Of course you can argue in favor of absolute morality. I did not mean to suggest that you cannot. However you seem ( to me ) to have argued that you can argue that an action is wrong in an absolute sense even while there is no justifiable argument available for a particular actor in a particular culture/period. In other words, you seemed ( to me) to accept that different cultures can have completely coherent views about right and wrong that differ from the true absolute morality. That is a position that I find impossible. I.e. absolute morality must always be potentially available to any rational/moral being.
Otherwise, one may indeed suspect that there exist concepts of absolute right and wrong that we, in our current state, cannot in principle comprehend. If that is so, then, and only then, we are faced with absolute morality as a metaphysical concept that does not help us in making moral choice. And a morality that cannot help us make moral choices is an oxymoron. I think your reference to our finite being suggests the scope of our disagreement. Our finitude may explain why at a particular moment we lack moral clarity. But I think the concept of morality forbids that a whole culture should fail in the same way.
Realizing the vast difference of actual moral arguments across time and culture I am led to believe that absolute moral principles are either non existent or extremely thin and abstract. I am uncomfortable with complete moral relativism, but the problem stated above makes me insist that any non-relativist theory of ethics must be such that what it entails should be available to any human intellect at any moment in principle. That is a high standard which most theories that pertain to absoluteness fail.
Hopes this clarify what I meant. And that it makes sense;-)
Why would anyone want to skip the commercials? The commercials are the only part of TV programming that looks like somebody actually was trying to think creatively while producing. The commercial breaks are nuggets of gold in a sea of horseshit.
Yesturday I was mentally somewhere else when they started showing a commercial for the Monty Pyton DVD set. Boy, I never, never, laughed so hard watching TV since I moved to the USA.
Why not have the Tivo remove the programming and allow us to see the commercials uninterrupted?
...if there is no absolute moral code, then our accepted moral code is purely a matter of personal preference!
Let me beat the dead horse once more. Your argument is:
if ( ! exists( absolute_moral_code ) )
morality == prefernce
I_want_to_argue( morality != prefernce)
Hence: exists( absolute_moral_code)
How about this: If there are no $1M in my account I cannot buy a condo in Florida. It is absolutely terrifying to think that I cannot buy a condo in Florida. Therefore, there are $1M in my account.
How can your preference determine reality? Just because the non-existence of an absolute moral code frustrates your desire to be able to make a certain kind of argument cannot possibly be a proof of its existence. Your problem is the fear of equality between preference and morality, and your solution is to assume that your own preference about what kind of moral arguments are available is real. It seems to me (Ocham's razor) that to assume existence of something requires a higher burden of proof than to assume non-existence. So you still have a mile to go.
There never was a right to own slaves in the USA. Anyone who claimed there was such a right was morally incorrect. Full stop.
This sentence is either false as a matter of fact or true by virtue of using words outside their dictionary meaning. There was such a right and this is a historical fact easily born by ample evidence. Some people, even then, thought that this right was wrong. But the right existed.
Challenging accepted standards may lead us to better moral understanding and moral practice, but it never changes the underlying rightness or wrongness of actions.
That underlying rightness has no presence in the mind of mortals. It functions in your theory as metaphysical scaffold, but it doesn't do any good because you cannot appeal to it. It just makes us feel good about ourselves. Our eternal rights are just rights that we cannot imagine living in a world without them. It is somewhat hubristic to believe that the moral foundation of the universe is defined by the limits of our imagination.
Your suspicion is wishful thinking and based on wrong numbers. I filled taxes last month and payed about 23% of my income in taxes. I am in the top 10% income bracket, and the government is happily using your taxes to subsidize my mortgage. Now, go eat cakes, while I wait for the tax cut that will make me slightly richer at everyone's expenses.
German government is much heavier that the US government. Taxes are much higher in Germany, and German workers are also more productive that American workers. So your theory is already bunk.
As best I can remember Guttenberg's press went belly up and he died broke. His books where too upscale and expensive to produce, but unfortunatly, the renaissance upscale crowd still prefered lavished manuscripts. Guttenberg's succesful emulators chose the opposite business model. They focused on producing cheap bibles, which they pre-sold un bulk to monasteries and other religious institutions ( the renaissance's corporate Behemoths). And that is how the print revolution took off.
right to speak freely -- 18th century enligntetment
right to a day of rest -- Old Testament
right to marry your same sex partner -- 20 century, Denmark, Netherland
right not no be tortured by police -- U.N. declaration
right to have an abortion in the USA -- Row vs. Wade
right to own slaves in the USA -- 1776-1866
right to receive education - the constitution of South Africa and Cuba.
You can always challenge a moral code from within because broadly accepted moral codes are almost always self-contradictory. Therefore you don't need an absolute moral code as an archimedean point. Almost all succesfull challenges start with an accepted premise and lead to a condemnantion of an accepted pactice. Other challenges work through changing the definition of a term, usually as a result of socio-economic change ( are blacks human, and therefore within the scope of human rights? Should basic human rights apply to pets, video-games? )
Do we really want someone to fix all of our problems for us, or should we take a stand and work hard to improve our own life? The school violence, the gun control debate, the drugs everywhere, and all the other ills of society could greatly be reduced when we realize that most of those ills come about because everyone wants to be lazy and 'let others take care of it' instead of us taking our individual lives into our own hands and working hard to improve whatever situation we have been given.
Dear Caveman,
If you ever go out of your cave, ( with proper eyewear protection) you might notice that Americans are working harder and longer today than at any other moment in history. Americans work harder and longer than any other industrial nation. They are still less productive than many European workers because of the abysmal American "education" system, but they work harder and longer. In fact, a research pointing out that Americans suffer from extremely high levels ( for a population) of sleep deprivation has just been released. Say "An american refrigerator" in Europe and they understand you want a really big refrigerator. Say "American vacation" and they laugh.
Americans don't need to work harder. They need a break. They need a good night sleep, an extra hour for a familly dinner. They need to stress a little less about whether they can afford to pay emergency medical bills. An extra two hours a day and a longer vacation will do wonders to such problems as school shooting, drugs, gun, etc.
All these things have been achieved by other nations, which proves that they are not unacheivable.
Exhorting Americans to work harder is a trully cheap shot at the expense of this overworked nation. It would be better to figure out who takes home the fruits of all this excessive labor.
I would love to see PBS go belly up. This isn't because I don't like non-commercial TV. Nothing beats the broadcasting of channel four and even the BBC. Americans have no idea that non-junk TV is even possible. Having said that, PBS is a joke. It is essentialy a corporate poodle pretending to offer a public service. It rarely takes broadcasting risks. It is afraid to offend Congress, it is afraid to offend corporate donors. Almost every time I surf to PBS I see some nature program. I love jaguars and pandas, but just don't call it a public service.
For me, the quality of public television is measured by its ability to do something that market driven tv cannot dare to do -- outrage. A good public tv station, like a good judiciary, depends on some level of insulation from both the financial and the political world. Its success as a public slervice lies in its ability to leverage this insulation in order to push the envelope of free speech.
All these schemes may work if you don't get caught or don't go to trial.
Judges and prosecutors are resourceful. If it looks like you did something with criminal intent they will find a way to nail you.
In addition consider that, if you are charged, any lwayer will tell you to cut a deal with the prosecution, because, a) you don't have the money. b) you don't have the guts to risk jail. c) something like 97% of tried criminal cases end in a guilty conviction. ( in other words, the chances of hearing a US jury say not guilty is about half of the chance an accused had of winning a case before the spanish inquisition).
I did read your post, several times, and at no point did you say "peer reviewed journals". You did say "history". Should I make a note that these are now synonyms?
Nor did I ever say that history was a scientific authority. I said "such statements are the product of human history."
OK that's your definition of facts. Mine is facts ARE a subclass observable
phenomena, for common use they are the observed subclass, The unobserved are
still facts by definition, the observable portion has not been completed. Propositions and statements are just that, propositions and statements, they might describe a fact or refer to a fact, but are not "facts".
Good, as long as you remember that when social constructivists talk amout facts, they mean some variation of what I call facts. You can argue with that definition, after you parsed the reason they prefer it. You can argue with the conclusion. You can argue with the evidence ( after you parse it). But calling it crap because it makes no sense when parsed with the wrong dictionary is not the kind of intellectual endeavor that a rational person should encourage.
In the defintion I am using a fact may not make a claim of truth, they must be true. A "claim" of truth is not truth, and allows for the possibility that the fact is false and
therefore not a fact.
And this is one reason why this definition is not helpful for the analysis of science. Facts[you], unlike facts[mine], do not let themselves to meta-analysis, because they are not accessible.
If they were accesible, science would be true in an absolute godlike manner. I am only interested in the truth claims scientist makes, and that is why, when these claims are accepted, I call them facts.
Again with the dependency on some form of Human acceptance, relying on some
form of perception. Since your definition allows for the posibility of falsehood in your
"facts" it now becomes needed. Mine still doesn't.
My definition indeed allows two kinds of falshood. The first is existential. We may have the highest confidence in the fact "smoking contributes to lung cancer", yet we may be wrong. Since our "wrongness" is not available to anyone who isn't God. And since our wrong belief is yet fully rational, this kind of falshood is possible but minimally interesting. It simply expresses the limits of human knowledge. The other kind of falsehood appears when a fact is demoted as a result of new evidence, re-interpretation, etc.. We used to have a fact, "Salt contributes to high blood pressure". That fact has been recently demoted. It is now only a theory. The process of demotion and promotion, i.e. changes in the degree of confidence accorded to scientific statements, is one of the main fields of empirical studies for social constructivists.
The other problem you mentioned if I understand is that I define facts in a way that depends on human acceptance. Indeed, that is the point. It is an empirical observation that truth claims are generated and become accepted in a complex social and institutional process. The point in defining facts in that way is to make sense of this empirical observation and to accomodate it within a coherent understanding of the way science functions.
"In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about
phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant
authorities."
You are now agreeing with me on theories? What happened to the asertion that
nothing can operate under this condition, where it only introduces uncertainty? This is
what I've said, a theory isn't a fact because it can be false or wrong. The empirical
evidence, the facts, do not make it a fact.
I did not challenge the existence of uncertain theories in science. However, in my definition of facts, when scientists stop arguing about a theory, when it stops being explained in scientific journals and starts appearing in high school textbooks, it becomes a fact. people accept it as a matter of fact, live their lives as if it were a fact, and that is reason enough for calling it a fact. I maintain that the only uncertainty that exists at that stage is what I called above "existential". Calling it a theory suggests that this existetial level of uncertainly is somehow worth our attention when in fact it doesn't. You will notice that the only people who fight tooth and nail to have evolution described as a theory are people who do not accept it. As I said earlier I believe the distinction between empirical evidence and supposedly non-empirical theories is soft. Yesturday's theories are built into new technology that provides evidence ("facts") for tommorow's theories. But the facts are only as factual as the theory behind the technology. I don't accept that purely factual scientific evidence exists.
Ok, so replace "fact" with statement and we'll all be happy. I can discuss the
"statement" but not the "fact". A fact implies a certainty which is more then a "claim"
can justify. The certainty that is implied with "fact", I call confidence. The "truth" of the "claim", I'll call honesty.
While we at least we traveled the contour of some of our beef, we don't agree, and I am not going to use your definition of facts in expressing my thoughts, because this definition is not useful for the kind of analysis I am interesting in. I will use your definitions to interpret what you mean, and if more people did the same there would have been less headers coontaining the word 'crap' on slashdot. ( Utopia, (sigh) )
The results of experimentaion are facts, the intepretations of them are not. When
someone comes up with the theory of everything and proves it, then I'll conceed.
Depend on what you mean by "the results of experimentation". If you mean,
"the needle appears above the digit 2" that is a fact in your definition, but it isn't a very interesting one. If you mean "The current was 2mA" I disagree. That statement depends on a whole electromagnetic theory, a theory about how ampermeters work, and a whole set of assumption about how much of optical inacurracy in looking at a dial can be ignored ( assumptions that are based on some theoretical understandings of both optical geometry and electromagnetic theory). Because of all these assumptions "The current was 2mA", is not a fact by your definition, it is a theory. It (the statement) is a fact by my definition, because all these assumptions are blessed as facts according to my definition.
Of course. And they are supported by confidence in each of them, not in the certainty
that they are facts. My lack of certainty doesn't stop my having confidence in the same
thing. That confidence allows me to draw conclusions and postulate new theories
based on my confidence in the others.
The problem with your approach is that you see a difference between, "the highest degree of confidence possible" and "certainty". This distinction has no practical meaning, and I am a positivist on this. If there is no practical difference, then I see no difference, and reserving the word "certainty" to a level of confidence that is impossible is a waste of a fine and otherwise useful word. Whenever practical (as opposed to existential) doubt is considered irrational, I prefer to say we are certain.
I do not subscribe to the fallacy that any of them are fact. The fallacy is a form of intelectual shorthand, which while usefull for the most part and effective in walking down the street, can a) lead to errors and b) be dishonest.
I can't see how a choice of words can be fallacious. A choice of words can be misleading, but only an argument can be fallacious. In addition, it is common theoretical practice that words are defined in some particularity that might be misleading if one fails to notice that the word is used in a technical context ( not to mention that this context is reasoned on the basis of non-technical practice). I don't think people who talk about "the social construction of facts" have to apologize because other people don't take the trouble to identify the vocabulary. I also don't see how we can avoid intellectual shorthand. Using shorthand is practically essential in intellectual discussions. Of course it can lead to errors and dishonesty, that is reason to be careful, not to avoid it. If I were to substitute my definition of facts everywhere I say "fact", I would be incomprehensible even to myself. The charge of dishonesty is a heavy charge. And it is too lightly used in the context of the so-called "science wars". We are all human beings, we all have hidden agendas, we all have careers, mortgage bills, axes to grind, psychological wounds, etc. So in one sense or the other we are all "dishonest". Yet, the astrological superstitions and personal arrogance of Newton did not prevent him from laying the foundations of modern science. It is in the best interest of intellectual honesty that the charge of "dishonesty" should a rarely used in intellectual arguments, not because we are all saints, but precisely because we are not. As long as a theory is argued, there should be a presumption of honesty, with the implication that the only honest reply is an argument based on careful reading.
"The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way"
It is perfectly possible to be known scientifically. It puts everything on the same plane.
It provides a common premise for everything described. It doesn't allow for mistaken
certainty when there is no reason for it. It is when the subjective feeling of certainty is
removed and not relabeled as confidence that the premise is not understood and
uncertainty results.
I am sorry, but I just don't follow you here, can you rephrase that?
It's just about a particular naming scheme that we all choose to voluntarily use.
domains are just names, SSNs are just numbers, money is just paper, etc. You get the idea. Social reality is made with "just" conventions. If you hit against them hard enough you will find these conventions are as real as concrete.
When network effects are at work, decentralization has a steep price. That is why Europe got the Euro. My guess is that centralization will occur when it saves money. Because, blantly speaking, money rules. It is more realistic to fight for democratic control of centralizations that to fight against centralization.
I define facts as statements that claim that a state of affairs obtains in reality independent of our awareness, and whose claim in accepted by relevant authorities. I claim such statements are the product of human history, and in that sense they are "constructed"
It appears that your "relevent authority" is history. Your definiton states a "reality independent of our awareness", then you claim it as the result of history. History might be a place to find facts, based on a temporal measure...
No, the relavant authority for physical theory is peer reviewed journals of physics. Could you please,pluuese, read, think, post in that order?
Let me repeat myself. Facts, in my definition are a subclass of propositions/statements, not a subclass of physically observable phenomena. In addition to being statements, (subclass) facts are distinguished from other non-facts statements in that
they refer to observable phenomena
they make a truth claim
their truth claim has been blessed with the assent of the relevant authorities.
"The earth turns around the sun" is a fact. I.e. it is a statement, refering to the observable phenomena of the earth turning around the sun, that makes a truth claim about the phenomena, and this truth claim is accepted by scientific authorities.
In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities. The difference is a matter of degree only.
I don't claim that reality independent of our awareness is the product of our history, but that the facts, as defined above, i.e. the statements that we make about what is independent of our awareness, are the product of history. I have nothing to say about planetary motion, either today or 1000 years ago, because I am not a physicist. I only discuss the statement that are made about planetary motions. These statements would not have existed, i.e. would not have been said or accepted, but for a particular history.
Science IS a web of theories. Science IS based on facts. A theory is an attempt to explain a set of observations, those facts available. A hypothesis is a specific application of that theory. Based on theory A, this phenomena should occur and result in X. An experiment is an attempt to answer the question of whether a hypothesis is correct. The experimental evidence are the Facts. They attempt to draw a very hard line and answer yes or no. Therefore a theory is not a fact in and of itself, but a description premised on facts.
Your discription of science is common-sensical. Unfortunately it squares badly with attempts to observe how science works in practice. It assumes that the evidence observed is of a different order
than the theories supported by the evidence. This is not the case. Evidence is provided by measuring instruments and measuring instruments are only trustworthy because of the acceptability of the theories that explain them. Thus, almost all scientific evidence is not factual by your definition, because it depends on the validity of theories that, as you said, cannot be proven ( though this evidence is factual according to my definition.) Consider a theory, the big bang. Now consider a piece of evidence, the speed and direction of galaxies. that piece of evidence depends ot our theory of light, relativity theory, chemisty, our theory of the composition of stars, atomic theory, optical geometry, etc. Analyze each theory and you will find theories all the way down.
Nor are crucial experiments logically crucial. Crucial experiments leave scientists with a choice between adopting a new theory and patching the old one with a minor ad-hoc hypothesis that explains away the anamoly. The second choice is the one made almost always. The first choice is the rare scientific thunderstorm.
The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no statement made by scientists can survive the requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way. But it is unhelpful. We want science to make definite statements about reality. When it succeeds we want to treat the result as we treat every other simple fact. I believe, for example, that water can be decomposed in two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen with the same level of certainty that I believe CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner. Calling the second a fact and the first a theory serves no purpose. We live our life based on the assumption that they are both factual. I.E. our actions are informed by the belief that both statements will be true even if we were not aware of them. Why have a linguistic practice that fail to express this constant? So I think both are facts, both depend on huge theoretical constructs in order to mean anything at all, not to mention to be true. Both are true. And both facts ( statements, not phenomena ) came to be through in a complex social process. ( In the CNN case, the refered reality is as social as the statement, but that is not the point here. )
I'm using one definition and you are using another. The definiton I am using doesn't allow for playing with words, your's does.
No, mine doesn't, I define facts as statements that claim that a state of affairs obtains in reality independent of our awareness, and whose claim is accepted by relevant authorities. I claim such statements are the product of human history, and in that sense they are "constructed" ( in exactly the same sense that it is said that the Empire State Building is constructed ).
"Every scientific fact started its life at some point as a hypothesis."
Are you saying that a fact didn't exist until it was hypothesised? then how did anything get done before the creation of the scientific method?
See my definition above. I make no claim about the way the world behaved before the scientific revolution. The way the world behaves is the domain of physicists, and I accept whatever they tell me. I only make claim about the process by which certain physicists came to make certain claims and others came to accept them.
Oh crap, this is one o the reasons that people yell about conciet of the Western thoughts and ideals, because people are careless in thier thoughts and language and say things like this.
People yell because they are afraid of new ideas and because they don't bother paying attention. People yell at social constructivism; people yelled at the copernican theory; so what?
Thank God, they stopped burning people with ideas they dislike. ( OK, I got worked out, actually the reason why people yell is always social. It is part of the strength of the theory of social constructivism that it usually gives better explanation why people yell at each other ( or burn each other) over ideas).
1.That Facts are absolutes, they are always true, if at some point they aren't true, then they either weren't facts in the first place or something is wrong....
3.Hypothesis may never be proven, but empirical results can provide the basis for confidence in a hypothesis.
In your definition, science is a web of theories, none of which can claim the truth status of a fact, with a lot of trivial facts at the border. The vast majority of 'evidence' is not factual by this definition either, because evidence is almost always the product of measurement. And measurement is done by measuring instrument whose functioning is explained by yet another theory, and so on. I can speak within this definition ( altough I think it is unnecessarily cumbersome). I would say then that theories and the confidence accorded to them is socially constructed, and be silent about facts because they are not interesting enough to warrant discussion.
It is part of the meaning of 'facts', that they are true even in the absence of our awareness of them. You started by saying that facts are true in the world and are not constructed, and you differentiated them from theories that are constructed. Let's go back to H in a manner that I'll try to make as exact as possible why this distinction is not as useful as it seems.
H is the case in the world regardless of our awareness. "H" is the former meta-statement. and 'H' is the statement that states H. We know that "H" because we have a theory Th that makes a statement 'H' and subtantiate it in a conclusive way.
Hence, Th implies 'H',
('H' by definition implies H.)
And the implication Th -> 'H' implies "H".
Now, you seem to agree that the coming into existence of Th is a process into which a variety of social events, processes and facts provide crucial input. Without that input we might have today held another theory Tj that implies 'J' and we would have believed "J". And we would have argued "J" ( namely that 'j' is true independent of our awareness) as vehemently as we argue now "H".
Of course we would have been wrong, because J is false and H is true, but our ignorance would only be available to someone outside human history, God perhaps. When I say facts are socially constructed, I mean that "H" ( our awareness that H is true independently of our awareness) is the product of a specific human history. The fact that I call socially constructed is not the content of the fact ( H ), but the statement 'H' that claims this fact, as well as our understanding of its facticity ("H"). I don't mean that H is socially constructed, but that is simply because H has no practical relevance to a theory of knowledge. Speaking about H outside of Th, 'H' and "H" is a pure theological exercise.
Social construction is a fancy academic way to say that something (Th, "H" and 'H'), are the product of a specific human history. Social constructivism claims that the claim that certain truths are eternal and independent of our awareness is, in fact, itself not independent of human history. It says nothing about these truths in themselves.
PS. this is oversimplified, but to quote, 'Hic Slashdot, hic salta!'
PS2. The one political implication of social constructivism is not that western science is bunk (altough it is painted as that by conservatives), but that western science is a fragile miracle that came to being under very specific historical circumstances. And therefore, the believe that science is immune to deterioration is dangerous. It is an open dabate how resilent to social change Western science really is. But the political point of constructivism, IMHO, is to make us realize that it is theoretically possible that western science becomes something else, and not necessarily better.
Thank you for the compliment. Do you suggest that scientific theories do not make claims about what really is the case in the real world? Or do you perhaps suggest that claims about what really is the case in the real world are not factual claims? If the latter, could you explain to me the difference between 'it is true that X is the case in the real world' and 'it is a fact that X'? If the former, could you explain to me what are scientists doing?
You are playing around with words. The social construction of facts is precisely the process through which hypoteses/theories turn into facts. Every scientific fact started its life at some point as a hypothesis. We take proven scientific truths to be facts. We think it is a fact that smoking contributes to lung cancer. By this we means that the evidence is conclusive. Until not long ago tobaco executives claimed it was just a theory. Scientists consider human contribution to global warming a fact, but Exxon Mobile and the White House think it is 'just' a theory, etc. Galileo was tried and found guilty because he argued that the motion of the earth around the sun is a fact, while the Jesuit scholars thought it was an intresting mathematical hypothesis but not a fact.
You may want to suggest that the difference is between 'simple' statements of sensation such as 'the sky is blue now' and scientific theory 'the sky is blue because of the way air refracts light'. This isn't much help because, first, if we accept this limitation on facts, nothing of importance would count as fact. In particular, no piece of scientific truth would be factual. This saves the bathtub by throwing away the baby. Second, our scientific evidence is arrived at by using instruments that expands our senses. Every doubt that can be raised against the result of scientific experimentation can be raised against the simple senses as well. In fact, we often trust science more than our senses. So this distinction between 'facts' and 'theory' leads inexorably to the, in my humble opinion absurd, position, that the only true facts are statement about our senses, such as 'When I feel my head is tilted up, in a place that seems to be open, I tend to have a strong sensation of blue in my eyes'. Again, with these kind of "facts", we don't need hypotheses, and that is why I suggest it makes more sense to treat the statement like 'the earth turns around the sun' in the common-sensish way, as a fact.
If you still do not agree that this is the common sense idea of facts, look at trials. The role of the jury is to do 'fact finding'. what facts are found? The prosecution and the defense present competing theories, one of which is found by the jury to be a fact, the other is discarded. Again, the difference between facts and theories is gradual, contextual, and bridgeable in principle.
PS. There is nothing relativistic about this position. But that is another story.
Indeed, if something is a fact, it is true everywhere, this a meta-statement about the meaning of the word 'fact'. But the philosophical theory about facts and social construction deals with the way a statement becomes accepted as a fact. "The earth turns around the sun" is a fact today. but the fact is, ( forgive the pun) that it took the world some two thousand years of written reflection on the cosmos ( and quite a few wrecked lives) to construct this simple fact. The construction involved not just looking at the sky, but some amazingly complex social elements, such as the change in the pay structure of different faculties in the medieval university, the complex relationship between the papal administration and the Florentine Medici court, the effects of the introduction of artilary on the art of war, the educational theories of the early Jesuits, and so on. Without the confluence of this amazing complexity, I might have written today that "it is a fact that the sun turns around the earth", and you would have nodded in assent.
This is a fascinating aspect of contemporary philosophy of science and I am amazed that slashdoters, who seem to care so much about science, are completely ignorant of its very existence.
I think what is missed in Katz' view is that the nationalism is not fed directly by globalization. In between stand the political institutions of the nation state. Globalization diminish's their influence and they compensate through nationalism.
The Chinese are reacting to a zelous White House that spend the first 100 days to project an image of national toughness at the expense of China ( such an image would help Bush to run ahead with his runaway pro-corporate agenda, it will also directly justify more military pork). The problem is that China has a similar internal political dynamics, and it was just a matter of time until they reacted. The accident came in the right moment for them. It is used now by factions inside China to weaken the architects of economic reform.
Yet another possibly unfounded impression - I get the feeling that KDE development is moving faster than Gnome development at the moment, though I gather that Gnome development is still clicking along quite well.
I don't know how unfound it is, but it seems to me that environments win more by luring developers than users. KDE, thanks to Qt, has a superbly easy to use library that allows relatively fast development. I think that is a big edge. You have to know the gtk library to write for gnome, and gtk is more difficult to learn and use.
??? I am not sure I understand your insight.
Of course they decide what information, viewpoint, attitude, to silence based on their pocketbook.
However, any decision to silence something based on content threatens to undermine the purpose of the first ammendment, which is to foster a marketplace of ideas and ensure that all viewpoints, in particular offensive ones, are available for consideration. The fact that the goal of the first ammendment is undermined by market forces rather than by the forces originally feared by the writers of the constitution does not make it any less dangerous.
As usual, Slashdot is obsessed with government censorship. Now, I don't fancy government censorship, but the fact is, in the West, and especially in the US, government censorship is a slayed dragon. Most of the decisions not to show 'offensive' material are made at different levels by corporate officers based on a sense of what things may result in lost viewers. That has the same result as government censorship. In fact, it is even more effective in silencing 'offensive' speech. And not only there is no legal protection against it, but the silent majority have been trained to see no harm in it.
As the piece on the FCC shows, government censorship is at worse high comedy. So please give us a break with these false alarms.
Anyone wanting to compete in the evolution of the web should be welcome. However, reading the link, I have a number of misgivings.
first, what exactly does curl offer that Java doesn't? It is a programming language plus client side environment ( say java), it offers a rich GUI,( say java) etc.
Second, the idea is that the separation of interactive code and static content is a hurdle. I don't think so. This separation allows different professionals to deal with their aspect of the product. It may be that some better way to deal with this separation is needed, but having every web developer be in charge simultanuously of programming the interaction and formatting the content seems to me less than desired.
Third, I am not sure that the need to combine various technologies is a liability either. This is after all a continuation of the Unix philosophy. I suspect that sooner or later someone will find out that Curl lacks something and people will come up with ideas of how to glue Curl and _your_favorite_technology_here_.
I do agree that the HTML browser GUI is unacceptable. What could solve this problem better would be a browser capability of delegating widgets defined in HTML to a toolkit ( tk, Gtk, etc.)
exactly does it follow that men who watch porn hate women? What about women who watch porn? Do they hate men? Or women? Do the men who watch porn hate men? Or do they hate the men in porn? If not, why just the women in porn? I think you see what I'm getting at here...
I see you're getting nowhere. The statement follows from the content of most porn, not from the concept of porn ( which, if you read the whole message, I was trying to defend).
I also consume porn. The question is what porn. if your sexual fantasy includes treating women like shit, you are expressing in it a deep level of frustation and hatred. You seem to believe that the content of our fantasies has nothing to do with us. That would be odd, wouldn't it?
I am sure God loves sex, in fact I asked her once and she told me she insituted the day of rest precisely for that reason. You work six days and you shtoop on the seventh, and in the skies above God shtoops with the handsome Angels to the sound of chimming bells.
On the other hand the idea that Christianity never viewed sex as evil is ludicrous. You're either a flamebait or a complete ignorant. Why don't you read St. Pauls letters in the Bible for a more serious engagement with official Christian doctrine?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you can argue in favor of absolute morality. I did not mean to suggest that you cannot. However you seem ( to me ) to have argued that you can argue that an action is wrong in an absolute sense even while there is no justifiable argument available for a particular actor in a particular culture/period. In other words, you seemed ( to me) to accept that different cultures can have completely coherent views about right and wrong that differ from the true absolute morality. That is a position that I find impossible. I.e. absolute morality must always be potentially available to any rational/moral being.
Otherwise, one may indeed suspect that there exist concepts of absolute right and wrong that we, in our current state, cannot in principle comprehend. If that is so, then, and only then, we are faced with absolute morality as a metaphysical concept that does not help us in making moral choice. And a morality that cannot help us make moral choices is an oxymoron. I think your reference to our finite being suggests the scope of our disagreement. Our finitude may explain why at a particular moment we lack moral clarity. But I think the concept of morality forbids that a whole culture should fail in the same way.
Realizing the vast difference of actual moral arguments across time and culture I am led to believe that absolute moral principles are either non existent or extremely thin and abstract. I am uncomfortable with complete moral relativism, but the problem stated above makes me insist that any non-relativist theory of ethics must be such that what it entails should be available to any human intellect at any moment in principle. That is a high standard which most theories that pertain to absoluteness fail.
Hopes this clarify what I meant. And that it makes sense ;-)
Yesturday I was mentally somewhere else when they started showing a commercial for the Monty Pyton DVD set. Boy, I never, never, laughed so hard watching TV since I moved to the USA.
Why not have the Tivo remove the programming and allow us to see the commercials uninterrupted?
Let me beat the dead horse once more. Your argument is:
How about this: If there are no $1M in my account I cannot buy a condo in Florida. It is absolutely terrifying to think that I cannot buy a condo in Florida. Therefore, there are $1M in my account.
How can your preference determine reality? Just because the non-existence of an absolute moral code frustrates your desire to be able to make a certain kind of argument cannot possibly be a proof of its existence. Your problem is the fear of equality between preference and morality, and your solution is to assume that your own preference about what kind of moral arguments are available is real. It seems to me (Ocham's razor) that to assume existence of something requires a higher burden of proof than to assume non-existence. So you still have a mile to go.
There never was a right to own slaves in the USA. Anyone who claimed there was such a right was morally incorrect. Full stop.
This sentence is either false as a matter of fact or true by virtue of using words outside their dictionary meaning. There was such a right and this is a historical fact easily born by ample evidence. Some people, even then, thought that this right was wrong. But the right existed.
Challenging accepted standards may lead us to better moral understanding and moral practice, but it never changes the underlying rightness or wrongness of actions.
That underlying rightness has no presence in the mind of mortals. It functions in your theory as metaphysical scaffold, but it doesn't do any good because you cannot appeal to it. It just makes us feel good about ourselves. Our eternal rights are just rights that we cannot imagine living in a world without them. It is somewhat hubristic to believe that the moral foundation of the universe is defined by the limits of our imagination.
German government is much heavier that the US government. Taxes are much higher in Germany, and German workers are also more productive that American workers. So your theory is already bunk.
Let me check about some eternal rights
You can always challenge a moral code from within because broadly accepted moral codes are almost always self-contradictory. Therefore you don't need an absolute moral code as an archimedean point. Almost all succesfull challenges start with an accepted premise and lead to a condemnantion of an accepted pactice. Other challenges work through changing the definition of a term, usually as a result of socio-economic change ( are blacks human, and therefore within the scope of human rights? Should basic human rights apply to pets, video-games? )
Dear Caveman,
If you ever go out of your cave, ( with proper eyewear protection) you might notice that Americans are working harder and longer today than at any other moment in history. Americans work harder and longer than any other industrial nation. They are still less productive than many European workers because of the abysmal American "education" system, but they work harder and longer. In fact, a research pointing out that Americans suffer from extremely high levels ( for a population) of sleep deprivation has just been released. Say "An american refrigerator" in Europe and they understand you want a really big refrigerator. Say "American vacation" and they laugh.
Americans don't need to work harder. They need a break. They need a good night sleep, an extra hour for a familly dinner. They need to stress a little less about whether they can afford to pay emergency medical bills. An extra two hours a day and a longer vacation will do wonders to such problems as school shooting, drugs, gun, etc.
All these things have been achieved by other nations, which proves that they are not unacheivable.
Exhorting Americans to work harder is a trully cheap shot at the expense of this overworked nation. It would be better to figure out who takes home the fruits of all this excessive labor.
For me, the quality of public television is measured by its ability to do something that market driven tv cannot dare to do -- outrage. A good public tv station, like a good judiciary, depends on some level of insulation from both the financial and the political world. Its success as a public slervice lies in its ability to leverage this insulation in order to push the envelope of free speech.
Public TV should be outrageous, or not at all.
Judges and prosecutors are resourceful. If it looks like you did something with criminal intent they will find a way to nail you.
In addition consider that, if you are charged, any lwayer will tell you to cut a deal with the prosecution, because, a) you don't have the money. b) you don't have the guts to risk jail. c) something like 97% of tried criminal cases end in a guilty conviction. ( in other words, the chances of hearing a US jury say not guilty is about half of the chance an accused had of winning a case before the spanish inquisition).
IANAL
Nor did I ever say that history was a scientific authority. I said "such statements are the product of human history."
OK that's your definition of facts. Mine is facts ARE a subclass observable phenomena, for common use they are the observed subclass, The unobserved are still facts by definition, the observable portion has not been completed. Propositions and statements are just that, propositions and statements, they might describe a fact or refer to a fact, but are not "facts".
Good, as long as you remember that when social constructivists talk amout facts, they mean some variation of what I call facts. You can argue with that definition, after you parsed the reason they prefer it. You can argue with the conclusion. You can argue with the evidence ( after you parse it). But calling it crap because it makes no sense when parsed with the wrong dictionary is not the kind of intellectual endeavor that a rational person should encourage.
In the defintion I am using a fact may not make a claim of truth, they must be true. A "claim" of truth is not truth, and allows for the possibility that the fact is false and therefore not a fact.
And this is one reason why this definition is not helpful for the analysis of science. Facts[you], unlike facts[mine], do not let themselves to meta-analysis, because they are not accessible. If they were accesible, science would be true in an absolute godlike manner. I am only interested in the truth claims scientist makes, and that is why, when these claims are accepted, I call them facts.
Again with the dependency on some form of Human acceptance, relying on some form of perception. Since your definition allows for the posibility of falsehood in your "facts" it now becomes needed. Mine still doesn't.
My definition indeed allows two kinds of falshood. The first is existential. We may have the highest confidence in the fact "smoking contributes to lung cancer", yet we may be wrong. Since our "wrongness" is not available to anyone who isn't God. And since our wrong belief is yet fully rational, this kind of falshood is possible but minimally interesting. It simply expresses the limits of human knowledge. The other kind of falsehood appears when a fact is demoted as a result of new evidence, re-interpretation, etc.. We used to have a fact, "Salt contributes to high blood pressure". That fact has been recently demoted. It is now only a theory. The process of demotion and promotion, i.e. changes in the degree of confidence accorded to scientific statements, is one of the main fields of empirical studies for social constructivists.
The other problem you mentioned if I understand is that I define facts in a way that depends on human acceptance. Indeed, that is the point. It is an empirical observation that truth claims are generated and become accepted in a complex social and institutional process. The point in defining facts in that way is to make sense of this empirical observation and to accomodate it within a coherent understanding of the way science functions.
"In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities."
You are now agreeing with me on theories? What happened to the asertion that nothing can operate under this condition, where it only introduces uncertainty? This is what I've said, a theory isn't a fact because it can be false or wrong. The empirical evidence, the facts, do not make it a fact.
I did not challenge the existence of uncertain theories in science. However, in my definition of facts, when scientists stop arguing about a theory, when it stops being explained in scientific journals and starts appearing in high school textbooks, it becomes a fact. people accept it as a matter of fact, live their lives as if it were a fact, and that is reason enough for calling it a fact. I maintain that the only uncertainty that exists at that stage is what I called above "existential". Calling it a theory suggests that this existetial level of uncertainly is somehow worth our attention when in fact it doesn't. You will notice that the only people who fight tooth and nail to have evolution described as a theory are people who do not accept it. As I said earlier I believe the distinction between empirical evidence and supposedly non-empirical theories is soft. Yesturday's theories are built into new technology that provides evidence ("facts") for tommorow's theories. But the facts are only as factual as the theory behind the technology. I don't accept that purely factual scientific evidence exists.
Ok, so replace "fact" with statement and we'll all be happy. I can discuss the "statement" but not the "fact". A fact implies a certainty which is more then a "claim" can justify. The certainty that is implied with "fact", I call confidence. The "truth" of the "claim", I'll call honesty.
While we at least we traveled the contour of some of our beef, we don't agree, and I am not going to use your definition of facts in expressing my thoughts, because this definition is not useful for the kind of analysis I am interesting in. I will use your definitions to interpret what you mean, and if more people did the same there would have been less headers coontaining the word 'crap' on slashdot. ( Utopia, (sigh) )
The results of experimentaion are facts, the intepretations of them are not. When someone comes up with the theory of everything and proves it, then I'll conceed.
Depend on what you mean by "the results of experimentation". If you mean, "the needle appears above the digit 2" that is a fact in your definition, but it isn't a very interesting one. If you mean "The current was 2mA" I disagree. That statement depends on a whole electromagnetic theory, a theory about how ampermeters work, and a whole set of assumption about how much of optical inacurracy in looking at a dial can be ignored ( assumptions that are based on some theoretical understandings of both optical geometry and electromagnetic theory). Because of all these assumptions "The current was 2mA", is not a fact by your definition, it is a theory. It (the statement) is a fact by my definition, because all these assumptions are blessed as facts according to my definition.
Of course. And they are supported by confidence in each of them, not in the certainty that they are facts. My lack of certainty doesn't stop my having confidence in the same thing. That confidence allows me to draw conclusions and postulate new theories based on my confidence in the others.
The problem with your approach is that you see a difference between, "the highest degree of confidence possible" and "certainty". This distinction has no practical meaning, and I am a positivist on this. If there is no practical difference, then I see no difference, and reserving the word "certainty" to a level of confidence that is impossible is a waste of a fine and otherwise useful word. Whenever practical (as opposed to existential) doubt is considered irrational, I prefer to say we are certain.
I do not subscribe to the fallacy that any of them are fact. The fallacy is a form of intelectual shorthand, which while usefull for the most part and effective in walking down the street, can a) lead to errors and b) be dishonest.
I can't see how a choice of words can be fallacious. A choice of words can be misleading, but only an argument can be fallacious. In addition, it is common theoretical practice that words are defined in some particularity that might be misleading if one fails to notice that the word is used in a technical context ( not to mention that this context is reasoned on the basis of non-technical practice). I don't think people who talk about "the social construction of facts" have to apologize because other people don't take the trouble to identify the vocabulary. I also don't see how we can avoid intellectual shorthand. Using shorthand is practically essential in intellectual discussions. Of course it can lead to errors and dishonesty, that is reason to be careful, not to avoid it. If I were to substitute my definition of facts everywhere I say "fact", I would be incomprehensible even to myself. The charge of dishonesty is a heavy charge. And it is too lightly used in the context of the so-called "science wars". We are all human beings, we all have hidden agendas, we all have careers, mortgage bills, axes to grind, psychological wounds, etc. So in one sense or the other we are all "dishonest". Yet, the astrological superstitions and personal arrogance of Newton did not prevent him from laying the foundations of modern science. It is in the best interest of intellectual honesty that the charge of "dishonesty" should a rarely used in intellectual arguments, not because we are all saints, but precisely because we are not. As long as a theory is argued, there should be a presumption of honesty, with the implication that the only honest reply is an argument based on careful reading.
"The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way"
It is perfectly possible to be known scientifically. It puts everything on the same plane. It provides a common premise for everything described. It doesn't allow for mistaken certainty when there is no reason for it. It is when the subjective feeling of certainty is removed and not relabeled as confidence that the premise is not understood and uncertainty results.
I am sorry, but I just don't follow you here, can you rephrase that?
domains are just names, SSNs are just numbers, money is just paper, etc. You get the idea. Social reality is made with "just" conventions. If you hit against them hard enough you will find these conventions are as real as concrete.
When network effects are at work, decentralization has a steep price. That is why Europe got the Euro. My guess is that centralization will occur when it saves money. Because, blantly speaking, money rules. It is more realistic to fight for democratic control of centralizations that to fight against centralization.
It appears that your "relevent authority" is history. Your definiton states a "reality independent of our awareness", then you claim it as the result of history. History might be a place to find facts, based on a temporal measure ...
No, the relavant authority for physical theory is peer reviewed journals of physics. Could you please,pluuese, read, think, post in that order?
Let me repeat myself. Facts, in my definition are a subclass of propositions/statements, not a subclass of physically observable phenomena. In addition to being statements, (subclass) facts are distinguished from other non-facts statements in that
- they refer to observable phenomena
- they make a truth claim
- their truth claim has been blessed with the assent of the relevant authorities.
"The earth turns around the sun" is a fact. I.e. it is a statement, refering to the observable phenomena of the earth turning around the sun, that makes a truth claim about the phenomena, and this truth claim is accepted by scientific authorities.In addition, facts differ from theories: theories also make truth claims about phenomena, but they are recognized only as potentially true by the relavant authorities. The difference is a matter of degree only.
I don't claim that reality independent of our awareness is the product of our history, but that the facts, as defined above, i.e. the statements that we make about what is independent of our awareness, are the product of history. I have nothing to say about planetary motion, either today or 1000 years ago, because I am not a physicist. I only discuss the statement that are made about planetary motions. These statements would not have existed, i.e. would not have been said or accepted, but for a particular history.
Science IS a web of theories. Science IS based on facts. A theory is an attempt to explain a set of observations, those facts available. A hypothesis is a specific application of that theory. Based on theory A, this phenomena should occur and result in X. An experiment is an attempt to answer the question of whether a hypothesis is correct. The experimental evidence are the Facts. They attempt to draw a very hard line and answer yes or no. Therefore a theory is not a fact in and of itself, but a description premised on facts.
Your discription of science is common-sensical. Unfortunately it squares badly with attempts to observe how science works in practice. It assumes that the evidence observed is of a different order than the theories supported by the evidence. This is not the case. Evidence is provided by measuring instruments and measuring instruments are only trustworthy because of the acceptability of the theories that explain them. Thus, almost all scientific evidence is not factual by your definition, because it depends on the validity of theories that, as you said, cannot be proven ( though this evidence is factual according to my definition.) Consider a theory, the big bang. Now consider a piece of evidence, the speed and direction of galaxies. that piece of evidence depends ot our theory of light, relativity theory, chemisty, our theory of the composition of stars, atomic theory, optical geometry, etc. Analyze each theory and you will find theories all the way down.
Nor are crucial experiments logically crucial. Crucial experiments leave scientists with a choice between adopting a new theory and patching the old one with a minor ad-hoc hypothesis that explains away the anamoly. The second choice is the one made almost always. The first choice is the rare scientific thunderstorm.
The problem with the categorical distinction between observable facts and unobservable theories is that, under close scrutiny, it leaves us knowing nothing scientifically, because no statement made by scientists can survive the requirement of not being dependent on some theoretical assumption. It is conceptually possible to go this way. But it is unhelpful. We want science to make definite statements about reality. When it succeeds we want to treat the result as we treat every other simple fact. I believe, for example, that water can be decomposed in two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen with the same level of certainty that I believe CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner. Calling the second a fact and the first a theory serves no purpose. We live our life based on the assumption that they are both factual. I.E. our actions are informed by the belief that both statements will be true even if we were not aware of them. Why have a linguistic practice that fail to express this constant? So I think both are facts, both depend on huge theoretical constructs in order to mean anything at all, not to mention to be true. Both are true. And both facts ( statements, not phenomena ) came to be through in a complex social process. ( In the CNN case, the refered reality is as social as the statement, but that is not the point here. )
I'm using one definition and you are using another. The definiton I am using doesn't allow for playing with words, your's does.
No, mine doesn't, I define facts as statements that claim that a state of affairs obtains in reality independent of our awareness, and whose claim is accepted by relevant authorities. I claim such statements are the product of human history, and in that sense they are "constructed" ( in exactly the same sense that it is said that the Empire State Building is constructed ).
"Every scientific fact started its life at some point as a hypothesis."
Are you saying that a fact didn't exist until it was hypothesised? then how did anything get done before the creation of the scientific method?
See my definition above. I make no claim about the way the world behaved before the scientific revolution. The way the world behaves is the domain of physicists, and I accept whatever they tell me. I only make claim about the process by which certain physicists came to make certain claims and others came to accept them.
Oh crap, this is one o the reasons that people yell about conciet of the Western thoughts and ideals, because people are careless in thier thoughts and language and say things like this.
People yell because they are afraid of new ideas and because they don't bother paying attention. People yell at social constructivism; people yelled at the copernican theory; so what? Thank God, they stopped burning people with ideas they dislike. ( OK, I got worked out, actually the reason why people yell is always social. It is part of the strength of the theory of social constructivism that it usually gives better explanation why people yell at each other ( or burn each other) over ideas).
1.That Facts are absolutes, they are always true, if at some point they aren't true, then they either weren't facts in the first place or something is wrong. ...
3.Hypothesis may never be proven, but empirical results can provide the basis for confidence in a hypothesis.
In your definition, science is a web of theories, none of which can claim the truth status of a fact, with a lot of trivial facts at the border. The vast majority of 'evidence' is not factual by this definition either, because evidence is almost always the product of measurement. And measurement is done by measuring instrument whose functioning is explained by yet another theory, and so on. I can speak within this definition ( altough I think it is unnecessarily cumbersome). I would say then that theories and the confidence accorded to them is socially constructed, and be silent about facts because they are not interesting enough to warrant discussion.
H is the case in the world regardless of our awareness. "H" is the former meta-statement. and 'H' is the statement that states H. We know that "H" because we have a theory Th that makes a statement 'H' and subtantiate it in a conclusive way.
Hence, Th implies 'H',
('H' by definition implies H.)
And the implication Th -> 'H' implies "H".
Now, you seem to agree that the coming into existence of Th is a process into which a variety of social events, processes and facts provide crucial input. Without that input we might have today held another theory Tj that implies 'J' and we would have believed "J". And we would have argued "J" ( namely that 'j' is true independent of our awareness) as vehemently as we argue now "H".
Of course we would have been wrong, because J is false and H is true, but our ignorance would only be available to someone outside human history, God perhaps. When I say facts are socially constructed, I mean that "H" ( our awareness that H is true independently of our awareness) is the product of a specific human history. The fact that I call socially constructed is not the content of the fact ( H ), but the statement 'H' that claims this fact, as well as our understanding of its facticity ("H"). I don't mean that H is socially constructed, but that is simply because H has no practical relevance to a theory of knowledge. Speaking about H outside of Th, 'H' and "H" is a pure theological exercise.
Social construction is a fancy academic way to say that something (Th, "H" and 'H'), are the product of a specific human history. Social constructivism claims that the claim that certain truths are eternal and independent of our awareness is, in fact, itself not independent of human history. It says nothing about these truths in themselves.
PS. this is oversimplified, but to quote, 'Hic Slashdot, hic salta!'
PS2. The one political implication of social constructivism is not that western science is bunk (altough it is painted as that by conservatives), but that western science is a fragile miracle that came to being under very specific historical circumstances. And therefore, the believe that science is immune to deterioration is dangerous. It is an open dabate how resilent to social change Western science really is. But the political point of constructivism, IMHO, is to make us realize that it is theoretically possible that western science becomes something else, and not necessarily better.
You may want to suggest that the difference is between 'simple' statements of sensation such as 'the sky is blue now' and scientific theory 'the sky is blue because of the way air refracts light'. This isn't much help because, first, if we accept this limitation on facts, nothing of importance would count as fact. In particular, no piece of scientific truth would be factual. This saves the bathtub by throwing away the baby. Second, our scientific evidence is arrived at by using instruments that expands our senses. Every doubt that can be raised against the result of scientific experimentation can be raised against the simple senses as well. In fact, we often trust science more than our senses. So this distinction between 'facts' and 'theory' leads inexorably to the, in my humble opinion absurd, position, that the only true facts are statement about our senses, such as 'When I feel my head is tilted up, in a place that seems to be open, I tend to have a strong sensation of blue in my eyes'. Again, with these kind of "facts", we don't need hypotheses, and that is why I suggest it makes more sense to treat the statement like 'the earth turns around the sun' in the common-sensish way, as a fact.
If you still do not agree that this is the common sense idea of facts, look at trials. The role of the jury is to do 'fact finding'. what facts are found? The prosecution and the defense present competing theories, one of which is found by the jury to be a fact, the other is discarded. Again, the difference between facts and theories is gradual, contextual, and bridgeable in principle.
PS. There is nothing relativistic about this position. But that is another story.
This is a fascinating aspect of contemporary philosophy of science and I am amazed that slashdoters, who seem to care so much about science, are completely ignorant of its very existence.
The Chinese are reacting to a zelous White House that spend the first 100 days to project an image of national toughness at the expense of China ( such an image would help Bush to run ahead with his runaway pro-corporate agenda, it will also directly justify more military pork). The problem is that China has a similar internal political dynamics, and it was just a matter of time until they reacted. The accident came in the right moment for them. It is used now by factions inside China to weaken the architects of economic reform.
Yet another possibly unfounded impression - I get the feeling that KDE development is moving faster than Gnome development at the moment, though I gather that Gnome development is still clicking along quite well.
I don't know how unfound it is, but it seems to me that environments win more by luring developers than users. KDE, thanks to Qt, has a superbly easy to use library that allows relatively fast development. I think that is a big edge. You have to know the gtk library to write for gnome, and gtk is more difficult to learn and use.
As the piece on the FCC shows, government censorship is at worse high comedy. So please give us a break with these false alarms.
first, what exactly does curl offer that Java doesn't? It is a programming language plus client side environment ( say java), it offers a rich GUI,( say java) etc.
Second, the idea is that the separation of interactive code and static content is a hurdle. I don't think so. This separation allows different professionals to deal with their aspect of the product. It may be that some better way to deal with this separation is needed, but having every web developer be in charge simultanuously of programming the interaction and formatting the content seems to me less than desired.
Third, I am not sure that the need to combine various technologies is a liability either. This is after all a continuation of the Unix philosophy. I suspect that sooner or later someone will find out that Curl lacks something and people will come up with ideas of how to glue Curl and _your_favorite_technology_here_.
I do agree that the HTML browser GUI is unacceptable. What could solve this problem better would be a browser capability of delegating widgets defined in HTML to a toolkit ( tk, Gtk, etc.)
I see you're getting nowhere. The statement follows from the content of most porn, not from the concept of porn ( which, if you read the whole message, I was trying to defend). I also consume porn. The question is what porn. if your sexual fantasy includes treating women like shit, you are expressing in it a deep level of frustation and hatred. You seem to believe that the content of our fantasies has nothing to do with us. That would be odd, wouldn't it?
On the other hand the idea that Christianity never viewed sex as evil is ludicrous. You're either a flamebait or a complete ignorant. Why don't you read St. Pauls letters in the Bible for a more serious engagement with official Christian doctrine?