Finding of fact

“ These admissions seem to me to prove that whenever a casual fact proves to us a new truth, it does so by its coincidence with previously known facts, and that the novelty of the occasion attracts all credit to itself, and we lose sight of the generalisation below—the fruitful soil of experience on which the new fact, like a seed, falls. We only recognise difference by comparison, and the comparison is an induction, however slender. ”

“ Mind that no fact, however insignificant it may seem, is unworthy of attention. Once the followers after wisdom began with theories; I begin with facts, and I take it that I cannot have too many of them. ”

“ However, we must observe each fact as presented, and further separate from it all the facts presented along with it, the occurrence of which from various causes is not contradicted by facts within our experience. ”

“ If the mental representation, accordingly, follows the new fact at once and passively, then that new fact must, of itself, immediately be constituted and represented in thought by facts already universally known and commonly observed. ”

“ Fact though it might be, you would call it an utterly useless fact—a fact that could in no way influence your actions in life—a fact that would not help you in learning how to live completely. Well, apply the same test to the great mass of historical facts, and you will get the same result. They are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn—unorganisable facts ”

“ If we repeated them ever so often, or multiplied them ever so much, they would not establish the fact. They have served a much higher and more practical purpose. They have brought the fact home to the minds of multitudes as a fact. ”

“ That fact, indeed, is present to no human observer’s experience. And yet, although it thus transcends every man’s observation and verification, it is an ‘accredited’ fact.” But the thesis, as thus amended, is no longer even a relatively pure empiricism. It is a synthesis of an appeal to human experience with an admission of principles that, whatever they are, or however they are grounded, transcend every man's experience. ”

“ But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.
As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. ”

“ Are mind and matter, cause and effect, purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as blinding and ill-advised as could well be. ”

“ We analyse experience with a view to discovering its implications, and we analyse our various scientific and unscientific theories of the contents of the world-system for the same purpose. Also, once having determined what are the formal characteristics of an all-embracing, systematic whole of experienced fact, we criticise our various concepts and theories by reference to these characteristics as an ultimate standard of reality and truth. ”

“ My demand is, that the ultimate arbitrariness of matter of fact from which our formulation starts should disclose the same general principles of reality, which we dimly discern as stretching away into regions beyond our explicit powers of discernment. ”

“ What I do wish to maintain—and it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative—is that insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is first suggested by its means. ”

“ To form a truth, two factors are needed—a fact and an abstraction. ”

“ With more complete evidence in the future, both from folk-lore and from science, there will be, we trust, a better vindication of the Theory, and perhaps finally there will come about its transformation into what it but seems to us to be now—a Fact. ”

“ Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in 418 some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. ”

“ The question is, at last, simply one of evidence: what is fact, and what is not fact? Imperfect observations vitiate reasoning, and lead to erroneous conclusions in the workshop, on the farm, in the counting-room, the church, and the legislative ball, just as much as in the laboratory or the observatory. ”

“ To the positivist, I have said, all facts are of equal authority; and, in order to decide what is a fact, and what therefore he should treat as a reality, he merely asks, Is it capable of definitely affecting my mind? Whatever stands definitely related to the mind is a fact, and has all the reality that can be discovered in anything whatsoever. All we can say of a piece of granite is that it definitely affects the mind ”

“ Hence we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It remains to define precisely what we mean by 'fact', and what is the nature of the correspondence which must subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true. ”

“ The imperfect character of this view is freely admitted; no other, consistent with known facts, presents itself by which the effect can be explained. The fact stands as a truth; the hypothesis by which it is attempted to be interpreted is open to doubt, and it is opposed to some favourite theories. ”

“ We may, then, attribute the view that to be true means to be cognised in a certain way partly to the failure to perceive that certain words, which are commonly supposed to stand for nothing more than a certain kind of cognitive state, do, in fact, also include a reference to the truth of the object of such states. ”

“ We must remember, in attempting to look fairly, to see clearly, that a concept is a much stronger stimulus to the brain than a fact. ”

“ For the explanation of a fact, something is offered which, upon close examination, is seen to be no more than the unexplained thing stated again in different terms. Why do masses of matter tend to approach each other? ”

“ It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for the facts. ”

“ We say of a fact or statement, that it is proved, when we believe its truth by reason of some other fact or statement from which it is said to follow. Most of the propositions, whether affirmative or negative, universal, particular, or singular, which we believe, are not believed on their own evidence, but on the ground of something previously assented to, from which they are said to be inferred. ”

“ Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.” ”

“ so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.
A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. ”

“ If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school-metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning for quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’—‘Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding,’ at the end. ”

“ If we were to pass from opinions regarding the shape of the earth to the many other and complex problems that appeal to human interests, it would be equally easy to collect "ideas" comparable to these in value, evidence, and eccentricity. ”

“ There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. ”

“ The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-FICATION. Its validity is the process of its valid-ATION.
But what do the words verification and validation themselves pragmatically mean? ”

“ Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. ”

“ Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man. ”

“ To him, as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of scientific truth. ”

“ I do not think we are deceived to grow,
But that the crudest fancy, slightest show,
Covers some separate truth that we may know.
In the one Truth, each separate fact is true;
Eternally in one I many view,
And destinies through destiny pursue. ”

“ For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by these very suspected faculties themselves.’ This is the substance of the argument that rests on the data of the sense or reason with which human nature is inspired. ”

“ My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ”

“ 47The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact. ”

“ Moreover, this love of truth must extend to a constant searching and inquisition of the mind, with the perpetual endeavor to keep inferences from observation or experiment unbiased, so far as may be, by natural predilections or favorite theories. ”

“ But how do we human beings get at what we call natural truth? By observation—so men say—and by experience. But by whose experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the common, experience of many individuals. ”

“ While we are analyzing an object, or tracing its genesis, we are not responding to it as a whole or feeling its beauty and power. The mystery, the spell, vanishes; we cease to thrill when we dissect. But knowledge proceeds by analysis, and gains by a study of origins and causes. ”

“ How empty is theory in presence of fact! ”

“ The instances we have given are all of them propositions or judgments, or else conceptions formed out of propositions or judgments, the purpose of which is to interpret experience. The actual experience itself, in so far as it consists of the actual presence of the object to the mind aware of it, is, as we have seen, neither truth nor error; it simply is what it is. ”

“ In the present question, the links of experience sequent upon an idea, which mediate between it and a reality, form and for the pragmatist indeed ARE, the CONCRETE relation of truth that may obtain between the idea and that reality. They, he says, are all that we mean when we speak of the idea 'pointing' to the reality, 'fitting' it, 'corresponding' with it, or 'agreeing' with it,—they or other similar mediating trains of verification. ”

“ How many a man of science, on some slight hint pointing in a given direction, with faith and courage has pursued his investigations, adopting hypothesis after hypothesis, rejecting, adjusting, the world meanwhile laughing at his folly and credulity, until he has discovered and proclaimed a great truth. ”

“ But when the hypothesis, of itself and without adjustment for the purpose, gives us the rule and reason of a class of facts not contemplated in its construction, we have a criterion of its reality, which has never yet been produced in favour of falsehood. ”

“ It follows, however, that no account of the categories of experience, which founds our consciousness of facts solely upon our experience of their compulsory or foreign character, can be just to the nature of knowledge. What we experience is, in one aspect, always our own will to be compelled by facts. ”