On 08/02/2014 06:11 AM, Chris Cain wrote:
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"
...
Great, now we are getting somewhere.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/verify?s=t
"to prove the truth of, as by evidence or testimony; confirm;
substantiate: Events verified his prediction."
I understand "capable of being verified" as "there is a way to verify
this" which is the same as "this can be proven" which would imply "this
is true".
What's wrong here?
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).
...
If I can verify 1==2, I would prove 1==2, as per the definition above, no?
"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.
It is possible that this is indeed what it tries to communicate. Thanks
for bearing with me in any case!
But as I wrote in my previous post, now this brings up the issue that if
an assertion is a statement of fact, then it is not necessarily true.
Why is it now obvious that it should be considered true?
