Comments on: Object-oriented ontology: conceptual claptrap

By: Erfan Younesi

Erfan Younesi — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:47:30 +0000

I would like to write my pesonal opinion about this subject. I agree with Frege's view because it is closer to perception idea philosophically. In the context of "humanism", human perception is central to perceiving the "real world" and deduction is considered as a complementary part of it. Although there are numerous non-physical entities which are imperceptible directly by human sensory systems, their vestige effect in the real world can be perceived or deduced indirectly. In biology realm, for instance, a gene can not be perceived directly by human but its existence is deduced due to pereptible traces of its existence; thus those rejecting existence of such entity decades ago, are not respected today anymore! I think objects currently considered to fall in the realm of "imagination" unifies with the set of "physical entities" gradually by time, as human is improving his power of deduction from imperceptible entities. What is called "encapsulation" in object-oriented modeling referes to this paradigm. Another example in math's world is Hidden Markov Model which is frequently used in object-oriented programming in bioinformatics and systems biology. This model tries to predict (deduce) a sequence of coming events (which do not exist as physical entities yet) from observed (perceived) sequences of events. Although this is a bit tricky example, it shows how existence of non-physical entities can be considered into account in the "physical realm".
As Einstein said, "imagination is more powerful than knowledge…knowledge is limited but imagination encircles the world".

By: Anj

Anj — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:32:15 +0000

Was I supposed to read the whole article. It had so many paragraphs. I only caught the duelist theories of duct tape for disoriented objects. And why aren't you here helping me out with this poopy openUrl thing?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 23:37:13 +0000

Hey duder, I found this blog of yours after finding the newly structured LOT website.

Interesting ideas you've written about here. For some challenging-to-read countertheories, I recommend Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" and his student, Hans Georg-Gadamer's "Truth and Method." Prepare to be frustrated or resolutely patient if you read these. I could not get all the way through either. I recommend starting with Truth and Method, as many of the concepts discussed within are more directly on target with what you've brought up here.

And as I think of it, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is also relevant. His description of "paradigms" would suggest that the so-called objective meaning or truth of "things" actually in the world can shift dramatically when a paradigm shifts (I've grossly oversimplified, btw).

The social constructionist and hermenuetic challenge to objectivism is this: Name a non-relational phenomenon. Point being, while there are indeed physical and non-physical objects that exist in the world, their existence is seriously questioned by their meaninglessness apart from a socially co-constructed system of meaning (e.g., language). Contextual differences may also challenge objectivism. For example, a table in our culture is objectively a table, but in a so-called primitive culture, it may be our linguistic equivalent of firewood.

Anywho, I just wanted to talk at you since its been a while. Hope you're well. Peace in the NW. Hope the moving prep is coming along smoothly.