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Are Facts And Opinions Really So Different?

Everywhere you look, facts and opinions are contrasted with each other. This is a mistake.

But is there a line—a distinction, a dichotomy, a division—between opinion and fact in the first place?

Not in the way the study, and society at large, thinks there is. Let me put it more diplomatically: It’s reasonable to conclude that certain differences exist between the two, but they’re far less pronounced, and far less consequential, than society tends to assume.

Let’s first get clear on the way we perceive the two. Anyone who were to take a few minutes to evaluate the way we use these categories—in everyday conversations, on social media, in classrooms—would discover that they generate certain associations in our minds.

We associate the following concepts with fact:

…and that’s just for starters. On the other hand, we associate these with opinion:

…and more.

But are these associations fair? It’s possible they have attached themselves to one of the two categories in a semantically illegitimate way. To give an example, it’s possible we shouldn’t associate opinion with bias. But we won’t know until we get a little clearer on what these categories mean in the first place.

Consider two claims, one straightforwardly taken to be factual and the other straightforwardly taken to be an opinion.

Claim 1: George Washington is the first U.S. president.

Claim 2: Coffee is better than tea.

Claim 1 is a fact, Claim 2 is an opinion. Nothing more to it than that, it would seem.

Not so fast. Perhaps, if we construct the scenarios just right, we might be able to see how each of these could actually fall under the opposing category instead.

Let’s start with Claim 1.

I imagine myself visiting my wife’s classroom (she’s an elementary school teacher) and one of her students asking if Abraham Lincoln is the first president. I’m only there for a few minutes, but I answer: “In my opinion, George Washington is the first U.S. president.”

There is something deeply off here. It’s a settled fact that Washington is the first U.S. president, which makes the “In my opinion” preface inappropriate. It just doesn’t belong in that sentence. The response to the student calls for a fact, not for an opinion.

Now let’s change things up. Instead of being in my wife’s classroom, I now imagine myself attending the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. The rapturous joy that will soon befall me, as I listen to scholarly addresses on arcane historical matters, is too intense to describe. The talks begin, and the first address is by an eminent historian who is pushing a controversial thesis: George Washington is not the first U.S. president. His argument is that Samuel Huntington, the first President of the Congress of the Confederation, should land that distinction.

America declared her independence in 1776, but adopted the Constitution in 1788. What document governed us during the intervening years? The Articles of Confederation (1781–1788). Though the Articles didn’t provide an executive or judicial branch, the document did retain the deliberative chamber America had used in the years before. And to preside over this chamber, the Articles outlined the role of president.

I realize this scenario is far-fetched. After all, the President of Congress was a ceremonial role, largely concerned with moderating debate and maintaining order. It was intentionally divested of power in order to reflect the ideal of decentralized deliberation. Also, power largely resided in the states—so leading the federal government ≠ leading the United States, in those days. But let’s assume the scholar gives his argument anyway.

During Q&A, I stand up and say: “In my opinion, George Washington is the first U.S. president.”

Go back to my response to my wife’s kindergartener. The “In my opinion” prefaced seemed bizarre, in that scenario. But it does not seem off in this new one. Uttering this statement as a Q&A respondent, the inclusion of “In my opinion” seems entirely apt. But what’s going on here? When did fact and opinion become fluid enough to accommodate one and the same claim falling under either category?

It can’t be that something about the claim itself has changed. Notice that the claim is the same in both scenarios — absolutely nothing has changed with respect to the linguistic features. Nor has new evidence come to light about George Washington or about early American history. What has changed are the contextual features, and one of them in particular stands out.

One might think, at first glance, that the difference is the second scenario contains a disputation of the claim. But this can’t be the answer. Imagine that in the first scenario, the little rascal responds, “Nuh-uh, Lincoln was the first.” I then tell him again, “Nope. In my opinion, Washington was the first.” Nothing the kid can say would make my inclusion of “In my opinion” seem normal—and this despite the fact that there is disagreement present.

What makes the difference in the second scenario is that it’s a credentialed expert who is offering the alternative take; it’s the view of someone who is in an epistemically advantageous position. Which means, if I’m going to offer a contrary claim, it’s not strange to couch it as a contrary opinion as opposed to a straightforward statement of fact.

Now consider Claim 2: Coffee is better than tea. That this is an opinion is open and shut, right?

Again, not so fast.

Imagine that everyone in the world agrees the most important feature of food is its energy-enhancing properties. Alertness and focus for work becomes so surpassingly important that whatever facilitates these outcomes—within medical reason—is prioritized above all else.

Within this scenario, it’s possible to see Claim 2 as a factual one. While it’s true that, prior to brewing, tea leaves contain more caffeine than coffee beans, after brewing it’s really no contest: according to the Mayo Clinic, an 8 oz cup of coffee has anywhere from 95–165 milligrams of caffeine, whereas an 8 oz cup of black tea has anywhere from 25–48 mg of caffeine.

What makes this claim take on a factual flavor is that, within this scenario, there is collective agreement on what constitutes “best,” as it relates to food. There is consensus on the hierarchy of food benefits: caffeine comes in first place in all our hearts. Because of this universal criteriological embrace of work-alertness, we can measure the relative value of coffee and tea the way we can measure the relative size of two different objects using a ruler. And no one would suggest the results of the latter are non-factual.

The results of the above discussion are striking: a claim we would all agree belongs under the fact category was shown to function kind of like an opinion, in a different context, and a claim we would all agree belongs under the opinion category was shown to function like a fact, in a different context.

The gulf between the two categories doesn’t seem so unbridgeable now. If you go back and look at the associations people make about fact and opinion—the line people believe exists between them—it would seem as though the two categories are worlds apart. But I’ve tried to show, by changing one major component in each scenario, that the two types of claims could transfer over to the other side.

The underlying problem with making a sharp distinction between fact and opinion is that opinions can be of the preference-based variety or the fact-based variety.

If, among the ancients, I stood up and said, “In my judgment, the earth is round!”, the categorization of this claim could easily be opinion. But it’s also true that I’ve said something factually correct. This claim, uttered in that context, is one of the fact-based opinions I mentioned above.

If, in our society, I stood up and said, “Coffee tastes better than tea!”, the categorization of this claim, to the great consternation of baristas everywhere, would be opinion rather than fact. And in this case there isn’t a fact of the matter about the tastier beverage. This claim, unlike the claim above about the earth being round, is one of the preference-based opinions I also mentioned.

To say, “Oh, that’s just your opinion” is actually not to have said much at all. The putative opinion could be of the factual variety or preference variety; it could be of the objective class of opinions or the subjective class of opinions. That opinions can be of either kind is precisely one of the reasons why a sharp distinction between fact and opinion is so difficult to maintain.

Does society blur the line between fact and opinion, as the Rand Corporation maintains? There’s a sense in which I hope it does and a sense in which I hope it doesn’t.

When we can no longer count on shared frameworks, we lose something important. Certain social trends—globalization, population growth, technological advancement, disaffection with society’s institutions, and other factors—lead to the proliferation of sentiments and ideas that make it hard to retain adherence to common sources of information and knowledge.

It would be better if no one believed any of the conspiracy theories that InfoWars peddles to its listeners. This is the sense in which I lament the blurring of fact and opinion—it’s simply lamentable that there exists an InfoWars framework for understanding reality. To listeners, such a framework functions as a factual description of reality, and this isn’t good.

But I also welcome the blurring of fact and opinion because society has long been plagued by a facile understanding of each of the two categories. Society has not understood that reality itself tends to blur the line. The truth is that some opinions possess a greater correspondence to the facts than do many attempts out there to factually describe reality. When this happens, when the former is designated “opinion” and the latter is designated “fact,” society in a sense mislabels reality.

At this point, the “line” becomes nothing more than an artificial attempt to demarcate acceptable beliefs from the more contentious ones. Characteristics associated with factual claims—being not reasonably disputable; being intended, and expected, to be received as true by all; etc.—are often functions of social preferences rather than correspondence to reality.

This suggests we should dissolve the line, and prioritize reason and evidence as the markers for accepting claims of any kind.

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