Quote:
Originally Posted by Velvet
Interesting... so what exactly are ‘facts’? Are they a definition of something like the wavelength of the color blue, or are they something a lot of people agree on such as in Columbus’ time that the earth was flat. Or are you referring to juried articles in academic journals?
In my opinion ‘facts’ are mostly personal perceptions;
From Wiki:
Blind men and the elephant.
Blind Men Appraising an Elephant by Ohara Donshu, Edo Period (early 19th century), Brooklyn Museum
The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. However the meaning of the popular proverb differs in other countries. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
|
The "fact" of this, is that it is, indeed, an elephant. That fact is not disputed, it is a provable thing. Regardless of what the blind men perceive, and how they describe it, it is an elephant. It doesn't stop being an elephant just because three people describe it in three different ways.
The descriptions might even be factual: this thing is alive. It has a leathery surface. It breathes. It has some kind of long appendage that curves around my waist sometimes. All of those things are FACTS, no matter if the person telling you is blind or sighted. They are not opinions. They're facts.
What you are describing is neither fact nor opinion. It's judgment. It's applying or eliminating value to fact, opinion, or both.