Myth #1A:  You Can’t Argue Facts

In Chapter 4 of Reading Argumentative Texts, I argued that two common views of arguments were incorrect and/or misleading.  One of these views, which I referred to as Myth #1, holds that the “conclusion of an argument must be a statement of subjective opinion.”  I will not use this post to continue to beat the drum of why this position is flat-out wrong. 

There is a related view of arguments, a close cousin of Myth #1, that I will analyze here.  It asserts that “statements of fact” are “not arguable.”  The authors of this position apparently believe that this is true because “[m]ost facts can be verified by doing research.”  Let’s call this Myth #1A.  It is also without merit.

There are two principal problems with this view.  First, it misconstrues the function of an argument.  It treats the function of an argument solely as the grasping of a conclusion.  The conclusion of an argument answers the “what?” question, as in “what is the case” or “what is true about the world?”  But an argument answers not only that question but also the “why” question, that is, it tells you why something is the case; it provides the reasons why some statement is true.  Without knowing those reasons, you know relatively little.  If you do not understand why some particular statement is true, if you do not know the reasons why it is true, you are not able to connect that statement with other things that you know to be true.  All of your knowledge is disjointed, unrelated fragments.  And that is not a particularly useful way of navigating through the world, if such navigation is possible at all. 

Curiously, the same authors who propound Myth #1A effectively acknowledge that a principal function of arguments is to answer the “why” question.  They concede that arguments “expand our knowledge with the depth of their analysis” and “lead us through a complex set of claims by providing networks of logical relationships and appropriate evidence.”

The second problem with Myth #1A is the idea that verifying facts through research is an adequate substitute for understanding the reasons supporting a supposed fact.  Let’s take a simple example to illustrate the point.  Suppose you are considering buying a dog, but don’t want one that will bite your friends, neighbors, and kids.  So, you get online and research the tendencies of various breeds to engage in unprovoked attacks on strangers.  One site states that “Rottweilers are inherently vicious and routinely attack strangers” and another site says that “Rottweilers are not inherently vicious and do not routinely attack strangers unless trained to do so.”  You won’t know which statement is true if you do not know the reasons supporting these two statements. 

Even if you do a lot more research, unless you gather enough facts to construct an inductive argument about the tendencies of Rottweilers, you won’t know which statement is more likely to be true or false.  Suppose you dig a little deeper and find that the first statement was supported only by this premise:  I was attacked by a Rottweiler in City Park, when I was walking though minding my own business.  (That’s a weak inductive argument.)  And you also learn that the second statement was supported by twenty scientific studies of many breeds of dogs and each study showed that Rottweilers are no more likely to attack strangers than other breeds.  (That’s a much stronger inductive argument.)  Now you know that the second statement is more likely true than the first and the reasons why it is more likely true.  If you are really interested in digging into the truth of this matter, you could even dig into each of these studies to learn how they were conducted, whether they utilized adequate control groups, what the margin of error is for their conclusions, and so on.  Soon you will become an expert not only on Rottweiler tendencies but maybe also on canine behavior more generally.    

We live in a time in which the “spin doctors” on cable television and social media sites are legion.  And a time when there is a plethora of false and incorrect information waiting to be found. The idea that you can just verify facts through research may be a remnant of a bygone, more innocent era. 

Moreover, it is worth pausing and asking, what is a “fact”?  “The cat is on the mat” may state a simple fact.  But much of what we argue about in our society is more complex facts (or matrices of facts), often mixed in with professional judgments and norms, and no quick internet or library research is going to verify those.  Consider this statement:  climate change caused by human activity is happening now.  That may look like a purely factual statement, but it is not entirely one or, if it is, it is a multi-faceted factual statement.  For starters, before you can begin to understand whether it is true or false, you need a precise definition of “climate change” and a method for measuring change cause by human activity, and both of those may involve some amount of scientific judgment and the application of agree-upon norms.  Again:  easy access to guns leads to more violent deaths in the U.S. than we would have if we had stricter gun laws.  This states a fact only if there is prior agreement on what “easy access” and “stricter” mean in this context.  (Strictly speaking, it states a counterfactual, but we need not go into that here.) 

In sum, you can argue facts.  Aristotle knew that more than 2300 years ago when he proved, through an argument, that “Socrates is mortal.”