I like the notion of a negative ontology, which is just an awareness that our distinctions, the beings we disclose with/by language, are contingent. There is always another way to slice it, name, disclose it.

I like this. What you call Sustain-ology is close to what I playfully call "nontology." At least it seems so to me.

Tell me more about "nontology." Is it the same as the "negative ontology" you mention above?
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Just as Einstein showed that there is no "abolute" frame of reference from which to view physical phenomena, there is no "absolute" being for which individual beings are manifestations.
:flowers:

It's the same, yeah.

It's my theory that thoughts are unities, whether we want them to be or not. They seem to be organized holonically. For instance, a car is zoomed in on to smaller unities like the wheel or the transmission, which we can further zoom in on. Or we can zoom out the all-inclusive unity. you are suggesting.

But this is where the difficulty manifests itself. To include everything we have to include the so-called "observer" who contemplates this everything.

But this "observer" is just a concept, an abstract being. A metaphor.

And is there a difference between the thought and the thinker, the observed and the observer the dancer and the dance? Is this difference just a useful but logically questionable invention?

I think Aristotle's concept of essence is crucial. It reveals, in my opinion, that objects or beings are unified by the "mind" --but so is this so called "mind." And so is an abstraction like "matter" or "reality." A safer way to say it may be that experience has an intelligible structure of unities organized within unities.

Just one more thought to add to my previous post. Just as Einstein showed that there is no "abolute" frame of reference from which to view physical phenomena, there is no "absolute" being for which individual beings are manifestations.

I must admit I don't see the sameness.
There are all kinds of thoughts. But they aren't all of the type that you are suggesting. You can look at a wheel as a unity as you suggest, that is "apart" from its relationship to the rest of the car, but you can also look at it as "a part" of the car, if you'll pardon the pun.
:flowers:

Part of the difficulty lies in trying to include everything. For instance, if I look at the outside of the car, I cannot see its transmission. When you take into account the observer, the observer can only look at the car from her perspective or series of perspectives. From this perspective or series of perspectives she may conclude that she is looking at a "car," and she may think "That is a car." Similarly, if she looks at a wheel, she may think "That is a wheel." If she has had experience in looking at cars and their wheels, she may even think "That is a wheel that is a part of a car."

Husserl's phenomenological approach was to distinguish between I observing a car, for instance, which he called "primary consciousness," and I observing my act of observation, which he called "pure consciousness." His error was in performing the so-called "phenomenological reduction" in which he attached more importance to the latter than the former. But Ortega, having studied Husserl before 1914, says that the so called "pure consciousness" is just another act of consciousness, in this case another observation. In this way, he sought to eliminate the last vestiges of idealism from the phenomenological method, which otherwise he adopted as his own.

5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.
5.62 This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.
5.621 The world and life are one.
5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)
5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas. If I wrote a book called The World as l found it, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.-
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.
5.6331 For the form of the visual field is surely not like this
5.634 This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is at the same time a priori. Whatever we see could be other than it is. Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a priori order of things.
5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world-not a part of it.

It's not that "objects that are unified by the mind" but rather that patterns of the phenomena that are experienced by the person are associated with other patterns previously experienced, remembered in the present. As patterns recur, these associations become stronger and may be given a name, i.e., "car." Much of our learning, expecially at an early age, involves learning the names of patterns, usually through pictures.
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I'll have to stop here, but I think I've given you enough to chew on.
:flowers:

You don't see why I call negative ontology "nontology"? Or you don't see a thread that connects our views?

Sure, of course, but that's why I mention the holonic organization of these unities. If we move from the car as unity to the wheel as unity, we are only moving from one unity to another. The essence of my point is that we are always dealing in unities.

That the intelligible structure of experience is discrete as well as dynamic.

Even our notion of nothingness is a being, if only a unified negation of determinate content. An empty set.

It doesn't matter if one sees the transmission, in my opinion. The transmission is a system of parts that we think of as a unity --- or, as you say, a part of the car. And this car is a member of the general notion of cars. And cars or vehicles, or human inventions. The imposition and the editing of our sets/holons is flexible.

I'm not saying that objects can't be both wholes and parts. Just about all of our beings are both. I suppose I'm trying to say something strange here..but if I'm right, we can't even intelligibly speak concerning nonbeings, as they don't exist. Excepting that the concept "nonbeings" is itself a being. Do you see what I mean? I'm saying we always talk and think in unities, no matter how we arrange them. These arrangements are flexible, dynamic, and this is the possibility of philosophy.

If you are saying what I think you are saying, then I agree. There is no subject, except for the fiction or being we have cooked up to unify certain other beings. In my view, absolute idealism was the death of and transcendence of idealism. If it's absolute, there is no more noumena, no more outside to the subject, but that means we have no subject, no duality. And "mind" becomes the wrong word.

The intelligible structure of the self/world/life/mind/experience (all these words are being disclosed/imposed by us) is, in my opinion, composed of unities.

Ortega is not saying that there is no subject. In fact he says that there is no subject without an object. In his metaphysics, the "subject" and the "object," or as he puts it, "I" and "my circumstance" coexist within the radical reality that is "my life," and therefore he has characterized reality as a "unitary duality." It is also a plurality in the sense that there are many such "unitary dualities" or "lives."

I think Reconstructo is taking the viewpoint of 'organicism' which is that a whole comprises parts which are also in some sense wholes. So this is an anti-reductionist view a la Bergson and Whitehead which I am generally very interested in. However I do agree with your critique of what he wrote in this context and on this actual occassion.:bigsmile:?

Incidentally LongKnowledge, while we are on the topic, if I had to pick a volume on Ortega, do you have a recommendation?

Is there a Routledge reader, or something similar?

Not all of these relationships are ones of unity, or even relationships between unities.
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I feel that you are missing my point. I'm saying that we think in unities--that our individual concepts are essences, or sets of properties.

A transmission is a "part" of a car in a different sense than a car being a "part," or a "member" as you say, of a "general notion," or "set," of "cars," or "vehicles," or "human inventions."

An engineer can look at a wheel in terms of whether or not it will come "apart," if you'll pardon the pun, but he also must consider whether it will support the rest of the car, what kind of traction it provides on differing road surfaces or in different weather conditions, what kind of road wear it will experience, how often it has to be checked for proper tire pressure, etc.

A rainbow doesn't have entirely discreet colors and yet is intelligible as well as dynamic.

"Peanut butter." "Claustrophobic." "Kevin Bacon." There. I've thought of three things at random. What's the unity among them? (I know, there are o
:flowers:

Ortega is not saying that there is no subject. In fact he says that there is no subject without an object. In his metaphysics, the "subject" and the "object," or as he puts it, "I" and "my circumstance" coexist within the radical reality that is "my life," and therefore he has characterized reality as a "unitary duality." It is also a plurality in the sense that there are many such "unitary dualities" or "lives."

I'm not sure Heidegger would agree.

You could also say that it is composed of parts. So parts and unities co-exist.

More next time.

:flowers:

What chain of words can say what a smile says?

Toward the end of his life, the Buddha took his disciples to a quiet pond for instruction. As they had done so many times before, the Buddha's followers sat in a small circle around him, and waited for him to speak.

But on this occasion, the Buddha, remaining silent, just held up a flower before them.

Confused, the disciples did their best to expound upon the meaning of the flower: what it symbolized, and how it fit into the body of Buddha's teaching.

All, except for Mahakasyapa, who simply smiled.

"What can be said I have said to all of you," said the Buddha, "but what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa."


And this is how Mahakashyapa became a dharma-heir.

This reminds me of the legendary origin of Zen Buddhism.


And to come full circle, we're back at what Wittgenstein said about 'that of which we cannot speak'....

Now that was great, my friend. How far it goes back! "Teems of times of happy returns! The same anew."