On 8/17/2014 5:51 PM, LizR wrote:
But we're talking about a very precise usage, in which it is important whether, say, a fact about the state of the world is just somehow in our minds (as comp suggests, I suppose) or whether it's actually out there in a real world, separate from us, our ideas, our theories, etc. So, for example, if we follow Brent's usage and say we "invent" the law of gravity, this may be true in a trivial sense, but obscures the fact that we may actually believe there are real gravitating objects outside our use of language, equations, models, etc.
We may or we may not. And to say "discover" implies that we both believe and that our belief is true.
Whereas if we say we have "discovered" it that brings with it the assumption that there actually exists a real world external to ourselves that we can discover.
To say Newton discovered his theory of gravity would be to assert it is true - which we can't be sure of, and in fact we're now pretty sure it's wrong. Einstein invented his theory of gravity, i.e. general relativity, which was better but we're pretty sure it's wrong too. That's why Bruno uses []p to express belief and to distinguish it from knowledge []p & p. So in precise usage, we invent theories not discover them. Of course there's not a really clear line between unreflective theories, "I have a visual perception of a table." and what in unphilosophical discourse we call a fact "There's a table." But almost every "fact" is theory laden. The exception would be one step beyond Descarte, "There is thinking.", which I think is why Bruno says consciousness is all or nothing. And our theories, even the simple ones implicit in language, always go beyond what is directly perceived. That's part of what makes them useful; they classify and evaluate and predict. They are not just tabulations of observations (like Kepler's tables).
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