[no subject]

["Roberto Poli" <***>]

John,

I have appreciated your reactions. Coming from different communities,
mutual understanding
usually require adjustments from both sides. Let me add some minor
remarks only.

> In my views the world (nature? existence?) is "change", a dynamic flow
> of influences concerning a constantly altered wholeness.

I entirely agree

> You said: I am epistemic, well, epistemology provides in its constant
> enrichment the current (up-to-date) basis for an "ontology"

I entirely disagree. Seeing ontology as dependent from epistemology is
possibly the main
mistake of mainstream philosophy since the times of Kant (and is
responsible for the poor
state of contemporary philosophy). Unfortunately, I see no way to
substantiate my thesis
in two or three sentences. Let's say that I, for one, claim for the view
that ontology
comes first while epistemology (i.e., the cognitive activities developed
by systems able to
represent themselves and their environment) comes after.

> Your views are of course definitely reductionistic, not a fault,
> I hurry to say, but not in the wholistic (Rosenite) line either.

let's wait and see, possibly without adopting dogmatic attitudes. I
guess we all
are trying to understand the world and our experience thereof.

> "Levels" of this 'reality' are our fabrications 'how we slice it'.

This is something I tend to reject. Some distinctions are unquestionably
ours. No doubt.
But some other are grounded in the hard stuff of the world and we only
have to properly
recognize them. Moreover (and more interesting), most distinctions are
grounded on both
sides: they require both the world and the mind (they present a kind of
bilateral dependence
on both sides).
One minor aspect of the problem of levels may help clarifying the point.
It is useful to
distinguish between levels of granularity and levels of reality. The
former depends on our choices:
we may observe something at any chosen degree of detail, with any chosen
scale. Interesting enough,
most phenomena require and impose their own preferred scale(s). We have
no choice but finding the right
(spatial and or temporal) scale. In my jargon, "Some levels of
granularity are levels of reality as well".
Good. Now a major hypothesis: Levels of reality are sustained by
causality nets. Select the levels of
reality with their causality nets and add the laws of connection between
levels (i.e. forms of dependence and independence, or causality from
above and from below) and you will approach one of the major structures
of the world.
As soon it is recognized that the different levels are sustained by
different families of causation, variously
interlaced, reductionism can't surface. As a matter of fact, one of the
main claims of reductionism is the thesis that there is only one form of
causation. Therefore, admitting more than one form of causation is one
way for attaking
reductionism. I think that this is a perfectly Rosennean claim.

cheers, r
*****************************
Dr Roberto Poli, PhD
Editor-in-chief of Axiomathes
http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1122-1151
Papers and other information from
http://www.mitteleuropafoundation.it
Preferred e-mail: ***