Is the following statement a fact or an opinion?

“I think that Chicago is a great musical group.”

Consider this carefully. How about this one?

“Pizza is my favorite thing to eat.”

If you gave an answer to either one of these within five seconds of reading them, you might want to re-think your response. I would suppose that most people who read these statements might conclude that these are both opinions, but there are a couple of ways of looking at each of these that give rise to debate.

First, let’s examine what a fact is and what an opinion is. I have run across many people who, for some reason, think that a fact is a statement of truth. But that is only one definition, and it is not the philosophical one. From a philosophical standpoint, a fact is a statement that can be proven either true or false. So if a statement can be proven to be false, it is, technically speaking, a fact, it is just a false fact. An opinion, on the other hand, is a statement that cannot be proven to be true or false, because it is based solely on one’s personal, subjective viewpoint. Opinions express like or dislike, pleasure or disdain, varying degrees of merit; they concern themselves with matters of relativity, all of which can change with the blowing of the wind.

Let’s look at the first example. If you have concluded that this sentence is a statement of opinion, then you have surely concluded that the opinion concerns the band Chicago. But let’s look at this from a grammatical standpoint. The subject of this sentence is “I”, which makes it the doer of the verb, the verb being “think”. These two words make up the bare bones of this sentence, and all of the rest of the words are merely tag ons. So this sentence is not about Chicago at all, or at least not primarily; it mainly concerns itself with the doer, “I”. “I think” is a statement of fact; whatever follows these two words is irrelevant. The doer may think that Mars is made of cheese for all we care; that is not the issue, at least not in this sentence. Granted, the doer may being lying about what they claim to think, i.e. they may not actually think that Chicago is a great musical group, they may simply be stating as much to fit in with a crowd. The mere possibility that we may at some point discover that this is a lie shows that it is a false fact. At this point, however, we don’t know; all that we know is that the doer, “I”, has stated that it thinks about something, and that, unarguably, is a fact.

Now for the second example. This one is a bit trickier. From a grammatical standpoint, the subject is now “Pizza” and the verb is now “is”. This is tricky because most properly formulated opinions begin by indicating a state of existence about a certain subject, and that is exactly what this sentence does. However, it continues with a twist, because the word “my” refers itself back to the one who is making the statement, and so it becomes a self-supporting statement. This means that it is either true or false that pizza is the favorite food of the person who has made this statement, and therefore it is a statement of fact.

I grant you that, contextually, these statements have matters of opinion embedded within them, but they are not themselves opinions. Pure opinions would appear in this form:

“Chicago is a great musical group.”

This statement concerns itself only with the musical group, Chicago, and its merits. It can never be proven that Chicago is not great, because this is a matter of subjectivity; it is relative; to some they are great, to some they are not. It is a fact that the person making the statement thinks this, while the content of such a thought is truly a matter of opinion. Since this sentence deals solely with the content of the thought, i.e. whether Chicago is or is not great, and refers itself in no way to the person making the statement or to the existence of the thought itself, it is a pure opinion.

As for the second example, it could be stated like so:

“Pizza is the best food.”

When examining a sentence to determine whether it is a statement of opinion, one of the first things to look for is whether any part of the sentence refers itself back to the one making the statement, perhaps through the use of such words as “I”, “my”, “me”, “we”, “our”, “us”, or other such similar first person terms. If it does, and if there is something stated about an object other than the statement maker, this may not be the opinion that you first thought it was. It will be worth your while to examine it further. This is not the final determinant, but it should set off a major red flag.

In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge that there are many strains of thought out there concerning these matters, probably more that disagree with me than otherwise. Many take a slightly different standpoint, only because to go as far as I have gone would confuse the average beginning student, and to that end I may concede to their methods. As for the rest, I would hope that if they will examine their own arguments thoroughly, and consider how they themselves define “fact” and “opinion”, often properly at least in part, they may discover a whole new world of thought to pursue.