So the physicalist has to claim that in a mindless -sorry!- brainless universe, facts still exist. — RogueAI

If by fact you mean what ideas it represents, facts would only exists within brains (as ideas exist in brains), so no brains no facts; if by facts an objective state of affairs, facts would still exist in a brainless universe.

but the physicalist can say that an old Encyclopedia Brittanica book still contains facts, even if all the brains in the universe suddenly ceased to exist — RogueAI

No, the physicalist would not say that, as you explained in your hypothetical scenario.

But if the materialist claims that my erosion example is not a fact, what about an erosion pattern in this universe that says Pi = 3.14...? — RogueAI

For us it is a fact because we interpret it as such. But for someone from Old Chinese kingdoms, pi=3.14 would not be a fact, it would a weird pattern on a rock. In a brainless physicalist universe, there would still be facts about the world, but these facts would not be represented anywhere because there is no conscious being to decipher what any symbol means.

but how is that different than the erosion pattern? — RogueAI

It means something to someone. The facts exist within our minds (or brain); the ink on the paper is not a fact, but it is a physical part of the world, what OP asked.

But I don't see how any of that relates to Corvus' original question. The question was whether a fact is a part of the physical world, and I gave the purported answer according to several different worldviews and different definitions of the word 'fact'. The token is a physical fact of the world for sure, the type depends on the worldview, while what objective state of affairs the type represents is a physical fact of the world (but not if one is an idealist).

Is "belonging to" a physical thing? They have to be, right? — RogueAI

Do they? I think this is where you're over-interpreting physicalism. Physicalism, as I understand it, is the position that everything that exists is a physical thing. Balls exist and are a physical thing. I exist and am a physical thing.

Belonging to isn't something that exists, and so isn't something that needs to be physical for physicalism to be correct. If A belongs to B then A is a physical thing and B is a physical thing. There are just two things involved.

The notion that the belonging to relationship between A and B must be some third physical thing that exists seems spurious. And the notion that the belonging to relationship between A and B is some non-physical mental thing that exists also seems spurious.

Whereas before the issue was with ambiguous language, the issue now seems to be with reifying verbs. You're giving too much metaphysical import to language.

What about "truth", though? Doesn't truth have to be a physical thing? It's certainly not a verb.

Doesn't truth have to be a physical thing? — RogueAI

No. We just use the word "true" to describe a sentence that we understand as describing some feature of the world. There's no reason to treat "truth" as being some object that exists.

So let's do away with the word "true", like we did away with the word "fact".

Either a sentence describes some feature of the world or it doesn't.

No. We just use the word "true" to describe a sentence that we understand as describing some feature of the world. There's no reason to treat "truth" as being some object that exists. — Michael

I would agree with that, except when we hear the old X-Files tagline "The truth is out there" we all know what it means, and we all treat "truth" in that sentence as a noun. Under materialism, don't all nouns have to be physical?

Under materialism, don't all nouns have to be physical? — RogueAI

Just because a word satisfies the grammatical role of being a noun isn't that it corresponds to some object that exists in the universe.

"Ghost" is a noun. The existence of the noun "ghost" doesn't disprove materialism. Ghosts don't exist.

No. You're reifying language. Just because a word satisfies the grammatical role named "noun" isn't that it corresponds to some object that exists in the universe. — Michael

But a noun is always a person, place, thing, or idea. Those are all physical things, in the materialist ontology. If a word is correctly being used as a noun, it has to refer to some physical thing.

But a noun is always a person, place, thing, or idea. Those are all physical things, in the materialist ontology. If a word is correctly being used as a noun, it has to refer to some physical thing. — RogueAI

Did you see the next sentence of my comment (I can't remember if I edited it in after)?

"Ghost" is a noun. The existence of the noun "ghost" doesn't disprove materialism. Ghosts don't exist.

Did you see the next sentence of my comment?

"Ghost" is a noun. The existence of the noun "ghost" doesn't disprove materialism. Ghosts don't exist. — Michael

Ghost can refer to an idea, which is a physical thing.

Ghost can refer to an idea, which is a physical thing. — RogueAI

Ghosts don't exist. Therefore the word "ghosts" in the sentence "ghosts don't exist" doesn't refer to something that exists.

Ghosts don't exist. Therefore the word "ghosts" in the sentence "ghosts don't exist" doesn't refer to an idea. — Michael

You're talking about fictional things: ghosts, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, God, etc. Fictional things exist as ideas, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to intelligently talk about them. So under the materialist mindset, they are things. Brainstates, I guess.

Also, if a lawyer tells a jury, "You'll discover what the truth is when the trial is done" he's not talking about something like a ghost, is he?

You're talking about fictional things: ghosts, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, God, etc. Fictional things exist as ideas, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to intelligently talk about them. — RogueAI

If "ghosts" referred to something that exists then ipso facto ghosts exist. Ghosts don't exist. Therefore, "ghosts" doesn't refer to something that exists.

Also, if a lawyer tells a jury, "You'll discover what the truth is when the trial is done" he's not talking about something like a ghost, is he? — RogueAI

Like the noun "ghost", the noun "the truth" doesn't refer to something that exists.

Again, ghosts don't exist. Therefore the word "ghosts" in the sentence "ghosts don't exist" doesn't refer to something that exists. — Michael

Let's use Sherlock Holmes as an example. Does Sherlock Holmes exist as an idea?

Like the word "ghost", the noun "truth" doesn't refer to something that exists. — Michael

What does it refer to then?

What does it refer to then? — RogueAI

Nothing really. "Tell me the truth" just means "don't lie".

Let's use Sherlock Holmes as an example. Does Sherlock Holmes exist as an idea? — RogueAI

What does "Sherlock Holmes exists as an idea" mean? Does it mean "the idea of Sherlock Holmes exists"? And does this mean "we (can) imagine Sherlock Holmes"? I agree with this. But this does not entail that the name "Sherlock Holmes" refers to something that exists.

Like with the word "fact" your question abuses the ambiguity of language.

You're talking about fictional things: ghosts, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, God, etc. Fictional things exist as ideas, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to intelligently talk about them. — RogueAI

From ny physicalist perspective you are equivocating between an idea as instantiated in a brain, and what the idea refers to.

From ny physicalist perspective you are equivocating between an idea as instantiated in a brain, and what the idea refers to. — wonderer1

I thought that too, except "Sherlock Holmes" refers to something that seems to go beyond something that's just "instantiated in a brain". I mean, when you're reading Arthur Conan Doyle or Mary Shelly or Stephen King, are you thinking of brains? Don't the fictional characters take on a kind of existence in your mind?

I thought that too, except "Sherlock Holmes" refers to something that seems to go beyond something that's just "instantiated in a brain". — RogueAI

Well, there are lots of ideas of ideas of Sherlock Holmes instantiated in lots of people's brains. But what seems to go beyond something instantiated in a brain?

I mean, when you're reading Arthur Conan Doyle or Mary Shelly or Stephen King, are you thinking of brains? — RogueAI

No. Things can be represented with other things, such as ideas with written words. Typically we are thinking of things represented in our brains. Representations in our brains no more need to to resemble what is represented, than a string of letters on a page needs to resemble the landscape it describes.

Well, you can see gravitational waves insofar as you observe them by checking the spatial distortion that they cause. Maybe that is what they were getting at but I did not see that thread. Not sure what the connection is with what I said though. — Lionino

Maybe they did. But whatever they saw, equating it to time or spacetime sounds bizarre.

For someone who defends physicalism, they are. — Lionino

It would be a form of totemism in disguise for science. Seeing an eclipse, and saying that must a God annoyed at something. A similar logic.

I would say no because those facts could be a fabrication of the mind. — Lionino

The fabrication of the mind is the world. No? I am sure when one dies, his world dies too, because he can no longer fabricate anything anymore.

The fabrication of the mind is the world. No? I am sure when one dies, his world dies too, because he can no longer fabricate anything anymore. — Corvus

Sure, we know that at least a world exists, the world being our mind. But we do not know whether there is an outside world (brain in a vat), that is usually what people talk about when we say the world exists or not.

It would be a form of totemism in disguise for science. Seeing an eclipse, and saying that must a God annoyed at something. A similar logic. — Corvus

Sorry I can't understand, I think this sentence has some words missing.

Sure, we know that at least a world exists, the world being our mind. But we do not know whether there is an outside world (brain in a vat), that is usually what people talk about when we say the world exists or not. — Lionino

Once you closed eyes and blocked your ears and nose, from the moment, your beliefs and inferences based on your memory of the facts, takes over on the existence of the world outside of you.

Sorry I can't understand, I think this sentence has some words missing. — Lionino

Seeing wave of gravity and saying it is time or space time is like saying, an eclipse is God's facial expression. Just a metaphor or simile whatever you call it. :) Are you a French or Greek?

Sure, we know that at least a world exists, the world being our mind. But we do not know whether there is an outside world (brain in a vat), that is usually what people talk about when we say the world exists or not. — Lionino

Isn’t that like saying that we know an organism exists but we dont know if the organism’s environment exists? If the organism is a self-organized system of exchanges with a world, then any line we attempt to draw between inside and outside is arbitrary. This is the way psychologists are beginning to think about the concept of mind. The mind is not the brain, it is the reciprocal interactions among brain, body and environment.

I am reminded of Wittenstein’s “Tractatus,” which on the opening page reads:

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

“Facts,” for example, allow for the recognition of interest rates. Interest rates are arguably real while, at the same time, not regarded as physical objects. But neither are interest rates considered mystical, spiritual or immaterial. After all, interest rates directly affect the amount of money that accumulates in bank accounts. Interestingly, physical events such as hurricanes and war can affect interest rates; and so can non-physical situations such as panic and market conditions. It’s perhaps best to say interest rates are facts, not physical (or immaterial) things.

Another example: “Facts” allow for the recognition of relations without the necessity of assigning “physical (or immaterial) existence” to them. “The back door is to the right of the dining room table” describes the relation of two physical objects to each other. Again, “to the right of,” is a relation and not a physical object; and yet it exists in the world. It’s a fact, not a thing.

Now… bring on the tooth fairy, but leave all your married bachelors at home!

Curious, that this discussion is occurring in the world that the participants call in to question.

A bit of a performative contradiction, no?

Isn’t that like saying that we know an organism exists but we dont know if the organism’s environment exists? — Joshs

That would be a valid analogy, yes.

If the organism is a self-organized system of exchanges with a world, then any line we attempt to draw between inside and outside is arbitrary — Joshs

Within Cartesian philosophy, the boundary is clearly drawn when the body and the mind are two distinct substances. What Corvus was making was a semantic argument of equating our minds with the world (or part of it), we know our minds exist, therefore we know that at least a part of the world exists thus the world exists. But the semantic premise for the whole brain-in-a-vat argument is that when we say "world" we refer specifically to the world outside of our minds — that was the distinction I was trying to point out.

The mind is not the brain, it is the reciprocal interactions among brain, body and environment. — Joshs

Right, the way I think about it (and it is a really silly argument at face value) is that the simple fact that we can tell where we are being touched just by feeling it hints that our mind has extensionality (it is not a substance without dimensions, 0D). It is not just that the mind has the idea of extension within it and that some interaction with our organs causes some idea of spatial localisation¹, but that experience itself can be located with coordinates x,y,z — we can isolate sight and smell and hearing to operations or projections of our 0D mind, but we can't do that with touch. Our mind would not just be a point of volume 0 in our "pineal gland", but extend everywhere where there is sense perception, from our scalp to the tip of our toes.

¹ In the everyday sense of the word.

A bit of a performative contradiction, no? — Banno

Brain in a vat.

Brain in a vat. — Lionino

I'm not seeing how this relates...

You see, if you are a brain in a vat, then there are vats and brains.

That is, there is still an "external world".

Thoughts?

Sure, 'brain in a vat', like other minds, is downstream from the central problem which is solipsism. Not the best article I could have linked to, so I will do a quotation instead:

Second, solipsism merits close examination because it is based upon three widely entertained philosophical presuppositions, which are themselves of fundamental and wide-ranging importance. These are: (a) What I know most certainly are the contents of my own mind—my thoughts, experiences, affective states, and so forth.; (b) There is no conceptual or logically necessary link between the mental and the physical. For example, there is no necessary link between the occurrence of certain conscious experiences or mental states and the “possession” and behavioral dispositions of a body of a particular kind; and (c) The experiences of a given person are necessarily private to that person. — IEP

From a, b, and c, everything that I experience could be very well fabricated by my own mind, "floating" in the nothingness of existence that is beyond-my-mind.

This is the best I can do at 3:00 without posting the first three meditations of Descartes.

The response I think most telling is from On Certainly. Doubt requires a foundation. In order to doubt that Canberra is the Capital of Australia, you need a background understanding of "Canberra", "Australia" and "capital", as well as a comprehension of how to articulate these into the proposition to be doubted.

You can doubt anything; but you cannot coherently doubt everything.

But this is not the argument in this thread. That is specifically about not believing that something continues to exist, unperceived. A very silly argument.

Threads such as this are interminable because, even after being shown the way out of the fly trap, some flies will say "Nah, I'm good."

But this is not the argument in this thread. That is specifically about not believing that something continues to exist, unperceived. A very silly argument. — Banno

Many believe in the existence they don't perceive such as God, Souls, afterlife, the places they have never been but seen on the social media and people they have never met but heard of ... etc. How is it silly asking logical ground for the belief? It is silly if and only if you don't understand the question.

:ok:

...when I am not perceiving the world, there is no reason that I can believe in the existence of the world. — Corvus

So you have no reason to believe in the existence of the things behind you? When you put the cup in the cupboard, you cease to have any reason to believe that the cup is in the cupboard?

That's not right.