This thread is inspired by a discussion in a legal thread about AI where several members have offered diverse opinions about the difference between truth and fact.

It is meant to give everyone a chance to expand on their view of this important subject.

On 6/8/2026 at 1:09 PM, studiot said:

On 6/8/2026 at 12:04 PM, dimreepr said:

  On 6/7/2026 at 11:39 PM, Gees said:

Facts require truth in order to be facts, but truths do not require facts in order to be true. This is why science has been called a child of philosophy, but philosophy has never been called a child of science.

Not at all, facts requires faith for us to accept them, truth is just waiting for us to prove it wrong, again...

I disagree with both members' statements as the situation is rather more complicated than either simplistic view of truth or fact.

Rather than indulge in semantic argument, surely it is better for any user of either vague term to define exactly what they mean by fact or truth, or the relationship betwen them if they need that.

To kick off explanations let me expand on why I think the situation is more complicated.

Both truth and facts are about statements and both require the detail of context to fully express the meaning of a statement. The English language is particularly good in providing the means to express this meaning, whether limited to some specialist use for a particular discipline or in the wider context.

It may or may not be possible to assign a "truth value" to any given statement.

Fir example one of the simplest sentences in the English language is - " Go!"

This statement has no truth value whatsoever.

So truth can be classified as at least either true, or false or no value or indeterminate.

Don't have much time as I have a busy day ( I thought those were over once retired ) but I just had to reply to this.

Facts are global ( apply to everyone - objective ); truth is local ( applies to one person - subjective ).

Diplomatic agreements often involve statements that can be looked at in such a way that the end result gives both parties a different view of what the words can mean. In other words a different view of what both claim to be truth. The process is known as constructive ambiguity.

A true statement is a proposition. As @studiot notes, not all sentences are propositions, like "Get down!" And some only appear to be propositions like Noam Chomsky's "colorless green ideas sleep furiously," because they lack meaningful reference to the world (may be nonsense or highly poetic or what have you). A good starting point (busy day, here, too) is Russell, with his correspondence theory of truth...

He holds that a statement is true if it strictly corresponds to an independent, objective fact. Truth is not determined by usefulness or consensus; rather, beliefs are formed by minds, but their truth hinges entirely on how they align with reality.

On his view, the condition of being true depends on objective fact.

One can trace a lot of modern theory of truth, say the last century, with his correspondence theory as a starting point.