I do not know where this excerpt orginated, I have seen it posted in several places:
"Bertrand Russell in his introduction to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus says that facts are what make propositions true. Suppose we have a fact A and that the proposition "A is true" is true, and we have an alternative fact B and "B is true" is also true. In itself this is not a problem, and so there can be alternative facts, for example if A is "I own a cat" and B is "I own a dog". However, if A and B contradict each other, then any reader of Aristotle or George Boole or even Ayd Rand would tell you that both A and B cannot be true. So, yes there are alternative facts but there are none that contradict other facts."
It has also been mentioned that the term "alternative fact" is present in arguing cases in a court of law. The thrust here is that when one person asserts something, such as "I did not steal that watch," and when other witnesses testify that they saw that person pick up that watch and put it on, that would appear to be irrefutable evidence. When the attorney for the defendent presents another fact, that the watch in question was identical to a watch the defendent can prove ownership of and that the alleged "theft" was inadvertant, this is still not an alternative fact to the question at hand: possession of a watch that does not belong to the defendant. The intention is not a relevant point in this inquiry, but intention may certainly mitigate any consequences from the action of taking something not belonging to the defendant: that is to say, an inadvertant possession of something not owned may not be "theft" but something else entirely.
There can only be one "fact" that, if proven true, indicate contradictory statements to be false. That being said, statements of "alternative facts," which are not borne out by evidence, are false. That means they are lies if the intention to deceive is present. If no one intends to deceive, that is more difficult to prove that anyone "lied." If lying entails the deliberate misrepresentation of a fact, then ignorance of the fact of the matter may not be a "lie," but something else entirely.
But this remains, that anyone with a desire to possess integrity would take pains to ensure that an inadvertant falsehood is corrected. Here we have the foundation of my objection to the actions of Conway, Spicer et al. Given the opportunity to correct mistaken assertions, they have blithely chosen to let the falsehood remain while moving on to other topics or stubbornly clinging to the notion that either what they state must be free from error or that others haven't taken all other "facts" into consideration.
For instance, the illustration of the blind men and the elephant is a good example of incomplete understanding leading to false ideas of "fact." One blind person examines the elephant, and feeling only the tail, concludes the elephant is more like a thick rope. Another feels the leg, and concludes the elephant is like a tree, another man feels the flank and concludes the elephant is like a wall. None of them are wrong, but the error lies in mistaking incomplete information for the sum total of all information available. On these grounds, the likes of Conway and Spicer hope to allay the assertions of the media that this administration condones lying. However, what these people are doing is bringing up incomplete "facts," not alternative facts, and present these incomplete considerations as if they were complete. In addition, all this is done to push a proposition of value, e.g. something which the government wishes you to believe and accept as good or bad.
When I ask you to accept a proposition of value, I am asking you to adopt an attitude toward something I am asserting, and rate it good or bad. I can bolster my contention, and tie moral or ethical considerations into the mix. By doing this, I can sway your attitude toward a good or bad evaluation. Case in point, the notion of alternative facts vis a vis crowd size at the inauguration this year. Spicer stated that this inauguration's audience was the "largest audience to witness and inauguration, period." By all measurements, this is not true, but crowd size is not the issue here. His inability to tell the truth about events is the issue.
For example, on February 2, 2017, Spicer asserted at a press briefing that Iran had fired a missle on a US vessel. When he was corrected, that actually a Saudi vessel had been fired on, all but inaudibly accepted the correction but in no way did that change the tenor of his admonishment that Iran was being "put on notice" for the attack. He did not go on record changing his inaccurate statement, and Fox news (if you can call it that) put out a public announcement with the false claim intact. This has not been retracted to my knowledge, and this is far worse than any claim about crowd size. This is how wars start. Not with alternative facts, but with deliberate false claims that are not retracted and come to be believed by a large segment of people.
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