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Wishing I Had More Time

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Posted by Harvey on June 21, 2001 18:44:39 UTC

Dick,

I wish I had more time to thoroughly reply to your comments, but I'll have to make do:

>>>You keep bringing up the classifications "epistemological and ontological " as if they provide some magic division between thoughts. I have no idea what is in your head; I can only go by the definitions and usage I find. To paraphrase my position: epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge; ontology is a branch of "metaphysics" that studies the nature of existence. Metaphysics comes from the Greek for "beyond physics", the title Aristotle gave to his writings after his "physics". I hold the position that Aristotle would agree that ontology is governed by epistemology.>That's what your subconscious would like you to believe! Your subconscious has presented you with this information and, the feeling that its answers are correct!>Your problem (in being able to understand my position) is that you have never questioned the information provided to you by your subconscious. I think you will admit that man's understanding of the universe has been flawed in the past and that the present understanding will most probably be found to be flawed in the future. Why is this so? Sure, you will admit of an error here and an error there but you refuse to admit that the possibility exists that the whole perception is wrong.As I have stated many times before, it is very easy for inconsistent concepts and definitions to arise as few people are seriously concerned with definition of their conscious concepts and none are at all concerned with their unconscious definitions (except myself that is).>H: "You seem to be touting some form of antirealism, but such a scheme doesn't explain why some ideas 'work' better than other ideas." D: I do not understand your comment. Good ideas work well and bad ideas work poorly.>H: "a priori knowledge of the world (not necessarily subconscious)." D: I do not understand what you are saying. Are you saying you are conscious of all your a priori knowledge or that you simply refuse to separate your conscious knowledge from that your subconscious has foisted on you?>H: "I say it comes from our evolutionary past and hence we have this knowledge as a result of the world (and not our willy nilly definitions)." D: How did this 'willy nilly' adjective get attached to our definitions? My definitions are certainly not 'willy nilly' and I suspect neither are those of your subconscious. But beyond that, your philosophy presumes "evolutionary past" is a necessary part of any rational explanation of reality. Again, that is a position which can only be called religious dogma

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