01.27.13

Charity and OOPs

Posted in ethics, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy at 11:30 am by nogre

Given an Object Oriented Ontology ethics can present a problem.*  It is not obvious how to fit ethics into an object oriented view: even if objects have ethical properties, ethics itself has to be considered just as arbitrary as any other property.  One could, of course, hold some Deontological, Consequentialist or other ethical viewpoint, but this position would have to be justified on other grounds, since O.O.O. is silent on the matter.  Hence having ethics as an ad hoc ontological addition is a problem because it shows that Object Oriented Philosophy is inherently lacking an important part of human experience.

To achieve a more comprehensive viewpoint, while still being object oriented, a different ethical strategy must be taken.

Consider that the objects of our reality are both overdetermined and underdetermined (overmined/ undermined in Harman-y terms).  This means that no matter how we think about our reality, there are multiple underlying phenomena and multiple overarching phenomena that can be understood to govern every part of our world.  Often this is used to develop an argument supporting O.O.O., but I want to develop a different consequence.

By permanently securing multiple fundamental reasons for every phenomenon, no single reason has ultimate sway.  We must, in principle, be ontologically humble.

This means that however much we learn about ourselves, there will always be more, multiple explanations, theories, and phenomena; we are forever interesting to ourselves.

To live with the expanding enormity of human experience, while never being able to fully come to terms with it, then we must forever re-explain and rediscover those unknown parts of ourselves.  To do this we need charity.  Charity for others, charity for ourselves, and charity for that which we do not understand, because we already know we do not fully understand. Having charity — extra time, patience and effort — when we explore (speculate on?) our reality lets us extend our experience into the unknown (the chaos, if you will), even in the face of theories that should completely determine phenomena.  This gives us the opportunity to explore ourselves, others and other ways of life, to find new objects and phenomena, and new ways to be charitable, ad infinitum.

Therefore the same dilemma that Object Oriented Philosophy presents as its ontological support, also yields support for a concept of charity.

Charity, as described, has ethical teeth.  Determining the charitable thing to do in a given situation tracks, at least to my mind, a typical normative ethical stance.  Like deontology it can be seen as having space for moral indifference and praiseworthiness: not all acts are governed by charity, though certain actions can be seen as especially charitable.  Also it has built in brakes.  The principle of ontological humility prevents us from naively applying our personal understanding of charity to others, which means it would be wrong, for example, to donate one person’s organs (without their permission) to save others.

Granted, more work will have to be done to flesh out these ideas, but my hope is that this outline shows that charity can provide a promising start to an integrated ethics within Object Oriented Philosophy.

————————

* I’m not sure how it happened, but my metaphysics has lead me to a similar position as the Object Oriented Philosophers, at least ontologically.  So for the course of this post, I’m wearing my Object Oriented Philosopher Hat.  My apologies if the arguments above are unique to my theories and not OOP in general, though this post makes me suspect I am not that far off.

Permalink Comments off

12.26.12

Aether Discontinuity

Posted in measurement, metaphysics, philosophy, physics, Relativity, science, time at 11:43 pm by nogre

Assume space-time is quantized.  This would mean that space-time is broken up into discrete bits.  It then follows that time is broken up into discrete bits.

This disagrees with basic experience: we can start counting time at any arbitrary point.  “Now” could be any time whatsoever.  Moreover, we run our physical experiments at any given point; we don’t have to wait to start our clocks.

But what if our ability to run experiments at any given point is just an illusion of our universe being broken up into such tiny bits that we just don’t notice the breaks?

Could we design an experiment to test when we can run experiments?

If time is continuous, we would never find any point at which we could not run an experiment.  If time is not continuous, though, we would likewise never find any point at which we could not run an experiment, since all experiments would use clocks that start within that lockstep quantized time.

Hence we are unable to tell the difference between quantized and continuous time such that it always appears continuous.

However, even if time is continuous in this fashion, measurement of time is not.  Since there is a lower limit to what we can distinguish between two different times, even if we are free to start measuring whenever we want, all subsequent measurements are physically dependent upon that initial fixed point.  The second measurement must be outside the uncertainty associated with the initial measurement (the clock start) and the third must be outside the second, etc.  Therefore all physically useful measurements of time (counting past zero, that is) are inherently physically quantized by their dependence upon the instantiation of measurement and limits of uncertainty.

If time is both continuous and discontinuous in this fashion, then so is all space-time.

This leads to the question of which is ontologically prior: if you hold that our reality is defined by what we can measure, then the universe is quantized and our experience pigeonholed; if you hold that our reality is defined by our phenomenal experience, then the universe is continuous and measurement is pigeonholing.

Either way it is a question of the metaphysics — not physics —  of space-time.  And without a way to distinguish between these options, no physical experiment will be able to settle the debate either, since we could always be chasing our metaphysical tails.

-
I’ve mulled over this issue concerning the logical limits of what can be measured by physics for years, but I never developed any conclusions.  However, there has recently been discussion of the feasibility of a tabletop search for Planck scale signals.  This nifty experiment seems deviously simple with the potential for novel results, so go check it out if you haven’t heard of it yet, for example in this discussion.  One issue that the experiment bears upon is the continuity of space-time at the Planck Scale.  My worry is that the above metaphysical distinction between counting zero and counting past zero may trip up the physicists’ search for the continuity or discontinuity at the fundamental levels of matter.

Permalink 2 Comments

06.10.12

Review: After Finitude and Facticality

Posted in metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, wittgenstein at 11:08 pm by nogre

[cross-posted at The Road to Sippy Cups]

Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude © has a very interesting discussion of Hume’s problem, Kant’s Copernican Revolution, the principle of sufficient reason and the relationship between dogmatism and fanaticism. Any one of his analyses on these topics makes the book worthwhile, but I’d like to focus on something different: the fundamental assumption of facticality.

Meillassoux has a factical view of the world, meaning that the world is made up of facts. He does not argue that facticality is a necessary position, though, but as it seems convenient for the rest of his arguments and has an impressive pedigree, he seems to feel this is good enough. He claims this pedigree stems from both Wittgenstein and Heidegger, among others.

This leads to two ways of criticizing his position: either by attacking the ground of the facticality of the world using Meillassoux’s own strategies or by using historic attacks on facticality of the world and applying them to Meillassoux’s position.

First let’s take a look at some historical arguments:

I do not know if Heidegger ever repudiated his views on this subject, but it was Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus © that propounded a factical world. Wittgenstein did repudiate this work, though it is not necessarily the factical world view that became offensive to later Wittgenstein.* However, what we do have is this quote from the Introductions (p. x) of the Philosophical Investigations ©:

For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book [the Tractatus]. I was helped to realize these mistakes—to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate—by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life.

Ramsey’s review of the Tractatus was published in October 1923 in Mind /©, and Ramsey died in 1930. Hence Ramsey’s review is five years prior to these discussions. Yet I do not know of any record of later conversations, so this Mind review remains the best source for Ramsey’s thoughts on the Tractatus. The task for me will be to show how his criticisms, which are directed at the Tractatus, can also be applied to the factical world view.

Ramsey criticized Wittgenstein’s concept of logical constants. Lighting upon 5.512

That which denies in ‘~p ‘ is not ‘~,’ but that which all signs of this notation, which deny p, have in common. Hence the common rule according to which ‘~p,’ ‘~~~p,’ ‘~p ∨ ~p,’ ‘~p & ~p,’ etc. etc. (to infinity) are constructed. And this which is common to them all mirrors denial.”

Ramsey says (p. 472)

I cannot understand how it mirrors denial. It certainly does not do so in the simple way in which the conjunction of two propositions mirrors the conjunction of their senses. This difference between conjunction and the other truth-functions can be seen in the fact that to believe p and q is to believe p and to believe q; but to believe p or q is not the same as to believe p or to believe q, nor to believe not p as not to believe p.

This criticism applies to the interpretation of logical constants within the Tractatus. Ramsey is arguing that Wittgenstein’s picture theory breaks down in its interpretation of logical constants since negation is not simply represented by a picture if pictures including negation also mirror denial. The situation for disjunction is worse, since it makes even less sense to say what a disjunction mirrors. The upshot is that there is more going on with logical constants than simply describing how facts can be broken down.

We can extend this criticism to the ontological, factical situation: In a factical world, everything can be otherwise. But if our logical constants cannot be pictured in certain ways — if our logical constants resist being viewed in certain ways since they are not strictly like other facts — then there are restrictions on our logical understanding of the world. Hence the factical world cannot be completely changeable: it is governed by the complex internal structures of logic. This means there are restrictions on what can be otherwise in terms of logic and a meta-restriction on how things can be otherwise: everything can still be otherwise, but not in every possible way.

This can be seen in another criticism of Ramsey’s. He said the Tractarian position commits one to holding, “the only necessity is that of tautology, the only impossibility that of contradiction.” (p. 473) He continues:

For example, considering between in point of time as regards my experiences; if B is between A and D and C between B and D, then C must be between A and D; but it is hard to see how this can be a formal tautology.

In terms of facticality we are dealing with absolute contingency, so everything must either be entirely contingent, or there is something necessary. But what this example shows is that if there is any sort of ordering that we can give to the world, then there are going to be necessarily existing facts about that world. So, again, everything could be different, but not in every possible way.

Worse, for QM, is that the factical position may then beg the question about what grounds for our scientific practice, since this is the sort of mathematical structure he wants to use to justify our understanding of the arche-fossil. So if there are mathematical systems built into the logical structure of facticality, then he will have to abandon his current project and start again without assuming facticality.

These two examples from Ramsey point out that the factical world is not an innocent assumption.

Now for an internal criticism of facticity.

Can facticity resist Meillassoux’s speculative move? If we can speculate on whether the world is factical or not, then must we still accept that the world is factical? I can’t see how since there is nothing about speculating on the factical world that should lead back to it; the factical world view was adopted on the principle that it worked with radical contingency. Also, seeing as Meillassoux is willing to apply speculation to his problems means that it is an available strategy to apply to his solutions. Hence we may engage in speculation before we accept facticity.

This leads to a dilemma of choosing between radical contingency and speculation: if we are speculative, then we no longer can accept the factical world and radical contingency theory based on it, but if we are radically contingent, then we accept the factical world and reject the speculative move, undermining the rest of the theory. Hence Meillassoux wielded too strong a weapon: using speculation without restriction is too dangerous for facticity, and this collapses the rest of his theory.

——————

* Hintikka has put forward an analysis /© of Wittgenstein’s rejection of the Tractatus during 1929 based on his dated notebooks and other records, such as Vienna Circle commentary. He maintains that Wittgenstein repudiated the phenomenological view of language but not the picture view (facticality) of the world, at least at that time. See page 167.

Permalink Comments off

01.24.12

The Rationality Cone

Posted in metaphysics, mind, philosophy, physics at 3:45 pm by nogre

There are different sorts of constraints on thought.  We forget things, we fail to infer consequences of our beliefs and we have features of perception, like blind spots, that affect our understanding of our surroundings.  We also can be greatly affected by our emotions: when we are angry — when we see red — we are unable to see the anything but the things that are making us mad; when we are infatuated we are, conversely, unable to see anything wrong with our object of desire.

This account of emotional states — moods — is interesting because moods affect our overall reasoning ability.  Given one mood, we will be able to make certain inferences; given another, we will make different inferences.  Moreover, what seems to be a rational inference in one mood may be irrational in another mood.

At this point we have thought, which is comprised of our knowledge, perception and deductions we make, and mood, which modifies and constrains thought.  If we consider the situation over time, then at any point a person has a history of thoughts and moods, which has led up to the current state, and a potential future of moods and thoughts based on where that person is now.   Going from one mood to another, or one thought to another, can only be done within a limited range, i.e. no thoughts or moods can be completely detached from prior thoughts or moods.  This gives us a perspective on the relation between rationality, consciousness and thought:

Considering a person’s consciousness at some point, we can map what we consider rational and irrational based upon the potential mood and thought changes.  Any possible future belief (a combination of thought and mood) will be a combination of changes in prior moods and thoughts.  Beliefs that require too great a change in both thought or mood may be outside the realm of rationality for a person, while beliefs that require little effort will fall within the realm of rationality.  Hence, the rationality cone

The Future Rationality Cone illustrates how, given changes in thought or mood, a person’s beliefs can become different from their current beliefs.  The edge of the cone is the limit of what that person could possibly rationally believe:  anything outside the edge requires too great a jump in thought or mood from where they currently are.  Any point inside the cone represents a set of beliefs that the person could rationally have, given different circumstances.  The bottom half of diagram shows the past rational states that could have led up to the current state, as represented by the Past Rationality Cone.

—–

If the above scheme is familiar, it is because it is modeled on the Light Cone from physics; the diagram is from the linked Wikipedia page.  I always found it fascinating that the light cone implies that there is part of the universe immediately surrounding each of us that we can never physically access.  Likewise, there are thoughts and moods that are just like our own that appear irrational to us—even if they are not—because they fall outside our capabilities.  Other people could, however, have these thoughts because their rationality cones are not exactly aligned with our own, or they started from another location, which enabled them to access that part of the mental universe.

Permalink 1 Comment

09.17.09

On Charitability

Posted in language, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy at 7:45 pm by nogre

There is no such thing as a private reality.  By private reality I mean any portion of reality that you alone can experience, that no one else could possibly understand.

There is, however, reality that is yet unexperienced and unknown to you.  Others may have experienced it before you, like explorers who have been to a far away place.  If a philosopher is clever, it is possible that she found a way to imbue her words with such an experience.  Since there are no private realities, it is also possible that you may be able to extract those experiences.

The allure of philosophy is then the allure of the unknown, the exotic and unexplored.  To be charitable is to approach philosophy in search of some yet unknown bit of reality.

Under these circumstances it is futile to give specific instructions on how to be charitable; each of us must understand how to prepare ourselves for adventuring beyond the relative comfort of what we know.

If anything, have faith in yourself and do not make assumptions (even charitable ones) about what you are doing.

Permalink Comments off

04.26.09

Of Duckrabbits and Identity

Posted in epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, wittgenstein at 7:27 pm by nogre

Of late I’ve become increasingly concerned with the meaning of identity.  When we say, ‘x = x,’ we don’t mean that the x on the left is exactly identical to the x on the right because the x on the left is just that, on the left, and the x on the right is on the right, not the left.  Since equality would be useless without having 2 different objects (try to imagine the use of a reflexive identity symbol, i.e., one that for whatever object it is applies to, indicates that the object  is identical with itself), there is something mysterious about the use of identity.

But what is the mystery?  It cannot be anything to do with the subjects being declared identical: these objects are arbitrary to the particular topic being discussed.  For example if I say ‘the morning star = the evening star’ then we are talking about planets, and if I say that ’3 = y’ then I am talking about numbers.  The identity sign is the same in both, even though the objects being discussed are rather different.

It is easy enough to believe that by paying attention to the different objects being declared identical we can know how to act (some sort of context principle *cringe*).  But this doesn’t address the question specifically: although we can know how to use the identity symbol in specific instances, this tells us nothing about how identity works or what it means.

Take a look at this:

=

The picture is the same save for location on the webpage.

———–

But what if we call the one on the left a duck and the one on the right a rabbit: what is different?  The features obviously don’t change, only the way we are seeing (perceiving? apprehending? looking at? interpreting?)  the two images.

(Triple bonus points to anyone who can look at the two pictures at once and see one as a duck and the other as a rabbit. Hint- it is easier for me to do it if I try to see the one on the left as a rabbit and the one on the right as a duck… focus on the mouths.)

In this example, as opposed to the others discussed above, a decision was required to be made – to see one picture one way and the other another way – before the differences even existed.  Now, in the above examples it appeared that there was a difference of knowledge: at one point we didn’t know that the evening star and morning star were one and the same, or that y was equal to 3.  This isn’t the case when looking at identical duckrabbit pictures because there is nothing about the two pictures that is different; the difference is entirely in the mind.

Let me make a suggestion about how to describe the phenomenon of being able to see one image two different ways: the image can be instantiated in two different ways, i.e. it has an associated universe with a population of two.  There are two possible descriptions associated with this image and until we make a decision about how to describe it, the image is like an uninstantiated formula.

Identity, then, is an indication that the two associated objects are things that can be generalized to the same formula.  The picture of the duck and the picture of the rabbit can be called identical because they both have a single general formula (the duckrabbit picture) that can be instantiated into either.  The identity symbol indicates that the two associated objects are two instantiations of the same general thing, be it a number, planet or image (but not objects in space-time because that would be self-contradictory… space-time and instantiation, a topic for another day).

How identity works can now be identified: it is to instantiate and generalize.  Consider the mystery of how we see the duckrabbit one way or the other: no one can tell you how you are able to see the image one way or the other.  However, you are able to instantiate the image in one way and then another, and recognize that both the duck and rabbit are shown by the same image.

Instantiation and generalization are skills and the identity symbol between the two images above indicates that you have to use that skill to generalized both to one formula.  Most of the time it is non-trivial to instantiate or generalize in order to show two things (formulas) to be equal.  In the case of the duckrabbit it is trivial because the work went into the instantiation process (to see the images one way or the other); in the other examples the situation is reversed, such that we had the instantiations but not the general formula.  In all cases, though, only when we can go back and forth between different instantiations and a single generalization do we claim two things identical.

Permalink Comments off

01.21.09

Deriving Philosophy of Science

Posted in metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, science at 5:27 pm by nogre

Two posts ago I claimed that

The goal of science is, therefore, to separate the settled from the anomalous.

So what is the settled?  What is the anomalous?  How are they separated?

If we take these concepts to be fundamental then we are unable to analyze the concepts of settled, anomalous and separation scientifically: if they are at the bottom of all science, then everything within science depends upon them.

How then to understand?

At the bottom of it all is our ability to understand. We learn and we understand.  With this comes the ability to determine what we believe we understand and what we do not:  For certain things we have reasons that explain those phenomena and for other things we will not have reasons nor explanations.

These abilities are not based in science; they are metaphysical and logical.  Claiming that you cannot understand (in general) is paradoxical.  If you claim to not understand what it is to understand, then you must understand what it is not to understand.  But if you understand what it is not to understand, then you must know what it is to understand not understanding.  So you must understand what it to understand. But then you are denying being able to understand…  Hence it is nonsensical to deny understanding understanding.

Therefore we get understanding, not understanding and the difference on non-scientific grounds.   Insofar as reasons and explanations are part of understanding, we get them too.

How do we understand what is settled and what is anomalous?

Again paradox:

If you claim that it is not settled what it means to be settled then you must have known what it is to be not settled, that is, it is settled what it is to be not settled.  Then you must know what it is to be settled, i.e. it is settled.  But then you claim that it is not settled… Therefore you cannot claim that what it means for something to be settled is not settled.

If we assume that not settled and anomalous are identical in meaning (not settled = anomalous; not anomalous = settled) then we have nearly all the concepts we need.

But here comes the hard part: how do we separate the settled from the not settled?

Well, since we already have understanding, this requires doing actual science, as in creating a theory and then  going and seeing if that theory actually makes something that was anomalous no longer so by predicting it accurately.  This isn’t the post for me to get down off my metaphysical cloud, so Good Luck, you’re on your own (for now at least).

Permalink Comments off

01.09.09

Truth is… and other short thoughts

Posted in ethics, language, logic, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, science at 1:04 pm by nogre

Truth is whatever you are willing to wager your sanity on.  This works because sanity is relative to people, so if you are willing to wager your sanity on something, so should other people.

Deontology has a problem because no one can definitively tell you what it is to follow a rule.  So deontologists can’t fault others for appealing to unexplained concepts without undermining their own argument.

Whereas the meanings of particular words may be conventional and subject to historical accident, there are distinctions that the words create that are not conventional.  If logical operators are conventional, but must exist is every possible world (you must define the world using such operators), then conventional loses its meaning: it ceases to be a convention and is instead a necessity of the universe.

The concept of structure in ‘structural realism’ is ontological, causing problems for ontic structural realists.  By calling the theory structural, structural realists are attempting to exploit the concepts associated with ‘structure’ from areas other than philosophy of science.  This means that the term is not being used ontically because the concept of structure is taken to have real properties.  So at every turn ontic structural realists are appealing to an ontological concept.

—–

oh and information aesthetics is back from break! woohoo!

Permalink Comments off

11.10.08

Part 2 of the Preterphysics: Metaphysical Ontology

Posted in art, epistemology, ethics, language, logic, metaphysics, mind, ontology, philosophy, preterphysics, science at 4:12 pm by nogre

What follows is the second part of my metaphysics, which includes the basic outline of just about everything in this world: nature, science, ethics, language and more.  Again it is impossibly short, but the overall structure is correct, so you get a flavor of how I think about everything non-preterphysical.

————

1 Metaphysical Ontology

1.1 Undisciplined Substances

To be disciplined is to take other people’s ontological position into consideration. Since it is impossible, without being crazy, to do otherwise, what is meant by `undisciplined’ is the minimal position: to take other people’s ontological position into consideration as little as possible.

1.1.1 Objects, Processes and Nature

Objects cannot exists alone. To observe an object, to recognize its existence, requires observing some process that the object is part of. Rational beings can lose their rationality; the process of losing rationality identifies a rational being, because the process could not occur without the existence of one.

Objects and processes are what make up Nature.

1.1.2 Words, Descriptions and Language

Words cannot exist alone; they are inseparable from descriptions. For a word to exist is for that word to be part of some description. Without being part of a description, a word is indistinguishable from anything else.

Words and descriptions are what make up Language.

1.1.3 Commitments, Values and Responsibility

Commitments cannot exist alone; they are inseparable from values. Values are how commitments are ranked. Without values all commitments are equal, and hence non-existent.

Commitments and values are what make up Responsibility.

1.2 Disciplined Substances

When you take other people into consideration when considering substance, then you have disciplined substance.

1.2.1 Science, Art and Craft

When we describe objects and processes in a disciplined way then we are describing nature scientifically. This means that the objects and processes are described in a way that is not limited to a particular person or place.

Craft is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe nature such that it refers to a group of people or various places, then you are describing craft.

1.2.2 Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

When we describe words and descriptions in a disciplined way then we are are talking about the language’s grammar. This means that the words and descriptions are described in a way that is not limited to a particular description. If we are describing features that all languages have, then this is called logic.

Rhetoric is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe grammar such that it refers to a group of words or descriptions, then you are describing rhetoric.

1.2.3 Ethics, Worldview and Society

When we describe commitments and values in a disciplined way then we are talking about ethical responsibilities. This means that the commitments and values are described in a way that is not limited to a particular person or place. If we are describing features that all ethics have then this is a worldview.

Society is a level of discipline that is not as universalized: when you describe ethics such that it refers to a group of commitments or values, then you are describing a society.

Permalink Comments off

10.25.08

Prologue to the Preterphysics

Posted in epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, preterphysics at 3:07 pm by nogre

A word of explanation before the actual text.  Besides never setting out to write something like this, I think it is at best good; likely not too bad.  Perhaps it is horrible, but all these determinations I leave to others.  I wrote it because I felt there was nothing else to be done, and it is the best I can do at the moment.

So what did I write?  The best way to describe the Prologue is to make a comparison to Descartes Cogito.  I set out the barest basics for what I believe can be used as a foundation for knowledge and inquiry, and for what exists in general.  And all in less than a page…

1 Prologue: Insanity

If am insane, then I have a problem. If I believe that I am insane, then there is nothing to be done because I am irreparably damaged and won’t be able to learn or understand anything.

I do not believe myself insane.

1.1 Substances

If I affirm the previous sentence then I may infer a few things:

1. Descriptions and words exist, else I wouldn’t have been able to make the above statement; I wrote it.
2. Commitments exist, else I wouldn’t have been able to affirm the above statement; I’m committed to it.
3. Something other than words, descriptions and commitments exist, else I wouldn’t have had anything to describe or commit to.

These three existential statements are inferred from affirming that I am not insane. So if you say you are not insane then you can also be said to believe in commitments, descriptions, and other objects.

1.2 Discipline

Being irreparably damaged is the same as being insane; if damaged you’re incapable of understanding what others can understand. Therefore if you deny that you are insane then you deny that you are damaged.

Anyone who asserts that they are not damaged, not insane, is committed to an ontology that everyone who is sane will understand.

If it were false, i.e. you claim you are not insane and you are committed to an ontology that some who are sane cannot understand, then those who you say cannot understand are damaged in some way becaues they cannot understand but are also not insane. However, claiming that someone is incapable of understanding but not insane is nonsense.

Therefore there is no preferential ontological perspective: ontology is relative to the sane. All sane people are equal in the sense that they can understand each other, are reasonable, when researching the kinds of things that exist. This is not to say that there won’t be disagreements or that understanding will not take time and effort, but that there is no third option of being niether sane nor insane. Either you understand and can be understood or you do not and cannot. and this space between sanity and insanity will be dealt with in the section on preterphysics.

Permalink Comments off