The Half-life of Facts.

Oh. The point about "language being contingent on humanity".
No "humanity" is a concept which like all other concepts is contingent on language. Isn't the chicken and egg game fun !

Ah, but it's not a chicken and egg game--unless you assert that language existed before humanity existed. If you make that claim, i'd say you're just substituting communication--something many forms of life do--for language, for the express purpose of avoiding the appearance of ever being wrong. Do you allege that there was never a time when there was no humanity? Do you you allege that having a concept of something invalidates that something's place in reality (objective reality, not the word game reality you usually employ)?

I allege that "time" like all other concepts is a psycholingistic construct. So to talk about a concept of "reality" or "language" prior to humans is a psychological sleight of hand involving current humans observing hypothetical scenarios "in the mind's eye", for the purpose of causal reasoning to current events. A "reality" without an observer of it (albeit in the mind's eye) is meaningless. And unlike Berkely, I don't evoke "God the ultimate observer" as a solution.

Once again, that there is a concept, that we can conceive of something, is not evidence that that something does not have a place in reality separate from our conception. That there might be a species specific reality is not evidence that there is no objective reality. Acknowledging an objective reality is not the same as claiming that there is a god. There is evidence for objective reality--there is none that i know of for a deity. You can trot out your epistemological arguments, but you'll still suffer personally from kicking the rock.

The support of other thinkers in the field is not evidence, it is just more speculation. I suspect that you react so badly to people who challenge your ideas because you have so long steeped in the academic atmosphere. You very likely do not react well to students who reject your allegedly informed opinions (something about which you prate as though no one who does not agree with has opinions which are informed). You treat people here as though they were students, or ought to be your students, as you dispense revealed truth from the scripture of your list of authorities. Those authorities are offering opinion and speculation no less than you are. The ability to craft intricate arguments is not evidence of the validity of said arguments.

I wasn't wringing my hands over your snotty remarks. I was just pointing them out as evidence of how poorly you react to anyone who will not agree with your views on this subject. In the last thread in which i asked you "Whence humanity?" (although it was not in exactly those words), you immediately descended into vicious personal remarks. I haven't mentioned history at all in this thread, other than inferentially in asking you whence humanity, and i have not offered any historical views on that subject. This is just a case of you sneering because you're offended that i don't worship your pop stars as you think i ought.

Once again, try to discuss this without the disobliging persona remarks. If Derrida or Wittgenstein are offended by my remarks, perhaps they will rise from their respective graves to assail me. How do you know they would be offended by being called pop stars, and why would you equate presonal remarks you make about me with calling them pop stars? You're not making sense, which is no news.

I don't invoke god for any reason. I also don't ignore the abundant evidence of empirical, naturalistic science--a tool you employ if convenient to your arguments, but lay aside if it doesn't suit.

We could carry on ad infinitum about the concept of "evidence". But surely such a concept is meaningful in what we call scientfic or causal paradigms but not when facticity itself is under scrutiny. This is a central point which seems to elude you. Now I am aware that your gut response to this might be to accuse me of avoiding your questions, but one outcome of reading the literature is to recognize that some "questions" are inappropriate to the level of analysis being attempted. And here I emphasise the word "attempt" because this is counter-intuitive stuff with perhaps little in the way of tangible results. However, one conclusion of Wittgenstein was to view philosophy as "therapy" insofar that it could identify and dissipate pseudo-problems such as those, for example,related to the nature of "ultimate truth" or "evidence for a deity". Here his concept of "language games" comes to the fore where words like "evidence" or "truth" which have functional status in one context have no extension to another context.

I cannot agree. Evidence from empirical, naturalistic science is very much to the point in a discussion of facticity. Meillassoux's definition of facticity is the ultimate example of question begging, because it assumes as a premise an absence of reason for reality. That is called, in the parlance of inappropriate card players, stacking the deck. Essentially, you have now defaulted to your favorite rhetorical position, which is that if one does not agree with you, it must obviously be because that one is not capable of understanding the subtleties of your religious faith . . . excuse me, your opinion.

I thought we had transcended the level of the personal. Obviously not.
I refer you to the text I opened this thread with and see if you understand that.
I have nothing further to add other than my own reservations on some of its conclusions.

Well, Bubba, you started it, so don't whine about being paid in your own coin. (It is interesting that you consider an allegation that you have a religious faith to be a personal slur.)

Thanks for your interest in my miserable posts. Crypto-crystalline is very different from crystalline, so my statement stands.

Not necessarily, i still think you're wrong. However, i cannot for the life of me account for your decision that your posts are miserable. What is the source of your sorrow?

The mini-review to which you linked seemed to suggest that the book was only talking about "scientific facts," not facts in general. As it states: That's not terribly new or interesting - we've known that new facts displace old ones since about the time that Archimedes ran around Syracuse naked shouting "Eureka!" The rate at which new facts displace old facts is of some interest, but not the phenomenon itself.

But then scientific facts are always subject to change. If they weren't, they wouldn't be scientific. That, however, still leaves plenty of facts that are non-scientific, such as historical facts, unaccounted for. As has been pointed out already, the truth of the statement "it rained yesterday in Chicago" has a half-life of forever. That statement is either true or false, and subsequent discoveries won't change it.

Rest assured I am not wrong. The reason a flintstone fragment cuts well is the same reason a glass fragment can cut pretty well, and it has no relation with crystals.

And my posts are miserable simply because they are mine, rather not yours...

Olivier essentially says the same thing here:



Unsurprisingly, Fresco had no comment on that. The post was not addressed to him, which is his only excuse.

I really cannot be held responsible for the neuroses of your posts.

The Wikipedia definition of cryptocrystalline contradicts you:

"Its crystalline nature is only vaguely revealed even microscopically" basically means it does not really behave as a crystal but rather as a paste, i.e. a natural glass, even though there are microscopic crystals in the paste.

I'm sure you're right, Bubba . . . you're never wrong, are you?

I'm wrong when I am wrong, not necessarily when you say I am... Don't try me on natural science e.g. geology or biology, not that I know everything but you're out of your league there. You don't even understand what you read on wikipedia about these matters, as you just made obvious.

Yes. This was one of the reservations I had about this text. I only have access to chapter one and I was hoping the book would deal with Kuhnian paradigm shifts involving the dynamic covariance of scientific communities with what is considered to be relevent data. Or by extrapolation, the covariance of linguistic communities with what they consider to be "reality".

And in answer to the Hitler question, it is conceivable, but currently unlikely, that a future society might evolve where reference to infamous 20th. century characters is discouraged, banned or officially altered as in Orwell's "Ministry of Truth". I take the controversial view that "existence" is always relative, never absolute, and that the "existence of Hitler" is/was a function of those for whom it might matter. On this viewpoint "it"(the nebulous Hitler phenomenon) may cease to "exist" because it will cease to matter.

Those with the conventional view of "objective existence" will no doubt disagree with me and none of us having been affected by the Hitler phenomenon has much chance of communing with a hypothetical person who has not. But I would say it is interesting to compare the current existential status of "a Hitler" with that of "a Jesus+2000 years".

Whether people are allowed or interested to talk about Hitler is another matter. The point is that, the moment you disseminate relativist ideas about his existence, you're playing the same game that Faurisson and other holocaust deniers are playing.