Truths and Facts
From Mbscientific_wiki
Physical vs Abstraction, Fact vs Truth
As stated, corroborated, better yet applied abstractions change the very notion of what is physical. Lets analyze that further. Take an example from physics, our model of electron is an abstraction that gives it a spatial reach into infinity. So does our model of a star. We associate a force field with them. In the latter case we call it gravity, in the former case we call it the electric field. Now, there is nothing in our 5 physical senses that can detect them directly. But we indirectly experience them, like when something falls on your head or when you see the electric discharge of lightning. So is the electrical field physical or an abstraction? I suppose if you are an electrical engineer making motors, then it is as physical as it gets. But if you don't know anything about it, say you are a Kalahari bushman and somebody shows up one day and waves his hands trying to explain the electric field, then to you it must come out as an arbitrary abstraction that has nothing to do with you. The point is that as applied abstractions get corroborated and the person gets it, his very notion of the physical expands, his aperture of perception expands. Now the corroboration may take a physical form, like the electric motor. Or, the corroboration may be in terms of observation, like gravity expressed in Kepler's equations of planetary motion.
We have to be precise enough in our definition of perception to include both the bushman and the engineer. The definition has to account for the ever-varying apertures of perception. We can break perception down into direct physical, physical abstraction and pure abstraction. Direct physical perception is that which impresses upon our 5 senses directly. Physical abstractions come in corroborated and uncorroborated variety, though that may be subjective, one person's corroboration may be another person's bogus. And pure abstractions are as in pure mathematical or artistic varieties.
So far we have examined physical versus abstract from a personal perspective. Being social creatures, there is a social element that comes into play that must be examined as well. What is truth? Lets look at it in detail. I see a wall, everybody else sees the wall. We all agree that that is a wall. So that is a wall, and that's the truth. You see what happened? Not only I corroborated it, but everybody else did as well. So that is established as truth collectively. The social element is crucial in establishing truth. Lets look at another example. In medieval Europe, it was established truth that earth was at the center of the universe. It was God's decree. Not only everybody agreed, everybody had to agree, or else. When Copernicus came up with a model that said earth rotated around the sun, it was heresy. When Father Giordino Bruno said hey this Copernicus guy may have a point, they burned him alive at the stake. And when Galileo said I have a point on the subject, being Pope's life long buddy, they just put him under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Lets bring this argument to modern day. Say a plummer, I assume, would agree that planets revolve around the sun. That is the truth. But is that tangible to him, did he corroborate that Saturn rotates around the sun personally? No. But, given that everybody says it does, and he has some measure of confidence because we are actually launching spacecraft to these planets, so we must know where they are and how they move. So he is convinced of the truth by social consensus.
That is the point, there is an element of perceived reality by social consensus that has to be taken into account, even if the consensus is blatantly false. There are, believe it or not, people that take it as God's truth that God created earth in six days, created man (Adam) out of clay and woman (Eve) out of Adams Rib. That is God's truth by social decree, and no matter what anybody says, that is the truth to them!
So, one's aperture of perception is directed towards inherent reality, towards others in one's group/society, as well as internally to already established knowledge trees in mind. New or amalgamated knowledge trees take input from all of these sources to coalesce.
And there is the unevenness of social equality to factor in. Lets do a thought experiment. Say there is a group of people, 3 individuals are observing something (figure below left). For the sake of simplicity, lets say what they see has elements of blue, red and green in it. But it is a fuzzy (uncertain) call, as reality almost always is. One person is leaning towards red, the other blue and the third green. Now they all perceive the object, perceive each other's reaction (conviction) and they also have a measure of their own internal conviction. Common experience tells you that the winning vote is the one from the person who pushes his vote over the others by the power of conviction, personality, or just kick ass aggression. So in the end the rest of the group capitulates and calls the damned thing blue (figure below, right), just to get the kick ass guy off of their case. I bet this has happened to you, you might even be the kick ass guy! (AP= Aperture of Perception).
Incidentally, the same thing happens to groups as well as individuals. Groups with higher levels of conviction, force of personality, aggression, etc. tend to dominate the social order, even if it comes to a fight, even if they are fewer in numbers. Much more on this in the next chapter, Our Social Evolution.
Kick ass people not withstanding, ultimate corroboration must be directly physical, registering on our 5 senses, and everybody must agree for an abstraction to become fact (physical reality). So truth to a person is subjective to their social circumstances. Facts on the other hand must be socially invariant and subject to personal, physical corroboration. Logical inference comes with a confidence factor. That confidence might per 100 percent, as in logical proof or statistical certainty. Or, an abstraction may be in strong logical or statistical correlation with something that is ultimately corroborated.
Perception integrated over a person's life constitutes his perceived reality. Now that gets really fuzzy because of the differences in the aperture of perception in different people. One's personal reality may differ from another's significantly. But since it is the integration of perception over the span of a life, then it seems reasonable to similarly give it the components of direct physical, applied and pure abstractions.
So, to sum up, there is The Inherent Reality within which we exist, parts of which we may or may not perceive. The portion of this inherent reality that we perceive becomes what we then internalize as our perceived reality. Therefore when we speak of reality, what we mean is our internalized sense of perceived reality. Inherent reality, to us, is by definition abstract. The portion of it that registers on our minds becomes abstractions to us, the portion of it that registers on our 5 senses becomes physical to us. Further, abstractions that are corroborated, or better yet implemented, also become physical to us, in time expanding our aperture of perception. Truth is the amalgam of perceptions, corroborated or otherwise, that is highly subject to social consensus and belief systems. Facts must be physically corroborable and socially invariant (we often use the words "truth" and "fact" interchangeably, they are not).
It must be noted that even facts are artifacts of us and by definition subject to our point of view. This is important because we often mistake our perceived reality, even though thoroughly corroborated and factual, with Inherent reality. Physicists are notorious for doing that. There once was the Newtonian model of the Universe. Then there was Einstein's model of the universe. Now there is talk of M theory and a multi-verse. The point is that all of these models, even if thoroughly corroborated, are just that, models. These facts, as we call them, are facts to us. I think that point can't be over-emphasized, our aperture of perception has by definition a limited view of the Inherent Reality. Any model we internalize as reality, though thoroughly corroborated and factual, is by definition subject to that point of view, to our aperture of perception.
So my perceived reality, at the highest level, is composed of abstractions. Subsets of these abstractions, which have functional values, form knowledge trees. Nodes of these trees form knowledge classes. Elements that comprise these classes are truths. A subset of these elements that are thoroughly corroborated form facts.
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