IMO facts are objective while truth is subjective, that is the reason people see "truth" differently. Anyone's "truth" is limited by their knowledge of facts (unfortunately what some call facts, aren't, and is probably the biggest reason for differences) and ability to construct them into a logical framework.

On 6/11/2026 at 10:13 AM, studiot said:

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 6/11/2026 at 10:13 AM, studiot said:

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.

No. This implies that truth and fact are only here to validate the existence of statements -- it is the other way around. Both truths and facts existed prior to language and validate reality as we know it. Truths and facts construct and recreate reality through language, so that the information can be shared.

On 6/11/2026 at 10:13 AM, studiot said:

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.

Or partially true, or mostly true, or occasionally true, or seldom true, or true now, etc.

Gee

On 6/11/2026 at 10:31 AM, MigL said:

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 ).

I have never heard the terms 'global' and 'local' applied to facts and truths. I like it and will use this idea. +1

Gee

On 6/11/2026 at 10:36 AM, OldTony said:

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.

Good point. +1

Gee

On 6/11/2026 at 11:09 AM, TheVat said:

A true statement is a proposition. As @studiot notes, not all sentences are propositions, like "Get down!"

Again. You and Studiot are talking about statements, not about truths. You are implying that nothing was real or true prior to language. Does a deaf mute not know reality? not know truth? Do species without language not know reality? Your philosophy will get lost if you can not separate language from reality.

On 6/11/2026 at 11:09 AM, TheVat said:

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.

You see what I underlined in your post? (statement is true) This is again about a statement.

In another forum, I was talking to a working neurologist, who explained this idea to me. He said, "You wake up in the morning in bed. The sun is up. The bed is situated so that you can reach the floor. You get out of bed. The next morning it happens again, then again, then again. You begin to be comforted by this familiar routine. This emotion, comfort, causes you to believe that this is good and right, which you now take as knowledge. If you wake up without the sun or the bed, your knowledge will tell you that something is very wrong.

So, experience plus emotion causes belief, which leads to knowledge, which we confirm with fact. Was it truth before we confirmed it as such? Yes. Experience plus emotion causes belief which becomes knowledge. Now it can be disputed by fact, but until it is, it is true.

Gee

On 6/12/2026 at 7:03 AM, dimreepr said:

I think it's both very complicated and very simple:

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world." - Wittgenstein

Culture is one of many filters that determine both truth, and to a lesser extent, facts; most of what we think of as objective facts, is via an editor of some sort...

Agree with the underlined. This is how we knew that witches were real, then we tested them with fire and drowning to prove it. Culture has a great deal to do with truth.

+1

Gee

In the case of any disagreement between a speaker and a listener as to whether a statement is true, or not, verification is usually established by fact.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

The concept of 'truth' is a language element that obviously bewitches many people. In fact it is just the substantiation of the adjective 'true'.

This is nonsensical. Who do you think has been 'bewitched'?

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

Example:

Of course: both refer to a true linguistical expression of a state of affairs. It says nothing more than that a statement is true. If I use the concept of 'truth', it is more a collection of true statements that are somehow related, e.g. in a murder case (to take the example of @Gees. From this view, the way (s)he uses the concepts of 'truth' here is nonsensical:

You are not making any sense here. You seem to think that I should not have used the word "truth" above. Why not? In each statement I would have corrupted the meaning if I used the word, true. To be precise is kind of important in philosophy, not like your example where you copied my response to The Vat and instead credited it as an anwer Studiot. I did not write the above to Studiot.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

The correct description of his example would be:

• It is true that (s)he stands over the shot body of a man (s)he despises, with a gun in his (her) hand

Yes. This is true and it is also a fact.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

• It is true (s)he did not kill him

This is not true and is not a fact. It is opinion and maybe conjecture.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

• It is true that (s)he was convicted for this murder.

This is true and is also a fact.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

You can replace 'it is true' with 'it is a fact'. Even worse, you can discard of the phrase 'it is true that' completely: one is still saying the same.

You can say that if you are happy with lying.

On 7/1/2026 at 6:59 AM, Eise said:

And to add: if somebody talks about 'Truth' with capital 'T', then he is making himself important...

Since no one here has done this, I suppose you are projecting as I see no other source that would cause this comment.

Gee

On 7/2/2026 at 8:50 AM, dimreepr said:

Every value statement is complicated, that's why we value a fact, in law, beyond reasonable doubt, is enough to jail them, but not enough of a fact that we should just kill them, even if it saves money...

You and I do not agree on many things, but I must say that you do understand the differences between facts and truths, probably better than anyone else here. +1

Gee

11 hours ago, Eise said:

20 hours ago, Gees said:

Through music, dance, and art, we can feel what others feel, and through poetry, we can compare and relate to similar situations and experiences.

What I am talking about here is an understanding of shared, subjective, reality. It has nothing to do with good or bad, with right or wrong, or with truths or lies. It is just a shared reflection of subjective reality.

11 hours ago, Eise said:

Sure. But why call it truth? Does a Nazi military march convey truth? Philip Glass' opera 'Einstein on the Beach'? Bach's Matthew Passion? Wouldn't 'awe' be a a better word?

Because it is a true reflection of other people's emotional perspective, or as close as one can get. What do you feel when you listen to a marching band? Most people feel energized, motivated, looking for a goal -- then the speaker comes on a gives you that goal -- or its incorporated into the lyrics of the music. Politicians and religious leaders have been using music, dance, and art for centuries to lead where they want the people to go. Why do you think that Trump keeps hi-jacking writers music to play at his conventions and speeches?

If you can not understand how emotion works, you can not understand truth. You can deny that emotion has anything to do with truth, but you will be wrong -- experience plus emotion equals belief, which is the foundation of knowledge.

Gee

11 hours ago, swansont said:

I don’t think that believing something to be true makes it so; that describes an opinion. It’s neither true nor false.

So is it your opinion that facts are valid and truth is not? It is my opinion that facts are often irrelevant.

11 hours ago, swansont said:

In another thread I asked for an example of something that’s true that’s not a fact, and something that’s a fact that is not true. I don’t think it was answered there. Any takers?

I saw that request and reviewed that thread. I found truths that are not fact, and facts that are not true. So I think it would be a waste of time to try to show you something that you refuse to see. You just want to argue.

Gee

5 hours ago, Gees said:

So is it your opinion that facts are valid and truth is not?

No. I’m not sure what I said that would lead you to raise the issue. But I don’t really care to know.

We’re trying to hash out the difference, or there is a difference. Without having agreed on any distinction, any conclusion on my part would be premature.

5 hours ago, Gees said:

I saw that request and reviewed that thread. I found truths that are not fact, and facts that are not true. So I think it would be a waste of time to try to show you something that you refuse to see. You just want to argue.

Gee

You gave examples of statistics, but you also said you didn’t trust statistics because people might make stuff up and that bias is present. If so, why do you consider them to be facts?

If someone lied and said that they had visited Greece, is that a fact? I don’t consider it to be a fact. So if some statistics are incorrect because they’re based on lies, how can they be considered fact?

9 hours ago, Gees said:

No. This implies that truth and fact are only here to validate the existence of statements -- it is the other way around. Both truths and facts existed prior to language and validate reality as we know it. Truths and facts construct and recreate reality through language, so that the information can be shared.

Or partially true, or mostly true, or occasionally true, or seldom true, or true now, etc.

Gee

I have never heard the terms 'global' and 'local' applied to facts and truths. I like it and will use this idea. +1

Gee

Good point. +1

Gee

Again. You and Studiot are talking about statements, not about truths. You are implying that nothing was real or true prior to language. Does a deaf mute not know reality? not know truth? Do species without language not know reality? Your philosophy will get lost if you can not separate language from reality.

You see what I underlined in your post? (statement is true) This is again about a statement.

In another forum, I was talking to a working neurologist, who explained this idea to me. He said, "You wake up in the morning in bed. The sun is up. The bed is situated so that you can reach the floor. You get out of bed. The next morning it happens again, then again, then again. You begin to be comforted by this familiar routine. This emotion, comfort, causes you to believe that this is good and right, which you now take as knowledge. If you wake up without the sun or the bed, your knowledge will tell you that something is very wrong.

So, experience plus emotion causes belief, which leads to knowledge, which we confirm with fact. Was it truth before we confirmed it as such? Yes. Experience plus emotion causes belief which becomes knowledge. Now it can be disputed by fact, but until it is, it is true.

Gee

Agree with the underlined. This is how we knew that witches were real, then we tested them with fire and drowning to prove it. Culture has a great deal to do with truth.

+1

Gee

You talk as if one word is truer than another, that's nonsense talk if your logic is fallacious.

As said by others, I would go along with the idea that facts are objective (have a broad consensus) and truths are subjective (derived from a singular or narrower consensus). Or put another way: a truth is what we feel ("It's beautiful") and fact is what we know (water boils at 100c STP). Not everybody will agree on the former but can on the latter.

19 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Or put another way: a truth is what we feel ("It's beautiful") and fact is what we know (water boils at 100c STP).

That depends...

who are you going to believe

47 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

That depends...

who are you going to believe

That was the point about truths. Not everybody aligns with someone's truth, which may only exist for them. "My headache is painful" is true for me but not true for you.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by StringJunky

45 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

That was the point about truths. Not everybody aligns with someone's truth, which may only exist for them. "My headache is painful" is true for me but not true for you.

But “my headache is painful” implies that it’s painful to the person saying that. The truth of that statement does not just exist for that person, even though only they experience it. Being personal means that the truth can’t be independently verified.

First I have to react on this:

9 hours ago, Gees said:

you copied my response to The Vat and instead credited it as an anwer Studiot. I did not write the above to Studiot

Must be a glitch or some logic (the OP was Studiot) of the forum software. I referenced this:

(Press on the arrow above right in the posting where I originally inserted it)

9 hours ago, Gees said:

Who do you think has been 'bewitched'?

Everybody who thinks that something like 'truth' exists. Compare it with colour: 'redness' does not exist; red things do exist, or red light. In this way 'truth' applies to statements (and reports, and stories, and and...).

9 hours ago, Gees said:

You seem to think that I should not have used the word "truth" above.

Well, English is 'versatile enough' (isn't it, Studiot?), that one can say of a statement that it is the truth. But it just means that the statement is true. And a true statement is the expression of a fact: a fact is a correct description of a state of affairs.

And, yes, very clearly against several posters here: for me a 'subjective truth' is a self contradiction. 'truth' means true for everybody. Otherwise it is a deeply felt conviction.

10 hours ago, Gees said:

  On 7/1/2026 at 12:59 PM, Eise said:

• It is true (s)he did not kill him

This is not true and is not a fact. It is opinion and maybe conjecture.

This is what you wrote in your example:

On 6/8/2026 at 12:39 AM, Gees said:

Six months later, it is a fact that I am a convicted murdered, and it is the truth that I have never killed anyone.

So, in your example, did you kill the man or not? Is it, just because nobody believes you, suddenly not a fact anymore?

10 hours ago, Gees said:

You can say that if you are happy with lying.

What is the difference next four sentences:

1. "At this moment the sun is shining during I am typing."

2. "It is true that at this moment the sun is shining during I am typing."

3. "It is a fact that at this moment the sun is shining during I am typing."

4. "The truth is that at this moment the sun is shining during I am typing."

There are some subtle differences of why somebody would use one of these formulations. But they all express the same state of affairs.

10 hours ago, Gees said:

Since no one here has done this, I suppose you are projecting as I see no other source that would cause this comment.

True 🙂. I just wanted to say this as I see it. I know you didn't use it, but I wanted to give the extreme where somebody thinks what he believes is the truth, and therefore also true for those who do not believe it.

Sorry, I am running out of time. I just wanted to add this as background for my viewpoint. Taken from Jürgen Habermas' communication theory. I copied it from Google AI (search argument: "3 areas of truth habermas").

Jürgen Habermas argues that whenever we communicate to reach an understanding , we implicitly raise three universal validity claims (areas of truth and validity) . They apply to the objective, social, and subjective worlds .

1. Factual Truth (The Objective World)

What it means: Claims regarding tangible facts, states of affairs, or events in the physical/objective world.

Example: "The train to Zurich leaves at 10:00."

Validation: We verify this through objective evidence, empirical science, and factual discourse .

2. Normative Rightness (The Social World)

What it means: Claims regarding moral, ethical, and social appropriateness . This dictates what is socially acceptable and morally correct based on mutual agreement.

Example: "You should give up your seat to the elderly passenger."

Validation: These cannot be proven with physical objects; rather, they are verified through moral/practical discourse, consensus, and shared social values.

3. Subjective Truthfulness / Sincerity (The Subjective World)

What it means: Claims regarding a speaker's inner state, thoughts, intentions, feelings, and honesty.

Example: "I am genuinely sorry I missed our meeting."

Validation: Verified over time through consistent behavior, authenticity, and trust.

(Italics by me)

Just to add: I am very well aware that there is more to life and communication than validity claims. One could even say that above is an 'empty scheme' that must be filled with what lies outside it.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by Eise

4 minutes ago, Eise said:

And, yes, very clearly against several posters here: for me a 'subjective truth' is a self contradiction. 'truth' means true for everybody. Otherwise it is a deeply felt conviction

Seems problematic that in a philosophy forum, there is dodging the work of finding a common philosophical definition of truth from which to proceed. I tried a while back to elucidate a little, but it doesn't seem to have been taken onboard. @Eise seems also to have difficulties getting concepts across. Another try:

https://iep.utm.edu/truth/

Philosophers are interested in a constellation of issues involving the concept of truth. For example, what makes an assertion be true? Surely the assertion has grounds and does not float in mid-air, so to speak. The grounds might involve a variety of things: our evidence, or the assertion’s correspondence with the world beyond the assertion, or the meanings of the concepts involved in the assertion, or the nature of mind, or our social conventions about making assertions, or some combination of these. A preliminary issue, although somewhat subsidiary, is to decide what sorts of things can be true. Is truth a property of assertions, or of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other), or of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? Is truth even a property? The principal issue is: What is truth? It is the problem of being clear about what you are saying, implying, and presupposing when you say some claim or other is true. The most important theories of truth are the Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. They are explained and compared here....

12 hours ago, Gees said:

So, experience plus emotion causes belief, which leads to knowledge, which we confirm with fact. Was it truth before we confirmed it as such? Yes. Experience plus emotion causes belief which becomes knowledge. Now it can be disputed by fact, but until it is, it is true.

This is a personal and idiosyncratic definition of what is meant by true.

Please feel free to read the IEP article on how philosophers have defined this word. And be aware that belief does not always reliably lead to knowledge. People believed many things about the world outside their heads which were never true. Examples are numerous and obvious.

Can't we just avoid all the drama by saying

All facts are truths; not all truths are facts.

Due to the vicissitudes of the English language, it seems 'truth' can have several interpretations, and as we see in this discussion, makes the communication of the idea somewhat difficult.
Facts, on the other hand, are 'self defined', and all are forced ( by the definition ) to agree on interpretation.

Edited to add: I think several have touched on the way that some statements (and also propositions, for those who don't want to specifically cement this in language) do not really have a truth value. This seems especially the case with contingent propositions. Let's take:

The King of France is bald.

If France still had a King, then we could assign some truth value to that. A King is either bald or he's not. We can empirically determine if the proposition is true. The truth is contingent on the circumstance of France having monarchy based on a patriarchal system.

But if France has no monarchy, then the proposition is neither true nor false since there simply is not an object to which the sentence's subject corresponds. This is what philosophers like Saul Kripke would call "a failed speech act." The world is full of nonsense which consists in such failed speech acts. Some here, like @Gees seem to be wary of language, possibly because of the occurrence such failed speech acts. But some statements are not prone to this kind of failure, and do correspond well to some existent state of affairs, and I think we can study these without too much trouble.

4 minutes ago, MigL said:

Can't we just avoid all the drama by saying

All facts are truths; not all truths are facts.

How about this: All facts are empirically verified propositions about the world, thus demonstrated to be true propositions? Not all truths however require facts. The latter is because some truths are inherent in the definitions of the words expressing them (which are called "analytic truths"), like e.g. All bachelors are unmarried. We don't need any facts for that sentence to be true - it is true by virtue of what its words mean. Or similarly, All triangles have three sides.

12 hours ago, Gees said:

What do you feel when you listen to a marching band? Most people feel energized, motivated, looking for a goal -- then the speaker comes on a gives you that goal -- or its incorporated into the lyrics of the music. Politicians and religious leaders have been using music, dance, and art for centuries to lead where they want the people to go. Why do you think that Trump keeps hi-jacking writers music to play at his conventions and speeches?

If you can not understand how emotion works, you can not understand truth. You can deny that emotion has anything to do with truth, but you will be wrong -- experience plus emotion equals belief, which is the foundation of knowledge.

Why are these not simply examples of psychological manipulation? - the often willful means of reducing the critical thinking capabilities of the audience to the point that they will accept dodgy assertions as "true"/"factual" when they are not so.

Reminds me of that old chestnut of Kierkegaard's: (paraphrasing) "If ten thousand people assemble and say the same thing; they're wrong even when they're right".

Simple belief does not establish actual "truth"/"fact" for anyone. The claim to "truth" under such conditions merely demonstrates conviction, not veracity.

Yep, emotion is just as effective at clouding the truth as it is at motivating people towards the truth. There's a good reason a judge instructs the jury to set their emotional responses aside and coolly consider the facts in reaching a verdict. "The defendant looks like a real dickhead to me, so he's probably guilty" wouldn't be a reliable path towards justice.

51 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Reminds me of that old chestnut of Kierkegaard's:

The 'true' (translated!?) text is:

"When truth conquers with the help of 10,000 yelling men—even supposing that that which is victorious is truth; with the form and manner of the victory a far greater untruth is victorious."

The Present Age: (1846)