{"id":207,"date":"2013-01-24T13:34:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T02:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/?p=207"},"modified":"2014-09-19T11:16:14","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T01:16:14","slug":"opinionated-a-bit-about-a-philosophical-vice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/2013\/01\/24\/opinionated-a-bit-about-a-philosophical-vice\/","title":{"rendered":"“Opinionated” – a bit about a philosophical vice"},"content":{"rendered":"

One oddity about the social media, as opposed to real life, is that they are often used to praise people for being “opinionated”, as if being opinionated is a good<\/em> thing. I wonder whether the word has changed its meaning, so that for many people it now just means something like “being prepared to express opinions”. In many contexts, that sort of preparedness is, indeed, a good thing – there are situations where we ought to stand up and be counted.<\/p>\n

But the more usual meaning of the word is something like “dogmatic or unreasonably stubborn, or even conceited, about one’s opinions”. This is the main meaning that I get when I consult the couple of big dictionaries that\u00a0I have readily at hand, and surely it’s what people have in mind when they say (in a frustrated tone after someone has left the group), “What an opinionated bastard<\/em>!” or (perhaps with much rolling of eyes) “He\/she is soooo opinionated<\/em>.” What is being objected to here is not that the person has opinions or is prepared to express them. Rather, it is a certain dogmatism or stubbornness as to contentious matters where a bit of epistemic modesty seems called for, perhaps with a certain misguided eagerness to impress with these opinions by raising them insistently, frequently, obsessively, out of context, etc.<\/p>\n

Understood in\u00a0this way, being opinionated is not a virtue of character – it is a vice.\u00a0Moreover, it does not show strength, but weakness.\u00a0An opinionated person is someone who is not<\/em> open to interrogating his or own opinions, perhaps revising or altering them. That sort of openness requires a kind of psychological\u00a0strength, a capacity to live with doubts and ambiguities.\u00a0An opinionated\u00a0person is not interested in the\u00a0contrary perceptions of others, or in\u00a0learning from engagement with those who disagree. Such a person can\u00a0also be driven by\u00a0a conceited view of themselves to hold forth obsessively, tactlessly, at socially inopportune times, etc. I’m sure we all know people like this, and know how boring they can be at parties. It may be a\u00a0cantankerous elderly relative who never misses an opportunity to try to dominate discussion. Or it might be an idealistic younger person who doesn’t understand that the rest of us\u00a0don’t share their\u00a0naive, if passionate, views on social\u00a0rights and wrongs.<\/p>\n

I think it’s clear enough (though I’m open to other opinions!) that being opinionated is a philosophical<\/em> vice. Intellectual progress is made by adopting a certain stance where our own opinions are provisional, and are open to revision if we hear\u00a0strong arguments against them (or even if we just learn more detail about a relevant situation). That does not mean, of course, that we never get to argue our case strongly (at some opportune or appropriate time), but at the very least we should not try to discourage other people when they do likewise, and we need a sense of the right time, manner, etc., if we’re going to do it. We would always do well to bear in mind that much of what we think may be wrong, that often we don’t have the full facts, and that, beyond a certain point, very<\/em> insistent presentations of our opinions reflect badly on us. They make us look inflexible, self-congratulatory, and… well, opinionated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One oddity about the social media, as opposed to real life, is that they are often used to praise people for being “opinionated”, as if being opinionated is a good thing. I wonder whether the word has changed its meaning, so that for many people it now just means something like “being prepared to express […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,11],"tags":[101],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debate","category-philosophy","tag-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}