Ontology

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions by Tim Robert Bals, developed within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Overview

Ontology (derived from the Latin word ontologia, and this from the ancient greek terms, ὄντος— [ontos] and λόγος [lógos], meaning "science of being") belongs to metaphysics, in turn a major branch of philosophy. It can be summarize it as the theory about the being.

What ontology ultimatelly empbraces is still a topic of discussion, since we are not sure what being really means, and we can only recognize the entities which we assume exist and therefore derive certain features or relations between these entities.

A few examples out of uncountable philosophical problems directly linked to ontology are: What defines life?; Which connection does the materialistic world have to the consciousness? (Mind-Body Dualism); The search for correlations and structural similarities; The delimitation of certain objects, identities, events, conditions,...

To be or not to be

The Eleatic Principle

With his question 'being qua being' Aristotle asked himself which rule all the wildest entities have in common. With the eleatic principle, there was one answer to this question. The Eleatics (pre-socratic school in the Greek Colony Elea, which were strong advocates of the Monoism) stated that "power is the mark of being". Therefore, all the abstract objects, which cannot change the world, are not defined 'being' by them. Following this point, ontology itself for example is not part of the being. If you now assume that existence is defined by 'being present', ontology shouldn't exist. Neither should the metaphysics, philosophy or any theory humans thought of. A solution for this problem would be if we also define abstract objects as 'Having power'. However, this would require them to have the ability to influence the world or more widely said, the capacity to produce or prevent change. If we look to the past, abstract objects like the relativity theorem by Albert Einstein indeed changed the world. Other beings like us humans took notice about such thesis and started to look for evidence. We build telescopes, particle accelerators, rockets,... in order to gather more information. All these innovations led to even further abstract objects which could possibly change the world again. By stating such a theory, a huge chain of events followed. The problem with this argumentation is that without the consciousness and the human mind, such theory would not have been a world changing abstract object since noone would have taken notice. The only power such abstract ideas have is in our mind. Like René Descartes famous statement 'cogito ergo sum' (I am thinking, therefore I am) our ideas are a part of our being. This is a clear evidence for the dualistic approach of René Descartes standing opposite to the monistic approach of for example Baruch Spinoza or the mentioned Eleatics. Our ideas are somehow linked to our physis. The Mind-Body Dualism gives a concept which can explain the power of abstract objects through the connection to a body.

Berkeley's Theory

One completely different commonly accepted answer was given by the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley by saying 'to be is to be perceived'. But what exactly means to be perceived? If noone perceives an object, does it stop existing? George Berkeley is stating that this problem is just of no interest. An object existed when we have last seen it, and it is existing when someone is perceiving it. Still this would mean that an object, for example a tree, is jumping between the two states of existence or non-existence depending if a conscious mind is perceiving it. To give an explanation for this problem Berkeley brings in the concept of an omnipresent being perceiving objects constantly. But what about abstract objects? If we would name this omnipresent being god, he must have our ideas as well in order to be omnipresent. But since god is existing continuously and is unchanging in the Christian doctrine, he needs to have all possible abstract objects perceived from the beginning of time. For McCracken (1979), who was contemplating himself with Berkeley's theories, this is creating several problems. Since physical objects are finite in some way but god is eternal, how is it possible to get a connection between them? Another critical point is that if god is perceiving all possible abstract ideas, following Berkeley's theory they would be already existing. This would also mean that we would not 'have' ideas in the sense that we are creating abstract objects, but rather find an already existing concept.

Panspychism

Another divergent non-spiritual explanation lies beneath the definition of perception. Can an object, which has no obvious consciousness, perceive its environment? The answer to this proposal is to be found in the definition of perception. If perception only means 'Perceive an object exists and also know certain attributes of it', the table in my office might be perceived by the objects around it constantly because it is a source of gravitation for example. Such argumentation is made possible by the concept of 'Panpsychism', which was first mentioned by Thales (624–545 BCE). His argument was that enminded beings are self-movers. Therefore, as he had seen magnets moving themselves, he concluded they must possess minds. Aristotel claimed: 'some say a soul is mingled in the whole universe - which is perhaps why Thales thought that everything is full of gods'. This is exactly what the word 'Panpsychism' means, pan ('all, everything, whole') and psyche ('soul, mind'). Such an approach is giving us a way between the dualistic and the physical explanation of the mind-body problem. And having a 'mind' tied to matter could also explain how my desk is perceived even if no 'creature consciousness' like a human or an animal is sensing it. Since my desk is not just there without any resulting effects (it is bending space for example), it gets perceived by its environment. However, the problems of Panpsychism and my whole argumentation are combination/summing issues. What scales are we looking at? Does every Atom or even every Quantum have their own mind? Where can we find a line which defines 'one' mind? If we define that even the smallest piece of matter is having a consciousness, this would mean every human or animal consists of many conscious minds. But consciousness is directly linked to 'ensuring the own wellbeing', to egocentric views, experiences and goals (sentience consciousness).
How is it then possible, that we connect all these micro components to a macro mind which only has a limited amount of experiences, opinions and aims. We now have two opportunities available. Either some experiences are lost in order to create the macro mind, which would also directly result in the extinction of the possibility to divide it into single components. Or alternatively, micro experiences are somehow negating themselves only leaving back the attributes of the macro mind. Since no information gets deleted, every micro mind could be accessed by considering the macro minds components only. In order to negate experiences, the information containing all these attributes must be somehow reduced to certain states (e.g. quantum information). We also need some kind of rules how to negate them, for example A ¬ B. This arises a lot of new problems. Where are the rules coming from? But even more important, all the information 'left over' must be the foundation of the macro mind and must therefore make sense by their own. Following the Panpsychism theory, there must be a near infinite amount of conscious-levels, for example a quantum in an atom in a molecule,... The question is, are those consciousness layers just unimaginably high, or are they really infinite? If we have a real infinite number of combinations possible, this mathematic approach can not work. Since infinite velocity requires infinite space in order to be expressed or even 'measured', such a quantized approach containing infinity is not possible. Although we cannot observe infinity in our environment, we admit infinity by believing in the big bang theory and its necessary singularity. Nevertheless, as long as we cannot proof real infinity, we can rule it out following all the evidence we know and have proof for. So maybe it is possible, that all the information puzzles together giving us an explanation for multi-layer consciousness.
A different solution might be to just avoid the summing-problem at all by introducing only one layer of consciousness. This would mean that the relation between matter and a consciousness-level is just a constant, rather than some kind of linear or even exponential function. Furthermore, consciousness would then only be a binary state, being either true or false. Since matter would be automatically regarded as conscious, only abstract objects would therefore be defined 'not conscious'. Such an approach would be actually kind of unsatisfying because it provides no solution to the question about abstract objects. Panpsychism theory lies just in the middle between the mind-body dualism and a monistic approach, which would be served if everything could be reduced to a single object, a basic token which can create everything else by just being multiplied. The possibility of a single-layer consciousness has just some kind of fascination tied to it. One outcome to this proposal would be the fact that the only thing which makes the difference between any living creature and non-living matter is some kind of information processing unit e.g. the brain of us humans. According to such a theory, our brain and our nervous system would play the key role of expressing and expanding our given consciousness in a way which makes us superior to all other organisms we know about. According to Panpsychism, these components would not be necessary for consciousness, but rather make us intelligent beings. This intelligence proposes several further capacities to us than just 'being aware to be aware' (self-consciousness). Such benefits would be: abstract and logic thinking, understanding as a whole, the possibility to learn, creativity, as well as planning and problem-solving skills (only to name a few). Since living creatures are the only ones we know about having such an ability to process information, 'Panpsychism' doesn't change anything about the exceptional existence of living beings. The universe (or the quants on the other end) might be 'aware to be aware' showing signs of self-consciousness, but without such a gift like our brain or any other equal object, capable to process data, they cannot make any decisions. They remain objects unable to react to their environment.

References

1. Hofweber, Thomas (2004, Oct 4). "Logic and Ontology". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Ont
2. Downing, Lisa (2004, Sep 10). "George Berkeley". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/
3. Goff, Philip (2001, May 23). "Panpsychism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/#PanpHistWestPhil
4. Schaffer, Jonathan (2007, Mar 19). "Monism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/
5. Skrbina, David (u.d.). "Panpsychism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/panpsych/
6. Robinson, Howard (2003, Aug 19). "Dualism".Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
7. Borchert, Donald (2006). "Ontology". Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd Edition. Macmillan.
8. Descartes, René (1984-1991). "The Philosophical Writings of Descartes". 3 vols., trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press