John Page

Ooooo, there's a challenge when I got a few seconds to spare.

sophie

Tristan Scott, following up on your statement : when THE TRUTH is used in a religious context it is not always the same as fact. So truth can be proven with empirical evidence, but only when dealing with the physical world.

Isn't religion a context in the physical world?

sophie

leyline : Many people describe phenomena that can be reliably detected by a scientific instrument as a fact.
ME : what about interprepation of the data-fact?

leyline : facts are up for discussion, rejection or evolution.
ME: Isn't this the data interpretation temporarily residing in a placeholder called fact until the truth is known$

leyline : nowadays we are generally happy with that special label being used for that kind of truth revealed by that kind of relationship to reality.
ME : This is because 2 in every million (or thereabouts, I cannot quote truthfully) have to decide what to tell the people.

leyline : Facts are very important because they are intrinsic to personal identity which relies on our own culture to help define and express it.
ME : yep, the cornerstone of surety, self-confidence, ect.

ME : Do you have an inkling when information hits its turning point and becomes truth?

spacer1

Originally posted by leyline:

I would say that a truth is a description of a fact, where a fact is some aspect of how reality 'is', regardless of anybody's knowledge or description of it - that thing that constantly provides us all with something (the same thing) to perceive.

I would assume that in using the word "culture" you are referring to humans, or at least living beings, and that the differences between the two wouldn't be so disparate that the two cultures could not communicate. I would also assume that they would both inhabit a very similar environment. Basically, I'll assume that you are using our everyday understanding of the word "culture", such as those human cultures that we have on this planet. This is necessary for any comparison of the truths of the two cultures.

Having assumed all of that, and in response to your question:

I would like to cite Karl Popper, whose Conjectures and Refutations I've been reading lately, in which he states, on page 318:

In agreement with this, I'd say that the better theory would be the one with greater explanatory power - the one that passed more tests. The classic example would be the comparison of Newton's and Einstein's theories. Assuming that the two cultures can communicate and that both share a similar understanding of the same reality external to them, then I believe their 'truths' regarding that reality can be compared and that one can be considered to have greater explanatory power than the other.

Back to your original quesiton - If one culture doesn't recognize another's truth at all, and there is no way of communicating such an understanding, then there is no basis for agreement or disagreement. It is as if one culture perceived some physical aspect of reality the other could not. There would be no awareness of such facts for the latter culture.

If the understanding could be transmitted between cultures, though, then what I said previously would apply. There would be a basis for agreement and disagreement, as well as the possibility to persuade your opposition that your theory better describes the same facts you both perceive.

Tristan Scott

No, not in the philosophical sense.

You can say: "I believe in God", and that may be true, but it would be hard to prove with emperical evidence. You can say "I love my son," but again where is the emperical evidence that can prove it. It may be true, but it is not a fact.

leyline

i haven't got much time to reply because i am about to leave for the weekend..


I think many here are using the word fact in the way that i am using reality. But the problem is that the words are loaded with different interpretations.

When a scientist measures something i would recognise this as a fact (for the scientist) not reality 'generally'. Reality divorced of a cultural relationship (whatever that is!) does not yield measurements IMO. A measurement is a fact to the person who relates to the world in that way, whatever its further interpretation, because a measurement is an interpretation in itself.

Other people would say that it was a fact that they saw a ghost. The scientist would argue with that because the scientists relationship is different to the person who believed the experience without recourse to experiment. Thus experience is also a part of the cultural relationship with reality. Different cultures will enable us to be more sensitive to different types of experience. We do not passively recieve experience, scientific or otherwise, but interact with reality. Our cultural bias is a part of that reality and in that are our truths, which are affected by the cultural context.

This is often a recursive relationship, as with philosophy. ie our culture then relates to itself, with the same bias/ability that it relates to the rest of reality.

I cannot see how a fact can exist outside a cultural context any more than a truth. It may be true that two cultures experience the same phenomena, such as an eclipse, and both may agree that the eclipse occured. Maybe this is what people mean by a fact, not the necessary scientific measurement of the eclipse. The measurement becomes part of the scientific relationship, but to a culture that interprets an eclipse as two gods interacting there may or may not be any measurement involved at all. Does the lack of a measurement mean the eclipse was not a fact???

For the scientist yes. But for other cultures i would say they have their facts, based upon testimony or memory or whatever. Each 'fact' is thus different depending upon the culture.

sophie

Tristan Scott you replied : No, not in the philosophical sense.

The American philosopher, Henry James would disagree with you.

sophie

I wanted to claim today, of all the days available to me, that it is understanding, which turns information into truth.

Without understanding one cannot claim to hold the truth. Without understanding, the truth may be accidentally true.

Tristan Scott

The only Henry James I know anything about wrote very scary stories.

John Page

I pretty much agree, in my schema understand turns information into facts which can later be tested for truthfulness. Truth implies causality.

Cheers, John