The Half-life of Facts.

@fresco,

What you should be concerned with explaining is how on hell did we were able to transcend our Biological apparatus given our species limitation within your train of thought...
...its funny that you just admit something of ultimate importance against your point in this discussion and haven't notice it yet..

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@Fil Albuquerque,

What do you mean by "ultimate importance". Are you referring to the ability to invent transducers ?

If you read my summary (pages back) you might note my suggestion that language is engaged in control purposes. It allows for dialogues involving the what/why/how of control. So the short sighted medieval guy happens to notice that a piece of shaped glass lying on a table allows him to see whats underneath more clearly and he subsequently applies the linguistic W/H questions and ends up as a lens manufacturer. The rest is history as they say.

Tool usage and complexity of language are acknowledged as signs of intelligence. But non-anthropocentrically it could be argued that all three are merely complex control behaviors driven by evolutionary forces.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

What do you mean by "ultimate importance". Are you referring to the ability to invent transducers ?

So the short sighted medieval guy happens to notice that a piece of shaped glass lying on a table allows him to see whats underneath more clearly

I am glad you confirm and acknowledge there is something to be seen more clearly underneath the table which was not previously seen to which language ought to be applied later on.

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@fresco,

It's been fun, but the moment Fil started posting I lost interest.
Reading the **** he writes is about as rewarding as listening to digital-beep versions of Justin Bieber hits.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

You know in what category of philosophers I see Fresco fit in Frank ? Le bon vivent type, a middle aged dandy that reads Le Monde diplomatique in the mornings and delights himself upon vague concepts while indulging in some red wine in the evenings...Fresco is a landscape gazer in love with his own libertarian philosophy, found of lecturing new believers freshly arrived in his congregation...a place where students are guests in his house of wisdom...to my view he should have taken poetry and literature for company without having philosophy in the mix, it sounds he would have far more friends.
I like him but I would like him better ad the distinction been there.

Well, I see him as a lot less than that...and over the years I have told him so. Which accounts for the fact that he sees what I am saying on this issue as nonsense...while he sees what he is saying as brilliant.

Essentially I am saying: I do not know the true nature of the REALITY of existence. Hell, it is a question with which the greatest minds every to exist on Earth have wrestled...and on which they have not come to a definitive conclusion. It could be any of many things...including some things that no human has ever considered...and also including the things that Fresco and Cyracuz guess it to be. All of which I acknowledge.

Fresco insists he knows what the true nature of the REALITY of existence is...and it is only what he says it is.

And he thinks I am speaking nonsense...and he is displaying brilliance.

Oh...he ought to explain to his philosophy group why he burdens a place like A2K with his brilliance rather than spend time with his intellectual peers.

This next comment will be a judgment...and a severely negative one at that. I apologize to everyone reading, but it has to be said right now:

Fresco is a phony...a fraud... from the top of his head to the tip of his toes...and from the moment he awakes until the second he drops off into slumber.

But like Fil...I like him. He has spunk to keep up the act...and he is amusing.

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@Frank Apisa,

I may be bright but hardly "brilliant". Mind you, I suppose the label depends upon whom you are being compared with. Philosophical genius's tend to be the ones who radically change philosophical thinking. Since much of the thinking here can be characterized as antediluvian, and rarely philosophical, observers would have a problem establishing a baseline.

BTW You keep insisting that I assert "the true nature of reality". I have no idea what that phrase means other than how you and other naive realists use it to refer to some sort of nebulous eternal fixed reference frame. I assert that there is no evidence of such a fixed frame and that the word "reality" AS USED IN NORMAL (NON PHILOSOPHICAL) LANGUAGE is always related to shifting contexts of negotiated mutual agreement. And "normal language" (not lay thinking) has become a dominant player in modern philosophical movements. Thus on the basis of evidence, mine is the "secular" claim, and yours is the "religious" claim, but such a reversal is so distasteful to your self integrity that ironically you stick your fingers in your ears and chant your religious mantra of "IS-ness".

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@fresco,

How do we know how mammals other than humans think. Yes, they don't have as sophisticated a language, that we understand. But, they do obviously communicate. How do we know what they think? Their activities we call instinct are prevalent in humans too. Look how we love to fight. There is obviously a big difference in communication ability, maybe because of physical vocal chord capability, but does that mean they have less 'thinking' abilities?

Clearly humans are at the top in capability to create tools, etc. But it looks to me like we behave in a similar instinctual fashion in many ways. And I don't see why our Reality is necessarily different, or species specific. The only thing species specific is our ability to communicate our observations to each other.

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@fresco,

Rest assured you are not 'bright', or you would be able to understand arguments made against your case.

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@IRFRANK,

You are thinking along the lines of Maturana who deflates "language use" to a behavior called "languaging" which some animals also indulge in. Dennett, I think deflated "thought" to language so this would complete the full deflationary argument. Note too that Maturana asserts that all "observation" is verbal insofar as it is reported (even to oneself). We may anthropomorphically talk about "animals observing", but Maturana claims they are operating within an automatic system called "structural coupling" in which their internal systems are molding themselves to external "perturbations". Thus a cat (thing) does not "see" a mouse (thing) and then gave chase. That's the human report which "things" using words. Instead there is, holistically, a chasing involving two structurally coupled life forms.

http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I may be bright but hardly "brilliant". Mind you, I suppose the label depends upon whom you are being compared with. Philosophical genius's tend to be the ones who radically change philosophical thinking. Since much of the thinking here can be characterized as antediluvian, and rarely philosophical, observers would have a problem establishing a baseline.

BTW You keep insisting that I assert "the true nature of reality". I have no idea what that phrase means other than how you and other naive realists use it to refer to some sort of nebulous eternal fixed reference frame. I assert that there is no evidence of such a fixed frame and that the word "reality" AS USED IN NORMAL (NON PHILOSOPHICAL) LANGUAGE is always related to shifting contexts of negotiated mutual agreement. And "normal language" (not lay thinking) has become a dominant player in modern philosophical movements. Thus on the basis of evidence, mine is the "secular" claim, and yours is the "religious" claim, but such a reversal is so distasteful to your self integrity that ironically you stick your fingers in your ears and chant your religious mantra of "IS-ness".

Sounds good...but you are full of it.

Raise you one, because I am getting more of a kick out of this than you: Smile

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@IRFRANK,

IRFRANK wrote:

How do we know how mammals other than humans think. Yes, they don't have as sophisticated a language, that we understand. But, they do obviously communicate. How do we know what they think? Their activities we call instinct are prevalent in humans too. Look how we love to fight. There is obviously a big difference in communication ability, maybe because of physical vocal chord capability, but does that mean they have less 'thinking' abilities?

Clearly humans are at the top in capability to create tools, etc. But it looks to me like we behave in a similar instinctual fashion in many ways. And I don't see why our Reality is necessarily different, or species specific. The only thing species specific is our ability to communicate our observations to each other.

No Frank...it is not their reality and our reality. It is REALITY.

The stuff you are talking about is perceptions of REALITY...and of course there is a difference in perceptions of REALITY between dogs and humans...just as there are differences in perceptions of REALITY between individual humans.

But...something actually IS in this existence...and whether you or Fresco actually "have any idea what it means"...really is not all that important. The REALITY is still the REALITY...what IS...IS.

This entire discussion had more value as entertainment than as true philosophical inquiry.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Benjamin Lee Whorf would ask you whether you could even "think" these comments without human language.

And that would be a silly thing to ask. I couldn't communicate them without language perhaps but I can and do think many things without language. I don't require language to visualize things. Humans are perfectly capable of thinking without language. Children do it before they learn language skills. Language is a short hand, nothing more. Whether we could communicate complex ideas without language is something else entirely but we are simply talking about how we relate to our surroundings here. Unless you are arguing that how we communicate about our surroundings is the only reality we have, which would ignore life in general.

Quote:

I'm underscoring Cyr's point that what we call "reality" is species specific insofar as it is a function of our perceptual apparatus.

Reality is just a term to attempt to describe the world we interact with. How we interact doesn't change our surroundings. It only changes how we perceive them. The only way you can make that argument is to argue that perception is reality. That is hardly true because our perception often doesn't match reality.

Quote:

The fact that humans are able to invent transducers to enhance our physiological apparatus does not explain the nature of subsequent observations without reference to a shifting epistemological paradigm .

Because our knowledge changes doesn't change the underlying reality of our surroundings. People once thought the world was flat. When the knowledge shifted so we believed the world was round, did the world change it's shape? I don't think so. Do you think it did?

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Colour-blind people see the world differently, and because they're a minority, we regard them as having an abnormality.
But supposing there was a world where nearly everybody was colour-blind, they'd regard "normal" people as being the ones with an abnormality.. Smile

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@parados,

Sorry but the subject of this thread is about the changing nature of what we call "facts". I don't intend to indulge in pursuing you along the intellectual trenches of your "realism" position.

As far as I am concerned (from a constructivist point of view) "facts" are constructions which work in certain contexts. The "round earth" works for transcontinental travel, and the "flat earth" works for a bike trip. Now it may be that "the round earth" has more uses than the flat earth, but then an "ovoid earth" might be have even more uses or different uses. I assert that there is no context free specification for "the shape of the earth" even if there is a limit to the number of human uses to which they may be put. And beyond such parochial concerns, persistence of "shape" is purely relative in terms of cosmological time, and any specification of shape would imply the presence of a hypothetical observer to categorize it.

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Let's narrow down my earlier "colour-blind" speculation to just TWO people living on a desert island, one is colour-blind and the other is not.
Each one could therefore put forward the valid claim that ONLY HE is seeing the world correctly, and that the other one is not.
In fact neither of them would know whether he himself is colour-blind or not, because the world would appear perfectly normal to both of them at the same time.. Smile

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@fresco,

What is the context in which the following 'facts' 'work':

-"The holocaust never happened."
- "Climate change is a hoax".
- "Planet earth is shaped like a doughnut."
- "Pi = 7"
- "Fresco is bright."

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@fresco,

Funny but I think it seems to be more the subject of the changing nature of how you want to use the word "facts"

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@fresco,

Quote:

I assert that there is no context free specification for "the shape of the earth" even if there is a limit to the number of human uses to which they may be put.

Duh.. Perception is only relevant to the single person involved. The perception doesn't change the object at all. It only changes the viewpoint of the person.

Someone that wants to use a chair to sit on may see the chair differently from someone that wants to put their coat on it but it doesn't change the chair. It only changes the use of the chair. The fact of the chair hasn't changed only the perception has.

Either you are arguing that perception is reality or you are simply performing an exercise that has no meaning, i.e mental masturbation.

Quote:

I assert that there is no context free specification for "the shape of the earth" even if there is a limit to the number of human uses to which they may be put. And beyond such parochial concerns, persistence of "shape" is purely relative in terms of cosmological time, and any specification of shape would imply the presence of a hypothetical observer to categorize it.

I call BULL ****. Humans are capable of complex thought that deals with many things at once. Because I look at a chair to sit on doesn't mean that is my only viewpoint. I can recognize it as being made of oak. I can recognize it as being of the Crafstman style. I can see many things beyond just the use of sitting on it. Those views of the chair have NOTHING to do with the "context" of wanting to sit on it. They have nothing to do with the fact that I want to sit on it. They are observations that are free from the context because I could make the same observations if I didn't want to sit or if I was only looking at a picture of the chair.

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Even if granting for the argument sake that a "fact" can be taken strictly in the original sense of facere as in Latin (Portuguese fazer), to construct, or to build, still it doesn't follow from it that reality depends on the subject once it doesn't prove the free will of the subject but only the relation with the entity we call subject. At this simple light, facts as constructions, can still be argued as fully determined in a reality that totally constrains the subject itself in all his processes.
I can raise the following challenge to Fresco as means of demonstration:

Fresco please create a new geometry on which there can be a line which is not either curved or straight. Construct one, make it a fact from your own sheer free willing, IMAGINE it ! Make A not A ! Laughing

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@parados,

Quote:

They are observations that are free from the context because I could make the same observations if I didn't want to sit or if I was only looking at a picture of the chair.

You could (in philosophy), but you don't (in real life) !
That is the significant dynamic issue that "realists" fail to take into account.

Note
1. I would be obliged if you would keep your crude references to bodily functions off my thread.
2.I am unlikely to respond further to your posts if you don't understand that perception is active not passive, and that such an active mode is informed by communal language and mutual context.

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The Half-life of Facts.

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