If you cannot understand that even the 'physicality of atoms' depends on the utility of that concept for humans, we will fail to communicate. — fresco
The concept of number is a human concept, but human judgments of number have an objective character in matters of fact. The concept of existence is a human concept, but human judgments of existence -- for instance about what is said to exist and what is said not to exist -- have an objective character in matters of fact.'Existence' is a human concept, and like all concepts requires context in which it is meaningful. The issue was perhaps highlighted my Niels Bohr's argument with Einstein about the existence of 'electrons'.
Bohr argued that there were no 'things in their own right' we call 'electrons', only consistent human 'interactions' with an aspect of the world it was convenient to explain by the word 'electron'. Einstein, perhaps in line with his role in establishing 'the reality of atoms', disagreed.
A current book by Rovelli (the Order of Time) underscores Bohr's view with the phrase 'things are just repetitive events.
This proposed 'relativity of existence' seems to me to render most philosophical discussion of 'ontology' to be what Wittgenstein called Geschwätz (idle chatter).
Any thoughts ? — fresco
But this ontological relativity is a matter of conceptual flexibility, and does not support claims against the objective character of judgments of existence.
In the investigation of nature, we refine our terms against the grindstone of experience, and let the world speak for itself with our language. — Cabbage Farmer
For me 'facts',are human constructions with a high degree of consensus. — fresco
The constructivist view of 'facts' is basically an anti 'naive realist' stance, which recognizes that 'facticity' can be negotiated and shifts over time. — fresco
Facticity is basically about the human preoccupation with prediction and control which are aspects of another psychological construct we call 'time'. — fresco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology3. "World" can be understood in another ontical sense—not, however, as those entities which Dasein essentially is not and which can be encountered within-the-world, but rather as the wherein a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. — link
The naïve realist theory may be characterized as the acceptance of the following five beliefs:
There exists a world of material objects
Some statements about these objects can be known to be true through sense-experience
These objects exist not only when they are being perceived but also when they are not perceived. The objects of perception are largely perception-independent.
These objects are also able to retain properties of the types we perceive them as having, even when they are not being perceived. Their properties are perception-independent.
By means of our senses, we perceive the world directly, and pretty much as it is. In the main, our claims to have knowledge of it are justified." — Wiki
↪Janus Let him speak for himself. That is what he said. — Banno
If most of us disagree with you, I suppose you haven't stated a fact. — g0d
Exactly. The construction with a high degree of consensus is actually that "fact" refers to "state of affairs." — Terrapin Station
Re: your common sense view, I suggest you consider replacing 'objects existing whether perceived or not' by ' expectation of functional persistence evoked by the abstact persistence of a naming word'. — fresco
Thus Maturana makes the point that ' a predatator stalking its prey' is meaningful for human purposes, but in the animal,world in which 'self awareness' is debateable, there may be no separation of roles, merely the automatic conjoint behavior we might call 'a chasing'. — fresco
The level of 'rationality' required to discuss these matters is transcendent of classical logic with its 'law if the excluded middle'. Such rationaliy is well known in QM, which would take us right back to the Bohr reference. — fresco
All of that which we apprehend, as objects of the world, can never lie beyond the boundaries of representation for itself, as granted through the mind of the subject and thus, stands only partial; offering sight of the object, yet all the while lessening the clarity of its image." — Vessuvius
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