RE: On Hell and Forgiveness
September 18, 2018 at 5:54 pm
(This post was last modified: September 18, 2018 at 5:56 pm by polymath257.)
(September 18, 2018 at 1:55 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(September 18, 2018 at 1:41 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Can someone explain to me in layman’s terms (if possible) the definitions of these two terms and how they’re related to each other? I’d like follow this discussion and I’ve been trying to do research, but I’m not like, totally smert like you guys, and it’s going over my head. 😭. Thanks in advance for any scraps so generously thrown my way! 😁
Epistemology Is the study of how we know things. Ontology is the study of the nature of things.
Someone had given me an example a while ago. There is a birthday party, and people are guessing at what is in a package. Some make some wild guesses, some make serious ones. Epistemologically, you might give the approximate weight or size of the object in the box. Is it hard or soft? Subjectively, they make guesses at what is in the box; some good educated guesses, some jokingly.
By its nature however, what is in the box is objective and independent of the subject. It doesn’t change based on the person guessing. They (other than the giver of the gift) don’t know what is in the box, but what it is, is not based on them or their guess (no matter how good or bad). A classic example of something that is subjective by nature is tastes and opinions. And without you telling me or some other evidence, I can’t know what is your tastes. This is because it is internal dependent, and specific to you.
So in this case, the opinions of what is in the box is subjective. And it may be based on good or bad data, informed or biased guesses. In this way it is subjective in how we know. But by its nature, it’s objective and independent of those people.
Hope this helps.
Does the game of chess exist objectively? Or is it dependent on the desires of the people playing it?
(September 18, 2018 at 3:12 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(September 18, 2018 at 1:41 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Can someone explain to me in layman’s terms (if possible) the definitions of these two terms and how they’re related to each other? I’d like follow this discussion and I’ve been trying to do research, but I’m not like, totally smert like you guys, and it’s going over my head. 😭. Thanks in advance for any scraps so generously thrown my way! 😁
The difference is between what something is and how you know about it.
Ontology studies what it means to exist and the nature of beings.
Epistemology is the study of what it means to know something and how you know what you know.
The difficulty is the epistemology of ontology. How do we know what it means to know? How do we know the nature of things? Can we just think about these questions and arrive at answers that we can be confident of? Or is it ultimately a matter of our biases?
