But it's not, and adding the word "here" shows that you know it. On the other hand, "1 gallon of H2O weighs 8 pounds always and everywhere on Earth" is true. There is no case for the relativity of truth here, unless you just mean that a statement can turn out to be either true or false depending on how clear it is, or depending on your interpretation. Interpretations are relative, but interpretations are implicit reformulations--which is where things get interesting. — jamalrob

I'm fine with truths like "3+5=8"; "the table of elements is accounts for all the matter that we have encountered"§; "the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776"; and so on. These truths state facts that can be proved, and whose proof is universally accepted.

But then there are other kinds of truths and facts. "William the Conqueror won the battle at Hastings." Fine, fact and truth match. "His victory resulted in beneficial changes in England." As far as I can tell, truth and fact match here, but it is possible to disagree with the facts and truth. "William's victory ruined the English language" is true, in that Old English was transformed. Whether "ruined", "corrupted," "transformed", or "enriched" are all true or not depends on how you define ruin, corrupt, transform, and enrich. There are facts supporting various interpretations. Isn't there more than one 'truth' here?

Then there are a lot of treasured statements about truth which that are not connected to any facts at all.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John 8:32 you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

John 18:38 "What is truth? retorted Pilate."

"Philosophy is a search for THE TRUTH." So, is philosophy in search of truths that match facts? Like "Fish absorb oxygen through their gills."


§Dark matter is thought to exist, thought to be necessary, but we haven't 'apprehended it' yet.

Well like I say, that's where things get interesting. (Y)

OK, it is a true fact that more precision is needed in my statements. Maybe.

OK, it is a true fact — Bitter Crank

(It's not a true fact)

Well then, if it isn't, wtf kind of fact is it? If I said it is a true fact about my statements...

Again, facts aren't true or false. Propositions are true or false.

Think of a bunch of cows in a field versus paintings of a bunch of cows in a field. The paintings are what are impressionist or surrealist or pointillist or realist or whatever style they're done in. The cows in the field aren't impressionist or surrealist etc. Those terms describe the paintings.

True and false are terms that "describe" propositions. Saying "true fact" is like saying "impressionist cows in the field."

Again, facts aren't true or false. Propositions are true or false. — Terrapin Station

Some use the term "fact" to mean "true proposition".

As for false facts, there's an interesting analogy given here:

Context can negate part of the definition of a word. "Artificial light" is light that is artificial (= "man-made"), but "artificial flowers" are not flowers (i.e., genuine spermatophyte reproductive orders) that are artificial. In the latter phrase, "artificial" negates part of the definition of "flower". The bats known as "false vampires" do not feed on blood: "false" negates part of the definition of "vampire".

The ordinary definition of "fact" includes the idea of "true" (e.g., fact vs fiction); the meaning of "fact" does have other aspects (e.g., fact vs opinion). Context can negate the idea of "true". …

It follows that "true fact" need not be a redundancy.

So a phrase like "false fact" could be comparable to phrases like "artificial flower" or "toy gun", with "true fact" comparable to "real flower" or "real gun".

Some use the term "fact" to mean "true proposition". — Michael

As I said above to John:

Only colloquially, where someone doesn't understand the standard distinction between facts and truth values.

If we're going to endorse colloquial conventions in that way, then we'd better also limit our metaphysics talk to parapsychology topics.

Facts, philosophers like to say, are opposed to theories and to values, they are the objects of certain mental states and acts, they make truth-bearers true and correspond to truths, they are part of the furniture of the world.

-Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

Although it seems ... obvious to say, "Truth is correspondence of thought (belief, proposition) to what is actually the case", such an assertion nevertheless involves a metaphysical assumption - that there is a fact, object, or state of affairs, independent of our knowledge to which our knowledge corresponds.

See, and here is the gist of the issue. Assuming that facts are always true turns truth into a metaphysical concept of "perceiving the world correctly" or "as it actually is". There is no escape from the fact that facts cannot be asserted without an observer, and this turns truth into a noumenon.

Facts, philosophers like to say, are opposed to theories and to values, they are the objects of certain mental states and acts, they make truth-bearers true and correspond to truths, they are part of the furniture of the world.

Does anyone else notice the ambiguity and quite actually contradiction in terms in the bolded text?

How can a fact be an object of certain mental states? This is gibberish.

How can a fact be an object of certain mental states? — Question

I wouldn't use the word "object," but I'd say that perceptual mental states are of external facts. Of course, I'm a direct/"naive" realist on phil of perception, and maybe you're not.

"Facts" or rather memory states are no different from any other object in that b they are all fundamentally energetic in nature. The difference is on substantiality.

So, are facts always true? — Question

Note that this is a question about English grammar. It is asking the correct use of the word 'fact'.

It is asking the correct use of the word 'fact' — Banno

Natural response is:
What is the correct use of the word 'fact'?

What is the correct use of the word 'fact'? — Question

Good question. In English we have no Academy to decide such things. So in a way Humpty was right. But it behoves us to at least be consistent in our use of "fact". We should have some sort of agreement.

The meaning of a word is given by conventional usage, and there are many words which are polysemous. 'Fact' is one of them. You may prefer the usages within which 'fact' appears more akin to 'actuality' or 'state of affairs', but that fact says more about you than about the general understanding of what facts consist in, and how facts relates to truths and actualities. The example I gave of the encyclopedia, which is generally understood to be a compendium of facts, shows an understanding which is alternative to yours. Do you think it makes sense to say that the encyclopedia is a compendium of states of affairs, or a compendium of actualities?

So what's your excuse for not sticking to parapsychology when we talk of metaphysics?

But perhaps an interesting consideration is the following statements:

1a. It is a fact that the ball is red
1b. "the ball is red" is a fact
1c. The red ball is a fact

2a. It is true that the ball is red
2b. "the ball is red" is true
2c. The red ball is true

3a. It is a truth that the ball is red
3b. "the ball is red" is a truth
3c. The red ball is a truth

Do they all make sense? — Michael

They all display a conflation of use and mention in their conclusions. For me, the 'b' premise follows form the 'a' premise. I think it is more the kinds of colloquial usages such as "The hot weather is a fact" which seems to make 'fact' synonymous with 'actuality or 'state of affairs' and thus of the world rather than of statements about the world. Perhaps it is merely sloppy usage. 'That the weather is hot is a fact' seems to make more sense to me. On the other hand I think there is not sufficient consistency in the use of the word 'fact' to enable us to definitely settle on one sense or the other, so we are forced to accept that facts are slippery criitters that transmogrify constantly from being truths into being actualities and back again.

What are you trying to get at here? You've lost me, I don't see the connection; I don't know if you are trying to make a joke or a serious point.

I'll pay attention to you, because you drew attention to the salient feature of alternative facts. As you pointed out, Conway meant something most of us would agree with: Trump has alternate beliefs. But she is became a purveyor of lubricant by the rhetorical move of elevating "belief" to "fact".

And that's it. There are no profound metaphysical questions here. Only questions about how we speak and write.

In colloquial conventions, which are far more popular than any philosophical usage of terms, "metaphysics" refers to paranormal/parapsychological content--ghosts, pyramid power, telekinesis, etc.

See.

We should have some sort of agreement. — Banno

I propose the following rough scheme, which I think is acceptable to most philosophers, even though common usage may deviate at times.

Factual statements are statements of fact, where facts are states of affairs.
Statements of fact are true or false according to whether the stated state of affairs obtains or not.
Statements are true or false; facts obtain.

Thus the statement "the cat is on the mat" is true whenever the cat is in fact on the mat, and otherwise false. The facts themselves are simply the way things are and cannot be true or false, but 'the facts as stated' (and this is slightly looser talking, more strictly, 'the statement of facts') can be, and is, either true or false.

This handily avoids any talk of knowledge or belief or senses or memory or experience, which can be discussed another time. Thus you may have an alternative statement (of fact), such as "The cat is not on the mat.". In such case, we have alternative statements of fact which are contradictory, and one statement or the other is necessarily false, because the facts themselves cannot be contradictory any more than they can be true or false.

Who decides? How do you get personal, subjective observation out of the mix? Impossible.

I think answered your problem. Facts are not the sort of thing that can be true or false; truth and false are predications of statements, not facts.

So no one is

assuming that facts are always true — Question

.

You don't often get to decide what is true. Rather you get to decide what you believe.

Agreed. So facts are just beliefs since there is no way to decide what is a fact without decisions.

So what? I don't see an analogy here. If there is a concern about the 'proper' philosophical sense of a term, there must be contradictions, inconsistencies or ambiguities in common usages. This is not the case with 'metaphysics', which simply means 'beyond physics'. If some popular notions of parapsychology take it to be beyond physics I don't see how that is relevant at all.

It's not as though there are some actual entities out there,facts, about which we could be right or wrong to refer to them as 'facts'. You still haven't answered the questions about whether you consider it incorrect to refer to encyclopedias as compendiums of facts. What consequence us the questions in any case. If 'fact' is a troublesome term then why not stick to using just 'truth' and 'actuality'?