Proposition, Judgment and Fact
Chapter Twenty-Five
Syllabus topic 2.1, "Distinctions between - proposition and sentence, proposition and judgment, proposition and fact, constituent and component."
Pages 121 to 125 of 334
In one line
A judgment is the mental act of asserting; a proposition is what is asserted; a fact is what makes it true.
In the wording a student can write in an examination: judgment is a mental act performed by a person at a time, and it is studied by psychology as well as by logic. A proposition is the content of that act, and it is what bears truth and falsity. A fact is a state of affairs in the world, and it is what a true proposition corresponds to.
The three lined up
It is worth seeing the three as three positions on one line.
The judgment stands at the mental end. When a judge, reading the evidence, concludes that the notice was served, an act takes place in a mind at a moment. That act is a judgment.
The proposition stands in the middle. It is what the judgment asserts: that the notice was served. It has no date and no owner, and it is the same proposition whoever judges it and whether or not anybody does.
The fact stands at the world end. Either the notice was served or it was not. That is a state of affairs, not a claim about one, and it exists whether or not anybody knows about it.
The relations between them are exact. A judgment asserts a proposition. A proposition is made true by a fact. Neither relation runs the other way: a proposition does not assert a judgment, and a fact does not make a judgment true.
Proposition against judgment
This is the same distinction, transposed, as the one between implication and inference at sequence 120. Inference is the act, implication is the relation; judgment is the act, proposition is the content.
Three consequences, each of them examinable.
A judgment happens; a proposition does not. It makes sense to ask when a judgment was made and by whom. It makes no sense to ask when a proposition was made, though it makes sense to ask when it was first expressed, which is a different question about a sentence.
A proposition exists unjudged. "There were 4,312 blades of grass in this field on 1 January 1800" is a proposition, it is true or false, and nobody has ever judged it. If propositions were judgments, unjudged propositions would be impossible.
The same judgment can be made by two people; the same proposition can be the content of two judgments. Two judges reaching the same conclusion perform two acts with one content.
Where the confusion does harm. Students who identify the two end up saying that a proposition is true because somebody believes it, which is the correspondence theory abandoned in a single step, and is why chapter 130 insisted that truth is not belief.
Proposition, Judgment and Fact
Proposition against fact
This is the harder half, and the trap is that a true proposition and the fact that makes it true are described in the same words.
"The notice was served" is a proposition. The fact that the notice was served is a fact. The English words are almost identical and the things are not.
The proposition is what is asserted; the fact is what is the case. The proposition may be true or false. The fact cannot be either, because a fact is not a claim about anything. It makes no sense to say a fact is false; if it were false it would not be a fact.
Facts correspond to true propositions only. For a false proposition there is no corresponding fact, which is the difficulty the correspondence theory met at sequence 130 with negative propositions.
In law the word "fact" is defined, and not in the ordinary sense. Section 2(1)(f) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 provides that "fact" means and includes any thing, state of things, or relation of things, capable of being perceived by the senses, and any mental condition of which any person is conscious. The second half is what surprises a beginner: a person's intention, good faith or knowledge is a fact in law, provable by evidence, and not an opinion or a legal conclusion.
And "fact in issue" is defined separately, in section 2(1)(g): any fact from which, either by itself or in connection with other facts, the existence, non-existence, nature or extent of any right, liability or disability asserted or denied in any suit or proceeding, necessarily follows. This is a logician's definition in a statute: it defines the important facts by what follows from them.
A worked example
At a trial the plaintiff pleads that the defendant knew the goods were defective when he sold them. The defendant denies it. Evidence is led, and the court finds that he knew.
Identify the three.
The fact is the defendant's state of mind at the time of sale. Under section 2(1)(f) it is a fact, because it is a mental condition of which a person is conscious, and it existed whether or not anybody ever proved it.
The proposition is "the defendant knew the goods were defective when he sold them". It was true from the moment of the sale, if it was true at all, and it was true before the suit was filed and while the defendant was denying it.
The judgment is the court's act of finding, on a particular day, that the proposition is proved. It is dated, it is attributable to a named judge, and it may be wrong.
Proposition, Judgment and Fact
Now see what the distinctions buy. An appeal is against the judgment, not against the fact and not against the proposition. Fresh evidence, if allowed, does not alter the fact and does not alter the truth of the proposition; it alters what the tribunal ought to find. A decree obtained by fraud is set aside because the judgment was made on false material while the fact remained as it always was.
Collapse the three and none of that is expressible. If the fact simply were what the court found, a wrong finding would be a contradiction in terms, and there would be nothing for an appeal to correct. The whole architecture of review presupposes that the three are separate.
Distinctions that carry marks
| Judgment | Proposition | Fact | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A mental act | What is asserted | A state of affairs |
| Has a date and an owner | Yes | No | No |
| True or false | The act is not; its content is | Yes | Neither; it simply is |
| Studied by | Psychology and logic | Logic | The sciences, and the law of evidence |
| Relation | Asserts a proposition | Made true by a fact | Makes a proposition true |
| Proposition | Fact | |
|---|---|---|
| Can be false | Yes | No |
| Exists if false | Yes, as a false proposition | No; there is no false fact |
| Expressed in words | Yes | No; it is described in words |
| In the Adhiniyam | Not defined | Section 2(1)(f) |
What this does not mean
A fact is not a true proposition. They correspond; they are not identical. A true proposition is something asserted; a fact is something that is the case.
"Fact" in law is wider than a beginner expects. A state of mind is a fact under section 2(1)(f), so intention, good faith and knowledge are proved by evidence like any other fact.
A judgment in this chapter is not a judgment of a court. The logical sense is the mental act of asserting. A court's judgment is a document recording, among other things, many such acts. The words coincide and the meanings do not.
Quick revision
Three positions on one line: judgment at the mental end, proposition in the middle, fact at the world end.
A judgment asserts a proposition; a fact makes a proposition true. Neither relation runs backwards.
A proposition exists unjudged, which is why it cannot be a judgment.
A fact is neither true nor false, which is why it cannot be a proposition.
Section 2(1)(f) BSA 2023: "fact" includes a mental condition of which a person is conscious. A state of mind is a fact.
Section 2(1)(g) BSA 2023: a "fact in issue" is one from which the existence or extent of a right or liability necessarily follows.
Proposition, Judgment and Fact
Why it matters: appeal, review and setting aside a fraudulent decree all presuppose that a finding can be wrong, which requires the three to be distinct.
Test yourself
1. Distinguish a judgment from a proposition.
A judgment is a mental act performed by a particular person at a particular time, in which something is asserted or denied. A proposition is the content of that act, what is asserted, and it has no date and no owner. The distinction is proved by the existence of unjudged propositions: a proposition about the number of blades of grass in a field in 1800 is true or false although nobody has ever judged it, which would be impossible if propositions were judgments.
2. Distinguish a proposition from a fact.
A proposition is what is asserted and it is capable of being true or false. A fact is a state of affairs in the world and is neither true nor false, since it makes no claim about anything. A true proposition corresponds to a fact; a false proposition corresponds to none, which is why the correspondence theory of truth has difficulty with negative and false propositions.
3. How does the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 define "fact", and what is surprising about it?
Section 2(1)(f) provides that "fact" means and includes any thing, state of things or relation of things capable of being perceived by the senses, and any mental condition of which any person is conscious. What surprises a beginner is the second limb: a person's intention, knowledge or good faith is a fact in law, to be proved by evidence like any other, and not a matter of opinion or a conclusion of law.
4. What is a fact in issue, and why is its definition of interest to a logician?
Under section 2(1)(g) it is any fact from which, either by itself or with other facts, the existence, non-existence, nature or extent of a right, liability or disability asserted or denied in a proceeding necessarily follows. It is of interest because the statute picks out the important facts by what follows from them, that is, by an implication relation. The definition is logical in form, not evidentiary.
5. Why must the three be kept apart if the system of appeals is to make sense?
Because an appeal presupposes that a finding can be wrong, and a finding can be wrong only if what was found and what is the case are distinct. If a fact simply were whatever the court found, no finding could be mistaken and there would be nothing to correct. The same is true of review and of setting aside a decree obtained by fraud, both of which assume the fact remained unchanged while the judgment about it was defective.
Proposition, Judgment and Fact
6. Is a judgment in the logical sense the same as the judgment of a court?
No. In logic a judgment is the mental act of asserting or denying, and every such act has a proposition as its content. A court's judgment is a document, which records a great many such acts together with the reasons for them and the order made. The word is the same and the things are different, and an answer that runs them together will misdescribe both.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.