I think the analogy to the round earth is unhelpful, for essentially the reasons Said Achmiz’s comment alludes to. More relevant would be an infinite plane (where you can always move west and there is a consistent global notion of west-ness).
It seems plausible that it’s correct to treat a piece of information as approaching very close the fact-ness. If I say that a cup contains an kilogram of water, there’s some sense in which this is not a pure fact, but it seems very close to a pure fact, and although pure-factness about water in this cup may be unattainable, it is not infinitely far away.
There are various different culinary measures called a cup, but if filled with water they all give you between 1⁄5 and 1⁄4 of a kilogram. Actual cups-for-drinking-from can give wildly different amounts but a kilogram would correspond to a litre of water, and vessels that large usually have names other than “cup”.
I think the analogy to the round earth is unhelpful, for essentially the reasons Said Achmiz’s comment alludes to. More relevant would be an infinite plane (where you can always move west and there is a consistent global notion of west-ness).
It seems plausible that it’s correct to treat a piece of information as approaching very close the fact-ness. If I say that a cup contains an kilogram of water, there’s some sense in which this is not a pure fact, but it seems very close to a pure fact, and although pure-factness about water in this cup may be unattainable, it is not infinitely far away.
You must have larger cups than me.
😛 Dangit, my American intuition wasn’t good enough. I was kinda close, only a factor of 2 maybe.
There are various different culinary measures called a cup, but if filled with water they all give you between 1⁄5 and 1⁄4 of a kilogram. Actual cups-for-drinking-from can give wildly different amounts but a kilogram would correspond to a litre of water, and vessels that large usually have names other than “cup”.