Ontology 101: So What and Who Cares?

by Biblioklept

Hopefully you’ve had time to sift through and absorb some of the primer. So and well so now you’re probably saying to yourself: “Okay sure, Aristotle, fabulous, Occam’s razor, I’m down, cogito ergo sum, fine, I get it, but so what?”

“So what?” and “Who cares?” are the most fundamental questions in any intellectual pursuit. Asking difficult questions doesn’t necessarily put food on the table or make us more attractive to the opposite sex or give us ten extra years of life.

So what do we gain when we ask: “What is?” and “What is it to exist?” and “What is real?”

Watch the following clip of Deepak Chopra on The Colbert Report. What is Chopra’s ontological position? What applications (political, social, cultural, etc) might his position entail?

Posted on January 4, 2007 at 9:54 am in Books | RSS feed | Respond | Trackback URL

Tags: Deepak Chopra, Ontological quandaries, Ontology 101, Stephen Colbert

2 Comments to “Ontology 101: So What and Who Cares?”

bob tomorrowland
January 7, 2007 at 10:02 pm

Uh, wow. “It’s a must-read for anyone who is going to die.” Chopra really knows how to sell it. One of the better/wackier Colbert interviews I’ve seen. Culture clash!

Ontologically speaking, maybe we could say that Chopra’s position is relativistic, bordering on postmodern? He seems to privilege the observations of the individual. And he attributes a creative power to these observations, too, which seems sort of solipsistic.

Am I on track here, teach?

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ed biblioklept
January 8, 2007 at 3:50 pm

Ha! “Teach”–he blushes: I should point out that the whole idea of this being an academic course is just kind of tongue-in-cheek fun, and that I don’t intend to promote myself as “the guy with the answers” (I’m the guy with the questions, hoping that all of you in Internetland can enlighten me…how selfish!)
However–I think that you’re totally on track, Bob. Chopra’s relativism is the complete opposite of Colbert’s moral absolutism, which is in turn a parody of the neo-con “culture warriors” a la Wolfowitz, etc. My favorite part is when Chopra says to Colbert: “You’re my illusion” and Colbert says “Nuh nuh nuh.”
Chopra’s position may be a form of metaphysical solipsism, but we tend to think of this as a “selfish” position–whereas I believe Chopra sees his position as a way to move beyond the illusions of self: as a way to remove oneself from the “I” position.

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biblioklept