| That would be a fact only after you did it, and it's a fact only to those who witness it. It could never be a fact to you, because if you're dead, you'll be quite incapable of knowing it to be fact, and if you survive, it will be wrong. The person with whom you're debating appears to have a philosophical understanding (likely logical positivist or early Wittgensteinian) of the term "fact" rather than the common dictionary definition. The dictionary definition isn't necessarily wrong, but it's a different language-game (i.e. different context). The consensus on the definition of the term is irrelevant to the subject of this thread. There is no way to form of a body or committee dedicated to the identification and preservation of what is fact and fiction because the facts, the things that are the case are based on our perception of them, and we can be wrong. People make mistakes, and can persuade others to agree with their mistaken interpretation, or people can be persuaded to deliberately falsify their interpretation of data in exchange for something they want. What is fact and fiction is ultimately impossible for any group of people to be responsible for without bias -- people have their personal beliefs, their own agendas, they can be bribed, lobbied, persuaded, agitated... The wise among us do not trust newspapers or media outlets, and even treat scientific discovery with academic scepticism until the math checks out. Fortunately in the sciences, we can check the work of others by making predictions and testing them, as well as checking the math. Take a news article and filter out everything that would be considered weak or bad science. You will be left with a statement of something that happened, perhaps a picture or video of the thing happening, or in many cases you may even be left with an entirely blank page. There has always been fake news, as long as within the news there has been the expression of opinion. People aren't motivated by a pursuit of the truth, they're motivated by earning money and notoriety (and thence more money). Motivated by ego. This is what people are instructed to do from childhood. As long as our primary currency isn't truth, you cannot trust anything but what you can prove for yourself. And even in that world where truth is what we all aspire to find, you still can't trust anything blindly -- because people can still make mistakes. Nothing is fact to you unless you can prove it based on something else you accept as a certainty, and nothing is a fact to people other than you unless you can prove it based on something they accept as a certainty. |