A result of the fact-or-opinion training is that two categories are created in the mind of the student: things that are true, and things that are neither true nor false. Essentially, the fact-or-opinion curriculum is first-rate training for thinking relativistically…
“That’s just your opinion.” My students and my children have given vent to this phrase countless times during dinner table discussions and philosophical conversations, often in response to some fundamental and important matter. Hearing the word “opinion” used in this way takes me back to my own school days, before learning the real meaning of the word “opinion” in the context of philosophy, and I recall to mind the exercises where we had to look at a list of statements and label them “fact or opinion.” I have come to find out that these lessons continue in school today, and a quick internet search found many, many examples of worksheets and lessons for elementary school and English teachers to teach and reinforce the idea that every statement should be labeled fact or opinion. Let’s take a look at some examples.
The first three of the following statements have been collected from various “Fact or opinion?” worksheets used in school classrooms around the country. The other two are my own creation.
Categorize each statement below as a fact or opinion, and then read on to see how you did. Scores on this quiz count towards your final grade. (Is the old, school anxiety setting in?)
- Sharks are mean because they eat other fish.
- Bluebirds are prettier than hummingbirds.
- Chocolate pudding tastes great.
- The earth revolves around the sun.
- “Fact or opinion” is a false dichotomy.
The solution keys for the first three statements said that they are all opinions. On the answer keys provided with the worksheets, no reasons were given, just that they are a matter of opinion, and are, therefore, not facts. Unfortunately, based on what I have learned in my study of philosophy and as I will go on to show, those keys are either wrong or only give half the answer. The well-trained student of the fact-or-opinion curriculum will identify the fourth statement as a fact, but not an opinion. To label that statement as “fact,” for most people, is actually incorrect. As for the fifth statement, that has to do with the thesis of this article.
My students are often shocked to hear me say that every statement is either true or false; in other words, fact or fiction. There is no example of a statement that is a mere “opinion” in the sense of “neither true nor false,” because opinion really means a belief that does not have a lot of evidence. The alternative to opinion is knowledge. What separates opinion from knowledge is the degree of certainty possessed by the person who makes the statement. Every statement is either fact or fiction in itself depending on whether or not it corresponds with reality. Every statement is also either opinion or knowledge depending on how much evidence or reason the person has for believing it. Let’s take a closer look at each of the statements above to make my meaning clearer.
The statement that sharks are mean because they eat other fish is not a fact. However, neither is it an opinion. Here is why. If we look up the definition of mean, we find that it is synonymous with unkind and cruel. All three words indicate a level of intentionality and a will to harm.
Sharks have no intentionality and no will, let alone a will to harm, be cruel, mean, or unkind, because they eat other fish. The statement asserts that sharks are mean for a specific reason, but that reason does not justify the application of the adjective mean, and is, therefore, fiction, as opposed to fact. Since we are able to look up the definitions and reason through why eating other fish does not imply meanness, we know that it is false, as opposed to having the opinion that it is false.
The second statement that bluebirds are prettier than hummingbirds is not a fact; it is fiction. If we consult a dictionary, we find that pretty has to do with being attractive in a delicate way.
Bluebirds, while attractive, are not nearly as attractive in a delicate way as hummingbirds. The hummingbirds in my yard are as delicate as can be, flitting to and fro such that I would not even notice them if I were not looking for them, and they can hover in front of and drink from a honeysuckle flower without disturbing a petal. Their features are small and look as if they might not survive a light rain. Bluebirds on the other hand, make a sound as unnerving as nails on a chalkboard and land on my birdfeeder with all the grace of a cannonball shot from 500 yards away. No, once this statement is understood, it is clear that it is fiction, not fact. And that is not a mere opinion; it is knowledge, for me at least. For someone who had no or very limited contact and experience with these two types of birds, it would be opinion, and not knowledge.
The third statement that chocolate pudding tastes great may be fact, or it may be fiction. It is one or the other, but the content of the statement has to be determined first. The question is, what does the person making the statement mean by the statement? Does he mean that chocolate pudding is his favorite pudding? Does he mean simply that he really enjoys eating chocolate pudding? Does he mean that he has conducted a survey and found out that the majority of people like the way that chocolate pudding tastes? Is he referring to a clearly defined culinary standard and stating that chocolate pudding is on the level of greatness, whatever that means according to the chef’s scale? The statement, as it stands, is vague. But that does not mean that it is not true or false, it just means that clarification is needed to make the content of the statement more apparent. If the meaning of the statement matches with reality, then it is a fact. If the meaning of the statement does not match with reality, then it is fiction. If, for example, he simply means that chocolate is his favorite flavor of pudding, then he is either telling the truth or he is lying. Chocolate either is or is not his favorite flavor of pudding.
Once the meaning has been determined, the person making the statement has to explain on what basis he makes the statement. What is the evidence? After hearing a rational defense or lack thereof, we can decide if this statement is knowledge or opinion.
It is a fact that the earth revolves around the sun, but for 99.9% of the earth’s population, that statement is opinion. Most people believe that the earth goes around the sun, not because they have carried out the necessary telescopic observations to observe stellar parallax and verify the motion of the earth or reasoned through the predictions of Newton’s theory of gravitation to find that it matches with Kepler’s orbital laws, but because they trust what their teachers, textbooks, and society has taught them. They do not know it for themselves. Therefore, it is fact in itself and opinion in the minds of most.
By now the judicious reader will have predicted the answer to the final statement that “fact or opinion” is a false dichotomy is fact, not fiction, and knowledge, not opinion. Fact and opinion are not mutually exclusive, because a fact is a true statement, as opposed to a false one. An opinion is a belief that someone holds with a limited amount of evidence, as opposed to a belief someone can justify. The exact amount of evidence that differentiates opinion from knowledge is debatable but irrelevant. The important point here is simply that opinion is a weaker form of assent, and knowledge is a stronger form. Every statement is either true or false in itself, once the meaning and content of the statement is clearly identified. Every statement is either fact or opinion based on the reasons one has for believing it.
A result of the fact-or-opinion training is that two categories are created in the mind of the student: things that are true, and things that are neither true nor false. Instead of opinion being a level of assent for belief, it becomes an idea that is neither true nor false. Every statement someone hears goes into a category of “true, and I should believe it” or “that is just his or her opinion.”
Essentially, the fact-or-opinion curriculum is first-rate training for thinking relativistically. What’s true for you is true merely for you, and what is true for me is what is true merely for me, except, perhaps, when it comes to science. Science is the only real way to know, and the rest is just mere “opinion” (i.e. neither true nor false, as opposed to the traditional understanding of opinion). Entire domains of learning have been tossed into the opinion bin, most especially the domains of religion, ethics, and philosophy. What could be more damaging for an educational culture and culture in general, I do not know.
I cannot tell how often I have asked my students about some deep, fundamental, philosophical, or moral question and the reply has come back, “Well, isn’t that a matter of opinion?” Is it wrong to murder? Does reality exist? Does God exist? What is the nature of God? What is the nature of right and wrong? What is the meaning of life? Why do humans have rights? Do I have a soul? What is the proper role of government? What is true happiness? What is the best way to live? Is Jesus God? For most modern people, all of these questions exist in the realm of pure “opinion.” Whether or not the fact -or-opinion curriculum was designed this way, it has rendered the most important questions in life not only unimportant, but nothing more than mere “opinion” in the minds of its students, neither true nor false. What is true for you is true merely for you. These questions are also nothing less than mere “opinion” because there is nothing less than mere “opinion;” that is as low as it gets.
We have been looking here mainly at the consequences of the fact-or-opinion curriculum, but the only reason to believe something is that it is true. Falsehood is damaging and unhealthy to thinking individuals. So, the most damaging thing about the fact-or-opinion dichotomy is simply that it is a false dichotomy. It is not true that fact and opinion are mutually exclusive categories, and it is not true that an opinion is a neither true nor false statement.
And so, I hope it is clear that it is time to get rid of the fact-or-opinion curriculum… as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
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That the earth rotates and revolves around the sun is certainly a widely held opinion but it is certainly not a fact. As Robert Sungenis and others have shown, not only has it never been proven, but the most recent cosmological and astronomical evidence suggests a motionless earth at the center of the universe. If you have not looked into the research of Robert Sungenis I would highly recommend it. Emotionless and earth at the center of the universe doesn’t know way conflict with Newtonian physics, because if the earth is at the center of mass of the universe then it works.
Great essay! Very clear and informative. The fact-or-opinion exercises have seeped into all kinds of curriculum across different subjects. Common Core is notorious for adopting this kind of thing, and I think it’s for the very reason you mention: educators and educational “experts” want to encourage relativistic thinking. If everyone thinks relativistically, then personal authority (ethos) and the emotions inspired by an argument (pathos) become key, the two things Aristotle says are weaker than an argument’s logic and evidence (logos).
You can also say–and this is implied in the article–that the false dichotomy of fact and opinion force a materialist view of things. What ends up qualifying a fact? Something that can be proven through materialistic means. Things are facts. Events are facts. Quantities are facts. Physical phenomena are facts. Arguments that incorporate a particular value or viewpoint cannot be facts because they cannot incorporate material evidence. Can one prove that murder is wrong? Or that drug addictions are bad? This depends on values and what one defines as bad or wrong. It enters the cloudy realm of opinion, and the person with the most diplomas or the most likes on Twitter has the most authority.
This has to hurt scientific inquiry at a certain point since material facts mean little if one can’t apply larger philosophical truths to them. Newton could measure objects dropping, but he had to consider what theory and what math would explain the way things move. He “proved” his opinion about motion through mathematical proofs and experimentation. Facts followed an opinion to form a complex truth about the way things move. If we’re trained to look at this backward, could he have come to this truth, or would his thoughts about motion be considered opinion and unworthy of serious discussion? Just one theory among many, which involved something called gravity instead of a pantheon of gods, or black magic, or invisible dancing strings of energy moving things around?
Hi Mathew, I prefer an alternate approach for to thinking about facts, opinions, meaning, belief, and so forth, albeit one that requires a fundamental shift as to how one might conceive of reality. In keeping with your observations herein, it’s clear that the meaning of concepts such as “opinion” and “fact” are far more slippery than one might initially be inclined to believe. But in particular, I would say that the more commonplace notion of “opinions” not only misses the mark, but can sometimes be potentially unhelpful or even result in needlessly divisive outcomes.
In this regard, I can do no better than the following excerpt from a wonderful essay by Ernst von Glaserfeld, which includes a leading quote from Karl Popper:
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“What we are seeking in sciences are true theories — true statements, true descriptions of certain structural properties of the world we live in. These theories or systems of statements may have their instrumental use; yet what we are seeking in science is not so much usefulness as truth; approximations to truth; explanatory power, and the power of solving problems: and thus, understanding.”
Glaserfeld then goes on to say the following: This suggests that “descriptions,” explanations’’, and “understanding” can indeed capture aspects of “the world we live in.” Whether we can or cannot agree with this statement will depend on how we define “the world we live in.” There is no doubt that Popper intended an objective world, i.e., a ready-made world into which we are born and which, as explorers, we are supposed to get to know. This is the traditional realist view, and Popper does his best to defend it, in spite of all arguments one can hold against it. The realists and the skeptics are once more in the familiar deadlock. Yet, there is another possibility. “The world we live in” can be understood also as the world of our experience, the world as we see, hear, and feel it. This world does not consist of “objective facts” or “things-in-themselves” but of such invariants and constancies as we are able to compute on the basis of our individual experience. To adopt this reading, however, is tantamount to adopting a radically different scenario for the activity of knowing. From an explorer who is condemned to seek “structural properties” of an inaccessible reality, the experiencing organism now turns into a builder of cognitive structures intended to solve such problems as the organism perceives or conceives.
….The world we live in, from the vantage point of this new perspective, is always and necessarily the world as we conceptualize it. “Facts,” as Vico saw long ago, are made by us and our way of experiencing, rather than given by an independently existing objective world. But that does not mean that we can make them as we like. They are viable facts as long they do not clash with experience, as long as they remain tenable in the sense that they continue to do what we expect them to do.
– “Learning as Constructive Activity”
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I think the approach discussed in that essay suggests a path that can lead us to a more open, generous and respectful way of understanding why our fellow brethren so often hold views that are wildly divergent from our own dearly cherished beliefs. Thanks for your essay, which has helped me to further refine own thinking on this subject : )
Excellent essay. Matthew takes us back to the “original position,” as it were, and reminds us that the human person is made for truth–and does not get to create his or her own facts!
This all reminds me of Robert Jay Lifton, who studied brainwashing by Communist governments.
One of the principal techniques of brainwashing is to portray inconvenient facts as mere opinions. It is vitally important that we learn to push through the underbrush and come out into the clearing of real, enduring truth.
Nice to see that John mentioned Robert Sungenis, a wonderful Catholic apologist with a strong background in science.. In my opinion he is the world’s most preeminent advocate of geocentrism and his work on this subject is truly extraordinary. Yes, indeed John’s statement about Dr. Sungenis is quite true: “As Robert Sungenis and others have shown, not only has it [heliocentrism] never been proven, but the most recent cosmological and astronomical evidence suggests a motionless earth at the center of the universe [i.e., geocentrism].