Ontologically confused materialist

wavefreak
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Ontologically confused materialist

I have some more questions about ontologies and stuff. Hopefully you can straighten me out.

 

Basically it seems to me that if strict materialism is correct and all that we can know is limited by the capacity of our brain to encode knowledge, then to say something that has no positive ontology does not exist is incorrect. We can only say that lack of ontologocal status means that our brains cannot encode such things, but not that such things cannot exist.

Essentially, what we know is limited by our brains structures. But to say all that can be known can be encoded into our brains seems absurd. All that humans can know is not necessarily all that can be known. Now things like logic, rationalism and ontologies are all part of the knowledge domain supported by our brain and as such even these are subject to our limitations of encodability. So while it is correct to say that something without a positive ontology has no coherent domain of discourse, we cannot make the claim that it does not exist, only that we have no coherent framework in which to discuss it.


wavefreak
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Since I'm stuck a little,

Since I'm stuck a little, I'll define what I mean by encode. Based on the idea that everything is material, including thoughts, then for us to think about something, there must be specific physical states involved for each thought. For a thought to refer to something real, that real object must be processed through our senses and current "library" of knowledge and a pattern of neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters must be constructed. It is this construct that I consider the encoding.


Strafio
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That's what I thought you

That's what I thought you meant.