All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
evolution
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by evolution »

Steve3007 wrote: May 15th, 2020, 2:33 am
Greta wrote:I am not convinced that our sensory perceptions are telling us the truth, given that our senses are evolved for thrival rather than veracity, and species with different kinds of senses perceive can a very kind of reality to the one that our brains shape for us.
It's interesting to consider how far this gap between evolved practical utility and representational accuracy could, in principle, be. It's clear that various living things, including humans, have senses that show them only the subset of reality that they need to be able to sense in order to survive in their particular niche. But that is still a subset of reality. It's not something different from reality. It's just not the whole of it.
Why do you suppose you can only see a subset of reality while others can see the whole reality, or whole real picture?

What do you think it is that is distorting, preventing, and/or blocking your senses from showing you the whole Truth.
Steve3007 wrote: May 15th, 2020, 2:33 am I wonder if senses that have evolved by survival could, as a result of that, evolve to show something different from reality rather than a subset of it.

(Obviously all of this assumes that it makes sense to consider there to be a reality without considering the way in which that reality is observed. i.e. it assumes that we are some species of philosophical realists.)
Either some thing is real or it is not. So, either you can see it or you can not.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

evolution wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:55 am Has anyone actually said "everything is the same thing"?
Here's an example from a recent thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16747

"Everything is the same, even what it doesn't exist."
evolution
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by evolution »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 9:11 am
evolution wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:55 am Has anyone actually said "everything is the same thing"?
Here's an example from a recent thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16747

"Everything is the same, even what it doesn't exist."
Okay thank you. It is amazing how quick some people can be providing support for their claim, that is; when they actually have something to back up and support their claim. Anyway, what does "even what it doesn't exist" actually mean?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

evolution wrote: May 15th, 2020, 9:19 am
Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 9:11 am

Here's an example from a recent thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16747

"Everything is the same, even what it doesn't exist."
Okay thank you. It is amazing how quick some people can be providing support for their claim, that is; when they actually have something to back up and support their claim. Anyway, what does "even what it doesn't exist" actually mean?
I'm guessing "it" was a typo. He seems to be forwarding some sort of Meinong-like ontology, where we it makes sense to talk about nonexistent entities as if they exist somehow, so that they have properties, etc., and where we're not simply referring to our imaginings as such.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: May 14th, 2020, 10:13 pm In other words, you don't think we should take our categories too seriously.
It's just that it's important to realize that (a) they're not something that exists extramentally, and thus (b) they're not something that we can be correct or incorrect about. Categories (qua the particular categorizations that they are, the content of those particular abstractions) tell us something about how individuals think. Not something about what the world is like independently of us. All sorts of errors hinge on people projecting those abstractions onto the world at large.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by h_k_s »

evolution wrote: May 15th, 2020, 8:14 am
h_k_s wrote: May 14th, 2020, 5:02 pm I guess the O/P did not want to start over with cogito ergo sum, then.
But who thinks, and therefore they are?

Answer the question, 'Who am I?' properly and correctly, then what was said in the opening post will be better understood.

The Universe is evolving, and so to is the Awareness of Thy Self.
I suppose Millennials and Centennials probably don't think at all, you are probably right about that part.
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Consul
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Consul »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 10:04 amIt's just that it's important to realize that (a) they're not something that exists extramentally, and thus (b) they're not something that we can be correct or incorrect about. Categories (qua the particular categorizations that they are, the content of those particular abstractions) tell us something about how individuals think. Not something about what the world is like independently of us. All sorts of errors hinge on people projecting those abstractions onto the world at large.
Brian Carr distinguishes between Aristotelian categorial realism and Kantian categorial conceptualism. The problem with the latter is that it psychologizes ontology, with categorial ontology thereby being replaced by categorial psychology: The study of categories of being or existential categories is replaced by the study of categories of thinking or representational categories, such that the subject matter of categoriology is no longer existence or reality (itself) but our thought about it.

QUOTE>
"Metaphysics, in its minimal form, is the activity of categorial description. Its subject matter is the most fundamental aspects of the way we think about and talk about reality, the most fundamental features of reality as it presents itself to us. We divide the world into horses and trains, people and mountains, battles and towns, and a whole complex structure of different things; our language is the repository of this enormously rich furnishing of the world. But we can discern within this richness some overall divisions, between things and their properties, for example, or between events and the times and places in which they happen, and it is with the overall pattern of our categorising of elements of the world that metaphysics concerns itself. The basic divisions which our thought and talk about reality entail are the quarry of categorial describers."
(p. 2)

"[T]he important thing for us now is to stress that Kant is not going beyond thought to reality to find his categories. They are the fundamental forms of thought, embedded in the forms of judgement. This puts Kant in stark opposition to Aristotle, for whom the categories, however identified, were natural, real divisions among things in the world. I will put this opposition by saying that Aristotle was a categorial realist whereas Kant was a categorial conceptualist. A categorial realist is someone who takes the categories, which he seeks to describe, as marking real kinds to be found in the things which collectively make up reality, and so takes categorial description as indistinguishable from (or at least an important part of) the grand traditional task of metaphysics. For the categorial conceptualist, the task is to describe the fundamental features of our conceptual scheme, of our thought and talk about reality, with no assumption made about the way reality exists independently of that manner of thinking and talking."
(p. 6)

(Carr, Brian. Metaphysics: An Introduction. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1987.)
<QUOTE
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Terrapin Station
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

Consul wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:05 pm Brian Carr distinguishes between Aristotelian categorial realism and Kantian categorial conceptualism. The problem with the latter is that it psychologizes ontology, with categorial ontology thereby being replaced by categorial psychology: The study of categories of being or existential categories is replaced by the study of categories of thinking or representational categories, such that the subject matter of categoriology is no longer existence or reality (itself) but our thought about it.
It's probably going to be pointless to ask you this, because you never actually get into an in-depth discussion about any of this stuff, but re "The problem with the latter is that it psychologizes ontology, with categorial ontology thereby being replaced by categorial psychology"--what exactly is supposed to be the problem with that? It psychologizes ontology (insofar as categories go), and that's a problem because _____? What do we fill in the blank there?
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Consul
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Consul »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:21 pmIt's probably going to be pointless to ask you this, because you never actually get into an in-depth discussion about any of this stuff, but re "The problem with the latter is that it psychologizes ontology, with categorial ontology thereby being replaced by categorial psychology"--what exactly is supposed to be the problem with that? It psychologizes ontology (insofar as categories go), and that's a problem because _____? What do we fill in the blank there?
…because the psychologizing of ontology results from the bad metaphysics of idealism.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

Consul wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:46 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:21 pmIt's probably going to be pointless to ask you this, because you never actually get into an in-depth discussion about any of this stuff, but re "The problem with the latter is that it psychologizes ontology, with categorial ontology thereby being replaced by categorial psychology"--what exactly is supposed to be the problem with that? It psychologizes ontology (insofar as categories go), and that's a problem because _____? What do we fill in the blank there?
…because the psychologizing of ontology results from the bad metaphysics of idealism.
It's only psychologizing categories. Surely you're not one to commit the error that if we're saying that x is F, then we're saying that everything is F, right?
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Sy Borg
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Sy Borg »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:40 pm
Consul wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:46 pm

…because the psychologizing of ontology results from the bad metaphysics of idealism.
It's only psychologizing categories. Surely you're not one to commit the error that if we're saying that x is F, then we're saying that everything is F, right?
Isn't psychologised ontology just epistemology?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote: May 16th, 2020, 1:55 am
Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:40 pm

It's only psychologizing categories. Surely you're not one to commit the error that if we're saying that x is F, then we're saying that everything is F, right?
Isn't psychologised ontology just epistemology?
It's epistemology if the focus is knowledge --how we know something, etc.

It's ontology if the focus is the "being" of the thing in question--what it is, what its "nature" is, its relation to other things as an existent, etc.
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Consul
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Consul »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:40 pm
Consul wrote: May 15th, 2020, 1:46 pm …because the psychologizing of ontology results from the bad metaphysics of idealism.
It's only psychologizing categories. Surely you're not one to commit the error that if we're saying that x is F, then we're saying that everything is F, right?
Eh…yes.
If categories are concepts, and concepts are mental representations, then they are part of the subject matter of psychology. But my point is that Kantian categorial conceptualism psychologizes the subject matter of ontology, which is then no longer being/existence/reality ("die Dinge an sich"/"the things in themselves") but our mental concepts ("ideas") qua ways of thinking of being/existence/reality. Of course, Aristotelian categorial realists use concepts too to think about being/existence/reality, but the concepts they use aren't their ontological subject matter. That is, according to them, ontology is not about mental world-representations but about the world (itself).
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Terrapin Station
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Terrapin Station »

Consul wrote: May 16th, 2020, 9:59 am
Terrapin Station wrote: May 15th, 2020, 7:40 pm It's only psychologizing categories. Surely you're not one to commit the error that if we're saying that x is F, then we're saying that everything is F, right?
Eh…yes.
If categories are concepts, and concepts are mental representations, then they are part of the subject matter of psychology. But my point is that Kantian categorial conceptualism psychologizes the subject matter of ontology, which is then no longer being/existence/reality ("die Dinge an sich"/"the things in themselves") but our mental concepts ("ideas") qua ways of thinking of being/existence/reality. Of course, Aristotelian categorial realists use concepts too to think about being/existence/reality, but the concepts they use aren't their ontological subject matter. That is, according to them, ontology is not about mental world-representations but about the world (itself).
???

You're not thinking that ontology is solely categorization are you? (And if so, why?)

Also, no existent is excluded from ontology, including brains/minds/psychologies. Were you thinking that there were some sorts of existents that we didn't deal with in ontology?
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Consul
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

Post by Consul »

Terrapin Station wrote: May 16th, 2020, 10:04 amYou're not thinking that ontology is solely categorization are you? (And if so, why?)
Also, no existent is excluded from ontology, including brains/minds/psychologies. Were you thinking that there were some sorts of existents that we didn't deal with in ontology?
Well, for example, there is an ontology of concepts too, which is certainly about concepts.

According to categorial realism, ontology qua categoriology is about discovering or finding (not inventing or "constructing") concept- and thought-independent basic kinds (types/sorts/species) of entities, divisions, and structures in reality, in nature.

QUOTE>
"Ontology is concerned above all with the categorial structure of reality – the division of reality into fundamental types of entity and their ontological relations with one another."

(Lowe, E. J. Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. p. 51)

"Ontology is the most general science or study of Being, Existence, or Reality. An informal use of the term signifies what, in general terms, a philosopher considers the world to contain. Thus it is said that Descartes proposed a dualist ontology, or that there were no gods in d’Holbach’s ontology. But in its more formal meaning, ontology is the aspect of metaphysics aiming to characterize Reality by identifying all its essential categories and setting forth the relations among them."

(Campbell, Keith. "Ontology." In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7, 2nd ed., edited by Donald M. Borchert, 21-27. Detroit: Thomson Gale/Macmillan Reference USA, 2006. pp. 21-2)
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