Arrangement of Truth
Truths can be arranged in such ways that the arrangement itself requires a different kind of analysis than asking whether the truths arranged are in fact true. Most philosophical positions follow a similar template; introduce some truths, explain what they mean and then make your point. It should be understood that all three of these steps require you to make decisions that make your position implicitly personal. It is not a flaw, it is an unavoidable consequence of intelligence, that you are able to arrange truths, interpret them and argue the meaning of what you've brought forward is an amazing thing. And it cannot be contested by truth alone.
Most of this should be obvious when pointed out in isolation but I feel it's necessary because it's not understood when people are being passionate about their positions.
Relevant Truths
When talking on a subject, I cannot possibly introduce every bit of information with any kind of relevance, I have to decide what is most important but no true piece of information is less true than another piece. We need to accept that it is impossible for me to include every piece of information, therefore what I choose to be relevant can have wildly different implications for my subsequent conclusions.
Besides deciding, I cannot decide if information is relevant if I am not aware of it.
Characterisations
The way truths appear to interact can have a lot to do with how characterisations add to the information we have alongside the truth. The truth is distinct from how we characterise it, yet, the truth is shaped by how we characterise it, as it merges with the characterisation. The man becomes the "angry" man or the system becomes the "unfair" system. The truth of the angriness of the man or unfairness of the system is one where people can reasonably disagree yet there is a fundamental difference between a system and an unfair system. I am not saying there is no such thing as anger or unfairness but just because you see something that way, that doesn't mean you can ignore the factors which helped you to arrive at that conclusion.
Interpretation
What it means for something to be true is separate from the actual truth itself. This should be self-explanatory but for instance, that I am a man is a fact but what it means to be a man is a matter of interpretation. We can reasonably disagree on the interpretation without disagreeing on the fact.
Emphasis
All true pieces of information are equally true but they aren't equally emphasised, whether for your point or in general. What emphasising a fact does, why it's being done and whether it should be done are all valid questions that don't challenge the truth of the piece of information being emphasised.
Narrativization
Through which truths are made relevant or important or are known, to how they're characterised or interpreted, a unique story is created. Yet what truths are made relevant or known, how they're characterised and interpreted, all of it happens differently depending on who is telling the story. We can disagree on what is fair, what is reasonable, what is lopsided and because how the story is arranged can all be reasonably disagreed upon, how it should be evaluated can be reasonably disagreed upon as well.
It is not about people making mistakes, being unreasonable, fallible, biased or whatever else. You are either aware of your involvement in how you have organised the truths, characterised them and interpreted them or you are deludedly believing that the result is also a truth and not something you have created. Even without ever disagreeing on what is true, you can arrive at a near infinite number of different conclusions by arranging the facts differently. Thus the question becomes, how do I judge a good conclusion from a bad one.
That is not something I'll discuss here but what is nonsense is to defend the arrangement by the truth of what you've arranged. It doesn't address any of the aforementioned choices you've made that have created the arrangement - none of which ever challenge what is and what is not true.
Most of this should be obvious when pointed out in isolation but I feel it's necessary because it's not understood when people are being passionate about their positions.
Relevant Truths
When talking on a subject, I cannot possibly introduce every bit of information with any kind of relevance, I have to decide what is most important but no true piece of information is less true than another piece. We need to accept that it is impossible for me to include every piece of information, therefore what I choose to be relevant can have wildly different implications for my subsequent conclusions.
Besides deciding, I cannot decide if information is relevant if I am not aware of it.
Characterisations
The way truths appear to interact can have a lot to do with how characterisations add to the information we have alongside the truth. The truth is distinct from how we characterise it, yet, the truth is shaped by how we characterise it, as it merges with the characterisation. The man becomes the "angry" man or the system becomes the "unfair" system. The truth of the angriness of the man or unfairness of the system is one where people can reasonably disagree yet there is a fundamental difference between a system and an unfair system. I am not saying there is no such thing as anger or unfairness but just because you see something that way, that doesn't mean you can ignore the factors which helped you to arrive at that conclusion.
Interpretation
What it means for something to be true is separate from the actual truth itself. This should be self-explanatory but for instance, that I am a man is a fact but what it means to be a man is a matter of interpretation. We can reasonably disagree on the interpretation without disagreeing on the fact.
Emphasis
All true pieces of information are equally true but they aren't equally emphasised, whether for your point or in general. What emphasising a fact does, why it's being done and whether it should be done are all valid questions that don't challenge the truth of the piece of information being emphasised.
Narrativization
Through which truths are made relevant or important or are known, to how they're characterised or interpreted, a unique story is created. Yet what truths are made relevant or known, how they're characterised and interpreted, all of it happens differently depending on who is telling the story. We can disagree on what is fair, what is reasonable, what is lopsided and because how the story is arranged can all be reasonably disagreed upon, how it should be evaluated can be reasonably disagreed upon as well.
It is not about people making mistakes, being unreasonable, fallible, biased or whatever else. You are either aware of your involvement in how you have organised the truths, characterised them and interpreted them or you are deludedly believing that the result is also a truth and not something you have created. Even without ever disagreeing on what is true, you can arrive at a near infinite number of different conclusions by arranging the facts differently. Thus the question becomes, how do I judge a good conclusion from a bad one.
That is not something I'll discuss here but what is nonsense is to defend the arrangement by the truth of what you've arranged. It doesn't address any of the aforementioned choices you've made that have created the arrangement - none of which ever challenge what is and what is not true.
Comments (99)
We do not gather and arrange truth - as if it were something that exists in and of itself - that can be placed into different arrangements, like many things can... flowers. Correspondence is not like that.
You're going to have to rephrase yourself, I don't follow.
No it cannot.
Fair enough, I will rewrite that.
This is a most interesting notion. It takes my mind to a further question, which is that of the value of truth arrangement, pending such a possibility. What is clear to me is that if truth can be arranged, then this means it can be controlled to some extent, which is most interesting. The onus would fall upon us to construct the most intelligent arrangement possible. In all simplicity, this was Marx's direction of thought.
"The truth" was perhaps more abstract than I was going for but conceptually it is simple enough to understand. That there are truths is less important than why a particular piece of information matters, what it means, what the implications of it are, does it tell the full story, who is bringing it up and for what, what should be done about it and so on. If you don't create your own reasons, you will only end up adopting someone else's and that may not best serve your interests.
So, I'm guessing that by "truths" you're talking about true claims, assertions, statements, or some such...
Is that about right?
Yes.
Quoting Judaka
And what does the term "truth" mean here? The same as before but singular? A true statement?
Yes, "truths" is just a plural of "a truth" which is something with the quality of being true.
It is not a flaw, it is an unavoidable consequence of intelligence, that you are able to arrange truths, interpret them and argue the meaning of what you've brought forward is an amazing thing. And it cannot be contested by a true statement alone...
The above replaces "truth" with "a true statement", which if a truth is a true statement, as you've claimed, that substitution ought be perfectly acceptable. The meaning ought not change at all. But...
...the problem is obvious, is it not?
Our ability to arrange true statements, interpet them, and argue the meaning can most certainly be contested by a true statement alone.
Right?
I agree that the conclusion of arranging truths, interpreting them and arguing their meaning can be contested by a true statement. I made an error in my last comment because I didn't read yours correctly. The "truth" here is referring to the literal state of things being true, if you think my language is confusing then I welcome suggestions on what you would have done differently.
I broadly agree with what you've written. Though I think that driving such a hard wedge between fact and interpretation is very close to skepticism.
Quoting Judaka
How many relevant interpretations can there be of "Some people like petting cats."? If it is a mere fact, what can be disagreed upon regarding it without adding irrelevant detail through the interpretation?
I don't know precisely what you mean but it probably is scepticism, to some extent, what I've written, I believe it is the bedrock of nihilism. I don't know, you are baiting me into heavily derailing my own thread here.
Quoting fdrake
True, we would require more complexity in order to arrive at a near-infinite number of different conclusions. I think that as humans, we are different in relatively meaningless ways in comparison to how we're the same. That is why I don't go into a discussion thinking that a near-infinite number of conclusions are likely to come up, I think people are likely to see things in just a few ways, it depends on the subject.
I'm not baiting you into heavily derailing your own thread. Whatever the facts are, they don't justify any interpretation.
I don't mean that just as snark. The point of saying it is that an intellectual commitment to nihilism that severs facts from interpretations is like a powerful acid. You can use it to destroy whatever you choose to, but as the above shows you can't function without the fungibility of facts and interpretations. You have to act as if the world is how you interpret it - that's what it means to hold beliefs about it.
So such a hard wedge between fact and interpretation; even if true in principle, is useless in the practice of reasoning about things. Except as a selectively applied powerful acid.
And some part of me wonders if extremely strong skepticism is just another form of faith; doubting all that would change my mind. I could be skeptical of every other interpretation besides the one I have already.
Facts don't justify interpretations, the rules for justification are negotiated or created. Sometimes what you are saying sounds like a valid way to argue against me, sometimes I am not convinced I actually believe what you're arguing against.
I am not entirely convinced that if you paraphrased the position you are arguing against that it would describe my position.
For a start, I would not use the term "truth" in so many different ways. It's called an equivocation fallacy. It causes confusion at best, and is a sure sign of self-contradiction at worst.
What's the aim here with the idea of the arrangement of truth?
(1) Facts have interpretations.
(2) When someone writes an account of something, they make a choice regarding what is relevant to present.
(3) The point (2) also applies to choice of facts.
(4) There may be multiple interpretations of the same selection of facts.
(5) When someone writes something fact based - IE which uses evidence - someone who reads it need not agree with the interpretations of facts while agreeing with all the facts.
(6) Some people behave as if facts usually have only one interpretation.
(7) That kind of behaviour is a delusion, since complexes of facts have multiple interpretations.
In the background, though not explicated, you seem to have intuitions regarding the arbitrary connection between collections of facts and what interpretations those collections of facts support. Similarly, you seem to be conveying that it's a ultimately a matter of individual caprice to make any organisation of facts in support of any thesis. Individuals who are not aware of how they do that are deluded. People often write accounts that organize facts and posit them as relevant in this deluded manner.
Seem about fair?
This "wedge" between fact and interpretation seems to be at the heart of a lot of philosophy in the post-enlightenment era. It could perhaps be said that Kant's critique of pure reason already contained the issue - in dormant form - when Kant introduced the "Ding an sich". It seems like Kant's reasoning, excluding the "realm of freedom", could be taken as a direct road to radical constructivism. Yet at the same time, it also seems self-evident that the outside world has a solidity that implies it exists "in and of itself".
Quoting Judaka
Can it be the effectiveness of one’s arrangement? If I understand you correctly, when one expresses her positions, views, or perspectives, the implicit ‘arrangement of truth’ has been inevitably involved. It brings many opportunities to disagree, oppose, contradict, or challenge the conclusion or the final statement. Yet, if the object of consideration is not
some particular truth, we could find common ground on discussing the rules of the game.
An effective, interesting game (arrangement) works if it produces specific effects and if it can be reapplied in different situations.
Are you sure you want to accuse me of a fallacy? Those definitions I have given are pretty standard, truth and truths are different words. Do you want to say that my argument actually hinges on these definitions? Give me the words you want to have them replaced with and see how much my argument changes.
What is the aim of the arrangement of truth? I have reasons for posting about it and caring about it but why it exists? There is no aim, it is just a natural consequence of intelligence.
I have a small concern, how do you define interpretation? I use it here to say: explaining the meaning of something. If you agree with that and we are not talking about epistemology or using interpretations to strip a truth of its status as a truth, then I will be more comfortable about responding properly. I said I might agree with Skepticism but after doing homework on what that is, I don't agree with it, I would use the same criticism as you about it.
As for the individual freedom to interpret just whatever.
The rules for justification are negotiated, created or are implicit, there is no necessity for facts to justify or falsify interpretations by themselves. I have ways of measuring the success of my ideas besides their truth value but these ways are pretty common, there is no incentive for me to destroy everything, or at least try to, I think only conceptually it could work but in reality, I am not so in control.
If someone beat me up and stole precious items from me, I could try to interpret this in a way that makes me feel good about it but as if it's that easy. Nobody would wish to be afraid due to such an incident, nobody would want to feel degraded by it but what can you do? You are not able to control your emotions or interpretations at will, you have to live with them. Before we are individuals, we are biological entities and with that comes rules, the rules of our nature and the nature of how things interact.
It is very far away from up to individual caprice, we must play within the rules but the rules aren't followed because they're compelling just rather we have no choice. Within these rules, sure, there is no truth value to interpretation.
I wholeheartedly agree with how you've paraphrased the concept and with how you suggest evaluating arrangements. I don't think it is the only valid answer but it is, in my opinion, the best one, as it is the most pragmatic. The subjectivity of the arrangement hardly detracts from its importance, we should decide what we are trying to achieve and then whether it is a good or bad thing to be trying to achieve and see what works best in the various contexts.
Yes. I definitely concur. They are different words. They're not the only such set though. Bird and birds. The difference is quantity. The latter is a plurality of the former. That's how it works, and my knowing that much is what grounded my earlier question to you; one which you initially readily agreed with, only to change your mind later after facing the consequences of that common sense use.
Quoting Judaka
Clearly not.
You're attempting to claim that "truths" is not a plural form of "truth". If a truth is a true claim, as you also agreed, then truths are more than one true claim. On pains of coherency alone...
Quoting Judaka
Quoting Judaka
Quoting Judaka
See the indication of another plurality above? Indeed, you've given different definitions of the same term. Multiple standards are problematic when they conflict with one another.
To the first question at the top of the page...
No. I do not, nor did I ever want to accuse you of a fallacy. I'm just telling you what some of the rules are. I'm not making them up. During the same argument one cannot just freely move between distinct and incompatible senses of the same term at their own whim and not get called out on it. It's unacceptable, incoherent, self-contradictory, nonsensical language use.
The substitution method I've employed is the most reliable tried and true(hehehe) method for checking to see if an author is using more than one sense of the same term. Turns out that you were/are. The fallacy was there, and it remains, regardless of whether or not you acknowledge and/or admit of it. Acknowledging it would make you a better philosopher.
I want to stress that what I'm saying is not negative a report of you. It's not about you, the author. It doesn't have to reflect poorly upon you as a person. It's about the writings that you're presenting openly on a public philosophy forum. Public forums are chock full of uncomfortable potential for everyone and/or anyone who so chooses to boldly go where they've never gone before... voluntarily opening themselves(their own belief) up to criticism.
I made an error in accepting your substitution due to not properly reading your comment, but I admit that the previous edit had "the truth" where "truths" was appropriate. Therefore, I did make an error there and I corrected it but the error was never a component of my argument nor did it represent a belief of mine. Nor did I change my opinion because of your ideas about pluralities, not every error constitutes an opinion, it was simply an editing mistake.
Quoting Judaka
What I have said here is that the meaning of the truth (meaning) is separate from the truth (truth), which is pretty much just stating the obvious.
I think my usage of truths and truth is pretty standard, but I am prepared to use a better way if I find one. Now I am prepared to take criticism but you are saying it's unacceptable, incoherent self-contradictory nonsensical language use. I am already listening, I asked if you had a better way of doing it, why then do you state so emphatically what a grievous error I've made? What is the purpose? It only gives credibility to the idea that you have interests outside of merely being helpful. Others have been able to perfectly paraphrase my position, therefore, it hasn't been quite as bad as you have put it.
True, truths, truth, I am happy to accept that having words so similar which mean different things being used in such close proximity to each other could be confusing. I am not sure on what a better way of doing it might be, I am open to suggestions.
I want to point out to what looks like one of your central presuppositions:
one inevitably starts with what has been objective, neutral, or natural facts. (Please correct me if I misunderstood you.) Consequently, there is a gap and controversy between ‘actual truth itself,’ which is a set of particular conventional fixations of the meaning of apparent facts, and the truth that we come to after ‘arrangement of truth’ has been applied. That is why Fdrake argues that your OP could be considered as the expression of nihilism:
Quoting fdrake
Probably, to avoid the dichotomy between facts and interpretations, your concept of ‘arrangement of truth’ could be broadened to show that ‘facts’ do not merely belong to the descriptive order. The factual cannot be separated
from sedimental practices and a practical relationship to the world. The factual meanings require
norms governing our behavior. So, there are not two orders—the normative and the descriptive—but normative/descriptive complexes in which facts and values inextricably interpenetrate each other. Further, normativity is not a universal category given from nowhere.
It is a historical product of struggles, conflicts, and politics. The fixation of the meaning of the
essential factual is ‘an objective illusion,’ necessary to maintain a stable social order. The truth of the facts is no less subjective (or objective) and contingent (or necessary) than the truth of interpretations. Actually, both are produced and governed by the complex interplay of the social determinants.
"Explaining the meaning of a fact" looks like a decent working definition to me. With the caveat that facts usually engender multiple interpretations. I guess for me an interpretation is also an ascription of meaning to a fact. Ascription of meaning to a fact, derivation of explanation from a fact, the direction of fit is somewhat fungible.
In some respects a fact engenders explanations consistent with its nature (fact->agent's explanation), but it is also used with the significance afforded to it by an agent (agent's explanation -> fact). The discursive distinction between a fact and the role a fact plays in an account. I understand the role a fact plays as an expression of the nature of a fact in a context by an agent - that context can be an account, an ideology etc. The fungibility comes, I think, from agents enacting the fact's logical/causal/epistemic relationships to other ideas by leveraging them in an account. The nature of a fact guides an agent in that fact's explication. In truth, I believe facts have relationships to each other that agents may explicate or otherwise use when making an account of something. Prosaically, some facts find others palatable, some distinguish themselves from others, some organize others by their schematic nature. So when you write:
Quoting Judaka
I am suspicious that it is a skeptical thesis; the arrangement of facts in an account can be a truth too. A truth in the sense of a valid argument with true premises, or as providing evidence for a statement conjointly. Among countless other inferential relationships. Drawing a strict distinction between a collection of facts and arrangements using them (if indeed you are doing that) looks to sever all facts from any issue they may bear on. Though you may have a technical sense of "arrangement" in mind that avoids the criticism.
Sure.
Quoting fdrake
What is the nature of a fact? And is it the fact's nature according to only to your interpretation?
Quoting fdrake
Sure.
Are you saying it is only the logical and causal and epistemic relationships to other ideas that create fungibility? This seems to be agreeing with the notion that I can include or exclude true pieces of information from a position, i.e the "relevant truths" part of my OP while neglecting the rest. Are you saying that the fact's role in a position is more or less defined by the fact's nature? The fungibility is not inherent in the fact itself which has a nature?
Quoting fdrake
How can the arrangement of facts in an account have a truth value? What I can agree with is that it can be logical, rational, reasonable, probable and many other things. Are you sure that you are not conflating truth with things of this nature?
I believe the scope of your inquiry is too narrow, truth has become for you, responsible for too much. Skepticism is guilty of being illogical, it makes unreasonable assumptions, it defies the rules for justification, it defies the laws of probability. There is really no compelling argument to be made in favour of Skepticism, but why is it not compelling? Can you answer that question by simply saying it's untrue?
Quoting fdrake
Arrangements do not sever facts from any issue they may bear on, they just don't have a truth value. It is the precipice of where the objectively true becomes the subjectively asserted. I have read many on the forum who have the worst view of what it means to for something to be "subjective", which is that it is some kind of personal preference, it's neutral, a good representation of it is "what's your favourite colour?" etc.
That is absolutely not how the "subjective" works because whether you like it or not, you are a biological entity and being that as it is, your brain - the tool you think with, is not even remotely close to neutral or unbiased. This bias is largely responsible for the differences and more importantly, the similarities in our interpretation of facts. No matter what one tries to do philosophically, nobody will ever succeed at removing these biases. The biases, do not even accurately distinguish between fact and fiction, let alone the truth value of facts versus arrangements.
Quoting fdrake
The problem here is that just one set of facts can give rise to multiple valid arguments with true premises. How can the truth be self-contradicting? How do you choose what "truth" to subscribe to and does that question dismantle the concept of the truth by itself? Which is pretty much the crux of my OP, you can't say that all of these arrangements are truths while there are so many to choose from, arguing that you should do totally different things or have totally different opinions or perspectives on the same set of facts.
This is a tough one. Judaka, I think you might be a bit too dogmatic here? You are absolutely correct about implicit bias. This has been studied in depth and repeatedly verified, but I have a hard time with your last statement. I think you might actually be arguing that we cannot remove every last ounce of our bias? This is likely correct, but there are indeed things we can do to overcome bias, here critical thought and standards play a large role. If you take the position all the way to solipsism then it becomes pure dogma without distinction, and would indeed lead to Nihilism. I can understand how a critical thinker would become a Nihilist, it would almost seem to be a necessary stage, but one must grow beyond it. Not trying to be condescending, but it seems to me you have the foundation to be a powerful thinker if you have the discipline and courage to stick with negation, coupled with the resistance to fight back against it with the power of thought. This is really the essence of every great thinker.
I think a fact's nature depends on the fact. Aspects of a fact that do not depend on an agent's interpretation, an agent's interpretation simply brings it out. If (1) there's a cup full of coffee on my table and (2) I live alone (3) It's about 10am here then it is reasonable to infer (4) I enjoy drinking coffee.
It's reasonable to infer some statements from facts and not others, whether it is reasonable usually will not be determined by an agent's tastes. Contextual information about the agent (say you're talking to your friend about someone they know intimately) can determine whether it's reasonable to trust them about what they say (regarding their friend).
It's all fallible, being reasonable and fair doesn't ensure you'll speak or believe truth, it just raises the chances.
Quoting Judaka
I don't believe so. Look at the above example, from (1) (2) and (3) it is reasonable to conclude (4). And when it is reasonable to infer a thing on some basis, it is true that it is reasonable to do so. A particularly stark example is that the syllogism: A => B, A, therefore B, requires that A=>B is true. But perhaps you would not see the inference A=>B, A as an arrangement of facts.
Perhaps more precisely, if an arrangement of facts cannot be true by fiat, whether an arrangement of facts renders it reasonable to conclude a claim can be. A paradigmatic instance is a valid argument with true premises.
Quoting Judaka
It seems to me you are conflating the fact that facts require agents for explication (through arrangement + narrativisation + emphasis) for the dependence of facts' relationships upon agents' explication of them. An error like saying whether things fall to the ground when dropped depends upon our scientific accounts of gravity. You need to adopt a story to explicate any aspects of reality; that makes such storytelling error prone. But not all accounts (= fact + arrangement + emphasis + narrative) are equally vindicated - they support their conclusions with different strengths.
Everyone is biased at all times. Biases are not enemies of the truth. As soon as you reason you are possibly in error; but not necessarily in error. Whether you are in errror depends on how you reason, that error is always possible is inherent to reason.
You did a good job in the OP describing a few mechanisms that bias can block the generation of relevant truths. I think you have invalidly inferred from the fact that we are necessarily biased when interpreting anything to the claim that interpretations of facts (with biases) are equally vindicated.
Sometimes a biased conclusion is the only reasonable one.
That's clearly an invalid argument. The number of arrangements doesn't say anything about their quality, only whether there are reasonable accounts does (and how many there are).
Does the fact that we disagree that your conclusions follow from your premises mean that there's no truth of the matter?
Anyway, bringing in the other aspect of what I'm saying. Let's grant that everything you are saying is true. Then consider a bunch of facts X with two interpretations A, B. What you are saying is independent of the quality of justifications between X and A,B, since it applies equally well to all accounts based on facts. So it applies to arbitrary X too. It thereby is entirely useless in every case for deciding on whether A or B or both are reasonable given X. Your concerns are orthogonal to any practice of justification.
Given that some people take X=all the evidence about the shape of the Earth and conclude A=The Earth is flat, and some people conclude B=The Earth is approximately a sphere. The only distinction between concluding A based on X and B based on X is taste in your account. It makes it entirely useless at assessing arguments on their strengths and weaknesses.
Which, ultimately, makes the function of this idea be entirely its discursive role. What ideas you throw the idea at to criticize. It can only be applied based on personal taste - tearing down what you dislike, leaving in place all you like. It's a version of faith, but a shallow one. It works to support any commitments you already have by rendering your tastes the last account standing, the only one you have not applied it to.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here.
Quoting fdrake
There is a way of salvaging some of the merit though, without losing this ground, I think. None of our epistemic peers think the earth is flat. It doesn't seem to be a conclusion it's possible to honestly derive from the evidence. Is it reasonable, do you think, to say that some arrangements of the facts are not reachable by use of reasonable thinking, but that those which are don't then become more or less true by virtue of that function? In essence, some arrangements are wrong, but those which are right are all equally right? Is there one single arrangement it is 'most reasonable' to reach (and we all simply strive for it), or is reasonableness simply a threshold which must be met?
We presuppose that reality exists and that truth is that which is in accordance with reality. Whether something is true or not is based on whether it is in accordance with reality or not. Therefore, the only thing for an intellect to do is to determine what is true or not true and they are either right or wrong about it.
We could begin by saying that the meaning of a fact can be true and it can also be untrue. That is to say that one can interpret a fact to mean another thing is true and be correct or incorrect about it but it is still separate from the fact that was interpreted. Nonetheless, there is coherency in asking "is the meaning of the fact in accordance with reality?" After all, there are many contexts where the meaning of a fact can be proven, such as within probability, physics, economics etc.
Thus the arrangement of facts can conclude in another fact, there can be a logical or causal relationship between the arrangement of facts, the conclusion and the truth value of the conclusion. The conclusion may not have been able to have been reached in another way than by demonstrating it through an arrangement. Nonetheless, the truth value of the conclusion was not determined by the truth value of what was arranged. The truth value of the conclusion is quite simply the result of the conclusion being in accordance with reality. That it took us the arrangement to understand the conclusion or reach the conclusion demonstrates the usefulness of the arrangement but not its truth value.
Quoting fdrake
Reasonableness is a characterisation and cannot be a truth, you create a ruleset for when something is or isn't reasonable and when the conditions are fulfilled then the characterisation becomes justified but this justification doesn't create a truth value. It is only true that you believe it is justified. The functionality of the ruleset was never dependant upon being in accordance with reality in the first place.
Quoting fdrake
I am not sure how you reached that conclusion, so I can't rebut except to say "no, I'm innocent!".
You said you are not conflating truth with reasonableness, logic, strength of arguments and the like but you clearly are. Reasonableness, logic, validity, they're all characterisations defined by mutually agreed upon rulesets which function without accordance with reality being necessary. They're equally applicable in reality as they are in fiction. I don't know what purpose it serves to bring these things up to me, at the very least, there is no diagreement in the usefulness of these things, I am not trying to suggest that all arrangements are equal by every measurement or that they can't be characterised as being unreasonable, illogical, invalid or whatever else.
Quoting fdrake
I am not positing that arrangements are of equal quality, I am suggesting that any evaluation of the arrangement needs to go beyond whether the facts arranged are in fact true. Something which I think is self-evident but people ignore it because they enjoy having the authority that comes with your position being true.
Keep in mind also that arrangements don't just generate truths but also oughts, perspectives, characterisations and many things which we hopefully agree are very subjective. That is more so where our biases become important than merely trying to figure out the truth - where bias just appears to be a hindrance.
Quoting fdrake
It says something about their quality of all being true - considering they're contradicting. If I have true premises and a valid conclusion and you have true premises and a valid conclusion and the result is two contradicting conclusions from the same premises then calling them both true is just absurd. How can two contradicting conclusions both be in accordance with reality?
Quoting fdrake
Impossible. You know full well that X proves B so why this example?
Quoting fdrake
Can you rephrase if you still feel this is valid?
I understand bias has negative connotations, I don't know of a word that helps me to avoid these. Biases, when you are trying to determine the truth, are a hindrance, biases in your subjectivity are what make life enjoyable and meaningful. We discriminate based on our biological proclivities but there's nothing there to replace it if it went. You wouldn't care if you lived or died, if your family was taken care of or not, you wouldn't be human anymore.
Nihilism is usually understood with the worst possible interpretation of nihilism which is the utter pointlessness of life. To me, nihilism is just reality, not an impediment to my enjoyment of life or the creation of meaning. I believe that only through the realisation of nihilism can true pragmatism be achieved. What lies beyond nihilism is an interpretation of nihilism that empowers your subjectivity without rejecting what makes you human.
Mutual agreement will not save you. An agreement is simply a shared interpretation. The community of flat earthers shares an interpretation of facts that the Earth is flat.
Quoting Judaka
I chose that example because it would be obvious to you that X proves B. It's important to pay attention to how X proves B, however.
Is it possible that all evidence that the Earth is round is fabricated to suit an agenda? Yes. So that the Earth is round cannot be derived from the facts alone; it is not like A=A. If we agree that the evidence proves that the Earth is round, what style of proof is it? What is the mode of justification?
That justification is going to require we submit facts to an arrangement. EG: you weigh that the contours of equal force for Newton's law of Gravitation are spheres along with the data of the horizon, measurements of the Earth's curvature, space pictures and so on against the very weak arguments and fabrications of a flat Earther and conclude the only reasonable position is that the Earth is round.
I am sure you will agree with that. However, that you do so only evinces that you selectively apply your position. You invite me to doubt the connection between facts and interpretations; arrangements of facts cannot be true. However, I must precisely arrange the evidence that the Earth is round, emphasize it correctly, and skillfully judge what is relevant and plausible to in order to conclude that the Earth is round. I must partake in emphasising, narrativisation, and arrangement of facts in order to prove that the Earth is round.
Yet here you are quite happy to say other conclusions are impossible. That the Earth is round has been proved. It isn't that other conclusions are impossible; indeed, some people conclude that the Earth is flat; it is simply that their interpretations of facts are deficient. They are unjustified, they see the wrong things as relevant, they tell the wrong stories, they are too implausible. They are wrong.
Were we in a context that usual norms of discourse applied, I would quite happily agree with you that it is impossible that the Earth is flat. When the methods of speaking truth (storytelling!) have their connection to the truths spoken using them blocked? It's all game. And you instinctively resist this conclusion, as you should, because it makes reason die.
Quoting Judaka
You are more than willing to privilege shared epistemic standards when it suits your purposes. Whenever something is sufficiently obvious. And reading your position carefully, we know that what is obvious is simply a matter of taste for anything of note.
We need to be able to criticize how stories are told, the truth plays a part; the subjective element that all things are spoken from some perspective plays absolutely none in the abstract. Always a question of how and why.
Quoting fdrake
That's the world we live in, earthly manners of acquiring agreement are all there is, do your beliefs give you supernatural powers to compel others to be reasonable or logical? I talk about what is, the consequences of reality can be considered after.
That's right, there are rules we follow because we desire the results that they bring about, the method of proving something I subscribe to doesn't have a true/false value, it's either effective in leading me towards the truth or it fails. I don't know the truth by default, I discover the truth through the methods I employ which have been figured out by others before me. The Earth being flat is impossible according to the methodology I employ for determining what should or shouldn't be considered impossible.
If my methodology could be whimsically changed to suit my preferences then it would no longer be effective in leading me towards truth and what would be the purpose of it? I rigidly apply high standards for determining the truth because that's how I succeed. If it were not in my benefit to know the truth then I wouldn't try to know it but it's almost never the case.
I don't know what to say to what you've written, there's scarce argument, few responses to anything I've written and bold assertions. I can't understand where you're coming from anymore.
Quoting Judaka
Quoting Judaka
Consider that we're talking sufficiently abstractly that any reason, any fact, any justification, any supporting story, any sentimental attachment for anything are being quantified over. We're in precisely the space of reasons where these delusional attachments you speak about are in play. Yet here you speak confidently about "what is"! With no qualification.
You are asking interlocutors to believe that you have surveyed the totality of human reasons and sentiment and filtered "what is" out like a pan full of gold, despite a well written injunction not to when considering such wide ranging topics. Because you have faith that you adhere to:
Quoting Judaka
a methodology. A style of interpretation. But it's ultimately a vascillation between degrees of credibility. You are happy, as I have said, to accept that your forebears and inspirations have given you the acuity to speak unqualifiedly of "what is". Whereas those who do not share this methodology will be prone to delusion. Every filter bubble declares its interior reasonable and its exterior irrational and irrelevant, a mechanism you have so well described in the thread.
The point of disagreement regards the consequences of your commitment; skepticism regarding any story told using facts. It seems you want to have a general skepticism that any arrangement of facts; which I take to be an account, or a story told using them; can be true. But your arrangement of facts is "what is"! And you know the Earth is round because it was "proven". Not because you've seen it from space, because you have evaluated evidence and trusted people, and made reasonable inferences based on that information.
Inferences, emphasis, arrangement, knowing what is relevant to what; that's all skill in using facts, it's knowing how to make sense of a part of the world. In one breath you will say it is impossible that the Earth is flat, and that it was proven to be round, in another you will forget what establishes the truth of those things; well reasoned accounts!
It strikes me that your account is trying to disassemble what it is based on. It further strikes me that you do not reason using it when pressed. When it comes down to it, your viewpoint is as dependent upon story as any others' - it's simply a question of skill.
Which speaks to the universal acid criticism; to whom are you addressing your idea? Who have you decided is deluded for believing fanatically in mere stories based on it? As reasoned in another mere story.
If you want syllogisms rather than polemic, though I doubt a syllogism will be particularly effective.
(1) The discovery of facts requires interpretation (of information, evidence...).
(2) Interpretation requires narrativisation, emphasising some things over others, selection of relevant detail.
(3) The discovery of facts requires narrativisation, emphasising some things over others and selection of relevant detail. (from 1,2, MP)
From what I understand of your notion of arrangement, an arrangement is a mapping from the collection of all facts to a subset. The mapping will be done in a manner that involves judgements of relevance, questions of emphasis, flow of story etc...
Using that notion of arrangement, you separate accounts from truths:
Quoting Judaka
I do not contest the claim that some conflicts cannot be contested by truth alone; some people disagree on right and wrong. What I contest is how you are using the notion of arrangement to separate truths from stories using them, based on the argument above. An arrangement is not a mapping from facts alone to interpretations, it's a productive relationship from facts and interpretations to facts and interpretations; you need to interpret+investigate skillfully to speak truthfully and keep falsehood + irrelevance at bay. The facts alone don't do that, you gotta put their interpretations (and their contexts + stories...) in the mix to do anything with them - to link them up and reason and investigate.
And since the facts alone don't do that, and even basic truths require that structure, the resultant picture assuming your framing of "arrangement" is an unduly skeptical one. It demolishes the connection between facts and accounts generating them at the same time as emphasising that all we ever make are accounts (the irremovable subjective element)... So there's no contact between us and the facts wherever it matters.
I am with you that facts under-determine interpretations; I am not with you that the under-determination of interpretations by facts allows you to conclude that (unspecified commonplace things) cannot be decided by facts - because there are judgements of relevance, emphasis and narrativisation that go into the facts themselves through their discovery mechanisms. If you think about facts in a manner that does not separate them from interpretation (hence all this talk about facts guiding interpretation previously...), then it addresses this global underdetermination = cannot be contested using facts thesis. The facts come with interpretations, that makes some facts weigh heavily on some interpretations (eg: refuting them, rendering them implausible...). Relationships between facts and their evidence should be brought out in an account using them; there is a structural symmetry in the domain of the map (facts) and the image of the map (selected subsets) that the notion of an arrangement as you were using it does not portray. The structural symmetry being evidentiary relationships among facts, what interpretations they engender and so on... showing up as lending support in an account through those relationships.
The purpose of all the polemic was to portray you as someone who purports to be using "just the facts", but is actually taking a lot of liberties with storytelling. It was intended to use the same idea as in the argument above. I took to posting in that style because it is extremely difficult to convince someone who believes in "just the facts" about anything, regardless of whether they are wrong. Because, you know, they allegedly just believe facts. In my experience, those who emphasize at length about facts in discourse are usually doing so to support their own worldview; it's a backhanded criticism against all that they do not believe. It purports to be an injunction to reason, but it actually functions as a means of rendering ideas invulnerable to critique. Reason as insulator. If you one day decide to waste an evening watching Flat Earthers on Youtube, look out for how much they emphasise the scientific method, skepticism, and conservative interpretation of evidence. I am not kidding you, they really say those things a lot. It's very easy to take on the posture of a rationalist without actually being one.
Quoting fdrake
What I have said is that you are either aware of the personalisation of your arrangement or you are deluded, not that using narratives or characterisations makes you deluded. I have said that the truth of the facts used in the arrangement doesn't substantiate the truth of the claim which is really self-evident. I have said that the conclusion arrived at by the arrangement can be correct and validated by the arrangement. That the conclusions of interpretations of the fact could be factually correct or factually incorrect.
Quoting fdrake
The methodology you describe is one you likely subscribe to as well, why then this response?
Quoting fdrake
Could you for a second slow down and ask whether yourself if you have understood me properly? I am not arguing for scepticism regarding any story told using facts. I am not saying arrangements are useless for understanding things, I've argued the opposite. If the arrangement has been made with the purpose of discovering the truth then my OP has almost no relevance anymore. Perhaps only to point out that people are biased which was already obvious to everyone. I never argued that this bias makes the arrangement useless.
Quoting fdrake
I mean... I agree? I don't think I've said otherwise. Did I ever even use this word "story"?
Quoting fdrake
I didn't argue this and there's no disagreement.
Quoting fdrake
Sure.
Quoting fdrake
I didn't say it necessarily means that you can't conclude that (commonplace thing) cannot be determined by facts. I said the arrangement itself has been personalised by your choices and you weren't "correct" to emphasise one bit of information or "incorrect" to leave out a key piece of information" because the arrangement has no truth value. You are only "incorrect" in accordance with agreed-upon rules of justification, logic, fairness, reasonableness or whatever else.
You can have an arrangement with a valid argument and factually correct conclusion which could/should be believed regardless of how there is the presence of emphasis of certain points or whatever.
Quoting fdrake
I mean this might just be the antithesis of my OP which says that nobody is using "just the facts" and everyone takes liberties with storytelling and can't help but do so. It's become very difficult to retrospectively go back and say which of your points are valid criticisms and which aren't or which of my responses no longer make sense because I believed myself to be understood (or misunderstood).
"I talk about what is" but that belief in "what is" is fallible and how I use it or argue with my beliefs is necessarily subjective. My interpretation of what the facts mean is not determined by the facts alone and I create my own narratives using the facts I choose to emphasise and without doing that, I would be stuck and unable to argue for anything.
If we disagree so vehemently, there is usually something of substance to the disagreement. I have a few questions regarding this:
When you say an something is subjective, what do you suggest apart from the fact that it was articulated by someone? Or what does the fact that it was articulated by someone entail about it? To me this sense of subjective seems an uninformative truism, but I sense that it means something more to you.
And can you give examples of what your critique in the OP applies to? When do you believe it is especially relevant to bring up? When someone writes or speaks, what reminds you of it?
Whether something is objective or subjective tells me how I should approach trying to understand it. When it comes to objective truth, it is experienced involuntarily, it is what it is irrespective of how or what I think about it. Therefore, if you say "B" is true then my options are to either accept that it is true or argue that it is false. I'm restricted to a particular type of conversation - finding out the truth of the matter.
Whereas if something is subjective, then the conversation can go in many different directions, so many lines of inquiry become valid.
When something subjective is called an objective truth, the door to all these different directions is shut closed. Where all these different lines of inquiry were possible, we can now once again only debate the truth of the claim.
There are many examples of this happening and OP is just one way in which people do it. OP is saying that the truth value of the facts arranged does not necessarily make your conclusion a truth. If it isn't the truth then you should need to justify it in a different way than "its the truth". You have to justify the framing in a different way and really consider its pros and cons or effectiveness.
I think about OP in talking about cultural or religious norms, morality, political framings, causal arguments, justifying one's behaviour, defending characterisations, justifying interpretations, many things. Just any situation where someone characterises a choice they've made as a truth which you either accept or are ignorant of.
Quoting Judaka
So much comes down to the distinction between subjective and objective! I don't support the distinction. It looks like two words (with a lot of baggage) masking a difference in degree that's hard to precisely define. When a claim's objective, I take it you agree that it is a statement about how the claim is justified/checked/evinced/verified and related to standards for those things. Same for subjective.
"The moon orbits the Earth" is objective (verifiable even!) and true.
"The Earth orbits the moon" is objective (verifiable even!) and false.
Right/wrong is separate from objective/subjective, right? It's also independent of topic:
"fdrake likes spicy food" is objective (verifiable even!) and true.
"fdrake does not like spicy food" is objective (verifiable even!) and false.
It doesn't matter that it's about me, what matters are things like: I've enjoyed a burger with blended reaper chilis on top of it. There is a prescient distinction between subjective and involving or being derived from an agent.
So what is subjective? Maybe a candidate is "Abortion is wrong", for reasons of people disagree about it. It's controversial. But I doubt being controversial suffices for being subjective. Objective statements bear on it too. A fertilised egg planting itself to the womb's wall cannot feel pain; it cannot suffer. Someone who believes "Abortion is wrong" because "murder is wrong" and believes "A fertilised egg planting itself to the womb's wall" is murder because it kills a human is wrong... It doesn't kill a human, it can't be murder, so it can't be wrong on that basis.
At the very least, there are intimate relationships between subjective and objective claims. Subjective and objective as epistemic properties do not seem to be preserved through inference - at what point in the above chain of reasons does "Abortion is wrong" (the purely subjective value statement) transform into "fertilised eggs cannot suffer" (an objective statement regarding the capacity to feel pain and have one's agency effected)? Anyone familiar with how those arguments goes can follow the points. It seems reason can act on what is subjective to produce objective statements through intermediary justifications.
And act on what is objective to produce subjective statements.
(1) Bagpipes exist.
(2) Fuck bagpipes. (1, restatement)
Anything can be wrong insofar as it involves interpretation. If someone believes that abortion is wrong, their reasons do not only concern their moral values, their reasons concern the properties of foetuses and tradeoffs with women's agency. I would like to say that believing abortion is wrong is a relationship to the facts of abortion - any interpretation can have a moral valence as a component. The reasons for believing it need not terminate in the individual, even though they concern a moral value. Having a disposition/attachment is never a good reason for having it.
Quoting Judaka
It doesn't matter that they've made the claim, it matters what the claim is and how it relates to others. To my mind, subjective and objective are actually retrojected types based on intiutions regarding (agent derived)=(subjective) and (agent independent)=(objective). The distinction sits uneasy with the fact that all claims are agent derived (with some motives and history and blah blah); everything becomes subjective. Not because it speaks to its evidentiary status, but because the linking between a claim's subjectivity and the fact that an agent made it is being emphasized too much. The distinction between subjective and objective claims is hot air when you press on it.
People can like things for the wrong reasons.
People can like the wrong things (I just love crushing kitties).
This only proves that you are not a Nihilist, but a thinker bent on facing the negative, whether you know it in those terms or not.
Quoting Judaka
Friend, holding pragmatism up as something to be achieved only manifest that one is lost in philosophical confusion. For example, the categories of pragmatism are themselves idealistic fictions without history, you will not make progress as a thinker or revolutionary through the domain of pragmatic idealism. It is essentially a philosophical position of giving up, which of course, makes it attractive to searching Nihilists.
I don't really disagree that the terms objective and subjective have issues. Thinking of alternative conceptualisations has been on my mind lately but I've yet to settle on anything. Mostly what I am interested in is looking at the effects of a viewpoint on an individual and challenging the individual to ask not what is true but what effect their ideas and beliefs are having on their lives. Analysing characterisations or narratives - looking at the consequences and evaluating what outcomes are good and why and how can we try for those outcomes.
In being interested in that, I look at why that's not happening by default. Why do people hold onto ideas or interpretations or have perspectives that are clearly having a net negative impact on their self-esteem, success or whatever else? The truth quality is something that I see come up a lot and there's something about the truth that makes it the least malleable thing, it's something you have to just accept.
The kinds of evaluations I want to ask people to make are invalid because the truth can't be changed just because it's inconvenient. That is why demonstrating how what was incorrectly called truth is actually often a set of decisions which have been made by you and that makes it less easy to shrug off responsibility for the conclusions. Then we can evaluate the conclusions by their effectiveness at bringing about desirable outcomes as opposed to their truth quality.
The reason I said that OP was a building block for nihilism was that I prefer to evaluate things in this way as opposed to their truth value. Even if God did exist and had created objective moral order and our existence had objective meaning (whatever those things even mean) then I could still choose my own way of evaluating outcomes and choose what gave me the outcomes I desired. Thereby retaining and defending what I have built irrespective of any truth value of alternatives.
My interest in OP is based on such thoughts, as far as the best method for determining what is or isn't true, honestly, I had given much less thought to how this might bear on that. I was really thinking more about challenging the unwarranted truth status given in a variety of contexts which I was unhappy about.
Any self respecting thinker must reject this kind of subjectivity. Whose "effectiveness" the Right or the Left? Quite consistently, I deny the presumptions on which this kind of thinking is based. The idea that one cannot know truth is a game of radical abstraction. I easily deny it. Children deprived of water and food will die. Supposing our Nihilist friend has a child, he will not fail to give it food and water. I deny that the Right is equal to the Left; I deny that pragmatism is a philosophy of intelligence. Some never recover from the error of radical abstraction, it poisons life and thought. The way forward will not be found by letting Nihilism set the rules. A thinker is better than that, nay, thought is a greater power.
Giovanni Gentiles was a Fascist with similar thoughts ;)
Probably, we can agree on the existence of things external to human consciousness. Yet, we need a more comprehensive account of realism. A spherical object such as a bundle of newspapers held together by a string, or a piece of foam rubber, is a thing that exists. But it is a 'football' in the context of a particular rule-governed practice, such as playing football; in other words, its meaning and significance are relative to a specific set of meaningful practices. A thunderstorm could be a physical phenomenon in our culture and the expression of Zeus's anger for ancient Greeks. Things can acquire different meanings and functions in different historical contexts and situations. Likely, our conceptual and discursive forms can ever exhaust their objectivity and meaning. Yet, if we do not apply Lacanian conceptualization of 'the Real,' when we talk about 'things,' we inevitably imply a network of social and discursive practices and embedded meanings. Is that possible to separate facts and their interpretations? John Searle distinguishes between 'brute facts' and 'social facts': "Brute facts require no human institutions for
their existence: Mount Everest has snow and ice near the summit or that hydrogen atoms have one electron, these facts are independent of any human opinions. 'Institutional (social) facts' are so-called because they require human institutions for their existence. In order for this piece of paper to be a five-dollar bill, for example, there has to be the human institution of money. Of course, to state a brute fact, we require the institution of language, but the fact stated needs to be distinguished from the statement of it." (John Searle, ‘The construction of social reality’) Doesn't Searle unreasonably determine his concept of a brute fact? "Mount Everest has snow and ice near the summit" could be considered as an example of a social fact, the product of various institutional practices, inscriptions of meanings and interpretations.
I can see the importance of such distinctions, I agree though I wouldn't have described it nearly as well. There's a lot you've brought up which I ought to think more deeply about.
Is there a need to distinguish between the practical elements of social facts and the elements which make claims that could reasonably be disagreed with? I could be satisfied to call a soccer ball a soccer ball, if people call that the truth is not something I can see myself going out of my way to argue against that. I enjoy being able to refer to a soccer ball as such and be understood. However, I don't wish to accept social facts which make claims that are guiding people towards ways of thinking which lead to misfortune or negative social effects. Social facts seem to be an umbrella to a great many different kinds of claims.
Slow down there Jerseyflight, I believe one can know the truth, however, we need to scrutinise which claims of truth are valid and which are misleading.
I've been sitting back reading this thread with the hopes of better understanding what Judaka was getting at in the OP. You've found a way to tease it out quite a bit. Impressive actually... for me anyway.
So, if I have Judaka right, he's talking about situations where everyone agrees that a group of statements are all true, but he's also saying that the way those statements are used, and what they're used for(the arrangement?), can vary remarkably.
Is that about right?
Does the following count as one of those arrangements we agree on?
Quoting Judaka
So, I take it that you and I agree that systemic racism remains inherent, to some extent or another, within America.
However, when it comes to the notion of white privilege, it seems that we're nearly at complete odds.
So, to me... if I've got it right... that is a prima facie example of what the OP is getting at. Would you agree?
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, this is most of what I was pointing out.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, that is a good example of an arrangement, you can see a lot of what I was talking about in OP here.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, much of my discussions about privilege get stuck at people failing to understand the concepts talked about in my OP.
Quoting Judaka
I can see how that could be problematic. There are some very important 'concepts' being discussed. However, I'm stuck on the fact that you do not seem aware of the actual relationship(s) between systemic racism and white privilege.
The distance between us here comes before the issues of racism and racial inequity and back to my OP. If white privilege is an arrangement of truth, filled with choices to emphasise, include/exclude information, characterise and narrativize then how should it be evaluated? Should we ask if it is true? Should we ask if it is reasonable? Should we ask if it is effective? Whether it makes things better or worse? How do we evaluate these choices?
Firstly, you can't arrive at a near infinite number of different conclusions by arranging facts differently. That matters because it's means that there's some set of conclusions which cannot be reached without denying or ignoring one or more of the relevant facts.
Secondly, once you're within the set of arrangements which can be arrived at legitimately from the relevant facts, why would you further need to judge a 'good' conclusion from a 'bad' one? If the arrangement has been legitimately arrived at (neither denying nor ignoring a relevant fact), then what could a further judgement of 'goodness' within this set possibly be evaluating?
Firstly, let's call near-infinite a hyperbole.
Secondly, why evaluate anything? Because you discriminate between outcomes. How one discriminates is not really crucial to understanding my OP, just that one does.
But you said...
Quoting Judaka
It seemed (not unreasonably) that the question of how one discriminates was exactly crucial to your OP.
It is crucial to my OP but it is not crucial to understanding my OP. You asked why and I answered.
It really depends on the context, what you are trying to achieve and for me, that's true as well. For instance, my refutation of white privilege is due to how it conceptualises economic issues as race issues, it emphasises the importance of race, it turns people away from caring about important issues due to superficial disagreements. So all of that, it's based on a set of complicated desires from me. I am looking to maximise outcomes that I see merit in and if we moved to a new context then I would have to ask myself what outcomes I want and I'd evaluate the effectiveness of the arrangement at delivering those outcomes.
And some of those outcomes are truth evaluable themselves, yes? For example "it turns people away from caring about important issues due to superficial disagreements". It may or may not do so, the fact of the matter is something over which any disagreement would be empirically resolveable.
The principle that facts are selected, arranged and presented in such a way as to serve some purpose outside of the mere promulgation of said facts is, I think, not disputed by anyone.
What seems to be in dispute is whether some arrangements are 'better' than others.
You've given a mixed bag of reasons why you prefer your arrangement of the facts about racism. Some appear themselves to be facts (x causes y). If the selection of a preferred arrangement really does boil down the the truth of just more facts, then we're not really playing any different a game by admitting the effect of this 'arrangement'.
My OP is actually very simple, I consider it to be stating the obvious. So if it seems for you to be simple and stating the obvious then don't think you need to do more. The "effect" of the arrangement I've described as an unavoidable consequence of intelligence, I am not trying to avoid it, I'm resigned to it.
That being said, I distinguish between the "truth" of the arrangement, it's bearing on the truth of the conclusion and the relevant truths important to how I've chosen to evaluate the arrangement. The difference is that if the arrangement is a truth because it includes the truth then we can only really debate its true/false value. Whereas if we are debating my evaluation, you are free to disagree with it without having to deal with the "truth" of whether the superficial disagreements turn people away. If you choose to deal with it then you can, if not then that's fine too.
The truth of the arrangement is a yes/no, my evaluation is just one way of many possible ways to evaluate the arrangement.
If the arrangement is true then we accept it regardless of the consequences, if we acknowledge the choices that were made and evaluate them in a different way then at least there's a chance to negate the negative consequences we'd otherwise have to accept.
Moreover, I think these truths function differently and the "truth" of the arrangement is illegitimate while my usage of truth in evaluation is within the rules of how to reasonably use the truth in argumentation.
That's where you go off the rails...
We agree that systemic racism exists. White privilege is an inevitable consequence of systemic racism(implemented by racist whites against non-whites).
I'm not sure how. If your evaluation of your arrangement relies (even in part) on "it turns people away from caring about important issues due to superficial disagreements", then I don't see how we can deal with the evaluation of arrangements without addressing that.
If your evaluation contained nothing but value judgements "I prefer to look at things this way", then there's really nothing further to say, but the moment they contain empirical claims about the consequences of certain arrangements, then their truth value can be called into question.
It makes no sense to ask these sorts of questions about white privilege. "White privilege" is all of the different benefits and/or privileges that whites have in the United States simply because they are white.
We both know that systemic racism exists.
Ask enough non whites about their own personal experiences regarding systemic racism. Ask them how racism has affected/effected them personally. Listen to all the stories, and then ask yourself if you have ever been treated in those ways simply for being white? If the answer is "no", then you've just learned a bit about your own white privilege.
It's not that hard to comprehend.
That truth is only important because I have decided it is important, this is something you could dispute.
But I couldn't dispute whether it's true?
EDIT: Actually can you clarify what is "it" here?
I have been waiting for the response you said you were working on in the privilege thread, respond there if you wish to continue talking about the white privilege framing. I have already extensively argued against white privilege there and this thread isn't about white privilege.
What's wrong with taking the conversation out of the complete abstract and adding some actual substance? You've already agreed that it's a real life scenario that fits the abstract ideas being put forth in the OP.
Because you have said that the questions I asked were nonsense and complained about why I can't comprehend white privilege. Which pretty much is the antithesis of OP, you are back to arguing a rejection of white privilege as an arrangement of truth and just asserting that it is a truth and one that I'm ignorant of.
Therefore the conversation is back to "is white privilege a truth" and that is really a conversation about white privilege than arrangements in general.
EDIT: Btw, I have already been talking about the issue of arrangements/framing in the privilege thread. I've made my arguments and don't wish to rehash them all here. I am just saying, you haven't even addressed the arguments over there, I have little more to say on the matter.
There is a real life example of you and I agreeing on an arrangement of true statements about American history, particularly those regarding systemic racism, but disagreeing upon how to best further arrange those true statements as a means to resolve the problem of systemic racism.
I'm saying that one arrangement results in looking at the consequences of systemic racism, with a particular focus upon what white people do not have to deal with on a daily basis, but non whites do.
That is exactly the sort of hypothetical scenario you've been talking about, except it's not so abstract anymore. Rather, it's an actual real life everyday example.
Sure, I mean to ask if one's arrangement can be assessed or evaluated on the same basis as the truths it arranges. It seems that arrangements are generally for a purpose (not just a random selection of facts or presentation method), if that's right, then whether they'll achieve that purpose is more or less an empirical fact and therefore truth evaluable in the same way the facts it constituted were.
So taking white privilege as an example, you could say the 'facts' of racism have been presented by the left in such a way as to sow harmful division. But the left haven't presented them in that way deliberately to sow harmful division have they? So if you're right, then this would give you, and they, some mutual ground for evaluating arrangements.
The grounds for my disdain for the white privilege conceptualisation are not on the basis of truth. I am not rejecting the evidence used by those who argue for white privilege. My rejection is on the basis that when I examine "white privilege" as a label, as a concept, as a framing all I see are net negative consequences. When you divorce "white privilege" from the facts it characterises then all you're left with is a shallow, divisive, racist term. Defend white privilege as an arrangement, as a characterisation rather than reiterating the facts that you're arranging or characterising.
Quoting Isaac
I agree, we can certainly try to evaluate the effectiveness of the arrangement using empirical evidence although how successful that will be could vary across different contexts.
Quoting Isaac
I think the same way, I've been trying to have this kind of conversation but to no avail.
How could one distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' social facts? Generally, there is a tendency
of unconsciously accepting a social fact without realizing all hidden presuppositions and effects. When I recognize this piece of paper as a five-dollar bill, there has to be the institution of money, maintaining my belief's naturalness. I may not like the tremendous complexity of the contemporary globalized financial system, but I do not think of it any time when I spend my bill. Usually, social facts disguise themselves as mere facts or brute facts. To understand it, one should endeavour the process of deconstruction, and the disclosure of the arrangement of truth could be one of the possible strategies. Recent discussions about systemic racism and white privilege could provide us with examples of the mobilization and function of particular dispositions of truth. Also, they can exhibit the cyclic process of transforming brute facts into complex social facts and then back into the mere facts.
Quoting Number2018
Well, I haven't understood social facts to function differently in how truth is arranged, I was just searching for a boundary with regards to how social facts can range from benign to having potentially significant implications. The method would depend on the individual I suppose, for better or worse.
Quoting Number2018
I believe I can see where you're coming from, this is certainly an interesting way to conceptualise the previously blurred boundary between different kinds of truths. I do think that by recognising how or whether the truth was arranged, we can detect the presence of "human institutions" and how the choices made by people were necessary for the "truth' to exist or function. Which would apply to language also, I certainly prefer to look at it this way as opposed to the objective/subjective conceptualisation.
Looking into other useful strategies may be of use to me as well.
Quoting Number2018
Yes, I agree. I think you have nailed the correct way of conceptualizing the process, it is quite sneaky and while I am happy to hear about this better way of conceptualizing it, somehow, the resulting explanation makes the process appear far more efficient and difficult to handle than I had already believed.
We'll see... I've replied to you in the privilege thread.
You're working from an utterly inadequate notion of truth.
Fact. Truth. Belief. Meaning. Interpretation.
Five different terms. Five different referents. Your use of them resulted in a word salad.
There are probably various kinds of truth, ultimately different from a conventional understanding of this concept. Suppose we agree that social facts are in the cyclic relations with mere facts, and a particular arrangement of truth is crucial for the maintenance of this cycle. In that case, we could consider how different this arrangement could be from what you outlined in your OP. Likely, when individuals are stating social facts, the arrangement of truth works as a momentarily temporary synthesis. Previous critical stages and moments of the process are condensed and compressed; we observe just the final moment of truth. The synthesis is impersonal. Mainly, it works independently from personal intentions. Trump (and so many other politicians) has been often accused of lying, contradicting his previous statements or positions. Yet, if we change our system of reference, we could find that there are culminations of arranging the truth at particular moments, independent of results of previous arrangements. What matters is not a reference to reality or mere facts, but a synchronic particular constellation, ultimately in-forming the resulting outcome. Different regimes (arrangements) of truth or the changes of variables of the same arrangement could lead to logically inconsistent statements of the same individual.
Quoting Judaka
I agree with you. The task is challenging. It is possible to assume that arrangement of truth does not merely govern our discursive practices but is also related to our behavioural patterns. Probably, we deal with productions of subjectivities, and the arrangement of truth is a part of specific socio-economic and semiotic assemblages that produce and reproduce dominant clusters of repetitive impersonal and personal effects. Subjectivities frame, organize, and manage the field of our agency. To what extent do they determine the limits of our choices?
Quoting Number2018
What I understand is that interpretations, characterisations and the like certainly mesh with facts by being so closely attached to the fact being interpreted or characterised, they become indistinguishable to some. The "angriness" of the man as I said in my OP becomes the angry man but that he is a man is a fact while his angriness is a characterisation of something - his behaviour, tone of voice, whatever else. Seeing as social facts are more of the same but with widespread acceptance, the same rules apply.
And the process I see you as describing is "the system does x, y, z" (brute facts)--> the system is unfair (social facts) --> what should we do about the unfair system? (mere facts). I do think that it might be sufficient to just say that brute facts + (add subjectivity) + widespread acceptance could = social fact and the social fact is not distinguished from a brute fact. After all, I don't think people often do distinguish between social facts and brute facts, that's not a widespread concept from my experience. So I may have misunderstood something because I wouldn't have said a particular arrangement of truth was crucial for this process.
Quoting Number2018
Certainly, I think what we describe as culture is in some circumstances an arrangement of truths. Our values dictate how truths are characterised, which truths are emphasised, included or excluded and likewise, an arrangement of truths is surely going to be at the heart of your worldview and to some extent helps to inform your values.
I talked a while back about a concept I believed in that I called interpretative relevance. Which said essentially that potentially relevant bits of information are weighted by individuals based on how much they're using these pieces of information to formulate their opinions. So if we decided to rate a mutual acquaintance's intelligence, even with the same information, you might rate them lowly due to how you recall them being bad at maths and I might judge them highly because I think they're articulate. Even though I knew that this person was bad at maths, that wasn't something I thought was relevant to their intelligence, so it was excluded from my interpretation.
So when you combine these two concepts (and undoubtedly more which we aren't talking about), you have your arrangement which is implicitly personal and then your usage of your arrangement to come to conclusions based on what you think is interpretatively relevant in the specific context. I think information goes through such a process to become a functioning opinion or perspective that examining this process becomes more important than anything else. As their opinion, while using their arrangement of truths and based on what they consider to be interpretatively relevant is possibly correct. So whatever impact the opinion or perspective has on their thinking, there is no reason for it to be challenged, regardless of what behaviour becomes logical or justified.
I am not sure to what extent this understanding should be used to understand the behaviour of others but I believe it should have an impact.
I'd add Triangulation. This involves subjecting your monologue to critique, both from reality and from other folk.
Edit: I see multiple others, including @fdrake and @creativesoul, have made much the same point. One might follow your arrangement meticulously and yet not speak the truth.
I think you completely misunderstood or misinterpreted what I tried to outline. My intention was to prioritize impersonal, collective social processes. In principal, I do not think that the process of formation of one’s opinion functions like processing ‘bits of information’. Bits of information, mere or brute facts, proceeding bits of information, are just virtual concepts, abstractions, isolated pieces of various conceptualizations, taken out of the determinant social contexts.
Quoting Judaka
They are usually indistinguishable in the case of ordinary language. If so, we already deal with a few syntheses, even in the most straightforward everyday speech cases. Though interpretations, characterizations, etc. are quite common discursive devices, they are inseparable from various unintentional operational arrangements.
Quoting Judaka
You assume that terms (a man) are primary, and relations (angriness as a relation between a man and his behaviour) is secondary. On the contrary, I think that the terms of the relation are completely undetermined until they enter into a particular relation: a man without emotion is a nonsensical being.
Further, if we start from a man as an essential fact, we should suppose a man's identity as a matter of an Ideal Essence, which is then somehow instantiated on the worldly plane.
Quoting Judaka
In general, people do not distinguish between social facts and brute facts, but the identification of a complex social fact as a mere fact, and the processes of recognition are impossible without the inscription of the status of truth. When you state a fact, you (most often implicitly) effectuate some system (arrangement) of truth. Even when one states a simple fact, there is no apparent natural truth. I think that unless we deliberately isolate some mathematical, or logical systems, we never start with a set of essential truths, and then develop or deduct consequent truths. In math, the presupposed truth arrangement cannot be separated from essential statements (axioms) or concepts. Arrangement of truth (the reasonable and correct logical ways of deduction and induction, various analytic strategies, etc.), direct and manage one’s thinking essential mathematical facts. For social actor, her worldview dominates over her system of values and beliefs. The worldview cannot be separated from the results of socially determined processes of normative recognition. One lives life as grounded on a set of essential (true) social facts. Yet, any recognition or identification results from operations of socio-political institutions and apparatuses, incorporating and applying various regimes (arrangements) of truth. Louis Althusser called them ideological state apparatuses: “all obviousnesses, including those that make a word 'name a thing' or 'have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the 'transparency' of language) and that does not cause any problems - is an ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are 'obviousnesses') obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the 'silence of consciousness') : 'That's obvious! That's right! That's true!'” (Louis Althusser ‘Ideology and State Ideological Apparatuses’). Any social fact that we accept and recognize as an accurate and correct is the product of particular arrangements' operations. When you merely start with the facts' truth, you run a risk of the unintentional effectuation of the hidden 'ideological' assemblage.
Quoting Number2018
Yes, I would agree that it doesn't really happen like that, I misunderstood, I could see how in some small contexts my response could be applicable but I don't think in general that things should be thought of that way. I didn't really mean to say that we input information and output opinion or anything like that. Since I misunderstood your intent, I will just leave it at that.
Quoting Number2018
True, a man without emotion is nonsensical but even if we agreed on what anger is, the characterisation in reality functions without accordance with reality. You could say that I seem angry right now and I could reasonably deny it. It is not about primary and secondary. It's about how characterisations can be more or less contentious, it's about who has the authority to make the judgement.
Quoting Number2018
Yes, of course.
Quoting Number2018
I see. I mostly thought of the arrangement of truth as being more explicitly stated, consciously understood. Logically, I see what you're saying, the same explanation you gave of the social fact of money and how acknowledging the item means acknowledging the system. Truths are acknowledged and must also acknowledge a system and that system can be called an arrangement of truth. Is that correct?
Quoting Number2018
So you are saying that because one's worldview depends on social facts and social facts depend on an implied arrangement of truth and this arrangement of truth is determined by various social, economic and political factors, we can see these factors as restricting our capacity for types of worldviews? Influencing how we see things? Is that correct?
Quoting Number2018
I hope I have the above correct and that I now understand you properly. If so, then you've taken the concept in a very interesting direction. I need time to think about it and to see a response validating my interpretation.
Something rough and ready in that regard:
Subjective/objective in their usual use are better parsed as matters of taste (subjective) and not matters of taste (objective). I think of a matter of taste as a condition whereby having the opinion/taste is sufficient and necessary for its truth. EG: I like coffee. Roughly whenever thinking something makes it so.
Issues which are not matters of taste break down into either failing the sufficiency or the necessity clause or both. If the connection between having a belief and its truth fails to be sufficient; then the fact that you have an opinion need not say anything other than that you have it (matters of fact). If they fail to be necessary, perhaps you are committed to things that you do not know (matters of ideology/behaviour).
Things of note fail both; we can be wrong in ways we don't understand, we can be wrong about something and not know we think it (but nevertheless we are committed to it). If having a belief but being unaware of it is something incomprehensible, spending some time in therapy will both convince you otherwise and probably make you feel better.
Quoting Judaka
I think the motivating context for the subjective/objective framing is usually matter of taste vs not matter of taste. Like seeing politics as a choice between really important ice cream flavours (and nevertheless choosing vanilla with chocolate chip for unexamined psychosexual reasons latent in the colonial unconscious :P)
My interest in the subjective/objective framing is to distinguish between what @Number2018 has called "brute facts" and pretty much everything else. The importance of which is how it is relevant to my approach to understanding it. So if you drink coffee every morning then the claim that you do can be verified by the evidence alone. If the claim is that you like coffee then crucial elements of this statement are not verified by the evidence alone, it's not a brute fact. So I have come to like this framing, clearly signifying the dependence of the fact on institutions of thought.
Then with "social facts" for instance, we can see that although evidence alone is not sufficient for verification, to call it a matter of taste is simply unreasonable. Because someone born into an environment where this social fact exists is going to have a really tough time doing anything except accepting it although exceptions may apply. I suppose that other categories help to signify the nature of the claim and how it is NOT merely a matter of taste. It is just a very helpful framing which really embodies what I see as the correct way to see things.
What do you think about this?
Quoting Judaka
Yes, now you understand me much better. Probably, I could not articulate my points clear enough, so thank you for your patience! :smile: You are right; in your OP, you involve a more explicit and logically coherent conception of truth than what I suggested. All in all, your outline is precise, logical, and intelligible. I tried to broaden it
to better deal with the latest debates and situations. Still, we are so concerned about truth… But what if at the heart of our discussions is not the truth, but the image of truth? “Narration ceases to be truthful, that is, to claim to be true and becomes fundamentally falsifying. This is not at all a case of ‘each has its own truth,’ a variability of content. It is a power of the false which replaces and supersedes the form of the true, because it poses the simultaneity of incompossible presents, or the coexistence of not-necessary true pasts…The truthful man dies, every model of truth collapses, in favor of the new narration.” (Gilles Deleuze, ‘Cinema 2 The Time-Image’). In many domains of social life (politics, the media, marketing), the construction of social reality has been so accelerated and shirt-circuited that the distinction between brute facts and social facts has been vanishing. As a result, the whole system of reference has been deformed, and we encounter
“the simultaneity of incompossible presents, or the coexistence of not-necessary true pasts’.
I don't think brute facts exist. I think the idea of a brute fact is one which does not depend in any way on the capacities of an agent in perceiving/representing/interpreting/explaining/articulating it. I don't believe it's possible for an agent to relate to any type of fact without compromising its brute-ness; as a brute fact is necessarily an unperceived, unrepresented, uninterpreted, unexplained and unarticulated one.
Insofar as the means of apprehension of a fact are theory-ladened, the resultant fact from that means of apprehension are not brute.
I think you have a three stage process in mind.
(A) There are brute facts.
(B) Brute facts are arranged discursively (with narrativisation, emphasis...).
(C) The discursive arrangement is evaluated normatively (morally, cost/benefit etc.).
The status of some facts as brute is what the process rests on.
Quoting Judaka
If this is social fact in the Durkheimian sense, I don't think it relates to bruteness at all. Bruteness is an epistemic/semantic issue regarding facts, social facts are facts about social structures (societies, cultures, institutions...). The only way I see of relating one to another is through this (largely unarticulated) intuition of agent dependence; if social facts are dependent upon the (possibly interpretive) practices of agents for their occurrence and apprehension, they are not independent of agents and therefore cannot be brute. But be careful with that - as it would be possible to erroneously infer that aspects of social structure are matters of taste ( if not brute = agent dependent = dependent upon an agent's interpretation = like "I like coffee")! Or indeed that whether arbitrary social events happen depends upon how they are interpreted.
This is really important (here, but also for any understanding of frameworks which deny brute facts). Mere taste is a model of my own mental state. "I like ice-cream" is an explaination for the endocrinological response I get from eating ice-cream. "The police are all corrupt" may well be infused with preference, ideology and interpretation, but none of that makes it no longer a model of 'the police', some institution in reality, not my own mind.
I just wanted to emphasise it because it often gets lost and denials of brute fact get lumped in with mere taste as if those were the only two options.
When I wrote about Searle’s distinction between brute facts and social facts, I have already noted that any brute facts have resulted from social construction. It is possible show that brute facts do not exist. Yet, epistemically, didactically, and phenomenologically this concept is entirely justified. Likely, social actors live lives as if it is firmly grounded on brute facts, without noting their socially constructed organization. A set of stable conventional facts (brute facts) is necessary for maintaining individuals’ social routine, social order, and the development of various models and theories of truth. When a relative balance between apparently stable facts and socially constructed is disturbed, we experience that 'the time is out of joint'. Models of truth collapse, individuals lose any common ground to debate the contemporary issues (for example, in the US right now). That is why Deleuze writes that the narration becomes fundamentally falsifying.
Honestly, I see that there are many possible ways to distinguish between different kinds of truths. All I am interested in is how the truth gains a distinct privilege in how it is not to be challenged on any basis but validity. That the truth is what it is irrespective of what you think about it. It is possible that this problem is due to how I've approached the truth and so, you have a hard time seeing it.
(A) could be brute facts, it could be objective truth or whatever. It doesn't matter. So (A) is just "things one takes as true". It's very hard for me to think of a way of defining truth that invalidates any of the points made in my OP.
Then (B) happens as a natural consequence of intelligence, you discriminate against true pieces of information for a variety of reasons. All the things I said in my OP.
Then (C) is just, recognising that the arrangement (not the conclusion) has no truth value because we don't give truth value to choices and how you've arranged your truths was a choice.
So we need to scrutinise over whether we couldn't or shouldn't introduce new truths, new interpretations, emphasise different points to get to a different outcome and then determine when we should aim to do this and when we shouldn't. I think how truths are arranged might challenge our understanding of what is true and what it means is a separate conversation from whether we do arrange truths and whether the way we do that is a choice.
Quoting fdrake
I agree that the brute fact is separate from how it is used in language and thought. Is that what you're saying? I do at times use the terms fact and truth interchangeably but when it comes to analysing the terms, I don't think they're the same thing. A fact is determined by a ruleset, it's an assertion based off rules for determining what is or is not in accordance with reality, whereas the truth is just that which is in accordance with reality.
So, for me, a brute "fact", yes, it's kind of contradicting. Besides what's practical, epistemology sucks.
Yet I need to distinguish between that which is asserted to be in accordance with reality (and could be correct) and that which is asserted to be in accordance with reality (and couldn't be correct). As the assertion is dependent on institutions of thought which can only exist as assertions. This represents to me, the flexibility for me to evaluate outcomes.
Quoting Number2018
You are suggesting the brute fact is a useful category because it signifies a particular role in an individual's understanding of their environment? Without which we enter into some kind of epistemological nihilism? I am still not totally confident on the term, I plan to read Searle's construction of reality since I'm interested but haven't yet.
Quoting Judaka
Probably, what you describe is a kind of an idealized, abstract model of truth. In our contemporary socio-political reality, this model does not work. For example, let's consider the two latest debates about systemic racism and white privilege. Both strive to define US society as a whole, and the discussions' outcomes can become vital for our future. Are the debates managed according to your model? Do participants start from some basic facts (objective, mere, bare facts, etc.)
and further arrange and evaluate them in particular ways, so that final truth is obtained? No, it does not look like this. And, it is not about selecting a set of suitable facts to get a preferred outcome. Most often, people start the debates having the ready final answer. They are not looking for the unknown truth; they are trying to defend what they already have in mind and shape it as the objectively obtained truth. It is the typical setting for all our public socio-political debates. Therefore, when one tries to organize the arguments in the best possible way, it almost does not matter anymore. The truth is still important, but it plays a secondary, subordinate role in many domains today. Arrangement of truth is not the constitution of the final, binding truth. It is the way of transforming the semblance of truth into what we finally could accept as the conventional factual truth.
Quoting Number2018
Yeah, I spoke that quote within the context of evaluating the arrangement and what doing that means for the truth. Humans are complex and as I said earlier, we do not input information and output opinion, a lot goes into it. Personality, experience, psychology, motives and the list goes on forever. I consider OP a niche angle and it doesn't describe all approaches to a topic as complex as a debate about white privilege and etc.
I think OP pertains to white privilege only for people who think white privilege accurately describes reality when really it does more than that.
What kind of idea is incapable of being accurate or inaccurate? Can you give some examples?
Edit: I guess what I'd really like is:
(1) A bunch of ("brute") facts
(2) An "arrangement" of them.
And labels for which bits of the account can be accurate and which can't be.
Or doesn't it break down like that? Can there be "arrangementless" facts?
A worked example would be really good.
As I said in my OP, that we characterise, prioritise, emphasise and interpret facts is inevitable.
It might be easier if we work backwards, let's first distinguish between types of conclusions. If I say that a rock weighs 1kg then the rock either weighs 1kg or it does not, there's a truth value to my assertion whereas if I say the rock is beautiful then there is no truth value, it is according to beauty standards. So if you ask me to prove the rock weighs 1kg.
(1) I bought 2 different, working scales (true)
(2) Each of them weighed the rock at 1 kg (true)
(3) Therefore the rock weighs 1kg (true)
The "arrangement" here is a logical one, I only did what any reasonable person would expect me to do to prove my assertion. Earlier I accused you of conflating truth with logic, reasonableness, rules of justification etc. An arrangement can be all of those things, also the conclusion (the rock weighs 1kg) is in accordance with reality, is true. The arrangement is good because it is logical, effective and led me towards the truth.
(1) The rock is shiny (fact)
(2) The rock is multicoloured (fact)
(3) This really appeals to me (characterisation)
(3) Therefore the rock is beautiful (no truth value)
The conclusion has no truth value but my reasons for believing that the rock is beautiful are true, there's clearly a lot missing from this picture though. Standards of beauty, for example, however, once again, forgetting that, if we say that the rules for the characterisation are fair then the arrangement is coherent, logical, reasonable and the conclusion is valid.
In the first example, clearly we have discriminated against true pieces of information, we only included the relevant information but we did that because we are following an effective method for discovering the truth (the conclusion). Hence, I would not argue that the rock doesn't weigh 1kg just because you made a choice about what information is relevant. The arrangement itself should be looked at as follows:
(1) true but is not responsible for the truth of the conclusion
(2) ""
(3) is true because it is in accordance with reality
Without the rules of justification, without seeing the arrangement as an effective way for demonstrating the validity of the conclusion and proving it is true, the arrangement doesn't make sense. To challenge the arrangement, I wouldn't challenge that it isn't "true" I would challenge that it wasn't effective.
(1) The rock weighs 1kg (irrelevant)
(2) The rock is multicoloured (important)
(3) The rock is shiny (important)
(4) This really appeals to me (important)
(5) The rock is beautiful (no truth value)
I could challenge this arrangement by saying it doesn't matter that the rock weighs 1kg. If the first example happened as a result of you asking me to prove the rock is beautiful, you could counter the arrangement by saying it is not relevant to the beauty of the rock.
or
Person A : What do you think about this rock?
Person B: It is very beautiful
Person A: I was talking about using the rock for my slingshot, whether it's beautiful or not is totally irrelevant
Your choice to talk about specific truths due to a perceived relevance, implication, importance to your point or argument can't have a truth value, your choosing of things to talk about is done at your discretion. What implications that has is a separate debate.
Our beliefs and even our values should be tentative. Leaving space for the unknown is necessary. New information just might replace, augment, or transform what we know. It is ok to be wrong and to change our opinion upon new information. This is a sign of maturity and the lack of an inflated ego. Someone that will not admit they are wrong is infatuated with being right, not the truth. Truth should be our goal. If truth is our goal, we feel gratitude for being corrected. We should practice intellectual groundlessness for the most part. A narrow view and the assertion of understanding without an ever-present driving force that is the search for truth is stagnation. The question itself; is the fiber of truth. When we stop asking and assessing, it’s because we feel that we have found an answer, maybe the answer. The practice of the search, that is what the essence of what truth actually is. This is never-ending. When we stop that search, we wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked us in the face. The question is the fiber of truth, because even if the question is tangential, it is always leading, and leading in the generally same direction toward truth itself if our analytics and ear for the ring of truth are adequate; because the very question was generated by our desire to accurately understand in the first place. I’m not saying it’s not alright to assert what we believe. As long as we have this understanding and drive, rendering our strongly held beliefs, values, and information tentative, even as they are presently held in that firm grasp by certain agreement. Because we all must start where we are, ever-present. Admitting how firmly our beliefs are held helps us to see exactly where we are, and continue to assess honestly with less bias. Because we then feel the force of that clinginess, and we can then analyze the merit of the clutching. Of course, if you can practice non-attachment with most all beliefs, values, and information, this groundless approach which is conducive to truth-seeking is more readily practiced. Not that an edifice -a foundation of seemingly certain knowledge cannot help but take form in the pursuit. The point is to not give up the quest and always start anew from where you are, looking back for flaws in those chains of belief. When new information, values, or beliefs are assimilated as veritable or demonstrably evident, that means we have to look back and contrast the new knowledge with what we already valued and agreed upon. Roots or core knowledge must be held dearly for this reason. We need to remember the cause of our adherence. Because our foundation might easily become an ugly mess if our understandings aren’t congruent, as some things actually do occlude the relevance of others. What’s more, if our values contradict themselves, arresting discord arises until reconciliation. Unless of course those values are not operative, yet if we authentically adhere to the veracity of value it can’t help but be operative in your conduct and perspective.
The next part is the desultory and extricated excerpts of some of my writing. I am sorry if I'm so selfishly myopic and I seek to hijack the conversation, feel free to ignore me, I'll take no offense. I call the thing Didactic Wanderings, and I hope you're tangentially wandering enough to enjoy it.
Whimsical Belief: The problem as I see it, Lost Hunt, are belief systems themselves. A belief may destroy an individual, a family, a culture, or even a nation… from riot to self-immolation, the perspective belief engenders wholly transforms our perception and is operative in our conduct. In my belief, it is responsible for the emergent motive.
Biological Shame: Belief might explain emergent motive while not speaking of the desires and needs of the body which drive us.
Radical Mystery Acceptance: It’s funny Whimsical Belief should point that out. I’ve been wondering what the position of “no belief” might be. How it would transform ourselves.
Pragmatic Reason: So, just strictly observable and demonstrable then? Nothing extra held?
Radical Mystery Acceptance: It would extract much of this chaos that Lost is worried about. If it’s not known as positive, it’s suspect, and then likely not so operative in behavior.
Gestalt Glean: This would do away with the concept itself would it not? Doing away with belief. Language itself. Nearly all conveyance is contrivances.
Whimsical Belief: It’s not just language itself; It’s persuasiveness, the ring of truth. The ring of truth enthralling our sensibility. If we were to do away with belief, we wouldn’t be able to tentatively position ourselves in alien positions to analyze for merit correctly. I’m not saying we could no longer consider things, but that our incredulous position would create rigid stigmatism therein. If we’re not willing to believe anything that isn’t known for certain, we wouldn’t be available to assimilate the tentative and follow tangents to discovery adequately. The truth is only as we define it, and if we aren’t mutable in our consideration and in the least slightly impressionable, our development is stunted in progression to grave stagnation.
Creative Truth: Truth is true whether we define it or not. Whether we believe it or not as well. It may only be as we define in that’s all we know of it, but what is unknown still has an effect. Real and present cause, the observation of which just might lead to more definition.
Aesthetic Nurturance: Ah but doing away with belief would strike delusion along with it. There would be much less senselessness in actors. Striking belief would give a base of truth itself, what is, more apparent and unsullied.
Fantastical Reconciliation: So, since we in the least seem to agree to the position of no belief would be interesting, how might it be accomplished.
Tenuous Comprehension: We are inundated with propositions for belief constantly. Incessantly being proffered with opinion and worldview. We are steeped in a market of persuasive language. Would no belief be a stubborn oppositional defiance disorder? Or mere denial?
Radical Mystery Acceptance: I believe it would take the form of a lack of investment. Belief -well, some belief, has a clingy nature. So, non-attachment with its sticky action. If we simply aren’t concerned with what isn’t known as positive, it wouldn’t enthrall us into a state of persuasion. If we remain pragmatic with an eye only for concrete understanding alone, we would sidestep exposure for acceptance in the first place.
Peaceful Oblivion: This might be done with a meditative state. The practice of taming your mind.
...
Heuristic Certainty: Let’s not forget the weight values have on motive as well. Every motive has a goal and it is the value itself that spurs the pursuit. The attribution of worth is selected due to taste or utility. I’ve found that while I know not what to do with the role formative experience has in the development of selection, the flow of selected value may eventually have sway with the inexorable ebb of a new belief.
Indelible Memory: Nothing may be done with how we’ve found ourselves downstream in the past However, we may always start where we are with further reflection which might take radical unlike form than our previous consideration thereby shaping our present and future formative experiences in transforming light.
Only Counterpoint: I don’t see how this would make the Truth more evident. Yes, it would cut out some noise. Render our sensory relaxed without added monologue. Yet, when speaking of truth, you need a subject. Unless it is a personal memory of an event and even then, sometimes, a subject almost necessarily brings with it belief on the matter. Without a subject, truth is a latent amorphous amalgam that’s been homogenized into “what is”. So, if you desire non-duality “what is” by all means, consider nothing.
Creative Truth: It is my belief that Truth, no matter the subject is absolute. However, we’re dealing with subjectivity, and relative to that the Truth is somewhat mutable due to subject, as the deeper you delve into subjectivity Truth may become facile considering objectivity.
Peaceful Oblivion: I myself have achieved objectivity to the extent one may. Although the Only Counterpoint is critical of thinking nothing, I cannot express how fresh it makes your experience. It is a calming reprieve. This non-attachment Radical Mystery Acceptance speaks of, I’ve found, that in the moment, I am absent of any belief to consider. Only gentle acknowledgment of existence. Mindfulness is solace, yet a meditative state might fatigue after a time. While it might be said that critical thinking is a muscle to flex and build, excessive meditation might be a detriment to it. I’ve found both go hand in hand if used appropriately, however. I suggest a practice of coordinating meditation and extemporized critical thinking when problem-solving is necessary. As meditation creates space in the mind to better objectify.
Only Counterpoint: As if subjectivity were responsible for chaos on the world stage.
Delinquent Hardship: Subjectivity or the perception of a consuming organism vying for resource and prestige might very well be a listed reason for chaos. While it wouldn’t be at the top of my list, that nature of the beast that is chaos hardly lets you rule out a culprit.
Amplitudinous Examination: What might be at the top of the list Delinquent Hardship? We could identify belief in need of being struck down.
Absence Chasm: Why don’t you make your own list Amplitude?
Amplitudinous Examination: What I’d rather, is to know how Gestalt Glean believes language is struck while belief is struck.
Gestalt Glean: Meaning is contrived. A contrivance of agreement of shared concept. Language, beyond nouns, is merely a belief in the form of abstraction. If we didn’t believe in the form of concept and convinced it was shraed through recognition-response, we’d only have those nouns. The progression of recognition in conversation assures us of that sharing of form, however, language is a belief in intangible fabrication, and it is completely made up.
Amplitudinous Examination: If the concept is belief then all we know for certain is “what is” in the first place. The sensory experience. Yet, while we are feedback loops in response to our environment you might say we’re building upon our stimuli. Attributing meaning to our sensory intake. As you have said, Gestalt, language is agreed upon in recognition, I wouldn’t define it as a belief but more of a tool.
Gestalt Glean: I must admit I’m playing a bit of a troll. Yet, what do you build in an environment verbally besides a story? A narrative of which consists of meaning completely made up. Yes, not necessarily false, a story might be true or false. Yet, even down to who does the telling might merit its veracity or ostensible nature as it all comes down to perception. A concept, due to your own personal experience may- nay, likely is of an unlike conception to the next image. Our recognition is our own understanding and its more than a tool, it’s a belief that exact understanding is shared.
Spesiphically: Let me be specific. I can grant you even that much Gestalt Glean, and still, what is not lost, is the nature of the concept itself. Conveyance has an essence of form that is not only recognized, it may not be mistaken, notwithstanding how the concept shapes relative to perspective.