humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 18, 1:34 am, David Schwartz wrote:
> Fred Weiss wrote:

> ...What in fact exists...

Which you alternately affirm and deny that we can ever really know -
apart that is from what we impute to the facts in the way in which we
process our knowledge.

You are not...umm...in fact in a position to be claiming what is or
isn't a fact. That's what you keep telling us. Are you reading what
you are writing?

For example:

> > > It is a mistake to argue that the mode is how things really are at
> > > rock bottom until you reach rock bottom and you know it. We are not
> > > there yet.
> > How will you know when you are there?
>
> I'm not sure. It may be that we will never know this.

Or:

> That you know of no reason something is false does not mean it must be
> true. That you can think of no way something can be false does not
> mean it must be true.

(This of course is a strawman, but I repeat it only as an example of
your stated thinking.)

> > You mean like we got to the moon and back? We didn't approximately get
> > to the moon and back. But that isn't an approximation at all. Thems
> > the facts, period. That there are many aspects of it which we still
> > don't know - or don't know as much as we may like - doesn't change
> > those facts which we do know. Know exactly, not merely approximately.
>
> Of course, but I don't see how this is relevant to the subject of our
> disagreement.

That there are things - many, many things, actually - that we know,
know to be facts independently of how we discovered or process those
facts.

I mean, you then go on and start questioning our knowledge of the
moon, not of any number of a myriad of facts which we don't know about
the moon, but of the very moon itself.

What you don't seem to grasp is that those very questions presuppose a
knowledge you are denying we can have. You are in fact in an infinite
regress of such questions with no end in sight, i.e. nothing that can
be called knowledge.

For example:

> Well, for one thing, the term "moon". It's an extent object based on
> the contents of a defined, but variable, region of space. It's treated
> as if it was a unit that can have properties.
>
> That is a model, created purely out of cognitive necessity and
> convenience. We use a single term to correspond to all the places that
> have been "the moon" and various things that were in those defined
> regions of space.
>
> This certainly corresponds to reality, but *what* in reality does it
> correspond to?

I don't know. You tell me.

> Just as the Greek's "indivisible atoms" correspond to
> things in reality that were *not* indivisible atoms.

Yes, it corresponded to atoms which in fact exist and which in fact
are basic building blocks of the physical world. It is just that we
now know that they are not indivisible.

We also now know that the moon isn't made of green cheese.

Fred Weiss