Questioning many professions, journalism or any social media has taking the biggest blow of them all. It’s a way of diminishing a claim, reducing it to a mere matter of taste which lies beyond dispute. Over the years, the doctrine of the Bible has been influenced by opinions of those trained in philosophy and Roman government. Example 2. All opinions are equally true and equally false. Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. Opinion, Philosophy or the TRUTH! First, they capture some of the concerns that lead people to insist on the fact/opinion distinction in the first place – in particular, the concern that claims not be accepted without good evidence. To understand more completely, let's define each. If everyday observers are confused about the distinction, “experts” fare little better. The Education Oasis site announces that “An opinion expresses someone’s belief ... about something.” So if I believe that there’s beer in my refrigerator, is that just an opinion? One of the most common misconceptions about philosophy is that philosophical views are just opinions and hence any view is just as good (or bad) as any other. But it’s controversial whether all normative claims are matters of opinion. Let’s consider three of those other distinctions. He argues that opinion is not pure knowledge and therefore can not be pure truth. Montaigne even states, “Truth must be, out several arguments for why it is always beneficial for people of the minority opinion to voice their opinions. A fact is a statement that is true and can be verified objectively, or proven. If the fact/opinion distinction were identical to the fact/value distinction, then once again we would need to revise our common thinking about facts and opinions. These definitions have several advantages. The girl has beautiful hair.FACT OPINION 4 5. I personally believe that Mill took freedom of speech too far in On Liberty, and, Since the beginning of our individual life, we are guided by those elders with prior experience of life. Thus, for example, truth can be defined as the body of real events, things, and facts (Glanzberg, 2016). Every man is a fool in some man's opinion . An opinion, however, is a statement that holds an element of belief; it tells how someone feels. between the two, however – the rule that tells us how to assign statements to one category or the other – they often get tongue-tied. Second, they explain why some objective matters – in particular, controversial matters such God’s existence or predictions about the future – get placed in the category of opinion, despite their objective content. For example, it is an opinion that broccoli tastes good (or bad).”. These theories all attempt to directly answer the naturequestion: what is the nature of truth? The same goes for expressions of belief: We can talk about statements of fact vs. statements of opinion, or factual claims vs. opinion claims, and so forth, and all of these are in the mouths of subjects. Discussions of truthmakers and truthmaking typically start with the idea that truth depends on being, and not vice versa. Accept and close Essays; Philosophy; The Different Kinds Of Truth Philosophy Essay. Therefore, if truth gives us knowledge we will need to provide an explanation of existence or why a statement is true. Others are about subjective matters, such as whether one would enjoy a Guinness more than a Corona. We cannot provethis to be true or false. Now it is neither necessary nor useful – indeed, it is positively misleading – to define ‘fact’ in terms of what is indisputablythe case – yet people … and those with subjective content (opinions?). An opinion is not always true and cannot be proven. This means that opinions are those ideas that we have absolutely no proof of. Want to Be Good at Philosophy? In the past year or so, the topic of Fake News, absolute knowledge, with the analysis of the true meaning, and the implications raised, the book Plato’s Republic there are many examples of turning blindness into knowledge. Truth for Aristotle has a conclusion; it is defining and is tangible. In fact, several historians say for instance, that the “Roman Catholic Church is more Roman than it is Christian.” There was never any systematic attempt at justification, and without this any claim to truth is seriously (and usually fatally) flawed. But there’s another, more pragmatic reason. Some of the best essays on truth feature controversial opinions. While some philosophers hold that moral beliefs are subjective, many do not. The Enchanted Learning site muddies the waters even further by claiming that you can look up facts in an encyclopaedia (always? Why worry about the fact/opinion distinction? Below we look at truth from a number of different perspectives, offering insight into “what we can know” and “how we can know it” as it pertains to Truth in its different forms. The few who do recognize the beautiful itself are followers of the sight of truth, the philosophers. They are closely related and hence many dictionaries actually list them as synonyms. That’s my opinion, anyway. Very interesting & important question. This answer is not at all helpful, since opinions are typically put forth as true, and some factual claims turn out to be false. It also jumbles together occurrences (what we earlier called “states of affairs”), statements about occurrences, and the evidence for those statements. “Opinion: statement of belief or feeling. FACT OR OPINION? (De gustibus non est disputandum: there’s no disputing taste.). (This is not how to conduct serious philosophical research, but it can be a useful way of gauging common thoughts on a subject.) On this theory, truth is understood in terms of the way reality is described by our beliefs. For example, it is a fact that broccoli is good for you (you can look this up in books about healthy diets). Of course, there are different kinds of beliefs and statements. For example: the statement that thousands were killed in Darfur is descriptive; the statement that such killing was wrong is normative. When debating ethics and other controversial topics, one frequently hears the claim “That’s just your opinion.” It is a pernicious claim, devoid of clear meaning, and it should be consigned to the flames – or so I shall argue here. ; The judgment or sentiment which the mind forms of persons or things; estimation. However, the actual value of living the heavily-examined life could be open to debate. Neither does it help, at least at first glance, to say that facts are “objective” (rather than “subjective”), since at least some statements in the “opinion” column involve matters that would be true (or false) regardless of what any particular subject believes. However, one may argue that what is true and false in art is not simply based on personal truth, but on some standards by which all art is measured by. Usually, we are unable to understand the real meanings of truth, fact, perception & belief. The same is true for “God exists” – not an opinion, on this schema, but a factual claim (maybe true, maybe false). It shows one’s feelings about a subject. In my opinion, truth and falseness in art is relative, meaning that a piece of art is not limited to a single truth. Major theories of truth include those based on correspondence, coherence, truth conditions, and deflationism. In particular, the statement that “God created the earth” will need to move over to the “fact” column, since whether God created the earth is an objective matter – it happened (or not) independently of whether we believe it happened. Suppose, then, we narrow our inquiry to statements, so that when we ask, “What is the difference between facts and opinions?” what we’re really asking is “What is the difference between statements of fact and statements of opinion?”, This seems like it should be an easy question, but it actually tends to stump most people on the street. But this simple statement masks a great deal of controversy.” Michael Glanzberg, “Truth,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009) Human society has not always thought this way, however. Plato goes on to, the ideas of opinion and knowledge. Philosophers might be tempted to draw this contrast by identifying facts as states of affairs – occurrences that are there in the world regardless of what anyone may think about them – and identifying opinions as beliefs (or some other mental state) about states of affairs. Given this definition, all beliefs (qua beliefs) are subjective, because beliefs depend on minds. For example, when speaking about God or His holy word, which is the truth (indeed, Jesus Christ is the truth Jn 14:6), instead of saying, “My opinion is,” or, “I have a different opinion,” or, “I think,” or, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” we Christians ought to say, “This is the truth,” “It is written,” “Here is the com- mandment of Christ,” “Here is how to apply that commandment”. Can Psychologists Tell Us Anything About Morality? Finally, consider the descriptive/normative distinction. Are philosophers stating truths or are they stating opinion? Philosophy, politics, and objective truth Volume 5 Summer 2013 something like method in the history of astronomy. Isn’t philosophy based on the opinions of their studying of human nature? God is an unchanging, permanent being, and only from this state can the concept of truth propagate. In Plato's The Republic he discuses the idea that there is first knowledge at the first degree. When someone asks, “Is that a fact?” they can be understood as asking, “Is that really the case?” or “Is that ultimately true?” When someone says, “It is a fact that…” they are telling us, in other words, “It is the case that…” or “It is true that…” That is, facts are not the statements themselves; they are, rather, the state of affairs or the reality to which a true statement corresponds. How useful would the fact/opinion distinction be if any statement could count as either one, depending on who hears it? Truth - Truth - Deflationism: Philosophers before Tarski, including Gottlob Frege and Frank Ramsey, had suspected that the key to understanding truth lay in the odd fact that putting “It is true that…” in front of an assertion changes almost nothing. (I’ll say more about the subjective/objective distinction later on.). Here are the second and third results from my quick internet search, from an “Education Oasis” and “Enchanted Learning” website, respectively: “A fact is a statement that can be proven true.”, “An opinion expresses someone’s belief, feeling, view, idea, or judgment about something or someone.”. We explore the nature of truth, the different types of truth, and the different types of entities who report truth to better understand the nature of information. 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