Truth v fact

I think part of the problem of distinguishing between 'truth' (particularly "my" truth') and 'fact' is that we are in a culture where everybody's opinion has to be treated as having equal weight and worth. It doesn't seem to matter if one opinion is based on scientific facts and another is based on feelz, both have to be given equal attention and treated with equal respect.

Yeah, 'bigot' is another of those words the no-debaters are humpty-dumptying.

[quote DottyHarmer]@Iwishihadariver - the trouble is “the other side” is always wrong because they cry “Bigot” and so truth is cast as nastiness.[/quote]

Dotty, we see "bigot" and "nastiness" thrown back at us when we're hitting the spot. That's where mumsnet is the shielddd waaaaaall of british feminism .

@Iwishihadariver - the trouble is “the other side” is always wrong because they cry “Bigot” and so truth is cast as nastiness.

Coming back to the More or Less radio 4 programme discussed on other threads, the piece on testosterone levels in trans athletes and the conclusion that a range of factors made their participation in women’s sport unfair, the final sentence was that some people believe that this does not matter . So their trump card is so what if facts are against them? What matters is their belief , therefore making it the truth and hence what is right.

This thread seems to be doing an excellent job of supporting the genderists in illustrating how the words 'truth' and 'fact' and 'belief' can be (re)defined and used to make and promote any position. So how can the other side be wrong!

It feels to me that we're playing to a tra script in doing this. For me, AlecTrevalyn had it right upthread with the Henry Jones analogy. Our fact and our truth is clear, continue to let everyone know what that is with enormous fucking brass knobs on.
We must double down, not be intellectually indulgent.

"My truth" kind of truth. That is , "my self-delusion "

This is the meaning of post-truth

'Feelings over facts' is now entirely valid because emotions are now tied to concepts like death and violence.

Hence a fact-based argument that hurts someone's feelings can now be described as an 'act of violence.'

Or, perhaps, ask him if the fact that truth has a subjective element is subjective, or if it is incontrovertible.

This seems like a joke, and of course it is, in a way. But it points up what is wrong with any claim that truth is relative (to a speaker, or a culture, whatever).

It cannot be simply true that truth is relative. Why? Because if it is simply true, then it is not relative. So if it is simply true that truth is relative it is false that truth is relative. So it is simply false.

Strange, the logic of truth, hein?

[ No tricks here, btw. This is simply true. And incontrovertible.]

A few people have mentioned belief in god as not being a fact, but a belief, but in many schools of philosophy it's seen as a fact in the same way these kinds of mathematical ideas are facts - belife in god is a kind of mathematical statement going right back to Pythagoras who said that everything is numbers - the structure of reality is mathematical. This has been one of the most powerful philosophical ideas in history.

The fact that some philosophers may come up with such a theory in no way makes it in any meaningful sense 'true'.

Something else I'd mention, not sure where it fits in, but there is a tendency for us in the modern period to put a lot of weight on material evidence, and call those things in particular "facts".

Even those things are not always as objective as we might like to think, data being a good example.

But there are also things like mathematical facts and proofs, which don't necessarily need any material evidential basis at all. There are quite a few mathematicians who believe mathematical truths exist apart from and perhaps even prior to (logically speaking) any material reality.

A few people have mentioned belief in god as not being a fact, but a belief, but in many schools of philosophy it's seen as a fact in the same way these kinds of mathematical ideas are facts - belife in god is a kind of mathematical statement going right back to Pythagoras who said that everything is numbers - the structure of reality is mathematical. This has been one of the most powerful philosophical ideas in history.

So unless we can state categorically that facts have to be material observations, which seems a little arbitrary, we need consider that what is a fact might be wider than a lot of us are conditioned to believe.

Yeah, I think he's right. Disparate facts don't cohere into something we can call truth until we put them together to form a larger picture.

There are certain things we might say are facts, but there are different ways we can organize those facts, different sets of questions we can ask, different working assumptions for thought.

When different people have very different worldviews it's not usually just because they don't agree on facts. It's all the stuff underneath the facts that make the biggest difference.

It's a common idea now that more information is what changes people's way of thinking. I think that largely that's untrue. It's a change in underlying assumptions about reality.

…think in words….

Back in the 1960s, when the Catholic Church was grappling with evolution, the nuns at my mother’s high school told the girls that there is only one truth, there can be no contradiction between religion and science because both search for one indivisible truth.

Even an ancient religion on the ropes wasn’t willing to scramble peoples heads about truth. They were looking for a way through to be sure.

This new religion is scary. Much more like a cult filled with sophistry. Redefining “truth” to be subjective strips It of its meaning. And confuses our thinking, since we think non words.

When people unilaterally change the meaning of words they are fucking around inside your head.

[quote owlinnahat]**@namitynamechange - www.holocaustcentre.org.nz/uploads/1/1/5/2/115245341/interpretations-of-the-holocaust.pdf is a good place to start with different schools of history.

And I'm not a Holocaust denier. I'm a Jewish historian with a Master's degree in the historiography of the Holocaust.[/quote]

I am just catching up with the thread and was a bit at @namitynamechange's response to your post. This though? This made me smile.

And religious beliefs centre around truth/falsehoods that are unprovable at this point in time. Either God exists or he doesnt; either I have a soul or I don't. There may be no way to prove either way, but that doesn't mean that God can simultaneously exist and not exist. One day maybe there will be sufficient facts and evidence to prove categorically one way or the other, but until then people have to look at the evidence that is available and make their decision, knowing that they might have chosen wrong.

Yes, exactly.

Truth is fixed and absolute, but sometimes unprovable. Facts are provable things which point us to truth.
There are also two different things: opinion and belief.
Opinions are subjective and not related to absolute truth, e.g swimming is fun, chocolate tastes good. People can hold opposite opinions and both are "true for them"

But beliefs hinge around truth which may or may not be provable by fact, e.g red meats cause cancer, the earth is flat, God is real. Beliefs are necessarilly either true or false, even if it's impossible to prove one way or another.

So humderds of years ago, everyone believed the world was flat, but now the evidence indicates that the world is round.
The world did not suddenly cease to be flat and start being round at the point that the scientific evidence emerged, nor does it become flat for those people today who reject evidence of its roundness.

And religious beliefs centre around truth/falsehoods that are unprovable at this point in time. Either God exists or he doesnt; either I have a soul or I don't. There may be no way to prove either way, but that doesn't mean that God can simultaneously exist and not exist. One day maybe there will be sufficient facts and evidence to prove categorically one way or the other, but until then people have to look at the evidence that is available and make their decision, knowing that they might have chosen wrong.

That is not the same thing as ignoring factual evidence. If there is an overwhelming body of evidence FOR something, and no evidence AGAINST it, then it makes no sense to believd it to be true

Feelings matter right up to the point they get overtaken by facts. You might "feel" you're a man trapped in a woman's body, and that's great until the point when you get accidentally pregnant, or you're sexually assaulted by a man who sees you as female.

If I believe Paris is in Spain, is that simply "my truth"?

truth that people feel

I disagree that you can have your own truth in material matters. That's a belief, not an objective truth. The truth exists regardless of what humans think about it, humans can only perceive it, and one of the better ways we have of doing this is via the scientific method.

I think facts and truth sometimes belong in different parts of a discussion but that they both have value.

On the subjective truth side, in an argument you can have quite a lot of facts:

• A said something to B
• B is upset by what A said (therefore what A said is upsetting to B)
• A did not mean to upset B

Those things can all be true and it can be more helpful in resolving the argument / compromising to understand that, rather than going on a big 'fact finding' mission to determine whether what A said to B is 'objectively' upsetting (to the man on the Clapham Omnibus or otherwise). It can be - for example if A is on trial for harassment. But in daily life, it's not usually particularly constructive.

...'is what a person believes to be true' is perhaps more accurately described by the word 'opinion' than 'truth'.

Truth is what a person believes to be true.

Do you really believe that? I don't. A person can believe something to be true which is objectively falsifiable. A person can believe something one day, but later change their mind. Where's the truth in that case?