[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #72 EVEN FACTS NEED EXPLAINING

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #72

November 8, 2021

Facts #3 

 

EVEN FACTS NEED EXPLAINING

 

 

Once you have a health skepticism about "the facts" that you are regularly
fed by the media, you can prepare yourself to think through those facts to
determine their validity, truthfulness, and usefulness.  That facts are
critically important, no one will deny.  To think clearly we need facts.
And we need them for many reasons.

 

For one thing, we need facts in order to be sane.  As facts ground us to
what is real and actual, they save us from living in an imaginary, pretend
world.  That's why we scour for facts.  We collect them, analyze them,
interpret them, and then use them to build knowledge.  Learning works best
when it is connected to reality.  Alfred Korzybski noted this in his
classic, Science and Sanity:

"Men do not 'go crazy' in response to facts as such.  They tend to 'go
crazy' as they get away from facts, out of touch with reality-when what they
say and think no longer stand in an adequate relationship to their world of
not-words." (1933/1994, p. 175).

 

When a statement is "true-to-fact," rather than "false-to-fact," you can
build up good useful mental maps and take actions that will lead to being
effective and productive.  That's why it is so important to be able to
determine what is and is not a true factual statement.  Our lives depend on
it.  When you take any statement, ask, "Is it a fact or not?"  The answer
will always be, "It depends."  As noted in Neurons #71, it depends on
context, criteria, theory, level, and kind.

           "That's a rubber mat."  Visually it may look like it is made of
rubber, but is it?  How will you test it?  When a manufacture calls
something 'a rubber mat,' that labeling does not make it so.

           "She is our third child."    That fact is dependent on not
counting a child that die at birth.  In some cultures, they would count the
child that died as number three, so now there are four.  Here, facts are
influenced by the culture in which they arise.  A fact in one culture may
not be a cultural fact in another.

           "That is a big truck" "That is really loud music."  These are
relative facts because these "facts" depend on who is making the statement
and what criteria the person is using.  "Big" and "loud" in comparison to
what?  Here we actually have comparative deletions.

 

To be a clear, creative, and critical thinker, you have to be able to test
language to determine if something is factual or not.  So while we normally
think of facts as items that we trust and automatically treat as valid and
true, it is not wise to do that.  While advertisers present facts as
unquestionable and absolute, always keep in mind that it may not be so.  It
is not irrefutably true.  Check it out.  What kind of "facts" is being
presented?  At what level is it being offered?  In what context and what is
being left out?  According to what theory or assumption?  

 

Yet things are not that simple.  Facts, as statements that assert things,
are based on data - which keeps changing.  Korzybski explained in this way:

"Since no two things are the same and no one thing stays the same, your
inability to adjust to reality will be in proportion to the degree to which
you insist on certainty as to facts-and believe that you have achieved it."
(Korzybski, Science and Sanity, p. 187).

 

We often attempt to sneak a map-territory confusion into our conversations
and reason by talking, thinking, and feeling that some things are "facts"
-meaning, real, actual, "a real happening," etc.  Yet the term that we are
using is not so one-dimensional as it seems. 

 

So, facts are not the last word about an issue!   That why, more typical
than not, facts do not bring an end to an inquiry.  They are essential to
every inquiry if we are to build up robust knowledge about things.  We need
facts and so that's where we start, "What are the facts of a case?"  Then we
have to consider context, background, hidden premises, etc.

 

 

Post Script

After five years of false information used to keep a conspiracy theory
alive, John Durham's investigation has now led to indictment against Igor
Danchenko, for his work providing information to former British spy
Christopher Steele for the dossier.  He was the Russia analyst who
contributed key research to the so-called Steele dossier that detailed
alleged ties between ex-President Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016
election was arrested Thursday as part of a probe by special counsel John
Durham.  Finally, the facts of the case come out, although it is certainly
five years late.  As it turns out, the Russian hoax had nothing to do with
Trump and everything to do with the Clinton campaign.

 

www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/durham-probe-analyst-tied-to-christopher-steele-trum
p-russia-dossier-arrested.html                




www.neurosemantics.com/even-facts-need-explaining/ 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

 

 

132607 NeuroSemantics Executive Learning Front Cover

 

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