I sense semantic tunnel vision developing.
Well, there's plenty of discussion of semantics in the thread, perhaps boring to some people who feel "It's just semantics. Yawn!". Of course, when it is asserted that evolution is
just a theory, perhaps by someone influential like Ronald Reagan, the same members are liable to be far less phlegmatic.
Semantics have consequences out there in the world. Some members may quite rightly feel a sense of outrage that Reagan (or whoever) is massively misleading the public and eroding trust in science . . . all through the inappropriate use of one little word. I feel STOT advocates and their brethren are doing the same, except in the direction of hyperbole, massively misleading the public about the trustworthiness of scientific theories. It is not denied that some are trustworthy; any suggestion that they
all are is the stuff of 1984.
Germs cause disease. Very probable they are, with a tiny chance we're rather in a simulation where it only looks that way.
I personally don't have a problem with the germ theory of disease, indeed it may be virtually inconceivable to us that it could be wrong. What I have pointed out, though, is that we've been in the same situation before, and have been quite wrong (geocentrism, aether,
et al), at least as judged by modern lights. As Dave himself adverted to, (some of) the finest physicists of the 19th century felt the entire book of physics was more or less closed. And it doesn't take a Matrix scenario or a Cartesian demon for us to be hopelessly wrong about these things, a conceptual revolution will do the trick -- not a particularly rare occurrence at all.
Every generation assumes a privileged position for itself, much as it was assumed that our planet occupied a privileged position in the cosmos. "Boy, these folks a few hundred years ago, so certain of themselves, sure had some primitive ideas." You don't think the same will be said of ourselves in, say, five hundred years or so?
Personally, I can think of few safer bets.
Facts? Of course we construct them. Reality is a whole. Facts are lean, carefully sculpted propositions (employing language and math) about particular parts of that whole.
I'd say it's a very peculiar way of stating matters.
I'd note first that we do indeed create
some facts, what John Searle refers to as "institutional facts" - money, property, marriage, etc. It is generally held that we do not create the brute facts of the world. To say as much is to endorse constructivism, a view regarded as preposterous by every scientist I've heard opine on the matter.
You are aware, of course, of the so-called "correspondence theory of truth". On this view, a proposition is true insofar as it corresponds with the facts. The
proposition (our creation) "The Earth is round", say, is true if and only if it is a
fact (none of our doing) that the Earth is round(ish). Facts of the world -- or
states of affairs out there in reality, if you prefer, which are not of our making -- decide whether assertions we make about these states of affairs are true or not.
Frank Sinatra's (tempestuous!) marriage to Ava Gardner was a fact constructed by ourselves. So is every other marriage. There was no fact of marriage between dinosaurs inasmuch as they lacked the cognitive and linguistic resources to create such facts. Or so we shall assume until they start digging up T-rex prenups.
But is it really your position that the sphericity of the Earth is not only a fact,
but a fact that we have created?
Is it possible you're confusing a fact with a
statement of that fact?
Well, except for Doug Adams "42."
I do believe I'm the only person in the world who never read the book or saw the TV series. My work here is far too important.
