14 Facts, Non-Evaluative Claims, and Opinion

Where values reflect how we think things ought to be, facts are those things that are true of the world independently of what we happen to believe about it.

There are facts about the past, facts about the present, and facts about the future. There are facts about particular things, about classes or categories of things, and facts about all that is. There are facts about the natural world and human society. And, there are facts about fictional beings, numbers and other mathematical objects, and (perhaps) supernatural beings, none of which are part of the empirical world in any straightforward way.

Many facts may be unknowable, many can only be known with some degree of probability rather than certainty, but, still, they remain facts.

Science aims to know facts, but so do we in lots of areas of our lives where science doesn’t reach.

Now, sometimes it’s hard to focus on the facts because of our values — we don’t want things to be true that challenge our evaluatively based beliefs. For example, if we want to be able to go to the gym and eat in restaurants, because we value doing those things, then we don’t want it to be the case that those activities are ones that make it easy to spread COVID-19.

Still, we can, at least in many cases, isolate the facts from our evaluative perspectives, and we should always try to do so. When we do try to do this, and we think we know what the facts are, we can then state what we believe to be true.

To state a belief about the facts is to make a particular kind of claim, what we will call a non-evaluative claim.

A non-evaluative claim is a claim that does not express the values of the person making it (so, it says nothing about what is good or bad, right or wrong, or should or shouldn’t be done).

Here are some examples of non-evaluative claims:

• Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.
• The earth revolves around the sun.
• The sun revolves around the earth.
• The earth’s average temperature is increasing.
• It will rain tomorrow.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates will win the next three World Series.
• Dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago.
• Sugar tastes sweet.
• Drinking a lot of soda will harm your body.
• Medical doctors are required to receive extensive education and training.
• Many people do not like their jobs.
• God exists.
• God does not exist.
• Either God exists or God does not exist.
• The soul is immortal.
• There is no such thing as a soul.
• Frodo is a hobbit.
• Frodo is an orc.
• If Frodo is a hobbit, then he is smaller than an orc.
• 2+3=5.
• 2+3=6.
• The sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.
• I like donuts.

Observe that, as with evaluative claims, there is actually a lot of diversity here. Some of these are obviously false (which ones?). Thus, as emphasized above, to say that a claim is non-evaluative is not to say that it is true, only that it purports to state a fact, i.e., an objective truth (without voicing a view about what’s good/bad/right/wrong/should/shouldn’t be done).

As with our list of evaluative claims, for each of these you can ask, “why should I believe that?” And whoever is asserting the claim can then try to give reasons why.

In some cases, the “why?” question will be answered by science. This requires giving empirical evidence in conjunction with whatever theory is relevant. So, if you ask “why should I believe that the earth’s average temperature is increasing?,” a climate scientist will be able to give the data they have collected and an explanation of how the earth’s climate mechanisms work in order to answer your question. Similarly for the claims about water, the earth and sun, dinosaurs, and the weather.

Other claims require objective information to support them, but there is more room for non-experts to have access to that information. If you ask why you should believe the Pirates will win the next three World Series, for instance, I can answer by giving you my analysis of their players, coaching, etc., based on my following the team carefully.

Observe that, in many of these cases, including the scientific ones, no matter how good the evidence provided for the claim is, there’s always some degree of uncertainty. Those who assert the claims are thus making a judgment that reflects their individual assessment of the evidence. In that sense, they are expressing an opinion. But note two things: (1) these are opinions backed by reasons, and (2) there are no values involved in these opinions. So, here we can see that it is possible to have opinions about facts, but, to the extent that they are based on reasons and evidence, they are not merely subjective. It is possible to assess the evidence provided by objective standards. (And, sadly, when one does so, the earth is warming, and the Pirates are unlikely to win the next three World Series.)

Other non-evaluative claims need to be supported by reasons in other ways. Take the claim about triangles. It expresses the Pythagorean Theorem. If someone asks, “why should I believe that?”, it is possible to provide a proof that it is true, on the basis of certain other claims that define terms such as “straight line” and “angle.” It is not a generalization from data about triangles, it is a necessary fact about them. No one who can understand the proof can deny the truth of the Theorem, so there is no room for individuals to have legitimate differences in the judgments they make about it. Mathematics in general works this way: its claims (most of which are far more abstract than the Pythagorean Theorem, and refer to objects which are in principle unobservable) are established with logical certainty, not empirical data. (Empirical scientists rely on mathematics to do their work; but there is a vast difference in how truth is established for empirical and mathematical claims.)

Or take the claims about God’s existence. Assuming we can agree on what “God” means (as at least some have been able to do), a being matching the definition either exists or doesn’t. So one of the listed claims is true and the other one isn’t. Like mathematical claims, which one of these is true isn’t a question for empirical science (at least on most understandings of what “God” means and how empirical science works). There’s a long history of arguments for and against God’s existence (which you can learn about in other philosophy classes if that interests you!). Some of these arguments are supposed to work like mathematical proofs; others work more like scientific claims that admit of some uncertainty. The assumption in both cases, however, is that it is not a matter of subjective opinion which claim is true. And, in neither case, does the truth depend on the values of the one making the argument. Your own values may be rooted in your belief in God (or in a rejection of that belief), but that does not mean that your values determine which claim about God’s existence is true.

Finally, take the first claim about Frodo. If you’ve either seen the Lord of the Rings movies or read the books by Tolkien that they are based on, you’ll know that this claim is true. But Hobbits don’t really exist! That means that you must determine its truth by finding evidence within the fictional world in which Frodo lives. As in the previous cases, nothing about what you value is relevant in determining whether this claim is true. The fact that we’re dealing with a fictional world doesn’t change that.

So, some Crucial Points to make about this:

CRUCIAL POINT #1: claims about the past and future are typically non-evaluative claims. Just because there is uncertainty in such claims (as when you say what the weather will be, whether a particular team will win the World Series next year, or that a species of animal existed along time ago) doesn’t mean you aren’t making a claim that is or is not objectively true – you just can’t know its truth with 100% certainty.

CRUCIAL POINT #2:  building on the previous point, claims that express uncertainty or probability (as most claims about the future do) are not, just because of that, evaluative claims. (They may involve individual judgment, but that does not mean that the values of the individual who is making the judgment are involved.)

Thus, CRUCIAL POINT #3: Non-evaluative claims are not to be contrasted with opinions. You can express an opinion about the facts, when there is some uncertainty and room for individual judgment about it. (In the case of doctors, we even call their assessments of a patient’s condition “opinions,” and it’s often good advice to get a “second opinion.” But these “opinions” are, in fact, expert judgments. They reflect the best assessment that the doctors can make about the facts; they do not express the doctor’s values.)

Telling the Difference between Claims

So, how do you know whether a given claim is non-evaluative, evaluative, or definitional?

1. The first thing to do is to look and see if it has language that implies it’s evaluative, i.e., whether it clearly says that something is good/bad/right/wrong/should be done/shouldn’t be done. If it does, it’s almost certainly evaluative. (I say “almost certainly” because language always has exceptions to its rules, and this rule is no exception.)
2. Once you are sure a claim is not making an evaluative judgment, you then need to ask whether the claim is non-evaluative or definitional. Definitional claims are really a kind of non-evaluative claim — they state the facts about the meanings of words or ideas — but they are special enough that we are giving them their own category. So, check to see if the claim is just about what a word or concept/idea means. To do this, ask if you could determine its truth just by looking at a dictionary. If you could, it’s definitional.
3. If you’ve ruled out evaluative and definitional, then non-evaluative is what’s left. But remember, there is variety here. Be particularly careful to recognize that among these are claims that involve individual judgment about empirical matters (doctor’s “opinions,” predictions about the weather or the performance of a sports team, etc.). It’s tempting to call these evaluative, but they are not.

Context, again

Now, about the claim “I like donuts.” In the previous chapter I gave a context where this is essentially equivalent to me saying “Donuts are good,” which expresses my (positive) evaluation of them. But suppose someone is coming around the offices in Wiekamp and taking a poll of people in order to decide what treats to buy, and they ask me “Do you like donuts?” If I say in response “I like donuts,” then what I am doing is reporting a fact about my food preferences. In that context, the same string of words is used to express a different, non-evaluative claim. I might actually think it’s bad that I like donuts (since I know they are unhealthy), even as I report the fact of my liking them.

In fact, a great deal of social science, as well as the work of product development and marketing departments, involves tracking the facts about people’s views of what’s good and bad. So, for instance, a researcher reporting on the results of a survey might make a claim of the form “X% of Americans think abortion is wrong.” But that claim, though about what people’s values are, is not itself an evaluative claim.

Thus, Crucial Point #4: In general, claims about what people believe is good and bad are non-evaluative. They describe people’s values without endorsing them.  

The fact/value distinction and the corresponding non-evaluative/evaluative claim distinction are helpful ones to make. Lots of our reasoning can be clarified as to whether we are assuming or trying to establish what we think is good/bad/right/wrong or trying to figure out what is true independent of our values. Not every case fits neatly into the distinctions or is 100% clear as to which side it falls on, but when we learn to recognize the ones that do, we can make better sense of the murky ones.