Hmm. Maybe not feelings, per se, but we only have senses/ sensations available to us to try to discern the real truth(s) from the apparent truth(s) and the outright lies. As much as I'd love to get outside of my mind and my nervous system to know that there's something outside of myself, alas, it seems as though that's not an option at the moment, so I, hopefully, make the correct assumption that there is an objective world, not entirely contained in my own consciousness.
And that's just the VERY IMPORTANT, and probably mostly overlooked, first step to determining the truth.
To arrive at an absolute fact, even waving the issue of the basis of reality as it relates to our subjectivity, seems like a rather unlikely achievement, given how many "filters" there are between the actual event(s) and and our coming to be aware of them, especially, but not limited to, the cases where we have to take some else's word for what happened, as, we're all well aware, people have a tendency to be both deceitful and forgetful, which will, at best, distort the facts and, at worst, pass off an outright lie as a fact.
Even when relying on our own eyes, cognitive biases and mood and overall state of alertness, etc., will naturally distort what is happening at a space and time, which explains why when several people try to describe the same accident, they hardly ever agree on many of the broad details, let alone the finer ones.
If we happened to be present as a witness to this vehicular accident and observe one of the men involved having his head decapitated, odds are we didn't hallucinate it (assuming that we aren't schizophrenic or on some type of hallucinogenic drug), especially if one or more of the witnesses present corroborate that detail. In that case, we've likely arrived at a fact (that a man died/ was decapitated), but, again, this is based on a few assumptions: one being that you're not dreaming it, that it actually happened.
However, if you're getting the facts second hand, through a media site or what-have-you, it's really "facts" in quotations, because there's no getting around the FACT that you're forced either to take their word for it (that it actually happened as they state) or, if you're someone closer to my camp, to be suspicious as to the actual factualness of their statement(s) that are passed off as factual. The space and time when the proof could have been witnessed directly has already passed and every second hand source, or "filter", brings with it that much more chance for distortion or deception, either unintentionally or intentionally.
And that's how 10,000 death tolls in historical battles rather inconveniently becomes 100,000 many years after the fact (inconvenient for us truth-seekers, that is). I think we, as a species, have a tendency to see the word "stat" (statistic) and to then conclude the data that it presents as a fact (as if someone taking the time to write down the number is proof enough that it's factual), but it often times is actually one group or person's claim as to what is fact and, in many cases, there is no way to reliably audit their data (therefore, stat =/= fact in more cases than we may tend to assume).
Yep. I write about this quite a bit.
Truth is subjective since each of us can only know what we have encountered and experienced, and we don't know everything though some of us may be confused and think we do.
Facts are objective.
Facts truly are only the immutable information. The details that do not change with interpretation. People that are passing OFF facts that are not such and can be interpreted another way are not dealing in facts, but they are dealing in truths.
They pass off their truth as the only truth. To them at the time it is. If we are intelligent thinking people then our concept of the ultimate truth should be in constant flux and change as we encounter new information.
A lot of people do not know the difference between facts and truth and they try to treat them as synonyms. Some thesaurus may list them as synonyms but in reality they are not.
Nope though it may tie into probabilities. Most of what we do in life seems to be related into risk and probabilities in one way or another.