The Half-life of Facts.

I find that my essentially anti-foundationalist notion of truth and reality is compatible with the thinking of Fresco and Wittgenstein (and Nietzsche and versions of Buddhism) insofar as all knowledge is the product of human effort, even the notion of Reality. I even think--perhaps unlike some Buddhist theorists--that human notions of Truth and Reality (not to mention practical knowledge) can be explained most generally in terms of the development of thought. Anthropology, whether the analysis and description of cultural evolution, social systems, and civilizations (not to mention the history of philosophy) focuses on the dynamics of constructivism.
This is almost beyond the reach of naive realists who insist that the world's significance is given to us ready made*. Remember the hick who complimented the astronomer for his dicsipline's discovery of planets and other astral bodies, but added the question: "But how in the world did you discover their names?

*Can we deny the existentialists' precept that Existence precedes Essence?

I have at not time mentioned the putative significance of the world, nor of anything else. I see your response here as a non sequitur.

Leaving aside the rather meaningless nature of the term essence, and pretending that you have a good reason to use the word, this is basically what i am saying. That something or someone must exist for there to be constructivism. I am asking where that something or someone comes from.

And I told you: Humans exist before meaning exists, and the world consists of meanings ("essences") that are their constructions/ascriptions. So, "things"* exist, but without meaning (they do not come with meaning) until it is conferred upon them.
*notices the quotes. Thingness is also a construction. Imagine a thing with its only property being its thingness.

Well, that's really no distinction, and it leads directly to my question, which is whence humanity. The claim that there is no reality other than what we construct is foolish because it does not account for where "we" come from. Talking about "thingness" and other such nonsense labels only attempts to avoid the question of where the constructors of reality come from--and no matter what the answer to that question, the implication is clear that reality is more than just that which is constructed by our language.

By "account for" are you asking for some sort of theory or causal chain ?
And by "we" are you focussing on "the human animal" or "consciousness" or a "socially cohesive unit" ?
I suggest your question is far too simplistic and in its present form. Constructivists don't start with materialistic building blocks. They tend to work on the dynamics of "systems". Physicalism can itself be considered to be a functional concept which is a product of a cognitive system, rather than an a priori.. Circularity is not a weakness in constructivist accounts. Such an accusation ignores Godel's incompleteness issue. i.e. It is an inevitable outcome of the infinite regress of axioms couched in language.

You can suggest what you like, and i am free to avoid your silly word game. "We" refers to humans, and if you weren't playing a word game, you'd acknowledge that that were obvious. I was responding to JLN, who had stipulated humans. Despite your contempt for me, i think it not unreasonable to assume that you'd recognize my right to say "we" when referring to humans.

Ignoring your typical appeal to authority--what Godel may say is not relevant to the question--the question is simple, but it is not simplistic. If there are constructivists, where do they come from? You do not answer because you cannot answer without stepping outside your thesis that there is no reality except that which we create. This is the fatal flaw in your thesis about the nature of reality, so naturally you'll respond with scorn and condescension, because the only alternative for you is to acknowledge that flaw in your thesis.

If you don't understand that 'humans' can imply a multitude of aspects from complex systems to cognate language users embedded in cultural modes of discourse then you won't have a clue what this thread is about.

Oh, i know very well what the thread is about. I also knew when Olivier mentioned that he might not understand what Wittgenstein was saying that you'd take your favorite exit from a tight corner which is to claim that your interlocutor doesn't understand what's being said. That kind of snotty response is typical of your responses when you find the questioning of your thesis uncomfortable.

What this thread is about is a book review which only concerned itself with the flawed statements of fact which arise from scientific research which has not yet gotten all the answers, and often isn't yet asking the appropriate questions--but which you have attempted to use as a springboard for your favorite hobby horse, the one you always want to ride.

It doesn't matter what word games you play about what humans means. For whatever the word may imply, the question will remain from whence do humans derive. If, as you are so fond of obsessively claiming, the only reality derives from this putative "multitude of aspects of complex systems of cognate language users," your thesis is still fatally flawed because it does not account for the origin of those language users. It cannot account for them because you will not take their origin into account.

Set isn't asking for some logical substrate. He's looking for an explanation as to how human beings evolved into what they are now (which would be a time prior to consciousness). And this explanation would hurt your thesis, because constructivism does not allow one to get past facticity, which is problematic.

Actually, no one on this thread is asking for a logical substrate. So, I don't know why you think anyone is. Set is asking you to provide an explanation, and, if you cannot, then that's problematic, because scientists are perfectly capable of explaining what happened.

You could meet Set's demands, but they wouldn't be satisfactory. You would state something like, " Such-and-such gave rise to humans so many years ago". But you would qualify it with a "for us", whatever that may be (some type of constructivist input to dispel the realist claims scientists are making).

Before I end this, let's keep one thing clear, and this is something I've been wanting to say for a while: just because a philosopher or person thinks that there is an independent reality DOES NOT imply that they're a NAIVE REALIST. There are varying realist positions. It's easy to beat the **** out of naive realism. Hell, anyone can do it. But it's another thing to tackle the other types of realism. So you might want to read up on some realist literature before classifying every realist position as being naive realist. Unless you are using "naive realism" in an idiosyncratic manner.

Hope this helps.

Hi JL. Who in hell ever assumed that the world significance is given to us ready made? Do you have names? Even Auguste Comte was not THAT naïve.

That looks like a strawman, and explains a lot of the misunderstanding that typically happen on those threads. You guys assume that those disagreeing with you are pre-Popper and pre-Kuhn realists, so to speak, or positivists à la Auguste Compte, but we're all post-modern here, or more precisely I consider myself a post-post-modern. It is possible to go beyond constructivism and once one does that, one sees the constructivists as... very naïve!

Naïve to the extent ghat thry confuse their inner mental world and representation of the universe with the universe itself. They confuse the map and the territory.

Eg Setanta is evidently right: the universe preceded humans, and humans preceded language, thus language cannot possibly create the universe. It only creates or shape the universe INSIDE OUR HEAD, our modelisation of the universe. The stars are indifferent to astronomers.

I could not agree more. This 'naïve realism' is a philosophical strawman constructed by naive constructivists.

Define what you mean by a "satisfactory explanation" without evoking a causal chain of logical reasoning. The constructivist description of facticity ignores that limitation by focussing on contextual dynamics, not origins, because views on origins are also dynamically shifting.

You mean something along the lines of, "half life of facts isn't real because the moon is made of blue cheese?"

Now it's your turn to make the argument for it without using logical reasoning.

What limitation is there to logical reasoning, that does not apply to any form or style of 'languaging'?

Seems to me that philosophy - logic = poetry.

Bergson took a poetic approach to philosophy, often to great effect. But his philosophy remains internally, logically consistent. He is not repudiating logic nor the objective existence of stuff, but simply places emphasis on intuition as a way to understanding stuff. You seem to consider both logic and the existence of a referent, ie an objective universe, as irrelevant...

It would be impossible for me in the course of a single lifetime to personally validate the vast majority of information that various disciplines have outputted. IOW, when it comes to "understanding what is on", I primarily have contact with what are approved facts in the context of respected formal systems -- which catalog and study multiple levels and regions of space / time. Rather than my having direct contact with the raw sources themselves of those described (sometimes photo/video depicted) facts.

I am living physically in an everyday world that dates at least back to an age of hunter-gatherer perceptions / conceptions, but largely living "intellectually" in an abstract, processed, refined, "fabricated representation" of nature. When it comes to "knowing" about that part of the present and past empirical realm that surrounds my body which I have not personally encountered and learned about via my own efforts during my days on this planet. I have never even traveled to Antarctica to directly confirm that it truly exists as a resident of the public, intersubjective half our experiences.

Nevertheless, I have great confidence in the institutionalized knowledge base that has been accumulated by Western methodology. But admittedly this trust is basically founded on armchair reasoning and acquired feelings. Instead of, again, direct observational contact with the original items and having more familiarity with whatever specific process of conclusion-generation was involved in producing any particular one of them that was not empirically observed, or relied upon mediation by instrument / experiment.

For instance, I would consider it an irrational, too-difficult-a-feat-to-pull-off and goofy idea that all the eyewitness testimonies / reports and media footage of Antarctica and men having ventured to the Moon were part of an elaborate, socially all-pervading conspiracy / deception. And obviously atom bombs work, which seems to validate a section of microphysics -- or at least that there is a particular way of conceiving matter which yields desired and predicted effects like that.

Touching upon the presence of "para-knowledge" constructs throughout the human past (or parallel to the modern, the way we still managed to survive minus our current approaches and approved information bases): Ancient North Americans "engineered" corn into existence with alternative / primitive conceptions and understandings of its ancestral plant than those that contemporary biological sciences would have (but surely more limited in their range of possible manipulations than the latter and its offshoot technologies). So what would be judged "wrong", or only a "partial-truth", or skewered "facts" in the context of one worldview may sometimes still serve as a functional tool for another. Or for cultures at one time dependent upon a para-knowledge framework (or actually / usually what would be informal, folk practices as contrasted to the systematic, well-detailed and organized information of modern institutions).


There should be little problem with a discipline having or needing fixed and immutable qualities, quantitative values, concepts or standards that are supported by its opening axioms or consistent within its reasoned framework as a whole. But regarding the non-artificial world and the relational interdependencies of its entities -- or its abundance of phenomenal "things outside themselves" instead of Kant's intelligible counterparts -- locating concrete absolutes or the non-described sources of any such candidates would seem a Ponce De Leon type quest.

Yes, lile Von Glasersfeld, Maturana et al I consider "an objective universe" to be irrelevant to an understanding of ontological and epistemological thinking.
(Google either for details of that position)

Thankyou for that well structured response.

And what about logic?

To repeat. Traditional logic is based on static set theory. Piaget pointed out that it was one outcome of psychological development in some adults. Irrespective of its inapplicability to the dynamism of cognitive state transitions, its "law of the excluded middle" is even useless in quantum physics.

Niels Bohr