Facts & Opinions

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Philosophy Now
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Facts & Opinions

Post by Philosophy Now »

Christoffer Lammer-Heindel tells us some important facts about them.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/115/Facts_and_Opinions
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HexHammer
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Re: Facts & Opinions

Post by HexHammer »

......../FACEPALM!!!

Completely clueless person!!! The author has NO FUCKING clue about ANYTHING!!! Speaking about facts then suddenly just to God and say it's an individual thing, then it has nothing about facts, specially when he has no facts to provide in the argumentation. He could have least have used the Prophecy of the Popes!

So "what is a fact?", that's where he's clueless again, and only shows that he's a cozy chatter and doesn't know about philosophy nor science, how to derive a fact, nor the real nature of facts, since science books are rewritten regularly.

0/10 usual garbage from PN.
creativesoul
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Re: Facts & Opinions

Post by creativesoul »

Contrary to the above participant, I actually found the article refreshing in it's consistency, and more relevant than most other articles I've read from the magazine(admittedly few). It made perfect sense given the conceptual scheme underwriting the article, and offered both valid counterarguments and objections to the fact/opinion dichotomy. Additionally, it shed a little bit of light on the horrible job the American public education does when it comes to teaching critical reasoning skills to students - by virtue of teaching an ill-conceived notion of what counts as a fact.

On a closer read, I did notice an equivocation fallacy in one section, where the author used 'fact' to mean true statements, rather than states of affairs...
spike
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Re: Facts & Opinions

Post by spike »

My opinion is that MaxHammer is obnoxious in his comment. But maybe I am wrong, that in fact he is.
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A_Seagull
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Re: Facts & Opinions

Post by A_Seagull »

Dr Lammer-Heindel can try to play around with the meaning of the words "fact" and "belief", but these are just his opinions :

"Properly understood, the term ‘fact’ refers to a state of affairs or an aspect of reality, not to a class of beliefs. By contrast, ‘opinions’ and ‘considered judgments’ are types of beliefs, and those labels are most usefully used to distinguish sufficiently well-supported from insufficiently well-supported beliefs".

But any understanding of the distinction between noumena and phenomena would reveal that any "facts" regarding the noumena can never be anything more than considered opinions.

In other words: A fact is an opinion that is claimed , as an opinion, to be a fact.

And that is a fact. :)
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Facts & Opinions

Post by Terrapin Station »

A bit odd that Lammer-Heindel more or less dismisses the sense of "opinion" that refers to "matters of taste" or "the way that one feels about something." There is a short section on that, but it's entitled, "Matters of Taste Are Not Opinions."

Usage determines definitions (or "meanings" some would say), and given that, matters of taste certainly are opinions. In fact, that's probably the far more popular sense of the term "opinion," and it's always the sense taught to kids in elementary school for example. It's just that there are a couple different senses of the term "opinion." What Lammer-Heindel spends most of his time describing as "opinion" is the sense that one encounters most frequently in academic contexts or when one visists a physician.

Moral, aesthetic etc. utterances, by the way, are opinions in the "matters of taste" or "how one feels about" sense.
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