I think we can be fairly certain that HIlary would have followed the neo-con agenda abroad and more aggressively than either Obama or Trump, the former more small scale interventionist (but all over the place) and the latter more isolationist in general, a businessman's attitude, possibly, about enormous expenses. I think HC could have gotten away with more. A hawk female democrat would find many liberals and lefties reluctant to criticize her. Trump or Bush would jsut have to make interventionist noises, so she would have provided more swingroom. Biden benefits as a supposed liberal, but he's kind of a gray figure. Who knows what he believes, really, or how far he is willing to go, but I think concern about an aggressive foreign policy is well grounded I think.

Is that even a bad thing? — jamalrob

I sure think it is. It is producing more interest in terrorism. It is scaring both China and Russia. If those countries intervened as much as the US does and did worldwide they would be painted as radically aggressive imperialist nations. Their domestic policies are horrendous, but the US is aggressive and passive aggressive (with bases close to borders, etc.) in ways that are destablizing and which would not be accepted if it was China and Russia.

So how would you label the two main epistemological choices. I am sure you have done this somewhere above, but it you can spare a moment to repeat just the labels. I am interested in the topic in both threads on these issues, but honestly finding it rather hard to understand the 'conversation'. (for example in the other thread I cannot figure out what the disagreement is between you and Isaac. And here I am having trouble getting what some of the disagreements are about - I am not asking you to explain this however. Generally I find I can come into a longer thread, read the OP and figure out how to join the discussion just by reading the last few posts. Well, I've done more than that in both threads and I don't get them. I get many individual statements, but the dynamics I find odd.)

I am assuming then that you believe moving away from freedom is irrational. Let me know if that is wrong.

Is it rational to choose irrationality intentionally? — David Mo

1) I think it is a preference to choose to lose freedom. It's not my preference, though in smaller ways and certain situations we all allow others to control us. The doctor's office. In a terrorist attack. In the military. In a corporation as an employee. So there is a wide spectrum and small to larger compromises. But even in those more radical versions where one ends up like a slave: in certain but not all cults, as an illegal immigrant working in sweatshop type conditions (and often living on the work premises), we are talking about people making choices based on values. So working from their values (and goals) they may be perfectly rational, but doing something neither you or I would want to do - and perhaps also you and are are lucky enough not to think the latter scenario is actually better than freer options that do not provide food for our families because we are better off. 2) I choose non-rationality rationally all the time. There are all sorts of decisions I make where I do not analyze in the ways generally associated with reason and logic. Now perhaps my implicit knowledge has been arrived at through some unconscious rationality, but I have to black box that. These can be decisions that have to be made quickly. They can be decisions where a vast array of factors are present and my gut reactions have been good (or in any case better than thinking it out verbally). There's a reason we evolved a mixed set of methods to arrive at decisions. Then there is the whole gut decisions on issues I simply cannot reason about, right now anyway. Is this a simulation and does that make a difference and other apriori type stuff. There's a vast array of social stuff that I use intuition for, though I often reflect later and this may or may not hone my intuition. Now this all may be a tangent, but honestly I think people are often reluctant to acknowledge how mixed their epistemologies are. How mixed the ways they arrive at decisions are. Irrational is pejorative, so I use non-rational for those processes that are not linear verbal thinking with the goal of being logical, parismonious etc.

Faith is general used as a term focusing on religion. But we all make assumptions because they seem to work for us or we don't even notice them and without some kind of scientific or deductive base. Our ideas about parenting, the opposite sex, how to succeed, when we have been rational long enough on an issue, who to avoid, how to determine what we want, when to be on alert, how to solve all sorts of problems that come up where rational analysis would need to much time or there is information overload or we have done it so long intuition is best, and so on. Some people have excellent intuitions, in general or in specific areas. It is rational to allow for that non-rational process to lead to decisions in many areas of life. It would be irrational to make all decisions rationally.

Pardon me if this went far off on a tangent or three.

Can you consciously choose slavery? — David Mo

Sure. People often move away from freedom, let other people decide things for them. Cults work like this. But more mundanely how many people allow media and marketing to determine what they choose to wear. People dislike anxiety, and I do feel empathy for that, and its not just fascist leaders who offer to make decisions for us.

IOW, under a critical rationalist conception of knowledge, there is no Gettier problem at all, because justification in such a paradigm doesn't mean what Gettier assumes it does. — Pfhorrest

I think the problem is not with 'justification' but with 'true' in jtb. First off it ends up implying knowledge is immaculate which it need not be, however scary this is. We can (and do) categorize things as knowledge even if they may turn out to be false. Certainly scientists, at least officially, do this and are proud to counterpose this to religious people who they consider not open to revision. But secondly I think JTB is misleading because it is as if there are two criteria, when really there is just one 'justification.' Now if one wants to argue that something can be justified but false, well, if we know that about belief X it is no longer well justified. (and of course that falsification might, in the long run, be revised, but that's another story). And notice I slipped in the word 'well'. Justification includes a matter of degree. Some kind of adverb is involved and people differ on both the degree and the criteria hidden in those adverbs. Different degrees of rigor. Different criteria that lead to something being considered justified. And then in the context of other research/knowledge that might undermine the best little deductions or study results. (at least for now). I say, take out the 'true'. Best justified gets to stand. But then I add in that it does not make sense to only have beliefs that are rationally justified, certainly not consciously, but that's another kettle of propositions.

I'd just like to add that fideism is oddly binary and extreme. IOW it prioritizes faith, at least when it is centered on religion (and perhaps philosophy) and denigrates reason.

I think that's problematic when taken as one of the two main choices and when applied to beliefs in general.

There is no reason I can see not to have a mixed epistemology. I think we HAVE to have one to manage to live. With beliefs being arrived at in a variety of ways. Adn one need not denigrate the various methods and choose just one.

Ah, OK. i though you were trying to summarize a common ground. I am interested in the topic but finding it hard to get in there.

We shouldn't just believe stuff without being willing revise that belief (except stuff like logic which we have to believe on pain of chaos). — Isaac

I don't know how one knows one is willing to revise a belief. Or, perhaps better put, I think people's self-evaluations on such an issue are radically biased.

Solipsism is a belief. A belief is neither logical nor illogical. ARguments are logical or illogical. Further, something not being refutable does not make it true. For example, In 20,000 BC a woman gave birth to a three headed child. i can't refute that, the statement, but that does not make it true.

:up:

Well, a Stoic would tell you to control your emotions, focus on the positive, be rational, change what you can and not torture yourself about what you can't change - like the other person's personality. Perhaps speak calmly to the person about what you would prefer in terms of behavior, try to see if they have a need or request that can be accomodated so they are not so bristly or whatever it is.

But then following the Stoics might lead you to end up cutting yourself off from parts of yourself. You could, when alone, really allow your reactions to this person to express. Let the anger and fear flow. I mean, your name is healing anger and that can be taken two ways. To get rid of it via some 'healing' or to heal via anger (and other emotions). Some things we need not and should not put up with.

This seems like an oxymoron for the simple reason that a placebo doesn't cure anything, that's why it's a placebo. — TheMadFool

Oh, but it does. You are confusing 'a placebo' with a sugar pill. A placebo is an act including something like a sugar pill. The patient is told they are getting a medicine for their illness and they get a pill. That is a placebo. You drop a sugar pill in their drink and don't say you did it and that it's a medicine...that is not a placebo.

By the way, I fail to see how the notion of placebos is relevant to my theory. — TheMadFool

I'll just quote myself then....

To me it is obvious that anything that affects our emotions can have positive or negative (or both) kinds of effects on our health. — Coben

Perhaps I should have added that Art Therapy affects the emotions, I thought you were working on that assumption in the OP. If a ritual so simple as a placebo can affect change, the extremely complicated and generally longer term rituals of art therapy can certainly heal emotional problems and likely more. Now beyond that I think that one can learn through analogical processes and that much of what we are less conscious of functions in processes that are like metaphors. So, I am not saying that it is a direct parallel to a placebo, but rather saying, hell, if a placebo can be effective then art therapy, which is much more directly attuned to the individual and is vastly more nuanced and also gives the patient/client room to express feelings seems even more likely to be effective.

So, it's just a matter of time before you start having sex with both your sister and your wife then? — TheMadFool

No, I think I was pretty clear that the body with my sister's brain I would never have sex with.

You speak of emotional aspects which I'll take to mean, all things considered, just the process of, as people say, getting used to the the cards that were dealt to you. That's all I could gather from your post. — TheMadFool

Hm. I never meant or said that. 1) I made a distinction about the REASONS one would be reluctant (and in one case unwilling) to have sex. It is not the same kind of reluctance. In one my attraction would likely still be there for the body of my wife, but since I know (have an idea) it would be my sister experiencing sex with me, I don't want that to happen. In the other case I am seeing my sister's body, so even though it is my wife, I have lived all my life with this as a taboo, being attracted to that body is a taboo (this all seems very familiar to me, but I'll write it again.) One of these two, for me could change. I could over time deal with my wife's essence being in a body that was my sisters. I would NEVER get over knowing that inside what before was my wife's body there is my sister experiencing through it. I would never have sex with that body. 2) I also raised the issue that our minds are not just our brains. And I mean even if you are a complete physicalist, it does not makes sense to just ignore the neuronal complexes in the heart and gut, and also to ignore the endocrine system. These radically affect personality and sense of self.

I think they are too different reactions. You don't want to have your sister experience having sex with you, so the body with the brain is out. You are used to seeing the other body as your sister's. The image has decades of taboo and non-sexual relations around it. I think over time I would be able to overcome the latter. That's my wife in there. I would begin to associate her words and personality with the new body. I could get over that. But I would never want to have sex with my sister's new body, even though I might find the body sexually attractive. I would be stopped by the knowledge.

But here's the thing. Our minds are not just our brains. We have large neuronal nexi in the heart area and in the gut area. The endocrine system, much of it, is outside the brain. The mind and the muscles, nerves, sense organs, endocrine systme are in constant extremely complicated interaction.

A placebo can help cure illnesses. This is the mere idea that you are getting an appropriate cure, when in fact you are not. To me it is obvious that anything that affects our emotions can have positive or negative (or both) kinds of effects on our health.

Let's jump to the side: There was a study done of Japanese male smokers in Japan compared to two groups of Japanese-American men in the US. Japanese male smokers do not develop cancer and heat disease to the same degree as american men and scientists wondered if this had to do with family life, which was much more extended and closer in Japan. And it turns out that if Japanese american male smokers continue Japanese family traditions (like elderly parents come into the adult child's house instead of a nursing home and there is more intra-familial contact, etc.) they do as well as their counterparts in Japan. But if they take on american family patterns with more independent and distant family relations, they get the same health problems at similar rates.

But art therapy is more of a pscyhological tool. By that I mean dealing with emotional problems, interpersonal problems.

I think this is better than only believing things that have passed some supposedly or actually rigorous epistemological process. 1) it matches reality - we come to adulthood with a very mixed set of beliefs, some of them not even conscious. These have been arrived at all sorts of ways: via parents (and into them via a range of processes), through experiences and peers, through reading through various other authority figures, through media (both implicitly and explicitly) and so. At a certain point some people begin to consider their various beliefs, perhaps separating the wheat from the chaff, some don't. But one is generally in the position of having too many things to check. I think it actually makes sense to keep going with many of them unless one has strong reasons - of all sorts of kinds - for putting one on the table for autopsy. Imagine eliminating all not rigorously arrived at beliefs at the age of 18 or 21. The next few years would be a mess. And, in fact, you wouldn't even know all of them. Which is my 2) you can't do without them. Whatever your epistemology you are going to have beliefs about the opposite sex, parenting, how to succeed professionally, how much emotion to express (and how much for each one), what should not be talked about with whom, how to determine who to be friends with, how much sleep you need, what you need to read or study, all sorts of social priorities and more, that you can't just stop believing, some of which you don't know about, and which give you heuristics to navigate both personal and professional worlds.One could pretend to decide one no longer believed these things and try to navigate every decision 'from scratch' while on the side engaging in a vast research project, I suppose. But that is a life's work.

i agree and it goes beyond philosophy. Nearly everyone has beliefs about the opposite sex, how to deal with powerful people, how much each emotion should be expressed and to what degree for each one, how much sentience other lifeforms have...as some examples....and these beliefs have been arrived at through a variety of processes most of which would not hold up in court. Not only do we have those beliefs, but they affect how we relate to other people (or species), how we judge them, how we reward or punish them, how we behave in relation to them. IOW these beilefs have real effects often important ones, even in the cases where we are not aware of our own beliefs, which can often be the case around race or gender, etc.

I think a little humility is appropriate when dealing with other people's faith or intuition or beliefs arrived at through non-scientific processes, because we all have these.

In science, up into the early 70s it was considered utterly unjusitifed to consider animals as having emotions, motivations, desires, and as experiencers. In fact to assert they did have these qualities could damage your career. It could not be demonstrated, it was thought, in the scientific community, so skepticism was considered the rational default. And yet quite rationally animal owners and trainers, farmers and all sorts of other lay people know damn well animals were, like us, conscious, goal oriented, experiencers with preferences.

Futher we all makes choices to believe in certain experts and in cases of non-consensus these experts as opposed to those. Those who focus on empirical science, still follow their intuition in making decisions because we cannot do the reserach ourselves. Those who followed the consensus of experts in the 40s and 50s about animals would have believed in a position about animals that seems ridiculous today. Thus an intuitively arrived at positions based on the conclusions of scientific experts and models would have been wrong.

None of what I am saying here means that I consider all positions correct or equally likely to be or that science doesn't have an incredibly effective epistemology and set of methodologies for arriving at great models. Nor that sitting alone in a room mulling would have produced quantum physics or neuroscience. I am not a Rationalist, certainly not in any pure form.

But there are always paradigmatic issues and interpretations based on current models and other potential areas of bias. And we all draw important conclusions based on epistemologies we may not want to acknowledge is ok when others base their conclusions on them.

I don't see any problem with someone saying that they believe in X because of faith or gut feelings or intuition. That just seems honest to me. The problem would be if they say that their faith justifies YOUR belief in God or whatever.

I see now I have said something like this before, here.

To me, that little incident kind of sums up we, um, philosophy giants. Articulate, rational, clueless. — Hippyhead

Yes, the right brain should be in charge, aided by the left brain not controlled and run by it. Here's a great read on that....

https://www.amazon.com/Master-His-Emissary-Divided-Western/dp/0300188374

The women you've known all, every single one, said that you thought you were more rational than you were. So, I knew you were ok, you still ran, at least in part on intuition.

No, but you can prove it's moot, that it makes no essential difference. — Olivier5

I think if there is only my mind, it would make a difference to me. And I think it makes a difference to him.But I'll read your proof when you get to it for him.

Another way to solve the equation is to realize that indeed we do live in a simulation of sorts, but not the kind where one is all alone in an absurd universe: we ALL (you, darkneos and me) live in our mental landscapes, constructed from sensory inputs translated into qualia. The color red, or the music of your favorite band doesn't actually exist 'out there', it's a view of the mind. What seems to exist are air presure waves and quanta of light and stuff. And yet we can all enjoy music and share meaningfully about it; we can all enjoy a sunset and call the attention of others to its splending colors. So this simulation that our brain does based on sensory data is a pretty good one, as far as simulations go. It's both effective, beautiful, and most probably universal (by which I mean your qualia for red is by and large the same as my qualia for red — Olivier5

Though you are just asserting this here.

Ah, I thought you were the OP writer and took your previous post as coming from him. I meant that he (or she) was asking for help with solipsism, a way to prove to himself it was not true and it seemed to be unpleasant thinking it was. He was asking for help from us, the participants here. You responded, though I thought it was him, that 'it' had helped Descartes. Well, then it seemed to me there was no problem anymore. He could just read descartes, what role is the plea in the OP.

But now I know you are a third person. My response to him is based on my sense that if someone is suffering and worrying that solipsism might be the case, this is a sign of something else. If one is engaged in life and close to other people, I don't think one ends up worrying about solipsism. One certainly might find it an interesting philosophical conundrum. I am not saying it should not be discussed. But I think that if it is to the point of being a source of pain, it is really a symptom of other things that should be addressed first. If those are addressed then the interest in the issue may go away OR if it doesn't it will not be an interest coupled with so much fear.

I suppose in the background I also do not think one can prove that solipsism is not the case. So a person suffering running through arguments against solipsism, to my mind, is heading not towards ameliorating that suffering but rather avoiding dealing with more core issues.

I think the key word is 'teach'. What does this mean? Inevitably children are taught philosophy. Ideas both implicit about the world, what it is made of, perception, right and wrong epistemology, ontology and much more are all 'taught'. I think it would be excellent to add subersive teaching to this, where the children are challenged via questions and explorations to think about the nature, especially where the adult is also curious and engaged and open.

But you were born with a brain that also had the inclination towards non-rational processes. Or you'd be a complete mess.

I don't think the answer is in finding arguments. If this is plaguing you move towards people, animals, nature...the other. Engage with people. The issue is whether you believe it, not whether it can be proven or disproven. And if it is plaguing you it is likely just the surface of the real issue, which is likely to be interpersonal with roots going back in time. More thinking is not going to dissolve this.

I think that we try to believe that we are rational but most of us are following the prompts of our subjective wishes, which are often far from rational. If anything, we try to justify our subjective intentions in a rational way as a means of self justification. — Jack Cummins

just like to introduce a third category - the non-rational. This would encompass the irrational, but since that is generally a pejorative term, I want a neutral term that would then also include neutral and positive choices and conclusions that are not arrived at rationally. IOW not arrived at through some logical, verbal process. Evolution seems to have selected for creatures (us I mean) who use a number of processes to arrive at choices and conclusions. 1) I can't see a way to avoid this, given how incredibly time consuming (and then also circular) it would be to arrive at everything using reason. 2) I think people can actually be quite good at non-rational processes. 3) Rational processes are dependent on non-rational processes. We are always deciding things like 'I have checked my reasoning enough' and 'I have a feeling I should check X again' and all sorts of time prioritization, focus prioritization, sense of the semantic scope of terms, interpretations of metaphors without analysis and more through non-reasoning 'feelings' 'intuition' 'gut senses' 'nagging doubts' 'sense of completenesses' and much more. We are mixed bags cognitively.

Form not content should be the focus of banning.
Racism was once the consensus opinion.
Snowdon revealed what would have been considered a conspiracy theory. Iraq war two was started by a conspiracy. (and yes, that one 'came out', but if we want to argue that any true conspiracy theory will come out, we are arguing something that is not falsifiable and also making a good case to reason around the issue)
Minority opinion holders or pernicious opinion holders should not be banned, (if they banned here with that as the jusfitication),regardless of how minor and how pernicious their beliefs seem.
People who post terribly, trollers, people who can only preach, etc.
Someone will likely say that the two usually or always go together. Well, then you have form criteria ready at hand to eliminate them. If they are not both present, then let reasoning rule and keep them present.

:ok:

One thing that the internet has brought amongst us is loneliness. — Konkai

I think this is true. At a very general level, I think it is increasing lonliness. Social media have enhance the ability to be falsely social. At least in person one's tone of voice, facial expression, posture all reveal things we might want to hide. In social media we have control and are encouraged to put a false front out. Children who use the internet are less good at reading faces - iow they are worse at empathy. This doesn't mean they no longer mean well, but they lack social mammal skills. Often teenagers are afraid of phones, even, let alone direct contact in person. Their social lives are more mediated (literally) and controlled. The internet is allowed for vastly more contact, but the kind of contact is impoverished and these trends are taking place in professional and private areas with adults. We are being atomed and distanced, while being fooled that we are in contact with others.

Yes, but that's just anthropomorphism. — Kenosha Kid

Though any criticism using anthropomorphism should lead us to wonder if there is any situation where positing such traits, even when describing 'us', isn't also a fallacy. IOW in the face of determinism and all the possible philosophical assaults on the sense of theire being an 'I' and persistant self and choice, etc.

And the interesting thing is that various species use quite different approaches, some could be labelled altruistic (individual to individual), some could be labeled selfish.

From a genetic standpoint, the rapist benefits iff there are viable offspring iff the victim benefits too. — Pfhorrest

unless the rape is part of a deterioration of the group (causal, correlated, whatever). IOW if the behavior leads to a group that does not work well together, other groups and other sets of genes may wipe them out in war or they may not thrive for other reasons.

Extending Dawkins' metaphor, an altruistic gene would be a gene that sacrificed itself for the sake of another gene. Such a gene could then not be passed down to future generations. It makes no sense, so apparently the attraction to the idea is emotive, not scientific. — Kenosha Kid

Alltruisitic behavior can benefit the speciies, the clan, the tribe - which means that genes in the group continue, and since other people in your group will also take care of you, your genes benefit. S, genes in your body, genes that are the same as yours or close in other bodies, and your species all benefit. Social mammals were all doing extremely well until one social mammal - us - got out of hand and started killing most of the others that they were not raising for food.

This doesn't make genes selfish, which as you say is a metaphor.

Claim: Most atheistic (non-religious/spiritual) forms of optimism rely on the collective knowledge and wisdom of humans going back to the dawn of time as some sort of mission statement. — schopenhauer1

I guess I consider most forms of optimism as tempermental. Not that they don't have belief-support also. My beliefs are, at least, in the main optimistic, but my temperment is pessimistic and most people, especially my wife would consider me a pessimist (actually I think she would say 'a catastrophic thinker.'

And I don't recognize the pattern of people being optimistic because of idea propagation. Not as a basis for people's outlooks. I think most people who are optimistic have less of an overview justificaiton for their optimism. Rather they are focused on day to day life, with a kind of built in sense/belief that their lives can (and probably will) get better. A kind of prognostic confimation bias. They can see the improved future, so they believe it is more likely than others. They are not, generally looking all the way down the pike at their own deaths, let alone at their children's deaths. They focus, if they focus beyond the near future, in the middle distance. I am not saying that people don't justify their optimism the way you say, and I think you are correct that it is more likely that academics think that way, especially since they are in the propogation of ideas game. Doing that well at that affects their salaries, their customers' (students', for example) respect for them, and they are reading and thinking about idea propogation all the time. Even there I think most who are optimistic are immersed in life and following what I describe above. I think the animal in us is also powerful. We are life, we want to live, if we are alive and not suffering immensely, we are looking for improvement/pleasure/connection/accomplishments and focused on shorter term acquisitions of these things, with some theater of the mind confimation bias. It is inherent, I think, in organisms to move forward with some positivity. They are counterpatterns and suffering and problems and frustration but even people living much worse lives than most people writing in an online philosophy forums generally are living often are pretty optimistic. They reset their goals, enjoy what they can, and try to improve via increments, some managing only the shortest term hedonistic versions of this, but still focused on that.

So, I am not sure I buy the mission statement theory. My guess is people are much more cognitively messy than that implies and much more driven by specific goals and varied focus.

I'd also like to hear more about the naturalistic fallacy. This doesn't quite sound like it to me. It sounds like

People buy that mission statement X makes life worthwhile (presumably despite Z and B and H).

It seems like a value conflict (with an anti-natalist, for example, who might evaluate the good based on suffering and final results).

So, I see a value conflict and not one side having a naturalistic fallacy.

IOW you can have a negative naturalistic fallacy also. Life is painful therefore it is bad. Bad feeling means bad life.

I see jousting naturalistic fallacies if anything.

But could you expand on how you see their optimism as a naturalistic fallacy a bit more?

i would guess that optimism is probably a positive survival trait, though it might help the herd/pack/group to have some scattered pessimists. IOW optimism may be kind of hard wired with beliefs as constructions made after to justify what is already there, and in the sloppy way most people (including me) organize their generally conflicting motely beliefs. So its like you have this animal that can think. Yes, thoughts can affect attitudes and emotions and temperments, but I think temperments lay a base, then the thinking animal finds thoughts that fit their temperment. I don't think most go all the way to make it all organized aroudn a mission statement. They are focused on the day to day. But I don't see them as getting a meme and they having an attitude like pessimism or optimism. I think causation runs both ways, but temperment (and the animal temperments benefis around survival high up there) leading to cognitions and also FOCUS choices and bias.

Because at least one, and perhaps the most comprehensive, established definition of it, which is a study of the nature of being. I personally see no reason to study something, that is: indulge in a concerted effort to acquire knowledge of, the result of which makes no difference to me. Somehow, I just can’t get excited about studying the fundamental nature of a basketball. And studying the fundamental nature of elementary particles may very well lead to a better toaster oven, but the particle remains as it ever was. — Mww

So then perhaps irrelevant to you, but not to physicists and basketball coaches. Or those deeply interested in those subjects.

The key is contained in it: that a thing has a nature is given, it is given because it exists, it exists because it is represented in me as a phenomenon. Which would be the case no matter the fundamental nature of its being, the stipulation obvious that beings of different nature merely manifest as different phenomena. Simply put, I have no need of the true nature of “canine” to cognize “wolf”, because it is I that determines both, those concepts, and which objects may eventually be subsumed under them. — Mww

Sure, but you likely take an ontological stance on 'things that happen in dreams' that is different from some people in other cultures and even some in your culture. And then you may also take ontological stands on universals or certain reified (in some people's opinions) abstractions. And others might find ontological models important in a number of fields. Even most philosophical topics will be affected by the ontologies of the discussion partners.

And then some people do need to think in terms of groupings of species/breeds.

Absolutely; was never contested. — Mww

Great, it had seemed part of a line going back to you saying ontology is irrelevant.
Perhaps we could go back to the beginning of my responses to you.

So....no, ontology is irrelevant; that a thing has an actual nature is given, even without the possibility of ever knowing the irrefutable truth of what it is. Granting the validity of an ontological domain does not at the same time grant apodeitic knowledge of it, and the human cognitive system in fact prohibits it.
(Prohibits iff the human system is representational, which would seem to be the case) — Mww

How is ontology irrelevant? To what is it irrelevant? Is it due to not producing irrefutable truths? If so why does it seem useful to have ontological assertions in science? Perhaps useful and irrelevant are not overlapping? It might only require, for me, a rephrasing of the above paragraph.

Agreed; no one should doubt the reality of an ontological domain. That which is susceptible to doubt, is apodeitic certain knowledge with respect to its content, which necessarily includes the fundamental nature of its constituent objects. You know....their fundamental ontological predicates. — Mww

I am not sure where 'apodeitic certain' is coming from. I know some people believe in that kind of knowledge and some regarding ontological issues. Which one could argue is a bit like what you say here.

This is correct, which simply means I do have ideas about what things are, because to say I don’t know something about things is self-contradictory. I do not make the mistake of granting objects the ability to tell me what they are, but rather, I tell them what they are, henceforth depending on future experience to show me otherwise. — Mww

My sense is that both what your ideas are and what scientists ideas are
are not irrelevent, even the ontological ones, just that they are open to revision. You frame yours as not granting the objects the ability to tell you what they are, but that you tell them what they are. Presumably not assuming that you can tell them anything at all and be satisfied yourself, even with how this fits what has happened in the past and now.

I suppose the thing I am saying is that the fact that you have this model is based on ontological ideas - which are presumably open to revision - about what your nature is and what the nature of external reality is. So you have a current ontological position and this influences your epistemology or the act of telling things what they are. It is just not apodeitic certain.

To me things that are not apodeitic certain can be relevent.

I don't see how there is any room for determining if something is in what your version of ontology is, since 'is' would have no meaning, nor would thing.. Your definition sounds like a part of epistemologyt. Determining whether a this is. But then since we can't discuss what a thing is in ontology - since for you that is outside the scope of ontology - the word 'thing' means nothing, so nearly every philosopher who ever engaged in discussions of ontology was actually discussing something else.

a good thing to remember when when people doing "ontology" claim that they're doing ontology. — tim wood

I don't get the scare quotes, how would you know, given what you've said, is going on in the external word. Those people would be part of the ding an sich. And also what they are doing is. And then even 'is' is utterly empty. I can understand a skeptical position not being convinced. I don't get on what ground you make assertions about things and people that are not you.

Yes, but the question inquires after what I am not, not what I might be. Any rational agency demonstrating a faculty for discursive understanding is an idealist. — Mww

Do you mean every philosopher is an idealist, in the philosophical sene?

But it isn’t; one cannot assume anything without thinking something antecedent to it, and one cannot conclude anything that isn’t a judgement about something antecedent to it. Both thought and judgement are members of the epistemological domain, insofar as knowledge is its end. — Mww

You really think you can have a language including categories of things (like judgments) without already having some kind of ontology? I can't see how that works. I don't see how you can decide how you can have knowledge of things, if you have no idea what things are. Since any epistemology is going to be designed to work GIVEN the way things are and how subjects relate to them and then what subjects are. There are chicken and egg aspects to this, and both likely came into being together and influenced each other.

The only reason for there to even be an ontological domain at all, is, initially, because the discursive understanding requires external objects to which its conceptions relate despite the impossibility of knowing the fundamental nature of such objects, and, more importantly, from post-modern academics, the invalid representation of the ding an sich as the unknowable aspect of any external object. — Mww

If by 'from post-modern academics' you mean they consider he ding an sich the unknowable aspect ofthe external object, I am not sure why we need to assume they are right. But even that formulation has problems, since it posits external objects with aspects that are unknowable and then, ti would seem, other aspects that are knowable.

But beyond that it's a postion in ontology (and epistemology). Reality is such that there are aspects of objects one cannot know anything about. That is an ontological conclusion/assertion. Whether you arrived at it before or after deciding on your epistemology, here you have an epistemological conclusion. And one that has asserted knowledge about perception, objects, subjects.

Ontological proposition: Jupiter is. Going beyond that is going beyond ontology in terms of what "ontology" says. — tim wood

Not according to most definitions I find, including the one I quoted.

If ontology is knowledge of being, as the word says, functioning as so many other -ology words function, then, it would seem to me, all you can affirm is that something is. — tim wood

I am not sure if we are talking past each or not. Let me go back a step.

Several ways to go here. This one seems best: can you provide an example of an ontological conclusion? Beyond the obvious one of course: which I am thinking is the only possible one, namely that the thing considered is. — tim wood

Could you be specific here with an example?

It seems to me that scientists, for example, work with ontological consclusions. Not merely that things are - and even the use of the word 'thing' and 'things' it seems to me will carry with it ontological conclusions - but what they are. Is reality a monism or not? What are subjects? A common ontology is the subject ->perceives->external reality that is matter. Idealists and some phenomenalists often disagree with this model. Physicists deal with a few different kinds of ontologies.

From Stanford's Encyc of Philosophy....

But we have at least two parts to the overall philosophical project of ontology, on our preliminary understanding of it: first, say what there is, what exists, what the stuff is reality is made out of, secondly, say what the most general features and relations of these things are.

Now there are other ways people define ontology as the same article says, but that is what I am working with.