This article articulates the figure of the storyteller and the concept of factual truth to reflect on elements of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy that are also important for understanding our political situation. In it, Arendt's thought is seen as tributary to history and disposed to an alternative model of thinking: narrative thinking. Two ideas that revolve around the figure of the storyteller and the concept of factual truth. The goal of this research is, then, to take up again Arendt's reflection on (...) factual truth in order to understand our own context, marked by negationism and even by ideas such as “post-truth”. The choice of the author is not fortuitous, but is justified by the approach in which truth is not taken as an epistemological, neutral issue. To this end, we divide our text into four parts. In the first, we resume essential aspects of the relation between Arendtian thought and history. In the second, the same question is seen from the point of view of the questioning of the adequate way to respond to the “imperative of testimony” about the concentrationary experience. In the third, we turn to the figure of the storyteller and “narrative thinking” as an alternative to the Archimedean point of view. Finally, we find the notion of factual truth that, in fact, underpins all previous moments. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, phenomenalism is the position that physical facts depend upon sensory facts. Many have thought it to imply that physical statements are translatable into sensory statements. Not surprisingly, the impossibility of such translations led many to abandon phenomenalism in favor of materialism. But this was rash, for if phenomenalism is reformulated as the claim that physical facts supervene upon sensory facts, then translatability is no longer required. Given materialism's failure to account for subjective experience, there has been a revival (...) of property dualism. But property dualism implies indirect realism with its threat of scepticism. Given difficulties with materialism and dualism, philosophers should reconsider phenomenalism. (shrink)

This paper explains a fallacy that often arises in theorizing about human minds. I call it the Factual Belief Fallacy. The Fallacy, roughly, involves drawing conclusions about human psychology that improperly ignore the large backgrounds of mostly accurate factual beliefs people have. The Factual Belief Fallacy has led to significant mistakes in both philosophy of mind and cognitive science of religion. Avoiding it helps us better see the difference between factual belief and religious credence; seeing that difference in turn enables (...) us to pose interesting normative questions about various mental states labeled “belief.”. (shrink)

Say that two sentences are factually equivalent when they describe the same facts or situations, understood as worldly items, i.e. as bits of reality rather than as representations of reality. The notion of factual equivalence is certainly of central interest to philosophical semantics, but it plays a role in a much wider range of philosophical areas. What is the logic of factual equivalence? This paper attempts to give a partial answer to this question, by providing an answer the following, more (...) specific question: Given a standard propositional language with negation, conjunction and disjunction as primitive operators, which sentences of the language should be taken to be factually equivalent by virtue of their logical form? The system for factual equivalence advocated in this paper is a proper fragment of the first-degree system for the logic of analytic equivalence put forward in the late seventies by R. B. Angell. I provide the system with two semantics, both formulated in terms of the notion of a situation’s being fittingly described by a linguistic item. In the final part of the paper I argue, contra a view I defended in my “Grounding and Truth-Functions”, that the logic for factual equivalence I advocate here should be preferred to Angell’s logic if one wishes to follow the general conception of the relationships between factual equivalence and the notion of grounding put forward in the 2010 paper. (shrink)

We argue that Dienes & Perner's (D&P's) proposal needs to specify independent criteria when a subject explicitly represents factuality. This task is complicated by the fact that people typically “tacitly” believe that each of their beliefs is a fact. This problem does not arise for comparative evidence on monkeys, for they presumably lack the capacity to represent factuality explicitly. D&P suggest that explicit visual processing and declarative memory depend on explicit representations of factuality, whereas the analogous implicit (...) processes do not require such representations. Many of the implicit/explicit findings are also found in monkeys, however, and D&P's account needs to explain this striking parallel. (shrink)

What are the truth conditions of want ascriptions? According to an influential approach, they are intimately connected to the agent’s beliefs: ⌜S wants p⌝ is true iff, within S’s belief set, S prefers the p worlds to the not-p worlds. This approach faces a well-known problem, however: it makes the wrong predictions for what we call (counter)factual want ascriptions, wherein the agent either believes p or believes not-p—for example, ‘I want it to rain tomorrow and that is exactly what is (...) going to happen’ or ‘I want this weekend to last forever, but of course it will end in a few hours’. We solve this problem. The truth conditions for want ascriptions are, we propose, connected to the agent’s conditional beliefs. We substantiate this connection by pursuing a striking parallel between (counter)factual and non-(counter)factual want ascriptions on the one hand and counterfactual and indicative conditionals on the other. (shrink)

It is argued that, while there is no such property as truth, there is a feature of factuality which certain states of affairs have and others lack. Since states of affairs can appear before the mind as having this feature when, in reality, they do not have it, a most difficult epistemological problem arises, namely, how to distinguish between a state of affairs which merely appears to have factuality and a state of affairs which really is factual. The (...) test for factuality, it is maintained, is twofold. It consists, on the one hand, of perception and introspection, and on the other, of coherence. What we perceive and introspect is not only presented to us as factual, but justifiedly taken to be factual. In case of doubt, though, we cannot but fall back on coherence, comparing some of our beliefs, perceptions, assumptions etc. with others. (shrink)

Within debates concerning responsibility for ignorance the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is often treated as crucial. Many prominent accounts hold that while factual ignorance routinely exculpates, moral ignorance never does so. The view that there is an in-principle distinction between moral and factual ignorance has been referred to as the “Asymmetry Thesis.” This view stands in opposition to the “Parity Thesis,” which holds that moral and factual ignorance are in-principle similar. The Parity Thesis has been closely aligned with (...) volitionist accounts of moral responsibility, whereas the Asymmetry Thesis has been closely aligned with Quality of Will accounts. Two central questions are at work here: how ignorance excuses, and whether it excuses in the same way for both moral and factual ignorance. I will argue that these questions have often been confused in the present debate, and once we have distinguished more clearly between them, it seems that Quality of Will accounts are compatible with the Parity Thesis. And more generally: that the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is far less important in debates about responsibility for ignorance than it has often appeared. (shrink)

The essay argues that some factual propositions are both clearly true and not known. The essays argues that those propositions are evidence for anyone to whom they are clearly true.

The article deals with the development of the philosophy of France Veber, the pupil of Meinong and a main Slovene philosopher. One of the most important threads of Veber’s philosophy is the consideration of knowledge and factuality, which may be seen as a driving force of its development. Veber’s philosophical development is usually divided into three phases: the object theory phase, the phase when he created his philosophy of a person as a creature at the crossing of the natural (...) and the spiritual world, who as an active, not merely passive subject possesses her own causal powers, and the third phase, when he supplemented his earlier philosophy with the theory of a special side of our experience which he called hitting-upon-reality. It is a direct experience of reality, a special kind of intentionality, which is however fundamentally different from presentational intentionality, which alone is taken into account by object theory or phenomenology. The questions of knowledge and factuality are closely connected in Veber’s philosophy since, pace Veber, knowledge is a kind of, we may say, justified experience the object of which is a factual entity. Hence, if we want to understand what knowledge is, we must face the challenge of comprehending factuality. There are five stages to be noted in the development of his epistemology. The first two belong to his object theory phase, the third to his person phase, the fourth is characterised by his distinguishing and exploring truth and validity with regard to the thought about God, and the basis of the fifth phase lies in his theory of hitting-upon-reality. In Introduction to Philosophy and The System of Philosophy, that is in the year 1921, Veber believed that factuality was a property of the object, which we do present, but we do not present the factuality of this factuality. In 1923, in The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy and in the work Science and Religion, he already rejected such a view. There is something that makes things factual, but that is a complete unknown X. Therefore we cannot even say what kind of an entity this factuality is. Some people would probably demand the following formulation: if X is an ultimate mystery, we should not claim even that it is an entity. In The Problems of Presentation Production Veber claimed that factuality is not a property since this would lead to a regressum ad infinitum. Philosophy related internally correct experience to personal will. In T he Book about God he developed the thesis that factuality depends on the act of God. In The Question of Reality he importantly modified, developed and enriched the thesis that we do not present reality with his theory of immediate experience of factuality. (shrink)

Most contributions to the current debate about the consideration and application of empirical information in ethics scholarship deal with epistemological issues such as the role and the meaning of empirical research in ethical reasoning. Despite the increased publication of empirical data in ethics literature we still lack systematic analyses and conceptual frameworks that would help us to understand the rarely discussed methodological and practical problems in appraising empirical research. This paper demonstrates the need for critical appraisal and its crucial methodological (...) role in the application of empirical information in ethical reasoning. Furthermore, it systematically examines the criteria and the appropriate appraisal of empirical research and the associated challenges by highlighting current problems in empirical ethics literature. These problems reveal the following challenges for a critical and responsible consideration of empirical information in ethical reasoning: (i) training in the basic skills of locating and communicating empirical data from the relevant studies; (ii) training in basic knowledge of how to critically appraise empirical (qualitative and quantitative) research and its results; (iii) determination of quality standards for empirical ethics research; (iv) adequate reporting of the methodology and results of empirical ethics research in scientific journals. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that the dichotomy between factual and eidetic represents one of the fundamental presuppositions of the Husserlian phenomenology. No authentic understanding of the phenomenological reduction and of its constitutive role for the transcendental phenomenology is possible without a proper understanding of this dichotomy and of its relevance for the transcendental problem. One of the questions I am going to discuss in this paper is the following: Could it be possible that both the dichotomy (...) between fact and essence and that between empirical and eidetic sciences is actually at work in Husserl’s Ideen I as a phenomenologically uninvestigated presupposition of his undertaking? The other matter I am going to address in this paper is the concept of originary givenness and the legitimacy of the knowledge based on it (which is presupposed by the “principle of all principles” which Husserl formulates in Ideen I). I will argue that this concept is a revolutionary idea not only from a philosophical standpoint, but also from a more general scientific one, because it offers a new criteria of knowledge, that of the originary donating intuition. (shrink)

What is the logical form of judgments, if they have one? This question remains an enigma for any transcendental approach to logical thought. The paper addresses the matter by following the debate between Edmund Husserl and Christoph Sigwart from 1890 to 1904. It shows the pivotal role that the problem of judgment played in this discussion. Since judgments were thought to be both refined mental acts and fundamental logical elements, the related issue was a thumbnail version of the broader conflict (...) between psychology and logic. The paper argues that Husserl, far from overcoming Sigwart’s “Kantian-psychologistic” approach, ends up integrating it into the later stages of his phenomenological work; and that this approach does in fact pose an unavoidable transcendental-genetic problem for Husserl’s phenomenology of logic. The argument intends to contribute to a possible integration of the study of the factual “nature” of men within the horizon of the philosophical logic of knowledge. (shrink)

Professor Kai Nielsen is one of the most forceful proponents of the view that theological assertions have no factual reference because they are compatible with any empirical state of affairs; no evidence, it is alleged, is allowed to count as falsification of such assertions, and therefore they spuriously purport to be what they are not. In this he follows the well-known essay by Professor Antony Flew in which the same argument was advanced, and Nielsen's own most recent contribution on the (...) subject in Religious Studies should be read against the background of his earlier controversy with Professors John Hick and George Mavrodes in The Canadian Journal of Theology. In this latest article he broadens the canvas to question the significance of applying language and concepts appropriate to the realm of empirical observation to anything that is held to transcend it; and this is the substance of Part II of his paper, in which he engages in debate with Professor Ian Crombie, treading well-worn ground that has been the subject of innumerable philosophical discussions. The rest of the paper, however, is a restatement of his earlier contention, and it is with this more limited issue that I shall be concerned in what follows. For I believe that Nielsen is wrong in two quite fundamental respects: he is mistaken in supposing that theological assertions are compatible with any empirical state of affairs: he bases his critique of theological assertions on a far too uncritical appraisal of the principles of verification and falsification in the case of ordinary factual statements. If I am right, the larger questions raised in Part II will still remain open, but it is high time that the ‘verification-falsification argument’ should be shown to be unfounded. (shrink)

Dienes & Perner argue that there is a hierarchy of forms of implicit knowledge. One level of their hierarchy involves factuality, where it may be merely implicit that the state of affairs is supposed to be a real one rather than something imagined or fictional. I argue that the factual or fictional status of a thought or utterance cannot be a matter of concept, implicit or explicit.

This book is an anthology of essays dealing with the problem of the justification of claims to factual knowledge of various sorts. All, except one excerpted from a book, were originally journal articles. Part one, contains essays by R. F. Holland, William Earle, and E. J. Furlong on the problem of memory. Part two, contains essays by A. J. Ayer, C. H. Whiteley, and H. H. Price. Part three contains essays by Ayer, R. J. Hirst, and C. H. Whiteley. A (...) general introduction precedes the essays. A useful bibliographical essay is also given.--A. S. C. (shrink)

This paper considers the method of idealization and factualization as the main method of all advanced empirical science. The procedure is as follows. Some idealizing conditions are assumed: the vanishing of factors $(p_{i}=0)$ which never vanish in the real world. An idealization law is formulated -- a law which is exactly (non-vacuously) fulfilled only in an ideal model, not in any real system. Then the idealizing assumptions are abrogated one by one-it is a process of gradual factualization, of the transition (...) to the factual laws which are fulfilled in real systems. These laws may be directly applied and tested by experience. (shrink)

A conclusion is a “material consequence” of reasons if it follows necessarily from them in accordance with a valid form of argument with content. The corresponding universal generalization of the argument’s associated conditional must be true, must be a covering generalization, and must be true of counter-factual instances. But it need not be law-like. Pearl’s structural model semantics is easier to apply to such counter-factual instances than Lewis’s closest-worlds semantics, and gives intuitively correct results.

I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. To summarize: factual beliefs (...) are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence. (shrink)

Gualtiero Piccinini has recently proposed an interesting new solution to the Gettier Problem: Knowledge is factually grounded belief. But there is a problem with this purported solution: It is both too strong and too weak. In this paper, I provide two counterexamples to substantiate the claim that it is both too strong and too weak. Thus, the view that knowledge is factually grounded belief is inadequate as an account of knowledge.

Clinical decisions are expected to be based on factual evidence and official values derived from healthcare law and soft laws such as regulations and guidelines. But sometimes personal values instead influence clinical decisions. One way in which personal values may influence medical decision-making is by their affecting factual claims or assumptions made by healthcare providers. Such influence, which we call ‘value-impregnation,’ may be concealed to all concerned stakeholders. We suggest as a hypothesis that healthcare providers’ decision making is sometimes affected (...) by value-impregnated factual claims or assumptions. If such claims influence e.g. doctor–patient encounters, this will likely have a negative impact on the provision of correct information to patients and on patients’ influence on decision making regarding their own care. In this paper, we explore the idea that value-impregnated factual claims influence healthcare decisions through a series of medical examples. We suggest that more research is needed to further examine whether healthcare staff’s personal values influence clinical decision-making. (shrink)

Abstract.Mandatory risk assessment is intended to reassure concerned citizens and introduce reason into the heated European controversies on genetically modified crops and food. The authors, examining a case of risk assessment of genetically modified oilseed rape, claim that the new European legislation on risk assessment does nothing of the sort and is not likely to present an escape from the international deadlock on the use of genetic modification in agriculture and food production. The new legislation is likely to stimulate the (...) kind of emotive reactions it was intended to prevent. In risk assessment exercises, scientific uncertainty is turned into risk, expressed in facts and figures. Paradoxically, this conveys an impression of certainty, while value-disagreement and conflicts of interest remain hidden below the surface of factuality. Public dialogue and negotiation along these lines are rendered impossible. The only option left to critics is to resort to claims of fear and to call for new risk assessments to be performed, on and on again. Science is allowing itself to be abused by accepting the burden of proof in matters more suited to reflection and negotiation. The specific challenge to science would be to take care of itself – rethinking the role and the limitations of science in a social context, and, thereby gaining the strength to fulfill this role and to enter into dialogue with the rest of society. Scientific communities appear to be obvious candidates for prompting reflection and dialogue on this issue. (shrink)

Martin bunzl in "causal factuals" ("erkenntnis" 21, 1984) attempts to adapt and improve upon an approach to causation associated with the counterfactual theory of causation. Bunzl proposes to use possible world semantics to analyze causal sentences without reference to counterfactuals. In this paper I argue that bunzl's analysis is subject to problem cases which bear a close resemblance to those which plague counterfactual theory.

In this book Gregory Browne rejects the views of David Hume and the Logical Positivists, and argues that there are necessary factual truths, which include a wide range of truths from many fields of knowledge. Browne argues for the necessity of Newton's Laws and truths about natural kinds, and for the factuality of definitional truths and truths of logic and mathematics. Browne synthesizes the work of Kripke, Putnam, Quine and others, but goes beyond the usual discussions of the meanings (...) and definitions of terms to discuss the references of various kinds of terms, and specifically to develop a theory of kinds, distinguishing 'Deep Kinds' and 'Shallow Kinds' . His theory of Deep Kinds does not accept all of the assumptions commonly associated wtih a theory of natural kinds. (shrink)

For naturalistic and non-intuitionistic moral realists, moral knowledge is more problematic than ordinary and scientific factual knowledge. For without special faculties of moral discernment, how could we ever detect moral facts and properties? Physical facts and properties may be accessible to perceptual recognition. But how could moral facts and properties ever be similarly accessible? To address this challenge, we need a meta-ethical account that does two things. First, it must explain how the discernment of moralfacts and properties ultimately consists only (...) of the detection of appropriate physical items. Second, it must explain why, despite this fact, moral perception seems so very puzzling. In this paper I endeavor to provide such an account. It is largely because of the relational nature of moral properties, and thecorresponding externalistically determined normative content of moral property terms, I argue, that our epistemic access to moral knowledge appears mysterious. The metaphysics of moral factuality does a lot to explain the seeming elusiveness of moral knowledge, and in ways that are surprisingly mundane. (shrink)

The core of Van Leeuwen’s thesis is that the prescientific word ‘belief’ is multiply ambiguous between distinct cognitive kinds, just as the prescientific word ‘star’ can refer to a ball of gas or a planet. This book examines two of these cognitive kinds: factual belief and religious credence. After briefly discussing Van Leeuwen’s method, I examine the putative kindhood of factual belief and religious credence, arguing that the distinction between the two is not as clear-cut as Van Leeuwen makes it (...) out to be. The distinction may consist in a continuum rather than discreet kinds. (shrink)

The distinction of fact and value and the problems entailed by it are concerns only for modern, Western thought. The distinction is supported by Kant, who, however, also attempts to solve its consequent problems. His first attempt is made by arguing that the standard of value is itself a fact. This brings fact and value together, but only in an intelligible world. Kant's second attempt is found in the third Critique in the argument that man, as both rational and animal, (...) must view the world in teleological terms; so doing advances the task of science, finds support in objects of natural beauty, and leads to the creation of beauty in art. Thus, ultimately, the highest complete good, a world under moral laws is itself seen as in fact really possible as the final goal of human creative artistic activity. (shrink)

In the present work are identified the main features of the algebraic structure with respect to the logical operations, of the set of all the quantum mechanical utterances for which can be specified a factual counterpart and factual rules for truth valuation. This structure is found not to be a lattice. It depends crucially on the spacetime features of the operations by which the observer prepares the studied states and performs measurements on them.

In the wake of recent attempts at alternate history (Bowler 2013), this paper suggests several avenues for a pluralistic approach to Charles Darwin and his role in the history of evolutionary theory. We examine in what sense Darwin could be described as a major driver of theoretical change in the history of biology. First, this paper examines how Darwin influenced the future of biological science: not merely by stating the fact of evolution or by bringing evidence for it; but by (...) discovering natural selection, and giving it pre-eminence over any other mechanism for evolution; and also by proposing a masterful and quite unique synthesis of many scientific fields. Contrasting Darwin’s views with those of A.R. Wallace, I conclude that “natural selection” is clearly an original contribution, that it had no forerunners or co-discoverers, and could barely have appeared after Darwin conceived of it. This specificity of Darwin’s contribution is an invitation to be strongly presentist (Loison 2016) and to adopt only weak counter-factuals. In contrast, there are possible ways to use strong counter-factuals as attempts to “pluralize” the history of biological theory: i.e. imagine new possible avenues for the development of evolutionary biology. The idea that evolution was a theory “in the air” suggests that evolutionary theory could have developed in a world without Darwin, especially if we accept to delete not only “Darwin” but “England”. France and Germany are examined as possible countries where evolutionary ideas would have thrived even with no contribution from the English scientists. Finally, the paper suggests another counter-factual hypothesis: deleting not Darwin and his Origin but the Darwin Industry itself. This may allow us to read the Origin of Species with fresh eyes and to discover Darwin’s life-long interest in variation and its laws, as many of his early readers did. (shrink)

According to social constructionism factuality, the establishment of accounts as corresponding to an objective external reality, is an interactional accomplishment ordinarily achieved in everyday conversations. In cases of disagreement regarding the interpretation and nature of events, however, not only the plausibility of the account, but also the rationality, integrity, and accountability of the participants is at stake. Delusions present extreme cases of such disagreement. This paper analyzes extracts from an interview with an individual diagnosed as delusional focusing on the (...) factualization devices used in the negotiation of accounts. The question of whether the observation of conversational rules documented in the interview is sufficient to establish the plausibility of an account and the rationality of its teller leads to arguments around the necessity of shifting the focus from the grounded micro-analysis of talk to wider social and institutional processes. (shrink)

Research on children's developing moral cognition has mostly focused on their evaluation of, and reasoning about, others' intrinsically harmful (non-)verbal actions (e.g., hitting, lying). But assertions may have morally relevant (intended or unintended) consequences, too. For instance, if someone wrongly claims that “This water is clean!”, such an incorrect representation of reality may have harmful consequences to others. In two experiments, we investigated preschoolers' evaluation of others' morally relevant factual claims. In Experiment 1, children witnessed a puppet making incorrect assertions (...) that would lead to harm or to no harm. In Experiment 2, incorrect assertions would always lead to harm, but the puppet either intended the harm to occur or not. Children evaluated the puppet’s factual claim more negatively when they anticipated harmful versus harmless consequences (Experiment 1) and when the puppet’s intention was bad versus good over and above harmful consequences (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that preschoolers’ normative understanding is not limited to evaluating others’ intrinsically harmful transgressions, but also entails an appreciation of the morally relevant consequences of, and intentions underlying, others’ factual claims. (shrink)

We wish to give a precise formulation of the intuitive concept: The degree to which the known facts support a given hypothesis.