Facticity ?

@fresco,

u deform fact concept intentionnally

fact literaly point the face of it, so it is never what any construct while always the opposite an objective perspective being else totally, it is the first condition of fact existence mean, it is a fact since not of u knowin that any of u is always the unknown u or the impossible knowledge of u to u completely so cant b a fact

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@imans,

A factious comment to a factitious question..

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@fresco,

Okay, lets flesh this out a little.
1. Is it a fact that my bookshelf has dust on it ?
2. Is it a fact that rocks are composed of atoms and molecules?
3. Is it a fact that prayers are sometimes answered ?

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The word "fact" comes from the Latin facere to "construct ". Constructions are either contextually functional or not and such functionality is context specific and may be temporary.. A "guess" is a tentative construction whose functionality is in the process of being assessed. The arbiter of functionality (aka facticity) is ultimately social agreement between those for whom specific contexts have significance.

This reads like a good description of what a scientific theory is, but it's lacking as a definition for what a "fact" should be in all contexts.

What if A murders someone, and all the evidence points to B? A's guilt is fact no matter what social agreement arises.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Okay, lets flesh this out a little.
1. Is it a fact that my bookshelf has dust on it ?
2. Is it a fact that rocks are composed of atoms and molecules?
3. Is it a fact that prayers are sometimes answered ?

All these are facts by the definition you gave, as long as we don't specify what answered the prayers. Your prayers could be a request to help you survive some medical problem. Hope and belief that you will survive are healthy, so the acts of asking to recover and of believing outside forces will bring about your recovery will lead to recovery. The universe, by which I mean the sum total of all forces except your own free will, will have answered your prayers.

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@Kolyo,

Not necessarily.Lets just take them one by one considering the contexts.

1. Unless the bookshelf is situated in an air filtered area it will trivially always "have dust on it". The facticity of this statement depends on its functionality in a hypothetical scenario of a contractual relationship between me and a cleaner. It may be "a fact" constructed by us and pragmatically, only for us.

2. The concept of "atoms and molecules" is relatively recent, and relies for its validity on a large paradigm of other conceptual inter-relationships we call "physical chemistry". By my definition it therefore follows that the facticity of the statement depends on whether it is made in the context of "physics and chemistry" and has no general currency. For example, a hypothetical member of a "non-scientific" community might ask us to demonstrate what we mean, ask us "how we know" or even retort with a "what's that got to do with me" (i.e. what's the functionality")

3. The facticity here rests on the statement being made in the context of a community of "believers in the power of prayer". In that context, it can indeed qualify as "factual" irrespective of alternative logical or scientific reasons given to account for "deliverence". Going further, "the existence of God (or gods) can be factual by the definition.

Now I argue this point as "an atheist", i.e.one outside the community of "religious believers". And I ask whether any statement whatsoever cannot be "factual" in the contextual sense of the definition, provided there is a minimum community of two to agree with the functionality of the statement.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

And I ask whether any statement whatsoever cannot be "factual" in the contextual sense of the definition, provided there is a minimum community of two to agree with the functionality of the statement.

You seem to be marking out facts by some sort of functionality.
Can physical description of what an experience is can capture what it is or must one live through? What about our existence? Can the observer reflect on itself, observe itself observing? Because we exist factically could we investigate what the world out there is like. So what about the statement: "I don't have a soul." Can such a statement be "factual" in the contextual sense of the definition, provided there is a minimum community of two to agree with the functionality of the statement? Can't facticity lie outside the limits of the current level of language and beyond the "social agreement between those for whom specific contexts have significance?"
All the facts one might gather about the substances, event states, and properties of the world does not explain "why I am me." This is because "I am me" is that unknown or unspecified that is already taken up in determining what the facts of the world are to begin with, and only because I exist factically can I inquire into what the world is like.

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@Bennet,

Quote:

You seem to be marking out facts by some sort of functionality

Absolutely !

Physical descriptions are meaningless unless they perform some communicative function. (statement 1)

Quote:

I don't have a soul." Can such a statement be "factual"

Of course. What is implied is that the "I" concept has no need of a "soul" concept.

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Can't facticity lie outside the limits of the current level of language

I say no.( Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world")
and Heidegger (et al) would say "you don't exist factually" most of the time. i.e. The reported presence of "self" is spasmodically co-evoked with the reported presence of "things" with which co-define it. "Permanence of existence" is dependent on the abstract "permanence of words". What we call "observation" is necessarily verbal.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Okay, lets flesh this out a little.
1. Is it a fact that my bookshelf has dust on it ?
2. Is it a fact that rocks are composed of atoms and molecules?
3. Is it a fact that prayers are sometimes answered ?

no ur book is never about facts nor dusts, those are relative objects that could b explained differently, regardin realities and circumstances

a fact is what is hundred percent existin and not u so really objective

ur sense of objective is an illusion obviously u mean too easily fact being what u see with ur eyes

rocks are not related to facts either otherwise they would b always rocks and since noone can do a rock so u cant know if it is essentially bc of what u say, it is mostly due to evrything else

sometimes is the opposite to fact while prayers are never answered
what is inferior or move as such get an inferior form of being real

from that sense it is written in scripture that only who got would receive
which is evil deformation for powers abuse on conscious bodies
the true rule is to do what u want by being it since any conscious can realize itself, so to stay neutral regarding anything else or everything

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@fresco,

Excellent exchange. Bennet I enjoyed your intelligent application of naive realism. Clever but wrong.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Okay, lets flesh this out a little.
1. Is it a fact that my bookshelf has dust on it ?
2. Is it a fact that rocks are composed of atoms and molecules?
3. Is it a fact that prayers are sometimes answered ?

Good thread Fresco.

The way you have constructed fact to be completely dependent upon semantics, I don't feel is yet substantiated.
You have decided that there is no objective by which to measure something.
In your framing, things like "accuracy" and "precision" have no meaning. (Except perhaps as some analogous relationship to functionality or social coherence).

From my view, both facts 1. and 2. are very accurate, they are not entirely precise.
1. The bookshelf for instance has no "material" contact with the dust, the outermost electrons of the outermost atoms of both objects mutually repel each other. [This new sentence still accurate, now more precise, but not 100% precise]

You discount the very possibility of any form of realism by the framing of your question.

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

You discount the very possibility of any form of realism by the framing of your question

....except for "social realism" or "reality as a social construction". I confess that topic was one of my earliest threads on A2K.

(UK bedtime)

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@fresco,

To be continued.....
Very Happy

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@fresco,

I think my most fundamental contention with "reality as a social construct" is that I find it highly implausible that a society would construct such an elaborate model for reality. I don't see the social value in elaboration. Why not remain content with the reality that the planets move in perfectly circular orbits? Why on Earth (pun intended) would anyone imagine that they didn't? Why would someone feel so strongly about it that they constructed a personal reality regarding elliptical orbits and then infected the rest of the society with it?
Do you think that prior to an understanding of Newtonian Mechanics the "reality" was magical?
I completely agree that our perceptions of reality have changed (and I hope have become more precise), but I have a very hard time agreeing that "reality" was in fact different when our perceptions were different.
You claim phenomena is all, because all we experience are phenomena.
Why then ever try for understanding?
What is the existentialist argument against willful ignorance and/or nihilism?

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@MattDavis,

(Off to work)
I'll just leave you with one pidgin English phrase for "the sun" to contemplate..
..."kerosene lamp bilong Jesus Christ"... Mr. Green

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I'll just leave you with one pidgin English phrase for "the sun" to contemplate..
..."kerosene lamp bilong Jesus Christ"...

Don't play your Jedi mind tricks on me...
.... those ARE the droids I'm looking for! Neutral

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@MattDavis,

Quote:

I find it highly implausible that a society would construct such an elaborate model for reality.

Are you conditioned by "Occam's Razor" thinking here ?

Quote:

Do you think that prior to an understanding of Newtonian Mechanics the "reality" was magical?

All "God" premises, including Newton's and Einstein's could be called "magical".
What those geniuses did was to extend our powers of prediction and control i.e. they enhanced our range of potential functioning.

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I have a very hard time agreeing that "reality" was in fact different when our perceptions were different

That's the naive realist bedrock position. It is is the non-constructionist view of "fact". It ignores the view that "reality" is an interaction between observer and observed. The frog who starves surrounded by what we call "dead flies" has its reality specific to its perceptual apparatus. And only "gods" have no perceptual limits.

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You claim phenomena is all, because all we experience are phenomena.

No, I claim "we" don't experience phenomena, our verbal reports of "a phenomenon" involve a we state plus things functionally related to that state. We are part of the phenomenon.

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Why then ever try for understanding?

Because attempt at enhanced prediction and control is an evolutionary advantage.

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What is the existentialist argument against willful ignorance and/or nihilism?

Probably too general a question requiring a doctoral dissertation !
The existentialists differ between themselves as to the nature of "existence" and "reality". Sartre, for example, goes towards the nihilist pole (notably in his novel Nausea which dwells on the (social) madness of being fixated on non functional detail like dust on bookcases). Heidegger holds the view that "authentic living" involves understanding the nature of "being" in the constructivist sense. Derrida ( a post modernist rather than an existentialist) dwells on the transient and dichotomous nature of reportage and hence the impossibility of segmenting "reality" into permanent functionally independent categories. (e.g "giving" necessarily involves "taking" on the part of the actor).

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@fresco,

Matt: "I have a very hard time agreeing that "reality" was in fact different when our perceptions were different."

Fresco: "That's the naive realist bedrock position. It is is the non-constructionist view of "fact". It ignores the view that "reality" is an interaction between observer and observed. The frog who starves surrounded by what we call "dead flies" has its reality specific to its perceptual apparatus. And only "gods" have no perceptual limits."

And this is the gist of the debate over recent years between A2K's constructionists and naive realists.

I congratulate Matt on his brilliant challenge to constructionism and Fresco's equally brilliant defense--a redemption I greatly appreciate.

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@JLNobody,

There is a BBC Sunday programme called "The Big Question" which is a discussion forum for "religious" issues. Yesterday I watched in bemusement as participants (Muslims, Christians of all type, Jews etc) argued vociferously with each other over "the nature and reality of Hell". And the only question in my mind was "is this adolescent bun fight what we pay our TV licence money for ?"
(BBC is non-commercial and funded by obligatory licence for all TV owners).

1 Reply

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