The Half-life of Facts.

Yet, in playing your semantic game, you want to claim that your mumbo-jumbo non-dualism is a fact and not a belief. It is hilarious the way you and Fresco present your claims as though they were fact, while denying that there is any such thing as a fact. You then dismiss contradictions as a means of avoiding that contradiction.

The concepts of dualism and non-dualism are a creation of Hindu theology thousands of years ago, even before your boy the putative Buddha came along. It is appropriate that you appeal to a theological concept given that you and Fresco are peddling your own religious creeds.

The definition doesn't.

But the definition of "absolute reality" makes "absolute reality" fall outside the definition of "fact".

No it doesn't. That is semantic nonsense, the only thing in this rhetorical exchange for which you've shown a talent.

A current view in the philosophy of biology suggests that species are individuals, which would mean that we're all, in some way, connected to a larger spatio-temporal entity known as homo sapiens sapiens.

If you accept that view, we're already there. :p

Cyracuz...you have fallen off the edge. This is the sort of thing that happens when a "belief system" corrupts your mind and ability to reason.

You don't get it do you. "Provenance" is just another concept dear to the parochial hearts of historians based on the concepts of "causality" and "time" neither of which has "legs" in physics. Even "human" is a concept with physiological, communicative, and cultural implications. And it is typical of the ignorant to denigrate those who would expose them as zealots. Mind you, in your case you denigrate anybody who disagrees with you as "clowns" so it looks like we have been honoured in this case by illiciting a higher degree of denigration.

I am certainly attracted to an adage of Heidegger:
<<Language speaks the man >>
which might be interepreted as "societies structure individuals"

Yes, at least offering some outdoor exercise for intellectual curiosity -- just anything to break the monotony of Western convention wallowing around in its own apartment day after day. Some strange bedfellows at times back in those days when the Frenchmen and Rorty were still alive -- in a social if not ideological compatible sense. I remember finding it a tad surprising that Searle felt respect for Foucault.

Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle, February 2000 issue of Reason

Searle: With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.

Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That's very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether.

I think I sort of understand Richard Rorty's view, because I've talked to him more, and he's perfectly clearheaded in conversation. What Rorty would say is that he doesn't really deny that there's an external world. He thinks nobody denies that. What Rorty says is that we never really have objective knowledge of that reality. We ought to adopt a more pragmatic approach and think of what we call "truth" as what's useful to believe. So we shouldn't think of ourselves as answerable to an independently existing reality, though he wouldn't deny that there is such a thing.

The problem that all these guys have is that once you give me that first premise--that there is a reality that exists totally independently of us--then the other steps follow naturally. Step 1, external realism: You've got a real world that exists independently of human beings. And step 2: Words in the language can be used to refer to objects and states of affairs in that external reality. And then step 3: If 1 and 2 are right, then some organization of those words can state objective truth about that reality. Step 4 is we can have knowledge, objective knowledge, of that truth. At some point they have to resist that derivation, because then you've got this objectivity of knowledge and truth on which the Enlightenment vision rests, and that's what they want to reject.
. . .
[EARLIER INTERVIEWER INTRO] ...Searle believes that the world is in fact real, not a mere construct of texts and word games, and that we can understand that real world--a position known as "metaphysical realism." He is famous as a vocal and vigorous defender of reason, objectivity, and intellectual standards within the academy. In 1977, he engaged in a highly publicized and often nasty debate over deconstruction's logical incoherence with French critic Jacques Derrida.]

I'd modify his "You've got a real world that exists independently of human beings" to "You've got a real, interpersonally available world in external perceptions that behaves independently of the individual wills and wishes of human beings". But that's just the old, lingering confine oneself to minimal metaphysical doctrine positivist still splashing around in me.

Oh, i get it. You're displaying all the traits of the religious fanatic, including the claim that those who don't agree with are ignorant, don't get it, are incapable of understanding--because, after all, if they could understand, they'd agree with you. Sneers about historians and phony and ignorant claims about physics won't underpin your religious dogma. You deny that there are facts, and then appeal to naturalistic scientific investigation to substantiate your dubious claims. You're really got a gall to talk about denigration--whether or not you accept a concept of linear time, you still have to account for the describers in the descriptivist scenario you construct. Confronted with the demand to account for those descriptors, you sink right down to personal smears. You get out of this what you put into it.

I happen to think that philosophers are the wisest of all humans. I acknowledge this is just a personal opinion…but it so ingrained that even when I am reading the works of a scientist, I tend to put more value in the inferences drawn from the scientists’ science than in the science itself. This is to say, that I tend to put more value in the “philosophical” aspect of his/her science.

All that considered…I am astounded at how philosophers are willing to make the same mistakes made by primitive humans.…that of giving too much credence to humans...much more than the big picture seems to indicate they are due.

The Earth seems to be a small pebble circling what seems to be a not especially significant star in what seems to be a not especially significant galaxy in a family of over a hundred billion galaxies of which we are aware. We are creatures living on this pebble.

How can learned people put so much stock in what we are…and in what we might mean to REALITY?

Granted…we humans may be one of the most advanced organisms in the cosmos. No way to tell right now...and it is possible that whenever an evolving entity gets about to where we are at the moment...it destroys itself. So we could be pretty hot stuff in the universe.

But even if we are…how can anyone think that REALITY depends on what we can or cannot sense, understand or explain?

Rorty, if not Feyerabend as well, has occasionally served as my poster-boy for what eliminative materialism eventually leads to if fully following the road of its consequences. Not intended disparagingly so much as what a party of EM'ers might react to as or consider an undesired outcome of their ironically held "beliefs".

By the way . . . is that a fact? You deny that there are any facts, stating it as a fact. You offer nothing but ipse dixit claims and appeals to authority, and then spray the thread with insults against those who don't accept that paltry and unsuccessful attempt to underpin your religious dogma.

I think your celebrated "Hehehehehe......" would be a good answer to that !

You are confronting nobody because "accounting for" is what naive realists attempt to do blinkered to the fact (sic) that they are involved in a wild goose chase for ultimate axioms.

But of course, everything's got to be confrontational to you hasn't it Set ? Confrontation is your favourite modus operandi.

You call people "naïve realists" (you should really learn to spell that word properly), you call them ignorant, you claim that they cannot understand what you are saying--and all merely because they won't agree with you. Now you want to add "confrontational" to your list of flimsy insults. Help yourself, i responded to this thread, despite the fact that you couldn't get past page two without grossly mischaracterizing the book review you posted in the OP, and i responded to with a reference to Contrex's point about a boiling point. There was no confrtontation there. You only get confrontation when you trot out your "naïve realist" straw man and start telling people they are ignorant, or incapable of understanding.

You just come here as though it were some vast lecture hall, and one in which there are so many unruly students who wont'accept what you say. People won't accept what you say because you have no plausible basis for what you say, and you expect to dictate what facts there are, what reality there is, based solely upon either you personal authority (a dubious proposition) or appeals to the authority of others, who have no better bases for their ipse dixit claims. As always, when cornered, you make it into a personal matter, because you are incapable of handling criticism or contradiction. After all, this is your religious creed--how dare anyone dispute you.

Seconds away....round 96 !

How very confrontational your attitude is.

And all we need now is Frank's "but I luv you guys" and we can all go home!

It seems to me that one of the problems is that you're already at home, and have a computer and way too much time on your hands.

Time ?

Think about it, Set.

Here is what your credible source says about "absolute reality".



So you say that this absolute reality exists.
You assign it the attribute "exists", and includes it in your knowledge as fact.

But how can that be "absolute reality" if it is defined as "unaffected by the knowledge of any finite being"?
Any reality that is described by humans, and divided into many little facts by humans, is most decidedly affected by the knowledge of any finite being.

So "absolute reality" is a logical ghost, like god. Because of how it is defined it can never be demonstrated, and so it cannot be called a fact.