@Bill

“"Facts" are what we human beings declare to be real. The word "fact" is a status that we confer on something which we believe to be indubitable.” Perhaps, you are confusing facts with truths. By definition facts exist by their own right. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. We cannot accord them this status of existence. Truth occurs when that which we “think” or “say” about a subject corresponds correctly with the “fact” of that subject, or anyhow justified.

. . . and how do we 'perceive' reality? What constitutes the reality that are facts? How do we determine reality from our perceptions? I wonder.

I am among the anxious population that will demand subjective objectivity even if it is to determine forms of reality. Facts are sacred. The time we accept anything as fact, we have concretized an evident perception and made them into our own reality. Or so I believe,

Bello,

Thank you for your insightful comment. It is true that to a great extent reality is subjective. So much so, many people agree, "subject object distinction is figment of imagination." However, my query seeks distinction between facts and reality.

That highlights my dilema!

In German we have the distinction between Realität (reality) and Wirklichkeit (which best translates into actuality). Realität equals to the facts we have/know, while Wirklichkeit is what is above that/us.

That is absolutely right.

Firoz,

The definition of reality given in the question corresponds to a common use of that word . But in science, that definiton corresponds to THEORY or a phenomenal model of an aspect of reality.

Dear Mohammad

Whenever we see some new fact that may contradict the prevailing theory, one must abandon the conflicting ideas and never ignore the fact: the theory is modified in order to integrate them into the same, apparel and new ideas. It is concluded that theories evolve by the discovery of new facts, which necessarily become part of the evolved version of the same.

In fact the scientific thought is always superior to the idea, and the fact you can always destroy - saying correctly, make false - the scientific idea. Therefore, as a scientific theory always formed from testable and falsifiable hypotheses, there is always the possibility of appearing a fact that may change the setting previously valid.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis, you can never prove it definitively

The Stability Of Beliefs

Michael Polanyi

http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/mp-stability.htm

quote:

13 Another example may illustrate the reverse case, namely when a series of observations which at one time were held to be important scientific facts, were a few years later completely discredited and committed to oblivion, without ever having been disproved or indeed newly tested, simply because the conceptual framework of science had meanwhile so altered that the facts no longer appeared credible.

Towards the end of the last century numerous observations were reported by H. B. Baker [9] on the power of intensive drying to stop some normally extremely rapid chemical reactions and to reduce the rate of evaporation of a number of commonly used chemicals. Baker went on publishing further instances of this drying effect for more than thirty years. [10] A large number of allegedly allied phenomena were reported from Holland by Smits [11] and some very striking demonstrations of it came from Germany. [12]

H. B. Baker could render his samples unreactive sometimes only by drying them for periods up to 3 years; so when some authors failed to reproduce his results it was reasonable to assume that they had not achieved the same degree of desiccation. Consequently, there was little doubt at the time that the observed effects of intensive drying were true and that they reflected a fundamental feature of all chemical change.

Today these experiments, which aroused so much interest from 1900 to 1930, are almost forgotten. Text-books of chemistry which thoughtlessly go on compiling published data still record Baker's observations in detail, merely adding that their validity 'is not yet certainly established' [13] or that 'some [of his] findings are disputed by later workers, but the technique is difficult'. [14] But active scientists no longer take any interest in these phenomena, for in view of their present understanding of chemical processes they are convinced that most of them must have been spurious, and that, if some were real, they were likely to have been due to trivial causes. This being so, our attitude towards these experiments is now similar to that of Azande towards Evans-Pritchard's suggestion of trying out the effects of oracle-poison without an accompanying incantation. We shrug our shoulders and refuse to waste our time on such obviously fruitless enquiries. The process of selecting facts for our attention is the same in science as among Azande, but I believe that science is more often right in its application of it.

Louis,

In mind was to encompass all types of realities (Constructed, Objective, Subjective, Empirical, Instrumental and other Realities) in the ambit of the word Reality. May be due to complexity involved to refer so many form of Reality its wording has given common meaning of the word. However, the example of reality of time refers to all these aspects of time. However, I am very thankful you pointed out this lacuna in the post. I have corrected this by referring to all these realities in bracket.

Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be. In its widest definition, reality includes everything that is and has being, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.

The word fact can refer to verified information about past or present circumstances or events which are presented as objective reality.

Fact is sometimes used synonymously with truth or reality, as distinguishable from conclusions or opinions. This use is found in such phrases Matter of fact, and "... not history, nor fact, but imagination."

Firoz,

Constructed, Objective, Empirical, Instrumental and other realities as expressed in our languages are things-realities or phenomenal realities which has to be distinguised from absolute reality, all that exist, the noumenal, and which we only partially access through all the phenomenal realities. I think that since we can only speak or know phenomenal realities then the distinctions should be between phenomenal or empirical realities and facts.

@Anees.

"Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be." Science relies on facts (verified information) discover structures and processes. As Nelson pointed out, do you believe that whatever scientists about a structure and process have theories that its state as it actually exists is such as that goes forever. I don't think it is such a position is maintainable. In this regard I agree with Louis that there are 101 reason structure or process of a phenomenon as described by a scientists can change in the light of new facts. It is why few are there who question paradigm shift in the sense that reality changes when more and more facts are known about it. Therefore, old problems are analysed from the point of view of new framework. Earlier an object in inertia in the space moved forward in a straight line on application of force, now it moves in a curved path. That was reality in the Newton's time, the second reality is ours.

The theory of Ptolemy, in which the earth is at the center of the universe with the sun, moon, planets, and stars revolving about it in circular orbits. In 1543, Copernican heliocentric model was proposed were the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform speeds. Both models were explaining the same facts, the changing position of the planets in the night sky, and at the time the accuracy of the prediction of the planet positions of the Ptolemy system was superior to the system of Copernicus. But the system of Copernicus although at the time not superior on explaining planet position in the night sky changed everything in our interpretation of these facts. These planets were not point light source but planets like our own, that have a size, that reflect the light of the sun. And these other fixed stars could now be interpreted as other suns. The change of paradigm immediately change our total outlook on the universe, it naturalizes it, the night sky ceased to be the realm of the surnatural, the realm of the gods. The Ptolemy system is still relatively good at describing the position of the planets in the night sky, in that respect, it was never invalidated.

"Facts" are what we human beings declare to be real. The word "fact" is a status that we confer on something which we believe to be indubitable. Doubtless we have current "facts" that will later prove to be false, as well as many facts of which we are not yet aware. There is no scientific authority which stands in relation to humanity in the same sense that religious believers hold God to stand in relation to the world. We cannot hold a scientific "God's eye view" of reality. Thus facts are not as solid and dependable as we often believe them to be. We human knowers are ones who declare something "factual". This is an inescapable limit of our own human perceptive and cognitive capabilities.

@Bill,

As for as human human perceptive and cognitive capabilities are concerned, your observations about "facts" appear correct. Perception is subject to revision by new acquired knowledge and therefore cognition. However, when there shines sun in your part of the world you might feel a sensation that it is different from the sensation of felt when icy winds blows. This sensation caused the shining sun and icy winds are different degrees of temperature whatever metric is used and whatever language you communicate this sensation, it does not change. It is a fact of over perception and cognition which can never change unless there is another world which is governed by different laws of physics.

Dear Bill,

In science, for a statement to be factual, requires that this statement be made into a scientific publication that has been reviewed by reputable scientists. The factuality or confidence in the fact will increase with the reputation of the publication, the scientist and the number of other independently confirmation of the statement in other scientific publications. It is not personal belief , it is a consential belief of a part of the scientific community. A fact may be viewed as important or may be viewed as banal depending of the theoretical perspective under which it is examined but fact do not change contrary to theories. The fact that the stars in the night sky move approximately as specified by the Ptolemy system was true and remains true in spite of the replacement of the Ptolemy system as a theory of the cosmos. What is observed is never falsified during scientific progress, it is the theories which are falsified and modified or sub-subsumed under more general theories. Interpretations of the facts change but not the facts, only the importance we attach to them change.

Hello Louis,

Yes, I am quite aware of this process. The history of science is a personal area of interest to me, and I have probably made almost as much reference to Polanyi as you have on Researchgate. He is a favorite author. I've read a lot in the sciences, and began my university studies intending to be a marine biologist. Philosophy of science is also an area of great personal interest. Roy Bhaskar and his take on Critical Realism is something that I think you and I have discussed on here in the past. I like his notion of "ontological depth" to reality. Though he is not one of my favorites I am also quite conversant with Thomas Kuhn.

All that being said, the truth is that we (Americans) use the word "fact" as though we had a grasp on the unchanging truth behind our theories. The distinction which I am making here is between reality and the truth that we humans are the ones who declare certain things to be "facts". There are things which are realities before we judge them to be "facts", and there are things which we have thought factual which have turned out to be inaccurate. Consider the status of Pluto having been changed from planet to "dwarf planet". A few years ago it was an incontrovertible "fact" that Pluto was a planet. Human beings are the ones who bestow or remove the label "fact" on an entity or state of affairs. We have to consider a reality to be noteworthy before we consider it important to discuss its facticity.

Since the early nineties it has turned out (in the world of epidemiology) that cervical cancer is the only cancer that we are aware of which is caused by a sexually transmitted disease. We have discovered that both human papilloma virus and herpes simplex II are spread by skin to skin contact. Prior to the early nineties that was not a "fact" although it was a reality. At that time it was a "fact" that these diseases were spread only through the exchange of bodily fluids. It was the discovery of the actual etiology of those diseases which caused Americans and Brits to stop talking about "safe sex" and start talking about "safer sex".

When I was a boy it was a "fact" that the smallest entities in existence were atomic particles. The molecule was seen as the building block of life. Now it is a fact that there are at least 36 sub-atomic particles. When I was a teen that was not a "fact" although it was a reality. The "Big-bang" took a giant step towards becoming a "fact" when Penzias and Wilson demonstrated the existence of the cosmic microwave background of the universe.

You are using "fact" in a manner synonymous with "phenomenon", whilst I am using "fact" in the way it presents in the vernacular both in the U.S. and in England. Perhaps the way in which you use "fait" is closer to "phenomenon" than our word "fact" is in its usage. In English facts are "that which is indisputably the case" or "that which is actual", as regards our present understanding. Designating a state of affairs as “factual” reveals a valuing process, apart from which it would not have that status. Like I said, there is no "God's eye view" from which to observe reality, so "facts" are the best we can do.

Bill,

You are mostly right and you convinced me that we should try to avoid using this term ''fact''. I was using it in the restricted sense of ''observational fact'' not including interpretation. It is a slippery concept.

Your Pluto example is flawed. The solar system has thousand of rocky-iced bodies in the Kuiper belt and Pluto is the largest one of these. A new planet classification has been adopted in 2006 and Pluto was categorised as a dwarf planet. Pluto is still a planet, a body orbiting the sun.

@ Mohammad Firoz Khan,

Fact is a subset of reality. Fact becomes reality when all the elements matches with the elements of reality. However, converse is not true because reality has some inner and non visible parameters.

Facts are crystals of realty

Reality could be measure with facts...and without factual evidence there is no reality.

Louis, I don't think my point is flawed. It is a demonstration of exactly what I am speaking about. The new planet classification which we humans have devised modifies those entities which we had previously held to be "facts". In reality, whereas a student who identified Pluto as a planet on a test in university would have been correct in doing so before 2006, after 2006 they are no longer accurate in so saying. Now it is a "dwarf planet". Facticity and factuality are not what we think they are. Rather, they are social constructs. Those who work in the "hard sciences" often think that they are dealing purely with bedrock, indisputable facts. They are often unaware of the socially based nature of their own classifications. The difficulty is as old as the human race. We are hopelessly given over to taxonomy, and the more we learn the more we have to modify and adapt our categories. We presume that we are getting closer and closer to an accurate picture of reality. I personally believe that we, in fact (pun intended), are really doing so, but as we do so, our "facts" will continue to change. This is an inescapable truth.

Facts are what we have in our hands, reality is what we all are seeking!

A very interesting write up by Bill and equally intresting by Louis.

Reality should be based on facts. I would consider facts as building blocks for proving anything that is to be considered real. Just to cite the example of Pluto as Bill suggested. The facts proved that it is a dwarf planet. why it was considered as planet in the first place, is probably based on unconfirmed reports.

Bill,

Pluto was planet before 2006 and is still a planet. What changed is the classification of the type of planet. This type of classification is not hard science but soft science, a social construct as you say. Biological taxonomy is constantly changing too. Yes our ''facts'' will continue to change.

Facts appear in infinitesimal (dt) and are snapshots in the flux of reality

Louis

what is

soft science Hard science being determinism ?.

Reality is absolute truth and facts take us close to truth. Using facts as reality may not be a sensible decision.

Constantine,

Most classification schemes contain a lot of arbitrary choices that are chosen for convenience from a point of view. What is a biological species? What is the best biological taxonomic system? It is not possible to anwer these questions. This is soft science. You cannot falsify a biological taxonomic system.

Louis,

You mean less methodological rigor

@Bill

“"Facts" are what we human beings declare to be real. The word "fact" is a status that we confer on something which we believe to be indubitable.” Perhaps, you are confusing facts with truths. By definition facts exist by their own right. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. We cannot accord them this status of existence. Truth occurs when that which we “think” or “say” about a subject corresponds correctly with the “fact” of that subject, or anyhow justified.

I am is a fact

i am a good person is true if the predicate "a good person " is "true" I claim the truth of being good person..

Facts might be seen as the epistemologically primitive units that can be drawn together in argument. They may be synthetic (empirical) or analytic (rational) but they form the basis on which we can engage. If we disagree about the facts, then the discussion must cease. We cannot get outside the facts - indeed to view the world outside the framework of facts and conceptual systems of which they are a part, simply does not make sense.

Mike.

@Mike,

I agree with most of your observation. However, "analytic or rational facts" are basically truths, because truths need rationalisation, justification etc. You need not to rationalise that fire burs, it is a fact. However, it is quite true that "facts/truths synthetic (empirical) or analytic (rational) but they form the basis on which we can engage."

Thanks Fulvio.

There is a theory of truth as that of 'warranted belief'. In other words a proposition is true if it can be formally justified, which might include by the application of scientific methodology. The problem with this theory is that we must first agree on what constitutes a justifiable methodology in science or in any other area. Researchers in the natural sciences occasionally disagree over the truth of proposition because the do not accept the methodology that was used by their opponents.

Whether the application of formal methodologies brings us towards propositions that correspond to reality is difficult to say. Indeed the whole idea of correspondence between descriptions and that which they describe, presents us with difficulties. But if two scientists disagree over a description of reality, and try to resolve their disagreement in discussion, they must, as a matter of necessity, believe that there is a reality over which they are disagreeing. They may be both mistaken in their descriptions but unless they believe in the possibility of a true description, i.e. one that conforms to the objects under discussion, then they might as well simply agree to differ and stop their argument.

Thanks Mohammad,

The proposition that analytic or rational facts are true begs the question as to whether the analysis or rationalisation is not mistaken, that the argument is error free. In some cases it takes many years before somebody shows that a commonly agreed analytic or rational fact, is in fact mistaken, Some might argue that there is no new information in analytic facts, that the conclusion is implicit in the premises. It is certainly true however that we come to understand new things about our number system although I don't think that these new truths would be referred to as synthetic.

As far as the propositions 'fire burns' is concerned, this would be based on inductive reasoning. Every time in the past that I have put something in the fire it burns, therefore this will always be the case. But of course this is not true. However many times something has burned in the past, it does not necessarily mean that it will burn in the future. Of course this is a perfectly adequate form of reasoning for our day to day experiences but it lacks the force of analytical truths i.e. truths that are necessarily the case.

Mike.

Dear Mohammad,

Fact is ... what actually exists.

Is the talk of facts redundant? The British logician Peter Geach wrote that “facts” found their way into literature by the end of the 19th century via the fashion journal “Strand Magazine”. In former times one could do without them. Facts spread very quickly after that, like a disease (Geach used another word). He calls them the wrong attempt to reduce hyothetical statements to categorical ones. (P. Geach, Oxford 1972, p 121ff).

Here are some more arguments that might be interesting:

Some authors say facts are the same as true assertions (R. Brandom, J.L. Austin), others deny this (e.g. A.J. Ayer) because there are more than one possible true assertions for one fact.

For some authors facts are the truth makers for assertions. W.V.O. Quine prefers objects as truth makers because there might be one object that makes a great number of assertions true.

R. Brandom criticizes facts as truth makers denying that there are semantic facts apart from physical facts.

P.F. Strawson criticizes Austin and his need for a truth maker: E.g. that the cat gets sick is not made true by the cat. – J.L. Austin needs something that goes beyond the “aboutness” of a statement. Strawson denies this need.

For Strawson there are further differences: facts are eternal, they cannot “burn”. For him, the identification of facts and assertions leads to a false identification of asserting (talking about) and referring (pointing to).

The question What is reality? plagued philosophers after Plato wrote his Allegory of the Cave. For Plato, what we observe are shadows cast on the wall of a cave by the glow of a fire (presumably behind us). If you want to observe more than shows on the wall of the cave, then, for Plato, you must leave the cave and search for something more than a world populated by shadows of actual objects.   In other words, it is necessary to reach behind or beyond the shadows of objects and discover the objects that cast the shadows that we perceive in the world of appearances.

It was Immanuel Kant who finally offered a formal answer to this question in his Critique of Pure Reason. Very much like Plato, Kant distinguished the world of appearances (his phenomenal world) and the world behind the appearances (his numeral world). Kant was content with advising us that the spatiality and temporality of the world were superimposed by us on phenomena, giving rise to what is commonly known as space and time. For more about this, see the attached 2007 article by Ralph C.S. Walker.

Imtiyaz,

Yes, but what is evidence? In other words, we have a fact if we have evidence to support the fact. But then would you say that a fact is synonymous with evidence?

I suspect that your answer will be Yes. So what is evidence?

That’s an interesting point: a distinction between reality and facts. If we were to maintain this distinction I think we would have to call the one side semantic. How should the other side – reality – then be labeled? And is evidence semantic? Or is it only the interpretation of evidence which is semantic?

There is another point: our fundamental equations do not dictate reality. E.g. it is sometimes said that time-reversal invariance is a property not of reality but of some equations. That’s interesting too and it backs a Kantian view.

I still owe you the references for the arguments I excerpted in my last post:

A.J. Ayer vs J.L. Austin

http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=AyerVs

W.V.O.Quine vs assertions as truth makers

http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=QuineVs&x=3&y=12

R. Brandom on facts

http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=BrandomVs&x=7&y=10

P.F. Strawson vs Austin

http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=StrawsonVsAustin&x=10&y=10

Strawson on facts

http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/listview-list.php?autor=Strawson

Martin,

Many thanks for the interesting links. I did some digging and found the following recent Ph.D. thesis that may interest you:

N. Lovasz, The Practice of Evidence in Evidence-Based Practice: A Conceptual History of Evidence in Psychological Clinical Practice, Ph.D. Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2013.

Thanks to this thesis, a number of distinctions are made that may help carry this discussion a bit further:

Classical foundationalism: In ordinary language, evidence refers to physical objects. For example, in a criminal trial, evidence refers to objects (e.g., fingerprints) in a crime scene. Bertrand Russell favoured this interpretation of evidence.

Propositional evidence: Philosophers such as Williamson, 1997, argue that all evidence is propositional. Williamson equates evidence with knowledge. Evidence is explained by hypotheses.

For more about this, see

summit.sfu.ca/system/files/iritems1/13478/etd8007_NLovasz.pdf‎

Mike,

The relation of a description to the reality cannot be assessed beyond the limit of the empirical testings and the common sense judment of scientific community. We can compare descriptions/models to each other but we cannot compare a description to reality which is never expressed into a description. Kant has put the nail in this hope to have a god eye description of reality in itself. The utilitarisms and later the pragmatisms cames to the conclusion that all descriptions are fictions whose usefullness can be empirically assessed. All descriptions are fictions but some are usefull and those we call scientific fictions which we live by until a more usefull come by.

Louis and Mike,

This discussion about description and its relation to reality is very good. Louis, I agree with you that Kant negated the idea that a description specifies some real object. Instead, Kant would say that all descriptions (in science) characterise phenomenal objects.

However, I suggest we do not give the show away to Kant. His view of the phenomenal world is just one among views of the world we live in. Do you agree?

James,

Take Marxell 4 equations of electromagnetism. Does this set of equations describes reality. This is a model where there are two spatio-temporal field: E, B and one type of electrical charge field and current. The model provides the relations between these entities. This model allows to understand electromagnetic wave, all kind of natural phenomena and allow engineers to build power line, transistors, all kind of things. Is this model a description of reality? It is a usefull fiction. If one beleive in this fiction, a lot of things make sense and a lot of devices can be built and they really work. This is not a fiction. What is not a fiction in a scientific model is the relations in the model. If you build a machine and the design respect the relations in the model, then the machine will work and you do not need as an engineer to really understand what really is E and B, and the charge, you let the physicists create other fictions for that. Kant called these relations , phenomenal relations. They are phenomenally real. They are not reality. As an engineer you do not dam care about what is this ultimate thing called reality. And these other physicicists that are supposed to take care of providing other models getting deeping into the nature of these names in the models , they simply come up with other names and relations and the reality of these other names is totally unknown and left to the next generation and it will always be like that because it is totally impossible in principle to comes up with a total explantion. We are simply practical, take a simple model and say this for me the engineer this is reality and I stop there and act as if it is. We objectify the mathematical model, we act as if it is reality, and it works. It works not because it is reality but because it does not matter that it is a reductive abstraction as long as it is used within the domain with this fiction works. That is what Kant meant and that what all engineers do naively. We take the mathematical models for reality and it works in spite of being totally wrong in an absolute sense.

What an engineer knows works even without understanding. This makes it become problematic to draw a line between the two sides – reality/facts - in that game.

It is a very delicate matter to say what Kant meant. He distinguishes several varieties of idealism and of realism. Anyway, from the claim that we do not know how the things in themselves are it does not follow that they are any different form the way we perceive them. We simply cannot know it. Of course, Kant does not presuppose a “reality behind”. I know that nobody of you claimed that, I say it just to remember.

What makes our work easier is to draw lines but afterwards we get into trouble to explain and to make sure that the lines themselves were only a help in our game.

We sometimes assume fictions when we investigate truth. Then we might say that an assertion is “true according to a good story” as Hartry Field puts it.

Understanding: When it’s about understanding we need something else in addition. We may not allow that the meanings of all words stem only from that fiction. Otherwise we would never be able to distinguish fictions from something else.

Martin,

What Kant really said is probably part of the unknowable noumenal so I will simply say what I think. A good example of fiction is a theatrical performance. As a spectator, you will enjoy it only if you cease to be critical and enter into it uncritically. Our edcuation from the toddler to all forms of schooling is a kind of learning to play roles but we do not call these as fictions. We learned them exactly the same way we do when we play the game of believing the theatrical performance. But we all know the distinction between between fictive theatrical play and real societal play. Do we? Our heroes in real life look strangely like the heroes in our mythical culture. When a sport team get to the championship, people are going out in the streets and celebrating as if it was reality. Some people are ready to dye for a piece of clothe call a flag, or for a sacred book. The line between fiction and reality gets blurred and it is not certain that when it is being blurred that we become crazy. Sometime yes and sometime we become in tuned with the stream of history this common theatrical play.

Louis,

I agree on many points of what you say, but I enjoy the theater still knowing that it is a theater piece, being critical or sometimes even uncritical. I think when we say we believe the actor because of his skilled performance we do not forget that he is an actor. How could we praise his skills otherwise?

Imtiyaz,

Talking about facts and reality, I think the concept of understanding is needed.

Understanding needs knowledge, meanings, the concept of truth (not truth!) and counterfactuals. We can understand sentences that are obviously wrong, too. We understand them even when we do not know if they are true. So understanding must be independent from facts. This makes it possible at all to deliberate if something can be the case.

To understand a sentence then means to know what would have to be the case if the sentence were true.

Reality is all what we live through, deal with according to our senses and within human limited vision towards everything around us. On the other hand, human works constantly searching for the truth ( fact ) as a matter of need and / or curiosity, that of course would depend on observation, analysis and evidence. Ones he reach the truth, it will turn to reality, and so on, human being will never give up looking for the truth.

Jeanan,

Thank you for your refreshing words. I’ll try to capture some of the terms we used in the last time. These are no rigorous definitions. Each of them is contested by some authors, of course. I spare us the references. They can be checked at the link below.

Reality: objects, states, changes (events).

Facts: something that is stated. These statements are about reality. So we may say that facts need “aboutness”.

Reality: is not about anything. There is no “aboutness” in the world without organisms who are acting in some way.

“Aboutness”: normally comes into play when a second organism is observing the acting organism. Acting is not about something but needs an intention which is about the possible outcome of the action and sometimes about the conditions of action. An organism can observe itself. Objects, change and events are not about anything.

The world: anything that is not a sentence. This point of view is defended by authors who take the problem of circularity seriously. Sentences are about the world and not part of the world. Otherwise we run into paradoxes. Anyway, most of these paradoxes do no harm.

Truth: a property of sentences – not of objects.

Objects: are real, not true.

Ontology: objects, but no properties without objects (because of the incompleteness of second order logic).

Sentences: can be false and still be sentences. They can even be senseless.

Facts: are stated by true sentences. When a sentence is false, it does not state a fact.

Facts: regularity, repetition, laws, completeness, correctness, consistency etc. are on the side of the facts (something that is stated) and not part of reality.

The World: should not be taken as something that is “out there”. At most we may say that the world is outside our models in order to prevent our models from being circular.

You may find more information and also counter arguments here:

Lexicon of Arguments

www.philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com

Reality and Facts!

Dear @Mohamad, It is really a very hard question to answer; every answer I did try to begin with turned out to contradict either the reality we are living on or the facts that we are facing.

Note that the two words in the last statement can be interchanged. Is not it?

Thank you for the question that makes us thinking about our lives.

Reality is milder than facts! Facts are asserted as true things in nature, reality is what truly is ! A thought provoking question !

Dear Shafig Ibrahim,

As far as I understand, the dispute in court is about what actually happened (the facts). If this is clear, then there is almost no question which laws apply.

Should we say that in physics this goes the other way around?

In physics strange objects are examined to find out how they behave. If a particle behaves according to such and such law we may say that it has a mass or no mass.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/darwin-einstein-case-for-blunders/

The Case for Blunders

Freeman Dyson MARCH 6, 2014 ISSUE

Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein—Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

by Mario Livio

Science consists of facts and theories. Facts and theories are born in different ways and are judged by different standards. Facts are supposed to be true or false. They are discovered by observers or experimenters. A scientist who claims to have discovered a fact that turns out to be wrong is judged harshly. One wrong fact is enough to ruin a career.

Theories have an entirely different status. They are free creations of the human mind, intended to describe our understanding of nature. Since our understanding is incomplete, theories are provisional. Theories are tools of understanding, and a tool does not need to be precisely true in order to be useful. Theories are supposed to be more-or-less true, with plenty of room for disagreement. A scientist who invents a theory that turns out to be wrong is judged leniently. Mistakes are tolerated, so long as the culprit is willing to correct them when nature proves them wrong.

Brilliant Blunders, by Mario Livio, is a lively account of five wrong theories proposed by five great scientists during the last two centuries. These examples give for nonexpert readers a good picture of the way science works. The inventor of a brilliant idea cannot tell whether it is right or wrong. Livio quotes the psychologist Daniel Kahneman describing how theories are born: “We can’t live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.” A theory that began as a wild guess ends as a firm belief. Humans need beliefs in order to live, and great scientists are no exception. Great scientists produce right theories and wrong theories, and believe in them with equal conviction.

The essential point of Livio’s book is to show the passionate pursuit of wrong theories as a part of the normal development of science. Science is not concerned only with things that we understand. The most exciting and creative parts of science are concerned with things that we are still struggling to understand. Wrong theories are not an impediment to the progress of science. They are a central part of the struggle.

Dear Prof. Mohammad Firoz Khan

Reality need not to be proven whereas, fact needs solid proof.

Facts are events, data, experiments, objective proven knowledge, state of nature's laws. Facts are or were proven and accepted data.

Reality is a picture of mind product based on facts, reasoning, mixed with belief, imagination, cultural and personality state; Reality of ones couldn't be the reality of others, reality could be true or false or manipulated.

Here is a tricky point about our talk of facts: we sometimes want to make sure that something is for certain, but it won’t help when we say “This is a fact”.

“It is a fact, that…” is not a strengthening but a weakening of our assertions, because it establishes an intensional context instead of an extensional one. E.g. this is an analytical truth:

3 + 2 = 2 + 3.

But from saying “It is a fact that 3 + 2 = 5” it does not follow “It is a fact, that 2 + 3 = 5”.

It is true but it does not follow from a fact. Moreover it does not follow from telling any fact if there were a fact.

The reason for this is that the operator “It is a fact, that…” is an intensional one and we normally cannot quantify into contexts of intensional operators which are therefore called “opaque” contexts. We may not replace the one by the other when quoting a witness.

This sounds a bit logical and it is. But never mind, “intensional contexts” are contents of that-clauses. E.g. even to say “It is a law of nature, that...” is intensional. That means it is the content of a belief. - Extensional would be a statement of set theory, for instance. "For all x, if x is put into water, x gets wet."

Here’s the good old famous example from Frege:

Intension: Morning Star/Evening Star.

Extension: the physical object Venus with all its atoms.

So when Paul tells us that he saw the Evening Star we may not quote him that he saw the Morning Star, even when the two mentioned objects are the same physical object.

A reality can consists of many facts.

How many facts are there?

When there is a fact that we call A., is there also a fact that not-not-A?

A tricky case for facts:

Imagine there is a village where the inhabitants hate cherries and never eat them. The village is located within a county. The inhabitants of this county love cherries. Now imagine that the county is located in a larger region where cherries are detested. This region is part of a country where cherries are the favorite fruit. This country is part of a continent where cherries are not loved…

Imagine you are an inhabitant of that village. Is it a fact that you are a member of a society which likes cherries or a member of a society which doesn’t like them?

Mohammad, Martin,

there can be only finite set of facts, but reality may be infinite.

Regards,

Eugene.

Dear Eugene,

In the world I don't believe in infinity. To me it is a metaphysical concept that had come in science and mathematics like others from their metaphysical root. To some extent I agree with Jaya that reality is milder than fact. We know, to be honest, conjure reality from facts. It is not necessary that our reality is in agreement with the future generation's reality. They will fault us but cannot dispute our facts. I am anchored to the Earth and others are also anchored to it, call it gravity or whatever you like, future generations if they would not build cities in space would also remain anchored to the Earth and it is quite likely what is force that keep us on the land may be different than our conjuncture.

Many facts and realities are what we say they are because they can be tested, verified, proven, measured, etc.  They are incontrovertible, beyond doubt, consistent (usually), immutable (usually).  A particular reality is real when the facts that it's composed of are all proven to be true, real.  Most of these facts and realities that are beyond a shadow of a doubt pertain to the sciences and natural law--natural and physical sciences, medicine, and mathematics.

Other phenomena or events that are presented as facts and realities are not so at all.  They are those things that are viewed through the eyes of someone who interprets them giving their opinion rather than presenting unbiased facts.  If the facts are distorted then the reality derived from factual distortions is likewise distorted and false.  Most of these instances occur in the realm of human interaction which is the area of social sciences, humanities, fine arts, and law.

Following up on my comment above, the second paragraph.  It is because of human interaction and (mis)perception of facts and reality and individuals in certain positions presenting their biased opinions as facts that we have innocent people sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit, racial discord, cultural misunderstandings, political gridlock, broken international affairs and international collaboration.  Those certain positions muddying the waters with misconceptions and misconstrued facts and realities include:  law enforcement, lawyers, witnesses, journalists, politicians, diplomats, government officials, to name a few. 

Mohammad,

reality does.not depend on generations.

Regards,

Eugene.

I believe in infinity and some other unobservable things. They are true reality, Mohammad. We have a mind to achieve it.

Regards,

Eugene.

"Fifteen years ago, I mused in a Reference Frame column on how different generations of physicists differed in the degree to which they thought that the interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a serious problem" (Physics Today, April 1989, page 9).

Interpretation of quantum mechanics does remain a serious problem, Mohammad.

Regards,

Eugene.

Hi Ali

“Reality is the state of things as they actually exist” is true and we say reality is out there beyond our mind and we have not conjectured it (on the basis of incomplete information) and expressed it in some structured logic or in mathematical logic. It is reality as it is. But when scientists/scholars logically construct/structure passing through filter of human, it is relative or not actual reality. It is simply symbolic of its state of actual existence. However, such relative reality works in our life, it is true to most of us. Greeks gave us a geocentric theory wherein Son revolves around the Earth. Today also most of astronomical calculations are carried out based on geocentric world. Calculations are correct, is the Geocentric theory also correct to us?

Dear Dr.Mohammad Firoz Khan

All the facts cannot be translated to reality but reality owns its own fact.

Afaq,

Very true, there exist no theory of  everything. Even a single theory does not take into consideration all relevant, therefore, there is under determination and uncertainty.

Our knowledge of reality is based on the models of reality. And, as I responded to the post of one of my esteemed scholar on RG that since models work they are true and if do not work we improve them. This way science and knowledge progress.

Dear Mohammad,

since all motions are relative, Geocentric theory is not false, it is simply overcomplicated.

Regards,

Eugene.

Facts are the known things and our assumptions,what we know but reality is the final real thing in our life,,no one can change it ...

and rest answers by Mohammad sir are excellent.

Dear Eugene,

Geocentric theory has been mentioned as a metaphor. Actually, even in its oversimplified form, astronomical calculation are accurate. It is metaphor in that:

"In 1633 the Inquisition tried him for heresy, and forced him under the threat of torture to kneel and read aloud a long, abject recantation saying that he 'abjured, cursed and detested' the heliocentric theory. (Legend has it, probably incorrectly, that as he rose to his feet he muttered the words 'eppursi muove...', meaning 'and yet, it does move ...'.) Despite his recantation, he was convicted and sentenced to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life. Although this punishment was comparatively lenient, it achieved its purpose handsomely. As Jacob Bronowski put it:

The result was silence among Catholic scientists everywhere from then on ... The effect of the trial and of the imprisonment was to put a total stop to the scientific tradition in the Mediterranean. (The Ascent of Man, p. 218)

How could a dispute about the layout of the solar system have such far-reaching consequences, and why did the participants pursue it so passionately? Because the real dispute was not about whether the solar system had one layout rather than another: it was about Galileo's brilliant advocacy of a new and dangerous way of thinking about reality." The fabric of Reality, p.73

Dear Dhiraj,

"Facts are the known things" true indeed but what about "our assumptions". Assumptions are assumptions, they can get challenged. I know scholars emphasising "reality is what exists, what existed and what will exist whether we are aware of it or not. I am talking about reality presented to us. Is it really real?

Dear Mohammad,

I think this is a perception and consideration problem as well as an expression (language) uncertainty.

The second one is easier to explain. I do not know what mean the words “fact” and “reality” for an Englishman or an American but regarding the approaches of people with other cultural and philosophical backgrounds, I am wholly helpless and perplexed. Take an example: the colour of red does not mean the same colour for you and for me. Fact and reality are much more complex phenomena thus the error may be huge.

Your ad hoc determinations (fact and reality) express both but collective or individual processes among information available, perception and various processing of brain information.

The reality - as you put it - can be even a game with the words or existing realities: constructed, objective, subjective, empirical, instrumental, mythical, political, western, eastern, even heavenly...

Dear András,

I am enlightened by your response. Especially, your observation, "Your ad hoc determinations (fact and reality) express both but collective or individual processes among information available, perception and various processing of brain information."is the crux of matter. Reality is composed/constituted of known and unknown facts. Information processing of available facts of reality via perception is carried out in terms of embedded assumptions, as such, in spite of incompleteness of information, as much we know about reality is not unbiased. Any reality becomes subjective.

An Epigrammatical View 

Facts are provable Concepts

At each level Reality is as Truth; a subjective experience . 

On Reality

Emergence is a partial description of how the world works, with unique laws operating at each level of reality that are not “reducible” to the laws of the lower levels. Emergence’s claim, disputed by some, is that reductionism does not always work, and even in principle, there will always be cases in which the laws of lower levels cannot explain the properties (or behaviors) of higher levels.

Here is elaboration of my earlier answer to this question.

The question What is reality? plagued philosophers after Plato wrote his Allegory of the Cave. For Plato, what we observe are shadows cast on the wall of a cave by the glow of a fire (presumably behind us). If you want to observe more than shows on the wall of the cave, then, for Plato, you must leave the cave and search for something more than a world populated by shadows of actual objects. In other words, it is necessary to reach behind or beyond the shadows of objects and discover the objects that cast the shadows that we perceive in the world of appearances. 

Now for the difficult part:  What is reality.    This question implies that there is a distinction between reality and non-reality (illusion), between real objects and non-real objects (seeing, for example, an oasis during an intensity hot desert afternoon that we later discover is a mirage).    This suggests two forms of reality, which are explored in a very recent process model of reality in

W. Sulis, A Process Model of Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, Ph.D. thesis, University of Waterlook, Ontario, Canada, 2014:

https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/8695/Sulis_William.pdf?sequence=4

First form of reality: whatever is left after humans are removed.   Philip K. Dick sums that  approach to reality in the following way: Reality is that which, if you stop believing in it, does not go away' (Section 1.1,  page 1).

Second form of reality:  Fundamental entities that reside at the bottom of the ontological food chain.    Higher level entities (such as mirages) supervene or emerge from the more fundamental entities (those we have experienced), also on page 1.    There are 434 instances where reality is considered in this thesis.   Obviously, this underlines the complexity of the notion of reality, from many perspectives.    A good overview of the general structure of what is known as informon is given in Fig. 2.1, page  28.  

From a physics point of view, a distinction is made between causal interpretation, local interpretation, process strength and content.    The general structure of a content set has the appearance of a collection of overlapping triangles (convex sets).   See Fig. 2.2, page 29.    This leads to a 3D view of a causal manifold conveniently represented as what looks like a wet dish-towel.    The maxima represent more certain parts of an informon.

A possible model for interactions between processes and an algebra of process is given in Section 2.4, starting on page 47.    This is very good stuff.    Processes may act sequentially (denoted by sums) or concurrently (denoted as products).     Then complex informons are built up from coherent primitive processes (see, for example, Fig. 2.8 on page 49).

So where do all of this leave us?   The separation between real and non-real is too simplistic.   It is more likely the case that reality is a complex mesh, where an intersection in the mesh represents an interaction between physical processes that we have observed.

Dear Prof. Mohammad Firoz Khan,

Reality cannot be transformed into any other logical conclusion while facts can be interpreted in different transformed logic.

Hello doctor

Reality is something that happens over time is possible

In scientific terms facts are events, data, information, knowledge, experiments... ie any verifiable and proved evidence thorough logical and meaningful statements. Facts are part of reality. i.e veracity. 

In theological subjects, reality as part of faith or believing is a sum of cultural and personal understanding of things, events, life, etc...i.e a personal (or group) conviction. In this case the reality of ones couldn't be understood by the others and vice verse.

Dear Fairouz,

You are discussing subjective reality, no doubt subjective reality is one aspect of the reality and to me objective reality is not neutral, it becomes subjective by interpretation, argumentation, evidence given by one who experienced it. However, reality is considered as James has explained 'Out there, beyond our mind" i.e. whether we exist or not, whether we experience or not, reality will be there. But, question is how is it related to what we call facts. Plato was an idealist. As explained by James according to him we are observing merely shadows or other words our reality is not perfect. Perfect objects exists in an other world and interact with the objects in our World. But, Plato is silent on the question when we can experience or encounter the real world, though sometimes he mentions when one goes up the world, one can encounter the real world. But, he is completely silent whether it will happen after death or really one rises above the earth using aircraft or spaceship like things. We can expect such an analogy from Plato from Greek mythology.

Dear Mohammad,

In my opinion scientifically speaking, each proved and meaningful evidence for the majority of people is a reality.  So the objectiveness of this reality is close to its measure of truth, i.e usually each experiment, knowledge or theory proved  allows discovery or progress of the knowledge and/or tools created from this knowledge, these are facts. A subjective reality is not a reality in scientific terms, may be it could be linked to faith or believes; so one could  believes in God from faith or cultural heritage, which is sound an evidence or reality for this believer, and may be not for the none believer who do wants some measure of truth from this statement .

In other words, this subjective/objective  reality could influences ones personality from the way of thinking ,  way of doing and some ethical rules

Personally, I believe in the supreme authority of the creator of the life and the word, i.e God. For me this evident reality is more close to logical thinking and faith, which is surely not shared by all people, even if some believe in same evidence but with other arguments. This is an eternal question of theological and philosophical aspects from psychological, cultural, societal features not always merged with logical thinking

I'm not specialized in Platonist philosophy, sure that his writing should be read behind the worlds he employed. By using the metaphor of the darkness of the cave where objects couldn't be clearly visualized , than in clear and light milieu,  he emphasized the objectiveness of the reality who needs clarity of the light i.e. measure of truth through proofs from knowledge and logic

Dear Fairouz,

I agree with most of your response, however your very invaluable contribution has reminded me of an earlier thread on the RG, in which it was threadbare discussed that what we call reality or understanding of something (object/phenomenon/process) is simply understanding/knowledge of its model, not reality per se.

Modelling of the reality depends our conceptualisation/visualisation of its structure or arrangement or how is it ordered, without evoking principle of uncertainty or reduction or abstraction (when model is transformed into a useful machine or piece of technology). If our conceptualisation of structure is correct reality is correctly modelled, forgetting that the reality comprehends to the diverse coherent relationships as part of a single meaningfully ordered world. If our conceptualisation is incorrect, our model of reality is also incorrect.

However, accepting for a while that our instruments/apparatuses/devices to measure or record can reach an absolute precision, it cannot be denied that they are invented/ made by us with a particular purpose in mind. This again emphasises an element of subjectivity in the observation and description of natural objects/phenomena/processes from quantum to cosmological scale because the measuring/recording instruments/apparatuses/devices have been constructed by the observer and we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning and our mental visualisation/conceptualisation.

Our scientific work in sciences consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal. In this way, we are reminded of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both players and spectators. It is understandable that in our scientific relation to nature our own activity becomes very important when we have to deal with parts of nature into which we can penetrate only by using the most elaborate tools.

It was in this context that I have commented that even scientific objective reality becomes subjective.

Dear Mohammad I think that the human invented instruments and tools (as you call them (instruments/apparatuses/devices), need fine precision for the purpose of their usage and functioning. If fine precision is not reached many of these tools become obsolete. Still the search of more fine precision is the target  to empower their usage, this search could improves discoveries or creation of better tools and instruments; The purpose of human evolution and progress is the mastering of the knowledge for creating fine tools enabling  their emancipation. Science is a pragmatic reality dear Mohammad.

I wouldn't agree that separating facts from reality could be that obvious. I strongly recommend Nelson Goodman's "Ways of Worldmaking" where he argues the statement that facts are objective, verifiable etc. and thinks of them rather as of social constructs that we've collectively decided to be facts.

E. g. we recognize the statement that the Earth is a globe as a fact. But a few centuries ago it used to be nothing more than just a fiction, for Earth was flat. Then Columbus argued that it is of shape of a pear (you need this very top for Eden not to be flooded in the catholic myth). And finally, we do know that Earth is a ball, however, it's rather a geoid. Or mabye not? So, where is that objective, verifiable fact?

Facts are observed reality.

Facts can be the starting point to check out their reality. On the basis of facts foundation of the reality can be built. So some facts are always needed in life to verify their reality.

Do you think that there can be a fact "instead of" another fact? Where should the "instead of" be located when we have

A instead of B

Will it belong to A or to B? Or to none of them? 

Scientists are always searching for the truth and when they reach a certain proof to prove their theory we begin to deal with it as a reality. on the other hand, when another theory refutes a theory which preceded, the reality will change according to that, and so on.

There is no an established fact and therefore there is no continuous reality... that is the secret of human development.

Hi Jeanan,  I would suggest that scientists are more interesting in useful information rather than the truth. Useful information is that which relates to hypothesis and coheres with other information within a particular sphere of enquiry.