Attention logicians. Facts are constructions!

jeeprs wrote:

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them

You must not believe in anything science tells us then, if you believe this. How could you? You believe we are all just in our own personal matrixes.

And many of you in this thread echo this same belief. This is downright frightening that people believe this sort of thing. I've got to calm down.

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@Zetherin,

I know you are zeth, flabbergasted is the word for it. I never said I think that things dissapear. That is a hyperbolic straw man oversimplification of the argument used. In fact I said I assume that independent things do exist. What I aked ken is how does he know, since apperantly I am required to explain why my argument is a loop but he is not for some reason only known to Ken required to explain himself.

Again as said several times already, A fact is not the independent existence of the thing, a fact is our interelation with the thing, which must happen to perceive and describe the thing. This internalization is the subjectification of objects and creation of facts, which makes them constructs of our interelation with independent objects.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote:

You really think your wife vanishes when you stop looking at her? And we have lots of evidence that supports objects existing before we did.

Just wanted to point out that even if his wife did vanish when unobserved, it still wouldn't be the case that his wife didn't exist. Hence, a vanished wife still has the property of being married.

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Our consciousness perceives reality. That sensory input - guess what it allows us sense? Things in the world! You know, things that are part of reality. Strange, huh?

My consciousness isn't as talented as yours. Fortunately, I can perceive reality even though my consciousness can't. Smile

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@Zetherin,

Quote:

You must not believe in anything science tells us then, if you believe this. How could you? You believe we are all just in our own personal matrixes.

You seem to have a pretty narrow view of "science" Zetherin !
Look up "signal detection theory". Green and Swets clearly demonstrated that central processes (motivation) clearly affect signal detection rates in noise. Or look up the cultural explanation for the Muller-Lyer illusion (different length perceptions for lines of opposite arrow heads).

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

In fact I said I assume that independent things do exist.

You assume no such thing. You know that they do. You believe they do, right? Your belief is not without justification, correct? You are not infallibly certain, but that's not a necessary condition of knowledge.

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@fast,

fast wrote:

GoshisDead wrote:
In fact I said I assume that independent things do exist.
You assume no such thing. You know that they do. You believe they do, right? Your belief is not without justification, correct? You are not infallibly certain, but that's not a necessary condition of knowledge.

1st) I must believe that I know to know, which I don't so therefore I assume.

2nd) If i did know, it still would not change the argumentation about facts being the subjectified interelation with the independent object

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Both the notions of mind-dependent and independent facts are religious in nature, but different kinds of religion. I take the side that facts are little theories, weighed down with tacit assumptions of one's cultural inheritance. And of course this applies to facts like "indendence", dependence, and "is-ness."

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Goshisdead wrote:

Again as said several times already, A fact is not the independent existence of the thing, a fact is our interelation with the thing, which must happen to perceive and describe the thing.

No, a fact is what is the case, independent of our interrelation or expression. In other words, even if couldn't perceive or describe fact X, fact X would still exist. A reality exists independent of our experience of said reality.

fast wrote:

Just wanted to point out that even if his wife did vanish when unobserved, it still wouldn't be the case that his wife didn't exist. Hence, a vanished wife still has the property of being married.

By vanished, I meant not existing anymore. Did you think I meant that the wife was simply lost? Like, as if I said that my wallet just vanished? Of course, here, I am not claiming that my wallet doesn't exist anymore, but that I have misplaced my wallet. But that is not what I was referring to with the wife example - I was referring to the wife not existing anymore. This was in response to Gosh saying, "And you know they don't vanish when you aren't observing them how?". I interpreted his vanish here, as not existing anymore; the definition "To pass out of existence."

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My consciousness isn't as talented as yours. Fortunately, I can perceive reality even though my consciousness can't.

The point is that, reality is not a construction of our consciousness. And I have no clue why people think this.

fresco wrote:

You seem to have a pretty narrow view of "science" Zetherin !
Look up "signal detection theory". Green and Swets clearly demonstrated that central processes (motivation) clearly affect signal detection rates in noise. Or look up the cultural explanation for the Muller-Lyer illusion (different length perceptions for lines of opposite arrow heads).

What does this have to do with anything? Do you believe that there is an objective world?

JLNobody wrote:

Both the notions of mind-dependent and independent facts are religious in nature, but different kinds of religion. I take the side that facts are little theories, weighed down with tacit assumptions of one's cultural inheritance. And of course this applies to facts like "indendence", dependence, and "is-ness."

There's nothing religious about believing that there is a mind-independent reality. Why do you think this?

Goshisdead wrote:

I must believe that I know to know, which I don't so therefore I assume.

If you believe that there is a mind-independent reality, and you have justification that there is a mind-independent reality, and it is true that there is a mind-independent reality, then you know there is a mind-independent reality. If you then didn't believe "I know there is a mind-independent reality", then your belief would be false, since you did know there was a mind-independent reality. In other words, no, you don't have to believe you know X, to know X.

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Zetherin wrote:

If you then didn't believe "I know there is a mind-independent reality", then your belief would be false, since you did know there was a mind-independent reality

I mean, if you held the belief that you didn't know there is a mind-independent reality, you would then be holding a false belief (if you did in fact know). But I don't quite know if you hold this belief, since all you said was "which I don't so therefore". Did you mean you hold the belief that you don't know that there is a mind-independent reality? Well, that belief may be false is all I'm getting at - you can know X without believing that you know X. They are different beliefs, remember.

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@Zetherin,

Can I really know something that I don't think I know? I suppose according to what you said I can, but what does that profit me? My operational belief is still that which I think I don't know. One day maybe I'll have an epiphany like I have had before, "oh I guess I knew that all along", but what kind of knowledge is this if it is not currently acted upon?

So in essence I agree that there are different types of beliefs which = different types of knowledge, yet I also disagree because the type of belief that matters is the type of belief recognized by the believer.

The other about what is a fact ends up being a debate on the definition of fact, which I find boring and, will drop.

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@Zetherin,

No worries Zetherin. You and I agree on a whole lot, so when I see you saying something that is substantially correct, I usually look for what you might call the little things that I may not quite agree with. In a way, I'm just chiseling around the edges with you, since as far as I can tell, most of what you say is spot on.

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

1st) I must believe that I know to know, which I don't so therefore I assume.

Where did you get that idea?

Belief is a necessary condition of knowledge, yes, but don't confuse your belief that P with your belief that you know P. That's two different things.

1) The child believes that his dog is barking, 2) the child has justification for believing that his dog is barking, and 3) it's true that his dog is barking, so 4) the child knows that his dog is barking, and it may very well be that 5) the child believes that he knows his dog is barking, and my point is for you to not confuse 1 with 5. My believing P and my believing that I know P are not the same.

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Goshisdead wrote:

Can I really know something that I don't think I know?

Yes, you can. For instance, for a while I didn't think I knew what the capital of Michigan was, but one day after I thought about it for a while I realized that I did in fact know what the capital of Michigan was.

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One day maybe I'll have an epiphany like I have had before, "oh I guess I knew that all along", but what kind of knowledge is this if it is not currently acted upon?

Yes, maybe you will realize you did in fact know there was a mind-independent reality after all. Refer to the quote by Wittgenstein that kennethamy always posts, "The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose".

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So in essence I agree that there are different types of beliefs which = different types of knowledge, yet I also disagree because the type of belief that matters is the type of belief recognized by the believer

Hm, I don't know where you got the impression I think there are different types of beliefs, which equal different types of knowledge. That's not what I was saying at all. But beliefs that we don't recognize, do matter. I suppose I would have to know what you mean by recognize, but if you mean aware of, then yes, I disagree. We're not always aware of beliefs that we hold, but that doesn't mean they aren't there or don't matter. Heck, sometimes we even need a lot of help realizing the things that we believe.

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The other about what is a fact ends up being a debate on the definition of fact, which I find boring and, will drop.

Alright, well, I think that facts are truth-makers, not truth-bearers. They are the things that make truth-bearers, like propositions, true. Although, I will admit, I need to read more on the matter myself.

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@fast,

fast wrote:

No worries Zetherin. You and I agree on a whole lot, so when I see you saying something that is substantially correct, I usually look for what you might call the little things that I may not quite agree with. In a way, I'm just chiseling around the edges with you, since as far as I can tell, most of what you say is spot on.

Yes, I believe what you were getting at was that, our mind is not us. We are not our minds, we are not our consciousness. And I would like to discuss that with you later.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote:

Quote:
So in essence I agree that there are different types of beliefs which = different types of knowledge, yet I also disagree because the type of belief that matters is the type of belief recognized by the believer

Hm, I don't know where you got the impression I think there are different types of beliefs, which equal different types of knowledge. That's not what I was saying at all. But beliefs that we don't recognize, do matter. I suppose I would have to know what you mean by recognize, but if you mean aware of, then yes, I disagree. We're not always aware of beliefs that we hold, but that doesn't mean they aren't there or don't matter. Heck, sometimes we even need a lot of help realizing the things that we believe.

What I was attempting get at is that in the classic epistemological justified belief schema belief is not the only variable. justification is a variable as well. Thus I may know something to be because I believe it and it is justified. but you may know the contrary to be because you believe and use an alternate justification. when I say "oh i guess I knew that all along" the epiphany comes from a change of justificatory underpinning not so much from an actual change of belief. The change of the justification normally coincides with a gradual sometimes inperceptable change in a persons base ideological core. So when I am convinced of the veracity of something I previously did not believe I normally only consciously percieve the change in belief.

and about facts. what am i supposed to say? I think noting inside one;s head "there is a thing" is internalizing an external through several abstracted categories and concepts, such as diexis, labeling, implying an antecedent etc... and that is not even getting to actually naming, measuring, rhiefying etc... that thing. You say no, it is enough that it exists to make it a fact. I can't argue that, no one can

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote to JLN

Quote:

There's nothing religious about believing that there is a mind-independent reality. Why do you think this?

Religious beliefs are usually concerned with permanence of an entity separate from the believer, because belief is essentially prediction. Whether this entity is an unchanging "God" or an unchanging "world" it is antithetical to the "certain knowledge" that all is "in flux". Even what we call "rocks" decay over time, so any concept of permanence is relative to our own life-span - a triviality on the cosmic scale! And once we admit a "relativity factor" we admit to the co-existence and co-extension of "self" and "world", as surely as "up" is related to "down".

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My take is that since the middle of the 19th Century, the belief in the supremacy of the objective realm has been substituted for the belief in God. The objective realm is held to be sole reality, about which more and more is gradually being disclosed by science. This is why the questioning of objectivity is 'frightening' - it's frightening because the so-called mind independent reality is, at the very least, a placeholder for 'the truth'. This fear is what philosopher Richard Bernstein calls the Cartesian Anxiety.

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Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, ever since René Descartes promulgated his highly influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

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@jeeprs,

I would very much like to read this book.

Hello Amazon.com

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@jeeprs,

Interesting !

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@GoshisDead,

Goshisdead wrote:

What I was attempting get at is that in the classic epistemological justified belief schema belief is not the only variable. justification is a variable as well. Thus I may know something to be because I believe it and it is justified.

You're forgetting the third condition, X being true. You can believe and have justification for X, but if X is not true, you do not know X.

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but you may know the contrary to be because you believe and use an alternate justification.

First off, let us not confuse contraries with contradictions. If you believed I was in Oklahoma right now, and I believed I was not in Oklahoma right now, we would be holding contradictory beliefs. One belief would be true and one belief would be false, no matter the difference in justification. Even if we both had justification for each of our beliefs, only one of us knew. The other only thought they knew (because, again, to know X, it is necessary that X is true).

But things are different when we speak of contraries, because if two things are contrary, both can be false. For instance, a pair of contrary propositions would be "Zetherin is in Oklahoma" and "Zetherin is in Pennsylvania". If you believed the former, and I believed the ladder, we could both be wrong. I could, for instance, be in New Jersey. And that's why these are contrary propositions and not contradictory propositions. But what is most important here to note is that we could not both be right if we held contrary beliefs. Two propositions are contrary if both cannot be true but both can be false.

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