We're not really helping, are we ogged? Fontana, who besides Wittgenstein comes to mind? I suppose you could go to Searle and 'brute' vs. 'linguistic' fact...
They don't have to say "fact." I thought you'd be all over the Hegel, baa.
I think I've misunderstood: what exactly are you looking for defintions of? Reality? A statement with a truth-functional value?
A statement with a truth-functional value? is closest to the mark. What I'm really after is that little bundle of metaphysical/epistemological/linguistic accounts that philosophers have used to describe "what is the case." Crudest example: a "fact" is something we can see.
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A fact is that which has been (or can be) observed and/or measured. That which has been (or can be) observed is of either an empirical nature or of opinion based on past experience. Fact has the presumption of reproducibility.
Ok SK, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, but it needs to be attached to a particular philosopher.
I remember hearing Bob Brandom insist at a talk, to general incredulousness, that "a fact is just a true claim." This seemed to be his considered view. In 1990. I don't have _Making It Boblicit_ on my desk at the moment, but I imagine he repeats the claim there. And if it's true that that's what a fact is, you'll have an example of a fact right there -- I mean, in the claim itself.
There's Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue): "belief in [facts] is one with belief in witches and in unicorns."