Education
 

Fact

From Psychology Wiki

Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help

Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language
Personality | Philosophy | Research Methods | Social | Statistics

Philosophy: Consciousness studies · Epistemology · Ethics · Mind-body problem · Modernism · Philosophy of Language · Phil. Science · Post Postmodernism · Postmodernism


A Fact is any of the following:

  • Something actual as opposed to invented.
  • Something concrete used as a basis for further interpretation.
  • Information about a particular subject.
  • Something known to be the case.
  • Something in the world that makes a true statement true.

[edit] Psychological aspects of factual claims

We tend to see facts which support our position and ignore facts which contradict our opinion. However, events that do not fit our framework also tend to stand out and draw our attention.

[edit] Statements of fact

A statement of fact or a factual claim is a statement that is presented as an accurate representation of a situation, event, or condition, and that is capable of being either proved or disproved.

If a factual claim is incorrect, then it is called a mistake or an error (if the person making the statement believed it to be correct) or a lie (if the person making the statement did not believe it). A factual claim shown to be correct is a fact. A factual claim that was believed to be true may later shown to be false (disproved), and a factual claim believed to have been disproved may later shown to be true.

A belief that cannot be proved or disproved is an opinion.cs:Fakt da:Kendsgerning de:Tatsache eo:Fakto id:Faktahu:Tény mk:Фактru:Факт sv:Faktum (sakförhållande)

Smallwikipedialogo.png This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Fact. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.