If you're talking about the use of the terms in science, there's a distinction, but it's what I described, not what you described. — InPitzotl

What distinction did you describe, exactly? Short version please.

Again, you replied, but you did not answer the question. Is it a fact that planets exist when you aren't looking at them, or a theory that planets exist when you aren't looking at them?: — InPitzotl

Neither. It's an absolute presupposition for astronomy. Supposedly, if we thought that celestial objects disappear, we wouldn't try and track their path across the sky and astronomy would never had been founded.

You may not like the answer, but it is one nevertheless. I refer you to Collingwood's Essay on Metaphysics.

"But the observations that were done, remain done, factum," ...but that's a contradiction. You're using certainty as a criteria, and we can't be certain an object is there when we are looking at it either. — InPitzotl

As explained, it is an absolute presupposition that things remain 'there' even when you don't look at them. That's why we look for our keys when we misplace them.

So what you're saying is because I might draw a blue marble, it does not matter what the probability is that I draw a red one. — InPitzotl

No, I'm saying that once you've drawn it doesn't matter if you were more likely to draw what you did or less likely. If the less likely outcome is what happened, on this single draw, you owe me money. That's all.

There is no number of times we can play where it's not true that you "might" win. — InPitzotl

I meant that your accumulated net winnings would gradually increase.

A bet is usually a stake laid on the outcome of an individual event, as here, and sometimes the favorite loses. Gambling as an ongoing enterprise to make money can follow the odds and the winnings should more than make up for the losses in the long term.

What distinction did you describe, exactly? — Olivier5

Well let me phrase it another way. You observe some particular and derive some truth about the particular, where "truth" is simply something to your own satisfaction. That's a fact. You collect a bunch of facts and find some generalized explanation for it... that's a theory. Incidentally this isn't just a mathematical or logical net; a mathematical relationship between several facts isn't considered an explanation; that is just a law, not a theory.

Short version please. — Olivier5

As requested, kept it very short.

Neither. It's an absolute presupposition for astronomy. — Olivier5

I'm unconvinced that being a presupposition implies "neither". We learn object permanence at an incredibly young age. It has the hallmarks of a theory; we observe objects going out of view, and coming into view, but there's some consistency of the observations that appears to arise out of the data... objects going out of view still seem to "be out there", potentially to come back into view again. We infer then that objects stay there even if we don't see them. This would make it a theory.

The reason science shows little interest in it is because it's primitive and ubiquitous; approximately all humans learn it at an incredibly young age. The tools of science simply aren't necessary to use to get to the theory.

No, I'm saying that once you've drawn it doesn't matter if you were more likely to draw what you did or less likely. — Srap Tasmaner

Once I've drawn 100 marbles it wouldn't matter if I were more likely to draw what I did or less likely.

I meant that your accumulated net winnings would gradually increase. — Srap Tasmaner

No, my accumulated net winnings would probably increase. There's a probability that it would. The contradiction here is that you're appealing to probability in the multiple case yet ignoring it in the single case. Either probability matters, in which case it matters on a single draw; or it doesn't, in which case it doesn't matter on multiple draws. The only thing multiple draws gives you is another probability.

So you think object permanence is a theory. A sort of theory about everything that we derive from experience.

To me, it seems difficult to verify or falsify from experience, because when you check that objects are still there, you must look at them objects. So you can't see what they do when you don't look at them.

So you think object permanence is a theory. — Olivier5

Correct.

Mmmokay. In a sense, a presupposition is 'theoretical'.

Still, there is such a thing as the brute picture taken of a planet, its spectrum analysis and the likes. Brute facts, the data, this data and not another.

The brute picture of a planet

A composite image of the south pole of Jupiter made from JunoCam images taken during the 1st, 3rd, & 4th orbits of NASA's Juno spacecraft, August 2019.

A fairly quick dismissal.

So are you committing to realism? Are there truths that we could not possibly know?

Dayam!!! that is something else. Thanks for sharing

You're welcome. Looks like a Van Gogh to me.

I don't see what the supposition that there are truths we could not possibly know even in principle (a supposition I don't make) has to do with my criticism of Fitch's (supposed) Paradox.

A notable feature of facts as I defined them -- as empirical evidence, basically -- is that they often cost real money. The cost of the Juno spacecraft which took the 'Van Gogh marble' picture(s) above was projected to be US$1.46 billion for operations and data analysis through 2022.

Facts have also financial value: they can be sold. Eg you can sell commercial satellite imagery, or survey data.

Truth, however, is not so easy to commodify.

A notable feature of facts as I defined them — Olivier5

This is often the problem of facts, not just the counter-factual nature of how most people engage with them, but the way that they simple suppose because they imagine something in their head it means that it is possible. If only logical possibility had any demonstrable relationship to facts, they might be on to something, but so far it seems like we have precisely the facts we have, no more, no less, and that logic serves as an interpretive tool rather than an imposition on what they can be.

The antonym of fact is not false, it's hypothetical/fiction.

In other words, facts are non-imaginary, true propositions (about this world we're denizens of).

Propositions can be:

1. True & imaginary (unicorns have a horn)
2. True & non-imaginary (facts)
3. False & imaginary (unicorns are dogs)
5. False & non-imaginary (NY is in Guatamela)

so far it seems like we have precisely the facts we have, no more, no less, and that logic serves as an interpretive tool rather than an imposition on what they can be — Ennui Elucidator

Exactly, except we can of course aquire more facts as we go along, and we do.

Exactly, except we can of course acquire more facts as we go along, and we do. — Olivier5

But to your point, facts come at a cost, so we are likely to obtain only those facts that have a cost that we (or others) are willing to bear in order to obtain them. Unsurprisingly, then, many facts support power and undermine the powerless. As @180 Proof has said, facts are ineluctable, but not for the reasons he supposes.

facts come at a cost, so we are likely to obtain only those facts that have a cost that we (or others) are willing to bear in order to obtain them. Unsurprisingly, then, many facts support power and undermine the powerless. — Ennui Elucidator

Yes, that's a key point. Knowledge is money or power, and all that jazz. So certain facts become more easily available than others. Like there tends to be more sociological data on poor people than on rich people. And I suspect not because rich people are not important but because they are too important for understanding society. They are not convinced that to be studied and understood is in their own interest.

There was an interesting case recently of the complexities involved in interpreting certain facts or documents. The US army released a few videos of phenomena they said they could not interpret or explain. You must have seen them. Here there are if you haven't:



The interesting bit is what followed: many pro-alien so to speak, others more sobber and rationalist interpretations were made of the same grainy footage. Among the skeptics is Mick West who analyses here the 'go fast' video. His explanation is technical, and in my view credible. And no it's not an alien spacecraft:



My point here is that the only undeniable facts are the grainy footages and their metadata (how and when they were collected). The rest is interpretation and therefore, highly technical.

A consequence of realism is that there are things we don't know, but which are true. The world exitst independently of what we say about it.

Antirealism in its various forms holds that all truths are knowable. So for an antirealist truth may be just what is verified. @Olivier5 may hold to something like this, with observation instead of verification. Then there are no unknown truths. One response to this would be that there are statements with an unknown truth value; that is, the rejection of bivalent logic.

So the possibility exists for building a much stronger case for antirealism than has so far been presented in this thread, by adopting some paraconsistent logic.

My first comment in this thread was

Here's a couple of uses for the word.

A fact is a statement that is true.

It is also the state of affairs set out by a true statement. — Banno

I expected to be picked up for the obvious fumbling between two quite different approaches to knowledge, but instead the thread went down the garden path of observations.

"A fact is a statement that is true" is compatible with antirealism. An antirealist would just add a definition of truth that is restricted in some way, by verification, construction, pragmatics or whatever, and so avoid Fitch's paradox at the cost of rejecting the law of non-contradiction.

"A fact is what is set out by a true statement" sets up a realist agenda. The fact exists independently of the statement. Here one might avoid Fitch by pointing out that there are things we do not know, and moreover, there are things we cannot know.

This last view has been the one I defended here, along with @Janus and @Srap Tasmaner, if I've understood them correctly. Perhaps there is room for a more robust defence of antirealism.

How to reply to someone who insists that a fact is a statement that is true, but not the state of affairs so represented? That is, someone who insists that there is no reality that is independent of the statement? That would seem to be the stronger antirealist position.

"A fact is what is set out by a true statement" sets up a realist agenda. The fact exists independently of the statement. Here one might avoid Fitch by pointing out that there are things we do not know, and moreover, there are things we cannot know. — Banno

I agree with you that there are things we do not know, and things we cannot know. I think I've indicated that amply in my exchanges with @Olivier5. One example I've given is that there are countless details of history we cannot know simply because they are past. But there is a distinction between what we can actually know (due to our place in spacetime) and what is knowable in principle. I think you would agree that all facts or truths are knowable in principle.

So, it wasn't clear to me what Fitch has in mind. Do you take Fitch to be saying that there are unknown truths, but that all truths are knowable in principle, or that all truths are actually knowable?

So, it wasn't clear to me what Fitch has in mind. Do you take Fitch to be saying that there are unknown truths, but that all truths are knowable in principle, or that all truths are actually knowable? — Janus

I'm not wanting to put words into Fitch's mouth, so much as into @Olivier5's. Consider:

A fact is an accurate observation. — Olivier5

Taking this as a naive attempt at verificationism, I'm suggesting it might be defensible if truth, not fact or knowledge, is defined as what has been shown to be the case, together with a rejection of non-contradiction. I'm thinking of Kripke's definition of truth. We assign the truth value "unknown" to every statement, then assign "true" or "false" to those statements which can be verified (leaving aside, for the sake of the argument, how this is to be done) and their logical consequents.

A fact is then any statement that has been assigned the value "true".

The criticisms I levelled at Olivier target observation, not verification per se. It might be fun to consider a more sophisticated version of antirealism. It's something that's been a the back of my mind for a while. I've not understood the appeal of antirealism for Kripke, Dummett, Putnam and others. This by way of exploring what they have in common.

A fact is then any statement that has been assigned the value "true".

The criticisms I levelled at Olivier target observation, not verification per se. — Banno

It's not clear to me what distinction you are making between observation and verification. In the context of science and the everyday there are countless facts that have been observed or measured, and on the strength of those observations and/ or measurements they are verified. Theories are never verified though, beyond that their predictions have been observed to obtain.

And facts are always contextual, of course. The fact that water has been observed to consistently boil at 100 degrees Celsius is subject to some conditions. For example is the water distilled or does it contain minerals, are we boiling the water at sea level? And so on. That Paris is the capital of France is not so much an observable fact but is true by convention or definition.

So, the fact that water boils at 100 degrees remains true unless the laws of nature change, and the fact that Paris is the capital of France remains true unless some other new capital is declared. That water did reliably boil at 100 degrees in certain "normal" conditions, and that France was the capital remain facts in any case.

Observations might be considered a sub-class of verifications, but not the whole. That was the unanswered problem with Oli's account. But what I am interested in is not the mechanics of verification so much as the logical structure of antirealism. Is there a way to make sense of it?

So drop truth, as such, from the lexicon, going straight to belief, with three values, true, false and undecided. Logic and mathematics are down as true. Add whatever institutional statements you like - bishops move only diagonally, making a promise counts as undertaking a commitment, whatever you need. Other statements are undecided. Then add observations and associated theory in some sort of holistic verification model as per Quine...

So drop truth, as such, from the lexicon, going straight to belief, with three values, true, false and undecided. Logic and mathematics are down as true. Add whatever institutional statements you like - bishops move only diagonally, making a promise counts as undertaking a commitment, whatever you need. Other statements are undecided. Then add observations and associated theory in some sort of holistic verification model as per Quine... — Banno

You might be able to find a way to make that consistent, I suppose, but would it follow that it is correct or maximally adequate to human experience and logic?

I mean, in one sense unknown truths can mean little to us, just because they are unknown, but the existence of unknown truths seems indispensable to the logic involved in understanding ourselves as knowers of things, particularly regarding the possibility that what we take to be known may not be.

My point here is that the only undeniable facts are the grainy footages and their metadata (how and when they were collected). The rest is interpretation and therefore, highly technical. — Olivier5

It sounds like you're saying that, for example, GOFAST is very likely some form of fowl. But it is possibly an alien craft. But whatever it is, it is definitely a genuine video with authentic metadata. Is that correct?

In other words, is the contrary position you're ruling out something akin to this?: "Most likely, GOFAST is some form of fowl. Not quite as likely, it is not an authentic video and has faked metadata. Even less likely, it's an alien craft."

A consequence of realism is that there are things we don't know, but which are true. The world exitst independently of what we say about it.

Antirealism in its various forms holds that all truths are knowable[known]. So for an antirealist truth may be just what is verified. — Banno

:up:

As 180 Proof has said, facts are ineluctable, but not for the reasons he supposes. — Ennui Elucidator

I think you have confused me with someone else. From this thread:

A fact is a truth-maker for at least one truth-claim. — 180 Proof

And also discussing 'ontology' :

What's impossible is a fact - node of causal relations - which is 'impossible to negate', or change; factual existence presupposes contingency - possibility of negation - insofar as facts are - at least one fact is - causally relational, unlike abstract subsistents which are not causally relational. — 180 Proof

Not necessary, not "ineluctable".

Unknowable or unknown. Yes. Perhaps the list of knowns is finite. The list of unknowns, innumerable.

The list of unknowns, innumerable. — Banno

You mean the unknowns have been listed? Are you sure of that?