Citation, please. I can't find that.
This just one entry;
"ignorance (n.)
1200, "lack of wisdom or knowledge," from Old French ignorance (12c.), from Latin ignorantia "want of knowledge"

To ignore is an action. It appears that ignorance is at best a passion, or unawareness. But I agree that an ignorant person can indeed ignore. — tim wood

For me, what is important is if the person can perceive the necessary information or not. That is different from having the capability to perceive information and choosing to ignore it. I have checked dictionary definitions and they do not clarify that point. It is like everyone takes for granted our ability to receive knowledge.

Most of the time, I read what you all are saying, and it is over my head. I am a gifted idiot. I have a terrible time understanding what people are saying. I have college lectures produced by the Great Course company and I listen to them again and again and still do not receive the information that is given. I am not ignoring the information. I just can not understand it. It bounces off my brain like a rubber ball bounces off a wall. I know it would help if I were more intent on learning and wrote notes while listening to the lecture. It takes a lot of effort and energy to learn something, and often comprehending what you all are talking about seems totally beyond what I am capable of. You use the word "unawareness", we have to know something before we can learn more. But that is not intentionally ignoring the available information. That is the point I want to make. Along with the points I want to make about education in other threads.

Believing a holy book and not the science that is vital to the health of our nation, is an educational failure that comes with replacing liberal education (how to think) with education for technology (what to think) and leaving moral training (the ability to think) to the church.

Most of the time.... — Athena

You now more than you think you know. And I tried the Great Courses some years ago - who could resist their ads? It's not you, it's them. I found the lectures oddly flat, many terrible. In teaching there has to be a "catch," or a kind of hook, or action or dynamism in the presentation and what is presented, or indeed it does all bounce off. In this era of free education on Youtube, (imo) that's the way to go, because a lot of it is done (imo) very well indeed.

Believing a holy book and not the science that is vital to the health of our nation, is an educational failure that comes with replacing liberal education (how to think) with education for technology (what to think) — Athena

Amen, amen. And that a gradual process starting mainly after the Civil War and ending, I think, once and for all in the late 1950s. c. 1959 - 1963, just a few years, one can see the stunning change evidenced in high school yearbook pictures. Young people at that point not wanting to be told what to think, but at the same time not themselves knowing how.

And now of course it's neither what nor how, but what a great guy or girl you are. With exceptions: some people are just plain smart, and smart enough to recognize they'll have to row their own boat. And life itself, which can and does administer its own correctives.

This is science apologetics. — Yohan

Explain please.

If something can be confirmed as fact, explain how. — Yohan

It says "confirm to a degree" and "provisional assent." I don't see any problem, just follow the scientific method, i.e. provide evidence.

This definition is like saying 'something is confirmed if its been so confirmed that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'. — Yohan

I think you're playing around with language. Do you really not know what Gould is saying?

Even the suicidal want to tie a good noose. — Zugzwang

I'm stealing that. — Banno

Actually, I've always thought that hanging would be a good way to commit suicide if I ever want to do so. When I picture it, I always just tie a slip knot. It is my understanding the fancy-schmancy hangman's noose was developed as a way to break the hangee's neck when they are dropped from a gallows.

So the true is tentative? And, "turns out not to be true" means something else is true? It becomes a hall of mirrors. — tim wood

Our knowledge of what is true is always tentative, or as Gould writes, "provisional." any definition of truth that doesn't take that into account is missing the point. Truth that can't be known is meaningless.

This is science apologetics. — Yohan
Explain please. — T Clark

Science doesn't have a way of establishing fact. Rather than admit this, which I believe honest scientists do, some science advocates and probably actual scientists won't admit it, but will instead rearrange the goal posts so that a fact can mean something that is agreed upon by the majority of scientists.
That's a quick theory, though I could be wrong.

It says "confirm to a degree" and "provisional assent." I don't see any problem, just follow the scientific method, i.e. provide evidence. — T Clark

I think its a problem because how do we determine what counts as sufficient reason to accept something as evidence. And then how much of such evidence is enough to accept something as fact beyond a reasonable doubt? It reminds me of the heap paradox. How much could be considered a big enough heap of evidence?

I think you're playing around with language. Do you really not know what Gould is saying? — T Clark

I don't think I am.
Something is either proven to be a fact or it isn't. No amount of induction will ever establish a fact. At least, I don't see how it could.

How do facts obtain as true?

That question is what I wonder about facts...

I am getting at the problem of religious conflicts, and the democratic belief that reasoning is the way to resolve conflicts. — Athena

If this is what you wanted, you should have said so in the OP.

I don't see how the belief that reasoning is the way to resolve conflicts is somehow a democratic principle.

If we are going to make laws that affect everyone, and put people in penitentiaries to save their souls, and go to war because that is the will of God, shouldn't we have really good grounds for what we believe? — Athena

I don't think many people, theists or non-theists, think we should put people in prison to save their souls. I also don't think theistic regime's are more likely to start wars than non-theistic ones. Please, let's not get into that foofaraw again.

Yes, yes, and yes. How can anyone today believe a god walked in a garden with a man and a woman and this is the beginning of our history? If that story is accepted as factual, isn't there a problem with our thinking? Like before scientific thinking why wouldn't everyone believe that story? There was not a method for thinking that would clarify the story as a myth, not a fact. — Athena

Gould said "in science." He was as big, if perhaps not as rabid, an atheist as you and @tim wood are. He, unlike you, was not anti-religion.

In 415, St. Augustine, one of the founders of the Christian church, stated that the bible should be interpreted metaphorically. Thanks to @Wayfarer for that information. Just because there are fundamentalists who haven't gotten the message, that doesn't give you leeway to let the straw dogs out.



And again, what makes you think democracy has some sort of privileged access to reason?

And then how much of such evidence is enough to accept something as fact beyond a reasonable doubt? — Yohan

You can accept that induction can't establish facts in the way we might have wanted, but stop somewhere short of "anything goes" or something. There's still a lot of ground between here and there.

The Gould quote is nice because "perverse" captures some standard of rationality, which can be comfortably expressed in terms of confidence or subjective probability. Sometimes people talk about "surprise" this way, giving it a somewhat rigorous definition -- we're talking Bayes here -- so you could treat as a fact something you'd be really surprised to find out was not the case.

We all know facts of an ideal sort are out of reach, and we've known it since Hume, but then what?

Science doesn't have a way of establishing fact. Rather than admit this, which I believe honest scientists do, some science advocates and probably actual scientists won't admit it, but will instead rearrange the goal posts so that a fact can mean something that is agreed upon by the majority of scientists. — Yohan

I don't buy this. A scientific consensus doesn't make something a fact, it makes it suitable for use. How do we use knowledge - adequately justified beliefs? We use them to make decisions about possible actions.

I think its a problem because how do we determine what counts as sufficient reason to accept something as evidence. And then how much of such evidence is enough to accept something as fact beyond a reasonable doubt? — Yohan

First off, we don't generally need to establish facts "beyond a reasonable doubt." Sometimes we do, but not usually. Choosing the level of allowable doubt is a matter of human of judgement. You have to take into account the amount of uncertainty and the consequences of being wrong. This is something people do all the time. It's nothing exotic or even particularly philosophical. Which is not to say they don't do it wrong lots of times.

Something is either proven to be a fact or it isn't. No amount of induction will ever establish a fact. — Yohan

This is silly philosophicationismness. The only things we can know that aren't established by induction are those that come from deduction, which have nothing to do with the real world. Maybe no amount of induction will ever establish a fact, but it can establish a provisional fact, belief if you will, that is suitable for use in making decisions.

but then what? — Srap Tasmaner

We just do the best we can.

The only things we can know that aren't established by induction are those that come from deduction, which have nothing to do with the real world. — T Clark

There is no singular "real world". Your world and my world are very different, even though we are both human males(I think?). Imagine how different is the world of the opposite sex, or other species even. But that is another realm of contemplation altogether.

what makes you think democracy has some sort of privileged access to reason? — T Clark

I have a soft spot for this idea, and the companion conception of science. The idea is that "the scientific method" is not responsible for the success of science, broadly speaking, but the fact that it is communal and self-correcting. Once you've institutionalized such practices, you can even overcome failures like the replication crisis. The faith is that democracy can support similar incremental progress towards a just society, despite its failures.

There is no singular "real world". Your world and my world are very different, even though we are both human males(I think?). Imagine how different is the world of the opposite sex, or other species even. — Yohan

I often say "There's only one world," so, clearly I disagree. There are, on the other hand, lots of ways to think, talk about it. I think humans, men and women, are much more alike than different. Ditto with people with different languages and cultures. It may take some work, but we can understand each other.

As for non-human animals? I don't know.

Yes, I am a human male.

Once you've institutionalized such practices, you can even overcome failures like the replication crisis. The faith is that democracy can support similar incremental progress towards a just society, despite its failures. — Srap Tasmaner

Both science and democracy are important to me and I agree with you about both involving self-correction mechanisms. That's not the same as saying that democracies are more likely to make their decisions based on reason than other forms of government. Perhaps that's not what you were trying to say.

Our knowledge of what is true is always tentative — T Clark

No, our knowledge of facts is tentative. The true is always satisfiable. Else true doesn't mean true. This, or there is no difference between fact and true.

Yeah that is what I'm saying, but only in the damnably long term.

No, our knowledge of facts is tentative. The true is always satisfiable. Else true doesn't mean true. This, or there is no difference between fact and true. — tim wood

Knowledge, truth, belief, fact. All tied up in knots of language and meaning.

Yeah that is what I'm saying, but only in the damnably long term. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps.

I often say "There's only one world," so, clearly I disagree. There are, on the other hand, lots of ways to think, talk about it. I think humans, men and women, are much more alike than different. Ditto with people with different languages and cultures. It may take some work, but we can understand each other. — T Clark

In my world there are many worlds. In your world there is one.
Who is right.
Well, it depends. If we use the analogy of a house...I consider every room in the house a world. Perhaps you say only the whole house is a world. I would then argue that what you are calling the whole house is really just one room in the house.

The world is the totality of things, not of facts.

Not of true sentences: it doesn't need those.

Nor of obtaining states: those are linguistic too.

In my world there are many worlds. In your world there is one.
Who is right. — Yohan

Neither of us. The idea of "world" as we are using it is a metaphysical term. As such, it is not right or wrong, only useful or not in a particular situation. It's just our different ways of looking at the same thing.

The religious and non-religious, or faith-based believers and evidence-based naturalists, are playing different yet barely overlapping language-games (pace S.J. Gould), so intractable disagreements are inevitable regardless of the extant facts. An actuarial resolution to existential disputes: the discursive community which out-breeds AND is, on average, better educated than the other/s tends to prevail in the longer run ... Let us prey!

'Facts' be damned. :pray:

The original sense was ‘an act’, something done — Olivier5

Claims of "original sense" are somewhat fraught.

We can go further back to the Proto-Indo-European root *dhe-, "to set, put."

So arguably a fact is put in place; it's what we work from.

But of course that's not valid; that it had that meaning five thousand years ago is irrelevant to the meaning it has now.

The usage as an act is found in Jane Ausitn, "...gracious in fact if not in word"; and Milton, Paradise Lost, "He who most excels in fact of arms". But as something that really occurred, in Thirlwall, "...one fact destroys this fiction". The first occurrence of fact as truth or reality is dated at 1581, well pre-dating your supposition that it derives from17th century empiricism. (SOED) (Edit: on checking the OED, the date is "1632 J. Hayward tr. Biondi's Eromena 21 They resolved that the Admirall should goe disguised‥to assure himselfe of the fact." It seems the point is one of contention).

We find @Srap Tasmaner's sense in 1729, "the writer's facts are untrustworthy".

The upshot is that the sense is in a state of flux. Nevertheless we can maintain a distinction between what is the case, and what is believed to be the case; and mark this distinction with care by distinguishing fact from belief. Choose whatever words you will, this distinction must remain, since without it there can be no error, and without error we cannot improve our understanding.

Neither of us. The idea of "world" as we are using it is a metaphysical term. As such, it is not right or wrong, only useful or not in a particular situation. It's just our different ways of looking at the same thing. — T Clark

I don't see it as a metaphysical term. Metaphysics is reductive, leading to essence. The sensory experience is appearance, emergent, and relative to the experiencer. It's truths are inductive, and its here that we hope for effective maps.
An earth worms world is dirt. A bird's world is the sky. Dirt and sky are not the same thing thought about differently.

Sometimes facts are arbitrary, with so many aspects of subjective testimony. Are there any 'true' facts which can stand above our own grasp and wishes to develop arguments? So much involves bias and, our own attempts to tell our own individual perspectives.

So this is just yet another thread about god. And here was I thinking it might be interesting.

How do we use knowledge - adequately justified beliefs? We use them to make decisions about possible actions.
...
First off, we don't generally need to establish facts "beyond a reasonable doubt." Sometimes we do, but not usually. Choosing the level of allowable doubt is a matter of human of judgement. You have to take into account the amount of uncertainty and the consequences of being wrong. This is something people do all the time. It's nothing exotic or even particularly philosophical. — T Clark

:up: :up: :up:

Facts cannot turn out the be false.
— Banno

Determinism — Athena

Well, no. It's just that if some statement turns out to be false, then it is not a fact.

A fact is a true statement.

Actually, I've always thought that hanging would be a good way to commit suicide if I ever want to do so. When I picture it, I always just tie a slip knot. It is my understanding the fancy-schmancy hangman's noose was developed as a way to break the hangee's neck when they are dropped from a gallows. — T Clark

I think pain pills and hypothermia might be interesting, a whole psychedelic death journey, with my last moments being perhaps the most exciting. If I did have to hang, I think I'd want to the broken neck. I'd prefer the guillotine though, if I had to offer my neck.