(WIP) I'm Starting to Think (Ontic) Strucutral Realism is Just Kind of True

My recent foray into some ontology.

One of the first questions to answer in philosophy is inevietably, “what is anything?” Probably the second is “how do we know anything?” These two monsterous questions bring forth the field of ontology and epistemology, the study of being and knowing, respectively. I intend to focus mostly on ontology here; in doing so, I’m going to make a debatable but probably necassary assumption: we have enough epistemic ability to come to conclusions about reality itself, and even if it’s always possible reality turns out to be an illusion, simulation, etc I’m going to assume that there are meaningfully different postions on ontology with real consequences and predictions. That is to say, I don’t want to just say “but everything as we know it could be wrong!” I’m assuming things we think to know are largely true.

I should note I’m by no means an experienced philosopher, nor really training to be (rigorous as math can be). Consider this some loose takes on things I’ve been musing over. Most of this will not involve extensive citations, discussion of contemporary literature, or even historical influences.

I see largely two broad ontologic categories out there:

• Idealism: Mind over matter; some form of consciousness or identity is fundamental. This category includes pantheistic or pantheistic visions where reality is identified as some component of God. Physical “stuff” is actually mental experience or mental states (perhaps thoughts of God?) somehow coming together in ways that appear stable to us.
• Materialism: There is some fundmanetal “stuff” or “energy” out there that does things, and we’re a result of that.