↪Cheshire The Correspondence Theory of Truth

It's not that it's wrong so much as that it is so very hard to be clear as to what correspondence consists in. — Banno

There is simply no alternative.

If it can not be validated how can it be an accepted fact? — Athena

One observation can be validated by another.

The OP resonates. Allow me a French tangent.

I used to love François Cavanna, a journalist and writer who spent a lot of time engaged in what he called "la guerre aux cons".

"Con" is a very common French slang for "stupid". Originally it's the same word and meaning as the English "cunt". There is a touch of perversion in the "con" concept: le con is not just stupid by lack of education, but stupid by choice. He rejects knowledge. Also he treats others rudely. E.g.: les Parisiens sont tous des cons.

Cavanna founded the magazines Hara Kiri and its successor Charlie Hebdo. He believed that in the war against stupidity, the media was a front line.

But he also said: Les cons gagnent toujours. Ils sont trop.

Graph from the latest IPCC report (2021).

:fire:

Why should I do that? You are obviously not arguing in good faith. You are busy blindfolding yourself.

I'm fairly confident that scientists should be able to create a CO2-greenhouse effect model in the lab and use it to forecast future global temperature trends. I don't know why they're so reluctant to do so. Smells fishy, don't you think? — TheMadFool

But there are dozens such models... What smells fishy to me is that you are not aware of that, and yet you go all judgmental about it... It proves that you do not speak in good faith, that you are lying to yourself. You are trying to find excuses.

Their mistakes can have far-reaching effects, no? Induce mass panic for instance. — TheMadFool

That is again simply not true that an error in prediction by a tenth of a degree will have "serious consequences" or "induce mass panic". You're just being silly.

So scientists are not allowed to make mistakes.

I mean, people asking for perfection are all absolutely perfect themselves, right?

what is accuracy? What makes one measurement more accurate than another? — Banno

That's a technicality and will depend on the variables being estimated. The important point here, generically speaking, is that truth and accuracy are BASICALLY THE SAME CONCEPT, except that accuracy involves a more nuanced quantitative aspect in terms of precision. Whereas 'truth' is 1/0 (either you speak the truth or not), one can be more or less accurate.

Edit: in other words, accuracy is to truth what a fuzzy set is to a classic set: very much the same thing but blurred on the edge.

Does your anus perfectly match predictions made about its throughput, or doesn't it? If if it doesn't, should we believe in your anus?

a significant number of people, scientists among them, have serious misgivings about the former. — TheMadFool

That is a lie you've been told. There are no serious, qualified scientist with 'misgivings' about climate change.

So being accurate is just being true? — Banno

Rather, being true is being accurate.

I have my doubts. — TheMadFool

You have zero reason to doubt climate change, other than the misinformation you've been fed.

And an accurate observation is... one that is true, perhaps? — Banno

Yes, and vice versa: a statement claiming to be true must be based on some observation or another. Otherwise you cannot know what is true and what isn't...

A fact is a true statement.
— Banno

Or an actual state of affairs. — Janus

Or an accurate observation.

And why insist that there is a territory for our map when all we can deal in is maps?
— Ennui Elucidator

Hmm. I'll invite T Clark and @Olivier5 to respond to Ennui, given what they have claimed here. — Banno

Why, he got you into a twist?

Maps without territories are simply not maps; they are drawings.

your definition of fact still relies on truth; just dishonestly. — Banno

Of course, and so does yours. And there no dishonesty about it. You should try and relax a bit.

As presented here to us, it is a dream, but a particularly odious one, as far as dreams go. Disgusting, in fact.

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.

This indicates another interesting distinction between facts and doubt: facts are beyond reasonable doubt. This is what T Clark meant I suppose. — Olivier5

And it provides another reason to define facts as 'accurate observations', at least in scientific language: science is made of 1) observations and 2) induced theories tying the observation in a logical or mathematical net. Now, logicians tell us that induction never provides certainty, that just because you never saw a black swan doesn't mean there's no such thing. Therefore our induced theories are provisional. 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.

Perhaps it could be translated as 'a fact is the kind of statement that all us reasonable people consider true, for now.' A more 'behaviorist' rendition might be ' a fact articulates a state of affairs that we seem to take for granted and rely on in our serious business.' — Zugzwang

:up:

As pointed out, the general use of the term 'fact' today is for 'a true and settled statement about the state of affairs', or 'a statement that is known or proved to be true.' The implication is: undeniable by a sane person in good faith.

This indicates another interesting distinction between facts and doubt: facts are beyond reasonable doubt. This is what @T Clark meant I suppose.

Certainly the concept is used this way in the current fight between post-truthers and the rest of us ('truthers', I guess): the rational folks are saying things like: climate change is a fact, and denying it is folly, or deception. While the post-truthers say: we don't know, there is still doubt.

The first occurrence of fact as truth or reality is dated at 1581, well pre-dating your supposition that it derives from17th century empiricism. (SOED) (Edit: on checking the OED, the date is "1632 — Banno

Ok, so you haven't disproven my hypothesis that early empiricists had something to do with the word's most modern meaning. Good.

The upshot is that the sense is in a state of flux. Nevertheless we can maintain a distinction between what is the case, and what is believed to be the case; and mark this distinction with care by distinguishing fact from belief. — Banno

Of course. Other useful distinctions can be drawn between fact and fiction (reality as opposed to some invented story); or between facts and theories (observations as opposed to explanations arrived at through induction).

The latter distinction requires my definition, though. It doesn't work with yours ("a fact is a true statement").

he insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was actually measured. Olivier5 seems to think something similar when he proposes that facts are observations. — Banno

Until it was measured, the height of Mount Everest was simply unknown, and that was a fact.

. It's like a tangle of metaphors. A mind is the something that a thing can be in, like a container. — Zugzwang

As a descriptive metaphor, I like to think of it as a space for ideas, the field our ideas play in. As a functional metaphor, I see the mind as the pilot in the plane. Animals can move around, and mobility requires piloting.

A science not of the words (that would be too banal, mere linguistics) but rather of the supposed referents of these words in their crystalline splendor. — Zugzwang

That poses a problem, which is that the essence of a word's meaning -- in all its crystalline splendor :-) -- can be meditated about, contemplated in silence within one's mind, but for some odd reason, it is extremely difficult to express such an essence in words. Thus good definitions are much harder to come by than most people think. Some people even conclude from that to the inexistence of essential meanings, which I think is going to far.

Just because we have a noun, doesn't mean we have a new entity we can be quasi-scientific about. — Zugzwang

In general, I agree, but in this case there is no science possible without some faith in the capacities of the human mind to understand the world.

the concept of mind has allowed philosophers to generate centuries of argument without obtaining consensus as to what, if anything, they are even talking about. — Zugzwang

And you know a concept, any concept, that has NOT allowed philosophers to generate centuries of argument without obtaining consensus as to what, if anything, they are even talking about?

We all have some sense of what a mind is, enough to communicate about it every day. If you have some idea of what it may be already, it's probably something like that. If you don't, then we can try dictionaries...?

It's experiential not observational. — Tom Storm

What's an observation, if not an experience?

But point taken: a fact has to be accurate and in order to be widely accepted as such, to be 'a statement that is known or proved to be true,' it needs to be objectively or intersubjectively verifiable ie observable by several people.

If you have a stomach ache, I can't observe that but it is still a fact. A — Tom Storm

It's a fact for me, because I can feel my pain, but it's not a fact for you, because for all you know, I could be pretending.

I don't believe half of what that cockroach says.

?

Okay so we agree that a fact is an accurate observation, then?

I have religious beliefs? That must be a misunderstanding.

There are unobserved facts. — Banno

Such as?

I'm talking about scientific, empirical facts. Not sure what a "religious fact" would be? Do you have an example?

So if it can't be observed it isn't a fact? Are you an empiricist? — Tom Storm

Indeed, I am an empiricist.

The general use of the term 'fact' today is 'a true and settled statement about the state of affairs', or 'a statement that is known or proved to be true.' The implication is: undeniable by a sane person in good faith.

E.g. "It's a fact that Canada and the US share a rather long border". This example is purposely phrased a bit vaguely ("a rather long border"), because all human statements are ambiguous (to a smaller or larger degree), but note that it is still quite difficult to reject in good faith. So facts do not need to be super super precise to be facts.

My thesis is as follows: for a 'statement to be proved to be true' about some state of affairs, if empiricism is true and assuming the correspondance theory of truth, some accurate observations must have occured. Some dude must have seen something for a fact to be a fact.

To come back to our example, if you look at a map of North America, assuming the map is an accurate compilation of accurate geographical observations (eg satellite observation today) by well-trained and dutyful geographers, you can observe that the border between the US and Canada is indeed rather long.

Therefore, a fact is an accurate observation of some state of affairs.



Additionally, a time-honored method to explore the meaning of a word is to look at its etymology, and figure out how the word in question came to mean what it means today, via a historical evolution. It's like trying to trace the trajectory of a word's usage over time. Meaning being use, that method makes some sense.

Fact comes from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere ‘do’. The original sense was ‘an act’, something done. Something you can't change, by implication, because it belongs to the past.

So originally, a fact is an act. How did it come to mean 'a true statement' or 'an accurate observation'? This semantic transition happened in the 17th century, precisely when empiricism established itself as one of the pillars of modern science. (The other pillar being rationalism)

I propose that in the work of scientists, a lot of observations get done, that observations are precisely an 'act’, something done. Something you can't change, by implication. If Galileo and others saw the moons of Jupiter in a correct or accurate observation, then it is a fact that Jupiter has moons.

A fact is an accurate observation.

you couldn't help being funny. — Zugzwang

I like @Bartricks's jokes too.

Is 'being funny' material? Can humour be weighted or measured in any way? We don't even know what humour is, and yet we couldn't live without it.

obscure entities like The Mind. — Zugzwang

Hey, speak for yourself. Your mind might be obscure, but mine isn't.

Note the similarity with Sartre's "Hell is the others".

What's the difference between western philosophies and non-western ones?

That's easy: western philosophies are located where the sun sets down, while eastern ones are mainly to be found where the sun rises... :-)