Devil's advocate for why ontology is meaningless and vacuous.

[Gemini]

No because many would think that "subjectivity is objectively existent" would be a contradictory statement. Indeed ontology is the study of being or existence. There is ontological objectivity and there is epistemological objectivity. For that reason "subjectivity is objectively existent" is not a contradiction because I have specified that I am talking about ontological subjectivity which is indeed is objectively existent if only as a totality of subjective objects or 'subjects'.

That seems to be a very common error people make. Noting the distinction between ontological and epistemological subjectivity is a good way to point it out.

[Edwardo Piet]

I thank John Searle for that one.

A simple brief from Wikipedia:

[John]Searle has argued that critics like Daniel Dennett, who (he claims) insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific because science presupposes objectivity, are making a category error. Perhaps the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective, (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective.

Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is "epistemically subjective", whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective." In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like 'the summit is so many meters above sea level'. No such criteria exist for prettiness.

Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena (including all conscious experiences) that are ontologically subjective, i.e. can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an ontologically objective claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science". But the pain itself is ontologically subjective: it is only experienced by the person having it.

Searle goes on to affirm that "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality". His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searl...bjectivity

[Arkilogue]

Is the "post 911 world" real?

Well... the date is 9/11 today and the future doesn't exist yet/isn't real yet because it by definition hasn't happened yet. So the world after 9/11 (starting with 9/12) -- or IOW: tomorrow -- isn't real.

So taken that way... the answer to your question is "no"

Post 9/11 2001 as opposed to 9/11 2016? Not necessarily real but certainly existent even if only solipsistically.

---

What is solipsistic/imaginary existence? It's the presence of our minds. It's the fact that minds are present or 'there'. No one would be able to imagine anything, there would be no lights on, without the existence of minds.

That's just my definition of 'existence' again, though. I don't define existence to mean "not imaginary"... that's how I define real. Because to say our imagination/our minds are not imaginary/not mental makes no sense to me.

What does it mean to exist in an imaginary way? To me it's just the opposite of the absence of an imagination. We can't imagine what it's like to not imagine something but we can imagine the concept of there being things without imaginations. Either rocks have imaginations or they do not. I'm thinking, no, but of course I can't prove that. But that is indeed very different to rocks having imaginations. I wouldn't say the imagination of a rock with an imagination was "real" I would say its imagination existed and was by definition the totality of imaginary experiences in its mind.

It's just my own way of sensemaking. We could just as easily say "reality" and "existence" mean exactly the same thing and "imaginaryness" and "nonexistence" mean exactly the same thing... it's simply my own way of avoiding equivoation between the imaginary concept of "absent altogether both in a real and imagined way" and the imaginary concept of "present as an imaginary concept but absent outside of that concept". It just clears things up for me.

Like... there's a difference between a) the concept of an absence of a concept besides the own concept of the absence of that very concept of an absence of a concept and b) the concept of the presence of a concept that isn't simply present as that concept of a presence of a concept but also refers to another concept itself that is present.

IOW there's a difference between the vacuously self-referential concept of the concept of an absence of a concept and the concept of the presence a concept pointing to a different concept.

TL;DR: Even when only speaking of the attempt to conceptualize the unconceptualizable ((*)(or the conceptulization of the conceptulizable)(*)... such a self-referential conceptualization attempt is different to a conceptualization attempt pointing to another concept. It's valid to distinguish between the completely meaningless self-referentially vacuous conceptulization of nonconceptulization/conceptualization of conceptualization (*both are equally useless*) on the one hand and the act of conceptualizating something imaginary like "the concept of the character buzz lightyear", for example, on the other hand.

---

I should have been more specific, what I meant by "post 911 world" is the way the politicians use it. While it's certainly real that the event happened (and may have happened quite differently than advertised), are we really in a "new era" of terrorism or is it a political fabrication? As with Buzz Lightyear, total fabrications have a way of becoming real. Especially when lie is repeated over and over and over like the feeding of a script.

So it makes me wonder, what other parts of our cultural milieu are total fabrications that have effectively become egregores in the mass mind? How do we exorcise those "demons" when many people are hell bent on defending them?

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah I know I was making a joke.

[Arkilogue]

Yeah I know I was making a joke.

Not used to that here yet

[robvalue]

Look, I win and you're all made of cardboard.

Gemini: Well said When "studying" what is real at a philosophical level, we're doing just the same thing science does. We're coming up with pragmatic models. My model is an attempt to remove as many assumptions as possible while retaining functionality.

[Edwardo Piet]

Look, I win and you're all made of cardboard.

Darn. 1-0 to you.






* Edwardo Piet 's perception of time doesn't pass.






Fake Edit To Add: You forgot to ring the pyrotechnics to tell them your alarmist bells are most definitely not ringing.

1-1 love.

5-5 Juice.

10-10 The Jews.

11-11 Juice 'cause I said so.

1-1 Return

5-4 re
fe
fray
4-5 Refrain

0-0 Nork.






...because I'm normal like that.

[Edwardo Piet]

Gemini: Well said When "studying" what is real at a philosophical level, we're doing just the same thing science does. We're coming up with pragmatic models. My model is an attempt to remove as many assumptions as possible while retaining functionality.

3 differences between science and philosophy:

1. 99.999999% of philosophy is bollocks.


Most people know that one. But these two are often forgotten:

2. Science itself as a methodolgy came out of empiricism/natural philosophy.
3. Scientific concepts such as "falsifiability" came about through philosophers of science like Karl Popper.

Bonus:

"Like Karl Popper? Wasn't it actually Karl Popper?"
"Karl Popper is like Karl Popper. Exactly like Karl Popper."
"He's not exactly like him. He is him."
"Same thing."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is."
"Carrot cake."
"Digression."
"Okay sorry. Well it's not exactly like him. I said. It is him and that's not the same."
"So what is exactly unlike Karl Popper then?"
"I haz confus."
"Yesh."
"Oh wait but exactly like him is like his identical twin or something."
"But his identical twin is at a different point in space & time/Space-time."
"Oh right."
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=eot5U7DDCbE
https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=FAQVkEI2VrY

Lol the voice in the second video sounds stoned as fuck.

Now bring on the cheese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ7S7ijFIGo

[robvalue]

Yup, you need a careful mix of science and philosophy. Neither are much good on their own. The classic mistake theists often make is to try and use philosophy to extend beyond what science can test. That's just totally flawed.

[Mudhammam]

Yup, you need a careful mix of science and philosophy. Neither are much good on their own. The classic mistake theists often make is to try and use philosophy to extend beyond what science can test. That's just totally flawed.

But isn't that a philosophical claim about the utility of science that cannot itself be subjected to any scientific test?  Don't get me wrong, I agree that empirical data is of utmost importance in verifying a claim.  But do I think that all knowledge depends on experience?  I think that might be difficult to establish, philosophically or scientifically!