4 ms·

>Facts are carefully constructed human artifacts, not ideal platonic forms. Is that a fact, or opinion?

programmarchy 5y ago
I’ll take the opportunity to expand. Say you observe an event directly, with your own eyes. We’ll exclude optical illusions, hallucinations, or the possibility of a demon manipulating your brain in a vat. Is your direct observation a fact? It’s an important observation, so you must communicate it to others. You perform a speech act to tell a few colleagues, with utterances and gesticulations to describe your observation as closely as possible. Is your oral exposition a fact? You must communicate the observation widely for the good of society. You write a Tweet thread, and publish a scientific paper to the journals. Are these written productions also facts? It’s retweeted, and a summary of the preprint is published to nature.com. Facts? Colloquially, most people would refer to all of these things as facts. And each one is a carefully constructed human artifact, whether it’s sensory data imported and stored in your brain, a speech utterance, a Tweet, or a scientific article.
- geysersam 5y ago
  Thank you for the well articulated comments. The emphasis on absoluteness of facts in (American) public discussion nowadays is sometimes quite hysterical.
giardini 5y ago
tenuousemphasis says>"Is that a fact, or opinion?" I'll muddy the waters here: neither, it is a belief. I prefer to avoid the term "fact" b/c it leads to too many arguments, just as is happening here. Rather than "facts" we have beliefs and some things we believe more than others. -------------------------- "...in this analysis we shall approximate the horse by a sphere of radius r..." - physicist's monologue in joke about racehorses, engineers, chemists and physicists.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  That... dodges the question. One may have a belief on a question of fact or one of opinion. > I prefer to avoid the term "fact" b/c it leads to too many arguments Arguments are not a bad thing. Avoiding them by muddying language is a bad thing.

I’ll take the opportunity to expand. Say you observe an event directly, with your own eyes. We’ll exclude optical illusions, hallucinations, or the possibility of a demon manipulating your brain in a vat. Is your direct observation a fact? It’s an important observation, so you must communicate it to others. You perform a speech act to tell a few colleagues, with utterances and gesticulations to describe your observation as closely as possible. Is your oral exposition a fact? You must communicate the observation widely for the good of society. You write a Tweet thread, and publish a scientific paper to the journals. Are these written productions also facts? It’s retweeted, and a summary of the preprint is published to nature.com. Facts? Colloquially, most people would refer to all of these things as facts. And each one is a carefully constructed human artifact, whether it’s sensory data imported and stored in your brain, a speech utterance, a Tweet, or a scientific article.

geysersam 5y ago
Thank you for the well articulated comments. The emphasis on absoluteness of facts in (American) public discussion nowadays is sometimes quite hysterical.

giardini 5y ago

tenuousemphasis says>"Is that a fact, or opinion?" I'll muddy the waters here: neither, it is a belief. I prefer to avoid the term "fact" b/c it leads to too many arguments, just as is happening here. Rather than "facts" we have beliefs and some things we believe more than others. -------------------------- "...in this analysis we shall approximate the horse by a sphere of radius r..." - physicist's monologue in joke about racehorses, engineers, chemists and physicists.

dragonwriter 5y ago
That... dodges the question. One may have a belief on a question of fact or one of opinion. > I prefer to avoid the term "fact" b/c it leads to too many arguments Arguments are not a bad thing. Avoiding them by muddying language is a bad thing.