We can all produce links to supposed facts written by 'experts' on the net but is it just one more personal opinion we choose to use?.

Written history is evidence of facts... but is it perhaps just another opinion we choose to accept??.

So what are facts....and the truth???

It certainly helps if the source is considered prestigious. We look for the ones that support our point of view. In our eyes, that gives the source validity. But every now and then sources that are considered reliable come up with some goof, and the supermarket tabloid comes out with a true story among the alien abduction pieces.

It might be delusional on my part, but I believe I have a better grasp of the ethics of this "war on terrorism" than the President does. Either that, or he just doesn't care.

There is this to dwell on.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Lenin (1870-1924)

This is a profound question, which has been debated by philosophers for millenia. I certainly don't have any answers, but here are a few thoughts.

The most certain of facts are those which are strictly deduced from definitions. "One plus one equals two" can be derived directly from the definitions of "one," "plus," "equals," and "two." In a very similar way, certain types of reasoning from hypotheses can be considered facts, given the rules (which seem to be inherent to human reasoning) of logic. It is a fact that, IF all alligators are blue, and IF Sally is an alligator, THEN Sally is blue. (Note that this type of logical proposition can be true without any of the hypotheses being true.)

This is all very nice, but we certainly need to move beyond pure abstraction and seek out the facts of the real universe. The oldest, simplest, and most intuitive method of seeking out facts is to rely on what our senses tell us. It goes without saying that this is often very misleading. Under this same category come all the various instruments of measurement and observation which people have invented. In essence, these are all extentions of the senses. Broadly, these sensory impressions are considered to be factual when they can be repeated, when many observers note the same sensations, and when the observations are consistent with other observations.

Of course, it is impossible for any human being to observe everything about the universe. We must rely on other sources for facts. One such source is a trusted authority. If I want to find out the name of the longest river in Argentina, I don't have to go look for myself. I can look it up in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica or another reliable source. Another important resource is consensus. If virtually all sources agree that Mars has two moons, this can be accepted as a fact. Of course, it should be noted here that authority and consensus can be very mistaken.

One should test what one is given as factual by seeing if it is consistent with other information. This allows one to determine how much evidence is required to accept a statement as fact. If you tell me that you own a dog named Fred, I will probably accept this as a fact, since this is very consistent with common experience. (Note again that I may be wrong; you may be lying for some reason.) If you tell me that you own a living pterodactyl named Fran, I will need much more evidence, since this contradicts other information accepted as factual.

Opinions are not facts, of course, but opinions can be tested to see if they are reasonably consistent with the consensus of opinions. This consensus is extremely variable, to be sure. If someone opines that it is morally correct to torture other human beings to death for esthetic pleasure, we reject this as unreasonable opinion.

In all but the most abstract concepts, we never truly reach fact; however, in many cases, we come so close to fact that it makes no difference in our lives.

Truth is consensus. Even scientific truth requires a consensus on the process whereby truth is arrived at. However this doesn't leave us in an ephemeral cloud. Many feelings and experiences are so powerful and existentially present that they achieve natural consensus. Not too many arguments about pleasure or pain or how hard a rock is or whether ice is cold.

As far as history we believe what seems authoritative. We also are inclined to believe what makes us feel good. Nobody has rapists and murderers in their ancestry. According to folks like Jung and Cambell we have some sort of internal zeitgeist that causes us to populate our internal world with stories and icons of a kind that have been traditionally life enhancing both personally and collectively, generating cohesiveness within the group.

Linguists tell us that the basic grammatical structures of language which we use to describe truth are in fact born within us. Some think this is the basic distinguishing difference between us and the other animals.

I keep a file of quotations which I have found interesting. At the start of the file are these:

I began to question my understanding of facts in High School Physics, when the teacher asked us to define time.

Then I got into the Physics of fission and fusion. "When 2 plus 2 is less than 4, Einstein's equation helps to explain..."

It is a defense attorney's job to present the facts that dispute the facts presented by the prosecutor. Speaking of which, I was raised to believe that "Crime doesn't pay!" Then I slowly began to realize that the policeman, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge, the workers in the crime labs, novelists, script writers, actors, etc. get paid. (very well, in some cases)

Another relevant quote sums up my opinion on what facts are: