48 notes, Comments
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A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word – ‘Everything’ – and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries.
Willard Van Orman Quine wrote his doctoral thesis on a 1927 Remington typewriter, which he used ever since. However, he “had an operation on it” to change a few keys to accommodate special symbols. “I found I could do without the second period, the second comma – and the question mark.”
“You don’t miss the question mark?”
“Well, you see, I deal in certainties.”
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Experience, really, like meaning and thought and belief, is a worthy object of philosophical and scientific clarification and analysis, and, like all those it is ill-suited for use as an instrument of philosophical clarification and analysis.
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I am physical object sitting in a physical world. Some of the forces of this physical world impinge on my surface. Light rays strike my retinas; molecules bombard my eardrums and fingertips. I strike back, emanating concentric airwaves. These waves take the form of a torrent of discourse about tables, people, molecules, light rays, retinas, prime numbers, infinite classes, joy and sorrow, good and evil.
