Facts vs Opinions

Background Facts vs Opinions
Something known to exist or to have existed is a fact or truth. A test of the fact is its verifiability, the ability to reduce it to experience. A test of experience would be repeatability as in a scientific experiment or in a standard reference. In the event of a repeatable test being impossible, the collection of observational evidence of the event would suffice as a test of verifiability. This distinguishes it from an opinion, a belief system, no matter how plausible, its an object of imagination or other creation of mere thought, such as taste or preference. This is not to deny the relevancy of the plausibility of an opinion, such an opinion is regarded as a Theory and is to be supported by facts. An unsupported opinion is simply imagination, belief or faith, regardless of its moral content, desirability or scope of acceptance. Still, an unsupported opinion, although imagination, may have ‘a realty’ although it is not a real fact. This leads us into an area of Philosophical Realism that include things like ‘red’, ‘nine’, ‘morals’, ‘ethics’, etc., things that have existence only because something objective exists that they can be an attribute of.The creation of social constructs in which we exist themselves creates realities of their own. Realities that have their existence solely in their “social constructs”. Since these ‘reality’ exist they are ‘true’ and it is tempting to regard them therefore as ‘facts’. Detail examination of these fall into the realms of epistemology and ontology of the attributes perceived. In the area of ethics there is ethical subjectivism where there are two schools of thought one depending on a test of ‘mind independence reality’, since some realisms are dependent on the observers own subjective taste, desires or value system. These two schools are termed realism and anti-realism. Another form of ethics is that of ethical objectivism, in this area moral propositions are true if they pass a ‘mind-independent reality’ test, if they fail it, they are false.We accept “ethical objectivism” as a more valid strategy for classifying these ‘realities’.
Position We therefore use this as the basis on which we classify ‘Facts’ and ‘Opinions’, and will further sub-classify Opinions into ‘Theories’, ‘Valid Opinions’, ‘Imagination’, ‘Falsities’ and ‘Absurdities’.

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