Page 25 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

12 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

Although these statements differ in what they say, each is a claim. More
precisely, they claim to represent truly something 'real' about the world. We could
test each claim to see if it is true or not (or at least get a clearer idea of whether or
not we can accept it as true). For example, if someone claimed that John Howard
had supported the war, we could check appropriate newspaper reporting of the
time. Opinion polls conducted at the time can test the first claim, to see if there
was such a majority. All statements that are claims assert the truth of some
information or knowledge about the world.
Claims are not, as you might think, the opposite of facts. Nor does a claim
'become' a fact once we know it is true. A claim is always a claim, but the truth of
some claims is established. And a claim does not necessarily involve some personal
advantage or bias. Although in everyday speech we often use the word 'claim' to try
to distinguish between statements whose truth is suspect or that are biased and
those statements (called Tacts') whose truth is established and that are unbiased,
these distinctions are dangerously misleading. All the statements that we think of
as 'facts' are, actually, claims; they are so widely and clearly accepted as true that
they seem different from claims that are not accepted. Put simply, claims are those
statements that express beliefs or views about the way the world is or the way the
world should be. Whether they are true or not is, of course, important, but it does
not determine whether or not they are claims. The reasonableness of claims (what
we think of as 'truth') does not change their status as claim or non-claim; but it does
help us to decide what to do with claims in our reasoning (as we will see).
To emphasise this point, here are three statements that are not claims:
• Do you think Australia should continue to support all American foreign
policy decisions concerning Iraq?
• Tell me immediately what you think about Australia's war on Iraq!
• G'day!
None of these statements expresses a view about the way the world is or should
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be, and hence they are not claims. The first asks for information (a question); the
second demands that a person do something (an order); and the third is an
exclamation. Note how we do not say 'g'day' to claim that 'this day is a good day'.
We say 'g'day' as a greeting, as a ritual use of language to begin a conversation.
Similarly, orders and questions are ways of initiating or concluding communi-
cation. A few statements may fall somewhere between the two groups (claims and
non-claims)—because they might be interpreted differently in different contexts—
but generally speaking, all statements can be seen as one or the other.
We cannot tell just from the written or spoken expression of a statement
whether or not it is a claim. Rather, we must look at the defining property of a
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claim: that it asserts something to be true. To distinguish a claim from other sorts
of statements, we simply need to consider whether it is possible to ask 'Is this
statement true or false?'. A claim need not actually be true; it need not be false. It
just has to be possible to ask if the claim could be true or false. Consider the
following three statements. Which of them do you think are claims?