This elaboration of the problem scratches an itch that has been a nuisance for a long time now. Very satisfying. As a point of curiosity, i wonder why you didnt explicitly consider the possibility that the statement "Everybody's entitled to their own opinion" might just fall into that class of statements you identify in the video as obviously bad because self-contradictory. In other words, is there not at least some sense of the statement that says, as you point out later in the video, that each is allowed his opinion because his opinion can be neither true nor false? If so perhaps one might rejoin that such a statement is an opinion and thus not able to be upheld as true. A kind of liar's paradox. But I am honestly also interested to hear if you think this may be an unworthy rejoinder or a cheap out, a strawman or a distortion of the character of the claim. Nietzsche certainly wouldnt be impressed if you made similar rejoinder to his claim that "Truth is an error that is necessary for life."
Thanks for the question. I have certainly used this approach in the past. I left it out here for two reasons. The first is that my sense is that it's not a particularly compelling argument for those who are already sympathetic to "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion" (EETTOO). They tend to hear the argument and then say "Well, that's your opinion, and EETTOO." Stephen Satris identifies this as part of a classic error that philosophy instructors make when responding to naive "student" relativism. They mistake the position for a serious philosophical position and treat it as such by arguing against it. But most people haven't actually taken this position up as a serious philosophical position at all, and they aren't even tacitly committed to the notion that if someone offers a knock down argument of their position, then they should abandon that position. As the saying goes, you can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into. Those who would be sensitive to a "tolerance paradox" style approach tend to already be skeptical of EETTOO. For anyone else who is reading this, the paradox we're discussing is this: "EETTOO" is an opinion. "It's not the case that EETTOO." is also an opinion. If the first statement is acceptable, a necessary consequence of believing that is also believing that the second statement is equally acceptable. This commits us to essentially saying "A & not-A," which is a naked contradiction. This argument seems like it would fall under the "all opinions are equally good" interpretation. So long as I can establish that self-contradictory opinions are not good, I get the job done. To apply this point back to "EETTOO" goes further than I need, and asks those who are thinking about this stuff for the first time to immediately take up a new concept and apply it. I'm content to walk before we run here (after all this is a semester long class), and not push things too fast. All that said, (and this is my second reason) if this video wasn't already at 45min, I would have tried to include it. I have a lecture slide devoted to this point and everything, I just cut it for this video.
Adam Rosenfeld Its interesting. While I certainly see the merit of Satris' point from a pedagogical point of view, as a kind of regard for the rhetorical efficacy of the approach belonging to something like what Kant identifies as the domain of applied logic (e.g. the psychological sources of error, lack of awareness, etc), it seems prima facie to be out of place in the context of critical thinking properly understood as you have clarified the activity. In other words, even if it is a worthy pedagogical precaution, taking the predisposition of the interlocutor in mind, isn't it essential to the practice of critical thinking to discover for oneself that one's pre-judgments and fore-conceptions, even if never explicitly cognized as judgments, nevertheless commit us to content that can be so cognized. Whether we understand ourselves to have initially made a claim that is philosophic or possessed of ideal logical content, we are still philosophizing in a manner analogousto the metaphysica naturalis as an ineluctable activity of all humans. If I claim EIETTOO, then quite apart from the psychological conditions under which and mode of perspicacity with which I claim it, havent I still made claim that in itself can and must be subject to critique, in the sense of a discernment of its grounds, scope, and justification/justifiability? Even if I just sling it as a slogan, am I not accountable in this manner. Even if it is asserted in a pre-thematic way, doesnt the content of the claim (and its relation to itself as a claim) still have to answer to the law of non-contradiction. I ask this because it seems a mark of those who commit a liars paradox related fallacy like "no opinion is true or false" or "to each his own (opinion)" NEVER initially realize that they are making a claim that must itself be subject to its own content (i.e. its alleged rule). There is always an initial naivete about the nature of the claim, a degree to which it lacks self transparency and is not explicitly made as a claim, but that doesnt mean it is an error to point this out. Maybe? I know its a digression but anyway. Thanks for the video. I look forward to the whole series.
Golden Guru I think the contradiction does not obtain between two opposite opinions (as long as both opiners insist on the explicit deflated epistemic trajectory of their claims, a move which is nevertheless in itself problematic if we understand, as Dr. Rosenfield's video suggests, opinions as eo ipso aiming at truth). However the immediate contradiction lies not between two opposed opinions but between the form of the opinion and its content. The opinion states a rule which extends to all opiners "Everyone is..." but it is precisely requiring that the content of the opinion be the entitlement of the opiner as such, that it cannot extend to another. It therefore cannot command the extent it requires to be intelligible. And this also gets back to the first point: What is "JUST an opinion?" Put another way, when you say Opiner 1 has opinion "S is P" and opiner 2 has opinion "S is not P", no contradiction obtains because both are opinions and only opinions. But this PRESUPPOSES the rule EETTOO as a condition that reaches beyond the realm of opinion as a condition of opining.
Golden Guru So far as I can see, there are two points in need of immediate clarification raised by your questions: 1.)What is the nature and extent of the commitment of opinions? 2.) Does the claim EETTOO have a univocal or equivocal function in the present context? The first question is, for our present purposes, really asking whether we can, without significant or even essential omission, translate EETTOO to something like "think whatever you want." As a preliminary remark, it may be observed that there are different ways in which one cannot think whatever one wants, and the modes of this inability differ according to the content of the thought that is in each case aimed at. Among such impossibilities of thought could be counted, e.g., a square circle which we might say is countersensical, as well as thoughts that are entirely non-sensical (phantasmic thoughts, such as that of a unicorn, do not fall under impossible thoughts such as these, but MERELY possible thoughts) It's not that each thinker can't attempt such impossible thoughts, it's simply that, in different ways they collapse in attempting to be thought; they are strictly speaking impossible, and this impossibility can be measured by the principle of non-contradiction. But this tells us something about thoughts: in order to be possible, they must be about the possible, taken in the broadest sense of what does not in itself contradict itself. Possibility is a condition for the possibility of thought; a thought must be thinkable. Are opinions merely thoughts in the sense of a thinkable possibility? I would suggest that careful attention to what is being aimed at in opining denies this identification. An opinion is not merely a consideration of a possibility, but a claim that the possibility has a relation to existence, or if you prefer, is the case in some way. "Fluorescent elephants" is a thought but it cannot be an opinion, "Elephants can be fluorescent" can be opinion. So too could the statement "I like florescent elephants" or "I think the thought of fluorescent elephants is a childish thought to have." Let this rough distinction suffice as a clarification of the first point your questions raise. Now let me attempt the second point of clarification. EETTOO, if it is an opinion (as contradistingished from a thought), makes a commitment, i.e. it aims at being true, or as was said above, it aims at saying that something is (in such and such a way). What state of affairs or' more generally content, does the opinion EETTOO aim at? Answer: at the relation between opinions and opiner. It claims that the relation is one of entitlement. To paraphrase, it says that the truth of the matter is this: "every opiner may have his opinions, regardless of their veracity or knowability, as his entitlement. So, what is true for all opiners is this: opinions are private property." Now just as a thought must be thinkable as measured by the principle of non-contradiction, so too must any claim to truth, even if it be an opinion. What is contradictory about the claim EETTOO was intended to be made more apparent in my paraphrase above. The claim is a universal one "Everyone..." and it makes a claim to a definite truth about the relation between opiner and opined. But the claim it makes about this relation, namely, that it be characterized by entitlement, forbids such a universal reach of opinions. This is not yet a contradiction, if you say that EETTOO is an absolute truth above any opinion. In that case, it is subject to the further question of whether entitlement REALLY IS the proper relation between opiner and opined. But if one then adds, as you seem to have added, that EETTOO is only an opinion, and that it is thereby justified, you have committed to a contradiction in so far as you are depending on the claim's universal validity in order to justify it as a non-universal opinion. Herein lies the equivocation mentioned in my question (#2) above. EETTOO is here functioning as an opinion, as in "I think EETTOO" and it is justified as non-contradictory (and unproblematically related to the claim "non-EETTOO" because of itself, this time functioning as a universal claim. As an aside I can simply add that for reasons such as these, EETTOO cannot mean the same thing as "Everyone should be allowed to make mistakes sometimes" or "Everyone should be allowed to believe a thing is true until it is proven false"
Golden Guru All of my replies to you have been exclusively devoted to your claim that EETTOO, when taken as "just an opinion," is not in someway contradictory. I hope that I have clearly indicated why, to the contrary, not only is it contradictory, but also self contradictory. Given this, you seem to want to shift the discussion into the political realm, a move in which I am reluctant to follow you, chiefly because I don't think it is necessary. To say that the governmentwill necessarily be interfering with each citizen's neurological activity does not follow from failing to uphold the self-contradictory claim of EETTOO; it follows from having a tyrannical technologically advanced government. It would be a false dilemma to suggest otherwise..
This elaboration of the problem scratches an itch that has been a nuisance for a long time now. Very satisfying.
As a point of curiosity, i wonder why you didnt explicitly consider the possibility that the statement "Everybody's entitled to their own opinion" might just fall into that class of statements you identify in the video as obviously bad because self-contradictory. In other words, is there not at least some sense of the statement that says, as you point out later in the video, that each is allowed his opinion because his opinion can be neither true nor false? If so perhaps one might rejoin that such a statement is an opinion and thus not able to be upheld as true. A kind of liar's paradox. But I am honestly also interested to hear if you think this may be an unworthy rejoinder or a cheap out, a strawman or a distortion of the character of the claim. Nietzsche certainly wouldnt be impressed if you made similar rejoinder to his claim that "Truth is an error that is necessary for life."
Thanks for the question.
I have certainly used this approach in the past. I left it out here for two reasons. The first is that my sense is that it's not a particularly compelling argument for those who are already sympathetic to "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion" (EETTOO). They tend to hear the argument and then say "Well, that's your opinion, and EETTOO." Stephen Satris identifies this as part of a classic error that philosophy instructors make when responding to naive "student" relativism. They mistake the position for a serious philosophical position and treat it as such by arguing against it. But most people haven't actually taken this position up as a serious philosophical position at all, and they aren't even tacitly committed to the notion that if someone offers a knock down argument of their position, then they should abandon that position. As the saying goes, you can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into.
Those who would be sensitive to a "tolerance paradox" style approach tend to already be skeptical of EETTOO.
For anyone else who is reading this, the paradox we're discussing is this: "EETTOO" is an opinion. "It's not the case that EETTOO." is also an opinion. If the first statement is acceptable, a necessary consequence of believing that is also believing that the second statement is equally acceptable. This commits us to essentially saying "A & not-A," which is a naked contradiction.
This argument seems like it would fall under the "all opinions are equally good" interpretation. So long as I can establish that self-contradictory opinions are not good, I get the job done. To apply this point back to "EETTOO" goes further than I need, and asks those who are thinking about this stuff for the first time to immediately take up a new concept and apply it. I'm content to walk before we run here (after all this is a semester long class), and not push things too fast.
All that said, (and this is my second reason) if this video wasn't already at 45min, I would have tried to include it. I have a lecture slide devoted to this point and everything, I just cut it for this video.
Adam Rosenfeld Its interesting. While I certainly see the merit of Satris' point from a pedagogical point of view, as a kind of regard for the rhetorical efficacy of the approach belonging to something like what Kant identifies as the domain of applied logic (e.g. the psychological sources of error, lack of awareness, etc), it seems prima facie to be out of place in the context of critical thinking properly understood as you have clarified the activity. In other words, even if it is a worthy pedagogical precaution, taking the predisposition of the interlocutor in mind, isn't it essential to the practice of critical thinking to discover for oneself that one's pre-judgments and fore-conceptions, even if never explicitly cognized as judgments, nevertheless commit us to content that can be so cognized. Whether we understand ourselves to have initially made a claim that is philosophic or possessed of ideal logical content, we are still philosophizing in a manner analogousto the metaphysica naturalis as an ineluctable activity of all humans. If I claim EIETTOO, then quite apart from the psychological conditions under which and mode of perspicacity with which I claim it, havent I still made claim that in itself can and must be subject to critique, in the sense of a discernment of its grounds, scope, and justification/justifiability? Even if I just sling it as a slogan, am I not accountable in this manner. Even if it is asserted in a pre-thematic way, doesnt the content of the claim (and its relation to itself as a claim) still have to answer to the law of non-contradiction. I ask this because it seems a mark of those who commit a liars paradox related fallacy like "no opinion is true or false" or "to each his own (opinion)" NEVER initially realize that they are making a claim that must itself be subject to its own content (i.e. its alleged rule). There is always an initial naivete about the nature of the claim, a degree to which it lacks self transparency and is not explicitly made as a claim, but that doesnt mean it is an error to point this out. Maybe?
I know its a digression but anyway. Thanks for the video. I look forward to the whole series.
Golden Guru I think the contradiction does not obtain between two opposite opinions (as long as both opiners insist on the explicit deflated epistemic trajectory of their claims, a move which is nevertheless in itself problematic if we understand, as Dr. Rosenfield's video suggests, opinions as eo ipso aiming at truth). However the immediate contradiction lies not between two opposed opinions but between the form of the opinion and its content. The opinion states a rule which extends to all opiners "Everyone is..." but it is precisely requiring that the content of the opinion be the entitlement of the opiner as such, that it cannot extend to another. It therefore cannot command the extent it requires to be intelligible. And this also gets back to the first point: What is "JUST an opinion?"
Put another way, when you say Opiner 1 has opinion "S is P" and opiner 2 has opinion "S is not P", no contradiction obtains because both are opinions and only opinions. But this PRESUPPOSES the rule EETTOO as a condition that reaches beyond the realm of opinion as a condition of opining.
Golden Guru So far as I can see, there are two points in need of immediate clarification raised by your questions:
1.)What is the nature and extent of the commitment of opinions?
2.) Does the claim EETTOO have a univocal or equivocal function in the present context?
The first question is, for our present purposes, really asking whether we can, without significant or even essential omission, translate EETTOO to something like "think whatever you want." As a preliminary remark, it may be observed that there are different ways in which one cannot think whatever one wants, and the modes of this inability differ according to the content of the thought that is in each case aimed at. Among such impossibilities of thought could be counted, e.g., a square circle which we might say is countersensical, as well as thoughts that are entirely non-sensical (phantasmic thoughts, such as that of a unicorn, do not fall under impossible thoughts such as these, but MERELY possible thoughts) It's not that each thinker can't attempt such impossible thoughts, it's simply that, in different ways they collapse in attempting to be thought; they are strictly speaking impossible, and this impossibility can be measured by the principle of non-contradiction. But this tells us something about thoughts: in order to be possible, they must be about the possible, taken in the broadest sense of what does not in itself contradict itself. Possibility is a condition for the possibility of thought; a thought must be thinkable.
Are opinions merely thoughts in the sense of a thinkable possibility? I would suggest that careful attention to what is being aimed at in opining denies this identification. An opinion is not merely a consideration of a possibility, but a claim that the possibility has a relation to existence, or if you prefer, is the case in some way. "Fluorescent elephants" is a thought but it cannot be an opinion, "Elephants can be fluorescent" can be opinion. So too could the statement "I like florescent elephants" or "I think the thought of fluorescent elephants is a childish thought to have." Let this rough distinction suffice as a clarification of the first point your questions raise.
Now let me attempt the second point of clarification. EETTOO, if it is an opinion (as contradistingished from a thought), makes a commitment, i.e. it aims at being true, or as was said above, it aims at saying that something is (in such and such a way). What state of affairs or' more generally content, does the opinion EETTOO aim at? Answer: at the relation between opinions and opiner. It claims that the relation is one of entitlement. To paraphrase, it says that the truth of the matter is this: "every opiner may have his opinions, regardless of their veracity or knowability, as his entitlement. So, what is true for all opiners is this: opinions are private property." Now just as a thought must be thinkable as measured by the principle of non-contradiction, so too must any claim to truth, even if it be an opinion. What is contradictory about the claim EETTOO was intended to be made more apparent in my paraphrase above. The claim is a universal one "Everyone..." and it makes a claim to a definite truth about the relation between opiner and opined. But the claim it makes about this relation, namely, that it be characterized by entitlement, forbids such a universal reach of opinions. This is not yet a contradiction, if you say that EETTOO is an absolute truth above any opinion. In that case, it is subject to the further question of whether entitlement REALLY IS the proper relation between opiner and opined. But if one then adds, as you seem to have added, that EETTOO is only an opinion, and that it is thereby justified, you have committed to a contradiction in so far as you are depending on the claim's universal validity in order to justify it as a non-universal opinion. Herein lies the equivocation mentioned in my question (#2) above. EETTOO is here functioning as an opinion, as in "I think EETTOO" and it is justified as non-contradictory (and unproblematically related to the claim "non-EETTOO" because of itself, this time functioning as a universal claim.
As an aside I can simply add that for reasons such as these, EETTOO cannot mean the same thing as "Everyone should be allowed to make mistakes sometimes" or "Everyone should be allowed to believe a thing is true until it is proven false"
Golden Guru All of my replies to you have been exclusively devoted to your claim that EETTOO, when taken as "just an opinion," is not in someway contradictory. I hope that I have clearly indicated why, to the contrary, not only is it contradictory, but also self contradictory. Given this, you seem to want to shift the discussion into the political realm, a move in which I am reluctant to follow you, chiefly because I don't think it is necessary. To say that the governmentwill necessarily be interfering with each citizen's neurological activity does not follow from failing to uphold the self-contradictory claim of EETTOO; it follows from having a tyrannical technologically advanced government. It would be a false dilemma to suggest otherwise..
Yeah.. but that's just your opinion.
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