I almost posted the Oven of Akhnai for them, but then I didn’t. Actual religious thought is too much trouble to understand prior to criticizing it.

Pluralism, is it? Now, you are putting words into my mouth. I thought we were talking about the conception of God amongst the ancient Israelites and the religious (particularly Orthodox) Jews of today, not about Noah Harari's conception of God... Of course, there are secular Jews, even atheist Jews like Harari, but they lie somewhat outside of the instant discussion, right? I would have thought this tacitly understood. — Michael Zwingli

And even atheist Orthodox Jews, but who is counting?

What is understood is that you are making ahistorical claims about what people believed over 3,500 years of a developing religion and using it for the purpose of defining away a substantial sect of Jews that do not believe the “essence” of their faith is a misattributed god concept. If you want to claim that the essence of Judaism is something, I’d at least like you to be in the ballpark.

And who cares about Harari? Have you read Buber?

If only. But maybe he will listen to you if you try to explain the non-literal parts of “Judaism” and the long history of reading the opposite of what the words say.

One time I was answering some questions on halakha from non-Jews online and some people started yelling at me and asking me to disavow Jesus. It was so weird.

I’m glad you were amused. It is crazy how the religiously ignorant non-orthodox world has bought the orthodox sales pitch hook line and sinker. Just wait till you tell him about Midrash.

That's a very important question! — Wheatley

I don’t think he cares, but maybe he will read about Jewish pluralism in the modern world. Much easier to simply treat “Jews” as a monolith. The synagogue he read that someone else doesn’t belong to is the Orthodox one (probably Chabad).

So, what actually is the justification for a non-literal interpretation? — Pinprick

Everything for you is an argument. Who is justifying what to whom? Actual members of the religious community don’t have to justify to you. And internally, they may not justify to one another - they simply receive what has come before. The question is not WHY they believe what they do, but whether religious people accept that their sacred myths are allegorical and not historical. You made the claim that no religious group admits that their stories are not making factual claims. When shown evidence to the contrary, you want to argue about why they admit it and whether their admission qualifies according to your as-of-yet undisclosed standard.

Even your red ink in a book that I am not talking about is highlighted in red precisely because the editors of that volume wanted you to understand the book in a particular way that was not necessitated by the standards of those that came before. Read about Christian literalism and whether anyone cared about the “facts” of creation before a few hundred years ago.

P.S. Did you ever question why Luther translating the Bible into the vernacular was such a major deal? Random quote.

Other translations of Scripture besides the Latin Vulgate were available, but Luther’s Bible was arguably the best. His opponents however, prophesied that a vernacular translation of Scripture, which allowed anyone to read and interpret the Bible for him or herself, would mean the end of Christian unity: the church would split and there would be as many interpretations of Scripture as there are interpreters. In the wake of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the ascent of human reason and emotion, Luther’s opponents were eerily accurate. Protestantism, as well as Lutheranism, is clearly fractured. Instead of the pope or the church councils lording over the Scriptures, now our own fancy has taken their place. Has access to the Scriptures really set us free? Or have we fled from one tyrant to another? Has the tyranny of the pope been replaced by the tyranny of our own reason, will, and emotion? — “Random Website”

It is this conception of God that has come down to, and is embraced by the Jews of today. — Michael Zwingli

. According to whom? Sources. Pick any ya reference you want and trace it through time or refer to someone that has. I’ve already referred to Maimonides. Go read the 13 principles of faith (which were heretical in his time) and see which of those harkens to Ya. Do modern Jews accept his interpretation? Which Jews?

What sort of evidence would you like? Do you want to read a few chapters later how god learns things? Or how god makes mistakes? Or god creates evil? Or god kills people for sport? Maybe we can read about the embodied god that walks or the disembodied god that needs to be carried from place to place. The descriptions of “God” in the Bible are inconsistent and evolving. The descriptions of “God” from Jews in later periods similarly move. Being omnipotent doesn’t make the Israelite god all knowing or all good. It doesn’t make that god all present.

The Israelite god isn’t even that good at being omnipotent.

I understand it’s possible to interpret these texts/claims metaphorically, but that isn’t evidence that that was the founders intentions. — Pinprick

This is the part that is most disingenuous. What evidence do you have about the “founders” intentions from 3,500 years ago? Tell me the basis/evidence upon which you conclude they must have meant it factually. So far as I know, there is no “evidence” either way and the most we have is some writings from about 1,000 years later. Here is Wiki on the topic:

The oldest manuscripts discovered yet, including those of the Dead Sea Scrolls, date to about the 2nd century BCE. While Jewish tradition holds that the Pentateuch was written between the 16th century and the 12th century BCE, secular scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting these early datings, and agree that there was a final redaction some time between 900–450 BCE.[15][16] — “Wiki”

It would be good if we could at least discuss people that you have some evidence about rather than compare unsupported theories about what the founders may have intended.

Here is a description of a guy in Judaism from not so long ago:

As a sacred document, the Bible is a source of truth. While the truths contained in the Bible may not always be apparent, we know in principle that they are there if one wishes to dig deeply enough. It follows that if one’s interpretation ascribes to the Bible a doctrine that is demonstrably false, such as the claim that God is corporeal, the interpretation is incorrect no matter how simple or straightforward it may seem. Should human knowledge advance and come up with demonstrations it previously lacked, we would have no choice but to return to the Bible and alter our interpretation to take account of them (GP 2.24). Anything else would be intellectually dishonest. — “Not a literalist”

He only said that about 900 years ago. Is the argument that he is lying? Or that Jews don’t know who he is? That they disavowed him? That somehow every Jewish intellect that followed after him and acknowledge the non-literal nature of the Bible was just making it up?

Look around for evidence of what actual religious people besides fundamentalist Christians think and you may discover a rich history of religious thought where religious myth is happily understood not as historical fact.

Wrote a long thing about conversion, but then deleted it because no one cares.

The very concept of a solitary, omnipresent, omnipotent and onmiscient God developed first among the Israelites of old. — Michael Zwingli

The Omni god is a GREEK invention largely attributable to Plato/Aristotle and imposed on the Jews by/during their Helenization after being conquered by the Greeks and Romans and then the Muslims.

What source do you have that Omni god was developed by the Israelites of old?

P.S. The Greeks screwed it up for everyone.

based upon the Israelite conception of God — Michael Zwingli

I just don’t understand stuff like this. Christianity is not Islam, Judaism, or the Israelite understanding of God. The beardy head in the sky as creator of all IS NOT the Israelite understanding of god. The Israelites weren’t even monotheistic.

A cursory search of the internet will reveal stuff like this: How the Jews Invented God, and Made Him Great. It really is not so hard to get a religious education if you want to talk about religion. Not an education as a member of the religion, but a secular education where you learn about religions as a subject matter - their origin, their development, their evolution. Hand waving and treating a 3,500 year old story as if it can be summed up in a single sentence isn’t intellectualism or critical thinking.

Which religions admit to being fiction? Pastafarianism? — Pinprick

This just doesn’t feel like a good faith question. Are you asking to be educated, being rhetorical, or being dismissive? The statement was

But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion?
— stoicHoneyBadger

Then religions should admit it instead of clinging to the irrationality of their beliefs by making a virtue of faith. — Pinprick

I’ve mentioned allegory and religious myth already. I’ve also pointed out that literalism is probably ahistorical as to the actual people initially telling and retelling the inherited allegories. Literalism is a late comer to understanding, not just because there wasn’t codification of particular writings (with concomitant illiteracy among the “believers”) until after new faith communities developed, but because there was diversity of religious myth in a time before unification of those ideas (and even after those ideas).

Ignoring Christian interpretation of the Bible for a moment, what factual claims of religions are you referring to? Islam? What religions do you have in mind when you state so unequivocally that they are all making “factual” claims that they refuse to admit are re-told for purposes of wisdom rather than as an “accurate” account of some event?

Do you even know what a fact is supposed to be in this context? Or history? Have you considered truth outside of correspondence theory or its relation to “states-of-affairs”?

It is just lazy to suppose that people pass on sacred stories because they are “facts.” Narrative is editorial. Why do certain stories pass on instead of others? And why suppose that people who repeat such narratives don’t understand the purpose of repeating it?

The issue here isn't so much one of what "I know" means as such, but whether we justify our internal states to ourselves. I am responding a bit to what Sam said here:

others are justified in their knowledge of your pain, but you’re not. You don’t justify to yourself that you’re in pain. This is senseless. — Sam26

I picked a dream because that was my mood, but I can also lay out a pleasant tale about how I know I was in pain when I stubbed my toe. Is it that we don't justify our claim of our present sense perception or that we don't ever justify our claims of sense perception? I am not talking about "I saw a ghost!" and someone points out that you saw a sheet (errors of interpretation), but what we do with past sense perceptions and whether we justify our beliefs about them to ourselves.

This is likely a distraction, but what happens with the past tense? Say you don't generally justify that you know you are dreaming (you are asleep after all), but then you are talking to someone and they say, "You look good in that."

Sometime later you think to yourself, "Who told me I look good in this?" You think awhile and can't remember, but has the occasion slips further into the past you begin to feel increasingly unmoored from the memory - like it is a transient thing that you have a glimpse of but as no real content. In fits and spurts it happens and then one day you think to yourself, "I must have dreamt that." Time passes and you come to believe that you know you were dreaming when you heard it, as that is what your memory consists of.

Now you meet the same person again and by chance you are wearing the same thing. The person says, "You look good in that." You respond, "Ha. The last time you said that was in my dreams." The person responds, "Why do you think you were dreaming?" And you respond "I know I was dreaming."

What work does "I know" do?

In that case you get secular humanism. Basically Christianity without Christ. ) — stoicHoneyBadger

But there are religions besides Christianity that have to confront sacred myth and the recognition that it isn't "fact" in that way. So as those religions acknowledge that prior "historical" claims were actually not historical, but something else, they don't become secular Christians.

Consider this - no one saw Moses part the seas. Yet there is a story of it that is central to various religious narratives. When did the author of the tale decide that it was a historical claim and the hearers believe him/her? It seems far more likely that what started in allegory has remained as such and it is only misunderstanding that leads to a literalist/facutalist claim.

It would be like people in a 1,000 years thinking that Superman was a real person because people discuss him to further truth, justice, and the American way.

Then religions should admit it instead of clinging to the irrationality of their beliefs by making a virtue of faith. — Pinprick

Religions do admit it. Some religions don't. If you want to argue about what Christians believe, argue about Christianity, not about "religion."

The effort to make Christianity "reasonable" requires the rejection of its claim to exclusivity and of the claim that Jesus is God. If neither claim is true, Christianity becomes something other than Christianity. — Ciceronianus

This is is more a historical debate and so is far too involved to really resolve. I'm going to suggest that early "Christianity" (after the word had first been used) may not be the same as Paul's Christianity. Further, the early Christian's didn't necessarily see Jesus as god. I wonder why the counsel of Nicaea, for instance, had to establish dogma on the topic if it was so universally accepted.

I think one can accept that Christianity writ large has been a certain sort of way for a long time and still acknowledge that not all Christians were that way for all of time (at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end).


Christology
Trinity

I say "within" means a necessary part of the definition, "necessary" being relative to that specific logical proceeding. — Metaphysician Undercover

For those following at home: Logical necessity/entailment. also a bit of relevance logic.

Logical consequence (also entailment) is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises?" — Wiki

. . .Relevance logicians have attempted to construct logics that reject theses and arguments that commit “fallacies of relevance”. Relevant logicians point out that what is wrong with some of the paradoxes (and fallacies) is that the antecedents and consequents (or premises and conclusions) are on completely different topics. . . . — SEP

And the ideas of semantic vs. syntactic consequence.

Syntactic consequence does not depend on any interpretation of the formal system.
. . .
A formula A is a semantic consequence of a group of premises G where the set of the interpretations that make all members of G true is a subset of the set of the interpretations that make A true. — Wiki with some liberties

but it seems harmless next to the Southern Baptist. — Tom Storm

I expect @180 Proof to pop in at any moment and dismiss everything I've said as the prattling of one those people who wants to play at religion and serves as mere diversion from the real boogie men.

Turns out I can't delete my comments, so I guess this is just an ill considered place holder until I can flesh it out.

The difference between us, Baker, is that you probably don't know the religious people that I know. It is tough to have a serious conversation about modern religion with a person that is committed to fighting religious battles from prior to the 1950s. Yes, lots of people haven't moved on. Many in the intellectual community have.

Well, it rather comes with the territory, doesn't it? If, e.g., Jesus is the only true God, and Christianity the only path to God, it's a bit taxing to be "friendly" towards other, pretend Gods and their ignorant worshippers. — Ciceronianus

I get it. I've just talked to Christian Ph.D. in theology kind of people who believe that Christianity survives a mythic Jesus and focuses on Jesus' message of love. They are not interested in Jesus as the only vehicle for the message of love, but that Jesus is their vehicle for that message and what they consider to be the best expression of it.

How does Christianity survive without supernaturalism or the fact of Jesus (either as historical person or son of god)? How does it survive without a claim to exclusive access to heaven? Those are great questions for Christians and they seem to be working on them. If/when they move on and the Christian community follows them, will they in that instant stop being Christians? I doubt it.

I agree with your sentiment about some historical religions being more or less tolerant than others, but I disagree that there is anything inherent about Abrahamic religions. The factual record demonstrates that pre-Israelites and Israelites evolved through time as they encounter other cultures (the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Muslims, etc.) and even changed names. Christianity itself went through radical shifts in the early periods and then again after the reformation. I can't speak to Islam, but two out of three radically altering forms from earliest appearance to the present is probably sufficient to make my point.

What constitutes a religion is subject to a variety of interpretations. Identity of religious groups through time is probably more about group cohesion and less about some doctrinal point or particular behavior. Particular groups (or individuals) claiming to get to define who belongs to one religion or another is not dispositive.

They're not "friendly" toward other religions, they just don't give a shit about them. Duh. — baker

I'm not sure what is intended by your remark, but you can flesh it out if you feel like it. I am personally familiar with these religions being friendly with other religions and even encouraging education about other religions to their members. There is "ecumenical" work, interfaith groups, etc. So "not giving a shit" isn't even close to right. Non-proselytizing religions exist.

I don't have to say new things to point out that intolerance is not a function of one group or another, just true things. :joke:

Should terms denoting religious identity be exempt from being meaningful? — baker

Last I checked you aren't a sociologist, ethnographer, or any other thing that could provide a useful inquiry into what is properly classified as "religion." Hand waving about a lack of Jesus or Jesus analogs precluding a group from being religious is not of much interest to me.

This view "All are good, but ours is the best" can sometimes be found in religions, and if one isn't careful, one could readily mistake it for religious tolerance, when it actually isn't. — baker

As an aside, this is a problem for religions interested in applying to everyone everywhere. Religions that are happy to constrain themselves to insular thinking (you do you, we do us, and we are the best) probably exist more than you might think. Not every religion intends to have everyone in the world agree with them or advocates that everyone in the world should agree with them.

Do you know of any religion that has ever been friendly toward another religion? I don't. — baker

As long as we agree not to engage in a game of what is a true Scotsman?

Unitarian Universalists
A variety of liberal Jewish movements:
Reconstructionism
Humanistic Judaism

Humanism Generally.
Ethical Humanism

I'm sure I could find others with relatively little effort, but I'm not sure what a more comprehensive list would do for the conversation.

The problem of particularism (that a group has the "right" ethic/god/culture/etc.) is not unique to religious settings. Multicultralism hasn't necessarily gone so well in your secular liberal states. Interestingly, the argument that religion is an abstraction from culture by people trying to navigate multicultural settings is probably a good one.

Is this last sentence a hint at hope and solutions? — Tom Storm

If only. But then I have my name for a reason.

On some level I would like to think that those most willing to do violence are not the progenitors of our future world, but I have a hard time seeing it otherwise. Sure, we in the US act as if our military power is about protecting other people and maintaining peace, but really what we are doing is exploiting the rest of the world and enriching ourselves while using violence as necessary to maintain our supply chains. I can be a pacifist in the US precisely because we have those willing to do violence in my name for subsistence level wages. Will this class of violence doers always insulate those espousing higher ideals? Many of us seem to assume so, but then I’ve also seen the stockpiles of weapons and heard the plans for the destruction of infrastructure when the time comes. Those with the guns have made it clear that they intend to “defend” themselves against any person competing for resources that is unwilling (or unable) to defend themselves first.

I can’t speak for how people see things in other countries, but so far as I know, no government has given up its ability to do violence and expected to get social cohesion and cooperation from well timed words supported by good education.

When I say that the facts will out, I merely mean that those with the most effective survival strategy will survive. If you think your facts are right but you are dead, good for you - everyone else was wrong. If you think your facts are right and you are alive and happy, who cares whether you are right? This is the problem of facts - unless it is a specific engineering problem or wall, the facts are easily ignored, whatever they are.

The world is now 7.9 billion people. It was 6.1 billion in 2000. The population of the “West” increased from about 1.2 billion to 1.35 billion. source. Guess the politics of the other 1.7 billion people born in that time period.

Blame god, I suppose.

But really, your reckoning is coming. Those naughty cell-biologists are on track to convert any cell back into a stem-cell and then grow a clone from it. Unless someone stops them, all human cells will have the potential to be independent humans. And in that moment, where every cell is a potential life if science is just applied properly, you will have a world of legal non-sense on your hands. Each time someone takes a stem-cell, does some genetic insertion, and fosters a new life into self-sustaining existence, you will have to confront the Pandora’s box of bad philosophy, theology, and law you have wrought. Thank god there are unlimited souls available to god to put into cells going nowhere - we are going to need them.

And just wait till they figure out totipotent cells where they remove all native DNA and replace it with whatever they want. You can start implanting human created embryos into a humans with a functioning uterus giving birth to people that for all intents and purposes are people even though they did not come from the joining of a sperm and egg. Your lack of imagination of what people will look like in the future and where they will come from does you no favors in developing (or supporting) your eternal ethic of personhood at ensoulment.

P.S. For those in the cheap seats, see ectogenesis.

P.P.S. And for those in the even cheaper seats, see cloning in modern animal industry.

… Most cloning today uses a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Just as with in vitro fertilization, scientists take an immature egg, or oocytes, from a female animal (often from ovaries obtained at the slaughterhouse). But instead of combining it with sperm, they remove the nucleus (which contains the oocytes’s genes). This leaves behind the other components necessary for the initial stages of embryo development. Scientists then add the nucleus or cell from the donor animal that has the desirable traits the farmer wishes to copy. After a few other steps, the donor nucleus fuses with the ooplast (the oocytes whose nucleus has been removed), and if all goes well, starts dividing, and an embryo begins to form. The embryo is then implanted in the uterus of a surrogate dam (again the same as with in vitro fertilization), which carries it to term. ("Dam" is a term that livestock breeders use to refer to the female parent of an animal). The clone is delivered just like any other baby animal. — “FDA on Cloning of Livestock”

The parties aren’t some abstraction, but actual groups of people who work towards their common betterment and have entrenched power structures. The typical voter who identifies as a party member, though removed from the functioning of their actual party and probably not dues paying, is not in a position to change power by merely winning one election, regardless of the significance of such office. Until the third-party has broad loyalty amongst entrenched members in all levels of government, it is not a true power broker.

A mole (or other cancer cell) is alive, genetically different, and not a person on your account. You are the one that says life is not personhood.

Nah. Your topic. I will leave. If people want to know my thoughts, we can start a new topic.

Ennui Elucidator In the light of your comments, how do you contextualize a phenomenon like, say, climate change and what to do? — Tom Storm

Philosophically or pragmatically?

Pragmatically I defer to the experts and rely on the system as constructed since it generally gives me stuff that I prefer (even if I find the circumstance distasteful). Radicalism does not actually advance social agenda so far as I know, but it may be a nice counter-point to help people remember there is another way.

Philosophically it depends on the issue (climate change policy, which always seems to be steeped in racism and colonialist profit taking/hoarding, is different than vaccine policy, which seems less steeped in racism and often driven by more immediate concerns of the individuals/communities effected), but in a meta sort of way, the metaphysics don’t matter. I am unconcerned with whether a state of affairs obtains or if I am wrong if my epistemology cannot account for such. I am much closer to using ideas as tools to help obtain my ends and those of people/things within my scope of moral regard (to whatever level they fall within it). Either acting as if is efficacious or it is not. The world imposes itself on me and I try to mold it to my desires using whatever contrivance available. All “facts” are understood contingently and abandoned/modified as necessary. Facts are understood in a political context (all speech is political speech) and assertions of fact which you insist other people acknowledge as being such is a ploy.

I doubt this answers your question, but I am happy to try again if you give me a bit more direction in what kind of an answer you are looking for.

Blaming the sheep is little too easy. Replace the current rigged electoral gerrymandering racket with a modern parliamentary system comparable to those by which other developed nations govern themselves, then start flaying the damn bleatin' sheep. — 180 Proof

:up:

Not that I am pro-parliament. But supporting one of the two parties seems the only rational choice unless you want to be a protest vote.

And so would religions. — baker

So syncretic religions don’t exist? Or pluralistic ones?

Is that you are unwilling to consider anything besides regressive Christianity/Islam or that you really think that modern religions don’t exist and/or that no historic religion was accepting of other religions?

I don't understand what EE has written well enough to figure out whether I agree or disagree. — T Clark

I don’t understand what I have written well enough for me to know if I agree or disagree. I was hoping @Banno would tell me.

1.4 Facts, Intentionality, Semantics and Truthmaking
We have mentioned the view that facts may explain actions and mental states and the view that facts are what we know. Facts are also invoked in the philosophy of mind by philosophers who claim that judgments or beliefs enjoy the property of intentionality, of being “directed towards” something, because they represent states of affairs or are psychological relations to states of affairs and that judgments and beliefs are correct or satisfied only if states of affairs obtain, that is, if facts exist. Versions of these claims are given by many philosophers from Meinong, the early Husserl and Russell to Searle (Searle 1983). Analogous claims in semantics are sometimes made about propositions or other truth-bearers: the proposition that Sam is sad represents the state of affairs that Sam is sad and is true only if this state of affairs obtains. Versions of this view are given by Husserl, Wittgenstein and Carnap. See the supplementary document on the History of Philosophies of Facts.

. . .

Does the proposition that Sam is sad represent the state of affairs that Sam is sad? It may be objected that the proposition does not refer to anything as a state of affairs. And once again the friend of states of affairs may retreat to the safer claims that the proposition that Sam is sad is true only if the state of affairs that Sam is sad obtains and that if the proposition that Sam is sad is true, it is true because the state of affairs obtains. Facts make propositions true.

Facts, then, are perhaps qualified to play the role of what makes judgments correct and propositions true. But the theory of correctness and of truth does not require us to accept that there are facts. Indeed it may be thought that the requirements of such a theory are satisfied by the observations that a judgment that p is correct only if p, and that the proposition that P is true only if p. If arguments in metaphysics or epistemology persuade us that there are facts, then we may perhaps appeal to facts in giving accounts of correctness and of truth. In the case of the theory of correctness conditions for judgment and belief the argument that knowledge is of facts together with the view that, contrary to a long and influential tradition, the theory of belief and of judgment presupposes a theory of knowledge (Williamson 2000) may persuade us that facts make judgments and beliefs correct.

The view that facts make propositions or other truth-bearers true is one theory among many of truthmaking. The theory of truthmaking deals with questions at the intersection between ontology, metaphysics and semantics. The view that facts are what make truth-bearers true is the oldest theory of truthmaking. — “SEP on Facts”

SEP on Facts and Truthmaking

That's not my claim. The world is always and already interpreted. — Banno

So if I say your cat is on the mat and you look over and see that it isn’t, your interpretation makes me wrong?

Further to the point, @Athena, is that both materialism and idealism can account for us bouncing off of the wall in the same way.

I refer you to idealism, materialism/physicalism, and facts.

Which is not say that I am either a materialist or an idealist, but merely that there is a context for a discussion of facts that has nothing to do with a theory of atoms or other claims of the natural sciences.

If you want to argue the man in the video is wrong, first you have to pay careful attention to what he said. — Athena

We are having two different conversations - I am talking philosophy and you are talking something else. If you want to talk about philosophy, then you need to focus on the difference between the sounds/gestures/symbols we make with our bodies, what is capable of being symbolized, and things like “reality” or “what is” or the “state of affairs”. We can’t walk through walls because we can’t walk through walls. That is the “fact” that is being discussed. A person’s understanding of why they can’t walk through a wall (such as a theory of electrons, atoms, and exclusion principles) is about symbols, not about “facts.” Pointing to someone blathering on is not in the least bit responsive to why we can’t walk through a wall. Idiots and physicists alike bounce of a wall when they walk into it.

The question is, what does bouncing off of a wall have to do with “facts” as used in philosophy? The point @Banno is making is not inherently about the generalization that “we can’t walk through walls”, but that there are specific instances of us and walls and the ways in which they interact independent of how we talk about them and our talking is judged right or wrong by how well they fit the “facts.” I am not critiquing generalizations per se (which are clearly abstracted from facts and do not refer to facts themselves), but the idea that facts are assessed by the extent to which they impose themselves upon us independent of our talk.

Your understanding of science (or the video’s creator) simply does not address the conversation being had - it is an aside.

The simple case (to avoid getting wrapped up in abstractions, tenses, etc.) is Banno’s cat. When Banno says, “My cat is on the mat” he is making a factual claim that we assess as “True” or “False” based upon whether his cat is on the mat. The issue is the relationship between his cat, “facts”, and “truth.” Is there some way, independent of his cat being on the mat, that we might say “His cat is on the mat” and claim such is true besides his cat being there? And if we said it and believed it, would that mean we weren’t wrong to say it when his cat is not on the mat?

Banno’s claim is that someone can be wrong and that wrongness is assessable by something outside of language. Is he wrong?

P.S. Banno, though he can speak for himself, will be clear that he isn’t talking about our ability to assess based upon our epistemology (that is, whether our assessment of whether it is true or false meets our epistemic criteria), but rather that regardless of what we know or claim, his cat is on the mat when his cat is on the mat and is not on the mat when it isn’t. No more, no less - a “something out there” which is or isn’t, as the case may be.