What to do when the ball's in your court

I once heard of a man who was very disturbed when he kept reading about the connection between smoking and lung cancer. So he resolved there and then to give up. He stuck to his resolve, and throughout his short life, he never touched a book again.

Quoted in John Young, 1986:
The Case Against Christ (p.201)

One of the principles that society defends is freedom of opinion. This basically means that you’re entitled to hold any opinion you like, no matter how indefensible, inconsistent or just plain silly it may be, without fear of punishment.

The great benefit of living in this kind of society is that, whatever your views happen to be on any subject, you can be safe in the knowledge that you won’t be punished by society for holding them. The only limits you may encounter are limits on how you can act on those views, if your actions are likely to infringe other people’s rights.

That’s how things stand from a political point of view. From a rational point of view, however, the situation is different. Here, you should remember the traditional warning issued by schoolteachers everywhere: you’re entitled to any opinion as long as you can justify it.

And ‘justifying it’ doesn’t just mean ‘putting forward your reasons and sticking to them’. It means both less and more than that: less, because nobody expects you to be able to spout off a perfect argument to justify every single opinion you hold; and more, because not any old reasons will do. Essentially, it means satisfying yourself that any problems with your opinion can be resolved.

Rationally speaking, if you want to be entitled to an opinion, you have to be open to objections, and you have to be satisfied that each objection you come across can be answered. And if you ever run into an objection that you find can’t be answered, then this shows your opinion to be inconsistent or false – and you must amend the opinion accordingly. It’s as simple as that.

This all seems very obvious. But it’s amazing how often you come across people who, when they see that they’re losing an argument, will come out with ‘Well, I’m entitled to my opinion’. From a political point of view, no doubt this is true, but from a rational point of view it’s just plain wrong. Rationally speaking, you’re not entitled to hold any opinion unless you’re satisfied that its apparent problems, holes and inconsistencies can be resolved. Nobody is entitled (in the rational sense) to hold an unjustifiable opinion unless they believe that the opinion can be justified. To do so is irrational and arrogant.

Historically, the big questions of philosophy seem to be questions that encourage lay people on both sides of the debate to fall back on ‘Well, I’m entitled to my opinion and you’re entitled to yours’. That’s all very well if all you want to do is avoid an argument, but it simply points out a political fact. It isn’t in the least bit relevant to either the truth or the justification of the opinion in question.

Now, if your opinions happen to coincide with everyone else’s, then daily life poses no rational challenge for you; it may just serve to make your own opinions more secure. But if your opinions happen to conflict with others, the challenge is clear. Rationally, you must find the flaw in the logic that leads other people to their differing opinions, or show why they don’t apply, or why they don’t make sense, or what they’ve failed to take into account – and if you find that can’t be done, then you should be prepared to amend your own opinions accordingly.

Of course, the situation is far from hopeless, and the challenge is hardly an impossible one. There’s absolutely no guarantee that other people’s conclusions are actually correct, so the process of tracking down their mistakes may well serve to make your beliefs stronger, not weaker.

But you’ll never know unless you try. The ball’s in your court.

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