Ontology is stupid

I am having a bad day.

That means you will get a short and uninteresting post today.

So I am taking this philosophy course at the university about ontology. Because you very likely do not know, what ontology is, let me explain.

Ontology is about existing. It doesn't take the religious kind of "Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?" -perspective to it, but rather the "What do I mean by who am I?" -perspective. It views existing from the angle of how do things exist and what existing actually means and what all things could hypothetically exist in any imaginable universe (I think the answer is any, I mean, I can imagine a world with anything in it, but I'm pretty sure I haven't quite grasped the meaning of alternate worlds when dealing with ontology).

Now, don't be fooled by the fact that this sounds interesting.

What we exactly hear of on the lectures is things like the problem of the universals (I am sorry if I do not know the correct terms for all there in English). The problem of universals basically asks the question, that if we live in a world of particulars, meaning everything is a different thing than every other thing, like a glass is another glass than the one next to it on the table, then how can they share a quality, such as transparency.

I have to admit I have not yet quite learned to see the problem with this, not even on any absurd level of the mind.

The point with it is, if all things are different that every other thing, then how can the same transparency be in both of the glasses. Because if we live in a world of particulates, then how can the same transparency be in both.

At this point I have to point out, that apparently in philosophy all things are seen as objects. Glass in an object. Transparency is an object. Red is an object. Water is an object. You are an object.

So, the question is, if everything is particular, then how can the same object that is transparency be in all the objects that are glasses, if they're not the same glass. It shouldn't be able to do that if it was a particular object. Or how can the same wood color be in all the tables in the lecture room, if the tables are different tables. Or how can we say that an electron is a different electron than some other electron if it's exactly the same.
Personally, I disagree with treating object that are things the same way as objects that are qualities. I mean, why would anyone even have had the thought in the first place, that transparency and a glass are fundamentally as things similar enough things to be treated in the same way in philosophical arguments.

We also discuss about whether it would be metaphysically possible that there is an alternate world in which Paavo Lipponen is the king of Finland, or our professor is Pekka Himanen (I still haven't figured out who that is. I just know it's someone everyone knows, and I feel really stupid not knowing.)

Basically what I do on those lectures is sit there and think "Why, whyy are we thinking about this? What possible use could any of this ever have in anything other than further ontology? Also, what are all these problems our professor keeps presenting us? I do not see any kind of practical or mental possible problem in any of them."
I did finally get a grasp on why there would possibly be a problem in all glasses being transparent, if this is a world of particulars, but I still do not see the point of thinking about it, because the way I see it is that all that it does is make everything so much more difficult than it actually is in reality.
So if there's someone out there who somehow stumbles upon our blog and had an answer to this, please let me know.

Hmm... This didn't turn out to be as short as I thought it would be.
Oh, well...

~matu

PS. As it turns out,  I will not be writing anything during November. I have one 5-page speech studies analysis, one 7-page lecture journal, three exams about lectures and another three exams with the material as only books to do in the next three-four weeks. And that's just school.
I'll probably have more time in December, once I get all this other stuff out of the way. Or then not. We'll see.