Thanks @ChoatieMom .
Googling explanations gave me the distinctions I was looking for that there are subsets within factual statements. Some may be unverified claims or false statements, however they are still considered factual statements.
I will go out more confused than I came in. What about a statement like “I’m hungry,” or “My foot hurts.”? You can’t verify those things, but it hardly seems reasonable to call them opinions. I think of opinions as something where another person could reasonably disagree, having a different opinion on the matter. “In my opinion your foot does not hurt,” seems problematic.
@mom2twogirls: Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it’s possible to have that simple a distinction. Do you mean that they can never be proven true or false? If so, then there’s no way to know what we will eventually be able to determine about the brain, and thus we wouldn’t ever know if a statement like “I’m hungry” is an opinion. Or, maybe you mean they can’t be proven true or false now. That would be pretty weird though, since an opinion (e.g., Mars is a planet) would move from opinion to fact based on the state of technology (e.g., good telescopes).
I think a more useful distinction would be: Statements of fact are statements about the world. Statements of opinion are value judgments. This is why the use of the term “significant” when referring to ISIS was such a problem. The loss of land was a statement of fact. The question of “significance” was a value judgment based on the importance of the loss.
I still say that things that can’t be quantified like “a lot” or “significant” or “few” or “many” are opinions compared to specific numbers or all or none. What is “significant” to person A may NOT be "significant to person B. Those terms apply value judgments and accordingly are opinions, IMHO.
@Demosthenes49 I’m hungry actually is considered an opinion.
@HImom if I understand it correctly, significantly could be quantified with actual data. And in scientific and math terms, there would be enough evidence to show whether it is significant. That would be why it would be a fact.
@mom2twogirls: Says who?
https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/lrc/studyskills/factsandopinions.pdf
https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-fact-and-opinion.html
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/Fact-opinion.html
There are more, but those are a few places explaining it.
If you say so. When we were taking classes about making clear objectives, they always stressed quantifiable instead of weasel words like “significant.” I can say getting ONE X out of 20 is significant because hey it was #1. You may say it needs to be at least 1/3 or more. Joe may say >50%, while Sue says nope, has to be at least 80% or whatever. That’s why those terms cause disagreements. That’s why, in my opinion when you use words that don’t gave a 100% consensus opinion, they are opinions.
@HImom I completely get where you are coming from. I only know that when I’ve been forced to edit my kids’ science labs and math work in the past, the word “significant” has been used in a quantifiable way.
https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-fact-and-opinion.html
Ok, this is UTTERLY false, so I reject this source of information completely.
Yes, there is a SCIENTIFIC definition of statistically clinically significant but the sentence about ISIS wasn’t a scientific paper in any way. Used among people outside of a scientific context, significance is in the eye of the beholder, imho.
Opinion can and often has swayed people to varying degrees. Isn’t that what marketing, endorsements, celebrities are all about?
Could it be a lie? If it could be a lie, it’s a factual statement. Therefore, “I’m hungry” is a factual statement. I could be lying; I could say I’m hungry when in fact I just had a huge meal and am not hungry.
“The sunset is beautiful” could not be a lie, however. There is no truth value about a sunset and beauty. It’s an opinion statement.
Oddly, “I believe the sunset is beautiful” is a factual statement. I could be lying. I could say the sunset is beautiful, when I don’t believe it’s beautiful at all.