What Constitutes a Fact?

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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fact?s=t


There was a debate I had with my brother about evolution.

He said evolution was a fact.

I argued that it was not a fact but a well established theory. I argued that gravity is a theory explaining facts about how things fall to the ground, and observations of the moon's and sun's position in the sky.

Then he brought up a good point. "The Earth being round, is that a fact?"

At first I said yes. Then he said was it a fact before anyone knew the Earth was round.

"Of course," I thought. The fact that people know about stuff doesn't change what they are. At least I do not believe that is how it works.

Then I went back and said. "The earth being round, as in it is the shape of a ball is not a fact. Because the way I know things are spherical is not by looking at them, as they appear circular, I can't see a ball from 360 degrees of direction at once only maybe slightly more than half of it. So the way I know a ball is roughly spherical is by feeling it, By covering my hands around it. That is how I define what a sphere is. I am not able to do that with the Earth. So I do not know for a fact. I have noticed the curvature of the horizon as I stared out of an Airplane window. When I look at images of the earth they certainly look like a ball, but I am unable to hold it so I don't know.

It goes back to his point, I see these clues all pointing to a curved earth, all the videos and pictures from satellites, staring out of an airplane window, inferences about how gravity works and how it would tend to mold large lumps of matter into balls in time. That makes sense to me. The evidence is overwhelming but it's still not a "fact". Maybe one day we will create giant space hands which we can hook up to our minds and feel the earth with. (perhaps crushing billions people in the process and creating giant tidal waves)" but until then, the earth being round is nothing more than a well-established theory.

What is a fact.

"When I look at the sky it appears to me to be blue."

"When you look at the sky it appears to you to be blue. That is a fact."

"No that is not a fact, I could be lying."

"What is a fact: I heard you say that the sky appears to be blue to you. That is a fact."

"That's right."

A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case -- something objectively verifiable.

The nature of knowledge itself does not enable us to reach 100 percent certainty about anything.

When argued to its extreme, we arrive at conclusions like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

But they are absolutely useless... One could argue to the end of time from these perspectives... Hey, does "One" exist? Does "End" exist? Does "Time" exist?

It all boils down to two assumptions:

1. An external reality exists
2. An external reality can be observed.

If one does not believe in 1 and 2, then why even bother having this discussion?

In the colloquial sense, evolution is a fact. If you want to get ontological/philosophical, everything can be debated.

"There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."

Or as the guy in your av said:

Which every debate on this forum seems to come down to. lol

Not to split hairs but if you are far away enough from a sphere, you can observe half of it and see that that half is (semi)-spherical. Generally you can then observe the other half of the sphere, either by rotating it in your hand, or moving your own location such that you are now looking at the other half of the sphere. Having done that, you've observed the entire sphere and seen the entire thing to be spherical - albeit at slightly different moments in time. If the sphere is small enough, you could even place it in front of a mirror, thereby allowing yourself to view one half of it directly, and a reflection of the other half, all at the same instant. So I do not think it necessary to have a sphere in your hands to prove that it is a sphere.

To be fair I think Descartes' Solipsism is right, I can be utterly 100% certain that I (the individual) exist... it's just I know nothing about the nature of my existence.

Predictable response: So my sensory perception tells me. How can I be sure that The_Walrus is not just a figment of my imagination?

These debates have been raging for ages with no productive result. At some time, someone decided to drop the discussion and move on under the assumption that reality exists and that it is subject to observation. Someone did not. The former are scientists. The latter are not...

That leads me to a question: "Are facts fallible", I mean, there are some who treat Fact as if it is somehting infallible, and they seem to give it 100% certainty (X is a fact synonymous to X is absolutely certain to be true)

The issue comes from the notion 'Evolution is a fact', but Evolution is a scientific theory which is falsifiable. So if X is a fact and X is falsifiable, then what the word fact represents here exactly?

A fact is so when you discover it. It, the fact, is often true irrelevant of your discovering it, but of what meaning is that to you? Meaning is important because the Catholic church declaring that we are at the center of the universe is a philosophical "fact" even if it is not geographically correct. Do we need to wait for science to prove it so for us to believe that home is where the heart is? No. It is in our DNA, and even if we are factually wrong in another sense, what relevance is it if has no meaning to us.

Of what we are able to observe, are there planes of reality that are still, or will always be unobservable? If we were left to only our five senses, factually correct information about the universe would remain outside our senses ability to perceive them. I ask this because materialists claim the materially observable is the only factual reality there is, and I have problems with this that I have not yet squared.

I do believe the human being has senses that we have not been able to replicate technologically speaking, and we should not dismiss them as mystics or fools simply because our instruments of quantifying and measuring the world has not been able to measure what they perceive. There are facts

Nothing is falsifiable to a fellow believer if you have faith in it.

Can you prove the theory, test the inverse, and even when the proof has been exhausted, what do we truly know about it in the final context. And even then if one is able to peace/stitch together a final context, of what meaning is that to someone who doesn't care and whose life will go on just fine without you, or the many more proofs you may establish in the future. Facts are nothing if they are meaningless. They just are, and people move unto more relevant things that are people-centered.

For those involved in the hard sciences, some feel to remain relevant is to speak authoritatively about things you have faith in that are outside of your specialization. Be it a linguist on the political brain of a conservative or a physicist declaring that physics and the sciences in general rule out the possibility of a God.

Evolution is no more a fact then force. Our knowledge of both is primitive, and we should keep it a theory until more pieces of he puzzle are discovered and can then lend a more clarifying view. A likely assumption? Likely. But fact? The realm of facts should be left to mathematics and things that can be proven mathematically. Truth is more bourgeois in that sense, with no inherent allegiance to the rigid hard sciences or anything really.

For all we know, we could all be in a matrix and everything we consider a fact may just be an illusion.

Would you call gravity a fact? Evolution is no more or no less "just a theory" than gravity is "just a theory." Evolution is a fact of nature as much as gravity is a fact of nature. If you claim there isn't enough evidence to say evolution happens, you might as well say there also isn't enough evidence to demonstrate gravity happens either.

Evidence can demonstrate that gravity is an observable law of the natural world, but if evolution wants to play God and explain everything away, it will remain a theory until it does exactly that. Which is a monumental task btw, physics or chemistry's barely birthed knowledge doesn't even know what tip of the iceberg its discoveries have identified, and you have a theory with almost no evidence FOR EVERYTHING ready to explain away EVERYTHING biological?

The mind man. Explain it not even in an evolutionary sense but in a purely chemical and physical sense... we're not even there, and that is far more in the realm of proofs, and provable. And even if you don't believe in the physical existence of a mind, what about music? Or language? Explain that with evolutionary "evidence" and not a collection of anecdotes and faith-based assumptions.

Nothing is a fact until it is testable. And even then, give it a few hundred years before we declare any of our theories, which are built on other theories and presumed truisms, a fact. Considering we truly know nothing, the case for everything is open, though no one likes uncertainty -- especially in a field where your supposed to be smart and know everything.

Just for the fun of it

One way to understand Descartes is to generalize what he was dealing with:

Reality is either fair or deceitful with me.
If fair, I am me, if deceitful I am not me.
Generalize/abstract even more.

R is either F or non-F with M.
If F, I am M, if non-F I am non-M.

One way to understand this is that Descartes confirmed the 3 classical laws of thought/logic. But he didn't prove "I think, therefore I am", because all he found is this:
Either I am me as what I remember(my past) and where I am is as it appears(fair) or I am not me, because I am not connected to the rest of reality as it appears to me. It could also read as "something thinks, therefore something exists", because reality is reality (R is R) is analytically true, where as reality is fair or deceitful, is a synthetic claim, which requires JTB for it to be known. Thus you can't know that you are you or that you are a computer simulation or in other words you can know there is a part of reality which is objective, but because it apparently "controls" you as causing and determining you regardless of being fair or deceitful either you are you or you are not you, but you can't know this.

Another point is the difference between ontological and epistemological solipsism. In the end you can only prove in the analytical sense that a part of reality is objective, because you can't know that a part of reality is in the strong sense independent of you. Why? Because if reality is objective as having reality independently of your mind, how can you then know that???

As to the practical usage of this kind of theoretical skepticism, it does have a practical side. It is a part of being able to use suspension of judgment; i.e. if you can hold the idea that you are not you, you can properly also do suspension of judgment on other aspects of reality as such.

MarketAndChurch, you are so incredibly wrong about this subject it is hard to believe you are not a troll. Far from having "almost no evidence" as you claim, evolution has possibly more evidence of more different kinds all supporting it than any other scientific idea known to man. And it IS testable and observable in the field and in the lab.

How can anyone be so in denial of what is demonstrably real? I'm not just talking about the FACT of evolution (and yes, it is as correct to call evolution a fact as it is to call gravity a fact). I'm talking about the EVIDENCE for evolution that exists and can be verified to exist by any honest person but which you deny.

Liar.