I’ll do my best…

Kant was a rationalist — taken to the extreme, his view of the world is solipsistic. In his three critiques he lays out a view of the subject (individual) that departs from empiricism and in which three faculties of mind provide our experience of the world according to reason and its intrinsic principles. (The categorical imperatives, which apply to what we know and should do.) Practical reason for apprehension of the world of fact; pure reason for imagination; judgment for legislating the two other faculties and for choice.

In Kant, the sublime is the experience that exceeds the ability of reason itself — an aeshetic experience exceeds reason’s own ability to build it up. It’s Kant’s way of accommodating experiences of awe, be they in the arts, or in nature, and in his way, of preserving the possibility of being affected by God (tho he does not make this a theological claim).

Magnitude is one example of this — a size that is not a number, but which is rather the limit point if you will of numbering/counting. An idea of big that exceeds the possibilities of counting — a size you can’t get to by adding one at a time (which is the job of practical reason).

Kant led to Hegel, and the dialectic. To Merleau Ponty, and phenomenology. ANd to his own post-rationalists or post Kantians, whose attempts pretty much all foundered on the shores of solipsism.

The 19th century culminated was the culmination of an immense amount of philosophical investigation into knowledge — be it in the metaphysicians of Europe, the pragmatics of Americans (dewey), the empiricists, etc. It’s not till the 20th century that the status of knowledge comes under real investigation, and takes a few turns that have brought us to the modern and unstable perspectives of today: systems, networks, discourse, psychology, etc.

Two fronts opened up in the 20th century that are fruitful, I think, for thinking about knowledge in networked societies/systems. One is recognition of the domain in which knowledge is produced, and leads to semiotics (signs, and terms are independent of their relations), structural anthropology (structures, ritual, traditions), language (linguistics, a differentiation of speech and language, and pragmatics, or performance), phenomenology, systems theory, even media theory. Second is interest taken in communication.

Sociologists have also given us a lot to learn from the construction of social relations and the status of knowledge. This accompanied a move from empirical fact to social fact, from reason to action, and from empirical knowledge to meaning domains.

The 20th c was a century of interpretation, and recognition of the instability interpretation creates not only for the construction of social facts, but their communication and even observation (what framework permits us to correctly observe social “realities?”)

Competing theories of course are many. The big ones include Habermas, whose pragmatics is based on speech, mutual understanding, interaction, and human interests (usually reasons). Luhmann’s systems theory is another. Foucault’s view that discourses and practices influence one another is very powerful (is in fact about power). Economics is catching up, but is still I think years behind. All would agree that a communication model that includes agency and action is necessary.

All would accept that Marx’s insight into modes of production holds not only for material life but for psychic life, and knowledge, too. So a strong critique of knowledge in networked societies would want (imho) to address the production of social facts in modes specific to media of their production and consumption. That’s my take on it. We do affirm more than we know, and the challenge to unpacking the status of knowledge today includes a recognition of the role played by communication in knowledge capture, preservation, organization, distribution, and use. Accepting that in the extreme, value may not reside within the fact at all, but in its ability to cement agreement or coordinate activity.

cheers,
a

So there could be many ways of stating the “fact” that discourse is about something other, or more, than we can know or control.

Another way might be: facts are theories – (Goethe). Theories are arguments. Arguments aim to establish facts, but what can be established without turning from them, to the unmastered power of rhetoric?

Does this mean that the “facts” depend on the questions asked? If yes that may lead into some quantum world of uncertainty.

In Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, our hero, Dupin, aks questions the police didn’t ask–about the unknown “language” of the killer, the super-human strength required to yank a clump of hair from a human skull, etc–and in doing so established a new fact, ie, that the murderer is not a human being.

Here’s he question: Did that “fact” exist in the detritus of the murder scene or was it called into existence by Dupin’s interrogation?

Think on’t.

Milverton Wallace

I think that one reason this may be a knotty problem is that there are a two different kinds of fact involved here — empirical fact and social fact.

Empirical facts are supposed to be truths scientifically proven by means of empirical observation. I believe those include your bedrock facts. But even empirical truths are subject to theoretical assumptions and disputes (eg Kuhn’s paradigms).

Social facts are of a different nature, and much more tricky. Habermas differentiates them as truth claims and has three types — facticity, or a truth claim asserted of the factual world (it’s raining); sincerity, or the truth claim asserted of intent (i’m speaking truthfully); and normative rightness, or the truth claim asserted on the basis of normative authority (i have the right to say what I say — as in, “your’e under arrest” is a fact only if I’m an officer). Not all agree on a consensual model of social facts, however, and many subordinate them to coordination of action, agonistics or negotiated differences, and much more. The matter of social facts is complicated because it necessitates a communication theory — which may emphasize interaction, statements, references, claims, action, understanding, and so on. But if you’re working on networked knowledge, some discursive model would seem necessary.