The Half-life of Facts.

@Cyracuz,

Well, of course, i said a realiable source, and meant for the English language--i did refer to it as a "credible source." You are free not to believe it if you choose. The entry you cite also does not refer to absolute reality--it refers to ultimate reality. Play word games much?

Yes, based on the fact that we are here, and that we are communicating, i believe on a very sound basis that a reality exists which is independent of our cognition or consensus about its nature. It is precisely because this ultimate (once again, Merriam-Webster's online dictionary did not use the term absolute) reality is not affected by perception or knowledge that its existence is so plausible--it accounts for the describers among the descriptivists, whether or not you or Fresco are willing to make such a simple effort. You are jumping out in front to beg the question, this time by making an unsubstantiated assertion. The definition has stated that this ultimate reality is unaffected by perception or knowledge, so of course it is not a reality described by humans. The only ghost here is your claim to a sound argument.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

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.

This happens in philosophy all the time. Broadly speaking, it happens a lot in the humanities. :/

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@Ding an Sich,

Perhaps because it has been more than 30 years since i worked in an academic setting my patience for this has eroded.

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By the way, i fully acknowledge that academic historians can be some of the worst for this sort of thing, and very petty.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

The definition has stated that this ultimate reality is unaffected by perception or knowledge, so of course it is not a reality described by humans

And yet you think of it as more real than the experience by which you know of it.

Even if everything points to an "absolute reality", there was a time when everything pointed to an allmighty god. There are those who still claim god exists based on the same kind of bullshit Frank has been peddling in here, for instance.

Quote:

Yes, based on the fact that we are here, and that we are communicating, i believe on a very sound basis...

Based on the fact that we are here... or in other words, on the experience we are having.
Reality is what we live in every day. It is not whatever is out there if we are not here to name it for ourselves and describe it.

Quote:

The entry you cite also does not refer to absolute reality--it refers to ultimate reality. Play word games much?

Actually, if you do a search of "absolute reality" it directs to that page. And you will note that the term being explained is "absolute reality" in which "ultimate" is used in the definition. Misunderstand much?

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Even if everything points to an "absolute reality", there was a time when everything pointed to an allmighty god.

Your comparison isn't sound. Every man is an island and the variety of our personal realities sometimes makes us wonder if we all live in the same world, but I still think we do. The hypothesis that you and I live in the same universe, the same space populated by the same stuff, seems obvious to me. I don't know how we could communicate otherwise. And when I play ball wirh someone, we both throw and catch the same ball. This ball and everything else evidently exists at the inter-subjective level. So the hypothesis that there exists an objective reality comes naturally and explains the facts very well. Much better than the opposite hypothesis.

And the idea that we all share the same world is useful socially, it's collaborative. Eg all scientists can collaborate in their task because they work on the same reality. Even and especially if they have different theories about this common reality.

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@fresco,

Quote:

To re-iterate the point I made about "the world prior to humans", I said that "time" is a human concept. So "prior world" is also a human concept constructed for present day purposes involving "causality" another human concept and prediction, another human concept and control another human concept.

Since every concept we know of is a human concept, humans cannot know anything about their own onthology??? How does that follow?

Just because I can think of you Fresco as a concept doesn't mean your body and your mind will stop to exist. Concepts and thoughts have no such destructive power. Just because we have a concept of time doesn't imply that time is an illusion.

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@G H,

Quote:

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.

I never read Foucault to be honest but he was a brilliant, committed, focused man so I am not as surprised as you are. Not all anglos harbor the same prejudice as you do. Smile

Foucault was probably right about Derrida's obscurity/ambiguity. It was by design. I suspect the same applies to Hegel and Heidegger.

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@Olivier5,

You have used two words there.."knowledge" and "existence" whose everyday use is unproblematic, but whose philosophical import cannot be assumed. I have expanded on this elsewhere (see my posting history) and do not intend to do so yet again. You have chosen to reject the half-life thesis on facticicity on the basis of a "logical argument" despite acknowledged problems with "logic" by those working at the frontiers of what we call "knowledge". I therefore have nothing further to say to you other than that you appear to be in a cognitive box of your own making.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

And yet you think of it as more real than the experience by which you know of it.

Straw man, i said nothing ot the kind. I have made no value judgments about descriptions of reality as opposed to objective reality.

You keep prating about absolute reality. I suggest that you get a mirror and argue with yourself, because i have not articulated a concept of "absolute" reality, and have no brief to defend a concept that you made up.

There was never a time when "everything pointed to an almighty god." There is a valid distinction to be made between ignorance-based delusion, and honest attempts to determine the nature of the reality of which we are a part--no matter how many pathetic academic philosophers attempt to make a living out of disputing the issue.

Quote:

Based on the fact that we are here... or in other words, on the experience we are having.

No, i did not say that--you must make **** up to argue against. People in a persistent vegetative state are here, but there is no evidence that they experience anything, and evidence in some cases that they experience nothing. Rocks are here, but i know of no evidence that rocks experience anything.

Quote:

Reality is what we live in every day. It is not whatever is out there if we are not here to name it for ourselves and describe it.

Yeah, i know your religious creed, you don't need to repeat it to me. You also don't need to attempt to peddle it as though you were some kind of oracle.

Quote:

The entry you cite also does not refer to absolute reality--it refers to ultimate reality. Play word games much?

Quote:

Actually, if you do a search of "absolute reality" it directs to that page. And you will note that the term being explained is "absolute reality" in which "ultimate" is used in the definition. Misunderstand much?

The one who chronically misunderstands around here is you, because of your poor command of the English language and your willful lies about what words mean in English. One can do a search for almost any term and get a definition--that doesn't authorize taking that particular ball and running with it. This is just more of your typical question begging. You go out to find a definition to suit your argument, rather than conducting an investigation to determine what you will argue for. You have an agenda, and all you are doing is cobbling together (rather feeble) arguments to support it.

I won't be playing your idiotic word games any longer, because that's all you're doing, you're playing a game. You have established nothing by doing so.

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Is this a discussion thread or a "let's see who can use the biggest fanciest words" thread?
You atheistic philosophers remind me of airy-fairy Morris dancers, all pointlessly waltzing round in circles without going anywhere.. Smile

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub3/morris.jpg

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@Setanta,

Quote:

The one who chronically misunderstands around here is you, because of your poor command of the English language and your willful lies about what words mean in English.

This made me laugh. My command of the English language is not poor.
The amount of **** you are able to peddle in that post is impressive though.
You make absolutely no valid counter arguments, only ridicule based on rather silly use of semantics.

The comparison between those who believe in absolute reality and those who believe in god is a good one. Both concepts are completely elusive, and claiming the existence of either is a matter of belief.
There is no getting around this.

The concept of absolute reality may be useful and it certainly corresponds to our intuitive understanding of things. But that does not change that due to how it is defined, it can never have the status of fact.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

The comparison between those who believe in absolute reality...

If by "absolute reality" you are talking about what I usually refer to as Ultimate REALITY...then there is no reason to "believe" (or guess) about it.

It simply has to be.

Whatever IS, Cyracuz...IS. That is the Ultimate REALITY.

It simply IS whatever IS in this existence.

I do not know the true nature of the Ultimate REALITY of existence. I don't think you do either.

But something IS happening here...even if just what I am experiencing.

So you are correct that "what I am experiencing" MAY BE ALL of REALITY...but it also MAY NOT BE.

Why are you so reluctant to concede that?

Why are you so insistent that you KNOW that REALITY is only that which you experience?

I cannot think of how you can possibly know that (short of you being GOD)...so could you explain how you do. Perhaps that could help me understand where are coming from, because you seem to be coming from the kind of position inhabited mostly by very devoted theists.

And if you cannot give a satisfactory answer, perhaps it can give you an opportunity to re-assess your position.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I therefore have nothing further to say to you other than that you appear to be in a cognitive box of your own making.

Well, good. To me (and to Setanta I guess) it seems you had nothing coherent to say in the first place. To you, the very idea of coherence with logic and facts needs to be rejected as philosophically cheesy. It seems we agree about the merits of what you're saying after all.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Reality is what we live in every day. It is not whatever is out there if we are not here to name it for ourselves and describe it.

That may be true in some language, but that language wouldn't be English. In English, reality means "the true situation that exists; the real situation; something that actually exists or happens ; a real event, occurrence, situation, etc." (Merriam Webster). In other words, reality is whatever is out there.

What you're doing here isn't philosophy. What you're doing is as philosophically-sophisticated as redefining a table as a chair. Then you make a stunning philosophical observation: people don't sit on chairs, they sit around chairs. And then you sell this observation as a stunning philosophical insight, a triumph over this crude notion of naive chairism that Setanta and I keep clinging to.

But the fact --- yes, fact! --- is that you are not promulgating any insight whatsoever. You are just using words that sound like they're English when they're actually not.

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@Cyracuz,

When you attempt to pretend that you can define words as you choose, and in opposition to the standard definitions of words in the English language, then your English is not only poor, it sucks. Of course, all of this is because you want to re-tool English so that it supports your thesis in advance, so that it serves to beg the question for you. Your English is a travesty.

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@Thomas,

Mmmmmmmmmmm . . . cheese . . .

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@Thomas,

The criticism of "not doing philosophy" cannot be substantiated by reference to a dictionary definition. Philosophers of language (Wittgenstein, Quine, Rorty, Sellars, derrida etc) have pointed out that meaning/significance of a word is always contextual, and not only that, examination of context is itself a new context !

In non-philosophical situations involving use of the word "reality", nobody reaches for a dictionary. "Reality" constitutes a contextual negotiation of "what is is the case." Such negotiation involves implied experience or projected experience /expectancy.

If you rephrase your criticism as "not doing analytical philosophy" then you may have a case, because recent moves in pragmatism, constructivism and post-modernism reflected in Cyr's case are indeed iconoclastic which respect to traditional positions. But note too that a central issue evoked by the "half-life of facts" is that it seems to reinforce the iconoclasm levelled at pedantic statements about "reality" (such as those found in a dictionary) , and to warn us about sticking our necks out beyond the bounds of experience.

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@fresco,

The half life of facts is a reference to a book review which you have only employed as a launching pad to once again ride your favorite hobby horse. You have not referred to the book which was being reviewed, which is, i suspect, because you haven't read it. From the book review, it seems clear that the author speaks of scientific facts, and how the inclusion of new data can invalidate what once were taken as facts. That does not change that in naturalistic science, a fact is that which can be demonstrated, without reference to language or culture. Chinese scientists do the same replicable scientific investigation without speaking the same languages and without having the same cultural antecedents as scientists in the west, and reach the same conclusions. You're a fraud when you try to use that book review to attempt to support your religious dogma.

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This thread has become a cross between Morris Dancing, handbag-fighting, a fancy-wordfest semantics duel, and petty soap-opera squabbling which is a pity because it gets Philosophers a bad name.
A great story I heard that illustrates the unfettered ability of true philosophers to think outside the box is when a Philosophy teacher held up a pencil and told his class- "I want you all to write an essay about this pencil before the end of the lesson".
The guy who got top marks wrote an essay consisting of just two words- "What pencil?"

Great stuff.. Smile

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The Half-life of Facts.

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