I’m pretty sure I’m ontologically clueless in the way you describe. There are some very fundamental things in my worldview that I suspect are misapprehensions but that I don’t know how to confidently replace with anything better. The yet-unimagined right answer to any of them could potentially knock out the pillars holding up much of what I think I know. It’s unsettling when I pause to think about it, but I muddle through.
Might be worth mentioning Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts” as examples of branches of knowledge jumping from one local maximum to another one, and having to resort their conceptual categories thereafter.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s histories of ethical philosophy also highlight how sometimes when a field jumps from one local maximum to another, it brings along old conceptual categories that no longer can find a place but they continue to haunt as weird, ghostly apparitions.
Yep, I think Kuhn is related but maybe doesn’t quite go far enough, since the new paradigms are still sort of “within the fundamental ontology humanity uses”? I didn’t know about MacIntyre’s history, that sounds interesting. Sort of related to ontological crises and how they’re sometimes in practice “not finished”.
One distinction I notice I didn’t make is that humanity can be ontologically clueless, and individual people can be ontologically clueless. Really any entity can be. It feels unsettling to think that humanity is on the ball with reality and I’m clueless over here, seems related to concept-shaped holes.
I’m pretty sure I’m ontologically clueless in the way you describe. There are some very fundamental things in my worldview that I suspect are misapprehensions but that I don’t know how to confidently replace with anything better. The yet-unimagined right answer to any of them could potentially knock out the pillars holding up much of what I think I know. It’s unsettling when I pause to think about it, but I muddle through.
Might be worth mentioning Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts” as examples of branches of knowledge jumping from one local maximum to another one, and having to resort their conceptual categories thereafter.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s histories of ethical philosophy also highlight how sometimes when a field jumps from one local maximum to another, it brings along old conceptual categories that no longer can find a place but they continue to haunt as weird, ghostly apparitions.
Yep, I think Kuhn is related but maybe doesn’t quite go far enough, since the new paradigms are still sort of “within the fundamental ontology humanity uses”? I didn’t know about MacIntyre’s history, that sounds interesting. Sort of related to ontological crises and how they’re sometimes in practice “not finished”.
One distinction I notice I didn’t make is that humanity can be ontologically clueless, and individual people can be ontologically clueless. Really any entity can be. It feels unsettling to think that humanity is on the ball with reality and I’m clueless over here, seems related to concept-shaped holes.