interesting.
this could get complicated--which would be good. but for the moment:
i agree with art up to a point. that point is here:
Quote:
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These so called "facts" ultimately are based on belief systems - belief systems based solely on assumptions.
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and that because the formulation is, to my mind anyway, too simple--in other words, i could not build to my positions (or meta-positions) from it because it skips or compresses steps. but it follows from art's conclusion that relativism is an adequate position from which to operate. it leads to it, or presupposes it as a conclusion, depending on your viewpoint.
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it also opens directly onto the kind of objections from kinnkai and the newly christened mister pig, which oppose mathematics/formal systems predicated on mathematics as a model to relativism. but here too, things are not so simple. you have all kinds of problems of system grounding/self-enclosure/self-referentiality in mathematics---such that despite its efficicacy in manipulating *aspects* of the world, it is not a total system: it cannot account for itself (philosophy of mathematics, which folk who prefer seeing the world through mathematics and its derivates not doubt avoid or hate if they dont).....
but it does enable certain aspects of the object world to be accounted for, measured, manipulated, etc. and so does constitute an area of knowledge that runs against the direction that art outlines in the op.
and again, it seems to me that the problem is that the op is too simple..and that because the positions that can be opposed to it are too obvious, and the discussion/debate/whatever this is can be stalled with this, if folk who play are so inclined to do that.
but the world is not made up entirely of objects, and when you shift from inanimate to animate objects/beings (for example--though we could play a game concerning the status of objects themselves, if you want) and try to apply a logic rooted in mathematics, in mechanics, in the conceptions of causation particular to mechanics as a way to understand how they operate even (not to mention what they are, which is an ontological matter), you end up inhabiting a really diminished world, and a really diminished view of the world.
there is alot that could be said here, but for the moment, i'll leave this.
dont wanna kill yet another thread.
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where i really diverge from art is on the question of the role of argument.
i dont think that simply because it is demonstrably the case that assembling information is a matter of projection (routed through constraints) that it follows that all assemblages are therefore equivalent.
and it is clear from your posts that you dont either, art.
but it is also obviously the case that a messageboard is a very limited and limiting mode of communication, so maybe at the tactical level (as it pertains to how to interact in a space like this) you're right. but if this is the case, then what we are really talking about is a matter of style.
either way, art, it's nice to see a thread from you.
you make this a better place, and i've missed seeing your sentences.
hope that all goes well with you.