| I got stuck for a while trying to figure out how you and Searles were
using this word "facts". I have been sent a list of 'useless facts'
by a friend which contains such gems as "An ostrich's eye is bigger that
it's brain"; "A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes"; "A pregnant goldfish
is called a twit"; and "The church of the sub-genius has a 'John Dillinger
died for your sins' committee". (The last I find particularly enlightening.)
Now I had always thought that the word 'facts' referred to these descriptive
phrases or statements, not to that which they were referring to.
But you and Searles seem to be using the word 'facts' to be referring to
the actual objects and relationships in the world. Searles you say
sez that "the world
is made up of real facts.." I thought of the great tradition
in western philosophy to say the world is made up of some sort of essence
(stuff). I think it was Thales, wasn't it, who tripped when wandering
along staring at the stars into a well, and said that is was all water.
Today we have people saying it's all made up of energy.
Personally I think of that as the crackpot theory, as it is the idea
that the world is made like pottery from clay, but when we search for the
essence, the 'clay', it falls like water through our fingers. So for me,
that pot is cracked. So I have been struggling these past few days to figure
out just what sort
of stuff 'facts' are which, according to Searles, make up the world. |