Dear John, (01)
Adopting an actualist ontology does not prevent one from believing
all kinds of sense and nonsense. It just makes one look very closely
at the manner in which people arrived at their beliefs, where they
obtained their information and who was responsible for formulating
it, reporting it, arguing in favour of what it said etc. etc. (02)
As you say:
''But it's also important to emphasize that there is a reality out there
> that is independent of our minds or of the collective minds of all
humanity."
which is a very sensible position to adopt when dealing with a huge range of
problems. In the appropriate circumstances, I imagine everyone of us
participating in Ontolog would share that belief. (03)
An actualist ontology does not rule it out nor any other belief. Actualism
reminds us that it is a belief rather than a fact that cannot be questioned
no matter how often emphasised by however many people. it also
draws our attention to the complex patterns of discourse that created the
belief and help to maintain it. Those complexities do not facilitate logical
manipulations as you might imagine, but the schemas also have some
elegant structures. (04)
Ronald (05)
On 12 Feb 2013, at 17:07, John F Sowa wre: (06)
> On 2/12/2013 10:51 AM, Ronald Stamper wrote:
>> I prefer a form of actualism, which recognizes as existing only those
>> things that a responsible agent perceives. An individual human agent can
>> perceive very little compared with the scope of reality that we take for
>> granted. For that broad knowledge of what exists we depend on individual
>> members of society sharing their experiences.
>
> That's a useful strategy. It emphasizes epistemology (how we know
> or can discover what exists) in contrast to an ontology that makes
> assertions about what exists while ignoring the source of evidence
> for any particular assertion.
>
> But it's also important to emphasize that there is a reality out there
> that is independent of our minds or of the collective minds of all
> humanity. Even for things we can't observe today, we have no idea
> whether they might be observed in the future.
>
> Peirce mentioned scientists had who talked about subjects that were
> in principle "unknowable" -- for example, the chemical composition
> of distant stars. But he noted that just a few years later, chemists
> discovered lines in the spectrum of light for each chemical element.
> With that discovery, that unknowable subject became very knowable.
>
> Peirce maintained that anything in the universe that has a causal
> influence of any kind is potentially knowable. Ernst Mach fought
> a long battle against the atomic hypothesis because he thought that
> their existence was undetectable. Not so long ago, many physicists
> thought that neutrinos and black holes were undetectable. They were
> all proved wrong.
>
> Peirce would have been delighted by the discovery of DNA and its
> ability to solve murder mysteries and answer questions about ancient
> migrations and interactions of plants, animals, and people.
>
> John
>
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