Paper: No Mind [brain, human]-Independent Facts

[Veritas Aequitas]

Note I have edited the Title to avoid Peter's confusion with 'Mind' to facts that are independent of the human brain, mind or whatever human, i.e. the human factor.

PH's and gang's argument that Morality is not objective is because there are no Mind [brain, human]-Independent Moral Facts.

But such grounding on Mind [brain, human]-Independent Facts is fatuous, meaningless and illusory in the sense of ultimate reality.

Note: I will use the shorter term "Mind-Independent Facts" to represent the intended Mind [brain, human]-Independent Facts

Here is paper on why there are no mind-independent facts and it argues that there are only mind-interdependent facts conditioned by its specific Framework and System [FSK] of Knowledge or Reality.

WHERE ARE FACTS?
A Case For Internal Factual Realism
Xinli Wang

1. Introduction
2. Many Faces of Facts
3. External Factual Realism
3.1 Factual Naturalism [concrete]
A. Facts As (Locatable) Particulars
B. Facts As (Datable) Happenings
C. Facts As (Observable) Situations
3.2 Factual Ontologism [abstract]
3.3 A Misconception of the Nature of Facts
4. Facts as True Propositions
5. Internal Factual Realism
6. Conclusion

1. Introduction
What exists in the world?
Are there only simple entities like objects, properties, and relations,
or are there also Complex Entities like events, situations, and Facts?

Against the background of traditional Aristotelian metaphysics, which pictures Reality as consisting of the aggregate of mutually independent individual objects or things,
the outstanding innovation of Wittgenstein's ontology is his characterization of the world as an aggregate of Facts, not of things (Tractatus, I, 1.1).

Facts are generically different from things or objects.

Facts are usually regarded as Complex Entities consisting of objects, properties, and external relations which
either relate a property to an object (say, John is bald)
or connect several objects (say, John is taller than Joe).
Facts are not simply the aggregate of objects; they [Facts] are objects standing in relations to each other.
Facts are configurations of objects.

If the world is a totality of Facts, what sorts of Facts exist in the world?
Where are Facts?

6. Conclusion
The traditional questions, ''What is a Fact?" or "When do we use the phrase 'is a Fact'?" is misleading.
The question seems to suggest that Facts have some intrinsic nature awaiting discovery.
External Factual Realism arises as an attempt to answer such a question.
Such an attempt is doomed to failure for there are no mind-independent Facts.
Most (if not all) Facts are language-dependent.

Our task is not to make sense of sense unfathomable entity, but in so far as there is a problem, it is one of knowing when we are entitled to proclaim something a Fact.

So the more appropriate question to ask about Facts should be:
"How do we use the phrase 'is a Fact'?" or
''When are we entitled to proclaim some complex entity a Fact?"

Such a switch in the way of asking questions about Facts is necessary and illuminating.
The answer to the question has to be language dependent.

For the details of the argument read Section 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the attached article.

[Veritas Aequitas]

In Section 2, 3 and 4, Wang present what are facts and what are mind-independent facts where he presented his argument on why mind-independent facts are not tenable.

Here is his argument why there are only Mind-Interdependent Facts that are conditioned to the specific FSK [language, model];

5. Internal Factual Realism
To recapitulate what we have gained so far based on our minimal definition of Facts:
(a) what are specified by true statements are not identical to true propositions expressed.
Facts are not linguistic entities;
(b) what are specified by true statements are not to which a true statement corresponds.
Facts are not mind-independent, either as concrete entities in the universe or as abstract entities in the world as it is.

We are left with two alternatives.
According to anti-factualism,
if Facts are neither in the world as it is nor within language,
then "Facts" fail to be true of any entities whatsoever.
A Fact becomes a pseudo-material correlate of a true statement and therefore is not real in any substantial sense.
Then we fall back directly to the traditional Aristotelian metaphysics, i.e., the world is the totality of things instead of Facts.
It is beyond the scope of the current paper to make a complete evaluation between these two competing concepts of ontology: the world as the totality of thing (thing-ontology) and the world as the totality of Facts (Fact ontology).

For my limited purpose, I have taken the stand of Fact ontology from the outset.

To repeat our question of concern:
"If the world is a totality of Facts, then what sort of Facts are there in the world?
Where are Facts?"

The other alternative would be: based on our previous arguments
that Facts are neither linguistic nor mind-independent and
that Facts are not concrete entities in the universe,
Facts would be non-linguistic, mind-dependent, abstract complex specified by true statements.
Facts are real correlates or objective counterparts of true statements.
If so, where are they on earth?

Internal factual realists reply:
a Fact, as a non-linguistic correlate of a true statement of a language, exists in a world specified by the language.

I have argued in section 2 that there is a necessary conceptual bond between true statements and Facts.
The category of Facts is specified only by the making of true statements; hence they are merely what true statements specify.

The concept of Facts would have no application for anyone who did not know what it was to make a true statement.
It would be wrong to assert that there is any other way except by making true statements in which the Facts may be specified.
To this extent, the obtaining of Facts-in-general is dependent on our linguistic speakers, i.e., our being able to make true statements.

Of course, this does not mean that Facts have nothing to do with the structure of a world.
The notion of Facts arises from a consideration of ways of thinking about the world.
The employment of the notion of Facts presupposes the existence of a world perceived by the speaker.
This world should have some fixed structure; otherwise the possibility of stating Facts would not have arisen either.
For example, if the world perceived by the speaker is a Heraclitean world of constant flux, it would be impossible to say anything, not to mention to make a true statement.
So our employment of the notion of Facts depends upon both the existence of an objective world around the speaker and the speaker's ability to make true statements.

The evaluation of a declarative sentence should be conceived as comprising two seldom-separated stages.
First, determine the Truth value-status of the sentence: is it a candidate for Truth or falsity?
To this question, the answer is language-dependent.

And second, supposing a positive answer to the first, is the statement true?
Therefore, whether a statement is true depends on whether the sentence of a language L which states the statement has a Truth-value.

Whether or not a sentence, when considered within L, has a Truth-value is determined in turn by whether a semantic presupposition of the sentence is true in L.
This is because, according to Strawson's trivalent semantics (Strawson 1950), the Truth of a semantic presupposition of a sentence is necessary for the Truth or falsity of the sentence.
For example, sentence K: ''The present king of France is bald," presupposes sentence Ka: 'The present king of France exists.”
K is true or false only when Ka is true; otherwise Ka is neither true nor false.

[Veritas Aequitas]

5. Internal Factual Realism Continue...
................
Core sentences of many theoretical languages, such as scientific languages, presuppose some common fundamental semantic presuppositions.
For example, the existence of phlogiston is presupposed by numerous core sentences of the language of Phlogiston Theory.
Likewise, the assumption that there exists absolute space and time underlies the core sentences of the Newtonian language of space and time.

These shared fundamental semantic presuppositions of a language are referred to as its metaphysical presuppositions, which are contingent factual presumptions about the world perceived by the language community.

A sentence may state a true statement in one language, but it may be not assertable or has no Truth-value at all in another.
As an example, consider the following two Newtonian sentences about simultaneity and precedence (Gaifman, 1984).

• (A) Event e1 and event e2 are simultaneous: τ (e1 ) = τ (e2).
  (B) Event e1 precedes event e2 : τ (e 1) < τ (e2).

A and B make perfect sense and are true-or-false in Newtonian physics since, for Newton, physical events happen within a self-existing, ordered line of time points independent of any event.

However, according to the relativity theory, precedence may depend on the coordinate system from which the events are viewed.
More precisely, if in some coordinate system the events are separated by distance d and time Δt and d > c x Δt (c = light velocity), then their temporal order depends on the coordinate system.
Therefore, to ask, "Does event e1 precede or "Are e1 and e2 simultaneous?" without specifying a coordinate system is to ask a factually meaningless question.
This is because the notion of absolute simultaneity presupposes the existence of an absolute time ordering which is denied by the relativity theory.
Thus A and B have no truth-values from the relativistic point of view.

Similarly, the language of phlogiston theory presupposes the existence of phlogiston.
To say, "The element a is not richer in phlogiston than the element b" presupposes that "There exists phlogiston.”
The sentence may be true when considered within the language of phlogiston theory, but it is neither true not false when considered within the language of modern chemistry theory.
.....................

Comment:
The above imply Facts are Mind-Interdependent as conditioned by the Specific FSK, i.e. the language used, Newtonian Physics, Relativity Theory, phlogiston theory, modern chemistry theory.

[Veritas Aequitas]

5. Internal Factual Realism Continue...

...................
If a Fact is whatever is specified by a true statement, and whether or not a statement is true is language-dependent,
then a Fact turns out to be language-dependent.

That means that Facts are relative to a theoretical language and exist in the world specified by the language.
There are no absolute mind-independent Facts out there awaiting us to discover.

Some theory, language, conceptual scheme, or theoretical preconception is the indispensable medium through which we apprehend Facts.

Not to mention some Facts dealing with theoretical entities (such as the Fact that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen),
even the most common conceivable Facts concerning detectable properties of some observable common objects (such as the Fact that this flower is red)
are still penetrated with some theoretical framework.

What could be further beyond question than the Fact that my pen is blue?
However, even this Fact presupposes some theoretical assumptions which are at risk against the following metaphysical claim: that the secondary qualities are subjective.

The situation here alluded to is familiar enough.
The matter requires no elaboration here.
All Facts are language/ theory laden.
A definite and specific theoretical context is operative in the initiation (creation), identification, recognition, and description of every Fact.
Rid yourself of every theoretical preconception, and Facts are banished also.

More significantly, Facts are not just language-dependent in general, but sometimes a state of affairs which is a Fact when considered within one theoretical language
may not be a Fact, even may not be a possible Fact,
when considered within another theoretical language,
since the statement used to describe the state of affairs may be true in the first language but false or neither true nor false in the second language.

Suppose that a statement that the element a is richer in phlogiston than the element b is true when considered within the language of phlogiston theory.
Then the state of affairs specified by the statement is a Fact existing in the world specified by the language.
But the apparently same state of affairs is not a Fact, not even a possible Fact, when considered within the language of modern chemistry; since the corresponding sentence is neither true nor false when considered within the latter language.
That means that many Facts--although not all Facts--are relative to each distinct language and cannot be the same across distinct worlds specified by those distinct languages.
Similarly, sentence A may be a Fact within the Newtonian language but not a Fact, not even a possible Fact, within the language of relativity theory.

Generally put, what is acclaimed as factual in language L1 is often seen to be non-factual in language L2,
because in L2 a new horizon of Fact has appeared which, in its turn and in a different language, will be judged to be non-factual.

It is only such an influx of fresh Fact which dislodges old Fact from the domain of factuality and stamps it as non-factual.
Therefore, the alleged difference between Fact and non-Fact should be viewed merely as the distinction between two different sets of Facts, each set specified within different theoretical languages.

Does it follow that the distinction between Fact and non-Fact is hereby deprived of any ultimate validity since it appears that we can turn at will a Fact into a non-Fact by switch of theoretical languages?
No, we can still draw a valid distinction between Fact and non-Fact.
Facts are still objective.
For once a specific language is chosen, there is no room for negotiation; the distinction between Fact and non-Fact is fixed.

Astronomic events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference are successive in another.
But that two events are simultaneous (or are successive) is a Fact (or is not a Fact) in one specific frame of reference.
From the possibility of mutual transformation of Facts into non-Facts, it does not follow that the distinction between Facts and non-Facts is shaky and hazardous.
However, such objectivity might seem spurious if we can switch languages at will.

The problem is that even though we can construct an appropriate language that determines and fixes a Fact, we cannot construct whatever we want and we cannot switch languages at will.
Although we can construct a language in which the event of e1 preceding event e2 is a Fact, we cannot construct a language in which that e1 happens prior to and posterior to e2 turns out to be a Fact.
.............

Comments:
Note the term 'frame of reference' which is the same as my Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] or Reality.

[Skepdick]

PH's and gang's argument that Morality is not objective is because there are no Mind-Independent Moral Facts.

Never mind mind-inddependent Moral Facts. Is there such a thing as theory-independent minds?

In both cases you are appealing to a theory if minds; and a theory of facts. So everything you are saying is grounded on theory and the human act of theorising. Great!

Do you have a theory of theorising?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-theory

[Veritas Aequitas]

There are no such things as facts

.........................
A Matter of Fact
Lawrence E Johnson
https://www.pdcnet.org/revmetaph/conten ... _0508_0518


FACTS HAVE A WAY of intruding into philosophical as well as practical affairs, and in each case we must in some way come to terms with them.

In this paper I will develop an account of facts—or, more accurately, of "fact" language, for I will argue that there are no such things as facts.

In brief, my conclusion will be that facts are merely linguistic substantives, having no status as entities, not even as propositional entities.

I maintain that "fact" language is a many headed Hydra of which the common element is an illocutionary factor serving to express certification of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical proposition.
Beyond this, "fact" language follows different patterns of which two are central to this inquiry, treating facts either as true propositions (or similar accusatives) of a particular sort, or treating them as worldly entities.
Yet no account of facts as entities, worldly or propositional, will allow them to fill all the roles facts are called upon to play.

When we employ "fact" language we are talking about some portion of the world, employing various useful linguistic patterns expressing properties and inter-relationships of things and events in the world, and conveying this illocutionary force; but to attempt to distil entities from these linguistic patterns is not justifiable.

In some part, the ideas presented here are anticipated in a paper by Frank Tillman,' through I present a broader theory intended to have utility in connection with the theory of truth.2
As any account of facts must also account for the roles they are assigned to perform, I will start with an investigation of some of these roles and their associated patterns of linguistic usage.
Of these, many shed little if any light on what facts actually are or are not.

[Peter Holmes]

1 The later Wittgenstein repudiated and painstakingly corrected his 'the world is the totality of facts, not of things' in the Tractatus.

2 If there's no such thing as 'mind', then talk of mind-independence is incoherent. What and where is mind or the mind, and in what way does it exist? How can a non-physical thing have a physical effect? What is the causal mechanism? (Answers come there none. Just indignation and bluster. How dare you say the emperor is naked!)

3 Correspondence and truth-maker/truth-bearer theories of truth amount to nothing more than tautological claims - purely linguistic matters. They explicitly mistake what we say about things for the way things are.

[Veritas Aequitas]

PH's and gang's argument that Morality is not objective is because there are no Mind-Independent Moral Facts.

Never mind mind-inddependent Moral Facts. Is there such a thing as theory-independent minds?

In both cases you are appealing to a theory if minds; and a theory of facts. So everything you are saying is grounded on theory and the human act of theorising. Great!

Do you have a theory of theorising?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-theory

Similarly;

Consistent with the idea of confirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree. Thomas Kuhn points out that knowing what facts to measure, and how to measure them, requires the use of other theories. For example, the age of fossils is based on radiometric dating, which is justified by reasoning that radioactive decay follows a Poisson process rather than a Bernoulli process. Similarly, Percy Williams Bridgman is credited with the methodological position known as operationalism, which asserts that all observations are not only influenced, but necessarily defined, by the means and assumptions used to measure them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact#In_science

Peter Holmes had countered The Scientific Model of Reality [theorized] is not the reality that is being modelled, which he is grounding on Philosophical Realism.
I have argued Philosophical Realism is not realistic and not tenable.

It is not a question that there is already a pre-existing reality awaiting to be discovered by modelling and theorizing.
The point is what is reality simply emerged in entanglement with the human self.
It is a post ad hoc action we then observe, model, theorize then describe that reality that emerged of which we are intricately part and parcel of.

[Veritas Aequitas]

1 The later Wittgenstein repudiated and painstakingly corrected his 'the world is the totality of facts, not of things' in the Tractatus.

2 If there's no such thing as 'mind', then talk of mind-independence is incoherent. What and where is mind or the mind, and in what way does it exist? How can a non-physical thing have a physical effect? What is the causal mechanism? (Answers come there none. Just indignation and bluster. How dare you say the emperor is naked!)

3 Correspondence and truth-maker/truth-bearer theories of truth amount to nothing more than tautological claims - purely linguistic matters. They explicitly mistake what we say about things for the way things are.

You argued your facts a feature of reality [state of affairs, complex entities, that is the case] that are independent of any individual's [mentally mind-based] opinions, beliefs and judgment which imply in the typical sense, the mind is involved somehow.

Thus those who claim there are mind-independent facts, their claims are the same as your 'independent'[objective] in whatever terms you assigned it.

'Mind' in this discussion is not referring that controversial concept of 'mind' as some specific organ in the brain.

What is general refer to mind is this;

The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena.
Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves.[2][3][4]
These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation.
They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind#Philosophy

If you don't like the term 'mind' then it has to be brain-independent facts or human-conditions independent fact? So what is your precise definition of what is fact?

Nevertheless, what is fact to you is grounded on Philosophical Realism with its basic principle that the moon pre-existed humanity and will exists [if not smash by meteorites] even there are no humans.

[Peter Holmes]

VA: '...what is reality simply emerged in entanglement with the human self.'

Complete nonsense. What we call reality (the universe) emerged (seemingly) from the big bang. No humans involved.

[Veritas Aequitas]

VA: '...what is reality simply emerged in entanglement with the human self.'

Complete nonsense. What we call reality (the universe) emerged (seemingly) from the big bang. No humans involved.

Note the Big Bang is merely a speculated theory from the Science-Physic FSK which has a lesser degree of objectivity in contrast to the theory 'Water is H2O'.

Where did the concept of 'Big Bang' if without any human involvement, i.e. entanglement.

The idea of the 'Big Bang' emerged from the Science-Physic FSK which is based on the intersubjective consensus of scientist peers.
As such that reality emerged in entanglement with human selves and the individual who adopts and hold such a belief of an intersubjective reality the Big Bang exist.

According to QM [thesis of the 2022 Nobel Prize of Physics], the more realistic version of reality, there was no Big Bang until it emerged in entanglement with the human conditions.

[Sculptor]

PH's and gang's argument that Morality is not objective is because there are no Mind-Independent Moral Facts.

But such grounding on Mind-Independent Facts is fatuous, meaningless and illusory in the sense of ultimate reality.

You are still wrong. You argument is circular.

[FlashDangerpants]

This is just another outbreak of wishful thinking for VA. He wishes that his FSK theory was good enough that in order to argue against it somebody would need a complicated theory of truth. But you don't need that at all.

If you agree that there is a useful distinction between the conepts of fact and fiction, that is enough. It is an inescapable observation that VA's FSK theory is designed and intended specifically for the purpose of converting a particular batch of fictions into facts on the basis that fairies become real if enough little boys believe in them.

Refusing to accept that fairies become objects in the world if more than 76 people belive in them doesn't require any specific opinion on the ontological status of sates of affairs or bearers of truth or any of the other stuff VA is going to sling in his increasingly futile search for somebody who is going to let him set these grandoise terms under which he expects to argue.

[Peter Holmes]

1 The later Wittgenstein repudiated and painstakingly corrected his 'the world is the totality of facts, not of things' in the Tractatus.

2 If there's no such thing as 'mind', then talk of mind-independence is incoherent. What and where is mind or the mind, and in what way does it exist? How can a non-physical thing have a physical effect? What is the causal mechanism? (Answers come there none. Just indignation and bluster. How dare you say the emperor is naked!)

3 Correspondence and truth-maker/truth-bearer theories of truth amount to nothing more than tautological claims - purely linguistic matters. They explicitly mistake what we say about things for the way things are.

You argued your facts a feature of reality [state of affairs, complex entities, that is the case] that are independent of any individual's [mentally mind-based] opinions, beliefs and judgment which imply in the typical sense, the mind is involved somehow.

Thus those who claim there are mind-independent facts, their claims are the same as your 'independent'[objective] in whatever terms you assigned it.

'Mind' in this discussion is not referring that controversial concept of 'mind' as some specific organ in the brain.

What is general refer to mind is this;

The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena.
Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves.[2][3][4]
These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation.
They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind#Philosophy

If you don't like the term 'mind' then it has to be brain-independent facts or human-conditions independent fact? So what is your precise definition of what is fact?

Nevertheless, what is fact to you is grounded on Philosophical Realism with its basic principle that the moon pre-existed humanity and will exists [if not smash by meteorites] even there are no humans.

It's not that I don't like the term 'mind'. It's that the word 'mind' is not the name of a non-physical thing - because there's no evidence for the existence of any non-physical thing, and therefore any non-physical cause.

The passage you quote, referring to 'mental phenomena, thought, imagination, memory, will, sensation. perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion', is a lovely demonstration of the power of the myth of abstract or non-physical things.

And if you're now saying that nothing exists outside human brains - that there's nothing brain-independent - how ridiculous does your argument have to be before you recognise its stupidity?

[Skepdick]

It's not that I don't like the term 'mind'. It's that the word 'mind' is not the name of a non-physical thing - because there's no evidence for the existence of any non-physical thing, and therefore any non-physical cause.

What evidence is there for the existence of "phyisical things"?

The passage you quote, referring to 'mental phenomena, thought, imagination, memory, will, sensation. perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion', is a lovely demonstration of the power of the myth of abstract or non-physical things.

And what about the myth of "physical" things? After all physicalism is just another metaphysical theory.