Timeline for Does a "fact" have to be true?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
97 events
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| Feb 28, 2021 at 21:21 | answer | added | Greybeard | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 12, 2020 at 15:00 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | It's a fact that the dictionary cited here includes the definition 4b 'fact: something supposed to have happened'. Of course, some don't accept dictionary definitions. They may well stop at definition 3 here say. | |
| Nov 12, 2020 at 12:08 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 14, 2020 at 1:41 | |||||
| Nov 12, 2020 at 0:54 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @EdwinAshworth As I already said, that means that the facts haven't been established and so are open to dispute, not that there are several conflicting facts. I really hope you didn't spend much time digging out that court transcript thinking it meant something notable :-/ | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 20:45 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Django Reinhardt : From a court case held as an example by the Stanford Law School: 'The majority opinion is essentially based on the statement that "The facts are not in dispute." But according to the record as I view it the facts are in dispute.' [J Schauer]. So the majority say A, B, C ... are 'facts'. But Schauer disagrees on at least one point. We can't be absolutely sure that what 'the majority' have labelled 'facts' are actually facts in the incontrovertibly true sense. | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 19:05 | history | edited | Django Reinhardt | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 11, 2020 at 17:58 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @EdwinAshworth Again, you are referring to the word in relation to the legal term "question of fact" or "finding of fact", as stated clearly by Merriam Webster. If you're going to deliberately distort the truth to support your claim, then your claim cannot be very strong. | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 17:54 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Django Reinhardt Do you disagree that M-W's 'fact can have the meaning an alleged event or circumstance' is allowable? If so, please contact them. I see in your answer you only select those dictionaries not disagreeing with your viewspoint. The 'ever-reliable'(?) OED and AHD are not among them; they're quoted in other answers. | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 17:49 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @EdwinAshworth That's relating to legal terms, eg. "question of fact". See: legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fact | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 17:38 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Django Reinhardt I think you misunderstand. ' "The facts are in dispute" means that the facts haven't been established, not that there are several conflicting facts' assumes definition 1, 2 or 3 from Random House. If we take 5b, 'an alleged event or circumstance', people could be arguing over whether the alleged event ('fact') actually happened. It might not have (ie not been a 'fact, definition 1'). This is what the question is all about. | |
| Nov 11, 2020 at 17:21 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @EdwinAshworth I think you misunderstand. "The facts are in dispute" means that the facts haven't been established, not that there are several conflicting facts. See: publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldjudgmt/jd991028/… "If the facts are in dispute, the jury is called upon to consider the evidence and pass upon the issues thus raised." | |
| Aug 20, 2020 at 13:03 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 17, 2020 at 15:20 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | 'Something I "know" is right?' Something stated in OED? CGEL? Wikipedia? By Brian Cox? Something sworn to by a witness in court? Something on the front page of the Daily ...'? _Something politician X has said ? I try to use modals (from 'according to X' to 'what we think is' to the occasional weaselly 'allegedly'). But I think an answer to 'what to do?' is far too opinion-based, too situation-dependent to address in an 'answer' here. | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 15:20 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I'd just reinforce your 'the meanings of this word as it is used and recorded in English seem to be antagonistic toward each other', changing to 'various senses of this word as it is used and recorded in English are quite obviously antagonistic toward each other.' [No great surprise there; someone came up with 'all words are infinitely polysemous'.] Perhaps more than with most words, this could cause real problems when using 'fact'. For this reason, outside childrens encyclopedias say [and I'm not too sure about that, either], the term must be qualified. 'Something I think is right?' ... | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 13:25 | comment | added | Robusto | @EdwinAshworth: (1) The number of Google hits a thing gets is indicative of nothing. (2) Even NGram results, which I view with much skepticism, are more useful. (3) You should be aware that many of "hits" that come up in a Google search lead to the same ultimate source. (4) I'm somewhat in agreement with you nevertheless; if you can bother to put your thoughts into an answer I'll likely upvote it, and if it's really persuasive I'll give you the checkmark. | |
| Apr 17, 2020 at 11:17 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Robusto (1) "The facts are in dispute" is not an unknown expression. OP and/or you can of course check to see if a reasonable proportion of them are probably actually not the work of the random acts of chimpanzees at typewriters. (2) If there are a reasonable number of distinct and ungarbled examples, I'd say we have a clear 'no'. Of course, OP (oh, it's you) should be aware of polysemy, hypernymy, and precising/stipulative definitions. 'Fact' needs to be defined before use in any situation where confusion / duplicity might occur. Then there are scare-quote facts. | |
| Apr 16, 2020 at 18:35 | comment | added | Robusto | @EdwinAshworth: Well, "teh" gets a quarter of a million Google hits as well. I don't know what that teaches us. | |
| Apr 16, 2020 at 16:09 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Doesn't three-quarters of a million Google hits for "the facts are in dispute" give a definitive answer? | |
| Apr 3, 2020 at 23:11 | answer | added | Conrado | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 24, 2020 at 7:02 | comment | added | Ram Pillai | Mr. Gandhi said, "God is truth, and truth is God". No philosopher has raised 'fact' to this level. Here lies the difference. Fact is relative (which people say, half-facts, true facts, less true facts, etc.), whereas, Truth is something comparable to God. | |
| Mar 23, 2020 at 21:46 | comment | added | Mitch | @Robusto Maybe the older question can be closed to point to this more definitive one? | |
| Mar 23, 2020 at 21:17 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @Robusto I've now addressed the myriads of mistakes in the accepted answer in my answer. Perhaps it will convince you that your original position was the correct one :) | |
| Mar 23, 2020 at 19:40 | comment | added | Robusto | @Django: A position is not necessarily based on "personal feelings." But if you really want to get this question closed as a duplicate you'll have to put in your own work on that. Good luck. | |
| Mar 23, 2020 at 17:46 | comment | added | Robusto | @DjangoReinhardt: Yeah, no. That is my accepted answer you link to, but I reconsidered my position based on the way the world had moved into the realm of "alternative facts" and the like. | |
| Mar 23, 2020 at 17:30 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | This already has an answer here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/22170/… | |
| Mar 5, 2020 at 19:57 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @hippietrail A "true fact" is a tautology. The use of the phrase "alternative facts", along with the lies that were used alongside them by Conway led to law professors filing a legal complaint against her (a practising lawyer). washingtonpost.com/politics/… | |
| Jan 19, 2019 at 4:22 | answer | added | Zebrafish | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 19, 2019 at 1:56 | answer | added | Phil Goetz | timeline score: 2 | |
| Oct 9, 2018 at 11:48 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Jun 27, 2017 at 2:35 | history | reopened | Robusto meaning Users with the meaning badge or a synonym can single-handedly close meaning questions as duplicates and reopen them as needed. | ||
| Jan 23, 2017 at 14:33 | comment | added | Robusto | @hippietrail: Agreed. | |
| Jan 23, 2017 at 10:02 | comment | added | hippietrail | A "true fact" has to be true. True facts can however be contrasted with the modern phenomenon of "alternative facts". | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 13:39 | vote | accept | Robusto | ||
| May 29, 2015 at 20:33 | comment | added | John Lawler | See what I mean about widely-held presuppositions? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 20:27 | comment | added | Robusto | Guys, let's keep it sweet, OK? No sense getting in a flame war at this point. :) | |
| May 29, 2015 at 20:23 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @TusharRaj By all means, flag away! I'm not attacking you at all. I'm sincerely trying to understand your POV, which, actually if you think about it, is this: A fact does not have to be true, but if you're refusing to discuss this further, so be it. Personally, what I subscribe to is surmised very well here: simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact | |
| May 29, 2015 at 20:07 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @TusharRaj I'm still waiting on an answer... :) | |
| May 29, 2015 at 20:00 | comment | added | Tushar Raj |
@Robusto: Thanks. If there are any points about my answer you'd like me to clarify, I'd love to. It isn't airtight, admittedly, but I think I've been able to get my point across. The takeaway should be the realtionship between the utterance of the word fact and the time it's uttered.
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| May 29, 2015 at 19:54 | comment | added | Robusto | @TusharRaj: I planned to comment once the dust had settled on these. Your answer is definitely useful, and I'm still considering accepting it. In my own mind I'm really struggling with this, however; I used to be more certain about the issue myself (at least I was four years ago) but now I'm not so sure. I like that this question provoked a lot of ragged, untidy conflict about the matter. I was also waiting to give out up votes, but I suppose now's as good a time as any. You just got one from me. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:51 | comment | added | Tushar Raj | @Robusto: Also unusual in SE history: The OP not commenting at all on the leading answer in a popular post. May I ask what you thought of my answer? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:42 | comment | added | Robusto | @TusharRaj: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21911908#21911908 (I voted to close this myself once I was made aware of the contretemps). | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:38 | comment | added | Tushar Raj | @Mari-LouA: This has got to be a first in SE history: an asker's question marked as duplicate of a question where they gave the accpted answer! | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:28 | comment | added | gatherer818 | My answer got eaten by the close-fairy right as I submitted it, and now it's gone T_T the duplicate has an incorrect answer (ironic, given the subject matter) highest-voted and accepted. le sigh | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:25 | comment | added | Mitch | If you're saying that 'fact' has slipped in usage to mean something metaphorical like 'factoid' (in analogy with 'literal' slipping in meaning to mean something like 'really a lot', then I've come to accept that that is possible, but I don't see that it is happening. I see it is more that people believe they're using it about facts, but are actually not (the Great Wall example). I realize that this is not terribly different from the situation with 'literally' but I don't have enough examples of the faulty usage that you see. Can you give more? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:25 | history | closed |
Mari-Lou A Chenmunka CommunityBot |
Duplicate of Is "incorrect facts" a contradiction in terms? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:25 | comment | added | Robusto | Tru dat. OK, you convinced me. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:23 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @Robusto I'm not convinced by lesser dictionaries myself, I often find mistakes in them :) That said, I think it's fair to state that, the word "fact" is used to distinguish between things that are indisputable and things that are debatable. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:17 | comment | added | Robusto | @DjangoReinhardt: OK, I'm nearly inclined to agree with you, but work with me for a second. Do four intervening years of irritation at the world not agreeing with that definition count for anything? (As witnessed by further dictionary citations that blur the line?) | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:13 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @Robusto If we're talking about English, and not some fluffy philosophical discussion about "truth", then the answer is already there: A "fact", by definition, is "indisputable" :) | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:09 | comment | added | Robusto | Now I need to determine if I'm making a substantially different point. Hmm . . . | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:06 | comment | added | Robusto | @DjangoReinhardt: Haha, busted. I'm getting old, I didn't remember answering that lo these many years ago. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 18:56 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | If this is, as the site would suggest, a question about English, and not philosophy, then the answer can be found here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/22170/… | |
| May 29, 2015 at 18:22 | answer | added | Django Reinhardt | timeline score: -2 | |
| May 29, 2015 at 15:44 | comment | added | Neil | Suppose we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that A were true. We think A is true, and, in fact, we consider it a fact. Perhaps we would then need to invent a new term to indicate "absolute truth," except that the idea of absolute truth is fleeting. Nobody knows absolute truth. It's a myth. We technically can't even prove number theory, which we ourselves invented. We can't even prove that what we see isn't being simulated or even that we exist. Absolute truth does not exist. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 6:54 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | It is a fact that we cannot travel in time, but is it a fact that time travel is impossible? Somebody from the general public might well state the latter as a scientific fact, but it doesn't mean the statement is true or accurate. People use and abuse words every day, I don't see what's particularly special about fact. If the writer knows his/her stuff and has data to backup their statement, then why not use the term fact? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 6:15 | answer | added | Jay | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 23:26 | review | Close votes | |||
| May 29, 2015 at 19:27 | |||||
| May 28, 2015 at 23:24 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/604065642199801856 | ||
| May 28, 2015 at 20:52 | comment | added | JPhi1618 | Here is some context from my past, and I can't be the only one that learned this... When I was in elementary school, we had assignments to tell if a sentence was a "fact" or an "opinion". Facts did not have to be true, but they had to be measurable or observable. For instance, "That is a cool car" is an opinion. "That is a fast car" is a fact. "The sky is green" would also be a fact, even though it happens to be false. The color of the sky is measurable. Some students would get tripped up and call an opinion a fact if they agreed with it and vice-verse. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 19:38 | comment | added | Crosscounter |
for those who are interested in semantics and etymology, be sure to check out axiom, perception, and verity. (Perception becomes fact/truth when everyone "perceives" it to be true.)
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| May 28, 2015 at 19:36 | answer | added | ermanen | timeline score: 7 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 18:48 | comment | added | Robusto | @Mari-LouA: All answers on this site are judged based on the polling mechanism you cite and subject to the same limitations. Many are probably as subjective as this one, if not even more so. Is it wrong to look for consensus here? | |
| May 28, 2015 at 18:33 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | What resources can we provide? What evidence do you require. It is, I suspect, one of those interesting, but subjective, questions which cannot have a "right" answer. Ultimately you, the OP, will choose the answer which you "agree" with most, and not the most objective one (ironically an answer containing hard cold facts). If this had been asked by anyone else, it would have been immediately closed as POB. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 17:28 | comment | added | dennisdeems | As a matter of fact, I do. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 17:23 | comment | added | Robusto | @dennisdeems: Do you see no difference between "supposed to have happened" and "happened"? | |
| May 28, 2015 at 17:21 | comment | added | dennisdeems | I don't grasp your beef with "supposed to have happened". The Grand Canyon is supposed to have been formed by erosion, though no one was there to witness the process. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 15:35 | answer | added | Yoav Kallus | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 15:34 | answer | added | user86291 | timeline score: 9 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 15:12 | answer | added | gaborous | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 15:09 | answer | added | Francis Davey | timeline score: 15 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 15:01 | comment | added | John Lawler | The fact is that lies have been shopped as truth so often for so long that fact has taken on an aura of "official reality" in many contexts, to avoid appearing to contradict widely-held counterfactual presuppositions (like "The Earth is flat, is about 6000 years old, and is not changing its climate"). So you have to be careful when somebody uses the word in certain contexts. However, this is hardly a new phenomenon. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 13:40 | answer | added | TimR | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 13:29 | comment | added | Robusto | @Mitch: Something like that. It is certainly not pristine, if it ever was. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 13:27 | comment | added | Mitch | So is your point then that 'fact' is slipping in its meaning like 'literally'? | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:52 | comment | added | Mitch | 'a true fact' is a pleonasm, yes. But 'in fact' is an idiom meaning 'it has been established'. Also, people may use 'in fact' wishfully. I don't think this is like 'literally'. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:51 | comment | added | Robusto | @TimRomano: You're reacting to a burr under your saddle that doesn't really exist. And people do use the term fact to mean "information" without reference to whether the information is accurate or not. If a fact is always true, then why do people ask all of the following: "What are the facts?" and "Are those the real facts?" and "Are those true facts?" | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:49 | comment | added | TimR | @Robusto: Your dilemma can be restated: Can I use a word precisely if other people use it loosely? Definitions found in dictionaries simply describe the word as it is used in various contexts. Any prescriptive authority boils down to "people don't use the word that way in that context". Context is king, also in lexicography. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:33 | comment | added | Robusto | @Mitch: "something said to be true or supposed to have happened" is not something that actually is true or did happen. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:32 | comment | added | Mitch | @Robusto can you give an example of the 'non-truth' version of 'fact'? I'm having a hard time seeing a problem here without actual usage where fact is not a true thing. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:27 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 28, 2015 at 12:17 | comment | added | Hot Licks | @Robusto - That's the interesting thing about "facts" -- people get to choose their own. This is what makes the word often useless. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:14 | comment | added | Robusto | @TimRomano: In no wise do I suggest that dictionaries rule the world. The various definitions exist and have been recorded as I describe. Cannot I use the term definition without any order of operation or appeal to authority concerning it? | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:09 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 28, 2015 at 12:08 | comment | added | TimR | -1 for use of the phrase "the definition". We have the word as it is used, and attempts to define that usage. Usage in the wild can be sloppier than the OP would like, but that doesn't mean that the definitions are themselves sloppy. The lexicographers are not "marching us". They're watching us march. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:08 | answer | added | user66974 | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:03 | comment | added | Robusto | @Josh61: More of a usage question, really. I'm wondering if the adulteration of the word I describe renders it, ultimately, meaningless and therefore something to be avoided. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 12:02 | history | edited | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 28, 2015 at 12:02 | comment | added | user66974 | Are you looking for indisputable evidence that fact and truth are unmistakable synonyms, or viceversa? | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:58 | comment | added | Robusto | @Josh61: Thanks. Interesting comment, but in the end it really only leaves me in the same pickle. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:56 | answer | added | JeffSahol | timeline score: 5 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:54 | comment | added | user66974 | This link may shed some light on the issue:philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8053/… | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:43 | answer | added | Tushar Raj | timeline score: 33 | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:38 | comment | added | Robusto | Only in terms of English. Other languages may have different words to distinguish the two meanings. Apparently we do not. Our word is unfortunately overloaded. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:37 | comment | added | Hot Licks | Yet you ask "how do we distinguish between what is a fact in the sense of absolute truth and what is a fact of a lesser order?" | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:36 | comment | added | Robusto | @HotLicks: I think I brought it down from the teleological empyrean enough that it could be answered in this forum. | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:33 | comment | added | Hot Licks | A fact must be true, but then, what is truth?? (You're asking a question that philosophers have puzzled over for millennia.) | |
| May 28, 2015 at 11:30 | history | asked | Robusto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |