© Roger M Tagg 2009 revised 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
I am immediately suspicious if someone comes to me with statements like the following:
The only way information gets to us is through our senses - either directly (we see, hear, smell or feel something) or indirectly (someone or something else conveys a message to us through some language or symbols). So-called facts are therefore subject to filtering, interpretation and rationalisation. This can be done by all the middlemen (humans and groups) that come between the original experience of somebody else's direct senses and our own senses; or our human senses can let us down - we can be caught up by illusions, mishear sounds, make errors in recognising patterns.
It is not always in our interests to pass on what we really saw, heard, felt or did - so we cannot just blame everyone else.
The media (newspapers, radio, TV, public entertainment) are crawling with ulterior motives, both of individuals and organisations, in terms of money or other objectives. For instance, newspapers and TV stations often depend critically on advertising revenue, so messages that make the audience less likely to buy have an uphill task to get published. In a bad summer in New Zealand in the 1990s, we even suspected the weather forecasters were told to be deliberately over-optimistic!
Even in universities, supposedly the guardians of knowledge for its own sake, there is pressure to act in accordance with the objectives of keeping money coming in, and student bums on seats. Researchers are pressured to "publish or perish".
History is full of examples of powerful people and groups rewriting history itself - for their own purposes.
Of course there are certainly plenty of areas where most people would be prepared to accept some things as facts, e.g. that pigs can't (by themselves) fly, the molecular weight of oxygen being around 16, the fact that the planet we live on is an oblate spheroid that spins round and travels in orbit round the sun. However we have to remember that this last "fact" was regarded as heresy by the Christian church only a dozen generations ago, and as one recent US presidential candidate said only recently, "if the Bible and science disagree, then I'm with the Bible".
So, in my opinion, "facts" are an illusion and usually a sign of bullshit. It is better to talk about "data", which literally means "what we are given" (in the Latin language). What about "truth"? I see it as the degree of alignment between
- if they had been able to observe what really happened. Of course such conditions rarely hold, so we are left having to rely on trust and the credibility we give to the source of the data. So "truth" is often very hard to establish. In my own view, the most we can hope for is wide consensus.
"Honesty" implies a comparison between what a person states and what his/her original experience was (whether that was direst sensory experience or passing on data received from elsewhere). Usually, only that person knows how honest (s)he is being - unless someone can find independent evidence.
I am as guilty as anyone in accusing others of doing things that show a lack of understanding of the real world. However I have to admit that the "reality" of the world is only relative.
Our brains are not (yet) up to the capacity of seeing all perspectives at once, so we tend to limit discussion to a few perspectives that we can more easily understand. But the "best-laid plans of mice and men" can still go wrong, usually because of some perspective we have not taken into account, or from our own bias not wishing to entertain what we do not like to hear.
Most of the time, when interacting with other beings and passing or requesting information, we are talking in terms of some abstract "model" which shares some features of what can be directly observed, but never all. A "model" in this sense is just a man-made set of patterns that try to simplify complex happenings. Examples of models could include:
So it is hard to say that there is such a thing as the "real world" that everyone accepts, because our models can all be different (see the discussion on Climate Change below). I prefer to say that the "real world" is just the "consensus of observed relationships" - sometimes we can get near consensus, but other times we can't reconcile our models.
As is the practice with academic researchers, we ought to, more often, regard whatever we are told as a component of the wider world of human knowledge, and therefore reference it, quoting who said or wrote it, and when.
We may also be interested in when (s)he said it, what underlying theory (s)he based it on, what influences and motivations applied.
What is stated ought often be subject to limitations on how far it is valid, e.g. whether it applies for all time, or only between some start time and some end time; also whether it applies in all or just some geographical locations, societies, altitudes, temperatures etc.
Further, the statement may be subject to a variable level of confidence, accuracy or probability. For example, Australian weather forecasters seem happy to give a forecast temperature for the next few days, but never give a range of possible maximum temperatures, and they always forecast rain or showers without any percentage probability (e.g. "50% chance of rain") as is done in some countries.
What is more hopeful is that we often have the chance to compare what person or group A says is true with what person or group B says, or with what we ourselves sense. This often shows up contradictions, and this is a great opportunity for improving our knowledge - even if it only says "don't rely on that lot"! I think that one of the advantages that Science has over Religion is that when Science encounters a contradiction, it looks to find a better theory - even if that involves throwing out long-held old theories. With religion, the tendency is to defend the theory as "god-given" by referring to long-ago writings, sayings and judgements which are claimed to be justified by time and tradition.
"Evidence-based" is a phrase often used nowadays to imply that if we assert something, we need to offer evidence to back it up. The phrase often gets used in medical circles, implying the need to ask the question "what evidence do we have that this or that treatment works, is effective or is safe?". An article I read recently bemoaned the difficulty of making any coherent story out of a whole lot of observations, many of which were contradictory. The authors of the article pointed out that we are all inclined to follow - often unquestioningly - certain "traditions of interpretation". The issue wasn't even a religious one - it was about plate tectonics. The point is that we might each interpret the same evidence in different ways, according to our "tradition of interpretation". I think "evidence-based", although not perfect, is at least an improvement over mythology or ancient traditions or scriptures. We just have to be conscious of our own bias.
We should give up trying to pretend that we can accurately know everything or reduce it to patterns other people or groups - or we ourselves - create. We need to leave room to say "probably", "possibly", "according to person X", "according to group Y", "as far as it is applicable", "with a moderate amount of confidence" etc.
In FROLIO there is the concept of "representation relationships" where we say that a certain description of a state of affairs or process "represents" the consensus of what is happening, as observed experienced by those nearer the scene of the action. Using this approach, we can say that our assertions are "models" of what can be observed or experienced. Models are the subject of a separate essay.
By the way, please remember, when reading this, that it is just the assertion of the author of this page. He has written it, for whatever ulterior motives he has and with whatever bias he has picked up over the years.
Talk of Climate Change is all the rage at the time of writing this. We have had some people declare that it isn't happening, or that it doesn't matter, or that it is nothing to do with human activity. Some business groups and countries are in denial. Some political parties have actually reversed their stand on the issue. Scientists might have an ulterior motive of getting money for research. The media are going to town on the matter - prophesying doom seems a good way of attracting interest. Are "facts", "truth" or "the real world" involved at all? Some say the increases in temperatures have already peaked. Where are any reliable trends (both short and long term), presented to us by disinterested parties? On a consensus basis, I tend to think there is a big problem, but I don't believe I am getting a coherent story.
Index to more of these diatribes
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 25th May 2010
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .