사실, 事實, Fact
상황의 하나 이상의 측면에 대한 실제적 자료
Factual information about one or more aspects of a situation
실제로 존재하는 무언가, 또는 확정된 평가의 표준에 관련하여 유효한 무언가를 가리킨다. 사실은 상황의 하나 이상의 측면에 대한 실제적 자료이다. 표준 참고 문헌은 사실을 확인하는 데 자주 사용된다. 과학적 사실은 반복 가능한 주의 깊은 관찰이나 실험이나 기타 수단을 통한 측정을 통해 검증된다.
예를 들어, "이 문장에는 단어가 포함되어 있다."는 언어학적 사실을 정확하게 기술하고, "태양은 항성이다"는 천문학적 사실을 정확하게 기술한다. '에이브러햄 링컨은 미국의 제16대 대통령이었다'와 '에이브러햄 링컨은 암살당했다'는 두 표현 모두 역사적 사실을 정확하게 묘사하고 있다. 일반적으로 말해서, 사실은 믿음, 지식, 의견과 무관하다.
사실은 추론, 이론, 가치, 대상(object)과 다르다.
어원
사실이라는 영어 낱말 fact는 라틴어 Factum이 기원이다. 이 단어는 영어에서 처음에 "완료된 것 또는 수행된 것"이라는 동일한 의미로 사용되었다. 이 의미는 현재 구식이다. "실제로 일어났거나 사실인 것"이라는 표현이 일반적으로 사용된 것은 16세기 중반부터이다.
철학적 의미
일상적인 의미에서 사실(fact)이라고 부르는 것에는 두 종류가 있다.
실제로 일어났거나 현재 진행 중인 사건을 가리키는 의미의 사실이다.
예1) 목성은 태양계에서 가장 큰 행성이다.
예2) 대한민국은 삼면이 바다로 둘러싸인 반도국가이다.
이는 진정으로 발생한 세상의 일에 대한 진술이고, 세계가 존재했던 혹은 존재하는 혹은 존재할 사태 자체에 의해 참과 거짓이 결정될 뿐, 우리가 그에 대해 어떤 믿음을 가지는 지와는 무관하다는 것이다.
관찰이나 경험 등을 통해 참이나 믿을만한 것으로 확립된 내용이라는 의미의 사실이다.
예) 재판과정에서 특정 피고인의 무죄를 법률적 사실로 확정하는 과정이다.
이는 현재는 사실이지만 나중에 잘못된 것으로 판명될 수도 있다. 1번에서의 사실과 달리 오류의 가능성이 있다.
사실 여부의 판단
1번에서의 사실과 2번에서의 사실은 개념적으로는 구별 가능하지만, 실제 상황에서는 구별하기가 어렵다. 또한 우리가 신이 아닌 이상 사실을 오류가능성 없이 확실하게 알 방법은 없다. 여기서 우리는 관찰이나 경험 등을 통해 얻은 사실(2번 사실)로부터 실제로 일어난 사실(1번 사실)을 추론하고, 그러다가 새로운 증거가 등장하거나 믿고 있던 2번 사실이 수정되면 그때까지 받아들여지던 1번 사실을 바꾸기도 한다. 우리는 전지전능한 신이 아니므로 사실이 어떠한지를 오류 없이 알아낼 방법이 없다. 우리가 할 수 있는 최선의 방법은 우리가 판단하는 사실을 확정하는 매 시기마다 그 순간에 이용 가능한 증거들을 최대한 균형잡힌 시각에서 고려하여 실재-사실을 추론해내려고 노력하는 것이다.
예) 절대온도의 창시자인 켈빈(Kelvin)은 "뉴턴 역학으로 모든 우주의 근본법칙이 증명되었다."고 이야기 하였으나, 막스 플랑크와 아인슈타인 등의 물리학자가 만들어 낸 양자역학이 등장하고 우리가 사실로 믿었던 뉴턴역학이 사실이 아니게 되었다.
과거, 현재, 미래에 걸쳐서 세계가 존재하는 방식에 의해 결정되는 사실은 세계의 본질을 오류 없이 파악할 수 있는 능력을 갖추지 못한 우리에게는 항상 사실의 후보로서만 보일 것이다. 앞에서의 "대한민국은 삼면이 바다로 둘러싸인 반도국가이다."라는 명제는 지금은 사실로 받아들여지지만, 베게너의 판 구조론에 의하여 오랜 시간 후에 대한민국이 대륙국가 또는 섬이 될 수도 있다는 가능성이 있기 때문에, 앞의 명제도 사실의 후보로만 보일 것이다.
Fact
A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
For example, "This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts. Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.
Facts are different from inferences, theories, values, and objects.
Etymology and usage
The word fact derives from the Latin factum. It was first used in English with the same meaning: "a thing done or performed" – a meaning now obsolete.[3] The common usage of "something that has really occurred or is the case" dates from the mid-16th century.
Barbara J. Shapiro wrote in her book A Culture of Fact how the concept of a fact evolved, starting within the English legal tradition of the 16th century.
In 1870, Charles Sanders Peirce described in his book "The Fixation of Belief" four methods which people use to decide what they should believe: tenacity, method of authority, a priori and scientific method.
The term fact also indicates a matter under discussion deemed to be true or correct, such as to emphasize a point or prove a disputed issue; (e.g., "... the fact of the matter is ...").
Alternatively, fact may also indicate an allegation or stipulation of something that may or may not be a true fact, (e.g., "the author's facts are not trustworthy"). This alternate usage, although contested by some, has a long history in standard English according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.[9] The Oxford English Dictionary dates this use to 1729.[citation needed]
Fact may also indicate findings derived through a process of evaluation, including review of testimony, direct observation, or otherwise; as distinguishable from matters of inference or speculation.[10] This use is reflected in the terms "fact-find" and "fact-finder" (e.g., "set up a fact-finding commission").
Facts may be checked by reason, experiment, personal experience, or may be argued from authority. Roger Bacon wrote "If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics."
In philosophy
In philosophy, the concept fact is considered in the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, called epistemology and ontology, which studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. Questions of objectivity and truth are closely associated with questions of fact. A fact can be defined as something that is the case, in other words, a state of affairs.
Facts may be understood as information, which makes a true sentence true: "A fact is, traditionally, the worldly correlate of a true proposition, a state of affairs whose obtaining makes that proposition true." Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is about the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
Correspondence and the slingshot argument
Pascal Engel's version of the correspondence theory of truth explains that what makes a sentence true is that it corresponds to a fact. This theory presupposes the existence of an objective world.
The Slingshot argument claims to show that all true statements stand for the same thing, the truth value true. If this argument holds, and facts are taken to be what true statements stand for, then one arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that there is only one fact: the truth.
Compound facts
Any non-trivial true statement about reality is necessarily an abstraction composed of a complex of objects and properties or relations. Facts "possess internal structure, being complexes of objects and properties or relations". For example, the fact described by the true statement "Paris is the capital city of France" implies that there is such a place as Paris, there is such a place as France, there are such things as capital cities, as well as that France has a government, that the government of France has the power to define its capital city, and that the French government has chosen Paris to be the capital, that there is such a thing as a place or a government, and so on. The verifiable accuracy of all of these assertions, if facts themselves, may coincide to create the fact, that Paris is the capital of France.
Difficulties arise, however, in attempting to identify the constituent parts of negative, modal, disjunctive, or moral facts.
Fact–value distinction
Main article: Fact–value distinction
Moral philosophers since David Hume have debated whether values are objective, and thus factual. In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume pointed out there is no obvious way for a series of statements about what ought to be the case to be derived from a series of statements of what is the case. This is called the is–ought distinction. Those who insist there is a logical gulf between facts and values, such that it is fallacious to attempt to derive values (e.g., "it is good to give food to hungry people") from facts (e.g., "people will die if they can't eat"), include G. E. Moore, who called attempting to do so the naturalistic fallacy.
Factual–counterfactual distinction
Main article: Counterfactual conditional
Factuality—what has occurred—can also be contrasted with counterfactuality: what might have occurred, but did not. A counterfactual conditional or subjunctive conditional is a conditional (or "if–then") statement indicating what would be the case if events had been other than they were. For example, "If Alexander had lived, his empire would have been greater than Rome." This contrasts with an indicative conditional, which indicates what is (in fact) the case if its antecedent is (in fact) true—for example, "If you drink this, it will make you well." Such sentences are important to modal logic, especially since the development of possible world semantics.[citation needed]
In mathematics
In mathematics, a fact is a statement (called a theorem) that can be proven by logical argument from certain axioms and definitions.[citation needed]
In science
Further information: Scientific method and Philosophy of science
The definition of a scientific fact is different from the definition of fact, as it implies knowledge. A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also called empirical evidence. These are central to building scientific theories. Various forms of observation and measurement lead to fundamental questions about the scientific method, and the scope and validity of scientific reasoning.
In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.
Various scholars have offered significant refinements to this basic formulation. Philosophers and scientists are careful to distinguish between: 1) states of affairs in the external world and 2) assertions of fact that may be considered relevant in scientific analysis. The term is used in both senses in the philosophy of science.
Scholars and clinical researchers in both the social and natural sciences have written about numerous questions and theories that arise in the attempt to clarify the fundamental nature of scientific fact.[20] Pertinent issues raised by this inquiry include:
the process by which "established fact" becomes recognized and accepted as such;[21]: 182 fn. 1
whether and to what extent "fact" and "theoretic explanation" can be considered truly independent and separable from one another;
to what extent "facts" are influenced by the mere act of observation;[20]: 138 and
to what extent factual conclusions are influenced by history and consensus, rather than a strictly systematic methodology.
Consistent with the idea of confirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree. Thomas Kuhn points out that knowing what facts to measure, and how to measure them, requires the use of other theories. For example, the age of fossils is based on radiometric dating, which is justified by reasoning that radioactive decay follows a Poisson process rather than a Bernoulli process. Similarly, Percy Williams Bridgman is credited with the methodological position known as operationalism, which asserts that all observations are not only influenced, but necessarily defined, by the means and assumptions used to measure them.[citation needed]
The scientific method
Apart from the fundamental inquiry into the nature of scientific fact, there remain the practical and social considerations of how fact is investigated, established, and substantiated through the proper application of the scientific method. Scientific facts are generally believed independent of the observer: no matter who performs a scientific experiment, all observers agree on the outcome.[22] In addition to these considerations, there are the social and institutional measures, such as peer review and accreditation, that are intended to promote factual accuracy among other interests in scientific study.[21]
In history
Further information: Historiography
A common rhetorical cliché states, "History is written by the winners". This phrase suggests but does not examine the use of facts in the writing of history.[citation needed]
E. H. Carr in his 1961 volume What is History? argues that the inherent biases from the gathering of facts makes the objective truth of any historical perspective idealistic and impossible. Facts are, "like fish in the Ocean", of which we may only happen to catch a few, only an indication of what is below the surface. Even a dragnet cannot tell us for certain what it would be like to live below the Ocean's surface. Even if we do not discard any facts (or fish) presented, we will always miss the majority; the site of our fishing, the methods undertaken, the weather and even luck play a vital role in what we will catch. Additionally, the composition of history is inevitably made up by the compilation of many different biases of fact finding – all compounded over time. He concludes that for a historian to attempt a more objective method, one must accept that history can only aspire to a conversation of the present with the past – and that one's methods of fact gathering should be openly examined. The set of highlighted historical facts, and their interpretations, therefore changes over time, and reflect present consensuses.[citation needed]
In law
Further information: Evidence (law) and Trier of fact
This section of the article emphasizes common law jurisprudence as primarily represented in Anglo-American–based legal tradition. Nevertheless, the principles described herein have analogous treatment in other legal systems such as civil law systems as well.
In most common law jurisdictions, the general concept and analysis of fact reflects fundamental principles of jurisprudence, and is supported by several well-established standards. Matters of fact have various formal definitions under common law jurisdictions.
These include:
an element required in legal pleadings to demonstrate a cause of action;
the determinations of the finder of fact after evaluating admissible evidence produced in a trial or hearing;
a potential ground of reversible error forwarded on appeal in an appellate court; and
any of various matters subject to investigation by official authority to establish whether a crime has been perpetrated, and to establish culpability.
Legal pleadings
Main article: Pleading
A party (e.g., plaintiff) to a civil suit generally must clearly state the relevant allegations of fact that form the basis of a claim. The requisite level of precision and particularity of these allegations varies, depending on the rules of civil procedure and jurisdiction. Parties who face uncertainties regarding facts and circumstances attendant to their side in a dispute may sometimes invoke alternative pleading.[30] In this situation, a party may plead separate sets of facts that when considered together may be contradictory or mutually exclusive. This seemingly logically-inconsistent presentation of facts may be necessary as a safeguard against contingencies such as res judicata that would otherwise preclude presenting a claim or defense that depends on a particular interpretation of the underlying facts and ruling of the court.