Do any of you know anything about Ontology?

The Study and Science of the existence of God through thoughts and feelings and anything outside your own existence.

Diane suggested that I read some of the other questions that are already posted.

I am a little apprehensive about asking this question. I feel like landing in a parachute in the midst of a crowd of questions and answers.

Diane just told me to tell you all, that English is my third language, I was born and raised in Belgium and spoke Flemish and French first, then English, then German and then Spanish. So please excuse my spelling and syntax.

Jeannine.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2000

Answers

Welcome Jeannine. There is much talk and also much friendliness in this crowd of questions and answers.

I must say "Hurray - a multilinguist!" Spelling and syntax is so much less important than having a different point of view, and having several languages will be a big asset as some things are easier to say in languages other than English (although you will have to translate for us English only types).

I'm sort of wondering if perhaps you meant "theology" when you used the phrase "The Study and Science of the existence of God through thoughts and feelings and anything outside your own existence."

To my limited understanding "ontology" has more to do with what exists and what can said to exist, and how robust those sayings might be. One dictionary defined it as:

Branch of metaphysics concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things that actually exist. Thus, the "ontological commitments" of a philosophical position include both its explicit assertions and its implicit presuppositions about the existence of entities, substances, or beings of particular kinds.

But - beyond definitions and more into the substance of your question. I believe that a person's conscious sense of their self is but a small part of what is going on inside them, and that important experiences that come from inside (from the "unconscious") are seen as coming from not-self and therefore coming from other. And that coming from "other" is often confused with coming from "outside". The common aspects of our insides will lead us to have similar experiences of "otherness". When we compare experiences this sense of "otherness" can then lead us to posit a separate existence for the source of the "otherness".

As an example - most people have had the experience of falling in love. It is something that takes us over, reshapes our world in terms of orienting our world towards the loved one. And we can compare notes and find that my experiences in love and your experiences in love have many similarities.

Yet in our culture we don't then attribute love to something outside of us - we explain it as something that is happening within us, something that we ourselves magically make. I say magically because it is outside the control of self - we say we "fall" into love. There was an old folk tradition (from ancient Greece?) that characterised falling in love as being a result of being pierced by an arrow from one of the gods named Cupid.

My sense of the world is that the same things apply to spiritual experiences. They are our experiences because they happen to us, there are simularities when we compare notes to others because human beings have vast simularities in their bodies, and that it would be a confusion to externalize the source of existence of the experience.

And the experience of God is one such spiritual experience.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2000

Good morning all (yawwwnnn),

Jeannine, welcome aboard, glad to have you.

....suddenly, I feel a million-word manifesto coming on! But first, ma'am, please define your terms, so we are talking about the same thing.

God - what's that? Definition, please.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2000

Hi Jeannine,

Thought it recapitulated phylogeny.

I can't spell at all as you've seen and am mono-lingual, if that so at your worst you'll still put me to shame.

welcome.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2000

Just saying hello Jeannine.

As you know, I'm getting ready for relatives visiting, so need to focus on that for the next few days.

Deep thinking goes on hold when cleaning house beckons.

;-D

Diane

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2000

Dave you nit!

That's ontogeny recapitulates philogeny, not ontology recapitulates philogeny...

Unless you were making a small joke...

The phrase "ontogeny recapitulates philogeny" was as statement that captures the notion that the developmental sequence of say the fetus in the womb, traces the development of the evolving branch of life that the fetus's species is a member of. So the early fetus has a tail and gills, and loses them further on... Dave can comment on what present day biologists make of this generalization/observation.

Now if we were to ask if "ontology recapitulates philology"? it would remind me of the question: "Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults in adultery...?"

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2000

Now Tom, as a Catholic Christian you know that's not true - Thomas Aquinas plainly stated the fetus starts as mineral, then progresses through all the vegatable stages, then aquires mammalalian characteristics..... And the church has said, anyone who disagrees with Aquinas is anathema...... you old excommunicated heathen you...

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Reminds me of an old cartoon.

A missionary is reading from a bible to a bunch of savages. Upon completion of his reading, he then says: "You have now heard the word of God. You are no longer pagans, you are now heathens."

Religious proselytizers definitely bring out the curmudgeony in me.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000