Brent: how about functional relations? are they included into 'ontology'? (I evade the "o" ref. whenever I can, because it relates to our present inventory leaving out the influence of the vast uknown/unknowable contributing to our know world). BTW what I am asking is part of the Aris-Total (the total being more than the sum of the PARTS -after Aristotle).
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 1:26 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11/7/2014 5:43 AM, David Nyman wrote: > > On 7 November 2014 01:33, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > >> (Apologies for the belated reply) >> >> Could you explain this further? Compare a brain with a car. Is a car >> diminished in some way in the absence of an appreciative observer but >> a brain not, or is it that the brain creates its own observer? If the >> latter, is that a problem? And how do you know that a car does not >> also in some ineffable way (because we're not cars, and can't >> appreciate even what this would mean) observe itself? Would it be >> right to say that the car's quasi-experience or lack of it is (a) >> meaningless because not externally observable, (b) wrong because not >> externally observable, (c) possible but unknowable, (d) trivial >> because equivalent to the assertion that the system is different from >> its parts? >> > > Better late than never! > > What I meant was that a putative "system", according to strict reductive > principles, can only be "more" than the sum of its ontological components > (and their interactions) in terms of some point of view or other. Indeed > the whole point and burden of reductionism is precisely to uncover some > "base mechanism" that requires nothing "more" than that. The only problem > with this is that, when "objectively" considering ontological composites, > > > Are not the relations between the subsystems part of the ontology? > > Brent > > a default point of view (the view from nowhere, or god's eye view) > still tends to be tacitly assumed. In this way we can conveniently regard a > car (an ontological composite), even in the absence of any other explicit > observer, as being categorically distinguishable from the assumed > ontological basis. But what tends to be forgotten is that the category in > question is epistemological, not ontological. > > Now, if we have some principled reason to regard a "system" as > self-interpreting, or self-observing, it may be understood as > particularising itself, epistemologically, from whatever (generalised) > ontology is assumed. In turn, this seems to justify, retrospectively, some > sort of (epistemological) realism about the composite entity responsible > for the interpretation. Admittedly, this does seem peculiarly circular, but > I'm rather forced to the view that this is a virtuous, rather than vicious, > feature. It certainly seems to follow necessarily from comp. > > David > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
