October 22, 2010

Do You Have a Right to Your Opinion?

It’s happened to you I’m sure. You are having a discussion with someone, and that person is not only wrong—they are obviously wrong. Every known expert agrees that they are wrong. You have presented them with mounds of incontrovertible evidence that they are wrong—but they still won’t admit it. They continue right along, believing whatever crazy thing they want to believe, insisting that they have “a right” to their opinion.

Stephen Colbert, from The Colbert Report, epitomizes this view perfectly. On July 31, 2006, he declared on his segment THE WØRD,

Now Folks, I’m no fan of reality [It Has a Liberal Bias] and I am no fan of encyclopedias [Just Fat-Ass Dictionaries]. I’ve said it before: “Who is Britanica to tell me George Washington had slaves?” If I want to say he didn’t, that’s my right.

But do people really have a right to have whatever opinion or belief they like? And is everyone’s opinion equally valid? What does it reveal about someone if they think they have a right to their opinion, despite the fact they have been proven wrong? KJ and Jay discuss these issues in the looming shadow of the 2008 Presidential Election. (That’s quite a time delay! Just pretend we are talking about the upcoming elections in November.)

KJ has an article on this issue in Steven Colbert and Philosophy. (It’s the first chapter.)

A revised (and much better version) of that article is the third chapter of Introducing Philosophy Through Pop Culture.