Ontological Matrices

by Lincoln Cannon on 30 October 2010 (updated 19 October 2016)

These matrices help me visualize categories, or relations between key concepts, as I understand and use them in my writing. Relations are both within and between matrices. For example, here’s a relation within a matrix: individuals are to communities as anatomies are to environments. And here’s an example of a relation between matrices: truth is to communities as knowledge is to individuals.

Epistemics

This matrix is about epistemics and related concepts. The relations between concepts in a matrix also hold for their negations. I haven’t made that explicit in the epistemics matrix. But I make that explicit in the ethics matrices below.

Ethics

The next three matrices are about ethics and related concepts. A combination of concepts in a single matrix does not mean that one is always the other. For example, pain is not always evil, but pain always relates to evil as pleasure relates to good. As there are exceptions to evil pain, there are also exceptions to good pleasure.

If you like these thoughts, you might also like “Dynamic Faith in Pancritical Rationalism,” “Desire Entices Us to Embrace Ethics,” and “A Mormon Ontology of God and Its Synthesis in Superintelligent Posthumanity.”