Roger's "Ontologically Objective" - A Question

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

I use the word "fact" to mean any existent at all (including relationships), irrespective of awareness. That means entities fall under fact. That's how I leaned it and it is certainly taught that way in several places. I see no reason to change this.

Here is a statement from Peikoff that shows this (OPAR, p. 18). I could find one from Rand, but I got tired of digging.

Such a man acknowledges a fact, the volcano—and the fact that it is what it is and does what it does independent of his feelings or any other state of his consciousness.

The volcano is an entity and it is a fact.

But the important thing is the concept of existence independent of awareness, not the word that expresses it. We can choose others. Otherwise, I will start speaking in Portuguese, and then we will really have trouble communicating.

Michael

[tjohnson]

The only way we can know that an entity exists is with our senses, agree or disagree? If you disagree, please explain how.

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

I use the word "fact" to mean any existent at all (including relationships), irrespective of awareness. That means entities fall under fact. That's how I leaned it and it is certainly taught that way in several places. I see no reason to change this.

Here is a statement from Peikoff that shows this (OPAR, p. 18). I could find one from Rand, but I got tired of digging.

Such a man acknowledges a fact, the volcano—and the fact that it is what it is and does what it does independent of his feelings or any other state of his consciousness.

The volcano is an entity and it is a fact.

But the important thing is the concept of existence independent of awareness, not the word that expresses it. We can choose others. Otherwise, I will start speaking in Portuguese, and then we will really have trouble communicating.

Michael

Michael, please don't threaten me with Portuguese. I'm already having too much trouble with your Greek!! :sweat:

Where did you lean (learn?) that "entity" falls under "fact"? And what "several places" is it being taught that way!? :shocked: I'd like to have a word or two with those people!

I don't see how "entity" can fall under both "existent" and "fact" at the same time, unless they are synonymous. Using "fact" as synonymous with "existent" (as you apparently do) is:

(1) redundant. If "fact" meant "any existent at all" --vi.e., "existent" -- then we wouldn't need the concept "existent," would we? Instead, they perform a very important division of labor in our conceptual functioning. Concepts grasp existents. Propositions grasp facts, i.e., ~things about~ existents, i.e., ~that~ existents ~are such-and-such~. Concepts abstract our awareness of existents from their measurements, and all their non-essential attributes remain as implicit, background knowledge about them. Propositions are the way we explicitly mentally unite existents with something else that exists. What makes possible this mental unification in a proposition is that there are ~facts~, i.e., ~things about~ these existents that we can grasp, just as we grasp the existents themselves by means of a concept.

(2) not the way any professional philosophers and/or Objectivist philosophers use the term, except when they're writing and thinking carelessly, as in the Peikoff quote. It sounds wonderful, rhetorically, to declaim things like, "Ayn Rand is a FACT!", but it's very sloppy to express it that way, when what is really meant is, "Ayn Rand REALLY EXISTS!" or "It is a FACT that Ayn Rand exists!". In the Peikoff quote, the part that is correct is "the fact that it (the volcano) is what it is and does what it does independent of...", and the part that is incorrect is "a fact, the volcano." Consider: if a volcano were a fact, then we could speak of it the same way we speak of the fact of its being dormant, or the fact that it exists. Try it: it is a fact that the volcano is dormant, it is a fact that the volcano exists, it is a fact that the volcano....what? See, treating an existent, out of relationship to anything else,

as if

it were a fact is a conceptual dangler. Facts are facts ~that~ things are ~such and such~. If you can't express what you want to say about something that way, then it isn't a fact, but just an existent. That doesn't mean that there aren't lots of facts associated with that existent, just that the existent per se is not one of them!

Michael, I am not making this up, and I am not dredging it in from non-Objectivist philosophers, though there are a good number of them that regard facts in this way (i.e., as not equivalent to existents per se). You have quoted Peikoff, whose OPAR is riddled with sloppy thinking and writing, and it is your misfortune to have latched onto one of the numerous examples of such in trying to support your view. My view of what facts are is basically the same as David Kelley's, as expressed in "Concepts and Propositions," an essay he has presented at least twice to seminars of The Objectivist Center (1996 and 2001). Since it's still unpublished, this quote cannot be taken as officially representing his position, but for what it's worth, here's what Kelley said:

What sort of being is a fact? The fact that my car is white is not to be identified with the car itself, as an entity, nor with its color attribute. A fact, qua fact, cannot be identified with anything in any of these categories. A fact is always a fact that x is P, or the fact of x's being P, not x by itself, and not the substantive kind or attribute, action, or relationship designated by "P".

Kelley also holds, as I do, that a fact is the object of a proposition, while an existent is the object of a concept. (However, unfortunately, he seems to think that facts do not exist independently in the world, a view with which I ~emphatically~ disagree! And did so state during the TOC cyberseminar on epistemology in 1996.)

Anyway, just so you know, Kelley, a much more precise and careful thinker than Peikoff, draws a clearcut distinction between facts and existents, and it closely parallels the one I've been arguing for here in OL, as well as in my own cyberseminar paper in 1996. (Just in case anyone thinks I am dissing Peikoff's philosophical ability, I think he is a much more creative and interesting thinker than Kelley. Now, if someone could just split the difference between them! :super: )

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

Well, at least you see I'm not a doofus on this and did have fundament. I thought that fact was not exactly the existent per se (a synonym), nor even an attribute per se, but the existence of the existent (and attributes, relationships, etc.). In other words, to my mind, a fact can be the existence of cause (entity) and effect (all the other stuff).

I will look into your conception. I have both Kelley's beta version of The Logical Structure of Objectivism and The Art of Reasoning. I should find something in there to get my juices flowing, now that you started the trickle.

Michael

[John Dailey]

GS:

~ Well, I'm certainly not going to butt into REB's and MSK's semantic debate on 'facts'-vs(?)-'truth' meanings, nor the relations twixt the facts/truths or their meanings to 'entity'/'existents'/'attributes'...and/or their meanings. --- I think it best we [especially you ] stay out of that.

~ But, to answer your question about 'senses', simple: you ask how can we 'discover' such without them? My point has been that 'discover' REQUIRES that they be there already before we do 'discover'; else we're talking Berkeleyian idealism. Re senses being necessary: of course they are! This doesn't mean that they're all we can go by. We don't directly 'sense' microwaves, ultrasound, or radiation (unless at extreme amplitudes)...yet, INDIRECTLY via created mediums/tools we apply our limited 'senses' DIRECTLY to, we know of them. That's how we know about bats' hearing which we don't 'sense' directly.

[John Dailey]

ADDENDUM:

~ As an aside, I find it interesting that, considering another thread in this forum about a distinction 'twixt the terms 'metaphysics' and 'ontology', that this thread is named...as such.

~ A further aside: I've noticed that the term 'ontology' is becoming a bit more used lately in, of all areas, science articles (primarily re Cosmology and Particle Physics); anyone else notice this?

LLAP

J:D

[tjohnson]

~ But, to answer your question about 'senses', simple: you ask how can we 'discover' such without them? My point has been that 'discover' REQUIRES that they be there already before we do 'discover'; else we're talking Berkeleyian idealism. Re senses being necessary: of course they are! This doesn't mean that they're all we can go by. We don't directly 'sense' microwaves, ultrasound, or radiation (unless at extreme amplitudes)...yet, INDIRECTLY via created mediums/tools we apply our limited 'senses' DIRECTLY to, we know of them. That's how we know about bats' hearing which we don't 'sense' directly.

No, it's not that simple. We cannot know something is there BEFORE we sense it, we can only know WHEN we sense it. We can ASSUME it was there before (and will be there next time) but we cannot KNOW it.

[tjohnson]

Additionally, when you think of distant galaxies we see light that theoretically may be billions of years old and so in a sense we are looking back in time. We do not know if that galaxy exists "now" because several billions of years have passed since the light left it. The point is we don't have a direct connection to "reality" we only have indirect abstractions via our senses and so it cannot be the same for everyone. This is not to say there is not some invariance, which is precisely what is expressed in our knowledge.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

You have the weirdest conception of knowledge. I can't get a handle on it. It seems to be based on human beings not having a capacity to know anything at all; maybe at a sensory level, but even then I have seen you claim that this is not knowledge.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

No, it's not that simple. We cannot know something is there BEFORE we sense it, we can only know WHEN we sense it. We can ASSUME it was there before (and will be there next time) but we cannot KNOW it.

Define "know". Everything we "know" about the physical world is in fact also an assumption, for example when we see a tree, we assume in fact that we can translate our visual sensation into a 3-dimensional physical object. We make a model of the world, and everything we experience seems to confirm the correctness of our assumption and a validation of our model, and therefore we tend to forget that it is in fact an assumption. But sometimes our assumption can be wrong, for example when we look at a clever trompe-l'oeuil painting: it tricks us into believing that we observe some 3-dimensional object, while it is in fact a flat layer of paint. In another nice illusion we sense a rotating green disk, but there is in reality no such thing. So there is no real dichotomy between "knowing" and "assuming"; we use the first term if the probability of our inference being correct is high enough, which will be the case if there is enough evidence confirming the assumption.

[tjohnson]

I can address the notion of knowledge but first I wanted to establish that speaking about objects existing without an observer is meaningless. The existence of objects is a result having an object AND an observer, you need both. Many people believe deeply in God and would argue strongly that God exists and nobody can prove he doesn't. Scientists think gravitons must exist but can't observe one either (last time I heard). As DF has pointed out, even when we observe some things does not mean they exist because our abstractions are limited.

The only possible content of 'knowledge' is structure, and I leave 'structure' undefined. So we perceive structure and we describe structure and infer structure of events. When our theories are similar in structure to events we have useful knowledge for prediction and so adjustment to living.

[Dragonfly]

I can address the notion of knowledge but first I wanted to establish that speaking about objects existing without an observer is meaningless.

A few billion years ago there were no observers on the earth - is it therefore meaningless to speak about the earth at that time? I don't think so. If we accept the model of the world that we use in our daily life as a good model, we'll have to accept that it implies that we can extrapolate the existence of things like the earth to times when there was no one to observe it.

[tjohnson]

A few billion years ago there were no observers on the earth - is it therefore meaningless to speak about the earth at that time? I don't think so. If we accept the model of the world that we use in our daily life as a good model, we'll have to accept that it implies that we can extrapolate the existence of things like the earth to times when there was no one to observe it.

Very true, BUT what we call 'the earth' today was NOT around back then. What we call 'the earth' is in a constant state of change. My point is that our words are static, unchanging affairs but what they represent are dynamic, changing things and each time we observe the thing it is actually different. It is in this sense that it doesn't exist without an observer. In fact we don't even technically 'observe things', what we do is manufacture abstractions from stimuli. So you argument is really that IF a human had of been around then he WOULD have registered 'the earth' and I would agree with that statement.

[Dragonfly]

Very true, BUT what we call 'the earth' today was NOT around back then. What we call 'the earth' is in a constant state of change. My point is that our words are static, unchanging affairs but what they represent are dynamic, changing things and each time we observe the thing it is actually different. It is in this sense that it doesn't exist without an observer.

But most things are in a constant state of change, you are not the same person you were 5 minutes ago. By your argument the things you put in your refrigerator no longer exist when you close the door.

In fact we don't even technically 'observe things', what we do is manufacture abstractions from stimuli.

Right, but it doesn't stop there. Our abstractions are not merely static snapshots taken at one particular time, but form a model that encompasses change and existence outside our direct observations. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to live an active life. IRRC even babies at an early stage seem to realize that an object that disappears behind a screen still exists. BTW this is an example that we are not born with a blank slate. Of course we have at birth no knowledge of particular objects that we haven't seen yet, but we have already some kind of model of the world around us, even if it is rather rudimentary compared to the sophisticated model that we develop later in life thanks to our interaction with our environment.

So you argument is really that IF a human had of been around then he WOULD have registered 'the earth' and I would agree with that statement.

But that is the same as saying that the earth did exist at the time! If it didn't exist then, a human (or a Martian) around then wouldn't have been able to observe it. That it would be different from the earth we know today is not relevant; the salad you take out your refrigerator is different from the salad you put in the day before, but our model of the world tells us that in spite of all the changes there is a continuity in the object, even at times when we cannot observe it.

[tjohnson]

At time₁ we manufacture abstraction₁, at time₂ we manufacture abstraction₂. The object has been changing and each abstraction is a "snapshot", abstraction₂ does not equal abstraction₁. So where does 'existence' fit into all of this? 'Existence' is a misnomer, an oversimplification of what is going on.

[Dragonfly]

At time₁ we manufacture abstraction₁, at time₂ we manufacture abstraction₂. The object has been changing and each abstraction is a "snapshot", abstraction₂ does not equal abstraction₁. So where does 'existence' fit into all of this? 'Existence' is a misnomer, an oversimplification of what is going on.

What you describe is only the first level of abstraction, that of what we perceive at a certain moment. But as I said, it doesn't stop there, we build higher abstractions to form a model of the world, in which the abstraction₁ is related to abstraction₂, and which describes how things may change, so that we can account for the differences between abstraction₁ and abstraction₂. What you describe reminds me of what I saw on television some years ago: a man who had (probably due to some brain damage) no longer a short-term memory. When someone entered the room, he was greeted by the man, but as soon as the visitor had been out of sight for only a moment he had been forgotten, and when the man saw the visitor again he greeted him again as if he'd never met him before. It was really weird to see, the more so as his long-term memory still worked fairly well and he could hold a rational conversation. It was obvious that that man wouldn't able to live on his own. But that would be the state of everyone if we only could make abstractions as snapshots in time. It is the model of an independent existence, whether stated expicitly or used implicitly, that enables us to see continuity and to act in an effective way.

[tjohnson]

It sounds like you agree that 'existence' is only possible as part of our abstraction process (lower and higher orders) and so by itself is meaningless. As you say, our higher order abstractions allow us to express invariance under transformation (4-dimensional structure) which is the only content of 'knowledge'.

[Dragonfly]

It sounds like you agree that 'existence' is only possible as part of our abstraction process (lower and higher orders) and so by itself is meaningless.

Why would it be meaningless? It is only by abstraction that we can create meaning. Just from a practical viewpoint it is very meaningful to hypothesize the existence of an independent reality that extends beyond that what we can observe directly. Few things are as practical as a good theory.

[tjohnson]

I'm all for hypothesizing existence but that is not the same as saying "it exists" period. Most people do not make the distinction.

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm all for hypothesizing existence but that is not the same as saying "it exists" period. Most people do not make the distinction.

If you hypothesize existence, then both the hypothesis and the hypothesizer (you) exist which indicates existence exists. If you deny existence then both the thing denied and the denier exist. You can't get away from it.

Given the the law of non-contradiction then the assertion something exists is bang on true.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited January 11, 2008 by BaalChatzaf

[tjohnson]

My premise is that one cannot manufacture an abstraction from stimuli that is not present. One can imagine something that was previously abstracted and one can postulate that an abstraction can be made in the future or could have been made in the past. 'Existence' is a poor term and should be discarded.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

'Existence' is a poor term and should be discarded.

GS,

Wanna start with yourself and show us the way?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

My premise is that one cannot manufacture an abstraction from stimuli that is not present. One can imagine something that was previously abstracted and one can postulate that an abstraction can be made in the future or could have been made in the past. 'Existence' is a poor term and should be discarded.

Everything outside your skin that impinges upon your awareness is exactly the stuff from which existence is abstracted. The only way you can get away from it is to live in a sensory deprivation chamber. Existence is what is. And what is is all around you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

I think this problem can be summarized as follows; does it make sense to speak of a process as a "thing" that "exists"? Science tells us that at sub-microscpic levels what we call "things" or "objects" are really processes and our abstractions are merely "snapshots" of processes. Apple_jan.11 is not apple_jan.30 and it will eventually become "apple sauce". So the object "apple" only exists while it matches our abstraction of what an apple "is".

[tjohnson]

'Existence' is a poor term and should be discarded.

GS,

Wanna start with yourself and show us the way?

Michael

Very clever Micheal.