Hi Gary!
Yes, I've been giving a lot of thought to the ways various philosophers have
had [and still persist in having] of arriving at a classificational
methodology of the ontological nature of the objects that surround us.
Leaving aside the Platonic kindergarten notions of 'form' and other
discredited inanities, I suppose the Aristotelian approach provided the first
articulate suggestions which resulted in the various later modifications or re-jigged
versions of this basic principle of 'ontological stocktaking' which have
plopped out of the other end of the teleological cloaca?
As with the classical Hegelian/Marxian hypothesis of, thesis - antithesis and
sythesis as applied to human social progress, which apparently satisfied the
social, political and personal needs of the hirsute-chinned classifiers, the
classificatory objects, [that which is so classified] remain exactly the way
they existed before such busybody 'quality-surveyors' and 'property assessors'
licked their ontic pencil-stubs and started ticking-off the 'qualities' that
an entity is supposed to 'have' and 'have not.'
Rocks and fruit flies still exist as inert rocks or short-lived entities, [by
our standards] and people still exist as the greedy, self-centered
opportunists that they were before, during and after the Communist or Fascist
experiment. It doesn't need much thought to realise that if indeed the
phenomenological fairyland 'qualities' or 'essenses' of the fantasists did exist, [rather
than being merely modalities of the existential actuality of the given entity]
that even if they sat down for the next umteen trillion billion years they
would never be able to exclude from the object in view even a tiny fraction of
the 'qualities' or 'properties' which it didn't have. In a similar way they
would need to sit down for another umteen trillion billion years in any attempt
to include as part of the suit of properties inherent in the object in view,
even a tiny fraction of the 'qualities' or 'properties' which it did have.
In other words objects neither have or have not anything whatsoever and these
metaphysicalities of 'property' or ' basic or essential attributes' shared
by all members of a class. It [together with the notion of 'identity' and
even worse still - 'essence' is the biggest load of bollocks in the whole of
philosophy.
As you say below all those primitive concepts are only there to enable
coherent speech, to which I would add that whilst such classification is helpful,
even vital as a feature of the coherent speech of quotidian generality in the
workaday world of words in the bar room or the bus queue, it has no place in
serious philosophy where a more rigorous ontological standard should be applied.
As to the morals or ethics of 'promises' and who 'deserves' this or that, or
if 'human rights' are God given or creations of society in order to protect
itself etc., I normally steer well away from such discussions, because I find
them ultimately frustrating. I don't mean to say that ethical questions bore
me, but rather that I find other areas of philosophy more interesting, and now,
due to the ever increasing pressures upon my available 'thinking time' [three
young boys] I tend to concentrate more on ontological questions.
I loved Dr. Ulrich Voigtâ??s recent remark that:
'I myself cannot accept the Kierkegaard â?? Heidegger postulate on the
fundamental importance of Angst - It is an anarchistic theory.â??
There is one line of thought which I have been pursuing lately about which I
would welcome your opinion, [and Richard's and Jon's if they have time] and
that is the question of my growing uncertainty about Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle. This theory of chaos, which is always trotted out by 'the
Heideggerian and Kierkegaardian foot-soldiers in the dispiriting 'Armies of Angst' as
a way of refuting analytically or materialistically minded thinkers' notions
of a physically ordered universe - that is an unchaotic one, where certain
physical laws are held to be universal.
It came to me recently, that without the possibility of change and a certain
degree of chaos in the behaviour of subatomic particles there would be no
universe at all, for the whole of the material of the universe is undergoing
constant change as a vital part of its nature [or the nature of nature] and in the
absence of behavioural aberration, [for example in the genetical material of
biological entiies] there would never be any change, and in keeping with the
Darwinian analysis without mutation, which is part and parcel of the mechanism
of survival and specialisation and niche-finding, life [if it had managed to
emerge at all] would still have remained as tiny mono-cellular organisms
living on the detritus of others of their kind.
In this way, or following from this theory that fortuitousness,
indefiniteness, and randomness at the quantum level is merely a reflection of what goes on
at the macro-level, even in our own lives with the neverending progression of
chance meetings, with other humans, or speeding trucks, or religious maniacs
piloting aircraft into buildings etc?
Cheers,
Jud.
<A HREF="
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ ">
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A>
Jud Evans - ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY.
<A HREF="
http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com";>
http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>
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