Fact vs Opinion | A Confused Category! 

Agreed. As long as the critical thinking is taught well. 🙂

Yeah

Love this. My students have told me many similar stories! 😄

Omg that’s so me, that’s why I suck at tests because I always get super technical.

I actually agree with this analysis, even though your teacher didn't quite grasp the subtlety. To me it actually reinforces the F/O framework; whenever someone forms an opinion, that is a fact in and of itself, but it does NOT affect the "facts on the ground"...

No, please do a video about facts and opinions. I don't care if you spill out the same information. People need to know about how ambiguous facts/opinions are.

Appreciate your feedback, Alaoui91. Spread the word that fact/opinion is an unhelpful distinction!

I’m not vain enough to think *my video* should be seen by all teachers, but I do wish I could think of a way to get more teachers familiar with the philosophical problems behind this sloppy thinking and , as you say, get rid of this _harmful_ distinction.

This👆🏼 Came here after a fast RU-vid search to explain someone I’m having a discussion with that my fact based opinion is a fact. Even though yes it is my opinion, it’s still a fact.

Just to clarify. By “fact” I mean that my opinion is true because it’s based on something that has been scientifically proven.

Nice catch. Yes, the term 'fact' has multiple senses and we too casually slip back and forth between the various meanings-as I accidentally demonstrated. 😆 I should have followed my own advice and stuck to the language of truth, belief, and justification.

Thank you, meindopen007! With respect to your question, it sounds like you are thinking of opinions as attitudes about subjective matters of taste where there is no underlying objective truth. Which is a perfectly legitimate understanding of the term _opinion_ . No quarrel there. But what about a case where you disagree with a friend, for instance, about the quickest route downtown? You say take the back streets, he says take the exit from the highway. You discuss it a bit but eventually give up and say, "Well, you have your opinion and I have mine." That seems to me a legitimate use of the term _opinion_ . But in this case, there might be an underlying, objective truth. For instance, you might be right that taking the back streets _really is_ quicker. Here I'd say your opinion was true and your friend's opinion was false. Would you agree?

​@@LetsGetLogical "Well, you have your opinion and I have mine." Those statements are not opinions. Opinions are not verifiable. We can verify both of those statements, and one would turn out to be correct, and the other, false. Both fall within the domain of facts; one of them is a false claim. I don't think the creator of this video really understands the concepts of fact and opinion, sorry (this was an opinion!) Anyway, please watch this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gs9ZGW_1oMM.html

@@rc7211 I watched the video you linked but unfortunately it trips over all the philosophical confusions I warned about in my video. But thanks for viewing and take the time to comment!

I hope the suggestions at the end were helpful! Better to have your students evaluate whether claims are _true_ . And the only way to do that is to evaluate whether the claims are _justified_ or _well-supported_ or backed by _good reasons_ . Then you're in a position to know whether to _believe_ the claim or not. The terms 'fact' and 'opinion' need not come into it at all.

Ha, ha, no! I'm not a "big name" philosopher like Marquis. Nor am I a celebrity professor at some Ivy League university. I'm just a run-of-the-mill community college philosophy professor. To that extent you are concerned about the search for truth, you and I are in full agreement, Kristine. It's what the channel is for! Helping people sort through difficult philosophical questions. Thanks for watching!

@@LetsGetLogical Thank you for writing back to me. But I still do not understand why you do not identify yourself (?) Especially since this is one (the first) way we as viewers research our sources. Please?

Dare I say it's a fact? 😄

Good idea! I think I will do this.

Can you point me to the relevant article? I'd be interested to read what Putnam has to say on that.

@@LetsGetLogical Hilary Putnam - The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays

@@dominiks5068 Just skimmed several reviews and I already like what Putnam is getting at. For instance, it appears that he says one reason facts and values cannot be easily separated is that facts-to be recognized as facts-require us to apply _epistemic values_ such as simplicity, elegance, coherence, and so on. So science, that bastion of objective facts, is already infused with all kinds of values. Good stuff. Thanks for the reference.

@@LetsGetLogical It's interesting that you haven't read Putnam, because his argument is actually very similiar to yours. So you should be proud - you independently made a video with the same talking points as one of the most respected contemporary philosophers :)

@@dominiks5068 Worse... I've _met_ Putnam! Guess I just overlooked this part of his work. Thanks again.

These are great questions and you're touching on a lot of rich philosophical territory. For instance, there is a whole literature on the nature of fictional objects. Is it true to say hobbits have hairy feet? I think so. But how can it be _true_ when hobbits do not exist?! My own view is that hobbits (and Harry Potter) are abstract artifacts. In other words, HP didn't exist until J.K. Rowling made him up. But once she did, Harry Potter the _fictional character_ came into existence. Wait! So Harry Potter the flesh-and-blood boy really exists?! No. Rather a non-physical, abstract entity exists. And we can say true and false things about that abstract entity: for instance, it's true that Harry has a scar and false that he is blonde. But I don't think the main thrust of you comment was about the nature of fictional objects. You were exploring how _facts_ fit into the picture. And here I'm afraid I'll just repeat myself from the video. The term 'fact' has many senses in English. Sometimes it means "the state of affairs that makes a statement true." Other times it simply means "a true statement." In some cases, it means "a true statement that has strong evidence supporting it." And sometimes it means something even stronger. Something like, "a true statement that has strong evidence supporting it and is widely-recognized by the relevant experts as well-established." All these usages of the term 'fact' are in play in our language. The problem-as I try to show in the video-is that people switch back and forth between these senses of 'fact' all the time without realizing it. So "Harry likes Cho" _is_ a fact. More surprising, it's a fact in _all_ the senses of 'fact' given above. For example, it is widely-recognized by the relevant experts (i.e. HP fans) as being well-supported (i.e. readers can point you to the parts of the text where it is clear that Harry likes Cho). I think you can probably work it all out once you take into account that the World contains more than just physical objects in space-time. There are also abstract objects. Now you have the "mind to world" fit you were looking for to make it _true_ that Harry likes Cho. And what makes it true? The way the World is. Because the World contains the abstract objects HP and Cho. And we can say true things about those entities. NB: Fiction is not my area of specialization so I may have tripped over a few of the details above. But that's roughly how I'd answer. 👊🏼

I'd be okay with "opinion" = belief of any kind and "fact" = reality of any kind. But unfortunately, the common usage of "fact" and "opinion" is not consistent. It varies wildly, resulting in all kinds of confusion and manipulation.

Awww! Good point. I make these for college students and typically have adults in mind for my audience, but still.... I should have thought of that!

I wish everyone would follow your advice and relegate their use of "opinion" to subjective statements. But watch and listen: that's not what people do. That's one reason there is so much confusion about fact and opinion. I bet you'd be interested in hearing David Chalmers refutation of your verifiability criterion of truth. It's really interesting and can be found in his recent book _Reality +_ (which I highly recommend-a lot of fun and philosophically rigorous). It goes something like this: imagine we're in a closed simulation. By closed, I mean that the architects of the simulation have designed and set the simulation running, but then walked away-they will not communicate with the sims. In that case it is *_in principle_* unverifiable that we are in a simulation. But nevertheless we are. That's the truth. So there you go: an in-principle unverifiable truth. We just wouldn't _know_ that truth. But I can tell from your comments that you're sophisticated enough to know the difference between states of affairs obtaining and having epistemic access to those states of affairs. Again, thanks for your comments. It's nice to know there are people out there who are interested in this stuff.