The contention is what you defined as "fact."Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 5:48 amSame mistake, over and over again.Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 3:01 am
Betti argued your 'what is fact' as you defined above is not realistic thus redundant.
Betti stated: "There is no hope to pull an ontological rabbit out of a linguistic hat.
There is hope only to pull linguistic rabbits out of linguistic hats (and here ’linguistic’ is about natural language)."
There are three separate things: features of reality that are or were the case; things we believe and know about them; and things we say about them, which, in classical logic, may be true or false, given the way we use the signs involved. (And, btw, it's all signs, not just those in natural languages.)
Betti's 'ontological rabbits' is the first thing: features of reality that are or were the case. And yes, the things we believe, know and say about the rabbits are not the rabbits.
Next step.
1 We humans have to perceive, know and describe reality - the ontological rabbits - in human ways.
2 A description of an ontological rabbit - a truth-claim - is always contextual and conventional.
3 Ontological rabbits are not obliged to conform to our ways of describing them.
So, of course we can't pull ontological rabbits out of linguistic hats. But that doesn't mean there are no ontological rabbits. That talk of facts and true factual assertions is misleading.
Outside language, there are no linguistic distinctions (identities) in reality. But that doesn't mean there are no distinctions in reality. The things we call cats and dogs are what they are (features of reality), whatever we call them, and whether we say they're the same as or different from each other.
Insisting on linguistic identity in reality outside language is a mistake. But it's equally a mistake to deny identity in reality - ontological rabbits - as though the ways we humans perceive, know and describe reality is all that reality can be. There's no reason to believe that, and no evidence that it's the case.
You need to brush up on the origin of the conception of your "what is fact" from analytic philosophy started by Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein where the essentials are still retained at present by you other of analytic philosophy brotherhood.
What Betti claimed is the "what is fact" as claimed by the analytic philosophers are like this;
Description, natural language - "fact" - ontological.
Description, natural language [the described rabbit] - "factual rabbit" - ontological rabbit.
What Betti argued in her 'Against Fact' that the insertion of concept of the analytic-fact [the factual rabbit] in the above is redundant.
You need to read her book to understand the above.
So Betti's position would be this;
Description, natural language [the described rabbit] - ontological rabbit-in-itself.
This is basically the philosophical realists' belief without the irrelevant analytic-fact, the factual rabbit.
On the other hand, my claim is this
Description, natural language [the described rabbit] [FSC] - the FSER-contingent fact of empirical rabbit.
Betti argued the factual-analytic-rabbit is redundant and nonsensical merely pulled out from a play of words and linguistic.