Fact

From LawGuru Wiki

Template:Wiktionary Template:Otheruses Template:Disputed Template:Original research

In philosophy, a fact is the state of affairs in reality that corresponds to a true proposition in a human language. The relationship between non-trivially true statements (i.e. not tautologies) and facts is one of the provinces of epistemology.

Any non-trivial true statements about reality is necessarily an abstraction composed of a complex of objects and properties or relations. For example, the fact described by the true statement "Paris is the capital city of France" necessarily implies that:

There truly is such a place as Paris;
There truly is such a place as France;
There are such things as capital cities;
France has a government;
The government of France is legitimate, and has the power to define its capital city;
The French government has chosen Paris to be the capital.

The truth of all of these assertions, facts in themselves, coincide to create the fact that Paris is the capital of France. Difficulties arise, however, in attempting to identify the constituent parts of negative, modal, disjunctive, or moral facts. For example, is the statement "Indianapolis is not the capital city of France" factual because it is false that Indianapolis is the capital of France, or because the situation does not obtain that Indianapolis is the capital of France? <ref>"Fact", in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ted Honderich, editor. (Oxford, 1995) ISBN 0-19-866132-0</ref>

In science 'fact' is an objective and verifiable observation.

Outside of science, a word 'fact' may be associated with some of the following:

A honest observation confirmed by widely respected observers.
- Errors are common in the interpretation of the meaning of observations.
- Power is frequently used to force the politcally correct interpretation of an observation.
A repeatedly observed regularity.
- One observation of any phenomenon does not necessarily make it a fact. Repeatability of an observation is required usually by using the stated procedures or operational definitions of a phenomenon.
Something thought to be actual as opposed to invented.
Something concrete used as a basis for further interpretation.
Information about a particular subject.
Something believed to be the case.

Science uses facts. Due to subjective nature of human senses science prefers the use of instruments to measure observations (=gathering objective informations) rather than using human senses. Science uses measuring tools (like clock, meter stick and other standards), as well as recording devices (like spectrometers, cameras, oscilloscopes, etc). Science also uses deductive and inductive logic (usually in form of mathematics) to derive reliable and statisically important conclusions through the process of measured data with the goal of forming or confirming laws of nature and theories - like relativity theory, theory of evolution, etc. Science fundamentally means "Let me tell you HOW I believe I LOGICALLY THINK I know."

The tremendous success of science we witness in 19-21 century is the direct result of use of the objective observation (of natural phenomena), use of of logic (mathematics) to generate reliable theories which in turn correctly predict behavior of various (sometimes rather complex) objects and systems and allows their successful control. This in turn allows to dramatically improve and diversify our life via building high quality shelters, transportation, communication, entertainment, produce more and better quality food, more energy, cure untreatable in the past diseases, etc.

[edit]

Psychological aspects of factual claims

We tend to see facts which support our position and ignore facts which contradict our opinion. However, events that do not fit our framework also tend to stand out and draw our attention. Beautiful theories that explain a cluster of facts as we know them are frequently enhanced (and sometimes destroyed) by new facts. New theories can help us see new facts that we never suspected to exist.

Proven - a theory is tentatively proven when the facts do not contradict the theory. Because facts are known with known margins of errors, science always specifies boundaries of applicability of any theory. For example it has been proven that the Principle of Uncertainity is correct.

Belief is an opinion or trust in a particular point of view. Science is a belief system. Dogma is an unquestioned or strong belief system. Dogmatic people frequently claim that they know the truth, but their claims are rarely true. They also frequently claim that you must be punished for your transgressions from the truth.

[edit]

Statements of fact

A statement of fact or a factual claim is a statement that is presented as an accurate representation of a situation, event, or condition, and that is capable of being either proved or disproved.

If a factual claim is incorrect, then it is called a mistake or an error (if the person making the statement believed it to be correct) or a lie (if the person making the statement did not believe it). A factual claim shown to be correct through examination is accepted as being supported. A factual claim that was believed to be true may later shown to be false (disproved), and a factual claim believed to have been disproved may later shown to be true. A fact that was once a fact and hence becomes disproven may once again become a fact if the factual evidence supporting its validity become increasingly factual in light of new and, ultimately, factual evidence. Supporting evidence may become realised for a fact long after the fact itself was first established and, thus, a factual claim must be as fact once the Popperian elements of falsification have been exausted - a process that never ends - to end with a fact accepted in the social. A belief that cannot be proved or disproved is an opinion.

We live in an amusing time where scientific and argumentative logic is often considered to define reality itself, even though such ideas are conjectural by their very nature (the universe is larger than us, thus all of our assessments approximate but do not exactly match a description of its mechanisms). People are fond of saying "This proves..." or "It's a known fact that..." without realizing that despite all of our theories and suppositions, there is only one proof in the world: events and actions as they occur, including the response of the surrounding ecosystem and physical world.

Wiser thinkers in the past reserved the term "fact" for actions as they had occurred, something often called history, but moderns like to think that abstraction is fact because our entire system of government and society is based upon abstractions. The first abstraction is morality: the idea that "good" or "evil" could classify events as they happened to an individual, and that this classification could be more important than events themselves. This is a fallacy of personal perspective, by which people reason that because they only know their world through themselves the world must be governed by the self - obviously an illusion, since the world is full of selves and none of us are so supreme. Morality of this type occurs when people are more afraid for themselves, fearing death or evolutionary insufficiency, than they are of lack of accomplishment or doing right by the order of nature as a whole.

There is no greater proof than history. History shows us ideas translated into actions and then how the world responded over generations; this is important because almost any idea will succeed initially if given enough support, but over time may be revealed to be unrealistic, even if this takes centuries. History is fact, and by history we do not mean the politicized "spun" accounts of history but events themselves and the fates of societies not as unique occurrences but as responses of the world to the type of design of that society. History for example tells us that democracies arise in the dying days of great empires, and they always cannibalize themselves and become totalitarian states. History also tells us that no multicultural society has survived more than a century in that state. Further, history shows us that when a civilization becomes more fascinated by commerce than culture, it collapses. Strangely, all of these historically-proven errors describe our modern time; is it any reason then that people are in denial of the facts?

[edit]