Wisconsin College of the Air; Introduction to the human enterprise; 15; Facts and values

The Wisconsin College of the air presents philosophy and the human enterprise selected from lectures recorded during the first semester in the classroom of Professor Max auto. In today's like their professor Otto continues the discussion of the interrelationship between facts and values. You will recall that last time Professor Otto spoke impromptu having forgot his notes in his opening remarks today grow out of that situation. Now here is Professor Otto. And that young man who was here last time. I was visiting. Said he thought. That that was a pretty good act I put off. He said he didn't believe for a minute that I'd left the papal home that I intended to bring what I memorized. The whole thing was a nice compliment. If that if I am as good an actor as Leonard. And I should have gone into something else if my life were not just part of the journey. And if you would have been one of the two young men talk to me

when I first discovered that I'd left that paper at all. I don't think you'd had an adoptable or if you would have had you wouldn't have had any doubt about it if you had been me. I don't remember what those young men said. And I suppose. I paid no attention to what they said because the one thing I was thinking about was what to do. I thought the best thing to do is to send you people home. But I didn't think I was fair to you so we talked. You know it was very urgent. I want to get that for quite a while. I said I'd read the quotations at your vociferous request. I'll read those for quotations today and it will go off. Pearl Buck facts are real of course. Or they would not be so constantly used to prove contradictory statements by persons opposing one another on two

sides of the same question. Facts are just so many bricks each an end in itself. But each nothing but great until it is fitted to other bricks to make a structure. The shape of that structure its meaning and its usefulness depend entirely on the mind behind the hand that picks up the bricks. And you remember he got a letter and he replied to the other in this way. What I meant by saying the facts are not real was what he said in the first letter is that facts have no meaning in themselves meaning in themselves. It is only when they're put together in sufficient numbers that they convey any truth. And even then on the way they are put together to Pen's their truth. You remember the old Easter story about the blind man to try to find out what an elephant was like. One took hold of its trunk and said an office like a branch of The Creator that the color of its tail and said the

elephant is like a snake. Each had hold of a fact. But neither had the truth. And then this quotation from how lucky I was which I felt most helpless and trying to reproduce for you at that. Time last Monday. As one grows older ones I've had cued towards facts changes. One begins to see her look. So far from being hard they now seem remarkably soft. Even when one thinks one has with much trouble succeeded at last in finding them. You stick your fist through them at any one point. The only hard facts one learns to see as one gets older are the facts of feeling. Emotion and sentiment are after all incomparably more solid than statistics so that when one wanders back and. Memory

through the field. Of life one has traversed. As I have in diligent search of hard facts one comes by carrying in one's arms a sheaf of feelings. They after all are the only facts. Hard enough to endure as long as life itself in your face. And then Amherst. Every five was brought here by some person. And there is not and there is none. That will not change and pass away before a person. Whose nature is broader than the person which is the fact. In question represents the goal of the quotation. I want to sum all that up. Now we've won from there some all add up.

I said something like this. Not in these words but this is what I was trying to argue that fact is not an independent self-existence self explanatory item metaphysical item is not that. The fact. Is an item of experienced reality. Maybe you'd like to take this down. I'm going to take it out. On the whole. This is movie lation and all is not a revelation this is just not the way things look to me. The fact is an item of experienced reality which tames to the status of fact. In virtue of being amused by someone has support for his demonstration of something.

That's not so bad either. Come think about it just look at it I think that's pretty good. Pretty good I mean it's pretty good as a statement of what I mean. And I couldn't walk or you know be nice to repeated the fact. See I began to fool around with this and changed a little bit so. I'm going to be the way I have a dollar here. The idea is the same. The fact is an item of experienced reality. Which attains its status as fact. In virtue of being used by someone. As his support for his demonstration of something he wants to demonstrate that's pretty much what I said.

Nah. Just watch this next step because the I know what. You might have felt and yesterday afternoon I got the feeling it very strongly last night when I read. About the. Political meeting in. Milwaukee and read about these revelations of people who don't seem to have any integrity at all. I said to myself well. There's no reason why somebody shouldn't take this thing that you have said and interpreted. As being the support. Of all of. That kind of attitude. After all what did you say. A fact is something that someone takes to be a fact. That's what you seem to have said. All. I want

just to get in here and I'm going wrong on the. Facts. Remember I said. Facts are made more than they're found in. Facts. Are not made out of hand. You just don't run around to make a few facts and have nothing to do this morning or you have a 10 minutes. They cation between duties between classes let's say let's make a few facts. Are not made out of hand like that. They're not made in a second place in the first place they're not made out of hand and second place and not made to satisfy a whim. They're made of something and the antecedent to the five they're made out of something what you're did not make. Their Man I was something antecedent

to fun. I mean something and you do the making. Blacks are our constituents or constituent elements of the concrete lowness of experience. That's James's friend concrete for us of the experience of all what you are now they call reality. They're made out of that. And they are married to certain specifications tool you can't just make them any old way you please. Saul. While it is true. At least you know when I say it is true I mean I believe it's true and I don't believe it's true without any evidence I've thought about a lot. While it is true that EF 5 is the

place where you stop seeking to turn around and begin explaining. The place where you stop is a place where you stop it is a place you don't just stop in your imagination. You stop in the concrete bonus of the experience and turn around and begin to explain. You have something to prove what I say. That's why you go in search of five. You aren't searching for facts all the time or something to prove you're in doubt about something all right. You go in search of evidence. And you finally go off and say here's a bit of evidence there's a bit of evidence and then you build up your case with this evidence. The place where used up. Maybe and satisfactory is a stopping place to somebody else.

He then takes your stopping place as his starting place and goes back. But he'll stop somewhere and where he stops will be his fact just as when I used up the YOU'RE fact. I'm saying that fact is not and I had a much metaphysical idea. It's a logical psychological biological all of us put together construct. A lot of experienced things in the interest of something that you want to do something you want to prove. All right now let's go a little deeper. Pearl Buck This is of last replies was Pearl Buck. I don't have luck Alice this is the philosopher who would have what Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This is a philosophy class whose ruffled women want to take a philosopher then the Josiah Royce. They'd say in Milwaukee that it gives no better. One of the profoundest man we have produced in this country on the very profound US or in all the history of thought one of the most laborious careful painstaking sharp. And comprehensive thinkers. More and more I begin to appreciate. What he tried to do. There's a quotation from him. We all of us from moment to moment. Have experience. Look at this. Look at that he said we have very bad we always from moment to moment have experience not we all of us from moment to

moment are reminders and experience you know we have experience this experience comes to us in part as a brute fact. I remember when I started this with a book from which this came to nice big volumes. Incidentally footnote before we get through I want to talk to you some day about the great books. And I think I'll bring those two volumes just to show you. Big. Tough. Well I studied these two books. Great experience it was to win one of my great teachers. And when it came to this this experience comes to us in part as a brute fact. He said that was Mr. McGill where he said the alternate. Route but I know it. Is the five.

That is a brutal. Line like elephants like that. According to Mr. Norris. Facts are. Ruled. By or not rude by Mr Macgillivray said this is an idealistic interpretation or it's great that you know what I'm talking law not doing it. No please you don't. Well I mean everything we all of us from moment to moment have experience. This experience comes to us in part as a brute fact he means. Just. Hard tough. On yielding. Rocky. What's a stuff. The flows down from a volcano of. Lava. Stylized brute fact. And Mr Macgillivray said. What I call facts. Ruth there are the only brute facts are facts. Druids.

Don't understand that. Sure you do. There the experience comes to us in part of brute fact light and shade sound and silence. Pain and grief and joy. All these just as data of sense of emotion of inner life in general. The means and ending of. Comes to you that way is just brute time is the means it's on its own spiritualized by your working upon. These given the facts flow by. And where they all. Where they all are we have our world would be too much a blind problem for us even to be puzzled by its meaningless presence. Not from the world in the individual voter who on page

56 they 57. Hadn't gone very far into it when I came. I read the whole to watch them study them hard. Or were. Going to look at this. A little bit. He's talking about the way things just come easy now he calls them brute facts I think Mr. Magoo always right you should not call him rude. You shouldn't designate them that. Doesn't seem to me you should call him 5 x even even don't call him fives you might try to explain what I mean by the whole thing and you shouldn't call him in or out or. Don't begin to call him names because as soon as you do that they cease to be what he means by rules. Some time ago I told some of you about this experience.

I will be talking to a neighbor of ours and suddenly I said to him what's up we just heard. No I said what's up. I just because I'm a bit anxious to make that because I was asking him what was that. I had just heard but obviously he hadn't heard what I heard had it he heard what he heard I heard what I heard. And I said to him What is that. We have just heard he said that what that bird call. Ya'll. Look at let's see what he's done. I was talking to him about something he had heard and he said Bird caw gave an interpretation of it. Was there anything on it that said the sound of it that said

bird call. Yes I said that bird call. He said all that's a bluejay. I don't like Blue Jays. Too many I'm around here. I'm on applying all the time. I don't like lying hotness. He saw that I was doubtful about I must of looked awfully said Don't you think the Blue Jay when I said no go. Or you go. What do you think it was. So I think it's a hawk. He laughed and he said a hawk. For a good very good. Oh Hawk this last atol I haven't seen a hawk around here for years. No. You just day we heard the sound again. We both looked involuntarily happens die. And there was a Hoff circling with circles and ever seeing the Hawks win that when they circle that way and go higher and higher and higher and and he said

more. I said Well. A couple days later I heard that sound again. This time it was coming from a spruce tree. My stall. And I went over and caught the bird in the act. The Blue Jays. I want to get out is this a sign. An interpretation of the Psalm. The. Interpretation of it is one thing the sound is another thing isn't it. I want to carry that on a little not three man but mainly the man I was talking to you but I want to know who the other three men

in order to make this thing a little less little more clear. Just heard of the. Little baby boy or girl. One some years ago I invented the pronoun to refer to them so you don't have to say. You don't even have to know whether it's a boy or girl you don't have to say he or she or him or heard him. I wanted to have it spread but didn't take all of my those nice little ideas language ideas thought ideas religious ideas thoughts offical ideas. I've tried to spread. I suppose you have to have you have to have got an advertising concern by cover make the thing go. I can get started anyway.

See him was six months old and is an active little devil always moving so I understand always moving arms and legs the other day looking out of the window. Sham. So I'll leave what I call a what I would have called a leaf if I'd been there. And shimmers mother said that for the first time Shem was completely quiet. No legs moving no arms moving for 15 minutes fascinated by that leaf one of the wonderful if we could find out what she was experiencing. What was she trying to do. We don't know. We never will know unless some time for do that once before we get to heaven and there we have a recovery of what we have for God.

But you forget what you've forgotten you used to do that famous jam where you never recover that but we do know that pretty soon not only you but him and all those cameras are going to come through the world will begin to. Get past and a future for that leaf they'll put it in a context. And when they put it in the context then it will cease to be. That kind of experience and will have a floor and after. Party's own sham will know that when certain things are taking place certain other things will take place and pretty soon that he or she will begin to demand that certain things shall take place in order that certain other things shall take place. Context context. Well from that.

I want to go to the man who thought about not him and not this little problem but the big problem that I really think this gentleman I referred to before FH Bradley. I told you and I'll say it again. I don't always refuse never even heard of the village Bradley doll very much where they've read anything by him. When this about if you try it sometime just to be laid out. Just stick to it and find out after quite a number of pages used to live and understood anything to good health. Very. FH Bing has these two words that he works in this connection. He says there is such a thing as that experience here Jakey which them under auspicious circumstances turns into a white

experience. That's what's going to happen the sham of that experience which is so puzzling now that it stops all his motion. Well by and by I turn into a walk Express and he's under he's in a in a setting where people will try to to help him have the that turn into what youre that turn into a you walk with all kinds of overtones sidetone blundered on the song thats Mr. Bradley's web going up you know loading personal Smith more of a must not know Logan price Will Smith is a neighbor of age Bradley relieved him of his family by moving political men and you'll be near him anyway. Don't do it John do we work with these two terms talking about the same thing.

He says had a JD and the known all kinds of aspects of experience are had and then they are known as half. The world. Maybe Arthur lost it on it's terribly difficult to the last. OK got some bad words are. AS. Bad as. As of that. If you could arrest him if you'd just stop it. And keep it as a laugh. Awfully difficult thing to do. You can learn to do it more and more so that for a second or so you can hold it up and keep it a pure that. You keep it from transforming itself into a walk or keep it they had keep it from transforming itself into a known that birdsong. For all. At home

early in the morning. Incidentally last Monday where you up before dawn were lives if they weren't weren't for this I'd say something. Too bad you weren't the star that morning that was a sight right down below the horizon I've been looking for it every morning since I looked for it many times before. Norma comes occasionally. Well you can see it to what you thought what was I talking about. I'm going to go look. What what happened just before the stars have oil as a whole look out of the window. The first picture of the hill and the great big elm tree on the here and now I'm describing it you see. I'm going away from what I love to get that first picture on identified just as a picture.

Oh I mean me. COURTEZAN book if you could. For a charm drawing my ceiling my school creation and I go back and talk about what we were talking about. Most objects. In our adult environment have become familiar through many associations. Rather than seeing them for themselves they I want to see this picture out of the window for itself not for what it means not elm tree not kiddie camp. Not grass not this not just for itself just as a as a as it is that if I'm right in seeing them for themselves these objects serve merely as symbols for still other things with which our minds are occupied. We are no longer attentive to the optical forms of things in their optical and Veyron with wildly optical form the auditory form the tactile form just as it is in itself. That's quite a

trick to be able to do that. I'm sure some of you must be saying because you've said that about all the things before you probably saying it now. What good would it do. Going to take it down the bank. Can I take it to the society in a better standing. Can I get relieved of being a private in your army and become Of course you know none of those things none of those things. But as to the enrichment of your experience by virtue of this direct experience in a dollar for along with a little bit. Had. And then you know had been in a context of reform that you know you my time but I have to try to.

There are presidents presence presences. And placings place place. Emerson imagined maybe Emerson had something all these men had something to do with this and would thumb my looking at things this way but EMERSON I think you have a lot to do with it as I mean I react to you favorably to Emerson's way of doing it. He talked about the apparition the apparitions of the world ghosts so that isn't what I mean just. Their. Presence not place call place bluejay. Hauke their presence. I love to look at people and see the face as maybe

just the face. Maybe just a picture and then place it as. This kind of face this kind of a character. This kind of anticipation no actual thing. For all of these men now divide the pad. The presence is in affable. On Talk of bottle ons. But when the love that. Is turned into what by virtue of the experiences we have had education we've had when they had is turned into the known. When the presences turned into the place. Then you have may then on talk about of all into a talk about love. Well I want to end the

end where our God we can have to have some questions about this because I wanted to give you. A What you call what you call these things and I think my dicks when they say this and this. Plus this. So this minus this equals this equation. Always. I've always wanted to make up an equation original equation shoring. Without. Knowing too much about but showing the list quite well informed in mathematics. After all wouldn't a person have to be very well-informed in mathematics in order to make up and originally Boyson will always want to make up an equation and make up an equation now along the line that we have been taught. We've said that. You have given.

Facts had that. Given presents all of us. Let's say that given that aspect of experience. Comes. The last word. Oh oh. Sorry dady. Doco you did. That's a given that aspect of the country. That's not a fact. The given aspect of the experience. Another word. Rail. Rail they are equally are we. Grapple from which on which our words creationist thinking which I never knew until I looked it up means really means originally means most basically

elected. So when God created the world. He selected the kind of world in which we live. And then R is another word for Akio that that's the word with which I really began FOC eal. Fokker a fakie fog. From which our words typed really come. To make. Given selected made. OK there there is the way of the data. Right I'm. Wrong. I'm inordinately proud of that. You know hard like rock and you

know you're easily when you're inordinately proud of something. It's not. Much to be proud of when it's really much to be proud of. You're not nearly so proud. But it contains the truth. I want to communicate. There is a giver like a river. Ever Florrie ever overflowing experience love to give the data. Oh what we still like what we might take a cup. And select a cup of water cup with a river. Make the river then make a copy what you selected. Not much really and that much was given rigorous and the river water

which you got in your cup was given but the coughing up blood and was sure to get you to the soul like oh let me guess what I'm making of the five I bought in my life. There's only this much more to say than a want to something else. Next time maybe. We learned very soon. Sham this little sham of shame I was speaking. Well I learned pretty soon how to how to take these presences and place them in certain areas of life and in certain other areas of life

he will outline a very well and in certain areas of life he'll be given the lowdown by an organized institutional tell him just exactly how to place. JUST THINKING THIS MINUTE OF A remarkable woman. I've never seen her. I don't even know who she is but I know his remark warmed by the experience she wrote about in New England. She had enough. Of talk to some of you bought her. She had the. Terrible experience she was about 50 years of a sudden and very wonderful woman as I said a very active woman trying woman Jean a woman overflowing with high spirits. And idealistic in everything and sudden there life again all that gave it. And then he was visited for this he said by God and he took her and

lifted her out of that and out of that darkness and despair. He restored her again to our former life. Now you see that she had the experience she had how could anybody you know. That she was downcast that she was done for that she was the rose that she was pessimistic of life had no meaning. OK anybody not I that. She was the one who experienced it. And I she placed the salvation according to the way she had been betrayed. She might have said some women she was trained whenever any experience like this comes any experimental missionary experience in your life you place it this way I say in certain areas we know just exactly how to place it in certain other areas we know. So that the problem before us seems to me is to learn better how to it's place these presence.

Out of place but are these hundreds of them how shall we interpret them how shall we know in the house only. One text. You will rise them. That's our drum. That's enough one there if you look for me in a way that is enough for you. You heard another in a selected number of electors from the course philosophy on the human enterprise recorded in the classroom a Professor Max Otto. In his next lecture Professor Otto proceeds from the subject of facts and value was to a discussion of the nature of truth. This is the Wisconsin College of the air. And. O recording.