An ontology can be arrested or preserved by a number of attitudes. A provisional list:
- Reductionism: treating one kind of being as strictly derived from another unlike kind of being.
- Mysticism: classifying what is outside of known being as unknowable in principle.
- Romanticism: assigning qualities of being to what is outside of known being.
- Ideology: reflexively invalidating what is unknowable within one’s current ontology.
- Decadence: refusing to clarify one’s thoughts enough to distinguish and relate various kinds of being.
- Ignorance: accepting the self-evident sufficiency of one’s ontology in the absence of evident insufficiency
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I’ve thought of philosophy as a quest for authentically innocent blissful ignorance. Innocent means one has sincerely attempted to overcome reductionism, mysticism, romanticism, ideology, decadence and ignorance… and failed so completely he cannot avoid feeling he has succeeded.
(Can a person feel he has succeeded if people he respects remain unpersuaded?)
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A question I have not asked seriously enough: What is the moral value of arresting or preserving an ontology? When is it right or wrong to arrest or preserve an ontology, and what is the standard and ground of this rightness or wrongness?
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Note: According to my definition of reductionism, strong holism (as I understand it) is as much a form of reductionism as atomism, because strong holism reduces parts to mere articulations from wholes and denies the reality of a part’s individual being.
Despite the fact that one may have some feeling about one’s success as it emerges, I don’t think that feeling one has succeeded is the measure of success so I would think the two being only partly connected could definitely occur exclusively.
It is the arrest/preserve dichotomy that seems to be tied to some morality, you have demonstrated the option of ‘Questioning’ and so far as I can tell it is never immoral to ask.
The standard/ground on which the morality in question lies is encapsulated in the ethic of behavior which through *study and discipline leads to understanding*.
Effort and discipline lead to positive outcome;In whatever situation the influencing of of some personal ontology will not work in harmony with this essential principle of development it could be viewed not as immoral so much but as in conflict rather than harmony with the nature of “Ontology”.
Obviously there is no building [an] Ontology without “Ontology”. this is cause and effect, reasoning not reductionism.
Whatever ontology is in best possible harmony with ontology the idea as it is, must be best. If such is composed and is shown to be insufficient then the idea of “Ontology” itself has been thrown into question.Something then more apt must be invented.
Reductionism:
Where dualities are presented as substitutive infrastructures for situations which in practical observation prove to arise from multiplistic architectures of causality, I think there is an unspoken agenda present and that being to reduce.
Repeated encounters with duality and/or dichotomy are significant since duality points chiefly toward states of being in which more than one exist.
The simple output of reasoning in reduction a system in which “Many” are the rule is the failure to reach any singular conclusion.
Conversely if “many” are accepted as state in question the output of the reasoning is singular. Just “Many”.
There is a widespread confusion afoot in this line of reasoning between *the poles of the octaves* along a fluid spectrum (of ordered potentialities) as opposites, and the points as markers of a body of transitions toward the next beginning point marking the next body in ordered sequence as a set of transitions.
If I had to state the actual dilemma I would think that it would be defining the rule for determining with reliability the differences in scale between any amount of groups of groups of “group from 1-many and any group from 1-many” within said spectrum of potentialities.
Ethically:
not the comparison of values, but the comparison to harmony of proportions(point) to values(body) as a vehicle to equilibrium. Isn’t that the inevitable outcome of personal confrontation with a system in which an unknowable multiplicity of values must be negotiated?
there is wisdom in balance between wisdom (and
knowledge) and knowledge in wisdom between balance and wisdom.