See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/308065738

"Facts and Opinions"

Article · August 2016

CITATIONS READS
0 2,115

1 author:

Christoffer Lammer-Heindel
Loras College
11 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Building Ecoliteracy View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Christoffer Lammer-Heindel on 14 September 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Facts and Opinions
Christoffer S. Lammer-Heindel, Ph.D.
Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa, USA
christoffer.lammer-heindel@loras.edu

The following manuscript was published in a condensed and edited format in Philosophy Now, No. 115
(August/September 2016). The published version is accessible at https://philosophynow.org/issues/115/
Facts_and_Opinions.

From a very young age, we are encouraged to distinguish facts from opinions. However, the fact-opinion
dichotomy is a false dichotomy which rests on a category mistake. The ability to distinguish facts from
merely alleged facts and the ability to distinguish opinions from considered judgments is an important
skill. But in claiming that facts and opinions stand in a dichotomous relationship we ignore the two
classes which stand in genuine opposition to each: facts are opposed to what we variously call non-facts,
merely alleged facts, fictions, or falsehoods; and opinions stand in opposition to considered judgments.

A fact is whatever is the case.

When someone asks, “Is that a fact?” they can be understood as asking, “Is that really the case?” or “Is
that ultimately true?” When someone says, “It is a fact that…” they are telling us, in other words, “It is the
case that…” or “It is true that…” Facts are not themselves statements; they are, rather, the state of affairs or
the reality to which a true statement corresponds.

It is neither necessary nor useful—indeed, it is positively misleading—to define ‘fact,’ in terms of what is
indisputably the case, yet for some reason this is a qualification that people sometimes make. We should
resist the temptation to include this further qualification for the simple reason that whether a particular
matter is disputable or not has no bearing on what is the case. Moreover, there is very little that is not, at
least in some sense, disputable.

As a means of coming to appreciate that disputability has no bearing on whether something is or is not a
fact, consider the following case. It is well-known that some people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did
not kill the former president of the United States, John F. Kennedy (at least not on his own), while many
others believe that he did. This is clearly a disputable issue. To say that a point is disputable is to say, at
the very least, that different individuals hold different views on it—views which are backed up by
reasons and supported by at least some evidence. Nevertheless, there is a fact of the matter as to whether
Oswald was involved in the assassination: he either was or he wasn’t, and if he was, he either acted alone
or in concert with a least one other person. One of the two options must be the case.

The same thing can be said about the question of whether God exists. This is clearly an issue that is
disputable, but we must recognize that it either is the case that the being referred to by the term “God”
exists, or it is not the case that such a being exists. (The fact that people have differing conception of God
doesn’t serve to undermine this point but simply to make it more complicated: for each conception of
God, the being so conceived either does or does not exist.)
Arguing about an issue doesn’t somehow make it into an issue about which there is no answer. Indeed,
genuine dispute is only possible when there is an answer. It is basically pointless to engage in a dispute
about something for which there is no fact of the matter.

Still, it is sometimes said in response to controversial issues, “Who determines what the facts are?” This
is an ambiguous question. On the one hand, the question can be understood as asking, “Who would be in
a position to discern what the facts are?” This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, since we do not all
occupy the same epistemic position; some of us are more equipped than others to discern the facts in a
certain domain. I, for example, know very little about automobiles. As a consequence, I am in no position
to pronounce on whether the clicking noise I hear when I start up my car is caused by the fuel system,
the timing belt, or so on. By contrast, I am in a position to determine (in the sense of discern, or figure
out) whether my wife picked up our child from school this afternoon, whereas you are not. The ability to
make an informed judgment as to what the facts are in a certain situation is a function of training,
experience, available evidence, and so forth. Of course, with respect to some issues, no one is in a position
to discern the facts. (We will return to this point in a moment.)

On the other hand, the question, “Who determines what the facts are?” could be understood as asking,
“Who makes it that something is or is not a fact?” When applied to the question of whether God exists,
the answer is obvious: no one does. Neither the existence nor the nonexistence of God (whichever it may
be) is caused by human action, so no one makes it that God exists and no one makes it that God doesn’t
exist. In this case, the fact of the matter is totally independent of us. In the case of Oswald’s involvement
or lack of involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald was the one who made the facts
what they are. We, looking back on the incident and the evidence, do not.

This illustrates an important but rather obvious point. To the extent that people act, they clearly do
make various things the case and various things not the case. If I place my coffee cup on the table, I’ve
made it a fact that the coffee cup is on the table and I’ve made it a falsehood that the coffee cup is in the
cupboard. This is because I can interact with the physical world and change states of affairs, thus
determining what the physical facts are. There are, however, facts beyond physical and empirical facts.
For example, sometimes our actions take on meaning because of institutional rules that are in place.
Thus, philosophers concerned with social facts are fond of pointing out that when the Pope speaks ex
cathedra on matters of faith or morals, he makes it the case that certain things become, as a matter of fact,
Catholic doctrine, whether we agree with these decisions or not, and regardless of whether we even care.
Similarly, when a sufficient number of individuals on a college’s board of trustees all vote to divest
holdings in Company X, then it becomes a matter of institutional fact that the college is not to hold
shares in Company X. In these and myriad other ways, people do determine (in the sense of make) the
facts.

Something can be a fact even if we can’t know it.

Consider the claim, “At precisely the moment the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s
atomic clock struck 15:00:00 on the afternoon of March 4, 2015, there were an odd number of people
inside the New York Public Library’s Rose Main Reading Room.” This claim is either true or false; it
either was the case that an odd number of people were inside the room at that time or it was not the case.
Now, if it was the case, then this claim would express a fact. If it wasn’t the case, it would express merely
an alleged fact that turned out to be a falsehood. Notice, however, that we likely can’t know whether the
claim is true or false, which is to say that we can’t know whether this is a fact or not. Such is life. There
are, quite literally, an infinite number of possible claims that we could make, each of which we know
must be either true or false (it is a fact that there is a fact!), but we cannot possibly figure out the truth-
values of each claim. For example, it either is or is not a fact that Julius Caesar was red-green color blind,
but it is doubtful that anyone will ever know what the fact of the matter is.

Facts are not properly contrasted with opinions.

As I mentioned at the outset, facts are often presented as the opposite of opinions. Justin P. McBrayer, a
philosophy professor at Fort Lewis College, Colorado, reported in the New York Times’ blog, The Stone in
2015 (“Why Our Children Don’t Think There are Moral Facts”) that national education standards in the
United States require that elementary school children learn to categorize statements as expressing facts
or expressing opinions, with the assumption being that all of the statements with which they will be
provided will either express facts or express opinions and that no statement could possibly express both.
McBrayer rightly points out that the fact-opinion dichotomy is a false dichotomy. To say that statements
must be either expressive of facts or expressive of opinions, but not both, is a bit like saying that all fruits
must either be (a) apples or (b) produce available at my local grocer. While a banana is clearly (b) but not
(a) and a Red Astrakhan—a relatively rare heirloom apple—is an (a) but not a (b), it is simply not true
that everything must either be an (a) or a (b), nor is it true that something could not be both. Physalis
(sometimes known as giant ground cherries) are neither (a) nor (b), and the Granny Smith sitting in my
crisper is clearly both (a) and (b).

To appreciate the analogy, we must first clarify what an opinion is. Clearly, the term ‘opinion’ denotes a
kind of belief. In common usage, an opinion is a belief which has not been sufficiently well-supported or
substantiated to count as a considered judgment. Indeed, beliefs can be usefully classified as either
opinions (those which do not enjoy sufficient support or justification) or considered judgments (those
which do enjoy sufficient support or justification). This is a perfectly appropriate dichotomy. Note,
however, that it should not be confused with another equally important and legitimate dichotomy:
namely, the dichotomy between true beliefs and false beliefs. Every opinion and every considered
judgment—in other words, every belief—will either be true or false. This is a function of the fact that
beliefs are about things or states of affairs and they will either comport with the facts or not.

It is also worth noting that whether a particular belief is a mere opinion or a considered judgment is
highly variable: it is relative to the individual believer. To return to the automobile example, my mechanic
and I could independently arrive at the belief that the clicking noise is caused by a faulty valve in the
engine. In my case, this would be nothing more than an opinion—just short of a wild guess, really—
whereas in the case of my mechanic it would be a considered judgment, or so I hope. Now, let’s suppose
that, in fact, the clicking noise is caused by a faulty valve. In this case, the statement “My car engine has a
faulty valve” expresses a fact, but before conferring with my mechanic, my belief would be a mere
opinion.

In the context of a heated discussion about a controversial moral issue it is not uncommon to hear the
retort, “Well, that’s just your opinion,” where this is intended to mean that the matter in question is
something about which there can only be opinions, for there are no moral facts. This is a view that enjoys
a fair amount of currency in contemporary society, and unlike some I do not think it is a view that should
be dismissed out of hand. It could end up being the case that those who believe there are moral facts are
 mistaken; there is nothing obviously incoherent about such a view. Yet, it must also be noted that it isn’t
obviously true that there are no facts about what is moral (good, right, just, etc.). If moral matters are
genuinely disputable, we must assume that there is some fact of the matter, though we can and perhaps
should admit that they are sometimes very difficult to discern. (Philosophers have long debated what
kinds of facts moral facts are. Some have sought to reduce them to other kinds of facts—e.g., institutional
facts or psychological facts—while others have claimed they are a unique and irreducible.) As J.L. Mackie
once argued in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), if there are no moral facts it will turn out
that all beliefs about supposed moral facts will be false beliefs.

Of course, it should be noted that the mere fact that a belief is false doesn’t automatically render it a mere
opinion. Suppose that, in addition to lying to their child by telling her that Santa Claus exists, a couple
also sets out to create an elaborate ruse resulting in the fact that the child actually has have evidence
(concocted, misleading evidence) that Santa exists. It is perfectly possible that the child’s belief in Santa
could rise to the level of a considered judgment.

Matters of taste are sometimes thought to be a close cousin of value judgments. Indeed, various
philosophers (e.g., David Hume) have entertained the possibility that moral judgments are nothing more
than matters of taste. Such views are interesting and worthy of careful, critical examination, though it is
beyond the scope of the present essay to consider them. What is within the scope of this essay is the
well-known claim that matters of taste are simply opinions.

Matters of taste are not opinions.

Suppose someone declares that black licorice is disgusting; we could imagine another person responding
by saying, “That is simply your opinion.” In such a case, this claim clearly means something like, “That is
just a matter of personal taste.” It is surely correct to say that whether black licorice is disgusting or
pleasing is a matter of personal taste. To that extent, labeling it a matter of opinion is understandable.
Notice, however, that this meaning of ‘opinion’ is very different from the meaning discussed above,
according to which an opinion is an insufficiently supported belief. This difference in meaning is
significant, for it would, in ordinary circumstances, be a mistake to say that one’s report that one finds
licorice disgusting is an insufficiently supported belief. If one has tasted it and found it unappealing,
one’s declaration concerning its disgustingness is perfectly well-supported, so long as it is understood
that the disgustingness is relative to the subject and not an observer-independent (or objective) quality
of the licorice. Put another way, it is a fact that this person finds licorice distasteful, and this is perfectly
compatible with it being a fact that a different person finds it quite satisfying.

Conclusion

Properly understood, the term ‘fact’ refers to a state of affairs or an aspect of reality, not to a class of
beliefs. Opinions and considered judgments, by contrast, are types of beliefs, and these labels are most
clearly and usefully used to distinguish sufficiently well-supported from insufficiently well-supported
beliefs. What these distinctions reveal is that it is inappropriate to contrast facts with opinions. To do so
is to make a category mistake: it is to treat facts, in themselves, as a species of beliefs. Of course we have
beliefs about what the facts are, and there are psychological facts about what individuals believe.
However, maintaining a fact-opinion dichotomy only serves to cloud discussions that would be
productively oriented towards figuring out whether our beliefs are justified and whether they conform to
the facts.

View publication stats