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Inflated Ontology


This illustration is making its way around the more philosophical corners of the interwebs.

In case I've given you an illegible variant of it, here are the captions, in sequence:

1. Shop for a new tie
2. Make macaroni
3. Do cardio
4. Don't inflate your ontology
5. Don't do it.
6. Vacuum the rug.

The fifth cell includes an illustration of a unicorn and the square root of -1 as thoughts in the mind of the character doing various quotidian things.

The warning, then, is not to attribute reality either to imaginary beings or to imaginary numbers.

Leaving unicorns aside, I think there is something odd about the warning as it applies to numbers. The value of any number system, including the numbers we call real and those we call imaginary, consists entirely of its utility. So, for a pragmatist as to math, the square root of -1 stands on the same "ontological" footing as does -1, or as does 1.

But I do like the cute minimalism of the illustrations here. Take the philosophy as you find it.


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  1. Francisco MaiaSeptember 17, 2020 at 8:34 PM

    Interesting that I found this post as I searched for an explanation for that picture. What exactly does inflated ontology mean, mathematical pragmatism notwithstanding?

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    1. ChristopherSeptember 18, 2020 at 9:39 AM

      As you probably know, because you can google it: ontology is the branch of philosophy that analyzes concepts directly related to being.

      When people talk about "inflated" ontology, they mean that Being is a sort of currency, and their shouldn't be too much of it, that would cheapen it.

      So for example, a nominalist thinks that Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin are real, but "Doghood" is not real, or not so much anyway. In a sense this is because the nominalist fears the consequences of inflating being by granting it to such abstractions.

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  2. ORHAN SEVDAJune 28, 2021 at 12:41 PM

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  3. ALİ AZİZJuly 13, 2021 at 8:07 AM

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  4. AnonymousApril 28, 2022 at 5:42 PM

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