Is there a difference between objectively true and fact?

[Joseph Richard]

Good night people,
Is there a difference between these terms, I had this doubt when I was reading an article about Neil deGrasse Tyson on El País, Is there a difference between these terms?

 

[micromass]

Context is everything.

 

[Joseph Richard]

I read it in Portuguese: http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2016/06/30/ciencia/1467281442_280683.html

 

[diogenesNY]

I think that this is a question that is best addressed under the headings of epistemology and ontology. I suspect this may be outside the scope of physicsforums.com.

However, a short answer (which may or may not address the OP's question) is that the terms are generally understood to have clearly and substantially different definitions. Further exploration of this issue will be left as an exercise.

diogenesNY

 

[CuriousLearner]

Yes, in several ways. 1) facts are events so it depends on whether or not you view a fact as being capable of being separate from an event. One example of this may be proof theory. 2) Facts can be falsified and thus not objectively true.

 

[Pepper Mint]

I think being objectively true means satisfying some specific truth conditions under which the subject matter is being discussed. Meanwhile, a fact is a conclusion expressed or stated for something that has occurred as a truth that as said is not always necessarily true.

 

[Joseph Richard]

Hum ... So, E = mc² is a objectively true, here to the Earth is also a fact, and to another parts to the universe is not a objectively true, in conditions that there be more advanced civilizations than us? I ask dorries to people here if I am very ignorant in this subject.

 

[Joseph Richard]

Curious,
Why facts can be falsified and not truths? I thought that the true can be falsified and not facts, why?

 

[CuriousLearner]

I think "truths" is a misleading concept. The question to my mind is whether or not a system of information is physically instantiable. If it is, then it is subject to experiment and it is also an event.

 

[Pepper Mint]

Hum ... So, E = mc² is a objectively true, here to the Earth is also a fact,...

If you bluntly state E = mc² as you believe that is what it is based on your physics background without any further explanation, what you state I think is more of a fact to the audience who share with you the same knowledge about the origin of the formula. And it is both objectively true and a fact if you explain why and how E = mc² though.
Off-topic: millions years ago, we swam in water, now we walk with 2 feet. That formula exists only some hundreds of years or so. Earth condition changes in the next million years or so would probably change it too. Maybe there could be another Einstein or Newton etc.