Video Transcript: Introduction to Ontology

Henry Reyenga - Henry Reyenga here again with Dr. Roy Clouser. This week,  this topic is ontology. So how would you define ontology?  

Dr. Clouser - It literally means a theory of reality.  

Henry Reyenga - Okay, reality the whole.  

Dr. Clouser - That's right. But what somebody is after is not the reality of this  object or that object or the other, okay? It's the nature of reality, and what's the  ultimate nature of the things that exist? And sometimes I explained to my  students by saying that if the, the area of mathematics, and physics and biology  and psychology, logic, linguistic, sociology and so on all these, if they are all  beads on the necklace, then ontology wants to know, what's the string? Okay.  We're back to the string idea. That's what ontology is. And to do that, what is the characterization of the nature of which all these are aspects, they're all different  sides of what okay. And generally, what has happened is in philosophy because  it was begun by pagan thinkers and so on, not by Christians. They took some  more of these fields of study and made that kind of a thing. The most basic thing there is and it generates all the rest. A materialist says, there's the purely  physical things, and they generate everything, whatever. Other physical things  that come into being and pass away, these don't, these are these self existent  realities that create everything else. And if there's anything that's non physical,  they generate that, too. right. But someone else is saying, well it makes no  sense to say that physical generates a logical thought. So they would make  logical thought, also, self existent, logical laws, and say that matter is the reality  we experiences is a matter of the logical laws being imposing order on the  matter, right, some people have held. You ready for this? Yeah. Some people  have even said no, all of reality is really nothing but our sensations, sights,  tastes, touches, smells and sounds that register in our minds, right? This is  pretty weird. One thinker who held that view in the 20th century said, I read  about the galaxies, how vast they are, and how far away and so on, but I don't  believe it. They are dots of light in my visual field. And that goes back to George. That's really George Berkeley, George Barkley, Barkley. It's spelled the same as  Berkeley. But the Irish pronunciation would be Barkley identified with he was a  bishop of the Church of England, in Ireland, if you can imagine a precarious  such a precarious position. Anybody sympathize with the Irish people. So he  wanted his name pronounced Barkley.  

Henry Reyenga - Do in the study of ontology? Does it really talk much about the  mind or thinking? 

Dr. Clouser - okay, sure, you can't get into a theory of reality without also  invoking, or at least making assumptions about theory of knowledge. And vice  versa. Okay, in the theory of knowledge, without assuming that some certain  things are real, or some are more real than others. And so that kind of thing is  intrinsic to both of them. You get foot in one, you'll get a foot in the other. 

Henry Reyenga - Give us real quickly. Christian philosophies, ontology,  according to Herman Dooyeweerd, just a little teaser, just to get us thinking  about that right now. How would you describe the Christian philosophy  ontology?  

Dr. Clouser - Sure. Whereas people who are who don't know God are prone to  take some one of the beads of the string one or two and say, this is really the  string. It explains all the rest of this is what generates, the Christian should begin Dooyeweerd says by saying that we know God, we already know God, by our  experience of God, and God has revealed himself. And so we know what it is  that has created everything. And that's God. So the start is start God created all  existence, yes. And instead of picking some aspect of the things, to be what  hangs them all together, it's God's power that hangs them all together and while  going quoted Colossians 1, it's Christ, in Christ, all things hang together. And  that means there is for Dooyeweerd is nothing called the substance of the thing,  the core of it, which generates all the rest of its properties and hangs them all  together. No, that's the power of God holding every individual thing in existence.  So there is at the center of every created entity a mystery that we can't  penetrate. And whenever we take any aspect of our experience and make that  the substance of all things, then we've replaced God with that.  

Henry Reyenga - Now, many people just say, is God some impersonal  presence? some impersonal power, is God and somebody may look at that and  say, It's all God. 

Dr. Clouser – No it isn't all God. There are creatures there, they're really  creaturely things. They're real they've been called into existence out of nothing,  but they're genuine. What's an example of that from philosophical, the best  example would be human beings, human beings are real. They have a center to  their existence, the Bible calls their heart. That's a metaphor for the central self  of a human being. And Bible says from the heart come all the issues of life. So  that's where it seated all of our capacities, abilities, dispositions, talents,  inclinations, and so on.  

Henry Reyenga - But the materialist would say what about us humans then?

Dr. Clouser - would say that that's, that's all to be attributed to the brain, to  physical brain processes. Okay, there are physical neuron firings in the brain.  And they are what we experience as concepts, percepts, feelings, beliefs, and  so on. 

Henry Reyenga – And Dr. Dooyeweerd with the Christian philosophy said no,  they come in entirety as a creation of God.  

Dr. Clouser - Yes, all of this is rooted in the heart of a human being, which is a  heart, but not the organ (unintelligible). Right. And that self has genuine freedom which is why it's responsible for choices and actions. So the materialist tends to  see it all as brain processes. And since we can't control our brain processes,  they think we're, the brain processes control us. And the interesting thing is that  they get themselves in an impossible dilemma. They argue they come to the  conclusion that we have no real freedom. But if we don't, they didn't come to  that freely, right. They were compelled to it. And it's not known to do this,  

Henry Reyenga - again, it forces our mind to think. But you but is the deeper you think about that powerful evaluation.  

Dr. Clouser - This is why denials of freewill are self defeating. If they're correct,  then the denial itself wasn't reached freely, and it's not a rational judgment. And  it's only what they were compelled to think. Right?  

Henry Reyenga - Well, so as you say, into ontology, You'll get exposed to a  theory of reality. And so what's your theory of reality as you start thinking about  philosophy, and then think about the word of God that illuminates our hearts and minds as making theories which talked about you get, that's what happened to  me when I was a philosophy major, I started making theories about my walk  theories about the world but still guided that God holds it all together. And that's  the essence of philosophy.  

Dr. Clouser - I give extra credit to people try original work.  

Henry Reyenga - There you go. Extra credit for all of you. Good job.