Inspired by Episode #104: Ethan Nelson on Writing, Stifling Ontoepistemology, Economics, and Shaping Gifts
Ontological Exclusivity From the Effectiveness of an Epistemology
An easy and dangerous mistake.
Ethan Nelson is wonderful to speak with, and we discussed in our second O.G. Rose Conversation topics like how writing is a critical practice for learning how to manage all the thoughts and threads that fill our heads, how money is a profound tool of attunement, the different kinds of “gifting” and how they shape us, and also the need to focus on “the creative act” versus just “the creative product” for new philosophical and metaphysical insight (which suggests the topic of “The Phenomenology of the Artist,” as I have discussed extensively with Andrew Luber). Notably, we discussed the connection between “ontology” and “epistemology,” and how work in one area always impacts the other.
Epistemology is conditioned by ontology: what a duck can know, and how the duck knows it, is relative to what a duck “is” and how it survives. Furthermore, what constitutes “logical” and “practical” is relative to “is-ness,” for it is logical for a squirrel to store up acorns, while for a human this might be strange. Furthermore, how a being thinking or comes to understand “truth” is similarly relative to what it “is,” for dolphins can use echolocation while humans cannot. More examples can be made, but the point is that “ontology” and “epistemology” are always “ontoepistemology,” which doesn’t mean we can never emphasis one, but it does mean that we must never forget that doing work in one means we are also doing work in the other.
If there is a “subject/object”-divide, then more individuated entities will be the focus of ontology, and epistemology will have to be in the business of avoiding relationality to practice “right thinking”; on the other hand, if there is no “subject/object”-divide and rather relations are more “essential” than “accidental,” then an epistemology which avoids relationality and doesn’t try to think how entities shape and influence one another is an epistemology which will lead us in the direction of falsity more than truth. This point is echoed in “Truth Organizes Values” by O.G. Rose, and basically means a thought is always a revelation of what “is,” even when the thought is wrong.
The main point Mr. Nelson and I focused on is how thought seems to naturally desire certainty, which is mostly impossible (as discussed in “On Certainty” by O.G. Rose), but “a sense of it” is possible — upon which gaining thought tends to lose interest in its subject. In this way, thought seems naturally orientated to “efface itself,” and problematically if epistemology and ontologically are always connected, this means we might also be ontologically orientated toward “self-effacement.” How we think is right to think implies a way that is right to be, and if thought is “toward” ceasing, we might as humans we “toward” not being human, which is to say we might be “toward” reaching a point where we can “stop” and not have to strive anymore. This is suggested by the economic system focused on retirement, but it’s also embedded in the emphasis on weekends and hard divisions between “work and play” (even though it’s possible to engage in a life of work/play, which might be best).
If however we saw thinking as more in the business of what Hegel calls “speculative reason,” an endless process of creative possibility and realization, then this would imply an ontology where “creativity” was primarily and “being human” a matter of creating and creating again. There is no end point to “speculative reason,” for “creativity” is its own end, its own “true infinity.” This might sound hopeless and exhausting, but it is the exact opposite: there is hope where there is possibility, and it can be more exhausting to have nothing to do (many people come out of retirement because they are bored, after all).
However, when people focus on a task and think until it is finished, they can prove effective and efficient, and this experience can seem to provide evidence that this is how thinking “ought” to be, and indeed we don’t want to entirely forgo this kind of thinking which is able to effectively complete tasks. However, it is a mistake to conclude what epistemology is best (especially to a point where the epistemology should be exclusively used) based on its effectiveness, because effectiveness can be relative to “the special case” in which that thinking is employed and exercised. For example, science studies and works through “reductionism,” which is precisely why it works so well: a single phenomenon is focused on and placed in an environment where that phenomenon can be tested repeatedly to see if the same results arise, and from this setting “confidence” can be built regarding our conclusion. “Reductionism” and “falsification” from Popper are strongly connected, and without them it’s hard to imagine the modern world coming into existence. But precisely because of this amazing effectiveness, it is tempting to conclude that thus “reductionism is the right epistemology” and to use it in all circumstances. This can contribute to “The Meaning Crisis,” nihilism, and ultimately the human is framed to “be” simply its smallest parts. There is no room for emergence, and we end up “reduced away.”
“Monotheorism,” as I have called it, is problematic, and that logic applies just as well to epistemology. If we have “a single method” for epistemology (“monomethod,” per se), we will end up with a problematic ontology and likely not even realize our ontology is problematic, because we will have also given up an epistemology by which we could recognize our problem caused by epistemological exclusivity. There is much talk today on the need for many “mental models,” and I applaud this effort — my point is that an expansion of “mental models” will also be an expansion of “ontological considerations.” And I would wager that basically most people know this when asked directly, but the problem is that we all tend to be trained into “subconscious habits” where we search for certainty or engage in reductionism without even realizing we are doing it. To really avoid “monotheorism” in all its forms, we will need to generate new habits, and that will require of us new practices and daily activities. This suggests the wisdom of Mr. Nelson in engaging in daily practices of writing, something from which I believe most could benefit.
If we are subconsciously trained to believe we cannot “act as if” something is true until we have certainty or until we’ve reduced it down to its smallest parts, then since certainty is mostly impossible and things aren’t reducible without changing what they are, we have basically arranged ourselves to be unable to begin thinking or to begin living. We must be stuck always looking for “a firm starting place” in a world where such an “Archimedean spot” doesn’t exist. Perhaps all of us could move the world if given a place to stand, but unfortunately there are no such places. We are in something more like water. We have a surfboard, but not dirt, and even if we did mud sinks.
This is here is where “the phenomenology of the artist” could prove useful, for the writer of a novel or composer of a song often occupies a strange “middle space” between knowing what they are doing and not knowing what they are doing. They have “a sense of the whole” but not a rigid and finished model, and yet if they wait until they have “the whole idea in mind” because they start, they likely never will. Even if they did and brought the project to competition, it could easily feel “forced” and “not alive” — Faulkner for example noted how his characters felt like they had a life of their own and needed to feel like they had a life of their own. Without that “lack of control,” his novels would have failed, and I think the same applies to life in general. Unfortunately, in us (subconsciously) privileging scientific epistemology over aesthetic phenomenology, we have searched for “models of experience” that are entail more reductionism and focus. “The Phenomenology of the Artist” has not been a model we’ve considered, much to our great detriment.
To review, negation/sublating certainty into confidence has a double function of giving us a way to start and a way to keep going, for we can never be certain that our work is done. Again, this might sound discouraging, but it actually means we have a way to always escape boredom and always have meaning. “Intrinsic motivation” is possible thanks precisely to the inability of motivation to ever complete itself: what seems like a curse is a gift. The goal of thinking is not certainty and effacement, which would suggest the goal of being human is effacement, but instead perpetual creation. We are to be Children who make Nietzsche proud. And in creating, we generate gifts to give the world, and as Mr. Nelson and I discussed “the act of gifting” changes the subject in profound ways. In a world that seems bound to and organized around “economic exchanges,” to be “a gift giver” is to be someone who transcends and rises above the zeitgeist. Giving/creation helps us avoid Deleuzian “capture,” but giving/creation requires sacrifice and work. Mr. Nelson and I discussed how money profoundly “attunes us” to life and the world, and if we are able to think of money as something which should serve creation, not merely serve our appetites, then we will be a point at which a new kind of world is possible. Furthermore, it will suggest the world is not known and lived through a single way.
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