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.
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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, 10:51 am
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)
<QUOTE
I'm asking you to think about this so that you can actually answer the question I asked:

Are you thinking that ontology is solely categorization? That's a simple yes or no question. Either yes, you're thinking that, or no, you're not. If you're not sure what you'd answer, think about it for a few minutes.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 16th, 2020, 4:31 pm
Consul wrote: May 16th, 2020, 10:51 amQUOTE>
"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)
<QUOTE
I'm asking you to think about this so that you can actually answer the question I asked:

Are you thinking that ontology is solely categorization? That's a simple yes or no question. Either yes, you're thinking that, or no, you're not. If you're not sure what you'd answer, think about it for a few minutes.
As you can gather from the quotes above, I think that…

QUOTE>
"The principal task of ontology is the provision of a Kategorienlehre."

(Simons, Peter. "Lowe, the Primacy of Metaphysics, and the Basis." In Ontology, Modality, and Mind: Themes from the Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe, edited by Alexander Carruth, Sophie Gibb, and John Heil, 37-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. p. 39)
<QUOTE

(The philosophical Kategorienlehre or category theory I mean is different from mathematical category theory.)
"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

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Consul wrote: May 16th, 2020, 5:18 pm
"The principal task of ontology is the provision of a Kategorienlehre."

Thanks for answering. Okay, so the follow-up question is why you think this.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Perhaps you intend to imply the all class of classical zermelo fraenkel set theory as the class of all classes as the all existence and the empy class which as the non-existence ? Or do you intend to direct us to first or second order logics ?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 16th, 2020, 6:06 pm
Consul wrote: May 16th, 2020, 5:18 pm"The principal task of ontology is the provision of a Kategorienlehre."
Thanks for answering. Okay, so the follow-up question is why you think this.
Because it's very important to have and work with a system of ontological categories in metaphysics.

QUOTE>
"If you really want to know what you are talking about, you need to know what you are talking about. This seeming truism can be given a logico-epistemological slant, as the maxim ‘Define your terms!’ As such, it is clearly doomed to fail, since not everything can be defined. Some terms cannot be given definitions: but we can try to reach an understanding with others, what Bolzano calls a Verständigung (Bolzano 1837, § 668), about the meaning of the term in question, with all the pitfalls that ensue, and aspire down the line to capture prime aspects of that meaning in accepted principles or meaning postulates restricting and governing the term.

The slant I give to the truism is however ontological, …namely the Aristotelian view that discourse which is not anchored in a proper ontology is not fully serious, and that metaphysics therefore enjoys a primacy among the sciences which is neither linguistic nor epistemological, but reflects a fundamentally realistic view. According to this, the world of things comes self-differentiated into different fundamental kinds, and these things combine and interact in their own ways, mostly without input from ourselves.

The critical turn in philosophy, starting with Descartes and Locke, and leading to the metaphysical deflationism of Hume, pushed metaphysics away from its regal position in philosophy. Kant strove to rescue metaphysics from Hume’s criticisms by confining it to the sphere of our cognition, leaving mind-independent reality outside the pale. History repeated itself over a century later when Quine, Strawson, and Dummett strove to rehabilitate metaphysics after the positivist onslaught by making it an adjunct to semantics. The result was in each case the same: to relativize what exists to our linguistic or conceptual scheme, and so to approach that most evil of philosophical positions: idealism.

There is no such thing as a safe metaphysics or an innocent metaphysics, or an easy a priori metaphysics which can be established by armchair methods, or by reflection on pure reason alone. It makes bold, speculative, and shaky conjectures. Serious metaphysics risks refutation by empirical discovery; it courts inconsistency and incoherence; it is subject to historical, cultural, and personal biases; and it is bound to be perpetually provisional. Saving a beatific vision, this is both what we must expect and that to which we must be reconciled. Yet metaphysics is inescapably a philosopher’s business, since it is universal: as Aristotle says, all the special sciences cut off a portion of being. When philosophers ignore metaphysics, others move in and do their job for them, usually badly.…

The scope and tasks of metaphysics were conceived and outlined by Aristotle, continued by medieval scholastics, and elaborated by Wolff, Husserl, Whitehead, and D. C. Williams. They consist in two parts. One part consists in the careful elaboration of a scheme of fundamental kinds or categories, their justification, connection, and governing principles or archai: an ontologia sive metaphysica generalis including a Kategorienlehre. Husserl called this formal ontology; Williams called it analytic ontology. The other part is a broader enterprise of showing how these categories and principles apply to a wide range of things in the world, what Williams called speculative cosmology and Husserl regional ontology, but which I prefer to call systematics. Without a view to its application, ontology remains a detached glass-bead game, but without a view to ontology, systematics remains at best a haphazard congeries of disconnected insights. Both sides of metaphysics require and reinforce one another. Metaphysical problems may up to a point be tackled piecemeal, but metaphysics as a whole must aspire to be systematic. That requirement is part of what makes metaphysics difficult to do well, something that Jonathan rightly emphasized in the face of those easy critics who scorn metaphysics as little more than hot air or think it is something a ‘real’ scientist could knock out on a Sunday afternoon.…

Williams’s adjective ‘speculative’, emphasized also by Whitehead, reminds us of the unavoidably conjectural and fallible nature of metaphysics. We cannot avoid going beyond the evidence in postulating the applicability of metaphysical categories and principles, and because of their highly abstract nature, correction through experience is indirect, haphazard, and slow."

(Simons, Peter. "Lowe, the Primacy of Metaphysics, and the Basis." In Ontology, Modality, and Mind: Themes from the Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe, edited by Alexander Carruth, Sophie Gibb, and John Heil, 37-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 37-9)
<QUOTE
"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

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Consul wrote: May 17th, 2020, 11:42 am
Terrapin Station wrote: May 16th, 2020, 6:06 pmThanks for answering. Okay, so the follow-up question is why you think this.
Because it's very important to have and work with a system of ontological categories in metaphysics.
How would "It's important to x (with respect to F)" amount to "All of F is x"?

Say for example that x is "checking that you have gas" and F is "driving to Toledo."

Not all of driving to Toledo is checking that you have gas just because it's important to check that you have gas before you drive to Toledo, is it?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 17th, 2020, 2:29 pm
Consul wrote: May 17th, 2020, 11:42 amBecause it's very important to have and work with a system of ontological categories in metaphysics
How would "It's important to x (with respect to F)" amount to "All of F is x"?
Say for example that x is "checking that you have gas" and F is "driving to Toledo."
Not all of driving to Toledo is checking that you have gas just because it's important to check that you have gas before you drive to Toledo, is it?
I'm sorry, I don't get your point.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Consul wrote: May 18th, 2020, 12:55 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: May 17th, 2020, 2:29 pm How would "It's important to x (with respect to F)" amount to "All of F is x"?
Say for example that x is "checking that you have gas" and F is "driving to Toledo."
Not all of driving to Toledo is checking that you have gas just because it's important to check that you have gas before you drive to Toledo, is it?
I'm sorry, I don't get your point.
Just because x is important for something, that doesn't imply that x is all there is with respect to that thing.
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 18th, 2020, 1:10 pmJust because x is important for something, that doesn't imply that x is all there is with respect to that thing.
I'm not saying that metaphysics is nothing more than categorial ontology (categoriology).
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Consul wrote: May 19th, 2020, 3:39 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: May 18th, 2020, 1:10 pmJust because x is important for something, that doesn't imply that x is all there is with respect to that thing.
I'm not saying that metaphysics is nothing more than categorial ontology (categoriology).
Okay, but that's what I asked you: "Are you thinking that ontology is solely categorization?"

So if it's not solely categorization, then again, what's the problem with the fact that categorization is psychological?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 19th, 2020, 3:56 pmOkay, but that's what I asked you: "Are you thinking that ontology is solely categorization?"
So if it's not solely categorization, then again, what's the problem with the fact that categorization is psychological?
Categorization or conceptualization is a psychological act; but from my realistic metaontological perspective, the subject matter of ontology is the categorial structure of the world (being/existence/reality) rather than the categorial structure of our thought. Of course, our concepts and thoughts are part of the world, but ontology isn't the psychology of concepts and thoughts.
"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

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Consul wrote: May 19th, 2020, 4:44 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: May 19th, 2020, 3:56 pmOkay, but that's what I asked you: "Are you thinking that ontology is solely categorization?"
So if it's not solely categorization, then again, what's the problem with the fact that categorization is psychological?
Categorization or conceptualization is a psychological act; but from my realistic metaontological perspective, the subject matter of ontology is the categorial structure of the world (being/existence/reality) rather than the categorial structure of our thought. Of course, our concepts and thoughts are part of the world, but ontology isn't the psychology of concepts and thoughts.
So it's still not clear whether you think that ontology is solely about concepts. If you say that you think that ontology is about the categorial structure of the world, that sounds like you think it is about concepts (at least insofar as we're talking about categories).
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 19th, 2020, 5:23 pmSo it's still not clear whether you think that ontology is solely about concepts. If you say that you think that ontology is about the categorial structure of the world, that sounds like you think it is about concepts (at least insofar as we're talking about categories).
From the point of view of metaontological realism, ontology is about the basic kinds, types, genera, or sorts of entities in the world, which aren't concepts, or mental or linguistic representations. From that point of view, categories are basic kinds of things rather than basic concepts of things, being categories of being rather than categories of thought; and the categorial structure of the world (to use the title of a book by Reinhardt Grossmann) is not a conceptual or representational structure in our minds but something out there in the world that exists independently of our concepts and conceptualizations. For metaontological realists, the categorial structure of the world isn't determined or constructed by our concepts, i.e. by our ways of thinking of the world.

QUOTE>
"[P]hilosophy needs to develop its own ontological systematics, which we may define as the theory of the diversity of basic kinds of entities in the world – not just living things but anything at all. Such a “science of diversity” is what this essay is exploring.

A basic ontology, let us say, is a theory about the most basic structures of the world, of what there is, beginning with the most basic divisions among things in the world. Within traditional philosophy, basic ontology begins with basic categories of entities, and in the idea of a scheme of categories we find philosophy’s first approach to an ontological systematics. The explicit conception of ontological categories began with Aristotle, who posited the categories of “substance” and various types of “attribute.” Many philosophers implicitly assume categorial distinctions, as between universal and particular, or between mind and body, or between fact and value. Ontology becomes systematic, however, when it organizes such distinctions, seeking a unified system of divisions that define very basic kinds or categories of entities. A system or scheme of categories organizes such fundamental divisions in the world, somewhat as biological systematics organizes fundamental divisions in the biosphere.

Roughly, ontological categories are abstract kinds defining entities with fundamental roles in the structure of the world. Logically, they are designated by general terms or common nouns such as “individual,” “attribute,” “relation,” “event,” and “causation.” It is the task of basic ontology to specify categories and their roles in defining the structure of the world. We use terms like “entity” and “thing” in the widest possible sense to cover anything in the world, including whatever falls under basic categories – things as diverse as relations and events, and not merely palpable objects like stones or sticks or birds or people.

A well-formulated basic ontology will include a scheme of categories of things in the world plus a system of principles about entities in the categories (and how they relate to each other, if they do)."
(p. 244)

"Because categories reflect the most basic divisions among entities, they are the most basic part of the structure of the world, and so specifying a system of categories is the most basic part of an ontology."
(p. 245)

(Smith, David Woodruff. Mind World: Essays in Phenomenology and Ontology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.)
<QUOTE
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Consul wrote: May 19th, 2020, 6:49 pm From the point of view of metaontological realism, ontology is about the basic kinds, types, genera, or sorts of entities in the world, which aren't concepts, or mental or linguistic representations. From that point of view, categories are basic kinds of things rather than basic concepts of things, being categories of being rather than categories of thought; and the categorial structure of the world (to use the title of a book by Reinhardt Grossmann) is not a conceptual or representational structure in our minds but something out there in the world that exists independently of our concepts and conceptualizations. For metaontological realists, the categorial structure of the world isn't determined or constructed by our concepts, i.e. by our ways of thinking of the world.
First, how are you defining "metaontological realism"?
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Re: All existence and non existence as the one Absolute

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Terrapin Station wrote: May 19th, 2020, 6:57 pmFirst, how are you defining "metaontological realism"?
As I said, I mean the view that the subject matter of ontology is being/existence/reality (itself), and that being/existence/reality has an objective, concept- and thought-independent categorial structure (in itself) that isn't mentally or linguistically constructed or invented by ontologists.
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