The Half-life of Facts.

There we disagree. I tend to suffer fools, if not gladly. Usually they think their behavior is meritorious. And I know that retaliation is the attempt to make them feel bad, to inform them that they are not meritorious. When I do that or attempt to do that I almost always regret the accompany loss of equanimity.

I agree that most often perception it is almost always in terms of linguistically meaningful categories of thought. This is most obvious when comparing the perceptual experiences of radically different cultures. But perception can occur sans meaningful categories. This is how I enjoy completely abstract art. That IS the exception, however.

Yes. Your wisdom with respect to behavior is beyond reproach.

I suggest the "enjoyment" of abstract art entails something beyond normal perception. It suggests the triggering of emotional responses which resist specific linguistic reference. Also, there is some evidence that synesthesia (the cross triggering different senses) is a more common experience than first thought, and in your case nebulous linkages to music might be occuring or even to the tactile if you paint yourself.

I myself do not particular enjoy such art unless I have some knowledge of where the artist "is coming from". i.e. I'm looking for context. But then I'm neither musician nor artist !

I appreciate that contribution. I guess my enjoyment of abstract art is more complex than I realize; it probably entails less than conscious cognitive activity. And the connection with music is obvious. I often refer to my more lyrical painting attempts as visual music--I am a life-long violinist.

My attitude of late is to abandon a conversation mid thought when I see that it delves into
What do you mean when you say..."

Ensuing discussions seem to subtend rather than enlighten. I usually disagree with fresco from an evidentiary basis and his use of rather obscure references (at least to me). In this case I was way more in agreement .BUT

I don't think fresco was at all guilty of deepity phrasing because I (of course this is only me) think he was NOT in a bushwhack over a series of rather trite definitions. (My fav deepity has always been Evolution is merely a theory")

Facts are not malleable, therefore they must either evolve or be abandoned for new bases of new facts.
When the Southern Baptists wanted to make pi equal to 3, their pronouncement was a fact, however their geometry was not.
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I like that... sort of aspirations to a pseudo non-Euclidean geometry !

And regarding geometries in general, "projective geometry"* is quite interesting with its "points of infinity" (apparently applicable to quantum physics).

I suggest that those who doubt that facticity is a metalinguistic or a metalogical issue need only consider the nature and status of mathematical systems such as these geometries in frontier areas like cosmology and quantum physics.
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*There is a potentially interesting line of philosophical inquiry involving Goethe's interest in projective geometry, and Wittgenstein's abandonment of his own logical positivism (the Tractatus) after reading Goethe's views on perception.

I've never seen a good discussion among people disagreeing politely on A2K so far. It always degenerates. Maybe I came too late to it.

In this discussion, it's pretty much inevitable. There just is no inoffensive way of telling people that they're talking pretentious nonsense, that what they're saying doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. And yet, it needs to be said sometimes. Some people are talking pretentious nonsense, often to the detriment of their own discussions.

But this is far from inevitable in general. Over time, I have often and fervently disagreed with each of Farmerman, Frank Apisa, joefromchicago, Parados, and Setanta (in alphabetical order). Almost all our disagreements have been polite --- because, while we all thought the other correspondent was wrong, at least he didn't waste our time with willful obscurity and cliquish put-downs.

I think, that with fresco, you are confusing his often pretentious choices of language with his thoughts. In this case I agreed with him (Yes Im looking at it from a Poster child area for language "half lives")
BTW the term "half life" has many applications in applied sciences. Chemical degredation of specific Organophosphate and organochlorine substances are termed "half lives" also. It isn't ONLY radiodecay (although the origin of the term was)
Its been taken over by chem, chem engineering, agriculture, and medicine.

HA, welcome to A2K's MO. Ive taken part in many "dump ons' and usually I am sorry to say (even with some of the total idiot Evangelicals), Ive said things that were really uncalled for.
When one member sees an exposed throat, it appears to be ok to "Team Feed"

I vaguely recall saying to someone that he wasn't even wrong. But that rudeness occurred because it was irresistable. I hope I apologized.

Yes, of course, when they do so relentlessly. But the problem extends far beyond the nonsense-producers.


I found Frank and Setanta's capacity to dialogue less than overwhelming, for different reasons. Frank is using too much board space to state again and again (and then more) his trivialities of choice. That is detrimental to a thread's dynamic IMO, and insults the intelligence of other posters. Setanta's a different case: most of time I find him spot on but we always find a way to clash, for some reason... Guess I am no angelmyself.

Fresco's far too happy to ditch embarassing questions. He's basically making noise, which is consistant with his theory that language is everything (language without meaning, ie without a referent out there in reality, is noise). JLN is more honest intellectually IMO.

Fman---I wish Id have said that

JL------You will dear boy, you will.

You and I sparred on genetics once. I was right of course but hope I was 't too nasty.

On this present thread, it was less of a gang attack and more of an outpour of excellent arguments against constructivism. Arguments that remained unanswered...

Do you realize how often you have said that?

You corrected me on my misuse of a single term Ill stip to that. However, I lost interest in the two arguments about decreasing gene frequency in phenotypes from a limited volunteer population.It was gamblers ruin in reverse. The other argument was that you and Set were doing a personal I didn't need to see continue. I lost interest in the thread. Sorta like this one

AS far as "constructivism" to me, it is Russian art in support of the revolution.

My eyes glaze over whenever people tell me how to build a watch when all I really wanted was the time .

Wow, I wish I said that.

I apologise if you consider some of my language is "pretentious". I dislike long posts and I tend to summarize complex epistemological issues usng as few words as possible. In addition, I have expanded many of my arguments on previous threads together with background reading suggestions and I may make the mistake that members are familiar with with preamble material. One example of this is my frequent references to the word "tree" over the kast ten years (and on page 2 of this thread) and its implications for several issues, including species specific "reality".

Another point is that many of the positions I take have become "well established" in mainstream philosophy to the extent that some "common sense" statements tend to trigger an eye-rolling response from those who have made the effort to go beyond hampered as we are by the limitations of ordinary language. (Eye rolling at dictionary definitions par for the course !)

I sometimes slip into jargon but I think someone nicely reminded me to (sometimes) include a glossary of terms that folks don't use daily.
I guess when the language we use doesn't communicate and instead is used to differentiate or separate the speaker from the audience, we (The audience) sometimes become suspicious of the conversation. At least I do.

If it was only pretentious... It's also meaningless. And we can roll our eyes about your language worship too, you know?