"They collect varying levels of data, and do various levels of fact-checking".
"This level of fact proved to be very, very telling," he said.
This is a question of two thinkers operating at different levels of abstraction, and while Chomsky's work functions best at the level of fact, Žižek speaks most fluently at the level of theory.
Both situations hold the same level of fact.
Watching the first debate with two friends from the UK--one a Member of Parliament and one a novelist who is a life-long Labour Party supporter, I became aware of things Americans might not notice: One was McCain's low level of fact checking and consistency, his assumption that the electorate would not notice his many reversals and descents into gobbledy gook.
If Chomsky is speaking at the level of facts, Žižek is concerned with the ideological framework in which they are interpreted.
Writing about people suspected of crimes is tricky in many ways, and one of them is conveying the level of facts legally proven to be true at the time of writing.
Science education is not culturally neutral: it can conflict with folkbiology on the level of facts, in how knowledge is organized, as well as in cultural models and values.
But his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation makes the stronger claim that different incompatible manuals of translation, or conceptual schemes, can account for one and the same verbal behavior and the indeterminacy resides at the level of facts rather than our knowledge, a position that leads to unavoidable ontological relativity.
"We'll never know if their mistakes were intentional or unintentional," said Shierholz, who was impressed by the level of fact-checking Obama's team did, "but they have displayed a lack of care for presenting the public with a really accurate sense of numbers".
