But that's my approximation. So, on to the easy question: what is there? — Manuel
...is actually driven by a different subject matter; the hows, the frames. The latter, IMO, is the appropriate level of discourse for ontology. — fdrake
Bascially, who cares whether we say it exists or not, how it works is the important thing. EG, does someone who believes God exists as a social construct and myth disagree with a hardline atheist on the appropriate ontology for God?
Doctrinally, "What is there?" is answered by "How we imagine what there is". — fdrake
That's fair. But would a framework of yours try to do away with certain postulates, or would you try to keep as many things as possible? — Manuel
Well, we can speak of God, but he needn't exist: he'd be a fictitious entity for an atheist and the Supreme Being for a believer. Thus we could retain God in a manifest ontology, i.e. at least a mental construction. — Manuel
Your answer is true, on a person by person basis. My initial reaction would be that of being careful not to do away with things, unless we can show such things to be of no use, which is admittedly a very broad goal. It would be nice to reach some agreement on this area, but it's extremely difficult, given how different we all are. — Manuel
God doesn't exist vs God does exist but only as a social construct vs God does exist but only as an idea?
That's the kind of thing that depends on the weather and starting point, right? Questioning the question is utmost importance with ontology. — fdrake
It's more than the things themselves strongly underdetermine how they are interpreted; so a large part of ontology is finding an appropriate angle of attack on what you're making an ontology of.
EG, imagine these parody paper titles:
Mereological nihilism and the impossibility of community action
The Rhizomatic Ontology Of Tuber Roots (this one's actually got real seminars on it, fuck)
Kant and the Impossibility of Experimental Science
The Irrelevance of Belief to Human Decision Making: propositional content from Aristotle to Gadamer.
The angle of attack on "what is there" strongly influences what is concluded about it. And that doesn't stop there being wrong answers, better answers, worse answers, irrelevant questions... — fdrake
That leaves mind-dependent. Is X a member? If no mind then no X, then X is a member. A great trouble with many of the Xs is general confusion as to what they are. Truth, justice, God, seven, The America Way are very often considered, treated, discussed, even claimed to be, in the mind-independent category. Which is pigs and unicorns. — tim wood
No doubt the membership of some things is tricky, but most of that difficulty resolved through the careful work of definition, meaning figuring out just what it is exactly one's thoughts are. Those, of course, subject to criticism. — tim wood
This simply a matter of direct v. indirect perception. You cannot see an atom, but whether thereby atoms are mind-independent or mind-dependent is just not an argument worth any time or trouble. They seem to have "earned" their place. One may have to take some care with what is then said of atoms as mind-independent entities, but care in all cases is necessary.I believe this could apply to say particles or cells. — Manuel
I'm assuming The Ontology of Tuber Roots was discussed by some Deleuzian? :lol: One has to keep one's eye's open for the Paris Postmodernists, they come up with the fanciest of ideas. — Manuel
It does. I'm far from confident in what I'm saying, I'm just trying things out. So let me pose to you the following question, given that all of this depends on the "starting point", what would you leave out in your system? As an example that could frame the conversation, how would you deal with fictitious entities like Frodo or Santa Claus? — Manuel
I get the point, that "impossibility of experimental science" doesn't make sense. But would the things discussed in such titles eventually lead to mental entities, concepts or what? Taken as titles, only one word in the title speaks of entities "tuber roots", as I understand them. — Manuel
They seem to have "earned" their place. One may have to take some care with what is then said of atoms as mind-independent entities, but care in all cases is necessary.
But everything is mind-dependent some may say. Or alternatively, mind-independent. To me at least this division seems fundamental. And it implies some constraints on possible claims. That is, it may be viewed as a reasonable game with reasonable rules. And people can play any game they like, but they just have to remember they're playing their own game and it may have nothing whatever to do with any reasonable game. — tim wood
If something is mind dependent, it seems to me that one is less constrained: one can add or subtract to an entity anything you deem reasonable, which other people may disagree with. Mind-independence, on the other hand, seems to follow from the evidence, we can't assign any arbitrary equation to particle physics. — Manuel
I find shitting on Deleuze from afar distasteful, what I found distasteful about the seminar - though it is wonderfully Deleuzian in form - was that Deleuze's metaphysics was being taken as simultaneously a metaphor and an explicans for tuber root branching processes. — fdrake
But they both seem to be part of social customs, and they're both not real... So perhaps in some umbrella term way they both exist as social constructs! — fdrake
I think perhaps you're focussing on the statement and what entities it quantifies over and whether the nouns in it have referents. That's one way of interpreting existential commitment (a Quinean way), and you can find what someone's committed to from what statements they make ("to be is to be the value of a bound variable"). Another way is to imagine what must be the case for someone to believe what they do irrespective of the propositional form of the statement. Like when someone says "I do" in a wedding, that entails a host of things exist in a myriad of ways - like a partner, wedding as a social custom, romantic relationships, courtship, contracts, rituals... But none of those are quantified over in the text of the speech act. — fdrake
Yeah, I'd like to avoid commitment ontologies actually. What I think there is may change as I learn new things or change. — Manuel
To be clear, I think Foucault is fine and Deleuze is quite creative, though I still think that some of the observations made by Sokal and Bricmont merit a reply. Deleuze is instrumental, for example, in the novels of Michael Cisco, who is totally unique and mind expanding. But I can't extend being charitable to Derrida or Lacan. I know others will strongly disagree, but it's just not for me. — Manuel
What happens with such things like "and", "despite", "furthermore", "but" and such words. They don't imply entities. — Manuel
So, on to the easy question: what is there? — Manuel
Doctrinally, "What is there?" is answered by "How we imagine what there is". — fdrake
This is an ontological judgement and, as such, it's already working within a defined ontological framework. — T Clark
Not to be all meta and all. That's the problem with, one of the problems with, ontology. Where do you stand?
If we were to stick to that standard, we'd probably still be living in animism, or something along those lines. It's somewhat akin to that saying "you only see what you know." From that, it simply follows that if we don't know, we won't see.Inferring what exists from what we do seems backwards to me. Like "If you wanna know what exists, look at what people do!". But like... I wanna change what I do based on what I think. — fdrake
You made some comments about the manifest and scientific image, in those terms commitment ontologies feed the manifest image into an ontology, whereas it seems philosophy when it's working well can be a bridge between the scientific and manifest image as well as a handmaiden in both domains. — fdrake
What's frustrating is when despite the enormous progress in physics, specifically in the quantum domain, we learn almost nothing about manifest reality. It's better than nothing though. — Manuel
I think of ontologies as metaphysical tools. I envision my trusty tool box. I have a problem, I open it up and pull out the one that's most useful in that particular situation. Example - I'm an engineer, so in my work life; knowing things, knowing what I know, and knowing how well I know them is important. A scientific world view often works well for that. On the other hand, a scientific world view has significant weaknesses. It focuses our attention tightly and things tend to be left out. See the ongoing discussion of mysticism. — T Clark
Aye! I think much of "manifest reality" isn't physical strictly speaking; as in you don't gain too much knowledge about a social institution from the thought that its office buildings are made of atoms. Much comes from the arrangement and interaction of things. I think there's more stuff in the scientific image than physics, eg the social sciences, neuroscience, genetics, engineering, anthropology. — fdrake
For the moment the traditional model will do. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, even prepositions we are too familiar with to properly question. So your choices are significant as being none of these.
Without further consulting the grammarian, what can be said of them? That they serve as linguistic lubricant, as function, process, structure, and without being part of the substantive meaning of the sentence. Part of the machinery.
More interesting, it seems, is the differences in the "rules" for understanding the two realms of mind-dependence and -independence. Existence itself of course a major pitfall and trap for many. — tim wood
give me one example of how a brain state produces a qualitative state, such as seeing the sky or a tree. — Manuel
What would an answer to that request be like? I mean how would you know you've had such an answer. I could say - your occipital cortex starts a chain of neural firings which, on average, lead to reports consistent with what we describe as 'seeing a tree'. Why isn't that an answer, what's missing? — Isaac
Simply put: a neuron looks nothing like green or brown, it doesn't smell anything and by itself, it sees nothing. So there is a gap between quantity like number of neurons involved and location of brain module and experience. — Manuel
You're asking how sensing the tree produces the feelings you have. The answer is that the external effects from the tree fire nerve endings of various sorts which trigger other neurons, the collection of which, coupled with the feedback you get from your further interaction with it and your social environment, is what it is for you to experience seeing a tree.
What I'm not getting is why that isn't a satisfactory answer. Oddly though it seems as if were I to say "light hits the neurons on your occipital cortex and they turn brown", that would somehow satisfy you. But then who looks at the brown neurons and how? — Isaac
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.