Wiploc

I don't know a difference between fact and truth. I've seen people try to split hairs, creating a difference, but always in circumstances where it seemed to me obstructive, like a way of being obnoxious, of preventing the conversation from making progress.

Dictionary.com defines the words as synonyms, as does the OED.

I do not suggest that there are no circumstances in which it would be appropriate to distinguish between them. But most of us aren't in those circumstances. And the people who insist that we all adopt their jargon seem to me fetishistic, very like people who come out of the army (where they are forbidden to call hand-held weapons "guns") and insist that the civilians around them should adapt their usage to military standards.

The above sounds harsh. It is obviously a reaction to frustration. Probably all I should have said is that it is perfectly legitimate to use the words as exact synonyms.

crc

Iggy

Facts corresponds to what is. Facts are some actuality or representation of perceived reality. Truths are about the use of some language to represent facts. Truths are different from facts in this sense. Truths exists only because they are valid statements about facts.

Iggy

Precisely.

kennethamy

Not quite. Truth is not a description of the relationship of a statement to a fact. It is the relationship of a statement to a fact. The word "truth" is the name of that relationship.

Chris Porter

"Truth value" is the name of the relationship. Truth is the type of truth value, that is, it's the type of relationship of fact to statement. Just as false is the type of relationship of fact to statement. Or ambiguous is the type of relationship of fact to statement.

kennethamy

Yes, I agree. In one sense of the term "fact" a fact is a truth. However, in a different sense of the term, "fact", a fact is what explains why a true statement is true. After all, there must be some explanation for why a true statement is true, and a false statement is false. It is not an accident that some statements are true, and others are false, is it? A true statement is a true statement because it has a relation (which is sometimes called, "correspondence") with something independent of the statement, namely a "fact" (or some say, "state of affairs") And, a false statement is a false statement because it fails to have with a fact. That is, there is no such fact for the statement to correspond with. So, in one sense of "fact", a fact is an explanatory entity, just as electrons or genes are explanatory entities, which we posit to explain some phenomenon. In the present case, the phenomenon of some statements being true, and others being false.

But, as I said, this is in one sense of the word "fact". In a different sense, you are right. A fact is just a truth.

Antiplastic

Moral statements, says I.

Language is not monolithic; it's not as though the only two things we can do with our vocal chords are factual description or noises in the air. What we do is participate in a series of language games of which "Describe the Facts of the Empirical World" is one of many. In any language game there has to be some distinction made between felicitous and infelicitous statements according to those rules, and I think the best way to understand truth is in terms of correct assertibility according to the rules of the language game you happen to be playing.

I don't think that when we enter into moral discourse, what we are doing with language is the same sort of thing we are doing when we are describing the world. But I think there are some moral claims -- "the Armenian genocide was wrong", "you shouldn't eat meat if you can avoid doing so", "homosexuals should be allowed to marry" -- which are true, and that people who disagree with those moral claims are mistaken. But I don't think they are mistaken about any matter of fact. I suspect that maths and logic are not factual disciplines either. So, facticity and truth aren't the same thing.

Wiploc

I understand. And there are places where it is appropriate to discuss that---and this thread is one of them. What I hate is people interrupting threads on other topics to lecture people, telling them that they said "truth" when they should have said "fact." It is legitmate to treat them as synonyms in most cases.

crc

kennethamy

There are truths that are not assertable for obvious reasons. "I am sound asleep" is one, "I cannot speak a word of English" is another. So, The conditions for assertability are different from those of truth. That is why "Moore's Paradox" "It is raining, but I don't believe it", is puzzling. Clearly, it may very well be truethat it is raining, and I not believe it is raining. But that is not assertable. So the conditions for assertability are not the same as the conditions for truth.

I agree with you that on the Tarski schema, "Murder is wrong" is true if and only if murder is wrong. And this by-passes moral realism. So that there need not be a moral fact for a moral statement to be true. But this is quite an etiolated version of truth, and I doubt whether most people will find it satisfying, or satisfactory.

What "mistake" means when it comes to morality needs analysis. A person who tells me that the torture of innocent children is all right (let alone, is right) is not making a mistake. He has a moral flaw, not an intellectual flaw.

fast

Oh, I see.

If a word has two legitimate uses, and if one them is being used, then one may object (but shouldn't) on the grounds that it does match the other use she is familiar with.

For example, it's perfectly fine to say that I have a theory about something, yet someone may object because my use of "theory" is inconsistent with her use of "theory," as in "scientific theory".

So, even though there's nothing wrong with me using theory in the layman sense, you wouldn't like it if someone tried to inappropriately correct me by saying that it should only be used in the scientific sense.

That makes sense.