As Featured in The Map Is Indestructible by O.G. Rose
On How Facts and Worldviews are Facts/Worldviews, and How to Be Human is to Situate
Facts are “facts” within a network of assumptions about what constitutes the truth. However, they can be appealed to in order to legitimize this network and/or framework, as if transcendent and “above” the framework within which they are situated and “factualized,” per se. Ironically though, without the framework, the facts wouldn’t even be facts: to transcend the framework would be to transcend the factual. In this way, to deal with facts is to deal with facts/worldviews, ergo what we might call “factviews.”
If I claim it is “a fact that balls fall when dropped,” I am operating within a framework in which “balls are balls” (versus collections of atoms), gravity (always) works, balls are that-which-fall-when-dropped (and so something that can float isn’t a ball), and so on. In other words, the fact “that balls fall when dropped” is a fact within a structure of (right or wrong) assumptions and notions about the world. To say “facts are facts within frameworks” isn’t to say “all facts aren’t true” (for there are true frameworks), but that facts can only be facts within frameworks (within contexts). It isn’t false to say, “A ball falls when dropped” — for within the framework and “type of reality” in which such is such, it is indeed the case. The point is that this fact is situated upon the presence of the framework; the fact isn’t non-contingent. A fact isn’t its own context; it doesn’t “stand on its own,” per se.
Facts are not “stand alones,” as if they, regardless the framework, “facts stand as facts.” Facts are inseparable from frameworks and/or worldviews, as frameworks and worldviews cannot exist without creating facts. If we believe in God, it can become “a fact” that worship is a good use of time; if we don’t believe in God, it can become “a fact” that worship is a waste of time. We cannot believe in God without creating “a fact” about the usefulness of worship, as we cannot disbelieve in God without doing the same. Facts “point toward” worldviews, as worldviews “point toward” facts (again, there are not “facts and worldviews,” only “facts/worldviews,” per se). Is this relativism? Is this saying there is no truth? Not at all: we are saying that one fact cannot be a fact without something else being a fact, which requires something else to be a fact — all facts are “networks of facts.” We are always dealing with “situations” and “consistency,” never just “points” and “isolated correspondence.” Even when true, facts never stand alone (which means there are always entire situations we could explore and get lost in…a Pynchon Risk always seems present…).
What does this mean? This suggests that to think is to “situate”: we are never dealing with “free floating” points. We discuss Leibniz often in O.G. Rose, ever-indebted to Anthony Morley, and we might say here that we are arguing all thinking is Geometric not simply Algebraic, and yet perhaps there is incentive for a subject to act as if “facts are just facts” in order to deny the presence of a situation that the subject may or may not (subconsciously, indirectly…) organize and design to the subject’s benefit — or detriment. In line with the thought presented in “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment” by O.G. Rose, humans must be aware of how they are “situation creators” in being “fact creators/finders”; if not, they might find themselves perpetually stuck in “false situations” that erroneously orientate what constitutes “true and false.” In “false situations” or “false networks,” what is true is still false, and what is false is also still false, but because what is true, within the situation, can “appear” true, it can strike the consciousness as “objectively true,” when in fact the whole structure in which the truth is situated might be false. (Please note here I don’t mean “true” is the narrower sense referring to “the nonrational,” as often employed in O.G. Rose; I mean the term here more generally.)
As a cow that never encounters the fences of the field cannot define “free range” from “freedom,” so the individual within a “false situation” who doesn’t know he or she is in a false situation, doesn’t know that what he or she believes is “true” is in fact only “situationally true,” when the situation itself is false. Humans create, by their choices, the worlds or situations in which what constitutes “being true” is (and so what is the groundwork for “being rational”), even if those worlds and situations, in of themselves, aren’t true. This being the case, we must be able to identity not only what is true and false within a situation, but whether the situation itself is true or false — a second step which can require a lot, seeing as we are “always already” in a situation and/or map. Unaware of this, the truth we realize within a situation might function to distract us from the falsity of the situation overall. As a result, we can find ourselves increasingly stuck within false situations, thinking all the while that we are true. Worse yet, if we aren’t aware how we are “situation creators,” we may unintentionally contribute to the formation of a false “being true” or “situation,” within which “being rational” might entail doing what is false. And we are always “situated” and “situating”…
I
Every phenomenon carries upon it “fact-ness,” per se: if it “is,” a “fact is” (or so “appears”: for a thing to “appear” is for a thing to “appear in-fact-ness”). In me being, the fact “Dan is Dan” comes into being, as in being a cat, the fact “cat is cat” comes into being. And yet “Dan is Dan” can only manifest because “humans are humans,” internal organs work, the universe works…a single fact cannot come into being unless there is a network of facts to “catch it” and/or “support it,” per se. Hence, worldviews do not come from facts so much as facts and worldviews arise together. This doesn’t mean facts aren’t true; rather, it means that what a given person considers “a fact” is relative to what a person thinks is the correct framework through which to interpret “what is.” People don’t so much have “facts and worldviews” so much as they have “facts/worldviews” — the line where one ends and the other begins is indistinguishable. We are “always already” dealing with networks and situations, and yet we can think “fact by fact by fact” as if facts exist and manifest sequentially and “one by one” (Algebraic). This is not so: facts arise together, which means that to think we must think situations, networks, and consistency — which arguably is impossible for us to do perfectly and necessarily means we are ideological. (What then are we doing when we think (we think)?)
If we were an atom and said, “It’s a fact that cats are cats,” though what we claim would be true, it would also be nonsense: atoms have never experienced cats; atoms lack a framework by which to translate the fact into something sensible or meaningful. Additionally, if an atom were to say to another, “It’s a fact that cats don’t exist,” all “empirical evidence” would suggest this was the case: no atom has observed a cat, and so the atoms would have every reason to believe “cats don’t exist.” And relative to atoms, this is reasonable, and yet cats exist.
Alright, so what do we do when we say, “This or that is a fact?” To be in the world is to be amongst facts, and most of the time, we don’t pay them must attention (they “work” like Heidegger’s doorknob or fall under “the certainty deterrence” we discussed with Wittgenstein). “Trees are trees,” “cats are cats,” “people are people” — all of these are facts which we are constantly surrounded by, and yet we rarely even think of them “as facts” (they usually lie “in the background,” unnoticed). They just “are,” experienced (hardly even that), so what would bring us to say, “Trees are trees,” or something similar? What would compel us to “pull out” a fact from “the network of facts” in which every phenomenon is situated and experienced within (often “invisibly”)? Well, we’re likely pushing an agenda, trying to win a debate, justify a worldview…it is hard to imagine any situation in which we would draw attention to facts without having a reason to do so. Sure, but is it always nefarious? No, but if we don’t at least allude to the whole “network” or “situation” from which the fact arises and comes, the likelihood our act proves problematic is higher. In other words, a space in which people are exchanging facts as if “stand alone facts,” versus “debating between worlds” (from places of “faithful presence”), is likely detrimental (as we’ll expand on in O.G. Rose).
Every worldview arises with (a set of) facts; likewise, there is no (set of) facts that doesn’t arise within a being or worldview. Facts are always “toward” a worldview, as a worldview is always “toward” facts, and yet we can think of facts as that which transcends worldviews and subjectivity, when in fact they are always located within them. That’s not to say facts are never true or that some facts are not reliable or regular between people (like “balls falls when dropped”), but that they aren’t true in a “stand alone” way (they are “always already” world-ed). Facts and worldviews are inseparable, and this point applies even to science, for science requires observation, which is always relative to the nature of the being that is observing (the science and observations of humans the size of atoms would be very different from the science of normal sized humans). This isn’t to say that science isn’t true or irrelevant; in fact, it’s one of our greatest tools for thinking. Rather, it is to say that science doesn’t transcend subjectivity, even though we appeal to science as if it does, and yet at the same time it is erroneous to treat science like it isn’t true in a way different from simple preference. Rather, the point is simply that science is “conditioned” and “situated.”¹
II
In the same way that “a fact” suggest a world, so too we can realize that for humans to act is to “situate” and/or “create situation.” To move a cup from one table to another is to change what constitutes “a fact”; the framework “behind” this fact (the “because”) is perhaps that “I wanted to bring my son a cup of water.” For a reason not readily located in materiality, I changed materiality, and relative to me, the “because” behind the action and the action itself are merged. But this might not be the case to my son: my son may interpret my actions as meaning, “I don’t think he can take care of himself.” However, the “because” and the “situation” unified relative to me, this interpretation may never dawn upon me. Regardless, the movement of the cup would have never occurred without the reason for moving it: the material fact would have never emerged without the metaphysical (fact of) the framework or reason which motivated me to move it (which brings to mind “Sensualization” by O.G. Rose). Without the framework, there would be no fact, and without the fact, the framework could be meaningless (though that isn’t to say it wouldn’t be present, just inconsequential and perhaps indeterminable).
To create a situation is to create a standard against which “being true” is defined, and what constitutes “being true” to me determines what constitutes “being rational” (relative to it). If we have a short-temper and yell at others randomly, we create situations that give people “objective realities” by which to determine it is rational to avoid us. Perhaps we only yelled so often because of something that happened to us when we were young, but relative to those we yell at, the only truth they can know is that “they are yelling,” not “they are yelling because of what happened when they were younger.” Relative to the truth of “they are yelling,” it is rational to avoid us, though relative to the truth of “they are yelling because of what happened when they were younger,” it might be rational to find out what’s wrong and to help us walk through it. Others though don’t readily have access to that “because” — they only encounter the situation.
Situations do not “wear on their face” the reason for the situation (to allude to Cardinal Newman): the motivation and reason is always “beneath” (“invisible”), which means we must interpret and explore. However, when we create a situation, the “because” and “what is happening” are one; relative to us, we experience both “the situation” and the “because” of the situation, but others only experience “the situation.” As a result, our experience can make us forget that others don’t have access to the “because” like we do; hence, we can fail to realize that the “being true” or situation that we create and present to others is not the same as the “being true” and situation we are experiencing. What we experience is a “situation” and a “because,” while others only experience a “situation.” This can cause misunderstanding and trouble; furthermore, people might have incentive to “create situations” that people can get lost in and misinterpret precisely to hide their “because” (“conflicts of mind” can be weaponized, I fear…)
III
To think is to world, either through creation or realization, and in this way we might think of humans as “situational beings,” which by extension means humans can also be “situation creators” (intentionally or unintentionally). If I leave a cup on a table, I am creating a situation in which a person can walk into a room and find a cup on a table. Hence, I create a situation where a person can encounter an “objective reality” of “a cup on a table.” If I tell my child, “You could have played harder than you did,” though I may mean this to inspire my child, I may unintentionally, relative to the child, create a situation that functions as an “objective reality” that “My dad is disappointed in me” and “I’m untalented and shouldn’t play football.” For good and for bad, by speaking, I have created a situation that my child must deal with, understand, and interpret relative to his way of thinking. Of course, I know what I mean, and I know what the situation that I have created is supposed to do (inspire him), but that doesn’t necessarily matter. My son interprets the situation differently, and it should be noted that the very fact interpretation is always involved in thinking suggests that we are always dealing with situations versus linear points and information. If humans were “point-to-point”-creatures, per se, we would not have to deal with interpretation, for we could say that interpretation is what follows when I cannot understand things “whole and entire” all at once and must rather understand them according to multiple dimensions.
If a tree was “just a tree,” there would be little to interpret, but because a tree is made of particles, belonged to my grandmother, was planted ten years ago, is an oak instead of a dogwood, and so on, there is a need for processing, multi-perspectivism, and understanding, all of which means we need to interpret (if there was no possibility for error and/or “difference,” perhaps the words “understand” and “interpret” would basically be similes). “Interpret” is a word we can also associate with “translate,” and there is a way in which when we experience a tree we are “interpreting/translating/processing” it to us to meet us in a way we can understand, but critically we cannot do this suddenly and all at once. It takes time, suggesting that thinking is more temporal than spatial, and that means there is room for error. The very possibility of “error” in of itself suggests we are dealing with situations (versus say that everything is relative and nothing is true), and this would mean error isn’t a testament against situations and maps but evidence of their presence.² ³ Where there is (possibility for) error, there is interpretation, and to fear error is to fear interpretation (alluding to Hegel), which here we are suggesting means we are afraid of situations (and reasonably so, I should note, given that situations are maps and mazes in which we might get lost…).
“Interpretation” as a word only seems to have meaning if it is possible to understand a thing differently without necessarily being wrong. If things were Algebraic, we could understand things rightly or wrongly, but I’m not sure what it would mean to “interpret” things. A world of situations is a world of interpretation, and interpretation can be wrong: thus, to think is to risk error, and furthermore we might say that “to think is to explore.” “Explore” here is an important term, for it suggests that thinking is a navigation and journey through a potential maze (“A Pynchon Risk”), which is to say that wherever humans are there will also be mazes, precisely because there will be maps. Does this mean our maps are mazes (an odd contradiction)? Aren’t maps about escaping mazes? In one way, but maps also let you know if we are in a maze or not, and before we might have been able to convince ourselves that we weren’t in a maze. Also, the world is “always already” there, regardless if we think about it, so it seems erroneous to say “mental maps make the world a maze”; rather there is something maze-like about the world, and furthermore a map can be confusing and hard to read, and thus can be experienced “like a maze.” A map can also help us realize we are in a maze and so help us see the world as a maze, meaning that “the map” and “the maze” can arise together even if they are not equivalent. In this way, to think and experience, since we are always dealing with networks, is to deal with “a map-maze.” This is not a term I will use often, but here at least I think there is value to realize the overlaps between “maps” and “mazes” (both often employed metaphors in the work of O.G. Rose).
Could facts “correct” this difficult tendency of the brain? No, for facts are not “no knowledge proofs”: without knowledge, “exploration,” or understanding, they do not automatically force consent upon viewing them, which means there is “space” for the brain to avoid the truth and by extension avoid change. We know there were processes which arose to them, and we have good reason to question those processes (the glance does not force ascent). Furthermore, facts are always facts in networks of facts, which suggests the facticity of one fact is contingent upon another, which is contingent upon another…on and on, meaning that to really “get” one fact we must get many, further suggesting that facts cannot “just be facts,” as if “no knowledge proofs.” Our plight is not so simple, but problematically we can imagine otherwise, daydreaming our way into a maze where we might end up lost and not wake up and realize we are lost until far too late. Perhaps we wake up because we start thinking and look at our “map,” which makes us realize we are in a “maze,” which is when the anxiety sets in. Hard to say, but it is hard to really think one thought and it not lead to thinking many, possibly constructing a great maze right before us. Perhaps best not to think at all, to just keep daydreaming in a maze we only ever experience as a hallway…
To emphasize: to think is to interpret because thinking is situational, and where there is a situation there is something we must navigate, which means there is something like a maze. Perhaps an easy maze, so much so that it hardly even seems like a “maze,” but the material and form of a “maze” are present all the same. But oddly this particular maze is a result of thinking that in the same act seems to generate a map for that maze or by which the existence of the map can be realized, suggesting that to think is to “map-maze,” per se: we create/realize a map and maze at the same time. Maps can let us know we are in a maze when we didn’t know we were in one, and maps can also be wrong. To think is to situate, which means “we map,” which means we are risk of misreading our map, getting lost, being overwhelmed — and so we can start to glimpse why we might find incentive to somehow convince ourselves that we aren’t dealing with “situations” but with “points” (not Geometry but Algebra). This is because once we accept that we are “always already” dealing with situations and networks, thinking becomes far more difficult and existential. Better perhaps to convince ourselves that we are dealing “with just data,” that facts are points not “factviews”…
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Notes
¹Not all subjectivity is equally true though: the truthfulness of subjectivity varies, and some “subjective truth,” relative to us, can seem indistinguishable from something like “objective truth” (like two rivers that cross and merge). The point is that even what we consider “objectively truth” (whatever this phrase might mean) is located within subjectivity, conditions, and/or a network: we determine what constitutes “subjectivity” and “objectivity” within “a kind of subjectivity,” per se, relative to our ontology.
²Error doesn’t suggest a way out of situation, ideology, and map, but in fact is the condition of their possibility, which is to say that it does not follow that because we can err that we are free. Yes, error is necessarily a condition for freedom (for in error we might “see” maps), but it alone is not sufficient. We need something more, say a movement from Understanding (A/A) to Reason (A/B) in Hegel.
³And yet “error” (like “ignorance” versus “true ignorance’) can function as evidence to us that if we were “in an erroneous situation” we would realize it, when in fact error is “in” a situation and thus not readily positioned to make us realize the faultiness of situation as a whole.
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