Zhang Kangsheng: Things and facts on the basis of sociology

　　1. Facts and opinions

　　We often encounter the following phenomenon: someone makes his statement, for example, he says, "The word enlightenment is the core of the Dharma, and if the definition of enlightenment is not accurate, the so-called Buddhism is all nonsense", and then another person objects to what he said, and he adds solemnly: "I am talking about the truth." We can see many, many examples like this in our lives. Let's analyze this example in detail: he said that "enlightenment" is the core of the Dharma, and without discussing whether his statement is correct or how subtle, the first thing we need to judge is whether he said it is an opinion or a fact. It's a bad thing if we always take facts as opinions, opinions as facts. For example, when I say that "Zhang San only lives by setting up stalls at the moment", you think that I am expressing my views in favor of him; Or someone says "Li Si is very arrogant", you will feel that he is telling the truth. Such examples are very bad logical thinking errors and manifestations. One of the most frustrating things in China today is that many people can't tell the difference between opinion and fact. It's normal that 100 people might have 100 opinions on any thing, event, or phenomenon, and that's normal, or at least not a big problem. But if you are faced with a concrete, tangible, tangible physical thing, such as a deer with horns, if 100 people have 100 different perceptions and statements about it, it is very scary and bad, people lose the possibility of forming a consensus and will not be able to communicate with each other. Even occasional occurrences in the understanding of a few things are extremely rare (unless intentional). For example, in the court of the ancient Qin II, Zhao Gao pointed to a deer and insisted that it was a horse and let others agree with his statement, thus leaving the ancient notoriety of "referring to deer as a horse". Although most people may not be able to give a clear and accurate statement of what is a fact and what is an opinion, people with normal thinking skills will not be unable to distinguish whether ordinary and simple concrete sentences are facts or opinions. For the sake of rigor and thoroughness, I will give a detailed definition of what is a fact and what is an opinion.

　　The so-called "fact" refers to the general and universal consciousness result of people's common mode of human thinking and cognition of object things and events (other than the subject's consciousness, including the body). In other words, facts must be the result of consensus knowledge of things, and the results of individual cognition that are not generally universal, that is, non-consensus, cannot be called facts, at least not recognized as facts by others. An "opinion" is an assertion that is not directed at the thing itself, which is produced and formed by people on the basis of something or facts. For example, for an animal in the shape of a horse, the question of whether it is a horse, a black horse, a brown horse, or a red horse is still a statement about the facts that do not leave the object itself, and if someone says that "the horse is a docile animal", such an expression belongs to the opinion. Because the conclusion of docileness is that the speaker's published view of the relationship between man and the horse has left the horse itself. You can think he's right or think he's saying it's a good idea, or you can disagree with it. In other words, the law of logical exclusion does not apply to the expression of opinions of different people. But factual statements have only the only option of "yes or no", and the result of the assertion must be true or false. Whether a horse is a deer or a deer, a deer is not a horse, and the law of logical arrangement must be observed here. The example mentioned earlier, "Zhang San is only living by setting up a stall at the moment", is a factual statement, yes, if it is not true, someone is lying. And the phrase "Li Si is very arrogant" is a typical expression of opinion, even if all 10 people in Li Si's group feel that this sentence is correct, it is still an opinion rather than a fact. So what are the facts about Li Si, for example, "Li Si is 38 this year" can be a fact. If one day one of the people in the group works with Li Si and changes his opinion because he thinks that Li Si is doing things very reliably, he will not feel that Li Si is arrogant but feel that he is very amiable. However, the matter of "Li Si this year 38" cannot be changed no matter who or not, and it will not be transferred according to anyone's opinion.

　　2. Abstraction and reality

　　We usually think that things and facts are intuitive and simple, such as mountains and rivers, houses, roads, clothing and food, etc., this understanding is not wrong, but it is too superficial. The physical, biological intuitive figurative things that exist in nature are obviously intuitive and simple, such as inorganic objects, organic plants and animals; So, all the facts that involve intuitive and simple things are of course intuitive and simple, such as horses running on all fours, juicy and delicious fruits, and so on. Therefore, for all natural and partial man-made things, as long as they are tangible and tangible, real matter-objects, the process of forming an understanding of them is extremely smooth, natural and unimpededed, and has a high degree of consensus, even people who have never been trained in thinking and have never had theoretical thinking experience will not have any problems.

　　Therefore, the process of people's understanding of intuitive simple things and facts is so simple that it becomes a subconscious, so it also makes people generally have the illusion that things and facts should be simple and intuitive, or at least physical and real. In his "Human Action", Mises emphasized the immateriality of "society", saying that it is only the result (manifestation) of human action. This expression somewhat implies that "things should have substance". It would be wrong to think that things and facts should be substantial, even though this error is widespread; If everything in the world is divided into two divisions in terms of whether it is an entity or whether it is real or not, then this philosophical view is somewhat problematic, or at least not smart. Because philosophy thinks about things with the focus of existence or non-existence, and the reality of things is discerned only when necessary.

　　Dividing things into intuitive things and abstract things by abstraction or reality can only be used as an expedient method of thinking. This division may be simple for superficial thinking, but it is ineffective for thinking and studying complex things that are far from the concrete, especially systematic things. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as non-abstract cognition in the human cognitive mode, even for simple and intuitive objects. Abstraction is indispensable for the process of human understanding, and the so-called "intuition" is nothing more than a very low level of abstraction, and abstraction is completed unconsciously at a very low level of consciousness. For example, the understanding of any apple is the abstract result formed by filtering out individuality; If the commonality of melons, fruits, peaches and peaches is not abstracted, there will be no such thing as "fruit". Any truth and truth is nothing more than man's knowledge of things, and without abstraction there is no understanding, and without understanding there is no truth and truth.

　　Everything in the world is simple and complex, and its complexity is increasing step by step. As its complexity gradually increases, so does the level of abstraction of its understanding, that is, the reality of things decreases step by step. Of course, continuing to abstract on the basis of the clear understanding that has been formed, and gradually and repeatedly abstracting will move away from the concrete, that is, farther and farther away from the reality of things. As things move away from the concrete, abstraction becomes more difficult. For example, physical, chemical, biological, psychological, social and other different levels of things, their complexity and abstraction level is gradually improved. The world we live in can be roughly divided into two parts, one is the natural material world naturally presented to us by the universe, and the other is the human world completely created by human consciousness and activities, the latter of which has a very low reality and requires a deep level of abstraction. Only by attaining enough abstract understandings far enough from intuitive concreteness can we get closer to the world as it is.

Before the maturity of human cognitive ability, the natural world is external to our perception and understanding, and our fate can only be arranged and determined completely passively by the laws or laws of nature, because without understanding there is no independent choice and action. That is, our life existence is always determined by the natural environment. Human effort is nothing more than adapting to nature; Creating or transforming the environment must follow the laws of nature. Whether it is adapting to nature or following the laws to transform the environment, it is inseparable from the basic premise of correct understanding. The instinctive understanding of natural laws directly related to survival, such as death if placed in the depths of water, and dependence on food for food and clothing, is the starting point for the formation of a series of human understandings. That is, cognition begins with perception, from intuition, from real things, which is also the law of nature itself. And how can human beings form an understanding closer to nature, which is itself part of the laws of nature, laws of nature that are not transferred by human will. Although man's subjective initiative makes different people have different understandings, only the natural world itself is the judge of the correct degree of understanding. Human cognition originates from perception and is formed in abstraction, and the process of cognition is actually a step-by-step abstract thought sequence that gradually moves away from the entity.

　　3. Things and facts

　　A thing is the object or object of knowledge, and the result of the formation of knowledge is the discovery and confirmation of something. This is a characteristic or limitation of human cognitive models. In the process of thinking and perceiving, if there is no discovery of things, it cannot be called cognition, but just some complicated signals and information reception process. The discovery of things is not always the result of rational thinking that follows the rules, and there are many examples of such enlightened thoughts or epiphany. For example, Einstein's discovery of "space-time (oneness)" and Planck's discovery of such things as "quantum (noncontinuity)". But discovery is only the beginning of knowledge, not the completion of knowledge, and discovery must be confirmed and confirmed before it can be considered the completion of understanding. The confirmation and confirmation of things must be repeatable and declarable, that is, it must be able to be relayed from one person to everyone and obtain recognition, so it must be carried out in a thinking mode that strictly follows the rules of logic, otherwise it is impossible to form a consensus and become knowledge.

　　The so-called things that are still in the stage of discovery are only the products of individual consciousness and have not yet become universal and general understanding. And only confirmed (or falsified) and repeated confirmation is the complete understanding. This lies in the details and mysteries of the formation of knowledge: confirmation (or falsification) can only be carried out against concrete objects, and abstract streams of consciousness cannot be confirmed (or falsified) objects. Judgment in human logical thinking can only answer the question of "yes or no" based on the concrete of reality, concreteness, audibility, visibility, touchability, and feeling. In other words, the object of people's thinking is things, but the object of operation is facts. The concrete information that can be heard, seen, touched, and felt on which any judgment can be formed is the concrete and actual embodiment of things in the natural world. That is, the actual embodiment and appearance of things, referred to as facts. Any result of the formation of knowledge is embodied in language as a proposition, and any proposition cannot be separated from the basic operation of judgment. In other words, epistemic thinking about things must be based on facts as long as it appeals to logic. This is true for highly abstract things and very concrete objects.

　　When we say that something exists in the world, this is not necessarily that knowledge may just be a statement. Even an understanding can come from imagination or speculation, such as we believe that there are Yan Luo Kings, Meng Po, Naihe Qiao and so on, and there are names and surnames, and the details are sufficient. But to appeal these "understandings" to the logical and rational thought process to form knowledge is powerless—because we cannot produce concrete detailed facts to provide a judgment of right or wrong, which can neither be verified nor falsified. In the scientific community, "ether" was once considered a thing, but it was later falsified by experimental facts. This experiment is to deduce specific details through the relationship between the ether and the speed of light, so that it can be confirmed or falsified.

　　Where does the fact of knowing things come from? The understanding of a thing, including the various properties of the thing, the behavior, and the continuous coexistence between the thing and other things. Without the existence of the three elements, those things that are in the mind are only imaginary and can only be embodied in language in symbolic form. The real object can directly obtain audible, tangible, and perceptible information from its three elements to complete the preset judgment; A highly abstract thing needs to dig out concrete factual details from its properties, behaviors and relationships with other things, a process that can be called embodiment or instantiation, which is the reverse operation of abstraction.

　　The above can also be understood as the relationship between things and facts. The relationship between things and facts is roughly similar to the relationship between the human soul and the body or between thought and action. Things are made up of an infinite number of possible forms of facts, stacked on top of each other by figurative details at different levels. These figurative factual details are the result of logical reasoning about the properties of things, their behavior, and their continuum with other things. For example, if a liquid is heated to 100 degrees at regular atmospheric pressure, that is, it begins to boil and continues to vaporize, we can basically judge that it is water. Since human cognition begins from information perception, cognitive ability starts from the cognition of concrete objects and events, and then begins to abstract step by step to form higher and stronger cognitive ability.

　　The understanding of highly abstract things is a difficult process that requires a lot of thinking, and it requires deliberate professional training and cultivation to form the ability to understand highly abstract things. This should have been the cognitive ability that everyone who enters modern civilized society should have, but the reality is that most people do not think it is necessary, and therefore lack the willingness to temper the ability to understand highly abstract things. Therefore, people's cognitive ability has a hierarchical difference or model difference, which can be roughly divided into two levels or two modes, one is the factual cognitive mode, and the other is the thing cognitive mode. Factual cognitive models often deteriorate into phenomenal cognitive models for various reasons.

　　Compared with the factual cognitive model, the former is accustomed to directly grasping some concrete things and starting to process conclusions, while the latter requires the accumulation of many things models in advance. The latter is quite extravagant in terms of energy consumption: any current practical daily affairs and events have not yet been able to give a judgment conclusion, first spend a lot of energy to train accurate and abstract thinking ability, and carry out a lot of seemingly unnecessary thinking projects. When enough knowledge of things is accumulated, the understanding system is built and formed. After that, in the face of all problems, whether simple or complex, it is through the abstract process to understand things, through the reverse abstract process to grasp the facts. The advantage of this model is that it can deal with very complex problems, and the conclusions made are quite stable and clear.

　　Correspondingly, the factual cognitive model is more efficient than the thing cognitive model, and the efficiency of cognition and its pattern formation is high, and the vast majority of cases can be completed in the subconscious. Because the factual cognitive model is intuitive, it is easy to form habits and mindsets that are difficult to change: starting from simple facts, after simple and crude deduction or induction, you want (or think) to get the ultimate conclusion. Because the level of abstraction of the things known in the intuitive mode is very low, the number of things that can be recognized is small. When the intuitive mode is faced with a systemic complex thing that is not very intuitive and more abstract, it will immediately degenerate into a phenomenal cognitive mode, or treat complex things as noun symbols and turn thinking into a word game.

　　The knowledge of strange things is based on the knowledge of enough (there is a threshold or threshold of the number of known things) of existing things. Without this foundation, complex things can only present to intuitive thinkers only phenomena rather than facts. For in a myriad of phenomena it is impossible to determine which is the fact of which thing and about what, it is as clueless as searching for a particular stone in a pile of rubble. Only by knowing things can man discern from the multitude of phenomena the specific and concrete facts associated with it. Without an understanding of things, people can only face the general phenomenon of thousands of countless details and sigh. Therefore, most people often talk about complex problems from phenomenon to phenomenon, and the highly abstract things involved are just some symbols that do not know what to do or mean wrong.

　　4. Disciplinary classification of facts

　　Before the formation of human understanding, everything in the world was actually a whole, only decomposed by human understanding, but not isolated according to people's separate understanding. Things just have to be gradually decomposed into different things from different angles, levels and dimensions in the process of cognitive formation according to the cognitive model of human beings; People's understanding of different angles, levels and dimensions of things leads to the emergence of different disciplines. The creator did not create the world according to the classification of human disciplines, but in order to facilitate their own cognition, people artificially divided everything in the whole world into different disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, inorganic matter research, organic biology and so on. Things that are the same target object in the origin are different things in different disciplines, such as a bag of fertilizer mixed with seeds, an object in physics, a compound in chemistry, a commodity or wealth in economics...

Everything in the world is a system as a whole, which produces any phenomenon in all phenomena, but the facts of different disciplines and different disciplinary natures, which are divided according to human understanding, are composed of special phenomena for various aspects. Physics needs to be directed at physical phenomena or facts, chemistry needs to be directed at chemical phenomena or facts, biology needs to be directed at biological phenomena or facts, economics needs to be directed at economic phenomena or facts, sociology needs to be directed at sociological phenomena or facts... Chemistry will gain nothing if it does not study chemical facts and targets physical facts; Conversely, physics is not applicable to chemical facts. This is determined by the disciplinary approach, not by the origin of things. Similarly, if economic research is aimed at psychological or physical facts, it will lose its economic meaning and become economics, such as "game theory", "behavioral economics", "econometrics" and so on.

　　For the distinction between the facts of the nature of different disciplines, the things of the material natural world are relatively easy in the natural sciences, while the things of the conscious human world or in the humanities are less clear. For example, "econometrics" is the fallacy of not knowing what and what are things of an economic nature. what are physical, chemical and biological facts, which are determined by their respective research goals and tasks; In the same way, what are economic and sociological facts is also determined by their respective research goals and tasks. For example, the goal of economics is to study the relationship between man and natural matter and the interpersonal relations on this basis, while sociology is interpersonal relations, which includes interpersonal relations of an economic nature. So economics is principled for sociology, and some of the content of sociology is actually macroeconomics, or macroeconomics is actually sociology.

　　Different from the natural material world, the humanistic world is the result of human activities, and due to the subjective initiative generated by human consciousness activities, the humanistic world is not only solving the natural problems faced by people, but also creating natural problems and humanistic problems at all times, which leads to extremely complex and highly abstract phenomena and things produced by the humanistic world. In other words, it is much more difficult to understand things in the human world, so it is much more difficult to separate sociological facts from the complex social phenomena and identify them than in the natural sciences. In the face of sociological problems, if the number of sociological things that already exist is insufficient, and therefore it is impossible to know and observe sociological facts, then we can only see the phenomena with our eyes and do not know why. Unless they are thinkers, theorists or sociologists, ordinary people generally look at society from the perspective of phenomena, understand society at the level of phenomena, and treat society with an attitude and stance (approval and opposition) towards phenomena.

　　For example, those professionals engaged in city appearance management hate and hate the stalls of traders who appear at any time or are parked anywhere, which is a goal that must be eliminated in their primary work, and it is also a bad thing that may affect their vital interests due to incomplete and untimely removal. For ordinary citizens who are busy rushing to survive every day, the various vendors who appear in their sight every day provide them with great convenience, and even become one of the indispensable contents of their lives; Of course, there may also be some vendors who occupy the road too much in the small streets, and other citizens who basically do not rely on the convenience of the vendors and therefore hate the vendors, and they hate each other because they have a slight conflict of interest. But in the eyes of economists and sociologists, this is a completely different story. The merchants and stalls that can be found everywhere in the city are phenomena in the minds of economic sociologists and do not stop at specific phenomena. In their minds, this is the basic nature and behavior of natural society, the most simple and common expression of economic activity. In other words, a sociologist's eyes see the people and things selling soy milk fritters on the side of the road, but what he gets in his mind is the "sociological fact" that "economic activities are on the street", and the complicated and trivial details of buying and selling and traders and personal likes and dislikes have been abstracted in the process of forming an understanding in his mind.