The Human-Frame Facts Model (HFF/MKF Model)

A philosophical essay on facts, meaning, and human knowledge

Introduction

Every society rests on facts.
We trust that the Earth is round, that water boils at 100°C, and that medical knowledge is reliable enough to save lives.
Yet underneath this shared confidence lies a difficult question:

What is a fact, really?

This essay presents a new framework:
the Human-Frame Facts Model (HFF Model / MKF-model).
Its starting point is simple but radical:

Facts do not exist as properties of the world by themselves.
They arise only within human frames of perception, interpretation, and shared meaning.

In other words: facts depend on human biological, cognitive, social, and political structures.
They are not arbitrary, but neither are they absolute.
They shift with what humans can see, understand, and organize.

This essay develops the HFF/MKF-model and situates it among—yet clearly apart from—major philosophical traditions.

1. Facts do not exist outside meaning

Husserl, Kant, and the beginnings of facthood

We often treat facts as “the world as it really is.”
But thinkers like Edmund Husserl and Immanuel Kant showed that we never encounter the world as it is in itself.
Our experience is always filtered:

• through our senses (Kant),

• through the structures of consciousness (Husserl),

• through language and conceptual tools (Wittgenstein).

The HFF/MKF-model builds on this:

A fact comes into existence only when a human being perceives something, interprets it, and assigns meaning to it.

Without meaning, there is existence — but no fact.
A falling stone becomes a fact only when someone can notice it, understand it, and describe it.

2. Practical facts vs. theoretical facts

Arendt and Popper on stability and doubt

A key distinction in the MKF-model is between two types of facts:

Practical facts

These are facts societies rely on to function:

• gravity in everyday life,

• medical knowledge used in hospitals,

• what counts as a table, chair, house, or citizen.

These must be stable; otherwise society fragments.
Hannah Arendt emphasized that shared public facts are essential for a shared world.

Theoretical facts

These exist within science and philosophy.
Karl Popper argued that such facts are always provisional:
they remain valid only until better evidence disproves them.

The MKF-model embraces both:

Practical facts anchor social life.
Theoretical facts keep the future open.

Only together do they create a world that is stable enough to function, yet flexible enough to grow.

3. Facts require thinking, justification, investigation, and communication

Why animals have knowledge, but not “facts”

According to the MKF-model, a fact is not merely a perception.
It requires at least four capacities:

1. Thinking — the ability to make distinctions and understand.

2. Justifying — the ability to give reasons why something is the case.

3. Investigating — the ability to test whether it holds up.

4. Communicating — the ability to share meaning with others.

Animals can know danger, but they cannot express, test, or argue about it.
Their knowledge is real — but not yet a fact.

This aligns with Arendt’s idea that something becomes “public reality” only when it can be shared and discussed.

4. There are no absolute facts

Fallibilism, Kuhn, and the end of eternal truths

Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that scientific facts depend on the paradigm in which they are interpreted.
What counted as a fact in 1600 — e.g., that the sun revolves around the Earth — was no longer a fact in 1700.

The MKF-model accepts this:

No fact is eternal or context-free.
A fact is always dependent on perspective, culture, tools, and historical moment.

This is not relativism.
It simply means that facts evolve as human understanding evolves.

5. Different beings inhabit different realities — and therefore different facts

Phenomenology and biological worlds

Humans perceive the world through five senses.
Bees see ultraviolet light.
Birds sense magnetic fields.
Some animals hear frequencies we cannot imagine.

These creatures live in different worlds.
Not because the world changes,
but because their bodies grant different forms of access.

The MKF-model concludes:

Facts are not universal. They are bound to the perceptual frame of the species experiencing them.

This is phenomenology applied to epistemology:
no perception without a body; no fact without perception.

6. The world offers resistance, but does not dictate facts

A nuanced realism

Although facts depend on human frames,
the world itself is not fictional.

If you jump off a roof, you fall.
Whether you believe in gravity or not.

The world has structure and consistency.
But our descriptions of that structure are always provisional.

The MKF-model calls this:

Resistance without independence.

The world pushes back —
but it does not hand us facts ready-made.

We interpret its resistance through our own frames.

7. Humans have psychological limits to how much uncertainty they can bear

The human side of epistemology

Most people cannot function amid constant doubt.
Persistent uncertainty causes anxiety, paralysis, and social breakdown.

Therefore, the MKF-model argues:

• Science must maximize doubt.

• Society must minimize it.

This balance avoids both dogmatism and chaos.

8. Evidence grounds facts, but is never final

Why science works despite uncertainty

Evidence, in this model, acts as a temporary stabilizer:
a way of saying, “this is the best we know for now.”

But evidence depends on:

• methods,

• instruments,

• accepted standards,

• interpretive frameworks.

Thus even evidence is contextual —
robust, but not absolute.

9. Facts are always shaped by power

Foucault, media, and the fragility of truth

Michel Foucault famously argued that knowledge and power shape each other.
Whoever controls institutions also shapes what counts as truth.

The MKF-model echoes this, but adds nuance:

Power can distort facts, but cannot eliminate the world’s resistance.
Critical thinking is essential to protect facts from manipulation.

Transparency, open information, and independent research are the best safeguards we have.

10. Facts concern the world, not our experiences

The subjective boundary

A stone falls — that is a physical event.
How much pain someone feels when struck is not a fact but an experience.

The MKF-model states:

Experiences are interpretations, not facts.
They are real, but not publicly verifiable in the same way as events.

Facts deal with what happens.
Experiences deal with what it feels like when something happens.

Conclusion — What makes the MKF-model distinctive

The Human-Frame Facts Model offers a middle path between:

• hard realism (“facts exist independently of us”), and

• radical relativism (“facts don’t exist at all”).

Its core claims are:

1. Facts arise only within human frames of perception, meaning, and communication.

2. Facts must be understood as context-bound, not absolute.

3. The world is real, but our facts about it are interpretive and provisional.

4. Society depends on stable facts; science depends on uncertain ones.

5. Macht and culture shape what is accepted as fact, so critical thinking is essential.

The MKF-model is therefore at once:

• philosophical,

• psychological,

• scientific,

• social,

• and political.

It describes not only what a fact is,
but hoe facts function within humans and human societies.