From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 15:43:56 GMT
Hi Sam:
P:
> > Pray that an American soldier being shot at by an Iraqi doesn't wait for
> > an interpretation within an overall narrative framework to shoot back.
> >
> > Do you really not see a difference between fact and fiction? Do you
> > really challenge DMB's assertion that as a matter of undeniable fact
> > "people do not come back to life after being dead for three days?"
> >
> > Say it isn't so, Sam.
S:
> (picture me smiling as I write this)
>
> You and I share large amounts of 'story' by which to interpret information.
> So you and I would agree on what to count as 'fact' and 'not fact'. And we
> can certainly agree on what the high quality response of a particular
> soldier would be in the present conflict.
We agree. That's a fact. :-)
> I think the best way forward for me would be to refer to the two
> contemporaneous experiments carried out by Priestley and Lavoisier in the
> late eighteenth century. As we would describe it today, the experiments
> were functionally identical (effectively to do with combustion chambers).
> Yet one scientist took it as proof of the existence of phlogistion, the
> other as proof of the existence of oxygen. What was the 'fact' in this
> situation? Can you describe the 'fact' without referring to a larger
> explanatory story?
You present the experiment as actually occurring, i.e., as fact. :-)
> My point about facts is that they cannot be understood separately from the
> overall explanation in which they are embedded.
Is that a fact? :-)
>To use the
> paintings-in-an-art-gallery analogy, it is like saying you can't just have
> a brushstroke (a fact) without a picture (the overall explanation). What
> makes a brushstroke part of a work of art - rather than a random occurrence
> - is its context.
Looks to me like the brushstroke is a fact, the picture is another fact,
and your comparing the picture to overall explanation is a third fact.
Parts and wholes are facts. Further, it's an overall fact you can't have
parts without wholes, or wholes without parts. :-)
> Where I would part company from the post-modernists - and where you and I
> might find some creative space for agreement, if we explored it - is that I
> think some interpretations have higher quality than others. So, to use
> traditional language, I think there is such a thing as the truth. I'm just
> sceptical about anyone who says that they have found it.
Now that you've revealed it, I would say that you've found truth in your
skepticism of anyone who claims to have found truth. :-) Be that as it
may, it's a fact we agree that some interpretations have higher quality
than others, especially when it comes to truthless postmodernism.
> That's all I mean when I say that there are no uninterpreted facts. I'm
> trying to highlight the fact that DMB is interpreting information according
> to his own criteria - which is fair enough. I do the same. I just think
> that my system of interpretation is of higher quality than his.
It's a fact I like your system of interpretation better, too. :-) Much better,
in fact.
> It is
> assessing the relative merits of the alternative systems that interests me
> - not responding in detail to particular conclusions of each system. (Which
> is why I'm not shouting about Jesus all the time in this forum)
Thank God you're not shouting Jesus all the time. ;-)
> As for whether people come back to life after three days, I would refer you
> to Hume's discussion of causation. We don't know that the sun will rise
> tomorrow, we just know that it always has so far. So we can have a
> reasonable expectation - but a reasonable expectation is not a fact.
I guess for Hume facts only pertain to what has happened, never what
might happen. Would you agree that regardless of our interpretations,
Hume was himself a fact? (Ignorance of Hume's historical existence is
no excuse.) :-)
> And
> as, to my mind, the Christian church would not exist if it were not for
> something remarkable happening on the third day, and the Christian church
> clearly exists, therefore something remarkable happened on the third day.
> We can debate about what it was till the cows come home, but our
> disagreement won't be over a 'fact'.
Oh, I don't know about that. Historical facts are argued about all the
time. The search is still on for "hard" evidence about that remarkable
happening.
> "When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single
> proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually
> over the whole)." (Wittgenstein, On Certainty)
Stated by Wittgenstein as a certainty.
Just as every attempt to escape from values invokes a value, so every
attempt to escape from truth and facts invokes a truth or a fact. (Platt
Holden, On Reality) :-)
Using "smileys" is just my way of convey my smiling as I wrote this. If
we can't have fun on this site, something important would be missing. In
fact, what always bothered me about going to an Episcopal church
service was the lack of humor or even a sense of fun. Maybe that's why
I like Gospel music. It conveys the joy that Christian faith brings.
Platt
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