How aren't they fiction? Weren't you stressing their lack of correspondence with actual states of affairs? — bongo fury
From the fact that a description can only be made relative to a set of linguistic categories, it does not follow that the facts/objects/states of affairs,/etc., described can only exist relative to a set of categories.
More assertions. I'm winning our game.Humans are far too embedded in their social institutions for even the most ardent individualist — Banno
Wait, doesn't this contradict what you just said?The game cannot continue if Sartre decides to exercise his radical freedom, regardless of what the majority say. — Banno
Seems like something a sociopath might say. Oh, and it's another assertion.That we are social animals is not the most comfortable thing. — Banno
But once we have fixed the meaning of such terms in our vocabulary by arbitrary definitions, it is no longer a matter of any kind of relativism or arbitrariness whether representation-independent features of the world satisfy those definitions, because the features of the world that satisfy or fail to satisfy the definitions exist independently of those or any other definitions.
Once we have fixed the meaning of the terms "gold" and "bishop", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us — Michael
Because this is about as straightfoward an example of a contradiction as one could imagine. This 'fixing' is not metaphysical. It is not an act that, once accomplished, like God's will, stands outside and beyond it's creation. Human agency maintains such fixing at each and every moment of conceptual employment. I cannot but repeat myself: if it is the case that, once we have fixed the meaning of "gold", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us, this "nothing to do with us" is maintained by no one other than - us. — Streetlight
That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" isn't that we determine whether or not this is gold. — Michael
That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" is that we determine whether or not this is gold. — Streetlight
Whether or not something is an element with 79 protons has nothing to do with what we mean by "gold". — Michael
Yet it depends on what we mean by element, or protons, or number for that matter. — Streetlight
Words (often) refer to extra-linguistic things, and the nature and behaviour of those things does not depend on our language. — Michael
Which is why it is a good thing that nothing I have said argues this. — Streetlight
That the material in my hand has the chemical composition it has does not depend on us, but that the material in my hand is money does. That the Sun is larger than the Earth does not depend on us, but that it is illegal to steal does.
Neither money nor the law is a fiction. — Michael
which would then mean that those extra-linguistic things whose nature and behaviour does not depend on our language are either institutional facts or not facts at all. — Michael
The latter of course: facts are not themselves "things". We attribute facts to the world, but the attribution is, precisely, ours. I see a stone; I walk over a floor; but I neither see a fact nor walk upon one (this is not exactly true: perception is conceptual, but we'll put that to one side). — Streetlight
But it does not follow that facts are somehow essentially linguistic, that they have the notion of statement somehow built into them. On the contrary, on the account I have given they are precisely not linguistic (except, of course, for the small but important class of linguistic facts) because the whole point of having the notion of "fact" is to have a notion for that which stands outside the statement but which makes it true, or in virtue of which it is true, if it is true.
but walking over a floor is a fact — Michael
Our words do not "lock on to our metal representations" because if this were granted, then there could be no such thing as our representations; there could only be your representations and my representations. There could be no agreement, no correction of those mental models because there would be nothing else but those models. — Banno
...the whole point of the creation of institutional reality is not to invest objects or people with some special status valuable in itself but to create and regulate power relationships between people — Searle, Making the Social World
This, to me, is much ado about nothing! :grin: — Agent Smith
How very convenient for you that your concepts exactly align with your politics. It's almost like these concepts are totally arbitray. — Streetlight
For Searle, language is an extension of biology; an adequate account will show how language is an "outgrowth" of biological processes. That is, the account is to be naturalistic. Language also has special features that enable other institutions and institutional facts. — Banno
No, it's an attempt at finding scientistic 'fact' oriented foundations for realism.
Does science have such facts? Is general formalized language suitable for bridging metaphysical gaps between sciences we don't understand and formal real worlds? Should we also consider ordinary language, even the biologically natural language of bees in a hive? — magritte
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