[ExI] Semiotics and Computability

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Spencer Campbell <lacertilian at gmail.com> wrote:

> I reject the notion that toothaches and heart attacks are
> equally real, on the basis that inherent "reality" does indeed lie
> on a spectrum rather than being binary.

I think it fair to say that either x is real or else x is not real. I also understand that some people here do not distinguish or care about the difference between reality and ~reality. They have medications for that. :)

> I do, however, reject the notion of a mountain being an
> objective fact. They're all just hills which we've decided, by a
> subjective value judgment, are simply too tall to be called hills!

But mountains do exist, no matter how you describe them. Yes?

> In fact, I'm having difficulty convincing myself that there
> could be any such thing as an objective fact at all

You've fallen into the hallucination. :)

>  Note that "empirical" means "based on experience", not
> "inviolably true". 

The word "empirical" needs some disambiguation.

On the one hand people mean by the word "empirical" something like "objectively existent facts in the world, which any observer can verify". But on the other hand people mean by it something like "facts which exist in the world, including for example the facts of an entity's subjective experience".

Clearly some things exist in the second sense that do no exist in the first sense. We can consider it an empirical fact that your dentist, for example, considers it true that you have a real toothache. Right?

-gts