Facts Matter, More Than You May Think: Democracy, Truth and Power

Our political and cultural identities do not mean very much if there is little that they have in common. It isn’t enough for all of us to “simply disagree” with each other in order to have a Democracy.

This is because personal freedom can only exist for each of us when we, together, create a system that defines and enables that freedom. Working together requires that we stand together on common ground.

Democracies have a special problem when it comes to general agreement on….most anything. In other forms of government, current rulers define beliefs and values, often through an appeal to religion, for everyone else.

But democracies are an exception to this pattern. When power is decentralized and continuously changes hands based on an effective mass-choice process, neither political leadership nor religious orthodoxy can dictate what people believe or value in their everyday lives.

Democracies must achieve a working level of unity of beliefs and values without the capacity to impose that unity.

Our challenge is beliefs more than values

Since the internet revolution, unity of beliefs (“what is”) has been more of a challenge than unity of values (“what should be”).

Despite all of the focus on patriotism, justice, family values, equity/equality, life, individual rights, etc., we generally agree that these are values at the heart of our society. We disagree on the details, and we must compromise in order to create policy. But we have achieved this, albeit through significant pain and suffering, for more than two centuries.

Unity of values is not the challenge that is new for us today. What has emerged with the internet is uncertainty about the facts of everyday reality. We have, in the past, relied on a common foundation of factual beliefs in order to work out our value and policy differences.

Consider science, our gold standard for accurate, factual description of the natural world. In the past, specific scientific theories or facts have been contested when they seem to contradict the values and truths held by other, often religious, institutions. Evolution and geologic time are good examples of this. Despite this, we have always tied our nation’s economic and political success to a focus on scientific knowledge and technological progress — because…..it works.

However, in our day, skepticism of particular scientific facts often morphs into a more comprehensive “science denial”.

A good example of this denial in everyday life is our history with COVID 19. Over the course of this ongoing pandemic, we (as a nation) have been unable to agree on the existence of COVID, on the virulence of COVID, on what constitutes a treatment, on the efficacy of emerging treatments, on the nature and importance of vaccines, etc., etc.

As opinions on all of these proliferate, scientific consensus becomes one more voice in the chorus, one option among equals from which individuals can choose. When the criterion for identifying facts becomes individual choice, facts no longer exist.

No facts, no democracy

The catch is, democracy is that form of government that requires facts. This is because facts are a form of truth that comes “from below”. For power to come from below, the truth that we all share must come from below.

Democracy is that form of government that requires an independence between truth and power.

Modern, nation-state democracies achieve this requirement through agreement on facts. Because factual descriptions are observable, these are the truths on which a general population is most able — without coercion — to agree.

Today’s assault on factual knowledge reflects a loss of the common ground on which we have, for over two centuries, debated values, created policy, and renewed our democracy.

Retaking that ground requires that we first of all, as a nation, become more aware of what facts are, and of their significance for democracy.

Facts are……: the line between fact and non-fact

One way of recognizing facts is to draw a line between factual and nonfactual knowledge. That line has these characteristics:

1. Facts are observable. The beliefs that can most readily be evaluated for accuracy and also agreed upon by the widest population are those which we can observe through our senses. If we can also measure them, so much the better.

2. In addition, there can only be one description accepted as fact at any one time — unless we throw out the concept of “fact” altogether and reduce all beliefs to individual opinions. There are often many opinions about the accuracy of a description of reality. One of these opinions becomes a fact when it is accepted by a general consensus on the basis of evidence.

3. This means that “fact-finding” is social; we create facts together. Truth claims about observable, everyday life are not considered facts simply because someone says they are. In addition, these claims are not discredited simply because someone disagrees with them. Fact-finding is our way of sifting through varied descriptions of everyday experience to arrive at that which we, as a group, consider the most accurate description.

4. In practice, all voices are not equal in establishing a fact. As examples: some manage to be heard more than others; some have more familiarity with the subject than others. In the interest of accuracy, fact-finding must be open to and recognize all of the most knowledgeable voices on a subject, no matter how loud or quiet they may be.

In sum: Facts are different than opinions and nonfactual beliefs in their capacity for verification. Truth claims become valid facts:

· the more detailed and complete the description of observable reality;

· the more generally accessible the observation, description and sources;

· the more these conform to the rules of evidence, including credibility of sources;

· the greater the consensus of knowledgeable persons, and the greater the body of knowledgeable persons.

These characteristics mark the line between factual and nonfactual beliefs. Any claim to factual status must justify that claim based on these standards.

The significance of factual knowledge: civil institutions

What does this line look like in everyday life? Happily for us, facts remain embedded in and evident at the heart of our civil institutions.

The most important of these is our educational system. A core lesson that our schools convey to our nation’s youth is that opinions must be compatible with facts. Our educational system sets the standards for the observation, description and rules of evidence that are at the heart of factual knowledge.

History and science are the two most important subjects through which our schools accomplish this.

History: History is our story about ourself based on evidence. Here the rules of evidence and verification are drawn by the community of historians — those familiar with documented events and what has been communicated about them. Anyone can write about past events, but their account must conform to these rules for it to be considered “history” — factual knowledge — in our democracy.

A good example of this process at work is the vast historical literature on race in the U.S.

There is a clear consensus among historians today regarding a growing and rich body of evidence describing our racial history. There is also disagreement among those historians regarding some of these factual claims, mostly having to do with the significance of past events on the shape of our democracy today and on current patterns of racial inequality. The line between consensus and lack of consensus, between fact and emerging fact, is clearly drawn in today’s vibrant debate over race.

We have much at stake in this debate. How it develops will determine the extent to which our national “arc of history bends toward justice”, in the words of Martin Luther King. In addition, awareness and respect for the changing line between fact and opinion in this debate determines whether democracy itself endures going forward.

We cannot have one without the other; no facts, no democracy, no justice. Facts and democracy are a necessary, if not sufficient, requirement for achieving policies of racial justice.

Science: The line between fact and opinion is most clearly drawn in science. Science provides clear guidelines by which practitioners — professional or not — establish scientific facts. This goes beyond comprehensive and detailed description to providing the gold standard for causal explanation. Science can provide maximum achievable accuracy in factual representation of everyday reality because it relies on a research process organized around disproving, rather than proving, hypothetical answers to research questions.

All of our democracy’s civil institutions rest on a foundation of historical and scientific facts. These facts provide their common ground, ensure their legitimacy and partially determine their effectiveness.

This is not a claim that our civil institutions are singularly focused on establishing valid facts in same way as history and science. They are not; they have different functions than this. The claim is that their various functions must be grounded on scientific and historical facts.

For many civil, and some public, institutions, the requirement for a factual basis is evident: journalism, health system, military, economy, etc.

For others, one may need to step back and look more carefully. For example, manipulation for power in our political system can obscure the significance of facts in democratic politics. Legitimacy in a democratic society requires that politicians remain grounded in factual knowledge. This is for two reasons:

· facts are generated from the bottom up, rather than the top down; in a democracy, truth cannot be imposed from the top down;

· facts are the most accurate truths about everyday reality that we have; they provide a politician’s best shot at the policy success required for enduring democratic power.

In other words, when political legitimacy no longer requires a grounding in fact, we are no longer living in a democracy.

The significance of factual knowledge: cultural diversity

Once we join together in a commitment to democracy and to factual knowledge, we have the tools necessary to create a system which ensures maximum personal freedom and cultural diversity to the greatest number of citizens. This includes religious freedom.

For some, this point may seem ironic, given our history of conflict between religion and science. However, when religious freedom is based on respect for and correspondence with the facts of everyday reality, it can thrive — because democracy can thrive. When religious freedom is used to undermine historical or scientific consensus on the facts of everyday reality, those facts, the democracy they support, and religious freedom itself are compromised.

In a democratic society, truth, in the form of facts, is the basis for power, rather than the other way around.

As a result, we have the potential to work things out if we value our democracy enough to unite in our commitment to factual knowledge. There is no other way.

Dan Stuhlsatz writes for the publication Our Sacred Democracy on Medium and is a Founding Member of the None of the Above Society.