Re: Contradiction: there is no such a thing as a fact

["Jonathan Siegel" <jmsiegel.info.research@worldnet.att.net>]

One of the examples I heard Dr. Deming give in illustrating this idea
involved counting the number of boats in a bay. What exactly is a boat? What
exactly are the boundaries of the bay -- both with the ocean, and with
rivers? Boats keep coming in and out all the time. Deming claimed that two
observers would be very likely to come up with different numbers, and we
have no basis for saying there is a "true value" for the quantity. We can't
say that might is correct and the other in error. Both are simply
observables, an interaction between a phenomenon and an observation method.
We can correlate obserables with other information and our own judgement to
assess their reliability, but then we are relying on the complex of
information, not on individual "facts."

Of course in the same way that we can be in doubt about whether something we
see is a "boat," we can be in doubt about whether something we hear is a
"fact" or not. My own thought was that the proposition "There is no such
thing as a fact" is a theory. It  seems to me to be a generalization from
observables said to hold across time, rather than being an observable or a
"fact" itself. My own thought was that a "fact" is (1) a single observable,
(2) fixed in time, that (3) has a true value.

I'm not here to say which view is right, just to point out that there is
uncertainty here, too. Here we have two people, observing a proposition,
calling it different things -- one a fact, one not a fact. Perhaps we can
resolve this one, and let it go. But I suspect that  sooner or later we're
going to come across some other statement that is sort of between a "fact"
and a theory and there's no easy way to corral it into one or the other
category. In the last paragraph I defined a "fact" in terms of certain other
words. What in heck did those other words mean? So it goes.

We can never remove the uncertainty inherent in observing or communicating
real things.  We'll have uncertainty defining or enumerating any set,
including the set of "facts". Rather than being a contradiction,  I hope it
illustrates the point.

Jonathan Siegel