DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF OPINIONS:
a. OPINIONS ARE COMPLEX INFERENCES: They are inferences drawn from factual or non-factual data, or from other opinions, or from narratives, or from anecdotes about the material or immaterial universe.
b. OPINIONS CAN BE EXPRESSED IN ANY TERMS: They can be expressed in any terms thought to be useful by the holder of the opinion, and are not limited to mensurability even when they contain pseudo-mensurable elements as in some of the following examples:
“Two men robbed the gas station.”
“The nine pennies in the drawer belong to Robert.”
“I got a double eagle on the seventh hole.”
“Some Democrats want to turn this country into a socialist state.”
c. OPINIONS CANNOT BE SUPPORTED BY FACTS: Opinions are not mensurable assertions and can never be supported by facts. They are assertions of belief based on credible (and sometimes, incredible) evidence. The evidence, however, may be Formal, i.e., the rational and logical entailments of consistent and well-structured propositions; or Circumstantial, i.e., “he was there, so he must have done it;” or Anecdotal, e.g., “families that eat together regularly are less likely to have kids who get into trouble.”
d. OPINIONS ARE ALWAYS SUBJECTIVE: Sometimes opinions are considered as low-grade or “subjective” facts”:
e. OPINIONS OFTEN DO NOT REQUIRE A LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION:
f. THE TEST OF AN OPINION IS ITS REASONABLENESS: Opinions are always gauged on their reasonableness and consistency. Since by their very nature opinions cannot have elements of enumeration, extension or duration, opinions are tested by conformance to some known standard of fluidity and grace. If the opinion itself seems to be reasonable and logical and consistent, without compelling errors, it is deemed a good opinion. Often times in scientific circles, this particular test is applied to things such as the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory. In both cases, there is no factual content to test. As a result, the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory are often subjected to the LBR Test: if it “looks ‘bout right,” then it passes the test.
g. OPINIONS MAY NOT BE QUANTIFIED: It does not make sense to say, for example, “George Bush is 2.6 percent (or 26 percent or 260 percent) evil.”
h. OPINIONS ARE NOT SELF-REFERENTIAL: They imply everything beyond themselves in the same way that a logical contradiction entails everything else.
i. OPINIONS, GENERALLY, ARE NOT VERIFIABLE AND REPEATABLE BY OTHER COMPETENT INDIVIDUALS: However, others may support similar opinions, or others may support opinions that do not agree with those opinions. One should recognize that considerable variation exists with opinions. As a general tendency, though, the results vary considerably from person to person to the point that opinions may differ widely - even to the point of outright contradiction.
j. OPINIONS ARE NOT TRIVIAL:
k. A COLLECTION OF OPINIONS CONSTITUTES A LIST: As opinions themselves can imply everything, so also lists can imply everything. Lists, sometimes called “data,” are used, however, to form subsequent opinions or more deeply articulated opinions. But the lists themselves are not limited to a definite conclusion.
l. OPINIONS, COLLECTIVELY GROUPED IN A LIST, ARE NOT INTER-RELATED: They are intransitive and independent of one another.
m. THE CONFUSION OF OPINIONS WITH FACTS: Science, as a self-styled, mensurable activity, frequently falls into the error of confusing opinions with facts. All scientific “evidence” is ultimately based on opinions and not on facts, even though the “data” will appear to be “factual.” In fact, the work of science is to make opinions appear to be objective by quantifying that which cannot be quantified.
n. THE MATHEMATIZATION OF OPINIONS YIELDS PARTICULAR DESCRIPTIONS OF RELATIONS:
OPINION NARRATIVES:
a. BIKER LOG: Some time ago I was directed by others to a web-site that featured a so-called report of a bicycling trip across the state of Iowa. On the whole I found this report unsatisfactory for several reasons. The author had a very perky and sophomoric style of writing that eventually enervated the reader with its strained effort to be funny. The attempts at humor were so contrived and forced that the work was difficult to read through in its entirety (I couldn’t finish it). It was far too long to keep anyone’s attention, and if one did not share a cycling passion with the writer, it was uninteresting as well.
Instead of supplying a useful narrative to his readers, the writer had only observations and opinions of what he had seen on the trip across state of Iowa. And invariably, the citizens there were pictured as hopeless and flawed individuals, who had voted Republican in the most recent elections, and who entertained perverse ideas, such as hostility to a variety of liberal views on taxation, gun control, and the death penalty, etc.
On the whole, the antic style of this particular writer reminded one of the perpetual class cutup back in grade school who always attempted to amuse his classmates with his highly inappropriate coprolalia. Either that, or this writer sounded like an inept person who tried to tell a joke that you had already heard before, and told that joke with such a telegraphic style that you were bored to death before the person ever got to the punch line. The only thing that could possibly make his writing worse would be his writing with him under the influence of quart of tequila.
On the whole, though, the article was useful for the lessons it taught about writing in general, strange as that may seem. Normally, one would expect to find a cycling report that described the trip and some of the things that were seen on the trip and some of the lessons that are learned there. Instead, the reader was treated to an endless, piecemeal memory-dump on the part of the author. Particularly annoying were his uses of foreign words and phrases mixed in with the most trite language possible. I suppose one was supposed to gauge his sophistication by the use of those haute words, but his childish style ruined the effect completely. By combining those sarcastic and ill-chosen words in the same sentence, the man merely looked foolish, like the rookie writer trying to be a sophisticate and a comedian at the same time. It simply didn’t work.
But I would have to say that his complete lack of narration gave a very staccato effect to his writing - almost a bam-bam-bam slide show effect - that made it very difficult to see the point the man was trying to make in his writings. Instead, each paragraph detailed a separate, unconnected view of what he saw on that cycling trip.
The comments were stated as his opinions of what he saw and did on that trip; or opinions of what he thought about the inadequacies of the citizens there; or his opinions of life in general. And he offered those opinions over and over as if any reader in the world might be interested in what he thought. But instead of being something that could be received with grace, those opinions merely showed a disillusioned and bigoted fool, who seemed to be convinced that the world thought he was God’s gift to writing. Of course, he wasn’t. Fools always come off as fools; they’re seldom seen as geniuses or as God’s gift to anyone. And this writer was no different. He was a garden-variety fool, with touches of literary talent, who managed to annoy everyone who looked at his piece of writing.
b. RAW OPINION: “The greatest of this [environmental] writing is neither sentimental nor obvious - instead, it is very nearly shamanistic, allowing the natural world to translate itself into English in all sorts of ways. The emotional ways, taxonomic ways, descriptive ways, intimate ways, Olympian ways. It is a community of writers, with all the particulars of their upbringings, tastes, genders, mental states, seeking faithfully to serve as some sort of connection between people and the rest of the world. That faithfulness demands the most scrupulous accuracy - you have to know the tree’s resilience, the coyote’s circling route, the carbon molecule’s structure. But it also demands that you care, which is the highest form of objectivity [emphasis not in the original]” (Bill McKibben. “Speaking Up for the Environment,” The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, Marie Arana, ed., New York: PublicAffairs, 2003, pp. 363-364).
a. OPINIONS ARE COMPLEX INFERENCES: They are inferences drawn from factual or non-factual data, or from other opinions, or from narratives, or from anecdotes about the material or immaterial universe.
b. OPINIONS CAN BE EXPRESSED IN ANY TERMS: They can be expressed in any terms thought to be useful by the holder of the opinion, and are not limited to mensurability even when they contain pseudo-mensurable elements as in some of the following examples:
“Two men robbed the gas station.”
“The nine pennies in the drawer belong to Robert.”
“I got a double eagle on the seventh hole.”
“Some Democrats want to turn this country into a socialist state.”
c. OPINIONS CANNOT BE SUPPORTED BY FACTS: Opinions are not mensurable assertions and can never be supported by facts. They are assertions of belief based on credible (and sometimes, incredible) evidence. The evidence, however, may be Formal, i.e., the rational and logical entailments of consistent and well-structured propositions; or Circumstantial, i.e., “he was there, so he must have done it;” or Anecdotal, e.g., “families that eat together regularly are less likely to have kids who get into trouble.”
d. OPINIONS ARE ALWAYS SUBJECTIVE: Sometimes opinions are considered as low-grade or “subjective” facts”:
e. OPINIONS OFTEN DO NOT REQUIRE A LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION:
f. THE TEST OF AN OPINION IS ITS REASONABLENESS: Opinions are always gauged on their reasonableness and consistency. Since by their very nature opinions cannot have elements of enumeration, extension or duration, opinions are tested by conformance to some known standard of fluidity and grace. If the opinion itself seems to be reasonable and logical and consistent, without compelling errors, it is deemed a good opinion. Often times in scientific circles, this particular test is applied to things such as the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory. In both cases, there is no factual content to test. As a result, the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory are often subjected to the LBR Test: if it “looks ‘bout right,” then it passes the test.
g. OPINIONS MAY NOT BE QUANTIFIED: It does not make sense to say, for example, “George Bush is 2.6 percent (or 26 percent or 260 percent) evil.”
h. OPINIONS ARE NOT SELF-REFERENTIAL: They imply everything beyond themselves in the same way that a logical contradiction entails everything else.
i. OPINIONS, GENERALLY, ARE NOT VERIFIABLE AND REPEATABLE BY OTHER COMPETENT INDIVIDUALS: However, others may support similar opinions, or others may support opinions that do not agree with those opinions. One should recognize that considerable variation exists with opinions. As a general tendency, though, the results vary considerably from person to person to the point that opinions may differ widely - even to the point of outright contradiction.
j. OPINIONS ARE NOT TRIVIAL:
k. A COLLECTION OF OPINIONS CONSTITUTES A LIST: As opinions themselves can imply everything, so also lists can imply everything. Lists, sometimes called “data,” are used, however, to form subsequent opinions or more deeply articulated opinions. But the lists themselves are not limited to a definite conclusion.
l. OPINIONS, COLLECTIVELY GROUPED IN A LIST, ARE NOT INTER-RELATED: They are intransitive and independent of one another.
m. THE CONFUSION OF OPINIONS WITH FACTS: Science, as a self-styled, mensurable activity, frequently falls into the error of confusing opinions with facts. All scientific “evidence” is ultimately based on opinions and not on facts, even though the “data” will appear to be “factual.” In fact, the work of science is to make opinions appear to be objective by quantifying that which cannot be quantified.
n. THE MATHEMATIZATION OF OPINIONS YIELDS PARTICULAR DESCRIPTIONS OF RELATIONS:
OPINION NARRATIVES:
a. BIKER LOG: Some time ago I was directed by others to a web-site that featured a so-called report of a bicycling trip across the state of Iowa. On the whole I found this report unsatisfactory for several reasons. The author had a very perky and sophomoric style of writing that eventually enervated the reader with its strained effort to be funny. The attempts at humor were so contrived and forced that the work was difficult to read through in its entirety (I couldn’t finish it). It was far too long to keep anyone’s attention, and if one did not share a cycling passion with the writer, it was uninteresting as well.
Instead of supplying a useful narrative to his readers, the writer had only observations and opinions of what he had seen on the trip across state of Iowa. And invariably, the citizens there were pictured as hopeless and flawed individuals, who had voted Republican in the most recent elections, and who entertained perverse ideas, such as hostility to a variety of liberal views on taxation, gun control, and the death penalty, etc.
On the whole, the antic style of this particular writer reminded one of the perpetual class cutup back in grade school who always attempted to amuse his classmates with his highly inappropriate coprolalia. Either that, or this writer sounded like an inept person who tried to tell a joke that you had already heard before, and told that joke with such a telegraphic style that you were bored to death before the person ever got to the punch line. The only thing that could possibly make his writing worse would be his writing with him under the influence of quart of tequila.
On the whole, though, the article was useful for the lessons it taught about writing in general, strange as that may seem. Normally, one would expect to find a cycling report that described the trip and some of the things that were seen on the trip and some of the lessons that are learned there. Instead, the reader was treated to an endless, piecemeal memory-dump on the part of the author. Particularly annoying were his uses of foreign words and phrases mixed in with the most trite language possible. I suppose one was supposed to gauge his sophistication by the use of those haute words, but his childish style ruined the effect completely. By combining those sarcastic and ill-chosen words in the same sentence, the man merely looked foolish, like the rookie writer trying to be a sophisticate and a comedian at the same time. It simply didn’t work.
But I would have to say that his complete lack of narration gave a very staccato effect to his writing - almost a bam-bam-bam slide show effect - that made it very difficult to see the point the man was trying to make in his writings. Instead, each paragraph detailed a separate, unconnected view of what he saw on that cycling trip.
The comments were stated as his opinions of what he saw and did on that trip; or opinions of what he thought about the inadequacies of the citizens there; or his opinions of life in general. And he offered those opinions over and over as if any reader in the world might be interested in what he thought. But instead of being something that could be received with grace, those opinions merely showed a disillusioned and bigoted fool, who seemed to be convinced that the world thought he was God’s gift to writing. Of course, he wasn’t. Fools always come off as fools; they’re seldom seen as geniuses or as God’s gift to anyone. And this writer was no different. He was a garden-variety fool, with touches of literary talent, who managed to annoy everyone who looked at his piece of writing.
b. RAW OPINION: “The greatest of this [environmental] writing is neither sentimental nor obvious - instead, it is very nearly shamanistic, allowing the natural world to translate itself into English in all sorts of ways. The emotional ways, taxonomic ways, descriptive ways, intimate ways, Olympian ways. It is a community of writers, with all the particulars of their upbringings, tastes, genders, mental states, seeking faithfully to serve as some sort of connection between people and the rest of the world. That faithfulness demands the most scrupulous accuracy - you have to know the tree’s resilience, the coyote’s circling route, the carbon molecule’s structure. But it also demands that you care, which is the highest form of objectivity [emphasis not in the original]” (Bill McKibben. “Speaking Up for the Environment,” The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, Marie Arana, ed., New York: PublicAffairs, 2003, pp. 363-364).
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