Analytic metaphysics, as far as I can tell, mostly tacitly rejects ontological cluelessness.
To give some ~examples from the analytic tradition: As far as I understand them, Brian Cantwell Smith and Nancy Cartwright espouse(d[1]) a view somewhat adjacent to ontological cluelessness, albeit perhaps slightly stronger, in that, according to (my model of?) them, there is no final/fundamental basis of reality and it’s not infinite regress either.
Somewhat more specifically, reading BCS’s On the Origin of Objects (haven’t read Cartwright yet) gave me the picture of a gunky-unknowable reality, where for a “part” of reality to even become a type of thing that can be known, it needs to be stabilized into a knowable object or something like that, and that process of stabilization involves parts/regions of the universe acting at a distance in a way that involves a primitive form of “aboutness” (?).
(There is some superficial semi-inconsistency in this way of talking about it, in that it describes [what it takes a not-yet-a-Thing to stabilize into a (knowable) “Thing”] in terms of knowable Things, so the growing Thing should also be knowable by transitivity or something (?). But I don’t think I’m passing BCS’s ITT.)
To give some ~examples from the analytic tradition: As far as I understand them, Brian Cantwell Smith and Nancy Cartwright espouse(d[1]) a view somewhat adjacent to ontological cluelessness, albeit perhaps slightly stronger, in that, according to (my model of?) them, there is no final/fundamental basis of reality and it’s not infinite regress either.
Somewhat more specifically, reading BCS’s On the Origin of Objects (haven’t read Cartwright yet) gave me the picture of a gunky-unknowable reality, where for a “part” of reality to even become a type of thing that can be known, it needs to be stabilized into a knowable object or something like that, and that process of stabilization involves parts/regions of the universe acting at a distance in a way that involves a primitive form of “aboutness” (?).
(There is some superficial semi-inconsistency in this way of talking about it, in that it describes [what it takes a not-yet-a-Thing to stabilize into a (knowable) “Thing”] in terms of knowable Things, so the growing Thing should also be knowable by transitivity or something (?). But I don’t think I’m passing BCS’s ITT.)
For another adjacent analyticist, Eric Schwitzgebel? https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Weirdness.htm
Oh, and how could I forget The Guy Against Reality? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman
I just saw that BCS died 18 days ago :(.
Good examples, thank you! I guess my analytic metaphysics knowledge isn’t big enough. The references look great, I’ll take a look.
Another perhaps example, though not quite analytic philosophy, but rather a neo-religion: Discordianism.
Specifically, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia#Overview