You're deflecting. — Michael

No, that was a demonstration of the importance of grammar, which is what you were questioning.

Yes. But this is identical to seeing the green grass. Yes or no? — Michael

No. I see that the grass is green as a result of seeing the green grass.

I didn't say that facts weren't discovered. — Michael

When you said that physics discovers things, I took you to be suggesting that physics discovers things rather than facts.

I said that scientific measurements are measurements of observer-independent things. You're the one who's saying that facts are distinct from things (and also observer-independent). So I'm asking you to make sense of this. What's the difference between measuring a thing and measuring a fact? How do scientific instruments distinguish between the two? — Michael

So you want me to get you out of the confusion that you've got yourself in to? Why can't you untangle yourself? I haven't said anything about measuring a fact or instruments which can distinguish between the two. That's come from you.

I've already provided a distinction. One is enough. I don't have to keep going on ad infinitum. Time to revise your argument. It was over before it even took off.

Yeah, but we've already presupposed that the tree falls. Get the paradox? — Question

Yes, this in itself is immediately an observer (mind) dependent observation/thought.

No, that was a demonstration of the importance of grammar, which is what you were questioning. — Sapientia

I was questioning what grammar has to do with truth makers, not with descriptions. The important part was what I said next: If we're using the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true if it corresponds to a state-of-affairs, and if we're a materialist then states-of-affairs (in a lot of cases) are physical things. The green grass is a state-of-affairs, and it's the state-of-affairs that the proposition "the grass is green" corresponds to.

No. I see that the grass is green as a result of seeing the green grass.

I can't make sense of this. It seems to be using two different senses of "see". I assume the latter is referring to the occurrence of visual phenomena. What's the former?

When you said that physics discovers things, I took you to be suggesting that physics discovers things rather than facts.

I'm saying that our measuring machines can only detect things. That's just how they work; they're physical things that are causally influenced by other physical things. Therefore either facts are physical things or our measuring machines can't detect facts.

Whereas you seem to be saying that facts aren't physical things but can still somehow be detected by our measuring machines. What kind of causal mechanism is involved in that?

So you want me to get you out of the confusion that you've got yourself in to? Why can't you untangle yourself? I haven't said anything about measuring a fact or instruments which can distinguish between the two. That's come from you.

You're the one who's saying that facts are not things and that facts can be discovered. So you need to distinguish between discovering a thing and discovering a fact.

Yeah, but we've already presupposed that the tree falls. Get the paradox? — Question

Not really, because you said "I have a hard time seeing . . ." Do you have a hard time seeing how facts would be mind-independent or not?

The rationale is that there are elementary facts of which nothing can be said about in isolation. — Question

That still makes no sense. Why couldn't the elementary facts of which nothing can be said (about) in isolation be either universal facts or particular facts. (And/or why couldn't it imply that there are either universal or only particular facts?)

The elementary fact or logical atomic fact or object exists as a sort of noumena if you see where I'm getting at — Question

Okay, but you could think that's either a universal or a particular.

You're the one who's saying that facts are not things and that facts can be discovered. So you need to distinguish between discovering a thing and discovering a fact. — Michael

I've already distinguished the two, and one distinction is enough. Your suggestion that they're identical has been refuted already.

That facts can be discovered is evident from the example I gave, which you accepted. That was not a thing, it was a fact.

One problem with facts is how to tell when one fact is the same as another. There's no fat man in my doorway. There's no thin man in my doorway, either. Two facts or one or none? Perhaps there's just One Big Fact to which all true statements refer - which gets around the problem of fact-identity. But if that is so then we can no longer talk meaningfully about facts in the plural. But if there are any facts then there are surely lots of facts - or we are not quite making sense.

There are certainly daisies and we have fairly reliable ways of telling them apart. We can count daisies and someone can point out that we have missed some or counted some twice. On the other hand, there are certainly clouds, but our ways of telling them apart can be a lot less reliable.

Which all establishes that facts are not daisies but they might be clouds. A modest conclusion, perhaps, but surely worth considering.

One problem with facts is how to tell when one fact is the same as another. There's no fat man in my doorway. There's no thin man in my doorway, either. — Cuthbert

One fact in my view.

"Fact" doesn't refer to a statement (with the exception of it being a fact that someone made whatever statement they did etc.)

I think a good place to look for understanding what Wittgenstein meant is Frege, especially Frege's context principle (which Wittgenstein adopted in the Tractatus: "never ask about the meaning of a word in isolation from its occurrence in sentences"). Here's a very useful quote form Frege:

What is distinctive about my conception of logic is that I begin by giving pride of place to the content of the word ‘true’, and then immediately go on to introduce a thought as that to which the question ‘Is it true?’ is in principle applicable. So I do not begin with concepts and put them together to form a thought or judgment; I come by the parts of a thought by analyzing the thought”

(the emphasis is mine)

And I think this quote is useful because it captures pretty well what Wittgenstein was doing in the Tractatus as well. Wittgenstein was interested in the logical analysis of propositions, and what characterizes propositions is that (like Frege's thoughts) they can be either true or false. So when we analyze a proposition (that is, break it down into its constituent parts) what we should be asking in the course of our analysis is what the proposition should be like in order to function as a sign that is essentially capable of representing a situation either truly or falsely. And Wittgenstein's key insight was that a proposition is able to do this because it is a picture of a possible state of affairs, or a fact. And now we can further analyze facts into things, but whatever those things are, they must owe they identity to the facts in which they can logically occur (just like words owe their meaning to the meaning of the sentences which they compose, as the context principle says). And thus Wittgenstein writes:

2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact.

2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.

2.0123 If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot subsequently be found.

So what Wittgenstein did is start from language (propositions) and ask what the world must be like for language to function the way it does (that is, represent things truly or falsely). In other words, Wittgenstein took logic as a guide to our ontology. Whatever things are there in the world, they must be such that we can think them (or represent them in language); and what we can think is facts or states of affairs, not objects or things. So this is why he says in the opening sections of the Tractatus that the world is made up of facts not things, in order to emphasize, like Frege, that he gives the concept of truth the central place in his analysis.

It is also useful to contrast Wittgenstein's approach to Russell's theory of judgment (which Wittgenstein also criticized in the Traactatus). For Russell, judging that such and such is a matter of a relation between a subject and a list of things (such as objects, properties and relations). So Russell's approach is the opposite to Wittgenstein's: you start with ontology and give the list of things that exist in the world, and then you try to explain judgment or meaning by relating the subject with the things which exist according to your ontology. And what was wrong in Russell's analysis from Wittgenstein's point of view is that he neglected the concept of truth; nothing in Russell explains why standing in a relation to some things allows one to form meaningful and true judgements, while it is not the case when a subject related to some other things. Wittgenstein answer was that unless we think about the things from which the world is made as something the can essentially occur within facts, we will have no way of explaining how it is possible to judge anything about the world, or represent it in language.

"never ask about the meaning of a word in isolation from its occurrence in sentences"). — Fafner

The first big problem, then, is that that idea is ridiculous.

The second big problem is illegitimately analogizing that to the relation of "things" to facts.

"I begin by giving pride of place to the content of the word ‘true’," . . . whatever that amounts to.

We should probably make this thread not about Wittgenstein. Why discuss someone who had things so wrong?

The first big problem, then, is that that idea is ridiculous. — Terrapin Station

Why? Because you've said so?

One problem with facts is how to tell when one fact is the same as another. There's no fat man in my doorway. There's no thin man in my doorway, either. Two facts or one or none? Perhaps there's just One Big Fact to which all true statements refer - which gets around the problem of fact-identity. — Cuthbert

According to the slingshot argument there indeed only is one single fact that all true sentences correspond to. The arguments, though, has also been viewed as a refutation of the correspondence theory of truth.

Why? Because you've said so? — Fafner

Because we obviously deal with the meanings of words in isolation. It's clearly not the case that there's any problem with this just because Frege or Wittgenstein said so.

What do you mean by "deal" and "meaning of words"? It seems to me that you have something different in mind than what Frege and Wittgenstein had.

Re the slingshot argument, this step seems particularly peculiar:

"Every sentence is equivalent to a sentence of the form F(a). In other words, every sentence has the same designation as some sentence that attributes a property to something. (For example, 'All men are mortal' is equivalent to 'The number 1 has the property of being such that all men are mortal'.)"

How in the world are those two sentences equivalent? I'd say they have nothing to do with each other, and that the second sentence is nonsensical.

The definition of "deal (with)" there is "utilize" or "make use of" or "involve ourselves (with)"

Are you going to ask for definitions of some of those words next?

Are you going to ask for definitions of some of those words next? — Terrapin Station

At least give some sort example to illustrate what you meant (that is an example of "dealing with the meanings of words in isolation").

At least give some sort example to illustrate what you meant — Fafner

Give some sort of example? You can't parse definitions?

You can't parse definitions? — Terrapin Station

Whatever that means...

Ok. And are they both the same fact as this: Julius Caesar was not born in 2015. If not, why not? If so, we are surely tending towards all facts being one - the one big fact that is all that is the case. And that has problems of its own.

Whatever that means... — Fafner

You should start with Jack and Jill if what I'm saying is beyond you. I can't guarantee you're not a moron or something. And in that case, you're not going to understand anything.

Ok. And are they both the same fact as this: Julius Caesar was not born in 2015. — Cuthbert

No, I'd say not. Because Julius Caesar has nothing to do with whether there's someone in the doorway.

If I'm a moron, why don't you fuck off and leave me alone?

You're underestimating my deviance. You could try not playing games and bullshitting though, and maybe that would be more productive for you.

What is the ontology of 'facts'.

The early Wittgenstein postulated that the world is the totality of facts, not things. — Question

Then he was right.

And we have similar statements from physicists Michael Faraday, Frank Tippler, and Max Tegmark.

...from Faraday as early as 1844. So far as I'm aware, Faraday was the first Westerner to suggest that logical/mathematical facts, and their inter-relation, are enough to explain observations, without believing in fundamentally-existent, primary, "stuff".

"Stuff" is the Physicalist's (Naturalist's) phlogiston.

But maybe there were a few millennia of philosophers in India who already knew that and said it.

And the "things" that the facts are about can be regarded as part of the facts.

What does he mean by asserting the existence of facts in logical space?

Does that really need any asserting? As I've mentioned elsewhere here, an inter-referring system of hypothetical facts have meaning in terms of and in reference to eachother. What other existence do they need?

I have a hard time seeing these facts about the world as observer-independent

They needn't have anything to do with an observer, because, as I said above, their relevance and meaning are in reference to eachother.

But you're also right to emphasize the observer--but for a different reason:

Those facts without an observer, including infinitely-many possibility-worlds with no inhabitants, aren't part of anyone's life, and don't mean anything to anyone. We're understandably self-centered, and if it doesn't relate to, or mean something, to us (or at least to someone), then it feels as if it has less reality-status..

You, as Protagonist, are the center of your hypothetical life-experience possibility-story. You're that story's essential component.

So the facts of your own life-experience story are the ones that seem most real to you.

I always agree that what's in the context of a person's life is what's particularly "real" to that person. ...like your desk and chair.

But I have to agree with Lightwave's statement that even abstract facts exist, because I speak of them as "are 'there' ", or in similar terms.(...even though I said that word isn't metaphysically-defined).

(A typing-error that I just made suggests asking if non-vegetarian metaphysics would be meataphysics

Lightwave says that contradictory or inconsistent propositions don't exist, and I'd agree that they differ from consistent ones, by not being valid. ...and that that's a big difference that might disqualify them from the broad category of "existent". I don't know. That hadn't occurred to me before.

So, I guess "exist" has a very broad unavoidable default meaning, even if there are more exclusive definitions of it.

Maybe "real" is more subject to individual people's limiting definitions. I ran across, on the Internet, a suggested hierarchy of real-ness, intended to roughly describe actual usage, and it seems to me that "actual" was at the top of that hierarchy, as the strongest real-ness. So maybe "actual" is a good word for things that are "physically" real in the context of someone's life..

When we assume that facts exist, we are implicitly committing ourselves to a form of nominalism as opposed to viewing things as mutually dependent and holistic.

...but your world, your possibility-world, and your life-experience possibility-story that takes place in it, are indeed dependent on you, as that story's Protagonist. It's a life-experience story only because it has a Protagonist--you, in this instance.

Are all of these facts observer dependant?

Your life-experience story is dependent on you, the observer/protagonist, being part of it. In general, though, facts aren't dependent on an observer, as I spoke of above, near the top of this post.

Michael Ossipoff

..from Faraday as early as 1844. So far as I'm aware, Faraday was the first Westerner to suggest that logical/mathematical facts, and their inter-relation, are enough to explain observations, without believing in fundamentally-existent, primary, "stuff".

"Stuff" is the Physicalist's (Naturalist's) phlogiston. — Michael Ossipoff

The error there isn't with positing "stuff," it's with being uncomfortable just in case we can't prove that there's stuff.

Ontology of the universe as facts is a problem since facts are our views of the material reality of the universe, not the truths of the Universe itself. — Thanatos Sand

That's an unsupported belief.

Your statement is a statement of the Physicalist belief that reality is material. ...that the material world is primary, is what's fundamentally real and existent.

Your primary, fundamentally real and existent material world is a big, blatant brute-fact.

There's no need for brute-facts. A metaphysics based on inter-referring hypothetical facts needs no brute-facts or assumptions. ...as I describe in my topic "A Uniquely Parsimonious and Skeptical Metaphysics."

In my other reply to this topic, I told some reasons for that.

Michael Ossipoff

" "Stuff" is the Physicalist's (Naturalist's) phlogiston+ — Michael Ossipoff


The error there isn't with positing "stuff," it's with being uncomfortable just in case we can't prove that there's stuff. — Terrapin Station

Fine, if you're comfortable with an unsupported brute-fact.

Michael Ossipoff

Except all facts are presented in language, which is always a social context. Some facts, particularly those presented in the language of Math, are more successful in representing indisputability and resisting slippage into ambiguity. However, they're all presented in language.

Except all facts are presented in language, which is always a social context. Some facts, particularly those presented in the language of Math, are more successful in representing indisputability and resisting slippage into ambiguity. However, they're all presented in language. — Thanatos Sand

Yes, all statements of what is believed to be a fact is done so in some symbolic language which is inevitably ambiguous for a variety of reasons.

Mathematical symbols, when stated as a definition, are more resistant too change because they are accepted definitions (for now). However, mathematics when used as representational suffers from the v same problems as any symbolic language.

[Ontology of the universe as facts is a problem since facts are our views of the material reality of the universe, not the truths of the Universe itself.
— Thanatos Sand

That's an unsupported belief.

Your statement is a statement of the Physicalist belief that reality is material. ...that the material world is primary, is what's fundamentally real and existent.

Your primary, fundamentally real and existent material world is a big, blatant brute-fact.

There's no need for brute-facts. A metaphysics based on inter-referring hypothetical facts needs no brute-facts or assumptions. ...as I describe in my topic "A Uniquely Parsimonious and Skeptical Metaphysics."

In my other reply to this topic, I told some reasons for that.

Michael Ossipoff

Nothing you say in your "counter" to my quote above it counters or even effectively addresses what I said at all. I never made a physicalist belief; I just correctly said our facts are our reflections of the material reality of the universe; I never said they weren't part of our reality as well.

And the only big, blatant brute-fact is your statement calling my statement one, as my statements can and have been explained, and you don't explain or support yours at all. And your referring to your outside in-supported topic with the interesting name does not suffice or stand as explanation or support.

Thanatos Sand