But the observations that were done, remain done, factum, unless they were poorly done of course. Any new theory would have to contend with past observations. So observations (and only they) are facts.

So, if you never saw a black swan, that is a fact that you never observed a black swan. The theory that no black swan exists is a different thing, not a fact. — Olivier5

On the one hand, I see no reason to think we can separate observation and theory like this. Facts are theory-laden. That's the lesson of mid-century philosophy of science and that's the lesson of neuroscience today.

On the other hand, I do believe reality pushes back, and we need to capture that somehow. It's tempting to think we could take "what is invariant across all theories" as the observation, but I suspect that turns out to be nothing at all. It might turn out to be plenty if we could narrow the field of theories, and I think something like that is roughly what happens in practice. Competing theories are often very close kin, differing in some important local respect, but with an enormous amount in common.

But I don't know how to proceed from there. The only natural way I can think of to classify theories is backwards -- to just sort them by invariance, in essence to sort them by what counts as an observation for them. But that looks like a roundabout way of getting to your position: within a theory family, something will count as a "pure" observation, but only because that's how we defined the family!

I just don't know how to make these two ideas -- both of which I find compelling -- play nice together.

But if the counter to lies is just alternate belief, what's the point?

Isn't the point that the election was fair, vaccines do save lives, climate change is man-made?

If you start from the premise that truth doesn't matter, you've already lost. — Banno

What matters is up to us, no? Your critique smacks of aesthetics.

It would be nice if facts mattered, but they don’t. The wall pushes back until it doesn’t. Your assertion we can never walk through it is true until it isn’t. What was true is no longer true and what will be true has yet to be. Facts are not substance, but wispy things that evaporate the harder we look or the harder we try to hold them. (Go ahead, start with the block universe.)

Being wrong is like the happiness machine - a cry into the wind about how what is real should somehow carry some weight beyond what we believe or feel - that we have to get back to something that has inherent something regardless of us. A futile hand waving in the face of insurmountable intellectual absence.

Your insistence that being wrong matters does not elevate facts to things which people can be wrong about outside of belief/language, and isn’t just about idealism. We change the world (the facts) all of the time and as our knowledge expands the world stops reacting in the way that it did before. What was a “fact” before is merely the limitation of the utterer to achieve their purpose, not some feature of metaphysics. And even your use of ideas like “climate change is man-mad” are so theory laden that if you turn out to be “wrong” about the causal mechanism but right about the solution, so what? What was important was to save the world as you defined it, not that your theory is not subject to revision as different evidence becomes available.

The cat is on the mat. It has been for years just as you’ve typed about the cat being on the mat with your keyboard and I’ve read it with my eyes and we’ve performatively contradicted any assertion of skeptical doubt. None of that fixes a fact.

A fact is the sort of thing that true statements are about - what makes a truth bearer true. Why put more weight on the word than what it supports? And why insist that there is a territory for our map when all we can deal in is maps?

If something can be confirmed as fact, explain how. — Yohan

It works like this- If someone says don't drink the water because it is polluted and if you drink it you will get sick and may die, and you observe that this is in fact what happens to the people who drink that water, you might agree the fact is true. Fortunately, nature is wise and kills the ignorant. We can see that with Covid. Our hospitals are so overwhelmed we have called in the National Gaurd to help and we have refrigerator trucks waiting to receive the dead bodies. Hopefully, this will also reduce the population who denies global warming and we can get on with the steps to respond to the reality of climate change.

It would be nice if facts mattered, but they don’t. The wall pushes back until it doesn’t. Your assertion we can never walk through it is true until it isn’t. What was true is no longer true and what will be true has yet to be. Facts are not substance, but wispy things that evaporate the harder we look or the harder we try to hold them. (Go ahead, start with the block universe.) — Ennui Elucidator

If we can not walk through a wall, there is a reason for that being true and that truth is very unlikely to change. Here is a cute video explaining why we can not walk through a wall.

https://scienceswitch.com/2018/04/24/cannot-walk-through-walls/

And now of course it's neither what nor how, but what a great guy or girl you are. With exceptions: some people are just plain smart, and smart enough to recognize they'll have to row their own boat. And life itself, which can and does administer its own correctives. — tim wood

A smart person puts a motor on that boat. :rofl:

What was a “fact” before is merely the limitation of the utterer to achieve their purpose, not some feature of metaphysics. — Ennui Elucidator

Fact as the limit of my will is very good. But we need to aggregate, and there are patterns.

If you have a set of organisms, each is part of the other's environment, but there are also non-organisms, or organisms not considered in the original set, that are part of every organism's environment (every organism in the set, that is). That's a simple starting point for something -- the limit of all of them aggregated by just taking the intersection (a set that's invariant across environments), and I think it's a version of that simple starting point people imagine as "reality", or "nature", or what's "out there". One sort of thing there are facts about.

But there are also patterns in the way we are each other's limits, and it's hard (okay, hard for me) not to reach immediately for game theory there. There is some predictability in the ways we compete with and cooperate with each other, patterns that inevitably arise within sets of organisms like this, and they have that weird double-status of being both something that feels sort of external to us, but that we are also part of and contribute to shaping. So there are things here that look a little like facts, but not the other kind of facts that are the limit of aggregate will, but facts that are aggregates of wills.

That's all terribly abstract, but I hope the point comes through that the limit of your will can be a thing, another person like you with their own will, or the way your will combines with the wills of others in a way you partially control, as everyone does, and partially don't, because no one does.

So some guy posts a video as to why and you suppose that is true for all eternity. Many a scientist was firmly convinced of many an error, why do you think your (or his) certainty creates facts where other people’s certainty failed to create facts before?

So some guy posts a video as to why and you suppose that is true for all eternity. Many a scientist was firmly convinced of many an error, why do you think your (or his) certainty creates facts where other people’s certainty failed to create facts before? — Ennui Elucidator

Because I have some understanding of scientific thinking.

Your post is not following the rules of a good argument. If you want to argue the man in the video is wrong, first you have to pay careful attention to what he said. Then you have to repeat what he said that you do not believe is true. Then you explain why you do not believe what he said is true. That I could be wrong or that mistakes have been made, is not a good argument against what the man in the video said.

A fact is everything. Everything that is is a fact. That's a fact. A fact of life. Every thing is a fact. Evey fact is a thing. Undeniably, Falsifiably, confirmably, liably. Factual knowledge is knowledge about these things. For example: Hannover is written with two n's. — Donkeywelling

Is a story about a god walking in a garden with a man and woman and that this god cursed them because they ate a forbidden fruit, a fact? Please explain why the story is or is not a fact.

I wasn't speaking about science when I gave my example about WWII, so I'm not sure I follow what you're saying in this part. It wasn't a scientific fact, but a historical one.

Faith is faith because it is based on belief alone, with little to no attention to facts. Science and religion in this sense are not compatible when describing the same situations. Sure, science is not sure proof, but nothing is. It's just that science is the best tool we have for ascertaining facts about the world.

Absent good evidence, we need good reasons to belief so and so. Philosophy can help us here. But if you want to speak about facts and how they relate to religion, I don't think one will get very far. — Manuel

I very much like your explanation. If I understand you correctly apples are not oranges. Some of what we say is factual and not everything we say is factual. If it is factual, there are proves of that, but if it is fictional there are no proves of what is said.

↪Athena I think facts are what true propositions assert. So if the proposition "It is raining" is true, then that it is raining is what's being asserted. That is, it is a fact that it's raining. Not married to that analysis, but it sounds about right to me. — Bartricks

That sounds good to me. However, if we want to be precise we might clarify the time and place it is raining. Unless we are talking with someone in the same place at the same time. However, if you are talking to a child who does not want to wear a coat, it doesn't matter what you say. Just as if someone doesn't want to wear of mask or get a vaccine, it doesn't matter what you say. :lol:

I don't see how the belief that reasoning is the way to resolve conflicts is somehow a democratic principle. — T Clark

:gasp: You must be a citizen of the US or maybe a member of the Taliban in Afghanistan? What is your understanding of democracy if it is not understanding what reasoning has to do with democracy? Do you understand what freedom of speech has to do with democracy? Science gives us information that is essential to good moral judgment. The whole climate change discussion is about what has caused climate change and if we can and should do something to correct a manmade problem. There are political and economic and life and death ramifications, to understanding science and what behaviors will increase or decrease our shared problems.

↪Athena So this is just yet another thread about god. And here was I thinking it might be interesting. — Banno

Oh no, this is a thread about democracy and the survival of humanity.

Yes.

We may, for example say factual claims about fictional works. For instance, Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 is a male and a party member, even though there is no Winston Smith in the actual world.

I like the focus on decision making. — Zugzwang

I've come around to the understanding that the question "What is true?" is not the right one. The one that matters is "What do I do now?" Truth is just a tool we can use to make the decision.

'a fact is the kind of statement that all us reasonable people consider true, for now.' — Zugzwang

Gould was one of the primary people who went out as an expert witness at trials involving creationism and intelligent design. This is something he was passionate about. One of the reasons I like his quote is that the passion shows. Your statement isn't strong enough for him, or for me. There is a bite in "perverse."

Indeed, you did. — Banno

Yes, Mr. Snoot.

So truth matters. — Banno

Let's talk about the Trump/Biden election situation. Truth no longer matters. Biden is president. That's not going to change. The people in power were convinced. What's important now is being able to work with those who don't believe. We can 1) Rant and rave and feel superior 2) Try to convince the disbelievers or 3) Work to reduce the level of animosity so we can work together going forward.

A lot of people who hate Trump want to drive the bus off a cliff as a matter of principle.

We may, for example say factual claims about fictional works. For instance, Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 is a male and a party member, even though there is no Winston Smith in the actual world. — Manuel

That is a scary thought. That means talk of the gods is factual and that does not sit well with me. I do not think that is good logic. I think it is pretty important we distinguish between what is real and what is not and that is why I started this thread.

On the one hand, I see no reason to think we can separate observation and theory like this. Facts are theory-laden. That's the lesson of mid-century philosophy of science and that's the lesson of neuroscience today.

On the other hand, I do believe reality pushes back, and we need to capture that somehow. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, the Duhem–Quine thesis, good point. Data are always interpreted and even collected based on some theoretical framework. Yet in the end, when Ms. X observes that with apparatus Y and initial conditions Z, a certain thing happen to that needle in that quadrant, that observation remains a fact.

Is a story about a god walking in a garden with a man and woman and that this god cursed them because they ate a forbidden fruit, a fact? — Athena

The story is a fact.

A lot of people who hate Trump want to drive the bus off a cliff as a matter of principle. — T Clark

Well, maybe we would be done with Covid if Trump had not dismantled the department that was about preventing or at least controlling pandemics, and maybe the economic pain would have been much less if the pandemic had been handled properly from the beginning instead of having a President who denied science and lied to everyone, and is still the king of ignorance flooding our hospitals and requiring refrigerator trucks long after everyone should have been vaccinated. Nothing is more important to this thread than understanding the importance of science, and citizens who understand what science has to do with our survival and democracy. But with a president like Trump who appeals to our emotions but not our brains and a mass that does not understand logic and the difference between nonfiction and fiction or what science has to do with democracy, the challenge seems overwhelming.

But with a president like Trump who appeals to our emotions but not our brains and a mass that does not understand logic and the difference between nonfiction and fiction or what science has to do with democracy, the challenge seems overwhelming. — Athena

What's wrong with appealing to emotions? What's so important about the brain? Emotions need a brain to flourish too.

The story is a fact. — Inplainsight

A librarian would put it on the fiction shelves, not the non-fiction shelves. Would you mind stating how older you are? I am betting you were educated after 1958, when we began educating for a technological society with unknown values and changing the organization of our institutions to take care everything for the people who can not be left to think for themselves because life is too complex. Don't worry dear, you do not need to know the difference between fiction and non-fiction because all you have to do is obey the authorities who handle everything for us.

You must be a citizen of the US or maybe a member of the Taliban in Afghanistan? What is your understanding of democracy if it is not understanding what reasoning has to do with democracy? Do you understand what freedom of speech has to do with democracy? Science gives us information that is essential to good moral judgment. The whole climate change discussion is about what has caused climate change and if we can and should do something to correct a manmade problem. There are political and economic and life and death ramifications, to understanding science and what behaviors will increase or decrease our shared problems. — Athena

I don't get your point. I value democracy. I value reason. I just don't see that they are necessarily strongly related.

Don't worry dear, you do not need to know the difference between fiction and non-fiction because all you have to do is obey the authorities who handle everything for us. — Athena

But I do worry dear! Science is a story too, eventhough our universities make us believe that it's about facts. What to think of massless Goldstone ghosts eaten by massless gauge bosons to aquire mass? Feyerabend is one of the few who understands this. The fact that science is one story amongst many.

What's wrong with appealing to emotions? What's so important about the brain? Emotions need a brain to flourish too. — Inplainsight

Here is the answer to your question.

Well, maybe we would be done with Covid if Trump had not dismantled the department that was about preventing or at least controlling pandemics, and maybe the economic pain would have been much less if the pandemic had been handled properly from the beginning instead of having a President who denied science and lied to everyone, and is still the king of ignorance flooding our hospitals and requiring refrigerator trucks long after everyone should have been vaccinated. — Athena

Again, I don't get your point. I don't and never did support Donald Trump. I think he was a bad president. What does that have to do with this discussion?

Nothing is more important to this thread than understanding the importance of science, and citizens who understand what science has to do with our survival and democracy. — Athena

If that's the point you've been working toward, you set the OP up badly. This thread so far has not been about what you refer to. It's not what I've been talking about. It's a bit late to turn it in that direction.

Here is the answer to your question. — Athena

I'm asking your answer. Not that of others.

Again, I don't get your point. I don't and never did support Donald Trump. I think he was a bad president. What does that have to do with this discussion?

Nothing is more important to this thread than understanding the importance of science, and citizens who understand what science has to do with our survival and democracy.
— Athena

If that's the point you've been working toward, you set the OP up badly. This thread so far has not been about what you refer to. It's not what I've been talking about. It's a bit late to turn it in that direction. — T Clark

Thank you. I am glad to learn. How should I have begun this discussion? Do you want to start a better thread for looking at the importance of being able to understand the difference between facts and fiction?

Perhaps I was wrong for saying why this subject is so important to me. But I do feel passionate about the importance of understanding logic and science and what that has to do with being a democracy.

The fact that science is one story amongst many. — Inplainsight

I agree with this, but it's a really good story.

Thank you a sane post. — Athena

Not to look askance at a compliment, but are you implying my previous posts were not sane?