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Harv,
>>>"Why is our discussion stopping?"
If it's stopping, then it is 100% my fault:
It's great to be able to come in here every day during my lunch "hour" (and they say time dilation isn't real!) to debate these ideas with folks like you, Harv -- it's usually the highlight of my daily routine -– but sometimes the sword cuts both ways. In short, when a truly challenging issue surfaces at work, and I therefore spend a lot more intellectual energy "tackling" it, I come back in here and brain-dump. Yesterday got fairly interesting around here, so my response was hurried and probably not as clear as it could have been.
>>>"(Ontology is) what actually exists... Hence, metaphysics literally means what is actually happening in the background of physics."
It seems you're trying to avoid the concept of something beyond physics, so I'm hopeful you do understand where I'm trying to go here. Indeed, because your wording seems to have been quite carefully chosen, I think you might realize that agreeing to the largely accepted understanding of metaphysics -- the assumption that physics is based upon something deeper than itself -- would be quite detrimental to your position.
In my view, we learn to break things down a long time after we start experiencing the world. As such, this tenet of metaphysics seems so certain and unquestionable because we've basically been holists for our entire lives once we finally begin to sit back and bounce our observations off one another.
You have said my position is that "meaning" is imputed into reality; I think that this assessment of my position is based within the assumption that if "meaning" only exists within our imaginations, then it is "imaginary." A big part of our problem is is our shared (and confused) lexicon. In my opinion, an "imaginary" object is just as real as a "more-than-imaginary" object.
>>>"When I say that we all are committed to some kind of ontology, what I am saying is that we are all committed to the existence of something... you said so yourself that 'meaning' requires sentience. If meaning exists (i.e., it is not reducible to some material thing), then sentience is required to exist."
I don't think the fact that I only require "meaning" to lie within our thoughts to indicate "meaning" is unreal. Again, this would mean I hold your position. The notion that what lies in our heads is not as real as that which we contemplate is the tenet I'm trying to penetrate here.
I'm posting this without my usual editing and re-editing ad nauseum, because my work is still "hopping." Just want you to know, before I sign off here, that I'm not attempting to end this discussion, and will do my best to respond to your next post.
-LH |
