For example, "This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, and "the Sun is a star" describes an astronomical fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" are both historical facts.
Etymology and usage
The wordfact derives from the Latinfactum. It was first used in English with the same meaning: "a thing done or performed" – a meaning now obsolete outside the law.[3] The common usage of "something that has really occurred or is the case" dates from the mid-16th century.[3]
Barbara J. Shapiro wrote in her bookA Culture of Fact how the concept of a fact evolved, starting within the English legal tradition of the 16th century.[4]
In 1870,Charles Sanders Peirce described in his bookThe Fixation of Belief four methods which people use to decide what they should believe: tenacity, method of authority, a priori and scientific method.[5]
The termfact also indicates amatter under discussion deemed to be true or correct, such as to emphasize a point or prove a disputed issue; (e.g., "... thefact of the matter is ...").[6][7]
Alternatively,fact may also indicate anallegation orstipulation of something that may or may not be atrue fact,[8] (e.g., "the author's facts are not trustworthy"). This alternate usage, although contested by some, has a long history in standard English according to theAmerican Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.[9] TheOxford English Dictionary dates this use to 1729.[10]
Fact may also indicate findings derived through aprocess of evaluation, including review of testimony, direct observation, or otherwise; as distinguishable from matters of inference or speculation.[11] This use is reflected in the terms "fact-find" and "fact-finder" (e.g., "set up afact-finding commission").[12]
Facts may be checked by reason, experiment, personal experience, or may be argued from authority.Roger Bacon wrote "If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics."[13]
Facts may be understood asinformation, which makes a true sentence true: "A fact is, traditionally, the worldly correlate of a true proposition, a state of affairs whose obtaining makes that proposition true."[16] Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System" isabout the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in theSolar System.[17]
Correspondence and the slingshot argument
Pascal Engel's version of thecorrespondence theory of truth explains that what makes a sentence true is that itcorresponds to a fact.[18] This theory presupposes the existence of an objective world.
TheSlingshot argument claims to show that all true statements stand for the same thing, thetruth valuetrue. If this argument holds, and facts are taken to be what true statements stand for, then one arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that there is only one fact:the truth.[19]
Compound facts
Any non-trivial true statement aboutreality is necessarily an abstraction composed of a complex ofobjects andproperties orrelations. Facts "possess internal structure, being complexes of objects and properties or relations".[16] For example, the fact described by the true statement "Paris is the capital city of France" implies that there is such a place as Paris, there is such a place as France, there are such things as capital cities, as well as that France has a government, that the government of France has the power to define its capital city, and that the French government has chosen Paris to be the capital, that there is such a thing as aplace or agovernment, and so on. The verifiable accuracy of all of these assertions, if facts themselves, may coincide to create the fact, that Paris is the capital of France.
Difficulties arise, however, in attempting to identify the constituent parts of negative, modal, disjunctive, or moral facts.[20]
Moral philosophers sinceDavid Hume have debated whethervalues are objective, and thus factual. InA Treatise of Human Nature Hume pointed out there is no obvious way for a series of statements about whatought to be the case to be derived from a series of statements of whatis the case. This is called theis–ought distinction. Those who insist there is a logical gulf betweenfacts and values, such that it is fallacious to attempt to derive values (e.g., "it is good to give food to hungry people") from facts (e.g., "people will die if they can't eat"), includeG. E. Moore, who called attempting to do so thenaturalistic fallacy.
Factuality—what has occurred—can also be contrasted with counterfactuality: whatmight have occurred, but did not. A counterfactual conditional orsubjunctive conditional is a conditional (or "if–then") statement indicating whatwould be the case if events had been other than they were. For example, "If Alexander had lived, his empire would have been greater than Rome." This contrasts with an indicative conditional, which indicates whatis (in fact) the case if its antecedentis (in fact) true—for example, "If you drink this, it will make you well." Such sentences are important tomodal logic, especially since the development ofpossible world semantics.[citation needed]
The definition of ascientific fact is different from the definition of fact, as it impliesknowledge. A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also calledempirical evidence. These are central to buildingscientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about thescientific method, and the scope and validity ofscientific reasoning.
In the most basic sense, ascientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with ahypothesis ortheory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.[21]
Variousscholars have offered significant refinements to this basic formulation. Philosophers and scientists are careful to distinguish between: 1)states of affairs in the external world and 2)assertions of fact that may be considered relevant in scientific analysis. The term is used in both senses in the philosophy of science.[22]
Scholars and clinical researchers in both the social and natural sciences have written about numerous questions and theories that arise in the attempt to clarify the fundamental nature of scientific fact.[21] Pertinent issues raised by this inquiry include:
the process by which "established fact" becomes recognized and accepted as such;[22]: 182 fn. 1
whether and to what extent "fact" and "theoretic explanation" can be considered truly independent and separable from one another;[22]: 185 [21]: 138
to what extent "facts" are influenced by the mere act of observation;[21]: 138 and
to what extent factual conclusions are influenced by history and consensus, rather than a strictly systematic methodology.[21]: 7
Consistent with the idea ofconfirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree.Thomas Kuhn points out that knowing what facts to measure, and how to measure them, requires the use of other theories. For example, the age offossils is based onradiometric dating, which is justified by reasoning that radioactive decay follows aPoisson process rather than aBernoulli process. Similarly,Percy Williams Bridgman is credited with the methodological position known asoperationalism, which asserts that all observations are not only influenced, but necessarily defined, by the means and assumptions used to measure them.[citation needed]
The scientific method
Apart from the fundamental inquiry into the nature of scientific fact, there remain the practical and social considerations of how fact is investigated, established, and substantiated through the proper application of the scientific method.[22]: 181 ff Scientific facts are generally believed independent of the observer: no matter who performs a scientific experiment, all observers agree on the outcome.[23]In addition to these considerations, there are the social and institutional measures, such as peer review and accreditation, that are intended to promotefactual accuracy among other interests in scientific study.[22]
E. H. Carr in his 1961 volumeWhat is History? argues that the inherent biases from the gathering of facts makes the objective truth of any historicalperspectiveidealistic and impossible. Facts are, "like fish in the Ocean", of which we may only happen to catch a few, only an indication of what is below the surface. Even a dragnet cannot tell us for certain what it would be like to live below the Ocean's surface. Even if we do not discard any facts (or fish) presented, we will always miss the majority; the site of our fishing, the methods undertaken, the weather and even luck play a vital role in what we will catch. Additionally, the composition of history is inevitably made up by the compilation of many different biases of fact finding – all compounded over time. He concludes that for a historian to attempt a more objective method, one must accept that history can only aspire to a conversation of the present with the past – and that one's methods of fact gathering should be openly examined. The set of highlighted historical facts, and their interpretations, therefore changes over time, and reflect present consensuses.[citation needed]
This section of the article emphasizes common law jurisprudence as primarily represented in Anglo-American–based legal tradition. Nevertheless, the principles described herein have analogous treatment in other legal systems such ascivil law systems as well.
In mostcommon law jurisdictions, the general concept and analysis of fact reflects fundamental principles ofjurisprudence, and is supported by several well-established standards.[24][25] Matters of fact have various formal definitions under common law jurisdictions.
a potential ground of reversible error forwarded on appeal in anappellate court;[29] and
any of various matters subject to investigation by official authority to establish whether acrime has been perpetrated, and to establish culpability.[30]
A party (e.g.,plaintiff) to a civil suit generally must clearly state the relevant allegations of fact that form the basis of aclaim. The requisite level of precision and particularity of these allegations varies, depending on the rules of civil procedure and jurisdiction. Parties who face uncertainties regarding facts and circumstances attendant to their side in a dispute may sometimes invoke alternative pleading.[31] In this situation, a party may plead separate sets of facts that when considered together may be contradictory or mutually exclusive. This seemingly logically-inconsistent presentation of facts may be necessary as a safeguard against contingencies such asres judicata that would otherwise preclude presenting a claim or defense that depends on a particular interpretation of the underlying facts and ruling of the court.[32]
^Mulligan, Kevin; Correia, Fabrice (2021),"Facts", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.),The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved18 November 2022,Facts, philosophers like to say, are opposed to theories and to values (cf. Rundle 1993) and are to be distinguished from things, in particular from complex objects, complexes and wholes, and from relations.
^ab"Fact" (1a). Oxford English Dictionary_2d_Ed_1989 JoyeExp. Dan. xi. Z vij b,Let emprours and kinges know this godly kynges fact. 1545(but note the conventional uses:after the fact andbefore the fact)
^Shapiro, Barbara J. (2000).A culture of fact : England, 1550-1720. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.ISBN0-8014-3686-9.OCLC41606276.
^Charles Sanders Peirce.The Fixation of Belief paperback – July 26, 2017ISBN1973922991, 38 pp
^"Fact" (6c). Oxford English Dictionary_2d_Ed_1989
^(See also "Matter" (2,6).Compact_Oxford English Dictionary)
^The argument is presented in many places, but see for exampleDavidson,Truth and Meaning, inDavidson, Donald (1984).Truth and Interpretation. Clarendon Press, Oxford.ISBN0-19-824617-X.
