My apologies to everyone, especially @sethoflagos my only excuse is, my friend invited himself to mine with a bottle of JD, insisting we finish it before he leaves. My normal tipple is a locally sourced scrumpy (hard Cider) which gives me plenty of time, post tipsy (about an hour) to see the event horizon of incoherent BS approaching. With JD it's so much faster, in fact the moment of recognition is already too late.

To clarify my position on the topic and hopefully resume the scheduled program's, both word's should be subject to the same rules as the judiciary, as in beyond reasonable doubt, perhaps the scientists/philosophists can come up with a more accurate word that describes certainty.

Like, erm, "certainty"? 😉 That might be ol' Manny K's analytic truth - things we know with certainty because they are á priori truths which can be known without empirical support. All bachelors are unmarried.

I stepped away from the thread for a while, mainly due to being a right-brain lefty who wearies of word fetishes and semantic wrangling. (is that why I like palindromes and wordplay? they tend to subvert the whole word game)

(Like a bottle of JD, right?)

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Like, erm, "certainty"? 😉 That might be ol' Manny K's analytic truth - things we know with certainty because they are á priori truths which can be known without empirical support.

All bachelors are unmarried.

I do think the underlined is an unfortunate example since the word bachelor has (had) several meaning; the original one having nothing to do with marital status.

Your point about certainty is on better mathematical ground as one of the meanings of a probability of 1.

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

My apologies to everyone

Accepted, for my part.

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

To clarify my position on the topic

Naturalism

Realism (specifically Scientific Realism or sometimes Empiricism on off-days)

Correspondence Theory of Truth

Within these thoughts, a truth may be deduced from a number of pertinent facts, whereas the reverse would sound strange. I'm open to that being a relevant difference in regards to the OP presumption. Facts may be viewed as 'atoms' of more general truths.

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

my friend invited himself to mine with a bottle of JD

JD is always getting blamed for something or other ...
( so I switched to double oaked Woodford Reserve )

And now I can't get either since our Government is boycotting American booze.

Edited Tuesday at 06:02 PM3 days by MigL

4 hours ago, studiot said:

I do think the underlined is an unfortunate example since the word bachelor has (had) several meaning; the original one having nothing to do with marital status.

Yes. It has been overused. I'm sure there are better ones, like all triangles have three sides. A priori statements often contrasted with synthetic ones, like "All swans are white," which Karl Popper used to example as one which could be falsified empirically by the sighting of just one black swan (which eventually happened somewhere in Australia IIRC). And as Popper et al also pointed out, no amount of white swan sightings would ever have been sufficient to achieve certainty.

18 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Accepted, for my part.

Naturalism

Realism (specifically Scientific Realism or sometimes Empiricism on off-days)

Correspondence Theory of Truth

Within these thoughts, a truth may be deduced from a number of pertinent facts, whereas the reverse would sound strange. I'm open to that being a relevant difference in regards to the OP presumption. Facts may be viewed as 'atoms' of more general truths.

Thank you.

Your list of references doesn't seem to back up your conclusion, can you quote the relevant passages please.

A fact may be be deducted from a number of pertinent truth's, sounds reasonable.

Atoms can change, given the right circumstances, it's also true of facts

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Your list of references doesn't seem to back up your conclusion, can you quote the relevant passages please.

These branches of thought are generally seen as complementary: all rooted in the Aristotelian tradition that was resurrected during the Enlightenment by John Locke and Co. I've not found any deep internal contradiction in them in over 50 years, so if you've found one, I'm going to need your help in locating it.

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

A fact may be be deducted from a number of pertinent truth's, sounds reasonable.

I agree. However, it sounds a strange way of putting it. A semantic point rather than a logical one.

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Atoms can change, given the right circumstances, it's also true of facts

I think it's clear that I was using 'atom' in its original sense. Time-stamped facts don't change. When ammonites ceased to be, they didn't cease to be ammonites.

Edited Wednesday at 02:04 PM2 days by sethoflagos

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

These branches of thought are generally seen as complementary: all rooted in the Aristotelian tradition that was resurrected during the Enlightenment by John Locke and Co. I've not found any deep internal contradiction in them in over 50 years, so if you've found one, I'm going to need your help in locating it.

That's as may be, but it neither explains your conclusion or an answer to my question.

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

I agree. However, it sounds a strange way of putting it. A semantic point rather than a logical one.

Please explain the parodox of your agreement with my point, whilst suggesting that my point is not logical.

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

I think it's clear that I was using 'atom' in its original sense. Time-stamped facts don't change. When ammonites ceased to be, they didn't cease to be ammonites.

That makes no sense, if a hydrogen atom couldn't change, we couldn't exist.

And please correct my wrongness, when I state that quantum physics undermines the certainty of classic physics.

22 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

When ammonites ceased to be, they didn't cease to be ammonites.

I would disagree with this. Unless one wants to argue that the difference between life and non-life has no meaning in this debate (is that just semantics or not?), I would say that when Joe the ammonite dies, he ceases being Joe the ammonite. Corpses/fossils/memories all tell of a former creature, Joe the ammonite, but none are actually Joe.

1 hour ago, npts2020 said:

I would disagree with this. Unless one wants to argue that the difference between life and non-life has no meaning in this debate (is that just semantics or not?), I would say that when Joe the ammonite dies, he ceases being Joe the ammonite. Corpses/fossils/memories all tell of a former creature, Joe the ammonite, but none are actually Joe.

Yes I'm inclined to support this view.

Something that is pretty important to Science in general is the way we knowingly use false models, because they give the right answer.

Examples would be Maxwell's mesh currents, Imaginary forces, simplified equations and so on.

Is D'Alembert's Paradox a truth a fact or an artifact ?

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

That's as may be, but it neither explains your conclusion or an answer to my question.

So be it.

1 hour ago, npts2020 said:

I would say that when Joe the ammonite dies, he ceases being Joe the ammonite.

Agreed; hence my point about time-stamping: Joe is an ammonite during his lifetime becomes Joe was an ammonite at some time during the Jurassic. That fact does not change; just the grammatical form needed to express it.

3 minutes ago, studiot said:

Is D'Alembert's Paradox a truth a fact or an artifact ?

It's a case of comparing apples and oranges. The inviscid assumption is unphysical and therefore false by at least the principle of naturalism.

24 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

It's a case of comparing apples and oranges. The inviscid assumption is unphysical and therefore false by at least the principle of naturalism.

There, and here is me thinking that D'Alembert's Paradox is just an artifact of oversimplification, that actually yields acceptable results in certain (quite many) cases.

But I hope you will agree with me that there is no such thing as an actual point load - it is an idealisation.

Yet we apply vector mechanics to them all the time.

1 minute ago, studiot said:

But I hope you will agree with me that there is no such thing as an actual point load - it is an idealisation.

Probably. We deal with point loads and line loads all the time in eg. Piping supports. They may exist in theory for an infinitesimally short time, but are converted instantaneously to area loads by deformation of the bearing surfaces. The 'rigid pipe assumption' is a useful approximation in some calculations, but creating a truth from the answer requires a very careful wording. Such examples generally yield limiting values hence by their very nature lie on (or beyond) the border of reality.

12 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Agreed; hence my point about time-stamping: Joe is an ammonite during his lifetime becomes Joe was an ammonite at some time during the Jurassic. That fact does not change; just the grammatical form needed to express it.

This points to the fact that truth and facts can be time dependent. There could have been an ammonite named Joe at some point and that would have made the statement that he IS an ammonite both true and a fact. However, it is no longer either so the statement has to be changed to Joe WAS an ammonite to be true and a fact. Has this really changed anything regarding facts or truth, tho?

Appreciate the discussion, even if it is splitting hairs at times.

11 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

Has this really changed anything regarding facts or truth, tho?

Yes. Any present state has a causal history - a unique chain of events that actually happened whether we have means of identifying them or not. It is true that each must have happened in some specific order that resulted in what we observe today. If any of these truths had potential to become falsehoods after the fact, then reality would be subject to random and sudden inexplicable changes of state. If you don't believe in the existence of absolute truths, you are essentially rejecting causality. That''s rather a big deal, I think.

9 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Yes. Any present state has a causal history - a unique chain of events that actually happened whether we have means of identifying them or not. It is true that each must have happened in some specific order that resulted in what we observe today. If any of these truths had potential to become falsehoods after the fact, then reality would be subject to random and sudden inexplicable changes of state. If you don't believe in the existence of absolute truths, you are essentially rejecting causality. That''s rather a big deal, I think.

So, getting back to the topic, your statement is both a fact and true; but your historic, in this thread, posting suggests that you consider, that a fact is of greater value than a truth.

22 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

That's as may be, but it neither explains your conclusion or an answer to my question.

So be it.

You make a habit of this, you lose the argument, or can't think of a legitimate come back, and then suggest that it's not worth your time and effort.

That doesn't strike me as an honest approach to a discussion, I'd much rather we could be friend's enjoying a single malt and a friendly chat, unafraid of being wrong.

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

You make a habit of this, you lose the argument, or can't think of a legitimate come back, and then suggest that it's not worth your time and effort.

It must by now be clear to all that our outlooks on life are diametrically opposed. You stated

On 7/22/2026 at 12:17 PM, dimreepr said:

Your list of references doesn't seem to back up your conclusion,

... and then refused when asked to be more specific. I'll give you a response to your argument if and when you get around to presenting one. Until that happens, then yes, I really can't be arsed to enter into what is little more than a juvenile slanging match.

Although I have not contributed to this thread until now, I have been following it since the beginning. From the title of the thread: "The difference between Truth and Fact.", it seems to me that the category of a statement is more significant than its truth-value. Both truths and facts are true and therefore are not distinguished by this.

What it means for a statement to be true is itself an interesting question, and it's not clear to me that it can be rigorously defined, particularly from a mathematical standpoint. In this thread, some have spoken of the conditional nature of a truth or fact. I tend to think that if a qualifying condition is not explicitly stated, then the currency condition becomes implicitly assumed.

I tend to regard facts as the atoms of truths. Facts tend to be specific, truths tend to be general. Facts tend not to be open to interpretation, truths tend to be open to interpretation. Facts tend to say what is or what happened, truths tend to say how or why. Nevertheless, I haven't been able to come up with a precise distinction between the two even though I have identified particular statements I have made as "facts", for example that the spacetime surrounding the earth is curved. In this particular case, I was distinguishing a statement that is the result of an observation from something that is falsifiable.

Edited 16 hours ago16 hr by KJW

42 minutes ago, KJW said:

Although I have not contributed to this thread until now, I have been following it since the beginning. From the title of the thread: "The difference between Truth and Fact.", it seems to me that the category of a statement is more significant than its truth-value. Both truths and facts are true and therefore are not distinguished by this.

What it means for a statement to be true is itself an interesting question, and it's not clear to me that it can be rigorously defined, particularly from a mathematical standpoint. In this thread, some have spoken of the conditional nature of a truth or fact. I tend to think that if a qualifying condition is not explicitly stated, then the currency condition becomes implicitly assumed.

I tend to regard facts as the atoms of truths. Facts tend to be specific, truths tend to be general. Facts tend not to be open to interpretation, truths tend to be open to interpretation. Facts tend to say what is or what happened, truths tend to say how or why. Nevertheless, I haven't been able to come up with a precise distinction between the two even though I have identified particular statements I have made as "facts", for example that the spacetime surrounding the earth is curved. In this particular case, I was distinguishing a statement that is the result of an observation from something that is falsifiable.

Thank you for expressing my doubts so clearly +1

23 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Yes. Any present state has a causal history - a unique chain of events that actually happened whether we have means of identifying them or not. It is true that each must have happened in some specific order that resulted in what we observe today. If any of these truths had potential to become falsehoods after the fact, then reality would be subject to random and sudden inexplicable changes of state. If you don't believe in the existence of absolute truths, you are essentially rejecting causality. That''s rather a big deal, I think.

Isn't that what change is, falsifying (changing) the present to make it past? I fail to see how that means one must reject absolute truth, especially if this is considered to be one of the (or the only) absolute truths.

3 hours ago, npts2020 said:

falsifying (changing) the present to make it past?

What becomes false as a fact in the present becomes one of the past? Only the tense used to describe it, surely? The event itself doesn't change.

Several observers watching the event see it happen at different times in their frames of reference. But it's still the same event for all of them.

5 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

What becomes false as a fact in the present becomes one of the past? Only the tense used to describe it, surely? The event itself doesn't change.

Several observers watching the event see it happen at different times in their frames of reference. But it's still the same event for all of them.

Most/all of what we consider to be facts is an accumulation of historical knowledge, that we have curated to represent our museums artifacts.

14 hours ago, KJW said:

Although I have not contributed to this thread until now, I have been following it since the beginning. From the title of the thread: "The difference between Truth and Fact.", it seems to me that the category of a statement is more significant than its truth-value. Both truths and facts are true and therefore are not distinguished by this.

What it means for a statement to be true is itself an interesting question, and it's not clear to me that it can be rigorously defined, particularly from a mathematical standpoint. In this thread, some have spoken of the conditional nature of a truth or fact. I tend to think that if a qualifying condition is not explicitly stated, then the currency condition becomes implicitly assumed.

I tend to regard facts as the atoms of truths. Facts tend to be specific, truths tend to be general. Facts tend not to be open to interpretation, truths tend to be open to interpretation. Facts tend to say what is or what happened, truths tend to say how or why. Nevertheless, I haven't been able to come up with a precise distinction between the two even though I have identified particular statements I have made as "facts", for example that the spacetime surrounding the earth is curved. In this particular case, I was distinguishing a statement that is the result of an observation from something that is falsifiable.

I would argue that a truth transcends time and a fact only exists in the past.

For instance, isn't it true that we never learn from history and therefore allow the Trump's of our time to impose their own facts?