I think that the ontological tyranny is some kind of perfect ideal. It’s not attainable in the imperfect world of human scientists. Ego, value judgments and self-interest are part of scientific investigations. Certain scientific fields are more readily influenced by these factors. For example, the softer sciences will be more influenced by value judgments. In all fields, the personalities of the scientists will play a large role. Although I think that scientists are interested in the really real, the human desires for money, status, security, etc. are too strong to overcome.
so does music agree that ontological tyranny is a perfect ideal…i would say probably…the really real…i think it is good that music speaks out aganst this tyranny…also it seems that the reallyreal stuff has a way of rearing its ugly head
no matter how greedy people can be.
Well, that would imply that I hold the way science actually works to be some sort of impoverished, unrealized attempt at that which the ontological tyranny affirms. I do not: such a posit-ion (positing) radically differs from the way we do science. It’s not a matter of degree; the concepts are contrary. Why not affirm value-ladenness, why not embrace it! Instead of thinking science to be infected and demeaned by values, why not think it strengthened by them! This is my position, turtle.
How would that work? The gender of scientists plays a role in evaluating experimental results? The racial views of an author are used to determine whether a paper is published? Could you provide some examples of how embracing value-ladedness would be beneficial.
Great thread.
Excellent response. Very well said, and I think you get right at the root of the issue–
Can an ontilogical status be anything more than a description? As far as I can see, even our best ‘explanations’ are essentially specialized descriptions. We experience some behavior, or phenomena, and infer causes through observation and description of predictable reactions. That is to say, explanations speak more to predictability than any universal or absolute Truth. Ask “why?” or “how?” enough times and everything becomes an unknown.
Science describes how things act, not what they are. Problem arises when the actors start saying what the play is, or worse when they deny there is anything bar actors.
That’s a philosopher’s point of view. A scientist believes that the more you ask, the more you will know.
yes i also would like to see an example of value-ladenness science…i hope this is not off-topic…
actually we need a philosopher-scientist at this point and music may be the man…on the topic of ontology-tyranny…
If, ultimately, there is an objective, ontological reality that expresses and explains everything then would that not also include these speculations about it? And if it does, does that not then infer that human autonomy is an illusion—merely another inherent manifestation of the tyranny?
Thus the world “tyranny” itself would become an anthropomorphism.
yes yes all of this is real but there is objective truth that we use to control our environment…the tyranny part is how some people try to distort reality for their own little benefit…
I couldn’t find a summary of this online - do you think you could give a precis?
Do you feel a moral duty to disarm the weapon, rather than to appropriate it?
How do we control anything at all if we ourselves are just an inherent aspect of the objective, ontological reality? Tyranny is a word we invented to connote something deemed [by most] to be “bad”, “evil”, “immoral”. But if everything is intrinsically part of the TOE, how can anything we name actually be these things at all? Right and wrong seem moot sans autonomy.
To me it’s like speaking of moral responsibility while positing an omniscient God. If God knows all, He knows everything we do—before we do it. Similarly, if there is a material totality that encompasses, ontologically, all that exist, then it encompasses everything we think and feel—before we do.
I just cannot wrap my mind around ontology and free will. Either the human mind is somehow the exception here or its “freedom” is just a chimera.
And what happens when he runs out of answers? More opportunity to know maybe, but a question doesn’t imply any easy answer [if any at all]. Everything becomes a matter of speculation and hypothesis if examined rigorously enough. Even scientists don’t claim to have all the answers, though they may have higher hopes of someday attaining them.
There isn’t a human among us who’s completely without bias or prejudice, but does that mean that all science is locked into an ontological ‘tyranny?’ (I, too, am slightly bothered by
tyranny’ because of its connotative meaning.) Chemistry don’t seem to be and quantum physics shouldn’t be, and often isn’t, although is may not seem so to the laity.
I think w-m already said there’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with ontology within science when he said, “Why not affirm value-ladenness, why not embrace it! Instead of thinking science to be infected and demeaned by values, why not think it strengthened by them! This is my position, turtle.” If science is value-laden and if a part of that ‘value’ is a search for Gott, das höchste Gut, or Supreme Being, if that search has led to a greater knowledge of the workings and substances of the universe, doesn’t the search, itself, have value beyond the ontological?
Agreed, but instead of Objective truth you probably want Absolute truth. Objective truth isn’t too hard to find, there are a ton of objective truths. Inertia is a good example, Inertia is an objective truth that applies to everything in our universe. We have no idea ow it works, or how it is, why it works the way it does, but we do know it’s there. And it’s there for not just me, or you, not just in our minds, It’s everywhere.
Objective = Not dependent on the mind for existence
Truth = The quality or state of being true
Is inertia in our minds? Does it exist? If life was nowhere, would inertia still be?
Very true, but what if these descriptive methods eventually described everything that is needed to be described? How can the following not meet the necessary criteria: We still don’t know what reality is, but we know everything it does.
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In what terms?
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What should we do with this information?
Inertia isn’t a truth. Truth applies to statements. “Inertia describes the resistance of matter to acceleration” is a statement that is true, “inertia applies to everything in the universe” is a statement that as far as we know isn’t false (does it apply to neutrinos? I’m honestly not sure).
Inertia also isn’t a Thing. It’s a description of how things move relative to each other: it’s a relation. It can be described in other ways, depending on the fundamental units we choose and the way we formulate our models. It may not be valid for all regions of the reality it attempts to describe.
Take Newtonian mechanics: it’s excellent for life on our scale. All our modern machines and structures are designed based on its principles, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the shock-resistance of an iPhone to the cars we drive and the planes we fly. But it’s not objective truth, only a very good approximation for some regions and states of things.
In what is now an infamous agricultural case study, Watson and Kennedy concerned themselves with the traditional understanding of plant domestication. I don’t have the study with me, but the traditional hypothesis was that either: 1) Shamans helped domesticate plants by selecting those that were useful in rituals and planting them near their homes; or, 2) plants domesticated themselves. Of course, I’m being somewhat simplistic for the sake of brevity. Anyway, the traditional hypothesis was absent women, working off an androcentric understanding of evolution that held men to be the purveyors of change, the actors and agents of evolution and progress, while women were merely passive bearers of offspring. On this theory, it seems absurd to posit women as the active role-players in the significant development of plant domestication. For Watson and Kennedy, the traditional hypothesis is blinded by its androcentrism, and so refuses out of hand the most empirically viable conclusion: that women were involved in foraging before domestication, and cultivating afterward, and so might very well have been involved during the domestication. The original hypothesis claimed objectivity, but was rather value-inclusive. The background theory at work is that women are passive and cannot affect change: this background theory both informs the hypothesis – that shamans domesticated plants – while also determining what counts as evidence, since if we think that women cannot affect change, then we are blind to evidence suggesting otherwise. Thus, the background theory ladens the hypothesis and the hypothesis determines what gets picked up as evidence.
In short, by consciously including their feminist values --instead of feigning scientific objectivity – Watson and Kennedy were able to develop the more empirically viable hypothesis, that women played an active role in the domestication of plants. In both hypotheses (the traditional and feminist), values are at work. However, by embracing their values and consciously including them, the feminist researchers were led to a better empiricism.
I’d also like to say, phyllo, that we ought to be more proud of the perspectives we occupy. Many perspectives are earned, not merely given. For Watson and Kennedy, feminist valuation is the product of a life-long struggle and should be embraced with pride!
“This is my way; where is yours? - Thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way - that does not exist.”
[Nietzsche, TSZ, Book III].