>>However, the dark side of the moon still exerts a gravitational force on me. The mass of all the moon is present in my observations (though ridiculously small and subtle, it is still present), even the parts that aren't observed visually must still be real in that respect.
>
>Substitute "black hole" instead of "dark side of the moon". Or your favorite celestial body which can be observed only in infrared or x-ray parts of the sprctrum. Continue in that direction... at what point does it stop being real?

There is a hypothetical particle that mediates the gravitational force in particle physics called the "graviton."

The graviton, I suspect, is not real. I'm sure it exists in the objective, fundamental reality, but because it is never observed it is not in our conscious reality, so to us, its not real.


>>>How real is mathematics? It could be construed as our collective imaginative work, that we for some reason treat as proof, but is it real? Could be the real mathematics (or physics, for that matter) of the current universe is something completely different from our toy.
>>
>>Mathematics is a human language like English or dBase. In that respsect it is very real.
>
>You know that for me even deities are real in that same respect - as human ideas. But does this human language of mathematics reflect reality (at least when applied as a tool of physics), the one reality that supposedly exists independently from human perception?
>
>I don't have an answer to this. I'd be lecturing somewhere if I did :).

As it reflects reality arthmetic seems to accurately describe reality, though calculus seems like a non-reflective larger abstraction who's results only generally apply to reality.


>Well, from what I've read in this thread, Rand's objectivism does its homework - it gives the lassez faire capitalism a brownie point and a feeling that they are justified in whatever they are doing, since even science proves they're doing the natural and desirable thing.

How does science prove this?

>>Another important question is are there other philosophies that are better at solving problems? If yes, then there is something more useful as a philosophy.
>
>The more important question is "whose problems". Yours, mine, big money's, economy's, world population's, humankind's; in the short run, in the long run...?

To me problems are where humans suffer. Its a very personal conclusion that I wouldn't be able to defend aside from citing "realism."

>>What then is a "fact"?
>>
>>I've been assuming it is a statement in language. If it is something other than a statement of language then you may be right. But then what is fact?
>
>A statement in whose language? If there's a reality independent from human observation, then there'd be two sorts of facts - the statements in some reality-per-se-language, which stand independently from our knowing, and the statements in human language(s). The two may or may not coincide. But then, in such a dual system, as soon as you start self-referencing (qv in GEB book, of course), we've sped up the enumerable path towards infinity of levels of self-referencing. IOW, such languages would have a problem talking about themselves, which then creates a problem when discussing them, as we're using one of such human languages right now, and can't even decide the existence of a hypothetical reality-per-se-language.

Worse, not only do we discuss with human language, its very likely that we think with human language.

Until more is said about this "hypothetical reality-per-se-language" I'm going to suggest its a fairy tale and doesn't deserve much attention.

I was reading more Popper last night. He described a philosophy that assumes a poor starting point: common sense.

Kant, Descartes, Hume and others have tried to find a secure foundation for philosophy. They would put this foundation into place and be able to reason accross it to deduce things.

Popper described why this was flawed. He used common sense and realism as his start points although he recognized that common sense is many times wrong. It is not a secure foundation. The idea is to find a starting point and then mercilessly criticize the startpointing. The idea is to identify its weaknesses (where it is wrong) and conjecture up solutions to solve the problems. He suggests a path infinite tentative solutions based on a known to be flawed foundation, unlike the idealistic approach you're describing with the absolute reality of facts.

There could be a reality-per-se-language, but until it means something to me, I'm going to think that "facts" are statements of language, in any language, and that facts are never known to be absolutely certain: instead we should be critical of our facts at all times, this way we can be in a position to fix problems we find and our knowledge grows, it evolves.

>>There is one more premise that Rand assumes and it is that man shall not be sacraficed for another man. Lazze fair capitalism is best political-economic match for the premises.
>
>Are you sure she didn't mix up her cups around page 200? Lassez faire leads to a free-for-all grab of resources, competition until extermination until monopoly, exploitation unbounded and the human victims along the way don't count as sacrifices, because there's nothing sacred. Now if you start talking of morality, laws etc - that's not lassez faire anymore, that's regulation.

I should have said "Rand believes this is the best match for the premises." I'm not sure if I believe it.

Personally, the ideal system would be one where I lived a life of luxary without working. I don't know what the hell Rand was thinking :-)

Also, you're describing the end-game of capitalism. I don't think that criticism is all that important in non-end game situations.

>Too bad I couldn't get to any conference this year. We could have discussed this over another couple of Jägermeisters :)

Ah, Jaggy. It goes down so smooth.

I'll make sure to have a Jag toast in Phoenix for you!