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Full Idea
Facts are what statements (when true) state; they are not what statements are about. ..But it would be wrong to identify 'fact' and 'true statement' for these expressions have different roles in our language.
Gist of Idea
Facts aren't exactly true statements, but they are what those statements say
Source
Peter F. Strawson (Truth [1950], §2)
Book Ref
'The Nature of Truth', ed/tr. Lynch, Michael P. [MIT 2001], p.453
A Reaction
Personally I like to reserve the word 'facts' for what is out there, independent of any human thought or speech. As a realist, I believe that the facts are quite independent of our attempts to understand the facts. True statements attempt to state facts.
Related Idea
Idea 18916 Facts are not in the world - they are properties of the world [Engelbretsen]
| 20780 | Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 23483 | Proposition elements correlate with objects, but the whole picture does not correspond to a fact [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| 13985 | A true proposition seems true of one fact, but a false proposition seems true of nothing at all. [Ryle] |
| 10843 | Facts aren't exactly true statements, but they are what those statements say [Strawson,P] |
| 10842 | The fact which is stated by a true sentence is not something in the world [Strawson,P] |
| 13469 | Tarski showed how we could have a correspondence theory of truth, without using 'facts' [Hart,WD] |
| 10355 | Facts can't make claims true, because they are true claims [Brandom, by Kusch] |
| 8315 | Maybe facts are just true propositions [Lowe] |
| 18357 | What makes a disjunction true is simpler than the disjunctive fact it names [David] |
| 18359 | One proposition can be made true by many different facts [David] |
| 4750 | The redundancy theory gets rid of facts, for 'it is a fact that p' just means 'p' [Engel] |
| 15333 | Modern correspondence is said to be with the facts, not with true propositions [Horsten] |
| 17740 | Instead of correspondence of proposition to fact, look at correspondence of its parts [Jenkins] |