The myth of objective fact

'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science."--Gottlob Frege

Regularly it is supposed that facts, like things and properties and laws of nature, are objective parts of the world. That they sort of sit out there, in some mysteriously unarticulated form, waiting for us to state them. But is this so? Can anything about a fact as we understand it be ascribed with properties making it some unalterable entity independent of our minds? Not really.

Take the fact "Today is Sunday." Here I am proposing that this day right now has the name of Sunday. It is certainly undeniable today, but in fact will no longer be a fact tomorrow. It's factuality is entirely contingent on WHEN it is being stated as well as on which side of our planet it is being stated on.

Furthermore, where is "today being Sunday" in any sense existing separately from my stating it as such. The facticity of the statement lies entirely in its truth and not in its representing some objective state of the world. That's why we always say "it is a fact THAT" such and such is the case. IOW, it is TRUE that such and such is the case. We would never claim that there was any truth in today merely being Sunday. A mere state of affairs in the world is neither true nor false. It just is. It is only the statements of such that can be true or facts.

Here lies the crux of the matter that Frege was getting at. That for all the fanfare among physicalists about facts and their supposed absolute and objective ontic status, they are really never anything more than propositional truths occurring as thoughts in our minds. "Objective" perhaps AS consensually acknowledged statements that we all believe in. But nothing more than that.

Susan Sontag puts it this way: "The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is." Richard Rorty puts even more starkly: "To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations. The suggestion that truth is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own."

(Sep 20, 2026 09:30 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [...] Regularly it is supposed that facts, like things and properties and laws of nature, are objective parts of the world. That they sort of sit out there, in some mysteriously unarticulated form, waiting for us to state them. [...]

Some might contend that's a strawman or circulating misapprehension of the hoi polloi. 

Whatever "objective facts" are, there's a practical need to distinguish them label-wise from contingent or subjective facts (below). Separate the sheep from the goats. And they shouldn't be misconstrued as absolute or utterly immutable and resistant to different times and different locations. "Abstract facts" might be the only ones capable of qualifying as absolute, and that's because they've been set as the unchangeable rules and values of intellectual games (like mathematics). Scientism may try to hijack the revisable "facts" of physics and treat them as immutable or prior in rank to space and time contexts (we don't know that for sure; some might evolve over billions of years or around extreme warping like black holes). 

Difference: Objective facts vs. subjective facts or claims
https://fact.technology/learn/difference...ive-facts/

Objective facts or objective claims refer to information that exists independently of personal beliefs, opinions, or interpretations. These facts are verifiable and observable, usually backed by empirical evidence that remains consistent across different observers. In essence, objective facts are the same for everyone, regardless of their background or viewpoint. Examples include Earth's circumference, the boiling point of water at sea level, etc.

Subjective facts or subjective claims/opinions, on the other hand, pertain to information influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or opinions. They are shaped by an individual’s emotions, experiences, and cultural background, leading to varying perspectives among different people. As a result, subjective facts can be open to debate and are not universally accepted. Examples of subjective facts include taste preferences, art appreciation, etc.

Quote:Examples include Earth's circumference

Even such a seemingly absolute fact as that--or rather the statement of such in a proposition--is subject to many conditionals. For instance do we measure circumference of the earth on the surface of its oceans or underneath them at ground level? Is the circumference equatorial or pole-to-pole? And would it not in fact vary from measurement to measurement depending on the variations of land features such as valleys, plateaus, and mountains we encounter in the circumscription? Will the measurement vary with the temperature and barometric pressure of the atmosphere at the time? Does not the moon exert certain "land tides" on the earth's surface? Was it the same a billion years ago, and will be the same a billion years hence?

But aside from the inherent relativities of a so-called "objective fact", there will always be imo a hugely subjectively-experienced "being true" of the factual statement that allows us to judge it as a fact. A "being true" largely manufactured for us in the context of our language and standards of measurement and culture and consensual perceptions of the world. Nothing about that is objective nor locateable in the world itself. It is a question always of the accuracy of our representations of the world, and never the state of the world itself.

(Sep 20, 2026 09:30 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: 'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science. What is a fact? A fact is a thought that is true. But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science."--Gottlob Frege

That seems a bit problematic to me.

Quote:'Facts, facts, facts,' cries the scientist if he wants to emphasize the necessity of a firm foundation for science.

Which suggests that we already have a firm grasp on what science is doing. At the very least, science seems to want to describe reality. And not only describe reality in its almost infinite complexity, but describe abstract regularities and principles that seem to science to underlie that complexity. (I'm thinking of the laws of physics here and all those mathematical heiroglyphs that physicists scrawl on their chalkboards.) What's more, science seeks to explain events, whatever explaining is. (That usually seems to consist in reducing events to instances of those regularities and principles, which science seems to simply accept as givens.)

But sure, science needs some connection to reality if it is to be something more than an exercise in imagination. The ideas of description and explanation imply as much.

Quote:What is a fact?

I'd define a 'fact' as an existing state-of-affairs.

Quote:A fact is a thought that is true.

No, no, no, I disagree pretty vehemently with that. A true thought is just that - a true thought. (Or perhaps proposition more abstractly. That which the thought or written expression expresses which in turn possesses a truth-value.) The fact is that which makes the proposition true or false. 'Paris is the capital of France' is T iff Paris is the capital of France.

Quote:But the scientist will surely not recognize something which depends on men's varying states of mind to be the firm foundation of science."--Gottlob Frege

Which is one argument against defining facts as ideas, I guess.

We can certainly include ideas and beliefs in the universe's inventory of states of affairs. Hence 'MR hates Trump' is T iff MR hates Trump. The state of affairs that makes the proposition T or F about what MR thinks is whatever MR thinks.

But what distinguishes that natural sciences is that the facts they are interested in aren't just facts about thoughts. The facts about natural science are facts about the physical world. Psychology differs in that respect.

Quote:Regularly it is supposed that facts, like things and properties and laws of nature, are objective parts of the world. That they sort of sit out there, in some mysteriously unarticulated form, waiting for us to state them. But is this so?

Yes, I'm most emphatically a realist in that regard. I'm convinced that reality exists independently of whatever I happen to think about it. (With the exception of facts about my own cognitive states of course.)

Quote:Can anything about a fact as we understand it be ascribed with properties making it some unalterable entity independent of our minds? Not really.

Take the fact "Today is Sunday." Here I am proposing that this day right now has the name of Sunday.

I think that the day-night cycle is a fact about physical reality. It was as true in the days of the dinosaurs as it is today and in no way depends on us. But the fact that days receive seven particular names in a repeating cycle is a fact about our culture and language and does depend on us. It might indeed be a state-of-affairs, but it is one that we are responsible for having constructed. Hence, I don't think that the names of the days of the week would count as something to be explained by natural science. It's more a matter for history, I guess.

Quote:It is certainly undeniable today, but in fact will no longer be a fact tomorrow. It's factuality is entirely contingent on WHEN it is being stated as well as on which side of our planet it is being stated on.

Those words are called 'indexicals': 'I', 'you', 'now', 'here', 'today', there are lots of them. What distinguishes them is that their reference is dependent on the circumstances in which they are used.

Quote:Furthermore, where is "today being Sunday" in any sense existing separately from my stating it as such.

We typically agree about what day it is, even though our calendars and names of the week are socially constructed. There's clearly something objective about it. That might well be a matter of social agreement rather than a fact about nature itself. But if I agree to show up on Monday, I don't have the freedom to define 'Monday' as any day I choose. I have to operate in coordination with other people.

This frankly, is how I conceive of ethics and morals. I see them as matters of social agreement rather than facts about nature. You will never be able to weigh evil on a balance or examine good with a microscope. We can't determine right and wrong with scientific instruments.

Quote:The facticity of the statement lies entirely in its truth and not in its representing some objective state of the world.

But what makes a particular statement true and another false?

Quote:That's why we always say "it is a fact THAT" such and such is the case. IOW, it is TRUE that such and such is the case.

It's even worse than that since we don't have any way to directly intuit truth. The best we can do is 'I believe that it's true that such and such is the case' even if we state it more strongly: ('I KNOW it is the case!' or 'It's a FACT that it's the case!') (Lots of epistemological problems arise which lead me towards something like ancient academic skepticism.) Google's AI says:

Academic skepticism is an ancient Greek philosophical school that arose in Plato's Academy around 266 BC, maintaining that true and certain knowledge is impossible for humans to attain. Core Beliefs - No Certainty: Followers asserted that absolute knowledge or infallible grips on truth do not exist. - Degrees of Plausibility: Unlike total despair in action, they believed reasonable, probable standards and beliefs still allow people to live and act practically. - Anti-Dogmatism: The school primarily focused on refuting the dogmatic claims of other groups, especially the Stoics and their belief in convincing sensory impressions.

Quote:A mere state of affairs in the world is neither true nor false. It just is. It is only the statements of such that can be true or facts.

Yes, I agree that truth and falsity apply to propositions, not to facts. As you say, facts simply are. It's whatever we say or think about the facts that is true or false. Depending on whether what we say corresponds to the facts. (More philosophical problems appear making sense of that correspondence relation.)

Quote:Here lies the crux of the matter that Frege was getting at. That for all the fanfare among physicalists about facts and their supposed absolute and objective ontic status, they are really never anything more than propositional truths occurring as thoughts in our minds. "Objective" perhaps AS consensually acknowledged statements that we all believe in. But nothing more than that.

Which kind of leads to a subjective idealist solipsism, doesn't it? If we deny the world around us in favor of our own ideas, than do we deny all of the other people out there in that world?

Quote:Susan Sontag puts it this way: "The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known.

The first part seems to follow from the idea that truth and falsity apply to propositions, not to facts. But the claim that truth can never be known is awfully strong though. Despite that, I kind of agree with it, hence my skepticism:

I am inclined to think that knowledge might be an impossible ideal. All we have in real life are beliefs, which can be better or worse justified. Some beliefs are so well justified that we can't imagine how they could possibly be wrong. Other beliefs are just shots in the dark.

But whatever it is that we believe, the possibility always remains that we might be wrong. If we adopt the Justified-True-Belief model of knowledge, then we will have trouble specifying a suitable level of justification and we might have to accept that we have no way of directly intuiting truth.