For example, it is a fact that I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate. While it’s nice to think of the world so neatly divided into matters of fact and matters of opinion, it’s not always so clinical in its precision. They can be the result of careful and sophisticated deliberation in areas for which empirical investigation is inadequate or ill-suited. Opinions are not just pale shadows of facts they are judgements and conclusions. Matters of opinion can be informed by matters of fact (for example, finding out that animals can suffer may influence whether I choose to eat them), but ultimately they are not answered by matters of fact (why is it relevant if they can suffer?). Ethics is an exemplar of a system in which matters of fact cannot by themselves decide courses of action. Matters of opinion are non-empirical claims, and include questions of value and of personal preference such as whether it’s ok to eat animals, and whether vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate. Matters of fact are confined to empirical claims, such as what the boiling point of a substance is, whether lead is denser than water, or whether the planet is warming. It’s not an empirical fact that science does so, but it works for me.īut we can be much clearer in our meaning if we separate things into matters of fact and matters of opinion. If we think of an opinion as one person’s view on a subject, then many opinions can be solid.įor example, it’s my opinion that science gives us a powerful narrative to help understand our place in the Universe, at least as much as any religious perspective does. This too is not a knockout attack in an argument. Then again, calling something an opinion need not mean an escape to the fairyland of wishful thinking. Proof by volume and repetition – repeatedly yelling “but it’s a fact!” – simply doesn’t work. Unaccompanied by any warrant for belief, it is not a technique of persuasion. Saying something is a fact by itself does nothing to convince someone who doesn’t agree with you. It’s also not the knockout blow we might hope for in an argument. It is usually used to represent the best knowledge we have at any given time. Geometrical hair-splitting aside, calling something a fact is therefore not a proclamation of infallibility. But the person who thinks that they are equally wrong is more wrong than both.
For Asimov, the person who thinks Earth is a sphere is wrong, and so is the person who thinks the Earth is flat. Thinking it a sphere, however, is very different from thinking it to be flat.Īsimov expressed this beautifully in his essay The Relativity of Wrong.
While we might be happy to consider it a fact that Earth is spherical, we would be wrong to do so because it’s actually a bit pear-shaped. It’s not only that facts can change that is a problem. What we think are facts – that is, those things we think are true – can end up being wrong despite our most honest commitment to genuine inquiry.įor example, is red wine good or bad for you? And was there a dinosaur called the brontosaurus or not? The Harvard researcher Samuel Arbesman points out these examples and others of how facts change in his book The Half Life of Facts. This isn’t a problem for many things, although defending such a claim can be harder than you think. To call something a fact is, presumably, to make a claim that it is true. It’s always been the case that in certain situations opinions have been more important than facts, and this is a good thing. The view that opinions can be more important than facts need not mean the same thing as the devaluing of knowledge. Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.
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