Facts, Verisimilitude, and Fake News

Overview

What is a fact? Does our language map onto reality? How can we describe the world through science or literature? Can we trust our observations or the observations of other people?

Chad Hegelmeyer from the Department of English at NYU led the conversations.

The various sessions and texts we looked at include:

•  What are facts? Where do they come from?

Mary Poovey, History of the Modern Fact

• What are facts? Where do they come from? (cont.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

• What are the limits of facts? Are they sufficient in themselves?

Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

•  What do facts mean? How do they mean?

Martin Heidegger, Hermeneutics of Facticity