VA maintains that I haven't countered his claim that what I call facts are illusory. So here is his post, to which he refers repeatedly. And I propose to refute his argument here.
VA
There are Two Senses of 'What is Fact'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39587
1. FSK-ed Facts
2. Mind-independent Facts which grounded on illusions.
PH's version of fact is that of 2. thus illusory
1 This begs the question - using a conclusion as or to support a premise. Our argument is about whether reality - the facts of reality - are independent from humans. VA's 'two senses of "what is fact" claim merely states his tediously repeated conclusion, without showing why it's true, from sound premises.
2 VA glosses over the 'mind-independent' condition, by saying it can mean 'independent from the human conditions', without showing that those are the same thing. But this is by no means clear - and the complications are obvious, as is the legacy mind/matter dualism.
VA
PH insists what I claimed as objective moral facts are nonsense.
There are Objective Moral Facts
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35002
This merely recycles VA's argument, as do most of his posts.
VA
My Caveat:
Moral statements [descriptive and prescriptive of moral-ought] related to opinions and beliefs of individual[s] and unorganized groups are not moral facts.
1 This distinction is designed to separate the 'opinions and beliefs of individual{s} and unorganised groups', which are not 'factual', from the consensus opinions and beliefs of certain organised groups, such as natural scientists, which constitute 'frameworks and systems of knowledge' - which VA refers to above as 'FSK-ed facts'. But this a kind of specialised bandwagon fallacy.
2 VA smuggles in 'moral facts' as a sleight-of-hand, which begs the question. The trick is this: the only facts are FSK-ed facts, which depend on humans, and therefore there are
moral FSK-ed facts. This non sequitur is central to VA's argument for moral objectivity - the existence of moral facts.
VA
PH claims his definition of what are facts [see below] are the only real facts.
However I argue, PH's version of 'what is fact' cannot be real, PH's fact is merely an illusion, speculation, opinions and ASSUMPTIONS.
VA doesn't argue this at all - but merely states it as a conclusion from no supportive premises. We are back to the beginning of this post.
VA
Here is PH definition of what is fact.
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:34 am
'To repeat, there are three separate things [re What is Facts]:
1. features of reality that are or were the case;
2. what we believe and know about them; and
3. what we say about them.'
VA's square-bracket insertion misrepresents my taxonomy, because my point is that what we call facts
are
features of reality that are or were the case. But, otherwise, the above is my starting point.
VA
To simplify:
facts /
knowledge /
description.
Fair enough, as a shorthand.
VA
In this methodological taxonomy, features of reality (facts or states of affairs) have nothing to do with what we know and say.
Again, here VA gets it nearly right. The point of my methodological taxonomy is that it untangles the conceptual muddle that comes from failing to distinguish between the three 'separate things' - the muddle that I think has plagued philosophy for millennia - the very muddle that VA's sub-Kantian theory perpetuates - as follows.
VA
For example, it is a fact the moon exists regardless of whether there are human or not.
1. Fact as features of reality that are or were the case"
PH's stance of what is fact as "1. features of reality that are or were the case" and independent of the human condition, is very problematic and there are many arguments why it is not tenable nor possible to be real.
1. Kant argued convincingly a thing-in-itself is impossible to exists as real, thus it is an illusion, nevertheless a useful illusion for various purposes.
And here's the rub. Kant's invented 'thing-in-itself', or 'noumenon', is the fiction that keeps on confusing. It's the ghost that doesn't exist but can't be exorcised. And it's 'usefulness'
is the point, because, since it doesn't exist, facts or features of reality
can only be 'things-as-they-appear-to-us', or 'phenomena'.
Without noumena, the argument that reality - the facts of reality - depend, in some way, on us humans collapses. So VA, following Kant, has to blur the distinction between features of reality and what we know and say about them. Those separate features of reality - those things-in-themselves -
must be illusions.
VA
2. QM has refuted facts and reality as independent from the human conditions.
The thesis of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, had proven that an independent objective reality is not possible to be real.
The implication of that thesis is;
The Moon Does Not Exist If No Humans are "Looking" at It
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39510
which refutes PH's - what is fact which implies;
"the fact that the moon exists regardless of humans existence or relation to the human conditions"
This is completely different from VA's Kantian argument above. And others here who know more about QM than I have repeatedly challenged, if not falsified, VA's metaphysical conclusion from the physics. But I repeat a point I've already made: QM is a very successful attempt to describe the facts of reality - facts which don't depend on the existence of humans.
VA
3. Model Dependent Realism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
" claims that it is meaningless to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything."
which mean what the model is modelling, i.e. the supposed PH's fact is meaningless.
Therefore, PH's version of 'what is fact' cannot be real, PH's fact is merely an illusion, speculation, opinions and ASSUMPTIONS.
Here VA conflates two different issues: general (empiricist?) skepticism; and model-dependence. I've addressed both of them repeatedly, and VA ignores or doesn't understand my rebuttals. But here are my points about model-dependence again:
1 To construct a model of reality is not to construct reality. If it were, then of what is the model a model?
2 If all we can know about reality are the models we construct, then how can we construct them in the first place?
VA
2. what we believe and know about them;
How sure is PH and gang that "what we believe and know about them" represent the fact which is independent of the human conditions?
To know [humanly] the facts precisely is an impossible task and there is no way one can confirm it. In this case, there is the gap between knowing-reality [epistemology] and the reality-that-known [ontology].
Here's the wretched noumenon - reality-in-itself - haunting VA again. And the mysticism is evident: there's something unknowable about reality for ever beyond our human understanding. Only an invented god could know everything and the essence of things -
because there must be an essence.
VA
I presumed PH will rely on the best, most credible and reliable method to know that-independent-fact which is the scientific Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK].
There is no denial that the scientific FSK generate its own scientific facts which is objective.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scie ... jectivity/
So how sure is PH that what are scientific facts represent the supposed fact-in-itself as a feature of reality and is independent of human conditions.
I believe PH will have confidence scientific facts do are of close approximation of his "independent facts" which definitely imply Correspondence or Mirroring even PH deny he is doing the mirroring.
To repeat: VA's FSK theory can't account for the relative or superior objectivity of any FSK. The obvious answer - that the natural sciences most accurately describe an independent reality, of which we're a part - is precisely the answer that the FSK theory rejects. Why is one model better than another? Because there's something that's being modelled. QED.
VA
In this case we have two types of facts, i.e.;
1. PH's fact as feature of reality independent of the human conditions.
2. Scientific facts which are conditioned to the FSK conditioned by human conditions.
There are Two Senses of 'What is Fact'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39587
What I conclude here is;
PH do not know his version of fact directly because his facts in independent of him, what he knows of are merely whatever are pulsing from his brain.
These pulsations of from the brain are concluded as scientific facts conditioned upon the scientific FSK.
The pulsations in relation to reality, i.e. scientific facts in this case are the real whole complex of things emerging from reality [all there is] with the human conditions.
Scientific facts are not mere inferences nor description.
It is something like Weltanschauung but in term of realization of reality;
A worldview or world-view or Weltanschauung is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view.
As such there are two aspect to what is a fact, in this case a scientific fact;
1. the culminating emergence of the fact with the scientific FSK..
2. the conclusions that can be described about 1.
3. what we say about them.
What PH say about are the consolidations of the scientific facts, not his supposed facts because they do not exist as real.
PH's version of 'what is fact' cannot be real, PH's fact is merely an illusion, speculation, opinions and ASSUMPTIONS.
Twere tedious to repeat refutations of this stuff.
And anyway, I and others have rebutted VA's interminable drivel interminably, without success.
Back to the novel.
