structure for 'Existence'    |     alphabetical list of themes    |     unexpand these ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / c. Facts and truths

[how facts relate to true sentences]

6 ideas
A fact is a thought that is true [Frege]
     Full Idea: A fact is a thought that is true.
     From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.342(74))
     A reaction: It strikes me as pretty obvious that facts are not thoughts, because they concern the contents of thoughts. You can't discuss facts without the notion of what a thought is 'about'. If I think about my garden, the relevant fact is aspects of my garden.
Realities just are, and beliefs are true of them [James]
     Full Idea: Realities are not true, they are; and beliefs are true of them.
     From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Fourth')
     A reaction: At last, a remark by James about truth which I really like. For 'realities' I would use the word 'facts'.
In a world of mere matter there might be 'facts', but no truths [Russell]
     Full Idea: If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood, and although it would contain what may be called 'facts', it would not contain any truths.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12)
     A reaction: Only a realist will buy a concept of mind-independent 'facts', but I am with Russell all the way here. We should not say "the truth is out there", but "the facts are out there". Facts are the target of thought, and truth is a relationship to the facts.
Many sentences do not state facts, but there are no facts which could not be stated [Ryle]
     Full Idea: There are many sentences which do not state facts, while there are no facts which (in principle) could not be stated.
     From: Gilbert Ryle (Are there propositions? [1930], 'Substitute')
     A reaction: Hm. This seems like a nice challenge. The first problem would be infinite facts. Then complex universal facts, beyond the cognizance of any mind. Then facts that change faster than thinking can change. Do you give up yet? Then there's....
We know we can state facts, with true statements [Dummett]
     Full Idea: One thing we know about facts, namely that we can state them. Whenever we make some true statement, we state some fact.
     From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 1)
     A reaction: Then facts become boring, and are subsumed within the problem of what 'true' means. Personally I have a concept of facts which includes unstatable facts. The physical basis of melancholy I take to be a complex fact which is beyond our powers.
There is no gap between a fact that p, and it is true that p; so we only have the truth-condtions for p [Hale]
     Full Idea: There is no clear gap between its being a fact that p and its being true that p, no obvious way to individuate the fact a true statement records other than via that statement's truth-conditions.
     From: Bob Hale (Necessary Beings [2013], 03.2)
     A reaction: Typical of philosophers of language. The concept of a fact is of something mind-independent; the concept of a truth is of something mind-dependent. They can't therefore be the same thing (by the contrapositive of the indiscernability of identicals!).