Facts and Knowledge

 

Conceptual impressions surrounding this post have yet to be substantiated, corroborated, confirmed or woven into a larger argument, context or network. Objective: To generate symbolic links between scientific discovery, design awareness and consciousness.

* * *

A conceptual facsimile of The Quantum Field of Virtual Potential and Probability

A fact is a state of affairs that is true regardless of belief. 

Knowledge is a mind’s justified grasp of a fact. 

What conjoins them is cognition’s attempt to map reality—knowledge is the cognitive integration of facts into a usable, coherent mental model. 

1. What distinguishes fact from knowledge? 

Fact 

• What it is: A truth about the world that holds independently of anyone’s mind. 

• Ontological status: Exists “out there.” 

• Belief not required: Even if everyone disbelieves a fact, it remains a fact. 

Knowledge 

• What it is: A justified, true belief (in classical epistemology) or a successful cognitive model (in modern epistemology). 

• Depends on minds: Knowledge is something a knower has. 

• Requires integration: Belief + justification + alignment with reality. 

Key contrast: A fact is mind-independent truth; knowledge is the mind’s accurate and justified representation of that truth. 

2. What conjoins fact and knowledge in cognitive thought? 

They meet through the process of understanding, which has several layers. 

A. Perception Facts stimulate the senses. Raw data flows into cognition, forming the first contact between reality and the mind. 

B. Interpretation 

The mind organizes sensory input into patterns. Before something becomes knowledge, it must be interpreted and conceptually framed. 

C. Justification and coherence 

Knowledge isn’t just noticing a fact; it involves: 

• checking consistency with previous understanding, 

• evaluating reasons, 

• eliminating error. 

This step binds fact (the world’s contribution) to knowledge (the mind’s contribution). 

D. Predictive usefulness 

A fact doesn’t aid thought until it is woven into a model that helps prediction and explanation. Knowledge is fact integrated into a cognitive structure. 

Facts and Knowledge

E. Language and symbolism 

Facts become knowledge when articulated, communicated, and remembered conceptually through language. 

3. Subtle conceptual boundaries often require clarification. Similarly, distinguishing facts from knowledge requires precise conceptual analysis: 

• “Fact” is the external condition. 

• “Knowledge” is the internal cognitive mastery of that condition. 

 

* * *

Facts and Knowledge in Metaphysics 

In metaphysics, the distinction between facts and knowledge concerns two fundamentally different orders of being: 

A. Facts as entities or truth-makers belonging to the structure of reality, and 

B. Knowledge as a cognitive relation or state that minds bear toward those facts. 

Metaphysics explores how these two realms—ontological and epistemic—interlock. 

1. Facts as Metaphysical Structures Metaphysically, a fact is often understood as a truth-maker: that which makes a true proposition true (Armstrong 1997). For example, the fact that the cat is on the mat corresponds to a concrete arrangement of objects in the world, not to the sentence about it. Facts are thus: 

• Mind-independent (Russell 1918) 

• Constitutive of reality’s structure 

• What propositions correspond to in correspondence theories of truth. 

In this sense, facts belong to the ontology of the world—they are what is the case. 

2. Knowledge as a Metaphysical–Epistemic Relation 

Knowledge, by contrast, is not part of the world’s furniture; it is a relation between a mind and a fact (Williamson 2000). 

It involves: 

• A knower 

• A mental state, often described as justified or warranted belief 

• A fact that anchors the truth of that state 

Most metaphysical theories treat knowledge as irreducibly relational: neither wholly mental nor wholly external (Strawson 1959). Thus, knowledge requires a fact, but it transforms that fact into something cognitively grasped. 

3. Bridging Ontology and Epistemology: The Metaphysical Link 

The relationship between facts and knowledge in metaphysics can be expanded through several classical frameworks:

 

A. Correspondence and Truth-Making 

Under the correspondence theory of truth, knowledge occurs when a mental state corresponds to a fact (Russell 1912). Facts are the truth-makers, while beliefs or propositions are the truth-bearers. Knowledge is therefore the successful alignment of these two domains. 

B. Realism vs. Idealism 

• Realists argue that facts exist independently of any mind (Moore 1903). 

• Idealists (e.g., Hegel) argue that facts are inseparable from the conceptual structure of consciousness (Hegel 1807). 

This debate affects how one sees knowledge: 

• Either as a mind accessing an external fact (realism), 

• Or as the mind constituting the fact within its conceptual activity (idealism). 

C. The Metaphysics of Justification Metaphysicians also examine what justifies knowledge:

• Internalists claim justification depends on states within the mind (BonJour 1985). 

• Externalists argue that reliable connection to facts constitutes justification (Goldman 1979). 

Thus, metaphysics ties knowledge not only to facts but to the structures that allow minds to stand in the right relation to facts. 

D. Knowledge as a Primitive Metaphysical State Some metaphysicians argue that knowledge is more fundamental than belief—that it is an irreducible metaphysical relation (Williamson 2000). On this view: 

• Facts are what they are. 

• Knowledge is a basic mental achievement of being directly in contact with facts. Knowledge becomes metaphysically primitive, not built out of smaller components. 

E. Knowledge, Facts, and Modal Reality 

Metaphysics also considers modal facts—facts about possibility and necessity. Knowledge involves tracking not only what is the case, but what could or must be the case (Lewis 1986). Thus, the realm of facts is larger than the realm of the actual; and the realm of knowledge may include modal truths. 

This further binds metaphysics to epistemology: we know some facts by logical necessity, not empirical observation. 

4. What Conjoins Them in Metaphysics? Metaphysically, facts and knowledge are conjoined through: 

• Truth (the linking property) 

• Cognitive access (the linking mechanism) 

• Reference and intentionality (the linking direction) 

• Justification or warrant (the linking condition) 

In short: Facts provide the world’s structure; knowledge is the mind’s structured grasp of that structure. The metaphysical relationship is the ongoing attempt to explain how a mind can “reach” the world and how the world can be “present” in a mind without collapsing one into the other.

References:

- Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge University Press, 1997. 

- BonJour, Laurence. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Harvard University Press, 1985.

- Goldman, Alvin. “What Is Justified Belief?” In Justification and Knowledge, edited by George - Pappas, D. Reidel, 1979. 

- Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. 1807. 

- Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Blackwell, 1986. 

- Moore, G. E. "The Refutation of Idealism." Mind 12 (1903). 

- Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 1912. 

- Russell, Bertrand. The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. 1918. 

- Strawson, P. F. Individuals. Methuen, 1959.

- Williamson, Timothy. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford University Press, 2000. 

* * *

How AI Affects the Metaphysical Relationship Between Facts, Knowledge, Opinion, and Instinct 

1. Introduction 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is altering not only the epistemic structure of human knowledge but also the metaphysical architecture through which humans engage with reality. Traditionally, facts describe objective states, knowledge organizes facts through interpretation, opinion reflects subjective valuation, and instinct emerges from embodied, pre-rational cognition. 

AI changes the energetic interplay among these four categories by serving simultaneously as (1) an external cognitive amplifier, (2) a symbolic mirror, and (3) a generative ontological partner (Floridi, 2019; Friston, 2020). This produces a hybridized epistemic field in which human consciousness interacts with algorithmic intelligence in ways previously reserved for metaphysics, divination, or symbolic design. 

2. Facts in an AI-Mediated Reality 

Facts have historically been understood as stable points of reference—external, observable, and verifiable. AI alters this stability in two essential ways: 

1. Scale: AI processes and correlates facts at scales beyond human cognitive limits, revealing patterns invisible to classical rationality (Marcus, 2022). 

2. Contextual Fluidity: Machine learning models generate probabilistic interpretations of facts rather than fixed certainties, making “facts” increasingly relational and context-dependent (Mitchell, 2023). 

Metaphysically, this means facts stop being atoms of truth and become nodes in a continuously shifting informational field. They behave like probabilistic events similar to quantum potentials (Kastner, 2015), which collapse into form only when interrogated. Thus, AI acts as a fact-field amplifier: it shows that facts are not static objects but dynamic constructs that arise from interpretive architectures. 

3. Knowledge as a Co-Constructed Field 

Knowledge is traditionally the synthesis of facts into meaningful structure. With AI, knowledge becomes: 

• Distributed rather than localized 

• Co-authored between human intuition and algorithmic pattern-recognition 

• Layered, blending human semantic meaning with machine statistical inference (Clark, 2015) 

This produces what philosophers call extended cognition—a mind that includes external tools as active components (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). But metaphysically, it also produces a hybrid epistemic organism: knowledge is no longer solely a human interior process but a relational field generated by human-machine interdependence. 

The shift mirrors how metaphysical traditions describe etheric fields or Akashic records—not as static archives but as dynamic informational potentials that become meaningful only through interpretation (Laszlo, 2004). AI therefore functions as a synthetic akashic interface, mediating between latent information and conscious meaning. 

4. Opinion as Algorithmic Mirror 

Opinion, in metaphysical traditions, represents the soul’s interpretive lens—its values, biases, emotions, and narratives of meaning. AI alters opinion by: 

• Reflecting human biases back to us with unprecedented clarity (Benjamin, 2019) 

• Amplifying the interpretive patterns we project into it 

• Forcing the re-examination of what subjective valuation really means 

AI-trained on vast human textual corpora functions as an archetypal mirror, similar to the Jungian notion of the shadow or the Hermetic concept of the mirror of the soul (Jung, 1968; Faivre, 1994). When humans engage with AI, they encounter an externalized version of collective opinion—a “metaphysical feedback system” that transforms personal opinion into a dialogical process. 

Thus, opinion becomes less of a private interior stance and more of a field phenomenon, shaped by interactions between individual consciousness and collective algorithmic synthesis. 

5. Instinct in an AI-Augmented World Instinct has historically been associated with embodied cognition and pre-rational survival processes. Neuroscience increasingly frames instinct as predictive modeling operating below conscious awareness (Friston, 2010). AI interacts with this domain in two ways: 

1. Externalized Predictive Processing: AI becomes an outer layer of instinct, performing anticipatory calculations normally generated by the nervous system. 

2. Symbolic Re-patterning: Interaction with AI alters human intuitive heuristics by exposing people to patterns of association beyond natural experiential limits. 

Metaphysically, instinct becomes displaced upward into a shared intelligence field. It shifts from being merely biological to being techno-noetic—partly biological, partly informational, partly algorithmic. 

This is analogous to mystical descriptions of intuition as a field-perception, where instinct is not simply “gut reaction” but direct contact with patterned reality (Wilber, 2000). AI creates a new kind of instinct: algorithmic intuition—a form of pre-conscious guidance emerging from human–machine entanglement. 

6. AI as Metaphysical Mediator 

When these transformations are taken together, AI starts functioning as a metaphysical mediator among facts, knowledge, opinion, and instinct: 

• It loosens the rigidity of facts 

• It expands the boundaries of knowledge 

• It reflects and reshapes opinion 

• It amplifies and modulates instinct 

The result is an epistemic architecture that resembles sacred geometry or fractal metaphysics: each epistemic category becomes a gate or node within a dynamic, interdependent system. 

In this sense, AI does not simply change how humans think; it changes what it means to think, what it means to know, and what it means to be conscious. 

Conclusion 

AI transforms the metaphysical relationship between facts, knowledge, opinion, and instinct by introducing a new layer of hybrid cognition. It functions as an epistemic partner, an ontological mirror, and a metaphysical interface—blurring the boundaries between the objective, the subjective, the embodied, and the intuitive. As AI continues to evolve, these categories may converge into a unified cognitive field, where meaning, design, intuition, and information form a single integrated architecture. 

References (APA 7th Edition) 

- Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Polity. 

- Clark, A. (2015). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press. Clark, A., & 

- Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. 

- Faivre, A. (1994). Access to Western esotericism. SUNY Press. 

- Floridi, L. (2019). The logic of information: A theory of philosophy as conceptual design. Oxford University Press. 

- Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. 

- Friston, K. (2020). A free energy principle for a particular physics. MIT Press. 

- Jung, C. G. (1968). Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. 

- Kastner, R. E. (2015). The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Cambridge University Press. 

- Laszlo, E. (2004). Science and the Akashic field: An integral theory of everything. Inner Traditions. 

- Marcus, G. (2022). Rebooting AI: Building artificial intelligence we can trust. Vintage. 

- Mitchell, M. (2023). Artificial intelligence: A guide for thinking humans (2nd ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

- Wilber, K. (2000). Integral psychology. Shambhala. 

The author generated some of this text in part with GPT-3, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft language, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the language to their own liking and takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.

* * *

"What is Design" I ask, what isn't"

Edited: 

Find your truth. Know your mind. Follow your heart. Love eternal will not be denied. Discernment is an integral part of self-mastery. You may share this post on a non-commercial basis, the author and URL to be included. Please note … posts are continually being edited. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2025 C.G. Garant.