A really well-known one is the cycle connecting ontology and epistemology: your epistemology should imply your ontology, and your ontology must permit your epistemology. More arcane is the interplay between phenomenology, epistemology, and methodology.
I have read many of your comments and I am uncertain how to model your meanings for ‘ontology’, ‘epistemology’ and ‘methodology’, especially in relation to each other.
Do you have links to sources that describe these types of cycles, or are you willing to describe the cycles you are referring to—in the process establishing the relationship between these terms?
Your approach to ontology seems to combine these two cycles, with the p/e/m cycle being more fundamental. All ontological claims are said to be dependent on a cognitive context, and this justifies ontological relativism.
The term “cycles” doesn’t really capture my sense of the situation. Perhaps the sense of recurrent hypergraphs is closer.
Also, I do not limit my argument only to things we describe as cognitive contexts. My argument allows for any type of context of evaluation. For example an antennae interacting with a photon creates a context of evaluation that generates meaning in terms of the described system.
...and this justifies ontological relativism.
I think that this epistemology actually justifies something more like an ontological perspectivism, but it generalizes the context of evaluation beyond the human centric concepts found in relativism and perspectivism. Essentially it stops privileging human consciousness as the only context of evaluation that can generate meaning. It is this core idea that separates my epistemology from most of the related work I have found in epistemology, philosophy, linguistics and semiotics.
In what you write I don’t see a proof that foundations don’t exist or can’t be reached.
I’m glad you don’t see those proofs because I can’t claim either point from the implied perspective of your statement. Your statement assumes that there exists an objective perspective from which a foundation can be described. The problem with this concept is that we don’t have access to any such objective perspective. We can only identify the perspective as “objective” from some perspective… which means that the identified “objective” perspective depends upon the perspective that generated the label, rendering the label subjective.
You do provide an algorithm for finding an objective description:
I see the possibility of reaching foundations, and also the possibility of countering the relativistic influence of the p/e/m perspective, simply by having a good ontological account of what the p/e/m cycle is about. From this perspective, the cycle isn’t an endless merry-go-round, it’s a process that you iterate in order to perfect your thinking. You chase down the implications of one ology for another, and you keep that up until you have something that is complete and consistent.
Again from this it seems that while you reject some current conclusions of science, you actually embrace scientific realism—that there is an external reality that can be completely and consistently described.
As long as you are dealing in terms of maps (descriptions) it isn’t clear that to me that you ever escape the language hierarchy and therefore you are never free of Gödel’s theorems. To achieve the level of completeness and consistency you strive for, it seems that you need to describe reality in terms equivalent to those it uses… which means you aren’t describing it so much as generating it. If this description of a reality is complete then it is rendered in terms of itself, and only itself, which would make it a reality independent of ours, and so we would have no access to it (otherwise it would simply be a part of our reality and therefore not complete). Descriptions of reality that generate reality aren’t directly accessible by the human mind; any translation of these descriptions to human accessible terms would render the description subject to Gödel’s theorems.
I see no reason to abandon cognitive optimism.
I don’t want anybody to abandon the search for new and better perspectives on reality just because we don’t have access to an objective perspective. But by realizing that there are no objective perspectives we can stop arguing about the “right” way of viewing all of reality and spend that time finding “good” or “useful” ways to view parts of it.
Do you have links to sources that describe these types of cycles, or are you willing to describe the cycles you are referring to—in the process establishing the relationship between these terms?
Let’s say that ontology is the study of that which exists, epistemology the study of knowledge, phenomenology the study of appearances, and methodology the study of technique. There’s naturally an interplay between these disciplines. Each discipline has methods, the methods might be employed before you’re clear on how they work, so you might perform a phenomenological study of the methods in order to establish what it is that you’re doing. Reflection is supposed to be a source of knowledge about consciousness, so it’s an epistemological methodology for constructing a phenomenological ontology… I don’t have a formula for how it all fits together (but if you do an image search on “hermeneutic circle” you can find various crude flowcharts). If I did, I would be much more advanced.
For example an antennae interacting with a photon creates a context of evaluation that generates meaning in terms of the described system.
I wouldn’t call that meaning, unless you’re going to explicitly say that there are meaning-qualia in your antenna-photon system. Otherwise it’s just cause and effect. True meaning is an aspect of consciousness. Functionalist “meaning” is based on an analogy with meaning-driven behavior in a conscious being.
it stops privileging human consciousness as the only context of evaluation that can generate meaning. It is this core idea that separates my epistemology from most of the related work
Does your philosophy have a name? Like “functionalist perspectivism”?
Let’s say that ontology is the study of that which exists, epistemology the study of knowledge, phenomenology the study of appearances, and methodology the study of technique.
Thanks for the description. That would place the core of my claims as an ontology, with implications for how to approach epistemology, and phenomenology.
I wouldn’t call that meaning, unless you’re going to explicitly say that there are meaning-qualia in your antenna-photon system. Otherwise it’s just cause and effect. True meaning is an aspect of consciousness. Functionalist “meaning” is based on an analogy with meaning-driven behavior in a conscious being.
I recognize that my use of meaning is not normative. I won’t defend this use because my model for it is still sloppy, but I will attempt to explain it.
The antenna-photon interaction that you refer to as cause and effect I would refer to as a change in the dynamics of the system, as described from a particular perspective.
To refer to this interaction as cause and effect requires that some aspect of the system be considered the baseline; the effect then is how the state of the system is modified by the influencing entity. Such a perspective can be adopted and might even be useful. But the perspective that I am holding is that the antenna and the photon are interacting. This is a process that modifies both systems. The “meaning” that is formed is unique to the system; it depends on the particulars of the systems and their interactions. Within the system that “meaning” exists in terms of the dynamics allowed by the nature of the system. When we describe that “meaning” we do so in the terms generated from an external perspective, but that description will only capture certain aspects of the “meaning” actually generated within the system.
How does this description compare with your concept of “meaning-qualia”?
Does your philosophy have a name? Like “functionalist perspectivism”?
I think that both functionalism and perspectivism are poor labels for what I’m attempting to describe; because both philosophies pay too much attention to human consciousness and neither are set to explain the nature of existence generally.
For now I’m calling my philosophy the interpretive context hypothesis (ICH), at least until I discover a better name or a better model.
I have read many of your comments and I am uncertain how to model your meanings for ‘ontology’, ‘epistemology’ and ‘methodology’, especially in relation to each other.
Do you have links to sources that describe these types of cycles, or are you willing to describe the cycles you are referring to—in the process establishing the relationship between these terms?
The term “cycles” doesn’t really capture my sense of the situation. Perhaps the sense of recurrent hypergraphs is closer.
Also, I do not limit my argument only to things we describe as cognitive contexts. My argument allows for any type of context of evaluation. For example an antennae interacting with a photon creates a context of evaluation that generates meaning in terms of the described system.
I think that this epistemology actually justifies something more like an ontological perspectivism, but it generalizes the context of evaluation beyond the human centric concepts found in relativism and perspectivism. Essentially it stops privileging human consciousness as the only context of evaluation that can generate meaning. It is this core idea that separates my epistemology from most of the related work I have found in epistemology, philosophy, linguistics and semiotics.
I’m glad you don’t see those proofs because I can’t claim either point from the implied perspective of your statement. Your statement assumes that there exists an objective perspective from which a foundation can be described. The problem with this concept is that we don’t have access to any such objective perspective. We can only identify the perspective as “objective” from some perspective… which means that the identified “objective” perspective depends upon the perspective that generated the label, rendering the label subjective.
You do provide an algorithm for finding an objective description:
Again from this it seems that while you reject some current conclusions of science, you actually embrace scientific realism—that there is an external reality that can be completely and consistently described.
As long as you are dealing in terms of maps (descriptions) it isn’t clear that to me that you ever escape the language hierarchy and therefore you are never free of Gödel’s theorems. To achieve the level of completeness and consistency you strive for, it seems that you need to describe reality in terms equivalent to those it uses… which means you aren’t describing it so much as generating it. If this description of a reality is complete then it is rendered in terms of itself, and only itself, which would make it a reality independent of ours, and so we would have no access to it (otherwise it would simply be a part of our reality and therefore not complete). Descriptions of reality that generate reality aren’t directly accessible by the human mind; any translation of these descriptions to human accessible terms would render the description subject to Gödel’s theorems.
I don’t want anybody to abandon the search for new and better perspectives on reality just because we don’t have access to an objective perspective. But by realizing that there are no objective perspectives we can stop arguing about the “right” way of viewing all of reality and spend that time finding “good” or “useful” ways to view parts of it.
Let’s say that ontology is the study of that which exists, epistemology the study of knowledge, phenomenology the study of appearances, and methodology the study of technique. There’s naturally an interplay between these disciplines. Each discipline has methods, the methods might be employed before you’re clear on how they work, so you might perform a phenomenological study of the methods in order to establish what it is that you’re doing. Reflection is supposed to be a source of knowledge about consciousness, so it’s an epistemological methodology for constructing a phenomenological ontology… I don’t have a formula for how it all fits together (but if you do an image search on “hermeneutic circle” you can find various crude flowcharts). If I did, I would be much more advanced.
I wouldn’t call that meaning, unless you’re going to explicitly say that there are meaning-qualia in your antenna-photon system. Otherwise it’s just cause and effect. True meaning is an aspect of consciousness. Functionalist “meaning” is based on an analogy with meaning-driven behavior in a conscious being.
Does your philosophy have a name? Like “functionalist perspectivism”?
Thanks for the description. That would place the core of my claims as an ontology, with implications for how to approach epistemology, and phenomenology.
I recognize that my use of meaning is not normative. I won’t defend this use because my model for it is still sloppy, but I will attempt to explain it.
The antenna-photon interaction that you refer to as cause and effect I would refer to as a change in the dynamics of the system, as described from a particular perspective.
To refer to this interaction as cause and effect requires that some aspect of the system be considered the baseline; the effect then is how the state of the system is modified by the influencing entity. Such a perspective can be adopted and might even be useful. But the perspective that I am holding is that the antenna and the photon are interacting. This is a process that modifies both systems. The “meaning” that is formed is unique to the system; it depends on the particulars of the systems and their interactions. Within the system that “meaning” exists in terms of the dynamics allowed by the nature of the system. When we describe that “meaning” we do so in the terms generated from an external perspective, but that description will only capture certain aspects of the “meaning” actually generated within the system.
How does this description compare with your concept of “meaning-qualia”?
I think that both functionalism and perspectivism are poor labels for what I’m attempting to describe; because both philosophies pay too much attention to human consciousness and neither are set to explain the nature of existence generally.
For now I’m calling my philosophy the interpretive context hypothesis (ICH), at least until I discover a better name or a better model.