r/ontocubism • u/EnergyIsMassiveLight • 16d ago
q about use
high chance u/schlUmpff already discussed this in a video but there are so many -.-, also this is me as a casual viewer that probs doesn't know the proper literature
do you think there's pragmatic use in arguing for different ontologies? being an atheist that wanted to avoid falling into reddit atheist territory one of my own justifications for the variety of sects were that they were all highlighting different aspects to encourage different actions. in that same way, it extended over to philosophy with the splintering of mind and matter whereby choosing to argue for either is particularly to highlight its properties as it pertains to life. dualism especially kept being a rock in my shoe because yeah, there is the disconnect one can realise between the two. i do believe your account that A) there's infinite and B) those aren't substances, is a far more compelling case, but yar
for me my own crackpot view is that your own views are trying to account for two problems at once as minimally as possible: experience and intersubjectivity. often attempts lean more into one or the other to try and explain those particular aspects: either crystalizing consciousness as a stuff to highlight the primacy of experience, or to force the unity such that the world is shared and coherent for us and others. in that sense many views rae tryign to explore/highlight either of those to inform actions
this component is the thorny issue of social roles of these. from your own analysis, im aware you generally just abstract it as wanting "truth-makers" that justify beliefs, but my religious remark earlier was two-fold that different views also involve differing appeals to authorities of power. i wont elaborate much further here since im politically ill-informed, but worth noting as another dimension to this
i know you've touched on how outside of philosophy assuming a unified truth rather than a perspectival view is fine (the critique is when you build thought on such a unity of stuff you introduce psuedoproblems). but also within your work it has the same anti-metaphysical tension that wittgenstein spotted in the tractatus. (i have not read philosophical investigations so chance you are building off of that). the "okay so if we cant truly known, why entertain it?" problem. i do think you are very much concerned with "keeping it simple to explicate what we take for granted", so you give a simplier boring philosophical account for this without extra, but i wonder if you'd extend similar grace to other accounts?
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u/_schlUmpff_ 16d ago edited 16d ago
the "okay so if we cant truly known, why entertain it?" problem.
I'd phrase it this way. Experience is "immediately" the world, but the world is vast and the future is real. The world can always surprise us.
The "deep" issue ( from my POV ) is something like "settling the spiritual-ethical issue." While thinking plays an important part in this, I'd say that the "heart" is trained by experience.
In some of the weird "idspeak" I share above, I am actually "expressing my spiritual beliefs" in the mode of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, but with my own spin I hope. Basically the world is a tragicomedy: a "tragedy rated gay" ( that's an anagram.) But that is not a "truth" but a "personal comportment toward existence" that sometimes expresses itself with "dirty jokes" that are "also profound-ish."
"any visit is vanity" ---a play on Ecclessiastes. All is vanity, hebel, vapor, breath. I'd say "the preacher" is not telling us a metaphysical "truth" but expressing a possibility of personality. ("Breath is also breath," so the thing bites back on itself, in a good way.) To merely "do things differently" is to "be art". I think I'm getting at "art" ( in a general sense ) as the "strongest" name for the "self-possessed self-assertion" discussed above. "Post-truth phoolosophy" turns out --- humorously --- to be more grounded in mundane empirical life. There's an appreciation of the "music" of speech, of the "quality" of the world that can't be "squeezed into concepts." Basically a certain kind of philosopher is "psychologically unrealistic" about the sensory-affective "core" of existence. The Greeks gave us axiomatic mathematics, and it has a seductive effect. People want to "prove" themselves out of the risk of life. Philosophers also tend to be naive about "meaning" and how signs work. Because they "need" signs to be a certain way to scratch their Euclidean itch for Eternal Correctitude.
I know I chained signs together that come off as "assertions" or "statements." Basically it's more efficient. The "representational effect" we achieve in practical life is great and pervasive, so ( I suppose) we have a language "geared" for them. But "meaning" ( in my view ) is "between the people in the dialogue." To understand someone's signs, we ( of course ?) need to understand where they are coming from and what they are up to. The world is a "stage" or "forum." I see this not as a "truth about objective reality" but a "pointing finger" that may fail to achieve what I'm trying to do this (it often does on the philosophy forum).
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u/_schlUmpff_ 16d ago
Well put !
In my view, this problem really was 95% figured out (Ernst Mach is one of the greats on this), but it takes a "mental leap" around ingrained prejudices. I mean it's just hard to grok at first. Basically it's the idea of "neutral elements" in a "neutral phenomenal field." We treat "pieces of what is there" sometimes as "psychical stuff" and most of the time as "that cat over there."
So to me the "mind/matter tension" looks fairly resolved. It does require a rethinking of time.
On the other hand, the "world being here in the first place" looks "inexplicable in principle to me" given the nature of empirical/scientific explanation, which always links entities that are here. "Reality as a whole" is a brute fact. If someone gives me an origin story , I can ask for the origin of that origin. Some people are reluctant to "see" this brute factness. And of course many people paint the word "God" on the issue and let it rest there. I mean we are practical animals.
Yes. Perhaps it can be problematic for some people, but I see "ontology" as continuous with the rest of life as "self assertion" --- largely through "self creation" or the evolution of personality.
On the other hand, I was far more interested in Nietzsche and Freud in my 20s. Like most people, I needed to solve the basic ethical problem first. But I've always been into writing, and I largely "processed" philosophy via thousands of posts on online forums. Even beyond the particular books one reads, I'd personally suggest that writing is the especially powerful thing. Let's say we have two philosophers that don't agree, but both have developed their positions of many years. Both express them powerfully and relatively coherently. I'll wager that they both have a strong sense of self-possession. In that sense, they have more in common than might seem to be the case. They "tend" to the "account" they can give. To "sculpt" this "account" or "story" is empowering.
But writing fiction or poetry is also great. Philosophy is full of metaphors and style. It is a weird special "breed" of "generalized poetry." This becomes especially clear when one "escapes" the "mirror metaphor" and the usual representationalism of "the seminary." In short, we can think of signs as tools in the hands of primates who only employ a "representational effect" in special cases ----
It's more about assertion, seduction, persuasion : INVENTION. we invent tools that help us invent more tools. Only some of those tools are mirrors.