So, for you, is there a difference between information and knowledge?


Or, perhaps, they're the kind of words (also, truth and fact) whose meanings and significance, as I seem to be learning, cannot be acquired through comparative thinking. That is, the differences have no real significance to our perspective. It's like illuminating one's home with white light or amber (yellow-ish), bottom-line is, they make it possible to see things.

A fact is the nature of a true statement (referring to a truth); in the OP, fact is restricted to had happened can be confirmed as fact.'

I disagree with. In some systems it's fact something in the future is X. At least there is a present tense.

Why it's the nature of true statements, is a shortener to annoy a greater sense of realm of fact.

It is partially what I'm saying. The Sun will rise tomorrow if all remains stable. This is a fact and neither side, yes or no exists for it. Perhaps, a lesser fact.

Thus I produce 'levels of fact', and a deeper explanation required from OP.

The difference is thought and forethought and minus forethought.

I have great forethought, the rate at which I track the nature of man is enough to read your mind at the symbol level of yourself.

I can read your expression and make correct links, if you think of it logically.

The links I have made are, amongst them, you were in a bubble and every movement you made was the cause of another movement. I know you are going to think this next, or at least can influence it, because you are this jar in a bubble.

Problem is you think thinking is just worded thought, motion is thinking.

proposition can, of course, be "in-itself true" even if it is not rigorously provable. A proposition, if it has a truth value, is either true for false. In and of itself. The world is either as the proposition describes or it is not. — Douglas Alan

What is an undecided proposition?

True and fact, two words, each four letters, spelled differently, sound different, one a noun, the other an adjective. Either they mean the same thing, or not. I say not. And usually it doesn't make any real difference which is used - except that one's correct and the other not - sometimes just a pedantic distinction to be sure. But sometimes it matters, that is, informal usage, careless or ignorant or sloppy, means the wrong thing. The auditor then has to "reread," adjust - maybe think about it - and then catch-up, not good communication.

Examples: true: 2+3=5.
Fact: Babe Ruth played for the Red Sox (at one time).
I credit the readers here with being able to recognize the differences between these two statements and a fortiori why the distinction.

And sometimes sentences like, "It's a fact that the sun will rise tomorrow." No doubt there are situations where this bending of language is appropriate, perhaps with someone who is arguing that it won't. But simply put, there is no such thing as a future fact.

But what is a simple way to mark the difference between fact and true? I offer this: facts are those things that could be other than they are. Caesar may well have crossed the Rubicon. But he could also have not crossed. Truths, on the other hand, cannot be other than they are. 2+3=5. Notwithstanding the erosive power of informal language that is continually wearing away at the distinctions preserved in language, that between fact and true is worth keeping. But maybe not. Perhaps, gentle reader, you will email me right away USD$2000, and not to worry, because it's a fact my brother-in-law will give me money next month, and I will, in fact, pay you back then.

To a philosopher in Cambridge MA, a proposition being a fact has nothing to do with whether you can prove it. It is a fact if it truthfully represents the world, and it is not a fact if it doesn't. — Douglas Alan

And this just shows there's no accounting for what passes for philosophy in Cambridge (our fair city), MA. (home of Harvard U., and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both claimed by our boy). A hazard of institutions that teach that they're congenitally always right and correct and congratulate themselves for same, or people who having attended, make it their own methodology.

What is an undecided proposition? — 3017amen

A kind of barbed hook that always catches the one fishing, and never a fish. Do you really want to go there? Google Kurt Godel and undecidable propositions.

Yes Tim, the question was somewhat rhetorical :wink: .

The short answer is that there are a multitude of propositions that go beyond simple true and false, yes or no, either/or. I just wanted to ask the MIT guy!

The short answer is that there are a multitude of propositions that go beyond simple true and false, yes or no, either/or. I just wanted to ask the MIT guy! — 3017amen

The word "proposition" to philosophers is technical jargon. Though we can actually find a decent definition for this jargon in the American Heritage Dictionary:

a. A statement that affirms or denies something.
b. The meaning expressed in such a statement, as opposed to the way it is expressed.

Such a statement can be true or false. "Horses are animals" is a true proposition. "Horses are all brown" is a false proposition. "Horses are good" is a proposition that fails to have a truth value.

I'm not sure what you mean by an "undecided" proposition. We might look at particular crayon that is orangey red and state, "This crayon is red." This statement is a proposition, but there may be no fact of the matter as to whether the crayon is red or not, and if there is no fact of the matter on that question, then the proposition fails to have a truth value.

|>ouglas

I'm not sure what you mean by an "undecided" proposition — Douglas Alan

Just quickly, of course, any judgment or proposition that relates to causation, cosmology, natural science, phenomenology, consciousness, et al.

You know, human condition kinds of stuff.

You know, human condition kinds of stuff. — 3017amen

Well, I'm not sure that I do know. But there are certainly a multitude of propositions that have truth values, but for which we'll never know for sure what that truth value is. (E.g., whether the Bohm or Everett interpretation of QM is the right one.) And there are a multitude of propositions which just fail to have truth values.

Many philosophers believe that any proposition that expresses whether some act is right or wrong, for instance, can never have a truth value, since moral judgements are not the sorts of things that are amenable to being factual. Other philosophers would disagree about this, however.

I guess the existence of moral propositions might cause us to ask what is their usefulness if they can never have a truth value. That's an interesting question for sure, but not a topic I have studied. The "term" proposition originated in logic, as I understand it, and logic would not concern itself much with propositions that have no truth value. Since then, the term "proposition" has been expanded widely. It is still used to convey the notion that an attempt is being made to assert that something is true via the proposition. But clearly things can get complicated outside of the tidy domain of logic.

|>ouglas

Hey Doug real quick don't have a lot of time this afternoon but wanted to get back to you. At the risk of redundancy it's worth repeating the infamous Kantian judgement that seems to baffle logicians:
All events must have a cause.

True, false , contingent, undecided...

I can think of many more but we'll have to wait till next week...

it's worth repeating the infamous Kantian judgement that seems to baffle logicians:
All events must have a cause. — 3017amen

I'm not familiar with logicians being baffled by this assertion. Logicians, in my experience, are concerned mostly with propositions that carry a truth value. As I mentioned, some propositions, will not carry a truth value, and different logicians have different opinions about what to do about such propositions.

Some have asserted, I believe, that all such propositions are to be considered false. At least if you insert them into a logically deductive argument. Others might say that the entire argument then will just have a conclusion without a truth value.

There are also forms of logic that are multi-valued. I.e., they are more truth values than just true and false. I don't know much about these alternative forms of logic. I think they have been used more by computer scientists for implementing AI systems, for instance, than by philosophers.

As for the sentence "All events must have a cause", I can see that people may agree or disagree with this statement. Or they may feel that it doesn't have a truth value. But in terms of how logic is to deal with it, I don't see how it is different from any other proposition that might be contentious.

Logicians and philosophers of language have worried a lot about propositions such as "Santa Claus wears a red suit", which seems to be true, despite the fact that Santa Claus does not exist. How best to handle such propositions took up much of a semester, with no clear answer at the time.

|>ouglas

But simply put, there is no such thing as a future fact. — tim wood

Is there any such thing as a future truth?

"It is true that..." and "It is a fact that..." seem to be semantically equivalent. They are grammatically different but the first can be changed to 'It is a truth that..." without seeming to semantically change anything or descending into incoherence.

And this just shows there's no accounting for what passes for philosophy in Cambridge (our fair city), MA. (home of Harvard U., and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both claimed by our boy). A hazard of institutions that teach that they're congenitally always right and correct and congratulate themselves for same, or people who having attended, make it their own methodology. — tim wood

And you are asserting that MIT carefully selects all of the reading material assigned so that it only confirms MIT's and Harvard's parochial view?

Considering that MIT's Philosophy department is ranked fourth in the world or so, they must be doing something right with respect to how philosophers in general view what comes out of MIT's Philosophy department. Likewise for the sciences at both Harvard and MIT.

Since "fact" is a word that can be defined however a group consensually decides to use it, it seems that you travel in philosophical circles that are different from mine. I wish you well on your journeys, but I do not wish to participate in them. Life is short and I do not have the time to also traipse down whatever path you are on.

As I mentioned already, philosophers around here like to use words in the same way that a layperson would when using words that are potentially of philosophical interest to the layperson.

This is what Wikipedia says that a fact is:

A fact is a thing that is known to be consistent with objective reality and can be proven to be true with evidence. For example, "This sentence contains words." is a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star." is a cosmological fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States." and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." are also both facts, of history. All of these statements have the epistemic quality of being "ontologically superior" to opinion or interpretation — they are either categorically necessary or supported by adequate documentation.

I.e., this is how the layperson uses the word "fact", and so philosophers in Cambridge go with that usage.

For reasons unfathomable to me, you wish to travel down a different path. I bid you safe travels.

|>ouglas

All events must have a cause. — 3017amen

This is sometimes called an absolute presupposition. That means that when Kant as writing, he found that for the scientists of his time - and he was himself apparently a world-class physics instructor - the idea of all events having causes was an absolute presupposition of their thinking. That means not that it was true or that anyone had proved it - it's not provable - but it was where they started in their thinking - something like an axiom. Google "absolute presuppositions" for detail. And it may seem absurd to question, but if you or i insist that all events have causes, we're only several generations behind in our thinking. Most of the sciences today have dispensed with the notion of causes, except perhaps in informal discussion, and think in terms of fields. One thing that drove them was the problem of giving a rigorous definition of cause.

It's argued that Kant's was an evolved understanding of Newton, who had argued that some events were due to the operation of laws, and others caused. Kant apparently just collapsed it all into all events have causes,

A fact is a thing that is known to be consistent with objective reality and can be proven to be true with evidence. For example, "This sentence contains words." is a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star." is a cosmological fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States." and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." are also both facts, of history. All of these statements have the epistemic quality of being "ontologically superior" to opinion or interpretation — they are either categorically necessary or supported by adequate documentation. — Douglas Alan

You make my point egg-zackly! For facts, their truth is granted. Different from the truth of, e.g., 2+3=5, which is in no need of being granted, and can stand on its own without question or need of any of "ontological superiority," or the other polysyllabic concoctions you offered. In fact, our truth as true is superior, if you must have it, to all of those.

You've been invited and challenged to consider the words themselves. Your response has been to appeal to your school, your teachers, what you were taught, and ultimately that groups can decide for themselves what words mean: "Since "fact" is a word that can be defined however a group consensually decides to use it,..." I'm pretty sure the in-some-cases world class thinkers from along the Charles are by no means at all so careless and sloppy in their usage, and if they're redefining a term, they're careful to do an explicitly careful job of doing it. Or at least that's what I find them doing, when I find them doing it.

It is true that..." and "It is a fact that..." seem to be semantically equivalent. They are grammatically different but the first can be changed to 'It is a truth that..." without seeming to semantically change anything or descending into incoherence. — Janus

Seem, sure, but think about where the meaning is coming from. The speaker or writer is presuming the reader/auditor already has the appropriate distinctions in mind and understands them as given. Not always the best recipe for communication. Why use the wrong word when there's a right one, unless you don't know the difference?

A fact is a thing that is known to be consistent with objective reality and can be proven to be true with evidence. For example, "This sentence contains words." is a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star." is a cosmological fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States." and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." are also both facts, of history. All of these statements have the epistemic quality of being "ontologically superior" to opinion or interpretation — they are either categorically necessary or supported by adequate documentation.
— Douglas Alan

You make my point egg-zackly! For facts, their truth is granted. Different from the truth of, e.g., 2+3=5, — tim wood

Apparently you don't know how to read plain English. The sentence, "This sentence contains words" is a tautology. It is true in all possible worlds. It is analytic a priori, not a posteriori, and requires knowing nothing about the external world.

Also you conveniently ignored, "they are either categorically necessary". A categorical necessity is a non-contingent fact of the sort, "Blue is a color". I.e., its truth just follows from the definitions of "blue" and "color".

If we scroll down a bit in the Wikipedia article, we'll find:

In mathematics, a fact is a statement (called a theorem} that can be proven by logical argument from certain axioms and definitions.

There's your 2+3=5. It's a mathematical fact.

I am done with you. You started off as an ass (e.g. calling me stupid and ignorant in your first response to me), and you remain one. I will no longer feed this troll.

|>oug

Seem, sure, but think about where the meaning is coming from. The speaker or writer is presuming the reader/auditor already has the appropriate distinctions in mind and understands them as given. Not always the best recipe for communication. Why use the wrong word when there's a right one, unless you don't know the difference? — tim wood

You haven't responded to the point which was the lack of substantive semantic distinction between the two common phrases. If you think there is such a distinction then perhaps you could say what it consists in?

A fact is the nature of a true statement (referring to a truth) — Qwex

There is no single factual definition of fact. I mean, it's a very ambiguous concept. Like ambiguous concepts, it is easier to understand as opposed to clearer ones. Especially, facts vs. values, facts vs. theories, objective vs. subjective facts, etc.
In general, facts are associated with objectivity, something that exists outside our mind or is a reference in our language. Therefore, facts is not truth. Truth is a property of some sentences; facts are the weft of reality. Gnoseology / ontology.

You haven't responded to the point which was the lack of substantive semantic distinction between the two common phrases. — Janus

If you do not know the meanings of, care about, or distinguish between the two words "fact" and true" then for you there is no difference. And to be sure, that's one-way-or-another true of many people in many contexts. The substance of my point is that they are two different words with two different meanings. And they have different meanings because the distinction made is one that matters.

Let's try this. If something is true, then it just is true. 2+3=5 is true. Why true? Because it can be shown, proven, at any time, and the proof requires no assent (understanding, to be sure); it's not a matter or persuasion. In other words, the proposition in virtue of what it represents possesses in itself a particular quality, called being true. A sign is when we say something is something, meaning now whether in a temporal or atemporal sense. So far so good?

Let's suppose we have a fact. According to me, all facts are historical facts. Being historical means being temporal. Let's see, there's time past, time future, and right NOW. I suppose that at the moment I'm being punched in the nose I might say, "I'm being punched in the nose!" And that would be true. But observe that it would be true at no other time and for no other person at any time.

Moving beyond the NOW, and generalizing a bit, we could say that X punched Y in the nose, or X will punch Y in the nose. The future punch has not yet happened. Anything said about it may be likely or unlikely, or conjectural; strictly speaking though, it is neither a fact nor is it true.

That leaves time past, X punched Y in the nose. Is it true? I sense you will jump i here and say something like, "Well, if it happened, then it's true!" But that leaves the questions, if what happened? Did it happen? How did it happen - is what happened what we think or say happened? Like it or no, these are all questions of an historical nature, and there is no way whatsoever to get around that. Can we say our answers our true? We can say, "Jellyfish!" if we want to, but as to truth, any truth attributed to these is simply not the truth laid out above.

The truth above is a demonstrated truth, proved. The so-called "truth" of the fact is a granted - and thereby provisional - truth based on something other than the thing itself. In short it requires some element of persuasion and acceptance.

To suppose that the words create this distinction is an error; the words only demarcate it. To dismiss it is the free act of someone who dismisses it for their own reason. But on the other hand, to suppose that there is no distinction is just ignorance in action. Persistence in which is a definition of stupidity. One of us, @Douglas Alan, is claiming that the folks who inhale the rarified air at two of the planet's better schools observe no such distinction. As it happens I know about that air, maybe better than he himself: they're as capable of great informality as anyone, but their knowledge of distinctions and the value of them is perhaps greater than Doug is aware.

One of us, Douglas Alan, is claiming that the folks who inhale the rarified air at two of the planet's better schools observe no such distinction. — tim wood

What an absurd thing to say. I never claimed that philosophers in these parts wouldn't recognize the distinctions of which you speak. They would just not use the word "fact" in the manner that you claim is the one true meaning of the word. Unless, perhaps, they included an introduction stating that they were going to be using certain words in certain jargony ways, in which case they would either define their jargon explicitly or by referring to the usage of the term by some famous philosopher.

E.g., the meaning of the word "meaning" is fraught. Many a book and paper that I read back in the day, would, when introducing the word "meaning" into their argument, mention that they were taking, for instance, Kripke's meaning of the word "meaning" as a given. They were unlikely to just plow on and assume that this is the way that the reader would take the meaning of the word "meaning".

Chalmers, in his seminal book, however, does not accept Kripke's usage of "meaning" as complete, and so he spends many pages devoted to describing his "2D" theory of meaning. In many cases, nothing really hinges on such distinctions and so little is said. In other cases, the difference is of paramount importance, and then lines of distinction will be drawn.

This case of "meaning" is a bit different from our debate about facts, since the usages of the word "meaning" by both Kripke and Chalmers are meant to capture the layperson's notion of the word "meaning". There is just some disagreement on how to best do that.

In your case, you seem to have no concern for how a layperson would use the word "fact" and just seem to insist that there is really only one correct way to use the word "fact" in philosophical discussions. How you have come upon this one true meaning for a piece of jargon is left as something of a mystery, other than that you just assert it to be the case and that anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant and stupid.

In the circles, I've been in, when the word "fact" is used, an attempt is usually made to capture the lay meaning of the term, just with more precision than a dictionary or Wikipedia entry might. There might, of course, be disagreement on how to best do that.

I have seen the word "fact" used more or less in the way that you use it, but mostly in older philosophical writings that had not yet moved towards ordinary language philosophy. At least with respect to terms that are used by ordinary people.

For the record, I have never asserted that there is one correct usage of the term "fact". My only real assertion has been that your usage of the term "fact" is far afield from ordinary language usage, while the philosophers I have studied with have attempted to stick with ordinary language usage, as much as is possible.

This is not to say that they don't use plenty of jargon, but when they do so, it is usually clear when they are, and they don't usually try to substitute a jargon meaning for ordinary language usage when trying to answer a philosophical conundrum that is expressed in ordinary language. Though, of course, it being an imperfect world, sometimes they slip, or they believe that the jargon captures the lay meaning, and then much hilarity often ensues.

|>ouglas

Truth and fact are different animals. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon is a fact. 2+3=5 is true — tim wood

The significant distinction between these two statements is that one relates to the real world and is ultimately founded on sense data, while the other is entirely abstract and relies solely on axioms, processes of inference and the generation of theorems.

Nothing you've said provides any reason why we should think there cannot be a-historical, as well as historical, truths or facts. I was only referring to the semantic equivalence between the two terms in common usage, not your or anybody's preferred interpretations of the terms.

I ask again, can you outline any difference in the semantic content of the two terms as they are commonly used?

I ask again, can you outline any difference in the semantic content of the two terms as they are commonly used? — Janus

If you do not know the meanings of, care about, or distinguish between the two words "fact" and true" then for you there is no difference. And to be sure, that's one-way-or-another true of many people in many contexts. — tim wood

So you assert a difference but are apparently unable to say what it is...

Go back through the thread, I've said exactly what I think repeatedly: two different words, two different meanings, a difference that makes a difference, and the two used somewhat interchangeably by folks who don't know or don't care or where it really doesn't matter. What else can I tell you?

For the record, I have never asserted that there is one correct usage of the term "fact". My only real assertion has been that your usage of the term "fact" is far afield from ordinary language usage, while the philosophers I have studied with have attempted to stick with ordinary language usage, as much as is possible. — Douglas Alan

My God, what a way to complicate your life! You guys seem in a mood of arguing!

Truth: property of a proposition.
Fact: what exists in the world.

It's two different kinds of things. For example, the theory of adequacy defines truth as the proposition adequacy to the facts.

In ordinary language it is sometimes said "the true thing", but it is a confusing way of speaking of those things that are designated by language and really exist.

What else can I tell you? — tim wood

You haven't told me anything yet.

Truth: property of a proposition.
Fact: what exists in the world. — David Mo

A fact would be a description of what exists in the world (or actually what has ever existed, since we can have facts about the past.) IOW a chair isn't a fact (nor is it a truth, for that matter).

Fact: what exists in the world. — David Mo

My car exists in the world. My car is a fact?

|>ouglas