The Half-life of Facts.

Simple. Derrida never denied the existence of an objective reality. Nor did Kuhn. Kuhn disagreed with Popper on how paradigm shifts come to be done and accepted. Deleuze was something of a realist, a pragmatist, etc.

Are you seriously contending that all those philosophers were in consensus, about anything, really? Foucault hated Derrida's guts.

My preferred one was always Deleuze, BTW.

Are you calling all of these "constructivists" ?
and you say

yet googling "Derrida Reality" yields

Honeysett

Why not? They all agreed that ideas and perceptions are constructed, negotiated and traded in imperfect ways, and that objectivity is an impossible goal for men to reach... Kant was the first among them.

You might want to restrict the use of the word to a smaller or different group of people, based on some criteria you would need to state, evidently. Please do. I am confident I can find disagreements about reality among those YOU consider bona fide constructivists.

Please quote from the man himself - he is easy to misunderstand.

Since your citation of Derrida's views on reality appear to be flawed , I see lttle point in indulging in further arbitrary rhetoric.
Thankyou for your participation.

I think YOU misunderstood Derrida, not I. But that's beyond the point. The point is: How could anything be flawed if reality does not exist in itlself, independently from us, and if logic is irrelevant???

Without evoking a causal chain of reasoning? Are you thinking of the DN (Deductive-Nomological) model? Cause that's not what I'm thinking of for an explanation. And even if the criterion for an explanation required some sort of logical reasoning doesn't entail that I am looking for a logical substrate. This is epistemology, not ontology.

And whoever said that we can't use contextual dynamics with logical reasoning? Seems like an arbitrary dichotomy to me. Unless I'm missing something here. I know you have a beef with set theory, but it really shouldn't be a problem so long as we keep in mind that we are focusing on explanation and not ontology. But I sympathize with your objections to set theory and the logical postivist movement. I've done my fair share of thinking about the topic. Hell, I experienced it. Went from 1st order, all the way to alethic logic. I know what it's all about. And the problems that come with it.

And just because what we believe to be origins are dynamically shifting, and this can be show historically, doesn't mean that origins are unimportant. What else would we be looking for in the first place? Granted, the processes by which we come to know about the world are important, I will grant you that. But that's not all that's important. Or maybe, once again, I am missing something.

I get the sneaking suspicion that we are not trying our best to differentiate between epistemology and ontology.

Wow, you just brought up Deleuze. Part of my independent study is on his ontology as reconstructed by DeLanda.

Thanks for making my day.

Without digging up references, I'm pretty sure that ontology CANNOT be separated from epistemology. Perhaps Heidegger's views on Existenz are reflective of this in which self (Dasein) and potential objects (Zeug) are co-extensive and transient.

In purely "scientific" terms, would the existence of "dark matter" be meaningful at all without the particular epistemological track physics has taken hitherto ? (And note in passing that such "matter" is NOW thought by physicists to account for most of the "undiscovered universe".)

So as far as I am concerned, "origins" and the causal reasoning that may follow is merely (but not trivially) a matter of choice of axioms which work for current contextual purposes. Psychologically, we would like closure, but pragmatically (and following Godel) we are not going to get it. The palliative...to evoke absolutes ...is rife.

I appreciate that Deleuze (an anti-Heideggerian) may differ on these issues and I need to re-acquaint myself with his work. I was not initially impressed by a recent lecture on him.

Interesting. Is Deleuze becoming fashionable in the States? The way you guys pick and toss French philosophers can be puzzling... :-) But in the case of Deleuze, I believe it's a good pick because of his pragmatism and -- dare I say -- philosophical courage in approaching old problems from new angles, eg trying to think through the mind-body problem in a materialist way while respecting the importance and particularities of the mind (rather than reducing it to matter).

Now, searching for who DeLanda was, I found this interesting discussion about Deleuze:

http://www.protevi.com/john/Delanda-Protevi.pdf

in which the following passage might interest you:

“Deleuze’s main contribution to philosophy, it seems to me, is to have rescued realism (as an ontological stance) from the oblivion in which it has been for a century or more. In some philosophical circles to say that the world exists independently of our minds is tantamount to a capital crime. Non-realist philosophers (from positivists to phenomenologists) have created a straw man to kick around: the naive realist, who thinks we have unmediated access to the external world and who holds a correspondence theory of truth. So the key move here was to create a viable alternative form of realism to deprive non-realists of that easy way out.”

:-)

Ça rigole plus!

Hehehehehehehe . . .

You're raining on his parade.

I am growing tired of seeing French philosophers pillaged and abused by people who conveniently misunderstand and misconstrue them at will. I'll save French philosophy from instrumentalisation by A2K poseurs, even if I have to read Derrida in the process !

Don't go overboard . . . you could do yourself an injury . . .

A fact is a very subjective thing.

I could indeed fall in an epistemological crevice, end up trapped in a onthological paradox, or simply die of boredom... yet the Gallic philosophical posture is at stake, no less!!!

Yes it is. Contrary to the perspective of some of our objectivists, It's subjectivity can be its very strength. A great example is seen in the "subjective" conception of time of Jorge Luis Borges:
"Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."
Our task as I see it is not to confirm or repudiate it; it's to understand it.

Olivier se prépare de battre les philistins.

That's a very subjective statement...

The question was: if logic is unreliable and facts are transients, what criteria can we possibly use to assess philosophies?

Ideally, such criteria should be able to work at the inter-subjective level: we should be able to agree on them and their use. If not, we're left with philosophy as a purely aesthetic and highly personal pursuit, like poetry or music, and there's no point discussing philosophy on A2K other than to share our personal aesthetic preferences, like on Letty's A2K radio channel: "I love Frank Sinatra" - "Me too but prefer Liza Minelli"....

Philosophy can be just as "aesthetic" as it is "scientific." We can share our insights--to the extent that we can--it's not only about competition.

I don't think philosophy can be scientific, but that may be for another thread.

Sharing is fine with me. The issue is that the 'naive irrealists' among us are constantly using words such as "rejected", "flawed", etc. but never ever explained on what basis can any philosophical idea possibly be rejected, since they consider facts as transients and logic as dispensable.

In short, if you want to call my philosophy flawed, that's fine and even interesting for me, but do explain why. If it's just because it's not your cup of tea, or you instinct tells you otherwise, I won't mind too much.