The Half-life of Facts.

@Setanta,

Second away...round 97.

Set opens with a "hobby horse" to the head followed by a "fraud to the stomach".
Fresco counters with metalinguistic and paradigmatic parries aimed at the brain but the target is either too small or too insulated by scar tissue from a lifetime of brawling.
"Hah !" snarls Set..."You're telling me to read stuff and you ain't read stuff yourself you clown !"
" Get a new pair of glasses Setty boy ! Those you've got are given away free with Reader's Digest !"

Ding ! What fun !

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@fresco,

Quote:

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.

Would you have a list of those words you don't want use to use? That'd be handy.... Wink

Quote:

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.

I already knew you have nothing to say, to me in particular, but thanks for confirming. And by the way you just used one of your forbidden words.

I have something to tell you though, which is that the thesis that facts have a half-life is simplistic, even if one accepts the post-modern epistemologic view that facts are human constructs based on observation, ie 'facts as perceptions'. These 'facts' will only rarely 'die'. Most of them evolve, they morph into very similar facts interpreted differently. Even those who die often make little babies before they do. The right metaphor is BIOLOGICAL, not quantic.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

A more important consideration with regard to Fresco's hobby horse is that before human understanding, there was a reality, and there were facts which lead to the evolution of humanity. Fresco consistently dodges the question of the provenance of humanity when i ask it because he recognizes the fatal flaw in his little word game.

I was talking to Cyr, who has taken refuge in a slightly different version of nihilism, where he states that reality existed before man but in a sort of undifferentiated, global way, without categories and 'things' identified within it. According to his view, categories would be a pure product of human language, and would only be created when Man started to identify and name things, as in Genesis.

Against that, I was arguing that reality has always been structured, e.g. in different animal and vegetal species. I was also pointing to the existence of language before human language: DNA. If there is ONE language that can construct and structure the world, it is DNA. You can't make a human being with a dictionary or even with Gray's anatomy, but you can with DNA.

In short, the central place given to humans in Cyr's theory is what bothers me the most. Such glorification of our species in philosophy is totally outdated, it is a vestige of religion and god making man at His resemblance.

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@Olivier5,

This childish thesis also ignores that there may be other sentient species on our planet (such as the cetaceans) and, of course, that there may be other sentient species elsewhere than on our planet. That is why i characterized this earlier in the thread as playing in a puddle and calling it the sea.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The criticism of "not doing philosophy" cannot be substantiated by reference to a dictionary definition.

I'm not referring to a dictionary to substantiate that you're not doing philosophy. I'm referring to a dictionary to substantiate that you're not doing English.

That being said, your disregard for the proper usage of English does handicap your philosophy. If you want to make a philosophical case that there is nothing "out there", just say it. Jusy say there is no reality, and that thinking that there is is a delusion. Then go on and present the logic and evidence supporting your case. But when you just redefine the term "reality" to mean what "the individual's subjective experience of reality" means in standard English, you're not making any case at all. You're just muddying the waters to pretend that they're deep. That's what wannabe philosophers do. Real philosophers, continental or analytic, are better than that.

fresco wrote:

In non-philosophical situations involving use of the word "reality", nobody reaches for a dictionary.

That's because nonphilosophers don't make bold statements about the nature of reality. Those who do should make it a habit of consulting dictionaries, whether they're philosophers or not. As a second-language speaker of English, I keep finding myself astonished by the sheer ignorance of allegedly-academic first-language speakers about the meaning of English words.

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What we have here with Cyracuz and Fresco is the Humpty Dumpty theory of language, as explained by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass, 1872:

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

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@Thomas,

Like Cy, I have implied that the word "reality" becomes equivalent to a religious position when it refers to anything specific beyond human experience. Nothing can be said about such "reality" that adds to our understanding of our interaction with what we call the world. Now obviously experiences appear to differ, and even as an atheist I can understand those who claim "knowledge of the reality of God". To me this implies that see themselves interacting with a world ordained by a divinity. Their co-believers reinforce that experience with appropriate contextual language. Such an interpretation of "reality" has nothing to do with ontology; it is about "what works for them" . Those who would claim that "reality" can ever be an "experience free zone" are in my opinion, paying the price of a set of parochial vested interests.

And BTW the phrase "doing English" is what happened at school according to a time-table. Philosophy of language in general, and semantic analysis in particular, is an entirely different ball game ,the recent philosophical epitome of which was die Kehre (the turn) first associated with Wittgenstein and Heidegger. With the advent of psychology Die Kehre constituted a displacement of focus the subject matter of philosophy from "thought" to "language". The Lee-Whorf citation from G.H. above indicates the assumed linkage between the two.

You complain about "lack of coherence" of what I and some other posters are saying,but unless you have at least a passing knowledge of recent philosophical developments such as those described above, you will be unaware that you are wandering in foreign territory without a compass.

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@Olivier5,

Close, Olivier, but not quite.

Quote:

In short, the central place given to humans in Cyr's theory is what bothers me the most.

Let me clarify... Humans hold a central place in human reality. Humans may be completely irrelevant to chimpanzee reality, in which chimpanzees hold a central place.
Flies are central to fly reality, where humans may also be irrelevant.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand.
I do not claim that humans are central to reality happening.
I claim that humans are central to anything humans can say and know about reality. In that sense we partially create the reality we perceive.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

This childish thesis also ignores that there may be other sentient species on our planet (such as the cetaceans)

Exactly. Pretty much all mammals and birds have a mental life IMO, sometimes also a social life mediated by all sorts of signals, and even octopuses seem to display amazing problem-solving abilities... So the idea of Man on top of its ivory tower, naming things into existence is rather dated. It's pre-Darwinian in fact.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Like Cy, I have implied that the word "reality" becomes equivalent to a religious position when it refers to anything specific beyond human experience.

Nonsense. I can't experience electrons or quarks. Nevertheless, I can construct scientific experiments, run them, read the instruments, and infer that electrons are real things. And it isn't the experiment that made them real things. Electrons are no more or less real today than they were in the days of Aristotle, who had no clue about them.

fresco wrote:

And BTW the phrase "doing English" is what happened at school according to a time-table. Philosophy of language in general, and semantic analysis in particular, is an entirely different ball game ,the recent philosophical epitome of which was die Kehre (the turn) first associated with Wittgenstein and Heidegger.

Are you expecting to impress me with rank-pulling and name-dropping? If so, it's not working.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

You complain about "lack of coherence" of what I and some other posters are saying,but unless you have at least a passing knowledge of recent philosophical developments such as those described above, you will be unaware that you are wandering in foreign territory without a compass.

This paragraph deserves a separate answer. It's a fallacy known as "the courtier's reply". As the Rational Wiki puts it, "The Courtier's Reply is a term popularized by biologist/blogger PZ Myers for a logical fallacy that boils down to: "But you haven't read enough on it! His answer to the fallacy is to say that telling a non-believer that he should study theology before he can properly discuss whether a god exists is like telling the child in the fable to study haute couture before he can properly discuss whether the Emperor is naked."

This, I think, hits the nail on the head. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You don't need an expert tailor to tell that the emperor is naked. And by the same token, you don't need an expert philosopher to tell that there is such a thing as reality. Your attempt to intimidate us with big names is flim-flam, pure and simple.

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@Thomas,

A recent BBC programmwe asked physicists at CERN about "the reality of sub-atomic particles". All of them said the term "reality" was inappropriate. "Useful constructs which helped generate and account for observations" was the most common reply.

It never ceases to amaze me how mention of the names of celebrated philosophers (other than Descartes) brings howls of "appeals to authority" from non-philosophers. I can't work out whether this is because such moaners find these writers too hard to understand, or whether they don't understand the importance of paradigmatic development and interplay within the history of philosophy in establishing a semantic frame of reference. Either way, omission of essential referencing would flunk any candidate on Philosophy 101.

BTW I have never said "reality does not exist". I have said that lay views of "reality" and "existence" are inappropriate to a discussion of facticity. Lay usage of words is like driving a car by a non-mechanic. No part/word has functionality/meaning except with respect to the whole dynamic system.

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@Olivier5,

This is hilarious.

You think it's outdated anthropomorphism to state that we humans have created our own understanding of reality.

I think it is outdated anthropomorphism to blatantly assume that however we chose to name and describe reality is the way it definitely, absolutely and ultimately is.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Let me clarify... Humans hold a central place in human reality. Humans may be completely irrelevant to chimpanzee reality, in which chimpanzees hold a central place.
Flies are central to fly reality, where humans may also be irrelevant.

Maybe we can rise above species-specific navel gazing and posit that we all share the same planet? We are relevant to one another. Humans can kill chimps and flies, in fact they do it all the time.

To think about ecology, we must posit the existence of a mind-independent and species-independent reality.

It's also necessary to understand curiosity. There's nothing to be curious of if reality = what we know about reality.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

I think it is outdated anthropomorphism to blatantly assume that however we chose to name and describe reality is the way it definitely, absolutely and ultimately is.

That's indeed a very dated thesis, pre-platonic I'd say. Nobody defended that strawman here. We're just saying that a reality exists independently of what we humans (and cats and rats) happen to think about it. We don't predend it's equal to what we think about it. In fact we are saying the exact opposite: that one needs to maintain a distinction between reality and what we think we know about it.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

And by the same token, you don't need an expert philosopher to tell that there is such a thing as reality

I agree. But you need one hell of a philosopher to demonstrate as fact that "reality" has any meaning outside of what can potentially be experienced. After all, what you just said is that you only need the experience of reality to state that there is reality. On the other hand you need magical powers to demonstrate "absolute reality".

Set accuses me of twisting definitions of words to prove some point, which is really lame of him, because even he admits that "reality" is the thing we experience continuously with all our senses.
It is not "absolute reality" because that is defined as "unaffected by the perception or knowledge of any finite beings".
And yet he claims "absolute reality" exists. That is nothing short of religion.

If we humans were able to swap out our senses for completely different ones, we might discover that a lot of facts and knowledge we had about reality just isn't valid anymore. We might get eyes that see a different specter of radiation, through which reality would appear completely different, for instance, and every fact we knew about vision and what the world looks like would have to be revised.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Maybe we can rise above species-specific navel gazing and posit that we all share the same planet?

Can you demonstrate that "reality" is a meaningful term outside of such species-specific context?

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Close, Olivier, but not quite.

Quote:
In short, the central place given to humans in Cyr's theory is what bothers me the most.

Let me clarify... Humans hold a central place in human reality. Humans may be completely irrelevant to chimpanzee reality, in which chimpanzees hold a central place.
Flies are central to fly reality, where humans may also be irrelevant.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand.
I do not claim that humans are central to reality happening.
I claim that humans are central to anything humans can say and know about reality. In that sense we partially create the reality we perceive.

Baloney! You claim a heck of a lot more than that.

You claim that what "humans can say and know about reality"...IS ALL THERE IS TO REALITY.

But REALITY may be (and almost certainly is) more than that.

You know that you have been claiming that right from the start, Cyracuz, but rather than simply acknowledge that you are wrong...you try to pussyfoot your way out of the problem you have created for yourself.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Can you demonstrate that "reality" is a meaningful term outside of such species-specific context?

It is obviously a meaningful term for people believing in the existence of an objective, mind-independent reality.

But even if one limits oneself to 'reality as perception', by logical necessity there exists a common 'space' in which you and I are talking and sharing perceptions. How do you picture that space?

That's inter-personal, and holds true for all sentient species. At the very very least, reality exists at the inter-specific level, the subject matter of ecology.

From saying 'we all share the same environment' to assuming our planet earth has some sort of objective 'thingness' to it, is a baby step. Maybe it's a leap of faith, but it's a small one. And earth must be in some environment so we all share the same astronomic reality. The cosmos is one. It exists by necessity, as our environment. Our common context.

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@Frank Apisa,

Sorry, Frank, but I cannot account for any absurdities you might have read into my words.

Quote:

You claim that what "humans can say and know about reality"...IS ALL THERE IS TO REALITY.

Well, can you think of anything we can't say or know that wouldn't be hypothetical?

This is no longer about what reality actually is. It's about the limits of language and logic.
If something is defined as inaccessible to our senses (the only means we have of detecting reality), how the hell can it be called REALITY?
It might exist. We cannot know, so it's hypothetical. An assumption.

So, the only reality we can be entirely certain exists is the reality we experience with our senses, and which we describe and predict.

1 Reply

The Half-life of Facts.

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