Relationship between Ontology and Epistemiology
This discussion was created from comments split from: The Principle of Atomicity – On the Difference Between a Principle and Its Implementation • Zettelka.
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@Sascha said:
You have a set of concepts there. Some of them are ontological in the strict philosophical sense, that is, representing reality, like state, boundary, part, whole, whereas others I would take to be logical and epistemological, like statement and justification.
I am not attached to any particular definition of knowledge.
There are many good ones that can be very different. I have been reading Mario Bunge's Philosophical Dictionary, and I was shocked by how loose is his definition of knowledge in that book (I thought I could do better!), when he has such detailed discussions of knowledge in other books.
Just picking some examples to show, why I think this is not that straight forward:
The boundary between reality and perception is not that straight forward.
My main point (hence Practical Ontology) is that there is decisional freedom that has to be rooted in some fundamental principles of good thinking.
Even the concept of statement is not easily put into the epistemological realm, since a statement is also an entity in reality.
The assumption that ontology and epistemology are separate planes of existing (using this term like in Dungeons and Dragons) is quite often not holding up. I mean it in a sense that I want to make theoretical philosophy relevant to thinking quality.
This was the state of the philosophy of knowledge when I focused on other stuff. There are a lot of detailed discussions just for a shitty end result.
I think that Ansgar Beckermann is spot on with his essay "Zur Inkohärenz und Irrelevanz des Wissensbegriffs. Plädoyer für eine neue Agenda in der Erkenntnistheorie", in which he basically say that the philosophical concept of knowledge is self-contradictory.
I am a Zettler
@Sascha said:
"The whole/part distinction is not strictly reality." Correct! The whole/part distinction is not strictly reality, it is (or can be) ontological, a representation of an aspect reality. There is probably no representation of an aspect of reality that is perfect for all purposes.
All of this is still ontology because we are representing reality, not analyzing the general adequacy of cognitive processes as in epistemology and methodology.
By the way, whole and part could also be applied to conceptual structures that don't refer to reality, but this would be ontology in the information-science sense, which is the systematization and formalization of one or more domains of discourse, not the philosophical sense of representing reality that I am using here.
But here you are omitted a third term: representation, which is neither appearance (content of perception) nor reality. Of course, representations need to be made in a perceivable form to be usable, but representation is not perception. Semiology or semiotics is the main field that I associate with the study of representation; it overlaps with logic, epistemology, etc.
Reality can be defined as straightforwardly distinct from perception (see below). We think about appearances at some point when we represent reality, but logically appearances and reality can be straightforwardly differentiated.
That "decisional freedom that has to be rooted in some fundamental principles of good thinking" is studied and taught in epistemology, methodology, applied psychology, etc. In the information-science sense of ontology there is much more freedom than in the philosophical sense of ontology as representing reality.
The truth value of "a statement is also an entity in reality" depends on how we define statement and reality.
Here is an example of reasonable definitions of statement and reality (and concept) that easily put statements in the domain of logic, semiology, and epistemology and not in reality:
Concepts and conceptual structures do not exist independently of what we think—they are units of meanings, which are cognitive—therefore they are not in reality, according to the preceding definition of reality. (Some philosophers reject definitions of statement/proposition like this one and only speak about sentences because they don't like the ontological/metaphysical assumptions involved in such a definition.)
Thinking happens in the living brain (or perhaps in other cognitive agents). The brain exists regardless of whether we think about it, and therefore the brain is in reality. But meanings and their units such as concepts and statements, which we could call contents of thinking, do not exist independently of thinking (they don't exist when we're not thinking), so are not in reality, in this definition of reality.
You could define statement and reality differently so as to make "a statement is also an entity in reality" true, but the definitions above are not unreasonable.
They are not separate in the sense of being unrelated; they are certainly related. Epistemology is like general quality control for our thinking and our activities related to thinking. Ontology in the philosophical sense that I have used above is thinking applied to the representation of reality. Because representing reality is difficult and easy to mess up, the thinking that we use to do it requires quality control.
Disclaimer: I got off-track quite a lot. So, perhaps read my comments more as "rants sometimes inspired by your post, sometimes merely caused by it."
I am quite struggling to write about this topic in English. So, expect subpar precision.
The idea I am coming from is that ontological decisions (e.g. whether the body is made out of cells or out of organs) can be evaluated for their adequacy.
You are saying both. I'd say it is way more adequate to say that the body is made out of organs (which are made out of cells), since the concept of body includes the self-organization and not just the mass of substance.
To give a practical example: When you measure the change in mitochondrial mass before and after a training invention, you take a muscle sample, put everything in the blender and then test for markers. Here, intensity beats volume (interval training vs. low intensity endurance training). The problem with this method is that you "blend away" the muscle structure. With low-intensity training you train mainly your slow-twitch fibres, leaving the fast-twitch fibres out of the training stimulus. With high-intensity training, you train your fast twitch fibres as well. So, the total increase in mitochondrial mass is higher in high-intensity training, yet the training effectiveness might be lower. Why? You need to increase mitochondria where they are needed. In many cases, you are mainly working with your slow-twitch fibres. You want your training to be effected here.
Still, this structural problem is often ignored, and interval training is deemed to be more effective for mitochondrial content (yet other studies show the total training volume is the driver for total mitochondrial mass which are in contradiction)
With "ontological awareness" such thinking errors could be reduced in frequency. I say that with my coaching experience in mind. Quite often, I am able to move the thinking of clients forward, just because I am ontological aware. I include basic concepts like time, space, substance etc. in my thinking.
It seems to me that there is an interval momentum of philosophy to make itself irrelevant for practical purposes and therefore ultimately ornamental. This:
is unsatisfying to me. If ontology is truly the study of being, it has to apply to everything. But anytime you think about ontology and neighboring disciplines like epistemology, you get a strange dynamic that separates the intense thinking about it and the practical relevance. Why bother at all if decisions can be made "by convention and best available reasoning"? If ontology has nothing relevant to say about reality it reduced itself to intellectual masturbation. This, too, is a question about reality. If ontology is just about intellectual masturbation, then it might be done just for fun. But then it is as relevant and deserving of attention as chess or Fortnite.
I think that contrary is true: Ontology is relevant and should be researched and thought about as a future thinking tool box.
Repeating myself from above. The problem I have is that there is the assumption that the mind is not in reality, that representations and perceptions are not in reality but somehow outside of it.
I think this was in a fantasy book: We are the consiousness of a god that tries to understand itself. This self-referencial picture speaks to my sentiment: There is nothing outside of reality. Even fantasy is a real thing (as a fantasy).
I think perception and representation are too tightly intertwined to gain a meaningful and practical thinking tool if you separate them.
Representation have to be perceived to be available. At the same time, representations are the precondition to even perceive.
I think a much more crude and primitive model (even that is just a representation...):
Perception and representation are both in the mind. Yet, they are entities in reality. The distinction isn't even consistent at the foundation. (I deem this difference as foundational to even start with all the other distinctions)
I wouldn't give epistemiology that much credit for decisional freedom. At least, whatever I read is written in the binary code truth/false. At least in philosophy, it is about what is the case and what is not. I operate in the binary code of pragmatism, not in a philosophical sense, but in a much more crude sense.
For example: I am ethically more interested in what decisions can be made properly by either coming from a deontological or utilitarian perspective. I am not interested what the final judgment about the nature of ethics is.
I am familiar with this line of thinking. But I think the problem is on the premise-level. I don't think that (part of reality) exist independent of what we think, since what we think is part of reality. So, our thinking is identical with part of reality.
To me, it is absurd to think that my thinking is not a real thing. When I think something different, this part of reality changes.
I am a Zettler
@Sascha, thanks. I share your impatience for the impracticality of much philosophy, and I prefer to think about the practical aspects of it (applied ontology, epistemology, etc.).
In my first comment at the top, I looked at your list of entities and suggested categories for them: ontological versus logical and epistemological. You rejected the distinction. I tried to defend my distinction, but I did not succeed. I still suspect that there is some value in making that kind of distinction, but I won't try to continue to defend it. I will just respond to a few points in your last comment, but I don't think it is very important. You could think about what would be an alternative set of categories for your entities that would be acceptable to you.
I agree that "ontological decisions (e.g. whether the body is made out of cells or out of organs) can be evaluated for their adequacy". Congruence with scientific knowledge is an important test of adequacy. In other words, ontology should be based on scientific knowledge. My answers to your two ontological questions were inadequate because I didn't base them on such knowledge. My mistake provided an opportunity to remember that ontology should be based on scientific knowledge.
I would have to consult the relevant scientific knowledge to say something precise about how perception relates to representation in the brain at an unconscious level. The representation that I want to emphasize in contrast to perception and reality is the kind that we consciously do, as in theoretical models or ontology.
For me, the most compelling reason to separate perception and representation is that we represent aspects of reality that are not possible to perceive: fundamental physical forces, physical fields, subatomic particles, etc. We only perceive the effects of them. Not to mention everything that existed in the past but no longer exists, many of which we represent even if we have never perceived them.
I agree that it is counterintuitive to say that meanings, or the contents of thinking, are not "in reality". I am not taking the position that the definitions of reality and statement that I gave in my previous comment are the best ones. Also, I misstated the definition of reality in a way that made it seem easier to refute or more absurd than it should have been. This is what it should have been, adding "the content of":
Perhaps you still don't like this definition, but please note that it does not mean that the thinking in our brains is not real. What is important here is the distinction between the thinking and its content or what the thinking is about. (As I recall, this divide is like what Howard Pattee called the epistemic cut.) Epistemology is (at least in part) about how thinking can accurately be about something. That's why I called it "quality control" for thinking. From an ontological perspective, thinking is in reality; from an epistemological perspective, content of thinking is not reality but may be about reality.
In your original list of entities above, I thought that "justification" is a common epistemological term, about the quality of thinking. Whereas "part" and "whole" are terms not specifically about the quality of thinking as in epistemology; they are commonly used in ontology.
I said I was going to stop trying to defend my ontological versus epistemological distinction, but I did it again, and probably just as badly as before.
Again, if you don't like this distinction, you could think about what alternative categories you could use for your entities.
Riveting exchange, gentleman.
And to Sascha’s credit I find his recent thinking re: atomicity and the ensuing literature reviews from the rest of the community here to be some of the most interesting work out of this forum in recent memory.
I’m developing a similar classification scheme parallel to the knowledge building blocks that Sascha’s outlined. This conversation feels like a macro-portrayal of my own rudimentary reflections. Very helpful indeed.
Disclaimer: Again, I ranted. Hopefully, you get something out of it.
To be fair, I don't reject the distinction altogether. Perhaps, a better way to phrase it is that I think that the ontological status of epistemic entities (justification) and ontological entities (matter) is the same. Either everything is real or everything is just constructed.
It reminds me of a story from my time in university. We were talking about skepticism. The professor said skepticism isn't as mind shattering as drunken students claim that it is. Nobody, would question the realness of the trees we were seeing through the windows. I raised my hand and said: "I question the realness of those trees, because I take each philosophical position seriously." It was part trolling and part highlighting my problem with philosophy performed just to be relevant for the ivory tower.
It might be that I was unfair and conflated your writing with the standard implications of ontology and epistemology (e.g., the different assignment of ontological statuses while acting as if everything is indeed real).
I think my problem is with these general words. "Perception" and "representation" are not only relevant terms for the abstract world of physics but also for the science of cognition. Equipped with too general concepts, the philosopher tries to describe quantum physics, cognition and my grandmother searching for baking powder and is destined to fail.
It might be that I have reacted to this. It is not that I completely reject the separation between ontology and epistemology. Instead, I think that the traditional line and the attitude are not good, and I saw this traditional line when you placed "part/whole" in the ontological realm.
I don't think either was done badly.
My problem is that I can't avoid this distinction if I want to talk to other people in an understandable way.
Luhmann wrote something that impressed me deeply:
I am too stupid to find the exact German quote in "Soziale Systeme" (1984) But it sounds very much like the quote that I was impressed by.
This as additional commentary:
of social thought, then three terms are relevant: system theory (Systemtheorie), neo-
functionalism and radical constructivism. System theory provides sociology with
a professionally specific versatility as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
universality (linking sociology to other sciences). However, Luhmann as a theorist
of social systems seems to be a ‘realist. His typical claim — es gibt Systeme (there
are systems) [23. P. 31] — expresses his idea that systems are not just thought-based
constructions or scientific models but real things. source
It might be that there is a stronger quote in "Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft" (1998). But the book is at the bottom of a pile and I don't want to burry my dog yet another time..
Reading the quote shock me for a couple of seconds, because of its strength and clarity. (Which was another brick in the foundation of my Luhmann fandom)
I think the only appropriate start of building a good theory on being, subjects interacting with being ("epistemiological acts"), subjectivity, and the not empty void only accessible with closed eyes, is to completely and confidently reject stupid constructivism. "Stupid constructivism" is what I made fun of in the above story. Stupid intellectual positions work in the ivory tower only. Only if you reject the ivory tower with appropriate moral outrage you have the right mindset to even start to form relevant thoughts.
It might be that a good way to phrase my problem is that I think the distinction is not the start, but what needs to be earned.
So, the start is to build an inventory of specific and small-scale use cases. (which is very unphilosophical based on how I learned philosophy...
)
Lastly, to give you a sneakpeek: I deem the system theory a ontology that is a very powerful framework and an awesome training ground.
I am a Zettler