Does a fact is a fact.

Well after reading the other topic About Rory's OCD, Rory replyed this:

"If a tree falls in a forest, and if nobody's around to hear it, then does it make a noise?"

I would like to go further on this sentence. My girl friend and I are 100% the opposites of each other. She always believe that a fact is a fact. I always see a fact as an opponion. A few years ago it all began with a discussion about an orange lamp. My question was.

"Is an orange lamp orange because it is a fact, or is it orange because someone told us that."

If I look at a middle to complex subject I always look at it as if it's new. I don't trust told "facts". From experience I know this has pro;s and con;s. I'm good in looking at things in an other view, but ask me a question and you will have to wait for an answer.

Having had the smallest amount of experience with epistomology I've got answers to both your questions.

As for a tree falling, sound is vibrations in the air - and the vibrations are going to happen regardless if there's someone to detect them or not.
But as sound is a human perception of the vibrations then without someone to hear the vibrations they don't really exist as sound.

That's my answer, badly explained.

An orange lamp emits electromagnetic radiation at certain frequencies, people perceive some of that radiation using their eyes. Common consensus is that the colour that people perceive is called "orange" even though it differs for everyone.

I don't believe in Platonic Idealism, which is what you look to be hinting at (that there's an idea of orange which exists as an absolute fact.) But I do believe that people can agree on the labels for things, as perception is roughly the same for all of us.

blowdart wrote:

A fact by definition is a fact. What you are really asking is "Is this statement or piece of information a fact?"

Of course data isn't a fact, without the context to turn it into information

blowdart wrote:



Well even outside development, some epistemological view an axiom ias a self evident statement of truth.

blowdart wrote:



It is simple; depending on how you define "fact";

• a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred; "first you must collect all the facts of the case"
• a statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened; "he supported his argument with an impressive array of facts"
• an event known to have happened or something known to have existed; "your fears have no basis in fact"; "how much of the story is fact and how much fiction is hard to tell"
• a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts"

All of which miss the point which is that how do you translate the perception of a human being into a fact. Given that hallucination is indistinguishable to a person from a "real" event / object how can anything perceived by a person be considered real? (brain, jar)

But that aside, as that's a dead-end argument, you mention "verified information" verified how? How do you establish fact? By getting a whole bunch of people to verify it? (Democratically establish fact?) By using scientific methods to verifiy it? (In which case I'd like to see you scientifically establish what a table is.)

Your last statement is a good one, but it only leaves abstract concepts which can be logically proven as facts and everything else as something other.

I'll take a "fact" as being not an absolute truth but a unanimous consensus, i.e. that red is red-coloured, and that tables generally have legs and a flat top.

A scientific fact is much more well established, but never absolute (but does tend to come with a handy measure of certainty.)

Neither of these "facts" can be shown to be absolute and true. Just live with it, the universe may not even exist - nothing is that certain. (Get over it, and pretend it does, just for arguments' sake.)

blowdart wrote:



You seem to argue that everything is perception based; I'd say that a lot isn't; maths, chemistry, physics etc. Is a temperature reading actually based on perception? Perhaps the scale might be, if you're saying it's hot/cold etc., but the actual temperature isn't.

The problem I have with scientific facts is more that I'm entirely uncertain as to whether anything exists at all. But that's by the by.

I like science for this reason, it doesn't actually define facts - what it says is things like: "We're 99.999% sure that DNA looks like this, and that seems to explain a whole bunch of stuff."

Or: "We're 90% sure that objects with mass are mutually attracted according to this formula (insert Gravitational formula here) but we're still really confused by the perihelion of mercury. Still this formula explains a whole bunch of cool stuff about the movement of planets."

The marvellous thing about science, and the key to its success is it has distilled various "facts" - which are actually really highly educated and very thoroughly examined guesses and created a model of the world. And then, (and this is the awesome part) been able to use that model to explain things happening back in the real world.

The success of this is so much so that it's easy to think that, as science created a predicition about something completely different to the area to which the theory was invented, that the theory has some basis in the fundamental fabric of how the universe works. So that it appears that the guesses which make up the model are absolute "facts" - I'd still argue that they're really really good guesses which have been thoroughly examined and critiqued.

blowdart wrote:



Hold on here, so are you saying, for example, ballastics equations are just guesses and models rather than absolute facts? Or that the periodic table is a guess? Or a statement like "normal human blood contains red blood cells" is just an opinion?

blowdart wrote:


Now if I was your boss I'd start to argue that your payslip isn't a fact, just a guess each month

It's funny, you guys are representing this topic exactly as I questioned  . Thanx for the input.

blowdart wrote:



But I'd say it's not based on gravity, it's just based on a downward acceleration (and even then you can, of course, use the equations without gravity effects, it's just straightforward motion). Regardless of how that downward acceleration is produced, or the model of resistance used (if any) the equations still stand.

A fact isn't a fact in N. Korea.

blowdart wrote:



Massif wrote:  Well, if you're going to abstract away the reasons for the numbers all you get is meaningless maths, which is fine - and you can use the answer as facts.

But I'm not saying the answers or values are facts, I'm saying the equations are. After all garbage in, garbage out.