Facts, perspective and opinion

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As I see it :
Facts = objective truth.
Perspective = subjective interpretation of the objective truth as it is understood.
Opinion = a viewpoint resulting from either a subjective interpretation of the objective truth as it is understood, a subjective feeling or a mixture thereof.

According to makuranososhi's subjectivist beliefs there exists no objective reality. To him everything is subjective and therefore two people can disagree on the facts and still be right. Of course, this cannot be true. If one agrees on the particular definitions used for the words to describe any given reality, there can be only one version of the truth. Of course, there may be different understandings of the truth or different interpretations of the truth, but the truth is unique and unambiguous under the condition that one agrees on the semantics used.

Makuranososhi tried to defend his subjectivism by referencing to the ambiguity of definitions and therefore a disagreement on the semantics used, however it would be false to consider a difference in use of semantics as an essential difference, because it is perfectly possible to have the exact same perspective while using different semantics to express the same. Differences in semantics only express a difference in the way certain ideas are put to words, but they do not imply a difference between the actual ideas behind those words. In my opinion, this makes semantics discussions irrelevant because it is not to the point and it also limits discussions where an agreement on the semantics used has not been reached, as this results in confusion and misinterpretation.

Discuss...

Actually, you've said numerous things that have never left my lips or fingertips - highly presumptive on your part, and perhaps demonstrating that your perspective is not indeed fact, but only what it is - an fragmentary observation. At no point have I said there is no objective reality, SFS. It is your insistence that it is the only form and standard of reality that I take exception with and do not concede. It is you who have spoken previously of your disregard for semantics, without which there can be no valid comparison between each individual experience to find commonality. And considering that instead of a discussion you provide such an assumptive post in terms of your being right (which, in your mind, you are - and in mine, you are completely off-base), I doubt much productive will come of this thread.


M.

I've learned in life that much that seems to be "fact" is actually closer to being an interpretation of something, than fact. Yes, some things are facts, but not quite as much as some people seem to think. If someone prefers black and white thinking, as many AS do, it becomes apparent to the outside observer that they will quickly sort into "fact" many things that actually do not belong there. I think most truths do live in the gray areas; the longer I've lived life, the more I've come to understand that.

To see something as "objective truth" you still have to apply a personal level of logic. Perhaps the more accurate definition would be "verifiable under all conditions and seen as objective truth by a very high percentage of reasonable people."

And I was one of the ones that got a chuckle of Clinton's, "it depends on what the definition of "is", is," because I've seen that played out in real life more than once.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 01 Feb 2010, 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I never claimed otherwise



Then we were having a different discussion, I guess.



It is the only objective standard of reality. There may be different standards, but there is only one objective standard.



Semantics must be agreed on before you engage in discussion as to avoid confusion. Discussing semantics is pointless and a waste of time IMO because your discussing on how to use words to express your ideas rather than discussing actual ideas.



I make a hypothesis and ask people to discuss about it. In no way am I assumptive of my being right. You are misrepresenting my position.

Are you in the Autism spectrum? For someone in the spectrum, you sound incredibly irrational to me.

In my experience, neurotypical people take non-facts for facts all the time. I sincerely doubt that people with Asperger's are worse in this matter. In fact, I'm convinced it is quite the oposite as we do not have a subconscious filter to process our sensory data before it reaches our conscious mind.

Anyway, when I was referring to facts I was referring to facts and not things believed to be facts while they aren't. I clearly made that distinction.

This comment wasn't made to me, but I find it interesting. Have you spent much time here in PPR? Everyone here (except maybe me, and I am probably more NT than AS) bases their viewpoints in what they believe is rational logic and fact, and yet they follow very different paths and reach different conclusions. Is there any better evidence of how individual rational thinking and the concept of fact can be than to read this PPR board? Just because someone has AS, and would naturally be inclined to one way of thinking, doesn't mean they won't eventually discover that maybe other ways are valid, too.

Definitely, NT's do it. But AS seem to, as well, and with extra determination because they DO have a more thorough and complicated process behind the decision as to what is, in reality, fact. But that doesn't mean the conclusion can't be flawed none-the-less. If that weren't the case, nothing would be posted on this board

So who decides what is fact and what is not?

Anyway, I should pull out of this discussion because I have things I MUST get done today. I don't get into the nuances like many here do, so I'm sure you all will have fun tearing up my contribution. Go for it.

I understand. I just find that neurotypical people tend to be less logical in their arguments than people with Asperger's because their sensory impulses go through a subsconscious emotion-generating filter based on (among other factors) personal bias, whereas we don't have such a filter or a least one that's barely active. Makuranososhi's arguments remind me a lot of the kind of arguments I expect from very prejudiced and irrational people. There seem completely illogical, irrelevant and pointless.



Only logical arguments belong in a rational debate. Anything else is just baggage that keep the focus away from the actual issue.

Obviously. Or that would imply that we would all agree on everything considering none of us would ever be wrong.

The reason people who are highly logical can still make mistakes is because they rarely are aware of all parameters involved and therefore have to make guestimates on the information available to them. If they do not have all the necessary data to make a conclusion or they have incorrect data on which they base their conclusion, the outcome is unpredictable even though the logic may be flawless. That's why one must always consider at least the possibility of having incorrect data at your disposal or not having all the necessary data to make a conclusion. A truely wise man will always keep open the possibility that he's wrong on everything, while at the same time strongly defending his position if it is truely based on logic and facts.



Science can make those decisions, under the condition that it leaves open the possibility to change what is considered fact when new knowledge arises. This doesn't mean the facts change but only that our knowledge of the facts change.

Not believing in Santa Clause will not make Santa Clause die because he never existed in the first place. When you changed from believing in Santa Clause to not believing in Santa Clause this was not because the facts changed but only because your knowledge of the facts improved.

I have to agree with you that on-going disagreement is a sign of the subjectivity of the results of supposedly rational analysis. If empirical observation of a phenomenon is not enough to confirm a matter, then what is?



I also think that your analysis of the matter is also correct. I mean, even if we aren't just appealing to people with AS, and just academics, we see the same kinds of thought processes. "Facts" established that other people will deny as facts, and an intense determination to the "facts" because these "facts" are seen as facts. There will even be very convoluted arguments about it, all of them very rational and sophisticated, all of which coming to different conclusions.


And finally one of the most brilliant questions asked. The only way to escape from interpretations into facts is to describe a process by which facts can really be known. The issue is that such processes can always be questioned, as the beliefs that mark "true" and "untrue" must themselves be "true", and the problem is the circularity, as a circular metric is generally considered invalid as it is potentially arbitrary.

Everyone's understanding of reality is filtered. Even AS people. Emotions always have to take part in the process because otherwise conclusions could not be met with the existing processes. Additionally, filtering is needed in order for our mind to make sense of the world. If you don't believe that you are being filtered, just go through some optical illusions.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/galle ... 05F5185BF5

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/200 ... usion.html

If you see both optical illusions, then you recognize that your brain is actually giving you incorrect information on matters of fact, not just matters of perception. (like with old woman vs young woman, or the faces vs vases) This of course brings out all sorts of questions about the mind and the validity of what realities we perceive.


Deductive or inductive? Is one more valid than the other? Where do intuitions fit in? It seems to me that rational debate can't be about anything without empirical content and assumptions. The issue is that if rational debate depends on things outside of rational debate, then those external things aren't just baggage. In fact, they seem to really be the heart of the matter with the logic just being a tool to smooth things out.

Empirical observation of a phenomenon, an agreement on the definitions used and an agreement on the various causalities. Just because to events follow one another, that doesn't per se imply a causal relation. Determining when there exists a causal relation between two distinct events requires at least some form of interpretation since the observation alone is insufficient to make any conclusion on causation. This is, however, a matter of perspective or interpretation and not so much a matter of provable fact unless the causation can be proven beyond reasonable doubt by means of experiment and/or mathematical proof.



That's only because different people start off with different incomplete and/or incorrect datasets. If you start with a correct and complete dataset and you apply the right algorythms to any given problem, there is only one possible conclusion to draw in most instances with the exception of moral judgements (morality is highly subjective and based on at least a handful of moral assumptions). The reason why so many people end up with different conclusions in all sorts of discussions is because they start with a wrong and/or incomplete dataset (often, not all necessary data is available), because their logical algorythms miss a few parameters or because they influence their decision with highly subjective moral judgements.



What's so brilliant about a question that has an obvious answer? Ever since the Enlightenment era, the very purpose of science is supposed to be precisely that : to determine a perspective of reality that's objective, verifiable, measurable, testable, etc. The very purpose of science since the Enlightenment era has been to determine what's objective and provable reality and what is imaginary. Thus, the answer to that question is simply "science". Science is to determine what's fact and what's not. However, science can make those decisions under the condition that it leaves open the possibility to change what is considered fact when new knowledge arises. As said previously, this doesn't mean the facts change but only that our knowledge of the facts change.



Just because a compulsive liar tells you something, that doesn't automatically imply you're being told a lie. Just because the foundations of a statement on the truth of another statement are wrong, that doesn't mean that other statement is wrong itself. It only means that you need different criteria to determine truth.



A purely rational debate by educated individuals will leave no room for circular arguments without them being totally demolished by the oposing side. Circular arguments are easy to spot if you're familiar with the subject matter and pretty easy to debunk as well.

Or it could be due to the fact that people aren't fundamentally logical. Think about it: if people have evolved from stupider and more impulsive animals like apes, then why do we have this crystal clear "reasoning" function that is so pure? It seems to me that the most likely solution is that reason isn't so pure, we just like to think it is because we are irrational. And in this, we end up with epistemic idolatry, we idolize certain conventions that we think are very useful saying that they are correct and the only correct thing when we can't actually support our idolatry.

As it stands, I don't know how to make a clear demarcation on facts and interpretations, and it seems to me that both get blended together very often. Additionally, I am not sure that your man is wise. What makes him "wise"? The fact that he agrees with your set of biases, or is there some "wisdom" metric in the universe?


But how can science make these decisions? Science does not dictate the validity of mathematics, and how could it? Nor does science include history or news, and if you are a soft-science skeptic, it doesn't include most of our social realities. But even further it does not include most of our day to day life evidence such as the things that we've seen.

Not only that, but to go even further science is full of people who are projecting their interpretations of reality onto reality.

An article in Wired actually gives this information:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/f ... pt_defeat/

Scientists find unexpected discoveries about half of the time, and most of that time they discard them because they contradict the theories. Now, think about that. Science is your given metric for truth, but science is rejecting the standard metric of truth a lot of the time.


That depends on your definition of Santa Claus, your definition of death, and what you consider evidence. If Santa Claus is the belief in Santa Claus and relevancy of him and death is the cessation of relevancy of Santa, then no longer believing can be the "death of Santa", and well.... this kind of notion of the death of something based upon coming to believe it never existed is commonly applied to God. Partially based upon Nietzsche, but also likely partially based upon the experiences of those who lose faith: "I felt like my best friend – my source of purpose and happiness and comfort – was dying. And worse, I was killing him." http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=12 "It was not merely the death of someone or something within the greater scheme of things. The entire scheme of things of things itself seemed awry and was slipping away like water through my clutching fingers." http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... story.html If these men were in some sense softer thinkers, they might actually say that they have had experience of the death of God, making it a fact to them regardless of what you might say. (of course both men seem the sort to keep reason pretty close to the top of their thought processes so the idea of a figurative death being a literal death might never have even crossed their minds)

And of course, the issue of where fact begins and interpretation ends still seems to remain.

With NT people, sensory data passes a subconscious filter that does not exist with us Aspies. For us, sensory data enters the conscious part of our brain pretty much without preprocessing, which leaves us to process everything consciously (which requires a lot more brainpower but leaves also less room for emotional bias).



I'm not saying we don't filter anything. I'm just saying we miss one particular filter.

Think of our brains as a smoke filter that filters only the thicker smoke particles, whereas NT brains filter also the tiny smoke particles. Although the comparison is far from perfect, it should illustrate the point.


Deductive or inductive? Is one more valid than the other? Where do intuitions fit in?[/quote]

Any type of logic that is valid for mathematical proofs is valid to prove pretty much anything with the right datasets. The validity and completeness of your dataset is essential, however, to come to any conclusion with certainty. Missing out on one parameter can lead to contradictory conclusions.



If the external elements do not add arguments to strengthen the validity of your own hypothesis or to weaken the validity of your oponent's hypothesis, I see no reason to add them at all. What else are they but baggage unless they contribute to the logical arguments being made?

The question was rhetorical. The observation isn't one about causality, but rather it is one about how reality plays out. So, talking about causal factors after taking a statement out of context has little relevancy.


There aren't right algorithms. The purpose of pursuing knowledge is to INVENT the algorithm, so assuming the algorithm is begging the question.

Additionally, a real issue is that dispute about algorithms is also ongoing and that heuristics ultimately decide our algorithms. I mean, you can refer to the incompleteness of data sets a lot, but it seems to me that the phenomenon goes a lot deeper than that. In fact, there is actually a paper that talks about how ongoing disagreement is likely a sign of pervasive human irrationality.
http://hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf

It bases this on Aumann's agreement theorem which proves that rational Bayesian actors will come to agreement. Of course, there are some people who dissent with their application of Aumann's theorem.


The fact that it really isn't obvious. I already pointed this out with a later article cited showing the ongoing rejection of laboratory tested facts in the scientific process. Additionally, the subjectivity of science has been highlighted relatively recently with Thomas Kuhn's very influential work "The Structure and Nature of Scientific Revolutions", in which he critically examines the history of science to show that rational considerations really haven't been the ultimate underlying matter, but rather that science remains a human proces.

Additionally, the task of science has never been to "determine what is true". The fact of the matter is that science has no real task. Originally it was stated that theology was the mother of the sciences, but what happened after Newton's discoveries was that science moved away from Aristotelian teleologies and became it's own subject. This was not due to a formal decision either, but rather due to an evolution where certain questions became invalid questions. Finally, I already attacked the pretensions of science to find truth by pointing out that science cannot legitimize itself, and never has had the purpose of doing so. So, the real issue is that your invocation of science IS circular, you just have likely tried to dismiss the matter.


No, but a compulsive liar telling you something also gives strong reason to believe that the statement is wrong.

The point I was getting at is a lot deeper. It's a regress problem.

1) Suppose that P is some piece of knowledge. Then P is a justified true belief.
2) The only thing that can justify P is another statement – let's call it P1; so P1 justifies P.
3) But if P1 is to be a satisfactory justification for P, then we must know that P1.
4) But for P1 to be known, it must also be a justified true belief.
5) That justification will be another statement - let's call it P2; so P2 justifies P1.
6) But if P2 is to be a satisfactory justification for P1, then we must know that P2
7) But for P2 to count as knowledge, it must itself be a justified true belief.
8 ) That justification will in turn be another statement - let's call it P3; so P3 justifies P2.
9) and so on, ad infinitum.

The problem is that you are claiming that X is a criterion of true, but for X to truly be the criterion of truth, it would have to verify itself. That is circular, and as you note, circularity is wrong. But in order to avoid that we have an infinite number of justifiers, which is impossible to satisfy. This is basically a trilemma in skepticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa's_ ... ormulation

The issue is that just about every attempt for human beings to emulate reason has itself proven irrational. This is seen with the Logical Positivists, and their inability to justify their verifiabilty criterion for meaning. This is seen with the foundations of mathematics and how attempts have generally floundered around paradoxes. And your attempt will be a failure for the same reasons.


You've already made a circular argument though. Science determines what is true is a truth statement. The issue is that this must be circular or it must be false or even both, as science hasn't determined it's own truth but it couldn't even if it tried due to the circularity of the matter.

You don't know ANYTHING about what you are talking about then. I am not saying this to be insulting but the matter of consciousness is something that Daniel Dennett(who is a very scientifically oriented philosopher) discussed in his book "Consciousness Explained", and the issue that he came to is that there is no Cartesian theater(you're implicitly positing one) and that our consciousness is set up in a manner where there is no real difference between a filtered consciousness and an altered memory. The optical illusions though are clear examples of unconscious processing that distorts facts, and really there is a lot of filtering that takes place. In fact, I am going to look it up, but the amount of resources spent on just taking in information is a fraction of the resources spent on processing information. The fact that we see bridges and chairs rather than various colors is just a matter of information processing. The fact that we see ourselves as psychologically continuous is also a matter of information processing according to some psychologists. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/m ... sonalities (and guess what? They're the scientists!)


Your later statement is at odds with an earlier one, so I am keeping up the previous rant. "For us, sensory data enters the conscious part of our brain pretty much without preprocessing, which leaves us to process everything consciously"(is the matter I would dispute)


I actually don't agree at all. The entire process of mind is filtering reality. There is no higher or lower filtering, and nor should there be. This goes back to my statement about evolution and rationality. If we are evolved, then why would there really be a pure state of reason? Such a thing has no use for an animal, and evolution doesn't create pure things, but rather it builds things through ad hoc processes of trial and error.


Mathematical proofs don't prove themselves, and all sets of mathematics are incomplete.


The issue is that logical arguments alone only clarify, they can't prove. You have to recognize that in all philosophical arguments, the heart of these arguments are the premises which are attacked or upheld, and the premises aren't proved, but rather accepted. They can't be proved, for to prove all philosophical premises would require an infinite regress.