There Are No Such Things As Facts

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Post Reply
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12368
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

This article is a counter to the Facts as claimed by PH & Gang.
"In this paper ... I will argue that there are no such things as facts."
I don't have the full article, but the short brief is sufficient to give a clue where the direction the author is taking to justify his claim.
A Matter of Fact
Lawrence E Johnson

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.

Illocutionary: relating to or being the communicative effect (such as commanding or requesting) of an utterance.
He urged me to shoot her. In saying that utterance, the speaker performs an illocutionary act of advice or order •
I am very grateful for taking me to the movie Page 4. In saying that utterance, the speaker performs an illocutionary act of thanking.
Would you like a cup of coffee?

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.
However, there are two quite common roles assigned to facts by ...........

1 Frank A. Tillman, "Facts, Events, and True Statements," Theoria, XXXII (1966), PP. 116-129.
2 This paper is one part of a three pronged attack on the question of Truth.
https://www.pdcnet.org/revmetaph/conten ... _0508_0518
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12368
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

I have Johnson's book,
Focusing on Truth
where Chapter 6 is likely to cover the above topic;
  • Before we go on to investigate other theories of truth, inquiry is made into the nature of truth-bearers and facts. Truth-bearers are not sentences per se, nor are they propositional entities of any sort. Rather, I take truth-bearers to be statements, sentences as used by language-users on particular occasions for particular purposes in saying something about something. I explicate this, and discuss how they are to be identified and equated. Facts are not entities of any sort. An alternative account of fact -language is presented.

    ## Truth-Bearers As Propositions
    ## Truth-Bearers As Statements
    ## Equating Truth-Bearers
    ## In Passing: The Theory Of Meaning
    ## A Matter Of Fact
    ## Facts And Their Roles
    ## Fact -Language And Truth-Related
    ## Discourse
    ## The Force Of Fact -Language
    ## Facts And Fact -Language
I will get to the details of the above later.
User avatar
FlashDangerpants
Posts: 6268
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:54 pm

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:00 am I don't have the full article
Oooh, another paper that VA hasn't read to add to his magnificent list of unread works that he claims as support.
User avatar
FlashDangerpants
Posts: 6268
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:54 pm

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:07 am I have Johnson's book,
You haven't read it though.
Iwannaplato
Posts: 6660
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Iwannaplato »

Well, I'm glad it's resolved there are no moral facts.
At first I thought that he meant that only PH's version of 'fact' didn't exist.
But there's nothing in the Johnson to justify this, so I see the OP as a gentle concession and reaching out to PH and his gang for negotiation.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12368
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:56 pm Elsewhere, VA has kindly offered a travesty of my argument against moral objectivism. So here's VA's own .. argument for moral objectivism.

P1 A fact exists only within a 'framework and system of knowledge'.
P2 There is a morality 'framework and system of knowledge'.
C Therefore, there are moral facts, and morality is objective.
Agree in general.
P1 is false, because the facts we discover and describe existed before we discovered and described them, and would exist even had we not discovered and described them. (After all, there was a universe before humans turned up, would be one had we not turned up, and will be one after we're gone.)

As this premise is false, the argument is unsound.
What you are ignorant of is there are perspectives and their precisions in the consideration of reality.
Within the vulgar crude common sense, convention sense [Newtonian, Einsteinian] it is relative and necessarily true, the universe existed [emerging from the Big Bang] before there were humans.
But this is the crude sense of reality while there a more precise sense of reality.

Within the more precise sense of reality, whatever exist, they are intertwined and entangled with the human conditions.

Note this thread;
The Moon Does Not Exist If No Humans 'Look' at It
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39510
implying the existence of reality is intertwined and entangled with the human conditions.
which contain the principles of the thesis that won the 2022 Nobel Prize of Physics.
If you disagree with P1, that reflects your ignorance.
P2 begs the question, because it assumes the conclusion: that there are moral facts which can therefore be known within a framework and system of knowledge. (After all, there is an astrology 'framework and system of knowledge', so there should be astrology facts and astrology should be objective. But there aren't, and it isn't.)

As this premise assumes the conclusion, the argument is fallacious.
The most credible and reliable Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] is the scientific FSK which has a high degree of objectivity.
All moral facts from the moral FSK are reducible to the scientific-biology FSK and other sub-scientific FSKs, thus has near equivalence of objectivity to the scientific FSK.

On the other hand, whatever facts as claimed from the astrology FSK or the theistic FSK cannot be reducible to scientific facts, thus has low or zero degree of objectivity.

Btw, your linguistic-fact-FSK by itself cannot be reduced to scientific facts or its near equivalent, therefore its objectivity is negligible.

Note "There Are No Such Things As Facts"
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39806
as claimed by Lawrence Johnson;
Lawrence Johnson wrote:Also, Facts are often said to have something to do with the story, in some way or another.
Facts have a way of intruding into truth theory as well as into practical affairs, and in each case we must come to terms with them.
Even so, I believe that while a practical concern for the facts is usually of benefit, truth theory has very often suffered as a result of a preoccupation with facts.
This is because truth theorists have too often taken facts as if they were entities of some sort.
Rather, I maintain, fact-language is a means we have for talking about things, with facts being merely linguistic substantives.
They [Facts] are not entities of any sort, not even propositional entities.
(There are no propositional entities.)
What you claimed as 'facts' are merely linguistic-FSK substantives or things, i.e. intelligible things aka noumena that has no sense of reality.
Your facts as features of reality which is just-is, state of affairs, that is/was the case, are merely illusory linguistic substantives /things only for the purpose of talking about things within the linguistic FSK.
Lawrence Johnson wrote:Fact-language is very complex, following a number of related but different patterns.
I shall argue that we can, at least normally, identify a performative-like factor, wherein our use of the term fact serves to express certification of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement.
When you use the phrase 'it is a fact that' [within the linguistic FSK] you are merely alluding to some degrees of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement [that necessitate the authority of the scientific or other verification FSKs].


Note,
It is the fact that [linguistic fact] 'water is H20' [science chemistry' conflates two FSKs, i.e. the linguistic FSK and the science-chemistry FSK.
this statement cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions because the FSKs inevitably entangle with the human conditions.

What I claimed as "facts" are human-based-FSK facts which can be reduced to scientific facts.
User avatar
Agent Smith
Posts: 1442
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2022 12:23 pm

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Agent Smith »

The vulpes is exhausted.
Skepdick
Posts: 14366
Joined: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:16 am

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Skepdick »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:29 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 11:07 am I have Johnson's book,
You haven't read it though.
He doesn't read them. You read them and don't understand them.

You both end up at the same place, but one doesn't waste any time getting there.
User avatar
Agent Smith
Posts: 1442
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2022 12:23 pm

Re: There Are No Such Things As Facts

Post by Agent Smith »

Factotum insipidum ruminatum ego est. :mrgreen:
Post Reply