Re: [ontolog-forum] Social interaction and teamwork

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 8:01 PM, Len Yabloko <lenyabloko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:11 AM William Frank wrote: 

>Every time these issues of the meaning and even existence of such things as
>
>facts, truth, knowledge, etc. etc.
>
>arise in this forum,
>
>it seems to me that John Sowa calmly and modestly bears witness for reason.
>

With all due respect to John Sowa, he is not a standard bearer for reason. Nietzesche once said "... the are no facts, only interpretations".

Is that a fact?
 

But then again for many people he is not a standard bearer as well. But more important is the fact that not statement can be false or true outside of the context.

Ah, yet  another fact.  Is Nietsche rolling over in his grave?

In point of fact, there *are* no statements except in context., Making a statement is a kind of speech act.  The statement being the assertion of the proposition expressed in sentence used the act.  Outside of context, we do not know what is asserted.  So, 'they' can't be true or false, because they are not statements, only sentences.

In this sense context is more important then statement itself. Nothing was said on this thread about existence of facts or its meaning. These disagreements can only be adressed in a properly set up context.      

>But I continue to wonder at this, for my taste, all too common topic of disagreement.   I always thought, before joining, that the denial of the >existence of these things was known to all to be logically inconsistent, as an application of the liar's paradox, so that whatever mysteries and >problems might lurk with respect to them,  nobody at all who thought carefully would be making these superficial, self-contradicting >assertions.

There is nothing self-contradicting said so far,

Only the quote from Nietsche.
 

and I don't see any natural langauge statement as an assertion. That is perhaps the source of your confusion. Natural language has evolved in a context of cooperation that involves various forms of signaling. Some of it may be considered a communication of facts, again in properly setup context. 

Exactly.  

 

But other foms of signaling do not commmunicate facts.

What fact is communicated by mating call?

Of course, and  I would have thought too that this knowledge also would be universal in this group, since it far postdates John Austin's "How to do things with words."  Or predicessors like Edward Sapir, who is firmly in the camp of social interaction and teamwork theories of language. 
 

You can certainly set up a logial context using modal logic where this call will be an assertion of fact. But that is syntethic, not natural interpreation.

I am not sure what you call an "application of liar's paradox". Can you elaborate? 

OK.  

I think the Wikipedia entry is much more fun than the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

how it applies here:

The statement:

"there is no truth" 

(or any of the similar ones that have been made in this forum, such as facts do not exist, yada yada)

if it were true, it would have to be false, because it disproves itself, by being an example of a true statement.

therefore, it must be either false or meaningless. 

if it is false, then we are home free, and talking about truth and falsity as if the terms made sense as all people have thought since before recorded history. 

If it is meaningless, then all of us are diluded, and we can't even ask whether the statement is true or false, or agree or disagree with it, Since agreement USED to mean, to all us deluded ones, that we agree the statement is TRUE, or by disagreeing, claiming it is false.   If all these words have no meaning, or some new meaning, where to start.  What would it mean to accept some new non-statements?   Which leads one to wonder, why bother to say anything.  People will now just like or dislike what you say, with no rational, objective basis for this, and can also change willy nilly, as the mood strikes them, from saying one thing to saying the opposite. And stoning you or not, without fair reason to guide them and chastise them.  

That is what I call reason.  I think Nietsche is peachy, but not a witness to reason.

Note, while the same sentence can obviously be used in different speech acts, sometimes to make a true statement, and other times to make a false statement,  and other times as part of a failed act (and so meaningless) the **statements themselves**, expressing a state of the world at a point in time, when understood in the  context of the act, are true or false for all time. And, of course, this is independent of whether it is known, or ever will be known, whether the statements are true or false.

And, again, if I am not deluded, all the people here talking about Donald Davidson and the like, know this 101 stuff so well that except for John Sowa, they just don't bother to respond to statements of the kind I am referring to.  Of course here are alot of details concerning these concepts, that many want to think and  argue about. I thiink that is outside the scope of the forum.   The basics, though, I thought was commonly accepted by people who want to advance knowledge, for otherwise, there is no knowlede to advance.

Most important to me, if there is no truth, then the promises made by the U.S. to the American Indians were never broken.  Just 'misinterpreted,' Thanks Nietsche, says Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant.  This is why Pontius Pilate is one of the guys who wants to question whether truth is a meaningful concept.  If it is not, no guilty conscious necessary. 

I suspect that the people who want to deny meaning to all these grounding concepts have good motives: they are reacting to unthinking absolutism -- to all those people who **think** they know things they have not even examined.  But this is not the way to combat this human tendency, instead, it opens the door to absolute power with no justification even needed.   Or perhaps, because logicians seem to have missed the fact that making assertions is very rare, compared with other speech acts, that there is a backlash of some kind going on that I don't understand.

Wm

     

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 11:00 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Len,
>
>First, I'd like to emphasize that knowing *facts* has enormous
>survivor values for every species, including humans.  If an animal
>knows where to find food, water, etc., that can make a difference
>between life and death.
>
>> In nature cooperation is not about truth or facts (however defined ),
>> but about playing games.
>
>First of all, there is nothing controversial about the word 'fact'.
>If you want a definition, just look in a dictionary.  If you type
>"define fact" to Google, you get
>
> 1. A thing that is indisputably the case.
> 2. Information used as evidence or as part of a report or news article.
>
>Definition #1 is the primary one.  The second is derivative.
>Other dictionaries will give you further fine points, but there
>is nothing controversial or political about them.
>
>But there may be controversies about the facts in any particular
>case, and finding the facts may lead to a lengthy investigation.
>
>> It shows that some strategies are seemingly wasting precious
>> resources only to "impress" others.
>
>Not all facts have the same survival value.  When you're starving,
>it's more important to know where to get food than knowing
>the capital of Wyoming.
>
>The same is true about impressing other individuals of the same
>or different species.  It can be essential for getting a mate,
>getting a job, or avoiding being robbed or killed.
>
>> There may even be connection here to the language games.
>
>I agree with that point.
>
>John
>
>
>
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--
William Frank

413/376-8167




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William Frank

413/376-8167

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