Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:50 am
Here's the Oxford Concise definition of the word
fact: a thing that is known to to exist, to have occurred, or to be true.
And this clearly shows that we use the word
fact in two completely different ways.
A thing that is known to exist or to have occurred obviously has no truth value; it just is or was the case.
But a thing that is known to be true, in this context, can only be a factual assertion - typically a linguistic expression: X is/was the case.
The point is that these different uses of the word
fact allow for equivocation, which the above extract demonstrates, and which VA relies on in his argument for moral objectivity - the existence of moral facts.
As I had stated your views are very shallow, narrow and dogmatic.
I have asked you to define 'what is fact' and explain in a more thorough manner with supporting references.
So far, I have not seen any reference from you to support your claim of what is fact.
I have been reading up on your supposedly 'what is fact'
The SEP's article re "Facts" focus on a very narrow view along your views.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/facts/
The word “fact” is used in at least two different ways.
In the locution “matters of fact”, facts are taken to be what is contingently the case, or that of which we may have empirical or a posteriori knowledge. Thus Hume ...
In this second use, the functor (operator, connective) “It is a fact that” takes a sentence to make a sentence (an alternative view has it that “It is a fact” takes a nominalised sentence, a that-clause, to make a sentence), and the predicate “is a fact” is either elliptic for the functor, or takes a nominalised sentence to make a sentence.
What I have been doing is based on the Humean 'matter of fact' via the scientific-biology and moral FSK which is empirical or a posteriori.
This is not related to Hume 'is-ought' where he referred to religious and platonic oughts.
Meanwhile your focus on 'fact' as in the functor (operator, connective), "It is a fact that .."
There are many versions of such facts, propositional, compositional facts, states of affair only fact, etc.
I believe you are very ignorant that this 2nd usage is very contentious and many do insist there is no such facts.
Note "Against Facts"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17kk830
This is a book against facts. It argues that we have no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world, on the major metaphysical theories of facts known to us. It holds that neither of two major such theories are tenable: neither the theory according to which facts are special structured building blocks of reality, nor the theory according to which facts are whatever is named by certain expressions of the form ‘the fact that such and such’. There is reality, to be sure, and there are entities in reality that we are able to name, but...
There are many other articles that refute the existence of your sort of facts.
I have argued you are delusional to insist such illusory facts are valid or real.
The one from WIKI is more balanced;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
It's true that we can describe something in limitless different ways.
And it's true that a description - a truth-claim - exists in a descriptive context.
There's no such thing as a context-free description/truth-claim.
So in this way a linguistic fact - a true factual assertion - depends on a descriptive context.
Strawman.
What I claimed as fact is fundamentally a science-biological fact, not a linguistic fact.
But VA forgets the other use of the word fact, to mean 'a thing that is known to exist [or] to have occurred' - which (outside language) obviously isn't a linguistic expression with a truth-value. I call this kind of fact 'a feature of reality that is or was the case, independent from opinion'.
I have already argued "a 1000" times there is no factual, real nor objective
'a thing that is known to exist [or] to have occurred' as a fact-in-itself independent of the human conditions.
Note
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism# quoted above.
Actually this fact of your is conditioned upon a specific Language FSK, Ordinary Language or whatever.
I have asked you to give me references to support your claim; this will establish the FSK you are relying upon to make your claim of what is fact.
(I maintain that the condition 'is known' doesn't affect the nature of this kind of fact - and that in practice, when we talk about facts, the condition is irrelevant. But that is a controversial matter.)
There is no fact that has an independent nature from what 'is known'.
QM [re the thesis of the 2023 Nobel Prize of Physics] has refuted this claim of absolute mind-independent nature of any claim of reality.
So here's the equivocation: 'a fact can exist only within a descriptive context' - what VA calls a framework and system of knowledge. This is true, if the word fact means 'linguistic fact'. But if it means 'feature of reality that is or was the case', then it's false - and completely misleading - as VA's 'theory' demonstrates.
What I claim is not a linguistic fact but a scientific-biological-moral fact within a moral FSK.
What is descriptive is secondary from the emergence-realization of the fact.
A FSK-fact is a reality that emerges and is entangled with the human conditions as one united thing; there is subject -predicate in this ultimate sense.
I have raised a few threads that asserted humans co-participated in the emergence of reality that it perceived and then describe.
Point is, if there are moral facts-as-features-of-reality, then they exist demonstrably in reality, as do all other facts. The claim 'there are moral assertions, so there are moral facts' is an absurd non sequitur. It's like saying 'there are astrological assertions, so there are astrological facts'.
I should add that, from incomprehension or pig-headedness, VA will ignore this explanation, and make little or no attempt to rebut it. I live without hope.
As I had pointed out, you are speaking from your delusional stance of illusory facts which you have never supported with references, thus you are merely echoing from hearsays.
As I had argued, there is an inherent moral function as human nature which drives humans to deliberate on moral [as defined] issues [as evident].
Human nature are obvious represented by empirical facts which obviously comprised empirical moral facts via a moral FSK.
Your clinging to your views of what is fact with so much arrogance from ignorance is like an emperor with no clothes.
Point is your 'what is fact' is so contentious whereas my 'what is fact' grounded on scientific facts to moral facts in that qualified state cannot be easily refuted.
Whatever rebut you present is definitely going to be a strawman.