Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [4]
Or so we think …
The thing is, the absurdity isn’t obvious. If it were, there would be fewer people doing it. We all know people—conservative, liberal, religious, atheist, whatever (you can think of one right now)—who do this! In fact, we know a lot of them!2 They issue their positions, without argument, and when you prove their position to be false (with argument and facts), even lacking a defense they will simply say, “Well, that is just how you see it. I have a right to my opinion and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”3 What?!? No! It’s not just how I see it—it’s how it is! You don’t have a right to an opinion you can’t defend. And we don’t have to agree to disagree—if you were intellectually honest, you’d agree that you’re wrong!
I’m not suggesting that all issues are black and white and that when people do not agree with you, you should intellectually beat them down until they acquiesce. That would be just as bad as thinking from the gut. All critical, open-minded thinkers consider objections, weigh evidence, and revise their beliefs when they are proven wrong. The smartest person doesn’t think he’s right about everything; the smartest person admits how much he doesn’t know.
That’s what the smartest people I know do. Even Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.), the father of Western philosophy, did this. He actually suggested that he had no knowledge at all. According to the Apology, the Oracle at Delphi said Socrates was the wisest. Socrates set out to prove the Oracle wrong by finding someone who knew more than he did—which shouldn’t have been hard given that he claimed to know nothing. He questioned the politicians, generals, teachers, and other persons who claimed to have knowledge, only to discover that they knew nothing. It then dawned on him what the Oracle meant. He was the wisest because he admitted his own ignorance—something everyone else refused to do.
So what am I suggesting? Think about your friend who thinks that JFK must have been shot by someone on the grassy knoll, simply because the direction JFK’s head moved after the gun shot. (“Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.” He watched the movie JFK one too many times.) You’ve explained to him that bullets do not always force the object they hit in the direction of the bullet’s trajectory. If the bullet causes projectiles to be expelled from the side opposite the bullet’s impact (that is, if the opposite end of the object explodes), like JFK’s head did, the force of the explosion will actually push the object toward the point of entry. Maybe you even show this person the episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit,4 where they debunk this evidence by shooting a melon the size and weight of a human head, showing how it reacts just like JFK’s head did—it falls toward the point of entry as the opposite side explodes. So the movement of JFK’s head actually confirms that Oswald was the only shooter. But your friend says, “Nope. There was a shooter on the grassy knoll; I don’t care what you say. That’s my truth; I have a right to my opinion.”
This is the person Colbert mocks; this is the person Colbert pretends to be—the person who exaggerates what their evidence can support, can’t respond to criticism yet hides his ignorance behind a “right to opinion” under the mantra that his opinion is “true for him”—all so he doesn’t have to give up what he wants to believe. Colbert is more concerned with people who do this in the political arena—it’s a little