Are “Facts” the Only Kind of Truth?
By Randall Smith
Several weeks back, I wrote a satirical piece critical of a quiz mentioned in a New York Timesarticle entitled “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts,” in which second graders were asked to distinguish in an either-or fashion between “facts” and “opinions.” Let me make clear that, in certain circumstances, this distinction is both valuable and appropriate. Indeed, one often wishes the reporters at The New York Times were regularly tested on how well they understood the difference between “facts” and “opinions.”
Yet, by the same token, sorting all statements into either “facts” or “opinions” can foster an unhealthy tendency to assume that “truth” is something that can be said only of statements orpropositions, which can be proven by demonstrable reasoning to be certain.
On this view, statements or propositions that cannot be certified as certain get relegated to the category of “opinion,” which, for some, makes them of little or no value. Sure, everyone has a right to his or her own “opinion,” but then again, no one should be able to force his “opinion” on someone else. So it matters a great deal in this climate what gets ranked “fact” and what gets relegated to mere “opinion.”
It’s clear we’re still laboring under the spell cast over the world by that demon Descartes who convinced the public-at-large that the word “knowledge” could only be used of ideas that werecertain – so certain that they couldn’t be doubted. And what sorts of things couldn’t be doubted? Well Descartes was pretty clear on this: mathematics. 2 + 2 = 4.
And what about all those things that aren’t quite as “certain” or “clear and distinct” as 2 + 2 = 4? Well, these things may interest some people, but you can’t call it knowledge. Not that stuff you get in, say, poetry or literature, or from the years of experience and collected wisdom of someone like your grandfather. You can’t call any of that stuff “true.” You just call it someone’s “opinion.” You can “respect” it, but you can’t take it too seriously. That is to say, you can’t take it any more seriously than you take someone’s tastes in shoes or men’s hats.
And thus, for many of my students, when the question of whether you can know any objective moral “truths” comes up, the intense mental pressure of being able to affirm that they can know these things with absolute, demonstrable certainty of the 2 + 2 = 4 type makes them hesitate and then wilt. “Well, who can say? I mean, can you really know these things?” And of course, that’s just the “out” they need. Not being able to know with certainty allows them to forswear responsibility for their own moral judgments.
Several weeks back, I wrote a satirical piece critical of a quiz mentioned in a New York Timesarticle entitled “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts,” in which second graders were asked to distinguish in an either-or fashion between “facts” and “opinions.” Let me make clear that, in certain circumstances, this distinction is both valuable and appropriate. Indeed, one often wishes the reporters at The New York Times were regularly tested on how well they understood the difference between “facts” and “opinions.”
Yet, by the same token, sorting all statements into either “facts” or “opinions” can foster an unhealthy tendency to assume that “truth” is something that can be said only of statements orpropositions, which can be proven by demonstrable reasoning to be certain.
On this view, statements or propositions that cannot be certified as certain get relegated to the category of “opinion,” which, for some, makes them of little or no value. Sure, everyone has a right to his or her own “opinion,” but then again, no one should be able to force his “opinion” on someone else. So it matters a great deal in this climate what gets ranked “fact” and what gets relegated to mere “opinion.”
It’s clear we’re still laboring under the spell cast over the world by that demon Descartes who convinced the public-at-large that the word “knowledge” could only be used of ideas that werecertain – so certain that they couldn’t be doubted. And what sorts of things couldn’t be doubted? Well Descartes was pretty clear on this: mathematics. 2 + 2 = 4.
And what about all those things that aren’t quite as “certain” or “clear and distinct” as 2 + 2 = 4? Well, these things may interest some people, but you can’t call it knowledge. Not that stuff you get in, say, poetry or literature, or from the years of experience and collected wisdom of someone like your grandfather. You can’t call any of that stuff “true.” You just call it someone’s “opinion.” You can “respect” it, but you can’t take it too seriously. That is to say, you can’t take it any more seriously than you take someone’s tastes in shoes or men’s hats.
And thus, for many of my students, when the question of whether you can know any objective moral “truths” comes up, the intense mental pressure of being able to affirm that they can know these things with absolute, demonstrable certainty of the 2 + 2 = 4 type makes them hesitate and then wilt. “Well, who can say? I mean, can you really know these things?” And of course, that’s just the “out” they need. Not being able to know with certainty allows them to forswear responsibility for their own moral judgments.
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