Brute facts are opposed to institutional facts, in that they do not require the context of an institution to occur. The term was coined by G. E. M. Anscombe and then popularized by John Searle.

For instance, the fact that a certain piece of paper is money cannot be ascertained outside the institution of money in a given society. And that piece of paper will only be money as long as the members of that society believe that it is so. Being money is an institutional fact. On the contrary, being a piece of paper is a brute fact.

Ethical facts, if we can talk of such facts, are institutional facts. Meaning and promising are institutional facts. On the contrary, physical facts and, arguably, mathematical facts are brute facts.

There is a strong connection between this opposition and the Humean opposition of is and ought, the distinction between fact claims and value or normative claims and the distinction, in law, between matter of fact and matter of law.