Where I introduce the ontological framework to be used in my work. Written 12-12-23.
“Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics; we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.” -Willard Van Orman Quine, “On What There Is”, “Quintessence: Basic Readings From The Philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine” (2004)
We have walked a long and winding road together, dear reader, through logic and epistemology, as we addressed the question “How shall we think?” and we have come out the other side of the abyss between thought and being, the ideal and the actual, to ask a new question: “What shall we think about?” This is the second stage of the alien’s quest to figure out what the hell is going on here and what to do about it.
Ontology is the philosophical study of being itself. It asks questions like “what exists?”, “of the things that exist, what are they like?”, and “what exactly does it mean to exist?” As such, it is the first step in the next stage of our project.
It is not our goal, however, to talk about what exists piecemeal. We don’t want a list of all the things which exist one by one (x amount of rocks, y amount of humans, z amount of whales, etc). Even if it were possible, such an accounting of reality would become tedious and unwieldy, and it wouldn’t get at the notions of being that we really wish to examine. Because of this, we will use the highest degree of abstraction possible that still gives us a usable taxonomy of what, in fact, exists. This level of abstraction gives us three primary entities: objects, properties, and relations, defined below.
Object – An object is a potential bearer of properties and potential member of relations. In linguistic terms, an object is what is picked out by nouns, i.e. “a person, place, or thing”. This definition includes concrete objects (what we usually mean when we say “physical objects”) and abstract objects (the objects of thought, such as numbers, abstractions, concepts, etc). Common objects include “a human”, “the number 9”, and “the musical note G”.
Property – A property is a feature of an object or relation, either concrete or abstract. Notably we cannot know about any objects which do not have properties (because “knowable” is a property) and properties are always associated with objects or relations (because what would the property be a property of, if not an object or a relation?). Linguistically, a property is what is picked out by adjectives. Common properties include “the color red”, “evenness” (in terms of numbers), and “loud”.
Relation – A relation is a way in which objects or properties interact. Notice also that we cannot know about any objects or properties that do not lay in any relations, because “is knowable by” is a relation. Unlike properties, relations are always “many placed”, meaning a relation is always between two or more objects or properties (even if both of those objects or properties are the same e.g when an object relates to itself). Common relations include “next to”, “greater than”, and “loves”.
These are our basic ontological notions, and for the purpose of this work they will be considered a set of “primitive” notions, by which I mean that they are basic and cannot be reduced to more basic concepts.
Now things get a bit more complicated.
Relational properties: Earlier I pointed out that we cannot know about any objects that have no properties because “knowable” is a property. But what sort of property is “knowable”? It is the property of possibly laying in the relation “is known by”. This is an example of a relational property, the property that a given object or property has of laying in a particular relation. For example, if A lays in the relation of being “next to” B, then A has the relational property of “being next to B”. “Next to” is the relation and “being next to” is the relational property.
Relations between properties: Sometimes we see two or more properties that lay in relation to each other. Common examples include “the loudness of the music is greater than the loudness of the dialogue”, “the redness of the ball is darker than the redness of the feather”, and “the fullness of the sack is greater than the fullness of the box”.
Degrees of Relations: The “degree” of a relation (also called its “adicity”) is the number of members of the relation. For example, the relation of “parent of” is dyadic…while one can have more than one parent and a parent can have more than one child, the relation from parent to child always has two members: the parent and the child. A relation that an object or property has to itself, such as “loving oneself” is monadic; it has one member. And so on.
Grades of Relations: We say that a relation is “unigrade” if that relation only has a single set degree. To use the example again: the relation “parent of” is unigrade…this relation is always dyadic. However, the relation “cause of” is what we call “multigrade”…a single effect may have multiple causes, a single cause may have multiple effects, and so on, in any number of combinations, meaning that the degree of a particular “cause of” relation can be of any degree.
Symmetric, Asymmetric, and Non-Symmetric Relations: In some relations, such as “sibling of”, if A is in that relation to B then B is also necessarily in that relation to A. We call this sort of relation “symmetric”. Other sorts of relations, like “is looking at”, may or may not be symmetrical, and if they are not, we call this type “non-symmetric” (if they are symmetrical we still call them “symmetric”). But a third sort of relation, such as “to the left of”, are necessarily not symmetric, and we call this sort “asymmetric”. However, note that when relations are of a degree greater than dyadic we will have to qualify the notion of relational symmetry, because there are relations like “between” where a triadic relation between A, B, and C is symmetric in the sense that if B is between A and C, it is also between C and A, but it is asymmetric in the sense that if B is between A and C then it is not the case that A is between B and C. So we will always have to specify the symmetry relations of degrees greater than two to take this into account.
Having introduced these three primitive elements of our ontology, let me first say that there are controversies throughout the history of philosophy about every element of what I have said in this section and, indeed, throughout this entire work. A lot of philosophers out there would object to many of the moves I have made and to many of my positions. This is the nature of philosophy, and I neither begrudge them their disagreement nor intend to change my positions because of it. But I think that at this time it would pay to enunciate some of these positions and why I hold them.
I am a realist about properties, not a nominalist…I believe that objects and properties are both real and separate things because I observe the same object (let’s say one of those super-bouncy balls I used to get when I was a kid) have one set of properties at time t (let’s say the ball had the properties of “red”, “elastic”, and “spherical” when I bought it) and another different set of properties at time t+c (let’s say that, alas, a year later it had lost its former properties and gained the properties “pink”, “rigid”, and “cracked”). It seems to me clear that the ball is the same ball I bought from the little toy dispenser, not some different ball that has replaced the old one, and that its properties have changed. Both its history and its changes were continuous, I had it in my possession at all times, and everything I know about the laws of physics and chemistry lead me to expect that my poor bouncy ball would age in this fashion. Therefore I believe that I am justified in saying that I know that it was the same ball. In order for a change to occur in an object but for the identity of the object to remain the same, the change in the object must be explained by a change in properties, which presumes the existence of properties, and the ball itself must remain the same ball in which these different properties have manifested, which presumes the existence of objects. A nominalist with a scientific bent might object that what I observed as properties changing was actually innumerable tiny changes occurring in the molecular structure of the ball as it reacted to chemicals in the air and the substances within it went through various predictable chemical changes over time. I agree with this completely. But I will also point out that the reason the properties of the ball have changed are due to the interactions of the properties of the various subatomic objects that make up the ball and the air around it. In short, I believe in both objects and properties because as far down or up in reality we go, all the way down to individual quanta of energy, we keep finding objects that have properties.
I’m a realist about relations, in that I believe that relations are real things, distinct from objects and properties, not just potential features of objects or special kinds of properties that we just perceive as being related. The reason I believe this is that we see objects such as vortices, singularities, and even commonplace philosophical objects such as cats on mats and snow that is white, that all only exist as particular sets of relations between particular objects with particular properties. A vortex is a very particular set of relations of forces (more on forces in the section of this work on metaphysics) and matter…if the matter and forces fall out of that particular set of relations, the vortex ceases to be. The same is true about singularities, cats on mats, and snow that is white. All of the phenomena change as the relations that make them up change, and if the relations break down completely, the phenomena cease to exist. And this is generalizable throughout physical existence. All matter that we know of consists of subatomic objects arranged in very particular relations and if they lay in significantly different relations the matter changes in corresponding ways. In a similar way, abstract objects like functions, algorithms, and programs are made up of elementary abstract objects like numbers and logical operators in specific relations, and if those relations are significantly changed, those abstract objects change correspondingly. To me, this implies that relations bear metaphysical freight…they do part of the work of making reality what it is.
There are other controversies in ontology about all three of my primary elements. But as in the other parts of this work, this is not the place to go into these academic controversies, as staking a claim in academia is not the goal of this work. Instead, the goal of the present work is to create a foundation, a starting place for a later attempt at a systematic philosophy of magick that will build on the elements presented in this work. “Towards a Philosophy of Magick” is just the forerunner, just the voice in the wilderness, for this later work, and my audience is the mages and mystics who will hopefully benefit from this work the most.
Now that we have established what exists (ontology), next we will talk about how what exists works together to do what it does (metaphysics).