Re: BHA: negativity wins

[Jan Straathof <janstr@xxxxxxx>]

hi Ruth and All,

first let me thank you and the rest of all the contributors to
the de-ont thread, this kind of debate is what i like most about
mailing-list, there are pro's and contra's, clarifications and
counter-examples, new questions, sticky paradoxes .... wonderfull !!

the debate on nothingness, absence, negative existence, de-onts
and the like, is as old as philosohphy itself and is imo extremely
difficult to assess from only one philosophical perspective and/or
vocabulary. It is a set of sets, a debate of debates, each debate
consisting of many sub-sets of debates ranging from eastern and
western types of empirism, rationalism, idealism, positivism,
phenomenology, dialectics ... what a mess over nothing :-)

i'm still in the camp of TDCR as Gary would say, but that doesn't
mean i'm totally convinced of everything, i guess i'm never totally
convinced of anything ;-) yet all i think is that it's a compelling and
stimulating thought to conceive both 'onts' and 'de-onts' as real i.e.
as causal, transfactual, stratified, structured, emergent, experiential
(in the ID) and that they exist independent of our knowledge of
them in whatever field we study: physics, mathematics, history,
sociology, psychology (TD).

one of the examples i mentioned in my previous post was the
"absence of gravity in a space station", what i had in mind then
were these scientific experiments with seeds, spiders, cells, cristals
etc. that are preformed in space to study the behaviour of these
beings in an environment of zero-gravity (an environment btw in
which these beings impossibly could have initially originated and
evolved); in fact the absence of gravity is here the main constructive
element of the research design, aimed to the possible discovery of
new scientific ontologies - and i believe they did discover new
nano-techniques for producing new cristals, minerals, medicines.

but yes, to call "zero-gravity" a "de-ont" is a choice of perspective
and/or vocabulary, maybe it's a way of life, i 'see' a de-ont as easely
as a missing ingredient in the soup as in every TINA compromise
formation ... and yes, they hate me for it ;-)

yours,
jan




     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---