On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 03:40:47 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
I already googled 'statement of fact' myself earlier, and found
the wikipedia entry for 'fact', that I quoted back then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
"The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that
is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience."
I.e. in order to determine whether something is a statement of
fact, one should verify it. Do you agree that it is saying this?
I'll just do this real quick, because it's a really easy one to
show the problem with.
Google "verifiable" ->
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verifiable -> "capable
of being verified"
That is, it's something that has some ability to be verified.
Thus, 1==2 is "verifiable" (it can be shown to be either true or
false).
"God exists" is an example of something that cannot be a
statement of fact because we cannot verify it one way or another.
So no, a statement of fact can be verifiable and still false by
your quote.
