The Half-life of Facts.

A dairy farm is a very instructive place.

If you observe one…you see that there are many cows and maybe just one bull. (Sometimes there are none. A bull or two are transported in when needed.)

Some of the postings here need more cow…if ya get my drift!

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@fresco,

Quote:

I would argue that what is going on is a functional contextual application of an abstract model which could easily be superceded by an another model in terms of increased predictive power in a redefined context.

Yes, and? It is the predictive nature that is needed for logic.

Because something that looks like a blob from a distance gains definition when we get closer doesn't change the reality of what the object is. The only thing that changes is our perception.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Toruses (and circles) are relatively easy to mentally assign with status, because we use them all the time for day-to-day "objects". Their "reality" is carried by association with our daily "naive realism" . But if we attempt to assign such status to successful yet more complex models I suggest we need to re-think any usage of the terms "fact" or "reality".

Perhaps these more complex models are an indication to us that even our "simple" models like circles and torus are perhaps not so easy to determine the ontological status of as we think due to our naive-realism.
After all, the term naive-realism could be said to have come about precisely because of these more complex models, hinting to us that what we see may not be what's actually going on.

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@Cyracuz,

You are correct on one reading of "naive" (pitted against "sophisticated"). But from a physical point of view I think the term needs to be viewed in the light of Heisenberg's celebrated "What we observe is not nature itself but the results of our interactions with it" (paraphrased). It is the mathematics which suggests what interactions physicists undertake, for example looking for the "same particle simultaneously occupying different locations". The counter-intuitive result of such "non-locality" seems to indicate that anything we had hitherto thought of as a limited "reality", is in effect a potentially limitless domain, thereby questioning the applicability of the term in "frontier science".

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I do not know much about set theory. But it seems to me that if mathematical facts have being or existence, their ontological status is similar to that of the hole in a donut.

How so? Some mathematical theorems are deemed true by fiat --- because mathematicians have postulated them as axioms. All others are deemed true because mathematicians have logically deduced them from axioms. Both the postulating and the deducing gets done inside of mathematicians' heads, with no input at all from the world outside these heads. In what sense, then, can you say that mathematical facts "have being"?

As it happens, mathematical models can describe and predict natural phenomena, often with astonishing precision and foresight. But this is a fact of empirical observation, not of mathematics.

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@parados,

The "thingness" of the blob is a function of its interaction with the "thinger", not an independent existential state. Unless you are a naive realist, the object has no "reality" of its own.

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@fresco,

So you are just discussing things with yourself then. OK. I see no reason to intrude into your reality then.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The "thingness" of the blob is a function of its interaction with the "thinger", not an independent existential state. Unless you are a naive realist, the object has no "reality" of its own.

The object either has a reality of its own...or does not.

The "thinger" MAY OR MAY NOT impact on that.

Why do you insist that your blind guesses about the REALITY have to be correct...and the guesses that go counter to yours have to be wrong?

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@Frank Apisa,

That religion of yours, Fresco, is one demanding son-of-a-gun. It rules you with an iron fist.

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@Frank Apisa,

But Frank, since fresco is imagining everything the wrong guesses are his too.

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@parados,

My selves (plural) are socially interacting with each other and with other selves such as yours in an exercise we mught call negotiating what we mean by "facts". Such selves are existently a function of the activity. Other selves will emerge in all of us, as usual, when we engage in other activities, or when we go off-line from our input mechanisms (dreaming).

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Both the postulating and the deducing gets done inside of mathematicians' heads, with no input at all from the world outside these heads. In what sense, then, can you say that mathematical facts "have being"?

At a minimum, they exist as mental facts (and mental facts exist, they are even the only facts whose existence we can be positively certain of). They can also be shared and learnt, so they exist as part of the 'market place of ideas'. The question is whether they exist in nature, prior to our invention of them. Are mathematicians inventing their world or are they discovering it? Was Pi always 'there', in some mathematical skies, waiting to get discovered and estimated ever more precisely? The question looks meaningless to me, yet nature seem to have some use for Fibonacci series... and we don't really know why/how.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

My selves (plural) are socially interacting with each other and with other selves such as yours in an exercise we mught call negotiating what we mean by "facts". Such selves are existently a function of the activity.

Except according to your statement I can't have a reality of my own. If I don't interact with you than I can't exist, is that not correct?

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@parados,

"You" exist as committee of verbalising selves often arguing with each other. According to Heidegger, what we call "self" is often absent with interaction of the body on autopilot.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

At a minimum, they exist as mental facts (and mental facts exist, they are even the only facts whose existence we can be positively certain of).

The tinnitus in my ear may be a "mental fact" to me. But it's a delusion. It does not represent any fact about the world outside my mind. What you call "mental facts" are not facts. So if you merely meant to say that the facts of Euclidean geometry are as true today as the tinnitus in my ear is true today, I have no problem with that.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

But Frank, since fresco is imagining everything the wrong guesses are his too.

Fresco wrote:

Quote:

My selves (plural) are socially interacting with each other and with other selves such as yours in an exercise we mught call negotiating what we mean by "facts". Such selves are existently a function of the activity. Other selves will emerge in all of us, as usual, when we engage in other activities, or when we go off-line from our input mechanisms (dreaming).

...and...

Quote:

"You" exist as committee of verbalising selves often arguing with each other. According to Heidegger, what we call "self" is often absent with interaction of the body on autopilot.

These things he knows, parados, the way Catholics know that the bread and wine during Mass are actually changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

It is sad to see a man as intelligent as he kidding himself the way he does.

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@fresco,

Quote:

"You" exist as committee of verbalising selves often arguing with each other.

Sometimes it's a true pain. One member of the committee only wants to look at women all day long. Another is a manic depressive, and there are a few compulsive control freaks... The list goes on. Some days it's so bad that I can't even fool myself with this illusion of unity business. Smile

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Same thing goes for Cyracuz, parados.

These guys think that because they are complex creatures...the only answer is that there are multiple "you" involved.

The other alternatives cannot exist for them...and that seems to be due mostly to the fact that the "you" we deal with doesn't allow for alternatives to what their belief system dictates.

As I said...rather sad.

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

These guys think that because they are complex creatures...the only answer is that there are multiple "you" involved.

That's not quite it. It is just as hard to prove that there is a unified self as it is to prove that our 'selves' are made up out of many different and conflicting impulses and ideas that are internally negotiated into what others experience us as.
And again it is a matter of perspective. I doubt you will think my view of these things makes much sense if you don't accept the same premises that I do. And it would be the same for me when I am relating to your views, of course.

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

The object either has a reality of its own...or does not.

The "thinger" MAY OR MAY NOT impact on that.

The way I understand it, any thing is indistinguishable from it's surroundings until this thing interacts with something else in such a way that the thing stands out from it's surroundings.
If the thing is a rock, and the thinger is an ant, the rock only has what "thingness" can be expressed in the relationship between the rock and the ant.
If the thinger is a human being, the rock will have "thingness" according to the capacity of a human to experience it.

The hypothetical situation of "the thing without a thinger" I leave out entirely. I do not know anything about "unexperienced reality".

1 Reply

The Half-life of Facts.

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