The Half-life of Facts.

I fell for it again didn't I Joe... the infinite dribble of cheap rhetoric !

I win

Facts can't all be just negotiation, because facts rely on other facts, which would mean negotiating the terms of the negotiation, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

And if they have to negotiate before they negotiate, do they then have to negotiate what constitute the facts that constitute the facts before they negotiate what constitute the facts?

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And if they have to negotiate before they negotiate, do they then have to negotiate what constitute the facts that constitute the facts before they negotiate what constitute the facts?

Yes. Luckily, that started the day they were born. Growing up, they successfully made their way into a position in the social group. They learned a lot of information, and formed their personal understanding of it, all along coordinating that understanding with those around them. All of this can be described as social negotiation, which forms the basis of our common understanding.

If that murder trial was a case where a teenage couple had locked themselves in a room with all their sexual appetite, teenage emo destructiveness and lots of drugs, and the girl was killed. They had done loads of drugs, and the boy has no memory of it when he wakes up.

Would it matter to the outcome of such a case if the majority of the jury members had sons, or if they had daughters? It seems to me that a jury filled with people who had sons instead of daughters, would be more likely to be open to the idea that the boy is also a victim of actions done by the pair of them, while a jury filled with people who had daughters would be more open to the idea that the boy is a murderer.

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Facts can't all be just negotiation, because facts rely on other facts, which would mean negotiating the terms of the negotiation, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

Well, hasn't that been known to happen in the court of law from time to time?

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And if they have to negotiate before they negotiate, do they then have to negotiate what constitute the facts that constitute the facts before they negotiate what constitute the facts?

Yes. Luckily, that started the day they were born.

Growing up, they successfully made their way into a position in the social group. They learned a lot of information, and formed their personal understanding of it, all along coordinating that understanding with those around them. All of this can be described as social negotiation, which forms the basis of our common understanding.

Would it matter to the outcome of such a case if the majority of the jury members had sons, or if they had daughters? It seems to me that a jury filled with people who had sons instead of daughters, would be more likely to be open to the idea that the boy is also a victim of actions done by the pair of them, while a jury filled with people who had daughters would be more open to the idea that the boy is a murderer.

How do pre-literate individuals negotiate anything?

That's sociology, not epistemology.

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That's sociology, not epistemology.

Why does that matter?

There seems to be a lot of tangential rhetoric going on here. Of course some aspects of a situation are "taken for granted" but nobody makes statements about them, and it is this verbal behavior which I have been stressing when I talk about usage of the words "fact" or "reality" as indicative of their meaning. In the praxis of living, there is no actual infinite regress of negotiation even if we in our philosophical armchairs might like to raise its possibility.

I offered to illustrate the usage principle for "reality" in any non-philosophical context raised, but the offer has been declined. So let me raise a recent one about the reality of human contributions to "climate change". Most accept that human activities can affect climate change but negotiations operate regarding (a) the significance of that contribution relative to "natural process", (b) whether a change in human behavior now would have any positive effect, and (c) whether a change in behavior is politically practical. These are the minimal strands of negotiation, and once again, it is apparent the "reality" of the human contribution is embedded in a complex dynamic social paradigm regarding what (if anything) "is to be done".

I hereby move that philosophy threads enact a cousin of Godwin's Law: In every philosophy thread, there inevitably comes a point where someone uses the word "paradigm". Whenever it comes to that, the thread is over, and whoever said "paradigm" first has lost the argument.

Are you kidding?

What you are essentially saying is that we should not discuss and examine our paradigms. That comes frighteningly close to the notion that we should not discuss and examine our beliefs.

But Kuhn inadvertently did enable a particular sham philosophy wherein people think they can conjure their opponent's arguments away simply by saying the magic word "paradigm". That's flim-flam, not philosophy. I wish we could put it behind us.

The word paradigm here is short-hand for "what counts as science in a community of specialist researchers" and we can thank Kuhn for the context in which that word has meaning.