“Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions: 'Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!' They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, 'Observe!' is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems.”
The trouble revolves around how much judgement is required on any given subject. On the right subject people can come perilously close to laying out facts devoid of interpretation; on the wrong subject either no one can or no one believes anyone can - which is pretty much the same thing.
A Nihilist is more stable than you think. A tree doesn’t need purpose to grow, and neither does a human. Instead they follow a process that’s expressed by the body in response to the environment. For humans we not only have physical sensation but also memories, ideas, and thoughts. Without a worldview these all still happen, and your body will still react to your thoughts and sensations without a purpose. A healthy Nihilist would not feel sad about having no meaning, since they never had one anyway; on reflection, they might feel happy that there’s no obligation to respond other than how their situation moves them to. A Nihilist can do what is morally right without the restrictions of a purpose that proscribes them to do otherwise.
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Longer take:
Defining what is morally right requires value judgement, and Nihilism rejects morality. What Is (facts) can't tell us what we ought to do. [1]
To build a moral framework on what one ought to do, you must necessarily ascribe meaning and value judgement otherwise it can't claim to be moral and it would merely be actions you perform devoid of meaning.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Why do you think meaning is required for making a value judgement? I can very easily claim that killing humans is wrong without relying on any metaphysics, just like I can claim the sky is blue. Both are beliefs based on reasons; meaning can be discarded.
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Morals/meaning have a shaky absolute foundation, in that deep down nothing probably matters and the universe is indifferent.
However I'm a person, born in modern society; everything has relative meaning even if the epistemological foundations are shaky.
I see Nihilism similar the mathematicians trying to prove foundational math [1], and similarly doubting it's actually fundamental.
Yet here we are using math to amazing things! Math doesn't need to be true for it to be useful. I find useful things valuable.
Meaning, in particular shared meaning, is similarly valuable and worth pursuing even if they can't be proven.
I agree but I think the breakdown is even stronger than that: Nihilism gives you no way to decide what is "better" in the first place.
If you've gotten to Nihilism, you have a blank slate to build what you Do believe.
Ascribing meaning to things has value. For example, human life in Nihilism is unimportant, which may or may not be true, but we all benefit from the shared belief in the value of life even if it's technically wrong.
So don't stop at Nihilism as the conclusion but rather use it as a canvas and build up what's meaningful to you. With any luck, others will find the same things as you meaningful.
It was my way out of Nihilism. The pursuit of being good is more important and valuable than us all agreeing on what is good (or even that good exists at all). And given that goal, all you can do is try your best.
Also why "unbiased" reporting can never truly exist (however wonderful that would be).
The choice to report something is itself a judgment of the topic.
Within that topic, you can present all the facts that you know, or just the ones that support a certain narrative.
Let's say you are reporting on the elevated rate of gun violence in Chicago compared to other US cities.
Which of the following facts do you include in your story? (For sake of argument, assume these are factually accurate statements.)
1. Chicago votes predominately Democrat.
2. Chicago has a higher poverty rate than other cities.
3. Chicago has a large black and Hispanic population.
4. Chicago has more gangs than other cities.
there's a lot to discuss on this topic without "contextualizing". you can report on whether gun violence is up or down YoY, whether the percent delta is above the noise floor of the last few years, compare against trends in similar US cities, that sort of thing.
once you start including facts like 1, 2, 3, or 4, you are crafting a narrative, whether it is explicit or not. it's irresponsible to include this stuff unless you are prepared to make a detailed analysis of whether these factors actually predict crime, thorough comparisons against other cities where the same facts are true, possibly some regression analysis. most journalists lack the time and capacity to do this.
By mentioning certain remotely related facts, it looks as if you're hinting at giving an interpretation of the central facts.
If you want to convey facts about a topic like gun violence in Chicago, then stick to facts closely relevant to it. Like different ways of slicing up the data. You might show a density map of where in Chicago most of it has happened over a certain period, or demographics about gun violence.
Now if you want to explore a link between gun violence and something else like poverty, then you have to get your ducks in a row about that. Such a subject deserves to be treated by a sophisticated researcher with an expert background in statistics. If that researcher postulates some kind of link, they have to look at all the reasons why that might be false, not only true.
If you want to preempt those accusations of bias, then you need to cover your bases and present all the facts that the public may believe to be relevant. Even those facts which you personally believe to be irrelevant distractions from the narrative you prefer.
That's not the same as avoiding biases.
You can't pander to both at the same time. What you can do, and typically is done, is pander to one or the other by conforming to one narrative or the other, choosing or omitting facts according to the needs of one narrative or the other. That is pandering.
That doesn't mean people should disregard journalism done from "journalism hot spots". But it's an important thing to keep in mind, and I think it bears especially on the question of how much emotional valence we should want invested in stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness
https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=%22theor...
Not always true. The goal of facts is to create trust and order. So when disputing "facts", it will initially cause chaos and disorder. Additionally, challenging a "fact" should come with reasoning (usually through the scientific method), and not an unresearched response. For example, flat-earthers deny a fact, yet offer no research. In such a case, a derogatory label is provided.
When you or I drive/walk, what do we experience: flat earth, of course. In other words, both flat-earthers and spherical-earthers experience the same. Further, flat-earthers reason that if the earth were to be round, one would fall off of the surface of the earth on a sea/land travel. Since such an incident never occured, flat-earthers reason that the earth can't be spherical. Flat-earthers reasoning is not spurious, they are entirely reasonable.
How to help them, you have to make them pilots and fly at 50000 feet, and they can experience the sphericalness of the earth directly. In other words, you can't transfer knowledge via authority. That's why there are disputes about what sciences are? Are sciences reduced to a set of theories, or just experiments, both theories and experiments? What happens when one theory gets supplanted by another, better theory? These are deeper questions about knowledge.
When I am sick, I trust some or doctor about his knowledge to diagnose. In some cases, even patients start doing research on their own (you can find many stories on this forum) to figure out when the doctors are not helpful. No one creates chaos, if one is genuinely seek knowledge. Instead of seeking knowledge, one seeks fame, followers, etc. Or as the other commenter said 'when so much energy is spent trying to undermine one's opponent'. That's a different story.
We have to be careful about psuedo-winning against those who create chaos. Here is an interesting piece by Late Prof. Larry Laudan: "Science at the Bar--Causes for Concern" [1], originally appeared in Science, Technology, and Human Values 7 (41):16-19 (1982)
Yes there is. People who say otherwise just want to push their partizan viewpoint.
You can present non-biased facts, it's just that it's hard and not financially rewarding because when you're non-biased you loose the polarized audience. Sticking to a single world view gives you a loyal audience.
Behind every human presentation there is a judgment, sure, but many facts simply exist in nature, ready to be observed and judged without a preexisting agenda.
I'm naturally suspicious of people who put "People's" in front of words where the word should be implied. It's like a People's Republic, you know? What's Zinn's agenda? Perhaps he is telling on himself, in this quote.
There really aren't any circles in the physical universe. There aren't any ellipses either. I'm not sure about lines. You're going to hit Planck's constant and the speed of light in any example you name.
Charge seems quantized, so you can probably have the integers and fractions, but real numbers are right out.
In your math example, yes, pi is a constant of nature that simply is. However, in choosing pi over Euler's number or the square root of -1 for your comment, you've made an implicit judgement about their relative importance. That's probably inconsequential for most math facts, but could be a lot more impactful for people presenting history or the news.
We never know any data before interpreting it through theories. All observations are, as Popper put it, theory-laden, and hence fallible, as all our theories are. . . . The growth of knowledge consists of correcting misconceptions in our theiories.
Pi is a great example. Did circles exist before minds existed? Or are circles approximations of the observed world?
But we need to do it so that we can stop talking.
>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.