What does it mean to know something? (And why it dissolves the gap between you and the world)
What if knowing is not a subject grasping an object, but the process within which both knower and known arise together?
Knowing
A collection of resources on the topic of knowing
Definition
Learn the definition of knowing, its etymology, common and essential meanings, along with its philosophical implications.
Core tenets
- Koan 50.1: Imperfect knowing
- Koan 50.2: The gospel is complete
- Koan 50.3: Invitation to realize
- Koan 50.4: Objective vs subjective
- Koan 50.5: Towards consciousness
- Koan 50.6: The want of intelligence
- Koan 50.7: The dance of uncertainty
Articles
On knowing: dissolving epistemology's oldest ghosts.
This article surveys epistemology's classic problems—the trilemma, induction, perception, and Gettier—and dissolves them by reframing knowing as a verb, not a noun. A student-friendly guide to understanding knowing as a process.
On belief
What is belief? This article traces how philosophers from the ancient Greeks to today have understood belief—and why they got it wrong. You'll learn the history of belief from Plato to postmodernism, then discover a new definition.
Language as reference: names are handles, not the things they handle. The category error is mistaking the handle for the thing. This subsection examines why substance ontology makes that mistake the default, and why the CoD supplies the qualification as part of the naming.
Thomas Bittner & Barry Smith: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Is Bittner & Smith's formal ontology an account of being—or a method of accounting that presupposes substance as reality? At what point does our methodology presuppose the answers we can derive?
Graham Harman: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Graham Harman's Object Oriented Ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Nicola Guarino: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Nicola Guarino's formal methodology isn't a rival ontology, yet it carries an implicit substance-commitment. This analysis shows how this methodology assumes relations as secondary to stable entities.
John Searle: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Does John Searle actually have an ontology? He tells us brains exist, minds exist, social facts exist. But he never asks: 'what is existence itself?'
John Searle: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of John Searle's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Alain Badiou: a comparative analysis with the CoD
For Badiou, being is non-relational multiplicity. Unity is imposed. Novelty requires a rare, traumatic Event to force a new truth. For the CoD, being IS relational process. One says relation is an effect. The other says relation IS existence.
Henri Bergson: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Henri Bergson's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Martin Heidegger: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Does Being require Dasein? My new analysis argues Heidegger's anthropocentrism limits his dynamic ontology.
Edmund Husserl: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Husserl grounded all meaning in consciousness. But what if consciousness itself is grounded in something far more fundamental?
Edmund Husserl: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Edmund Husserl's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
The privatization of consciousness: Descartes, Locke, Smith, Kant, and the rise of individualism.
More than twenty-nine theories of consciousness plague modern science. This paper traces the privatization of consciousness from Descartes to Kant and argues for a return to its original meaning.
Friedrich Nietzsche: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Nietzsche reduces all relationality to an expression of a single, monolithic competitive drive. But what if he only had it half right?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Hegel's substance-process teleology transforms the Many into the One, while the CoD's a-teleology 'bears together' that which 'bears apart'.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
René Descartes: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Descartes splits reality into two substances: res cogitans and res extensa—then needs God to glue them back together. For the CoD model, mind and body were never separate.
Theistic Vedanta: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Theistic Vedanta says: the many are real, but only in the One. The CoD says: the One is the conference of the many. One grounds unity as a prior substance. The other grounds unity as an ongoing process. Which ontology lets you watch unity happen in real time?
Advaita Vedanta: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Advaita Vedanta says the world is illusion. The CoD says the world is a 'conference of difference'. One negates the many. The other grounds unity 'in' the relationship of the many. Which ontology cancels less of your lived experience?
Samkhya: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Samkhya splits reality in two: consciousness over here, matter over there. Forever separate. Never touching. Clean. Elegant. But unable to explain how they interact. Samkhya's metaphor tells us that the blind carrier and lame guide only work together. But what if this dependency was one process mistaken as two?
Advaita Vedanta: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Advaita Vedanta's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Plato: a comparative analysis with the CoD
What can a modern process ontology tell us that Plato's perfect Forms cannot? Is the world of change just a shadow of a higher reality, or is it the primary expression of existence itself? My latest article explores this through the lens of the Conference of Difference (CoD) model.
Jainism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Jainism vs. Modern Process Ontology: When do metaphysical assumptions become a liability?
Gospel Koan 50.1
Imperfect knowing
Gospel Koan 50.2
The gospel is complete
Ideology
When the map obscures the territory.
Who am I?
The self as a conference of difference perceived as now.
The parable of the fish
An ever-expanding network of empowerment.
Mind and consciousness
Does consciousness exist within us or between us?
Descartes - on God's existence
Was Descartes confirming or challenging God's existence.