Version: 2.0.

We live in a day of false facts, fake news. Kant proposed that, on questions of fact (distictive of questions of right), that one (e.g., the courts) appeals to testimony and material evidence, both of which are appeals to experience. This is part of what Kant called 'transcendental deduction.' Does it apply?

For the majority of researchers in natural sciences, also in textbooks in high school level, questions of fact are often NOT what Kant thought, in transcendental deduction. Physics does not do so, it recognizes that so-called experience may be an an apparent fact, or an illusion, neither necessarily fictive or false. Things are not always what they seem.

The Sun experience, as measured by humans on Earth, is that the Sun moves around the Earth. The human experience was that magnetism is independent of electrostatics, but there is in nature, that we see, no magnetic source, only charge movement.

In physics, a fact is what you were willing to believe. [1-6]

Not an experience, that would be, somehow, objective, but an intersubjective truth, with more or less coherence, more or less followers, but not objective, not permanent, nor abstract.

Abstract definitions are indeed the highest aim in physics, producing the longest-living facts, excluding all actors, all stances. Just touching on relationships. In that, we reach, post-effect, the hypothesis in physics -- as a testable relationship.

Still, a fact is what one was willing to believe. The past tense --was-- is used to denote a decision in the past, that influences the present. A fact is also a bias, preventing renewed knowledge.

A question of fact is seen, thus, both -- as the worst "enemy" in the natural sciences, bias, and also as necessary to advance. [1-6]

Do we really want a memoryless system, as this RG question may show, in "hidding" answers? Our goal is to foster collaboration, we seek a collective effect. Even that which does not collaborate, is collaborating. Where is the dialetics in this quest? [4]

Can physics and mathematics help? [6] Yes, the text below addresses this question, in physics itself, in helping find what is the definition of question of fact.

We tackled that within the work of the literal million of readers and workers, in the MCWG, .ca. 1998 [5]. Other references online.

Suppose we want to define "inertial motion" in physics. In this discussion, arguments must be non-circular. It must not suffer the linguistic and logic problems, noted by Einstein and others, in Newton's First Law -- what is a straight line, to denote a straight line? A "traveling wave" is, indeed "a wave that travels" as the physics, current college textbook Serway says, but that does NOT convey any information ---- it is a circular definition. Physics is still full of those. It is also pointless to discuss about names. What is one to do?

Let us follow a semiotic road in logic, in recent advances in theory of types in mathematics and TCS (theoretical computer science), more basic than set theory, instead. Nothing is more fundamental than theory of types in maths, used in TCS.

So, all circular references have no logical reason to exist, we just have to go deep enough to TCS and type theory, in this view. Not even "inertial motion" resists, as we shall see.

The term "inertial motion" is thereby treated as an arbitrary name, a reference, a truth value, and is considered not relevant here, could be "sdrufs". We discount the circular, logical problem, likewise, of defining a "straight line." But, how can we discuss, when a veritable Babel tower is in our discussions?

Simple, we do it intuitively everyday, in our laboratories of nature, and is explained in semiotics. If we were to talk about Bessie, we would not have to drag the cow from the barn, we just say "Bessie" -- the arbitrary name "inertial motion" links the truth-value to the exact referent, of many, the physical object in "Inertial motion" ---- which is what we talk about. What is also relevant here is the meaning, the sense, the truth-condition that the duple (reference, referent) denotes, forming a triple (reference, referent, sense).

This triple is further made unique, in semiotic considerations in the MCWG group, by adding trust:

trust: a non-localized "field" created by an intrinsic collective effect, that is directly and indirectly defined by knowledge (what you know you know, and know as exempify); that which is essential to a communication channel but cannot be transferred using that channel (Gerck, 1998).

Trust, as indicated above, binds all three elements together, within an extent, a measure. This forms a "hard" object, a "particle" of understanding -- not unlike a proton being studied as a set of three quarks and a confining field -- and this we study as "inertial motion", called by its quite arbitrary name, but a distinct physical object and a definite meaning, within a defined extent of trust in matters of physics.

Please feel free to, consistently, use any name you would like, physics is name-agnostic. The same phenomenon applies to any other name.

Now, the language being clear and unique, in any language, of what a fact might be, we can better go on to the physics and life.

DISCLAIMER: We reserve the right to improve this text. Questions, public or not, if on-topic, are preferentially answered here. This will help make this discussion text more complete. References are provided by self-search. This text may be modified frequently.

REFERENCES

[1] Ed Gerck, Presentation Science and the Search for Truth: Scientific Method

[2] Ed Gerck, Presentation The Big Idea in Physics and Science: The Absolute

[3] "Paraphrasing  one of Frege's examples, if I tell you "I will photograph the Morning Star" or if I tell you "I will photograph the Evening Star"  then, clearly, the two phrases have the same reference (i.e., the planet Venus) but one describes it as the last celestial body to disappear at dawn and the other as the first one to appear at dusk -- thus, they have different senses or meanings."

and following paragraphs, In Ed Gerck, 1998, Technical Report Toward Real-World Models of Trust: Reliance on Received Information

[4] "Dialectics, as a specific form of knowledge, with its origins in Kant and German Idealism and its systematics in a ‘critique’ of the ‘whole’ of knowledge and of contemporary society, has more or less disappeared from current philosophical discourse.", on Frederik van Gelder, Conference Paper Is dialectics 'history'?

[5] " I remember that one of the first things our lecturers explained, very wisely, was how in philosophy we should always criticise the theory [i.e., the question of facts] and not the person [i.e., the question of rights, including ad homimem attacks, where one should attack the argument -- not the person, or restrict a right to "win" an argument, collusion, etc., anything that might encumber the person]. In undergraduate philosophy tutorials, especially in debates about applied philosophy, we would have to discuss contentious issues like abortion, animal rights, and nuclear weapons. We should strive to do that dispassionately, with philosophical objectivity, and without taking offence or attacking other people, even if we’d be shocked by the views they’re stating in the context of ordinary life [e.g., applicable law, the question of rights, was it legally permitted for him to do so?].

There’s no other way to do philosophy. If we want to think rationally ourselves, we have to focus on the evidence for and against what people say [i.e., the question of facts], and forego criticism of the other person’s character [i.e., the question of rights]. "

In https://donaldrobertson.name/2016/12/24/ad-hominem-arguments-and-the-principle-of-charity/

[6] E. Wigner, THE UNREASONABLE EFFECTIVENSS OF MATHEMATICS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES. Online at

https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf