What are the facts?

In today’s world, articles expressing opposing viewpoints are labeled as “fake news” and falsehoods have been rebranded as “alternative facts”. We all have beliefs about the world. In many cases, we disagree with one another about what the facts are. But we can’t all be right. The sub-branch of philosophy known as epistemology, offers some useful concepts in discussing matters of truth, facts, and belief. In this post, I will use some of these concepts to clear up some of the conceptual confusion surrounding recent events involving President Trump and his spokespeople.

Belief

Philosophers define belief as a state of mind where a subject accepts that a given proposition is true. For instance, Joe believes that he has work in the morning translates to Joe accepts that it is true that he has work in the morning. Beliefs can be true or false, and they can be about anything, even things that are obviously true (e.g. the United States is in North America). 

Truth

A belief is true if it corresponds to how the world is. A belief is false if it does not. The world is the way it is independent of our beliefs. This conception of truth goes back as far as Aristotle and is the dominant view among academic philosophers. There are epistemic relativists and coherentists who hold alternative views about truth, but in our everyday conversation, I assume that we all share a common vocabulary and are making claims about the world under that shared framework. A shared conceptual framework is what makes disagreement possible in the first place.

Beliefs can be true or false even if we cannot know what the truth is. For instance, there is a determinate number of grains of sand at the beach. Likewise, there is a fact of the matter whether or not advanced lifeforms exist elsewhere in the cosmos.

Facts and justification

There’s a fact of the matter as to how many people showed up to Trump’s inauguration. We can safely rule out that only five people attended or that five billion attended. Estimates by crowd scientists, whom carefully studied aerial photographs of the event, put the attendance at around 200,000. Trump, relying upon how things looked from where he was standing, thought the number was over a million. We have two competing claims for how many people showed up to the inauguration. Which number is probably closer to the truth?

We can ask about the kinds of justification used by Trump and the crowd scientists. Which used the more reliable method for counting large crowds?

Crowd scientists look at objective measures, like aerial photographs and the number of metro tickets purchased. Aerial views enables one to see the crowd in its entirety.  Looking out from the ground level at front of the crowd leaves out of sight all of those standing (or not standing) in the back. Furthermore, the front of the crowd is exactly where you would expect to see a higher density of people, thus, providing a (potentially) misleading impression of how many people were there in total. We can see that these two methods of establishing crowd size are not equally reliable, and that Trump’s method is especially prone to error.

In response to crowd estimates conducted by experts, Trump’s counselor, Kelly-Ann Conway, referred to Trump’s belief as an “alternative fact”. Here, she is either misusing the word “fact” for political means, or she is confused about the concept. Sean Spicer, Trump’s main spokesman, has also made similar claims: “Sometimes we can disagree with the facts.”

There aren’t the facts and alternative facts. Facts are facts. What we have in the current situation is a disagreement between two parties about what the facts are. I take it that Conway is not just saying that Trump disagrees with the crowd experts. She is also trying to say that Trump’s belief about the crowd size is a legitimate view to hold.

Given the unreliability of the methods Trump used to form his belief, there are strong reasons to discount his testimony and to side with the experts. Hence, if Conway is insisting that Trump’s view is a legitimate alternative, then she is simply wrong. Having an alternative view does not mean that you deserve to be listened to or respected. There are plenty of possible views one might hold, but many are nonsensical or can be rejected after carefully looking at all the evidence. Holocaust denial is an alternative view. Would Kelly-Ann Conway be prepared to say that Holocaust deniers are presenting “alternative facts”? I highly doubt it. Conway and Spicer are probably just using this rhetoric to try and stay on the President’s good side.

In cases like these, why would some people side with the president over experts? There are several explanations one could offer.

1)    Authoritarianism: Shut up and agree with what our president says!

2)   Conspiracy theorizing: The crowd scientists have doctored the photos. Trump is telling the truth.

3)   Anti-elitism: The academic elites and scientists act like know-it-alls, call those who disagree with them ignorant, but they are often wrong. Therefore, we shouldn’t trust experts.

I take all three of these explanations to be plausible when it comes to Trump’s most ardent supporters. It is hard to see how a rational discussion could take place with such individuals. However, there are plenty of reasonable people who voted for Trump—for instrumental reasons (e.g. Republican control of government) or because they believe his policies will lead to better consequences (e.g. making us safe)—that are amenable to reason and evidence.

Conclusion

We should all care about the truth, even if it is ugly or in conflict with our political views. Instead of demonizing those who disagree with you, hear out their arguments, first, to understand what their position actually is, and second, to see if their position has any merit. Before we begin to have a rational discussion about our disagreements, we need to share some common ground. One source of common ground is a shared understanding of the nature of truth. 

Take-home messages:

1)      There are alternative views, but not alternative facts.

2)    Truth is independent of our beliefs.

3)     Not all beliefs are equally justified.