Facts. The concept of factuality has considerable bearing upon the study of religion. In logic and linguistic analysis the term "fact" can be shown to be much more complex than it is commonly taken to be; e.g., "factual" can be used: (1) as referring to "the real world" on contrast to "fictional"; (2) as referring to what is directly decidable by observation, in contrast to "theoretical"; (3) as referring to what is objectively and decidably in the world independent of human evaluation; (4) as referring to what concerns the world rather than human thought or outlook or discussion about the world; and (5) as referring to mathematical or logical statements that can be shown to be mathematically or logically true in contrast to statements that can be shown to be mathematically or logically false. What it means to say that x is a fact is related to questions about what it means to say that x is true. Some talk of "brute" facts to designate what is considered to be given independently of the way in which we see the world around us, which is different from the way in which worms and even horses and dogs see it. "I am seeing grass to be pink" might be a factual statement about an aberration in my vision, but it would not be a "brute" fact. "In that chess game I could have checkmated you in one move" may or may not be a fact of a kind, but since it depends on the rules of the game it could not properly be called a brute fact. The importance of such distinctions for the philosophy of religion may be exhibited by the complexities arising from one's contending that the existence of God is a fact, not a fiction. What precisely is one contending in such a case? Plainly one is denying that by the existence of God one means the existence of an idea in one's mind to which the name "God" is given; one is asserting, rather, that what we are naming "God" exists independently of the human mind. What kind of such a fact is envisioned is, however, a separate question.
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