1 + 1 = 2 is fact. It is not truth. This is because it is very easy to devise a formal axiomatic system in which 1 + 1 ≠ 2, because the very foundation of metamathematics cannot be mathematical, i.e., if circularity of reasoning is to be avoided. A definiens cannot contain the very term to be defined. Hence mathematical "truth" falls into the domain of fact; it is not Pythagorean reality, it is not Platonic agathon. And even this fact of 1 + 1 = 2 is relatively factual with respect to the formal system in question, and does not necessarily apply across the board of mathematical logic. Facts and truth must be distinguished.Truth is suprarational (which does not preclude the rational). Facts are rational.To say, 'Is it truth?' is different from saying, 'Is it a fact?'Truth is a disposition, not a statement. Real Truth is paradoxical.The concept of Truth is abstraction.Fact is exoteric, Truth is esoteric (which subsumes the exoteric).Fact is verifiable, Truth is transcendent and immanent. A person might be willing to die for a Truth which they embrace; no person would be willing to die for a fact. Fact is epistemic, Truth is existential.Truth is inarticulable in everyday language. One can assert logical "truth," such as
(∀x) [P(x) .⇔. Q(x)] .⇒. [P(x) ⇒ Q(x)],but such tautologies are simply facts in the well-defined, conventional domain of bivalent propositional logic. I am not speaking on the other hand of the possibility of Kantian synthetic a priori either; such logically tautological statements as in the example above still pertain to factual assertions, to "facticity." "Truth" is too big a word.Truth subsumes fact. All the facts in the universe can be subsumed in a single Truth.
"Truth" pertains, with respect to existential comportment and disposition to the Totality of being-as-such, to modes of human being such as "honesty," "integrity," "authenticity"; otherwise Truth pertains to "being," "reality," and so on. Truth in this ontological sense is an aspect of the absolute.
Facts are "true" only within the scope of an agreed-upon paradigmatic universe of discourse, specific conceptual schemes in question, and their inherent (relative) grammar. But absolute "Truth" is simply a through line of all universes of discourse, paradigms (no matter what), grammar, and of course, everything else. Truth is vibration, and vibrations in secret fields. Truth is the pink Noise of the universe. Truth is sound, word, and reality. Sound is speech (vibration), word is mind, reality is the body.Truth is sound, word, and reality themselves, all as one. Thus, Truth is inaccessible to articulation, since Truth is the very substance of the possibility of articulation itself.Fact pertains to the surface, ostensive, referential dimensions of objects and events.Truth can have a strongly subjective allure to it; it is the stuff of ideology. But Truth cannot be trifled with in such things as ideology, with impunity. Truth is not for humans to tamper with. It is an aspect of the sacred apple of the Cosmic eye.
From G.eorge Orwell, 1984
