I got into a pretty wild email interchange with a woman friend the other day. We ended up battling it out over what amounts to a difference created by a conservative and a liberal approach to making sense out of the world. At one point I guess I was being sloppy with the distinction between an "opinion" and a "point of view" (or as she put it, view point). I seem to have caused confusion by stating that "from my point of view such and such means this" rather than "it is my opinion that such and such means this." (Maybe it was the other way around, I am not really sure which way it went.)
That got me to wondering if these phrases are synonyms or not. I think maybe they are not. Maybe "point of view" describes the context from which we understand things, and opinions are formed based upon that context. Maybe opinions are logical constructs (in a philosophical or mathematical sense) that naturally come from a person's "point of view" - the place where they view things from. Kind of like the old story of the blind men encountering an elephant. The one who has hold of the tail forms a logical opinion that an elephant is snake like, while the one holding onto an ear has an entirely different, but also logical, opinion or conclusion. It all depends upon the point of view.
I suppose this is a simple and logical difference, but maybe it is one that I have not been giving proper attention to in my attempts at understanding what stanch conservatives say. I find myself totally baffled by what comes out of their mouths. Often, the statements are totally incomprehensible to me. How in the world could they possibly go from a common set of facts that we both have access to and both share, and come up with the opinions that they express. To me it is simple logic to go from a given set of facts to a most likely conclusion. However, that certainly doesn't jive with what they are saying - and I can see from their frustration that they are having a similarly difficult time in trying to understand how I could possibly go from the shared set of facts to my conclusions. They are often so diametrically opposed that it is obvious that something important is not being discussed or understood.
Maybe that "something" is the point of view - the whole way of our looking at the world is from a different hill top and there just is no way that the description of an elephant via the tail will ever match up with the description from the point of view of an ear. However, it seems to be even worse than that example indicates. It is more like what happens when I see something as a color blind person versus what my wife sees with "normal" (to her - not to me) color vision. We see the same thing, we can discuss it forever, but she and I can never come even close to an agreement because we cannot understand the other's "point of view."
Maybe the only way to really understand each others respective opinions would be to live our entire life in the skin of the other - but since we can't do that we can't really put ourselves in a frame of mind that would allow us to have a shared point of view. If so, we might be doomed to forever arguing over things with no conceivable way of coming to a mutual understanding or shared opinion. That is what it often feels like to me. I find myself often watching and listening to people, seeing their anger boiling to the surface, seeing fear and frustration at my not agreeing with them, and wondering what could possibly be going on within them to cause these reactions. For example, not believing in the beliefs of a religious fundamentalist doesn't just result in them being sorry for your not believing in their version of the truth, it often results in large amounts of anger and worse.
I wonder if there is some way that we could come up with mutually acceptable "rules" for forming opinions and conclusions. That seems to be what some philosophers have attempted with formalized logical methods. While these formalized approaches might do a better job at coming up with "correct" conclusions (from the mathematical sense), they do not seem to be very useful by regular people, or for practitioners of these methods when it comes to problems of everyday life.
I suppose there is no solution to this problem. However, I am going to attempt to better understand the point of view of those who differ with me, rather than focusing on the logic of how they got from the facts to the conclusions. Obviously, either they are using an entirely different approach from going from facts to conclusions that I use, or the facts are different for them because they have a different point of view. It is probably a combination of these two problems. I hope this approach of approaching confusion will somehow eventually dawn as wisdom - but I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. I am convinced that these people with such differing opinions and conclusions are as smart, or smarter, than I - but something is getting in the way of our understanding each other. That is extremely frustrating, because without understanding we seem to have no way to work out are differences, or for finding better solutions that address all of our concerns. We end up in the kind of stalemate that has paralyzed the United States' governments for the past couple of decades - much to the detriment of all involved.
4 comments:
I think you are missing part of the puzzle. Two different people with the same set of facts and the same ability to reach a logical conclusion often disagree as to the correct conclusion. The difference is their assumptions, or beliefs, these assumptions are not grounded in reality and therefore cannot be confirmed empirically. For example, following the liberal conservative thread: If one person believes, or assumes, that there are times when it might be necessary to raise taxes and another person believes that there is never a justifiable reason to raise taxes (because the government can’t be trusted with money or something), then the two will disagree on the correct course of action even if they agree on the current state of the world. It is these core beliefs and assumptions that change the way people see the world, it changes their point of view. If you were to know, and accurately list, your assumptions and if the person you were debating could do the same, then I am sure that the two of you would agree that the other was behaving in a logical manner, even though, the conclusions maybe quite distinct. It has been my experience that most people are fundamentally unaware of their own assumptions, and it is this lack of awareness that causes such anger and frustration, because they can’t understand how you could reach a different conclusion. The best I have been able to do, is to try to understand myself and be aware of my assumptions, and understand that some people just see the world differently.
I think you are missing part of the puzzle. Two different people with the same set of facts and the same ability to reach a logical conclusion often disagree as to the correct conclusion. The difference is their assumptions, or beliefs, these assumptions are not grounded in reality and therefore cannot be confirmed empirically. For example, following the liberal conservative thread: If one person believes, or assumes, that there are times when it might be necessary to raise taxes and another person believes that there is never a justifiable reason to raise taxes (because the government can’t be trusted with money or something), then the two will disagree on the correct course of action even if they agree on the current state of the world. It is these core beliefs and assumptions that change the way people see the world, it changes their point of view. If you were to know, and accurately list, your assumptions and if the person you were debating could do the same, then I am sure that the two of you would agree that the other was behaving in a logical manner, even though, the conclusions maybe quite distinct. It has been my experience that most people are fundamentally unaware of their own assumptions, and it is this lack of awareness that causes such anger and frustration, because they can’t understand how you could reach a different conclusion. The best I have been able to do, is to try to understand myself and be aware of my assumptions, and understand that some people just see the world differently.
"For example, following the liberal conservative thread: If one person believes, or assumes, that there are times when it might be necessary to raise taxes and another person believes that there is never a justifiable reason to raise taxes (because the government can’t be trusted with money or something). . ."
A different way of putting it, one that looks at the same question from the other side, would be "If one person believes, or assumes, that it is always justifiable to raise taxes regardless of the spending level, particularly if they are raised on someone other than me", and the other believes "It is rarely justified to raise taxes, particularly when the current government squanders so much on programs that I believe are not productive, and on excessive salaries and benefits for positions that could be filled with qualified people for much less."
I think these kinds of issues would be resolvable (or at least discussable) if we could be more careful about explaining our point of view. It seems that we make assumptions that things are some particular way, and then forget (or refuse) to consider that others might have valid contrary points of view.
My upset isn't so much that others think differently, it is that they won't (or can't) express their differences. I am more than willing to include a different point of view - but when I try to find out what that might be I often (maybe usually) run into a wall of indignation and anger.
I am wondering how we can learn to express our differences so that the other can have a chance at understanding. I find it extremely frustrating to keep having to guess at the other's point of view, rather than have them just tell me what they think. If I have to guess, I often guess wrong - which does no good at all.
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