What does it mean to say we are entitled to our opinion?

A redated post. 

What does it mean to say that someone is entitled to their own opinion? People say that a lot, but I am not sure what they are saying when they say it. To say I am entitled to something, I take it, implies someone might want to take it away from me, and either shouldn't or shouldn't be permitted to. But who might be taking out opinion away from us, and what kind of protection do we need from whoever it is that is trying to take our opinion away from us? Further, it isn't clear what an "opinion" is in this context. That can mean a personal preference that can be neither true nor false (country music is better than rock-n-roll), or it can mean a claim which can be true or false, and for which there can be evidence, but is not completely settled to everyone's satisfaction. Consider the "opinion" of Kirilov in Dostoyevsky's The Possesed, who believes that "he who kills himself, becomes God." Is this something that Kirilov is "entitled to," even if it may lead him to suicide (and did, in the novel).
And then we can look at the various means that people might use to get people to stop holding an opinion. We can torture someone to make them change their minds, we can disown them or give them a lot of disapproval and make them feel bad for believing what they do, or we could try to give them reasons why their beliefs are false. Does our being entitled to our opinion mean that no one should attempt to give another person a logical reason for rejecting what he or she currently believes? I would say, certainly not.

This essay is entitled "Sorry, but you are not entitled to your opinion."

I believe I have linked to it before.

Are unprovable statements objective?

 Objectivity does not depend on provability. There are unprovable statements that have to either be true or false. "There is intelligent life on other planets" would be one. I don't know how to prove it one way or the other, but it's got to be true or false. 

Consider the claim "An omnipotent being exists." Many people think that statement can't be proven one way or the other. But even if those people are right, there either is one or there isn't. 

If there is a God, does God know that adultery is always wrong, or is God in the dark about it? It's hard to imagine the latter position as even conceivably true. 

Relativism about evolution?

People have different beliefs about a lot of things, but in many of those cases this does not undermine the idea that there is an objective truth about it. For example, on creation and evolution, no one would suggest, on either side, that evolution is true is if you really believe it, but if you are a creationist, then that is true for you.

Can atheists and believers both be right?

 Let's take a simple case where most people would want to avoid being relativists. Let's take the claim that the world is round. If someone thought the earth was flat, and then went around the world on a ship, it looks as if the sensible conclusion would be that they were in error about that, that the thought the earth was flat, but it turns out to be round.

Now, let's try something else. We may be unsure as to who committed the Jack the Ripper murders, since the case was never solved. But we do know that someone did. That seems to suggest to me that even in cases where we don't have sufficient evidence that something is true, sufficient to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt, we still believe that someone is right about it. Thus, many people believe that O. J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, even though the jury didn't think there was enough evidence for a conviction.

Of course, being right doesn't mean being justified in one's belief. Thus, I can get the right answer to a math problem by guessing. It's still the right answer, even if the teacher doesn't give me credit for it because I didn't show my work.

Now let's consider a scenario in the matter of religious belief. Suppose a person were to be an atheist throughout their lives, and a person who does not believe in life after death (as almost all atheists do). Suppose this atheist were to die, but continue to exist, and were then to experience the presence of a very powerful being on a white throne (let's say), and that being on the throne were to ask the atheist why he did not believe in his existence during his lifetime. (We can imagine this atheist being sent to overheated living quarters thereafter). Wouldn't the sensible think for this atheist to say be that those darned Christians were right after all?

Speaking with conviction

Having a belief that something is really true is, you know, uncool. From Taylor Mali.

Still Another Attack on "You are entitled to your opinion."

Which has an attack on that "fact and opinion" crap that kids get taught in grade school.

Relativism and Respect

A trap that many students seem to fall into with respect to ethics (and sometimes with respect to religion as well) is that they assume that if you have the idea that someone has a false belief, you are disrespecting that person, and the only way to restore respect to the conversation is to assume a relativism in which no one is really right and no one is really wrong. Why assume that?

It seems as if they think I can’t say that, for example, deontologists are correct and teleologists are in error, or vice versa, without disrespecting the people on the other side. In plenty of other areas of discussion we can disagree, and thereby think the other guy is wrong, without disrespecting the other person. If I predict victory for the Cardinals over the Titans in the next NFL game, and you say, no, you think the Titans will win, you are saying that I am wrong. Only one team can win the game. But there need be no disrespect.

How do you deal with student relativism?

What does it mean to say "We are entitled to our opinion?"

When we say we are entitled to our opinion, what this means is that if we have a sincerely held belief, the powers of government don’t have the right to brainwash us and force us to change that belief. It doesn’t mean that we are morally justified in the way in which we hold our beliefs, nor does it mean that regardless of how rational or irrational our belief-forming processes are, our beliefs are as likely to be true as anyone else’s. We can have different opinions about whether our injured ankle is sprained or broken, but the well-informed judgment of a doctor is surely more worthy of consideration than the less-informed opinion of the patient or members of the patient’s family.

Who is to say?

How many times have you heard the phrase "Who is to say?" What could it possibly mean? Is it a commitment to the "someone to say" theory of truth: "p is true just in case there is someone to say that p." But that seems clearly false.