This is an experimental subwiki hosted by Math 4 Wisdom.

The purpose of this subwiki is to support the creation of an Ontology Subgroup of the Friends of Wisdom.

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Greetings, Friends of Wisdom

Andrius Kulikauskas: This is a subwiki where an ontology subgroup could create pages, for example, on wisdom and all manner of concepts and terms. We can also work at other venues such as Wikiversity, for example, Leland Beaumont's page on The Wise Path. https://www.math4wisdom.com/wiki/FriendsOfWisdom/Ontology?action=edit Friends of Wisdom who have joined the (provisional) Ontology Subgroup

  • Ron Barnett
  • Janos Abel
  • Eri Mountbatten-O'Malley
  • Andrius Kulikauskas

Andrius Kulikauskas: I am writing out and organizing my thoughts here...

I am watching and studying these videos:

Readings:

Ron Barnett

  • Tension between what is real in the external world and what is real in the absolute, personal world (such as a student growing in understanding)
  • What is (existence) and what could be (thought)
  • What is: descending layers of what his hidden [Roy Bhaskar]: 1) empirical, 2) actual, 3) real
  • What could be: ascending layers of what we could aspire to [Ron Barnett]: 1) ideational (concepts), 2) imaginary (constructions), 3) utopian
  • Understanding and the problem of separation. Reason and the university as a space of reasoning. The relation between the internal world and the external world.
  • Deep structures in the world can affect our ideas and vice versa our ideas can effect the deep structures in the world.
  • Is social value real in the world (and thus an object of study) or simply in the eye of the beholder?
  • Ideas ("I think therefore I am") lead to mindsets (distinction of knower and known) which give birth to more mindsets like instrumentalism and extractivism. Separation of ontology and epistemology.
  • "Wants" to keep ontology and epistemology separate but bring them closer together. Allow for both fate "The world makes me - I can do no other" and free will "I can do as I like".
  • Interconnected world - differentiation - clusters, assemblages - ecosystems
  • World is in motion - "imbued with spirit - will" - hence instability in the world itself and our representations of it
  • Anthropocene - human ideas affect the world (we're not aware) - Bhaskar "reasons can be causes" Generative mechanisms inhere not only in Real structures - materialism, instrumentalism, racism
  • University is interrelated with 8 ecosystems - economy, polity, knowledge, learning, culture, natural environment, social institutions, human identity (persons)
  • Humans impair ecosystems and can restore them.
  • Universities is a space where three domains come together: 1) the real, 2) the ideational, 3) the spirit.
  • Real affects the university and vice versa.
  • Wanting to affect the balance of the ideas in the mix.
  • ... the ontological turn ...
  • ... philosophical advocacy ...
  • ... squeezing the air out of universities ...

Gregg Henriques

  • Tree of Knowledge System: Matter - Life - Mind - Culture.
  • Science as a product of Culture. Sciences for matter, life, mind, culture.
  • Skinner (Basic psychology): Behavioral investment theory. Freud (Human psychology): Justification theory - basis for culture.
  • Systems: Habit, Experiential, Relationship, Defensive, Justification.
  • "Motivated to learn and grow"

History of Universities

  • First degrees: grammar, rhetoric, logic, theology, canon law, notarial law
  • trivium – the preparatory arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic or logic – and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
  • natural philosophy, logic, medicine, theology, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, law, grammar and rhetoric.
  • Stages - the importance of a divine orientation
    • Tools for Scriptural argumentation - the incorporation of Greek and Latin texts - the development of the humanities - the advancement of education - separation from religious dogma
    • Feudal structure and dogmatic orientation is irrelevant to the Scientific Revolution
    • 1800s in Germany - the development of the research university - the abandonment of religion
    • Last 50 years global competition goes down the chain not only to first rank but second rank and third rank

Nicholas Maxwell with Greg Henriques

  • Wisdom emerges from the basic concern of reason.
  • Triviality of analytic philosophy - not considering the fundamental questions - the triviality of the issues of the meaning of words
  • Impressed by Karl Popper
  • Popper's three worlds (negative)
  • Criteria of Popper
  • Physics - empirical grounds - and unification
  • Henriques - unification a problem in psychology, different schools, different frameworks
  • Assumption of unity in nature. Just a conjecture.
  • Assumption: We can have some local knowledge as needed for life to be possible
  • Assumption: Metaknowability - universe is not malicious - we can learn how to learn
  • Assumption: Universe is comprehensible
  • Assumption: Universe is a physical unity
  • Physics does not reflect on the assumption that the universe is physically comprehensible precisely because it's so problematic, we have no justification for it, so it's repressed and replaced with this apparently unproblematic pain of truth, nothing being predisposed, methodological neurosis, repress the unjustifiable aspects of the self
  • The justification: We have nothing to lose.

we make this very weak point in science 29:24 is to represent the assumption in the form of a hierarchy of assumptions 29:30 as we go up the hierarchy the assumptions get less and less substantial they say 29:36 they assert less and less um and so become more likely to be true because 29:44 the less we say the more likely we are to be correct if we don't say anything at all 29:49 um we're bound to be correct if you say either raining or it isn't raining um 29:54 you've really covered your back entirely you're never going to be false um and then as we come down the hierarchy 30:02

Nicholas Maxwell. Intellectual autobiography.

  • we cannot verify scientific theories, we can only refute them

Jakub Krzeski, Annie Pirrie

Theodore Richards

Notes

  • Falsifiability of certain things is impossible - to prove that we understand each other - by proving the falsifiability that we don't understand each other.
  • Be explicit about our assumptions
  • Dialogue with Popper - Dialogue with Maxwell and Barnett.
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This page was last changed on July 04, 2023, at 10:43 PM