Logic

Sometimes my students want to argue that "my opinion is as good as anyone else's opinion." How do I counter this view with a reasonable philosophical argument? Thanks! Richard in New York

Comments

Ah yes. We've all been there.

It may be worth helping the students see that if they extend this to all opinions, then they've put themselves in a position of telling us that we have no reason to take their own opinions seriously. In particular, if they're right all that all opinions are equally good, then your opinion that opinions aren't all equally good is just as good as theirs. This is a bullet that most thoughtful people could only pretend to bite .

Of course, when people say what your students say, they often have something a little less paradoxical in mind. They may mean that when it comes to certain kinds of questions -- the Olde Chestnuts of philosophy, perhaps, or difficult moral questions -- the fact that consensus is well nigh impossible to come by suggests that one belief on the matter is as good or bad as another.

A really good answer to this worry would take up rather more space than this forum allows. But a few things seem to the point. The first is that some arguments are better than others, even if there's room to disagree about the conclusion. Once again, if someone doesn't grant this, they've taken themselves out of the realm of rational discussion. But well-argued opinions would seem to be better than ill-thought-out ones. Also, we can't be too sure in advance that a question is intractable. Sometimes it just takes a long time to make progress on certain matters. For example: Kant (among many others) thought that the very idea of time required an unambiguous matter of fact about whether x happened before y, y before x or whether they were simultaneous. We've learned (Einstein helped us) that Kant was wrong. Careful thought was what got us to see things more clearly.

Finally, although it's not directly on point, I'd suggest that the students just might find this discussion of an earlier askphilosophers question relevant:

http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/2151

The opinion that all opinions are equally good is one that is usually held by people whose attitude toward knowledge is what some psychologists call "Multiplism" or "Subjective Knowledge". This is the view that, because there are often conflicting answers to questions (or conflicting solutions to problems), people must trust their "inner voices", rather than external authorities (like teachers or professional philosophers:-).

In particular, many "Multiplists" believe that most questions (or problems) are such that we don't yet know what their solutions are, and that this is why everyone has a right to their own opinion.

Although I like Allen Stairs's counterargument--if all opinions are equally good, then so is the opinion that all opinions are not equally good--I'm not convinced that a Multiplist would find it convincing! In general, Multiplists are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with logical argumentation.

A better way to get Multiplists to see that proposed solutions to problems (call them "opinions", if you wish) must be supported by reasons and can be compared and evaluated, is to challenge them to do just that, namely, to learn how to evaluate solutions (or "opinions"), while supporting any discomfort they might feel in doing so. This can be done by reinforcing the view that authorities can and do disagree, having the Multiplists encounter multiple possible solutions to a given problem (after all, the more opinions, the merrier!), and letting them take responsibility for structuring their own learning in an environment with a low degree of structure.

(The psychologists most associated with this view are William Perry and Mary Belenky et al. For an overview and citations, see "William Perry's  Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development".)

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