Logik wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 1:44 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 1:02 pm
Features of reality aren't relative to anything. They just are. What we say about them is relative to perspective, etc. You're muddling map and terrain.
That's your religion and you are still holding onto it.
This is silly. The methodological naturalism that (informally) informs the natural sciences - and most ordinary life - is not a religion - though some theists like to say it is, unaware of the irony that they thereby identify religion as irrational because unsubstantiated belief.
Despite your inability to point out any feature of reality that "just is" - independent from perspective.
Try the planet that we call the earth. Or take any ordinary object near to you now. There are infinite ways of describing them from an infinite number of perspectives. But they're things that can be described.
I am not muddying the map and the terrain. I recognize that that all we can ever speak about is the map, NOT the terrain.
Yes, you are doing precisely that. The map is one of many possible maps of a terrain, which we use to talk about the terrain. Otherwise, why call it - or think of it as being - a map? Do you think maps are purposeless exercises in fictional play about nothing? We can use language to talk about the ways we use language - of course. But the main function of language is to talk about something other than language: the terrain.
Until such time that evidence presents itself that our map is incorrect (which happens to frontiers of science, not people on philosophy forums).
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 1:02 pm
3 I'd be grateful if you could directly address the assertions (1-5) in my previous post - because I think they cut to the heart of your argument. Do you agree or disagree with them - and why? Or am I still off-track?
OK lets try...
1 What we call factual assertions (about features of reality) are both true and false, depending on perspective, context and conventions.
No. I prefer to think of it as indeterminate truth-value until the axioms (per-suppositions) are stated. These can often be inferred from the perspective so a sufficiently approximate interpretation can be chanced. But if you are after precision - disambiguation is hard.
I think this is prevarication. A factual assertion has a (contextual) (classical) truth-value: true or false. There's nothing indeterminate about it - you're smuggling in your religious dogma here. And where does 'precision', 'accuracy' or 'completeness' - or any other supposedly non-contextual property - come into the matter? This is foundationalism - as I've repeatedly pointed out.
What we've called 'facts' (true factual assertions) are matters of opinion. Facts are relative to perspective, and so on. And there is no perspective-free perspective from which to assess the truth-value of an assertion.
They are a matter of shared pre-suppositions. Axioms. Which (by definition) are accepted on faith.We have to agree on those before we part-take in any truth-value determination of each other's claims.
More prevarication. It's the axioms (the mapping rules) that are conventional, not the factual assertions and their truth-value, which are about the terrain.
Whether the conversation is in adversarial or cooperative context makes all the difference to "factuality".
So, you agree facts - true factual assertions - are possible. Perhaps I've misunderstood you all along.
If you use the metric system and I use the imperial system - we will never agree on anything.
You've got to be kidding. We can use either or any system to make true factual assertions about features of reality. Has your objection to truth, facts and objectivity been as banal as this all along?
What we've called 'objectivity' (reliance on facts) is an illusion - as, therefore, is the distinction between what we've called objectivity and subjectivity. In effect, all there can be is opinions.
All they can be is different ways of narrating and conceptions of our experiences of the world.
Prevarication blending into evasion. This is becoming suspiciously post-modern.
We can call any assertion a fact, including a moral assertion, so moral discourse can be as objective as any other.
This is what objectivity means to me: Given same observations and same reasoning process you always expect the same result.
True objectivity means 'no room for interpretation'.
Whoa. So we've moved from 'facts are values' and 'objectivity is a con' (or something like that) to 'true objectivity means 'no room for interpretation'. From which non-contextual context can you claim to know what constitutes 'true' (?) objectivity? Are you now saying there can ever be no room for interpretation? That facts are independently true? Has the wheel come full circle?
Consistency or some such value.
5 All the above assertions are both true and false, as is this one, depending on perspective, and so on.
Yes. Because they can be interpreted conventionally and unconventionally.
If you are accusing me of murder - I get to choose which interpretation aligns with my agenda.
Oh well. The light gleamed an instant and is gone. Okay. As a skeptic, I think it rational to reject any of your factual assertions about our epistemological and moral predicament - because they could be true or false, and even you aren't and can't be sure which.