Re: abstractions & ontologies

[John Kineman <***>]

Tim, yes its a good point. The claim of reality should be taken softly -
always I mean an instrumental reality relative to how we construct a
theory. Like "standards" - the neat thing about them is there are so
many to choose from. What is really "out there" is unknown and our
meta-theory or ontology is just a guess at it (which is why its an
"ology" not a "ism"). What makes it an ontological view is that it
applies to everything and is not itself reducible to anything more
fundamental causing it -- its the beginning of thought in this
framework. I see is as a better guess than the mechanical assumption,
only because it results in better theory when applied to actual
experience. There could easily be other ontologies that are just as
good. As far as we know "reality" might actually BE a fat, pink,
playful, child-like, many-armed creature with an elephant's head, a
broken tusk, and riding on a pet rat - i.e, the Hindu God Ganesh, who
symbolizes the penultimate reality just short of the formless void. I
think they must have known this basic epistemic problem to have come up
with such an improbable image. The interesting thing is that regular
folks then actually believed it, as such, and pray regularly to that
very icon. No matter how hard you make the point, any image gets taken
seriously by one side or the other. I think Douglas Adams understood
pretty well.

Sounds like an interesting book, I'll check it out.

JJK

Tim Gwinn wrote:

> Agree with you (and Rosen) about the nature of abstractions. But I question
> whether this gets at the ontological view at all. Since we cannot step
> outside of these abstractions, but only step into a different abstraction,
> we remain confined - epistemologically speaking - within these abstractions.
> Even the notion of there being a complex something 'out there' (i.e., "all
> these abstractions must therefore be an abstraction OF something, right?"),
> of which these abstractions are representative, is itself an abstraction.