What is the difference between Fact and Truth?

Question

I'm curious about the difference between Fact and Truth. I was searching on the internet if I could find it. But still I'm confused about the exact meaning.

I first read the forum discussion here Fact and Truth where an author has given two examples for each like below

A fact is a reality that cannot be logically disputed or rejected. If I say "fire is hot," I don't care how great your reasoning skills are, if you touch fire your skin will burn (and don't give me that "but people can walk on hot coals!" bull. There's a difference between the transfer of heat through conduction and training one's body to deal with the agonizing pain of said conduction). Now when I say this, I am not speaking a truth, I am speaking a fact. If you say "fire is not hot," you are not lying, you are incorrect. Facts are concrete realities that no amount of reasoning will change. When one acknowledges a fact, they are doing just that. Facts are not discovered, facts are not created, facts are simply acknowledged.

A truth on the other hand, is almost the opposite. Truths are those things that are not simply acknowledged, but must be discovered, or created. If I say "God exists," and I possess strong reasoning for the affirmative of that statement, then God really does exist, that is a reality. However, if another individual possesses strong reasoning for the negative, and because of this reasoning they believe that God does not exist, then that is also a reality. If we were to debate our ideologies, and my reasoning appeared stronger than theirs, they may choose to adopt my belief that God does exist. If they do, then the existence of God is just as true as the nonexistence of God which they believed a week ago. Truths, as opposed to fact, are much more fluid and malleable than their empirical counterparts.

and followed by further discussion.

Then I found this Reference.
Article from above link says like below:

Facts are notes and lyrics on sheet music. Truth is what the singer gives to the listener when she’s brave enough to open up and sing from her heart.

But still curious about the difference between both of them.

In our daily life, in general conversation, we generally use these both terms interchangeably. Then what is the difference? Are they synonym or have specific difference?

Answer 1

The quote about facts gets it pretty right. A fact is, for many philosophers, a part of reality (Russel, for example). So as there are people and tables and chairs in our world, there is also the fact that I am sitting on the chair. It is as real as the chair itself. You often see some kind of brackets when someone speaks about fact, so for example: < I am sitting on a chair> converts to "The fact that I am sitting on a chair".

Truth is a property of sentences, propositions, utterances, whatever you like. Facts can therefore not be true, in the same way as a chair cannot be true. Stating a fact, however, and depending on your opinion, has a truthvalue.

I think the second quote about truth is a bit problematic. It sounds as if good arguments alter reality. But arguments cannot be true, they can be valid, and they can be truthconserving. So if I have an argument for the existence of god, it is at best valid. That does not mean, however, that suddenly, in virtue of the good argument, god came into existence.

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Edit: More on truth

So on one common view those things that can be true are propositions. So a meaningful exression would be: The proposition that snow is white is true.

If you believe that sentences are the things that can be true, then this would be an example: The sentence "Grass is green" is true.

Most people believe that facts cannot be true: They think that "(The fact that grass is green) is true" is a weird thing to say. (I use brackets to make clear that the predicate "is true" refers to the fact. Because otherwise there could be a second reading about the (fact that grass is green is true), if there is such a fact)

To conclude:(i) There is the fact that grass is green, and (ii) the proposition that grass is green is true.

Also it is worth pointing out that there are philosophers who say that there are no facts, because facts are weird ontological things and maybe you can do without them. So this is just one way to answer this question.

Answer 2

I want to make some general points about the OP.

Firstly, you appear to be asking for how the words truth and fact are used, but you capitalize these words. That already tends to obfuscate the issue, suggesting there is some very special, possibly metaphysical, usage you are alluding to.

Secondly, in asking for the meaning of individual words, you are suggesting that the unit of meaning is a single word. This is not true, as any cursory look in a dictionary will demonstrate. There are multiple entries for both truth and fact, not in the the least because the meaning of the words is modified by their context, and that therefore truth and fact can have multiple meanings in different contexts.

Now, it happens to be the case that one such dictionary entry for truth is "conforming to the facts" and for fact "a particular truth known". This is from the Oxford Dictionary, but I assume any dictionary would have similar definitions. This only goes to show that in one important sense truth and fact are interchangeable.

Answer 3

A fact    is a perception of            reality.
A truth   is a perception which matches reality.

There is a nice parallelism with [axiomatic] formal systems:

An axiom   is a building block for           possible worlds.
A  theorem is a statement      about certain possible worlds.

Ok, that didn't turn out quite as well as I hoped. I was trying to establish the analogy:

fact : truth :: theorem : axiom

There is a weird asymmetry:

    fact ↔ theorem
    truth ↔ axiom

At least, I expected it to work the other way around. The convention in this thread has facts being possibly wrong; we are much more used to axioms being possibly wrong, for we only call something a 'theorem' if it has been logically demonstrated to flow from the axioms. Then again, if we are trying to approximate the world with a formal system, we are essentially searching for axioms that generate theorems which match the facts. In pictogram format:

  (fact)
observation   < —— >   theorem
    ∧                     ∧
    |                     |
    ∨                     ∨
  truth                 axiom

Excepting tautologies, truths are unknowable except by approximation; we must remember that science models reality, but it does not say what reality is. Models are made up of axioms & theorems. To the extent that our theorems match our observations ('the facts'), we think that our axioms are [close to] truths.

P.S. The word 'reality' in this answer can be replaced with 'possible world'; what is true in a fictional world may not be true in our actual world. Assuming there is an objective reality, of course. :-)

Answer 4

First, truth and fact are two words made by men, so we have to examine what men mean when they use the word truth, and when they use the word fact.

A news reporter is always reminded to include answers in reporting a news item, to the following interrogative terms, what I call the five w's and one h, namely: who, what, where, when, why, and how.

So, let us start with what is a fact? It is a word indicating an event i.e. an occurrence in the world that is experienced by men, for examples: It is a fact that dogs bark, it is a fact that the woman delivered a baby, it is a fact that the moon illuminates the night sky.

And what is a truth, in the world of humankind?

A truth is the opposite of a lie, as simple as that.

Wait, and what is a lie?

A lie is a communication from a man that is contrary to what knows in his mind [some folks will find my words here familiar to themselves in their school days].

So, truth and lie are opposite correlatives.

Examples of lies: a jeweler tells his customer that the ring he is selling is a diamond ring, but he knows the ring is a fake diamond ring, the diamond in the ring is just a piece of plain glass, next - an applicant to a job tells his prospective employer that he finished a college degree of mechanical engineering, but he knows he has no such college degree, a husband telling his wife he was held up by traffic on his way home, but he was not held up by traffic, instead he dropped in at the new bar in town.

In ordinary communication truth and fact are used interchangeably, though.

If you ask me, I will tell you that truth depends on man's experiences of facts - however, he could be mistaken with his experiences of facts; this still does not mean that there is no certainty at all - it just means that every human must check carefully for ascertaining that the facts are really facts, and not mistaken facts.

Answer 5

truth is a generally accepted outcome or reasoning while fact is a proven truth...in other words every Fact is True but not all Truths are facts. Example 1+1=2 is a fact (only one result proven truth), but 2=1+1 is true but not fact(infinite result as 2=1x2,2=6-4,2=2+0 to infinity.

Answer 6

In a sense, say from deflationary theory or pragmatism for instance, facts and truths are labels, ways of talking. Both are lingual. The only difference that makes a difference is that facts are apparent and obvious while all propositions that are truth-bearing require warrant, justification.

For example, it is a fact that the sky is blue when it is blue and that roses that are red are red ... it is also a fact that colors do not exist.

If we look at how we're using our vocabularies, then we can ultimately notice as some have in philosophy, that whatever else we'd say about facts and truths are just particular distinctions a group of people have found useful to make in their sort of conversations about them.

Answer 7

We look INSIDE ourselves to find truths. OUTSIDE of ourselves to find facts.

• Chocolate is good = Truth, not fact • I love my mom = Truth, not fact • God exists = Truth, not fact

Many things exist in truth (according to an observer), and not fact. Truths need an observer to exist. Facts stand independent of an observer, wether we like it or not.

• The sun exists = fact • The earth orbits the sun = fact

Answer 8

A fact by definition expresses something MUST forever be TRUE. A fact is not voted upon by a majority. A fact is not a belief or percieved by individuals. Your perception and your subjective beliefs can be wrong but a fact can never be wrong by definition. If you think a fact can be wrong, then someone or you made a wrong claim, period. If I say all women are 12 feet tall, all it takes is one sample to disprove the original claim. One woman who is not 12 feet tall disproves the original claim and it is A Fact the original claim is false. A fact contains very specific content that prevents a misreading or misinterpretation. In this way the truth value of a fact can never change. You could be guilty of using loose language (vague or ambiguous terminology) by avoiding the specifics to deceive others or persuade others. You can misrepresent facts. This is why classical logic had strength in fallacy detection.

Some truths are corresponding truths. That is, the claim matches the sense verification. So if it is true that you are sitting in a chair right now, this is verifiable by the senses as true or false. One should take note you sitting in the chair is not forever true. This truth would only be temporal. This gives the impression some truths are relative or contextual. The verification of the senses is usually what science uses as a standard of truth. Objective truths are not always verifiable though so scientific thinkers will claim either there are no objective truths or no human would be able to detect them.

Objective truths are usually spoken about when one claims a proposition is true or false. Objective truths are independent and are not biased, opinionated, subjective, relative, voted upon, etc. The truths would be true even if there were no humans. Snakes would still be reptiles. The Sun would still be the same, Jupiter would still be the same, addition would still be the same, subtraction still the same, plant life still the same, etc. To say some thing is objective is to say this proposition does not change its truth value over time. So in Aristotelian logic a syllogism in the mood AAA in the first figure is always valid would be an example of an objective claim. This notion if it is true would also be a fact. Suppose I claim x is objective and end up being wrong? Well then my claim was objectively false the second I uttered it. Even if you don't know the truth value of a given proposition there us STILL a truth value. Not knowing the truth value is no excuse to deny the truth of a proposition proof or no proof. Proposition values do not depend on your existence as they are independent. The proposition "there is a God" has a truth value with or without an existing proof. You just may not know the truth value. Being specific as possible instead of trying to generalize as much would reduce possible misunderstandings or misinterpretation .

Answer 9

Facts are statements which hold correct on the subject's nature, property, incidents or behaviour etc.

Truth is an instance of quoting one or many of the facts while describing or discussing the subject.

Answer 10

The difference between truth and fact is that fact is something that cannot be combated with reasoning, for it is logic itself. But truth is something which depends on a person's perspective and experience.