Friday, December 02, 2016

Trump Surrogate Hughes: "There's No Such Thing...Anymore, As Facts"

You in the reality-based community will probably find it shocking for an actual grow-up human person to say:
And so Mr. Trump's tweet, amongst a certain crowd—a large part of the population—are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some—amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up.
But...uh...well...I think that's shocking...but...huh?
   Maybe the Trump camp is trying find some common ground with the pomo/PCs...

2 Comments:

Anonymous Critical Spirits said...

Wow. Hughes' argument is basically that because people dispute the claims that are purported to show facts, there are in fact (LOL) no such things as facts. Or: because many of the claims that people typify as facts turn out not to be, then there exists no such thing as a fact.

It's something along the lines of: "If we can just slap the label 'fact' on any 'ole claim, then the word is vacuous because many of the things we call facts turn out to not be, therefore facts don't exist." "Also, the sheer incidence of disagreement as to what the facts are demonstrate further that there is no such category, or that the category is empty." (I'm also anticipating that there is a line of reasoning implied such that if a claim represents a fact, then *everyone* (like, every single person of a sound mind) would already assent to the claim)

1. This is some critical thinking 101 depravity.

2. The conditional might very well be true, in that if we settle on a broad, liberal usage of the word 'fact,' then the word (the locution) itself becomes nearly meaningless..BUT THIS DOES NOT MEAN THERE IS NO OBJECT THAT CORRESPONDS TO OUR IDEA OF WHAT A FACT IS. So what, is Hughes an epistemic nihilist? There are no true sentences? Is it not true that I'm typing this comment right now?

Blah, I don't know why I'm explaining this to you..I know that you know this already.I think that I've simply lost my patience for this brand of thinking.

I could use some words of encouragement.

1:50 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Testify, brother, testify.

She sounds like one of my intro students. And not a particularly bright one.

Uh...encouragement, eh...the truth will be victorious...in the extremely long run...if there is an extremely long run?

2:10 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home