Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [8]
Locke points out that, if what your gut says really is true, it would stand up to rational inquiry. In fact, if it is true, it should be provable. Even when the prophets of the Old Testament received a revelation (gut feeling) from God, God did not expect them to trust it alone. He gave them signs to verify the revelation’s accuracy (for example, a burning bush). Whether or not you buy the stories of the Old Testament the point is, even for prophets, gut feelings are not good evidence on their own. The conclusions towards which they drive you must be tested by rational means. No matter how strongly you feel about something, “Reason must be our last judge in everything.”11 Gut-thinkers are not justified; they simply are enthusiastic.
“That’s My Right”
I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn’t true … Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that’s my right … we are [a nation] divided by those who think with their head and those who know with their heart.
—Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report12
Your conspiracy-loving friend used his “right to opinion” to protect his gut-based belief. The supposition that everyone has—or should have—a right to their belief is widespread indeed. In a legal sense, the supposition is right. In America—God’s country—there are no laws restricting freedom of opinion. No one can be thrown in jail for something he believes.13
But the legal right to an opinion is not what your friend is referring to when he can’t answer the multitude of objections you have raised against his position and just says “Hey, I have a right to my opinion.” If he did have the legal right in mind, he would be pointing out to you that you can’t report him to authorities and have him hauled away to jail for continuing to believe in grassy knoll shooters. I highly doubt he thinks you’re considering doing so. No, your friend likely means one of two things. Either he thinks he has an epistemic right to his opinion or he thinks he has a moral right to his opinion. In either case, he is wrong.
Epistemology is the “study of knowledge.” A belief is epistemically justified if it’s backed up by evidence and argument. A belief is not epistemically justified if it can’t be defended against objection. If your friend has an epistemic right to his belief, it’s only because his belief is epistemically justified. Given that he has given no argument for his belief, and he has not answered any of your arguments against his belief, his belief is not epistemically justified. So, if he thinks he has an epistemic right to his opinion, he is obviously mistaken.
More likely, he thinks he has a moral right to his opinion. But what could this mean? As philosopher Jamie Whyte14 points out, if your friend has a moral right to his opinion, you must have a certain kind of moral duty to treat his opinion a certain way.15 That’s what moral rights do; they create duties for others. According to Whyte, this duty could amount to three things.
Perhaps your friend’s right to his opinion means that you have a duty to agree with his opinion. But that can’t be right. If he has a right to his opinion, then you have a right to yours—and you can’t both be obligated to agree with each other. Perhaps it means that you are obligated to listen to his opinion. Again, this seems unlikely. If he has that right, everyone does. And that means you are obligated to listen