SUO: The Story So Far -- E Pluribus Unum? E Unibus Plurum?
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SUO Working Group,
I often think that the good of an ontology, a story about being,
must be to reflect the quality of being, or a good enough sample
of its aspects, characters, functions, natures, or ways of being
to provide us with an interesting or a useful account of it all.
If this makes sense to you, then this question about our ontology,
our common story about being -- if we can think of how to tell one --
namely, whether it ought to be many or one, ought itself to lead on
to the deeper question of whether being itself is many or one, and
that, as you know, is a very old, but still a very good question.
But before we even begin to try and answer such a question,
it seems like a good idea to ask whether it has any answer,
that is to say, whether it has any answer for us, which is
to bring up a further question, of who we are to expect an
answer, and what kind of answer do we expect. And that is
a very practical question, so it seems to me, and one that
often brings to mind this following favorite story of mine:
| Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains,
| I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in
| a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The 'corpus' of the dispute
| was a squirrel -- a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one
| side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side
| a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to
| get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but
| no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the
| opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself
| and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught.
| The resultant metaphysical problem now is this:
|
| 'Does the man go round the squirrel or not?'
|
| William James, 'Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking'
| Longmans, Green, & Company, New York, NY, 1907, page 43.
Moral of the Story: The ambiguity of the phrase "go round" is not likely
to be resolved without the consideration of some "pragmatic definitions",
what we frequently call, in first approximation, "operational definitions".
An application of this moral to our immediate situation would lead us
to ask after an actual, effective, functional, operational, practical --
pick your own favorite word here or make up your own -- definition of
the notions at issue, namely, "One" and "Many".
If you seek a pragmatic definition of a pragmatic definition,
there are many good ones to be had, but here is one good one,
one of the best:
| Consider what effects that might conceivably
| have practical bearings you conceive the
| objects of your conception to have. Then,
| your conception of those effects is the
| whole of your conception of the object.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'The Maxim of Pragmatism', CP 5.438.
Just some things to think about, I think.
All The Best Wishes,
Jon Awbrey
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