Facts and Opinions

At the risk of stirring the hornets' nest this weblog can sometime be, I want to take a moment to discuss something that is important to debates such as the ones that often rage here. In these debates, as has been true for most of human history, an ongoing confusion of the understanding of fact and opinion has occurred that has served to cloud the debate and make it more vociferous.

Fact and opinion can be hard to define because the difference between the two is often subtle and sometimes imperceptible. An example of where this definition as become extremely difficult is in the use of information in the ongoing warrantless surveillance debate.

Both sides of this debate have reached very clear and opposing conclusions, ones supported by the citation of information from a variety of sources--some reputable, some not--which information itself is also a conclusion based on information gathered from still other sources. This chain of information and supporting conclusion extends back until it, hopefully, reaches facts, such as the citation of specific laws or the Constitution.

The semantics of the above description are important because those semantics represent definitions of logical debate. While conclusions and the information used to support them are powerful and important, they are not facts.

In a way, this is a legal definition as well. Conclusions are opinions, as informed and reasoned as they might be. This is the same definition used by the constitutional courts of the United States (appellate and supreme) in referring to their own conclusions about the law. This terminology is used because the judiciary has always accepted the inevitability that some of their conclusions will be overturned by the conclusions of future courts.

Such conclusions can be deeply held, but ultimately they are still opinion. Such conclusions should be based on facts, but even with a majority of facts, they are still opinions. Because they are opinion, they can still be proved wrong by better conclusions or facts.

Because such conclusions are opinion, how they are used in the course of logical debate is very important. The use of conclusions as a proof of the wrongness of an opposing conclusion is a tricky proposition because of the risk that the conclusion used might yet be proven wrong.

Fact, on the other hand, has none of the potential ambiguity of opinions. Fact is irrefutable and empirical. Semantically, fact is. Fact serves as the basis for everything else including debate.

In the course of logical debate, it is possible for certain opinion to become fact-like, due to agreement or inattention. This conversion does not imply that such opinion is fact; rather, that it is being used as fact in the absence of more obvious fact.

Understanding of these distinctions cannot help but strengthen the nature of logical debate. Conclusions, though opinion, are the inevitable result of the absence of definable fact, but such conclusions must fulfill other requirements before they can be facts. In logical debate, the use of conclusion must be tempered by its nature, or the debate ceases to be anything more that argument.

That’s my opinion. Let the stinging begin...

-=DLH=-