What I want to know is this: are facts something “out there” to be discovered and brought kicking and screaming into the arena of debate like some recalcitrant child at bedtime (evidence of objectified reality)? Or are facts something we gather - like wild flowers - into a rounded bouquet to present to a loved one as evidence of our ardent love (evidence of relationships)? Are facts, thus, merely ways of beating our opponents over the head with the found-objects of obstinate detail or are facts, instead, great mystic muses that we bring along by the hand to sway our opponents with their alluring beauty? Are facts nothing more than selected arguments that we marshal to support our contention (evidence of subjective reality) - arguments of a particular refinement to be sure, but nonetheless arguments that venture out like timid mice into the penumbra beyond the bright edge of opinion? Now, I know that we like to speak about facts as if everybody in the whole wide world knew exactly what we were talking about. And sometime I suspect that we really do know just that. But there are those other times, when I think that we babble our Kaatie Kekkelbeck nonsense because we don’t know any better, and we end up smothering ourselves with our own ignorance and stupidity.
Of course, it shouldn’t be that way at all. We should know - at least intuitively - what a “fact” is, so that when another person comes along telling us "that they hate us and that’s a damned fact,” well, the perpetrator of that animus, then, surely makes himself perfectly clear. Why should there be a rolling wave of confusion about something as straight-forward as lingering doubt? Especially, doubt about the hater? Do I make myself clear? Tell me, then, just what is a fact?
One thing I would stress here, at this particular point, is that I will not use the word “fact” in the conventional sense in which you are most likely to encounter the word. You may be disturbed by my idiosyncracy. But nonetheless, I use the word in my particularity because “fact” as commonly understood fails to distinguish itself from mere “opinion.” In the search for something I call “unassailable facts,” I have noted that only certain characteristics inhere in statements that cannot be readily challenged. And those inherent characteristics always prove to be trivial.
Of course, it shouldn’t be that way at all. We should know - at least intuitively - what a “fact” is, so that when another person comes along telling us "that they hate us and that’s a damned fact,” well, the perpetrator of that animus, then, surely makes himself perfectly clear. Why should there be a rolling wave of confusion about something as straight-forward as lingering doubt? Especially, doubt about the hater? Do I make myself clear? Tell me, then, just what is a fact?
One thing I would stress here, at this particular point, is that I will not use the word “fact” in the conventional sense in which you are most likely to encounter the word. You may be disturbed by my idiosyncracy. But nonetheless, I use the word in my particularity because “fact” as commonly understood fails to distinguish itself from mere “opinion.” In the search for something I call “unassailable facts,” I have noted that only certain characteristics inhere in statements that cannot be readily challenged. And those inherent characteristics always prove to be trivial.
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