Opinions

Continuing my occasional series on constructive discourse and logical fallacies, consider the word "opinion." As I noted last time, words generally have a range of meanings. In scientific writing, a word may be given a very specific, narrow definition, but if the same word also exists in the vernacular, it may be commonly used more broadly. That isn't a mistake, it's just that the meaning of a word can be dependent on context, and on the style of writing or discourse. It is a mistake if the broader, common meaning is used to read back the scientific discourse, or if the narrow technical meaning is used to criticize non-technical writing. In other words, you have to know where you are and which meaning is intended.

 

"Opinion" is a word that shows up in the scientific or at least semi-scientific context of polling and survey research, but survey researchers, as far as I know, seldom bother to define it or even query what they mean by it. It's however people answer a question of whatever sort. But in fact the word does have multiple meanings and this often leads to confusion and people talking at cross purposes.

One meaning of the word is purely personal preference, a stance that does not at its base depend on any specific facts beyond what Jack and Jill like and enjoy. In Herman's opinion, Bobby Flay's fish tacos are better than Alex Guarnaschelli's. Melba prefers Carol King to Carly Simon.  That sort of thing. You can't argue with it. You can't tell Herman or Melba that they're wrong and Herman and Melba can't tell anybody else to agree with them, although food and music critics will try to do exactly that. But you're still gonna like what you like.

 

Then there are moral judgments or values. These are trickier because people often do claim they should be imposed on others, and we apply the same terms - right and wrong - to moral judgments as we do to facts. I can say you are wrong to believe that bats are birds, and I can also say that you are wrong to believe that abortion is murder, but these are entirely different sorts of claims.  Without trying to summarize 3,000 years of moral philosophy, I will just make a couple of key points. First, people do have some built-in moral instincts, and there are some principles that are pretty much cultural universals. These basic rights of personhood, however, may extend only to a certain group designated to have the rights of persons. As we have seen in our reading of the Torah, unprovoked assault and rape are not allowed against fellow Israelites, but they are allowed against conquered people. Nowadays, most nations accept laws of war that says that's not okay, but it still happens. In the United States, it was once okay to enslave Africans but not Europeans. (I won't get into the continuing distinction in the moral categories of people of African and European descent because it would be a distraction here, but I will likely discuss that eventually.)

Apart from whatever moral instincts people have -- and I'm sure you've been reading about the trolley problems and that sort of thing -- there are arguments from utility or pragmatism for certain moral positions. Much -- though not all -- of the criminal law is intended to protect people's safety, or to defend the economic system (for better or for worse from any individual's standpoint). Of course where lines should be drawn and what the penalties should be for transgression are always debatable.

Then there is the argument from religion: God said so. Obviously I don't have to believe in your God or that God made any specific moral pronouncement. Curiously, by the way, the God of the Bible did not say that abortion is murder, or even that is the tiniest bit wrong. So that must come from someplace else.

 

Now we come to the third broad meaning of "opinion," and that has to do with various categories of uncertainty. There's uncertainty about the future: who will win the election, or the world series? Are Herman and Melba ever going to tie the knot? What horse will win the third race at Aqueduct? Predictions are therefore a kind of opinion.

Then there are present or past factual matters that are in doubt. You might have an opinion about the true story of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. You might have an opinion about the nature of the Dark Matter -- Massive Compact Halo Objects or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or something else. There is a truth out there somewhere, but it's in dispute. But that's actually a matter of degree. Some people will insist that the true story of the King assassination is not in doubt at all and you're a dupe not to believe it.

And here it does get more complicated. Some conclusions are the product of deep study requiring special expertise, such as the age of the universe or the nature of conservatism. But these two examples are of a different kind. Some people do not believe the conclusion of cosmologists about the age of the universe, but cosmologists make the good faith claim that their evidence is incontrovertible, and if you undertook a course of study leading to a Ph.D. in the proper subject matter you would be convinced; and you might be even if you undertook a less rigorous inquiry.

In the social sciences, however, matters are seldom so clear-cut. People who study history, society and politics marshal facts and process them logically to come to conclusions, but the questions are less sharply defined, isolating values from facts is often very difficult, and evidence may be of uncertain accuracy or conflicting. This means that scholars can come to different conclusions about a question, although we often do see convergence over time. So, Philip Agre's conclusions about conservatism are not mere "opinion" in the same sense that your favorite flavor of ice cream is an opinion. They are based on knowledge of history and current events, on a review of social structures and associated rhetoric  over thousands of years. 

 

You may disagree with his conclusions, but to talk about them constructively you must engage with his arguments. Just claiming that you and others disagree is not helpful, especially since part of his argument is precisely that conservative rhetoric is intended to deceive and often does so successfully. You would need to show why it is not deceptive after all, and present fact based, logical arguments for your own, different conclusion. If you can do that, you can join a conversation. Otherwise, you're just wasting people's time.