What? — Banno

A fact.

Yes - with the quibble that there are other legitimate uses, as listed in the OED, for a start.

So for example, saying that such-and-such is a fact can be a way of exercising authority.

One of the difficulties here is that language will not sit still.

Yeah. Nuh. You lost me.

Yeah. Nuh. You lost me. — Banno

The question is simple! When is a fact a fact?

When it is true...?

When it is true...? — Banno

I knew you would answer that! For a fact! I'm not telling you a lie...

Bye.

Bye. — Banno

Give up already?

Care to explain what that would be?

The expression found in the T-sentence; "P is true" is the same as P. The "...is true" is redundant.

See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

The expression fo9und in the T-sentence; "P is true" is the same as P. The "...is true" is redundant. — Banno

Abracadabra...Simsalabim...HocusPocus...PilatusPas...

The expression found in the T-sentence; "P is true" is the same as P. The "...is true" is redundant.

See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/ — Banno

This looks like more intellectual masturbation from self-asserted 'analytical' jesters. E.g. from your link:

‘snow is white’ is true just in case snow is white

No shit, Sherlock! This is exactly the correspondence view of truth, not an alternative to it. A sentence is true iff it corresponds to some reality out there...

This is exactly the correspondence view of truth, not an alternative to it. — Olivier5

Yes, as explained above - it has the advantage that the correspondence is explicit: it's truth-functional.

The problem with correspondence is that it is hard to say what that correspondence is; and when you explain that correspondence, in terms of truth-function, it becomes... "intellectual masturbation".

So you can go with correspondence and be wrong, or deflation and be a wanker.

You said there existed alternatives to the correspondence view of truth. Are you now saying the opposite?

Well, what is the exact nature of the "correspondence" in your theory?

Folk who work with redundancy will also describe it as correspondence; but it is stricter than other versions of correspondence; those who might say that the correspondence is found in an observation, for instance.

what is the exact nature of the "correspondence" in your theory? — Banno

Simple: The sentence ‘snow is white’ is true iff there is such a thing out there called "snow" by people, and iff that thing, when shed solar light on, generally appears white to people.

So you've got that ‘snow is white’ is true iff people observe snow to be white.

Can you see that this is not a correspondence theory of truth? It's an observation theory of truth.

Your hypothesis is that things are as they appear. We know this to be problematic.

You are just trying to confuse yourself, as usual... And you're quite good at it, might I add.

The example "snow is white" speaks of the color of snow. Color is a type of appearance, so naturally the example speaks of how snow appears to us... Another example, e.g. "Snow is frozen water", would be about the nature of snow rather than its appearance. I am therefore not saying that things are like they appear, I am just taking an example which happened to be about how snow appears to us. It could have been about something else.

You are just trying to confuse yourself, as usual... — Olivier5

:wink:

If you must. I think there is a reason that the SEP does not have an entry called "the observation theory of truth". How's that cockroach?

The SEP is not a resource I use. It's written for students who need simple guidance on issues such as "How do we know that snow is white?". It is not a useful resource to assess philosophies. Also it cannot possibly be exhaustive, and tends to prioritize anglophone writers and traditions because of its origins - sometimes giving alot of room to super-obscure folks and none to some other much more famous philosopher who happened to write in Spanish, French or Portuguese. This is not a default but certainly it is a bias.

So just because one of my ideas is not given an entry in the SEP is not a concern for me. They cannot know everything. :-)

Fact is usually contrasted with Fiction. It (fact) differs from truth in that the latter can be assumed in a fictonal world. So, for instance, Sherlock Holmes lives in Baker street isn't a fact but in Conan Doyle's detective sleuth world, it's true. Similarly, but inversely, dragons don't exist is a fact but in the fictional Tolkien's world of elves, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs, that they do is true.

It appears that facts are about the correspondence theory of truth as in propositions that speak of the real world as it is are facts but the correspondence theory of truth has a scope that encompasses fictional worlds too (as described above). Thus a fact corresponds to some quality or state of affairs in what we hold to be the real world but a truth can correspond to the same but in either the real world or a make-believe one.

In short,

1. If I utter a fact, it has to be about the real world.

2. If I utter a truth, it can be either about the real world or a fictional world.

This was a great post to read. Not that I keep track of who posts what but from what I can recall and associate with your screen name, probably my favorite. Funny it may sound sarcastic but it's really not. I will admit I'm not a fan of your if X is Y then Z posts. Then again, perhaps logic and morality are more intertwined than we like to think..

So. The obvious questions/responses

You claim to define therefore (more or less absolutely) know a real world which so begets the existence of an alternative. What makes one more real than the other? Your mere interpretation from your (and these are other people's words not mine) barely evolved senses or even simple presence? Ha. Doesn't a charlatan create a world that is real to those who observe and believe?

But for all intents and purposes, let's call this interconnected experience we call life that we can interact and respond either positively or negatively with one another, as "the real world". Was all science and definitions or laws of reality defined 500 years ago? No. What on Earth would make you think, especially in this age of degeneracy and strife, they are now? There will always be more to learn. The only idea of a fact comes from a hypothesis that has yet to be confronted by an opposing truth.

The SEP is not a resource I use. It's written for students who need simple guidance on issues such as "How do we know that snow is white?". It is not a useful resource to assess philosophies. Also it cannot possibly be exhaustive, and tends to prioritize anglophone writers and traditions because of its origins - sometimes giving alot of room to super-obscure folks and none to some other much more famous philosopher who happened to write in Spanish, French or Portuguese. This is not a default but certainly it is a bias. — Olivier5

That's dreadfully inaccurate. Oh, well, I suppose it's down to background and education. Cheers and goodnight.

Yes, it is probably linked to education and most importantly culture. I find the SEP parochial, but it's probably useful for some as a sort of Junior Woodchucks Guidebook on anglophone academic philosophy.

Did I slay a holy cockroach of yours or what?

A T-sentence can be applied to any statement, and so is more general than correspondence. It has the advantage of being undeniable. Correspondence comes with its own difficulties. SO I'll go with T-sentences. — Banno

Correspondence seems to leave room for degrees of truth content. How much of a T-sentence has to actually be true versus how much correspondence to the facts a statement has to achieve to be informative and accurate.

Hmm. A T-sentence is all-or-nothing. Any finesse would be in the subject and object sentences.

"It's 99% possible that's a cockroach" is true IFF it's 99% possible that's a cockroach

Fact is usually contrasted with Fiction — TheMadFool

But the point is: What is fact and what is fiction?

What counts as fiction for some cultures, like the ancient Greek gods are for scientific culture, or quarks for ancient Greek culture, is fact for others, like quarks for midern scientific culture or gods for ancient Greek culture.

This was a great post to read. Not that I keep track of who posts what but from what I can recall and associate with your screen name, probably my favorite. Funny it may sound sarcastic but it's really not. I will admit I'm not a fan of your if X is Y then Z posts. Then again, perhaps logic and morality are more intertwined than we like to think..

So. The obvious questions/responses

You claim to define therefore (more or less absolutely) know a real world which so begets the existence of an alternative. What makes one more real than the other? Your mere interpretation from your (and these are other people's words not mine) barely evolved senses or even simple presence? Ha. Doesn't a charlatan create a world that is real to those who observe and believe?

But for all intents and purposes, let's call this interconnected experience we call life that we can interact and respond either positively or negatively with one another, as "the real world". Was all science and definitions or laws of reality defined 500 years ago? No. What on Earth would make you think, especially in this age of degeneracy and strife, they are now? There will always be more to learn. The only idea of a fact comes from a hypothesis that has yet to be confronted by an opposing truth. — Outlander

Let's just say, facts are ontological entities, in a sense what is, really is and truth is epistemological, what we know or think we know.

What is fact and what is fiction? — FredStair

The plain and simple answer seems to be fiction is that which has no physical form or that which can't be verified. Fact, the exact opposite.

For me, for example, that there is another planet in our galaxy with humanoid creatures living on it is either a fact or it is not, regardless of whether we can discover the truth of the matter. — Janus

What if you can't even imagine being able to discover the truth of the matter? We can imagine an extraordinary spaceship that would allow us to visit every planet in the galaxy, one after another, in a couple days, and we're pretty sure we would be able to recognize humanoid critters as such when we arrived on each of them. Maybe that's all we need to talk of their existing or not as fact, even if it's not practically within our ability to establish it. We could even count them.

But then there's "How many blades of grass are there in my front yard?" Seems like a simple but terribly impractical counting problem, but is "my front yard" clearly circumscribed? If it's not, no matter how quickly and carefully we count, there's no fact of the matter here. Is what counts as "a blade" clearly defined? If not, same problem. Sometimes questions like this do have imaginable but not practical answers and sometimes they don't.