Defining Facts & Opinions

A fact is a statement that is true and can be verified objectively, or proven. In other
words, a fact is true and correct no matter what. An opinion, however, is a statement
that holds an element of belief; it tells how someone feels. An opinion is not always
true and cannot be proven.
An opinion may be supported by facts and principles, in which case it becomes an argument.
Different people may draw opposing conclusions (opinions) even if they agree on the same set
of facts. ... It can be reasoned that one opinion is better supported by the facts than another, by
analyzing the supporting arguments.

When debating ethics and other controversial topics, one frequently hears the claim
“That’s just your opinion.” It is a pernicious claim, devoid of clear meaning, and it
should be consigned to the flames – or so I shall argue here.
In calling something an opinion, one presumably wants to contrast it with something
that is not an opinion, and the obvious candidate for the contrast class is “fact”.
Philosophers might be tempted to draw this contrast by identifying facts as states of
affairs – occurrences that are there in the world regardless of what anyone may
think about them – and identifying opinions as beliefs (or some other mental state)
about states of affairs. According to this approach, we can separate facts from
opinions by using what Perry Weddle has called the “Whose?” test: It always makes
sense to ask “Whose opinion is it?” but never “Whose fact is it?”
But this way of drawing the contrast merely pushes the problem back further. For
among the beliefs that people have about the world, there are some that people
tend to put in the “fact” column and some that they tend to put in the “opinion”
column. That is, they contrast factual beliefs from opinions (opinion beliefs), and it is
quite appropriate to ask “Whose belief?” in either case. The same goes
for expressions of belief: We can talk about statements of fact vs. statements of
opinion, or factual claims vs. opinion claims, and so forth, and all of these are in the
mouths of subjects.

Facts & Opinions

Christoffer Lammer-Heindel tells us some important facts about
them.
From a very young age we are encouraged to distinguish facts from opinions. Now the ability to
distinguish facts from merely alleged facts, and the ability to distinguish opinions from considered
judgments, is an important skill. However, the fact-opinion duality is a false dichotomy which rests on
a category mistake. In claiming that facts and opinions stand in a dichotomous relationship, we
ignore the two classes which stand in genuine opposition to each set in turn: facts are properly
opposed to what we variously call non-facts, merely alleged facts, fictions, or falsehoods; and
opinions really 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…” That is, facts are not the statements themselves; they are,
rather, the state of affairs or the reality to which a true statement corresponds.

Now it is neither necessary nor useful – indeed, it is positively misleading – to define ‘fact’ in terms of
what is indisputably the case – yet people sometimes do. We should resist the temptation to endorse
this 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.

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 John F.
Kennedy, while many others believe that he did. Both views are backed up by reasons and
supported by at least some evidence. So 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.
Nevertheless, there is a fact of the matter as to whether Oswald was involved in the assassination:
he either was or he wasn’t. 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 a disputable
issue, but we must recognize that it either is the case that the being referred to by the term ‘God’ (let
us say, ‘creator of the universe’) exists, or it is not the case that such a being exists. (The fact that
people have differing conceptions 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 meaningful when there is an answer. It’s basically pointless to
engage in a dispute about something for which there is no fact of the matter.

Facts & Knowledge

Still, it is sometimes asked 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 some of us are more equipped than others to discern the facts in a certain area. For example, I
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
whatever. 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 available evidence,
experience, training, and so forth. And 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 so 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 non-
existence of God (whatever the fact of the matter may be) is caused by human action; so no one
makes it a fact that God exists, and no one makes it a fact 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 fact
what it is. We, looking back on the incident and the evidence, do not.

This illustrates an obvious but rather important 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 physical states
of affairs, thus to that extent determining what the physical facts are. There are, however, facts
beyond physical facts. For example, sometimes our actions take on meaning and so create facts
because of institutional rules that are in place. When a sufficient number of individuals on a college’s
board of trustees all vote to divest the college’s holdings in Company X, then it becomes a matter of
institutional fact that the college is not to hold shares in Company X. Similarly, when the Pope
speaks ex cathedra [meaning, with the agreement of all the cardinals, Ed] on matters of faith or
morals, he makes it the case that those things become, as a matter of fact, Catholic doctrine. They
will be Catholic doctrine whether other Catholics (and non-Catholics) agree with the proclamation or
not, and regardless of whether we even care.

In these and myriad other ways, people do determine the facts in the sense of make them.

Something Can Be A Fact Even If We Can’t Know It

Consider the claim, “At precisely the moment that 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 Main Reading Room.” This claim is either
true or false: it either was the case that an odd number of people were (completely) inside the room
at that time, or it was not the case. Now, if it was the case, then the claim would express a fact. If it
wasn’t the case, it would express merely an alleged fact, which was (in fact) false. Notice, however,
that we probably can’t know whether the claim is true or false – which is to say that we can’t know
whether it is a fact or not. Such is life. There are, quite literally, an infinite number of possible claims
that we could make that we know must be either true or false (it is a fact that there is a fact about it!),
but we cannot possibly figure out their truth-values. For another 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 now 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 elementary school children to learn to categorize
statements according to whether they express facts or express opinions – the assumption being that
all of the statements with which they’re provided express either facts or opinions, and that no
statement could express both. McBrayer rightly points out that, contrary to the assumption that forms
the basis of that standard, the fact-opinion dichotomy is a false dichotomy.

To say that statements must either express facts or express opinions, but not both, is a bit like
saying that all fruit must either be an apple, or be produce available at my local grocer. While a
banana is clearly produce available at my local grocer but not an apple, and a Red Astrakhan – a
relatively rare heirloom apple – is an apple but not available at my local grocer, it is simply not true
that every fruit must either be an apple or available at my grocer. Nor is it true that a fruit could not
be neither. The Granny Smith sitting in my fridge is clearly both an apple and available at my grocer,
while physalis – sometimes known as giant ground cherries – are neither apples nor available at my
grocer.

To appreciate this analogy, we must 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 (beliefs which do not enjoy sufficient support or justification) or considered judgments
(beliefs 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 distinction between true beliefs and false beliefs. Both 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. So as with the fruit example, it is not true that a belief is either a fact or an opinion.
Rather, an opinion may or may not express a fact, just as a considered judgment may or may not
express a fact. (And again, it is a separate issue whether the fact in question can ever be known or
not.)

It should be noted that a belief being 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 set out to
create an elaborate ruse to provide the child with evidence (albeit concocted, misleading evidence)
that Santa exists. It is perfectly possible that the child’s false belief in Santa has then risen to the
level of a considered judgment.

It is also worth noting that whether a particular belief is a mere opinion or a considered judgment is
highly variable: it’s relative to the individual believer, and to a particular time in their life, too. To
return to the automobile example, my mechanic and I could independently arrive at the belief that
the clicking noise I hear when starting up my car is caused by a faulty valve in the engine. In my
case, and considering the state of my current knowledge (that is, my current ignorance), 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 the clicking
noise is in fact caused by a faulty valve. In this case, the statement “My car engine has a faulty
valve” expresses a fact; but before my conferring with my mechanic, my own belief would
nevertheless be a mere opinion.

Moral Facts and Moral Opinions

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 that there are moral facts are mistaken. There is nothing obviously incoherent about that
view. Yet it must also be emphasized that it isn’t obviously true that there are no facts about what is
moral, good, right, just, etc. There may well be objective moral facts. If moral matters are genuinely
disputable, we must assume that there is some fact of the matter under dispute, although we can
and perhaps should admit that the facts are sometimes very difficult to discern. Further, as J.L.
Mackie argued in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), if there are no moral facts, it
will turn out that all beliefs dependent upon supposed moral facts will be false beliefs.

Philosophers have also long debated what kinds of facts moral facts would be. Some have sought to
reduce them to other kinds of facts – for example, institutional facts or psychological facts – while
others have claimed they are a unique and irreducible type of fact. Matters of taste are sometimes
thought to be a close cousin of value judgments. Indeed, various philosophers (such as 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, although it is beyond the
scope of the present article to consider them. What is within our scope is the widespread claim that
matters of taste are simply opinions.

Matters of Taste Are Not Opinions

Suppose someone declares that licorice is disgusting; we could imagine another person responding
by saying, “That’s simply your opinion.” In such a case, this latter claim clearly means something
like, “That’s just a matter of your personal taste.”

Now it is surely correct to say that whether 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 the
meaning of ‘opinion’ here is very different from the meaning used above, where an opinion is an
insufficiently supported belief. This difference in meaning is significant, for in ordinary circumstances
it would 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 the disgustingness is understood as being
relative to the subject and not implied to be an observer-independent (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. By contrast, ‘opinions’ and ‘considered judgments’ are types of beliefs, and those labels are
most usefully used to distinguish sufficiently well-supported from insufficiently well-supported beliefs.
The primary thing 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 also psychological facts about what
individuals believe. However, maintaining a fact-opinion dichotomy only serves to cloud discussions
that would be more productively oriented towards figuring out whether our beliefs are justified and
whether they conform to the facts.