these are far from absolute. They are tentative generalisations that can only hold if they are falsifiable, but yet to be falsified.
Second, the notion of applying “natural law” to humans is suspect, due to its theistic and deterministic overtones. What we sometimes call natural laws are more properly described as theories about observed regularities in nature, (although we still use the term “law” as a matter of convenience). There is nothing inevitable about these theories. Some are discarded, some last the course, but you can’t tell which is which before the case.
A third and related flaw is the assumption that “natural laws” determine human behaviour, in the same way that gravity determines the behaviour of apples. But much human behaviour seems to escape this sort of determinism, so your analogy is misplaced.
In fact, even if your analogy were valid, it’s a bad analogy. People who jump off cliffs usually die. In likening capitalism to gravity – “Capitalism is the gravity that will cause his fall” -- you are implying that capitalism leads to death. I’m sure you don’t mean to imply this. A better analogy might be “holding back the tide” or some such, but even so, analogies are necessarily informal arguments and cannot support absolute or inevitable claims.
Brendan
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