But if something attains the status of a fact, for example in science, then it by extension becomes a name, albight a complex one.

If you combine all three categories given in the OP, then a fact seems to become a name, no?

And they would be correct in that conclusion. Facts are names but not ridged designators regardless if they are contingently true or necessarily so.

The idea - not too controversial I hope - is that the typical behaviour of individuals in society is shaped - but not 'determined' - by what might be called the 'incentive structure’ of that society: the rough system of rewards, punishments, pleasures, accolades and disincentives that permeate it. The video uses the board game Monopoly as its exemplar: regardless of the values or moral dispositions of the individuals involved, the win-conditions of the game are such that the more greedy and ruthless you are, the more successful you will be - and this will be the case regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ you are as a person.

I think this is important to emphasise because too often - in my opinion - does social discussion focus on the 'psychology' or the ‘values' of individuals involved in any one situation. — StreetlightX

No, it is more insidious than that. In evolutionary game theory and vanilla game theory, it is assumed that the fittest actors in any game are legitimately (as justified by the term 'rational actors') greedy and selfish. Compassion and altruism, to the best of my knowledge, are still seen as means to a selfish end.

So, you have at one end social structures reinforcing greed and selfish behavior lauded under the guise of noble concepts like 'freedom' and 'individualism', and at the other end, the individual trying to stand out from the crowd but in reality just reinforces the whole game.

The Wiki entry on 'fact' is just shit.

Someone do something about it.

Upon further thought, I think what the issue here is, is treating facts as a correspondence between the world, so-to-speak, out there, and the mental representations that we have about the world. Hence, the confusion between the fact and the mental representation of the 'thing' or 'object' spoken of, when one and the other are in essence the same thing. Otherwise, there would be little content to speak-of in general.

If one simply does away with a correspondence theory of facts as things out there, then the issue resolves itself, I think?

Sorry, I have no idea what passage you are referring to. I have the book in front of me trying to find what passage you might have in mind.

He never objected that idea explicitly in the Investigations. In fact he talked in great finesse about bedrock beliefs and such, which constitute what is or is not the case.

Then, what is the alternative if that is not the case?

As per Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, the totality of facts of either what is or is not the case, constitute the world of objects, not things.

Facts, i've been convinced, are neither true nor false - that is, truth an falsity does not apply to them. So, if you like, the difference between "the grass is green" and the green grass is that one can be true, the other just is. — Banno

Yeah, that may be true, pun-intended. But, the ontology of a fact has to be grounded in a statement either being true or false.

Does that make 'facts' metaphysical or in other words what performative role does the inclusion of a 'fact' have on a state of affairs?

Referentialy, extensionaly, they are identical. If you think there is a sense in whcih they are different it is up to you to present it. — Banno

Going back to this...

I don't think they are referentially or extensionally equivalent. I think, talking about a fact is different from a statement based on observation. So, green grass is a statement based on observation, where talking about the grass being green is an observer-independent fact derived from reasoning about the world.

Different things, no?

Obviously, we can't claim the fact that grass is green, is true, if the grass isn't green.

So, it would seem that this is an issue with inductive reasoning. We can't deduce a fact without prior observation, can we? At least not in an informal language.

From what I've read it seems like there's a couple of logical fallacies being made in the article and hereabouts. Namely, that just because we don't have all the facts down, that we should give up or relinquish any institutional authority on some matter, in this case asserting any claims to knowledge in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences, which seems like a slippery slope.

Maybe some fields of studies are immune to epistemic closure on a global scale; but, asserting that they don't and thus any attempt to arrive at some bedrock beliefs (to borrow the phrase from Wittgenstein) would be nonsensical and a non-sequitur. If you really analyze the whole article, the whole issue is a non-sequitur or an elaborate reductio ad absurdum, made by a cynical mind.

Then there's the no true Scotsman fallacy made of truth being relative and no final claim to true knowledge can be attained, which is obviously untrue.

Anyway, to address the issue would be to emphasize the importance of truth by making people or politicians, mostly, accountable for telling lies or falsehoods. To pick out the rather sad case of American politics and extend the case beyond the scope of American politics would be a gross overgeneralization.

↪Posty McPostface Any news? Dang it! I just read your update in the shoutbox
{{{{{PostyMcPostface}}}} <<<< online hugg — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Thanks, I got bummed over it today, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, now we're going to family court, see what comes up, and then onto the division of joint assets.

Shit will hit the fan for the family court.

Haven't felt so alive in a while.

Not a pagan, myself, but more a Stoic who sees, like John Lachs, a connection between that ancient philosophical school and Deweyian pragmatism. — Ciceronianus the White

How so? An interesting point to make in general.

I'm still waiting for it to happen. In five hours I should know the result.

Can't sleep; but, not feeling too hot about it.

I'm a wannabe Stoic, but in reality a Cynic.

Oh, the drama!

None of this ambiguity would apply in a formal language like mathematics; but, this isn't the case informally, why is that?

What is the difference between the fact that grass is green and the green grass?

Nothing. They are truth functionally equivalent. — Banno

That's not the question here. The question is whether the content they convey is different from each other? Namely, is the statement that the fact the grass is green, observer-independent as opposed to the observer-dependent statement of green grass?

My take on the matter is deflationary. There is some implicit metaphysics being pushed by stating 'the fact the grass is green' from 'the grass is green'.

In other words, the fact that the grass is green alludes to a certain set of conditions that are universal in nature to determine that the grass is green, where the green grass is just a statement based on individual experience that is much like the beetle in Wittgenstein's box.

No problem Dorothy.

Have you been in a school classroom recently? Most kids do not have much interest in learning.
"Why do I need to know this? If I ever need this information I can find it on the internet" is something I hear every single day. — Sir2u

Perhaps you address a different target audience. But, in general, people are inquisitive and interested in new things or at least if it serves their goals (college setting). Is this an issue with how education is presented or the framework of the settings in which the information is presented?

If the economy is a sticky gum that surrounds and traps one's whole life affairs, and that cannot be escaped, there is no need to put more people into such a state of affairs where they are burdened with dealing with maintaining their material existence. It is necessary once born, but not necessary to be burdened with in the first place. Now, you will hear slogans of all stripes which don't deal with the issue. That is to say, a new person is burdened with the economic situation, but since the very problem of dealing with an economic situation is not dealt with, there can only be trying to adjust for this and that once born. Instead of the bigger problem, it is trying to make due. — schopenhauer1

Again, if there's no real alternative to the current state of affairs, then your post is reduced to a type of value judgment or some emotive, *I don't like this*. Provide some alternative, and the case can be made successfully that the current predicament is undesirable and ought to be changed. I think Marxism has already been tried to no avail. Maybe in the future, we'll all have AI know us better than we know what we want ourselves and the market could be run successfully by an adequately competent enough central manager.

I just think you're being unreasonable in your claims to know about human nature in an economy. At the very least, if you live in a democracy, you have some say in the matter about where resources should be diverted. Possible allusion to more social spending and less neo-Keynsian leveraging the economy for persistent growth by making the cogs less thrifty and more docile.

Well, you can't say in advance that they won't be happy, or use you as a measuring stick for what others should or ought to think.

You really are a part of an inescapable superstructure that is not ideal. — schopenhauer1

It would be an undue burden to claim that what we have ought to be ideal, otherwise we shouldn't participate in the superstructure, as you call it.

It is what it is, and that's all that it is.

That's always what we're doing though. We constantly adjust ideal conditions to shittier ones and plaster this over with being a "realist". Don't be fooled by pragmatic-sounding slogans. None of them mean anything because the people saying them, don't even know why they do such and such. They are following the rituals handed to them to survive, instrumentally. The way of rebellion is simply not allowing others to deal with the burdens that are not necessary to deal with in the first place. — schopenhauer1

I find it hard to equate the professed attitude here, and the actual state of affairs. Isn't this all just an issue with perception or attitude towards a situation and not the problem of the situation or set of circumstances itself.

You want a home? You need a job. You have a job? You need transportation. You want transportation? You need this, that, and the other. It's all a cycle that we cannot escape except through slow death by starvation and exposure or some hermit monk type thing which is usually unsustainable. — schopenhauer1

This must have been what Adam complained to God after being banished from Eden. Yeah, we do live in a world of scarce resources, and decisions have to be made about what best to spent (disposable income) on. If you're perpetually behind payments, then you still have the option to default on your debt. So, yeah, we're kinda screwed. Best to make the best out of it?

The good thing about not being materialistic in a materialistic society is that you can spend more time to yourself by not satisfying the never-ending ebb of want's and perceived needs that the economy facilitates. Leaves room for self-edification and more time to do education in the meantime. It's tricky to get there though. You know, truth not being a guided path and all. That's the part that people find most troublesome. We tend to learn from a teacher; but, when you are your own teacher, there's nobody to point out your mistakes. Quite a conundrum.

The good thing about the economy is that those preferences are able to get fulfilled if one is so materialistic. So, it's an issue about how much we value materialism, no?

Exactly. Hence antinatalism. There is no alternative. Why throw more people into it? — schopenhauer1

Yeah, but that's obviously a reductio ad absurdum. People do find happiness in such a predicament despite what the economy demands from us. I mean, I might as well be angry at gravity for not letting me fly around or do cool stuff.

I am not saying that having a different economic system will change things. I am simply explaining how, once born, we are exposed to the de facto economic grips of almost everything we deal with. Our relationships are often defined on our interactions at an economic level. — schopenhauer1

Isn't that like some form of truism if no alternative is provided? I mean, there really aren't any viable alternatives to the predicament of just being a cog in the economy or a moocher in my case.

In economic theory, Hayek in his epoch The Road to Serfdom, concludes that it only gets worse when the means of production are in the hands of the government. The classic economic theory just says that you have the choice to live a poor life though, with the opportunity of that changing.

Personally I've never understood the coherence of 'quietism': it seems to me that any claim to what we can and cannot say must itself be grounded in account of 'the way things are' (broadly understood), without which no such claim could ever get off the ground. The whole position seems to be shot through with performative contradiction, but then again, I don't think I've ever come across a quietism that ever been rigourously formulated. — StreetlightX

I feel as though Quietism has its roots in Moore's ethical philosophy or naturalistic philosophy. It also adopts the common sense philosophy of Moore to a great deal. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with Moore's common sense ethics. Throw in neo-pragmatism and you'd be hard-pressed to not be a quietist given those prerequisites.

Do you smoke CBD weed? If so, for what ailments, or benefits? — Metaphysician Undercover

If I can afford it, I try and get a vape product of CBD, which is still quite expensive. The benefits are mostly anti-anxiety. It's also good for depression last I read.

Apart from the negativity THC get's (and rightly so in some regards), there is a host of other components to marijuana, such as; CBD, CBN, CBG, etc. that are only being investigated now due to a lift on the ban of studying the effects of marijuana in universities.

I don't like the psychoactivity, just the positive effects of CBD mostly. I also rarely smoke cannabis. Get too much anxiety.

Quietism in philosophy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy) — fishfry

That one. :_)

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one ought to remain silent.

However, the job market has evolved over time to increase the required skills a person needs to be able to get a "living wage". So, there's that issue of inflating the importance of college.

Brilliant insight and explanation. But, one has to understand that it wouldn't be an issue if tuition was so high. So, how does one lower tuition is the next logical question if there is at all any answer?

President Nixon closed most of the Job Corps in 1969 when he took office. — Bitter Crank

Let's hope trickle down will eventually work to raise all floundering boats. Here's me hoping.

Regarding marijuana,

There's been a strong tendency from the government to prevent the use of marijuana. I don't entirely know how to put this; but, marijuana tends to break down the drive for consumerism or at the very least provides a short sense of relief from the utter urge to consume (apart from food). Governments have recognized that marijuana tends to break down the desire to consume or follow with the social conditioning that many people are brought up with. I have no idea how to rationalize on some deeper neurological level.

Then there's the issue of consumerism itself and how it relates to drug use. Again, it seems half-baked; but, there seems to be a strong link between satisfaction (or rather the lack of it) and consuming goods. Drugs tend to amplify the feeling of satisfaction; but, we all know that that is a short-lived feeling and tends to subside after the effects of the drug have worn off. Consumerism is like gambling, fun as long as there is money to spend. It's ridiculous how easy it is to spend money on the internet. It's literally too easy. People who have limited self-restraint or have a high urge to instant gratification are prone to becoming poor or engage in drug use, which is exploited to the detriment of people nowadays by consumerism.

There's also a strong sense of liberty and individualism being professed by drug consumption. The laws against it also don't help dissuade people from their lure and appeal. Perhaps, it is something that is really interesting to do, although the effects subside after prolonged use.

I believe that people find it harder and harder to connect with people or their families and this tends to leave a gaping hole that needs to be filled with some sort of entertainment or more consumption.

Then, there's the strange reason why drugs aren't seen as a societal issue and instead as a legal or illegal choice. If communities got together or were more close, then I suspect drug use would plummet.

Still, a topic worth exploring more in detail in my opinion.