I am probably not alone in welcoming the return of Liam Kofi Bright to blogging after a longish hiatus. Writing as The Sooty Empiric, he takes on the ‘fact vs opinion’ distinction, which is peddled by educators and misinformation scholars Stateside. As he notes the distinction is increasingly “a marker of civic political competence.” What makes Liam’s piece so excellent is that he both diagnoses the earnest impulses that might give rise to promoting such a distinction, and that he uses lovely examples to illustrate the many reasons
I haven't followed all of the argument. But if there is no fact/opinion distinction, there can be no facts. If so, whoever is more powerful gets to determine what is taken to be true. That was the path that took social constructionism into the defense of creationism (Fuller), climate science denialism and so forth. Latour saw the problems with this back in 2004, IIRC.
I haven't followed all of the argument. But if there is no fact/opinion distinction, there can be no facts. If so, whoever is more powerful gets to determine what is taken to be true. That was the path that took social constructionism into the defense of creationism (Fuller), climate science denialism and so forth. Latour saw the problems with this back in 2004, IIRC.