Facts And Truth
Facts And Truth
Friday, 4 June 2004
Things aren’t necessarily any more real because they are facts. Morality is real enough but isn’t factual. Emotions are real but you can't point to them like they are there. You only see behaviour that supposedly emanates from them. Value in art isn’t a fact. You can’t show or prove its existence. It’s something you feel and sometimes share. Causes aren’t facts. Cause we assume to be in place due to manifestations. The actual cause itself is not an entity separate from the things acted upon.
It might be true that the majority of important stuff in our lives isn’t actually factual. It is an error of judgement with regard to an ontology of life to assume that the more brutal and base aspects, the hard facts, are somehow more real or have a better claim to truth than these other types of reality. They may be more immediate and make more of a direct assault on the senses. They may be more easy to identify and harder to argue with. They may be easier verified and corroborated. But none of these things necessarily make them any more real or true. They are just different.
