[bunny]

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I may be using the word wrong so jump in and define fact or theory if that will help...

I think facts exist quite independently of us or our theories (most of which dont contain facts imo). I think there was an answer to "How fast is the earth moving relative to the sun?" before anyone was around to ask it - I think that is one example of a fact.

If there are no facts until theories - do you have an explanation for why we end up agreeing with each other so much? We dont seem able to just make up anything - or at least usually agree on what is a "poor" theory. What is it that constrains the theories we come up with if it isnt facts about the world?

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Isn't the earth moving around the sun just model we created? The doesn't seem to be any need for it to be 'actually' moving around the sun any more than the sun was moving around the earth in the older model.

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I think there needs to be relative motion or our models are not going to go very well. (Alternately, a model we try and develop based on the Earth and Sun being stationary relative to each other is going to fail - I think it fails because it doesnt fit the facts).

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Agree with each other? hahahaha, don't you read SMP?
ok, we agree with each other because we're an evolved species with a general base model. We wouldn't agree that much with each other if I was a rattlesnake ( even being from 3000 BC may leave us with a lot of discrepancy with what we take as obvious now.)

luckyme

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I think this is true for some things (art, beauty, justice,...) but not others. I would claim that everyone would agree that modus ponens is valid if they could understand what that meant (even the rattlesnake, imo) - our evolution may drive what kinds of theories or arguments we make, none of us have the choice to see modus ponens as invalid though, nor to make pi rational, nor to say that there is more water in the local creek than there is in the thames, or that you cant travel from the arctic to the antarctic without crossing the equatorial plane.

If there is some constraint on our correct theories, I think those constraints constitute facts about the world. I think what you're noticing is that we cant discuss facts without a theory. I think that's a limitation brought about by language and the way minds work though - I dont see how it suggests that nothing is actually true (if that's what you mean by facts exist).